On Raising Wolves

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When I meet people I often tell them I was raised by wolves. I do this as a way to excuse my sometimes pointed comments. This sentence is delivered like a joke, and often get a laugh. Usually the laugh is followed by a look of recognition, as the other meaning starts to sink in. I was raised by wolves.

I was thinking of this as I was listening to my son play with a friend this morning. The friend stayed the night, which was a first for our son. Teri and I were both a bit nervous, needlessly so as it turned out. His friend is easy to deal with, good at grasping his own needs (for a 12 year-old), and gracious with adults. The friend is also smart and verbally gifted, like our boy. Listening to them play, really more like riffing on each other, is an interesting peek into that strange time of growth called pre-adolescense.

As I listen to them casually trade verbal barbs so pointed and sharp that they would considered terribly rude if spoken among strangers, I am reminded of tiger cubs playing. Each swat and bite a cute and playful treat, yet at the same time this  behavior will eventually lead into something terrible. Fully grown tigers bite and swat with lethal force. Once they hit a certain age, there is absolutely nothing cute or charming in them.

The same can be said, of course, for wolves and their cubs.

Teri and I, because we are adults and mindful of the pain our words can inflict, are forever warning Trevor. “Find a nicer tone, son.” “These are your friends, be nicer to them.” or “Do you think you could have said that is a nicer way?” We say these things because we know from painful experience how amazing sharp and deadly harsh words from an adult can be. But Trevor is not an adult. He lives in a different world.

In middle school tough words are an art form, and being quick with a quip is a valuable skill. This is his world. There is where he lives. Boys and girls at this age are verbally vicious, yet at the same time their words are usually completely ineffective. Stand on a corner as middle school kids get out of school and you’ll hear insult after insult, sometimes repetitively, sometimes with whole groups of kids ganging up on one another. But the funny thing is all these harsh words seem to have little effect. Kids will gleefully insult each other, and then turn around and talk about their favorite video game, exactly as if nothing untoward was said. Its as if middle school kids survive by having a thicker skin than adults. Or perhaps, like the bites of young tiger cubs, the verbal skills which as an adult will prove to be lethal, are  playful and largely ineffective because they are still so young.

And that is what he is. So young, yet at times so adult. One day his words are going to carry far more weight. Like that tiger cub’s bite, they will mysteriously transform from playful to lethal. I don’t envy him this transition. It was not a easy path for me, nor was it for Teri. But its also a part of growing up.

I wonder if tiger cubs have a similar experience, if they wake up one day and say to themselves, “Holy shit. I just bit a hole in my sister’s face! How’d that happen?”

I know Trevor will eventually have this experience. I can only hope that when he does his behavior will be easier to monitor because he’s learned at an earlier age to be more compassionate for his friends, and more mindful of his words. Then again, if he doesn’t, he can always retort, “I’m sorry, I was raised by wolves.”

The irony is, from his lips it will be just as true.

On Death and Mourning

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Death comes to your home like an unannounced guest and always stays long after you’re ready for it to go.

I came up with this idea many years ago. Perhaps its even a quote from somebody else. I don’t know, but it captures the feeling I have in dealing with loss and mourning.

In my head, death is always personified as a she, not an it. This is not, at least I hope, some latent misogyny, rather a reflection of how much Santa Muerte has infected my mind and my writing. I think we need a patron saint for death. Like love, death is a valuable thing to our culture and society. It changes things in ways that is difficult to understand up until you go through it. Its a bit like sex in that regard. There are some things in which words do not do justice to the experience.

One thing I can say for sure, as a man I didn’t fully understand manhood up until the point we buried my father and my father-in-law. After they died, every major decision I’ve made feels like performing a dangerous routine without a safety net. I have this sense of, “Oh shit. I could really fuck this up, and I don’t have anyone to call for backup.” It is both terrifying, and in some weird way, freeing.  I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, but at the same time I know deep in my bones that it is necessary. As necessary as breathing.

