Interviews

The ultimate to-do list

Sasha Cagen took the everyday to-do list and used it to peer into our souls. In an email interview, she tells the story of the genesis of her magazine, To-Do List, and describes the challenges of the publishing world.


(Melvin Piro)

Most of us write to-do lists, but most of us do not found magazine’s based on them as Sasha Cagen did.  Her magazine, To-Do List, wais “committed to exploring the details of modern lives” that “make us click, roar, think, develop, and sometimes break down.”  It useds the to-do list as a window into the complex shape of our lives and communities.  To-Do List was the winner of the Utne Reader‘s Alternate Press Award for Best New Magazine 2000, Reader’s Choice.  Since then, Cagen has been forced to put the magazine on permanent hiatus.  But as I found from interviewing Cagen, who lives in San Francisco, is much more than just a thousand lists.  Her essays have appeared in various publications including The Village Voice, Utne Reader, and the San Francisco Chronicle.  She is also the author of Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics, which investigates people the person who “enjoys being single (but is not opposed to being in a relationship) and generally prefers to be alone rather than dating for the sake of being in a couple.”  As an avid list-maker myself, Cagen’s magazine intrigued me enough to contact her for the following interview, which illuminates how lists often offer a window into our culture and how projects such as To-Do List might succeed.

Francis Raven: How did you start collecting lists?

Sasha Cagen: I wasn’t really a listmaker when I first started To-Do List magazine. Sure, I made the occasional pros and cons list, a Christmas list as well as a list of all the presents I bought for family, but listmaking didn’t structure my days the way they do now. I made them sometimes at work to help me organize my day and my tasks, but I called them “work plans,” because I saw someone else use that title, and I figured that it would look good to my boss if I had a “work plan.”

I started collecting to-do lists when I decided to start a magazine of the same name.
Before we launched our first issue, I placed an ad asking for people to send us their to-do lists. Once the actual, handwritten lists started coming in the mail, I became addicted to getting them, and my ideas about the name changed. At first, the name To-Do List was more conceptual — about the to-do lists of young adulthood rather than real to-do lists themselves. But I started to realize the name To-Do List conveyed a lot more than the tasks and hopes and dreams one would have as an adult. There’s something completely universal about the to-do list written at any age, and something both voyeuristic and comforting in reading another person’s list. You see that you are not the only person struggling with daily tasks like buying stamps to mail a bill on time — things that are supposed to be easy. And you also see how people think about larger issues too — because people write to-do lists about everything. Not just what they hope to accomplish in a day, but also what they hope to accomplish over their whole lives.

The to-do list concept became a jumping-off point for examining the details of daily life, and to convey the breadth of topics we would cover in the magazine, from the mundane to the meaningful, just like the random jumble of items on any one’s to do list (from flossing to finding your soul mate).

FR: What’s the quality you are looking for in a good to-do list?

SC: To-Do List published essays and interviews, and actual handwritten lists accompanied those pieces as artwork. When we were choosing lists, we were just as selective as when we were choosing essays. We were looking for lists with unexpected, human, mysterious, funny items: lists that told a story, but not in an over-the-top, calculated way. It’s very obvious when someone constructs a list and sends it in to the magazine to be reprinted. The handwriting is too perfect and well aligned. The items are too precious. A good list raises questions and tells a story, but it’s elliptical. The items should be slightly mysterious, so that you start to imagine your own story about the person’s life.

FR: What’s the most difficult thing about running a magazine?

SC: When you run a magazine, the more successful you become, the more difficult your life gets. Your to-do list becomes endlessly long, which is fine if you are getting paid a salary and know how to set limits on your workday, but a lot of independent publishers don’t know how to set limits very well, and the labor of love starts to take over your life, and you go crazy! The same can be true of writing a book, which is what I turned my attention to in the last few years. Since my first book Quirkyalone came out in 2004, I’ve been consciously working on writing shorter to-do lists so that more of my time is devoted to leisure, meditation, yoga, and pure hanging out. And I have to say, I like my shorter to-do lists.

(Kristian Birchall)

FR: How did you start the magazine?

SC: With a lot of passion, energy, and ideas but very little money. I started To-Do List in 1999 (our first issue was released in summer 2000) with paychecks saved from my proofreading job; at the time, I was 26. The staff was super-talented and all-volunteer. Annie Decker was the senior editor, Burns Maxey was the art director, and I was editor and publisher. Our efforts were bolstered by a gang of other volunteers in the San Francisco Bay Area. (This is a great place to start a magazine — there are so many talented designers, writers, editors, and proofreaders who are willing to work for reasons other than money.) Burns left after two years and she was replaced by another great designer, Sara Cambridge.

