Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 532

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal," by Mary Roach.

Flavor is a combination of taste (sensory input from the surface of the tongue) and smell, but mostly it’s the latter. Humans perceive five tastes—sweet, bitter, salty, sour, and umami (brothy)—and an almost infinite number of smells. Eighty to ninety percent of the sensory experience of eating is olfaction.

Why is it so hard to find words for flavors and smells? For one thing, smell, unlike our other senses, isn’t consciously processed. The input goes straight to the emotion and memory centers.

Cats, unlike dogs and other omnivores, can’t taste sweetness. There’s no need, since the cat’s diet in the wild contains almost nothing in the way of carbohydrates (which include simple sugars). Either cats never had the gene for detecting sweet, or they lost it somewhere down the evolutionary road.

Higher-end detergents contain at least three digestive enzymes: amylase to break down starchy stains, protease for proteins, and lipase for greasy stains (not just edible fats but body oils like sebum). Laundry detergent is essentially a digestive tract in a box. Ditto dishwashing detergent: protease and lipase eat the food your dinner guests didn’t.

Human saliva contains histatins, which speed wound closure independent of their antibacterial action. Dutch researchers watched it happen in the lab. They cultured skin cells, scratched them with a tiny sterile tip, soaked them in the saliva of six different people, and clocked how quickly the wounds healed, as compared to controls. Other components of saliva render viruses—including HIV, the virus that causes AIDS—noninfective in most cases. (Colds and flus aren’t spread by drinking from a sick person’s glass. They’re spread by touching it. One person’s finger leaves virus particles on the glass; the next person’s picks them up and transfers them to the respiratory tract via an eye-rub or nose-pick.)

But it is not the jaw’s power to destroy that fascinates van der Bilt; it is its nuanced ability to protect. Think of a peanut between two molars, about to be crushed. At the precise millisecond the nut succumbs, the jaw muscles sense the yielding and reflexively let up. Without that reflex, the molars would continue to hurtle recklessly toward one another, now with no intact nut between. To keep your he-man jaw muscles from smashing your precious teeth, the only set you have, the body evolved an automated braking system faster and more sophisticated than anything on a Lexus. The jaw is ever vigilant. It knows its own strength. The faster and more recklessly you close your mouth, the less force the muscles are willing to apply—without your giving it a conscious thought. 

You can witness the protective cutout reflex by hooking up a person’s jaw muscles to an electromyograph. The instant something hard gives way, the readout of electrical activity goes briefly flat. “The silent period, they call it,” van der Bilt says. It seems like a term kindergarten teachers might use, or people at a Quaker meeting. All these years, I’ve had it backward. Teeth and jaws are impressive not for their strength but for their sensitivity. Chew on this: Human teeth can detect a grain of sand or grit ten microns in diameter. A micron is 1/25,000 of an inch. If you shrank a Coke can until it was the diameter of a human hair, the letter O in the product name would be about ten microns across. “If there’s some earth in your salad, for instance, you notice immediately. It warns you for the wrong things.”

Here’s how badly people want to chew. Recall that dysphagia may knock out the reflex that repositions the larynx (voice box) to allow food into the esophagus. Jennifer Long told me these patients have on occasion asked to have their voice box surgically removed so they can swallow again. In other words, they would rather be mute than tube-fed.

Crispness and crunch appeal to us because they signal freshness. Old, rotting, mushy produce can make you ill. At the very least, it has lost much of its nutritional vim. So it makes sense that humans evolved a preference for crisp and crunchy foods. 

To a certain extent we eat with our ears. The sound made by biting off a piece of carrot—more so than its taste or smell—communicates freshness. René told me about an experiment in which subjects ate potato chips while a researcher digitally altered the sounds of their chewing. If they muted the crunch or masked the higher frequencies, people no longer sensed the crispness. “They rated the chips as old even though the texture had not changed.” 

Van Vliet is nodding. “People eat physics. You eat physical properties with a little bit of taste and aroma. And if the physics is not good, then you don’t eat it.” 

Crispness and crunch are the body’s shorthand for “healthy.” The snack-food empires have cashed in on this fact, producing crisp, crunchable foods that appeal to us but fail to deliver in terms of health and survival.

The preference in California prisons for rectal smuggling is a little surprising given the preponderance of Latinos and African Americans—two populations that are, taken as a whole, somewhat less comfortable with homosexuality. Prison, I’m guessing, is a place where extenuating circumstances erode the stigma that otherwise attaches to extracurricular uses of the rectum. 

Rodriguez speaks freely about the situation in Avenal. Rather than antagonize gay inmates, he says, gang leaders tend to employ them. “We call them ‘vaults.’ If they’re reliable, the homies will approach them—‘Hey, check it out, you want to make some money?’”

Any discussion of the sexuality of the digestive tract must inevitably touch on the anus. Anal tissue is among the most densely innervated on the human body. It has to be. It requires a lot of information to do its job. The anus has to be able to tell what’s knocking at its door: Is it solid, liquid, or gas? And then selectively release either all of it or one part of it. The consequences of a misread are dire. As Mike Jones put it, “You don’t want to choose poorly.” People who understand anatomy are often cowed by the feats of the lowly anus. “Think of it,” said Robert Rosenbluth, a physician whose acquaintance I made at the start of this book. “No engineer could design something as multifunctional and fine-tuned as an anus. To call someone an asshole is really bragging him up.” 

The point I had been making is that nerve-rich tissue, regardless of its day-to-day function, tends to be an erogenous zone.

