Ampersand Gazette #58
Welcome to the Ampersand Gazette, a metaphysical take on some of the news of the day. If you know others like us, who want to create a world that includes and works for everyone, please feel free to share this newsletter. The sign-up is here. And now, on with the latest …
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To the Editor:
“When Your Technical Skills Are Eclipsed, Your Humanity Will Matter More Than Ever,” by Aneesh Raman and Maria Flynn (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Feb. 14), provides an optimistic picture of artificial intelligence’s effect on the work force—one in which intuition and innovation trump raw intellect and technical prowess.
Their assessment leaves us with an important question: Can we become more human in a world becoming less so? What we need to be asking now is how.
Our approach to education needs an overhaul. We’re stuck in a system obsessed with standardized tests that robots can already pass in seconds. We’re busying our students with a game that’s already over at the expense of equipping them for what comes next.
We can’t afford incremental change. What’s needed is a fundamental shift that reorients instruction and evaluation around the REAL skills: resilience, empathy, agency and leadership. These abilities are truly “future-proof” because they’re the things that are uniquely human.
The complex problems facing humanity—polarization, inequality and an imminent climate crisis—require human solutions.
It’s time to start teaching kids the subject that matters most: themselves.
Abby Falik
Oakland, Calif.
The writer is a social entrepreneur and the founder of Global Citizen Year. She is currently a visiting fellow at Stanford, where she is designing a blueprint to transform how young people learn and lead.
from a Letter to the Editor in The New York Times
March 3, 2024
I can’t be the only person in the United States who has noticed that Americans are so often given to doing the easy thing or the measurable thing or the obvious thing rather than patiently taking the time to get to the root of the problem—whatever it may be.
The Affordable Care Act is a case in point. It’s a great idea, don’t mistake my meaning, but it doesn’t solve the very real, and exponentially-increasing problem of the medical-industrial complex, not by a long shot. In fact, the ACA, despite the good it does, isn’t about healthcare at all. It’s about health insurance.
We’ve done the same thing in a similar way with education. We’ve focused on turning out citizens who test well on standardized tests. Full disclosure: I filled in those dots on the SAT as a pleasing design, and never read one question. FWIW, I told the truth about it in my interview and got into an Ivy League school Early Decision.
Standardized tests are easy, and fast, in the measurement department. So?
When did we decide to choose easy-to-measure over, say, valuable, honorable, compassionate? When did helping students learn to think go by the wayside? Do we mean to turn out robots from our public educational institutions? Because if we do, great.
I don’t believe that a majority of people in the U.S. think that turning out matching sets of students who test well is the goal of school. Call me Pollyanna. At least, she was glad.
Were you glad in school? Did you enjoy it? I loved school, but not the curriculum. I loved the things that branched off the curriculum: research, the essays, the think stuff, not the regurgitate stuff. Sure, I did okay with that, but it did not make me all get-up-and-go on Monday mornings. What did that was the challenges.
The challenges developed what Ms. Falik calls “the REAL skills: resilience, empathy, agency and leadership.” They made me ask the hard questions in life: Who am I? What is fair? How do I change this? Why is this the way this is? How can I make this right for everyone?
“These abilities are truly ‘future-proof’ because they’re the things that are uniquely human.”
Right now, the writing world—from Madison Avenue to the great American novelists—is all a-flap over AI, and there are plenty of good AI tools meant to be used for good things, and, I’m sure, bad ones as well, but when it comes down to it, however we ‘train’ AI, it is not now, nor will it ever be, human.
Ms. Falik asks: Can we become more human in a world becoming less so? Her answer is the same as mine. We have to. Unless we do, we’ll go on measuring, and we’ll go on missing the point, and we’ll go on creating the same same, which isn’t working for a lot of folks.
In a book I read decades ago by Sue Monk Kidd, long before she ever dreamed of writing fiction, she told a story about how her lifelong Christian faith had, at one point in her life, been broken apart. Not just broken, but pulverized, diced, minced, sliced, cubed, sharded, and left in shambles.
Her faith had left her, she was in an awful limbo, and she didn’t yet have a firm place to stand. In the book, she was telling the story to her pastor husband of many years while the tears streamed down her face. He listened to the whole sorry tale and never said a word. When she stopped, he reached for her face with one finger and caught one of her tears. Without a word, he placed it on his own face.
I’d like to see AI do that.
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A parttime employee in a bakery, and aspiring novelist, is repeatedly asked to do another shift or stay late. She has a hard time saying no …
One afternoon I was venting about it to my stepfather, expecting his sympathy, and he just shook his head, vaguely amused. Then he offered one of the best pieces of wisdom I’ve ever received: “She has the right to ask the question, and you have the right to say no.”
