Practicum 3: Family Dinners

I bit off of Andrew’s practicum a while ago for mine this week. It seemed like a good one for me to do because it rolls several of my values into one thing. Most obvious of those values is family, but I also find my values of taking time and quality in family dinners. Spending time with family over food is an important routine to make, and unfortunately we haven’t prioritized it for a long time. I hope to make it a more frequent occurrence beyond this week, though.

Overall, the practicum worked very well. My parents and I (and occasionally a few other members of the extended family) would actually sit at a table without piles of junk on it, with actual table settings, and it was nice. Taking the time to make sure that happened improved the quality of the meals, since there was planning and more effort involved. I also felt like it was a good thing to finalize the day, a routine to get grounded and unwind, and I went to bed happier. Even if there wasn’t much talking, or if most of it was between my parents, it was still nice to simply sit in their presence without any distractions, and hear what’s up with them. I guess it’s kind of like what checkout is to PSCS.

However, there were two nights where it didn’t work out perfectly. The first was Monday, when I have to leave at 6, about the time my mom gets home, and get back at 9, when my mom starts thinking about going to bed (she gets up at 5 to get to work). The other time was Friday, which was the showcase. Different scheduling things like that, which all of us have, makes it not completely sustainable. Even so, it’s something I get a lot out of, and it’s worth making a habit out of.

Text Study 3: Leaves of Grass

My third text study was a poem from a collection by Walt Whitman called Leaves of Grass. It was first published in 1855, with just twelve poems in it, though throughout the rest of his life Whitman tinkered with and expanded it (the copy I have, the last edition he made, is known as “the death-bed edition” and has about 700 pages of poetry in it). The poem I chose is the first one from the original 1855 version of the book, titled “Song of Myself.” It’s not really one poem, but is made up of a bunch of smaller ones that go together. I didn’t find relevance to my beliefs in all of them, but even so I read all 52.

The first line of the whole thing is “I celebrate myself and sing myself”. Many of the following lines are about self-celebration, almost to the point of arrogance at times. Even so, it’s something I really liked about this text. Whitman expresses satisfaction and contentment with things the way they are, and with himself the way he is. Self-improvement and ambition aren’t things he seems to devote much thought to. Rather, he accepts and appreciates what is, enjoys the present, and lets the world take care of itself.

I like this idea very much, to a certain extent. What is generally thought of as success and accomplishment is, to me, super over-valued. People are always working towards the next best thing, the bigger house, the bigger paycheck, the big accomplishment, wide recognition, whatever. I would much rather hang out on the low rungs of the ladder and be happy doing what I do, than be constantly driven upward by blind ambition. Not that I think people should only reach for the low branches. But I do believe there is such a thing as enough, and that living in obscurity is completely fine, as long you’re happy. In fact, I think that many of the most important, seemingly insignificant things are extremely significant in their obscurity. On the other side of it, I also don’t think it’s acceptable to just float around and be a bum. Some of the people that drive me up the wall are the kinds who won’t even try, and then say, “this is how I am, accept me!” So I guess there’s a happy medium between blind ambition and slackerdom where contentment lies.

Here are some of my favorite tidbits, if any one cares.

I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.
…………………………………..
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
…………………………..
Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.
…………………………..
…do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else,
And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to me…
…………………………
I resist anything better than my own diversity,
Breathe the air but leave plenty after me
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

(The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place,
The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in their place,
The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.)
…………………………..
I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is…
…I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

Interview 3: my parents

For my third interview, I chose my parents to talk to. I knew pretty close to the beginning of the credo process that I wanted one of my interviews to be of a family member, and my parents seemed a natural choice because they would’ve had the most direct impact on my beliefs. The conversation quickly turned to the importance of family, which is something I’ve had on my mind for a while now, though I’ve never really had any fully-formed thoughts on it.
In the last few years, I’ve noticed that I feel differently about my family than many of my peers, or people in general, feel about theirs. Spending time with my family and maintaining good family relationships are things I value, and I think that came down to me through both sides of my family. For my mom, good family relationships get down to her belief in treating others as you would want to be treated. In the case of family, though, it runs deeper than just that, because there’s a sort of sacredness to it. Yeah, so there might be quibbles and things you don’t like, but it doesn’t really matter, because they’re family. Of course, she made a point of saying that if there are really toxic relationships, no one should have to stick it out if it means they’re miserable.
During the interview, both my mom and my dad talked about family gatherings and rituals they had growing up. My mom talked about her grandfather’s birthday party, which happened every year on May 5th, and how it’s just what happened, it was like Christmas or something. My dad talked about his last conversation with his Uncle Tom before he died of cancer, in which he gave a very clear message: “promise me you’ll get together for family gatherings, because family is everything.” He also talked about dinner in his household, which was always eaten together at the same time every night.
I’m still not really sure how to find the words for the base belief behind the value I have in family. I guess a lot of it for me is knowing your roots, not only by knowing family stories and history, but also simply knowing the people that you’re linked to by biology. I think a lot of my feelings about my family also came from the fact that I’m extremely lucky with the personalities that are in the family I got. Both my parents are super easy-going, and we all get along really well, which not everybody can say.
Anyways, my mom simplified good family relationships in a way that I liked. Treating other people how you want to be treated is one part of it, and the other is being good for goodness’s sake. Being good to people bring about all sorts of good karma, and doing it for its own sake, not because you want all the good things you’re going to get back, is important.

