Skidding into a New Culture

In September of 2006, I was sitting in a mah-jongg group when the conversation turned to the real-estate market. I said I didn’t understand how lending companies thought it was a good idea to give interest-only loans. They were based on the idea that housing prices would continue to rise, and that, in my opinion, couldn’t happen indefinitely.

Mah-jongg tiles

Another woman in the group clacked down a tile and said, “That’s why you aren’t a banker or loan office; you don’t understand those things.” I might add that this woman was bright and was in a powerful career.

Now, of course, it turns out that a lot more people had no idea how the market would sustain itself. The economy is in horrible shape. And now, before it becomes old hat, it’s time for me to point at something else that’s not working, that will have to change before the country gets it’s act together.

Competition doesn’t work. It doesn’t make people stronger. It doesn’t create better teams. Now, before you start lighting the torches and picking up the pitchforks, let me explain.

There was a time when competition was a simple pitting of a skill or product. At that time, the point of competition was to make the best of yourself and show it. The winner honored victory by pointing to the fact that a lot of talent showed up, and a good game was the best result. Winners were gracious in victory.

Slowly, this changed. Competition has come to mean more than winning, it has come to mean someone else has to lose. And not just lose, but be a “loser”— a term that has come into our vocabulary to mean a failure, rather than someone who didn’t win a game. Winning meant that any means to win was fair—doping, cheating, lying, it was all grist for the competition mill. If you weren’t “Number One,” you weren’t anybody.

To prove our own worth, we bought enormous houses with space we didn’t need, a bigger car than our neighbors, until a tank of an SUV, the Hummer, was a sign that you not only had $50,000 to spend on a car, but you didn’t care about how much gas you used. No one actually needs to drive a Hummer. It became some sort of twisted  proof you weren’t a loser.

Companies vied against each other in ways that made winning more important than anything else. CEOs received bonuses that most of us in the common ruck won’t earn in a year. They deserved it because they were winners.

And now the winning is over. We all lost. Our culture lost, our society lost. Sure, there are still some super rich people who don’t care about anyone below their level of achievement, but the dream is over. 100,000 Americans lost their jobs last week. It’s time to wake up.

I’d like to suggest that it’s time to put away the competition–the fighting for the bigger piece of the pie. It’s time to admit we made a big mess, and go back to knowing our neighbors, sharing what we have and working together. Riding public transportation is a good way to get to know the people who live in your neighborhood. Giving them a ride is a good way to know them, too.

Buying in quantity and sharing is a valuable way to save money. It requires knowing and trusting people, instead of pitting yourself against them.

Pull your money from the huge, global banks that still are spending millions on decorating their offices, and use small local banks, who invest in your neighborhood.

Get to know who is good at home repair and ask them to help you while you help in their garden. Or create a baby-sitting or carpool group.

Our coming together as a healthy culture will begin when we admit that we need each other. We can’t make it to the top alone. Now, while so many of us are on a leveled playing field, might be a smart time to give up believing we are “Number One” and create a new community of awareness, sharing and helping each other.

And if I’m wrong,  the worse that can happen is that you’ll have a lot of friends when the economy comes back. At best, this belief will build a new economy of ideas and learning, of sharing and building things of value. And our heroes and celebrities will be people who contribute to that culture, rather than people who are famous for their ability to stay in the public eye because of marriage, divorce, and clothing.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer, life- and creativity coach who runs workshops in communications. She owns QuinnCreative.

Snark: the book

David Denby, film critic for the New Yorker, is tired of all the sniping, the pointless, the mean, the vapid spew of anger that passes as writing today. He wrote a book about it: Snark.

Illustration from "The Hunting of the Snark"

The word comes from various sources. One dictionary says it blends “snide” and “remark,” another one points to Lewis Carroll’s “The Hunting of the Snark.” There are sailboats, missiles and minor characters in novels that are snarks. (The minor character is in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22) but in Denby’s book, it is always mean and cruel.

I’m not overly surprised to see how common snark has become. The anonymity of social networking sites and emails (on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,) allows us to be mean without responsibility. We don’t have to say it in person or show ourselves,  so the bar to decency is lowered considerably.

