Context
My husband told me about part of this story today, where people are calling a grocery store in Newtown, Connecticut and offering to pay for people's groceries.

Commentary
To my everlasting shame, with all the internal and external debate I've engaged in about what caused the Newtown massacre and how we can prevent these tragedies in the future, it never occurred to me to offer personal help to the people there.

What did you see today?

I saw a stray dog

Context
As I was heading to Texarkana for Friends meeting today, I saw a dog running along the side of the road. After some internal debate, I pulled a u-turn and went to go look for it. I found the dog, but he ran away from me and seemed to be heading for a house a little ways off the road, so I gave up the chase.

Commentary
It was important to me to include the "internal debate" stuff in the Context, because I didn't want to go after this dog. Attending to stray dogs is a hassle. You often can't catch them, and when you do manage to get them in your car, you then have to decide what to do with them. Even if they have a collar with a current tag on, reaching the owners is sometimes a matter of several phone calls, and where does the dog stay in the interim?

No collar, no tag is even worse. Take the dog to the shelter? OK if it's open, but it often isn't, and even if it is, sometimes the people there suspect that you're dropping off your dog, not a stray, and give you a hard time. I used to work at the SPCA; I understand the instinct.

So why did I do something I didn't want to do? I think I know, but first I want to talk about some arguments I don't find compelling. You could say that I really did want to go after the dog, and that may be true, but as an explanation it's completely useless. If I can't even consciously access my own motivations and desires, there is little point in trying to analyze my actions. There's just this shadow self of mine that apparently does whatever it feels like.

Similarly, I find deterministic explanations of behavior problematic. By "deterministic" I mean both the religious idea of predestination and the scientific theory that brain chemistry controls everything. Despite their disparate backgrounds, these two ideas are remarkably similar in effect: they remove personal responsibility and self-actualization from the equation.

Also, it seems like determinism is both overly simple and overly complex. Simple in that it would answer every behavioral question the same way, either "God made me do it," or "My neurons made me do it." The complexity comes in when you look at that internal debate I mentioned earlier. It seems remarkably inefficient for either God or my brain to decide I should do go after a stray dog, then let me spend several seconds mulling the decision over. Why not just send me off right away?

So maybe you're thinking the reason I went after the dog was because even though I didn't want to, I thought it was the right thing to do. This is certainly closer to the truth, in that I do think stray dogs present an ethical problem. My husband will tell you that I grieve and pray over dead animals in the road, but for me, domesticated animals are a special case. At some point in our history as human beings we made agreements with dogs and cats that we would take care of them in return for some service. A stray dog indicates that we've dropped our end of the leash, if you take my meaning.

However, the reality is that I don't always go after every stray dog I see and even today, I didn't move heaven and earth to capture this one. So why did I perform this particular set of somewhat unusual actions today? Because I received a very specific call from God and (eventually) answered it. It's not predestination; it's a conversation with God about what I'm going to do. People look at me funny when I say that the reason I don't drink caffeine is because I had an argument with God about it and lost, but it's the truth!

In this case, the call was to go see if I could help the dog. Once it starting running away, I was released from the call. If you're not religious, you may prefer to think that my conscience smote me on this particular occasion, and that's fine. From my perspective, doing something I don't want to do seems so unlike me that it feels like an external presence. Ergo God.

"C'mon Lynn," you may be saying, "why would an omniscient God ask you to do something so pointless? Stop your trip, turn around, and not even catch the dog? What's up with that?"

I don't know, which is another reason I point the finger at an external God rather than my own internal mechanisms. This whole blog post has illustrated that I like to have good explanations for the things I do. Sometimes, it seems like God just says, "Nah, let's do this instead."

Which doesn't mean I can't impose an explanation after the fact, so here are are two possibilities:

1) Obedience is more important than results.

2) It made me blog about God, right?

What did you see today?

I heard myself use a Southernism

Context
A colleague of mine at the library was telling me that after cleaning files and books off her desk that had been there for a long time, she was surprised to see that there were a bunch of ink stains on the surface from when she'd been writing and smeared. I told her that never happened to me as I rarely use an "ink pen" for my job.

Commentary
My parents were Southerners, but I don't usually consider myself one. Over time, though, I've taken on some of the speech patterns of American South. For example, I can't tell you the last time I actually pronounced the "g" at the end of an "ing" verb. I used "y'all" long before I moved to Shreveport, because it cures the omission of a second person plural in formal English, and now that I'm here I also find myself saying things like "buggy" for "grocery cart." Apparently "ink pen" has joined the mix.

I found myself wondering today why people in the South add the word "ink" to "pen." Don't all pens have ink? Well, pig pens don't, but I don't think that's the issue. It comes back to an inherent problem with Southern English, a drawback to the drawl, if you will: there is pretty much no difference between the short "e" sound and the short "i" sound. This is usually not a big deal, as context will tell the listener the difference between "bliss" and "bless" and between "tin" and "ten." How often does someone ask you to lend them tin dollars, after all?

