Travel Guide

Up in the Adirondacks

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I’ve always wanted to raise a family near wherever my parents are living because I grew up far away from my grandparents. My mum’s parents live in Montreal, QC where I was born and my dad’s parents have moved from Montreal to Toronto, ON where most of my cousins live. Seeing my grandparents was always a scheduled event involving a car trip, overnight bags, passports, and green cards (which we forgot once). I was always envious of friends whose grandparents picked them up from school and friends who saw their grandparents whenever anyone wanted. Spending time with grandparents has really always been something that I’ve treasured, which was exactly the case during our week in the Adirondack Mountains in good ole upstate New York.

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Our dog, Puck, posing for a photo on the dock

In order to bring all of us together, though we missed my brother who couldn’t take off work, my parents rented a cabin on the lake just outside the adorable little town of Old Forge, NY. We went into town for ice cream, Mum’s daily latte, and to visit Old Forge Hardware, which sells everything and is a delight to explore.We didn’t have cell service and wifi only worked in certain corners of the cabin, so I read a lot and was very happy to disconnect for a while.

In true holiday fashion, we quite enjoyed our view of the world from the cabin porch:

We had a pontoon boat and a kayak to play with and were out on the water every day. My dad and grandfathers went out fishing a few times and I went with them for the sake of the scenery. In six days, the three men managed to catch two fish. That, according to my dad, is why they call it fishing and not catching.

I love being out on the water.

I also love hiking! One morning, my parents and I hiked Black Bear Mountain and we decided to bring Puck along just to see how he would do. Turns out, the dog is part mountain goat and it’s a good thing, too, because the trail was fairly steep and very muddy.

The view from the summit was beautiful, too:

Later in the week, my dad and I hiked Bald Mountain, so named because it’s very rocky (as opposed to leafy, I guess). It’s a much shorter hike and therefore was also more crowded. I’ve never spent time in the Jurassic Age, but I think it looked like Bald Mountain.

We climbed this tower at the summit . . .

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. . . from which my dad pointed out all of the seven lakes that make up the central region of the Adirondacks:

And of course, because that’s what you do up in the mountains when it gets cold after sundown, we made a fire every night. My trusty Syracuse University sweatshirt reeked of smoke (and so did my hair) but I had packed it just for that reason. I’m a bit of a pyromaniac when I’m allowed to be; I love watching the flames dance and hearing the crackle of the wood and the whistling of the fire. Had some good fun with my zoom lens, too:

In sum, that was the week. Time outside to hike in the mountains, boat and kayak in the lake, and run along the trails. Quiet time to read. Singing, telling stories, and laughing over the fire. Being together with family. Very relaxing and very simple. Can’t ask for more than that.

On My Mind

What makes a man?

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“Alexander Hamilton,” my friend declared after listening through Act Two of the musical, “was not a good man.”

Well. That depends. If we’re judging the measure of a man by his faithfulness to his wife then no, Alexander Hamilton was not a good man. And neither were Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, nor Albert Einstein. All of whom, I would argue, are key figures in building the world we live in today and who did more good than anything else. But to say they were not good men because of marital transgressions seems to unfairly dilute and discolor their legacies as individuals who built a world.

Yet, my friend’s comment leaves me wondering: What makes a man? What makes a woman? More importantly, what makes a good man or woman?

Is a good man one who puts his family or his wife first? To me, that sounds like a good father or a good husband.

Then, what is a good man?

Is a good man someone who puts work, money, and providing before everything else? To me, that sounds like an employee or employer, a breadwinner, a producer.

And I continue to wonder, what is a good man?

Is a good man someone who has ideals, stands for them, writes them, shouts them from the rooftops? That could be an orator. That could be a leader.

It seems to me that all of these characteristics comprise the entirety of a man, just as they also comprise what makes a woman.

So what is it about people who stray, who are unfaithful, who seek a plurality of relationships of varying types and intensities that puts them in the “not good” category?

I wonder about that.

And I wonder about the other categories that we all fall into. I’m an educator, a daughter, a sister, a friend. I’m a runner, a yogi. Once upon a time, I was a dancer, a singer, a girlfriend. Do any of those things make me a “good” woman? What is a good woman? Is a good woman different from a good man?

And so back to, what makes a good man?

I’d argue that we need a social conversation about our goals for the people that we are developing, the people that we are creating. I’d argue that what makes a good man or a good woman can be discussed as simply, what makes a good person? 

We want people who care about other people. We want people who work for sustainable worlds built on justice, happiness, security, and increased well-being for all. We want people who care about those around them and who are willing to put others first and do what is right for the good of the whole. That seems to me less about being a good man or good woman and more about simply being a good human.

What makes a good man? What makes a good woman? That depends on who you ask.

What makes a good human, at least as far as I’m concerned, is the much more important question.