Practicum 2: low-tech

My second practicum was basically a kind of low-tech week, to put into practice the value I place on being aware of what you’re doing, instead of just pressing a button and waiting for the end result. I tend to think that a lot of those modern conveniences that keep on getting invented to save people a couple of minutes sort of deteriorate that kind of thoughtfulness that could be put into whatever one is doing, and make people lazy, too.

I didn’t use a lot of daily conveniences that people tend to rely on and take for granted: the internet, the microwave, the dishwasher, my ipod, things like that. In some ways it worked out alright, it some ways it sputtered out a bit. I often would only realize that I had used something that I shouldn’t have after the fact, like, “oops, I used the electric kettle”, or, “oops, I used the phone”, or, “I took a ride from my dad to someplace I could have gotten to myself, if inconveniently…does that even count?” All these things are so ingrained into everybody’s life, they’re just about impossible to get away from, and to really do this practicum properly, I’d have to go live with the Amish or something.

So in that way it wasn’t as successful, but in another way, it was successful for the same reason. It kept on striking me over the week that a lot of my quibbles with technology and convenience seemed totally petty. I still place tons of value on being thoughtful of what you’re doing and taking time for and appreciating the process of something, rather than thinking solely about the end result. But so many of these little things I’ve kept harping on just don’t seem to matter that much in the grand scheme of things, and I think I’m starting to let go of those things. Who cares if some bit of technology makes things a bit easier, especially if it actually does the job better than you could by yourself? For example: I broke down a day early because I really really really wanted to make some banana bread, which requires the use of an electric mixer, unless it is to be intolerably inferior. So I made the banana bread and it was totally awesome. I think this example helps me draw the line between what’s being mindless and lazy and what’s not, so that I’m not throwing the baby out with the bathwater (for lack of a better phrase). If I had simply put all the ingredients into some magic banana-bread-making device and sat back to wait for it to be done, then I would have crossed the line, but I was still active in the process, which is what’s important. That was a really nice realization to make, because now I don’t have to feel as much like my values of quality, thoughtfulness, and low-tech are at odds with each other, which was nagging at me for quite some time.

There was another definite positive experience this past week that sticks out in my mind, and that was Deb’s class The Good Rain. Normally I’d have my computer out during that class so we can bum around the net in search of answers for the questions we bring in, but kept it in my bag this time. I had a feeling that the class might not go anywhere without the net, but it worked out really well. Instead of drooling over the computer, we took our thoughts about the chapter of the book we read and ended up having a big philosophical discussion that lasted the whole class. It kicked butt, and I think that’s what Deb’s original intent for the class was.

Something else that’s been on my mind a lot lately (it’s unrelated to the practicum, but I wanna talk about it anyway) is the constant desire for more knowledge. I really strongly believe that people don’t need to know and understand everything, that some mysteries are better left unsolved. Space and Time has given me a concrete example of something to rail against, as far as this goes (sorry, Nic), and has helped me define this belief a bit. As the year has gone on and we keep getting into more and more crazy and obscure stuff, I keep getting more perturbed by it. The universe is obviously a super complex thing, or maybe that’s just it’s been made out to be, and all these scientists are trying to work it out, trying to describe it with all these stupidly complex theories. I think that it’s something we simply can’t understand, and we’d be better off just basking in awe. It is what is it, whether we understand it or not.

In the physics intensive earlier this year, we watched a video about Richard Feynman, in which he talks about a flower, and how it’s beautiful on the surface, but knowing how it works and being able to explain it makes it even more beautiful. I was asked what I thought about that, and at the time I wasn’t really sure. But now I think I’m definitely in opposition to Feynman on this one. Taking something beautiful and trying to figure it out and explain it is like explaining why a joke is funny. It just is, and we don’t have to have all the answers about it. I also feel that to figure things out and explain them like that, you have to break them down into all their little parts, which means you’re treating them like they're simply the sum of their parts.

