VIEWPOINTS
Saturday, January 12, 2019
East Oregonian
A5
Set for the dark weeks still ahead
I
hope you got a book for Christ-
The front page of “Razor Girl” — the
mas. True, seed catalogs will get you
one where the author insists, “This is a
through January, but books are even
work of fiction” — has already made me
better.
laugh out loud. “However,” Hiassen con-
tinues, “true events in South Florida pro-
If you lived in Iceland, you would
vided the lurid material for certain strands
almost certainly have received books as
of this novel, beginning with the open-
a gift. Julabokaflod, they call it — the
ing scene. The author also wishes he’d
“Christmas Book Flood.” In late Septem-
ber the Iceland Publishers Association puts
dreamed up the part about the giant Gam-
bian pouched rats, but he didn’t. Those
a free catalog of that year’s books — the
suckers are real.”
Bokatidindi — in every
But it’s Ursula’s words
mailbox, and the buy-
I’M HOPING WE
ing rush is on. Icelanders
I’m looking forward to
open their gifts on Christ-
the most. My bookshelves
CAN BRING BACK
mas Eve and then every-
already hold many volumes
MOLLY GLOSS
one tucks into bed with a
of her essays and poems,
SOON. SHE’S
new book.
her translation of Lao Tsu’s
They’ve been doing
“Tao Te Ching,” and her
MUCH-LOVED FOR
this since World War II,
blog posts collected in “No
HER NOVELS SET
when currency restric-
Time to Spare.” But unlike
HERE IN EASTERN
tions on imports were
the entire rest of the read-
OREGON
ing world, it seems, I came
more lenient for paper
late to her fantasy and sci-
than for other gift items.
ence fiction. There’s no
And Icelanders recog-
nize a good thing when they see one. Their
excuse for this: I had already shared “The
horses, for example. Progress toward
Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” with
equality for women, sparked by the annual
students and showed them the film made
October 24 “Women’s Day Off” tradition
from “The Lathe of Heaven.” Finally I
that began in 1975. They even open their
opened “The Left Hand of Darkness”
doors to refugees.
and then “Always Coming Home” …
Luckily, I did get books for Christmas.
and, well, I should have known her sci-fi
A lovely two-volume set of Ursula K. Le
wouldn’t be about robots and laser guns.
Guin’s favorite short stories and novel-
The good news is, I get to hear her
las, and on the lighter side, Carl Hiassen’s
voice again in these collected works. Now,
“Razor Girl.” So along with books from
when I miss that voice so much. And one
the library and books shared by friends,
more confession: yesterday I ordered the
I’m set for the dark weeks still ahead.
new “Earthsea Collection.” All five books
Behold, the gadfly
gadfly is a persistent irritating critic, a provocative stim-
ulus, a goad, a blighter, a pesterer and resident irritant.
Or, as Robb Corbett, Pendleton’s city manager once
said, “Tom, you’re a both lightning rod and a civic treasure.”
We gadflies are outliers, self-appointed, carry a license to
offend, and we don’t go away until our work is done. In my
friend Ron Gross’ book, “Socrates’ Way,” (Putnam, 2002) he
tells how Socrates used the metaphor of the
gadfly to dramatize the need for truth telling.
Only the constant bites of the gadfly keeps
the state alert enough to avoid disastrous
mistakes by those in power. Socrates wrote:
“If you kill me you will not easily find a
successor to me, who, if I may use a figure
of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to the
state by God. The state is a great and noble
T om
steed who is tardy in his motions owing
H eberT
to his very size, and requires to be stirred
COMMENT
into life. I am that gadfly which God has
attached to the state and all day long and
in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and per-
suading and reproaching you. You will not easily find another
like me, and therefore I would advise you to spare me.”
They didn’t, he took the hemlock, and Athens soon com-
pleted its descent into ruin.
Examples of this gadfly at work: First, I came to Pendleton
at the request of the CTUIR government to establish a tribal
horse program for young Indians. I failed.
For 20 years I have worked diligently to bring cowgirls
back to the Pendleton Round-Up in rough stock, riding saddle
broncs. Failed so far.
I worked hard to get a cowgirl rodeo movie made here in
Pendleton. Failed.