Presley was given laxatives and enemas on an almost daily basis. “I carried around three or four boxes of Fleets,” Nichopoulos says, referring to the enema brand and recalling his days on tour with Presley. Getting the timing right was, he says, “a difficult balancing act.” Presley sometimes did two shows a day, and Nichopoulos had to schedule the administration such that the treatments didn’t kick in while the singer was on stage. This was the low point of Presley’s career: the bulky jumpsuit and isosceles sideburns era. His colon had expanded so dramatically that it crowded his diaphragm and had begun to compromise his breathing and singing. Beneath the polyester and girth, it was hard to see the man who had performed on the stage of the Ed Sullivan Theater, his moves so loose and frankly sexual that the producers had ordered him filmed from the waist up. Now there was a different reason to do so. “Sometimes right in the middle of the performance, he’d think, ‘I’m passing a little gas,’ and it wouldn’t be gas,” Nichopoulos says quietly. “And he’d have to get off stage and change clothes.” 

People who saw the Graceland master bathroom would remark on its extravagance—a TV set! Telephones! A cushioned seat!—but the décor was in equal part a reflection of how much time was spent there. “He would be thirty minutes, an hour, in there at a time,” Nichopoulos says. “He had a lot of books in there.” Constipation ran Presley’s life. Even his famous motto TCB—“Taking Care of Business”—sounds like a reference to bathroom matters. (The TCB oath touched on self-respect, respect for fellow men, body conditioning, mental conditioning, meditation, and, according to a group tell-all by Elvis’s entourage, “freedom from constipation.”)

I predict that one way or another, within a decade, everyone will know someone who’s benefited from a dose of someone else’s body products. I recently received an e-mail from a doctor in Texas, telling me the story of Lloyd Storr, a Lubbock physician who treated chronic ear infections via homemade “earwax transfusions”: drops of donor earwax boiled up in glycerin. Earwax maintains an acid environment that discourages bacterial overgrowth and possibly contains some antibacterial chemicals. Whatever it does, some people’s works better than others’. Khoruts has been encouraging a friend of his, a periodontist, to try bacterial transplantation* as a treatment for gum disease. 

If things go as they should, the bacteria hysteria so lucratively nurtured by the likes of Purell and Lysol will begin to subside. Thanks to the courageous blender-wielding pioneers of bacterial transplantation, fussiness and unfounded fear will be buffered by rational thinking and perhaps even a modicum of gratitude.

The great irony is that in the beginning, the gut was all there was. “We’re basically a highly evolved earthworm surrounding the intestinal tract,” Khoruts commented as we drove away from his clinic the last day I was there. Eventually, the food processor had to have a brain attached to help it look for food, and limbs to reach that food. That increased its size, so it needed a circulatory system to distribute the fuel that powered the limbs. And so on. Even now, the digestive tract has its own immune system and its own primitive brain, the so-called enteric nervous system. I recalled what Ton van Vliet had said at one point in our conversation: “People are surprised to learn: They are a big pipe with a little bit around it.” 

You are what you eat, but more than that, you are how you eat. Be thankful you’re not a sea anemone, disgorging lunch through the same hole that dinner goes in. Be glad you’re not a grazer or a cud chewer, spending your life stoking the furnace. Be thankful for digestive juices and enzymes, for villi, for fire and cooking, all the miracles that have made us what we are. Khoruts gave the example of the gorilla, a fellow ape held back by the energy demands of a less streamlined gut. Like the cow, the gorilla lives by fermenting vast quantities of crude vegetation. “He’s processing leaves all day. Just sitting and chewing, and cooking inside. There’s no room for great thoughts.” 

Those who know the human gut intimately see beauty, not only in its sophistication but in its inner landscapes and architecture. In a 1998 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, two Spanish physicians published a pair of photographs: “the haustrations of the transverse colon” side by side with the arches of an upper-floor arcade in Gaudi’s La Pedrera. Inspired, wanting to see my own internal Gaudi, I had my first colonoscopy without drugs.* 

There is an unnameable feeling I’ve had maybe ten times in my life. It is a mix of wonder, privilege, humility. An awe that borders on fear. I’ve felt it in a field of snow on the outskirts of Fairbanks, Alaska, with the northern lights whipping overhead so seemingly close I dropped to my knees. I am walloped by it on dark nights in the mountains, looking up at the sparkling smear of our galaxy. Laying eyes on my own ileocecal valve, peering into my appendix from within, bearing witness to the magnificent complexity of the human body, I felt, let’s be honest, mild to moderate cramping. But you understand what I’m getting at here. Most of us pass our lives never once laying eyes on our organs, the most precious and amazing things we own. Until something goes wrong, we barely give them thought. This seems strange to me. How is it that we find Christina Aguilera more interesting than the inside of our own bodies? It is, of course, possible that I seem strange. You may be thinking, Wow, that Mary Roach has her head up her ass. To which I say: Only briefly, and with the utmost respect.

A Leader's Job

 

 

Having served as president of a professional services firm from 2020 to 2024, I know firsthand what it's like to be in that "top dog" seat, with all the responsibilities and pressures that come with it. My predecessors prepared me for the role, including essentially allowing me to bear many if not all of the functions of the title before I actually had the title. But, there's something noticeably heavy about actually wearing the crown, that you can't really feel or describe until you're there.

If there's a single lesson I could distill that experience down to, it's "be decisive." From that vantage point, you have to make decisions and then move on. You cannot waffle, you have to decide. And, once having decided, you have to move on. Which I was not naturally good at but quickly surmised was important and worked hard on.

