Author Archives: Sarah Shugars

The Accidental Admiral

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Today, I had the pleasure of attending a talk by James Stavridis, Dean of Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Previously, Dean Stavridis, a retired Admiral in the U.S. Navy, served as the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO.

So he’s kind of a big deal.

Dean Stavridis discussed a range of issues, including his book, The Accidental Admiral. As the name implies, the book traces his unexpected life journey.

So much of our lives are accidental, Stavridis mused as he described his rise to “Supreme Allied Commander of NATO” – a title which doesn’t sound like a role a real person would have.

Someone asked him how – before he found himself in a position of such power – he dealt with that sense of individual effort being futile in the face of such great challenges. How did he answer the question, what can I do when I’m just one person?

Stavridis responded with a Russian proverb – it’s better to light a candle than to curse the light.

One person can make a difference, he argued. But for one person to make a difference it takes collaboration. We each have the power to generate change, but to do so effectively, to do so in a good way, we need to work together.

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Prison Labor

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A new story emerged from Boston’s never-ending snow fall yesterday: first there was a call for people to help shovel the MBTA tracks at a rate of $30/hour. Not long after that, came a clarification: the offer was only open to union members.

Then, at last, an additional observation: state prison inmates were also clearing the tracks.

Presumably, with plenty of snow to go around, these inmates weren’t taking any union jobs, but there are still plenty of concerns with this approach.

For one thing, just how much are the prisoners getting paid for their work? The Department of Corrections hasn’t released those details, but with the median wage of state workers coming to  a meager 20 cents, I’m going to guess they weren’t paid very much.

I was really taken with the reaction to this news. The comments on Universal Hub offer a pretty diverse range of views, coupled with a somewhat hilarious attempt at citing various acquaintance as sources.

Some people were appalled, calling the use of prison inmates “slave labor.” Others were supportive, explaining that the program is voluntary and that it support re-entry.

And then, of course, there’s that old canard:

These are men who commented crimes and have lost the right to be part of society. In order to be invited back into society they’re being punished accordingly…When you commit crimes and are found guilty you give up some of your basic rights.

But how are we to evaluate these conflicting views?

Well, first, I think it’s important to realize this is not anything new. In 2011, Middlesex County inmates went out shoveling with little fanfare. Suffolk County has operated a Community Works Program for years.

That program has a particularly engaging description, reassuring citizens that inmates are under the constant watch of an armed Sheriff’s deputy and that the end result of the program is quite simply a win–win. The inmates give back a measure of the cost of their incarceration while learning the skills needed to conduct themselves as responsible, contributing members of society and the law enforcement community benefits by breaking the cycle of inmate recidivism.

There’s even a happy logo of people with shovels to be extra convincing.

To be honest, I know nothing about this program, and I don’t have enough information to make an informed decision. But I am skeptical.

Maybe shoveling snow in sub-zero temperatures is more enjoyable than being locked in cage, but that doesn’t seem to be saying much.

Perhaps we should go all Roman and have inmates engage in Gladiatorial combat. After all, that would be a way more interesting way to live. I’d bet we’d volunteers.

But these individual, probably well-intentioned, programs are not my problem. The problem is deeper than that.

Today’s Boston Globe reported that the the idea to use inmate labor “came after Mayor Marty Walsh’s office asked all city departments to more efficiently use their resources.”

Because inmates are resources.

Not people.

And that’s the problem. It’s not a problem specific to Boston or to Massachusetts, but to our whole, national, prison system.

The 13th amendment states:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States

As much as I disagree with the commenter who argued that criminals have lost the right to be part of society, who argued that punishment is the only atonement for their sins, that’s really what this issue comes down to.

I don’t know much about people in prison, but I do know this: they are people.

They aren’t resources to be used efficiently. They aren’t three fifths of a person. They are people.

Living, breathing, feeling, people.

Regardless of their crimes, regardless of their wrongs, regardless of what sins we may see upon their soul – perhaps it’s time we started treating them like that:

Like people.

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Modern Phrases of a Living Language

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I tend to be somewhat old fashioned when it comes to language. I like archaic terms and am slow to pick up the hottest trends.

I have a general dislike of portmanteaus – when I’m not traveling for a vacation, I always correct people who feel comfortable calling that practice a staycation. I won’t use that word.

But I also have a deep appreciation of English as a living language. It is always growing and evolving and changing, and that is wonderful.

Words that are coined spontaneously go on to serve a valuable role in our ability to express ourselves.

Phrases that were once trendy are still appropriate to bust out on particular occasions. I’m never distraught to hear something described as the bee’s knees.

So I’m always interested to see what words and phrases stick with me. And I wonder which ones will survive time. I hope that in 80 years no one even remembers that amazeballs was even a thing.

