Diary of an Urban House

I’m switching from a daily multivitamin to a daily recommended dose of theobramba cacao.  Maybe if I use the latin name for it, my Crossfit friends might be fooled? Or, hopefully, won over! Think of it as the latest paleo-supplement… it’s thousands of years old and was once consumed (as a performance-booster and health tonic!) exclusively by Mayan warriors, priests and kings.

And hey, if grain-loaded Clif Bars are bad for me now, what about these protein bars? Gluten-free! Lookin’ good! As long as I avert my eyes from the rest of the stuff on that site, anyway.

As an online adjunct professor at the undergrad and graduate level, I can tell you that Google’s Wave is intriguing, but a far cry from the regular online delivery tools we already use.  Compared to eCollege (soon to become “Pearson LearningStudio“), Google Wave is vague and unhelpful– it doesn’t have any of the wonderful features that are built into eCollege, like a configurable gradebook that links automatically with your department head and with the registrar, and drag-&-drop ease of loading course content (video lectures, audio commentary, graphs, diagrams, photos with captions linked to other text inside or outside the eCollege “shell”, discussion “rooms” within courses within departments, etc).

The difference between Google Wave and the established online education environs (eCollege and its competitors) is very like the difference between Facebook and WordPress.  Facebook is carefully structured, and you must learn your way around the user interface, exploring the functionality that is already provided.  WordPress is more like a foundation and a set of tools with which you can build your own custom structure, one which will be internally robust, relatively easy to assemble (you don’t need to learn a computer language and write every line of code yourself!), and which can possibly offer far MORE functionality, and a BETTER user interface, than Facebook… but you must create that functionality yourself.  Or cobble it together from the bits and pieces and themes that other WordPress authors have made available.

With Facebook, as with eCollege and its ilk, the big decisions and major designing have already been made for you. It is what it is: you can tweak it, but you can’t get “under the hood” and completely rearchitect it. If you don’t like it, go to its competitor (Xanga, Ning, MySpace, whatever)… they are just like Facebook but different in their details and designs.

With WordPress, and apparently with Google Wave, you have more of a blank canvas or a slab foundation, and you must create your own painting (or build your own structure) with the tools WordPress and Google Wave give you.  The result could be vastly better than eCollege, at least for your particular needs, and it will certainly be original, not “color-by-numbers”.  And it will cost you very little if you do the work yourself.  But it demands a significant investment of time, energy and creativity.   Meanwhile, for a fee, eCollege can give you a basic online classroom with a lot of functionality in thirty minutes.

I haven’t had time to really mess with it much, but Google Wave definitely feels, from the get-go, more like a huge lump of modeling clay, not like a Lego set which I can assemble in thirty minutes.  No Michelangelo will be satisfied with the Lego set… but if your buddies are waiting for you to make your toy quick so you can come out and play, Lego will beat Sculpey every time.

On the other hand, Google Wave will be a much better way for me to tutor students one-on-one, especially in writing and composition skills…

I’ll be working with eCollege for years to come, I’m sure. But on my own time, I’ll be fiddling with Google Wave like a lump of Sculpey, trying to build it into my WordPress-powered blog page, playing with it with my kids, trying to create a beautiful thing that eCollege isn’t malleable enough to manage… and far from being threatened by Google Wave, eCollege will simply incorporate Waves in their future versions of Pearson LearningStudio, and I will someday discover that my online class discussions feel distinctly Wavey.

Saw a link to this article on a bike-commuting newsgroup, read it, and had to comment.  Kudos to attorney Thomas Bowden.  For your convenience, his guest column is below.  Click here to see my comment and others.

I am a bike commuter – every day I brave traffic, potholes, snarling dogs and sometimes even rain and snow on my way to work.  Some things you can’t avoid.  But what I don’t understand is the drivers who honk, try to brush by me as close as possible and practice their sign language skills from the safety of their rigs.

But whether they like it or not, the Virginia Code gives me and other cyclists the legal right to use almost any state road in Virginia. This should really not be a surprise, because it’s historical fact that the first paved roads in America were paved for cyclists, following a campaign by the League of American Wheelmen (now the League of American Bicyclists). Membership included John D. Rockefeller, “Diamond Jim” Brady, the Wright Brothers and, no doubt, numerous other fine upstanding citizens.  We were here first, but we are happy to share.

