It's Never a Vuvuzela

Whenever I think I hear a vuvuzela in the wild, it turns out to be something else. Sometimes, the universe is a tease. The sources of my fleeting excitement:

1. Construction across the street
2. Someone's phone vibrating on their desk
3. My friend heard a swarm of bees while on a walk.
4. Elevator buzzer (added 07/07/10)
   

As a service to the public, I will maintain this list of vuvuzela imposters.

A Good Nest

NY Times magazine has an article (link here) about the Ajax soccer club in Amsterdam, and their system of developing soccer players. Volunteer scouts observe youth games, going to the matches of boys as young as five. If the player generates enough interest, an Ajax scout will go watch, and for a lucky few, an invitation will be extended to train with the club. Once in the club, each boy's performance is rigorously evaluated, and he is competes against fellow players to keep his spot for the next year.

Below, the author is observing a game with one of the volunteer scouts, Ronald de Jong. They're watching Délano, five years old and pictured above.

De Jong kept up a running commentary as we watched, becoming increasingly excited. As Délano cleverly dribbled around a bigger boy who came charging at him: “You see, they will try to physically dominate him, but he will always seek a football solution. He always has a plan.” As the concentration of other boys drifted: “He is not looking at planes in the sky; he is looking at the ball.” At halftime, as Délano conferred with his father, who was coaching his team: “You see how nicely they are talking? You can tell he comes from a good nest.” Later, after Délano weaved through three boys and blistered a shot just wide of the goal: “This is unbelievable! At this age, I’ve never seen a player like this!”

One of the points made in the article is how many fewer games the Ajax youth play compared to their American counterparts. Mention is made of maintaining a family life and having time to play. I love that family is considered a priority. I thought it was very telling that de Jong notes that the five year old comes from a "good nest."

I blame Jezebel

Meet the sloths from Amphibian Avenger on Vimeo.

Be brave!

I am generally uncomfortable with feelings. I can definitely get used to the nice ones, but give me awkward or tears and I sincerely wish I were a turtle. I'd pull all my limbs in and you could knock on my shell to let me know when it's all over. Alas, after years of vigorous wishing, I have yet to magically turn into a turtle.

Sometimes I google the authors of Modern Love columns. They are journalists, lawyers, or just average people. I am always struck by how brave it is to show people your insides, put your name on it, and have it published. Last week's Modern Love column was written by a woman who had given her son up for adoption. It was an open adoption, so she's part of her son's life, an in-between presence, and there is a raw, wrenching quality to the essay that I found very palpable.

My biggest act of bravery is not a physically risky activity; it's really just allowing myself to be vulnerable. I think I would rather have my blood drawn. It's hard, but sometimes it is the right thing to do. The world is such that keeping people at arm's length essentially keeps people at arm's length, so I've had to learn to accept the risk for the potential reward.

So try something new today, sign up for kickball.

Longform.org

I am attached to books in their papery, cloth-bound form. I love reading in the bath, while brushing my teeth, and while trying to get a tan. I'm not particularly interested in a Nook or a Kindle at the moment. The only book I would have really liked to read electronically was Warren Buffet's bio, but I read a majority of that book by a Mexican pool or in a Guatemalan bus, not exactly the best place for an e-reader. The book weighs a few pounds, and was my only arm workout for months.

I continue to have a childhood attachment to magazines. I think I can still name most, if not all of the magazines I had subscriptions to as a kid: Highlights, Readers' Digest large type edition, Cricket, Stone Soup, Ranger Rick, Smithsonian, National Geographic, TIME, and Newsweek. My mom knew kids liked to get mail.

The same childhood attachment doesn't extend to newspapers. I don't feel a visceral reaction to the imminent death of newspapers. I came of age in a time when so many stories broke on the internet, I would be fine without a physical newspaper. I do not think I'd be fine without the journalism the newspaper represents. As a person who prefers bullet points to paragraphs and complete sentences, I'm in constant admiration of the labor that goes into reporting and the process of turning information into a well-written story.

I learned about www.longform.org on Slate (article here). The site, founded by Max Linsky and Aaron Lammer (pictured right), is what it sounds like, long-form stories from newspapers and magazines, posted without ads or navigation. It's supposed to look great on the iPhone. There's usually one of these articles per month in a magazine, and occasionally in the paper. Longform.org presents the best of these in one place. I like the older articles, there is an Esquire article from 1966 I've marked 'to read.' It's unlikely I'd ever read Esquire, let alone a story from 1966, if not for the website.

This morning, on my morning news trawl, I read a April 19th NYT Magazine article on Mike Allen, the Politico reporter. The story takes 12 page clicks to get through, and I now have to suffer the annoying NYT suggested articles that pop up in the lower right corner. About 8 pages through, I thought this would be perfect for longform.org. I opened up a new tab and looked up how to suggest an article. Before sending it in, I did a search to see if the article was already there. It was. I felt strangely content, knowing that I understood Linksy and Lammer's mission, and that we were on the same page.

Fight back, with song.

I found the above clip on Salon. The Westboro Community Church decided to picket Palo Alto's Gunn High School. In case you don't know about Westboro, "The group, which recently made headlines for suing the family of slain Iraq soldier Matthew Snyder for reimbursement of legal fees – and appallingly, winning – after being ordered to pay damages for disrupting his funeral." They're of the opinion that the US is being punished with the death of soldiers due to the nation's tolerance of homosexuals.

