De Minimis Non Curat Lex

Jul16

There’s a book in this old judicial maxim “the law does not concern itself with trifles”. An entire library of trifles with which the law does not concern itself. One man’s trifle is another man’s indigestible, unvomitable hairball, after all.

Think of the things that may bother you most. Trifles, virtually all of them. The Law does not regard or concern itself with them. Like a demented four year-old on first discovery of the equally chilling “I know you are, but what am I?” the justice system’s got one for you right here, pal.

“De minimis non curat lex“

How Do you form a team?

Jul11

I’ve been puzzling over how to take an idea, made real now in a NYC public school over the course of 36 weeks, and turn it into an idea worth discussing, an idea people would be happy to kick in some money to see flourish in the world.

The short version of the idea: give primary school children the chance to play and work together, teach each other skills they’ve mastered, show the results of this in animations they produce and score. The adults in the room keep track of time, support and admire the ideas and products, lend a hand with some technical detail the children may ask for help with. Once in a while the adults also corral a kid who is going out of control, calm the hopped up little bugger down. But for the most part, it’s a buzzing beehive run by the kids themselves.

I picture it functioning best in the worst schools in the city. I’ve already seen great positive changes in several of the 14 kids who participated in the first sustained workshop. A class clown who was disorganized, sloppy, had a dozen unfocused ideas a week evolved into a focused, ingenious animator. She was very proud of herself, and I was too. When I asked her the most important thing she’d learned in the workshop she said “work together.” I gave a little yip of approval which she humorously imitated, making it even more ridiculous. A boy who was quite egotistical and a bit of a bully became one of the most helpful and interactive kids in the group. I imagine the transformations in “at risk” kids will be even more dramatic.

Children in most schools, particularly in poor neighborhoods, are rarely given any autonomy outside of choosing a red or purple crayon to color in the crude outlines of some shoddily photocopied drawing, a turkey at Thanksgiving, a crudely drawn Martin Luther King Jr.’s suit during Black History Month. The photocopy machines in slum schools always produce worn out, grey sheets, since teachers pump out work sheets by the thousands every day until the machines give out completely. Toner is expensive and so rarely replaced until the images are almost invisible on the pages. Creativity in those schools is considered a luxury these poor kids can’t afford.

If I would shame the well-to-do enough to fund this program I need to expand it to a number of schools. I need a team. How do you form a team? Asking for volunteers has not been a sustainable strategy, when people do you a favor you must be grateful, no matter how small the favor is. It seems to me that my assistants, the people I would groom to replace me in a room once the program is up and running, should be paid generously, at least twice minimum wage. So I do. But so far, I can’t help but notice a mercenary aspect to their participation. The hours they’re paid for they work fine. And that work, I point out, is mainly interacting with kids who are doing interesting, funny artistic projects. Nice work if you can get it. Unpaid hours? I thought you said you were paying us.

If the organization had $25,000 in the bank right now, it would be less of a problem. I will have to raise a sum like that, 1/3 cajoled out of well-to-do people I know, the rest raised from a public whose passion must be aroused by the excellent little documentary I have to make to promote the program. I need contributions from people I know so that strangers will see the needle on the crowd-funding meter ticking constantly up in the beginning, so they will know this program has support, is gathering momentum, is an idea worth making a tax-deductible contribution to.

But how do you form a team? Volunteers and interns must be idealists motivated by passion for the project. Paid people must be paid, which takes money. How do you form a goddamned team? And if you don’t answer this question the potential of this innovative program is another bit of unmonetized good idea friends may talk about at my memorial service, lamenting briefly that for all my talent and good ideas, I never figured out how to make a living.

Where Do Ideas Come From?

Jul11

Many ideas are floating through the air at any given time. People catch them and remark on them, causing someone else to comment, an article or book is written, a movie or TV segment made. There are ideas whose time has come, it is simply the right moment for these things to step into the world, raise a little sand. Ideas both beautiful and horrific enjoy their moment on the world stage, in the minds of the most curious and the most incurious.