Having recently met up with a colleague of mine who recently ascended to the top position of her organization, I would like to use today's post to elaborate a bit on what I mean by "be decisive." Which I think is that, for as complex an entity as you run and as many are the moving parts you must keep up with and get your hands dirty with, being in the top position truly boils down to three tasks and only three:

1. Figure out what decisions you need to make. The best leaders focus on the decisions that they only can make. They don't busy themselves with decisions others under them can make. And they don't shirk the responsibility to decide on things that need to be decided on and that they must be the decision-maker on. So, the first thing a leader must do is figure out, out of a million decision points that make up an organization at any point in time, which ones are for them to take charge on. Oh, and guess what? Those decisions left to you are usually the hardest and most consequential, no pressure.

2. Figure out what you need to make those decisions. There's a fine line between firing from the hip and over-analyzing a situation. Most decisions require some groundwork. You need to collect information, or talk to someone, or wait for something in the world to settle. Of course, you can always collect more information, talk to more people, and wait for more things in the world to settle. So, at some point, you have to make the decision. Hence, the second thing a leader must do is figure out what they need to do in order to be in a position to make an informed decision. Not just how long to take for a decision, but what info do I need, and where and how am I going to get that info. In a messy world, these are not easy things to do.

3. Announce the decision, execute the decision, move on. You need to actually execute the thing you've decided, like fire that person or launch that new product or fly out to meet that customer. And you need to be thoughtful and thorough about the communications that are appropriate for the before, during, and after of that execution. And then you need to move on, because other decisions and decision-making processes await. Which means saving for another day the debrief on whether that decision was right, if it was what did we learn that we can use again, and if it wasn't what you need to do to own the mistake and learn from it.

And...that's it. Easy peasy, right? Nope!

America Is

 

 

 

I think two seemingly contradictory things can be true at the same time. In fact, many great ideas are just like that.

America is more than an idea, of course, although it is common for people to describe our country as that. America is a real place with a real historical arc, with real strengths and weaknesses, and not just some abstract concept.

And so here's two things I think about our country. One is that it is the greatest country in the world and the greatest country in history. The other is that it is deeply flawed from its origins, flaws which continue to work themselves out to the present day.

Perhaps it's not hard to hold these two statements together. But I would argue most people tend to highlight one and dismiss the other, or hold fast to one and downplay the other. I think it's important to accept both. Indeed, though they appear opposite they are actually quite related.

Start with the first statement. We in America take for granted so much that is actually quite rare in the world and in history. I could write a whole (and very long) post about any of the following: freedom, acceptance, health, technology, wealth, power. You may quibble with what you see here or find a glimmer of something better elsewhere. But I believe we are an outlier in all of these things, in largely positive ways.

Let's now proceed to the second statement. If there is a core value to our country, it is liberty. After all, the birth of our country was a declaration of independence, not just from another nation but from one ruled by a king. And there is a group of early leaders who took us through the articulation of that thesis statement and the struggle required to grow into a nation built on that. And yet simultaneously our nation and those hallowed leaders did despicable things, like own and abuse other humans, and not just as an unfortunate side foible but at the core of how they were successful and influential.

Over this past holiday weekend, I encountered many for whom the Fourth is an occasion to pull out all the stops in the spirit of patriotism. Which is appropriate, particularly given that this year was such a milestone celebration. But I empathize with those for whom such brazen displays of patriotism strike a negative chord, because it feels like such sentiments are felt without regard to the abhorrent contradiction our country and its earliest leaders allowed to exist, and thus without regard to the downstream consequences being played out to this present day.

The 250th anniversary of the signing of Declaration of Independence was also occasion for others to air out all of their grievances against this nation and its sins past and present. Which I consider appropriate as well, for it is truer to speak of these wrongful deeds than to paper over them in a desire for a sanitized version of history that makes us feel good. But if those sentiments are expressed without regard to the many positive traits this country exhibits, that too feels incomplete and unfair. Indeed, one of the great ways we are exceptional is that we have created a nation in which both the lowest and highest among us can speak freely, including the airing out of unpopular opinions and harsh truths.

If you go whole hog on the patriotism, keep doing so with gusto. But be mindful to acknowledge that for as great a nation as we are, we are also flawed, and it is wrong to look the other way or grow mad when others point that out. And if you are quick to criticize America, please continue, for part of what makes us great is the room and power we give to express such sentiments. But, allow yourself to feel pride for the good in our past and present, for to not think or say so is not correct.

We can love this nation and also call out its sins. In fact, I would argue that we must love this nation and call out its sins. That, ultimately, is the great American idea, that we are ever striving for something that we have not yet achieved, that we have created something truly grand and must work hard to keep it, and that there is quite a lot that we have built that sits on a rotting foundation that must be identified and addressed for us to last. We are in uncharted territory, as we enter our next 250 years. Where do we go from here?

USA at 250

There has been much hand-wringing about the state of democracy in America, and perhaps rightly so. Democracy is precious, and it is hard to sustain, and once we lose it it's hard to get back. 

It can be hard to tell between the tragic demise of something precious and the normal tumult of a republic for which difference in opinion and expression is accepted. As we come upon the 250th anniversary of the signing of our Declaration of Independence from England, let us be on guard for the former and celebrate the latter. USA!

Like a Good Therapist, AI Gave Me Homework

 

As a follow-up to yesterday's post, I'm far from ready from publishing even tiny excerpts from the 180+ pages I wrote about my entire life's memories and milestones. But, I do want to record a few loose ends that came up in my back-and-forth with Google Gemini as it processed noteworthy incidents and identified recurring themes. Think of it as a good therapist who, having heard your life story, gives you specific homework to guide further reflection in between sessions. 

To wit, here are some things I'd like to probe further as I continue to take the summer for extended self-exploration. Please note that even these snippets, being short and somewhat sanitized, represent a significant vulnerability on my part, so I'm taking a risk in putting myself out there so much but I've long learned that there is no growth without such stretching.