"Pin" and "pen" are different though, because they're often used in the same context. Picture me sitting at my desk in the I.T. department. I can't see my colleague in the next cubicle, so if she says, "I need a pin," I don't know if she's asking for something to write with or the password for a web page she's trying to access. The problem is not relieved by the natural tendency of people to make a word longer in order to be clear. If I ask my workmate to repeat herself, no matter what she wanted she's going to say, "a pee-ye-nuh." No help at all.

You may think I'm ragging on Southern speech, but I'm not. A true drawl is a lovely, mellifluous thing, greatly to be admired. If you've never heard one, you probably think the name "Lynn" consists of one syllable. Nuh-uh. My late mother-in-law, who was from East Texas, routinely drew it out to four. Remember up above, when I was talking about "short e" and "short i?" That's how I was taught to describe them when I was in grade school, but that was a long time ago and I wasn't in the South. I don't know what students are taught here, because there's no such thing as a short vowel sound. Shorter, maybe, but not short. And the shortest of them all is what is technically classified as a long vowel sound: the "i" in "fire." It's pronounced "ah." That means it's difficult to tell the difference between "fire" and "far," but again, context helps.

Nor do I think my perception that there is no distinction between the "e" and the "i" is because I'm not from 'round here (Yup, I use all kinds of Southernisms). I honestly don't think native-born Southerners can tell the difference either, because I've heard conversations between them that sound like the one described a couple of paragraphs ago. Apparently some time ago someone decided to resolve the problem by adding "ink" in front of the appropriate "pen," and the solution caught on. Ironically, the similar-sounding vowels have not become a part of my speech yet, but the workaround has. I guess I am now prepared to ramp up my drawl.

What did you hear today?

I saw a t-shirt

Context
I have a large amount of t-shirts. Since this is a wearable collection, I rotate them on a regular basis and usually wear whatever comes to the top of the pile. Today's selection was a shirt depicting Suicide Squid, the mascot for an old Usenet group named rec.arts.comics. You can find a picture of the shirt in question, plus a faux description of the character, here.

Commentary
Over the years I've become more aware of the sensitivities of others, so I've discarded some of my t-shirts that, while funny, could also be construed as insulting. Therefore, when I looked at the Suicide Squid this morning, with its depiction of seven methods of self-annihilation (It would be eight, but one of his tentacles is holding a knife while slitting the wrist[?] of another.), I thought about whether he should join his departed friends. After all, I can hear the reaction in my mind: "Suicide isn't funny!"

Actually, that's wrong. Anything, viewed from the proper perspective, is funny. In my opinion, you only have to look at a picture of an octopus sticking a knife in a toaster (C'mon, have you clicked on the link up in the Context yet?) to know that. Furthermore, although I take the pain that precedes a suicide attempt very seriously, I think poking some fun at the act itself might be beneficial.

It seems to me that one of the reasons some vulnerable populations like teenagers consider suicide is because it is serious. They think, "This, finally, is the thing that will make me worthy of people's attention." The movie Heathers, which takes on the unenviable task of making both suicide and homicide funny, shows this in a scene where a high school loser gets excoriated for trying to commit suicide, an activity which is apparently reserved for the cool kids.

Even Freddy Mercury took his potshots at the "that'll show 'em" aspect of suicide. He wrote a song for Queen that seemed like an effective deterrent to me when I was a teenager because it said this in a jaunty uptempo rhythm:

Don't try suicide; nobody's worth it.
Don't try suicide; nobody cares.
Don't try suicide; you're just gonna hate it.
Don't try suicide; nobody gives a damn!

In the end, that's why we make fun of dark subjects; it takes away a little bit of their power, their mystique. If wearing a t-shirt with a squid reading Kafka in order to off himself (Seriously, go look at the link!) reduces the allure of suicide even a little bit, my work is done.

What did you see today?

I saw a story about a touching gesture

Context
I was looking over the New Items List on my library's catalog when I found Eric LeGrand's Believe: my faith and the tackle that changed my life. LeGrand is paralyzed as the result of an injury he sustained while playing football for Rutgers University. The summary of the book mentions that earlier this year, LeGrand was signed to the roster of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers largely due to the efforts of the former Rutgers and current Tampa Bay coach, Greg Schiano.

Commentary
Up until today I would have told you I didn't like Greg Schiano. Earlier in the season, his first in the NFL, he told his players to knock down Eli Manning when the Giants went into what's called "the victory formation," ten guys huddled around the quarterback as he kneels on the ball in the closing seconds of a game. A very unflattering description of Schiano and the league-wide reaction to this legal, but not very sportsmanlike gesture can be found here. So it was very surprising to me to read about about this same man who many consider to be a classless bully deciding to extend the benefits of a NFL career, albeit briefly, to a guy who was never really going to have one.