This was mind-boggling in both its simplicity and its radical reframing. The requests that I’d experienced as acts of violation were really nothing of the sort; it was not only my right but also my responsibility to draw my own boundaries, rather than expect another person to draw them for me.
What was so hard about saying no? Often it was the fear of disappointing someone, not being able or willing to meet some need. But it was also often the fear of permanently losing something—a chance, an opportunity, a connection. Every offer was a message that would self-destruct 10 seconds after I refused it, never to be seen again.
Almost every woman I knew had expressed, at some point, difficulty saying no. … The inability to say no was tangled with other things: a mercantilist desire to shore up affection, gratitude and opportunities, and a craven, self-centered fear that I would be annihilated by someone else’s hurt or disapproval.
She said yes one too many times, and …
After coming home from the hospital, in the quiet of my apartment, I decided to make something I called the “Notebook of Noes.” On every page, I wrote down an opportunity I had decided to decline. … Underneath, I wrote what saying no had made room for.
More than anything, however, the Notebook of Noes helped me see absence as a form of presence—instead of lamenting the ghost limb of what I wasn’t doing, I could acknowledge that every refusal was making it more possible to do something else.
The flip side of saying no is saying yes more fully, less grudgingly—because I’m not living life like a pat of butter spread too thinly across toast.
from a Well column by Leslie Jamison in The New York Times
The Mind-Boggling Simplicity of Learning to Say ‘No’
February 28, 2024
Has this ever been you? On any front? Are you ever afraid of missing out? Worried that you’ll disappoint someone? Scared you won’t be asked again?
More, do you do your best always to say Yes if you can?
Why?
I love the notion that her boss is allowed to ask. Make that friend, lover, stranger, it doesn’t matter. Anyone can ask anything of you. Anyone.
You get to tell each and every one of them Yes or No based upon what you choose. The author’s insight that she has a right to create her own boundaries is a valuable one. Why wait for someone else to push us before we think about and bring about the boundaries we choose? And, why wait for someone else to create our boundaries? That makes no sense at all.
I certainly have seen myself get all het up, and in someone else’s business, because of something they’ve asked me. The subtext goes something like: How could you?! Here’s a counter to that one: Why wouldn’t they?
Beloved, we teach people how to treat us by the way we treat ourselves. It’s that simple. And yet … and yet …
Ever heard yourself say something like I just don’t like confrontation? Who does? But No doesn’t have to be confrontation, unless you make it one. You can learn to decline nicely, kindly, politely, and firmly.
Oh, except. Within. That requires confrontation. It asks that you pay attention to yourself, figure out what you want, and act accordingly. Like this:
My mother had four children, three rather close together, me and my two brothers. Then ten years after she had me, almost to the day, she had my youngest brother John—something of a surprise baby.
Fast forward to the day before John starts public school kindergarten, and that night, right before dinner, my mother did something quite uncharacteristic of her. She knelt in front of her youngest son, looked him dead in the eye, and said, “Repeat after me.”
Johnny nodded his head.
She went on in as serious a tone as one might take to announce the new pontiff, “My mommy is the mommy who brings the paper napkins.”
Johnny, dear little angel that he was, repeated after her.
My mother had had it with bake-thirty-cupcakes-on-demand for which her other children gleefully, and apparently abundantly, nominated her.
Now Mama’s was a preemptive No, but it works for in-the-moment Noes as well, also future Noes.
You’ve heard this, I’m sure, No is a full sentence. It is, and it is your responsibility to use it as often as you determine for yourself that you need to. You’ll never run out of them. I promise.
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Here’s a universal affirmation. It works every time, for everyone, always and forever …
Daniel G. Hill
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And in publishing news …
We’re more than halfway through reading Gemma Eclipsing aloud. I’m always amazed at how much I haven’t caught in my own proofreading. Seriously, if you ever really need something to be perfect, proofread it aloud. It’ll boggle your mind. At the rate we’re going, I’m now aiming for Tax Day to launch both ebooks and paperbacks.
Speaking of which, I am no longer in a serious muddle with Amazon. When I finally got into the right mindset—which I did by using EFT, or tapping—I was put onto a supervisor almost immediately. He understood the issue, promised me that I’d hear from him via email by Tuesday (that was a Thursday,) and he did exactly what he’d said he would do! Woo-hoo! Nothing like setting myself up for success.
EXCEPT. Amazon can’t/won’t fix it, because the backend of KDP isn’t equipped for it. So he sent me explicit instructions on how to make it the best it can be for now, and promised that he’d personally kick it up the chain to management as my situation is not unique. For a No answer, it was pretty satisfying. I swear that the one thing we all need when we’re “suffering” whatever we’re suffering is to connect it to meaning in some personal way.
