crystallize!

Two recent favorite reads, forming an interesting study in contrasts:

• The new North: an account of a woman’s 1908 journey through Canada to the Arctic, by Agnes Deans Cameron
• Two coots in a canoe: an unusual story of friendship, by David E. Morine

Cameron was a remarkable character. After a 20-year career as a schoolteacher in Vancouver, ended abruptly as a result of her flouting a rule she deemed unfair — she allowed a student to use a straight-edge to draw a straight line, in order that his otherwise promising academic career not be jeopardized by such a trivial requirement, and her superiors could not condone such misbehavior — she moved to Chicago, became a journalist, and thence undertook her impressive voyage, with her niece as traveling companion. She documents her nearly-six-month trip in crisp and vivid language, providing enough detail to paint an interesting story without ever becoming bogged down in minutiae. Her descriptions of the people who host her, the towns she passes through and their agricultural outputs, the culture of the Hudson’s Bay Company, the local flora and fauna, the river, the scenery, her fellow travelers — all are engagingly presented. Her discussion of the Eskimos she meets, especially, is a fascinating study, since they are quite unlike what she had expected: a tall, regal people, for whom she expresses great admiration.

Morine’s book documents a modern adventure, a trip down the Connecticut River from source to sea. Before he retired, Morine served as head of land acquisition for the Nature Conservancy; his traveling companion was an old friend from grad school whom he hadn’t seen in years. The gimmick for the trip was that instead of camping, they stayed each night with different hosts, “relying on the kindness of strangers.” Since I live right next to the Connecticut myself, midway along their route, many of the places he describes are familiar to me, so it was especially interesting to read about who he met along the way.

I wonder what Cameron’s journey would be like in this century, or what Morine’s would have been like in hers.

Interesting recent NYTimes column by Nicholas Kristof: What Could You Do Without?, profiles a family’s startling adventures. They took the “crazy, impetuous and utterly inspiring” step of “selling the luxurious family home and donating half the proceeds to charity, while using the other half to buy a more modest replacement home.” Their forthcoming book, The Power of Half, chronicles their story.

Also interestingly, they are evidently getting negative reactions from folks who consider them “sanctimonious showoffs,” when their actual goal in sharing their story is to demonstrate that an initially selfless gesture turned out to be of at least as much benefit to themselves.

Lots more about the project, the book, and an encouragement to find your own “half”: thepowerofhalf.com.

I’ve long admired Margaret Atwood’s writing, but this was my first foray into her nonfiction. The chapters of this book were first presented as a series of lectures on CBC radio in November 2008, so although they are of a decidedly literary-scholar bent, they also spin together an engaging series of stories, much as you might expect from Atwood as professional storyteller.

From this book I learned many interesting things, including:

• Capuchin monkeys and chimpanzees have a very clear sense of what constitutes fairness.
• In Aramaic (the language Jesus spoke), the word for “debt” is the same as the word for “sin” — hence, among other things, the disparate versions of “forgive us our trespasses.”
• How Dickens’s A Christmas Carol can be read as a direct reversal of Marlowe’s (or Gounod’s) Faust.
• Why mills and millers carry a stigma in folklore.

I enjoyed this tour through religious, literary, and social history, and its insightful exploration of how humans have thought about debt from ancient times until today. Don’t miss the final chapter’s reworking of Scrooge into a contemporary setting, featuring Scrooge Nouveau and his alternate possible futures involving hemp suits and a giant cockroach.

Recently I’ve been struck anew by the fact that often my relationship with all my travel plans and ideas has been to relegate them to the maybe-someday queue. Someday I’ll go to New Zealand, someday I’ll go to Australia,… Bali, Ireland, Bhutan, Uzbekistan, Japan,… I’ve been adding new places to the list for decades, and not crossing them off anywhere near as fast. Some of them have been on the list for over 20 years, which in other circumstances might merit the label of “stuck.” So it’s occurring to me that now would be a good time to change the way I think about planning travel, at a basic level. This realization has been helped along by an inspiring meeting with a new friend who spent 10 months traveling around the world a few years ago, and also by the somewhat alarming number of my friends who have been contracting sudden fatal illnesses over the past few years. (Probably any number over zero would seem alarming.)

