This Slate article about Omni magazine reminded me of just how influential that publication was to me as a kid. Along with this 1982 book, The Kids’ Whole Future Catalog, which I used to read and read and re-read, Omni inspired my pre-tween dreams about the future, and helped to offset my anxieties about nuclear war. (I grew up in the shadow of NORAD and Cheyenne Mountain, so I spent a pretty unhealthy chunk of time calculating my survival odds after seeing The Day After on television.) Robots, space vacations, and technological solutions to poverty and inequality: these were the subjects of my dreams about 2010. It’s a year laden with so much sci-fi meaning. This is the year we’re supposed to make contact, yo.
Being a few days away from 2010 feels all sorts of mixed up. Our dreams of the future from twenty years ago just seem really silly now, even as I think many of us are actually pretty disappointed (if not because we don’t have robot housecleaners than because we still – unbelievably – haven’t prioritized finding and implementing solutions to things like poverty and climate change). And yet, this ever-increasing digital world we are living in feels pretty dang amazing. So, at the end of this year, I’m thinking a lot about past-future hopes, present disappointments, and the magic of my lived reality.
Compounding all of this is a general feeling of elation that we’re leaving behind the aughts, or the zips, or the zeroes, or whatever we want to call this last decade. Yes, I know that the new decade won’t officially start until 2011. But I don’t really want to slog through another year of the 2000s. Most people I know don’t really want to, either. (Some of my friends have, in fact, declared the 2000s The Worst Decade Ever, although I don’t feel entitled to make that judgement.) The catalog of horrors feels almost endless: Bush, 9-11, evangelicalism, torture, class divisions, the worsening state of public education, wars on two fronts, the swelling of the prison population, natural disasters exacerbated by climate issues… Blarg, blarg, blarg, and BLARG. When I stood on the National Mall and watched Barack Obama deliver his inaugural speech at the beginning of this year, I experienced as much relief as I did hope. Finally, it seemed, someone had the courage to tell us that there are no good and fast answers to our problems, but that it is our job to undertake the difficult task of making meaningful change, anyway. That commitment is what really gives me hope, after all.
So as much as I don’t have dreams anymore about my life on Saturn (yes, it has rings, so it MUST be the best planet), I also don’t have any illusions that life in this new decade will be that much easier or better. As Buckaroo Banzai, that pivotal figure from the world of early 1980s cult sci-fi said, “No matter where you go, there you are.”
So here we are. And it feels good to hit the reset button (even symbolically) and start a new decade (even if it’s not really) and get started with the hard work of reinventing our present and re-imagining our future. I’m elated about this! And I hope you are, too. So let’s make and achieve some big goals, and let’s do some real good in the universe.
Happy New Year, readers and friends!
I’ve been contending with chronic back pain for nearly two years now, and it’s been hard to think of it as anything but a condition, a curse, and a limitation. But as the holidays take hold and I reflect (again) on the many, many blessings of my life, it occurs to me that I’ve recently begun to understand this injury as a kind of gift. Not all the time, and not always happily, of course. But it is a gift, of sorts, from the universe.
Did You Miss Me? by Sam Brown (http://www.explodingdog.com/title/didyoumissme.html)
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I’m lucky to have two great book clubs in my life that prompt me to read a couple of novels every month. (Even though I love to read, I get busy and brainfried and often find myself diving for a DVD before a book at the end of a long day. So I’m grateful for a happy accountability to book club discussions.) I find equal pleasure in Good Books and airy treasures that remind me why I fell in love with reading in the first place. It’s so good, this reading. So in the the spirit of all the (slightly obnoxious but addictive) year-end listmaking, I thought I would make a few notes about what I loved reading this year.
Without a doubt, the best new(ish) book I read this year was Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen. It’s rather an understatement to say that I was impressed and moved by this novel, which is a meditation on time, identity and love, all wrapped up in meteorology, and written by a woman of about my age. (And that summary doesn’t really do justice to the novel. Please just read it.) I experienced a similar intellectual reaction to I am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett. These two books practically had me hopping around my apartment with hooray to talk about them.
