An Experiment in Newsletter Formatting

(New format!) The Best Issue So Far | Castles in the Sky #18

“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” – George Elliot

🍌New Newsletter Format

Starting next week you’ll be receiving two emails per week:

• Early in the week, you will receive a full story or essay in the body of an email. The subject line will be the title. There won’t be any other links or commentary, just straight to the good stuff. 

• Later in the week, you will receive a numbered issue of Thought Bananas. This will be a roundup of updates on my work as well as things I’ve written, read, and watched in the last week. These issues will be longer but organized so that they're easy for you to scroll through, read what you like, and skip what you don’t like.

• Everything will be organized according to the three areas of interest for Thought Bananas. There will be a table of contents under “In This Issue” where you can click any given story and it will scroll you directly to that part of the newsletter.

• Feedback has been super helpful. So please reach out and tell me what you like or don’t understand about the new format and layout.

🍌In This Issue 

The Rawlsian Toolbox

• Teacher, Bureaucrat, Cop is a discussion of the nature of grades, the roles a teacher plays, and how much fairness should factor into teacher’s decisions.

Antecedence

• “I am his eyes and he is my arms” is a short story about two friends who had few options and dedicated themselves to planting a forest.

• The Orca and the Spider: On Motherhood, Loss, and Community is a reflection on the power of mothers, family, community and grief.

Reading, Writing, and Riches

• Farewell to Atlanta, a great Magical Realist TV show celebrates the series finale of Atlanta by highlighting how it is a unique example of Magical Realism.

• I Remember the Bookstore is a nostalgic essay in favor of browsing in-person independent bookstores.

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The Rawlsian Toolbox

John Rawls said the fairest world is one that we would all want to be born into regardless of where we were born into it. In the interest of a fairer, more prosperous world, I share stories of educators and entrepreneurship, techniques for molding minds and building businesses, and discussions of policy around schools and businesses.

Painting: Rural School Room by Perkins Harnly

🍌Teacher, Bureaucrat, Cop

In this excellent essay, a professor of introductory philosophy writes about being a teacher in the way only a philosopher can: by considering the nature of things. 

First, they say that the nature of a teacher is to serve three roles. The first role is—naturally—a Teacher: 

The function of teacher is to educate and improve their students. To give them knowledge, grow their skills, charge up their critical thinking, train their intellectual virtues—anything like that.

Then next role is a Bureaucrat: 

The function of bureaucrat is to fairly evaluate the students. It is to offer some relatively objective assessment and ranking.

And finally, a Cop: 

The function of cop is to enforce the rules. Perhaps the kinder way to put it might be that the cop functions to maintain the current social order. Though, in some cases, the way to maintain the social order is to inculcate a sensibility of pure obedience to the letter of the law.

They then discuss the nature of grades, and how the grades serve a function for the teacher, the bureaucrat, and the cop. For the teacher, grades encourage a student to progress. For the bureaucrat, they provide a way to measure a student’s progress in comparison to other students. And for the cop, grades are a way to reward or punish students for following rules for rules’ sake. 

If you want to be a better teacher, or have ever questioned why grades work the way they do, or have a bone to pick with the current way that students are turned into numbers at every level of schooling, I highly recommend checking out the whole essay on Daily Nous. 

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Antecedence

Recently becoming a father, I find myself spending a lot of time considering the people, ideas, and places that shaped who I am, how they came to be the way they are, and how through me they will shape my children. I think about family, history, geography, and philosophy: looking at life as big questions over decades.

Painting: In The Forest by Narcisse Diaz de la Peña

🍌“I am his eyes and he is my arms.”

There’s an old Greek proverb that says, “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” As anyone who has been reading Thought Bananas knows, I think that trees are a beautiful metaphor for history and community. 

I found that this story was especially poignant: a man who lost his eyesight and a double amputee became friends and have worked for decades replanting trees in their Chinese village. They started it for income because they did not have many other options, but their work has transformed their community. 

When they began working together on the project, other villagers were cynical, Haixia explains. "They didn't believe what we were doing was possible," he says, "the whole riverbank had been bare for years and there were hardly any trees." But after a few years the trees grew, the area became greener and the villagers changed their attitude choosing now to assist the two men.

