Written by Yang Ruan

I read "Lean In" by Sheryl Sandberg recently.  It's basically a collection of tips for women who work in male-dominated professions.

I've always been in male dominated fields, and I could really relate to many of the situations she described.  I'm glad that she brought up that in many cases, your own prejudices and insecurities work against you to make the experiences even more negative than they otherwise would have been.  Most of the tips involve shifting your own way of thinking or doing things to compensate for your bad habits.  It was also helpful for me to read these because it also gave me a better understanding of other women.

The most interesting conflict was the one between Success and Likability, which is what Chapter 3 is focused on.  Basically, being nice is necessary for being attractive as a woman in America.  Being attractive is important for self-esteem and feeling like a complete human being.  At work, there will always be someone who will be upset so matter what you do, even is you are just doing your job.  There will always be cases where you are inconveniencing someone, and they may take it personally or simply act like they're taking it personally.  If being agreeable is important than being disliked by even one person can be very disconcerting and uncomfortable.  As a result, many American women do not feel that leadership positions and being ambitious are fun or rewarding.  Sandberg considers this the biggest reason women eventually stop working or don't return to work after having children.  It's just not worth it.

I find this really interesting because I actually don't feel the same need to be likable.  I really think it is because Chinese culture does not emphasize being nice or even liked in order to be attractive.  There is much more of an emphasis on being smart, competent, and hard-working.  Those are the qualities one's self-worth are tied to.  As my friend would say, we feel the need to be a PMOS - productive member of society.  The principle is that if you are helpful you will be liked, but good intentions are useless.  So now that I understand the need to be nice and liked, I can better understand American women.  I can also see why there are many Chinese and Taiwanese-American women in male-dominated fields and moving up corporate ladders right now. 

I wrote up more of my thoughts in a google doc where I listed what I considered to be the main points in each chapter.  I'm planning on using it for a discussion on the book.

Cross-posted with Yang's blog.

By Jess Reilly

When I landed in Kansas in 2009 as part of a Visioning committee for the Kansas Scenic Byways, I was brought there to help the state develop nature, cultural, and active travel along their scenic backroads. I conducted nine stakeholder meetings throughout the state and was privileged to be part of a process of input and evaluation with hundreds of people committed to sustainable development of their communities.

Gene and Mary are fifth generation farmers in Kansas. All five of their kids have returned to work on the farm.

However, in 2013, Kansas representative Dennis Hedke has proposed legislation to remove all language of “sustainable development” from any Kansas projects.

It would be easy to assume that Hedke’s views represented the rural populations in Kansas. When I asked my peers, I realized that very few young people from the coasts spend much time in the physical heart of the U.S., and rarely had anyone strayed from the interstate. But I was also among the ranks of cross-country drivers who had gripped the wheel and prayed to not fall asleep traversing the state. Working in Kansas changed my impressions of a landscape that is neither homogenous in politics nor terrain. I had a hard time imagining the draw of Kansas for a traveler seeking adventure, but I could not have been more wrong.

Yes, this is Kansas!

Kansas is quite magical, with or without sparkly red shoes. The nostalgia is palpable, the beauty is nonchalant, and the past whistles in the tall (switch)grass. For example, I stood in a cave where Dull Knife hid with 100 women and children when the Cheyenne tribe fled from their reservation in Oklahoma and tried to reach Canada. The view is hauntingly the same as in 1878.

In Alma, Kansas, I walked into a bakery and bought cookies on the honor system. I laughed over the best coconut cream pie on earth (this is confirmed) in Dover, and sat at a long community table and ate brownies with a feisty group of elder ladies at the weekly quilting bee in Ellinwood. On the 60,000 acres of wetlands along the Wetlands and Wildlife Byway, more than half of all the shorebirds that migrate east of the Rocky Mountains pass through annually, not to mention endangered whooping cranes. Here, Kansas pioneers shot the waterfowl out of the sky with a cannon, back when birds used to “blacken the sky.”

Just sit back and enjoy the homemade brownies, dearie.

Barry Jones searches the endless skies and wetlands for some of the most rare birds on earth.

