GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Notes

  • Natto, 2020

    Over the past year, I’ve started making natto, the sticky, pungent soybean fermentation. The process is extended but fairly simple:

    • Soak the beans for twelve or more hours
    • Steam it in the Instapot with high pressure for 4 hours
    • Inoculate the beans with with a spoonful of older beans
    • Incubate it for 24 hours in a toaster oven set on warm (at around 100 degrees Farenheit).

    I started with a commercial natto product and have been backslopping it for multiple generations. However, I’ve hit a couple weak batches.

    These modern industrial mono-culture products are not considered particularly resilient, so maybe it’s time to start anew. However, I may also have been at fault. After an extended good run, I might have gotten sloppy and pushed my luck, using a smaller inoculating batch or not being vigilant during this process.

    Even though my general philosophy has always been to push for “good enough”, there are still limits on how lackadaisical I can treat the process, since natto is not as forgiving as sourdough.

    A sour batch (while still edible) invariably feels like a soul crushing disappointment, but I need to remind myself that I learn more from failure. One doesn’t find the limits via easy success. Boundaries are discovered by going awry.

  • Flight Volume 2, Kazu Kibuishi (editor), 2007

    I bought this book so long ago, I checked the copyright to see if I had bought it before leaving California. From the date, it was published a couple years after my wife and I had started dating, so it seems that my memory of buying it in a comic shop in Texas might be accurate.

    Last week, I noticed it in the garage on top of my big row of boxed up books, waiting for a permanent home with bookshelves. My daughter saw me flipping through it and wanted to read it.

    It was time. I wrapped it up and gave it to her as a birthday present last week.

    The girl went so quickly from being a concept, through infancy and toddlerhood, and is now blasting through books and graphic novels with abandon.

    It goes fast. Even her prehistory can’t keep up with her.

  • Aging Well, George E. Valliant, 2002

    Last night I had a dream. I led some folks around on a wild foot chase around the neighborhood and then snuck into the office, pretending nothing had happened. To my chagrin, a police officer walked in soon after. Even though I didn’t hurt anyone, someone had slipped and broke their ribs during the run around.

    For goodness sake, what’s a more certain sign of aging than having your subconscious punish you for second order effects from your dream-state actions? Maybe its a budding sign of a grown up wisdom?

    The book itself is a pretty easy read. It’s a more or less heartwarming collection of stories. Even though your start isn’t as important as it may seem, there are definitely good and bad outcomes at the end.

    The main takeaways are to avoid alcohol and smoking, practice good mental acceptance techniques, and create a good network around you. Honestly, this isn’t much different from what everyone tells their kids. Even so, it’s nice to have a few longitudinal studies to lend common sense the authority of science.

    Other Takeaways

    There were three other key takeaways that I think are worth lifting straight out of the book.

    George Valliant identifies six adult life tasks:

    1. Identity: Finding a sense of one’s self, values, etc., separate from your parents.
    2. Intimacy: Finding a life partner.
    3. Career Consolidation: More than a job, this is one’s work.
    4. Generativity: Guiding the next generation, community building.
    5. Keeper of Meaning: Conservation and preservation of the culture and institution, beyond individuals.
    6. Integrity: Facing death and life at the end.

    Valliant also lists key “adaptive coping mechanisms” that will help you navigate the vagaries of life. Maladaptive ones are projection, passive aggression, dissociation, acting out and fantasy. There are also mature defenses:

    Such virtues include doing as one would be done by (altruism); artistic creation to resolve conflict and spinning straw into gold (sublimation); a stiff upper lip (suppression); and the ability not to take oneself too seriously (humor).

    page 64

    And finally, Valliant closes his book with a quote from E. B. White, via a valedictory address by Timothy Coggeshall.

    Be a true friend.

    Do the right thing.

    Enjoy the glory of everything.

    page 325

  • Ubongo!, Grzegorz Rejchtman, 2003

    Yeah, yeah, its a great game. It’s something that even our 6 year old plays well. It doesn’t surprise me that this game has sold 5 million copies.

    My one quibble with the game is the scoring system. Clearly it’s an issue because the publisher changed it between the original release to the copy we just bought.

    The original scoring system with the jockeying pawns looks a bit fussy, so I suspect that randomly pulling scoring gems from a bag is a better fit for the light filler mood of this game.

