WCPN’s Sound Of Ideas on shootings in El Paso and Dayton…
A Hudson Megachurch, a Beloved Pastor and the International Sex Abuse Scandal…
The Jail Health-Care Crisis…
The Radioactive Boy Scout…
How to say sorry (and why you should stop saying it so much)
Innocence lost: What did you do before the internet?

That Marianne Williams would be the Democrat running for president who first mentioned reparations is an embarrassment for the party and for the nation. If she becomes associated with reparations—and yes, I’m aware that I’m helping that happen—she may have single-handily killed the issue for the 2020 election. A few other candidates may feel shame, some, relief.

We cannot let that happen. If we, as a nation, do not talk about the two hundred fifty years of slavery; ninety years of Jim Crow; sixty years of separate but equal and thirty-five years of racist housing policy, then our national wound will continue to fester. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, as Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote, America will never be whole.

Regardless of what they feel, Williamson lit a torch that the rest of the candidates must either piss on or hold high. Progressives and Conservatives alike have jumped on her brief moment and the larger debate is raging. (I have been in favor of reparations for some time.)

Dan Spinelli, reporting in 150 years later, slavery reparations are on the agenda again for Mother Jones magazine, interviewed William Darity Jr., a public policy professor at Duke University. (Darity is co-author with Kirsten Mullen of the forthcoming book: From Here to Equality: Black Reparations in the 21st Century.) Darity liked what Williamson had to say. Spinelli ledes:

For a brief and all-too-rare moment in American politics, the case for slavery reparations took center stage Tuesday night, and William Darity Jr. was thrilled. Darity is a public policy professor at Duke University and an acclaimed scholar on reparations, and for the first time in his life the idea of compensating the living Black descendants of American slaves was being discussed by people running for president—one of them, author and spiritual guru Marianne Williamson, actually working out the math onstage, in front of an audience of millions. “It was,” Darity told Mother Jones, “a fairly dramatic moment.”

This happened during the first of the two Democratic presidential debates in Detroit. First, there was Beto O’Rourke, declaring his support for Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s legislation—HR 40, originally developed by former Rep. John Conyers—to launch a commission to study reparations. “The legacy of slavery and segregation and Jim Crow and suppression is alive and well in every aspect of the economy and in the country,” O’Rourke said.

And then came Williamson, arguing that the $200 billion to $500 billion she’s proposed for reparations wasn’t “financial assistance” but rather a “payment for a debt that is owed.”

That number is probably low, but until we actually follow through on HR 40, we can’t know. Darity agrees:

There’s a number of ways of looking at this. One way is to look at what would be required to eliminate the racial wealth gap—what would be required to give Black Americans the same share of the nation’s wealth that corresponds to our share of the nation’s population. And that would be a figure in the vicinity of $10 trillion to $12 trillion.

Another route toward calculating the reparations bill is to partition off the injustices. So you could do a monetary computation of the injustices associated with slavery, the injustices associated with a period of Jim Crow, including legal segregation with respect to residences, with respect to education, with respect to employment discrimination. You can also monetize out the dimensions of American racism that have been associated with the post–Civil Rights period, manifest in police executions of unarmed Blacks, the costs associated with mass incarceration of Black Americans, ongoing employment discrimination, as well as the immense racial gulf in wealth. If you go that route, if you add up all of these pieces, you come up with a figure that’s closer to $17 trillion.

Darity, however, reaches back to build his case from the period of Reconstruction and what that meant to the four million former slaves declared free by the 13th Amendment.

I [Darity] don’t think that there’s been a point in which national candidates for the presidency of the United States have explicitly talked about reparations. The way reparations have emerged as a topic has been through grassroots efforts in the Black community to promote programs. But they have never had the kind of attention at the national level that currently is occurring, at least not since the Reconstruction era, when the promise was made of 40-acre land grants to the formerly enslaved and that promise was not fulfilled. That’s why we’re having the conversation now about reparations, because it was a foundational moment for the enormous wealth disparity that we now observe between Black and white Americans.

It was the so-called Radical Republicans, who wanted to make sure that there was actually a form of restitution and foundation for asset building that was held by the core advocates of the land grant. But they also wanted to ensure that Black male voters could actually exercise the vote, and none of that happened. To the extent that it happened, it was temporary, for a period of about five to seven years.

There’s a long history of activists within the Black community making the reparations claim. There’s a somewhat obscure case that I’m just learning about now on a person named John Wayne Niles, who created what he called the Indemnity Party in the 1880s. He made a reparations claim that was predicated on obtaining land grants that was put into a petition, which was actually put forward by William T. Sherman’s brother John when he was in the Senate from Ohio. The petition was ultimately tabled, so no serious attention was given to it. The most significant 19th-century movement for reparations was led by a woman named Callie House, who cleaned laundry in Tennessee. It was a movement for pension funds for the formerly enslaved, and I think obtained as many as 300,000 signatures from formerly enslaved individuals to support her petition. She was far more successful in building a movement than Niles was. But the powers that be were very disturbed by the success of her movement. They brought her down by using mail fraud charges, the same type of charges used to bring down Marcus Garvey when his movement was gaining momentum.

It’s my understanding from Mary Frances Berry‘s work that former members of Callie House’s movement were instrumental in the development of the Garvey movement. And one of the prongs of the Garvey movement was reparations for Black American descendants of the persons who were slaves in the United States.

Subsequent to that, there was a smaller movement that was led by a woman named Queen Mother Audley Moore. Her efforts were the basis of organizations like in N’COBRA, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America. That’s the organization that was most involved with John Conyers and the development of HR 40, circa 1989.

There’s a rise in interest in reparations on college campuses primarily at the end of the 20th century. But this gets shut down. There was a surge in interest in reparations, but everything was silent after 9/11, and there was no real significant attention drawn to reparations until 2014, when Ta-Nehisi Coates publishes an article in the Atlantic called “The Case for Reparations.” After that, you have a renewed surge of interest, particularly a surge in interest and activism that has occurred in social media, led by Yvette Carnell and Antonio Moore, who have promoted the ADOS movement (American Descendants of Slavery).

Conyers introduced the bill for 30 consecutive years without it actually getting to the stage of emerging from the judiciary committee. It was actually an important moment when Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee managed to have hearings on the bill [in June]. N’COBRA was important from the standpoint of keeping the message alive, but they did not have much of a national impact. That’s one of the reasons the bill remained cloistered for so many years.

Like the Hatfields and the McCoys we are a nation that has forgotten how the fight started. We need to understand, and own, the roots of our yet unconcluded second revolution. Until we do that, our irresolution will continue to cripple our nation.

Bonus No. 1: DON’T THINK THAT MACHINES ARE JUST MACHINES…

Bonus No. 2: This US heartland has been flooded for five months. Does anyone care?

