Active listening
I’ve been thinking a lot about talking to strangers. As vaccination rates in the United States continue to climb, I’ve seen and felt the change in the 10-block radius—also known as my neighborhood—where I’ve spent the past year. Fuller tables at restaurants, more grandparents at daycare drop-off and at the playground, more conversations with neighbors who used to just wave as we passed. Everything feels so different than it did this time last spring.
Human interaction is what makes us happy. Even short conversations can be powerful things. After the State of California banned same-sex marriage in 2008, activist Dave Fleischer, director of Leadership Lab, came up with a better way to reduce bias against LGTB people in voters’ minds: deep canvassing, a method of persuasion based on listening and engaging in conversations with strangers—the opposite of the usual messaging practices of political campaigns, where canvassers blast talking points to anyone who will listen. It’s time-consuming work—each conversation takes about 10 to 15 minutes—and operates more like therapy than like marketing, encouraging voters to open up about how they feel. But it has been shown to work.
This Sunday, my husband and I hosted a picnic. We had beer and Le Croix and tangerines and some cupcakes because those all seemed like hygienically safe things to put on a table. We weren’t doing any canvassing—we just wanted to introduce our new baby to some of our friends. We were thrilled to see people we hadn’t seen in person in more than a year, but we were also pretty rusty at socializing. I’d resolved to be a better listener when I finally got to see people again—more patient, more present, more open —but I kept finding myself blabbing about me and my world instead of listening much. That’s what lonely people with cabin fever do.
So I’m writing this newsletter. I’m calling it Active Listening because I want to make a resolution that sticks. Not because I’m out to change minds, and not because I'm working for any campaign, but because seeing people in person is a privilege I never realized I had. And if 2020 has taught me anything, it’s that being oblivious to privilege is not a good thing.
I’m going to share some news, share some links, rant a bit, and send you a picture. Paying subscribers, if I ever get that far, will get more pictures, plus some surprises. I’ll be sending this out once every two weeks. So here goes…
Read, watch, listen
Comedian Vinny Thomas as a man who just got the vaccine. Old but worth bringing back up: Two sets of twins in Colombia switched at birth. “Shake Sugaree,” by Elizabeth Cotten, whose bio I really want you to read. And this dancing dog on TikTok that you’ve probably already seen.
Complaints
Alexis McGill Johnson, president of Planned Parenthood, tackles the difficult question of Margaret Sanger’s racism in a recent column in the New York Times. This is a topic that deserves to be brought into the open—Sanger supported eugenics—but I almost stopped reading when Johnson writes that Planned Parenthood doesn’t want to be a “Karen.” Karen, as she puts it, “escalates small confrontations because of her own racial anxiety.” But Karen is a term for which there is no male equivalent. The male counterpart of Karen gets let off the hook. He’s good-guy Greg. Memes are a reflection of our culture, and in ours these kinds of causal outlets for misogyny still get a pass. So, ugh. Let’s call Karen what she is—a racist—and find a better shorthand for people of all genders who use their privilege to complain.
Thanks for letting me vent there. Here’s a picture of the view from my apartment, which I’ve seen way too much of these past thirteen months, but which right now is cheering me up.
And finally, for those of you who haven’t heard from me in a long time, have no idea who I am, or who would rather not see a newsletter from me again, there’s a link below to unsubscribe. I won’t take it personally. This is my very first dispatch, and you have the option to make it your last.
To everyone else: Thank you for reading this! More TK in a couple of weeks.