RWL #201
mass incarceration, common ground, toilets, & more!
Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! The student organization for my department, the Student Organization for Health Leadership (SOHL) sponsored an virtual alumni panel about finance careers yesterday and I Zoom bombed in to watch. I was commiserating with one of the alumni about being mostly remote and I jokingly said I miss seeing everyone in person, the students never come to see me, they don’t bring me flowers anymore, making an allusion to the Neil Diamond/Barbara Streisand duet from the 70’s, thinking I was making a clever joke. The president of SOHL said, “Oh Professor Bonica, we’ll bring you flowers”, and I said, thanks, but did you get the reference? And of course none of them did. How can you not know that song? When I was in college, all my friends would get together and sing along with this album, but it was You Don’t Bring me Flowers that brought down the house. Beer may have been involved; irony definitely was. Sometimes working with undergraduates really makes me feel old.
Campus officially closes at the end of next week and we go all remote for the rest of the semester. We’ve done well, but cases are rising here and everywhere else. I’ll be giving an in-person exam on Tuesday, and then I think I will opt to go all-remote a few days early to let my students leave town.
(I got out to paddle earlier this week - we had a run of 70 degree days and I could not let them go to waste. Pic above is one more shot of foliage from the water.)
Stay well and stay safe!
Read
What: The New Yorker, What Makes the Difference Between Getting Out of Prison and Staying Out?
Why: This is a nice piece about a non-profit organization that provides transitional housing and counseling to individuals released from prison who are trying to get back on their feet and rejoin civil society.
A bit from the piece:
Near the end of one mock interview, the questioner said, “You seem like a fine candidate for the job. I’d like to offer it to you. But, of course, I’ll run a background check on you. Tell me, if I do will anything come up?” The candidate, trained in previous classes, struggled to recall the ideal answer, which is something like: “Yes, when I was younger and behaving stupidly, an unfortunate situation occurred and someone got badly hurt. This led to my becoming involved in the criminal-justice system. But I studied hard and attended several programs while I was in jail. That person I was is not who I am now.”
The United States has the highest imprisonment rate in the world, even worse than Communist China (probably if we ignore the Xinjiang concentration camps). I am not anti-prison - I think some people should be segregated from society. Unfortunately we overuse the tool. Our prisons are overcrowded, and as a result, violent and governed by gangs, as my friend David Skarbek has written. As a society, we do not do enough to stop recidivism as well. The Fortune Society, the name of the organization written about in this article, tries to step into that gap. Prison is a critical social tool, but we have overused it and turned it into a public health problem.
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What: Bloomberg, Winter Is Coming. Get a New Hobby.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-11-13/winter-is-coming-get-a-new-hobby
Why: I’m a fan of hobbies. This article makes the usual case for them - they are good for your physical and mental health, you live longer, etc. Add on, I think they enhance your performance in your day job by helping you develop more diverse skills. But the point of this article is particularly on maintaining well being during the pandemic:
To stay sane during this time, then, we need a way of creating new mental spaces. I’ve written before about how to keep your work-from-home headspace separate from your live-at-home headspace. But two mental spaces aren’t enough. You need a third — a place that’s not work, and that isn’t caregiving or cleaning.
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Watch
What: TED Talk, Nisha Anand, The radical act of choosing common ground
https://www.ted.com/talks/nisha_anand_the_radical_act_of_choosing_common_ground_nov_2020
Why: Anand starts her talk with a reference the Crime Bill of the 90’s (something President-Elect Biden helped pass) that led to much of the over use of prison I mention above. The point of her talk is about finding common ground - shared interests - that allows us to find a way to coexist. It was through finding common ground that Congress was able to pass the First Step Act that has started to reduce mass incarceration. There are some lessons to be learned here, given our highly polarized politics. I wrote last week about how important finding common ground in the workplace, even if your job is to talk about policy and politics. It’s worth taking a few minutes to watch.
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Listen
What: Why It Matters Podcast, Let’s Talk About Toilets (30 min)
https://feed.podbean.com/cfrwhyitmatters/feed.xml
Why: In the developed world it is easy to take basic sanitation for granted. But basic sanitation is not a given in much of the world, and it has major public health impacts. What is interesting about this podcast is the discussion about how sanitation is cultural, and there are cultural forces keeping it from modernizing.
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What: a16z Podcast, How to Moderate Talks, Panels, Meetings, More (Virtual and Beyond!) (62 min)
https://a16z.com/2020/11/05/moderation-communication-skills-mediums-virtual-verbal-nonverbal/
Why: Excellent how-to podcast. I think I’m ok at managing panels and talks, but meetings are not my strength. I’m about as organized as a Jackson Pollock painting. It takes me a lot of time and effort to organize my thoughts, so organizing the thoughts of others is hard for me too. So I appreciated this interview. I think even if you think you are good at running meetings (and talks), this is a useful podcast to listen to. There are some good tips about virtual meetings in here, which most of us are still adjusting to.
Thanks for reading and see you next week! If you come across any interesting stories, won't you send them my way? I'd love to hear what you think of these suggestions, and I'd love to get suggestions from you. Feel free to drop me a line at mark.bonica@unh.edu , or you can tweet to me at @mbonica .
If you’re looking for a searchable archive, you can see my draft folder here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jwGLdjsb1WKtgH_2C-_3VvrYCtqLplFO?usp=sharing
Finally, if you find these links interesting, won’t you tell a friend? They can subscribe here: https://tinyletter.com/markbonica
See you next Friday!
Mark
Mark J. Bonica, Ph.D., MBA, MS
Assistant Professor
Department of Health Management and Policy
University of New Hampshire
(603) 862-0598
mark.bonica@unh.edu
Health Leader Forge Podcast: http://healthleaderforge.org
'It is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk, that keep the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love.' - Gandalf (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey)