Books And Happiness

A few weeks ago, J helped me write short synopses of her five favorite books from last year for a post I did for Saffron Tree. I have blogged several times about my undiminished sense of wonderment in the American public library system. That is possibly the first thing I loved about this country and it continues to top the list.All the books I ever owned were hand me downs from relatives or friends who no longer wanted them or bought really cheap at second hand book-stores.

It was just not the done thing in my family to go off any buy books "randomly" as my mother would like to say. The first question she would ask if I wanted to buy one was "Will you read it a second time ?". If the answer was no, purchase was out of the question. While there was still such a thing as the USSR, every year there would be a Soviet book fair in my town and that was the time I could buy a few books. My parents allowed this "indulgence" mainly because they were so cheap. The thrill of bringing my books home to look them over, is unlike anything else I experienced in my childhood.

To this day, I put a lot of thought before actually buying a book but there is a huge assortment at home at any given time thanks to the bounty of the public library. Like me, J has come to depend almost on it entirely for her reading needs. The happy faces of the children crowded around an illustrated book in this article on the mission of Pratham Books made me count my blessings yet again - I tried to imagine the look on the faces of these kids if they too could have twenty or more books each of their choice and get to keep them for a couple of months only to get that many more new ones. Pratham is obviously doing an amazing job bringing books and therefore the joy of reading to children who otherwise may have been deprived of both.

Overshare

Some weeks ago, a woman tweeted about the death of her two year old and got a ton of grief from her followers instead of the emotional support she was possibly seeking. The comments on this story depict the wide range of positions people hold on the issue. The overwhelming consensus being that she was criminally negligent and should have been spending her time watching the child rather than tweeting. But what really upset folks was the fact she tweeted right after the crisis with a "please pray" message.

Social media etiquette is still in the early stages of evolution and people are still figuring out the role it plays in their lives. The very notion of privacy is in upheaval. We are in a world where one can have several thousand friends and followers on-line with whom they share (and frequently overshare) their lives with. Until this tragedy happened this woman would have been considered socially adept and well connected but it took a few minutes to change all that.

I know from my own experience (which is nothing nearly as difficult as this woman's who lost her two year old) that in difficult time, I have felt a compulsion to share too much. It did not bother me that I was saying things to strangers that I would have in another life never shared even with close family and friends.

There was so much bottled up inside, that I was bursting to tell - to get out in the open, be heard. It was a lot of delirious, repetitive rambling for the most part. I must have estranged a many friends in the process - there is only so many times anyone can hear you rehash the most painful event of your life. Even at that cost, it was helpful for me. The fever of anger and grief subsided over time and with it my tendency to talk too much and overshare.

Cleaning Brush or Mother

This news story about some orphaned hedgehogs adopting a cleaning brush as their mother is perfect for an illustrated children's book. If I had any skills at sketching cleaning brushes and hedgehogs I might have given it a shot on Storybird. Kids would love the cute factor but there is also a deeper lesson in love, loss and attachment. A chid's favorite stuffed animal or blanket is a lot like this cleaning brush. Children love to use things that belong to their mothers - it is a way for them to be close to her,  feel her presence when she is away.

Common Sense Challenge

Egregious is the only word that comes to mind reading this NYT story about Walmart and
H & M slashing their unsold clothes before throwing them away to make sure no one gets to use them. Forget about being a good corporate citizen or giving back to the community, this even flies in the face of common sense.

If they have no use for it and will trash clothes (that armies of underpaid, over-worked workers in third world sweat-shops had helped produce), it would seem logical that they would give it away to anyone who could use it. Clearly the solution is not nearly as obvious.

There is certain maliciousness about this thing - it is as if they don't care as much about the losses as they do about frustrating would-be free-loaders that refused to buy that stuff even at 90% mark-downs. The idea is perhaps to teach them a lesson on the consequences of not buying when they had a chance to. If they set such a precedent, penny pinching customers might wait it out until they can get their clothes for free from the dumpster. To that end, they cut off their nose to spite their face.