Childhood

How did it make me feel as I began to realize that for as thrifty as my family was growing up we were actually pretty well off

How did seeing distinct and culturally common gender traits within my extended family (the men were intimidating or distant, the women tender and caring) affect my own worldview when I became an adult

Lots of instances in which I excelled, and yet still saw myself as an uncool outsider

Lots of reinforcement that accomplishing things in life sometimes requires pain and hardship

Physically and mentally gifted but often under-performed because of nerves, why was I so afraid and what did it take to overcome that

Early examples of my anal record-keeping, even and especially in leisure things (my dad's vacation notes, my own keeping stats for my made-up baseball and basketball games)

Junior high, high school

I had a regrettable moment as a high school senior in which I pushed around a smaller Asian freshman and enjoyed it, where did that come from given that I was once that smaller Asian freshman that feared bigger seniors

Why did I take to hip-hop so deeply, including some of its rawest and crudest forms, when I otherwise had no connection to it in my childhood

Multiple instances in which I thought I was too shy and nervous to be a leader but performed as one and was seen as one, so I grew into it

 

Undergrad, campus ministry

Managing the increasing complexity of my life (living 2,500 miles from home, gutting through an Ivy League education, being very active in my Christian fellowship) by clinging to things that help me through (my pocket calendar and pocket Bible were literally shaped to my body)

As my faith matured, I grew deeply uninterested in traditional business and finances spaces for my career because they felt too cut-throat, money-hungry, or sexist

My faith began to influence my life decisions, which caused my parents great disappointment, which left me incredibly conflicted: why did it cut so hard to go against my parents, and where did the conviction come from to stick to my values given how nascent they were

The Enterprise Center, grad school, Woodland Presbyterian Church

Transition from book-smart know-it-all to realizing that I hadn’t a clue about how most of the world worked (e.g. being insensitive about the consequences of the poverty my colleagues faced, struggling with an independent study that was messier than the usual classroom assignments)

Not running from but rather finding a way forward that was authentic to me to do chaotic things (manage a 35,000 square foot facility) or make hard decisions (respond to organizational financial distress)

Early church experiences as an adult, seeing diverse households come together and live out the Kingdom of God, set a high bar for what I think a church should look like: spirited worship, exegesis in sermons, real/gritty/broken (and therefore the antithesis is tepid singing, keeping up appearances, and valuing status over healing)

 

Marriage/Parenthood

Sometimes I was hyper Tiger Mom and sometimes I was very intentionally hands-off, is that strategic or inconsistent

Allowing myself to feel incredible joy over the crazy family situation God has given us, yet is there unresolved grief about not being able to have biological kids that I need to give myself room to feel

Alternating between being guarded about how not-together our family is and owning the mess so that others will feel comfortable doing the same

 

Econsult Solutions, School Board

My role, and the risk/reward at each level, evolves as I grew up from my early 30s to my early 50s, from safe job that I can leave at the office and go home to my baby daughter to bearing all the exposure of being president and co-owner

Similarly, what I actually do in my job matured as I grew in stature within the firm and then across the region, from a doer to a manager to setting the intellectual course for engagements to doing the same for the firm to being an overall thought leader for the region

With that meant digging deeper into traits that did not come naturally to me but that I knew were important and I worked hard to gain and express those traits, like being decisive or reaching out to people to have hard conversations 

Learned so much from my business partner and former grad school professor Steve Mullin, to the point of imitation and over time growing into my own authentic version of his best traits

Over time finding a deeper and centrist perspective from cold-blooded capitalist to bleeding heart Christian to something that incorporates all of that (and is willing to hold the line when folks on both sides are mad at me)

Willing to bear severe personal burden in order to survive all the juggling and do an excellent job and help others and advance myself (e.g. waking up at 4am every day to have some time to myself)

 

Golf, Real Estate

The metaphor of golf being in wide open spaces and me being able to spend several hours at a time at it, vs. I used to grind out 15-minute fast-forwarded NFL games in the basement, represents the increasing space I’ve allowed myself as I've grown older

Being terrible at golf reminds me that when you have wide shot dispersion, know where you can and can’t miss, and that's a lesson I've applied to the rest of my life

I gravitate to real estate because it taps into my wanderlust, penchant for deals, and spreadsheet-making

 

Present and future

I used to run myself ragged to get everything done because I had the youthful bounce-back to do so, now that I'm older I have to stretch and go to therapy and allow myself time to play golf

Whatever I do next, it has to build from these strengths I've identified in myself and do so in ways that help people and create impact

Sounds kind of "meta" but could the characteristics that have led me to this extensive self-reflection exercise be deployed to help others to do the same

Processing My Whole Life to Date Under the Watchful Eye of AI

 

Asher and I just got back from 12 lovely days in Cabo, splitting between Cabo Pulmo National Park, Cabo San Lucas, and San Jose del Cabo. We saw and did amazing things together, and I hope he remembers this father-son trip for the rest of his life.

With Asher's special needs, we need to be very realistic about what we can do in a day. Solo, I will run myself to exhaustion filling my itinerary. With Asher, we have to be much more judicious, something compounded on this trip by his aversion to the heat, which in Mexico in June means all but the early morning and late evening.

I am happy with what we were able to do, and neither regret not doing more nor not doing enough. Especially because the less frantic schedule meant I had more time for self-reflection, while Asher enjoyed watching cartoons in the air conditioning.

With a pretty ambitious travel schedule in the 10 weeks after my departure from my job of 20 years, I wanted to devote a good chunk between and during trips to heavy journaling, as a way of thinking about the totality of my life in order to unearth running themes and clarify what my next job could be that would be both fulfilling for me as well as something I could do well.