A Kansas farmer on the Smoky Valley byway identified all the grasses and dried flowers on the roadside while native switchgrass swooshed at our feet, soon to be harvested for biofuel. He also showed me ground that had never been plowed—too much limestone. As a result, bison wallows remain. These shallow dishes in the rocky earth are all that linger of the millions of buffalo that roamed freely over the short-grass prairie and slept on the plains. Standing in a hole carved by generations of resting bison was eerie and deeply moving.

David shows me the fuel of the future.

Kansas’ new political “redness” contrasts with the tough, practical, and resilient people I met with throughout its rural communities. Consequently, I find it difficult to reconcile Hedke’s legislation with all of the voices I heard throughout the state. The sky is huge in Kansas and I met many people with the vision to match it.

The same grit needed to build a life on the frontier is required in the new battle for sustaining rural communities in a changing world—and we are now more connected and are able to amass our voices in dissent. Even as our population in the US becomes increasingly urban, we can support rural communities with our individual actions, such as low-impact tourism, signing petitions, keeping a watchful and active eye on our representatives, and giving time, energy, and action to organizations that fight to support rural communities and their economic viability.

I can promise you, the people of Kansas are worth standing with.

Walking strong with Kansas.

You can read about Jess’ research, living on a sailboat, and all her adventures in between at jessreilly.com.

By Peter Alstone

This is a short story about riding bikes with kids, and more specifically about the challenges of making good transportation decisions as a parent.

Being a professional energy geek makes me acutely aware of the resource implications of personal choices, and one of the most important is how you decide to travel around town.  Over half the greenhouse gas emissions in Berkeley are from cars and trucks.  We all want to do the right thing and for me this means riding bikes and buses as much as possible.  But what happens when you have a kid who needs to travel with you?

As a parent of a preschooler and an infant, I can attest that first of all, my car gets a lot more use than it otherwise would.  When we need to make a quick trip somewhere beyond walking distance as a family the car is really the only way to go.  The bus can work sometimes but it takes longer in almost every case, and time is a very precious commodity for any graduate student, and particularly parents.  It turns out little kids can be impatient too...imagine that. 

Luckily, having a good bike setup can really help us get back on two wheels.  We use a trailer to haul around our son (the preschooler).  As a bonus, the trailer is a trunk for grocery runs and provides great resistance training.  I tend to agree with people who think trailers are good from a safety perspective too (at least compared to seats on the back of bikes).  That said, it is sometimes harrowing to dive into rush hour traffic with my kid in tow.  The bus is better this way (or back to the car). 

A hipster station wagon

Soon though, our son will be too big for the trailer and not big enough to keep up (or watch out for traffic).  As the late cycling luminary Sheldon Brown describes it, an awkward phase for family biking.  Maybe we'll try a follow-along type contraption. 

Why go through all this headache?  The fun answer is that riding bikes and buses is a much more fulfilling way to get around town than a car and my kids like it to boot.  We stop to check things out on the side of the road (like construction equipment) and take new routes to our destinations when it strikes us.  Parking is never a problem.  When we ride the bus or BART (public train), it is an opportunity to sit and talk about whatever is going on without worrying about traffic and speed limits.  Plus, our son has an ongoing obsession with the different varieties of buses and enjoys pointing out the subtle differences between them (his categories: "New" Gillig Buses, Hydrogen buses, "long" buses—those with a bend in the middle, "line" buses—the old style that have lines painted on the sides, and "normal" buses—the most common Van Hool buses that AC Transit runs). 

The more serious answer about why to bother with bikes and kids comes in two parts.  First goes back to the drive to make good personal choices when it comes to resources and transportation. Second is setting the right kind of example for my children.  Having them grow up with bikes and buses can't hurt when it comes to the way they choose to travel later in life.

I know that adding two folks to the population of our planet will lead to some incremental increase in consumption, and some of my environmentalist friends have chosen to drop out of the reproduction business altogether for that reason.  To me that line of thinking doesn't jive (a cartoon version of the implications were hilariously presented in Idiocracy).  I'm an optimist about the future and instead of using birth control to completely eliminate my families future environmental impact, I'll make sure they know how to ride their bikes.  Instead of rubbers, meet the road. 

Cross-posted on Peter's site.