Having been thinking about this belief, the Harvard Classics reading this week was quite fitting. It was an essay on beauty by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and it had a few quotes that really resonated. “The boy had juster views when he gazed at the shells on the beach, or the flowers in the meadow, unable to call them by their names, than the man in the pride of his nomenclature"…"The human heart concerns us more than the pouring into microscopes, and is larger than can be measured by the pompous figures of the astronomer.” (Holy crap, I like this dude!) For me, this gets at, similar to my belief about not needing to understand everything, my belief that not everything has to have a reason. Things can happen simply because they do, and we can appreciate them for that.

There was also a quote later on in the essay that I liked a lot: “Beauty is the moment of transition, as if the form were just ready to flow into other forms.” I can tie this back to what I was talking about earlier, about taking time to appreciate the process of creating something, not just the result, and also to the sum-of-its-parts thing. A bunch of flour and sugar and butter and eggs and mushy bananas aren’t too special by themselves, but seeing them make those transitions from one thing to the next until they’re a batter, and from that into deliciousness makes them more than that. Remember when I was talking about simple pleasures? This is what I was talking about.

Anyways….I really don’t know how to end this. I suppose I’ll end with the last question from the handbook.

What are your core values? What do you believe?

I believe that things are more than the sum of their parts.

I believe in keeping mysteries, mysteries.

I believe in simple pleasures.

I believe the means are more important than the ends.

I believe in being mindful.

Text Study 2: Wendell Berry

My second text study was an essay written by Wendell Berry in 1988 titled “The Work of Local Culture.” In it, he talks about really close communities of the sort that are very rare these days, because people don’t have the same roots to their place and knowledge of local culture, and as a result, young people move away from their hometowns and never go back.

The first thing that popped out at me was the high value Berry placed on good old-fashioned neighborliness. A good local community depends on people knowing and trusting one another, supporting and helping each other out, and is shaped from the inside, not by anything external. To illustrate the kind of close local community he was talking about, Berry told of a group of old neighborhood fogeys who would sit around in a field in Kentucky and just talk, and tell stories, even stories they’d all heard before. The kids would hear these stories, and in that way, local memory, and local culture, would live on. I think this is an important chunk of the passing down of knowledge thing I was talking about last week. These people didn’t have any money, but that didn’t matter to them. They had each other to support and help each other out, and they created their own entertainment. This reminds of Charles saying in my interview with him that real wealth has nothing to do with money, real wealth is having true friends.

Berry expresses his sadness and frustration that everybody is always moving away from their hometowns and families to big cities to get educated and be the biggest, most glorious and rich thing they can be. Everyone tries to move “up” as if it’s the only good direction to go, leaving big holes in the small but important spots. Those sort of insignificant things people do are often actually extremely significant in their obscurity, and a good local culture with people that are familiar with each other and the things they do, will appreciate those little things. While he was talking about education, he also showed a lot of disdain for “experts,” in this specific case, “educators.” He complains about how people are no longer educated to be effective members of their community, only to leave home and make tons of money. Before this was the prevalent attitude, education was centered more around the home as well, which the “experts” are now saying they’ve figured out that home is an important place to learn, and families should be involved in their children’s education. This is annoying because that’s the way it was done for years and years, before it was all ruined. They didn’t tell us anything new, they only hijacked old local culture and made it external, rather than the internally shaped thing it was before. I definitely feel the same annoyance for expertise as well. I’d rather look around me to the body of local knowledge that’s been cultivated forever by a community, than look up to some distant expert, who might not even be helpful. I think my favorite sentence from the whole thing is this: “the only true and effective ‘operator’s manual for spaceship earth’ is not a book any human will ever write; it is hundreds of thousands of local cultures.” Local culture is not only something I want for myself, but for the entire world, too. It breaks my heart when I hear about all those hundreds of thousands of old and diverse cultures disappearing as westernization and homogeneity creeps over them. I don’t even care if I never hear a thing about these cultures, I just want them to exist.

The hardest question the text raised for me was about Home. Home is something I’ve always known is important to me, but I’ve never teased out what it really means as far as my beliefs go. Having my own place to be comfortable and spend time in is really important to me, and having someplace you can always go back to. Berry talks about how sad it is that young people leave their hometowns and their parents and never return, and it made me think about whether I’m going to stick around Seattle forever. I definitely want to go places and travel, and I’ve dreamed of doing so for as long as I can remember, but I never could imagine living permanently in anyplace other than the Northwest. I’ve spent my entire life here, and most of my family is either in Seattle or Portland.