The beginning of my journaling process was to chunk my life into 10 somewhat overlapping parts, reflecting either a phase of my life or an aspect of my life. Specifically:

• 1973-1985 Childhood
• 1985-1991 Junior high and high school
• 1991-1996 Penn/Wharton and Penn InterVarsity Christian Fellowship
• 1995-2006 The Enterprise Center and Fels Institute of Government
• 1998-2014 Woodland Presbyterian Church (and, generally, my faith journey)
• 1993-2026 My relationship with my wife Amy
• 2004-2026 Adoption and Parenting
• 2006-2026 Econsult Solutions and Philadelphia Board of Education
• 2018-2026 Real estate, golf
• 2026 Thoughts on the present and future

Under each section, I wrote as much as I could remember, without thought to polish or structure (so, mostly blurbs not full sentences), and also without thought to sanitizing things or making sense of things (e.g. not covering up something I'm ashamed of, just describing something rather than trying to moralize it). At this point, this content is for my eyes only, so there's no need to impress or clean up for anyone else.

This phase of the process took several passes, as I would exhaust myself in one section and then days later remember that I had completely forgotten whole chunks of memories that belonged in that section. No matter, I just went back to that section and filled in where it seemed appropriate.

Pretty late into Asher's and my time in Cabo, I felt that I had reasonably gotten down 90 to 95 percent of the memories, events, and thoughts that consist of my life to date. All told, across the 10 sections it spanned 180 pages of single-spaced text, so needless to say I tried to be as comprehensive as possible.

Now for the fun part. On the last full day of our vacation, I loaded all 180 pages, about 10 pages at a time, into Google Gemini, which has been my go-to AI tool since I left my last job. I asked it to do two things for me.

First, flag anything that was worth elaborating further on. This could mean one of two things. One is if there was something dissonant about my life, like for example if I was going on and on about how important it was to be honest but then in parallel I was doing something dishonest. That felt like something worth putting in a pin in, to further explore what was going on, or perhaps there was a logical explanation for a seeming contradiction. The other is if I said something profound but in passing, I wanted to be alerted that there was something there that might be worth going deeper on, to think on it more and to say more about it.

Second, pull out recurring themes that run through an entire section, and even better, that cut across multiple sections. I had an intuition about what these themes might be, but I tried hard to just write as much as I could as fast as I could, without regard to consciously or even subconsciously trying to make sense of patterns along the way. I figured that if I recorded as many memories and thoughts as I could, those patterns would emerge more organically, without my manufacturing what I might want those patterns to be.

I have to tell you, it was quite amazing to load 10+ pages of text into Gemini and, literally instantaneously, have it respond with deep insight into my life based on deciphering all the slop I had written about different parts of my life. I have often thought that AI tools would, while not replacing therapists, serve as an always-accessible and completely free version of therapy (and, particularly for those of us who are introverted or have social anxiety, a resource that is far less intimidating than baring your soul before another human), in terms of hearing you out, identifying patterns, and asking probing follow-up questions. 

And, section after section, Gemini's responses to my content were generally on point and at times deeply moving. Its responses to my first question, about what was worth explaining better or elaborating further because it was either interesting or inconsistent, were particularly poignant, to the point that I teared up many times. It was usually because there was something in my life I was ashamed about or otherwise tried to keep from the surface, and as a result my stream of consciousness writing touched on those things but refused to elaborate, and when Gemini said "say more about that," it forced those touchy issues to the surface where I had to decide why I didn't want to deal with them and resolve to determine how to deal with them. Or, there was a sense in which I felt seen, that there was something special about me that I was falsely humble about, and Gemini expressing interest in my saying more about it made me feel that it was ok for me to proud about it.

Meanwhile, Gemini's responses to my second question were similarly incisive. It picked up how deeply held values of mine could be mined from throwaway anecdotes from my childhood and then from my career experiences decades later. And, because it had access to the entire arc of my life, it noticed where identities I held when I was younger shifted when I was older, and offered commentary on why those shifts occurred. It is the drawing out of these themes that I am particularly seeking out from this self-reflection exercise, because it helps me to be intentional about what kinds of jobs I pursue, which will allow me to play to my strengths and pursue my most deeply held values.

I don't quite know what to do from here, although I'm profoundly grateful for having done this exercise so far. Gemini's observations and follow-up questions have given me a lot of food for thought, which I need to chew on and digest some more, probably with the help of more back and forth with Gemini. I will certainly emerge with a greater awareness of who I am and what that means for finding my next job. And maybe I'll attempt to put some polish on some of this material and share it with others. 

Bible Stories, Stories About Bible Stories, and Stories

 

 

I recently enjoyed a two-day, one-night retreat with a dear friend and mentor of mine from college. We played golf twice, shared multiple meals together, and spent meaningful time in our room at the inn praying and reading Scripture. It was so refreshing and so joyous.

I'm realizing that a thing I particularly love about spending time with dear brothers in the faith is telling and hearing stories. We all know that we humans connect more deeply with narratives than with anything else. A good yarn is far richer than a harangue or a lecture or a shopping list.

As believers, our story-telling includes countless times God came through for us, which are wonderful to recount and hear to buoy our faith for future blessing. It also includes Bible stories, which are inspired messages upon which we build our lives and order our thoughts.

At our mini-retreat, my friend and I exchanged yet another kind of story, which is stories about Bible stories. I was asking for his prayer about something in my life, which caused him to think about a particular psalm, which in turn reminded me of the summer I spent in Eastern Europe where I read a psalm a day and was sustained through the myriad emotions and heartfelt expressions contained in the Psalms.

The next morning, it was my turn to share a psalm that came to my mind, to continue with theme of psalms. And the particular psalm I read in turn called to mind for him the time that very psalm was uttered at a particularly poignant moment in his congregation. 