Lately, I’ve been gravitating toward the half sentences which have emerged as popular.

Maybe it’s because there is 6 feet of snow on the ground, but, I can’t even -

I love that expression. I can’t even.

It so perfectly captures that overwhelmed feeling of confusion coupled with revolution.

I don’t think there was a good expression for that before.

I’m also a fan of phrases such as: no, but really and wait, but, what?

I wouldn’t have guessed those three words would make such a good expression, but it’s a welcome replacement to hold the phone or shut the front door. The more brash version of that former expression is fine with me, but I’d not use it here.

So I wonder if these half-phrases, these sentences which grammatically mean nothing but are filled with cultural context, will survive.

Maybe they will, maybe they won’t, but one things for sure – it’s wonderful to be working with a living language.

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Transit and Politics

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The big news yesterday was that MBTA general manager Beverly Scott resigned. Her resignation came after the T shut down train service for a day following record breaking snow fall. A day on which she held a “barn burner of a press conference” in which she defended the T.

Now, for those of you not from Boston, a little history.

The T is in a lot of debt. About $9 billion in debt, including interest.

Now, that doesn’t just come from poor book keeping. The state’s Central Artery Project – eg, “the Big Dig” – focused on improving highway transit, most notably rerouting 93 and putting part of it underground. The highway was falling apart and not able to support the volume of traffic.

What does this have to do with the MBTA? Well, as part of the Big Dig, the state is legally obligated to provide certain environmental justice mitigation. That is, if you’re going to make it possible for more cars to be on the road, you’re obligated to make improvements which mitigate the environmental impact. And not just because we’re all going to die from global warming, but because living near highways is actually really bad for your health.

So, the state was obligated to make transit improvements. And in 2000, Massachusetts passed $3.8 billion in debt from transit improvements off to the MBTA, granted them 1 percent of the revenue from the state’s 5 percent sales tax, wished them well and told them to balance their book.

That didn’t work.

Fast forward to December 2012 and Beverly Scott starts as General Manager. She inherits the oldest transit system in the country and the most indebted transit system in the country.

Frankly, I don’t know what made her take the job in the first place – there’s no single person capable of “turning the T around.”

So I’m not surprised that with nearly “a Gronk” of snow – that’s over six feet – the system had to shut down to pull itself together.

But Scott’s resignation in the wake of the closure wasn’t all together surprising. As Peter Kadzis put it the day before her resignation, “My gut tells me this is more about ritual than politics. The ritual of offering a sacrifice, in the form of Scott, in the name of moving forward.”

So that’s how we’re managing our public transit system now. Ritual sacrifice.

And while Kadzis says it’s not about politics, it seems to me that it’s all about politics.

If it was a sacrifice, it was a political sacrifice. It may not have been driven by a Democrat v. Republican showdown, but it was about human and community interaction in the public sphere. It was all about politics.

It probably didn’t help matters that Scott was appointed by a Democratic Governor and that the Republican Governor who know holds office was part of the administration that saddled the T with the debt in the first place. But more fundamentally, it was about a need to blame someone, to have someone become the embodiment of all that went wrong.

It’s like a slightly less disturbing version of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery.

Personally, I liked Scott. I thought she was on fire in her press conference and I was impressed that she was so bold in explaining the T’s problematic history. But regardless of how you feel about her, politics seems like a poor way to manage our transit.

As Beverly Scott said in that final press conference:

If there is a silver lining, please can we be talking about what are the long-term …yes, the T needs to be efficient, it needs to push itself, but this is not just about cutting costs.  You can cut every cost you wanted over here and that is not going to wind up taking the place for what has to be systemic, planned, serious, bold reinvestment in terms of this doggone transportation system. Not just to wind up keeping it where it is, but to wind up making it be what it can absolutely be in terms of being a modern, top-notch, serving-with-pride transportation system.

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Frontiers 2015 – Call for Panelists!

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Alumni of the Summer Institute for Civic Studies are organizing a few of the panels for Frontiers of Democracy 2015. We are seeking panelists to help shape engaging sessions on the following topics:

Frontiers will take place in Boston on June 25-27 and all panelists must register for the conference. To be considered for one of these panels please complete this form by Friday, February 20: activecitizen.tufts.edu/civic-studies/frontiers/call/

Whether you come as panelist or not, you should definitely check out Frontiers. As the framing statement on the website explains:

While powerful forces work against justice and civil society around the world, committed and innovative people strive to understand and improve citizens’ engagement with government, with community, and with each other. Every year, Frontiers of Democracy convenes some of these practitioners and scholars for organized discussions and informal interactions. Topics include deliberative democracy, civil and human rights, social justice, community organizing and development, civic learning and political engagement, the role of higher education in democracy, Civic Studies, media reform and citizen media production, civic technology, civic environmentalism, and common pool resource management. Devoted to new issues and innovative solutions, this conference is truly at the frontiers of democracy.

