The Story

Yesterday afternoon, I noticed a stack of books on one of our designer's desks. Where I work being a web company, books aren't usually floating around everywhere, so I picked them up, as I am wont to do. The stack was 6 volumes of A Book Apart's web series. Something immediately caught my eye:

The text on the spines is totally broken. On every book. All broken. All broken differently. And they don't even add up to anything when you stack them together like other brilliant broken-text spine designs do. The one that immediately comes to mind pops up a little farther down this page. 

I tweeted (like I do...), wondering if it was just a printing issue. It surprised me that any publication coming from a group of high-level designers would let something like that slip. Especially not do it intentionally.

By the end of the day, I was still stuck on these books and the response I got on Twitter. I appreciate innovative design that breaks the mold, but not at the cost of function, legibility, or aesthetics. The notion of it being an intentional design decision just wasn't working for me. Nor was the excuse that the spines don't matter because the books aren't being sold in stores.

The Production Editor in Me

I've seen hundreds of books to press. There is a reason books have specifications. They are physical objects intended for hands-on use. They sit on shelves a certain way. People hold them a certain way. And we look for information on them in a certain way. Each part of the form has a function and a standard.

When you print a book, you have to know a few things, like how long the book is so you know how thick the spine needs to be. In some cases you have leeway. The spine will adjust accordingly. In other cases, you have set parameters across a series. For example, when I worked on mass-market paperback series, every book had to be exactly the same number of pages. Every time. No exceptions. This helped reduce printing time (there were no surprises), cost (we were printing LOTS of them), and the books all looked great next to each other on shelves.

Spines can be nitpicky and annoying, but they serve a crucial function: holding a title. A legible title. First and foremost, there's the consumer experience component. Most books don't get to be face-out in stores, so spines are how you find things. I know...A Book Apart doesn't sell them in stores. What about libraries though? A Book Apart went as far as to give their books ISBNs, so I assume they want them sitting somewhere, even if just the Library of Congress. Forget that though. What I really care about is the book's life at home. I can't name a single collector who doesn't love how a set of books in a series look next to each other on their shelves. Not just for legibility, but for overall aesthetic. 

Finally: Standards and Usability 

A List Apart, the parent of A Book Apart, prides itself on being the evangelists of web standards and usability. Where did those standards go here? I can't find them. I've been watching book publishers screw up websites for years because they don't understand the other medium's standards. Now I see web designers doing the same with books. 

Looking at the copies in my hand again, I can't help but feel that lack of homework (and maybe some cost cutting) is hiding behind an artificial mask of brave design. I just don't see who they're fooling. The books don't attempt to conform in length. And the design of the spine doesn't bother adapting to that variable. I find this especially ironic considering Book #3 is titled "Responsive Web Design." Book design has always been inherently responsive, except in this case, which is unfortunate.

From where I stand, it's just not good enough. Because at the end of the day, everyone I showed the books to, marketing people to designers alike, had the same reaction: "That looks fucked up."

I hated high school, but I loved the buildings. Twelve years later, it's the thing I remember most fondly about Cranbrook. I'll never go to a reunion, or send in my life updates to the quarterly alumni magazine. And there are few people I keep up with, aside from surface-level glances on Facebook. But on the rare occasions I go back to Detroit and have some time, I like to see the place. 

It turns out I was spoiled by the art and the architecture. The art on campus, the art in the design, the art in the classroom. It seems funny to waste such beauty on teenagers, especially when so many of us just think of high school as a prison. I know I didn't fully appreciate it at the time. But maybe the point is that it does sink in over time. Because sometimes I actually wish I'd been in a little less of a hurry to leave.

I took a trip out to New Jersey this weekend to visit some cute babies, but shot these two photos on the train out and back. One old train, one new. Credit goes to my new portrait lens that makes everything buttery soft and beautiful. But I really love how these photos came out, especially side by side. 

Of course, my friends happen to all be really good at having adorable babies. So there's that. But you tell me.

I love the Red Wings and Michigan football. And cherries. And Vernors--the gingeriest pop in the whole wide world, putting all other ginger ales to shame. When I listen to Motown, I get to own a piece of it because my dad also grew up in the suburbs of Detroit when that music played on the radio for the first time. 

But I left Detroit for college and never went home again. I visit, mostly for holidays. But not even a single summer was spent back in my hometown. I was almost eager to shed that skin and never return. So I didn't. 

