Do You Know the Muffin Man / the Muffin Man ...

Last Sunday I had a brilliant idea: What if I baked a different cupcake everyday for a week?

Thus, the ERA Cupcake Challenge was born. The idea is simple enough, bake a different type of cupcake every night to bring to work every day. The cupcakes should be striking and unique, taking advantage of some of the delicious fresh produce we have in Southern California (and, of course, the summer season).

Having reached the last day, I've realized that I might have a slight compulsive disorder (because really, who bakes EVERY night for 3+ hours?) and I probably should talk to someone about it. Regardless, I have met my challenge and produced five different cupcakes (plus four different brownies) for this week. My neighborhood Ralph's is now like a second home and my hands are a little stiff from beating the batter with a fork.

So, what did I bake?
Below are the cupcakes for each day with the recipes. Enjoy!
***
MONDAY: Late Summer Peach, Blueberry, and Thyme Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting
From Chockylit at (http://cupcakeblog.com):

For the Roasted Peach Mush:
2 medium peaches

1. Cut the peach in half, remove the pit, and roast cut side down in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.
2. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool.
3. Scoop out peach flesh and mush with the back of a fork.

Peach, Blueberry, Thyme Cupcakes
12 regular cupcakes / 350 degree oven
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1-1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup roasted peach mush
1/4 cup blueberries
2 teaspoons loosely packed, fresh thyme leaves

1. In an electric mixer, beat butter on high until soft, about 30 seconds.
2. Add sugar. Beat on medium-high until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.
3. Add egg beat until combined.
4. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Add to the mixer along with the milk and beat to combine.
5. Chop thyme leaves.
6. Fold the peach mush, blueberries, and thyme into the batter.
7. Scoop into cupcake papers about two-thirds full.
8. Bake for 22-25 minutes until a cake tester comes out clean.

Note: Leave cupcakes undisturbed for the first 15 minutes of baking (always) and then rotate the pan once to ensure even baking.

Thick Cream Cheese Frosting

4 ounces Philly cream cheese
1/4 stick butter, room temperature
2 cups sifted powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

1. Beat butter vigorously with an electric mixer.
2. Scrape the bowl and add the cream cheese and beat until combined.
3. Add the sifted powdered sugar and vanilla and beat until smooth.

Assemble
1. Top cooled cupcakes with frosting.
[Optional] Sprinkle with thyme leaves.

TUESDAY: Carrot Cupcake Deliciousness
From The Cupcakery at (http://the-cupcakery-blog.blogspot.com)

Carrot Cupcake Deliciousness
Makes 24 cupcakes
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
2 cups finely grated carrots (about 3 to 4 medium carrots)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 can (8 ounces) well drained crushed pineapple
1 cup shredded coconut
1 cup chopped pecans, divided
1 cup raisins (or golden raisins)

1. Preheat oven at 350° degrees F. Line 12-cup muffin tin with muffin papers and set aside.
2. In a mixing bowl, combine dry ingredients; stir to blend.
3. Add eggs, oil, shredded carrots, and vanilla; beat until well blended.
4. Stir in pineapple, coconut, and 1/2 cup of the pecans and raisins.
5. Spoon into cupcake liners with small ice cream scooper. Bake 18 - 20 minutes until the tops are golden brown or until a wooden toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
6. VERY IMPOPRTANT to cool completely before frosting.

Pineapple Cream Cheese Frosting
1 brick (8 oz.) cream cheese, softened
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup pineapple juice

1. Combine cream cheese, butter, salt and vanilla in a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer.
2. Alternate powdered sugar and pineapple juice and beat mixture for 5 minutes until fluffy.
3. Add Wilton gel food coloring "Peach" until pastel color is achieved. Pipe onto completely cooled cupcakes and sprinkle toasted coconut on top.

