Endless Knots

Helen Thomas: "Thirty women reporters had to sit on the floor"

Helen Thomas

It isn't often that a small number of people has the chance to meet, listen to, and sit so close to a force as great as this pioneering journalist, who's covered every US president since Kennedy, who was there when Khruschev banged his shoe on the table ("We will bury you!"), and who has so many firsts to her name that no American woman journalist is really her peer.

The Center for New Words sponsored a brunch with Helen today and some 75 or so people turned out to listen in the lovely Brookline home of one of CNW's board members.

Helen began by saying that "it's the worst of times for America and yet the signs of democracy are strong" with the election of Obama, allowing "black people to stand taller" and white people "to feel they've done the right thing."

She didn't shy away from the tough topics - she wants the US out of Iraq and Afghanistan now, believing that those countries have it in them to solve their own problems.

She "believes in Medicare for everyone," i.e. a single payer healthcare system. When people call that "socialism," she says, "What about roads, schools, and bridges?"

She is devastated by the demise of the newspaper industry, calling it the "greatest tragedy" of the economic meltdown, because "there's no democracy without a free press." She also pointed out what all serious reporters know: blogging is not journalism. We need editors for that and this ain't that.

"Words count," she said, more than once (how I love writers) and implored all of us, including Obama, to understand that "this is the time for quantum leaps," not careful steps.

She ended by responding to some questions about her career. "There's no such thing as making it," she said. "There's always another mountain to climb." When she came to Washington as a reporter, she couldn't join the National Press Club. It took Khrushchev's coming to Washington -- and a concerted effort on the part of women reporters -- to even be allowed to attend National Press Club functions.

Where were the women journalists invited to sit at the Khrushchev press conference? "Thirty women were allowed to sit on the floor at the National Press Club," she reported. "Everything has been a struggle. And I'm still carrying that anger."

Report on, Helen. We in your wake thank you so for what you've endured.

"It takes a lifetime to change the world"

I'll leave it to you to figure out who among them is the godchild (disgusing that person's privacy even further) but a moment like this cannot pass without record.

On Friday morning in a drenching rain at a school that experienced the kind of tragedy just a few months ago that most institutions would shun mentioning at a celebration, Concord Academy held its commencement exercises.

As the festivities began, we were all holding our breath, I'm sure, because of the death of one of the students' classmates in February at a party (dozens of tributes here).

I would guess that many institutions would have mentioned this only in passing at graduation but from the very first speaker on (the chair of the Concord Academy board) the awfulness was acknowledged. When horrible things are met at the front door, it allows everyone to come in. Jake Dresden, retiring head of Concord (we're all going to miss you and Pat, Jake), continued, also talking frankly about what happened ...and so it went until the commencement speaker, Eric Lander, came to the podium. His son was graduating too.

Need I mention the anticipation of ho-hums that always accompanies the moment before the graduation speaker begins? More platitudes in the offing, we all think, worried that the person might have read all the other commencement speeches online and threaded them together, thinking that would be new.

But Eric did something different. He talked about the future for these kids against a measure that they could perceive. His refrain:

It takes a lifetime to change the world.

It was a beautiful speech, delivered with passion, drawing on his own experience as a very accomplished scientist -- and a parent.

Here are some notes from my little notebook that's always in my purse:

What is 50 years?

It's the time it takes to change the world.

In 1953, Crick and Watson published their first ONE PAGE paper on the double helix.

Fifty years later, the Human Genome project was completed.

A lifetime is enough to change the world.

What is 50 years?

It was approximately 50 years from the time Vannevar Bush first proposed the idea for memex, the precusor to hypertext, aka what we now know as the web.

About 50 years passed between the Montgomery bus boycotts and the election of Barack Obama.

And only 40 years have passed since the Stonewall riots, arguably the night the fight began for equal rights regardless of sexual orientation, and when the first same-sex marriage rights bills were passed in state legislatures.

