Weekly Newsletter 11.17.2020
Updates
Last week, I mentioned my participation in the Leadership in the Age of Personalization Summit coordinated by Glenn Llopis. The “highlights reel” from each day of the summit are now available: Day One (Healthcare), Day Two (Corporate America), and Day Three (Higher Education), which not only captures me not paying attention to my co-panelist (I really was, but I was also trying to figure out how to sneak a sip of water without going all Rubio on camera) but also features my overly-animated sound bite about the campus as a laboratory for culture. For a little longer, you can still register here for the summit (for free) to access all of the sessions.
In October, I was invited to give a keynote at West Sound Academy’s Fall Festival Fundraiser. Like most organizations, WSA shifted to a virtual platform for the event. Sure, it denied the school community a chance to get together, mingle, and celebrate the season, but it also inspired innovative programming. Updates and brief reflections from the school’s senior administrators, who served as the event’s emcees, were interspersed with short videos from students and faculty, a couple of live performances, and talks from an alumna of the school and me. As communities are forced to rethink the forms and structures of their customs and institutions because of the pandemic, they also have a chance to respond to the systemic injustice and racism (and all the other -isms) that have been revealed to us. Much of my talk focused on making meaning of the moment so we can intentionally rebuild and move forward, and it was really inspired by Arundhati Roy’s essay, published in early April, “The pandemic is a portal.” If you’re interested, I adapted the talk to an essay called “Making meaning,” now posted on Medium.
Last week, I started offering guided meditations via Zoom. My approach to meditation is informed by my own engagement with Buddhist insight meditation, Jesuit discernment, and centering prayer, and my aim is to practice being present - to myself, to others, and to the world. If you or someone you know could use a 20-30 minute dose of peace and quiet on Mondays, visit the meditation page on my site to sign up.
I post longer reflections on Medium - not regularly, but as they’re ready. If you’re interested in exploring my take on the world, visit https://billhulseman.medium.com/. If anything strikes a chord (or a nerve!), I’d love the chance to be in dialogue with you about it - leave a comment on Medium, or reach out to me directly if you’d like to go deeper into any of these topics.
Good Stuff
Listen
Maybe it’s counterintuitive to listen to sad songs when you’re trying to keep your spirits up, but the last few days, with the winter holidays approaching and most of the country still grappling with the restrictions that the pandemic requires, I’ve been humming Bob Dylan’s “I Was Young When I Left Home” to myself. I’m not a Dylan aficionado by any means, and I met this song through Antony and Bryce Dessner’s cover. The lyrics communicate Dylan’s own parable of a prodigal child, longing to return. They resonate differently with me today - instead of a much-anticipated roadtrip through Idaho, Utah, and Arizona to be with my family, we’re adhering to Washington State’s advisory to restrict travel and staying home. It is, quite literally, the least we can do to slow and end the pandemic, but it leaves us with one more disappointment in the calendar year whose name I dare not speak. The longing in the song - and in Antony’s voice - feels pretty familiar right now.
I don’t like it in the wind,
I want to go back home again,
but I can’t go home this a’way.
This a’way, Lord, Lord, Lord,
and I can’t go home this a’way.
If you stream music on Spotify, I’ve started a playlist called “Bill’s Good Stuff,” including music I’ve loved for a long time as well as things I’ve come across more recently. Feel free to add the playlist to your favorites! Bill’s Good Stuff Spotify Playlist
Read
As part of Monday’s meditation, I included Mary Oliver’s poem...no, not that one. I know, everyone loves “The Summer Day,” and its call to appreciate our “wild and precious” lives. But her collection, Thirst, includes “Praying,” which impels me to appreciate the ordinary as a gateway to the extraordinary.
“Praying”
Mary OliverIt doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
See
As the pandemic goes on, arts venues are suffering badly. Some, like Tacoma Arts Live (full disclosure: I’m on the Board), have been able to pivot to streaming to be able to keep artists working and audiences engaged. Among the innovations of live-streaming, they’ve developed The Muse Hour. Two more to go - Rhiannon Giddens & Francesco Turrisi on November 22 and a Holiday Concert featuring Pink Martini’s Thomas Lauderdale and China Forbes on December 12.
Peruse
As a kid, I was a bit obsessed with geography. It didn’t rise from a prodigious affinity for cartography - instead, it was the product of a lot of time alone and many hours flipping through the World Book Encyclopedia. Of 1972. So, you know, Zimbabwe was still Rhodesia, Germany was split in two...anyway, I figured out how to supplement and update that information, enough to get me to the Illinois State Geography Bee in 7th grade. (I told you, a lot of time alone.) I didn’t make it past round 4, and my career as a celebrity cartographer never took off, but I maintained a love for understanding geography and the meaning, impact, and politics of maps. Somewhere along the line, I stumbled across Worldmapper, which has mastered the art and science of the cartogram, marrying geography and various, people-centered data points, presenting the world in ways I’d never imagined. In addition to the thousands of maps on their site, their Instagram account posts a “map of the week.” Since the start of the pandemic, they’ve mixed in updated maps and animated maps depicting the spread of COVID-19. And when watching those maps gets to be too much, go back to seeing different slices of the world, like Tourists in 2015, UNESCO Natural Sites, Adult Literacy, or just the plain old Population of the world in the year 2018.
