Columbia Gorge Dispatch

I remember some corporate training I received a few years ago where the person pushed the idea of the Platinum Rule being superior to the Golden Rule. Instead of “treat others as you would be treated”, it’s “treat others as they would like to be treated”. It came up again in an audiobook I recently finished.

Here are my issues with the attempt to upgrade the Golden Rule. First, you’re much more able to know yourself than others. If you’re held to the platinum standard, you’re forced to get into the business of mind reading a vast majority of the time. Sure, in some cases you can ask, or through getting to know someone closely, you’ll figure it out with some high degree of certainty. But ultimately, it’s a losing game. Secondly, and here’s the kicker: it is part of the Golden Rule. Listen, would you want others to treat you as you’d like to be treated? Of course! So, the Golden Rule has it baked in — you’re obliged to make an effort. That said, would you hold people accountable for not knowing your particular idiosyncrasies? Most reasonable people would not.

Let’s not get in the business of expecting people to mind read. That doesn’t seem like an expectation setup for a great outcome in society.

I hope everyone has a fruitful Lent, starting today. I thought about doing Exodus 90 (without the brotherhood aspect) this time, but shied away from it. The one thing I’ll be public about is, and this isn’t a huge sacrifice, is I’m giving up video games over the Lenten season. I don’t play much, but I do a bit on my phone. I’m a big believer that it’s very easy to overdo video games, especially on a phone, due to both the time it can take and the distractions that it causes if you’re trying to multitask. I think that I’ll find myself making real gains in other areas due to this decision.

40 days (not including Sunday) to Easter!

It does get cold in New England, for sure, but not this cold. It hit -20F last night, with a wind chill of something like -43F. This is from before bed:

To set the crazy historic level, Mt. Washington hit an all time record for New England yesterday. -107F wind chill. WOW.

I just found that WordPress has a “writing prompt”, much like Day One’s journal prompt. Today’s was “what do you want to read?”. Ok, I’ll run with that, in a manner of speaking.

I always want to read more than I find the time for. This has been a problem (is it really a problem?) for my whole life, though. I think I’d be happy reading for hours a day if I didn’t have so many other responsibilities. Not complaining — the other things I do are important! — but what it leads to is I always have a reading list that stretches out into an unreasonably long point in the future. The singularity of reading lists, so to speak.

I read in 3 forms: paper, Kindle, and Audible. And I usually have more than one going in each form at the same time. Right now I have going on:

• The Book of Joy (Audible)
• We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Audible)
• Oliver Twist (Audible)
• The Magician’s Nephew (Kindle)
• Introduction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Kindle)
• My Antonia (Kindle)
• The DevOps Handbook (Kindle)
• Conan: Blood of the Serpent (paper)
• Once Upon a Time Machine (paper)

So yeah, 9 books: I have a problem. You understand, I’m actively working on (reading at least once a week) almost all of them. How many people do something like this? How odd is this reading style? One of the issues is I want to keep up with my kids’ reading from school, and since they go to a classical liberal arts Catholic school, there’s a lot of reading. Then I want to keep up with technical books, philosophical books, nerd books, and Important Books.

OK, time to put aside the keyboard and pick up one of the above books!

She’s calling it an “evening race”, which is fine. It’s not night until it’s time to sleep. We’re at Protor Academy’s own ski hill, which is interesting. They have a T-bar, like I grew up on. I’m not skiing myself, as almost the entire mountain is taken up by the course. She’s doing well – so much improvement in the last two winters… so far!

True, Mrs. Parker. True.

We got hammered today by about 13” of light powdery snow. Great storm, with more on Wednesday! I took Tigli out for a walk and had to carry her over some of the drifts that were over 2’. No complaints from the dog. (But maybe a bit from Danica when the ice on her melted.)

In New Hampshire, schools get out early for skiing for some days in the winter. I was surprised when I learned about this, but my Mom told me that in her day they had the same thing. They take skiing seriously in New Hampshire!

I signed up to chaperone for the school lessons, but the organizer said I wasn’t needed – they had plenty of parents signed up. So, for about 3 hours, I skied with Clare, her best friend at school, and her Dad. The conditions were… meh. We have a huge snow drought problem here in New England this year. Thin covering and slushy — oh, and about 40 degrees. Seriously, it was like skiing on Mt. Hood in April. No bueno. We still had lots of fun and I got some good technical practice in.