So we have the right to ride on the roads – but why do we do it?

Some think they are saving the planet. Good for them. Regardless of your opinion on global warming, where’s the harm?  Others just want to keep a few more dollars out of the hands of the oil magnates of Moscow and Venezuela. We all benefit from that.  Me, I just ride because it makes me feel good, and it beats sitting in a steel cage blowing college tuition out the tailpipe of my SUV every morning. Yes, I am a bike commuter who owns an SUV (multiple SUVs, actually) — so yes, I do pay my share of road taxes. I’m not so different from you, really.

In fact, cyclists, serious cyclists, bike commuters like me, are the motorist’s best friends. Think of it this way — you may get frustrated if you have to veer around me in your rush to the next stoplight (where I will probably catch up to you waiting for the green). But ask yourself — would you rather veer around my bike or be stuck behind my Grand Cherokee? When you are looking for a parking space, isn’t it nice to know that there is at least one more out there — the one that I would have used if I had driven? And when you go to the gas pump, think of the 7.5 million gallons of gas that we bike commuters didn’t buy last week. That has to help keep prices down for drivers.

Bottom line — bikes are good. Bikes make sense. Granted, bike commuting is not for everyone, but if just another 1 percent of daily commuters rode a bike to work, there could be 1.5 million fewer cars on the road burning 4.5 million fewer gallons of gas per day. That means a faster commute and lower gas prices for you.  There would be 1.5 million more parking spaces, all without one dime of federal, state or local tax money. And if just 10 percent of commuters rode their bikes, even on sunny days only, we could probably stop buying oil from Saudi Arabia and Iraq.  At 15 percent, we could tell Russia and Kuwait to take a hike, too.

So on Monday, if you happen to pass me on my way down Cary Street, please don’t honk – just wave, and give me three feet when you whiz by. Sure, the law says I’m only entitled to two feet, but what’s another 12 inches when we’re talking energy independence? We’re not trying to make you give up your cars – we’re trying to help you keep them.

Thomas Bowden is an attorney at Sands Anderson, where he focuses on mergers and acquisitions, corporate transactions and corporate finance. He has also been a partner in a technology startup. You can read more about him here.

…Well said, Mr. Bowden!

This is a script I use to convince university students, in various venues, of the centrality of writing (and of course to pitch my services as a writing tutor).  After repeating its general contents for the umpteenth time on the phone for someone recently, it occurred to me that I could simply post it on my blog… although I certainly don’t mind talking about it at length!  I did not make this up to promote my tutoring; rather, my desire (and hard work) to tutor others flows from these truths.

It’s an outline of talking points, really– the actual talk can be longer or shorter depending on the situation, and can involve more stories, quotes, and statistics than you see here. Forgive its bullet-list appearance.

Enjoy!

“Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”
—Gene Fowler

“Don’t let it end like this.  Tell them I said something.”
–Pancho Villa’s last words, 1923

1.  The centrality of writing in life

It’s everywhere: text messages & user manuals, email & blogs, columns, articles, love letters, textbooks, advertisements, speeches, stories, novels, screenplays, notes to your roommate.  We read and write all the time, and we assume we understand and will be understood perfectly. How often are we wrong in that assumption?

Like the old radio advertisement used to say, “You are judged by the words you use”, and by how you use them.  What we write will be taken as what we meant.  And if it is written, it endures, somewhere. Once sent it cannot be revised.

2.  The centrality of writing in academia
Academic work, even in the sciences, is largely writing (or studying the writing of others).  We are judged, academically and professionally, by how we write.  Writing well is not tangential to your degree program, it is central: it is vital to your success in school and even more vital to your professional success after graduation.

3.  The centrality of revision & feedback in writing
No writing is ever good enough on the first pass. Even a shopping list ought to be checked for accuracy before it leaves the house (especially if you are sending someone else to do your shopping).  The best writers spend the most time revising, rewriting, and getting feedback from others.

4.  How to improve your writing
The first step is to know your audience.  In all communication, the audience is sovereign: if your writing fails to connect with your reader(s), it is you who have failed, not them.
Next, you must find your blind spots: certain weaknesses in your writing that you will miss if you revise on your own.  These weaknesses can only be found with feedback from others.
Finally, you practice in those areas of weakness, develop an eye to see them yourself and correct them.
In both the correcting and strengthening of your writing, a writing coach can make a huge difference.  A good writing coach will see things your friends and possibly your TAs won’t see.  And a good writing coach won’t just point out mistakes, but offer clever ideas to help you really “get it” and resources to continue improving on your own.