It's true what they say--you can never go home again. Maybe New York does that to a person. I know other friends who took to this great city like I did and just couldn't go back to their hometowns. I walk around here and think to myself daily, "How does anyone live anywhere else?" New York changes you--but I still didn't grow up here.

So of course, I got chills watching the Chrysler ad during the Super Bowl. Those amazing shots of my first city. I recognized everything. The statues, the artwork, the rubble. It's the city where my dad took me to Tigers baseball games, driving down Woodward Avenue to the real Tigers Stadium. And countless trips to the Fox Theater for concerts and movies on a BIG screen (Spartacus! Ben Hur!)--for me, the most notable was getting to see Frank Sinatra when I was 8. It was the city that's fallen apart over the years, failing to really rebuild, or innovate industrially. It tugged my heartstrings.

I may never leave Brooklyn, but I still have a Michigan drivers license. It's been impossible for me to give it up. (Not just because they make it so damn easy to renew in the state of car culture.) But because once that goes, I've made the final split. Intellectually, I'm ready. But I'm a creature of nostalgia and sentiment--soon enough I'll just bite the bullet. I pay taxes here. I should probably get around to voting here too. But getting to say I'm from Detroit gives those of us lucky to say so a sense of pride--it's gritty and tough. I'm not some California lightweight. It's hard to let go.

The transition is tough, maybe because my family is also abandoning Detroit one by one. It's not just me who has gotten up and left (though I was first)--it's everyone. My parents won't be too far behind, that is as soon as one of us gets around to giving them a grandkid. And when that era ends, I'll consider it one of life's semicolons, like my dad says.

Someday I want to take my children to Up North Michigan to have summers on the Great Lakes looking for Petoskey stones and walking around Mackinac Island, riding bikes and eating fudge. I want my kids to love hockey (only the Red Wings, of course) and call it pop not soda. I want them to drive cars in ways that would make their Michigan family proud. And maybe they'll get to lay a little claim on Detroit too, because it'll always be home to me, even if I can't go back. 

So without much more reflecting, I'm just going to leave you this photo of a sunset over the Statue of Liberty that I took on Monday. Good night, 2010. Good morning, 2011. I'm excited to see you.

First, was just the standard Torah study variety. It's hard not to study that book without having certain issues with the character of God in the text. In fact, my students are pretty well convinced that the God of the Torah is a real jerk. To the point where one student said, "Isn't it kind of douchey of God to put the Jews in slavery just so they can thank Him when He takes them back out again?" Marah 1, God 0.

Then, sometime during that same class did another student wisely compare God to a baker of pies. You have to experiment with the pie to get it right, and sometimes throw it all out, and even then not everyone is going to be happy with it, because not everyone likes blueberry pie in the first place.

But the big event was with my high schoolers. I think it is what you'd call a real teaching moment. I've been doing a mini course on Jewish fiction and creative writing. I just pick an excerpt from something Jewish, read it, and have the kids do a writing exercise on that topic. This last class we did Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.

It wasn't that serious a selection, but what I wanted to know was how the kids were taught to believe in God. Most of them reported that they hadn't been, but were still expected to. And one kid said, "I'm an atheist because my friend died last year and I can't believe in God after that."

I can relate to that. Who can't? Also, if they've only been taught that God rewards good behavior and punishes bad behavior, it's really hard to rationalize why bad thngs happen to good people. I'd stop believing in God too if that's how I thought divinity worked. And it's not like I haven't had my ups and downs with this relationship over the years.

But we went on to talk about the other options and images in Judaism about God. That God is a judge, king, shepherd. We ask to be protected in the shelter of God's wings. God is a potter (which always sung to me) and sculptor in one of the more beautiful Yom Kippur prayers. The options are endless.

I also talked to them about how the word Israel literally means, "struggles with God." We're supposed to struggle. It's right there in the very name we identify ourselves by. God isn't easy. The relationship isn't supposed to be. Only the difficult things are really worth it. Isn't that always true?

Then I had the kids write their own Dear God letters. And at the end of everyone's writing and sharing (if they wanted to), the young atheist asked if he could say something. And when I said of course, he said, "I'm really glad I took this class. You've made me start to believe in God again."

I am still weepy just thinking about it. For more than one reason.

But this friend isn't Jewish. Not even close. So a trip to Israel in this case was totally going to defy what I expect my friends to be doing there, or even how they approach the trip as a whole. I mostly think of it as a family affair--in the obligatory sense. My parents own an apartment in Jerusalem, and ultimately intend to partially retire to. My one sister lived there for a year after college. My youngest sister just made aliyah and is now in the Israeli Army.

