Sunday Review
March 5
This week the most simple articles, ideas, life portraits, had me going down some existential avenues I was truly not expecting. We will look at the country's "oldest young poet," the best way to cut cheese (perhaps the week's most profound article!), look at the growth of part-time work culture, make a quick detour to the 1430s and the first-ever autobiography, and, take a look at a breakup that maybe we all need: the one with our phones. Happy reading!
Helen Czerski
Feb 26, WSJ
“In every kitchen there’s a drawer that acts as a window to the owners soul, revealing their weaknesses, hopes and regrets.”
I'm listening!!
“This drawer represents the gap between your culinary aspirations for yourself, and who you really are.” Ok I could have stopped reading right there. This is a truism that speaks to me. However, I shall continue: Culinary hatchets that barely get used.
Ok so basically she talks about the physics of why a cheese cutting wire is actually worth it. It doesn’t squash the cheese too much and the proteins that might push back against a regular knife do not face the same resistance with the wire. Who knew.
However, I think that she hit on something with this idea of our vision for ourselves and the reality of our ability to actualize that vision. I think that vision sends you in a direction that you may have otherwise put your compass to. Kind of along the lines of Seneca's favorable wind: go ahead and decide where you want to go, or, in this case, what kind of culinary genius you aspire to, and by all means set off in that direction.
As far as life goes, I have experienced so many situations where I live in the gap between the aspiration for myself and the reality. This is a real tension for all of us and I think, personally, the gap is closed by faith and trust. This is turning into a very long review of an article about the optimum way to cut cheese... but sometimes one has to go where the wind blows, to stay on course. I will say though, that we often find ourselves in this tension between what we hope to be and what we truly are and I think that is ok. You can't stay there forever, but certainly feeling dreams and hoping for a change in one way or another, is a good and beautiful way to live.
Back to the kitchen. I think the items in my kitchen drawers that remain unused are these mini pizza baking dishes. I always had this vision of our family having pizza night but alas, they remain untouched, forgotten. But the journey I set out on - wanting to be the kind of person that had pizza nights - has set me in the direction of getting the kids involved with any and all cooking I do, which I believe I mentioned in a previous post. There are other items that represent the "culinary gap" but the mini pizza plans are the large glaring example. For you, I encourage you to find an item in your kitchen that you haven't used, maybe ever, and see if you can set off in some sort of direction, find some favorable wind, and perhaps use the item in question. Let me know how it goes. Oh, yeah, - and cut cheese with a wire!
A review of Malcolm Spiegelman's book, Nothing Stays Put: The Life and Poetry of Amy Clampitt by Malcom Forbes
WSJ Feb 26
Clampitt once wrote, “I’m not a poet of Place, but of displacement.” What I found most compelling about the book is how Forbes describes the way that Spiegelman wrote it. He does close readings of her poems, demonstrating how they are “evidence of her life" by charting the events of her life alongside her poetry. What a beautiful way to live, Amy Clampitt! Experiencing something big in life and turning first, to your pen. To prose. I think we should all try to write - try poetry! - and process the big things in life. Be more like Amy Clampitt. I'll get us bumper stickers.
The other compelling part of the story is that “she was 58 when her first poem was excepted by the New Yorker in 1978… she was the countries' oldest young poet.” Wow. This line also got me: "she might have emerged late in the literary firmament, but she made up for it by shining exceptionally bright."
Catherine Price
“Breaking up with your phone means giving yourself the space, freedom, and tools necessary to create a new, long-term relationship with it, one that keeps what you love about your phone and gets rid of what you don’t.“
OK I will admit. I skimmed the first half of this book. It was a lot about all of the negative impacts of your phone. And I don’t disagree but it did carry-on. I will summarize it basically with saying we are one addicted to our phones; we sometimes reach for our phones to avoid unpleasant things or hoping that something good is waiting for us; social media can make us sad; our attention, spans are lessened, etc. etc. etc. OK I get it!
Maybe the fact that I skimmed the first half of this book is evidence of everything she’s saying about my ability to focus. Lol. But I wanted to get to the meat of her plan for us all so here it is.