Among other major recognition, To-Do List won Utne’s Alternative Press Award for Best New Magazine, 2000, Reader’s Choice. We got press coverage in the San Francisco Chronicle, Real Simple, [National Public Radio’s] “All Things Considered,” and the Chicago Tribune. A fiction piece by Jenny Bitner was reprinted in Best American Nonrequired Reading, edited by Dave Eggers. To-Do List was an unusual, special, great magazine, but no matter how good a magazine ist, it still needs money, and that part of the equation wasn’t figured out from the beginning. We didn’t have capital, which now I realize you really need in order to launch and make a magazine a sustainable operation. After three years, I put the magazine on permanent hiatus. There’s no job I would rather have than publishing To-Do List, but now that I’m in my thirties30s, I have to focus on making money and I can’t work for free any more. In the future I’ll find a way to bring to-do list back to life as an operation that pays the people who work on it.

Meanwhile, I am thinking about a  book that reprints actual to-do lists, and I invite people to send me their actual, authentic lists (not made up for the purposes of contributing) to To-Do List, PO Box 40128, San Francisco, CA 94140. Please include a note describing yourself and the circumstances in which you wrote the list.

FR: What does a person’s to do lists tell you about them?

SC: Reading other people’s lists almost always makes me feel better. It helps to curb my own workaholism. I see either how insane other people are with their lists, and recognize the trait in myself, or, by comparison, realize how much I accomplish. Either way it is a lift.  . In their improbable mix of the mundane and the meaningful, to-do lists are a window into another human being’s private world, into her (and more often than not, to-do list writers seem to be women) ambitions, desires, failings, poor memory (the need to remind herself of the smallest task), and our imperfect humanity. Everyone writes to-do lists. These scratched-off catalogs are like diaries, except there’s no artifice, no arranging, no clear narrative or storytelling: they’re the most spare kind of a diary, private little scratched out versions of our lives.

Once the magazine started to gain attention, I realized that To-Do List was tapping into a community of readers who had never really been named or identified: the listmaker personality. People can become pretty identified with their lists. Husbands make fun of wives for listmaking. People store boxes full of them. An older man sent in a story about finding lists in his deceased father’s pockets, and what the lists told him about his dad. A gay man wrote about the coded lists he wrote as a teenager.

NPR’s “All Things Considered” asked me to be on their show on New Year’s Day 2002 to talk about making lists of New Year’s Resolutions. Noah Adams and I talked about some of the craziest lists we had ever received and the kinds of things I put on my to-do lists. The response from that one radio interview blew me away. Suddenly donations were streaming in — enough to help us pay our printer bill for the third issue.  . All of these people were so incredibly excited that a private part of themselves — a facet of their personality sometimes mocked by significant others and family members — was a shared experience, and that someone had actually made a magazine that printed to-do lists. About a dozen people sent in checks for $100 without even having seen the magazine. They were just so happy someone had started a magazine about lists and wanted to support it!

FR: Do you have a favorite to do list?

SC: Yes, the very first person who sent us lists, Rebecca, who lived in Berkeley, continued to send in the most beautiful lists for years. She once even sent in a whole mini-notebook. Her lists are really aesthetic and have the most unexpected items on them. They’re a work of art.

FR: Does running To-Do List make you intimidated to write your own to do lists?

SC: No, it’s just made me more conscious of my own to-do-list-writing style, and that I have become progressively more reliant on them — especially when I’m tackling a big creative project.

FR: What was the last to-do list you wrote?

SC: I’m starting to do more freelance writing now, and trying to figure out what next to do with my life. Here’s the latest mega-list of various projects that I may take on. This was written on a computer. I write lists in Microsoft Word when I’m really trying to organize my to-do items in various categories.

***
PITCHES I CAN MAKE AND STORIES I CAN WRITE
Hooping story
Rhode Island magazine expatriate story
Mr. Best Ever for Men’s Health (talk to Doug next time I see him)
Writer’s breakdowns after their books come out (Poets and Writers) — ask Dr. Gray for stories
Insomnia essay for SELF — write Paula Derrow and make sure she would be interested …. . . also look at the stuff that I have already written
Meditation and insomnia for Natural Health or Breathe — write that editor and ask for copy—and send her clips

PRACTICAL THINGS TO DO
Make photocopies of SF Chronicle Magazine piece, Men’s Health, and 7 x 7

FOR QUIRKYALONE
Publicize RI and NY Events — write up listings and send them to the bookstores and media in NY and RI

TO-DO LIST BOOK PROJECT
To-Do List book project — email self what I have written and put together a brief proposal to send to Jill in advance of our meeting, also scan in some of the best lists. Find a place to do this scanning! (Can I scan in a whole bunch at Jenny’s house and it won’t be a problem?)