The Value of an English Major

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A friend of mine on face book posted this opinion piece from the NY Times Sunday Review on the loss of the English major in education. Below is my response.

I guess I’m more pragmatic about the topic. I’ve always thought writing well, and reading well, should carry its own reward, and I believe it does, regardless of ones avocation. If this is true, then I’m pretty sure we’ll start to see previous business majors sheepishly come back to school willing to do the hard work of learning to write, even if it is based on the desire to give themselves a leg up on the competition.

There is a corollary to this point, which is also important; that is if writing well and reading well are not a virtue, then they should go the way of the buggy whip. I also believe this to be true. Seriously, if you can write like a pro, and still cannot explain the value of writing to our culture at large, either you’ve over estimated your wiring skills or its value.

As I alluded to above, I think the “real” reason we’re seeing a drop in English majors is because learning to write is hard work. Most people would rather take an easier path, and they will up until they discover that easy and fast doesn’t always equate with best. Some day these skimmers of “internet facts” these believers in a Cliffs Notes education will come across an enemy who has taken the time to read “The Prince”, or pretty much anything of Shakespeare, and will happily eviscerate those poor souls (with words alone, one hopes) who thought skimming a good replacement for deep thought. Yes, the pen is mightier than the sword, bitch, and I keep mine sharp.

I’ve always thought the proper reason for an English degree–although I guess it applies to the whole of the humanities–was for someone who still did not know what they wanted to be when they grow up. This is not intended to be a slight, even today at the tender age of 50 I am not sure of what I want to be when I grow up. There is a genuine need for people to learn in university the skills they will use to discover themselves and the world.

Doctor for Death

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I had a dream last night in which I was a doctor and was hired as a specialist to help people smoothly transition towards their death. Sort of a death therapist with a heavy background in medicine and the effects of various medications on a dyeing person.

Obviously this is not what I do in real life, but it was a fascinating idea all the same.

There must be a point in which the complexity of medical care, especially for the elderly, becomes too difficult for the patient to comprehend. Heck, we’re already at this point, so much so that the standard rule for our family is to not let anyone be in the hospital without another adult in the room Add in other complications associated with end of life issues, and the complex becomes chaotic. Now add in the various emotional responses of all the family members, and the financial implications if a large estate is involved, and you get a rich heady stew. Rich enough to last several television seasons worth of solutions, for instance.

Success

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I dreamed about my father last night, something I have not done since he passed almost four years back. In the dream he was talking to me, telling me that some obscure thing I had invested in would pay off really well. Later in the dream this proved to be true. Since I don’t do much in the way of investing in the real world I assume the dream, the investment, and the succeess are all metaphor.

For all that he grew up a cowboy, my father was ever the banker, and worried about money and its intendant security more than anything else. He never really grasped why I am self-employed. The idea was almost abhorrent to him. For years whenever we would talk he would ask if I had gotten a job yet. Never mind that I was making more money freelancing than he ever did, it was the insecurity of my position which worried him. The irony is of course that his “secure” job never proved to be any more secure than mine, but that is the nature of people and parents. At least I can say is that he spoke out of the concern of a parents, and I cannot honestly say that  this concern was always misplaced. Freelancing is not for the faint of heart.

It wasn’t until after he passed, at his funeral in fact, that his wife (my step mother) appreoached me to say, “You’re father wanted you to know he was very proud of you.”  Kind words. I would like to say it would have meant more coming from his lips, but that was not his way. Perhaps I am biased, but I seemed to recall hearing more of my father’s concerns than I did his praise. My sisters had this experience as well so if I am biased, at least it is a shared one.

