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.