    But better doesn’t mean correct.

    I’m not the only one who is uncertain about the new scoring system. Otherwise the rules wouldn’t have included a variant where one merely earns set points for each place you finish.

    I get the conundrum. Some puzzles are just harder than others. So there is already some randomness backed into the game, even if skill matters in the aggregate.

    Which brings up the interesting design question, does adding randomness on top of randomness improve the game? Is it better to stack unfairness upon unfairness?

    I don’t know, but I suspect we’re heading into philosophical territory about life, the universe, and everything.

    I’ll give it 42 stars.

  • Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges, 1962

    I was originally introduced to Borges via his short stories while in college. Twenty years later I finally got around to reading the essays and parables.

    Wow. Just as with his stories, these pieces are tight, dense, and well worth reading. Then again, that was pretty obvious – all the adulation that could be written has already been written. Hell, I couldn’t write a collection of hosannas more effusive than the introduction at the start of this anthology.

    So let’s talk about the librarian and the Librarian.

    One is lionized as a god from South America, the blind protagonist in the rose. And the other is a teacher who makes my daughter excited to live with books. In this time of distance learning in pandemic, where I am an ever present spectator of my girl’s education, I now know why my daughter loves her school librarian.

    Ms. Douglas brings the heat. She can control a room even over a video call, with an infectious generous energy every Friday afternoon wrangling first graders for an hour. It is a mundane display of exceptional skill.

    As in my profession, there are the great and the Great.

    The masters of our universe are revered in legend, but we ought to praise the vast cohort who have quietly mastered their craft, spreading the love to the next generation.

  • Bread, 27 Jan 2021

    Today’s loaf was a case of failing upwards.

    I overproofed my dough in the toaster oven. Maybe because I set the warming function too high and prematurely killed my leaven. The loaf collapsed in the bake.

    No matter, I was still hungry for a midnight snack.

    Which is when I found out that I forgot to add salt to the dough when I mixed it this morning.

    But all’s well that ends well.

    I pulled out my fig butter (which I had fermented with too much salt) and slathered it on a slice.

    I can’t say it was delectable, but it was tasty.

    One of my favorite aspects of being a home baker of sourdough bread is that you get to eat your failures.

    Occasionally those failures will be interesting. And I’d say that a bland gummy slice of sourdough bread with a heavily salted fig butter topping makes for a singularly unique snack.

  • It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, 2018

    I read this book a couple years ago and really enjoyed it. In fact, my initial blog draft was a long series of quotes that basically plagiarized the entire book. There was no way I could publish that old blog post, but suffice it to say, this book is highly recommended. While re-reading all the quotes in the old draft, this line caught my eye.

    Calm requires getting comfortable with enough.

    While there’s no hard-line definition of when’s enough or what’s enough in every situation, one thing’s for sure: If it’s never enough, then it’ll always be crazy at work.

    It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work, 161

    Lately, I’ve been thinking about the question of “enough”.

    I really enjoy my gig right now. No job is perfect, but it is hard to find of a better fit for what I want. Reasonable hours, interesting problems, minimal risk. Plus it compensates me quite nicely, meeting all of our family’s needs.

    Studies have shown minimal gains on general happiness after one’s household income surpasses a basic level. So assuming no drastic changes to our needs, I’ve been pondering the question is “what next?” Do I just execute as a PM2 for the next twenty years and then draw my pension when I don’t feel the energy to keep up a 40 hour week?

    But would I get bored? And I can’t deny that I would be flattered the local acclaim that comes with a fancier title – go high enough and I might get listed on a bronze plaque! At what cost? We have no desire to uproot the family, and I have little interest in working the hard hours and playing the long politics to earn an exalted position.

    I’m not a adherent of any religion, but I’ve been haunted by an oft repeated line by Dr. Carl Totten, “Taoism is the art of saying enough“.

    Maybe it’s time to turn off the career radar and say “I’m good”.

  • Bread, 20 Jan 2021

    Our range oven died after Thanksgiving and we’re waiting for the pandemic to settle down before fixing it. So I’ve been using a toaster oven for baking bread.

    Fortunately we have a cast iron Lodge Loaf Pan which makes a lovely toasted crust, (though the top sometimes gets a little burnt given how much it rises, so I’m still working on that).