FINISH TO-DO LIST INTERVIEW

FR: Is a person who makes lists a different type of person from a person who does not?

SC: There are different kinds of listmakers. There are people who make lists just to help them get through the day; there are also list-makers who just love making lists. It’s a fun activity for them to go to a café and make lists about the magazines they want to subscribe to or the places they want to visit. I recently interviewed a woman about things she loves to do alone, and she answered, “I really value time alone so I can sit in my room and make to-do lists.”

Men make lists, but on the whole, more women make them. I think that’s a reflection of how much women multitask — they’re mothers and workers and friends and so many other things. Men multitask too, but most don’t to the extent that women do.

FR: What makes you laugh?

SC: A good corny joke that is just goofy enough.

FR: What is a good charity to give money to?

SC: There are so many right now. Obviously there are a lot of organizations that are doing great work and we need their work so much in the Bush era. If I have to choose one, I would say organizations that are helping women and men who are in welfare reform get better training and child care to support them as time limits on their benefits run out. And of course you can always donate to an independent magazine! They need every penny!

STORY INDEX

RESOURCES >    

Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics
URL: http://quirkyalone.net

To-Do List
URL: http://www.todolistmagazine.com

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Commentary

Mississippi Learning

Best of In The Fray 2005. More than 40 years after a horrific — and racist — triple murder, the “other Philadelphia” is finally showing some signs of brotherly love.


Mississippians are fond of quoting their state’s native son, William Faulkner, who said: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

I’ve quoted Faulkner myself, and I’m not a Mississippian. Recent events there have got me reconsidering Faulkner’s quote. In June, Edgar Ray “Preacher” Killen, the main conspirator in one of the most notorious killings of the Civil Rights era, was convicted on three counts of manslaughter in the deaths of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman. The verdict came 41 years to the day after the men’s disappearance in 1964. Two days after the conviction, Killen was sentenced to 60 years in prison — a life sentence for the 80-year-old man.

Killen’s fate proves the limits of Faulkner’s observation: The past is dying in Philadelphia.

I speak as a black woman raised in Tennessee. I came of age during the Civil Rights struggle. I was only nine when Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner disappeared, but I remember it vividly. The case stunned the nation. The men disappeared in June, and their bodies were found 44 days later, in August.  Even then, it took a tip from an informant to lead the FBI to their graves. The agents brought in bulldozers; the men had been buried under tons of earth.

The trio wasn’t killed in Philadelphia, but they had been charged with speeding and were detained in the county jail while their murderers plotted their deaths. Thus, this southern city of brotherly love wore a scar that thickened over four decades. The town’s very name invoked black people’s worst fears about the racist South.

In 1989, working for a Mississippi newspaper that had sent me to Philadelphia, I heard that fear in my relatives’ voices. I spent two months living in the black community there, and wrote about race relations 25 years after the murder. The past was alive and well in that little town. There, the complexities of racial segregation lingered in ways that seemed unfathomable to an outsider. The high school had private baccalaureate ceremonies: one for the black students and another for the white ones. Blacks didn’t shop much at the drugstore in the center of the city, and they certainly didn’t sit down to have a cup of coffee or a cold drink. The drugstore had been off limits to blacks during the Jim Crow era, and that prohibition, though illegal, remained in force. The one theater in town still reserved the downstairs seats for whites and the upstairs for blacks.

That was the Philadelphia the world saw this summer; it was a vision that framed the stories I read about Killen’s trial. It was a view of a hopeless place that would never change.

There was, however, another Philadelphia — one of small-town pleasantries and relationships. Even though I was an outsider (and worse, a reporter), the suspicions and hostilities eased somewhat. People began to talk. Over and over, I heard black and white Philadelphians insist that their home was more than the place where the infamous murder was hatched. They were tired, and they were ready to lay their burden down.

But how?

Burying the past is a long journey that begins with a single step. Philadelphia took that step in June of 1989, when a committee held a commemoration of the Civil Rights workers deaths. The ceremony included a speech from Richard Molpus, a Neshoba County native and Mississippi’s Secretary of State, admitting that the city and state bore responsibility for the killings. Just last year, at the 40th anniversary of the murders, Molpus pleaded for informants to come forward. “I’m speaking primarily to the white community now,” he said, noting that as many as 20 co-conspirators were believed to have participated in the murder. He continued: “Someone told me the other day, they have already had their judgment day. Others, however, have told wives, children and buddies of their involvement. There are witnesses among us who can share information with prosecutors. Other murderers are aged and infirm and may want to be at peace with themselves and with God before their own death. They need to be encouraged to come forward. They need to know that now is the time to liberate those dark secrets.”