So when my father spoke to me last night in my dream, his words were pretty much like always. He was telling me, not really talking with me. He used the same tone he used when asking, “Are you sure your client’s are going to pay you?” Anything I might say in response didn’t really matter, and would likely be ignored. He would simply bring up the subject in our next conversation exactly as if we had never spoken of it before. In short, he was stating something completely obvious, and with his voice of authority. Mind you, I do this myself sometimes, the manners of the father are often passed to the son. So much so that a friend of mine often jokes, “Eric Tolladay, Master of the Obvious, Curator of the Plainly Seen.” I can only hope that my pronouncements from on high of “the obvious” are not as painful as his were to me. Doubtless this is not always the case. Lucky for me most people are willing to overlook this annoying habit of mine. Those that cannot, well I can’t say that I blame them.

But I find it odd that my father would be speaking as he was in my dream. He was so very concrete, speaking in metaphor was not his way. I can only hope it is a sign I am doing well. I suspect this investment metaphor refers to my writing. I certainly hope so as it is an investment. Especially as a time when I really should be more mindful of filling my spare time with paid work. The vagrancies of freelance work means I often stumble into stretches of no work. I try to fill that time with writing, when I can afford to do so, but it is costly in terms of money not earned. Lucky for me, Teri does not mind this investment, or is kind enough to bite her tongue when I do. Since I’m not heavily invested (be it time or money) in anything else, other than my family and our home, I can only assume this obscure hobby of mine will eventually come with a paycheck.

The funny thing is Teri is forever dreaming about friends and family who have passed. It one of the things I truly respect about her. For her such dreams are a way of letting go, saying goodbye. They don’t always start well, but they end with a sense of balance and closure. I’ve not had dreams like this, at least until last night. Do you supposed some of her is rubbing off on me? God I hope so.

Rite of Change

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Something struck me this morning as I was listening to a story on Igor Stravinsky on NPR. This year, 2013, marks the 100th anniversary of his ballet Rite of Spring; a piece of music so muscular, so intense, that the first time it was played it caused a riot.

Nowadays this kind of idea is difficult to fathom. Its had to imagine a musician today, be they popular or off in their own little corner, who could cause such a reaction. Can you imagine a riot caused by a Justin Beiber concert? I can’t. The only thing that comes close to my mind is either the Beatles playing the Ed Sullivan show or when Bob Dylan went electric and pissed off all his fans.

You might recall “Rite of Spring” from the Disney movie Fantasia. Its the famous piece with the T.Rex killing the Stegosaurus.  The music, however, is more memorable than that scene. Much more. If you listen to it with a musician’s ear you’ll find it full of mixed meter, rather bizarre and almost frightful chording, and is just plain intense. A big orchestra playing a very big sound. In person, the darn thing can blow your ears off. No wonder people rioted.

Now the thing that struck me this morning was not the intensity of the music — I’ve known that for a while, ever since I won tickets to a Hollywood Bowl concert of the Rite, and went with my buddy Clark Souter. Listening to the piece in that context, shorn of the animation, and shorn of any other mean sing, allowed me to really listen to it. All I could think was “Fuck me! This is big!” What really struck me was the time in which it came out. 1913 sounds like a long time ago, but in terms of orchestral music, it is really near the end of a very long era. 1913 is well over 100 years after Beethoven’s famous da-da-da-dumm of the Symphony #5 was written in 1804, and just short of 90 years after his 9th Symphony was written in 1824. Its 190 years after Bach’s “Well Tempered Clavier” hit the scene, 54 years after Liszt suggested his New German School, and about 100 years after Schubert. In short, it came out well into the end of what we generally consider “Classical Music” and even the end of the Romantic Era of classical music. And yet, this very, very, late, late-comer to the classical music scene, this 30 year-old punk kid wrote a piece of music so intense, so awesome, that it freaked people out.  It caused riots in the streets of Paris. It started a whole new movement in classical music called Modernism. It changed things.

As a writer, working along the long thin edges of the form of art we call the Novel, I am heartened by this. Stravinsky teaches us there is still room for radical change within a medium that appears to be lethargic. Not that I’m interesting in tinkering with the modern forms of the novel, I find the post-modern stuff to be a lot of crap if done for the sole purpose of shock. I don’t think Stravinsky intended to shock as much as I think he intended to stretch his limits, to push his own internal boundaries. Something he was want to do his whole long life. Hell, the man was writing interesting pieces well into the 1960s.

