The Values Sort

A series of indeterminate length exploring the core things that drive us.
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Growing up, the path was clear: "Where you go, I'll go. Where you stay, I'll stay." But what happens when the path you were given becomes a betrayal of your very self? Hosted by Nick Walton—husband, dad, and coffee roaster—The Values Sort explores what happens when you have to rebuild your life’s foundation from scratch. After leaving the structure of his childhood church and feeling "lost," Nick found a simple tool: a deck of cards, each printed with a single human value like "Helpfulness" or "Honesty." By sorting them down to five core essentials, he found a new way to navigate the world. In this series, Nick explores the cards that changed his way of thinking, sharing the essays and stories that define them. Whether you are 10 years old or 80, this is an invitation to figure out who you are, five cards at a time. nickfromoregon.substack.com

  1. 1日前 ·  ボーナス

    Repair

    ​Let’s talk awhile about Repair. I am at work. I am looking around at the things I have repaired over the years, just here, in this room, and it’s a pretty long list. ​I broke a stainless bolt off the foot of my effluent scrubber. I was so frustrated. It happened while I was uncrating it. It was brand-stinkin’-new! And I broke the foot off. I had to drill it out (no small feat, it was stainless!) and then re-tap, re-cut threads, and manufacture a new foot with all-thread I found at the hardware store. I did that. ​I have patched holes in the roof. I have re-soldered circuitry on my bag filler. I have repaired and maintained my roasting machine a number of times. Everything from replacing burners to rewiring for data-logging software. ​And this is my current roaster! A beautiful San Franciscan SF-25, built by hand in Nevada of largely American made parts and pieces, which I prefer and appreciate mostly because of the easy availability of replacement parts. The machine I began my career on, the machine that built this business, is resting in pieces in a storage unit. I will not go into great detail here and now, but it was also built by hand, a one-off fabrication some dude built in a garage in Olympia. I repaired, and repaired, and rewired, and rebuilt that roaster endlessly. It was maddening in its need for attention. Like a toddler, that thing demanded my constant supervision. And like some toddlers I’ve known, if left to its own devices, that roaster would surely have burnt the house down. That thing knew how to throw a proper spark. ​I have repaired espresso machines and I have repaired coffee brewers from various manufacturers and with varying degrees of competency. I’ve been to trainings and I’ve learned on the job. I’ve glued things back together out of sheer need, and I’ve paid dearly for new parts to swap in. ​I think of my home. My tractor won’t start right now. It’s a fuel issue, I’m fairly certain, but I haven’t cracked into it yet. It’s cold out there! But I’ll get to it, and it’ll run. ​I am, in truth, stalling. Right now, here, as I write these words. The toilet and shower are backed up in my home. I know exactly what the problem is—it’s a way the pipes were set up improperly in the first place, and it’d be a monumental challenge to tear them out and replace them properly now. So when I get home, I will address the issue, without fixing the underlying cause. C’est la vie. ​When I think of repair, I think of Thrift. And I think of the why behind repair. It’s not just money. It’s not just that I couldn’t possibly afford to buy my way out of a given repair project in my life. It is, for me, a value. ​A value for avoiding superfluous resource spending, and a value for having my hands on my life. I do not want to go under my house today. I do not want to get the contents of my sewer pipes all over myself. But I do want to have the job done, and I want it done correctly, and I’d prefer it be done expediently. And, as we established in capability, I am capable of many things. So I do them. ​I appreciate people’s work and I appreciate people who work with their hands. Because look at the alternative. ​We live in a world of cheap consumer goods. We live in a world of inexpensive landfills. I just put stuff in a special can and a person comes and makes my hassles disappear into nowhere. We live in a world where we ship bales of fast fashion castoffs to faraway locales for people to sort through endlessly in their quest out of poverty. We live in a world where children in other countries work at sorting our e-waste, scrapping for bits of conductive metals to sell back to us in the form of even more cheap consumer goods. ​And I am repulsed. I am alarmed. I am making choices in my own life that hopefully reduce my impact on these systems, but I feel so small. I feel so insignificant. ​I buy durable shoes. I have my blue jeans repaired when they tear. I attempt to buy high-quality shirts, preferably ones produced in a responsible fashion in a country with high standards of laborer compensation. This means I spend more money on fewer t-shirts. I spend money on jean repair. I spend more money on shoes less frequently. I am not sure I’m saving money. And I know I’m not personally saving the Earth. ​So why am I doing this stuff? It’s something about Agency. It’s something about living a life that I can be proud of and satisfied with. For and within my own self. ​(...A few hours later...) ​I have taken a break from writing and fixed my septic backup. It was a relatively disgusting and straightforward procedure, and one of my kids helped me. ​We learned how to do it better next time, and discussed strategies for managing the problem with the plumbing in the future. We did save a little money. But more importantly to me, we lived our lives together. We were not on our phones. We were not sectioned off from one another. We were knee-deep in the problem, together. ​I showed my kid that a thing could be done, and in the process, I learned the same lesson myself. It makes us feel brave. We can do hard things. We saved money, we saved the gasoline needed for a repair person to come deal with the situation, and we saved a lot of time. We were in and outta there in less than an hour. We might’ve waited for days to get on somebody’s non-emergency schedule. ​I reflect again on my pickup truck. I’ve chosen repair. I’ve chosen to upgrade instead of replace. Because when you repair something, you aren’t just fixing a machine. You are building a relationship with the physical world. You are telling the entropy of the universe: “Not today.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nickfromoregon.substack.com