Read about it in the BBC or check out this excellent mini-documentary on Great Big Story (2 minutes 46 seconds):

 🍌The Orca and the Spider: On Motherhood, Loss, and Community

I read a beautiful personal essay where Grace Loh Prasad reflects on the power of mothers, family, community and grief. 

One by one, the sides of our perfect square collapsed. Even though we lived an ocean apart for more than two decades, each loss was like sawing off a table leg, causing the whole structure to wobble and fall. Although my brother and my parents weren’t present in my daily life, they provided an invisible scaffolding that I didn’t realize I depended on until they were gone. All the things that proved I had a home in California—house, job, passport, driver’s license, ability to vote—were the result of choices I had made, rather than natural ties to a culture and community. It was a one-sided equation: I could claim it, but it did not claim me. The only true unit of belonging I had that was intrinsic and undeniable and could not be undone, that understood my complicated identity without needing an explanation, was my family.

Specifically, she talks about the pressures on women to be the ones who do the thankless emotional labor of bringing families together, how she wishes she had extended family to shoulder this burden with her, and how this plays out in her own relationship to her son. 

The older he gets, the more I worry that I have not done enough to knit a tapestry that will enfold and protect him, that will open doors and give him room to stretch while keeping him out of harm’s way, that will imprint a pattern so deep and recognizable that he can always find his way home. This is what I am most afraid of: that I will be exposed as the mother who cannot weave, who cannot on her own produce the work of many hands, the unseen web that no one notices but everyone needs. Try as I might, there is no material stronger than kinship.

Check out the whole story in The Offing.

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Reading, Writing, and Riches

“A psychologically rich life is best characterized by a variety of interesting and perspective-changing experiences.” Writing and storytelling, particularly in books, have brought me joy, entertainment, and meaning Here I discuss and share the books, stories, and big ideas that have made my life psychologically rich.

🍌Farewell to Atlanta, a Great Magical Realist TV Show 

Last week was the series finale of Atlanta by Donald Glover. I think it was one of the best TV shows in decades–maybe ever. It was funny, bizarre, compelling, and unlike any other TV show I’ve ever watched. 

Atlanta was the best TV example of my favorite genre, Magical Realism. It reminded me of some of my favorite artists in other mediums, like filmmaker Charlie Kaufman, who made Synecdoche New York, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, and Being John Malkovich, and writers Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Haruki Murakami.  Magical Realism makes use of realistic storytelling, but elevates certain aspects to dramatic heights to make certain points. 

Magical realism is about the “inclusion of fantastic and mythical elements into seemingly realistic fiction.” Many of the moments of magical realism in Atlanta offer the same kind of socio-political relevance, a truth beyond the truth, that you find in [magical realist writers like] Marquez.

If you haven’t seen Atlanta and want to see a few examples of Magical Realism, or if you watched it and just want a refresher, check out this article in High Snobriety, The Eight Greatest Examples of Magical Realism in Atlanta. 

If you just want to dive in, I recommend streaming Season 4, Episode 1 (available on Hulu in the US). It stands alone well even if you know nothing about the characters, and is the perfect mixture of hilarious, poignant, and bizarre to tell you what the show is all about.

🍌I Remember the Bookstore 

In this great ode to physical bookstores, the writer explains how our concepts of the internet are wrong. The internet is not a “place” we can “explore.” There is no “browsing,” only “teleportation.” We lose a lot because of this, and we stand to gain from perusing physical bookstores.

When asked why people should come to my family’s secondhand bookstore, I will often say something like “rediscover the lost art of browsing,” and go on a tangent that looks like this author’s recollection of physical stores: 

There was something steadying, though, about standing in an actual, cavernous bookstore and taking it all in. Your fellow customers shared a room and a set of options. The scale was human, and the stock was present. Some of it disappeared from day to day as people purchased books. But you had to walk past the stuff you thought you didn’t want to reach the stuff you thought you did. Thus, you could stumble on something you hadn’t set out for. (I’d never heard of Snow Crash the day I picked it up.

The essay is a great read if you love bookstores, but if you’re not a diehard fan, it might be a little too into the weeds. In that case, watch this mini documentary (by our friends at Bennett Creative) about America’s best kept secret: Becker’s Books. Then, when you’re in love with physical bookstores, come back and read the essay.

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That’s all for now—see you next week!

Thanks to everyone who edited, proofread, and gave feedback on the writing in this issue. And thanks for reading Thought Bananas!