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You Can’t Will Yourself a Better Life

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Years ago, I read this mediocre tween novel about a group of people who enslaved another group of people on a frost planet or something. The privileged group lived in luxury while the oppressed group slaved away in ice mines.

I’m not sure why they were mining ice, but the result was this group of people was always cold. Not just chilly, but perpetually on the verge of freezing to death.

This made them easy to oppress. Not only did the ruling group have the power to quash any rebellion, but the enslaved group was so physically devastated as to be hardly able to rouse a resistance in the first place.

In the end – spoiler alert, but don’t read this book anyway – the oppressed group rallied the power do fight for and achieve equality. The catalyst which allowed them to achieve this momentous feat was when our hero discovered the power was in her all the time.

She and her people could be warm, she discovered. All they had to do was think warm thoughts.

No, seriously. The solution to these people being enslaved for generations was for them to visualize images of fire. Problem solved.

Even knowing this was a fantasy novel, that was always a little much suspension of disbelief for me.

You can’t will yourself to be warm.

In fact, feeling warm in a cold environment is one of the warning signs for frostbite, but I suppose it could also mean your ready to throw off the shackles of oppression.

It’s a nice story. It’s a nice idea that all you need to do is find your inner power and believe in yourself. I believe there’s a story like that about a girl with “magic” ballet shoes. It turns out she could dance beautifully the whole time – the “magic” shoes just helped her believe.

It’s a nice story. But it IS a story. And it is, in fact, a dangerous story.

In the short story American Hijiki, Akiyuki Nosaka recounts his moments from his childhood in post-war Japan. The work gets its name from his experience of an American airdrop of what his family took to be Hijiki – a type of seaweed. They were confused when they tried to eat it, though – as it turns out, it was tea.

But there’s another parable in there which seems relevant. After the war ended, Americans generously air-dropped aid packages Japanese families, who were starving since all their fields had been destroyed. They had been defeated, they had been humiliated, and they had no food to survive. But Americans dropped aid packages.

For weeks at a time they dropped nothing but bubble gum.

They dropped bubble gum to feed these starving souls.

And that, Nosaka says, is when he learned: you can’t get full from bubble gum.

And don’t think he didn’t try. Nosaka details different ways they tried to prepare the gum. Ways they tried to squeeze out the flavor or use the sticks to quell their empty stomachs. But nothing they did helped.

Because you can’t get full from bubble gum.

Just like you can’t warm yourself by thinking about it and you can’t will yourself a better life if you try.

Yes, individuals have agency. They have the capacity to make good choices and bad, and a lot can be changed by a person’s will and resolve. But at the end of the day, context is everything.

No matter how hard you try, you can’t get full on bubble gum.

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Writing Processes

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I’m always curious what people’s writing processes are like.

Personally, I tend to write in my head. When I was in school, this was my primary approach to writing papers. I wasn’t procrastinating, per se, but rather than writing in the traditional sense, I’d spend spare minutes here and there mulling over the topic, outlining ideas, and mentally writing whole sections.

Then, eventually, I would just sit down and write it.

Not that I would get it right on the first take – my editing process has always been a bit messier. I use the page as a canvass. I have to be careful to clean up the bits of text I’ve left drifting at the end of a document like flotsam. Spare words, phrases, perhaps even whole paragraphs of text that I discarded as I went.

Those are the processes that have generally worked for me, but I’ve also gotten the sense that’s not how other people write.

It’s not something people talk about a lot, though, so I really have no idea.

For me, writing just always felt like the most natural way to express myself. Talking is too fast, too impulsive. It doesn’t allow for time to really think and organize one’s thought. It just kind of comes out all at once, and typically comes out messy.

So I’m slow to speak up, but I can write a storm.

I imagine that for people who favor the spoken word writing is more difficult, but I have no idea. I don’t know what other approaches there are or what other approaches work for people.

I only know that the process of writing makes me thinks of the words Stephen Sondheim used to describe the process of Georges Seurat:

White. A blank page, or canvas. The challenge: bring order to the whole. Through design. Composition. Balance. Light. And harmony…

White. A blank page, or canvas. His favorite.
So many possibilities.

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Gender and Grammar

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I generally feel rather strongly about using correct grammar. I suppose I ought to as a communications professional. But there are a few rules which I continue to break no many how many times I’ve been corrected.

I almost wish I’d kept a running tally, for example, of the number of times I’ve been marked down for noun/pronoun disagreement. That is, for writing sentences such as:

Did your child get their vaccine?

