dan

2016 – A Look Ahead

Building on what worked in 2015, I’m ready to wave my arm around and point in some general directions of where I’d like to go over the next 366 days.

First on the list—because I’m convinced it helps with everything else—is to continue my meditation practice. In the latter part of 2015, I meditated on 35% of days, and for 2016 I’ll up that to 50% of days.

Currently, I do a little yoga before sitting, and I’m going to expand that by attending a regular weekly class, as I did prior to being injured back in early 2012. I’ll begin by attending a Level 1 class by my old yoga teacher, Vicki Russell Bell, for a few months. If it goes well, and I can build up some strength and flexibility, I’ll begin attending her Level 2-4 class weekly.

I journal a bit after each sitting meditation, and I will continue that part of the practice as well.

With support from my practice, I aim to be more aware, more of the time, of my breath and presence and of being grounded in contentment.

In particular, I’ll make further progress accepting my PTSD, examining it, familiarizing myself with it, inviting it in for tea. At the same time, because I don’t want or need to guarantee it permanent residence, I’ll continue with therapy, including investigating, during the course of 2016, some adjunct somatic therapies (such as EMDR).

I’m identifying two values on which I intend to strengthen my attention:

Parenting and family life, and
Cultivating my creativity.

During 2016, Zoe will go from being six-and-a-half to being seven-and-a-half, a significant leg of her journey through childhood. Right now, Melanie and I are pondering how best to help her learn about disappointment. For all of us, it’s a revealing (and never-completed) life lesson and a big piece of what makes up character.

Parenting happens in the now, and effective parenting is all about achieving and maintaining a calm, loving, engaged, and contingent mindset. No one can do that always, but I’m going to be looking back, as I review each day, and coach myself to be here now whenever I can, but most of all when I’m interacting with my kid.

The most satisfying times I’ve had as an engineer—and in retrospect, the ones that have opened the doors to success—have been when I was creating something new. Of course, I’ve also had creative moments that brought on conflict and led to disappointment. Sometimes people don’t want a new and better solution. Sometimes what looked like a good solution, in that creative moment, just isn’t.

Outcomes aside, those creative moments haven’t been as frequent as I’d like. It’s not so much that I’m risk-averse; it’s that I haven’t yet connected my grounding in contentment, so recently and tentatively achieved, with exercising my right-brain. I create, but to create with soul… that’s been like a prize to which I’ve felt I’m not entitled.

In 2016, I’m going to stretch and work my corpus callosum—that connection between the brain’s hemispheres. I’m going to start with putting more time, and more of myself, into practicing the guitar. And writing.

Those are the main intentions I have for the coming year. I have quite a few others, having to do with finances, the amount of time I spend working, and my domicile. I’ll write about those things another time.

January 2, 2016 by dan Personal Status 0

2015 – What Worked

2015 was a whopping good year for me. Before I start setting goals or making resolutions for 2016, I’m going to focus on some things that worked out well in the past year.

The best thing I did all year was to participate in David Weinberg’s 10-week course, “Advancing in Stillness,” which advanced my mindfulness practice and helped me get focused on living my values. The prerequisite 8-week mindfulness course—which I completed in 2014—was useful in its own right. The 10-week graduate course, which ran from January to April, marked a turning point in my personal development. In particular, I made progress accepting how PTSD affects me, and how it has affected me throughout my life.

Most importantly, after finishing the course, I continued to meditate regularly for the rest of the year. I use Insight Timer, and after a free update came in May, the app started tracking my sessions. So I know I meditated on 35% of the days since May. My routine usually includes some yoga poses before I settle into my zafu.

I continued my weekly psychotherapy sessions—something I have done for eight years now. At times during 2015 I felt it might be time to cut back or even stop, because in general I’m happier than I’ve ever been. However, I continued and plan to continue this work as long as it is expanding the horizons of my emotional experience. It contributes a lot to my effectiveness as a parent and partner.

Throughout the year, I continued to bicycle regularly. I participated in roughly half the Saturday rides with the Oakland Yellowjackets. When I could, I went out for a solo ride mid-week as well. On the Yellowjackets rides, I didn’t hold back taking the lead of our Advanced Intermediate group. I found that I could be comfortable doing that, and I found that I could measure my success in the strength of the group’s camaraderie and by the glow in the faces of my fellow riders. And I could accept, with only mild frustration, the times when the group didn’t hold together as well as I’d like.

