The Metamorphasis

No, literature heads, this is not about Kafka (sorry) – but another K, de Kooning. I attended a lecture last week given by a MOMA curator promoting the museum's exhibit, de Kooning: A Retrospective. While previously unfamiliar with de Kooning’s work, I found the lecture quite fascinating for two reasons: first, that without context I would have disliked de Kooning's work, and secondly, that his work is the result of a constant evolution. Keeping first things first:

1.  1.  Context

De Kooning is one of those (I borrow the art term) “abstract expressionists” whose work usually translates to confused head scratches from the public. Like Picasso, it evokes a sort of visceral confusion, with some viewers loving the obtuseness and other complaining, “What IS this?”  This is a famous question that art enthusiasts usually refuse to answer - evasively responding that art is whatever you see within it. But de Kooning did give a bit of color on one of his works, titled "Attic" (below).

In this piece, I initially just saw squiggly lines - but our instructor explained that de Kooning called the work "Attic" because it mirrored the attic in a house, where you throw together pieces from your past and present into a big jumble. De Kooning believed in giving "glimpses" in his artwork, where you think for a moment you see shapes, but then rapidly loose the image. So too our attics are full of individual items that blend into many memories, and a single memento can have different meanings for different family members.

With the context of explanation, I had a new appreciation for the work - seeing it less as squiggly lines a child could produce, and more as a thought-provoking composition of items. What do you see in the "Attic"?

2. Evolution

The second key is evolution – understanding how de Kooning's final product was really a subtle metamorphosis of experiences over time.

Take a look at the below string of artwork. The beginning is a pencil sketch done by de Kooning in art class, followed by "Seated Woman" (who scholars think is probably de Kooning's wife), which shows some abstractness in the shape of her arms but which is largely identifiable. From here, de Kooning follows with the women theme but gets more and more abstract (see "Pink Lady," then "Pink Angels," and "Woman 1"). Let's just say that on it's own I would find "Woman 1" to be quite scary - but taken in context of de Kooning's growing shift into abstract-ism, it makes a bit more sense.

           "Still Life"                                       "Seated Woman"                 "Pink Lady"

"Pink Angels"                                                            "Woman 1"

The bottom line? Context and evolution matter - and they apply to our lives as well. While we usually think of ourselves as unbiased, in reality our evolving sense of purpose is constantly shaped by our own current and past experiences, and a single event may not make sense without information from other events. What in our life would confuse a stranger but makes sense to someone who has grown up with us? How would a different past alter the shape of our current selves?

It is important to reflect not only on our own context, but others' as well.  We cannot understand where our peers/friends/family are and where they are going unless we understand where they are coming from. A great example of necessary context is a politician: in order to understand their proposals we must dissect their motivations, and in order to know their motivations we must examine their past. Why are they in politics? What are their past affiliations? When are they next up for re-election?

Everyone has a motivation, a reason and past that affects their choices. Our challenge is to understand their context, like de Kooning's, and allow that to illuminate our understanding of their lives.

Wings of Hope

On Monday my husband and I attended a talk at Columbia given by General Raymond E. Johns, U.S. Air Force. His topic was “Ethical Leadership in the 21^st Century,” and while he really focused more generally about the military’s balance between fighting and humanitarian missions, I found the speech just as interesting.

A caveat is probably required here that I come from a military background; my father served in the Marines/Coast Guard/National Reserve, my aunt as an Army nurse in Vietnam, my other aunt is currently a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Air Force, and my husband is a Navy veteran. So I came in pre-disposed to be interested, but General Johns still impressed me with his well-spoken and heartfelt talk about balancing the myriad demands faced by our armed forces.

 

The Air Force sees itself as having two main missions – “machines of war” and “wings of hope.” That is, missions that support military action, and those that are humanitarian-driven. But behind these missions are millions of smaller decisions; how to allocate budget money, where to prioritize troops, what supplies to drop where across the globe. During the Q&A portion of the evening, we had the chance to ask General Johns about some of his toughest decisions, and one audience member asked about the ethics in deciding whether to resign if a service member doesn’t believe in an order. 