Ideas can flutter like dust motes, cough out like particulate ash, make kids’ tongues pop out for a taste, like snowflakes. Free floating ideas can become projectiles and plunge down causing actual damage. There are a number of these ideas out there now, they are always there.

Other floating ideas take wing, as they say, and you can see them soaring. Like an idea Sugata Mitra had about the education of young people and the salubrious effect of an older person showing interest, and affection, and a sense of wonder about what the young person is learning.

A sense of wonder, there’s an idea we don’t appreciate every day.

Creepy

Jul9

There’s been a marked decline in laughter around here in recent months. Funny things continue to happen all around, I’m sure, but they neep by unnoticed, don’t get to me in the same way. It’s kind of creepy. Virtually everyone I know seems in the grip of this grim new way of being.

This is abstract, I realize, and calls for a colorful illustration. I can offer examples, but they only heighten the creepiness of this laff drought. Why bother going down this road, if I’m not prepared to squeeze out at least one example?

OK, here’s one. I have an old friend who is famous for being manipulative, sometimes in ways so overt they’re comical. It is such a part of who he is that most of the time I don’t even notice the agenda he is always clutching just behind his back. Things must always be arranged to maximize his advantage, somehow, even though how it actually benefits him is often hard to say and the price he pays for this is sometimes high. There are many people like him, and I don’t point this out to be critical of the old fellow.

I have another old friend who is in the process of rebirthing himself. Hard work! I understand how hard this is and I applaud his devotion to emerging as a more mindful, compassionate, grounded person. This chap and I have shared many a wheezy chuckle over the years over the constant inventiveness of our manipulative friend.

I got up early the other day, for me, resentful about the short sleep, in order to accommodate our host’s schedule (turns out he’d accidentally pushed everything three hours earlier without realizing it). I move to offbeat circadian rhythms, true, and it’s rare I’m in bed before 4 a.m. My mind gets into full power mode around 11 or 12 every night, always been that way. So early for me is mid-morning for most other people, granted.

On short sleep I drank coffee, paid bills, answered emails, thought a little about business, showered, dressed and then it was time to go. As my friend arrived to take us to the home of our host I was opening a yogurt, which I bolted standing in the kitchen. My friend smiled merrily as I complained that I had to choke down my breakfast so as not to be late to this, no doubt, artificially early play date. Then he hurried me out to the car.

As we drove he mentioned a stream of messages he hadn’t listened to from our friend the host. “I didn’t listen to them, I figure they were just his usual string of nervous proddings and I didn’t feel like hearing them,” he said breezily. Then the friend called and said we wouldn’t be starting at 12:00 after all, that 2:00 was more realistic, since he was out shopping with his wife and wouldn’t be home much before 2:00. I listened to this impassively, responded mildly and rang off. I even let the statement that he was making things easier for me by doing it later roll off and land soundlessly on some imaginary pillow.

We headed back to Sekhnet’s where my friend made himself lunch while I went upstairs and took care of some business I hadn’t had time for, rushing to be in the car by noon.

But here’s the thing that creeps me out. That my manipulative friend didn’t bother calling or dropping me an email the night before with the new time– to be expected. That he said he’d moved things back to make it easier for me– well, a little problematic, in light of how much easier it actually made things, but not unexpected. What creeps me out is that as we headed back over to our friend’s house my friend who was driving said, casually, “I heard his first message at 11:05, about not starting until 2, but I was already in the middle of rushing through my errands to be here by noon.”

So when I was wolfing my yogurt, and complaining about being put under this kind of time crunch, he already knew there was no time crunch. Still, he didn’t tell me to sit, relax , eat breakfast, that we had two hours, he pretended we were still running late.

“Why would you put something like this on the web, you querulous, carping prick?” asks a chorus of the two or three who will one day read this post.

Why, indeed. I told you something creepy is in the air.

Playing together

Jul1

If it’s music we’re talking about, the first thing is listening. Don’t do anything at first, listen to the beat. There are many places to put a note, a beat, an accent; against the beat, on the beat, next to the beat, slightly off the beat. The first thing though, is to feel the groove that is waiting to emerge from the beat.