I finished one century ride in May. I trained for another in October, but a sudden bout of flu caused me to abandon that ride at the last minute. Most of the year, I felt fine and strong, if a bit more creaky than in 2014. Best of all, I remember feeling, on a few of those Saturday rides, that I was having about the best experience anybody ever had, rolling through the impossibly scenic Bay Area in the company of friends.

I got some inspiration from reading Joel Friel’s book, Fast After 50, in particular the advice about continuing to train near your cardiovascular limits as you age.

Another big help: Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert), in his somewhat odd and throw-away collection of thoughts titled How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, has some good advice on changing eating habits. I followed that advice—principally about refocusing your cravings to protein and vegetables, and staying away from carbs—and quickly lost about half of the extra 10-15 pounds I’ve been carrying around for a few years now.

As a parent, I accompanied Zoe into the “big kid” stage, with big emotions and suddenly, a lot of differentiation. She’s managing a big portfolio—including first-grade expectations, navigating the elementary school social landscape, and shuttling between Melanie’s household and mine. Looking back on the year, my recollection of her occasional tantrum is muted, as is my frustration with her not-so-occasional resistance to following my direction. Brighter, and sharper, are my memories of a lot of playful roughhousing, the pleasures of beginning to read together, and sharing the fun of learning new games and new skills. I drew a lot of insights from these books: Siegel and Bryson, No-Drama Discipline, and Ames and Ilg, Your Six Year Old: Loving and Defiant.

I worked a lot this year, billing over 1,600 hours, in addition to time administering the business and the occasional gig done for promotion or pro bono.

I liked almost all of it. My working environment is beautiful and suits me well. My clients are good people; I’ve known some of them for decades, others for a few years; we share values and for the most part common perspectives on environmental protection, bureaucracy, and other aspects of the work we do. My interactions with them are a real pleasure.

I got a lot of satisfaction from presenting my accumulated knowledge to new audiences and from preparing documents and tools that are used by many people in their work. This year, I often left meetings and presentations exhausted but also feeling validated and appreciated.

During the course of the year I realized I was enjoying planning and designing projects a lot more than I enjoyed dealing with policy and regulations. However, I’m not ready to give up the higher-level side of my work, as I am way invested in advancing in my ideas about how urban runoff should be managed, and I like seeing those ideas take hold (and less worthy ideas held at bay), when it comes to mandates and funding.

Toward the end of the year I invested in renewing my technology—moving my files to the cloud and upgrading my software to subscriptions. It’s taken a lot of effort to reorganize and reconfigure things, but I now can access email, calendar, contacts, and files—and do various levels of editing—on three devices: a Windows 10 desktop (with two monitors), an iPhone 6s+, and a iPad Pro. To my mind, this is another aspect of having a work environment that is, in fact, very pleasurable to be in.

I think that as time passes and I look back on this year from a more distant perspective, what I will remember most vividly—what I hope to remember most vividly—will be the vacations and trips, short and long. There were a lot of them:

 Our family started the year where I am as I write this: In Monterey, tide pooling on New Years Day at Point Lobos State Reserve.
 Late January: The first of four seasonal family trips to Yosemite, sightseeing in the valley and stopping near Crane Flat to find a patch of snow—rare in the drought winter of 2014-2015..
 February: Four nights backcountry truck-camping in Death Valley National Park with Zoe, including a memorable day wandering down upper Monarch Canyon.
 April: Spring Break exploring Mexico City, with day trips to Teotihuacan and Xochimilco.
 Memorial Day: Another family trip to Yosemite, leaving the crowds behind to bicycle around the Valley.
 June: two nights family birthday backpacking to Coast Camp, in Point Reyes National Seashore, including tide pooling at Sculptured Beach. Another day playing in Stinson Beach.
 July: an 8-day family road trip through Humboldt County. Bicycling on the Avenue of the Giants. Whitewater kayaking (in IKs) and rapid-surfing on the Trinity River.
 August: I joined my old friend Stephen Zunes for a 4-day backpacking trip through the Hoover Wilderness and Yosemite Wilderness.
 September: A weekend at Camp Tawonga, and then another family trip to Yosemite, this time to Tuolumne Meadows, on the last day before the high country closed for the season.
 December: Zoe and I visited by dad Ted and his wife Laura in Albuquerque, and awoke to a lovely snowfall.
 Also in December, our fourth trip to Yosemite, skating at Curry Village and stopping on the way out to sled in fresh, abundant snow near Crane Flat.
 And back to Monterey for New Years Eve. This is the fourth year we’ve done that, both times including kayaking in nearby Elkhorn Slough.