I thought her guiding questions were helpful. What do you want to pay attention to? Make a list of the things you love in your off-line life. Get an alarm clock. Turn off notifications. Go through your apps and delete the ones you don’t really need. Create a new habit with where you charge your phone. Charge it in a different room in your house. Have no phone zones in your house. Maybe family room? Maybe bedroom? Try it for 30 days and see how it feels. Do not check your phones during conversations, during the meal, and or while you’re at a party. If you need to check your phone when you’re around other people consider leaving the room. If you are worried about an emergency select a few people who can get through during your do not disturb but otherwise keep it off. Try to take a digital Sabbath. 24 hours without turning on your phone or at least delegating that time to specific break times. Get a landline. Download Maps ahead of time. Downgrade to a dumb phone. Put your phone deep in your purse while you are driving. Remain on guard.
The most compelling moment in the book was her thoughts on what we may miss. She has this term I had never heard but it is MY LIFE: fleeting relationships. Be aware of good fleeting relationships!! When you are not on your phone, you may smile at a stranger on a bus, have a great interaction with a waiter, join a group cheer at a sports bar. This was the best part of the book. What I found lacking in the first half (the negatives of the phone) were well made up for in the second half: the postives of what life can really be. Be ready for all of the beautiful things in life that we can see, hear, smell, touch, feel - experience - when we put our phones down.
Christ in Purple Silk Irina Dumitrescu London Review of Books, March 2
A Review of The Permeable Self: Five Medieval Relationships
by Barbara Newman.
I loved this glimpse into the medieval sense of self - the porous selfhood - in the London Review of Books this week, where Dumitrescu reviews Barbara Newman's new book The Permeable Self: Five Medieval Relationships. One example Newman looks at is The Book of Margery Kemp. Kemp was a middle class mystic and would be saint. The book was written by dictation in the 1430s is considered the first autobiography in English. Barbara Newman asserts: “medieval Christians understood themselves to be interconnected to an extent that would surprise many people today. This ‘porous selfhood’ was modeled on the Christian doctrine of coinherence, the notion that the three persons of the Trinity dwell in one another simultaneously.”
In her book, Kemp reveals “the profound strangeness of the Middle Ages.” In part, the reason - at least for women, is that they had no standing and needed to carve out authority.
Dumitrescu sheds light on the way in which women got around this little issue of authority. "The surprising feminist argument woven through The Permeable Self is that women could gain a voice by losing some of their selfhood. Ambitious women in the late Middle Ages were aware of St Paul’s injunctions against their preaching or teaching. The trick was to teach or preach while claiming not to." I think women from every era could relate to this lived experience of the need for psychological porousness in order to operate in a world where close parameters have been the norm. The cunning way in which Kemp and others navigate this world has lessons for women today as well as our ability to understand women over the centuries who had to shift, change, and sidestep authority in order to live into their calling.
Lauren Weber, WSJ Weekend Feb 25-26
Another fascinating look at the shift in work culture - those working part time rose by 1.2 million in Dec and Jan. “25 hours is the new 35 hours." This is a look at those voluntarily taking on part time role, for noneconomic reasons.
The most compelling component for me in this article was the discussion of an increase in substitute teachers. This is what we are seeing in my world. Schools are hiring more substitutes (an increase of 16% over the past few years) as they struggle with teacher shortages. We are seeing more long-term subs.
Overall, I see this shift to the desire for part-time/flexible work, as positive in two ways: it is showing an increase in people who are saying, look, I have enough. I can live at a level that meets my needs, my families needs, and I don’t want to sacrifice my mental health or my time just to grind out more hours. I recognize this is a privileged position, but what I see in my world is that people are using this privilege wisely. People are donating their time, energy and resources to help solve big problems that we face.
I think the other positive impact is that companies are saying, look could we actually give our employees more flexibility or find ways to build hybrid roles for more women to stay in or enter the workforce or more part time or three quarter time people to continue to use their skills. In the UK they are experimenting with a four-day work week. There are so many ways we can be creative and flexible without burning out our workforce or losing a large swath of workers who can’t make it work with family life.
Well that's it for this week! I hope you found an interesting idea that you may explore further. If anything, I hope you have some time to close the gap between the you who you want to be and the you who you are, or just find a moment to enjoy living in this tension and be ok with it. I also wish you many happy fleeting relationships this week! Happy Sunday.
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