"What I Talk About When I Talk About Running"

Let me clarify. Not me, Haruki Murakami.


Yea, I know, it's not one of the books in the "1001 Books..." list that I'm working through, but I've been carrying a half-read copy in my backpack for the last several months, and so I finally pushed through the second half, mostly on the metro. It was well suited for the metro - a light easy read with short chapters. I haven't read a lot of Murakami, but he's a wonderfully skilled writer; tight descriptive prose with an honestly reflective emotional core. Some of his other books are on the list, and I'm definitely looking forward to them.

But this one is an odd choice for me, frankly.

Mostly because I hate running.

I've got several friends who run for health/fitness reasons, and a few who run for...pleasure?

I guess that's why I ended up reading this book. I've never understood what it is about running that draws people to it. I don't mind the solitariness of it, but there's an interior state that some people seem to relish.

Murakami deftly articulates the appeal that running holds for him through a series of personal reminisces and reflections, and draws parallels between the commitment that running demands, and the day-to-day dedication that is required of professional authors. In reading this, it's clear that his mix of gentle self-effacement and acute self-awareness are, in part, derived from his experience as a lifelong runner. The knowledge of his physical limits, and the mature judgement to know how and when those limits can be pushed.

This provides a common theme that runs through the entire book - pushing yourself past your limits can pay off, but it can also be an act of self-sabotage.

It's a lovely little book, with some beautifully descriptive vignettes on running in Boston and Central Park, and Greece, and throughout Japan. Not my typical read, but enjoyable nonetheless.

9/11

What did you do because of 9/11/01?

 Not "how did it affect your life?" or "what was its impact on your daily routine?"

What did you change - consciously or unconsciously - about yourself or your engagement with the world because of what you saw/thought/felt on 9/11?

What did you DO because of 9/11? What changes to your life did you make in response to that event?

Book 1 of 1001: Aesop's Fables

The very first book listed in the “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die” book is Aesop’s fables. Because it’s been around in various forms for centuries, I was able to download a copy of the e-book from Amazon for about a dollar. I could probably find it elsewhere for free, but I’m not 100% sold on doing any heavy reading on e-books as it is, so I went with convenience at a small cost.

A little background: It’s listed as just over 300 pages, though almost none of those are full pages. The Fables themselves are generally just a paragraph or two, sometimes with the moral of the story restated at the end. The introduction provides a useful history of the fables, explaining how they were initially compiled 2600 years ago, translated, added to, re-translated, recompiled, added to again, and translated and compiled a few more times.

The animal characters are generally obvious archetypes – Lions represent the most powerful members of society, while mice are the weakest. The characteristics of the various foxes, wolves, cranes, sheep, deer, oxen, crows, rabbits, and so on are all relatively consistent through the various stories.

And boy, there sure are a lot of stories. More than 350, in total.

It’s not an easy read, just because of the sheer quantity of fables. It’s like trying to make a meal out of a giant bag of assorted cough drops. If you try to read straight through it you start to burn out pretty quickly, and the stories start to blur together (not helped by the fact that it’s the same rotating cast of predictable animals and redundant moralizing).

All told, I’d be inclined to scrap about 70% of the stories here just for the sake of readability. Of course, I’m not actually sure who this volume is for. I mean really…what’s the goal here? Why put them all in one place like this? Who’s going to read this? I’d understand if it was being used as a Greek or Latin primer for young learners, but what purpose or edification can be derived from page after page of this stuff if you’re not a folklorist tracing the history of particular anecdotes across the Eurasian continent?  

The introduction sort of warns the reader of this:

Has [the fable] a future as a mode of literary expression? Scarcely; its method is at once too simple and too roundabout. Too roundabout; for the truths we have to tell we prefer to speak out directly and not by way of allegory. And the truths the Fable has to teach are too simple to correspond to the facts of our complex civilisation; its rude graffiti of human nature cannot reproduce the subtle gradations of modern life. But as we all pass through in our lives the various stages of ancestral culture, there comes a time when these rough sketches of life have their appeal to us as they had for our forefathers: The allegory gives us a pleasing and not too strenuous stimulation of the intellectual powers; the lesson is not too complicated for childlike minds. Indeed, in their grotesque grace, in their quaint humour, in their trust in the simpler virtues, in their insight into the cruder vices, in their innocence of the fact of sex, AEsop's Fables are as little children. They are as little children, and for that reason they will forever find a home in the heaven of little children's souls.

I’m not so sure that phylogeny recapitulates monotony, but among the chaff there are certainly a few kernels of wheat that bear relevance to our daily condition. One fable in particular, immediately upon reading, brought to mind the ongoing discussion about “the marketplace of ideas” and whether everyone deserves a spot at the podium or an equal voice in the debate (i.e. do Nazis and white nationalists deserve the opportunity to publicly debate the merits of their ideology of ethnic cleansing?).