Bonus No. 3: Yeah. But my plants love the carbon!

The Jail Health-Care Crisis…
El Paso shooting: 21-year-old suspect in custody as officials investigate…
Dayton, Ohio shooting: nine dead in second US mass shooting in 24 hours…
Gardens: a riot of colour on the Emerald Isle…
150 years later, slavery reparations are on the agenda again…
This US heartland has been flooded for five months. Does anyone care…?
The Radioactive Boy Scout…

Free Markets: that fantasy that allows people with shit buckets full of cash to not only hold onto their shit buckets full of cash, but to use their shit buckets full of cash to accumulate even more shit buckets full of cash with out interference from people who don’t have shit buckets full of cash. Yeah, that definition isn’t from my Econ 101 class, but I’m good with that.

Of late I’ve been seeing more stories on rethinking, or outright trashing, our current economic models because they’re not working for anyone who doesn’t have a shit bucket full of cash. See, for instance, The new left economics: how a network of thinkers is transforming capitalism by Andy Beckett or Robert Reich’s 2008 book: Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life.

Andrew Simms, co-author with David Boyle of Economics: A Crash Course writes in Economics is a failing discipline doing great harm–so let’s rethink it. for The Guardian:

Something is killing conventional economics and it’s probably an inside job. Reliance on abstract mathematics and absurd assumptions has brought the discipline into disrepute, even if politics and policy are guided by the ghosts of its teaching.

When economic theory favors people with SBFOC, Simms continues, we get abominations like:

…the epic, conceptual departures from the real world made by the economics mainstream in recent years. Risk models used by the investment bank Goldman Sachs suggested that the financial crisis of 2007 should have been in effect impossible. And have you ever wondered why privatisation continues in the face of repeated failures from care services to railways, and in spite of pledges to rein them in?

It’s because neoclassical economics has so deeply entrenched the notion that markets are better than all other ways of organising life, that decisions escape rational scrutiny.

Neoclassical thinking in economics has created a monster that students—like Katie Kedward—are walking away and looking for models that make real-world sense. Simms, continues:

Kedward left a banking job in the City for ethical reasons and sought a degree that would make sense of economics. Despairing at the unreality of mainstream courses, she found a rare exception: a master’s in ecological economics at the University of Leeds. The course, though, isn’t even taught in the economics department but the School of Earth and Environment. That’s why new groups are emerging to promote heterodox economics, which draws on the insights of the study of complexity, neuro and behavioural science, ecology, feminism and the core economy of family, mutualism and community.

Young women and men like Kedward are promising, but the old hands are still clacking away.

Late last year, on the day that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its starkest warning yet on the importance of holding global heating below 1.5° C, William Nordhaus was awarded economics equivalent of the Nobel prize. Nordhaus is famous for applying conventional economic models to environmental issues. Using his toolkit on climate breakdown, infamously he came to the conclusion that an optimal economic approach would allow warming of at least 3° C–the level that climate science shows would cause catastrophic, irreversible change.

For anyone outside economics that might seem bewildering, but the blase disregard of the economy being a wholly owned, and utterly dependent, subsidiary of the biosphere is perfectly symbolic.

(For those still stuck with Fahrenheit, 3° C equals 5.3° F.)

The 2009 book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everythingby Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner turned the musty, inscrutable world of economics beyond Econ 101 and 102 into a fascinating way of seeing the world and that was a dangerous event. The more people who grasp how economics work in the real world, the more critics are able to call bullshit! and that is a good thing.

Economics: A Crash Course, published Tuesday in England, is not yet available on our side of the pond. I have put the book on my watch list, however.

Bonus No. 1: WHO WILL SPEAK WHEN THEY COME FOR YOU…?

Bonus No. 2: Ryan on Ravi Batra.

Bonus No. 3: So, 20,000 illegals sneak into a bar…

Are Robots Competing for Your Job?
150 years later, slavery reparations are on the agenda again…
White man as Black man exposes Southern racism, embarrasses racists…
Economics is a failing discipline doing great harm–so let’s rethink it…
Cat Person author Kristen Roupenian on the trouble with writing about sex…
This US heartland has been flooded for five months. Does anyone care…?
The Radioactive Boy Scout…

President Donald John Trump is so used to being able to demand the loyalty and obedience of his underlings in the Trump organization that he never learned the art of nuance and persuasion. This particular ignorance has cost him in the White House. The most recent example has been President Trump’s belief that he can direct the Federal Reserve.

Being able to borrow money with no interest, to have access to free money, is a universal fantasy that has real-world consequences for personal savings and the safety of monthly Social Security checks to seniors. Regardless, to business, particularly corporate business, free, or nearly free, money is the holy grail and Ralph Nader understands President Trump’s aspirations when it comes to the Fed.

Nader, in Trump’s Effective Intimidation of the Powerful Federal Reserve, writes:

The Federal Reserve–the United States’ version of a Central Bank–is a strange duck. It is the U.S. government’s most powerful regulatory agency. It, after all, regulates money and interest rates. Yet, its budget comes entirely from the banking industry and relationships with the financial industry. So Congress, which appropriates money for all other federal agencies, has little leverage over the Fed’s operations.

This independence–except from the big banks–is by design, when the Fed was devised by President Woodrow Wilson over one hundred years ago. The Fed, a secretive, private government inside a public government presents problems for a democratic society. The alternative was deemed worse by its boosters, allowing “politics” to determine the Fed’s Board of Governors decisions.

It is as if the Federal Reserve/banking complex does not deal with political power by its own definition. The Fed entrenches the power of the banks without accountability inside Washington. Ask Republicans in Congress whether they generally oppose government regulation of a business and most will say “yes.” Ask whether they want to deregulate the Federal Reserve and they will say “Of course not.” Somebody has to Continue Reading »

At some point in his life I have no doubt that President Donald John Trump grabbed the pussy of a black or brown employee and got slapped for his effrontery and, because the toad can’t handle rejection and really knows how to hold a grudge, he has diverted our attention, and now billions of military dollars, to his phony border crisis.

Leaving us, the people paying for his revenge, to fix the bullshit. Daniel Trilling thinks that journalists aren’t helping us much. Trilling, reporting in How the media contributed to the migrant crisis for The Guardian, ledes:

When did you notice the word “migrant” start to take precedence over the many other terms applied to people on the move? For me it was in 2015, as the refugee crisis in Europe reached its peak. While debate raged over whether people crossing the Mediterranean via unofficial routes should be regarded as deserving candidates for European sympathy and protection, it seemed as if that word came to crowd out all others. Unlike the other terms, well-meaning or malicious, that might be applied to people in similar situations, this one word appears shorn of context; without even an im- or an em- attached to it to indicate that the people it describes have histories or futures. Instead, it implies an endless present: they are migrants, they move, it’s what they do. It’s a form of description that, until 2015, I might have expected to see more often in nature documentaries, applied to animals rather than human beings.