What the “Rite” teaches me is that somewhere out there is a novel yet to be written that is so intense it will cause a riot. Just the idea that this novel might be out there, somewhere, is enough for me. It doesn’t have to be mine, it just has to have  the possibility of existence. Like holding a lottery ticket that will not be drawn for a few days, it gives one room to dream. Dream great big muscular dreams. And I like that feeling.

Now its time to lift some word weights, and get my scrawny writing muscles into shape.

Independent vs collaborative creative processes.

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I know a song-writer who divides his creative process in two parts. 1) Creating, which he does alone, and 2) Editing, which he does with others, and in a separate room from the one he creates in. I used to think this a bit weird, but more and more I think its a great idea.

I bring this up because all to often I see writers talk about their craft as if they are doing it all alone. Yet every other art form I’ve done (both professionally and as a hobby) has used both an independent creative process and a collaborative creative process. Usually, like my song-writer acquaintance above, the initial creative process is done independently, while the editing is done collaboratively. But even the independent part of the creative process, (Bog, is there a better word than “independent” to describe working alone?) is not really working alone, at least for me. When I write my ideas come from all around me. Something said to me earlier that day might make its way into the story, or a joke I overheard, or something I witnessed on the bus. And that’s not counting the hundreds of novels and stories I’ve read over the years. Surely some of that works its way into everything I write.

And once you get to editing a novel (and I’m not just talking copy-editing here) then the story goes from independent to collaborative. An author writes, but where would their novel be if there weren’t promoters, and printers, book-jacket designers and art directors, publishers and even readers? All of these people make up a successful novel, not just the author. I think its time we authors start admitting this. Our stories are more than just the sum of their parts.

 

How being a witch looks an awful lot like being a Christian.

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I’ve been reading a wonderful series of books by a guy named Terry Pratchett. Rereading really. I read them once, and now I’m reading them to Trevor. Most of them take place on a planet (if you can call it that) named Discworld, and most of these books use the same 8 or 10 characters. Recently (as in 5-6 years ago) Mr Pratchett developed a new character. Her name is Tiffany Aching, and she is a witch. Only she’s not like any witch you’ve ever read about before. She is young, smart, resourceful, and talented at working. She also does the magic stuff well, but that is really a rather small part of the novels with her in them. Mostly what she does is grow up and learn from other witches, and its what these other witches teach here that I find amazing.

Below is a long quote from the second Tiffany Aching book (out of four) called A Hat Full of Sky. In this scene she is having a conversation with Mistress Weatherwax, who everyone agrees is the best witch around. In this conversation they refer to two different witches who are polar opposites. They are Miss Level who is the kind, long-suffering witch that Tiffany is now training under, and Mrs Earwig, who is selfish, conniving, and not the least bit helpful to others.

Miss Level’s life is difficult because she is so self-effacing that no one respects her, they literally walk all over her. Mistress Weatherwax understand this, mentioning it at the beginning (its her speaking at the start), but look at where she goes with it.

…

“Respect is meat and drink to a witch. Without respect, you ain’t got a thing. She doesn’t get much respect, our Miss Level.”

That was true. People didn’t respect Miss Level. They liked her, in an unthinking sort of way, and that was it. Mistress Weatherwax was right, and Tiffany wished she wasn’t.

“Why did you and Miss Tick send me to her, then?”