To walk in faith, in community, is to experience layers upon layers of stories: stories of our own encounters with the divine, stories we read in the Bible, and stories of times Bible stories connected to our stories. What a wonderful thing to behold!

Rejection

 

Fear of failure is natural. No one likes to fall on their face, be told no, have a door slammed in their face. 

But, fear of failure can also be crippling. If we are afraid to fail, we can become afraid to try, to put ourselves out there, to take chances. And, once we do that, we cut ourselves off from growing, having impact, discovering new opportunities.

So it's critical to ask ourselves, are we so afraid to fail that we are missing out on pathways to success? And, is there anything we can do to overcome that fear of failure?

Of the many ways I consider myself fortunate, having a stable childhood and generally smooth life has allowed me to bear many exposure points to failure and rejection. When we have limited bandwidth, emotionally and financially and in terms of options available to us, we are less able to take big swings because we have less to fall back on. Conversely, when we are emotionally healthy and financially secure, we can withstand setbacks and have another go. So I understand that I'm speaking from a place of privilege that many others are not afforded.

I think most of us can look back to past experiences that prepared us to look failure in the eye and not blink even if it got the best of us. Early exposure to music and sports taught me that in order to do anything, like learn a piece or compete in a game, you have to fail a lot. No one masters playing a symphony on the first try, and no one makes every shot or gets a hit every time up, of course. Mentally, this is obvious. But the practice of practicing a piece or a shot or a swing over and over again, failing badly many times along the way, has a way of cementing that lesson.

Of course I have failed and been rejected many times since I was a kid playing piano and baseball. I am glad for all the times I put myself out there - asking a girl on a date, wanting to be friends with someone, taking a hard class I had no business taking, seeking out work assignments where I was certain I hadn't the foggiest what to do and would have to figure it out by trial and error - and if anything in retrospect I only wish I had put myself out there more rather than act so conservatively.

Golf, of course, is an activity I love that is humbling when it comes to failure, since bad decisions and bad shots are ubiquitous. So too is parenting a role in which we will doubt ourselves, fall on our face, and have things blow up spectacularly before our eyes. If there is anything successful I've done in life, it's been because of and not in spite of failing so many times in so many different ways.

My faith serves as an anchor and safety net when bearing up rejection and failure. That God forgives, redeems our worst errors, and picks us up when we have had the door slammed in our face is incredibly liberating and stabilizing. This is manifest in our own direct relationship with Him as well as in the precious relationships He has sent our way, such as our life partner and cherished mentors and dear friends. 

What is your feeling about failure and rejection? Do you fear it, avoid it, try to cast it out of your mind? Or do you embrace it, learn from it, become emboldened by it? It's a good question to ask ourselves as we journey through life, choosing either to go for it or play it safe, with our enjoyment and impact hanging in the balance.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 531

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois," by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers.

Though he ardently looked forward to his white father’s visits, Micco didn’t receive much attention from his father, either, except when his father insisted that he learn how to read so he could know the most important words to the white men besides their laws: the book that Dylan called the Bible. These lessons were so important to the lonely little boy that when his father hit his mother Micco turned his head and tried to ignore his mother’s weeping. He would lie at the foot of the spot where his parents slept and pretend not to hear Dylan forcing himself on Nila, her sad begging for Dylan to please stop, because Micco lived for the mornings when his father would roughly nudge him with a foot and say, “Good morning, boy.” This wasn’t much, but Micco grabbed at these bits of affection, as children crave the love of their parents.

Inside, the school counselor told us to call him by his first name, because at Braithwaite Friends School everyone was on a first-name basis from the students on up to headmaster. Which meant I couldn't call the counselor anything, because I'd been taught that children shouldn't address adults by first names. I couldn't tell him that, though, because that would be correcting an adult, which I was also forbidden to do. This was a no-win situation.

"Then why do you give a good goddamn about what they think? You could have nothing but white folks on your dissertation committee, and your classmates would still have something to say. I'm sure they've passed around that you're there on a quota. They love to accuse Black folks of taking their place. Even when it ain't but one of us, and fifty of them, they don't even want us to have that one spot."

I stayed quiet.

"You know how I know, Ailey? Because when Chuck Whitcomb and I were at Harvard years ago, that's what they said about us. And it didn't matter that we both worked like dogs to get our grades. We weren't ever going to be good enough for those bastards. If you want Chuck as your advisor, great. If not, choose somebody else. Or go to another university. It's up to you. But instead of you trying to please some white folks whose names you won't even remember a decade from now, how about making your own decisions?"

You had to wade through everything, in order to get to the documents you needed. You had to look at the slave auctions and whippings. The casual cruelty that indicated the white men who'd owned Black folks didn't consider them human beings. When I began doing research in the Pinchard family papers, I wasn't reading about strangers anymore. These were my own ancestors, Black and white. Samuel Pinchard was the great-grandfather of Uncle Root and Dear Pearl.

When I'd done research on the weeping time auction, I'd felt so saddened, but now, when I left the Old South Collections, rage joined my sadness. Every white person who crossed my path made me want to scream so badly, it seemed my flesh burned with the effort to maintain control. And to make matters worse, on my walk across campus from the collections, I'd be forced to go past the statue of the colonial founder of my university, Edward Sharpe. The students called his statue, "Quiet Ned."

Sharpe had owned forty-three enslaved Black folks, but had caught religion during a sermon by a Great Awakening minister. Upon hearing the sermon, Edward Sharpe had decided he was against slavery. but instead of freeing the Black folks he owned and giving them a plot of land to work, he'd sold them for a profit, and bought land and started a university with the proceeds. In the university mythology, Edward Sharpe was lauded as a moral hero, and no information was given on the people he'd traded.