Here in the former colonies, we’re comfortable with the word as in migrant farm workers, you know, the people enable us to buy produce so cheaply? But I take Trilling’s point. We make much in our media of why people of Central America and Northern Africa/The Middle East are moving north—gangs, wars, gang wars—but we chose to ignore the big reason: climate change. People are moving north because their homes are getting to fecking hot to live in. (Yet another reason to move to Canada. Have you bought waterfront property on Hudson Bay yet?)

Trilling, however, is focused on a more nuanced, wonky bit: how and why media are responding to the crisis. (He’s writing about the Eastern Hemisphere, but we’re not so different here in the other half. Trilling continues:

Throughout 2015, the crisis narrative was developed via a series of flashpoints at different locations within and around the European Union. In April, for example, attention focused on the smuggler boat route from Libya, after the deadliest shipwreck ever recorded in the Mediterranean. A month or so later focus shifted to Calais, where French and British policies of discouraging irregular migrants from attempting to cross the Channel had led to a growing spectacle of mass destitution. By the summer, the number of boat crossings from Turkey to Greece had dramatically increased, and images and stories of people stepping on to Aegean shores, or of piles of orange lifejackets, came to dominate. Then came the scenes of people moving through the Balkans, and so on, and so on.

In all of these situations the news media were able to do their basic job in emergency situations, which is to communicate what’s happening, who’s affected, what’s needed the most. But this is usually more than a matter of relaying dry facts and figures. “Human stories” have the greatest currency among journalists, although it’s an odd term if you think about it.

What stories aren’t human? In fact, it’s most commonly used to denote a particular kind of human story; one that gives individual experience the greatest prominence, that tells you what an event felt like, both physically and emotionally. It rests on the assumption that this is what connects most strongly with audiences: either because it hooks them in and keeps them watching or reading, or because it helps them identify with the protagonist, perhaps in a way that encourages empathy, or a particular course of action in response. As a result, the public was able to easily and quickly access vivid accounts and images of people’s experiences as they attempted to cross the EU’s external borders, or to find shelter and welcome within Europe.

The trade-off was that this often fit into predetermined ideas about what disasters look like, who needs protection, who is innocent and who is deserving of blame. Think, for example, about the most recognisable image of the refugee crisis in 2015: the picture of a Turkish police officer carrying the lifeless body of three-year-old Alan Kurdi away from the water’s edge on a beach near Bodrum.

As the Dutch documentary Een zee van beelden – A Sea of Images – (Medialogica, 2016) asked: why did this image in particular strike such a chord? After all, many news editors see images of death on a daily basis, yet for the most part decide to exclude them. The documentary showed how the apparently viral spread of the Alan Kurdi photograph on social media [Emphasis mine, JH] was in large part the result of a series of decisions taken by senior journalists and NGO workers.

First, a local photo agency in Turkey decided to release the image to the wires because they were so fed up with the lack of political response to the crisis on their shores. The image was shared by an official at a global human rights NGO with a large Twitter following, and retweeted by several prominent correspondents for large news organisations. Picture editors at several newspapers then decided, independently of one another, to place the photo on the front pages of their next editions; only after that point did it reach its widest circulation online. The image gained the status it did for a mix of reasons – political, commercial, but also aesthetic. One of the picture editors interviewed in the documentary commented on how the position of the figures in the photo resembled that of Michelangelo’s Pietà, an iconography of suffering and sacrifice that runs deep in European culture.
But if this way of working has its advantages, it also has its dark side. News media that rush from one crisis point to another are not so good at filling in the gaps, at explaining the obscured systems and long-term failures that might be behind a series of seemingly unconnected events. To return to the idea of a “refugee crisis”, for example, this is an accurate description in one sense, as it involved a sharp increase in the number of people claiming asylum in the European Union; from around 430,000 in 2013, according to the EU statistics agency Eurostat, to well over a million in 2015 and 2016 each. In global terms this was a relatively small number of refugees: the EU has a population of over 500 million, while most of the world’s 68.5 million forcibly displaced people are hosted in poorer parts of the world. But the manner of people’s arrival was chaotic and often deadly, while there was a widespread institutional failure to ensure that their needs – for basic necessities, for legal and political rights – were met. To stop there, however, risks giving the false impression that the crisis was a problem from elsewhere that landed unexpectedly on European shores.

One of the points that was constantly on my mind as I read Trilling’s piece was: to what degree did those advising then candidate Trump—Steve Bannon, et. al.—see events in Europe and the resurgence of fascist elements there, look to our border with Mexico (were immigration had been less than emigration for years) as a model for how they could push their own fascist agenda? How could they gin up a phony crisis to distract people from their real purpose?

Hmm?

Bonus No. 1: GAWD WILLING AN’ THE CREEK DON’T RISE: PART II…

Bonus No. 2: Will Trump Stop His MAGA Rally Crowd From Chanting Racist Slogans?

Bonus No. 3: Just One Question: Democratic Candidates Edition.

Bonus No. 4: If you act now you can maybe avoid the worst of climate change. But you know you’re not going to.

Full disclosure, I haven’t watched any of the Democratic Party debates—although I have listened to a fair amount of the soundbites—because doing so would mean a loss of time I can never get back and the Iowa Caucuses are 186 feckin’ days away. I am reading some of the reports, but really, the only thing that matters to me is that Joe Bidden drops out. Soon.

So, first up is William Gritten, writing for The Week with The issues that will decide the Democratic primaries. Gritten lists: healthcare, immigration, race and who can beat Trump. While I agree on his list of four, he ignores—as do too many candidates because Americans (unless you live in Louisiana) can’t see that far down the road—the Climate Crisis. (Yeah, Andrew Yang, blah, blah, blah…)

If I had been invited to watch the debates—are you reading Tim?—I definitely would have done so with a copy of Matt Taibbi’s Official Democratic Party Debate Drinking Rules. The rules for Round One included:

1. DRINK a thimble of liquor each time Maddow, Todd, or Swalwell mentions Russia or Putin.

2. DRINK a full shot every time a candidate mentions: (a) I AM THE CHILD OF IMMIGRANTS; (b) WHOSE HUMBLE BEGINNINGS; (c) WORKING WITH MY SLEEVES ROLLED UP AS AN [INSERT REAL JOB HERE]; (d) WITH THE SUPPORT OF MY BELOVED FAMILY MEMBERS [INSERT NAMES]; (e) TO REALIZE THE AMERICAN DREAM; (f) WHICH IS UNDER ATTACK; (g) BY A MAN WHO PUTS CHILDREN IN CAGES; (h) AND HAS FOSTERED A CULTURE OF DIVISION; (i) BECAUSE HE’S A [INSERT TRUMP JOKE]; and (j) AND IN CLOSING, I SAY [SOMETHING IN SPANISH].