“The H & M thing was just ridiculous, not only clothing, but bags and bags of sturdy plastic hangers,” Ms. Magnus said. “I took a dozen of them. A girl can never have enough hangers.”

H &  M, which is based in Sweden, has an executive in charge of corporate responsibility who leads the company’s sustainability efforts. On its Web site, H&M reports that to save paper, it has shrunk its shipping labels.

Talk about left hand not knowing what the right is doing. Smaller shipping labels to be green while slashed clothing on their plastic hangers are being dumped in trash. Makes you wonder if corporations are not schizophrenic along with being psychopathic.

Uses Of Adversity

I have by now lost count of the Tiger Woods mistresses that keep coming out of the woodwork at a steady clip. It is hard enough to tell them apart anyway. Lately, there is nothing I can read on-line without being interrupted by news, satire, analysis and commentary of the early morning fire hydrant episode - because there is no schadenfreude quite like watching a celeb suddenly topple off their pedestal. It becomes a spectator sport and its not over until the fat lady sings.

But two things stood out of the crowd. One is a campaign by Accenture. The pop up ad where I saw this, had Woods squatting on the green, getting drenched in rain - a creature of circumstance weathering the physical and metaphysical storms of life if you will. The lesson learned from this whole episode per Accenture :

High performers turn periods of uncertainty to their advantage by fully integrating a risk-management programme, which serves not only as a defensive tactic but also as an offensive weapon. Accenture identifies steps that can help you use risk management for competitive advantage.

I won't even begin to parse all that in light on the fire hydrant related adversities the protagonist is facing at this time.

The other one was about the sky-rocketing sales of a physics book that was found in the car Woods was in at the time of the fire hydrant incident. It is not for nothing that Shakespeare spoke of sweetness in adversity :

Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

Spelling Bee

As the risk of resorting to a terrible cliche, desi kids winning the Spelling Bee has become as predictable as a cherry on a sundae. It is about yet another contest and yet another desi winner who wants to become a neuro-surgeon when they grow up. We seem to have a little system going there. Blogosphere has been buzzing with desis ruminating on the topic and I figured it would not hurt to thrown my two cents at it.

I don't fully get the point of the Spelling Bee but then I don't get the point of quiz contests or trivia challenges either. It is something desis apparently get and get really good as well. I can understand why I might enjoy watching a figure staking contest or a tennis match - there is deep admiration for the talent the contestants have and amazement at their proficiency. Both are very positive feelings. With a Spelling Bee, my initial reaction is one of concern for the kids who will not win - as a parent I wonder how they will cope with the disappointment after having worked so hard and come so far.

Once, I am over that and get into the groove of things, the contest is like a high stakes, high adrenalin reality show - except the contestants are really young children. If I believed in the concept of the Bee, then enjoying the show would be perfectly legitimate - I would be in awe of the ability of the kids. Since I do not, finding it entertaining is tinged with guilt - I have no right to derive any pleasure out the frenzied efforts of a bunch of tense, totally stressed out kids.

Brain Gym

Recently a friend and I were chatting about how irrelevant our education has been as far as the work we do for a living. When you consider the cost of acquiring the degrees we need to enter the job market, you have to wonder if the time and effort (and in many cases also a great deal of money) would not have been better spent learning vocational skills that we could have found some practical use of. For a lot of people, after a number of years in the workforce, their academic degree becomes more ornamental than functional.

Of course there is education that is worth acquiring simply because we want to broaden our horizons or have a passion for a certain subject and want to immerse ourselves in it. With those goals, it may be entirely acceptable to not find any "material" application of the learning - as would most likely be the case with some of the stranger courses offered by American universities.

The worst casualty of not being able to use or apply your education in the workplace is probably the stagnation of your mental faculties. At some point ,your paycheck becomes dependent on your speed and proficiency at a certain set of skills that rarely challenge you to apply knowledge in unusual ways let alone require you to learn more. It does not surprise me that the concept of a "brain-gym" is catching on - clearly a lot of people are not getting the mental exercise they need from the work they do for a living.