WEDNESDAY: Lemon Drop Cupcake with Strawberries
From Coconut & Lime at http://coconutlime.blogspot.com
Ingredients:
juice of 1 lemon
zest of 1 lemon
1 1/2 cup flour
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup buttermilk
7 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
2 eggs, at room temperature
12 small to medium sized strawberries

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour or line 12 wells in a cupcake pan. In a large bowl, cream the butter, zest and sugar. Add the lemon juice and the eggs. Beat to combine. The mixture may look a little curdled but that is okay. Mix in the buttermilk. Continue to mix and slowly add in the flour. Beat the batter an additional 2 minutes, until light and fluffy. Pour an even amount into each cupcake well, filling about 3/4 of the way. Place a whole strawberry, point side down in the middle of each cupcake. Bake 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted on the outside of the strawberry comes out clean. Cool in pan briefly, then remove from the pan and cool completely on a wire rack. Ice*.

Icing suggestion: make a basic buttercream and substitute lemon juice for any liquid and add some lemon zest. I actually made a cream cheese icing: 8 0z cream cheese, confectioners' sugar and some lemon zest.





THURSDAY: Rich Chocolate Cupcakes filled with Chocolate-Mint Ganache topped with Mint Buttercream
From Chockylit at http://cupcakeblog.com

Chocolate Cupcakes
24 regular cupcakes / 350 degree oven

200 gram bar of Valrhona 61% cocao
3 sticks butter
2-1/4 cups sugar
8 eggs
1-1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder, unsweetened
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt

1. chop chocolate and transfer into the bowl of a standing mixer.
2. add butter to the chocolate and place the bowl over a pan of simmering water. stir until chocolate melts and butter is combined.
3. remove from heat and stir in sugar. let mixture cool for 10 minutes.
4. beat in an electric mixer for 3 minutes.
5. add one egg at a time, mixing for 30 seconds between each
6. sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and a pinch of salt into the mixture and mix until blended.
7. scoop into cupcake cups and bake at 350 F for 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Chocolate-Mint Ganache
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup + 1 teaspoon chopped mint leaves
1 tablespoon butter, room temperature

1. chop chocolate and transfer into a heat proof bowl.
2. heat cream and 1/4 cup mint until bubbles form around the edge of the pan, pour cream through strainer, over the chocolate.
3. let sit for 1 minute then stir until combined.
4. add butter and the remaining teaspoon of chopped mint and stir until combined.
5. let cool then transfer to the refrigerator to thicken, 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Mint Buttercream Frosting
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
4-5 cups powdered sugar, sifted
1/4 cup milk
1/8 teaspoon all natural peppermint extract
1. beat butter until creamy, scrape bowl.
2. add 4 cups of sifted powdered sugar, milk, and peppermint extract, beat until combined.
3. add more powdered sugar as needed to get piping consistency.

Note: I tried to keep the mint flavor subtle and not too overpowering. I recommend starting on the light side with 1/8 teaspoon or less and tasting to get the flavor you want.

Assemble
1. stuff the cupcakes with ganache using the cone method (cut out a cone shape from the top, cut off the pointy cone part, stuff the whole with filling, then put the top back on)
2. frost them.
3. top with something green (if you want), like a mint leaf, green candy, or whatever you fancy.

FRIDAY: Peanut Butter Filled Cupcake with Chocolate Ganache
From Chockylit at http://cupcakeblog.com

Chocolate Cupcakes
24 regular cupcakes / 350 degree oven
5.4 ounces dark chocolate or 3/4 of a 200 gram bar of Valrhona 61% cocao
22 tablespoons butter
1-3/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons sugar
6 eggs
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons flour
4-1/2 tablespoons cocoa powder, unsweetened
1-1/2 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt

1. Melt chocolate and butter over a water bath.
2. Add sugar and stir, let mixture cool for 10 minutes.
3. Beat in an electric mixer for 3 minutes.
4. Add one egg at a time, mixing for 30 seconds between each
5. Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and a pinch of salt into the mixture and mix until blended.
6. Scoop into cupcake cups and bake at 350 F for 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Peanut Butter Filling
4 ounces or 1/2 package of Philly cream cheese
1 cup creamy peanut butter
2 cups sifted powdered sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons milk (*I added 3.5 tablespoons)

1. Beat cream cheese and peanut butter until combined.
2. Add powdered sugar and vanilla and beat until combined.
3. Add the milk and beat until combined.