5.  Your writing can improve.  Will you choose mediocrity?
I am the Catalyst of Wordsmith Writing Coaches, experienced writers who can help you bring your writing skill to a new level of excellence.  We will meet you whenever and wherever is convenient to you, often at local coffee shops.  We work mostly one-on-one, but if you pull together a small group, two to four persons, we’re happy to work with that too.  Our standard fee is $75 per hour one-on-one (add $15 for a  second person and $10 each for the third and fourth persons, per hour).
Wordsmith is not your only option.  There are other private writing tutors out there.  There are also plenty of writing courses you might take, online or on campus or at a training center somewhere.  Also, most universities have a writing center on campus that will offer free writing tutoring and they generally do a good job.  But you are limited to their facilities, their hours of operation, and their appointment lengths (usually just 30 minutes at a time).  Near the end of a semester they are often booked solid and cannot help you unless you have made your appointments in advance.  But they can be a good source of free handouts & helpful articles that address common grammar & composition issues, and occasional workshops that can be well worth your time.

Whether you develop your writing craft through your on-campus writing center or a writing course or through a private writing coach like myself, please, choose excellence.  Don’t settle for writing “well enough”.  The rest of you is making progress through life– don’t leave your writing skills behind.

As I sit in my study, grading papers, I can hear my wife and daughter downstairs hard at their homeschooling.  

“But mom, I don’t know how to draw a chair!”

“Here, honey, let me show you a trick for that. Whenever you want to draw a chair, you just…”

…and without looking, without needing to hear any more, I know that my daughter is NOT learning to draw a chair.  She is learning to draw something which, in our culture, will immediately be recognized as representing a chair: in semiotic terms, a “sign” that evokes a general sense of chairness. This marks another incremental death of the ability artists cherish, of being able to draw “what the eye sees, not what is there.” But it lays an indispensible foundation for abstract reasoning later on. Argh, life! It requires so many deaths and growths of us, and we find we must relearn things we once found easy– like drawing what we see, not the semeion.  Maturity requires familiarity with signs and symbols and the invisible truths all around us, but a deeper and more precious sort of maturity yearns to reach past the semeion and touch reality.

As a writer, editor, and writing coach, I am as concerned with plagiarism as any of my peers in those fields.  Detecting plagiarism is a necessary and oft-used skill for everyone who grades or vets written work.

However, in our vigilance for plagiarism we often miss its more subtle cousin, the vice of misattribution.

Unlike plagiarism, which takes credit for someone else’s work, misattribution admits the work is someone else’s… and quotes the wrong source. This is sometimes a simple clerical mistake, but it can also be plagiarism’s laziness dressed up in different clothes: throw in that data or phrasing you remember from somewhere, and rather than do the hard work of tracing the source, just put any likely citation in there.

This avoids any charge of plagiarism– you freely admitted it was someone else’s thinking, not your own. If the misattribution is caught, you can play dumb and apologize– and voila, your professor or TA or editor has usually done your source tracing for you, using their plagiarism-detection tools and skills, and you probably get away with a mild chiding. Because after all, it wasn’t plagiarism. Right?  (Misattribution loves to hide in the shadow of its notorious cousin)

But misattribution often goes undetected.  Why run cited quotes through a plagiarism-detection algorithm? The writer is not claiming originality for that part.  Or if the whole paper is checked for plagiarism, a harried TA won’t notice if attributed quotes are approved as being original work.  Original work is what you want from your students, right? No red flags = no careful look.  Or if you are submitting to an editor, if the quote seems legit, it is often not checked. Unless it is later published in book form, and by a reputable publisher who employs fact-checkers, it may never be caught.

Putting respected names on another person’s words to acquire the patina of authority is bad enough. Making up false data and statistics is worse. Numbers carry an extra weight of “proof”.  Make some up and attribute them to a respected authority, and you have something that is plagiarism-free, appears like a solid argument, but is vastly more misleading and hollow than if genuinely substantial content had been plagiarized.  At least data is a lot easier to check for veracity.  And it is more likely to be checked, if the piece is headed for any sort of formal publication.

