I'm Interested [02]: Friendships, Flabbiness, Finlandia, & Containers again
Hello again everyone - I’m back with the second issue of ‘I’m Interested’.
If you read the first one - thank you. If you didn’t, I believe in second chances, but the only way to truly repent is to share this issue with at least one friend.
I'm interested in a lot of things. I know YOU are too. Not everyone has the energy or attention span to dig through the vast expanses of the internet and then read and prioritize what would be worth a chunk of that idle time we spend on our phone.
I'll be that someone.
Dare I say, I’m Interested.
TL;DR - If these short nuggets of thought provocation are too long and you don’t read, you should consider deleting TikTok and reclaiming your attention span.
Flabbiness
Former National Geographic explorer of the year, Alastair Humphreys, has an intriguing new book called ‘The Doorstep Mile’, but I’m particularly interested in this excerpt about the 3 stages of flabbiness in life: physical, mental, and moral. I’ll let you enjoy his wonderful writing style to understand what he means. I will share his solution, the only way to sort them out is “…either jump in the nearest cold river for a bracing swim, or I plan a trip, set a start date and, come what may, begin.”
Friendships
This is a topic I will spend more time on in an upcoming issue, until then I will leave you with this article: How to Have Closer Friendships (and Why You Need Them). This is an important discussion that should really never go away (unless it’s solved, of course).
In groups of adults, you often hear some form of this complaint: It’s hard to make friends as an adult. And if, for whatever reason, you don’t stay connected to your childhood or college friends, you can end up in your 30s (or 40s, or 50s) knowing a lot of people, but being close to very few of them.
It seems that we hone in on career goals, financial success, and family/personal milestones rather than connection with others. When people list life goals or New Year’s resolutions, rarely do they include making close friends or getting closer to existing friends.
In 2020, I think I made the fewest friends and acquaintances of any year I can remember (THANKS, Obama!). There were times I was a short drive away from close friends, but couldn’t spend time with them due to COVID precautions. It took a noticeable toll on me. I know I’m not alone.
In 2021, friends and close connections are a major priority - I have a lot of work to do and I plan to make friendships & community a consistent theme in this newsletter.
Fitness & Food
I’m always looking to share interesting products I’ve found. Check out this food tracking app that works solely with SMS messaging. You shoot a text with what you ate and FitMeal does the rest. I’m not an advocate for calorie counting, I think the value here is that if you want to eat more vegetables, diversify your choices, rein in the coffee intake, reduce alcoholic beverages, etc. - there is definitely some utility. Read more straight from the founder.
2021 World Tour Stop #2: Finlandia
TL;DR: Kylie and I are ‘touring’ a different country every month in 2021 via YouTube videos, podcasts, articles, Anthony Bourdain shows, food, and drinks. The tour continues and Finland is up this month. It’s cold as hell, they have bars in transit cars, and their schools are awesome.
Did you know there is a tram in Helsinki with a bar inside it? This means two things:
The street cars are stable enough to store, serve, and enjoy a cold one. Sounds a hell of a lot better than the DC red line.
Revelers can travel across the city in the pub tram no matter what the weather is and keep the party going.
Party Tram
No drunk driving, more money spent in local bars, and one hell of a time on the tram. Can you imagine the camaraderie between drunk people crawling across the city, headed out (or home) and having a time at the tram bar? I could see one of these working well in a place like Minneapolis or Chicago - taking people between breweries or music venues. Unfortunately, all of our cities are built for cars and the street car was all but eradicated across the U.S., so this is a pipe dream - more on that in a future issue.
School is Different. School is Better.
I’m not going to get into their rankings, the equal resources, and all the magic that gets associated with nordic countries & their public services. Finland has 5.5 million people, most of them speak the same language and have similar backgrounds. Americans often scoff at things that work there vs. what would work here. The bottom line is, in the country with the arguably the best education system in the world, they do a lot of things that work incredibly well and we can learn from them.
I’m pro-nuance and acknowledge the massive difference in situation, just look at the brief section in that Smithsonian piece about how they deal with supporting an immigrant student in the city of Espoo. The rare exception, they call it.
Did you know young Finnish school kids only go to school for around 20 hrs a week? The rest of the hours are prime time for play, exploration, and socialization. They even play for 15 minutes between lessons. You can give me a thousand reasons why that wouldn’t work in the U.S. and I’d likely agree with you, but I like where their head is at.
They hardly give any homework at any level. Now, having homework and doing it are two entirely different things in my experience, but I didn’t go to an esteemed Maryland public school - so what do I know.
Vocational School vs. Degree + Debt?
Digging further, 43% of Finnish students go to vocational school when they are of age1, dedicating time to apprenticeships and learning skills that lead to stable employment, fulfilling careers, financial security, and a stronger workforce. I think the U.S. sends far too many students who don’t fit the academic mold and are unsure about their interests off to accumulate crippling debt and a degree that doesn’t guarantee hard skills and employment. We should be actively supporting vocational training and de-stigmatizing alternate paths after high school.
I could go on for days, but I encourage you to read more if you’re interested. Quotes like “We value play” and “Equality is the most important word in Finnish education. All political parties on the right and left agree on this…”(IS THAT POSSIBLE?) are particularly poignant.