Taibbi also offered a number of side rules, my favorite of which was: [Tim] Ryan tells the audience, I love you or goes out of his way to remind you he played quarterback in high school.

For the second debate, Taibbi came up with: drink EVERY TIME you hear:

 1. Cages
  2. Existential threat
  3. Mitch McConnell (double for “Moscow Mitch”)
  4. Unity
  5.Trump is (rehearsed witticism)
  6. (Something something) is a human right
  7. Fundamentally
  8. (Speaks Spanish)
  9. “This is not who we are.” and
10.“Not above the law.”

Since I didn’t watch any of the debates I can’t really judge, but based on my understanding of Taibbi’s ability to detect banal bullshit, I’d say I would have spent the night on someone’s couch.

From my paper-of-record, here are this morning’s heads decks and ledes. First, above the fold, from Sabrina Siddiqui—

Joe Biden stands his ground and resists rivals’ attacks in testy second debate

Former vice-president targeted in second Democratic debate
Biden rejects criticism of healthcare and immigration plans

Joe Biden was the central target as 10 Democratic presidential candidates took the stage for the second debate in Detroit on Wednesday, with rivals attempting to knock the former vice-president from his frontrunner status.

Below the fold we got:

From Moira Donegan—

Joe Biden was appallingly mediocre. Sadly his opponents were, too.

Biden repeatedly fumbled in response to basic challenges about his own positions, displaying more arrogance and bluster than competence or vision.

Following a memorable first clash between Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, anticipations ran high that the California senator would again attack the former vice-president on his race record. Biden suffered in the polls after their first clash, but he quickly recovered, re-establishing himself as the frontrunner and leading many to think that Biden’s presidential campaign would follow his career-long pattern of failing upward. When they walked on stage and shook hands, he could be heard on a hot mic saying to her: “Go easy on me, kid.” (Harris is 54.) She did not go easy on him, and neither did anyone else.

And, finally from Jessa Crispin, Art Cullen, Lloyd Green, Kate Aronoff and Theodore R. Johnson—

Who won the Democrats’ debate? Our panelists’ verdict.

Another combative Democratic debate saw clashes between Joe Biden and his opponents.

Jessa Crispin: ‘Lackluster candidates all around’
Art Cullen: ‘The winner was universal healthcare’
Lloyd Green: ‘Joe Biden won. Now he must face Elizabeth Warren’
Kate Aronoff: ‘Climate disaster Joe Biden failed to impress’ and
Theodore R Johnson: ‘Biden hasn’t lost his supporters’

Seth Myers had a few words to say on the subject as well…

Clearly, I need a drink.

Bonus No. 1: NELSON ALGREN—NEVER A LOVELY SO REAL III…

Bonus No. 2: Kentucky’s Wants to Break Up with Mitch McConnell.

Bonus No. 3: The rise and fall of superhero Robert Mueller.

Bonus No. 4: Make no mistake it is tough being pro-coal, just ask Ian the Climate Denialist Potato.

[Update on 2 August @ 1047: Found in this morning’s email from This Week At VA…: Treating the cause of Insomnia: Behavioral Treatment works best.]

I started writing this post at 2:11 a.m. after going to bed at 9 p.m., failing to fall asleep—which extremely rare for me—getting back up at 9:40 p.m. to read for awhile, getting back into bed at 10:50 p.m. to finally fall asleep only to wake back up at around 1:30 a.m. and finally get out of bed at fecking 2 a.m.. I have been struggling with this for more than a decade.

While I wish I didn’t have to spend so much time sleeping, insomnia really, really sucks. My insomnia is what first drew me to Oliver Burkeman’s essays in The Guardian in 2010 when I read This column will change your life: Can’t sleep, don’t sleep. By my count, Burkeman has devoted nearly one essay a year to some aspect of insomnia.

I’ve taken all the sleep hygiene steps and I’ve consulted with the sleep doctors at the Veterans Administration hospital here in Cleveland who recommend taking Melatonin: I take a 5 mg tab before I crawl into bed because my insomnia involves waking up in the middle of the night, not trouble falling asleep. I’ve tried a Continuous Positive Airway Pressure machine and since 29 November of last year, I’ve been taking part in a long term Cognitive Behavioral Therapy study through SHUTi. (The acronym stands for Sleep Healthy Using The internet.) The program works, except when it doesn’t. Like this morning.

Coincidentally, Mary Jo emailed me Nicola Davis’ article, Insomnia sufferers can benefit from therapy, new study shows from The Guardian, this morning. Davis ledes:

Forget counting sheep and drinking warm milk, an effective way to tackle chronic insomnia is cognitive behavioural therapy, researchers have confirmed.

Yay! Sort of. The key word there is effective. The words is so important that it appears no less than five times in Davis’ piece, how effective is effective? Davis summarizes:

Looking at results from four randomised control trials, with between 66 and 201 participants of mixed ages, the team found that participants fell asleep on average nine to 30 minutes sooner after completing a course of CBT for insomnia and experienced a reduction of between 22 and 36 minutes in the amount of time spent awake after going to sleep. By contrast, those who were just on a waiting list, or given treatment as usual, only experienced up to four minutes’ improvement in the time it took to drop off and a maximum of eight minutes’ improvement in time spent awake after going to sleep.

That is effective, I think, but insomnia is serious business. Davis continues:

Chronic insomnia, in which individuals have difficulties dropping off or staying asleep at least three nights a week for three months or more, is thought to affect about 10-15 percent of adults. The condition is linked to health problems including depression, as well as difficulties in functioning and sometimes resulting in accidents.

Burkeman went even further, writing:

The last thing anybody who suffers from insomnia needed to hear was this month’s finding, from sleep scientists at the universities of Warwick and Naples, that consistently getting fewer than six hours’ sleep a night may lead to an early death. Well, thanks a bunch: what news could be more likely to induce sleeplessness?

Before SHUTi I can probably count the number of times I’ve had more than six hours of sleep in the past 15 years or so on my combined digits. SHUTi has improved my sleep and in the July, according to my log sheets I slept more than six hours a total of 12 times. I even managed to get more—at least seven hours of sleep—three times, but these figures include naps on seven occasions. I only managed six hours or more of sleep in any 24-hour period without a nap on five occasions. Naps are not good.

SHUTi recommends no more than one 30 minute nap a day and that before 3 p.m. My log clearly shows I’ve been a bad boy there, napping for more than 30 minutes on eight days in July. I may be paying the piper there. Another issue, I think, is iced tea. In the summer I like to drink cold green tea and though green tea has less caffeine than black tea or coffee, it still contains caffeine. (I drink 1,300 ml of half-caf in the mornings.) Yesterday, I had a glass of ice tea at dinner. That was mistake.