  2. 7月15日 ·  ボーナス

    Craftsmanship

    My grandfather was a craftsman. He was an accomplished woodworker. The president of our state woodworking guild, he had multiple lathes in his shop, and numerous heavy tools that he built himself, sturdy, out of wood. His bandsaw, wood. His router table, wood. Drum and spindle sanders, wood. He had a lathe on which he could turn huge columns for the Elks Lodge. He had a tiny lathe on which he could turn intricate, delicate ornaments for the Christmas trees at our state house and even the United States Capitol Building! He built Governor Atiyeh’s desk. He was known for unique, one of a kind spinning wheels. He built a carousel quality rocking horse for us, his grandchildren and he filled his home with ornate woodworking details. Hidden compartments in the mantel. Secret stereo cabinets. That sort of thing. His shop was warm and eclectic. In addition to his original creations he restored antique furniture, which is a skill beyond. It’s one thing to make something beautiful. It’s quite another to fix something beautiful that someone else built with their ways and their tools and make it literally as good as new. There was a whole wall full of custom jigs that he had built for various pieces of antique furniture. The workshop smelled like a hundred kinds of wood plus his cigarettes—which he didn’t think anyone could smell. A cork board in his little office was covered in business cards, the currency of a businessman of the 1970’s, the 1980’s. It also had a hundred little pins in the shape of a drop of blood. One for every time he had given blood to the Red Cross over the years. A laborer by nature and a dairyman by trade and training, my grandfather was, for his last decades, a craftsman. I didn’t know him nearly well enough. There was tension in our family relationships and we never found each other’s deepnesses before he died. My first graphic designer is a craftsman. He’s out there, crafting still. He and I became fast friends shortly after I began as a businessman, and as a result of our friendship I have always had an outsized graphical presence as a company. Even now, he’s moved far away, took a good job, I know what graphic craftsmanship looks like because of him. I know who to hire. And who not to. He taught me what to look for. I have had exceptional graphic design, right down through the years. Which is a handy skill, because I am not a Craftsman. In some ways I wish I was. I have certainly tried to be over the years, but you guys, I’m just not. I do crafty things. I am not an unskilled person, not by a long shot. No self deprecation here. I can be honest and not betray my value for humility. I have built things out of wood that are functional as well as lovely. I have an eye for odd materials and how they might look with other materials. I can, after twenty years’ practice, make a mean cup of coffee. I can steam milk and pour beautiful latte art. I can do stuff. But here, now, I can admit that I am a generalist. I am a jack of all trades. Personally, my own sense of craftsmanship lies in spotting and managing craftsmanship. I’m a good collector of things, and I often know what things complement a company, a product, a recipe, a design project. And I think admitting that I’m not really a craftsman is the first step to developing it as a part of my personhood. And I do want to develop a greater sense of craftsmanship in my life. A greater value for it. A builder I know builds tract homes. Endless, boring, cheap. He would say that he’s providing a product for which there is demand, but if I’m honest I’m very sorry that there’s a demand for such a thing. I’m sorry for the place we find ourselves in as a society where cheaply built equals good. Malvina Reynolds sings a song, Little Boxes. Little boxes, on the hillside. Little boxes made of ticky-tacky, little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same. There’s a green one and a pink one, a blue one and a yellow one and they’re all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same. My granddad, the accomplished woodworker, used to sing that song. It’s about the devastating sameness of modernity and the boxes we find ourselves in. The boxes we put ourselves in, sometimes, but often times the boxes we’re expected to climb into by others. And the people in the houses all went to the universities, where they were put in boxes, and they came out all the same. It’s a critique of society’s willingness to default to the path of least resistance. It’s a song about settling. Another builder I know is a craftsman. He builds structures that are lovely and customized to their use case, and more importantly, structures that will stand up to the test of time. They are more expensive, though not unreasonably so. The biggest difference between these builders is the thought that both they and their customers put into the spaces they create and dwell in. So. Here we are at the end of my first free-wheeling essay with no card. No anchor. And which is it, I’m still sort of wondering? I have spent the essay telling you I’m not a craftsman and have now convinced myself that I may be. I am naturally a generalist, a tradesman, a doer. A collector of craftsmanship. Like my grandfather’s corkboard I have amassed a huge team of people upon whom I can call. My espresso machine was purchased new in 2012 and has essentially been on for 24 hours a day since then. Day in, day out, it is warm and ready to produce. It was built by hand in Florence, Italy. I am astounded at how little maintenance and repair it’s required over the years. Craftsmanship. Quality. It’s ended up being much less expensive than a cheaper machine would have been. The countertops in my coffee shop are concrete. With help from a couple of friends, my wife and I built them by hand. We designed them, we formed them, supported them, we poured and polished them, all us, all on our own. They have survived daily commercial use for thirteen years! Our signage, hand painted, classic, colorful and simple and strong. No backlighting, no plastic. Just aluminum and paint and good natured craftsmanship from a local sign painter. We have a four panel mural that is wholly our own. Again, produced by someone wonderful and local. The list goes on. I am a collector of craftsmanship. My collection is rich. It takes someone putting it together. It takes the farmer drawing lambs into the barn, the gun shearer gathering wool, it takes the person laboriously sitting at my grandfather’s spinning wheel, spinning carded wool into yarn. And it takes the weaver, mixing colors and textures to create patterns. A tapestry is not usually made by just one person. Devaluing our contribution is a trap. Devaluing others’ is a trap. One I seem almost eager to fall into at times. As has become a theme in my writing I must again acknowledge the benefit of community participation. The joy of teamsmanship, even over craftsmanship. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nickfromoregon.substack.com

