“How attached are you to the idea of being white?” Chenjerai Kumanyika puts that question to host John Biewen, as they revisit an unfinished conversation from a previous episode. Part 7 of our series, Seeing White.
Photo: Composite image: Chenjerai Kumanyika, left; photo by Danusia Trevino. And John Biewen, photo by Ewa Pohl.
There are some great questions here that are well worth revisiting in light of the remainder of the series.
Some of this discussion reminds me of a lazy, 20-something comedian I heard recently. He hadn’t accomplished anything useful in his life and felt like (and probably was in the eyes of many) a “complete failure.” He said he felt like an even worse failure because in the game of life, playing the straight white male, he was also failing while using the game’s lowest difficulty setting. I wish I could give the original attribution, but I don’t remember the comedian and upon searching I see that the general concept of the joke goes back much further than the source–so it may seem he was an even bigger failure in that he was also lifting the material from somewhere else. What else should we expect in a society of such privilege?
Imagine for a moment that you could go into a meeting and everyone in the meeting would have very deep context on the topic you're going to discuss. They would be well-versed in the critical data for your business.
Not alone and not unread, but the ground underfoot ain’t steady. An instance of Homo economicus wouldn’t be doing this — no payday looming. So I guess I’m not one of those. But hey, whenever I can steal an hour I can send the world whatever words and pictures occupy my mind and laptop. Which, all these years later, still feels like immense privilege.
I’ve written a few things on Medium (not paid) because I liked the experience of their writing tools, their statistics, and their reach. I think two of the three items I wrote became featured and had several thousand reads. It’s a wonderful way to write and a wonderful place to post.
But it’s not mine. It’s theirs.
Bingo.
You can use someone else’s software, but still have your own “platform”, if you’re hosting it from a domain name you control and are able to easily take your content and traffic with you to another tool or host at any time. You don’t need to go full-Stallman and build your own blogging engine from scratch on a Linux box in your closet — a Tumblr, Squarespace, or WordPress blog is perfectly fine if you use your own domain name and can export your data easily.
Google Plus doesn’t have RSS feeds, or email subscription options. Both are important to me; I want to speak to my readers however they want to be spoken to. Some day, we’ll be able to write to and read from any platform in any other platform, just like we can call one phone network from inside another phone network now.
I hope he’s being clever here, because we had that. (And I think we still have it.)
It’s interesting that so much online publishing is moving into a small handful of massive, closed, proprietary networks after being so distributed and diverse during the big boom of blogs and RSS almost a decade ago.
Want to feel old? Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report was released fifteen years ago.
It casts a long shadow. For a decade after the film’s release, it was referenced at least once at every conference relating to human-computer interaction. Unsurprisingly, most of the focus has been on the technology in the film. The hardware and interfaces in Minority Report came out of a think tank assembled in pre-production. It provided plenty of fodder for technologists to mock and praise in subsequent years: gestural interfaces, autonomous cars, miniature drones, airpods, ubiquitous advertising and surveillance.
Shopping for a new cooler. Also got myself a folding sports wagon (code for “a wagon for adults”) for carrying stuff back and forth to Gerrish this summer.
The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
Marie Kondo
House & Home
Ten Speed Press
October 14, 2014
Kindle e-book
226
Presents a guide to cleaning and organizing a living space, discussing best methods for decluttering and the impact that an organized home can have on mood and physical and mental health.
I originally picked this up on April 18th when my brother Steve had asked me if I could track down a copy for him. Last week another friend mentioned it at brunch with her recommendation, so I thought I’d give it a shot.
Kondo does an excellent job of highlighting the most important parts of the book as she goes along, so it’s rather easy to skim back through the book for important parts.
The basic gist is to get rid of everything in one’s home that doesn’t “spark joy” when physically holding it. It’s not too dissimilar to the philosophy set forward by designer/artist William Morris who once said, “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”
Most of the book is devoted to some of the basic philosophy as well as recommendations about how to go about paring things down and storing them. In particular I found some of her ideas about folding things interesting and I was a bit surprised at how one can differently fold things to not only save space in drawers, but to also make them easier to see and choose.
I went so far as to watch some videos about how she folds:
This series of short videos and a few longer talks do a relatively good job of encapsulating the contents of the book.
An interesting thing I find in what I’m supposing is a translation from Japanese is that though the translation is strong, the flavor of the writer’s Japanese culture still burns through the philosophy and story of the work. To me these were some of the most interesting parts of her story.
If you tidy up in one shot, rather than little by little, you can dramatically change your mind-set.
Highlight (yellow) – Why can’t I keep my house in order? > Location 247
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Tidying is just a tool, not the final destination. The true goal should be to establish the lifestyle you want most once your house has been put in order.
Highlight (yellow) – Why can’t I keep my house in order? > Location 300
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Putting things away creates the illusion that the clutter problem has been solved. […] This is why tidying must start with discarding.
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…the space I live in is graced only with those things that speak to my heart.
Highlight (yellow) – Why can’t I keep my house in order? > Location 402
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Finish discarding first
Start by discarding, all at once, intensely and completely
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The urge to point out someone else’s failure to tidy is usually a sign that you are neglecting to take care of your own space.
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In fact, that particular article of clothing has already completed its role in your life, and you are free to say, “Thank you for giving me joy when I bought you,” or “Thank you for teaching me what doesn’t suit me,” and let it go.
Highlight (yellow) – Finish discarding first > Location 698
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To truly cherish the things that are important to you, you must first discard those that have outlived their purpose.
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Tidying by category works like magic
You may have wanted to read it when you bought it, but if you haven’t read it by now, the book’s purpose was to teach you that you didn’t need it.
Highlight (yellow) – Tidying by category works like magic > Location 1013
This is essentially sacrilege to me, but then again most all books give me a spark of joy.
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Storing your things to make your life shine
…storage “solutions” are really just prisons within which to bury possessions that spark no joy.
Highlight (yellow) – Storing your things to make your life shine > Location 1426
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Never pile things: vertical storage is the key
Highlight (yellow) – Tidying by category works like magic > Location 1551
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Never hang on to them in the belief that you might use them someday.
Highlight (yellow) – Tidying by category works like magic > Location 1602
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This is why I urge you to refrain from stocking up on things.
Highlight (yellow) – Tidying by category works like magic > Location ####
TOKUMNOTE
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This is why I urge you to refrain from stocking up on things.
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She’s talking about socks/stockings here. Pun intended? 🙂
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When you treat your belongings well, they will always respond in kind. For this reason, I take time to ask myself occasionally whether the storage space I’ve set aside for them will make them happy. Storage, after all, is the sacred act of choosing a home for my belongings.
Highlight (yellow) – Tidying by category works like magic > Location 1831
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The magic of tidying dramatically transforms your life
I truly believe that our possessions are even happier and more vibrant when we let them go than when we first get them.
Highlight (yellow) – The magic of tidying dramatically transforms your life > Location 2044
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Guide to highlight colors
Yellow–general highlights and highlights which don’t fit under another category below Orange–Vocabulary word; interesting and/or rare word Green–Reference to read Blue–Interesting Quote Gray–Typography Problem Red–Example to work through
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