The popularity of reality shows lies in the “mean girl”snark–the bullying insults that we secretly wish we could hurl at the person who was mean to us. We get that vicarious pleasure in someone else’s bad behavior, that emotional schadenfreude of a rush, guilt-free, from those shows.  After endless seasons of escalating backstabbing in the kitchen, bedroom, hot tub, dress-making studio and home remodel, “shocking” has numbed us down to acceptance.

Oddly enough, I can appreciate sarcasm, irony, parody and wit. But snark takes them all out for a walk, then mugs them and tells them they don’t have a sense of humor. Snark hurts.

I think it may be time to put down the glee in gossip, and recognize that winning is not everything, or the only thing, but a time in our life we can really show how big we are. Reality shows would collapse, and we’d have to rediscover a real sense of humor. Personally, I’m ready for it.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and creativity coach who runs workshops in communicating at work, at home, and to strangers.

Choosing by Picture

Facebook does it. So does My Space. In fact, almost every website does it–post pictures of people who are in the company or in the public eye. We do it for recognition, and because people look at other people–even if it’s just in a photograph. In fact, eye-tracking studies have shown that people will look at the photograph of another person, particularly at the eyes, before they read copy.

I’ve become uncomfortable with the fact that organizations I belong to ask me to post my picture in my listing or on the page they provide me with. One of the facts that has come out in research on hiring practices is that we are drawn to people who look like we do, and who are similar to us. So a blond hiring manager is likely to offer the job to another blond, although the reason given is “the applicant is a good fit.”

So I did a small experiment. I took a picture of a much younger, thinner me and posted it on two listing sites for one month. I then removed it and put up an unfortunate picture taken of me squinting into the sun, with strong shadows under my eyes. I left it up for the same amount of time. While it’s not a scientific survey, the results were not surprising: the month the younger me was representing my company, I got almost twice as many requests for information.

I think that in listings that include photos, we unconsciously (or perhaps deliberately) choose the person who is attractive–young, slim, fit, good-looking. We don’t look at the qualifications first. We go for the glamor. So I’m beginning to wonder if it might not be a good idea to not post photos on the Web. I don’t want to go as far as to post someone else’s picture, but I’d rather not be eliminated for race, gender, age, weight, hairstyle, or the amount of shine on my teeth.

What do you think? Is it important to have up a good-looking photo on your website or listing? And if you aren’t good-looking, what’s an honest alternative?

–Quinn McDonald is a trainer in business writing and speaking. She also gives workshops in journal writing.  (c) 2008-9 All rights reserved.

Image: 1912 class of Corsicana High School on http://www.rootsweb.com

Lorem Ipsum

This blog post won’t  hit the top of Google’s popularity list.  Unless you are a typesetter or graphic designer, the phrase is Greek to you. In fact, that’s what it’s called—greeking. Lorem Ipsum is placeholder type, used to fill in for real words in ad design, book layout, magazine dummies and new Websites.

Apple's Lorem Ipsum widget

Because it mimics the length of English words and sentences,  it looks genuine, but because it has no meaning and isn’t repetitive, it doesn’t call attention to itself as clients look at design.

It’s so popular in design that Apple.com has a widget that lets you generate your own Lorem Ipsum.  Never heard of it? Here’s the first paragraph:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nullam vel turpis. Sed justo. Phasellus malesuada sem non sapien. Nunc feugiat nulla eu augue interdum vestibulum. Aliquam urna lorem, hendrerit vitae, fermentum ut, rutrum eu, massa. Maecenas nec sapien. Morbi ante ligula, dignissim vel, vulputate sed, ultrices vel, lorem. Nunc nulla nunc, tincidunt posuere, egestas eu, ultrices eget, diam. Nullam pharetra pretium mauris. Sed quam nibh, posuere eget, ultrices vitae, rhoncus ac, nisi.

I assumed that it was scrambled text, with no meaning. But I was wrong. It has a proud history, about 500 years of it, and it is one of the few print facsimiles that made the leap into the digital world with no damage.

Sometime around 1500, a typesetter wanted to display different fonts, so he made a sample book by scrambling some type from a text he had printed. The book was “The Extremes of Good and Evil,” by Cicero, who wrote the ethics treatise around 45 BCE. Lorem Ipsum, more precisely,  has a 2,000 year history.