The Wolf and the Lamb

by Aesop

A WOLF, meeting with a lamb astray from the fold, resolved not to lay violent hands on him, but to find some plea, which should justify to the lamb himself, his right to eat him. He then addressed him: "Sirrah, last year you grossly insulted me."

Indeed, bleated the lamb in a mournful tone of voice: "I was not then born."

Then said the wolf: "You feed in my pasture."

No, good sir, replied the lamb: "I have not yet tasted grass."

Again said the wolf: "You drink of my well."

"No," exclaimed the lamb: "I never yet drank water, for as yet my mother's milk is both food and drink to me."

Upon which the wolf seized him and ate him up, saying: "Well! I won't remain supper-less, even though you refute every one of my imputations."

Moral: The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny, and it is useless for the innocent to try by reasoning to get justice, when the oppressor intends to be unjust.

*********************

Well. One down, a thousand to go. Is this truly a book that you MUST read before you die? I'd say no. You're probably better served watching a few classic episodes of Aesop & Son from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle show.

A New Start

Last post was mid-2015. Did I miss anything interesting?

Regardless, I'm back.

So what's in store for the website? I'll be weighing in on travel, literature, food, and music. Possibly a podcast and some music of my own as well. Politics? Some. I do a lot of ranting and arguing on Facebook, so maybe this can be something different - a place where I don't do that.

The real goal is just to keep me writing on a regular basis (writing non-work material, that is). Towards that end, I'm about to start working my way through the list featured in this book, with updates as I finish each book.

1001 Books? That's a lot of books!

Yea, by my estimation, I've already read 10-15% of the books listed here (and started several others), and I'm not planning on rereading them all, so that saves a bit of time, right?

But I also travel a lot, and when I'm not travelling I have a pretty long commute, so I'll be taking advantage of that as well.

So how is this going to work?

Well, here's the deal: I prefer to read in hard-copy when I can, but I'm not about to go out and buy all of these books if I don't have to. I'm also pretty low on space - I've got a pretty big library, and it includes several books on this list that I was already planning to read (or finish).

What's interesting about the "1001 Books..." is that the books are listed oldest to newest by publication date. This means that basically the whole first half of the list is all in the public domain (i.e. free or super cheap as e-books). So what I'll probably do is run two simultaneous tracks, one for e-books, and one for hard copy. I'll start the e-books at the beginning, and I'll pull the hard copies off my own shelf pending availability. That'll work for at least a few months, and if I come up with a better system, I'll update you all here.

[Sidenote: I"m using the 2008 edition (as opposed to the 2006 or 2010 editions, which vary somewhat). All three lists can be found here.]  

First two books:

"Aesop's Fables" (e-book) and Stendhal's "The Red and the Black" (which was on the shelf nearest my bed, so...why not?). 

Onward!

Packing for Travel Part 2 - The Checked Bag

My suitcase is my home and office while I’m on the go, and there’s a decent amount of redundancy, since my current work is team-based, and part of my job is to keep them functioning smoothly in the field. This is why 25% of my luggage weight is cliff bars and office supplies.

Items pictured, vertically right to left: Dress shoes, additional gallon zip-lock bags, folders and manila envelopes with additional documents, duct tape (black), masking tape, books, running shoes, oblique strategies deck, card game, business cards, cheap folding knife, head-lamp, bandanna, packing cube (socks, undershorts, and undershirts), zip-lock bag with secondary toiletries (comb, deodorant, assorted vitamins, hand sanitizer, Emergen-C,  lozenges, q-tips, soap, full-size toothbrush),  small travel cube (t-shirts, and misc. loose items), crushable hat, binoculars, large travel cube (dress shirts and dress slacks), spare notepads, gallon zip-lock bag with tertiary toiletries (electric razor, lotion, sunscreen, bug repellent, lint-roller), gallon zip-lock with office supplies (sharpies, highlighters, markers, pens, post-it notes, binder clips, scissors, voice recorder), gallon zip-lock (assorted cliff bars). Not pictured – suit jacket and hiking boots.

The most interesting and exciting discovery I’ve made in the course of getting better at travel is “travel-cubes.” Somehow these modular stuff sacks make packing insanely easy. That's a week's worth of clothes in the image below, except for my suit jacket, and footwear. A must-have from now on.

Some various comments on products above:

Books include “The Nature of Scientific Revolutions,” and a general history of Central America. Decks of  cards include the game "Flux" and Brian Eno's creative problem-solving deck, "Oblique Strategies"

Some reflection on what was and wasn't useful will come next week.

Packing for Travel Part 1 – The Carry-on

As I write this I’m travelling to Central America for a two week work trip. Although I’ve been doing a lot of traveling lately, I wouldn’t describe myself as an expert traveler yet. I’m writing this in no small part to myself, so I can think about what my packing choices were and what I can learn from this retrospectively.

The travel I do is for work rather than tourism, and tends to be rather specific in its nature. I mostly stay in midrange hotels, and 80-90% of my time is spent in the capitals, or other larger cities, so although my packing choices will have limited relevance for backpackers, campers, and other types of adventurous tourists, there may be some useful ideas here.