One of my several first steps: start reading more about the places I want to go. My library obligingly supplied a couple of books about travel in Australia; it also happened to have another with an amusing title nearby, so I pulled all three.


Quick reactions, in lieu of actual reviews: Bryson is hilarious, as always; Parry’s writing is less skillful but still amusing; both added substantially to my previously miniscule grasp of Australian geography and history. Which is to say, my mind is now full of vivid maps and images of lots of places I must go see for myself. I enjoyed Gurdon’s documentation of his travels-with-chicken publicity stunt, too (he is a writer in England who was on book tours in aid of his previous book, also about chickens).

Getting more done by doing less—it’s a simple enough premise. Identify what’s essential, limit yourself to doing the things that fall under that heading, and presto! you have amazingly improved productivity. In practice, of course, it may be simple but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily easy. But if you’re ready to give it a try, this books offers an excellent set of clear steps.

I’ve been experimenting with his basic building blocks for a couple of weeks, and I’ve gotta say, they’ve been really helpful so far. One of my perpetual challenges has been learning to set a reasonable task list for myself, so I don’t become a slave to my endless to-do list. I mean, yeah, obviously you prioritize and then you do the most important things first, yadda yadda—but there are always umpteen things left on the list at the end of the day, right? So here’s the new rule I’ve been using with great success: as you begin your workday, choose just three things that you absolutely must do today. These are your Most Important Things, and you may work on other things only after all of them are completed. I must confess, I’m still a little sloppy on that latter bit, sliding in some little stuff up front and thus effectively assigning myself more than three things. And I’m still refining my ability to choose the right three. But even so, the overall effect has been notable. For me, this is largely because that one rule gives me a simple and attainable goal: done the things? today is a success!

The book covers a lot of ground, first presenting several chapters of basic principles about setting limits and creating new habits, and then offering practical advice on how to put all of those principles into action. Lots of tips here about setting setting goals and tasks, managing your time, handling email and filing, creating daily routines, decluttering, slowing down, improving your health and fitness, and finally on sustaining your motivation as you work on all your new habits. None of it is rocket surgery, as they say, but nevertheless it’s a great little resource.

Babauta also writes a great blog called Zen Habits, if you’re interested in lots more reading and inspiration about simple productivity.

“How to use Feng Shui to get love, money, respect, and happiness,” promises the subtitle. I’ve lost track of who recommended this to me, but I have long thought that it would be fun to check out at least one of the myriad books geared toward the Feng Shui novice. This one is an interesting starting point: it’s a quick read, humorously presented, easy to understand, offering a variety of quick cheap fixes (a few little mirrors here and there can evidently go a long way). It’s envisioned as a workbook: learn how to apply the grid to your own living space, then examine each section and make adjustments as needed. I discovered almost immediately that my own house, according to these directions, actually has three “missing corners” (since the entire shape isn’t rectangular)—and what’s more, what little of the Prosperity corner I do have is an immediate uh-oh: “Let’s hope there isn’t a toilet in your Prosperity corner,” she says cheerily.

I was struck by the strong similarity between (this presentation of) Feng Shui and the popular literature about the Law of Attraction. Focus on visualizing the things you want in your life, let the universe know what you are trying to attract, avoid giving any energy to dwelling on what you don’t like about your situation. In this case there is a fairly elaborate set of symbology around the structure of how you go about clearing space and creating these visualizations, but fundamentally the teaching is about balance and intentionality, “the intelligent use of intention through environmental metaphor.” I’d be interested to know more about whether a more traditionally rooted teaching of Feng Shui carries the same essential lesson.

As for whether I plan to go through with applying any of these suggested Feng Shui remedies to my own living space—hey, it can’t hurt to try out a couple things. So far I’ve followed the instructions to inform my Helpful People corner that I’m looking for the perfect new owner for my VW Beetle; no nibbles yet. Maybe soon the ground will thaw enough to let me extend those missing corners of the house.