The high school's response can be seen in the video clip. The principal held an assembly, a teacher sent her thoughts to a planning meeting, and the students organized a lunch-time response to the picketers. " ... the kids at Gunn decided to fight back. With song ... At those moments their mettle is tested most, teenagers can be loving, united, and strong – and they still rock to those campfire classics." I don't know a single one of those kids, but I love them.

Read-peat One

In addition to listening to the same song over and over again, I'm also a fan of reading the same thing over and over again. I read the same book while in the bath for years, even after the front and back covers had come off. I would test my familiarity with the plot by choosing a page at random and seeing if I could orient myself within the story.

Other things I like on repeat one: "Reunited" on TAL and the below NYT Modern Love column by David Sarasohn, an associate editor of The Oregonian in Portland:

"A Joint Account That Underwrites Our Marriage"

The title may at first evoke thoughts of money, but Sarasohn is describing the "deposits" of bonding experiences between him and his wife.

Talking about twelve years of infertility, "the years of shared pain turned into a fund of shared experience, it was like coal being crushed into a diamond."

"In different ways, we translate each other to the rest of the world, and admire each other’s contrasting language skills. Being married to someone you respect for being somehow better than you keeps affection alive. That this impressive person chooses you year after year makes you more pleased with yourself, fueling the kind of mutual self-esteem that can get you through decades."

Gettin' Gritty With It

http://bit.ly/ieusA



The above 2009 Boston Globe article by Jonah Lehrer predates The Atlantic article I posted in January. Lehrer's article discusses grit as an indicator that more accurately predicts success than intelligence as measured by IQ.

*I was a few years behind Jonah Lehrer in middle school and high school. This is the second Reed MS/North Hollywood HS person that's been published. I better step it up.

From "The Frisky"

An enormous furry animal and a baby? I am toast.

Anthropomorphism Works

Spirit

http://xkcd.com/695/

"Hers was an easy birthday."

The above quote is from a NYT Modern Love column about the columnist's mother. Horses were her passion, and so "Hers was an easy birthday." Life is much easier for those shopping for you when you have a passion. It's a sweet column about his mom's love for her horses, his father's supportive role through doing chores, and the time and energy that goes into keeping horses. When some horses are stolen from the farm, his mom launches into a multi-pronged media and print effort to recover them; she even posts on www.netposse.com. The horses are recovered!

I love Modern Love columns because they're not always about romantic love. The focus of this column was initially the mom's passion for horses, but taking one step back, it's also about the son's admiration for his mom's devotion. And the story is of course told through the lens of a child's love for his mother. It also reminded me of my friend's fiance. When thanking guests for their attendance at their engagement party, he remarked how easy it was to love my friend. That's always stuck with me.

The author of the column is Brandon Lawniczak, he's a lawyer in Chicago.

Cristóbal Smartypants

I'm always impressed when someone is able to distill instinctively common-sense concepts into a concise response. My attempts often lead to something unwieldy ending in 'you know what I mean?'

Below excerpt is from today's NYT Business section, an interview with Cristóbal Conde, president and CEO of SunGard. Conde's BS is in physics and astronomy, and he's mentioned that he often interviews potential employees with engineering backgrounds. I like science-y people, and his concrete take on management dispels the myth that science backgrounds lack people skills and social insight.

"If you start micromanaging people, then the very best ones leave.

If the very best people leave, then the people you’ve got left actually require more micromanagement. Eventually, they get chased away, and then you’ve got to invest in a whole apparatus of micromanagement. Pretty soon, you’re running a police state. So micromanagement doesn’t scale because it spirals down, and you end up with below-average employees in terms of motivation and ability.

Instead, the trick is to get truly world-class people working directly for you so you don’t have to spend a lot of time managing them. I think there’s very little value I can add to my direct reports. So I try to spend time with people two and three levels below because I think I can add value to them."

Grit and Life Satisfaction

From What Makes a Great Teacher? by Amanda Ripley, in this month's issue of "The Atlantic":

"What did predict success, interestingly, was a history of perseverance—not just an attitude, but a track record. In the interview process, Teach for America now asks applicants to talk about overcoming challenges in their lives—and ranks their perseverance based on their answers. Angela Lee Duckworth, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and her colleagues have actually quantified the value of perseverance. In a study published in The Journal of Positive Psychology in November 2009, they evaluated 390 Teach for America instructors before and after a year of teaching. Those who initially scored high for “grit”—defined as perseverance and a passion for long-term goals, and measured using a short multiple-choice test—were 31 percent more likely than their less gritty peers to spur academic growth in their students. Gritty people, the theory goes, work harder and stay committed to their goals longer. (Grit also predicts retention of cadets at West Point, Duckworth has found.)

But another trait seemed to matter even more. Teachers who scored high in “life satisfaction”—reporting that they were very content with their lives—were 43 percent more likely to perform well in the classroom than their less satisfied colleagues. These teachers “may be more adept at engaging their pupils, and their zest and enthusiasm may spread to their students,” the study suggested."