The groove is not the beat, it’s all the stuff around it that makes the beat groove. Check it out. One note put in the exact place to make the head jerk forward slightly, or one of the hands to unconsciously, or consciously, flick an invisible, or visible, drumstick. It sets the groove in motion, wait for it… AH! oh, yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.

I think this is a wonderful metaphor for a good life and playing nicely with the people you meet. Before you can say something helpful you have to have heard what the person is really trying to say. Thinking back, many times I could have been more helpful if I’d listened better, and paused to listen to my own thoughts, before launching into a particular solo.

Genetic Predispostion to Laughs

Jun28

My mother, maybe two weeks before she died, was in her bedroom when a hospice nurse, social worker and someone from a physical therapy place arrived to speak with her. The previous hospice had declined to give her physical therapy, not because they were mystified that she wasn’t dead already, not because it was pointless to give her the illusion that she was fighting to get stronger when death was days away, but on the grounds that she was too demented to remember the instructions of the physical therapist.

I was incensed, switched from incompetent, vicious Vitas (this conclusion about dementia was but one of their criminal bits of negligence) back to the other hospice, who’s name escapes me, and a day or two later these three arrived to assess my mother for physical therapy. I was in the kitchen when these three women went into the bedroom where my mother was resting on the bed. Within a minute I heard one of the women laughing, soon they were all cracking up. There were several peals of laughter. I have no idea what my mother was saying, but the effect was pretty dramatic.

“One thing for sure, your mother is not demented,” said the nurse coming out of the room with a big smile still on her face. They started physical therapy the next day, and she did pretty well that first session, but session two had to be postponed so she could be admitted to Hospice By The Sea to die a few days later.

I think about this because, while I’m not up against an imminent death sentence as my mother was, I am living a stressful enough existence these days, no income, escalating health insurance, a program that works amazingly but that I haven’t managed to monetize, recruit the people I need to turn it into a sustainable business, blah blah. There are days when I’m feeling quite desperate about things. I spend long stretches alone wondering what I was thinking.

Nonetheless, wake me from a sound sleep on one of these days, like my wasted, napping mother, and I will find my footing in the conversation pretty quickly. There will often be a chuckle or two, even though a moment before I may have been dreaming of my unfair and gratuitous execution.

Laughter is like medicine, it is medicine, there is nothing as good for you as a good laugh. At least that’s the way it feels to me, the dramatic reminder that in the midst of horror there is still a moment to lose yourself and your troubles in a roar that makes your heart leap and clears out everything else.

Why Smiling Anger Can Be So Dangerous

Jun25

When somebody rages, with eyebrows drawn low over the eyes, teeth bared, facial muscles torqued into a mask of aggression, you have a good indication that you should be careful. People in this state can become violent, it’s called being “mad” for good reason. They are out of control in their anger. They may snap, they could have a heart attack. It’s fairly easy to recognize, when somebody is in this kind of rage, that care must be taken to avoid things getting worse.

Take rage to its extremest expression and you have murder. If an angry person kills you, it rarely makes everything right for them. They just have to start justifying themselves and getting ready to do the same to anybody else who backs them into an infuriating corner. And, of course, there are the police to worry about, and all the rest of the legal system.

There is another way of displaying anger, a bit more subtle and almost as common. It expresses itself without snarling, but is just as determined to exact its price. The real horror of anger? There is no price it can exact that will really make things better for anybody, outside of a sincere apology and promise to do better next time. And with this subtle kind of rage, it often has nothing to do with the person it is being visited on, so it cannot be placated.

When you see a genial person become intransigent, but continuing to smile, even as the intransigence escalates, realize what you are dealing with. If nothing you can say is having any effect, beware. It is not a situation worth staying in, if you have any way to leave.

Personal Manifesto — preview

Jun22

From time to time, I’m told, it’s good to write a manifesto– a plan of action laying out the beliefs that animate it. I’m going to do that, if you watch this space you will see it soon. I hope you may even be inspired by it. But today I have only a few minutes. Somewhere I jotted a note the other day, I remember writing it down, and that it was a hook to a big part of the manifesto and my motivation. Let me dig it up.

