Sayeth the [Future] Presidents

My initial objective was to write about the presidential debates this weekend. I watched 2 of the 3 debates, and after having heard some of the insidious exchanges between the candidates, I decided I would look up the transcriptions of each debate at nytimes.com, comb through them the remarkable lines that stood out in my memory, and let what was said speak for itself. I figure every other political figure has probably done enough analysis on every word and facial tic that my own two cents won’t be worth much.

I will say, however, that the only reason I am not in an utter American panic, right now, is that 1) I barely have any money worth losing in this Economic Crisis, so the state of the stock market doesn’t much matter to me, and 2) I am so confident Obama is going to win that I am not wasting my time worrying over what the state of our country will be if McCain wins. If I thought the latter had a chance of winning, I would currently be looking into the process of getting my work visa for England.

Now, on to Debate #2:

“My friends”—said by McCain in the beginning remarks of nearly every one of his answers. Obviously his political tactic was to force the public to equate their American identity with that of “friend of John McCain,” but if he truly were addressing only those who considered him a friend, would he be speaking to very many people?

(Im)Proper Figures of Speech
The Simile, Strangled
MCCAIN: Well, you know, nailing down Sen. Obama's various tax proposals is like nailing Jell-O to the wall. There has been five or six of them and if you wait long enough, there will probably be another one.

A Mindful Metaphor
OBAMA: I think it's important to understand, we're not going to solve Social Security and Medicare unless we understand the rest of our tax policies. And you know, Sen. McCain, I think the "Straight Talk Express" lost a wheel on that one.

Being a little too optimistic
MCCAIN: Let's look at our records, my friends, and then listen to my vision for the future of America. And we'll get our economy going again. And our best days are ahead of us.

Someone who just doesn’t understand
OBAMA: Well, you know, Sen. McCain, in the last debate and today, again, suggested that I don't understand. It's true. There are some things I don't understand. I don't understand how we ended up invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, while Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are setting up base camps and safe havens to train terrorists to attack us.

Debate #3:

“Joe the plumber” said by McCain in the beginning remarks of nearly every one of his answers. If this debate was directed to Joe the Plumber, then McCain might have a chance at winning the election.

The Ideal Tax Policy
MCCAIN: Nobody likes taxes. Let's not raise anybody's taxes. OK?

On Hurt Feelings:
The launch
SCHIEFFER: Senator Obama, your campaign has used words like "erratic," "out of touch," "lie," "angry," "losing his bearings" to describe Senator McCain.
Senator McCain, your commercials have included words like "disrespectful," "dangerous," "dishonorable," "he lied." Your running mate said he "palled around with terrorists."
Are each of you tonight willing to sit at this table and say to each other's face what your campaigns and the people in your campaigns have said about each other?

The response: McCain wants an apology
MCCAIN: A man I admire and respect -- I've written about him -- Congressman John Lewis, an American hero, made allegations that Sarah Palin and I were somehow associated with the worst chapter in American history, segregation, deaths of children in church bombings, George Wallace. That, to me, was so hurtful…. I hope that Senator Obama will repudiate those remarks that were made by Congressman John Lewis, very unfair and totally inappropriate.

But Obama wants to stick to the issues
OBAMA: …now, I think the American people are less interested in our hurt feelings during the course of the campaign than addressing the issues that matter to them so deeply.

But McCain still wants his apology
MCCAIN: …again, I did not hear a repudiation of Congressman....

So fine, Obama will deviate, if that’s really what McCain wants…
OBAMA: I mean, look, if we want to talk about Congressman Lewis, who is an American hero, he, unprompted by my campaign, without my campaign's awareness, made a statement that he was troubled with what he was hearing at some of the rallies that your running mate was holding, in which all the Republican reports indicated were shouting, when my name came up, things like "terrorist" and "kill him," and that you're running mate didn't mention, didn't stop, didn't say "Hold on a second, that's kind of out of line."

MCCAIN: You've got to read what he said...

OBAMA: Let -- let -- let...

MCCAIN: (interrupting) You've got to read what he said.

OBAMA: Let me -- let me complete...

[And the debate continues in this vein for an unnecessarily length of time, during which Schieffer servs as an instigator every time McCain seems to lose steam.]

On what was Left Behind
OBAMA: I do think that it is important for the federal government to step up and help local school districts do some of the things they need to do. Now we tried to do this under President Bush. He put forward No Child Left Behind. Unfortunately, they left the money behind for No Child Left Behind.

Why to vote
SCHIEFFER: This concludes the final debate. I'm Bob Schieffer of CBS News, and I will leave you tonight with what my mother always said -- go vote now. It will make you feel big and strong.