Yes, Cicero was a Roman, and Lorem Ipsum is called “greeking,” but it was Cicero who introduced Greek philosophy to Roman culture, and then developed a Latin vocabulary for Greek philosophical terms. And Cicero wrote much of his work in Greek.

Who discovered the link between greeking and Cicero? It’s attributed to a Latin scholar— Richard McClintock, from Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. He looked up keywords from the passage, and found a match in sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil).  The first line,  “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..”, comes from a line in section 1.10.32.

Entranced yet? Wear your love of lorem ipsum on your sleeve. Well, at least on your wrist.

—Quinn McDonald remembers how to spec type, hot lead type, and paste-up nights at the newspaper. Now she’s a writer, life- and creativity coach who helps others through change and reinvention. She owns QuinnCreative.

Lemon Harvest

Today was the day. A moderate day of sun and puffy clouds at the end of January. It was time to pick the lemons. We have one lemon tree, and a central branch was sheared off several years before we bought the house.  The tree was burdened with lemons. It was time to pick them.

Lemon tree, about 10 feet tall

Lemon trees have thorns, and picking lemons is rough work. The lemons need to be trimmed off with a pruning shears. We picked some bare-handed, and our fingers got dark and greasy from the lemon wax and dust.

All in all, we picked hundreds of lemons.This table seats six comfortably. There are more lemons than in this picture– at least two more big wine cases piled high with them. But the tree is breathing easier.

Freshly picked lemons

The tree will now drop its leaves while new ones are forming. In a few weeks, there will be scented blossoms, and then the cycle will start again, from tiny green lemons, visible in May, to harvest in January.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer who owns a lemon, orange, fig and grapefruit tree. It makes her feel rich beyond measure. (c) 2009. All rights reserved.

Restaurant Review: Tarbell’s in Phoenix

Each year on our anniversary, we choose a nice restaurant, a spendy one we wouldn’t drop into on a Tuesday night, and pay no attention to the prices. We’ve eaten at City Zen in Washington, D.C., at Eve’s in Alexandria, Virginia, and other interesting and not-so-wonderful places.

We got married on the coldest day of the year, all those years ago, in Connecticut. This year, we walked into Tarbell’s (in Phoenix, Arizona) without winter jackets, on January 24, and remembered the 80-degree temperature difference with a grin.

The reception was friendly, but they seemed to have lost our reservation. The two young women at the desk smiled, but spent a long time scrolling and whispering at the screen. During the 15 minute wait, we were offered two tables, one tall one in the noisy bar, and a smaller table right in the middle of the raceway between kitchen and dining room, which we also declined. The wait was worth it.

“The wait was worth it” was the watchword of the evening. The waitstaff was uniformly cheerful and informal, which I enjoyed. Once we were seated at the banquette, our server arrived with a “Hi-Ya, Guys!” I glanced at my husband and raised my eyebrows. I absolutely hate being addressed as “guys,” when “you,” or “folks,” would be far more accurate. The server was so observant that she never used the term with us again that night, although we heard her use it at other tables. Good move.

Word of warning: this is a loud restaurant. The tables are close together, and no conversation is private. The kitchen is open, and the noise level rises as the evening progresses.

We ordered drinks, which appeared quickly and were cold and nicely served.

The menu is short and satisfying. It includes a vegetarian, fish, and meat choices. Our appetizers, yellowfin tartare with taro chips and duck confit, were excellently spiced and beautifully served. The tartare was evenly cubed fish, which had been shaped in a timbale (a straight-sided cylinder) and placed on the plate. It had an impeccably fresh, briny, but not salty, flavor. The taro chips were crisp and substantial, and made a perfect counterpoint to the fish. On the opposite corner was a small cyclinder of cucumber relish. It provided a good finish for the course.

My husband’s duck confit was finished with white beans. The duck skin was crisp and flavorful, the duck rich and satisfying. It was a generous portion, served on the bone, and presented in an asymmetrical bowl that made chasing the white casoulet beans with a fork a bit of a game. The beans were a perfect foil for the duck, supporting the flavor and texture of the meat without overwhelming it.