So, short term analysis: first, no naps after 2:30 p.m. and always set an alarm for 30 minutes if I do take a nap; and second, no caffeine after lunch. Here’s hoping that August is better.

Bonus No. 1: BD ponders his lost helmet…

Bonus No. 2: GAWD WILLING AN’ THE CREEK DON’T RISE: PART I…

For many, many years my prewriting practice has involved reading one of Lawrence Blocks’ essays on writing fiction and I’ve read them all multiple times. I don’t necessarily learn something new each time, but the rereading always make me think about my current novel project in ways that are beneficial to me. Two other teachers, however, changed my perspective.

I only took one fiction writing course in college—Short Stories with Daniel Keyes in the spring of 1981—but I have studied with a number of other professors (including, but not limited to, Luke Whisnant, Lee Zacharias, Ron Rash and John Gregory Brown at the Green River Writers Workshops and Wildacres Writing Workshops.

I also learned much of what I know about poetry from the truly wonderful Kentucky poets Sherry Chandler and Mary “Ernie” O’Dell whom I met at The Green River Writers Novel In Progress workshop in Louisville, Kentucky.

There is a rabbinic tradition that each teacher gives full credit to the line of their teachers—extending back to Moses (yes, they know all the names)—for their own understanding. I don’t yet know who John Gardner’s teachers were, but Charles Johnson gives John Gardner full credit for his writing chops and now, after I’ve read both Johnson and begun to read Garner’s guides, I owe them the same honor. That is not to suggest that I’ve abandoned Block, your first always is, and always will be, special.

Johnson and Gardner each delivered particular smacks to the side of my head and we all, occasionally, need that. I discovered Johnson back in March of 2017 when I read his The Way of the Writer: Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling. Johnson wrote that his teacher, John Gardner, shaped much of what he became and, because I was impressed with Johnson, I ordered two of Gardner’s books: On Becoming A Novelist and The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers. (I also read his interview in The Paris Review which was equally enlightening.) I finished the first a few months ago and began the second yesterday. I’m only 16 pages in, but I’ve already marked up a number of passages, one group of which focuses on the value of a university education. That is where I’d like to start this morning. Gardner writes:

The university can do more than offer opportunities—opportunities made available nowhere else: a wealth of books, at least a few first-rate courses, professors and fellow students, also lectures, debates, reading and gatherings where anyone at all, if their not too shy, can talk with some of the best novelists, poets, musicians, politicians and scientists of the age. If foolishness abounds in universities, it is only within that same university world that the honest understanding of literature is a conscious discipline. No one can hope to write really well if he has not learned how to analyze fiction—how to recognize a symbol when it jumps at them, how to make out theme in a literary work, how to account for a writer’s selection and organization of fictional details. (p. 12-13)

The line that ought to jump out at any writer is: No one can hope to write really well…. I can’t ask Gardner, of course, but I would take that he is speaking to Theodore Sturgeon’s 10 percent of every category that is not crud. That would apply to all published fiction. Does that mean the 90 percent doesn’t sell? Of course not. Does that mean that the writers of the 90 percent aren’t making money? Again, of course not. But what Gardner is getting at here is that the works that people will remember in 100 years will come from probably the 10 percent of the 10 percent. Can you name a single contemporary of Charles Dickens? Hermann Melville? Victor Hugo?

There are pitfalls to a university education (remember Sturgeon’s Law). Gardner writes:

The English professor’s work is the analysis of what has already been written. It is their business to systematize what they read and to present their discoveries in the way most likely to be beneficial to their students. [The professor’s] purpose is to make structure and meaning crystal clear. This can lead—from the artist’s point of view—to two evils. First, the professor, and indeed his whole profession, may tend to choose not the best works of literature but those about which it is most possible to make subtle observations. …

This perversion of standards leads to the second evil: The literature program wastes the young writer’s time. Instead of allowing them to concentrate on the important books, from Homer’s Iliad to John Fowles’ Daniel Martin, it clutters their reading with trivia, old and new. (p. 13-14)

I have said before that if I were able to make a Faustian bargain it would be to live until I had read all the books I wanted to read. Gardner suggests that while university guidance is important, graduating from from a university is not. He writes:

…No law requires that the student leave college with a degree—discounting practical considerations. All that’s required is that the student get, somehow, the literary background they need. (p. 14)

Gardner finishes off his first chapter: Aesthetic Law and Artistic Mystery, with an examination of Mastery.

The writer’s business is to make up convincing beings and create for them basic situations and actions by means of which they come to know themselves and reveal themselves to the reader. For that one needs no schooling. But it’s by training—by studying great books and by writing—that one learns to present one’s fictions, giving them their due. …

However they may get it, mastery—not a full mental catalog of the rules—must be the writer’s goal….

Mastery is not something that strikes in an instant, like a thunderbolt, but a gathering power that moves steadily through time, like weather. In other words, art has no universal rules because each true artist melts down and reforges all past aesthetic law. (p. 15)

Where most writers fail, I think, is that they jump immediately to the reforging without a clue as to whether their working with gold or dross.

Bonus No. 1: FORGET BEDS, THERE MUST BE SEPARATE HOUSES…

Ohio Governor Doofus, aka Richard Michael DeWine, just showed the world how Ohio leads; off the climate cliff by signing into law the disastrous House Bill 6 bearing the Orwellian and equivocal short title of Creates Ohio Clean Air Program. The long title, which Ohio Republicans pray—they do so love to pray—that no one will ever read tells a very different story.

Especially when you cut to the middle and read 12 vital words: facilitate and continue the development, production, and use of electricity from nuclear, coal…

To amend sections 303.213, 519.213, 713.081, 4906.13, 4928.01, 4928.64, 4928.641, 4928.644, 4928.645, 4928.66, 4928.6610, and 5727.75, to enact sections 3706.40, 3706.41, 3706.43, 3706.431, 3706.45, 3706.46, 3706.49, 3706.53, 3706.55, 3706.59, 3706.61, 3706.63, 3706.65, 4928.148, 4928.47, 4928.471, 4928.642, 4928.75, 4928.80, and 5727.231, and to repeal section 4928.6616 of the Revised Code to facilitate and continue the development, production, and use of electricity from nuclear, coal, and renewable energy resources in this state, to modify the existing mandates for renewable energy and energy efficiency savings, and to determine amounts of federal funding received for home weatherization services.

Governor Doofus, err DeWine, with the stroke of his pen has vaulted our Buckeye State into the global consciousness in a manner far worse than the 50 years of attention Cleveland Garnered for a few feet of burning river.