Idiosyncrasies from another life

The question of the day, anymore, is “how is the new job going?” It’s not a question I am entirely sure how to answer. On one hand, I could say that the job is going wonderfully. I feel I am picking up my various responsibilities relatively quickly, and nearly everyone I have met in the office has been very nice. I am busy all the time, so the day passes quickly, and my tasks are just varied enough that I don’t get too bored doing any one thing.

That being said, the many tasks I am doing are all very administrative. I fax, print, copy, and pass information between people. I schedule meetings and keep guest checklists after emailing invitations to events I participate in planning. I take minutes at meetings and do my best to make sense of them afterward when writing htem up for the participants. I query databases. I make spreadsheets. I proofread the spreadsheets. I assemble them into reports. And in doing all of these things, I make errors.

I have a mental chalkboard for each humiliating error I make, and there are several bold white slashes already looming up there after only my first few weeks. It is hard to accept these as part of the “learning process,” because they seem such affronts to my view of my own competency. Still, I am trying to be patient.

The better question, as opposed to “how is the new job going?” is “what are you learning at your new job?” In response to this question, my mind immediately beings to assemble lists of skill sets: learning to write invoices, to use Excel, Outlook, Lotus Notes, AS400, the Wiley Portal. . . . Yet, if I stop and consider a fuller, more complete answer, I am also learning that old habits die hard. I am observing many little idiosyncrasies from my former “life” creep into this new Office Life, even where they don’t belong.

For one thing, I type like a pianist. This is not just to say that I hold my hands like a pianist rather than a typist, but rather that when inputting information into the computer, in instances where the average person might use a left click or a drop-down menu, I almost always use a keyboard shortcut. In fact, I have combined right-hand mouse work and left-hand key strokes to such a degree that they work in concert, almost like the pedal on a piano works in concert with both hands on the keyboard—independently and with a completely different motion, but toward the same goal. It’s quite fascinating to observe this in myself and one which I only discovered one day when I realized how differently Damian and I went about the same copy/cut/paste tasks. We were moving information between Excel and Word, and he would always use the left-click functions, whereas I only ever highlighted information with the mouse and then used my hands on the keyboard to do the rest. I wonder if hands know how to miss an instrument.

Another habit I am finding hard to break is my inclination to cite every piece of information I provide. Every time one of my bosses, or an Editor-in-Chief, or anyone, really, asks me a question that I must research the answer to, I have to resist the impulse to direct them back to the websites and the individual people from whom I garnered the answers. Initially I thought sending them directly to the sources may be a good idea, but then I realized that they don’t want me to waste their time. All they want is the answer to their question. If they ask me later how I found out, I should keep track of my sources for my own sake, so I can “prove it.” However, people in the “working world” don’t generally need an email with an attached bibliography. That’s for academia, and despite how closely I am working with academia—since I am working on neuroscience journals and current protocols, both of which involve professors throughout the world—I am still immersed in the Business, with Business People.

The last habit I am having trouble overcoming is my tendency to try to finish assignments before they are due. Usually, this would not seem like a bad quality. After all, it is never good to fall behind schedule, and what better way to avoid falling behind schedule than to complete all tasks ahead of schedule? However, in the working world, or at least in the publishing world, information changes to rapidly that in order to offer the most up-to-date figures on any report, one must create the report as close to when it is due as possible. This creates all kinds of stress for me, since I have never been the kind of student to write term papers 24 hours before they are due. I prefer to begin months ahead of time, to wade through the material, to create outlines and drafts, and to copyedit and proofread right up until a week beforehand, when I breathe a sigh of relief and hand the thing in so I can go study for some other test.

Now, I am multitasking all over the place, with everyone’s calendar layered on top of my own calendar, and I can’t even check things off, because they aren’t allowed to even be started until such-and-such a date for fear of having outdated information show up on the report. “What sort of life is this?” the student in me asks. “You didn’t sign up for this sort of stress!” But then again, no one asks me to stay until 8p.m. any evening to finish that last story or get that last piece of copy to print, so I shouldn’t complain. If I don’t get home until 9 or 10p.m., it’s because I was out with the Harriers running team or playing volleyball at the Chelsea public gym. Like I said, old habits die hard.

Snapshot Book Review: The Thirteenth Tale

The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel by Diane Setterfield

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
What a unique book. It mixes types like none I have read before. The structure is one where the author writes about a girl who is writing about a writer. Sittenfeld is telling the story of a girl (Margaret) who is telling her own story by writing it directly to the reader, but she is also commissioned to write down the story of Vida Winter, a renowned author who tells her story verbally. The two stories intermingle at times, as Margaret hunts down details of the living remains of Ms. Winter's story, visiting ruins of the Angelfield house and interviewing lost souls such as Aurelius. The Thirteenth Tale is about characters telling one another's stories, and if the characters in those told stories had told stories, The Thousand and One Nights would have been quickly called to mind!