Interview 2: Charles Hadrann

Charles Hadrann is the very friendly, very talkative, and very opinionated owner of Wright Bros. Cycles works in Fremont, where I spent a lot of time over the summer. I wanted to interview Charles because his generosity and sense of humor, among other things, endear him to me, and also because he always seemed to me to be annoyed by crappy stuff, like I am (in the shop, he would sometimes call me over to a bike he’d be working on to make an example of it: “Look at this! It’s a piece of shit! A Sears bike! Factory made crap! It’s doesn’t deserve to be called a bike, it’s a bicycle shaped object!”). He also often said that patience was the most important tool in the shop, which always stuck with me.
I met Charles at 10:00 on a Friday morning at a coffee shop to do the interview. I started off by explaining what the whole interview thing was supposed to be about, and without my even asking a real question, he launched into his worldview and all I had to do was absorb what he said as he talked for a straight half hour. The very first thing he said was about keeping a positive outlook. What good will bitching and grumbling about something really do for you, anyway, he said. Having a problem solving approach to things instead is important to him, because bad things are going to happen no matter what, things that aren’t in your control, so what’s the use in griping? What can you do to make the situation better for yourself? How can you fix this thing that’s broken? Where’s the silver lining?
Something else Charles placed a lot of importance on is learning and knowledge. Particularly the passing on of it: connecting to people by teaching, mentoring, sharing skills, etc—he thinks that people shouldn’t keep it all to themselves, because then it’s as if it’s not even there at all. I can really jive on that, especially because those kinds of personal connections are important to me, and perhaps a bit because of the “passing down knowledge and skills” phrase. I don’t know what it is about it that draws me in so much, maybe it’s that it somehow implies tradition, which I find comforting. Doing things the same way they’ve been done forever, the way people have taught them to other people, provides roots to the past, which is important to me. I know that sounds tacky, but there ya go.
As much as I embrace learning and knowledge that way, it’s also something I struggle a little bit with. I firmly believe that people don’t need to know everything about everything, and am comfortable with common sense knowledge that people gain from experience of the world and people around them, and that isn’t necessarily always backed up by science. Knowledge for knowledge’s sake and progress for progress’s sake aren’t good things to go after all the time, because then it gets us too much power and we just start trying to fix what’s not broken, and do things just because we can. This really freaks me out, and might explain part of my resistance to fancy new science and technology.
Anyways, back to Charles. He talked about how looking at and taking things in baby steps is important. A big project, for example, should be broken down into lots of little projects, and that way it’s not so daunting. To illustrate this, he used a bunch of marble cubes as a metaphor. “Take a cube, and carve and wear it down until it’s a perfect sphere. Then throw it over your shoulder and move on to the next one.” Small habits also seem to be important to him. When he was talking about learning, he said he tries to make sure he learns one new thing a day. Reading something everyday, something he really wants to read, not like the newspaper or things like that, is also something he makes a habit of. I can connect this to my appreciation of simple pleasures. Every once and a while something of grand proportions is always good, but really, what makes me smile are the little things. A good cup of cocoa, the satisfaction of doing laundry, a nice pen, a really good song or piece of art…these kinds of small things provide sort of an underlying foundation of satisfaction and happiness that everything else rests on.
Two words that Charles came back to several times were patience and perseverance. When I asked him about his thoughts on quality, he looked at the question from the perspective of fixing something and doing a quality job. “Do a good job the first time,” he said, “or you’ll have to take more time to fix it the next time.” This often means taking time and having patience with it. And if you get frustrated with it, take a break, come back to it and keep trying. Patience is something that’s really important to me to have, and I like to think that I have it when it counts, even though I can be impulsive at times. Perseverance I’m not as sure about, I haven’t really thought about it much. If there’s something I want or a goal that I have, I think that I’m usually able to go for it and keep at it until I get what I want, but I also know about myself that I’ll give something up pretty fast, or just flat out refuse to do it, if I think I’m going to be bad at it. I like to be good at whatever I do, so if something doesn’t come naturally to me, I tend to be stubborn about not doing it for the sake of my large and fragile ego, even if I know it’ll be a rip-roarin’ good time.
Given how much I like and respect Charles, I took pretty much all of what he said during the interview to heart. He didn’t so much change my beliefs as much as reinforce them, but he definitely gave me a few new things to think about, most importantly perseverance, and caused me to mull over things that have been floating around my head for a while, like the knowledge and learning thing.