Containers, again. New Zealand’s Re:START Mall
TL;DR - Christchurch, NZ was ravaged by an earthquake in 2011, the city center was a ghost town so they built a bustling shipping container mall in a pinch. It really worked.
In Issue 01 of I’m Interested, I brought up the idea of dynamic, close-knit shipping containers that could blend work, life, and play and adapt to changing needs and conditions. As promised, this week I have an analogous example in the form of the Re:START Mall in Christchurch, NZ.
Context: Christchurch the Ghost Town
In December 2015, I found myself in Christchurch on the last leg of a camper van journey through New Zealand. I will never forget what I saw or how I felt. Giant empty lots near city center, collapsed church steeples and rubble, condemned and boarded buildings, and an overwhelming feeling of emptiness and despair. The streets were sleepy and the bar we found was somber. I hadn’t done my research: (if you know me, that statement might surprise or delight you haha)
In February of 2011, downtown Christchurch was ravaged by a violent earthquake, killing 185 people. Thousands more were left homeless. An area more than 4x the size of London's Hyde Park was deemed uninhabitable. At least 70% of the central business district’s buildings needed to come down in its wake. Over the next 3 yrs, the area experienced thousands of smaller earthquakes.2
The rebuild effort was hampered by aftershocks and unstable ground.
Enter: Containers.
With aftershocks continuing and an inability to build or plan long term, the city invested in a temporary shopping area built with shipping containers because they were "strong & re-locatable". Approximately 60 shipping containers were set in various configurations, fit with windows and folding doors and painted in an energetic color palette. The mall soon filled with art galleries, high end shopping, and cafes. It drew tourists again as it was highlighted by Lonely Planet and even Atlas Obscura. Best of all, it was all built in just 8 weeks.3
Why does it matter? Why am I sharing this example?
To follow up on the ideas from last week - I wanted to draw attention to what Christchurch was able to accomplish in 8 weeks. They brought life back to a devastated downtown, provide spaces for social gathering, kickstarted business, and gave reason for optimism.
I’m particularly struck by the sociability of the public spaces. The edges of the colourful container buildings are as important as what’s inside them. People sit, chat, drink coffee, listen to music and the spaces are intimate, sheltered, on a human scale – they find a receptive public. People clearly feel safe there and they relax.
There are many lessons to be learned from Re:START about the construction of public space in a new city. In effect, the mall itself is a tiny purpose-built city in the middle of a vast wasteland. As Tritt comments ruefully, parking is no problem. It is so lively and cheerful that you forget, for a while, the great strangeness of its context.
Lara Strongman - Australian Design Review
The Magic of Mason Jars
TL;DR - Unlike your usual blog post recipe, I’m pretty straight to the point on this one. Mason jars are cool, I’m making pickles and so can you. Magic mushrooms are for the next email.
You don’t have to spend long on pinterest (or strolling through a Portland, OR farmers market) to see all of the applications of mason jars in craft culture. This is not a new phenomenon by any means. That said, the classic, re-usable, darlings of the DIY community have been a topic of discussion for me this week. First for making homemade pickles (see below), and then in discussing the growing sensation of cultivating psilocybin at home (for more on why people are doing that and how I hope they help us battle the mental health crisis in America, check back in 2 weeks).
Easy Pickles
I’m not a fan of recipes that require me to scour a supermarket for obscure things or even worse, measure precisely. Knowing that, I made my own pickles & pickled onions for the first time last week. This is primarily enabled by the wonders of hydroponics & my Aerogarden - overrun with fresh dill. I kept it simple and loosely referenced this recipe for refrigerator pickles. If you scroll down for 15 minutes, wade through invasive ads and read my entire life story - the recipe is at the bottom, I promise! Kidding.
For 4 pint jars:
Simmer 2 cups white vinegar, 2 cups water, teaspoon of salt, tsp of sugar until it dissolves
Get your cucumbers (recommend ‘Kirby cucumbers’ available at most stores) and cut them in chips or spears, slice up a red onion if you want to do a jar or two of those instead
Stuff the jars, add 1/4 tsp of peppercorns, a pinch of red pepper flakes, and 2 smashed garlic cloves per jar
Add 3-5 decent dill sprigs per cucumber jar
If you want spicy pickles - dice up some Jalapeño or Serrano pepper and add more red pepper flakes
Pour the hot vinegar solution into each jar, cover until it cools a bit, put in the fridge. In 5 days they will be primed and ready to eat and share.
Closing with the Vibes
If you click on one thing in this newsletter, let it be the play button. Feel that bass-line.
If I can get you to replace 15 minutes of mindless scrolling through your media/news/app rotation with some interesting, optimistic, educational content in a newsletter, I'll rest easy.
If I made that happen, or there was something here that you enjoyed, please pass this along to a friend (or two!)
If you’re not feeling it, please reply or reach out and provide some feedback. I don’t know what I’m doing and I can only improve through iteration - stick with me.
http://ncee.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Finland-Education-Report.pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/jan/27/christchurch-after-earthquake-rebuild-image-new-zealand
https://www.australiandesignreview.com/architecture/restart-mall-christchurch/