  3. 7月10日

    #57 Sense of belonging

    Another central theme. Of this project. Of my life. A sense of belonging can encompass so many of the ideas we’ve talked about. Or at least it weaves, mycorrhizae-like throughout. What are we without a sense of belonging? Family security, humility, social recognition. They all intertwine with a sense of belonging. Forgiveness, equality, a world at peace. It’s all tied in. True friendship. Loyalty. Enjoyment of life. And card number 57–sense of belonging, feeling that others care about me– connects us, in my head, anyway, back to the beginning, card number 1. social power: control over others, dominance. Because in the times of my life where I’ve needed to reach for dominance, or control over others it’s always because I don’t feel a sense of belonging. I don’t feel a sense of security within my community. If we fall out of one, we may slip into the other. This gives me a tremendous sense of compassion for those mean people in the world, and that’s an impulse I could stand to follow a little more often. Default to compassion. Default to understanding. I cannot change the world alone. But I can change myself. I know–that’s a little “ABC Afternoon Special”. Forgive me. But it’s true. A sense of belonging is a lot of the why behind my values choices. Behind the hard work I am, (and sometimes I’m not) willing to do for my people. It’s the reason I subdue my sometimes overwhelming violence and bring it to heel. I have a high value for others feeling a sense of belonging. I lament the way many men feel the need to assert control and dominance. I care. About you. Others care about you. You are enough, you are large enough and strong enough. You have enough. We can have enough together. I reflect on all of the ways I feel a deep sense of belonging and I lament the rarity it is in some folks’ lives. I measure it in a hundred ways. I measure it in the hidden keys I know the location of. I measure it in the beautiful child I’ve been made godfather to. I measure it in manatees made of yarn and wire. I measure it in coffee customers and I measure it in the questions my friends know they can ask me about sex or poop or money. Or anything. I am blessed. I am the bearer, again, of an absolute embarrassment of riches. I am wealthy beyond comparison. I wish it was appropriate to list my riches, name by name. I have a sense of belonging in my space. I belong to a community, a large family. I am loved and cared for. I am a local business owner. I am a water board member. Belonging often isn’t a feeling you get, but the bench you’re sitting on. I’ve talked about “making space on the bench” a number of times. A sense of belonging is made real with the act of scooting over. It’s for family, it’s for friends, it’s for the weak and the marginalized, it’s for everyone, together. I left my church. Let’s talk about it a little bit. Perhaps that’s my keystone story as it pertains to a sense of belonging, and I’ve mentioned it, but I’ll talk about it a little bit more here. Thirty years. I began engaging this community when I was about nine years old and I only left in my fortieth year here. I believed everything. I contributed. I engaged. And there were times when I felt a sense of belonging in that context. But really, there were people, many people with whom I felt a sense of belonging, and it wasn’t about the church at all, it was always about the people. The structure failed. The structure claimed to be that mycorrhizal network. The church claimed to be the trellis that we could grow on and when we grew to a certain size, it broke under our weight. There was no room left on the bench, and no more was made. Men failed. It’s not okay. Some days I’m not okay. There have, nevertheless, been many people over the years who have scooted down, made room for me on their benches. Many of them have been in church, and I am heartened by the benches still available to me. I think of the number of people whose houses I would let myself into, I would eat their food and drink their coffee, I would take off my shoes and pick up their children and take apples from their trees. And I am glad. For everything. I am here. I belong where I belong. I also know how to make others feel that sense now. I reflect on the little person living in my home. I reflect on my own children and my nieces and my closest friends. And I believe all of my experiences in all of the years have stacked up and culminated in our ability to make room on the bench. I believe in our ability, my family’s and mine, to be a trellis upon which other people can hang and grow. Belonging is the mycorrhizae. It’s the network of love and affection that transfers information and nutrients between different organisms. Belonging is the key to someone else’s home, hidden in a place where the right people can find it. Belonging is the trellis. Belonging is not just the bench, it’s the act of shoving over. Belonging forks half its food onto your empty plate. I will end here with a bible verse, as has become my way. It’s one you doubtlessly know, or maybe you’ve just heard of it. Or maybe, like Tolkien in your forties this will be your first brush with First Corinthians 13. Here it is, paraphrased by yours truly. May it live a little bit within us. Love is patient and kind. It’s not jealous or envious. Love doesn’t boast or burst with self-pride. Love’s not rude and it doesn’t look out only for itself. Love doesn’t get drawn into fruitless fits of anger, and it forgets wrongs done quickly. Love doesn’t quietly root for evil to be visited upon others, but it does rejoice in the true things in life. Love is protective and trustworthy. It’s constantly hoping for the best and it stays the course. Love doesn’t fail. This is it! Card 57. The end of the deck. It feels like the end of something, but I feel like I’m just getting started. Stay tuned if you feel like it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nickfromoregon.substack.com