“Because she likes people,” said the witch, striding ahead. “She cares about ’em. Even the stupid, mean, dribbling ones, the mothers with the runny babies and no sense, the feckless and the silly and the fools who treat her like some kind of a servant. Now that’s what I call magic – seein’ all that, dealin’ with all that, and still goin’ on. It’s sittin’ up all night with some poor old man who’s leavin’ the world, taking away such pain as you can, comfortin’ their terror, seein’ ’em safely on their way . . . and then cleanin’ ’em up, layin’ ’em out, making ’em neat for the funeral, and helpin’ the weeping widow strip the bed and wash the sheets – which is, let me tell you, no errand for the faint-hearted – and stayin’ up the next night to watch over the coffin before the funeral, and then going home and sitting down for five minutes before some shouting angry man comes bangin’ on your door ‘cos his wife’s havin’ difficulty givin’ birth to their first child and the midwife’s at her wits’ end and then getting up and fetching your bag and going out again. .. We all do that, in our own way, and she does it better’n me, if I was to put my hand on my heart. That is the root and heart and soul and centre of witchcraft, that is. The soul and centre!” Mistress Weatherwax smacked her fist into her hand, hammering out her words. “The . . . soul. . . and . . . centre!”

Echoes came back from the trees in the sudden silence. Even the grasshoppers by the side of the track had stopped sizzling.

“And Mrs Earwig,” said Mistress Weatherwax, her voice sinking to a growl, “Mrs Earwig tells her girls it’s about cosmic balances and stars and circles and colours and wands and . . . and toys, nothing but toys!” She sniffed. “Oh, I daresay they’re all very well as decoration, somethin’ nice to look at while you’re workin’, somethin’ for show, but the start and finish, the start and finish, is helpin’ people when life is on the edge. Even people you don’t like. Stars is easy, people is hard.”

…
So Mistress Weatherwax thinks the most important thing about being a witch is helping others. Obviously the author does too because this is a theme that is constant through all of the Tiffany Aching books. Work hard, help others, measure your value by how you help people, don’t waste your time on material things, its the people that count.

To give you an idea, here’s a quote from the first book in the series, The Wee Free Men. In this quote a very young (9 year-old) Tiffany is talking to Miss Tick who is a witch finder (a lady who looks for girls showing unusual signs of power). All of this is done partially in secret; where Tiffany grows up, they don’t like witches. In fact they kill an old woman because they think she was a witch. But I digress.

 

…
“Witches are naturally nosy,” said Miss Tick, standing up. “Well, I must go. I hope we shall meet again. I will give you some free advice, though.”
“Will it cost me anything?”
“What? I just said it was free!” said Miss Tick.
“Yes, but my father said that free advice often turns out to be expensive,” said Tiffany.
Miss Tick sniffed. “You could say this advice is priceless,” she said, “Are you listening?”
“Yes,” said Tiffany.
“Good. Now…if you trust in yourself…”
“Yes?”
“…and believe in your dreams…”
“Yes?”
“…and follow your star…” Miss Tick went on.
“Yes?”
“…you’ll still be beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy. Goodbye.”

 

…

 

Notice how the traditional advice given in movies (trust in yourself, believe in your dreams, etc.), all those things we like to tell our children, the author happily tramples with hard work, and an education. This is a kids book, and yet the advice is so absent of fantasy, and so full of practical good advice that it tickles me pink.

And you know, every time I run across these words I am reminded how much they sound like Jesus. Which I find fascinating.

Dwelling design and politics

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What if the great rift that separates the left and the right were not in fact a product of political belief, but an artifact (at least in part) of design?

This is at heart the premise I’ve come up with while reading over a wonderful book called The Death And Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. I should start by saying this is not Ms. Jacobs premise at all. Her book is about urban planing and how the way a city is designed will effect the way people live within it. The book is wonderfully clear, straight forward, and has taken my mind into places of design I had never contemplated before. More importantly, it made me question the way we socialize and how that socialization might change our character.

At the beginning of her book, Ms. Jacobs talks about the use of sidewalks. Not as a conveyance (although that is covered too) but as a social structure. Its about how the many small things, corner grocery stores, bars, front porches, stoops, stairways, and any old place that people will use to congregate, will give those living on a street a sense of shared ownership. Such places allow the people living and working there to establish social relationships that are numerous, shallow, and yet important, and at the same time they make a sharp divide between public social lives, and private ones.