“I don’t want to see stubborn, opinionated, pandering televised idiots having false debates about reality and the most pressing questions of the future– help create smart citizens.”

I’m doing it, B. I’ll get more into the details of this next time. There is one other matter and then I have to jump into the shower, get ready to go.

People, when they’re young, love to play. Without play, what does a young person have? Grim preparation for a life of unsatisfying drudgery. Seems pretty clear, when put that way, that children should be encouraged to make discoveries during play time. Got that one covered too. And older people, we need to keep playing too. You know what’s left if we don’t? You know what’s left.

Last point. You hear often from funny, successful people that feedback and support were key elements in their growth. I hear it loud and clear, even as I am put to the test, over and over, to prove that even without much feedback or support — if you have enough belief in what you are doing and in your creative power to do it — amazing things can still be done.

Now go forth and play, my friends.

The Minor Leagues

Jun18

I’ve been wrestling with applying to TED talks, I have a few more days to wrestle, the deadline for this round is Friday. You can only apply once in twelve months. I’m told that TED, like everyone else, looks at stats– how much of a following you have on-line, in the world, how many clicks, how many click-throughs. By that criteria, I’m already disqualified, with well under a hundred watching each of the kids’ animations made by my visionary program.

On this blahg I get a few readers on a good day, not that I’d mention gratootskyblahg to TED. I have a small group of followers who seem to be about 50% business people looking for customers. I am supposed to be a business person, if I’m to be attractive to TED. My great idea worth spreading must already be out in the world, being discussed to some extent. Being seen by more than the few hundred who’ve visited this great site.

In the real world I can’t get people to answer my calls, yet. I think I may be in a better position in six months, when many more people are talking about my great idea worth spreading. Maybe I should wait to apply to TED then, when I’ve raised my profile. It’s a shot in the dark either way, who knows?

I stumbled on the farm system for TED yesterday, TEDx. These appear to be the minor leagues for TED, small stages where people who may think their ideas are worth talking about get to audition, give a little taste of their stuff. I watched some of these with a sinking heart yesterday. Several Muslim comics, I watched one after another, addressing audiences in places like Doha, Qatar. The titles were things like A Kuwaiti, a Saudi and an Egyptian walk into an Iranian Bar, Muslims are Funny, Too, and We All Laugh. I hope we all laugh, it’s the best hope we have. I haven’t had a laugh in a while, I was ready, overdue, really. So I turned hopefully to my young Muslim brothers.

I watched one, an earnest young Saudi guy talking about how he helped bring Stand-Up comedy to the Arabian Peninsula. As he talked very seriously about comedy, and getting laughs, the camera panned the faces of his audience. There were a few smiles to be seen as I waited for laughs. Where are the laughs? I kept thinking. None there. Went to the next one, and the one after that, I smiled, but nothing got a laugh out of me. A few of these guys had charm, but they were walking a very careful line. Those who walk such lines are generally not hilarious.

Go to the major league TED talks and you will almost always have something to laugh about as you are provoked by super-bright performers to think new thoughts. These people are at ease and inspired, they speak easily to the crowd of 1,500. I was at ease and inspired at my mother’s funeral, even funny, true, but it was a crowd who knew me, and my mother, and appreciated the irreverence, which was a tribute to, and in part attributable to, her. Forget that little show.

Forget IBM, TED’s main secret sponsor, forget IBM’s stunning info-mercials at the end of each minor league TEDx Talk. Forget, as you hear IBM’s genius public relations firm spin out the wondrous story of IBM changing the world with amazing ideas, that at one time IBM’s amazing ideas included keeping track of people an organized government headed by a psychopath murdered by the millions.

I am in a dark mood lately, no lie. No laughs here. Maybe next time. In fact, remind me to tell you the one about the visionary data company and the visionary purifier of blood. It’ll kill yuh.

Insomnia