 

Education

Why (and What) I Read

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Until a couple years ago, I read almost exclusively fiction. I read for pleasure and to pass the time, to embark on an adventure to worlds I would never inhabit. I love historical fiction (i.e. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, The Help by Kathryn Stockett, The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory, People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks) and just about anything with a hint of magic (i.e. JK Rowling, Haruki Murakami, The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, 11/22/63 by Stephen King, Ready Player One by Ernest Cline). I love exploring other worlds, people, places, times. I love feeling part of something that I’m not, something I will never see.

Losing track of time in a good book is an escapist behavior, one that always leaves me feeling more whole than I did when I started. There’s beauty in the pages of books; beauty, truth, and perspective on what does or does not matter. I’ve reread some of my favorite books dozens of times, particularly in times of difficulty, great upheaval, and challenging emotions. When the real world is too painful, it’s comforting to curl up with a world that I know and an ending I can trust.

But in more recent years, beginning around the time I finished my Master’s degree, I found myself greatly interested in nonfiction. My nonfiction reading had previously been course texts and research articles, some of which were terribly interesting. (Others . . . not so much.) When I finished grad school, I realized that I missed the reading that made my brain work a little harder. I missed reading that forced me to draw connections between what I knew from personal experience, empirical evidence, and prior reading. I missed learning new things and drawing more nuanced conclusions about how and why the world works the way it does. So I started picking up more nonfiction, which was initially daunting because of how much there is to read! I discovered that I enjoyed biology and neuroscience more than I had in school, was less enthralled than I used to be with historical tomes, and gravitated towards texts that explained people and ideas rather than places and things. (And yes, I understand that people, ideas, places, and things are related and not mutually exclusive.)

And what I found in that world of nonfiction has had an impact on my thinking, interactions with others, eating, daily routines, career and personal goals, and hopes and dreams. The nonfiction I’ve read especially in the last two years has provided me with knowledge, data, and facts that inform my observations of the world. It has helped me make sense of the patterns, incongruities, and possibilities that I see, seek out, and question.

Reading nonfiction has made me more eager to ask questions because I am constantly humbled by how much I don’t know. It has made me willing to admit ignorance and then prompted me to seek out answers. This path is very much a rabbit hole and I continue to find more twists and turns than I expect. I feel a swell of pride when I recognize studies cited in multiple books because I’ve read those studies and the books that explain them. There’s a little bubble of delight that comes from familiarity with an incestuous family of academics who have all the dysfunctional tendencies of most biological families.

My students often ask me why I know everything, which couldn’t be any less true. I tell them that I’ve just lived longer than they have. I tell them that I read a lot. I tell them what I’m reading. I tell them when I don’t know an answer and I tell them when I find out that answer. I answer their questions with a level of detail that is probably over their heads, but I hope the details prompt more questions. That’s how it is for me. When ideas are challenging, I find myself slowing down, looking up more words, spending more time clicking my way through Wikipedia hyperlinks and Amazon recommendations, finding more podcasts to listen to and blogs to follow. Encountering challenging ideas reminds me that there’s so much more out there and encourages me to continue exploring.  

So, since we’re somehow halfway through 2017, I thought I’d put together a list of what I’ve read so far this year. The books are listed in order of most recently finished. The five with asterisks and authors in red are the most important books I’ve read so far in 2017. Those with asterisks and authors in purple are fiction, still my greatest escape from the world. Have a look. Maybe you’ll find your next favorite! 

***Jonathan Livingston Seagull – Richard Bach
***Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools – Michael B. Horn & Heather Staker
Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education – John Dewey
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century – Timothy Snyder
Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education – Martha C. Nussbaum
***Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
The Courage to Be – Paul Tillich
***2BR02B – Kurt Vonnegut
Moving Toward Global Compassion – Paul Ekman
Read This If You Want to Take Great Photographs – Henry Carroll
Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race – Margot Lee Shetterly
Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life – Susan A. David
The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction – Mark Lilla
Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies – Nick Bostrom
Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries – Kory Stamper
***The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever – Christopher Hitchens
Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life – Dacher Keltner
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow – Yuval Noah Harari
***The Nun’s Story – Kathryn Hulme
Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them – Joshua D. Greene
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience – Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi
***Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller
Good Citizens: Creating Enlightened Society – Thich Nhat Hanh
Modern Romance – Aziz Ansari
***Caring: A Relational Approach to Ethics and Moral Education – Nel Noddings
Simone Weil: An Anthology – Simone Weil
The Wisdom of Insecurity – Alan W. Watts
***The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined – Steven Pinker
The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays – Henry G. Frankfurt
***How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place – Bjørn Lomborg
***World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students – Yong Zhao
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind – Yuval Noah Harari
Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy – Francis Fukuyama
The Hero Handbook – Nate Green

I’m currently in the middle of a novel, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, and Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, a neuroscience book by Robert Sapolsky. Both are rather long and having been taking me some time to read, but I’m enjoying them very much.

If none of the above inspire you, my 2016 reading list is here for your perusal. You can also follow me on Goodreads to see what I’m reading as the year continues. Click on bookshelves and take a look! Happy reading!

Julian

On loving, learning, and living