I added a bunch of novels to my “I Can’t Believe It’s Taken Me So Long To Read This Incredible Thing” list: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon; Watership Down by Richard Adams (okay, so it doesn’t quite qualify as “incredible,” but it did make me think big thoughts about rabbits, John Hurt, and Bunnies & Burrows all Spring); and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. I was especially taken with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, not just because it’s one of the best coming-of-age stories I’ve ever read, but also because I live in Williamsburg and it was delightful to re-imagine my familiar blocks in Smith’s turn-of-the-century story.
In the sci-fi universe, I finally got around to reading Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which made me give a cosmic, jovial punch in the arm to hard science fiction. I normally steer clear of you, classic hard sci-fi, but this novel was a surprisingly charming and humane representative. It was a year of re-reading in sci-fi, too. I took a second look at Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, appreciating all the more how it anticipated so much of our modern social media world, and I spent a few good days re-visiting The Female Man by Joanna Russ. I read and wrote about The Female Man in my teens, and finishing the book for the first time was the moment when I decided (even though I’d been deciding all along) that I was a feminist (in fact, that I had to be a feminist). Reading it twenty years later, it’s not quite as revolutionary, but it has become more revelatory for me. In the new weird universe, Brian Francis Slattery’s Liberation killed me with awesome both times I read it this year.
I spent a fair bit of time with short stories this year, too. Belle Boggs’ “Homecoming“ was a stand-out among contemporary selections. Shirley Jackson’s “The Summer People” is a rad, economical little story that reminded me 1.) of why I should never stay on in a vacation town after Labor Day, and 2.) why Shirley Jackson does creepyawesome like no other author. And I think that E. M. Forster’s 1909 story “The Machine Stops“ actually flabbergasted me with its vision about the role of technology in the future (despite its dystopian-as-all-heck outlook, it’s fairly spot-on in a lot of ways about the way we are living our lives right now).
And (of course, of course) there are more! But I’m really interested in what you’ve read this past year, and what you think I should be reading in the next.
Please comment or drop me a line with some suggestions, dear readers!
Oh, and I’ve included a bonus book club PowerPoint presentation after the jump, too, if you’re interested… ok
I met Christopher and Jennifer Schell (aka the Design Rangers) in 2000, when Chris and I began working at the same advertising firm. For the past ten years, they’ve seen me through two key career changes, assorted derby injuries, four moves, a whole heap of relationship woes, and a bunch of different hair colors. Right about the time I set up camp as a freelancer in Brooklyn, they embarked on building their own design firm. It’s a real joy to say that we’ve been partners on this journey of the last decade – the whole way.
It’s also awesome to show off the Design Rangers’ many talents, including the design prowess of this website! Take a moment, if you please, to stop by their camp blog and see how they transformed a Wordpress theme into this here very cool tammyoler.com that you’re lookin’ at.
Yeah. Radness.
With the Design Ranger Family (and Ehrenspace) at the top of Mt. Almagre
It’s easy to think of success on our journeys as whether or not we arrived where we thought we should go. But some of my most important journeys have ended in unexpected places. And, after all, isn’t it really all about the people who honor us by becoming part of our journeys? I think so.
I hope I have many more decades of friendship and creative collaboration like the one I’ve enjoyed with the Rangers.
[I contributed the following post the Design Rangers Camp Blog, the virtual outpost for my favorite field guides to the creative world. I'm cross-posting it here for you to enjoy!]
As you reflect on your marketing efforts in 2009 and prepare for 2010, it’s easy to focus on what you accomplished (or didn’t) and what kinds of strategies will meet your needs going forward. But before you design a plan that’s all about YOU, remember that no marketing will work unless you put your customers first.
Ask yourself the following question: how often do you listen to your customers? ok