I also failed at helping to establish a permanent tribal cattle
operation, Indian Country Livestock, LLC. It was too fragile to
last. It collapsed in 2010.
One day I realized that the Rivoli Theatre was a potential
boon to downtown Pendleton. After putting it on Pendleton’s
to-do list, with good leadership it has taken off and will be
open fairly soon.
Another initiative I kick-started in 2015 was an outside
professional assessment of several local museums that have
almost zero door counts. If they attracted visitors — were a
marketable whole — our fair city would be stronger. But as of
now, visitors learn virtually nothing in our museums. Which is
why they fail. Failed again.
In these troubled times there are plenty of reasons to worry
today about the state of the American mind, as well as the state
of the nation. Speech is not as free; gadflies are not as wel-
come; inquiry is dictated as much by the availability of funding
as it is by the instincts of curiosity, and funding itself is often
short. But let’s start 2019 on a happier note.
Remember this from Dave Tovey, as I quoted in a July 2012
Confederated Umatilla Journal column? “Tom, you are a val-
ued community member and achieved ‘institution’ status! I
was taught early on that show me someone in Indian Coun-
try that no one hates and I’ll show you someone that hasn’t
accomplished or tried anything.”
Of course, beyond a similar healthy dose of skepticism
about my own fault-filled character, any kinship to Socrates is
absurd. This is demonstrated by my ignorance of the Socratic
Method, “To solve a problem, it would be broken down into a
series of questions, the answers to which gradually distill the
answer a person would seek.”
When’s the last time Hebert solved a problem with ques-
tions? He’s too busy talking.
Tom Hebert is a writer, public policy consultant and East
Oregonian columnist.
A
in one volume. With lovely illustrations.
Even if you didn’t get a book for
Christmas, you can do this too. Start your
own Book Flood! Who knows where this
could end?
One place to find good books is at
Pendleton Center for the Arts First Draft
Writers’ Series, where you hear the writers
read and then decide which book you can’t
go home without. Kisha Lewellyn Schle-
gel, who teaches creative writing at Whit-
man, will be the featured writer next week
— Thursday, January 17 at 7 p.m. She’ll
bring her prize-winning essay collection
“Fear Icons.”
The third Thursday in February will
bring us a mother-daughter duo, Bar-
bara and Monica Drake. Barbara’s new
poetry collection “The Road to Lilac Hill:
Poems of Time, Place, and Memory” is
inspired by her life on a small farm in
Yamhill County; Monica, who teaches at
Northwest College of Art, will bring nov-
els, the award-winning “Clown Girl” and
“The Stud Book.” In March, Peter Walker,
who teaches geography at the University
of Oregon, will be here with his “Sage-
brush Collaboration: How Harney County
Defeated the Takeover of the Malheur
Wildlife Refuge.”
And I’m hoping we can bring back
Molly Gloss soon. She’s much-loved for
her novels set here in Eastern Oregon —
“The Jump-Off Creek,” “The Hearts of
Horses,” and “Falling From Horses” —
but she’s also an award-winning science
fiction / fantasy writer, and three books
B ette H usted
FROM HERE TO ANYWHERE
that fit into that category are being re-is-
sued by Simon & Schuster’s Saga Press.
“Outside the Gates,” “The Dazzle of Day,”
“Wild Life.” And most exciting to me, a
new book: “Unforeseen,” a collection of
short fiction.
So: Christmas all year round? You
decide.
Bette Husted is a writer and a student
of T’ai Chi and the natural world. She
lives in Pendleton.
Give meditation a chance
By FARHAD MANJOO
New York Times
B
ecause I live in Northern
California, where this sort
of thing is required by local
ordinance, I spent New Year’s Day
at a meditation center, surrounded
by hundreds of wealthy, well-mean-
ing, Patagonia-clad white people
seeking to restore order and bal-
ance to their tech-besotted lives.
In the past, I might have mocked
such proceedings, but lately I’ve
grown fond of performative sin-
cerity in the service of digital bal-
ance. It’s the people who haven’t
resigned themselves to meditation
retreats who now make me most
nervous, actually.