My guess is the questioner meant grossly unethical orders; perhaps driven from stories of Vietnam’s My Lai or the like, where soldiers commit atrocities and later claim to be acting only under orders. General Johns’ response was an interesting one. While he sidestepped a bit the minefield of discussing truly heinous orders, he shed light on situations that are grayer, and challenged us in a similar situation to first consider whether or not we wanted to remain as an affecting agent in the situation’s outcome. His point is that once you bow out of a difficult situation, meaning in this example resigning from the military, you lose the opportunity to continue to shape the situation.

This seems to me a bit of a slippery slope – is it ethical to voluntarily remain in an unethical situation? – but I take his point that simply leaving the scenario may be taking the easy way out. If you were an employee at Enron, you could have seen the fraud and quit the firm, but would that be ethical? Do you have a duty to remain in an unethical situation and do everything you can to turn the scenario around? Or by staying in an unethical situation, are you giving tacit approval to what happens?

What do you think?  

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Not to be confused with my tax post, It's the Great Tax Punt, Charlie Brown, today's post is all about celebrating a new season. With fall upon us, I figured I would try out a few seasonal recipes (in between working full time and frenetic homework-ing for school). The below recipe for pumpkin bread (from Joy of Baking) turned out to be delicious, so the recipe is below for any baking-leaning readers:

PS: Yes there are a lot of ingredients, and it takes a bit longer than a quick mix recipe, but the results are more than worth it! It took me about 40 minutes to prep, plus an hour to bake.

Cream Cheese Filling:

8 ounce package (227 grams) cream cheese, room temperature

1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated white sugar

2 large eggs

1 1/2 tablespoons all purpose flour

Pumpkin Bread:

1 cup (110 grams) pecans or walnuts

3 1/2 cups (450 grams) all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

4 large eggs

2 cups (400 grams) granulated white sugar

1 cup (226 grams) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1 - 15 ounce (425 grams) can pure pumpkin

1/2 cup (120 ml) water

1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Pumpkin Bread: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) and place rack in the center of the oven. Butter and lightly flour two - 9 x 5 x 3 inch (23 x 13 x 8 cm) loaf pans. 

To toast nuts:  Place the nuts on a baking sheet and bake for about 8 - 10 minutes or until brown and fragrant. Cool completely and then chop coarsely.

Cream Cheese Filling: In your food processor, process the cream cheese just until smooth. (Really, Joy of Baking? A food processor? Clearly you are not considering your Manhattan-dwelling storage-starved readers. I just used a fork to stir). Add the sugar and process just until smooth and creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, processing just until incorporated. Do not over process. Stir in the flour.

Pumpkin Bread:  In a large bowl, sift or whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

In another large bowl, whisk the eggs until lightly beaten. Add the sugar and melted butter and whisk until blended.  Whisk or stir in the pumpkin, water, vanilla extract, and nuts.

Add the flour mixture to the pumpkin mixture and stir just until the ingredients are combined. (A few streaks of flour is fine.) Do not over mix as it will make the bread tough (this is very important!... less is more in terms of mixing at this stage unless you want a Pumpkin Brick).

Divide the batter in half. Take one half and divide it evenly between the two prepared pans. Divide the cream cheese filling in half and place each half of filling on top the two pans of batter, smoothing the tops. Top with the remaining half of batter (use two spoons to place small dollops of batter on top of the filling) (I guess I put in more than half the batter in before the filling because I didn't have enough batter left to completely cover the filling. But the bread still came out just fine). 

Bake the breads for about 55 - 65 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

Place pans on a wire rack and let cool for about 10 minutes before removing breads from pans (One of my loaves ended up with more batter than the other, so one loaf cooked in 55 minutes, and the other took 65). Can serve warm, cold, or at room temperature. Store leftovers in the refrigerator or else freeze for later use.

Makes 2 loaves

The Attic

 

First, an apology to my dedicated readers for a two-month abandonment. Between MBA term finals at Columbia and two weeks of vacation, I have been off the radar. But school is now back in swing and I am back at the keyboard!

Our vacation included a week in Alaska, which was refreshing on so many levels. Partly, a respite from balancing the responsibilities of a full-time job and part-time school. But also on a deeper level, a refreshing of the spirit in being among grand natural monuments, largely untouched by human development. The picture at top is one of many I took trying to capture moments of sweeping mountains, blankets of fog, immense glaciers, and myriad wildlife. Alaska calls itself “the Last Frontier,” and in many ways this is true; there is simply so much untouched space that you feel you could truly come and live an adventure. (That said, the winters would be an ‘adventure’ in and of themselves). I kept thinking of Psalm 8:3-4:

 

“When I consider your heavens,
   the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
   which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
   human beings that you care for them?” 