The plates were removed together, and promptly after my husband had just finished. (I had finished my tartare a few minutes earlier). It reminded me how good service can really add to the enjoyment of the meal. Most restaurants today will ask, “Are you still working on that?” as if a meal is a project to complete. Removing both plates is far more polite, and watching when the diner places fork and knife on the plate makes this excellent service possible.

And then the wait began. My husband had ordered butternut squash ravioli with spinach and pine nuts. I had ordered pepper steak with creamed spinach and potato gratin. The first 15 minutes weren’t too bad, but when the server (this time, a man, probably the expediter) appeared and asked if we’d like more drinks, he told us the meal was a bit delayed, but would be here soon. We then waited another long time, and became aware we were hungry. The expediter came back, apologized some more, and gave us a time update.

The last time I experienced this, my meal was stone cold and shriveled, so I said the wait wasn’t a problem if both meals arrive hot, but not from being under the heat lamp. The server assured us they would both be perfect, and sped off.

He returned with our plates, both hot. He then waited to make sure we were both satisfied with the quality of the meal. My husband cut into a moist ravioli, which was steaming, and declared it hot. I tried my steak and it was perfectly cooked and hot. The server apologized for the wait and left. What a great touch–making sure the food is right before speeding off.

The wait had been worth it. My steak was exactly as I had ordered it–medium rare. It was crusted with pepper, but not overwhelmed by it. The spinach was whole leaf and flavored by a touch of lemon and a light waft of butter sauce. It wasn’t creamed,  it was better. The potato gratin was magnificently layered with cream and gruyere cheese. The potatoes were not mush and the cheese was the perfect counterpoint to the rich and flavorful beef. When I couldn’t finish it, the staff immediately boxed it for me.

My husband’s ravioli were tender and redolent with butter, pine nuts and the spiced butternut squash that created a perfect textural difference between the pasta. Butternut squash can be damp, but this ravioli was moist, but the filling not squishy or mushy. It was firm and vaguely sweet, the true flavor of good, ripe squash. Tarbell’s serves locally  grown, organic vegetables, and it shows.

We shared a dessert, as perfect as the rest of the meal. All desserts are made at Tarbell’s. A tower of mascarpone cheesecake was the lightest, best-tasting cheesecake I have tasted. Not gummy or slick, but airy without being mousse-like, fresh and clean tasting, it was topped with a light caramel sauce that had been infused with rosemary. The herb’s flavor was a delicate touch and sparked the caramel, which was neither cloying nor heavy. Around the plate, piped in dark chocolate, were the words, “Happy Anniversary.” Spelled right. Great calligraphy.

The meal left nothing to be desired, except for the timing of the main course. And when the bill arrived, they apologized for the weight and did not charge us for our drinks or dessert. “Because we want your anniversary to be perfect.” And it was.

Tarbell’s is located on the Southeast corner of  32nd Street and Camelback Ave.  in Phoenix. Parking is in the shopping center, and free. On weekends, there is valet service.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer, life and creativity coach who loves eating and experimenting with recipes. Her husband is a personal chef. They are obviously a good match, and have been for more than 20 years.

Keeping a Messy Journal

This gallery contains 1 photos.

Somewhere in your head is the vision of the perfect journal. Maybe it’s all online, on a beautifully decorated page. Or maybe it’s all written in fountain pen, in a lovely Palmer penmanship. It’s a nice thought, but it’s unlikely. … Continue reading →

Inaugural Poem: Praise Song for the Day

Praise song for the day

By Elizabeth Alexander, professor of African American studies at Yale University, who has published five books of poetry and one of essays. She joins an esteemed rank of poets who have presented their poetry at American Presidential inaugurations:  Robert Frost, Maya Angelou and Miller Williams.

* * *

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp — praise song for walking forward in that light.

Getting to Sleep

For years, I’ve been fighting sleep. I’m not a morning person, and although I can be exhausted by 6 p.m., once 9 p.m. comes around, I’m wide awake and eager to work.

Phoenix is an early town, and I’m not serving myself by going to bed at 2 a.m. I might get work done at night, but I usually exercise in the morning, and by the time I do my three-mile walk, eat breakfast, and get ready, the prime morning hours have a serious chunk out of them.

