Depressed for No Good Reason
Well, not exactly depressed for no good reason. It’s the fifty-first day of my shelter-in-place sojourn and I finished reading Sarah Kendzior’s Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America this morning. As a specialist, Kendzior explains the development of autocracies and kleptocracies and chronicles all the steps in Donald Trump’s rise to power. Good book but not an upper. Hiding in Plain Sight is written the […]
Coronavirus Counting Game, Watching the News
Watching the News Coronavirus Counting Game It will make watching the news worth it when there isn’t any. Which journalists have books on their walls? Or paintings? Or photographs? Or certificates? How many books by Stephen King can you count? By Rachel Maddow? About Trump? How many mix fiction and nonfiction? New and old? And do you see any old books? Percentage of unadorned white walls to bookshelves? Are certificates framed, […]
Comprehending Time, Passing Through a Wall
Explaining to a seven-year-old how to tell when 5 hours had passed, I pointed to the clock. No, she said. I know how to tell time, but I don’t comprehend it. How long is it? What can I do in five hours? I was almost 70 then and I couldn’t comprehend time either. Hours, yes. But I was in the decades. How long my life had been—how long anything had […]
Your Ducks in a Row
As long as you have two or fewer, your ducks are always in a row.
The Covert Comic
On the problem of school library visits being limited to 3 books every 2 weeks when each book is finished in a day or two.
What I need are books that can survive me for two weeks.
Carolyn, age 8
The first follower is actually an underestimated form of leadership in itself. … The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader.
New followers emulate the followers, not the leader.
Nurture the followers because that values the movement, not the leader.
Dereck Sivers from his TED Talk, How to Start a Movement
Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving a Wider Audience
Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving a Wider Audience is a wonderful collection of letters worth reading. Inspiring, funny, confused, and courageous. Letters of Note is an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos. Scans/photos where possible. Fakes will be sneered at. Updated as often as possible; usually each weekday. Reading such wonderful missives might help inspire you to write, or absolve you of guilt because others […]
I do not mean any disrespect to Oprah. A friend of mine once meant disrespect to Oprah, and all his window treatments turned on him.
Alexandra Petri, Compost, Washington Post, 2011
Design is the first sign of human intention.
William McDonough