The other aspect I enjoyed in Alaska was a re-focusing of priorities. One of our excursions took us kayaking in Ketchikan with a great company, Southseas Kayak. Our guide grew up in Australia, visited Alaska a couple years ago, fell in love, and decided to stay with $10 in his pocket. He now owns a small boat that he lives in, and guides kayak tourists like us around for fun and to pay the bills. Worried about what you’re having for dinner tonight? This guy keeps a small trap outside his boat and eats whatever he catches for dinner. In the inland states, a complex and myriad-choice land of supermarkets and strip malls, we have so many things to pick from. But what should we really focus on in our lives? How can we be choosy about choosing?

Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Study in Scarlet” contains one of the more famous Sherlock Holmes quotations, showing Holmes to be quite conscientious in what he chooses to learn:

"You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."

I don’t recommend following this so whole-heartedly that, as Sherlock admitted, you don’t know that the planets revolve around the sun rather than the other way around. But it is about priorities, and one of my goals this term is to be more consciensious about choosing and focusing on my priorities. There are certainly lots of things I could do – but the real question is what should I do? The answer to this will change with changes in circumstances, but I want to keep Alaska's reminder that life is only as complicated as we choose to make it.

Tit-For-Tat : A Negotiator's Guide to the Debt Crisis

It’s hard to avoid news of the debt crisis. In fact, I find it almost impossible to follow any longer – I’m just not sure that I can watch any more political posturing without throwing the remote at the television. To save myself the migraine of getting back on the debt soapbox, I’ll refer back to a previous post on the national debt. However, for good or evil, the battle over the debt crisis has been an interesting illumination on negotiations and how they work (or, more accurately, how negotiations break down and shouldn’t be done).

Negotiations happen every day, from the mundane moments of debating a toy purchase with a child or vacation planning with a spouse to the “larger” debates of negotiating salary or wrangling debt. One of the more famous books on negotiation is Robert Fisher’s Getting to Yes, which discusses the concept of BATNA: Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement. The idea is that before going into a negotiation, you have to know your best alternative in order to negotiate effectively. If you’re buying a used car, know what other car you’re interested in if this deal falls through. Then you know how high you are willing to bid before walking away.

Establishing co-operative behavior is also fundamental to negotiating, and has become a key issue in the debt stalemate. Psychologists recommend a strategy called Tit-for-Tat as the most effective in dealing with other parties (as proven by Robert Axelrod). The theory here is that you start out cooperating with the other person, and then respond to the other person’s actions tit-for-tat. If they cooperate in return, continue to work with them. If they “punish” you by attacking/betraying you, punish them back, but only once. Then continue to follow your opponent’s lead, preserving the working relationship and optimizing both parties’ outcomes. In other words: 

1. Never be the first to defect
2. Retaliate only after your partner has defected
3. Be prepared to forgive after carrying out just one act of retaliation
4. Adopt this strategy only if the probability of meeting the same player again exceeds 2/3

Our politicians are stuck in a state of non-cooperation, and part of the problem is that on the rare moments where one party appears willing to cooperate and compromise on an issue, the other party “punishes” them by calling their plan partisan/idiotic rather than reaching out “tit-for-tat” with their own concessions. We then create a “punish” cycle where no one is willing to cooperate for fear of being burned.

Below is a chart adopted by one of my Columbia professors, analyzing approaches to negotiation. Clearly our politicians are set in "competing" mode, with strong concern for their own party's outcome and little concern about their opponent's party or solving the issue at hand.

For risk of sounding a bit too harsh, I do get that this is a hard topic, and that no answer will appeal to everyone. But hello, that is your job as a politician.  That is why we have been negotiating since the dawn of man. Figure out what's really important, give up what isn't, and meet the other party somewhere in between. Or, as a friend of mine posted on facebook yesterday, "Congress and Mr. President: Put on your big boy/girl pants and fix this problem, now!"

Yo Ho and a Bottle of Rum (Cookies)

I tried a new cookie recipe last night and it was a big hit both with our dinner guests and among my work colleagues (who got to enjoy the leftovers). I'll go the humble route here and give credit to the recipe rather than my superior stir-clockwise-with-wooden-spoon skills, and thus thought I'd pass the recipe along. The original name is Cappuccino Royales, but that sounded kind of lame to me, so I'm dubbing them Pirate Chocolate Chip Cookies because somehow I can see Captain Jack Sparrow drinking a lot of rum and coffee.