  4. 7月6日

    #56 Health

    ​Another one that’s hard to pin down. ​”Clean living.” That’s what my dad says. The old man who smokes all the days of his life and dies peacefully in his sleep at 93? “Clean living,” my dad might say with an eye roll. ​Health is an honest value to choose. Health for me and for you. Healthy foods, healthy habits. Healthy minds and bodies. At least we have our health. I can lose a lot and still have a lot if I have my health. ​But boy, that can go sideways. ​I think of my friend the artist. She lived her life clean. She avoided sugar, ate healthy, and walked fifty miles for her fiftieth birthday. And then she got cancer and died. Quickly. ​I think of my cousin, the Forester. He finished his course of study and found a job in the woods somewhere. He got married and had a pair of real nice kids. Then he got the flu and died of complications. The flu! You hear that it kills people every year, but you don’t think it kills the strong. It killed my strong, healthy cousin. He was an ox. He was a gem. He was beautiful and strong, and he died because of the flu. ​My parents are all sick and beginning the process of moving on to the next stage. For one, it’s dementia. For another, it’s chronic leukemia. For the others, it’s heart disease and diabetes. This life can be cruel. ​Oh, that we might all live to old age and die in our lover’s arms. “We walked in and found them together, peaceful and gone.” ​My friend Johnny lived until he was old. He mowed the lawn one sunny morning. He came up on the porch and half-drained a glass of lemonade, and then he sat back in his chair and went to be with Jesus. That is the dream. Death by lemonade. He died of too much satisfaction. But we don’t get to choose. My middle child was born with complications. They spent a month in the NICU in Portland, and then came home with us. Their young life was punctuated by appointments and checkups, blood draws and urine samples and renal ultrasounds. They are healthy and strong today—essentially no residual effects. ​But years later, when our third child was nearly ready to be born, the doctor reading the ultrasound (who was also involved in our middle child’s birth) stopped and looked at the chart. She asked if the older one had survived. Survival is apparently uncommon for kids with our middle kid’s condition. And survival with no meaningful consequences is essentially unheard of. We rolled the dice and won. We had the dice rolled for us. We did little more than blow on them. ​And of course, my own wife is a cancer survivor. We do not take our health for granted. Or if we do, we do so in folly. ​I have experienced acute mental health issues in my lifetime. I think they’ve been with me all along, but it wasn’t really until my wife’s cancer diagnosis that they became untenable. Unmanageable. I am not a stranger to the darkest of thoughts. Thoughts of how my family might be better off without me. ​But my family rose to that occasion. My wife, my closest friends—they surrounded me and chained me to a deeper reality of our mycorrhizal connections. I sought help and found it. I am more attuned now to my mental health and more conscious of its delicacy. ​Be well! Stay healthy! As we’ve established o’er and o’er in this series, we have but one life for sure. And we don’t even know the length of that. ​Live your life fully and chew on the bones. Drink in love where you find it and give as much as you get. Give a little more than you get. Mind the mycorrhizae. They are the only things holding us up. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nickfromoregon.substack.com