Chocolate Ganache
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate
5 ounces semisweet chocolate
1 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon butter, room temperature
2 cups powdered sugar

1. Chop chocolates and transfer into a heat proof bowl.
2. Heat cream until bubbles form around the edge of the pan, pour cream over the chocolate.
3. Let sit for 1 minute then stir until combined.
4. Add butter and vanilla and stir until combined.
5. Transfer to the bowl of an electric mixture and let cool for 10 minutes.
6. Sift powdered sugar into the mixture and beat until combined.
7. Continue to beat with an electric mixer until lighter in color and creamy.

I spent a lot of my childhood trying to find different ways to disappear. My strongest memory is playing in my mom's closet, seated on the wood floor underneath her dresses and my dad's suits, with the sliding door open just enough to let a sliver of light in. I was guaranteed a good couple of hours without any interruption. When I outgrew the closet, I made a little fort in the corner of my room (better light) with a couple of thin blankets, and entertained myself with my books.

Even today, I have a strange attraction to small spaces. I used to study the best in small office spaces-- I could lock myself in a cubicle and write for hours before I realized I should walk around a bit. In high school, I used to sit in the back of my math class, underneath the table, until class was over (I was really bored...). I love unwinding in my car... I can't even count the number of times I've just slept in my car whenever I was stressed out.

At this point, I'm looking for my next little closet.
My brain feels muddled and slow. I'm in a constant state of exhaustion and boredom, leading me to sleep most of my daylight hours away (when I'm not at work, of course).
I get like this when I feel out of balance. I love my friends in LA, but I miss my girlfriends. I miss our summer nights, getting dressed up, and hitting the bars. I miss their support, their love, their light! I love my job, but I love indulging in art and in spontaneity. I miss late-night drives and new LA discoveries. I miss going out with my camera and not feeling like a fraud or self-conscious. I miss design and pretty things.

Life is becoming rhythmic and while I am thankful for the knowledge that I am secure in my life and future, I am also fearful of the complacency this can bring.


I need a wake-up call.

Stolen from another blog.

Sue: Well, you've lived in Los Angeles, so that
part of city living must be familiar.
I: Oh no, the cities are so different -- my
friend has the best metaphor -- she says, If the
gods were giving birthday presents, they could
wrap up New York or San Francisco and trade
them like jewels, but Los Angeles has no edges
so you can never pick it up.

Is the city I live in / The City of Angels?

I've been away at a two-week design charette for work (it's complicated why I'm here... let's just leave it at the simple fact that I'm here) and haven't really had the chance or the energy to update properly.

I figured a good way to solve this dilemma is to post the blog entries I've had to write for the charette.
---

Sunday, June 15
Being one of the few participants from Los Angeles, it's strange re-introducing myself to the city. It was only a month ago when I was one of the many Angelenos trapped in traffic on Alameda, trying to get to over the 101-overpass during rush hour. My challenge is to overcome my familiarity with the project area and force myself to see this city again with a fresh set of eyes.

I've been enjoying the questions that arise from my international cohort, especially after our site visit-- they've made me question my own LA quirks and habits and wonder what other possibilities there are for us. Selfishly, I am more excited than ever about the project. Of all the participants, I may actually have the chance to experience the fruits of everyone's labor and enjoy the newest Freeway Park sometime in the future.


Monday, June 16
One of the panelist captured it perfectly: it's a no-man's land. The expanse of sidewalk and street between the edge of the Civic Center and the beginning of Chinatown is desolate. If ever I forgot that Los Angeles was and is a desert, that strip of concrete was a good reminder. In the car, it's a quick drive through a slightly winding road, with an interesting-enough view. On foot, it's dry, hot, and never-ending. I tried to imagine who walks on this street. While we did our site visit, I didn't see too many people. One woman was parking her car on the street to avoid paying the $20 for two-hours of parking at the Cathedral. A few tourists were heading back to their car after an afternoon of sightseeing. Add a few Chinese grandmothers and that was about it. It's exciting to imagine the possibilities of the site, but it's also hard to think about who would use it...


