things to read: september

I've been so busy this month that it feels like it's almost over. Alas. Here are a few things I enjoyed reading this month.

On Quality, by Keyana Sapp

A short essay on the undefinable word "quality" and how we all still know what that means.

A good object is a fossil record of care. Thousands of small selections made by people who could tell the good facts from the bad ones and picked the good, even when not doing so was cheaper or easier. The extra ounce of brass, the second coat of lacquer and the tolerance held a hair tighter than the drawing demanded. Every one of those selections survives for exactly one reason, which is that somebody with power over the object gave a shit.

Before You Decide, Decide How You'll Decide, by DeEtta Jones

Y'all know I love writing and reading about decision-making. This straightforward essay shows us why it's so important to create a sandbox for each decision we make together.

Decision criteria are an agreement — the short list of standards every option gets measured against. Set them deliberately, and in advance, and the decision becomes defensible, repeatable, and shared. Leave them implicit, and something else decides for you: the loudest voice in the room, the newest worry, or simply the most polished case.

My Corvid Friends-to-Be, by Jennifer S. Holland

Most people don't think about corvids as songbirds except to hate on their singing. But corvidae is a family: from the crows in my region, to the grackles of my hometown, to the ravens of the east, and so many more. I think corvids are in the running for most intelligent beings on earth. I'm not about to get on their bad side.

Not just because they can talk, crows and their ilk, including ravens and magpies, are known to be super intelligent. From a long-term study done at the University of Washington in the 2000s, we know they recognize human faces and even remember for years the faces of those who treated them badly early on. The results were hard to dismiss: While banding birds for research, students wore a particular rubber mask that the birds learned to associate with the irritation of being caught. For years after, the banded birds would punish people in the “bad guy” mask, forming small mobs and loudly scolding, and ignore people wearing other kinds of masks. Remarkably, the offspring of those original birds learned to dislike the same masked face and would join their elders in shaming the wearer.

Mexico City's Utopias, by Ashwin Ravikumar

Jamie shared this article with me about the incredible community centers, called UTOPIAs, that dot the borough of Iztapalapa. The Units for Transformation and Organization for Inclusion and Social Harmony cost relatively nothing to run, but they exceed most people's idea of what public works could be. But why shouldn't a planetarium, a zoo—an animatronic dinosaur park??—occupy the commons? I'd suggest it's a better use of land than a golf course.

Imagine that in the poorest neighborhoods of Detroit, Atlanta, and Chicago, you could find a public park with glistening swimming pools, world-class sports and recreation facilities, and spectacular landscape architecture rather than vacant lots. If you are a single mother, rather than being forced to lug your clothes blocks away to pay to wash your clothes, you can come to a public, well-maintained, space to do your laundry for free while you eat delicious food grown at the agroecological garden nearby. Meanwhile, your children can learn how to swim, attend workshops on how to grow food in the city, hit up the planetarium to learn how Mayan Cosmology relates to the Big Bang, hang out at the skate park, or take a guitar lesson.

Wild Oysters Make a Comeback in Maine, by Kirsten Lie-Nielsen

Oysters: one of my all-time favorite proteins. They are the filter-feeding keystone of the coastal ecosystem. The most I've eaten in an evening is 52. One Maine oyster farmer in particular was in the news for not-great reasons. Perhaps, like me, you think an essay about oysters heading back home to Maine sounds like a fun read. Enjoy!

Pickers can be salty characters, some of the last true foragers of the coast. They spend long days on the mud flats at low tide, bent over holes that they dig with specialized rakes, seeking out soft-shell clams, the most commonly harvested shellfish in Maine. They often gather wild oysters too; the stationary creatures can be a relief to find as they only need to be pried off the rocks exposed at low tide, rather than dug out of the thick mud.