Leah Stokes, writing in While the planet overheats, Ohio’s coal industry gets a bailout for The Guardian, calls Ohio House Bill 6—sponsored by Republican legislators Jamie Callender (Ohio 61) and Shane Wilkin (Ohio 91)—the worst yet.

Coal—where wealth continues to build while jobs continue to disappear—garnered a lot of attention in 2016 and President Donald John Trump is grateful for the industry’s support. Stokes writes:

The legislation reflects an unfortunate national pattern: electric utilities pushing to delay climate action, bolstered by a president similarly interested in dragging our country’s feet. For years, FirstEnergy and AEP have been trying to dismantle Ohio’s clean energy policies and bail out their dirty coal plants. Since President Trump took office, these companies have found a receptive audience.

FirstEnergy’s CEO has met with Trump personally. Last year, the company asked his administration to invoke emergency powers to save its struggling coal and nuclear plants. Just a few months ago, an Ohio Republican operative who has a major role in Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign called several House Republicans who were on the fence to persuade them to vote for HB 6.

These companies have spent several million dollars on deceptive advertising, lobbying and campaign contributions to help elect politicians sympathetic to their cause.

In return, these politicians have proven dutiful beneficiaries, working diligently to secure almost a billion dollars of ratepayer subsidies for FirstEnergy and AEP.

As lobbying goes, not a bad return on investment.

To be fairish, FirstEnergy and AEP were bad actors years before President Trump began to campaign so that he eviscerate all the accomplishments of his nemesis. Stokes continues:

[First Energy and AEP] started their attacks on renewables in 2011. By 2014, the state had frozen its clean energy targets and made it nearly impossible to build wind energy. This latest change will erode what little policy is left. The law will eliminate clean energy targets and gut an energy efficiency program that has saved the state $5bn – instead cementing Ohio’s position at the bottom of national clean energy rankings. With only 2.5 percent of its electricity from renewable energy sources last year, the state is in 49th place.

Ohio’s republican Governor and Republican Legislators and Republican (plus one Democratic) senators—HB 6 was co-sponsored by: representatives Jon Cross (83rd), Anthony DeVitis (36th), Haraz Ghanbari (3rd), Brett Hillyer (98th), Don Jones (95th), Bill Reineke (88th), William Seitz (30th), Dick Stein (57th), Nino Vitale (85TH) and senators John Eklund (18th), Theresa Gavarone (2nd), Lou Terhar (8th), Sandra R. Williams (21st), the sole Democratic Party co-sponsor,—are all for sale to the highest billionaire bidders.

I suppose Williams’ vote makes the bill bi-partisan. Stokes concludes:

Some advocates have focused on the parts of the bill that would subsidize nuclear, and the legislation’s small offerings for solar – both carbon-free sources of power. Yet the bill provides almost twice as much funding for coal as clean energy.

This is all occurring as Ohio bakes in another heatwave. As farmers throughout the state struggle to plant crops under record rainfall and flooding. As poor communities surrounding these coal plants continue to breathe toxic air.

The climate crisis is on Ohio’s doorstep. Yet the corporations running these ancient coal plants want to keep them operating until 2040, when they will be 85 years old. These plants are long past retirement age.

The next time you feel that you are to blame for climate change–because you forgot to hit the light switch, or you took that flight to see your ailing mother–remember the Ohio electric utilities and their coal subsidies. Remember the politicians who gave them this billion-dollar bailout after receiving personal favors, like a flight to Trump’s inauguration on a corporate jet. And know that one day after signing this bill, Ohio Governor DeWine attended a Trump fundraiser hosted by coal baron Bob Murray.

OH-HI-OH…! OH-HI-OH…! OH-HI-OH…!

Bonus No. 1: THE BARTENDER WALKS OUT OF HIS BAR AND…

Bonus No. 2: Greta Thunberg to sail across Atlantic for UN climate summits.

Bonus No. 3: Short Circuiting Policy: Interest Groups and the Battle Over Clean Energy and Climate Policy in the American States.

Bonus No. 4: Pushing through overgrowth on the Coventry canal up to Fradley Junction.

Bonus No. 5: Boris Johnson: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

The House of Representatives is unlikely to impeach President Donald John Trump and that if unlikelyhood should come to pass, there is simply no way in hell that the Senate—given President Trump’s claim that: I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters—would ever convict him. No, he’s here until until 20 January 2021.

So, we have a little more than 500 days before we can usher Trump out of our White House and the only way that I can see that happening is if we vote his lardness out. Ralph Nader agrees.

Nader, in Only Civic Driven Voter Turnout can Defeat Tweeter Trump, writes:

Does the Democratic Party know how to defeat the foul-mouthed, bigoted, self-enriching crony capitalist Donald Trump? Trump pretends to be a populist. In reality he does the bidding of Wall Street instead of Main Street and weakens or repeals governmental health and safety programs.

Defeating corrupt, disgraceful, disastrous Donald should be easy. He is, on many documented fronts, the worst and most indictable president in U.S. history. Moreover, Trump is personally obscene and is a walking tortfeasor against women. He is a politician who doesn’t read and doesn’t think. He doesn’t know anything about government and doesn’t care about the rule of law. All he seems to know how to do is stoke the war machine with taxpayer dollars and shut down law enforcement agencies designed to protect the health, safety, and economic well-being of citizens from today’s Big Business robber barons.

Dumb as he is on the matters of public policies, Trump is a cunning schemer and a master of deflection. For Trump, every day is a reality show, in which he must dominate the news cycle with his destructive, personal politics of distraction. The mass Continue Reading »

Ah, the summer of ’74, I remember it well…

Since August of 2015 when I predicted that Donald John Trump would not only win the Republican nomination to run for president in 2016, but that he would crush Hilary Rodham Clinton in the general election, I have wondered just what are Republican politicians afraid of? My conclusion? They fear being unmasked as the idea-less political lightweights that they are.

That could only happen if they lost the cover provided by gerrymandered districts, suppressed voters and rivers of cash generated by Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. I don’t think there is a Republican on the national stage today with the stature of Ronald Wilson Reagan, let alone Barry Morris Goldwater or Howard Henry Baker. Ralph Nader, however, thinks differently.

Nader, in Will Any Disgusted Republicans Challenge Trump in the Primaries?, writes:

In 1956, then Senator John F. Kennedy authored a best-selling book titled Profiles in Courage, in which he told the stories of Senators in American history who, on principle, bucked the tides of power. Today, some Republican writer or conservative syndicated columnist–George Will or Max Boot–should write a book called Profiles in Cowardliness. It should cover Republican leadership’s near total cowardliness in the face of Donald Trump, whom they despise on many fronts. Many in Republican leadership believe he has hijacked their Grand Old Party.