Politically, I found the year frustrating, painful, and more than a bit enlightening. Donald Trump is astonishing in his crudeness and directness, but he is characteristically American, and his popularity shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. Bernie Sanders’ 15 minutes of fame, on the other hand, is more troublesome to me. He is a leftist, and I have been a leftist all my life, and what is wrong with his campaign is—I’m thinking—what is wrong with the left, and has been wrong with the left. I think Barack Obama has been a great President and I think Hillary Clinton will be an even better President (I’m just finishing reading Hard Choices, and though I’m a critic of US foreign policy, and don’t accept many of her assumptions and views that are consistent with that policy, I think she is thoughtful, and capable.) I think that in a few more cycles liberal Democrats will control all three branches of the Federal government, which is cause for hope.

I found some time to improve my mind through reading, and I advanced my perspectives on science and society: Ta Nahesi Coates’ Between the World and Me, and the strange and wonderful The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time (Ungar and Smolin), which I am still working on, have been especially worth the time invested.

So those are my reflections on the outgoing year. Next up: My view ahead.

December 31, 2015 by dan Cycling Personal Status 0

CASQA Conference

The California Stormwater Quality Association’s annual conference is October 19-21 in Monterey. I’m delivering two presentations there.

The first is at a special workshop on the Central Coast Post-Construction Requirements. For those interested, my Powerpoint is here.

The second presentation, in a Wednesday session on green infrastructure, summarizes my work creating eight conceptual designs for drainage retrofits. The Powerpoint file can be downloaded here. The eight conceptual designs, accompanying project information sheets, a project report, and a cost estimating workbook can all be accessed here.

October 16, 2015 by dan Stormwater Pollution Prevention Work Status 0

Earthy Day

I still have mixed feelings about Earth Day.

In 1970, I was in seventh grade, having already been suspended and about to be expelled for political activity—which was largely, but not entirely, in opposition to the raging war in Southeast Asia. I’d seen the Life magazine pictures of the massacred old people, women, and kids in the ditches of My Lai.

This Earth Day idea—that we all needed to take personal responsibility to do something about pollution—seemed like a clever political diversion.

The school administration decided it would be instructive to have us pick up litter on a hot North Carolina roadside. We had some classroom discussion afterward. I suggested most pollution was coming from factories, and that big business was responsible. It didn’t go over well with the teacher.

I hadn’t seen, until today, that on that first Earth Day the great I.F. Stone was making some related good points in a speech at the Washington Monument.

Forty-five years later, I think a lot of the participation in the environmental movement comes from a perspective of doing your part, taking individual responsibility, and feeling good about it. With age, I’ve come to be more tolerant of that perspective. However, I still think it is a diversion from the pressing need for political action to challenge the military-industrial complex.

April 22, 2015 by dan The Nature of Belief 0

Green Infrastructure

I’m glad to see “Green Infrastructure” become au courant, although, as with “Low Impact Development,” it’s one of the those squishy terms that invites expansion, and drift.

“Low Impact Development” is used to refer to everything from sensible urban planning to water conservation, and now “Green Infrastructure” shows up in conversations about everything from building with recycled materials to planting trees. It’s all good, I guess.

For a while there, I was using “Low Impact Development Drainage Design” to keep things focused on what LID means to me, which is designing land development projects to treat runoff pollutants and mimic predevelopment hydrology. Maybe I’ll need to start saying “Green Infrastructure Public Drainage Systems” to keep the focus on designing—and retrofitting—streets and storm drains.

As Green Infrastructure becomes a thing, I’m trying to contribute by developing methods to rapidly identify retrofit opportunities and carry them forward to conceptual designs. Wonderfully enough, I’ve got an assignment to do just that. On Wednesday, I gave this 15-minute presentation at City of San Jose offices.

April 10, 2015 by dan Stormwater Pollution Prevention Work Status 0

Stormwater Utility

Today I listened with interest to a presentation on efforts, by a broad coalition of local government entities, to make a modest change to California Proposition 218. The 1996 constitutional amendment requires a 2/3 popular vote to create or raise fees—the add-ons to property tax bills local government uses to pay for schools, parks, and other things people need.

Proposition 218 exempts water, sewer, and garbage fees. The logic of the exemption is that these utility fees are for are services provided directly to the property owner, and are in direct proportion to the cost of individual service.

Local governments would like to add stormwater to the list of exemptions. The proposal presented today foresees the creation of local stormwater utilities that would fund flood control, storm drains, and stormwater pollution prevention programs—and could create raise fees to pay for those programs without a 2/3 popular vote.