There seem to be three motives for misattribution: laziness (”I know someone said something like that…”), villainy (to deceive, defraud or defame), and shame (no one will take my thinking seriously– I’ll say X said it).  To paraphrase First Thessalonians 5:14, let us warn the lazy, expose the villainous, and encourage the timid, making clear to everyone that plagiarism’s subtle cousin is even more deceptive and destructive than plagiarism itself.

May I remind the timid misattributors, few as you are: it is the impact of the words, not the reputation of the speaker, that endures for generations.  Take credit for your own thinking so that in the future we can attribute it properly.  You’ll save us a great deal of trouble.

And to the lazy and the villains among us: Write honestly. You’ll save yourself a great deal of trouble.

Ah, good news on the Authenticity front. Some time ago I shared my fear of fake chocolate.  Of course, we can always expect the top-tier chocolatiers to use only the best ingredients.  But what about grocery-store chocolate? Or convenience-store chocolate? The kind you actually buy because you can’t get to a Trader Joe’s in a timely fashion?

Rest easy. Mars has gone public with their decision to keep it real.

This afternoon and evening I had the privilege of being one of the honored guests and speakers at Saroya Munnings’ “sweet 16″ debutante ball.  Wow.  Saroya is the daughter of Ken and Sandra Munnings, former next-door-neighbors of mine who are now just down the street from me (I was the one who moved down the block, not them).  Months ago, Ken and I were talking about our kids growing up and wanting them to understand what that meant to us, and for them.  He had already planned to have a sort of Protestant Quinceañera for Saroya, for her 16th rather than her 15th birthday, hence the odd name for the event.  His invitation to speak grew out of that discussion we had, leaning over his fence one afternoon.

Here is the talk I gave, with a little bit of ad lib in the moment. (ask Sandra about the Power Beans!)

What a wonderful celebration!  It is such a privilege to be here tonight with you.  All the kids on our block have been talking about the party– everyone was either going to come or wished they were coming.  This is the place to be tonight.
Let’s take a moment to consider exactly what we are celebrating:
~1  Saroya herself!  You are a remarkable young woman, loved by your parents and friends, full of talent and potential. I see in you the diligence and courage that a person needs in order to fulfill their potential.  That is the other thing we celebrate tonight–
~2  Growing up. Becoming an adult. Fulfilling your potential.
Growing up does not mean becoming sexually active.
It means becoming wise.
It does not mean ignoring your parents or “not letting anyone tell you what to do.”
It means taking on responsibility, choosing what authority you will follow and being loyal to that. (I recommend Jesus– and your parents of course)
It does not mean getting more and more stuff for yourself.
It means giving, creating, providing for yourself and for others.
Some of you arrived tonight in elegant cars.  Not to mention Saroya’s limo-bus!  I happen to drive a 1997 Ford truck, a stick-shift.  I learned to drive stick when I was younger than you, Saroya; back then, half the cars on the road were manual transmission.  To drive a stick-shift, you learn to find the friction point and let the clutch out gently, easing the car into gear, so it accelerates smoothly and doesn’t choke or stall.

That’s what your parents are doing now: not insisting that you take on all the responsibility of adulthood, popping the clutch on you, but easing you into it, giving you more and more responsibility as you are ready for it.

Tonight, with your promises of purity, loyalty and diligence, you’re officially in first gear of adulthood.  Anyone who drives stick knows you don’t stay in first gear for long!  Graduating from high school is like shifting to second gear; getting a college degree is third gear; career, marriage, and children is where you will shift into fourth and fifth gear.  You will need the momentum you’ll build up in the lower gears so that you’ll have an easier time in the higher gears.  Don’t skip a gear, or rush too fast through them!  You don’t want to choke or stall.

To celebrate you getting your adulthood into gear, I have two gifts I want to give you: Wisdom, and Happiness.

My symbol for Wisdom is books.  Wisdom is found in people of course, as well as in books. But some books, like this one, are especially rich in wisdom.  (it’s not a Bible, I figured you had one of those already.)  A book is just a person’s story, their thoughts and words, carefully chosen and prayed over.
A wise person learns from her mistakes.
A wiser person learns from the mistakes of others.
The wisest person learns from more than mistakes! She studies life and God and learns from success as well as failure.  The wisest people I know all LOVE books. May this one be an enriching experience for you.