So, if you want the paperbacks, look carefully. There are two volumes for each book.
The first two of the tetralogy, Jezebel Rising and Jasmine Increscent can be found at these live links for ebooks and paperbacks.
P.S. I attempted to do what he told me on Saturday afternoon, and the way the KDP pages are set up, it’s impossible. I have to call them on Monday now! ARGH.
Once again, if you haven’t seen it, here is the blurb for Gemma Eclipsing—Book Three of The Subversive Lovelies!
A rescue. An artistic vision. And her new vicety demands its immediate birth.
Gemma Bailey is the third of the Bailey siblings, yes, those Baileys. Known for being exceptionally talented on the stage, whether theatrical or domestic in nature, Gemma is given muchly to dramatics in the best sense of the word. She can make an occasion out of anything. She loves ritual. She loves pomp. She loves circumstance. She’s good at all of it, and she’s perfectly content with her legion of myriad friendships, no romance necessary.
Now it’s time for Gemma’s vicety—the third of four the sibs had planned upon the death of their beloved father seven years earlier. Since then, Jezebel’s pair of viceties—The Obstreperous Trumpet, a saloon, and The Salacious Sundae, an ice cream parlor—are going great guns. Jasmine’s vicety, The Board Room, the first of its kind in the City, is racking up the profits, all of which go to charitable causes. Gemma has been naming and claiming a music hall as her chosen vicety for years until the time arrives to make it happen.
Then, the extremis of a young painter causes a vision for a fine arts academy strictly for women artists to be birthed full-blown from Gemma’s eternally capacious imagination. And despite her abundant performance giftedness, Gemma discovers a fulfilling talent she never dreamed she had.
Will her vision engender the support it needs from all corners of the exclusively masculine art world? Will she struggle pointlessly to put forth her case? Or will an encounter with an unlikely colorful glass artisan change the whole game completely for Gemma and her vision for a vibrantly creative future for Chelsea Towers?
I’m on the verge of diving into writing Jacqueline Retrograde, and I can’t wait!
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Sometimes, we all need accountability. That’s where my brilliant spouse bookhusband Tony Amato comes in. It doesn’t matter if “all” you have is an idea. He’ll help you figure out what to do next, and he’ll keep you intent on your goal. Find him here.
In fact, two weeks ago we had scheduled a weekend meeting to figure out what the Energy Leaks micro-courses might have turned into! Oops, best intentions … it’s turned into an ongoing mealtime check-in sort of thing as each segment is revealing itself—one at a time.
Sometimes I get impatient with the Divine. Do you? Well, anyway. I get to wishing that the whole plan would be revealed all at once, like an outline for a book or a paper, instead of one piece at a time.
The hilarious thing is that even typing that word—outline—makes me shudder in dismay. I’ve tried. I can’t write or teach to an outline. I’m a discovery writer—I discover what I’m writing as I’m writing it. That’s one of the things that makes it have such a deep fascination. What I even think I’m doing longing for an outline makes me shake my head at myself. No telling what humans will get up to.
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The research phase of any project is one of my favorites. Here’s what I’m reading right now.
I just finished Leading Lady: A Memoir of a Most Unusual Boy by the hilarious Charles Busch. I was fascinated to learn that he did not think of himself as a drag queen. No, he was an actor specializing in leading ladies. I totally appreciate the difference.
I’d seen him in Vampire Lesbians of Sodom during the height of the AIDS epidemic. He said they were the jesters in the face of the plague, and he was absolutely correct. They were.
I’m also reading And the Band Played On—in its 20th Anniversary edition. It’s about the first five years of the epidemic. I’ve read it before, but I need it again now. It’s still as chilling as it was when it first came out.
I also just finished a magically-powerful version of the Jesus / Mary Magdalene myth by Sophie Strand called The Madonna Secret. It’s a delicious 830 pages and well worth your time if you cotton to the notion that the two were wed.
In addition, I’m reading gorgeously-photographed coffee-table books about drag queens galore, and the usual fiction popcorn I choose for a mental break—billionaire romance, Mafia romance, supernatural fiction. All in all, most satisfying.
I love, love, love book recommendations so, feel free to email me yours.
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For those of us who feel as though we’re caught
in a repetitive pattern, which likely means all of us
in some part of our lives,
consider, for a moment, that wherever you’re
S T U C K
has its own beauty and wonder, if you’ll seek it.
I am, without doubt, certain that And is the secret to all we desire.
Let’s commit to practicing And ever more diligently, shall we?
Until next time,
Be Ampersand.
S.