While her book mostly talks about these relationships in the context of a city, I could not help but translate this into the small-town world I grew up in where everyone on the block knew your name, and if you did something stupid they would be happy to tell your parents. I got my first job though small town connections, and my first sense of the world though them as well.

Mind you, these small town connections were not always appreciated. I remember vividly one Friday afternoon when a Clovis cop gave me a tongue lashing for throwing my bundled up dirty gym clothes against a street sign. At the time I thought he was being a power-hungry jerk, but I never tossed anything at a street sign after that. Moreover, what I now understand as an adult but could not see then as a sullen teen was that his anger was not directed at any potential damage to the street sign, his anger came from a sense of ownership. He owned that sign, at least in part, because it was part of his world, and he felt a sense of responsibility for it. In the same way he felt responsible enough to me and my actions to say something.

That is both the gift, and the cost of group ownership. The joy and the responsibility, both at the same time. And I believe that this is a crucial element to small town America, and more importantly large city America.

Except it is no longer an element in either.

How many of you know your neighbors? How many of you trust them? No I don’t mean trust like share your innermost secrets with, that kind of trust belongs within the private relationships of your family and close friends. By trust I mean trust enough to leave a key to your house with them, and conversely owning a key to their house in your home.

I ask this because Ms. Jacobs mentions that on her block the local deli has keys to half the homes around it. This is an informal thing. The deli owner is not paid for this, and does not offer it as a service. That he holds their keys makes it easy for relatives or outsiders to visit, even if the owner of the house is not home. You can tell your friend, “Go down to the deli and ask Joe for the key.” Its safer than keeping a key under the doormat, and it means that anyone coming to visit is noted on the block and looked after.

So why does Joe the deli owner do this? He doesn’t get paid, and it doesn’t necessarily lead to any more service. Why do the home owners do this? There are no contracts, no signatures, nothing legal at all, and such a situation is ripe for abuse. Yet one block over it’s the candy store that holds the keys for that block, and the next block it’s the cleaners, and the block after that…

At the heart of these relationships is a thing called public trust. Its not a close relationship, its not like a close friendship, its more informal, and much more shallow. Its trading a little bit of your private space for a little bit of theirs. Its exchanging small bits of information over coffee. Its the bits of gossip that are helpful and not necessarily hurtful. Helping the new mother with the complex ins and outs of the school district, telling a lost neighbor the quickest way to the bus stop, offing a cup of flour to a neighbor who is out, feeding the neighbor’s cat when they go out of town, or driving a neighbor to the airport.

These things are not all that important. There’s is no specific reason why one “needs” to do these things for or with their neighbors, yet by doing these things one gains a sense of belonging, a feeling that they are part of a larger community. Everyone starts to own a part of a public space that is independent of them, yet beneficial to them.

And beneficial it is. As Ms. Jacobs points out, city blocks that have a shared sense of ownership experience much less crime. The kids are much less delinquent, there are less robberies, and much less strife. Why? Because everyone is watching out for everyone else. If your kid acts up, your neighbors will tell you about it. If a suspicious looking guy starts following women, he’ll be accosted. If a drunk gets too angry, he’ll be held in check. Someone is always willing to call the police for you, because they know you’ll do the same for them. And why do they do that? Because they know you. They see you everyday walking your kid to school, or buying a cup of coffee at the newsstand, or picking up a head of lettuce for your wife and the corner grocery. They don’t know you well, but they know you well enough to have a sense of belonging to you. By living in their area and interacting with them you have become one of “them”. Part of their team. Close enough to call the cops if a burglar starts to pry open your window, but not close enough that they need to know everything about you.

And its this sense of community, this belongingness, that I think sits right at the heart of our political divide.

Let me first start out by saying that I don’t think one political group has more of a sense of belonging than another. I think they’re both pretty equal right down the line, because I think the desire to form and maintain social contacts is equally distributed amongst the entire population. Sure some people want little public contact, and some people want more, but on average, either group of people has pretty much the same desire.