  5. 7月1日

    #55 Reciprocation of favors

    This is another weird one. People don’t tend to choose it, and they often need help understanding it. Here’s how I explain it, imperfectly, when I’m sitting with someone doing the sort: Imagine I bring you a cup of your favorite beverage. Out of nowhere. What do you feel? Do you feel loved and cared for? Or do you feel a sense of urgency to reciprocate? Do you feel a sudden, heavy weight that you now “owe” me a beverage? Do you have a value for returning the favor? Or do you simply let love do the talking? I’m not rightly sure what I think about this card. Or what my level of value might be for this concept. Let’s explore it together. I guess in the worst circumstances, this value could produce anxiety. Every time something nice happens, it’s as though a burden is laid at the feet of the giftee. That would be heavy indeed. If I buy you lunch, and you spend the whole meal doing mental math on how to buy me a dinner of equal value to “settle the score,” we aren’t having a meal. We’re conducting a transaction, and I hate the ledger. I hate the idea that relationships are a balance sheet to be zeroed out. That feels antithetical to everything I believe about grace. But... let’s look at the flip side. Let’s say you make good on that promise to bring me a box of Island Punch Spindrifts. I would not probably feel like I needed to rush right out and buy you something of equal or greater value. What I would feel is loved and thought of. It would make me think you were paying attention to my words and my likes and you wanted me to feel seen. That, in turn, would endear you to me. And naturally, organically, I’d be on the hunt for a way to love you back. Is that Reciprocation of Favors? Yes, I suppose so. But there is a nuance here—The ledger vs. the echo. * The Ledger says: “I owe you.” (Definition: Avoidance of indebtedness). This is about me. It’s about clearing my name. * The Echo says: “I heard you.” This is about us. It’s about keeping the connection alive. If you shout into a canyon and there is no echo, the sound dies. If you pour love into a person and there is never any return—never a nod, never a thank you, never a mirrored kindness—the relationship eventually withers. Not because you were “keeping score,” but because flow requires a circuit. I think back to the Mycorrhizae from the last essay. The fungi give nutrients to the tree. The tree gives sugars to the fungi. They aren’t sending invoices. They aren’t worried about “indebtedness.” They are just living in a state of constant, fluid reciprocation. If one stops giving, the other dies. The danger, as established, is in putting things on the backs of another person in expectation of reciprocation. “I did this for you, so now you must do that for me.” That is manipulation. That is a trap. But the beauty is when the reciprocation is involuntary. When you love someone so much that you can’t help but return the serve. I don’t value “Avoidance of Indebtedness.” I am happy to be indebted to the people I love. I am happy to owe you my time, my ear, my heart. But I do value the Echo. I value the back-and-forth. The volley. The dance. So, if you bring me the Spindrifts, I won’t pay you back. But I will probably write you an absurdly long text message telling you how great you are. And that, I hope, is a melodic echo. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nickfromoregon.substack.com

  6. 7月1日

    #54 Family Security

    We choose our families. I believe that more deeply than ever. My wife and I have chosen one another time, and time and time again. Through thick and through thin, up times and down times. It’s been conscientious and it has not been either easy or automatic. My kids and I, also. We didn’t choose to be specifically who we are, they didn’t choose to be born. But staying in tight with one another is a choice and it’s one we keep making. We don’t start out choosing our families of origin. But at some point we must begin choosing them. I have not really asked my family about these essays, I have not really asked for advice or input from them on the content of these writings. But today at our shared table I did. As I cracked my brain open for family security I asked simply “what I should write”, and my wife said connectedness without performance. Right off the dome like that. She should write her own essays. I’d read them. Connectedness without performance. A sense of belonging, (that card’s coming up), without expectation of reward or even always reciprocation. I have talked about my family throughout these essays. I have talked about my brother whose love for the soil and the land make me love mine more. I choose him. I have talked about my wife and kids. They’re everything to me. They’re my sun and my moon, and they rise on me daily, newly, brightly. I have talked about my grandmother’s values and her biscuit bowl. I have talked about my