I’ve tried going to bed early, but I simply don’t want to. I want to finish something, start something, read, but not sleep. Even though I’m sleepy enough to drop off in about 15 minutes once I go to bed. I’m still fighting sleep, even when I’m tired.

Warm milk, chocolate, no TV–all for nothing. But I’ve finally hit the right note.

Part of the success in getting to bed and to sleep is the same way I get to my work in the morning: ritual. If you do a set of actions, the rest of your body knows what to do.  At 10 p.m., I stop working on whatever it is, no matter how wonderful. I’ve had to set an alarm to do this, but luckily, my iPhone helps with that. At 10 p.m. I pick up my latest hobby–knitting–and put on an audio book. It’s not a educational book, just easy fiction. I call it “the potato chip of the mind.” It’s distracting and interesting enough so I want to listen. For half an hour I knit and listen, literally, to my bedtime story. At 10:30, at a pause in the CD, I get up, mark down where I stopped listening, and go to bed.

I’ve made the ritual a bit easier as well. After supper, before I start my evening work routine, I take off my makeup, wash my face, and brush my teeth. This part of the routine usually wakes me up if I do it too late at night. And brushing my teeth keeps me from snacking our of boredom.

Listening to a story and knitting something without a complicated pattern helps me wind down. Like a kid fighting sleep, I’m not ready for bed, but with the ritual, it’s much easier.

Cartoon: http://www.ireallydontwantajob.com

–Quinn McDonald is a night owl in a lark’s world. She is working hard on adjusting. See her work at QuinnCreative.com (c) 2009 All rights reserved

Read A Newspaper Before They’re Gone

More and more newspapers are disappearing. Not enough young readers. Not enough middle-aged readers. Not enough advertisers. “We can read it on line,” I hear. And, “I’ve given up reading newspapers, they just overwhelm me with bad news.”

from mixedink.com

Would you give up going to the grocery store because cinnamon rolls make you fat? Didn’t think so.

Reading on the Web takes 25 percent longer than reading on the newspaper, so it’s not the time it takes to read a newspaper. It’s the depth of the news. We don’t want to know the details, we want the overview or the bottom line, the stuff in the middle is too hard to figure out.

Oddly enough, it is not too hard to figure out the complexity of celebrity coupling, uncoupling and sniping–in 2008, according to Yahoo, Britney Spears was the most searched name. Barack Obama came in second.

What about the bad news accusation? We can’t read the newspaper because off all the bad news? Why are we scooping up magazines that roll in bad celebrity news? Why are reality shows–the worst of the bad news–so popular? It’s not the bad news we fear. It’s the lack of control.

In the end, the Brangefer triangle is worse than our lives, and we can walk away from it, but we can’t walk away from rampant disease, political treachery, and endless, groundless wars. We are part of them. We voted, we didn’t vote. Either way, we had a hand in it. And we can’t control it all. We can’t even control some of it. So we don’t want to know about it.

Our need for control works when we over-schedule our own time, our kids time, our pet’s time. But we turn away from the news because we feel we have to fix this mess and don’t know where to start and don’t want it on our desks. Or worse, our conscience.

I’m in full agreement that if you are too plugged in to news, reading headlines, catching up on reports on your cell phone or PDA, a break is necessary. No would blame you for turning off the TV, radio, CD and DVD players and crawing into bed. A little rest is good for everyone.

The next day, however, it’s time to start thinking. Maybe you can’t solve the world’s problems, but not knowing is different from not wanting to know. Being informed keeps you from blaming yourself, but it helps you make better choices, better votes, and a better environment. And while you can’t solve the world problems, you can do tiny things with enthusiasm. They add up. If we all do it, we can save the world.

In this super-connected world, wouldn’t you pay to have the latest news brought to your doorstep, complete with interesting photos, summaries in the first paragraph, readers leaving comments, and gossip? It’s not out of your reach, a daily paper delivered is less than $5 a month in most cities. Before they become extinct, before you lose control, grab a newspaper. Read it. Do one thing.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and life coach. She reads newspapers at the kitchen table every morning, then reads a few more online.