That’s incorrect, you see, because the child is singular while “their” is plural. You could ask about children getting their vaccine, but if your talking to a person with one child, that is not an optimal solution.

Traditionally, the proper approach was to always use “he” when a singular gender was unknown.

But, as others have noted this approach is generally considered “outdated and sexist.” An unknown person isn’t always male, after all.

So then came the so-called gender-neutral solutions:

Did your child get his or her vaccine?

Or, if you’d like to be a little more edgy, you can replace the default “he” to a default “she”:

From each, according to her abilities.

Those were the grammatical suggestions I received growing up, but neither ever seemed quite satisfactory.

“He or she” is just clunky. If you don’t know the gender of the person you are talking about, nobody cares enough for you to spend that much time on it.

Using a default “she” is delightfully subversive, but I personally find it rather stale. It seems to typically be used by men who are trying too hard to prove they’re feminists. That use may have its place, but is generally unhelpful to me.

And, of course, there’s a bigger problem to these solutions: both reinforce a gender binary. Are “his” and “hers” the only gender options?

English doesn’t offer much in the way of genderless nouns, as you might guess from the fact that they would more properly be called “neuter” nouns.

Did your child get its vaccine?

Well, okay, I might say that, but only because I am cold-hearted and childless.

From each, according to its abilities.

Better get ready for the Marxist robot take over.

Some have advocated for the use of newer pronouns, such as ze and xe. Call me old fashion, but I just prefer the simple they.

And better yet, there’s a now a term for this. I haven’t been suffering from noun/pronoun disagreement after all – I’ve just been using the singular they.

This may seem all neither here nor there, but words matter. Words are important.

So I was delighted to see the New York Times recently profile students at the University of Vermont – where the university allows students “to select their own identity — a new first name, regardless of whether they’ve legally changed it, as well as a chosen pronoun — and records these details in the campuswide information system so that professors have the correct terminology at their fingertips.”

Of course, this doesn’t stop the times from trotting out tired tropes of gender norms – saying one student “was born female, has a gentle disposition, and certainly appears feminine.”

But, I suppose, change happens bit by bit. It changes through big movements and upheaval, but it also changes through words and grammar. And so I stand by my grammatical standard:

Regardless of a person’s gender, they can go by any pronoun they want.

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Langston Hughes

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This past weekend was Langston Hughes’ 113th Birthday, a fact which was commemorated in a Google doodle.

A prolific and powerful writer, Hughes wrote in many forms – poetry, plays, fiction and non-fiction.

All his work is remarkable, but I’ve always been particularly taken with his short poems – his ability to express so much with so little. Take, for example, Winter Moon:

How thin and sharp is the moon tonight!
How thin and sharp and ghostly white
Is the slim curved crook of the moon tonight!

But, of course, the real heart of his work was around social and racial justice. Hughes has plenty of works which tackle these issues outright – the 1947 ballad Freedom Train, for example.

And yet, there are few works I found as powerful, as poignant, as Lanston Hughes’ simple note, For Selma:

In places like
Selma, Alabama,
Kids say,
    In places like
    Chicago and New York…
In places like
Chicago and New York
Kids say,
    In places like
    London and Paris…
In places like
London and Paris
Kids say,
    In places like
    Chicago and New York…

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Questions for Murakami

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With all the snow, I nearly forgot that Haruki Murakami, who is arguably my favorite living author, is currently receiving questions through a special website, Murakami-san no Tokoro (Mr. Murakami’s Place).

I first ran across Murakami’s writing nearly 15 years ago when I read Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World for a Japanese literature class. I was intrigued just by the title and, while I often regret that I haven’t gone back to re-read it, it remains one of my favorite works to this day.

His genre is metaphysical fiction.

His characters wonder through life, listening to jazz, talking with cats, and hollowly searching for connection in an isolated world. Some are moved to search for meaning while others are resigned to knowing there is none.

His stories remind me of Vonnegut, though his style is quite different.

When I saw that he was accepting questions from the public, I rather thought I ought to submit something.

I’m not one to get star-struck – I generally disdain contact with celebrities who are unlikely to remember my existence – but this is, perhaps, too rare an opportunity to pass up.

But then, of course, there’s the question of just what to ask him. I’d like to go back and re-read Hard-Boiled Wonderland, to re-read Kafka on the Shore, or to re-read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Perhaps those pages would inspire the perfect question to ask.

And while I’d like to re-read those books someday, I’ll likely not re-read them today. So, I suppose instead I’ll just ask the question that all his books see to answer:

Why live in a meaningless world?

And this question isn’t merely one of being – I mean live here in its finest sense.

Why seek agency and autonomy, why live life to the fullest – and how do you live life to the fullest in a world that is ultimately, tragically, beautifully, meaningless?

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