Seligman says there are three elements to one’s explanatory style around life’s highs and lows: permanence (how long causes are believed to last), pervasiveness (how context-specific the causes are believed to be), and personalization (how internal to the individual the causes are believed to be). Optimistic people explain positive experiences in terms of permanent, pervasive, and internal causes, and negative experiences in terms of transient, specific, external causes. In other words, good things happen because of the optimist’s enduring good traits which manifest themselves in most situations, while bad things happen due to very specific, temporary accidents. Pessimists explain events in the opposite way: bad things happen because of their enduring and pervasive bad personal qualities, while good things are specific, temporary, external flukes.

The asymmetry here is interesting, and neither of those two explanatory-style stereotypes seems like something I want to aspire to. Perhaps that’s related to my scoring optimistically when explaining bad events and pessimistically when explaining good ones. In fact, I wonder whether pondering the impermanence of all things and the traps of the ego doesn’t predispose one toward explaining all events this way, as due to accidental, temporary, external causes….

Seligman notes that while optimism is generally the preferable mindset in terms of getting individuals to dream big, act on their dreams, and get over failures, pessimists have a more accurate grasp of reality, and may thus have the more useful mindset for mission-critical applications like surgery, flying airplanes, and accounting. He notes, however, that we can choose to be flexible in employing optimism when it would be useful. His technique for doing this is based on the ABCDE acronym for reframing failures optimistically (interestingly, he does not reframe successes optimistically):

• Adversity: Some external bad event happens.
• Beliefs: Our explanatory style leads us to believe in certain causes for the adversity.
• Consequences: Those causes have consequences: how we respond to the adversity.
• Disputation: However, we can challenge our pessimistic beliefs using techniques such as seeing whether the evidence lines up, whether there are alternative explanations, what the implications of our beliefs are, and whether our beliefs are useful in any way.
• Energization (!): As a result, we can feel more in control of our response to the situation.

In essence, the book is largely just a motivational build-up to this technique, whose key step, “disputation,” is nothing other than reframing our internal explanations in a fairer and more useful way.

Mindfulness is getting more and more mainstream attention in the West these days, and with good reason. In a world where our default mode of operation is racing from one thing to another, where we strive to keep up with our social media lest we be (and be perceived to be) out of the loop, stopping to actually savor where we are is simple yet surprisingly hard recipe for appreciating our life while we’re living it. In the process, by learning to put our egos on hold, we can approach problems more objectively and empathize more easily with our fellow beings.

I’ve been interested in mindfulness for a while now, though it’s only recently that I’ve been “sitting” formally on a regular basis. Part of what made it hard was figuring out exactly what the nuts and bolts of the practice entail, without the mystical trappings that are extraneous and distracting in my secular, rationalist world view. Most of the books I’ve consulted include these metaphysical elements to some degree or another. Two that don’t (and which I’ve mentioned before) are Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Wherever You Go There You Are and Henepola Gunaratana’s Mindfulness in Plain English. Nonetheless, the first one I found a bit too vague for what I needed, and the second spent a bit too much time for my taste on Buddhist philosophy and terminology.

I now have a new favorite meditation manual, Ronald D. Siegel’s The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems. The first two chapters motivate and introduce mindfulness straightforwardly, noting its historical roots but not unduly burdening the reader with extraneous information. The real value of the book, however, lies in the third and fourth chapters, which contain directions on how to do various concentration and mindfulness meditations. These are the clearest instructions I’ve found yet, presented in a very approachable way. I particularly like the metaphor of the restless mind that will not focus for any length of time as an untrained puppy that you just expect you’ll have to repeatedly and lovingly tug back.

The following two-hundred-plus pages go into details of how particular meditations on certain topics and sensations can be used for rather specific life issues, such as fear, depression, pain, and relationships. These were interesting enough to read through and are a useful reference, complete with worksheets to identify problem areas and write down meditation intentions. They boil down to a common theme: using mindfulness and awareness of the present to ride and observe our unpleasant sensations, noting how they ebb and flow by themselves and in response to external circumstances.

For those serious about exploring meditation, this is the one book I would recommend to get started. I also recommend using a meditation timer to remove the concern of spending more or less time than intended; there are many phone apps that can fill this role, like the one I currently use.

This isn’t exactly what happened to us, but it felt that way when we stopped at one of the many tea houses that dot Inari, a mountain dedicated to the eponymous Shinto deity of fertility and rice. The mountain is laced with paths marked by distinctive, bright orange torii, donated by the faithful. We quickly wandered off the main path and into some of the smaller alcoves and hidden shrines, and it is there, in the sleepy tea-stop that was just getting started for the day, that we had the first of several cups of tea that day on the mountain.