When I pack I prefer to do a two-tiered approach: a light easy-to-carry backpack and a large suitcase. I sometimes also carry a separate laptop bag, but I’ve found that to be an annoyance, and I’m now working to integrate that into my backpack (which may need to be replaced with a slightly larger one to accommodate this easily). My operative philosophy is to be prepared for the chance that my checked bag may not get to the right place. It’s not a problem that I’ve run into, but I’d rather not take the chance.

My current backpack setup is pictured here:

Items pictured, starting top left, in vertical rows:

Backpack, books, flip-flops, cheap poncho, zip-lock bag of essential toiletries (toothpaste, travel toothbrush, deodorant, broad-spectrum antibiotics, advil, Emergen-C, etc.), flashlight, misc. pens, two folded garbage bags, hand sanitizer, bandanna, glasses/case, cliff bars, zip-lock bag of batteries (AA & AAA), digital camera, fitbit charger, phone quick-charger, notepads and essential documents, sunglasses, phone charger, cheap phone (for use with local SIM card upon arrival), zip-lock bag of nitrile gloves, shemagh, basic clothes (two pairs of socks, t-shirt, undershirt, synthetic/wrinkle-free dress shirt, running shorts light slacks,). 

Books include a pocket Spanish/English dictionary, a travel safety book, “The Fourth Way,” “Digital Humanitarians,” and “Tactical Reality Dictionary.” 

Most of these things are self-evident in their utility, but a few deserve extra mention:

Zip-lock bag (various contents): I use zip-lock bags for all sorts of things. They help with organization, but they also help prevent water damage and insect infiltration. I also keep a couple of garbage bags handy as well. They are essential for packing wet/dirty clothes in amongst the dry/clean ones when you’re on the move, or for wrapping shoes when you have to tuck them in a bag.

Antibiotics: In much of the developing world it is possible to buy antibiotics without a prescription. It’s always a good idea to pick some up when you arrive, just in case. That said, the quality and strength of those antibiotics cannot always be known, so it’s good to keep a backup stash of something potent and fast, especially if you don’t have a lot of extra time to spend regretting your dietary habits.

Phone quick-charger: It’s a horrible waste of batteries, but sometimes your phone is your lifeline, and a dead phone is a crappy lifeline. It's possible to buy much better ones (e.g. something like this), but AA batteries can be found almost anywhere.

Cheap phone: mobile phones are dirt cheap in most places around the world, and once you have one, switching out SIM cards is easy. I’m putting together a pill container with SIM cards from different countries that I can travel to regularly.

Nitrile gloves: sometimes you have no choice but to touch something disgusting. The gloves help.

Shemagh: Also known as a kefyya this is an incredibly useful thing to have. Aside from doubling as a head covering and scarf, it can also be used to wrap fragile items, serve as a makeshift carrying sack, swaddle a newborn baby that you just delivered in the back of a taxi, flag down a passing freighter from a deserted isle, you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta, and...well, you get the idea.

Spare Clothes: Though I’ve never needed to use them, it’s reassuring to know that they’re there.

Once packed, this bag weighs about 15 lbs. Adding a laptop and charger can very easily push that up to 20, and a water bottle adds another 2-3 as well. That’s really a bit more than I’d prefer, and some of this weight could be saved by switching from books to a kindle or other e-reader, but I’m not quite ready to make that jump yet.

Part two - suitcase contents - coming next.

Retooling and refocusing

Back in October of 2013 I stopped putting up new posts on this page. Between a new job and a major death in the family I had other things in my life that were taking precedence. Mouth shut, eyes and ears open, that was the rule for the year that followed...

...and the year that followed  has been a pretty amazing one.

In particular, I've had the opportunity to travel to places I've always wanted to go, and places it never even occurred to me to want to go. Ironically enough, given my prior focus on the greater Middle East, almost none of the work or travel that I've done has been in any way connected to that region.

Instead, I have spent the past year working on projects that apply GIS and geospatial data to thorny but mundane problems of day-to-day life. I alternate between an intimately close village-level perspective of far-flung places around the world, and (almost literally) the broader view from space.

Although my interests still lie within the greater Middle East, my work no longer does, so although I intend to restart my posting activities, my attention will be broadening to a wider range of topics.

What topics? Well, pretty much whatever appeals to me at the moment, but with upcoming trips to Central America, the Levant, South Asia, and East Africa, I'll definitely be able to throw some pictures up for your edification, along with whatever meanderings and monologues I see fit to transcribe for your entertainment and interest. Maybe some travel tips, music reviews, cooking experiments, literary musings, artistic exploits, and straight up rants as well.

Let's do this!

  

“Walk tall, kick ass, learn to speak Arabic, love music and never forget you come from a long line of truth seekers, lovers and warriors.” 

 -Hunter S. Thompson