Tuesday, June 17
The last two days have been intensive, as the project managers attempt to get 24 non-Angelenos familiarized with this city. The variety of speakers and viewpoints have been great-- better than I expected, in fact. They have managed to capture the underlying history of the region, one that is not always just nor particularly nice to think about. But the question, of course, lingers in my mind, "What is everyone actually getting out of this and what are we still missing?" We have yet to really probe into one another's minds to see what elements were picked up from our panel discussions and what were left out. I imagine that our individual filters will be revealed as we begin to sketch out our visions for the project site. I begin to wonder about my own filters and what I choose (or don't choose) to keep in my memory bank for future uses.


Wednesday, June 18
While the project scope itself is extremely interesting, it is equally fascinating to observe how people think. The afternoon and evening was spent in groups, intensively thinking about the vision of the project. We each got caught up in our own ideas and inspirations, trying to pull in the other group members to consider our respective visions. What seemed so simple to others, were incredibly complicated and abstract for me. When I see an issue or an opportunity, my mind immediately moves to "what could this be used for?" rather than "how could this look?" I think about who could the site serve now, while others think about who could it possibly serve in the future. I've been fortunate enough to have a group who is willing to work through all the different processes and thoughts to form interesting (and what I think are balanced) interpretations on each of these disparate things.


Thursday, June 19
The stress is mounting and you can see it in the personal interactions. More people are stepping outside for breaks, there's a good amount of stomping about the studio, and you the sounds of frustration are audible. A deadline looms and it just doesn't feel like it's enough time. Strangely, I feel calm throughout all of this. Perhaps it is recognition of the fact that this is a "visioning" stage-- an opportunity for ideas to be a little incomplete so more people can become involved in the creation. Or, it could be that my skill sets don't really put me in a position to be doing the mad-cap scramble to prepare all the sketches for Friday's presentation. Either ways, I am looking forward to our first real interaction with the stakeholders-- I'm interested to see what they have to say and what they think would benefit Los Angeles.


Sunday, June 22
My weekend was spent in two very small, very quaint towns: Carpenteria and Avalon (on Catalina Island). While I appreciated my time there, I wouldn't want to have downtown LA to be this way. These towns are... well... towns. People move there to have the small environment, where everyone knows each other, everyone has been to school together since they were 5 years old... People move to downtowns for very different reasons. I like the disarray, the chaos! As I think about it more and more, I don't want to use the 101-freeway to capture the nostalgia that people have about downtown. Highly urban areas are about something different (to me, at least). They change, radically, within short periods of time... this should be captured in the use and the design of our park. We will never be the city we were 50 years or ago or even 5 months ago. I think we need to be prepared to defend this point to the potential nay-sayers come Friday.
Suffice to say, I'm excited for the rest of this week.


Monday, June 23
And the week begins.We are still trying to define our "big" concept. The designers attempted to design the most democratic plan, pulling in the elements of each previous design to build something that, theoretically, should have worked to make something grand. What we were left with, unfortunately, was a plan that didn't have the innovation of the others. The elements got lost amongst one another. I have moments of frustration where I feel like we're designing something without fully understanding where we are and who we are doing this for. We say we are considering the Los Angeles of the future, of the next 100 years, but we have no sense of who they will be.

There is a constant push from the visitors to our studio to think about who we can draw in to use the park, without any encouragement to think about the current communities who would greatly benefit from some sort of public space. The site was selected because there is a viability in it already with 50,000 residents who are park-poor, low-income, and have typically been left voiceless in these types of matters. We've left our final ideas with a team of three to see if without the distraction of 21 other voices and opinions they might be able to return us to the grand vision we once had. Perhaps in the relative quiet of their workgroup they will remember all of the elements and all of the people here as they create a plan.