Now, with Killen’s conviction and sentence, the city has taken a giant step. Is its journey over?  I don’t think so, and neither does Molpus. “The end of this saga should not be about only cowardly racists finally brought to justice,” he said last year. “The final chapter should be about redemption and yes, those famous words we hear about moving on … moving on to a better life.”

Even though he was addressing Philadelphians, his words speak to the nation. The racial divide is embedded in our society. Philadelphia belongs to all of us, even though the town has symbolized an aspect of American life that many of us would rather ignore. I’m convinced that they are showing us the way through the pain, anger and shame that accompanies race relations in our country.

Faulkner warns us that we can’t leave the past behind. Philadelphia proves that we can put it to rest.

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Blog

If you pay them, they will come…


“I feel we have an obligation to do everything possible to get our kids to come and stay in school. ”

Chelsea High School, located outside of Boston, will begin paying its students $25 a quarter for perfect attendance when they return to school this September. The money will be placed in an account at the school, redeemable only upon the students’ graduation. The vagaries of this decision — is it bribery or a justly deserved reward? — aside, the school district’s decision makes clear the results of continued pressure from the federal government to both assess and improve upon quantifiable outcomes rather than quality of experience.

—Laura Louison

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Political Prose

‘I’m a whore this week. What can I say?’

If you happen to be one of those doe-eyed, trusting readers who thought there was no need for alternative media (but why would you be, if you’re reading such a cutting-edge, avant-garde magazine like ITF?) you ought to…


If you happen to be one of those doe-eyed, trusting readers who thought there was no need for alternative media (but why would you be, if you’re reading such a cutting-edge, avant-garde magazine like ITF?) you ought to pay attention to the juicy details coming out of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s investigation into the “pay-for-play” shenanigans that are rife in Radioland. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, emails unearthed from the inboxes of Sony BMG Music Entertainment execs reveal that the record company shelled out airplane tickets, vacation packages, TV sets, DVD players, laptop computers, cash — even, God fordbid, blackjack games with Celine Dion — to radio station managers who spun the “right” songs.

Willing to play J-Lo’s “This Is Me … Then” until your listeners’ eardrums bleed? Help yourself to a 32-inch plasma TV. Wouldn’t mind spinning Celine Dion’s “I Drove All Night” a couple thousand times a day? Enjoy the travel package to Vegas. (But first, sign right here with your fictitious name and fictitious Social Security number for our fictitious listener contest.)

One station manager boiled it down in an email: “I’m a whore this week. What can I say?”

The folks at a mammoth record company like Sony BMG were not averse to begging and whining like a bunch of teenage groupies to get their songs on the radio. “What do I have to do to get Audioslave on WKSS this week?!!?” wrote one employee who was trying to hawk Audioslave “Like a Stone” to a Clear Channel station in 2003. “Whatever you can dream up, I can make it happen!!!” (Which makes you wonder: How many exclamation points do you need to sell a Britney Spears song?)

But the most bizarre email has to be the one sent by an Epic promotions employee to the person in charge of the record label’s call-in campaign. What, you may ask, is a “call-in campaign”? It seems that Epic would make its interns bombard radio stations with calls, posing as listeners and requesting their favorite songs — which happened to be the ones that the label was trying to promote. “You need to rotate your people,” the promoter complained to the intern wrangler. “My guys on the inside say that it’s the same couple of girls calling in every week and that they are not inspired enough to be put on the air. They’ve got to be excited. They need to be going out, or getting drunk, or going in the hot [tub], or going clubbing … You get the idea.”

It takes two to play, of course. If the record companies were giving out bribes, it seems that some radio stations were more than happy to take — and then some. In some of the emails released this week, senior staff members at Sony BMG’s Columbia Records expressed their fears that Clear Channel, the country’s largest radio station conglomerate, would boycott their label’s songs unless they ponied up more cash and gifts.

With the secret now out, will the music industry clean up its act? Judging from the amount of damage they’re taking so far, I wouldn’t hold my breath. (In response to the allegations, Sony BMG has sacked an executive at one of its labels and paid a $10 million settlement, an amount roughly equivalent to Gwen Stefani’s weekly dry cleaning bill.) That said, Spitzer’s office is now sniffing into the inboxes of the country’s other mega-sized radio and record companies, and perhaps more heads will roll. In the meantime, I think I’ll stick to free streaming audio. Try WFUV.org or Novaplanet.com — the former is listener-supported public radio, the latter is French but plays mostly American tunes (added benefit: you won’t understand the ads).

Now I’ll go enjoy the plasma TV I got for telling you that.

—Victor Tan Chen

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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