For my friend who is entirely outside this context, the trip (for work, no less) could go in a myriad of ways. It's a tense place. A religiously conflicted, but modern place. A place full of more characters and idiosyncrasies than you expect. A place of obscene hypocrisy and contradictions. Possibly the place the war that ends the planet will start. So I didn't really anticipate him telling me that he was expecting/hoping for some kind of spiritual moment in the Old City of Jerusalem. 

"What does a spiritual moment looks like for an atheist?" I asked.

"I have no idea."

Atheism aside, this gets one thinking about whether you can even have a spiritual experience in a place over-hyped for that purpose. If approach a place knowing it's got that association, can you really be open to anything? Can you intellectually pre-empt your own spiritual moment?

I think yes.

There are two cities in the world that tug my heartstrings. I live in one of them. The other is Jerusalem, a city I will never live in. It's too complicated there. I don't fit in religiously. (Maybe I'm too blond.) But still, whenever I'm in Israel, I feel really weird being in any other part of the country. I can't quite put my finger on it. It's a pull. And one that I'm not entirely sure I like. 

But I don't know that I've had a truly spiritual experience there. The Kotel holds nothing for me. It's too rife with conflict and bad feelings. I don't particularly like praying in formal settings in Israel at all. In fact, I think the moments in my life where I've felt something other have been in places I least expected it.

Like Auschwitz. 

Talk about a place that is going to carry emotional weight. Yeah, you expect to be upset. You expect to cry. Do you expect to feel God? Not so much. God was decidedly not there when the place earned its reputation. But 12 years ago, walking out of Birkenau--the place both of my grandparents lost their entire families and pieces of themselves--I saw a rainbow. It was raining. The sky cleared. I believe in weather patterns just as well as anything else. So it was mostly just a fluke. But...there it was at exactly the moment I needed it. 

Since then, I don't try for the spiritual moments. If it comes, it comes. You can want it, but seeking it out can only be anticlimactic and self-defeating. Let the universe do what it's going to do. The best spiritual moment is the one that smacks you upside the head when you're least expecting it. That's how you know it's real.

**Post Script: I don't really consider myself that spiritual of a person. Nor do I really even know what that means most of the time. And I definitely don't want to confuse this with concepts of faith or religion, so we can kindly leave all that out of any comments that might appear below.

In either case, I have actually been watching a lot of Star Trek lately. I have had an on-again/off-again relationship with Star Trek since I was a kid. It's my dad's fault. We used to watch returns of the original series together and make nachos. And when The Next Generation was announced, I was about 8 years old, and I remember being upset that the captain was going to be bald. This was apparently heresy in my 8-year-old brain. 

In middle school I went from casual consumer to hardcore fanatic. As any uber-awkward pre-teen with zero social skills to speak of does, I sank into that fandom in order to give my little life some meaning. This was an oversight. I didn't know the first think about talking to boys, but dammit, I could know that show inside and out. And know it I did.

My sister and I, and our two best friends, went as Star Trek characters for at least one Halloween. There were latex Klingon foreheads, plastic phasers, and pin-on communicators involved. I started taping episodes to keep i a collection. There are still heaps of VHS tapes in my mom's basement with an unknown quantity of episodes all labeled either "TNG" or "DS9" and title. I actually knew them all by title. I still might.

In high school though, I buried this love. You couldn't talk about that for obvious reasons. No one should ever know about that one Star Trek convention, or the fact that you may have had (and worn) a Bajoran earring. It's probably good that I abandoned some of these habits. But still.

By college I had found a few kindred spirits (we watched Voyager till the bitter end, though I had weirdly given up on DS9 at some point), but it was still largely a hidden facet of Elana. But Enterprise sucked, and the movies got worse, and the love-affair was put to rest until some time later.

And that time is now, thanks to 3AM airings of TNG on the CW, and the magic that is the DVR. At any given point in time I have a nice stockpile of episodes to watch when everything else on TV sucks. Which is often. And I turn to them more and more because...well, they're just that good. Plus I get to appreciate old things with new eyes. Or older eyes. I never realized how inconsistent some rules of the universe are, or how hilarious some of the early writing was, or how often the show let Patrick Stewart break out of the Jean-Luc Picard severity and do some hilarious acting. 

So yes, I watch a lot of Star Trek. Even more enjoyable than getting to hang out with old characters I love and privately enjoying my own nerdy tendencies, is that this time around I'm just admitting to the habit. And something tells me I'll actually make a few new friends out of it this time around.