So since it is not lacking of desire, then what lies at the difference between the two political sides. Well I think it is the way in which we form and maintain or social contacts.

Rural Americans live far apart from each other. I know people who would have to walk a half mile to knock on a neighbor’s door. This is a massive distance when compared to a suburb like ours (about 60 feet, to either side), or an apartment in the city (as little as across the hall, or as long as 30 feet down the hall). This distance makes for some interesting things. For instance our more rural cousins enjoy a lot more privacy than those living in the city. They don’t have to put curtains on their windows so the neighbors can’t see in, there’s not a house close enough to worry about. On the reverse side, our city dwelling cousins enjoy much more social contact. All I have to do is step outside the front door and I’m almost guaranteed to talk to someone. Teri jokes about this all the time. If we lived in an apartment it would be even easier. I’d just have to open the door. Now compare that to our friends living out in the country. Short of picking up the phone (or the internet) the only way they can have a conversation with someone not in their house is to get in a car and drive.

Now neither of these are good situations or bad ones. As far as I know there is no empirical difference between living in the sticks or living in the smog, with the exception of personal preference. One might prefer one over the other, and most people do, but the homes themselves are similar enough for all practical purposes, except for one obvious point. People who live in the city will have the opportunity for a larger and more complex social circle. In short, they will belong to a larger social group than those living in the country.

Now if you’re with me so far, then the rest should be easy. This is where we get to the heart of the political aspects. You see, one of the key differences between liberals and conservatives is how they see those around them. Both groups believe in helping their fellow man, both groups I believe genuinely care about other people, but both groups show their care is significantly different ways.

Conservatives like to keep their giving private. They like to donate to their church, or their school. If they see a poor man on the street, they like to hand their $20 over to that person themselves. And based on the amounts that they give, conservatives they care very much about their fellow man. Much more, in terms of dollars, then liberals.

But in all these things the giving is happening to someone who is socially close to them, or to an organization that is socially close. Why? Well look at the relationships a person maintains while living in the country. Family they see everyday, sometimes too much of them. Neighbors they see occasionally. The same is true of shop owners, and other merchants. The only other places they can make and maintain public relationships is either in school or at church.

Seeing this, a pattern starts to arise. Rural Americans will likely not have many social relationships, but the ones they do have will be tight and deep. And what do we see when we look at how conservatives give? We see them spending their money in the places that are close to them.

Now lets visit our liberal cousins living in a city. City people have much more opportunity for public trust, and use this to their advantage. While their rural neighbors might use 20 acres to gain a sense of safety, a city person uses their neighbors (and curtains) to the same effect. When we look at how city people like to give, we see they want to spend their money not on churches or on schools, but on their neighbors and their neighborhoods. Because they live in a tight web of social interactions they know that handing a poor person $20 might or might not help them. But they also know that handing that same $20 to the right person, within that poor person’s neighborhood, will definitely help them.

When a city person says that giving money to the poor is beneficial, what they mean is inserting money into the right place in a poor person’s social network, will greatly benefit them. But consider this same problem from the point of view of their cousin in the country. The country cousin doesn’t have a large social network. Such things are completely invisible to him. If you told him you keep a key to your house at the local deli he might go into shock. The idea is foreign to him. So saying you want to spend money on a thing he doesn’t see strikes him as foolish. “Why don’t you spend that money in church instead,” he’ll say, because this is exactly how he would solve the same problem in his social network.

“But that doesn’t work over here,” his city cousin would reply, because in his world this is true.

And thus we find ourselves at odds. Not over the desire to give, but the method in which it is accomplished. And these alternative methods of giving hold their roots in the ways that we live amongst each other. In short, the design of our communities constricts the way in which we view a problem, and how we come up with a solution.

Is it any wonder that liberals generally come from big cities and conservatives from more rural areas? Perhaps one of the reasons Americans become liberal or conservative might have something to do with the design of their surroundings.