Crime in the 'hood

Let’s close out the week with one more bit of drollery from the People’s Republic, spotted on one of my walks:

I mean, littering is truly bad. But there’s no camera anywhere in the vicinity. So, nice try.

Compensation issues

Welcome to Virginia, y’all.

I just wonder that no one’s let the air out of this guy’s tires.

Goldilocks goes SoMe

I see that Facebook is flapping its corporate hands in shock—shock, I say—at discovering a “coordinated disinformation campaign” (per WaPo) in the run-up to this year’s elections. They claim they can’t find any link to Russia in the pages they’ve shut down, so I suppose that means their “ad” checks are still clearing the bank.

Here’s the thing—everything about Facebook is geared around them producing data that will support whatever they choose to do. And if having all those Russian trolls create pages and engage in activity so that it makes their user numbers look good, they’re going to find data that backs them up.

Every single time they pretend to solicit feedback, it’s in the form of “you want us to do this, right?” not a real attempt to collect our opinions, much less act on them.

A case in point is a survey they fielded a few weeks ago. It was page after page of multiple choice questions that were utterly meaningless. (And don’t even think about a verbatim option.) Here’s one utterly idiotic example:

What does this even mean? It makes me think of Goldilocks and the three bears. If I say I have “too many FB friends”, what are they going to do about it? Bring out the guillotine? And If I say I want more, are they going to cook some up for me? (No, no—I know: they’re going to demand access to my email contacts list and start soliciting people to join up. After all, they need to replace all the fake account they’ve purged.)

But aside from that, I'm pretty sure that Facebook gathered no meaningful information from it. It was a Potemkin survey.

Property is theft

Right until about ten or 15 years ago, the vast preponderance of the People’s Republic was what you might call communal. The whole point of this particular planned community design was to maximize commonly-held ground (and social sharing) and to minimize private property.

But now that The Developers have arrived, there are a lot of No Trespassing and Private Property signs around.

However, long-time residents of the People’s Republic don’t give a toss about such things, as you can plainly see by this path that’s been worn by scores of feet right next to one:

Power to the people, baby!

Gratitude Monday: Grace

The term “grace” covers a lot of territory. It can mean anything from an elegance of movement—poise—to a state of permanent godly sanctification. (The latter concept has always manifested itself in my imagination as a kind of shower of light. Which, now that I consider it, may be what all those Medieval and Renaissance painters were getting at with the halos they attached to the heads of angels and saints.) But today I’m thinking of something somewhere between the two endpoints of the spectrum.

I’ve been grappling with the notion of grace for a while. And by “a while” I mean “years”. Grace lies at the heart of my gratitude practice—my conscious effort to actively seek out people and things in my life that spark joy in ways both large and small. If you click on the “Giving thanks” label to the right of the blog, you’ll find my weekly devotion to gratitude. Sometimes it’s something glorious, like the Women’s March, or the Supreme Court striking down laws prohibiting same-sex marriage; occasionally it’s a reflection on a friend. But most often it’s me stopping to notice and appreciate small beauties, like sunsets and flowers and rabbits and birds; or even latte art.

The latter category—small beauties—is the one I draw upon on days when I feel the absolute crappiest. When I have to make myself cast about for something—anything—that doesn’t suck to the max, and that therefore might constitute some indication that there might be a reason to want to wake up tomorrow.

So this post from a local Unitarian-Universalist church on grace definitely resonated with me. The writer speaks of the grace that I seek—the small, unexpected splashes of light in a life that seems almost entirely in the shade, if not in darkness. This is the part that struck deep within me:

“I don’t get to choose when grace is given to me, so I must be gracious in my life.”

And this is where I struggle. I get so wrapped up in fears large and small—from what’s going on in the world and the nation to what’s going on at work—that I fail to be aware of grace, which also exists alongside the fear. With eyes focused on the pavement, I walk past the flower that peeks out between bricks in a wall. My brain replays last week’s conversations on continuous loop, so I fail to hear the birds singing around me. The scowl on my face as I gird myself for another frustration at work, on the commute, wherever…prevents someone from greeting me with a smile.

And thus my own lack of graciousness thwarts the very thing I seek from manifesting itself in my life. I fail, in Caine’s words, to recognize the subtle blessings in life—in my life. This is a fearful realization.

The corollary to this—something I also frequently fail to recognize—is that I can be a grace in the lives of those around me, by being kind, by being attentive, by showing recognition and appreciation. By picking up the litter someone else has tossed. By making room for the baby stroller on a crowded Metro car. By letting someone merge into traffic.

When you feel you have little to contribute, it’s heartening to think that you can give grace. It doesn’t require great wealth or grand gestures; it only needs awareness and willingness. I don’t get to choose when to receive grace, but I can choose when to give it. And by giving it, I can choose to be it. That is within my power.