As much as I hope this effort succeeds, I think the analogy to water, sewer, and garbage collection is flawed.

The rain that falls, and the runoff it creates, are things communities hold in common. Keeping that runoff unpolluted, controlling it so it doesn’t flood our neighborhoods, maintaining the habitats it nourishes—every benefit runoff provides is a benefit to all of us. We all live downstream, as the saying goes.

As we get ever deeper into the business of protecting and enhancing urban watersheds, we realize that our work is entwined with every problem and benefit that makes up a City. Our rain gardens are play areas; our streams are places to escape to and explore, but can’t be trash-free until we solve homelessness; our streets carry the worst floods, and we must be conscious of runoff when we wash or fix our cars, or do any work outside.

Stormwater is exactly the kind of problem a City is (to use Jane Jacobs’ phrase), which is to say it is a common problem, a shared problem, the kind of problem that the Proposition 218 authors deliberately want to make government too starved and weak to do anything about. When Grover Norquist said he wanted to make government small enough to drown in a bathtub, he chose his metaphor well.

March 18, 2015 by dan Stormwater Pollution Prevention The Nature of Belief 0

20 LID Lessons

I delivered this presentation today on “20 LID Lessons Learned” at the California Stormwater Quality Association’s (CASQA’s) quarterly meeting in Sacramento.

The trip was just about perfect: I left the house at 6:28, BART at 6:30, Amtrak from Richmond at 6:47, beautiful views of the Carquinez Strait at dawn, a brilliant red sunrise over Suisun Bay, and into Sacramento on time at 8:37. Then a lovely morning stroll through Old Town Sacramento to the Holiday Inn. A day sharing information and stories with colleagues, and then the reverse trip: 3:30 Amtrak departure, a bit of a nap, and BART delivering me home by 5:30.

March 12, 2015 by dan Stormwater Pollution Prevention Work Status 0

White Paper

I just received the final version of the Bay Area Stormwater Management Agencies Association (BASMAA) MRP 2.0 Provision C.3 White Paper, including some final edits from my coauthor Jill Bicknell.

The “White Paper” provides technical data, analysis, and rationales to support some key changes to the California Regional Water Quality Control Board’s (RWQCB’s) stormwater requirements for land development projects in the Bay Area.

At BASMAA’s monthly Board meeting yesterday, as Chair Matt Fabry accepted a motion to forward the White Paper to RWQCB staff, he thanked us for our work, and he noted how difficult the process of preparation and review had been.

I seconded that thought silently. With 76 BASMAA member agencies in the review loop, it wasn’t possible to get consensus to propose a top-to-bottom overhaul of the requirements.

Many of the current requirements (in MRP 1.0) are vague, outdated, or wrong technically. Municipal staff lament this, and they lament the time they waste figuring out how to apply this regulatory mess to real-world development project proposals.

However, by now each of the 76 agencies has developed their own interpretations and ways of doing things, and the staff of each doesn’t want to change that for regional consistency.

There’s a more broadly applicable lesson there, I’m sure.

Anyway, I’m proud of the stuff that stayed in.

February 27, 2015 by dan Stormwater Pollution Prevention Work Status 0

Quick Draw

Cycling through downtown Oakland on my way to a meeting this morning, I got caught at the stoplight at 17th and Webster. Looking to my right, I could see water entering a stormdrain, and just around the corner, a dumpster.

A classic stormwater pollution image. But could I whip out my phone and capture it before the light changed?

February 26, 2015 by dan Cycling Stormwater Pollution Prevention Work Status 0

Cool Calculator

Last year I completed the BASMAA Post-Construction Manual, which applicants for development project approvals will use to design site drainage and incorporate rain gardens (bioretention facilities) into their projects. The manual implements requirements in Provision E.12 of the California State Water Resources Control Board’s Phase II Small MS4 General Permit.

The manual will be used by Marin, Sonoma, Napa, and Solano Counties, and by the small cities within those counties, so it has a fairly wide reach. It can (and I think will) be adapted for use by smaller cities, towns, and counties throughout California.

During January I completed an Excel-based calculator that should facilitate the iterative design process needed to prepare an elegant and optimal LID drainage design. It felt great to create what I think will be a quite useful tool in only a day (project budget was 8 hours, prepared for the City of Napa).

Additional resources: The instructions are in a tab within the calculator, but it might be helpful to also have them as a separate Word file. Also, the manual includes Technical Criteria for Non-LID facilities, but for bewildering and complex reasons these had to be published separately.

February 11, 2015 by dan Stormwater Pollution Prevention Work Status 0

dan