It's not entirely an accident that it takes a lifetime to change the world.

And he also offered this very sage advice:

Your life cannot be planned in advance but will be assembled from pieces of your passion.

The projects of a lifetime come in all sizes.

The single greatest project of a lifetime is having children.

And...it's utterly impossible to plan in advance how it will all play out.

Well said, Eric. And good luck to the godchild.

(Tiny itty bitty disclosure: Daughter #2 graduated from Concord Academy, providing her with an unparalleled education during her last two years of high school and launching her on her career as an artist.)

Oh, those Flippin' Burgers

Maybe it's because it looks like a real urban eatery, with its crumpled and stained menus and cartoons of current and former presidents taped to the fridge.

Or because its staff is so nonchalant that one sign on the door said OPEN while the other said CLOSED.

Or cuz there's some really interesting art on the walls, courtesy of the cook (she's doing a series of 365 paintings, one for each day of the year).

Probably it's because the burgers are so flippin' good.

On a whim last night, we stopped by Flippin' Burgers in Newton Centre, MA, picked up a cheeseburger for the hubby and a mushroom burger for the me...and wow! Daughter #1, the chief family foodie, had found the place originally; I've passed it a zillion times; eyed it from the hair salon across the street that I've been frequenting of late.

Then the big moment, dinner last night, when we were thinking of going to Star Trek. Instead, burgers.

Others have discovered Flippin' Burgers' wonders before. See this great one from Chrissie Long, with the bona fides of the owners and staff.

Nearby folks, drive right there. Or call them. They even deliver. (Fries, which come with the burgers, are good too.)

Facebook and the !Kung

Well, not exactly, but this interview ("Where Gifts and Stories Are Crucial to Survival") with Pauline Wiessner, an anthropologist at the University of Utah, is not to be missed. She talks about how the !Kung (click your tongue to say it or listen to Miriam Makeba sing "The Click Song") maintain social connections across distance and time--and how here in the non-!Kung world we imitate them via social conveniences like Facebook.

First point is that distance is no impediment to intimacy if we are willing to keep those we care about close in our hearts through gifts. Reinforces the truth that many of the most generous people are those with ostensibly the least to give.

Second point is the story-telling. By talking about those who are "away," the !Kung keep them in the conversation. Facebook, Wiessner says, is a contemporary example of how we keep those not in view front and center in a different way.

"People who use it [Facebook] say it keeps memories of distant friends alive and it sometimes brings long-lost relationships back home. We all know of people who’ve been 'friended' by old pals from college and former neighbors they’ve lost touch with. When they see pictures of them and read 'sharings' from their Facebook partners, they are reminded of their presence in their lives."

Here are the opening few paragraphs of Claudia Dreifus's enlightening interview with Wiessner. You have to read it. Make sure you go to the end too where one of the !Kung snags a satellite phone and calls Wiessner in Utah, asking her to buy some soccer shoes for their team, which an American documentary filmmaker had promised to send a few years earlier but never had.

Q. ONE OF THE GROUPS YOU STUDY, THE !KUNG PEOPLE OF SOUTHERN AFRICA’S KALAHARI DESERT, ARE NATIVE TO ONE OF THE MOST UNFORGIVING CORNERS OF THE PLANET. HOW DO THEY SURVIVE IN A PLACE OF FREQUENT DROUGHTS, FLOODS AND FAMINE?

A. They have an intricate system of banking their social relationships and calling on them when times get rough. The system is maintained through gift-giving, storytelling and visiting. It works like insurance does in our culture.

I first arrived in the Kalahari in the early 1970s, when the !Kung were still primarily hunter-gatherers. My question then was: how do people without meat on the hoof, grain in the larder and money in the bank survive hard times?