Call them what you want, the recipe is as follows:

Wait! First, a warning! The full batch makes a LOT. Like 5-6 dozen. I cut it in half, but choose your own adventure here...
Ingredients:

• 2 cups butter, melted
• 1/4 cup instant coffee (if you buy a strong roast, use the 1/4C. I bought Best Yet brand, aka cheap NY grocery store brand of oblivion, so I used extra to bump up the flavor)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 teaspoons rum (or you can use extract or brandy... I used the real thing and doubled it ;-))
• 3 cups granulated sugar
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 cups milk chocolate chips
• 5 1/2 cups flour 

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Mix instant coffee, vanilla and rum with the melted butter while it is still warm and allow coffee crystals to dissolve.
3. Add sugar, eggs, soda and powder, mixing well.
4. Stir in chocolate chips.
5. Add flour gradually.
6. Form dough into small balls (they spread out quite a bit while baking - I started with ~1-1.5 inch diameter balls and they baked into 3 inch cookies), rolling in granulated sugar if desired. (Rolling in sugar helps keep them from sticking to the sheet and gives the finished cookies a sort of granular look. But its optional!)
7. Place onto cookie sheet and flatten slightly (if you rolled in sugar, you don't need grease. Otherwise, grease the cookie sheet)
8. Bake 9-11 minutes and allow to cool for a couple minutes before moving to a cooling rack. (I baked for 9, which gives a very soft, chewy cookie. I forgot one batch was in the oven and they went for ~11 mins, yielding a crunchy cookie. Again, choose your own adventure here - fudgy vs crunch, one of the Great Debates)

And voila, you are done! The dough took me about 15 minutes to put together, so in less than 30 minutes you can have warm homemade cookies coming out of the oven... yo ho!

The Ideal Dollar

 Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language, and yet one that we are culturally cut off from understanding and enjoying.  The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.

      - Elise Boulding

  The Wall Street Journal noted a study last fall pegging the ideal salary as $75,000. Make less and you are increasingly anxious about covering expenses. Make more and you’re apparently still increasingly anxious about… something. The article spawned a flurry of comments, arguing that $75K won’t buy in Manhattan what it buys in North Dakota (true), with one poster arguing that $500K is the absolute minimum income for a decent life in Manhattan (seriously?).

The point behind the study, at least to my view, is less about bickering over geographic buying power. It is more the underlying point that once necessities are covered, more money essentially makes people less happy. But why?  One perhaps obvious solution is that higher salaries usually demand longer hours for employees, leaving less time for families, days at the beach, puttering in the basement with LGB model trains. The more subtle moral is that of relativity. Rich people do not consider themselves rich, because they look at those richer than themselves and feel they have not yet “made” it. A miserable employee is one who earned a solid bonus - but then learned that his neighbor received twice as much.

With more income in American society also comes a self-imposed (and often subconscious) burden to live up to the “expectations” of that income bracket. Your neighbors have pools so you need a pool. Your friends enjoy lavish vacations, so you feel you must do the same. Voluntary expenses become necessary, and pile up continuously until you can’t imagine living at a lower income than you currently make. And in that moment you are trapped, mentally handcuffed to your job and current income level.

But if the rich don’t feel rich, who is rich? Obama defines it as $250K, but the issue again is not the amount of money itself, but our tendency to view people making more than whatever we make as “those rich people.” A separate class of mysterious people we envision hording money (or swimming in gold, like Scrooge McDuck) and having elite foie gras and cracker parties in manicured, private lawns.  Yes, there are some truly very wealthy people out there – but there are also truly wealthy generous people as well. Money is simply a necessary function of buying goods; it is no more an indicator or moral capital (or dissolution) than hair color or shoe size. With money comes a great responsibility to use it wisely, but the wealthy should no more be seen as evil hoarders than the financially struggling should be seen as unproductive squander-ers. Politicians love to bait us against one another, but we cannot let money define battle lines of the next War Between the States: “us” against “them.”

What responsibility does money bring at any income level (not just for "those rich" types)? Perhaps John Wesley says it best: Make all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can.