nieces for and with whom I would walk to the end of the Earth. I have talked about my aunt, the chef, who never had children of her own but loved us eternally and even in death is knit tightly into the fabric of this family. Something funny happened this week. My brother and his wonderful wife, who is a sister, (drop the in-law, if you please), to me, and their five beautiful daughters were in my home. It was not an event–it was a morsel. It was the stuff futures are built up upon. The pylons supporting our forever-structures. My middle niece has eyes only for me at this time. She thinks of me. She made me a manatee, (one of my favorite animals), out of wire and yarn for Christmas. She didn’t show up with gifts for my wife, for my kids or for her grandparents. Just me. I am honored and love her so very much. We spent a good part of Christmas day drawing together with her new paper and pencils and I gave her two Blackwing Pearls for her collection. When I saw her a few days after Christmas at my house she did something nobody’s done for me since I started my Values Deck adventure. She grabbed my deck and asked if she could do my values. I think I mentioned at some point that though I’ve thumbed through the deck countless times on countless mornings, I have never been presented with the deck and property done the exercise since my day in therapy so long ago. She grabbed hold of my hand and the deck and presented each card to me in turn, reading them aloud. It was a beautiful expression of love for me. She knows how much this means to me and she wants to be a part of it. We are choosing each other. I have talked about my parents. I have probably hurt their feelings at some point in this project and for that I’m sorry. They’re imperfect people who have done imperfect things, and some of them have affected me negatively. This is normal. I know because I talk to other people and I now have an adult child of my own; I am no different than my parents. I am not better or worse, and besides, they have done so many wonderful things as well. They made me who I am and I am grateful. We have to choose our parents, too. Once we become adults we have to choose them. Even if we stay connected, there’s a certain level of relationship that just won’t happen on its own. One person I have not mentioned is my sister. I have one. Not a lot of people in my life know about her. She is far away from me. I believe she is physically far from me–living in another state and another state of mind. She is insecure in our family and has chosen to withdraw for her own sense of self preservation. I am bereft. There is a piece of me that will always roam a stretch of wilderness longing for her. But I am not angry at her for withdrawing. I understand some of the reasons and I think there’s probably a lot more that I don’t understand. I think about her nearly every day, and there’s an element of family security that is dashed because of the great weight of knowledge that this estrangement brings—I say it again, we must choose our families. And sometimes we don’t choose the ones we’re biologically connected to. And sometimes that hurts. My sister is quite savvy–I have not blocked her on my social media apps, nor have I changed my telephone number in the last twenty-five years. I email her on an old email address periodically, when something big happens in my life. I assume she reads my words but I do not know. I wish to be a person with whom she might feel secure one day, if ever she wanted to. It’s entirely possible that she’s reading these words now. Nevertheless, I am overwhelmingly blessed in my life with relationships. The people I’ve married, the nieces who adore me, my children to whom I’m so devoted. And my closest circle of friends who care for me. And I am compelled to learn from their example. To be a better friend, a better husband and dad and uncle. To foster and be ready to expend father, uncle, friend energy for anyone who might need it. Any time they might need it. That requires me to be deeply and firmly rooted in family. In community. On my little Values Tree our roots are the representation of our Values. They’re fed by the rain and the sun and they’re informed by the mycorrhizae of community. Mycorrhizae are symbiotic partnerships between fungal networks and plants’ root systems that benefit both organisms. In fact they blur the lines between organisms. They allow plants to share water and nutrients and even information. One tree can talk to another. Mycorrhizae make this community possible. It’s such a very beautiful thing! Family security is really just connectedness without performance. It’s connectedness for the sake of itself and I am insurmountably endowed with a deep sense of security in my relationships. I am glad. I am satisfied. And I feel the missing mycorrhizae of my sister acutely. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nickfromoregon.substack.com