Tuesday, June 24
The days are blurring together. Three more days before the final presentation... At this point, there is nothing more to believe than the simple fact that we will somehow pull it off, because with this group of people, it would be impossible otherwise. We have split into teams, based mainly around skills. In a form of organized chaos, it's hard to tell what people are doing and if they are working at the appropriate pace, but by the time of evening pin-up, everyone has something to show for themselves.

Do I believe that the final design will be something that fits for Los Angeles? I don't know. But then again, is there anything that will ever fit for Los Angeles? With competiting opinions about who should live in LA, no one can agree about what this design should do and who it should serve. Is it about the new potential residents or is about serving those already here? Is it about creating something iconic or about creating something functional? Is it about infusing new ideas or respecting the existing ones that create the current urban fabric? Of course none of these questions should be considered in a binary plane, but what do the alternatives look like and how can they meet each other?

I'm trying to hold onto every moment when I am inspired to move away from my old views of Los Angeles and integrate them into the final presentation, because I hope, that is what will inspire the policymakers, the stakeholders, and especially the protectors of LA's nostalgia will embrace this design.

You may say that I'm a dreamer / But I'm not the only one

J.K. Rowling's Commencement Speech to Harvard's Graduating Class of 2008:

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I’ve experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world’s best-educated Harry Potter convention.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I’ve used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Why the rest of the world respects the United States so much...

We let monkey men run the country.

And the hardest part / Was letting go, not taking part / Was the hardest part

I'm a believer that some of the most profound life-changing lessons come in the form of the most mundane experiences.

When I was in high school, I wrote a college essay about the profound experience of shopping for back-to-school clothes. In my mind, that annual family experience captured my family's dynamic, our socio-economic conditions, some of my culturally-infused values, and most importantly, a major life lesson I had come to learn throughout the course of my childhood.

To summarize, in my family, shopping is a bit of a sacred tradition. We were never rich enough to buy new things all the time, so my parents made it a point to avoid the shopping malls altogether. So, when we did go shopping, it was always an experience. We would wake up extra early, get showered and properly dressed (my mom always wore her nicer clothes, my dad would be in khakis and a button-up shirt), and we would spend the day indulging ourselves in material items that we would never be able to afford throughout the year. My brother and I would load up on new clothes for the upcoming school year. We were fortunate to live in Southern California, where the weather stayed pretty consistent and different clothes weren't really needed for different seasons.

Buying clothes would always be a struggle for me, because I was always extremely underweight for my age. Pants would fit around the waist, but would be too short at the ankle. Dresses were a no-go, because I would swim in them. It would be embarrassing to ask for a size '8' when I was actually 12 years old. I would only be able to afford a few select "cool" articles of clothing, because that's all we could really afford. Shopping, as exciting as a family event it was, always left me a little dejected by the time I got home, because nothing would fit quite the way that they should.
It took me years before I could come to accept my body for what it is. I'm still a little too thin, a little too lanky, and extremely flat-chested. But over the years, I learned to find what works for my body, rather than trying to fit my body to what's popular. Finally realizing that I didn't have to wear what everyone else was wearing was one of those profound life lessons about learning to accept and be happy with who I am.

The mundane, yet profound, life lesson I thought of today has to do with my hair. Walking into the office, a colleague noted that my hair looked particularly pretty put up. I had tied my hair up to eat my lunch, without putting much thought into it. I know though that if I try to mimic this hair again, it'll never happen. My hair is just funny like that-- if I try to make it do anything, it just doesn't work. I realized that life is like that too. Planning for it sometimes doesn't do very much. Just trying something, without thinking about it, yields great, unexpected results.


Given this view of the world, I am prone to think a lot about every little interaction and situation, trying to determine if there was a greater lesson to be derived from it. I guess this is what makes me such a serious person most of the time... I'm always thinking and reflecting about life's that has already happened. I figure at some point I'm going to have to let this little obsession go and just let life be, but for now, it's fun to think that everything connects to everything else...