For me, Happiness is like… chocolate.  Not just any old chocolate.  These are hand-crafted with love to be a gift to others, not machine-made to make a buck.  Like you, Saroya, each one of these is unique and different inside (and like true happiness, I’ll leave the contents a mystery, and let you taste them for yourself).  There have never been chocolates exactly like these, and there will never be another Saroya exactly like you.  You are hand-made by God, a masterpiece, “to do good works which God prepared in advance for you to do” (Ephesians 2:8-10).

Saroya, you have good parents, good education, good friends.  God has prepared you well to do good works.  You have, in Him, a future and a hope.  As far as it is in my power to do so, I bless you with these gifts. [hand book & chocolates to Saroya, if haven’t done so already]  Wisdom and Happiness to you… and happy birthday!

We still have not settled on a name for the house. Usually in my family it would already be named: I lived at 8602 until middle school, when we moved to 23036… or maybe just use the street name: most of my urban ministry was spent at 53rd Street, and 29th Street was the first house my wife and kids and I had ever lived in.

But there is great power in naming a home. It makes it more than merely an address to occupy, however pleasant or meaningful that address might be. When one’s livelihood depends on it, we instinctively name the house: what bed & breakfast establishment, for instance, ever went without a name?

(Good, you thought of one: but aren’t they using the address as a proper noun, and giving it the same significance one would attach to a name? Like The Inn at 657, for instance? Even Number 10 Downing Street or 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are freighted with significance that any name would be proud to carry… and it feels more natural to call the latter “The White House” anyway)

So: my father’s house in Tahoe, which we now run as a modest retreat/reunion/wedding locale, is a classic Norwegian chalet (dad is Norwegian) so he named it Fjeldheim - “Mountain Home.” Since I’m there a lot (at least, more than I’m anywhere else besides Los Angeles), it seems natural to call this house Stadheim - “City Home.” Nice symmetry there.

The problem is, that gives this house a Norwegian name, and there is very little Norwegian about it. My dad, builder of Fjeldheim, is full blooded Norseman… Kathryn and I, builders of this home, are American mutts with a clearly detectable Scandinavian phenotype in one of us. But our family is an amalgam of contrasting phenotypes besides Scandinavian: British, Mayan, African, probably others more subtle.

What name encompasses that diversity?

We might try another angle, and name the house after its purpose. We like to experiment with interesting languages, and a Jewish friend suggested Bet Elohim or Bet al Amin - “House of God”, or “House for the Peoples.” We aren’t ethnically Jewish at all, but you might argue that the blood of a Nazarene runs through our family, or that we are adopted into the family of the Jewish messiah Yeshua. Adoption is a strong current of our identity and purpose, but do we want to make it the chief metaphor through which we identify this house?

Suggestions and questions welcome!

One of the most frustrating things about the Olympics is that I love the pageantry and commentary and competition, but I can never see enough of the sports I love, and always end up watching too much of other sports so that I begin to dislike them Not the sport itself, I guess, but the being forced to watch it because what I want won’t be shown.

Not to mention all the commercials! Has television always had so many commercials? Yeesh. As a kid I didn’t notice so much. Some of them are funny (the first and second time anyway), but egads, what an insipid waste of Olympic time and my brain cells. Good reminder to me of why we do not own a television.

But once or twice a year (Superbowl, Olympics, presidential inaugurations) I will borrow a TV or hang out with a friend who has one. The rarity of my television time means I really do resent the commercials. And when it’s the Olympics, I really do want to see certain events, and care less and less about events that are pushed on me.

One event in Beijing right now that I would dearly love to see is not sponsored by the Olympic Committee, but it ought to be required viewing for every Olympic athlete (and fan for that matter): Scribble, by Urban Poets.

I am privileged to know several of the Urban Poets personally, and have seen many of their shows over the years. I have NEVER been disappointed. Every time they surprise me with their passion, excellence and insight. You’d think I would get used to it, but unlike the clever Olympic or Superbowl commercials, they are a moving target, always changing, morphing, improving, adapting to their audience or the occasion.

Their presence in Beijing is a gift to China. I dearly wish I could watch it unwrap. But Scribble is one event I’m sure the networks will neglect. Guess I’ll go see if synchronized diving is over yet.