When I was there for about a year, some answers came. There was a heavy rain. The desert plants died and the wild game dispersed. As people grew hungrier, they began telling vivid stories about loved ones who lived as far as 200 kilometers away. They spoke about how they much missed them. Soon people were busily crafting beautiful objects — gifts. Finally, when push came to shove, 150 !Kung began trekking to the encampments of the people they’d been remembering. There they stayed until conditions in their home area improved.

What I’d witnessed was a structured system at play. The Bushmen used the storytelling to keep feelings for distant persons alive. The gifts are their way of telling the receiver, “I’ve held you in my heart.” Over the years, I saw this repeated many, many times. It would turn out that the !Kung spent as much as three months a year visiting “exchange partners,” and this was the key to their survival.

Science bloggers submit!

My friend Elatia Harris, who writes for 3quarksdaily, is calling all science bloggers or friends of to nominate posts for this award:

We at 3QD are running a contest for Best Science Post of the year -- $1000. If you know of a single science post that you'd like to nominate, feel free. Readers are nominators, editors are winnowers, and Steven Pinker will judge. http://3quarksdaily.com/. Noms open till June 1. We are trying to encourage excellent writing by awarding the prize for single posts, not blogs -- working around such matters as blogosphere fame, likability and the general coolness of the blogger. We're hoping for a brilliant nerd from the lower blogosphere to rise and astonish and collect! More $1000 awards in arts & letter, politics and philosophy scheduled from June through spring 2010, then back to science next summer. Please become a reader and stay tuned!

Margaret Fuller's 200th birthday begins

It was Margaret Fuller's 199th last Saturday, May 23, the beginning of her bicentennial year and a wonderful time was had by all.

For those unfamiliar with her, take a look at her Wikipedia entry or The Margaret Fuller Society or the site for The Margaret Fuller Bicentennial, which I'm deeply involved with.

The Bicentennial really began the day before at the American Literature Association held here in Boston where two panels of academics held forth. I made it to one, which will surprise precisely no one who knows me when they hear the title: "Margaret Fuller and Transnationalism." Among her other traits, Fuller foresaw the rise of the transnational state--then took herself to Europe in the late 1840s to explore its meaning.

On Saturday morning, her actual birthday, we made our annual pilgrimage to Mount Auburn Cemetery where the memorial stone in her family's plot reminds us that she was "by genius belonging to the world." Later in the day, the Hedge Club devoted its meeting to Margaret, including a performance by Laurie James, who has been impersonating Margaret in various dramatic venues for years.

Then in the late afternoon, many of Margaret's fans--and many more than we expected--gathered at First Parish in Cambridge for her official 199th birthday party. Organized by Rev. Dorothy Emerson, who hosted the event (and with whom I'm co-chairing the Bicentennial Committee but, honestly, Dorothy has done all the heavy lifting), the party drew about 80 people, including scholars, writers, musicians, and sundry Fuller fanatics.

The program included two Margarets--Laurie James and Jessa Piaia (in her premiere performance); Megan Marshall reading from her Fuller sections of her Pulitzer-finalist The Peabody Sisters; independent scholar Judith Strong Albert; pianist (as in Ken Burns documentaries) Jacqueline Schwab who played Chopin (whom Margaret met in Paris at the home of George Sand); Melody Lee, who hosted the event for First Parish; and, yes, me.

Here are some pictures, beginning at Mount Auburn Cemetery.

 John Halamka arrives with his Shakuhachi, celebrating his birthday too, for second year

 John's new flute up close, made for him in Japan

 

 Rev Dorothy Emerson, Margaret, and guess who

The Dell at Mount Auburn on that rainy morning

 

"Margaret Fuller's Birthday," film by Ron Mortara, which we made last year at Mount Auburn and showed this year

The timeline of Margaret's life in pictures, created by Bonnie Hurd Smith, and displayed at the "birthday party" at First Parish

Fuller family photos, compiled by Laurie James, along with Laurie's books about Margaret

Buttons and magnets for sale!