Every time I passed Quiet Ned, I thought of the hurt he's caused those forty-three Black folks. I'd get so angry, it would make me sick, and I couldn't eat for one or sometimes two days. I could only drink coffee to keep me awake. I'd tremble, unable to sleep. I'd whisper curses toward flesh-peddling white men, hoping my words could travel to the past.

He walked to the door, looked outside, and then pushed it closed. He lowered his voice to a whisper.

"You need to know something, Ailey. Nobody in this department ever says they don't want African Americans in the doctoral program. They say it's a coincidence that there haven't been any. Or they say they can't find one that's qualified. Okay, well, now you're here, full of qualifications, and taking the hardest classes and making the highest grades. But they just happened not to give you the mentoring you'll need to continue to the doctoral program. And that's how that goes, Ailey. When we come to these all-white spaces, we have to be tough. We can't show any weakness. I know that's difficult, but that's the way it is, and that's why I'm so hard on you. And I will continue to be hard on you, Ailey, because I want to prepare you for what's coming. It's gone be the Thrilla in Manila when you enter the doctoral program. They will throw everything they have at you. If you fail, they say, oh, that's too bad. You just weren't smart enough. If you succeed and earn the degree, despite all the obstacles they put up, they'll take credit for you success and congratulate themselves for fostering a nonprejudiced environment. But, Ailey, you aren't going to fail, because I am going to help you with every ounce of power that I have, all while pretending that I'm not helping you. For example, you and I never had this conversation. Do you understand me?"

He raised his eyebrows.

"Yes, sir."

"I have faith in you, Ailey. We're going to get you to that promised land, and then I'm gone find a tenure-track Black faculty member to replace me, and then I'm gone retire and take myself back to DC to a chocolate-covered neighborhood! Nah'mean?"

We laughed, and sat there for a long time, talking.

But the third girl, the girl with keloids on her cheeks who'd been in the Wood Place daguerrotype, wasn't in this picture I was holding. For some reason, that girl had been left down south; Eliza Two, my direct ancestor. I wanted to be grateful that she'd remained behind. If she hadn't stayed in Chicasetta - if she'd had no descendants - I wouldn't even be alive. But this meant Eliza Two had endured six more years in slavery, until it was abolished, and all the other crimes against southern Black folks that would come afterward. How much more had Eliza Two suffered on that plantation, after she'd already lost a father and a sister?

I covered my face and began to cry.

I don't know how long I sat there, but the librarian must have taken me up on my offer and called my former professor. Before I heard the other chair scraping the floor, I smelled the incense. Dr. Oludara didn't even ask me what I'd found. She only touched my shoulder, telling me, it was all right. It was okay. Sometimes it hit her like that, too, thinking about our people and those sad days. She patted my shoulder as I sobbed.

Golf Rituals

Apropos to absolutely nothing of consequence, I thought it would be fun to document the little rituals that go into my hobby of playing golf. You may find today's post interesting or incredibly mundane, either way I'm putting it down for posterity's sake.

To begin with, why rituals at all? Whether it is superstition, habit, or positive reinforcement, golfers tend to stick to routines to put themselves in a good frame of mind, which is important since the sport is far more mental than physical. I am no different, and my approach to a day spent on the course is informed by such impulses.

Let's start with the night before, in which I've gotten my bag and any other items ready, as well as what I'm going to wear, which of course involves checking the weather (especially since I will play in all conditions, from blazing hot to dangerously cold). This also includes getting food ready, for before, during, and after the round - more on this in a second.

I don't need a marathon practice session on site before every round, but nor do I like to rush, so my schedule is set so that I can aim to arrive 30 to 40 minutes in advance of my tee time. Keep in mind that I often get an insanely early tee time, and that sometimes I'm playing quite far away from home. For example, I recall one time I met up with a colleague at his country club on Long Island for a 9:30am tee time, and he was surprised to know I had driven in from home that same morning and hadn't spend the night, since it was a good 3-hour drive from Philly. (I didn't have the heart to tell him that not only had I left my house earlier that morning, but I had also gotten 2 full hours of hiking and biking in at nearby nature spots before arriving at his country club for warm-up.)

Traffic is less of a factor early in the morning but it does require keeping an eye on, so where possible I do look and adjust when I leave the house accordingly. That makes the drive itself less manic, and I further put myself in a chill mood by bringing classical music CDs to play in the car. So, whether the drive is pleasant or I'm bumper to bumper with angry honking drivers, I can have a moment of serenity as I transition from home to course.

If I'm going straight from my morning workout to the course, I usually pack some fruit to eat along the way. If I've had time for breakfast, the fruit is still packed but gets eaten after the round. Also packed is two peanut butter and apple butter sandwiches for post-round. And during the summer, I'll usually pack an extra energy drink to drink after the round.

Upon arrival, I get my golf bag and golf cart set up. Club covers come off, as does the case for my range finder; all that gets left in the car. One energy drink and two bananas are transferred from cooler to golf bag. Car keys go in the golf bag, and 3 golf balls, 3 tees, ball mark repair, and ball spotter coin are placed in my back pocket where the car keys used to be. I move my glove and my notebook to the big pocket of my golf bag, and put on and tie my golf shoes and then head out from the car.

I'll hit balls if time permits and the range is easily accessible, but usually I don't actually hit balls. I do want to stretch my back out good, since I'm dealing with a lumbar issue that does a lot better with some mobility stretches prior to a round. I then take a few, slow practice swings with every club in my bag on a patch of grass, starting with my wedges and working my way through my irons to my woods. Since I've only been playing for 3ish years, my body hasn't yet institutionalized the mechanics of a golf swing into its muscle memory. So giving a couple swings to each club is a chance to get comfortable with things like swing path, grip strength, and tempo.