Clearly the Republicans–except for Rep. Justin Amash, who recently quit the Party after accusing Trump of impeachable crimes–are intimidated by this foul-mouthed president. Republican politicians are cowed by Trump’s bellicose personal rhetoric. We have seen this cycle repeat itself countless times, with the media boosting their ratings by recklessly repeating Trump’s insults.

Republicans remember what Trump did to Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio during the 2016 Republican primary. They observe how loud-mouthed Donald spews toxic falsehoods at Democrats and gets away with it. Why, Republicans ask themselves, should they take any chances provoking this unstable Twitter Emperor and his ditto-heads on social media whom he deliberately incites? The answer: because patriotism Continue Reading »

I’ve been trying to find where I first read about Lawrence Block’s Random Walk, but the source is lost in time. I’ve been reading Block since before he wrote the book, but I was so focused on Bernie Rhodenbarr, Matthew Scudder, Keller and the rest that I must have been changing stations when I passed Guthrie Wagner on the road and he was gone before I looked up.

This month I pulled a u turn and corrected my mistake. In announcing the 2018 reprinting of the 1988 book—I actually found a much yellowed first edition—Block wrote:

Sometimes at a book signing or other public appearance, someone’ll come up to me and say, ‘You know, I’ve enjoyed everything you’ve written, except there was one book that just didn’t work for me at all, and I couldn’t figure out what you had in mind when you wrote it.’ And someone else will say, “I’ve read and enjoyed your books for years, but there’s one book that hit me like a ton of stone tablets, and I’ve read it seventeen times and I get something new from it each time and I have to say it changed my life.’ And I’ll know right away that they’re both talking about Random Walk. I suppose for some people it’s just another book, but for a sizable proportion of readers it’s a definite outlier—they either love it like crazy or they don’t get it at all.

In the cover blurb for the new edition, Harlan Ellison wrote: Larry Block has always been at least three steps ahead of most writers in originality and readability. With this book he goes over the horizon and readers are urged to follow him. I agree and I did.

While I found the whole book fascinating on several levels, I paused and reread Chapter 16 a couple of times because—in my mind—that was where Block goes over the horizon. (Click on the image below to see a larger version.)

Pages 248-249; 250-251, 252-253, 254-255 and 256. The final paragraph of the chapter is pure Block gold.

Much of what I’ve previously written about Block has had to do with his nonfiction arising from his monthly column—1976-1990—for Writer’s Digest. While I own all of the collections of his columns and have read, and reread each multiple times, I’ve also kept my copies of the magazines where they first appeared. I’ve never found a better Master Class on writing fiction than those columns.

Because Random Walk is, and is not (you’ll have to read the book to see why) a major divergence from all of his other works, this is a must read.

*Having read so much of Block, I feel fairly certain that he had this twist on the classic a minister, a priest and a rabbi walked into a bar lede in mind when he created the Guthrie.

Back in the ’90s, during the Clinton years, I often wondered that Clinton advisor James Carville could marry Reagan and Bush advisor Mary Joe Matalin could date while working on opposite sides during the 1992 presidential campaigns then marry only a few year latter. There are a number of possibilities, none of them particularly attractive. Perhaps:

1. The sex was really, really good and nothing else mattered;
2. Blackmail was somehow involved;
3. Neither of them gave a fuck about politics, only the game mattered;
4. They’re in on the illusion that Democrats are different from Republicans;
5. Both are just whores working for the highest bidders; or…

Well, you get the idea. That question leads me to the present and the bizarre marriage that is George Thomas Conway III and Kellyanne Conway. The Conways were not always at such odds over President Donald John Trump. While Ms. Conway is a staunch supporter of President Trump, Mr. Conway was, at least in early days, enough of a supporter to be considered for the post of Solicitor General.

Since taking office, Trump seems to have increasingly irritated, and then enraged, Mr. Conway. And then the whole go back to where you came from episode erupted and the generic became personal.

George Conway, in Trump is a racist president for The Washington Post, writes:

To this day, I can remember almost the precise spot where it happened: a supermarket parking lot in eastern Massachusetts. It was the mid-1970s; I was not yet a teenager, or barely one. I don’t remember exactly what precipitated the woman’s ire. But I will never forget what she said to my mother, who had come to this country from the Philippines decades before. In these words or something close, the woman said, “Go back to your country.”

How the fuck do you swallow that when you get home to dinner? Do you ask your wife to resign? Do you question what you married when you realize that she didn’t resign on the spot? Do you ask for an Oval Office sit down to reason with the President?

Hell, George, what did you do?

Bonus No. 1: The government is like a horse – it could kill you without any trouble.

When my family moved out of Marietta, Ohio, in 1964, I transferred from the urban Phillips Elementary School—built in 1953 (two years before I was born) and still in use 66 years later—to rural Warren Elementary school. I became friends with Bill Rogers Besides stellar academics, the Rogers children were known for their perfect attendance.

I think that each of them graduated from Warren High School without ever having missed a single day in 13 years, and that, I also believe, is an accomplishment that Ralph Nader would admire as well.

Nader, in An Unsurpassable Sterling Record of Stamina!, writes:

I’ve always been fascinated by stamina. Lou Gehrig was my boyhood hero, and not just because of his batting average, clutch hitting, and dignified comportment. From 1925 to 1939 he played 2,130 ballgames in a row, not missing one, despite injuries and illnesses. (It was the record until eclipsed by the Baltimore Oriole’s formidable Cal Ripken in 1987).

Stamina by underdogs over great odds in various areas of lawful human endeavor is engrossing because of all the elements in its making. Focus, determination, resilience, skill, self-renewal, strategy and, at its best, reflective idealism.

Who isn’t fascinated by bee hives, ant colonies, birds and squirrels dutifully building nests, and the sheer alert stamina required of mammals raising their young during constant peril?

This background provides context for contemplating the end of radio’s John Sterling’s record announcing 5,060 straight New York Yankees baseball games without missing one. Since 1989, whether ill or injured, Sterling showed up every day in city after city to command the airwaves and perform his duties. He was undaunted by fatigue or Continue Reading »

Did you enjoy the All-Star game this week? The Home Run contest? I hope so.

Because you paid for it.

Of course, we’re all told good news: how much money flowed into Cleveland. Someone on WKYC-TV said that billionaire Cavs owner Dan Gilbert claimed that sports had brought some $500 million into the city. Didn’t he say where it went. Other than his pocket?

Well, I wonder then, why can’t he and the Dolans and Haslams pay their bills? It’s not that they’re too cheap. It’s that they easily shift the burden to the citizens of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County with the help of local politicians. Have you noticed that there isn’t a politician—city or county—that speaks loudly for citizens? This is the most docile bunch I’ve ever seen.

The river of money has been flowing OUT and continues to on your dime. Hard details are revealed in a piece I wrote in 2015 when the team owners put a $65 million bond debt on the tab in your name. It is detailed and saveable.