Which brings me to my point:
It’s 2019. Why haven’t you started
meditating, already? Why hasn’t
everyone?
I’ve been a technology journalist
for nearly 20 years and a tech dev-
otee even longer. Over that time,
I’ve been obsessed with how the
digital experience scrambles how
we make sense of the real world.
Technology may have liber-
ated us from the old gatekeep-
ers, but it also created a culture of
choose-your-own-fact niches, ele-
vated conspiracy thinking to the
center of public consciousness and
brought the incessant nightmare of
high-school-clique drama to every
human endeavor.
It also skewed our experience
of daily reality. Objectively, the
world today is better than ever, but
the digital world inevitably makes
everyone feel worse. It isn’t just
the substance of daily news that
unmoors you, but also the speed
and volume and oversaturated fak-
ery of it all.
A few years ago, I began to fear
that the caustic mechanisms of the
internet were eating away at my
brain, turning me into an embit-
tered, distracted, reflexively cynical
churl. Since then, I’ve done every-
thing I can to detox. I consulted
app blockers and screen-time mon-
itors to keep me offline. I even got
my news from print newspapers to
experience a slower, more deliber-
ate presentation of media.
But there are limits to the sup-
posedly life-changing magic of
going offline. Smartphones are as
central to the economy as cars and
credit cards, and a lot of people
have little meaningful opportunity
to quit.
EO Media Group, File
Yoga instructor Tania Wildbill demonstrates a yoga pose called thread the
needle to a 2009 class in Pendleton.
And the “offline” world is now
ruled by what happens online.
Escape is impossible. Quips on
Twitter are indirectly programming
cable news, and whatever lengths
you might go to to shield your kid
from the dark powers of phones,
her social life will still rise and fall
according to the inscrutable dynam-
ics of Instagram and Fortnite.
And so, to survive the brain-dis-
solving internet, I turned to
meditation.
Don’t roll your eyes. You’ve
heard about the benefits of mind-
fulness before. Meditation has been
rising up the ladder of West Coast
wellness fads for several years and
is now firmly in the zeitgeist.
It’s the subject of countless
books, podcasts, conferences, a
million-dollar app war. It’s extolled
by CEOs and entertainers and
even taught in my kids’ elementary
school (again, it’s Northern Cali-
fornia). The fad is backed by reams
of scientific research showing the
benefits of mindfulness for your
physical and mental health — how
even short-term stints improve your
attention span and your ability to
focus, your memory and other cog-
nitive functions.
I knew all of this when I first
began meditating a year ago, but I
was still surprised at how the prac-
tice altered my relationship with
the digital world. At first, it wasn’t
easy: After decades of swimming in
the frenetic digital waters, I found
that my mind was often too scram-
bled to accommodate much focus.
Sitting calmly, quietly and attempt-
ing to sharpen my thoughts on the
present moment was excruciating.
For a while, I flitted among several
meditation books and apps, trying
different ways to be mindful with-
out pain.
Then, about four months ago,
I brute-forced it: I made medita-
tion part of my morning routine and
made myself stick with it. I started
with 10 minutes a day, then built
up to 15, 20, then 30. Eventually,
something clicked, and the bene-
fits became noticeable, and then
remarkable.
The best way I can describe the
effect is to liken it to a software
upgrade for my brain — an update
designed to guard against the terri-
ble way the online world takes over
your time and your mind.
Now, even without app block-
ers, I can stay away from mindless
online haunts without worrying that
I’m missing out. I can better distin-
guish what’s important from what’s
trivial, and I’m more gracious and
empathetic with others online. As
far as I know, people are still wrong
on the internet, but, amazingly, I
don’t really care anymore.
I can anticipate your excuses.
First, this is all very old news:
As Buddhists have known for-
ever, meditation is really good for
you, and The New York Times‘ new
op-ed columnist is on it. And sec-
ond, it’s all a bit too woo-woo — it
sounds promising, but you’re not
one to go full Goop.
Still, I hope you give it a try. I
hope everyone does. I’m not prom-
ising meditation will fix everything
about how the internet has ruined
you.
But what if it does?
Farhad Manjoo became a col-
umnist for the New York Times in
2018.