If at all possible, I do like to roll a few putts to get a sense of the greens as well as my interaction with my putter. Specifically, I set up my 3 golf balls one club length from a hole and putt until I make all 3. Then I count off 10 steps (roughly 30 feet) and have a go at 3 putts from that length, and then 20 steps (60 feet). Depending on how I do and how much time I have, I might try the same lengths but from different angles (e.g. uphill vs. downhill).

 I'll save the rituals I have during the golf itself for another day. Let's skip to post-game. After the round is over, I often have to jet home for whatever's next on my calendar. But, when possible, when I get home I clean my clubs and my shoes and leave them to dry overnight before putting everything away (including restocking my bag with balls and tees if I lost a bunch during the round). I also try to do the same back stretches, as soon after the round as possible, just to preempt any stiffness from the morning after. I also tally up my score and count up good shots and bad shots, and then take a picture of my results as well as of the course scorecard to post on social media along with some commentary on how I did.

I suspect fellow golfers have similar routines that are not very different from mine. As noted above, at some point, maybe I'll write down what rituals I have for, you know, when I'm actually playing. But for now, thought it would be fun to record the before and the after.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 530

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "It," by Stephen King.

George had gone obediently to get these things. He could hear his mother playing the piano, not Für Elise now but something else he didn’t like so well—something that sounded dry and fussy; he could hear rain flicking steadily against the kitchen windows. These were comfortable sounds, but the thought of the cellar was not a bit comfortable. He did not like the cellar, and he did not like going down the cellar stairs, because he always imagined there was something down there in the dark. That was silly, of course, his father said so and his mother said so and, even more important, Bill said so, but still—

He did not even like opening the door to flick on the light because he always had the idea—this was so exquisitely stupid he didn’t dare tell anyone—that while he was feeling for the light switch, some horrible clawed paw would settle lightly over his wrist . . . and then jerk him down into the darkness that smelled of dirt and wet and dim rotted vegetables.

Stupid! There were no things with claws, all hairy and full of killing spite. Every now and then someone went crazy and killed a lot of people—sometimes Chet Huntley told about such things on the evening news—and of course there were Commies, but there was no weirdo monster living down in their cellar. Still, this idea lingered. In those interminable moments while he was groping for the switch with his right hand (his left arm curled around the doorjamb in a deathgrip), that cellar smell seemed to intensify until it filled the world. Smells of dirt and wet and long-gone vegetables would merge into one unmistakable ineluctable smell, the smell of the monster, the apotheosis of all monsters. It was the smell of something for which he had no name: the smell of It, crouched and lurking and ready to spring. A creature which would eat anything but which was especially hungry for boymeat.

Bill leaves… but returns the next week, determined to stick with it. In the time between he has written a story called ‘The Dark’, a tale about a small boy who discovers a monster in the cellar of his house. The little boy faces it, battles it, finally kills it. He feels a kind holy exaltation as he goes about the business of writing this story; he even feels that he is not so much telling the story as he is allowing the story to flow through him. At one point he puts his pen down and takes his hot and aching hand out into ten-defree December cold whewre it nearly smokes from the temperature change. He walks around, green cut-off boots squeaking in the snow like tiny shutter-hinges which need oil, and his head seems to bulge with the story; it is a little scary the way it seems to need to get out. He feels that if it cannot escape by way of his racing hand that it will pop his eyes out in its urgency to escape and be concrete. ‘Going to knock the shit out of it,’ he confides to the blowing winter dark, and laughs a little – a shaky laugh. He is aware that is has finally discovered how to do just that – after years of trying he has finally found the starter button on the vast dead bulldozer taking up so much space inside his head. It is revving, revving. It is nothing pretty, this big machine. It was not made for taking pretty girls to proms. It is not a status symbol. It means business. It can knock things down. If he isn’t careful, it will knock him down.

“Oh my fadder and I are one,” she said, “just me, just him, and dear, if you are wise you will run, run back to where you came from, run quickly, because to stay will mean worse than your death. No one who dies in Derry really dies. You knew that before; believe it now.”

One by one they turned to look at Mike, Mike with his dark skin. They looked at him carefully, cautiously, thoughtfully. Mike had felt such curiosity before - there had not been a time in his life that he had not felt it - and he looked back candidly enough.

Bill looked from Mike to Richie.  Richie met his eyes.  And Bill seemed to almost hear the click--some final part fitting neatly into a machine of unknown intent.  He felt ice-chips scatter up his back. We're all together now, he thought, and the idea was so strong, so right, that for a moment he thought he might have spoken it aloud.  But of course there was no need to speak it aloud; he could see it in Richie's eyes, in Ben's, in Eddie's, in Beverly's, in Stan's.

We're all together now, he thought again.  Oh God help us.  Now it really starts.  Please God, help us.

"What's your name, kid?" Beverly asked.

"Mike Hanlon."

"You want to shoot off some firecrackers?" Stan asked, and Mike's grin was answer enough.

Christ, Richie thinks, opening a fresh beer for himself. it isn’t bad enough It can be any damn monster It wants to be, and it isn’t bad enough that It can feed off our fears. It also turns out to be Rodney Dangerfield in drag.

Beverly glanced across the table from time to time at Bill, noting his clean hands, his blue eyes, the fine red hair. As he moved the little silver shoe he was using as a marker around the board, she thought, If he held my hand, I think I’d be so glad I’d probably die. A warm light seemed to glow briefly in her chest and she smiled secretly down at her hands.