From Donald Hall’s Notebook: The Beautiful Work

From Donald Hall’s notebook

Eric Gill: Work is sacred, leisure is secular.

Georgia O’Keefe: The days you work are the best days.

Matisse: Work is paradise.

Rodin: To work is to live without dying.

Mad Men: Negotiating and Life

From Mad Men “The New Girl”

Don Draper (Jon Hamm): Negotiating’s boring.
Bobbie Barrett (Melinda McGraw): it’s hand-to-hand combat.

————–
Bobbie Barrett: You have to start living the life of the person you want to be.

————–
Bobbie Barrett: You can’t be a man. Don’t even try. Be a woman. It’s powerful business when done correctly.

Singing to the Sensitive Hills

From Joy Harjo

When you grow up you either make uneasy peace with the density of destiny, and entertain the possibility of a reckless, cruel god, or watch television with the rest of the escapees.

See those sensitive hills? They need to be talked to, sung to….

Free Seats and Booing

Chinese Proverb

Those who have free seats boo first.

The Myth We Live

Thinking about history a lot this week:

From Roy P. Basler

“To know the truth of history is to realize its ultimate myth and its inevitable ambiguity.”

From Robert Penn Warren

“Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.”

Politics Unusual: A Few Words from Barney Smith

From Einstein
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Repeated by Monica Early, Akron, Ohio, Obama volunteer at the Democratic National Convention

Even better:

From Barney Smith, Marion, Indiana plant worker–lost job of 30 yrs when plant moved to China

“We need a president who puts Barney Smith before Smith Barney.”

The Cruel Motion of History

From E. Ethelbert Miller’s blog

“This is a reminder that until we focus on the folks at the bottom of our society – we won’t experience the change we need to see.

Right now a few blocks from the White House are a legion of homeless black men. I’m certain I could find a few wearing something that has Obama’s name. It might be a shirt, hat or just a button. These folks holding onto the last of their dignity seem to be grasping for the hem of Jesus. Even if Obama wins the election in November, I’m certain these homeless black men will still be homeless. Why? Because they are invisible. They are not the middle class. They are the poor. They are folks with disabilities. They are people with substance abuse problems. They are people who suffer from mental illness. They are my brothers. And no one speaks for them.

Yes, they are happy that Obama has won the nomination. They are happy for the moment – because they live from moment to moment. Their dreams have vanish – just like their homes and jobs. The last thing to vanish has been themselves. Even Ellison has no narrative for them. The motion of history can be cruel. It moves forward leaving so many of us behind. For many of us – even the air is gone.”

Read the full post at E-Notes:

Read Ethelbert’s poetry at his website

Charmed By the Flute or the Storm

From “Heart” by Catherine Bowman

Charmed by the flute
or the first thunderstorm in spring, drowsy
heart stirs from the cistern, the hibernaculum,
the wintering den of stars.

The Practice of Freedom

A few I return to each fall as I enter the semester

From Bertrand Russell
No man can be a good teacher unless he has feelings of warm affection toward his pupils and a genuine desire to impart to them what he himself believes to be of value.

From Bell Hooks
I entered the classroom with the conviction that it was crucial for me and every other student to be an active participant, not a passive consumer…[a conception of] education as the practice of freedom…. education that connects the will to know with the will to become. Learning is a place where paradise can be created.

From Helen Keller
The highest result of education is tolerance.

Become the Person

From Bobbie Barrett (Melinda McGraw) on AMC’s Mad Men “The New Girl”

“Pick a job you want, then become the person who does it.”

So brilliantly simple, isn’t it? But what courage it takes.