The numerous shrines and temples are not limited to the tourist sites like this particular mountain; they actually pervade Kyoto. It is not uncommon to see personal shrines in front of some houses, bigger shrines or temples occupying full house lots, or even historic shrines, plaques and all, wedged between glitzy modern department stores in a very lit and lively downtown shopping area. These places are not just for show: shoppers, tourists, and pilgrims will stop, set down their bags, and pay their respects to the deities by clapping, bowing, ringing a bell, and praying.

It is quite fascinating to watch the devotion of the faithful, to regard the opulence and beauty of these religiously inspired structures and statues, and to consider the time and resources that are used by religious observances. Not that the West can’t hold its own here, mind you, but this is a good reminder of how universal the religious drive is.

Every morning I run on the boardwalk by the Mediterranean. On my “weight-lifting” days I join the random strangers (young and elderly, athletic and not) at one of these gym areas and do pull-ups, push-ups, dips, and that exemplar of classic beach calisthenics, body-weight squats. It’s a perfect way to burn off the sumptuous Israeli breakfast, and there’s enough inspiration around to keep one motivated…

I wasn’t interested in gardening when I was growing up. It felt like an obligation when I would much rather be living in my head, playing with thoughts and ideas, reading, programming.

As an adult, though, I am more and more fascinated by it. On a personal level, it’s a good break from being inside my head all day. It is also a chance to be mindful by focusing on a simple activity, and to be attuned to the wonder that is the complex system we call life. Philosophically, it makes sense to break the pernicious cycle of store-bought food from all over the world, always available, intensively farmed: the production cycle of these foods often damages local ecosystems, increases global pollution, decreases bio-diversity, and exploits workers.

Of late, there has been renewed interest in eating well and sustainably. Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life is yet another offering to this particular audience. In this book, Kingsolver uses the chronicle of her family’s resolution to eat mostly home-raised and local foods for an entire year as a springboard for discussing food sustainability in general.

While this experiment was made easier by the family moving to a farm where they could devote significant time to agriculture, Kingsolver inspires both the back-yard gardener in me to try heirloom varieties to keep them in circulation, and the urban dweller in me to be more conscious about local and free range products in the supermarket.

The book has a companion website with recipes and local food resources. I found it enjoyable and inspiring, and recommend it to anyone thinking about eating and living more responsibly.

It was such a pleasure, then, on a recent flight, to gorge on the short stories in The Best American Short Stories 2002. With authors ranging from Michael Chabon to Arthur Miller to others of whom I had not heard, these stories were eclectic and delightful. And what made the whole experience more charming is that this was a book I picked up from the library on a whim during one of those rare days when I ventured outside the office.

Pollan book makes the case for these dicta in three sections. The first traces the rise of “nutritionism,” the ideology that what we should eat can be reduced down to a set of studied nutrients, the proper proportions of which will be made known by technocrats. It was in this section that my biggest beef with the book is most prominent: Pollan seems to blame “science” in general for our sorry nutritional state, and in so doing almost appears to have a neo-Luddite reverence for the Wonderful Way Things Were. I think his case would be just as strong if he focused the blame where it belongs: in an industrial era hubris that we were unlocking all the mysteries and could synthesize the perfect way to live, in an industry concerned with profits above all else, and in a government that finds it hard to resist lobbying. That recasting of blame out of the way, his chronicle of the history is informative and his conclusions sensible.

The second section explores what makes the “Western diet” (actually, the typical American diet) so bad. He cites:

• The shift from whole foods to refined
• The shift from nutritional and chemical complexity to simplicity: over and over we think we’ve identified all the crucial nutrients, only to find out later that there’s something else, or some unknown synergistic effect that we don’t understand.
• The shift from quality to quantity
• The shift from leaves to seeds, the latter of which are more calorie-packed but don’t contain the same diversity of nutrients
• The shift from food culture (your family and environment telling you what to eat) to food science (the high priests of nutrition pronouncing that you need this or that nutrient).