    #54 Family Security

  7. 6月25日

    #53 Social Order

    Stability of society this card says at the bottom. Man, I feel like no matter where you land politically there is a tremendous instability in our society. On the heels of national security, the inclination is to see this as a very broad, national conversation. Maybe a global conversation about police and guns and the National Guard moving between communities. But I’m going to think small. Real small. I am water insecure. Which is an insane thing for me to say out loud because it’s currently raining buckets outside. Just dumping. I moved onto this land a couple of years ago. We have two sources of water on this property, which makes my statement about insecurity sound even sillier. But I’ll lay it all out for you. There’s a well. I was told by a neighbor that “the wells around here are brackish”. I didn’t know what that meant, so I did what any country boy like me would do, I went out to the barn and had a long drink from the hose. It tasted fine to me. But to be honest I have a high tolerance for weird water–that’s another story. I bought one of these water testing kits on the internet. They send you some little bottles and some instructions and you follow them just so, and fill the bottles and send it all in to a lab. And then they email you a report. I got mine and there were a bunch of green line items on there, and a few yellows and a couple of reds. “That doesn’t seem great” thought I, but my life is pretty wild and free wheeling, and I moved on. I figured I’d have to pay that piper at some point, but we have another source of water for our home, so I didn’t pay it much heed. Well, I should have paid heed, friends. My plants did poorly. I watered a little patch of grass all summer and it didn’t do very well at all. And my chickens—their stool was loose and watery. Watery stool! With some trepidation, I fed my water report into AI, and it basically threw a bunch of red flags that explained all of my symptoms. I switched our chickens to our other water source and—good news folks! Firm, solid stools! I know you were worried. So basically, without giving you more detail than is necessary for this, I’m looking at a very expensive reverse osmosis system if I ever wanted to do much of anything with the water from the well. Not much else to to with it. Rats. The other source of water is municipal water from a nearby larger city. We have a meter on a small water utility. I had lived here about six months when my neighbor roped me onto the board of our small utility and so now I have access to and am privy to information that is openly and readily available to all, but which I may not have paid attention to if not for being a member of the board. Our water comes to us in a single 4 inch PVC line running nearly ten miles from its point of distribution. That line, until recently, had no isolation valves making leak identification complex. We had two separate water outages in 2025, one lasting a week, (and we got lucky—it could have been longer). The system was installed in the early 1980s, the same time I was installed into society. And it’s just in disrepair. We’re doing our best with the resources we have, but honestly, we live in a fairly rural area, there’s not a lot of money sloshing around here, and federal grants for this kind of thing are harder to come by than they once were. It is entirely plausible that the cost to maintain this system will, in the future, outstrip public ability or willingness to do so. And this, so far, has been all about me. About My family. About my property and my specific scenario. The reality is that our little water utility serves only about 85 households in my area, and there have to be 300 households more who would benefit from this clean drinking water. Because remember my neighbor, who told me the wells ‘round these parts were brackish—he knew what he was talking about. They’re pretty much all brackish. The salts come from a time many years ago when my piece of the world was covered in the sea. Salts settled and were sealed in by the thick, sticky grey clay that is so prevalent where I live. And there the sodium sat for thousands of years, untouched, until someone disturbed the aquifer. And now our wells are salty. So that’s the situation at my home. And it makes me feel insecure. Not for tomorrow or the next day or even next year. But in the broad, uncertain future. And that makes me feel uneasy. Because I remember a time before the internet; I could go back. I remember a time before the ubiquity of handheld screens; I could go back. I can imagine a time, (though I don’t remember one) without electricity or speedy, efficient travel between towns and cities and counties and states. But I understand that I could go back. My family and I are adapters. We could do without a lot of things. Yours could too. But we can’t do without water. We cannot do without basic foods and clean drinking water. So what do I do if, in ten or twenty years’ time my source of water dries up? What do we do if we are faced with an impossible situation? A man once told me, right to my face, that if it came down to it, some terrible, nightmare scenario, if society had collapsed to the point that a loaf of bread could buy a bag of gold, that he’d shoot me and my family dead before he shared. He wasn’t even being threatening. He wasn’t an enemy of mine or in my estimation a particularly hateful person. He was just a guy. With a plan. And an iron jaw, set against the world. I worry about the order of our societies. I worry about not having enough. I worry about what I might do then. And I think there’s a certain healthy wisdom in thinking about these things. Not obsessing, not making them the central focus of your life. But sitting, as I do, in my morning chair, coffee in hand, (what a luxury), and staring into the middle distance. Letting ideas and thoughts wash over the various bits of my brain and allowing them to tumble about, picking up context from my life and, yes, from the values I’ve chosen along the way. I’ll tell you what I want to do. I want to build a big-assed cistern. Really big. My friend, the beautiful musician—I’ve mentioned him before—lives far away on a tropical island. He was born there, moved here, and has moved back. We made fast friends in an instant one day and have just stayed that way. I have been to his home to visit, it is utterly lovely in almost every way. One challenging thing about his island paradise is that there is no fresh water. Zero. Zilch. One well on the whole of the island and it’s brackish like mine. My salt is from the Eocene era, 40 million years ago. His saltiness is because the well is like a hundred feet from the ocean. There is a single, diesel powered desalination plant on the island which serves the main downtown core of the small main town with piped water, and water is also available for sale via tanker truck or barrels in the back of your rig. Other than that, (and there’s a lot going on other than that), all of the fresh water on the island is collected rainwater. It is ingenious. It is a kind of elegant beauty. And it is an inspiration to me in my beloved western Oregon, where we routinely receive a full four feet of rainfall every year. A tremendous amount of fresh water falling out of the sky. My plan is, as I mentioned, (when I can put funds together), to build a huge cistern, and collect the rainwater from the roofs of my buildings. I have built on my piece of land a garage with modest living quarters for my parents-in-law. The structure totals about 2000 square feet. If I were able to collect four feet of rain from 2000 square feet of roof, that would total 8000 cubic feet of water. Now, a quick burst of mental arithmetic, (or a quick trip to Google) will tell you that’s very nearly 60,000 gallons of fresh, clean drinking water with only minimal need for further processing. That’s a lot of water, friends. With some specific lifestyle choices, (that who are we kidding–I’m excited to make anyway), like a grey water system installed and mindful showering, that could be more than enough for my family to live on for the year. Plus, the hope is to add a little more roof in the future. I’ll spare you the details. Plus, I have a barn! A huge piece of roof. More like 5000 square feet. That’s enough water to feed critters. It’s enough water to drip irrigate crops for food. It’s enough water. If I can store it… From there my mind wanders to the wanderer. What will I do when there are people around me with no water? How can I make choices now that put me in a better position to share later? Look, maybe none of this will come to pass. Hopefully! Hopefully our little water utility will find the funds and the community support it needs to upgrade and provide that water for all. Hopefully society never collapses this way and a loaf of bread will remain simply a thing to be shared. And as an aside, hopefully, as a culture, we’ll stop being so obsessed with gold anyway. This whole “end of the world” scenario I play out is mostly just a mental exercise in kindness. How can I prepare for kindness to my family, to my loved ones, to my neighbors. Because I’ll tell you right now, in the end, when a loaf of bread will buy a bag of gold, you will have a place at my table. We will drink water together until the end. Maybe the end comes quicker that way? But we’ll be together. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nickfromoregon.substack.com

