'A Gardener Is an Artist'

Reading a fabulous nonfiction/popular history For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World's Favorite Drink and Changed History by Sarah Rose.  Fascinating stuff.  And this passage, wow!

Butchart Gardens (via)

“Although science was very much at the core of Fortune’s work, he was at heart a gardener, and a gardener is an artist: His canvas is land; his medium, plants.  A gardenre works in a three-dimensional world, taking into account the relative heights of trees and depths of borders, the slope of a hillside, and the views to be ‘borrowed’ or enhanced.  But he works in a fourth dimension as well: time.  A gardner plans for seasons: which trees will bloom in spring (forsythia, magnolia, cherry, lilac, and apple) and which will reach their peak of color in autumn (acer, euonymus, and elder).  A gardner’s art also spans years ~ in determining which trees mature quickly and grow tall easily, such as birch, ash, and the softwood evergreens such as cedqar, fir, and pine, and which grow slowly and with some effort to leave a lasting legacy, such as oak, beech,a nd maple, which stand for generations.  Fortune was well aware that to be a great gardener demanded great patience.” ~ Sarah Rose, For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World's Favorite Drink and Changed History

I am honored to have a piece up at Role/Reboot! Have you read the article in CNNMoney about men in traditional marriages tend not to promote women in the workplace? This is my response, "Men in Traditional Marriages Are Less Likely to Promote Women at Work. Here's What to Do About It."

An excerpt:

Men in traditional marriages are much more likely to deny promotion to women in the workplace, according to a study last year. In other words, if your boss is married to a woman who stays at home, you as a woman may not get that promotion, even if you’re qualified.

The study had several other key findings—that those same men are much more likely to view women in the workplace unfavorably, to perceive organizations with high numbers of women employees as operating less smoothly, and to view organizations with female leaders as “relatively unattractive.”

“The consistent pattern of results found across multiple studies employing multiple methods and samples demonstrates the robustness of the findings,” reports Sreedhari D. Desai (UNC Chapel Hill and Harvard), Dolly Chugh (NYU), and Arthur P. Brief (U of Utah).

Maybe we haven’t “come a long way, baby.”

Click here to read more.

To Be Famous, You Have to Document Yourself

(via)

“History goes to those who leave stuff.” ~ me

Have you ever noticed that biographies and documentaries are most often about people who leave a paper trail or a video trail or photo trail?  Coincidence? I think not.

Al Jazeera America

I loved watching the new news station Al Jazeera America last night.  I think it’s so cool that we have this option, and I hope the channel makes it. Somewhat because we have entrenched political debate in this country, and this might stir things up, but moreso because I love the chance to get away from “The Danger of a Single Story.”

You know Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s fabulous TED talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” don’t you?  (If not, I’ve put it below.)  She talks about how America has a narrative of what Africa is and isn’t and how her work is not only a reaction to that but a claiming of her own story.  This happens throughout history.  People yearn for a single line of meaning for the world, preferably that involved their kin in the main storyline.  Unfortunately and fortunately, that’s not the way the world works.  Everybody is the hero of their own story, but if they have the power (hegemony) they get to impose their story, their version of the truth, on the multitude of other narratives out there. 

Creating meaning for a group isn’t a bad thing.  It’s human nature, how we make our lives have worth.  But we have to acknowledge the many narratives that there are.  Like the Harper’s piece by William T. Vollman about being suspected of being the Unibomber.  In an interview on NPR, he talks explicity about his America and what it means.  (Mikhail Bakhtin has some interesting things to say about the centripetal and centrifugal forces in national dialog.)

Some of the things I love about the new Al Jazeera America channel.  The fact that most of the anchors are nonwhite (by that I mean not of European American descent).  That it has an international focus yet still covers the U.S.  That it tells positive and negative stories.  That there is dialog and disagreement and vehement discussion.  That The Nation advertises on it, and you can go online on Facebook and participate in the discussion.  Most of all, there is pushback against the dominant lines of discussion. 

Very cool.  And here’s the wonderful Adichie for your moment of zen.
 

'Motherhood Isn't Always a Choice' Up at Role/Reboot

One day I noticed on my Facebook feed a fascinating article at this website called Role/Reboot.  Then just the next day I saw another.  I kept clicking over and reading all these great articles by wonderful writers, all from this same site, and they kept popping up on my Facebook feed.  Needless to say I've had writer's envy ever since and wanted to publish something for a long time.  And now I have! Thank you, Role/Reboot! You guys rock.