More than its narrative structure, The Thirteenth Tale had a unique feel to it. Its English setting and the various details Setterfield used gave it an almost fairy-tale/cottage-like quality that suited its storytelling nature. What is more, it used the Sixth Sense effect, so that once a crucial element was revealed, it made me want to go back and check to make sure every detail in the novel fit my new understanding. It is always fun to see stories in a new light, particularly when the new light is so unexpected.

My biggest criticism is that the narrator herself often bordered on melodrama, with all of her pining about twinness. I understand that being a twin was part of the essence that drove the novel in the first place, but I never really felt that I got to know the narrator in a way that made me much empathize with her lack of appetite, sleeplessness, or basic neuroses. And the last chapter was dreadful. If I had been Setterfield editor, I would have insisted that it be cut.

And yet: this book would appeal to a wide range of audiences. I would recommend it to mystery lovers, Harry Potter fans, and anyone who enjoys books set in old England. I don't particularly fit any of these categories, though, but I found the book entertaining, so book lovers in general, I suppose, will probably like it, too.


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New Yorkers ARE Nice

And here is my proof: since I have officially moved to the city, I have met a number of these neighborly, welcoming people through the various activities I have pursued. Take, for instance, the New York Park and Recreation Center, which I recently joined for the bargain price of $37.50/6 months. The Chelsea location has open gym volleyball sessions every Monday, which I discovered utterly by accident as I was exploring the gym on the Monday I joined. I noticed the nets and people warming up, evaluated their ability levels, and walked right into the gym. I asked the nearest girl with a friendly-looking face whether these were leagues or not and if I could play with them (them being the group that was warming up together), and she said no, this was a session open to anyone, and sure, the more the merrier. We formed our first team of six, and ta-da! I was suddenly playing volleyball again.

The next week, when I returned again on Monday, I began warming up with a man named Greg. He looked to be about retirement age—perhaps a little younger—with completely gray hair and a compact 5’7” build. As we passed and set to one another, he suddenly said, “You know, your team should automatically get extra points because you look so much like a volleyball player.” I felt very flattered.

My first team was comprised of a spunky girl named Nicole, who I ended up spending a good deal of the night practicing my pass-set-hitting sequences with when we weren’t on the court; a tall, lean Hispanic guy with baggy shorts and a black bandana who looked for all the world like he could be cast in a movie as a gang leader. He possessed the air of cocky world indifference to match that impression, but he still exuded the air of someone you desperately wanted to please, someone you wanted to “be cool with,” evident by the fact that guys were either tough with him or ignored him and girls either flirted with him or had to play the tough card. When our first set of games were over, Nicole and I practiced passing with him. We had to be tough, partially because we were trying to be good volleyball players, but mainly because we aren’t Hispanic—those girls were always flirty, even if they were skilled players.

The next guy on my team was a tall black guy, somewhat similar in stature to the Hispanic guy because of his lean, muscular, innate-seeming athleticism. However, this guy had an air of classiness to him. He held himself with a particular grace and acted with a quiet, reserved politeness that I cannot quite describe. Suffice to say, I knew that if I made a mistake, he would not be the one to give me a dirty look for it.

The last member of the team was another guy whom I also imagine would never have given me a dirty look for any mistake I might make. This guy was Asian (I regret to say I cannot identify which particular ethnicity), which made him appear younger than the other two guys, but upon reflection, he probably wasn’t any younger than the rest of us and perhaps may have been older. He was certainly a very skilled player. He was very quiet at most times, but not passive at all, in spite of his wire-thin appearance. He emitted what I would call an aura of humble pride that made me wonder what sort of image I gave off without realizing, because I doubt he had any idea that people may perceive him as seeming humbly proud.

In any case, that has only been one of my experiences at a New York Park and Recreation Center. The other occurred even more recently, when I took an evening to use the center’s pool for the very first time.

Much to my chagrin, the pool was extraordinarily crowded. I suppose this is to be expected, considering that the center is publicly owned and operated and that I was swimming at the most convenient hour of the day for every working individual. Thus, I was forced to share a very narrow lane with five other swimmers. This would not have been such a problem, had they been anywhere near my speed or ability; however, not one of them even did flipturns. At one point, two of the swimmers left, and I paused at one wall to determine what my next set would be. Another boy standing at the wall looked at me with what appeared to be awe. “You’re really good,” he told me. I laughed, thinking to myself as I always do at those kinds of compliments that he had no idea what “good” was. But I thanked him, and we chatted for a bit about how long he had been swimming, what good exercise it is, and the best times to swim. It was a pleasant chat, and we shook hands at the end before he left the pool. His name was Anthony.

