Monthly Archives: August 2009

Missed connection

In an effort to cut my carbon emissions, I’m trying to commute to the church by train as much as possible. Last night, the meeting of the Board went later than I had expected. I asked if I could leave a little early, and started walking to the train station at about 9:35 p.m., thinking that I had plenty of time to get there. But when I was still a couple of blocks away from the station — too far to try to run — I heard the train pull into the station, and then pull out of the station. I had misjudged the amount of time I needed to walk from the church to the train. So I had to wait another hour for the next train to arrive. At least I had a good murder mystery to read, so the time went quickly.

In another few months, I will know exactly how long it takes to walk to the train station. But right now, I’m unsure of that, and unsure of lots of other things; I often feel stupid because I just don’t know the simplest things. That’s the hardest thing about moving to a new place: so much of what we do is governed by habits, by small bits of knowledge that we aren’t even aware we have.

Weather

I’ve been reading Weather of the San Francisco Bay Region by Harold Gilliam, who says that in this area, if you don’t like the weather, you can walk or drive a short distance to find weather more to your liking. “Fishermen along the fog-shrouded coast of Marin County on a summer day may be shivering in the low fifties while people in San Rafael, ten miles east, bask in comfortable 70-degree weather,” writes Gilliam, “and residents of ranches at the edge of the Sacramento Valley, another 40 miles east, mop their brows as the thermometer hits 100 — a temperature difference of 50 degrees in 50 miles.”

I have noticed that it is generally cooler at home in San Mateo than it is at church in Palo Alto. At our apartment in San Mateo this morning, it was perhaps 60 degrees, with low stratus clouds overhead, and a chilly breeze blowing. I put on my fuzzy fleece jacket and walked over to the train station. After a 30-minute ride, I got off the train at the San Antonio station in Palo Alto, 17 miles to the southeast, and it was sunny and in the 70s.

Books and libraries

We haven’t completely unpacked yet, but we are mostly done. The bulk of my possessions consists of books, and I have most of my books unpacked and placed into book cases.

By Wednesday, I had gotten most of my professional books into the bookcases in my office at church. On Thursday, I noticed that I started thinking differently: I was thinking about a work-related problem, and I knew part of the answer was to be found in a book that I owned, and I walked over to the shelf and pulled that book out. A week ago, I would not have been able to find that book; and a week ago, I simply ignored that problem.

The theory of distributed cognition suggests that tools contain a measure of accumulated wisdom. A crosscut panel saw, for example, contains accumulated wisdom on one way of cutting wood (whereas a coping saw contains a somewhat different accumulation of wisdom on cutting wood). I used to work for a cabinetmaker, and saws and other tools shape both your body and your mind: using a Western-style crosscut panel saw strengthens certain muscles, and makes your mind think about wood in certain ways; if you then try to use a Japanese-style pull saw, you find that you use different muscles, and you also find that you have to think about wood in a different way.

But it’s not just individual tools which contain distributed cognition. When I worked for the cabinetmaker, over time I came to realize that the layout of his shop also contained accumulated wisdom: the way he organized his workbenches and big machines shaped the way we thought about making things, and shaped our work physically as well. Not only that, but the toolboxes that he carried to job sites were also a form of distributed cognition. Thus, tools which are in themselves a kind of distributed cognition can be assembled in arrangements which are yet another layer of distributed cognition.

A library, whether a personal library or an institution’s library, is a form of distributed cognition that is similar to the cabinetmaker’s shop. An individual book is one form of distributed cognition (obviously); but a library, the way it is arranged, the books that are in it and the books that are not in it, is another form of distributed cognition. I learned how to lay out my personal library both from spending a great deal of time in institutional libraries, as well as from looking at the personal libraries of friends and mentors in my field; another influence on my personal library has been syllabuses from graduate school courses. The Library of Congress cataloguing system and the Dewey Decimal system offer ways to systematically arrange human knowledge (as it is contained in books); and each profession has its own ways of organizing the knowledge essential to that profession. Professionally speaking, I think more clearly when I can get at my professional library.

One of my frustrations with Google Books is that the books within it are poorly organized; Google wants you to browse its online books using its search engine, but search engines contain very little in the way of distributed cognition. Books and libraries are highly evolved and subtle technologies; by comparison, today’s e-books and e-libraries are in many ways crude and clumsy technologies.