 

Scholars Phyllis Cole, Megan Marshall, and Helen Deese

 Laurie James as Margaret

Jessa Piaia as Margaret

House on Brattle Street
where Margaret and her family lived -
now Cambridge Center for Adult Education

Georgian, gambrel roof, three story,
much like a house I know, love--and live in!

"The world's most powerful form of networking"

On this, Memorial Day, take a look at the expanded points of the "most powerful form of networking" from Joshua at Design Pepper, which I ran across thanks to one of the newest forms, which I'm loathe to call networking at all because in truth it's merely linking and clicking. Simple and to the point. Reminds me of something Stewart Brand wrote to us years ago, paraphrased as I can't put my hands on the original: "Networking is not calling up all the friends of your friends and harassing them to death." Now, Joshua:

“It’s not what you know…” Countless articles, books, and blog entries have been written on the subject of networking over the years. I’ve read my fair share of them. But many of them also make me a bit queasy. Even if the tactics they suggest aren’t problematic in themselves, it seems that they often promote a coldly calculating approach. It’s as if instead of seeing people, they ask us to see merely the next stepping stone on our path to success. I believe that this is fundamentally anti-human, and in the end, counterproductive.

What then, do I suggest? The oldest, most powerful form of networking in the world: genuine friendship.

1 in 4 text while driving!

This is horrifying. Vlingo survey of 5000 people.

You

know

how

I

feel

about this.

"Social sites are building the database for the planet"

Thanks to Melinda Meyer Moses, I was able to attend the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium yesterday. Although I wasn't able to sit in for the whole day, I was able to catch a few excellent sessions, including the one on virtual organizations (you'll have to scroll to find it on the agenda) where Simon Crosby, Citrix's CTO for Virtualization and Management, dropped quite a few gems.

Honestly, it's hard for anyone on a panel about virtual organizations to say anything new. Most people are operating from the limited base of their own experience - their company, for example, which was the case with most panelists. I should say "is" the case with most panelists. I've been on a slew of such panels.

And, as is typical, regardless of the question, especially at a tech conference, which is where, say, 99.99% of these panels take place, the answer is almost always about technology, i.e. we use x, y, and z. Further, the only technologies referenced (again, typically) are the real-time things - teleconferencing, screen sharing, video - all useful, necessary, yadda yadda, but, in my experience, not what makes for profound breakthroughs in how we can work differently in a no-travel, post-meltdown, carbon-emission-intensive, whatever-the-name-of-the-next-flu-is world.

Yesterday's panel, with its earnest participants, was no exception, which is why Simon's remarks stood out. Good work, Simon. Reposting here the tweets (#mitcio -- get ready, there are tons), including my own, unmarked below. 

• Simon Crosby: "social sites building database for the planet" #mitcio
• Citrix CIO reports that distributed developers with rigorous process work beautifully w/out f2f or even flaming
• "Born-digital workforce doesn't live in locked down world" - Simon Crosby-CIO, Citrix @#MITCIO
• abbielundberg Virtualization threatens IT's existence - Simon Crosby, Citrix #mitcio
• aagee #mitcio how do we deal with expectations of born-digital workforce? Virtualization gives user own world free from legacy apps
• BillIves #mitcio Simon Crosby companies need to throw stuff off the cliff periodically (test recovery? or clear deck?)
• BillIves listening to panel on virtualization at #MITCIO event employees are ahead of most CIOs on this

• And from the convener of the panel, Irving Wladawsky-Berger via ESLundquist #MITCIO: The organizational skills to create virtual orgs lag the tech tools

Cutting budgets? Telecommuters offer help

According to a survey by Citrix Online, which makes software for telecommuters, "[t]wenty-one percent of workers would take a 5 percent cut in pay if they could work from home, even if it were for only 1 to 2 days per week:

When asked what they like most about telecommuting, employees cited having more control over schedules, even more than saving time and money on transportation. Female entrepreneurs were 50 percent more likely than their male counterparts to allow working from home.