Later, at the end of my swim, I received a similar compliment from another lane partner. This fellow’s name was Mike, and he asked me whether I could swim breaststroke and butterfly. When I replied that I could, he told me he was jealous. He had recently taught himself to swim, and he had only mastered backstroke and freestyle so far. Now, from swimming in the lane with him, I never would have pegged him as a self-taught swimmer, so I told him that. He was bashful, but not so bashful that he kept from asking if I wouldn’t teach him butterfly. I was very surprised, but I said sure, and then suddenly there I was: teaching a grown man (is someone my age considered a grown man? I suppose that depends) the fundamentals of the butterfly.

Even before I joined the NY Park and Recreation Center, though, I had been so in need of a “group” of athletes that I Googled running teams and came up with the Harriers—a group that runs on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays in Central Park. I emailed the coordinator and then showed up one Tuesday evening in mid-July, hoping for the best. It turned out to be one of the bravest and most beneficial things I could have done. Obviously there are so many runners in Central Park that finding one particular group is a bit of a task, but once I had asked half a dozen people if they were the Harriers, I found one correct person, and was then welcomed to the workout. As they first discussed what we’d be doing, I knew I would be at the back of the pack. And since then, I have remained there. It feels reminiscent of my “serious” attempts at swimming: the harder I tried, the more “bottom of the pile” I was. But having already been resigned to that position on a team and working for My Personal Best rather than to beat another person, I am okay with that. Instead, I am celebrating the wonderful people I have already met through this group.

First and foremost is the closest person I have to a friend here in NYC: Arianna. I have only met her in the last month or so, but she is the perfect running partner, because she is a wonderful conversationalist, and we are very close in speed. We started out by calling each other up for long runs on the weekends, and then, once I got up my courage, I asked her whether I could store my belongings at her apartment on Tuesdays and Thursdays when she planned to attend Harrier workouts. It is too far for me to go all the way back to Queens from Hoboken, NJ and then get back to Central Park by 7pm, and she lives six blocks from where the Harriers meet to run, as well as about halfway between the two points on my commute. She agreed, and it has worked superbly every since.

Almost all of the other runners I have met through the Harriers have been very kind, but the other one worth mentioning is Mark. He’s sort of the Harriers’ unofficial “coach,” as he writes and attends most of the workouts, and he is probably the most knowledgeable runner I have ever met. What really made him stand out to me as a coach was the fact that after only my fourth workout with the team (and I haven’t attended all that many, probably not even ten yet), he ran behind me and gave me tips on form—my form, what I specifically was doing with my body—for sprinting vs. long-distance running. I honestly couldn’t believe it. Me? I wanted to ask him. You’re paying attention to me? But I’m not even a real runner! Again, it was so reminiscent of my swimming days with WHAT and George. Every time George would come over and give me advice about my stroke or my times, I would think, He’s paying attention to me! Even though I’m slow! Even though I’m not a real swimmer!

So the bottom line is, New Yorkers ARE nice. But maybe it’s athletes who are nice. Sports create community; although I guess it is hard to tell if they are the cause—if the sport generates the camaraderie between individuals—or the effect—if kind, welcoming people tend to gravitate toward athletics. Regardless, sports have proven, socially, to be my saving grace every time I settle somewhere new. From elementary school to parochial school, back to public school, to high school, to college in Rochester, to England, to New York City, sports are what have always helped me feel a “part” of something.

Maybe war is just patriotism, wanting to feel a part of one’s country, gone horribly, horribly wrong. Because doesn’t it just seem like a sport on steroids?

Snapshot Book Review: Pigs in Heaven

Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
The funniest part about my adoration of Barbara Kingsolver is that my favorite book of hers is not The Poisonwood Bible. In fact, of the three books of hers I have read now, that is probably my least favorite. Prodigal Summer still probably ranks as my favorite, followed very closely by this one, Pigs in Heaven. My biggest disappointment upon finishing this novel occurred when I went back to the library to find another Kingsolver book and discovered that the only one they had was actually a prequel to this novel! I hadn't known The Bean Trees came first in the telling of these character's stories, and I was tremendously disappointed to find out that I already knew the story of The Bean Trees without having read it in Kingsolver's vivid, elegant prose.

What I love about her writing is that it is so beautiful without trying to be so. You get a stunning picture of southern and midwestern landscapes and a true sense of people's lifestyles and ethnicities without her, as an author, shoving these facts and descriptions in your face. Somehow, she blends them into the language so seamlessly and so convincingly that you end up feeling them rather than knowing them. This is the mark of a truly successful writer, as far as I am concerned. And the mark of a truly successful book is one in which I do not find myself wanting to edit as I read. That is not something she achieved with The Poisonwood Bible--I badly wanted to edit the ending of that novel--but Pigs in Heaven kept me page-turning relentlessly without one critique, in spite of my ability to predict the ending.

Now there was a real accomplishment, because I hate to predict endings. But somehow, Kingsolver and those pigs pulled it off. I look forward to her next novel.


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