    The recipe is as simple as always, just scaled down a little from my usual 4/3/1/.02

    306g flour
    270g water
    46g starter
    4g salt

    The loaf pan lets me skip the shaping process. I take the proofed dough and just pour it directly into the pan. I let it rise a second time (about three hours) and then throw it into the oven for the bake. I don’t bother preheating the oven if it isn’t already hot from something else.

    Since we’ve been eating a lot of bread (and because it is cool in the house due to winter), I’ve also started using the bread dough as its own starter. When I pour the dough into the loaf pan, I pull off some dough that becomes the next day’s starter. I let it proof on the counter overnight and it’s ready to start another loaf.

    I kind of miss the shaping process, but it was the cause of quite a bit of mess and a little bit of stress, plus the loaf pan loaves are much easier to cut! In all, I can’t say I miss the dutch oven baking, though I’m certain I will revisit it, as soon as we get the range fixed.

  • Linchpin, Seth Godin, 2010

    I’ve started reading this book a few years ago after Seth mentioned that this book was his masterpiece during the previous book tour for This is Marketing. When he repeated this claim again during promotional interviews for his newest book The Practice, I finally buckled down and finished it.

    Spoiler: It is.

    I’m not sure why I had difficulty pushing past the first few chapters during my initial reads, but it really picks up steam mid-book and earns the author’s own esteemed opinion of it.

    I suspect Linchpin did not grab me in previous attempts because it is particularly ambitious. I’m quite fond the smaller format of his other books, such as The Dip and Purple Cow, which also have catchy premises that grab us on the first page. The argument for Linchpin is both obvious and takes a bit of unpacking.

    To become indispensable, we need to be more than “good enough”, so we will have to take some risks. When trying to improve things, we have made a commitment that might not pan out. Once in a while, the proposed change might be a “big hair audacious goal”, but normally it’s just putting ourselves just a little bit past normal. It can be daunting to step out of line, and this book is all about encouraging us to dance with that fear.

    If we want to be indispensable, we need to create a deliberate practice of testing improvements. However, there is no guarantee, experiments fail as often as not. Trying to be better takes initiative, and taking initiative means we own the results – both good and ill.

    It sounds risky, but what’s the alternative? Staying stagnant locks us into today’s mediocrity and becoming obsolete tomorrow.

    So we might as well become linchpins. Not everything will succeed, but work is a lot more more fun when we’re constantly experimenting!

  • A Concise Guide to Macroeconomics (2nd ed.), David A. Moss, 2014

    I’ve always been a bit mystified by two political fields – economics and foreign affairs. The first because everything seems counter-intuitive, the latter because it always seems to be a choice between several bad options.

    I haven’t found a good primer for foreign affairs, but this book helped me get a basic “macro” sense on economics.

    Ultimately the basic issue is “what are the people producing”? If they are producing a lot, the macroeconomics are going to be generally quite good and the inverse if people aren’t producing a lot of value per capita.

    That’s simple enough, but then everything starts to get funky once you add the two other core concepts of money and expectations, which can color the how production is calculated and create odd phenomena around the economy.

    Secondary concepts of interest rates, exchange rates, and methods of accounting then fill out the picture. This is when things start to get a little counterintuitive, but nothing too crazy that can’t be handled with a little careful reading.

    The counterintuitive part of economics is found in the fact that these basic concepts are affected by a myriad of factors – ultimately all the individual actions of all the players in the marketplace (as in each of us). Also once we get comfortable with a theory, something comes in and bowls us over, as the Great Recession, and people need to reassess their theories. Life tends to be messier than math.

    Even though the basic concepts are pretty straightforward, when there are so many players (who aren’t perfectly rational) interacting with each other you end up a pretty complex field.

    This book gave me a basic sense of how the big pieces of economics fits together. Even though I doubt I will read another dry textbook on economics and I’ve already forgotten some of key concepts just a couple months later, I sense a residue buried in my brain and these ideas should be much easier to recall when needed, kind of like riding a bike.

    This book was just what I needed. For future reading, I’m going back to popular books about wacky counterintuitive quirky economic topics. Sometimes you need to read the fun stuff first to get you interested in a topic, but I find that exposing oneself to basic foundational stuff is always worth the effort, even if you ultimately go back to the candy.