A teaser:

Motherhood Isn't Always a Choice

For years, Tamara Linse wanted to have a baby, and she could get pregnant, just couldn't stay pregnant. So "choosing" to have kids isn't always that simple.

As I read the recent article “Having It All Without Children” in Time magazine, I was struck time and again with the word choice. Women choose to have children, while other women choose not to. Some variation of the word occurs throughout the article.

Choice is not a word I would have applied to motherhood in 1998. I was 29, and my husband and I had been married for five years. We wanted to wait to have children until we paid off our car payments and student loans, both of us working two jobs, and had remodeled the early 20th century Victorian we bought the year we married. We were nesting. We didn’t think of it that way, but there’s no other way to put it.

I should take a step back. Growing up, I was not a baby person. I was the youngest of seven, so there weren’t a lot of babies around for me to take care of. I didn’t gravitate toward babies, but I liked them, and I always thought I’d have a couple. Of course I would: My mom had had seven, and one of my sisters had seven, along with four step-children.

But then, at age 29, my husband and I lost our first baby at six months’ gestation. I went to that particular appointment by myself, and so I was alone when the matronly OB/GYN told me that the ultrasound showed no heartbeat. She had this look in her eye I will never forget. Compassion and empathy, certainly, but also a withdrawal, as if I had something, as if I were something that she had to protect herself against, the emotional equivalent of crossing herself.

For more, click on over to Role/Reboot.

The Amazing 'Avatar: The Last Airbender'

No, I'm not talking about the movie.  I'm talking about the fabulous series created by Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. Cue crazy screaming fan-girl!  Avatar: The Last Airbender, created for Nickelodeon, is single-handedly one of the best shows in recent history, animated or no.  You should watch it!

And I always love the behind-the-scenes look at things.  Avatar always was a bit of a mystery, as they didn't do much publicity for that, but I was thrilled ~ thrilled! ~ the other day to come across this video interview of the co-creators. I love to hear them talk about the creation of it and the craft of it.  I love how they went above and beyond, outside of the received notions of what good animated film should be.  I love that they based it on real-life martial arts imagery and ideas ~ the best art has a firm grounding in reality, as well as lots of imagination.

I just love it.  Here you are!

The Power of a Well-Told Story

From Two American Families (via the New Yorker)

If you screened Two American Families for Charles Murray and other social critics who believe that the decline of America’s working class comes from a collapse of moral values, social capital, personal responsibility, and traditional authority, they would probably be able to find the evidence they’d need to insulate themselves against the sorrow at the heart of the film.

…

But the intellectually honest response to this film is much less comforting, for the overwhelming impression in Two American Families is not of mistakes but of fierce persistence: how hard the Stanleys and Neumanns work, how much they believe in playing by the rules, how remarkable the cohesion of the Stanley family is, how tough Terry Neumann has to become. Both families devoutly attend church. Government assistance is alien and hateful to them. Keith Stanley says, “I don't know what drugs or even alcohol looks like.” In the words of Tammy Thomas, whose similar story is told in my new book, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, these people do what they’re supposed to do. They have to navigate this heartless economy by themselves. And they keep sinking and sinking.

This is George Packer in the New Yorker talking about a new PBS Frontline documentary Two American Families about the declining prosperity of two families in Milwaukee.  I would like to see it, though I know it’ll be heart-wrenching.

But what I love is Packer’s point about stereotyping vs. the power of detail.  It’s easy to insulate ourselves from pain and social responsibility through the power of reducing someone ~ or a whole class of people ~ to an idea.  We can dismiss it handily without feeling any remorse.  It’s the same way hunters can bear to kill living breathing animals and soldiers can murder other people.  The other is reduced to an object, a target, an idea.  Hunters and soldiers have to, or they couldn’t provide for or protect their families and their homelands.  It would tear them up and often does anyway.  But in a social context, it’s a choice, an easy out.

But I’m not here to soapbox you.  My point is the power of detail.  The way you reach people is through the immense empathy created by a well-told story.  Le mot juste, the exact right word, or words. That’s Packer’s point.  This documentary has the power, if you give it “an intellectually honest response,” to push you past your comfortable notions of who deserves and who is to blame and to see on an individual level the effects of forces beyond their control.

As a fiction writer and as someone who does marketing for my job, I am constantly reminded of the power of details, of a narrative, to move people.  Writing can be used for infinite good, for empathy, for love. That’s why I strive every day to get better at it.