The third section contains recommendations for the individual food consumer. He suggests that we abandon the “Western” (sic) diet and take the time to get to know, prepare, and savor real food slowly, as other cultures do. Specifically, we should

• Eat food. This means real food, not “food-like substances”:
  • Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother would not recognize as food
  • Avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more than five in number, or that include d) high-fructose corn syrup
  • Avoid food products that make health claims
  • Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle to get the fresh food and avoid the pre-packaged goods.
  • Get out of the supermarket whenever possible and go instead to farmers’ market or your own yard. Get to know your food source.
• Eat mostly plants:
  • Eat mostly plants, especially leaves. Near-vegetarians are just as healthy as vegetarians. Leaves are less calorie-laden than seeds.
  • You are what what you eat eats too: the value of your own diet depends on the value of the diet that your own foodstuffs consume. Pastured animal foods are much more nutritious than grain-fed animal foods. [And indeed, the eggs that we recently bought at the farmers' market had bright orange yolks from, apparently, the beta carotene in the green grass.]
  • If you have the space, buy a freezer so you can shop in bulk and in season at the farmers’ market and have good food year-round.
  • Eat well-grown food from healthy soils. Organic [is that where the food term comes from?] rather than chemical fertilizers are best for the plants and the entire food chain, including us.
  • Eat wild foods when you can. They have to be versatile and defend themselves from biological predators, and are likely to have a wider variety of healthful nutrients as a result.
  • Be the kind of person who takes supplements (that is, someone concerned about their health), but then save your money (except for a multivitamin as you get older).
  • Eat more like the French. Or the Italians. Or the Japanese. Or the Indians. Or the Greeks. Just eat foods the way cultures generally have, because they have accumulated and tested preparation knowledge over the years that turns out to be quite effective in extracting nutrition from their comestibles.
  • Regard non-traditional foods with skepticism
  • Don’t look for the magic bullet in the traditional diet. Whole dietary patterns appear to matter much more than isolated nutrients.
  • Have a glass of wine with dinner.
• Don’t eat too much:
  • Pay more, eat less. Quality over quantity.
  • Eat meals. Stop snacking already! Sit down and make the meal a ritual.
  • Do all your eating at a table. A real table.
  • Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does: no gas stations.
  • Try not to eat alone.
  • Eat slowly, both literally and in the Slow Food sense.
  • Cook and, if you can, plant a garden. Get to know your food.

This was an informative, inspiring, and fun book to read. Recommended.

So prompted GMail in a recent e-mail thread. The occasion: a demonstration Knox and I were attending at a local farm to see how turkeys get killed.

This all started way back in the summer, when friends of ours on Capitol Hill decided that (why not!) they would raise turkeys for Thanksgiving. Knox and I were game. We bought into the co-op, and sporadically visited the turkeys as they grew. Now, with Thanksgiving around the corner, all the co-op members are getting ready for the kill—except we’ve not really done this before.

Knox, however, managed to find a post on Craigslist for a free-range farmer who allowed folks to purchase his birds and kill them on the spot. We attended one such event as mere spectators. Knox’s agenda was learning how to become our turkey butcher (I’ll be blissfully working at the time). My own purpose for going was to test my ethics in facing the source of my animal food.

And so, there we were, watching tukeys get knocked out, killed, and prepped. I’ll spare you the (slightly) gruesome details. I will note one, though: the magic step is the plucking. Take the feathers off the dead bird and it becomes instantly recognizable as a food item.

Tomorrow, Knox became the turkey-killer-in-chief. As for me, I think there ought to be better ways for animals to die. I’ll be edging a bit closer to vegetarianism once again.

There is a new addition to the Gardnovsky Gardens, and its name is Pops. Knox came back from a mysterious errand in Tacoma on Saturday with a rabbit. A giant, obese rabbit. We later found out (thanks to What Breed is my Bunny?, of course) that it is a fawn-colored Flemish giant.

Apparently, his biography looks something like this: he got his name because the kid he belonged to thought he was the color of Corn Pops. He shared his cage with a cat. The kid lost interest, the cat was given away, the rabbit was lonely. He’s been living outside, unfazed by his barking canine neighbors. The previous owner, a veterinary assistant, decided he was neglected. One Craigslist posting later, Pops came to join Galli at the Gardnovsky Resort and Spa.

Pops is awfully cute, but certainly needs to go in a diet: his jowls are all too conspicuous when he relaxes, all splayed out. We keep him in a rabbit hutch outside, which hutch will be graced with an HGTV-style addition before our own house will. We’ve been bringing him indoors every so often to look at him and pet him, and he seems to enjoy that just fine. He and the cat have been sniffing each other out (and I mean that literally; Galli is intrigued by Pop’s butt). Galli remains suspicious, staring at Pops in her focused huntress mode. Pops is laid back, knowing he has the advantage of size.

So far, our major complaint is that when he comes inside, Pops likes to poop (perfectly formed soft pellets) and pee (brownish syrup). We need to get him housebroken and using a litter box. He’s got a scat kink going, too: he’ll wallow in, sniff, and eat his own pellets, and he seems to quite enjoy stretching out in his own urine. Sigh. As much as I enjoy him, I’ve instituted a new house rule: you bring it home, you take care of its excrement.