New food fad

This afternoon, my older sister, the one who lies in Indiana, called. “We’re going to the Indiana State Fair,” she said. This year, she said, the food to try is chocolate-covered bacon. “Everyone says that it’s one of those things that sounds gross at first, but when you try it, it’s really good.”

I’ll bet it is really good — you can’t go wrong combining sugar, fat, and salt. I did a little Web research on this new food phenomenon. According to Wikipedia’s entry, chocolate-covered bacon dates back to at least 2005. But last year chocolate-covered bacon was the big hit at the Minnesota State Fair under the name “Pig Lickers,” which means that this year it is appearing at all the best state fairs across the nation. Biggest thing since deep-fried Pepsi.

Given the realities of Bay Area culture, I’ll bet I won’t find any chocolate-covered bacon around here (although I might be able to find vegan bacon-substitute covered in low-fat fair-trade chocolate). Well, I may have to drive up to the California State Fair in Sacramento, just so’s I can buy me some Pig Lickers.

Weather

At a meeting the other day, some of the other people in the room were complaining about the weather here. “It’s so hot,” said one (it has been in the mid-80s, but windy and dry so it’s very comfortable). “Miserable weather,” said another.

At some point, one of them looked at me, and suddenly realized that I have just moved to the Bay Area from a place that is currently beastly hot, in the 90s and humid, a place which just had destructive rainstorms and flooding — that I have just moved here from a place that has blizzards and ice storms and hail and hurricanes and thunderstorms. “Well,” she said, “the weather here is not so bad compared to New England, is it.”

“No, the weather here is pretty good,” I said.

“The weather here is actually perfect for human beings,” someone said.

“But human beings just like to complain about the weather,” said someone else.

Thinking about church size

I’d kind of forgotten that there are lots of evening meetings when you’re a minister of a mid-sized church; small churches just don’t have that many meetings. Yesterday, I left home at 9 a.m. and got back at 11 p.m.; today I left home at 9 a.m. and here it is 9 p.m. and I am still at church.

This is one of the unspoken reasons why many ministers don’t want the membership of their small church to increase. They look at the ministers in mid-sized churches, they see that those mid-sized-church ministers typically attend three evening meetings a week, and they don’t like what they see.

This is one of the unspoken reasons why many church members don’t want their church to grow any larger; for there are many church members who prefer an informal organizational style, and don’t want the more formal organization required by a larger church, the type of organization that engenders a formal decision-making process requiring many evening meetings.

On the other hand, there are those of us who actually prefer more formal organizational structures. We also like evening meetings (in moderation: no more than three per week). And we like the increased diversity, the greater financial stability, and the additional programs that come with mid-sized and larger churches.

Both smaller churches and larger churches have their strengths and their weaknesses. It’s not that one is better than the other, they’re just different.

Seasons

I remember from the last time we lived in the San Francisco Bay area that there are two seasons here: winter, when most of the rain falls, and summer when very little or no rain falls. I feel that the terms “winter” and “summer” are misleading, though: “winter” comes from Old English, and the season it describes has little or no resemblance to winters in old England. I tend to think of the two seasons here as the green season — because when the rain falls, the plants start to grow, and the hills turn green — and the brown season — because after the rains stop, eventually the plants dry out, and the hills turn golden brown.

We are in the middle of the brown season now: the hills are brown, the soil is dry, the air feels dry. I was walking through a residential neighborhood a couple of days ago, and some of the home owners let their front yards turn brown: either they let their lawns dry up and turn brown, or they had something other than grass growing, or they just had bare ground or pea stone for their yards. But the majority of home owners feel the need to have bright green lawns year round. As I walked through this residential neighborhood, I couldn’t help thinking how odd it looked to have lush green lawns during the brown season. It would be as if New England home owners had snow-making machines, and tried to cover their front lawns with snow during the hottest days of August.

Arrival

After a certain amount of confusion, our Pod with all our belongings arrived this morning. We had a crew ready, and they unloaded everything quickly and cheerfully. In fact, the crew was so good, moving was actually fun — thanks a million, Dave, Emily, David, Mike, Mara, and Dick.

With all our belongings, our apartment feels a lot smaller than before. For a moment, we almost wished that we didn’t have all our belongings. We only wished that for a moment: it’s nice to have pots and pans, and clothes. But we continue to wish that we owned fewer possessions, and we are talking about what we can get rid of. I think I may be getting rid of some books — sixty boxes of books is too many books.