There are 32 teams in the NFL. Because I was born in Michigan, I always root for the Lions and against whoever they're playing. However, that leaves 15 other games on most weeks that I want to choose a favorite in. Most of the times I make my choices pretty arbitrarily, focusing on one characteristic, good or bad, of the teams in question: Jay Cutler is whiny, Peyton Manning is brilliant, that sort of thing. So I had written off the Buccaneers because they had this badly behaved coach. It seemed like harmless fun to me, since I have no impact on Greg Schiano's actual life. It was just an opportunity for me to set up a straw man and knock him down, nothing to do with real life.

But what do I do with my newfound knowledge about Schiano, that he is in fact a normal human being who is capable of both great gestures and boneheaded ones? Should I now be rooting for the Buccaneers? Should I alternate weeks believing Schiano is a hero and a villain? Or should I just give up my love of quick and easy judgments, even about things that don't really matter? If I say "I don't know," I've kind of already made up my mind, haven't I?

What did you see today?

I saw a description of negotiations

Context
I'm reading The Social Life of Information by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid. This book contends that the belief that more information, especially in the form of the internet, will somehow solve all our problems is at least premature, if not hopelessly naive. I've just finished a section where the authors talk about the intricacies of negotiation, pointing out that human beings makes thousands of implicit negotiations every day, and that we only resort to rule-based decision making, the kind computers are really good at, when those fail. As an example, they point out that committees often have to make rules about how to communicate, like who can talk for how long, but groups of friends usually do not.

Commentary
The idea of rule-based decision making and negotiation got me to thinking about the rule of law. Patriotism is a challenging concept for me. I like being an American because I think we have a kick-ass constitution, not because of any loyalty to a geographic or cultural entity. Does the U.S. even have a culture? Our embrace of multiculturalism maybe, but I digress. Anyway, I like the rule of law in this country.

On the other hand, I'm a Quaker, and as a matter of practice, we abjure some of the things the Constitution prescribes. For example, Quakers don't vote when doing church business. In my experience, Quakers vote like mad in the national elections, but that's a separate issue. Anyway, in our meetings for worship with attention to business (We're a simple people, but we like the names of things to be painfully precise.), we make decisions by "sense of the meeting." This means we work together until we find an answer that resonates with everyone participating in the process, rather than voting, which produces winners and losers.

If you ask a dozen Quakers why we do things this way, there's a good chance you'll get at least ten different answers. Christian Quakers often believe that a collective answer is more likely to reflect the will of God. In my case, I specifically hark back to the wrong turn the children of Israel made when they told God they no longer wanted their disputes settled and armies led by the itinerant judges He raised up among them. They wanted a permanent hereditary king, like all the other cool nations had. The extra level of remove from the Lord did not work out well for them.

Quakers who are not explicitly Christian sometimes still invoke the mystical aspect of collective decision-making, even if the mystery is not attributed to a particular deity. Even non-Quakers sometimes adopt the "sense of the meeting" language to their secular business dealings, in the belief that consensus (or in the case of the International Monetary Fund pretending to have consensus) serves better than conflict when expecting people to work together.

So I like the rule of law, but I avoid using it whenever I can. Brown and Duguid point out computers can't manage the slight change-of-course negotiations people navigate with ease because these depend on shared values and trust, which machines can neither create nor maintain. And there's the rub: the moment we turn to the rule of law, which is the set "If you cross this line, these consequences will happen," way of looking at the world, we give up human connection in order to take a chance on "being right." Which one is really more valuable?

What did you see today?

I saw a complaint about carelessness

Context
A colleague at the library I work at sent me an e-mail asking if I would remind people how important it is to do proper data entry when registering patrons for library cards. I replied back both my apology that this would fall outside the scope of my job duties and my opinion that if just reminding people of the importance of a task was enough to ensure perfect execution of it, airplanes would never crash.

Commentary
I think there is a sweet spot where we do our best work on any given task. When we're first learning, we're very careful, but we make mistakes because we don't understand everything we're doing. Later on, when we understand both the procedures and the logic behind them really well, we think we can do the task with our eyes closed and the carelessness bugaboo emerges. Somewhere in between we probably produce outstanding work a couple of times.

I can see a couple of ways to fight this problem. One is cross-training, or at least, task variation. If we only do something once a month, rather than 20 times a day, there's the potential for it to seem a little bit unfamiliar each time we do it, maybe enough to make us work carefully. At the very least, we don't grow so resentful of the repetition that we switch off our brains. Balancing my checkbook is a pretty mindless task, but I don't do it often enough to be bored by it.

Automation is another solution. Machines are uniquely suited to repetitive tasks, even complex ones. What's great about computers these days is they can learn (mostly by trying different procedures and keeping only the ones that work), but they can't get bored. In my line of work, as in many others, there are people concerned about their jobs being turned over to computers. I always assure them that computers are only good for tasks that are too stupid for human beings, by which I mean too mindless to be satisfying for us. Maybe I'd get more leverage if I said "tasks that are too boring for human beings."

What did you see today?