  8. 6月15日

    #52 National security

    I grew up American. All the way American. I know all of the songs. I know the old ones, like our National Anthem, The Star Spangled Banner. My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring! You’re a grand old flag, you’re a high flying flag, and forever in peace may you wave, You’re the emblem of the land I love, the home of the free and the brave. I know the new ones too. Like the post 9/11 Toby Keith classic, Courtesy of the Red White and Blue, also colloquially known as The Angry American. Perhaps my favorite lines of the tune: Oh, and justice will be served and the battle will rage This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage And you’ll be sorry that you messed with The U.S. of A. ‘Cause we’ll put a boot in your ass It’s the American way There is a kind of a perfection of toxicity in those lines that hammered hard when I was young and teases at amusing today. We’ll put a boot in your ass. Is that the American way? Is that your way? Alan Jackson sang: I’m just a singer of simple songs I’m not a real political man I watch CNN, but I’m not sure I can tell you The diff’rence in Iraq and Iran But I know Jesus and I talk to God And I remember this from when I was young Faith, hope, and love are some good things He gave us And the greatest is love Kinder words for sure, but I do think perhaps all of us could have spent a little more time learning the diff’rence in Iraq and Iran. Faith hope and love. I am an American. I travel with an American passport and I consistently pay my taxes. This has presented more and more conscientious challenges for me as I’ve gotten older, and I think, if we’re honest, it presents them for many of us. We border on sociopathy when we hide our eyes and our minds from the American Way of putting boots in asses. And listen, I was there, I remember 9/11. I was young but I was awake. I was living with my grandmother at the time, because I was awesome. My friend was quietly staying there with me because he was also awesome. We both came downstairs that morning and my grandmother was weeping in her armchair. Sitting not comfortably back into her chair as was her way, but perched up on the edge, hoping she wasn’t seeing what she was seeing. We watched the coverage of the first tower, then we watched live as the second was hit. The loss of life was senseless. The cruelty was on display in a way we’d never experienced in this country. Except. I mean. We did know our way around cruelty, right? Approximately 13 million Africans were shipped like cargo across the Atlantic ocean. An estimated 10.8 million actually survived the journey. Of those, most were landed and were enslaved in the Caribbean and South America, with a comparatively small percentage making it to North America proper. But statistically all of them were bought, sold and traded by people that look like me. That’s just what’s real. Our whole society is built on globalized poverty, those systems were institutionalized and propped up with enslaved people. Sugar, (and rum) and tobacco to feed our insatiable appetite for vice brought in from the Caribbean. Importantly, the slave trade didn’t end there. In 1808 after we outlawed the international slave trade, (partly to clean up our act, thanks, Quakers, partly to present ourselves as more virtuous than we had any right to to the international community, but mostly to protect the economic interests of southern plantation owners), a robust internal slave trade took root, displacing families and individuals at an unprecedented scope and scale. God damn it. Damn it all to hell. Slavery has been a part of human history for millennia. But we, white Europeans and Americans, perfected this most barbaric, treacherous evil. Nobody enslaves like we enslaved. Also I skipped past the atrocities committed against the people living here before Europeans began arriving in force. Forced displacements and starvations literally designed to eradicate in the name of our Lord. The card says “Protection of my nation from enemies”. I have seen the enemy you guys, and it is us. It’s me. It’s my fathers and theirs. What then is our response. What’s the big, white, traditionally Christian guy’s response to such heinous history? Such ugliness? I must protect my nation. I want to protect my nation. And the only way I can do that, the most subversive act I can think of is making room on the bench for others. It’s using my girth, as I’ve said before, to hold the door open for others. It won’t end up being apologizing, (though that probably couldn’t hurt), it will be demanding equality, loudly if necessary. Only then will it be a brighter tomorrow. We cannot blot out the stain of the past, and our past is filthy and stained. Don’t listen to anyone still peddling American Exceptionalism, still peddling Manifest Destiny. Get your head right. It’s not about a guilt trip. That’s what they want to make it. They want to say that the blacks and the browns are pissed off and they want the whites to prostrate themselves before them. They’re coming to GET us! But it’s not about that. It’s about a brighter, better, coequal, loving, caring, generous future that considers everyone and leaves nobody behind. Look, I’m happy to be an American. I love my lovely valley and my mountains high. I love many cultural aspects of America. I love the ingenuity that has been shown by the people here from time immemorial. How else could the first Americans, (the ones who knew the place before there were roads or bridges or pubs or muskets or AR-15’s or horseless carriages or Christianity) survive and thrive as much as they have? Ingenuity! Constant personal reinvention! Admirable qualities that we could all aspire to. I’m not advocating for anyone to go home. Europe wouldn’t know what to do with our Chick-fil-a’s and Ford F650’s. We are all Americans now. The least we can do is all be Americans. I will end this essay with the entire text of Emma Lazarus’ consummate piece of Americana, The New Colossus. May we read it over and over until it’s burned into our souls, and for once in our history may it be true for us. Now, you read it. I mean it. Read it all and read it twice. Don’t you skip this ending. Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nickfromoregon.substack.com

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番組について

Growing up, the path was clear: "Where you go, I'll go. Where you stay, I'll stay." But what happens when the path you were given becomes a betrayal of your very self? Hosted by Nick Walton—husband, dad, and coffee roaster—The Values Sort explores what happens when you have to rebuild your life’s foundation from scratch. After leaving the structure of his childhood church and feeling "lost," Nick found a simple tool: a deck of cards, each printed with a single human value like "Helpfulness" or "Honesty." By sorting them down to five core essentials, he found a new way to navigate the world. In this series, Nick explores the cards that changed his way of thinking, sharing the essays and stories that define them. Whether you are 10 years old or 80, this is an invitation to figure out who you are, five cards at a time. nickfromoregon.substack.com

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  • クリエイター
    A series of indeterminate length exploring the core things that drive us.
  • 配信期間
    26年
  • エピソード
    60
  • 制限指定
    不適切な内容を含む
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    © Nick Walton
  • 番組のWebサイト
    The Values Sort