They did similarly recently with a $70-million bond issue (all in addition to the millions still collected for the sin tax and other dribs and drabs I won’t go into now).

No one has taken the time—and I’m not in that business anymore—of asking what that dough buys and what is the cost.

But if the past is any indication, we are buying team owners whatever can enhance their earnings. And they’re not sharing.

In this LOOK BACK to Vol. 26, No.20 and Vol. 30, No.6 there’s a clear indication of how the public gives the teams what they want.

Why aren’t reporters now asking for the documents that reveal the new purchase via the latest County bond money? It is public information.

You will have to do some work yourself but the point of view issue headline “Gateway dines on taxpayers” tells how the Terrace Club in the stadium became the largest downtown restaurant with everything—even the forks and spoons—paid for by you. Sammy’s at the arena was similarly adorned—and for a former Gateway board member.

The second issue, “Gateway keeps costing” reveals how costs that likely should be borne by the tenant are shifted to us. For example, new carpeting some $75,000 worth three years after the place opened; $55.000 for new lighting supposedly to meet NBA standards.

You’ll see that the Cavs owners enjoyed deducting such charges and reducing rent, or being owed rent from the facility owners—us. A rare tenant benefit.

I’m not going to talk about the Italian imported marble for loge coffee tables or the boat sized, Wahoo-embedded, board-room table for the Indians. All on your dime.

The Plain Dealer headlined with a three-column, two-inch high, day-after salute to the city: “Great night in an All-Star City.”

But reality didn’t quite cooperate. The next column headline: ”Two children among four killed.” Sadly, the real city.

[NOTE: When you bring up the issue it will be smaller than it should be. Above at right is a sign “Download,” if you click that a sign will appear in the lower left side and if you click it the issue will appear with a symbol (+) that will allow you to enlarge the issue to make it more readable. —Roldo]

While our third president—and man to President George Washington’s immediate left on Mount Rushmore—Thomas Jefferson did not write: An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people. The words are an accurate paraphrase of Jefferson’s views on education according to the Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia.

Sadly, our citizenry is not much better educated than it’s militia is well regulated. On the plus side ignorance is eminently correctable and Ralph Nader has a 10 excellent suggestions to remedy that deficit. Nader, in Highly Recommended Books for 2019 Summer Reading, writes:

1. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff. You’re already experiencing the early stages of Big Corporations becoming Big Brother while Big Government becomes the Big Pussycat. Unfortunately, indentured Members of Congress drink the milk of campaign contributions and dream of industry job offers. This constructive book is chilling and will curb your digital enthusiasm.

2. Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom by Katherine Eban. This book exposes the price gouging U.S. Drug Companies that are outsourcing production of medicines (and their active ingredients) to China and India with disastrous results. We are at the mercy of these largely uninspected, often contaminated, foreign labs and are not given labeling information regarding the country of origin of vital medicines. Did you know that the U.S. no longer produces antibiotics? Once you read Eban’s work, you won’t look at prescription medications the same way.

3. Strength Through Peace: How Demilitarization Led to Peace and Happiness in Costa Rica, and What the Rest of the World can Learn From a Tiny, Tropical Nation by Judith Lipton and David Barash. Lipton and Barash expertly tell the story of how Costa Rica outperforms the U.S. in meeting basic human needs. The book Continue Reading »

So, for nearly half a century my unsuccessful, but also unrelenting, efforts to get a grip on my life have orbited about the Hobbs-centered—no, not that Hobbes or even this Hobbs, this Hobbs (his family dropped the “e” for the sake of efficiency, I’m sure)—system. Having said that, I’m always looking for tweaks, and Oliver Burkeman this week has a good one: Kanban.

Because I’m also a life-long Japophile, the system is doubly intriguing. Kanban—signboard or billboard in Japanese—was developed by Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer at Toyota. Central to the concept is the use of a dedicated board and sticky notes to track what is important. What is more important, and the object of Burkeman’s essay, is the realization that we can only do a very small number of tasks in any day.

[I must note, however, that hyper-organized and driven Japanese—particularly students and sarar?man have insanely high suicide rates.]

Burkeman, writing in Overwhelmed by your to-do lists? Try this simple solution for The Guardian, begins with burnout.

The term “burnout” dates to 1974 , but judging from the media, and many people I know, it’s the official diagnosis of 2019. Well, semi-official: last month, in Geneva, the World Health Organisation announced it was recognising burnout for the first time–yet the next day, it emerged this wasn’t the case. (Let’s be fair to the WHO staff, though; they’re probably just very tired.)

I can relate. One of the reasons I decided to take retirement was that I was feeling burned out after working with at-risk students for more than 15 years. Burkeman’s piece piqued my attention. He continues:

[W]we still have to tackle our to-do lists, and there’s one technique I’ve recently found more useful than any other, as well as better suited to this era of exhaustion and overwhelm: limiting work-in-progress, or WIP. It’s a simple notion, originating in the Japanese system of industrial scheduling known as “kanban”, adapted by Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry in their book Personal Kanban. You fix a small upper limit to the number of tasks you’ll be working on at any one time – say, three. Then, you add no further tasks to your plate until you’ve finished at least one. When there are only two tasks remaining in your WIP, you can bring in one more. And so on. The kanban system visualises this using Post-its on a whiteboard, arranged in columns: each task moves from the “to do” column to “doing” to “done”. If your WIP limit is three, there should never be more than three notes in “doing”. (You can add a “waiting” column, where you shunt tasks that are waiting on other people.)

The effects are extraordinary. By limiting WIP, you feel your finite capacity, so the counterproductive urge to start 15 tasks naturally subsides. Without trying, you find yourself breaking projects down into doable chunks (because if “write book” or “get new job” is one of your tasks, it’ll jam things up for months). Above all, this way of working brings a deeply satisfying sense of having a foothold on things. Benson and Barry write: “Linearly finishing one task before embarking on the next commitment becomes addictive, a pattern, and eventually a habit.”

I’ve been working with the system for a few days now and, while this is early-days yet, I find that I like the way this works. I’ve made a minor stylistic change by using 2 x 1.5-inch sticky notes instead of the 3 x 3-inch, full size, versions and I’m using a template to run them through my laser printer, but I’m staying true to the spirit of Benson’s idea.

I have my board—I’ll take and upload a picture later today—to the left of the door in my writing room and while the options section is already nearly full, the doing section contains only three items. In addition, I’ve incorporated the method into my journal and replaced my traditional Time Power list of six action items.

I feel calmer already.

Bonus No. 1: NELSON ALGREN—NEVER A LOVELY SO REAL II…\

Bonus No. 2: Look life is really tough, even when it isn’t. You’re allowed to feel shit.