Things that turn 50, in 2017

My good friend Paul Schuster turned 50 today and I was inspired to ask, "What else turns 50?"

CountryLiving published "50 people and things turning 50 in 2017"  which includes names such as Will Ferrell, Keith Urban, and Julia Roberts, plus several songs, inventions, TV shows, and more.

Here are my top 10 (with one extra icing-on-top for my Canadian brother).

Handheld Calculator

The first prototype , Texas Instruments' CalTech

 

Countertop Microwave

 

Lite-Brite

Introduces as the "art toy" by Hasbro

 

Battleship

Rolling Stone

First published on November 9, 1967

The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton

Published April 24, 1967

 

The Big Mac

Debuted in the Pittsburg-area McDonald stores in 1967 before being released nationwide in 1968

 

Pringle's

(I never knew it was possessive . . . I always thought it was Pringles. Strange.)

 

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Band

Released June 1, 1967

 

The Flying Nun

Premiered September 7, 1967

 

The 25th Amendment

Designating the order of succession in the event that the President is removed from office. It was adopted on February 10, 1967

My Papa's Waltz, by Theodore Roethke

My Papa’s Waltz

BY THEODORE ROETHKE

The whiskey on your breath   

Could make a small boy dizzy;   

But I hung on like death:   

Such waltzing was not easy. 

We romped until the pans   

Slid from the kitchen shelf;   

My mother’s countenance   

Could not unfrown itself. 

The hand that held my wrist   

Was battered on one knuckle;   

At every step you missed 

My right ear scraped a buckle. 

You beat time on my head   

With a palm caked hard by dirt,   

Then waltzed me off to bed   

Still clinging to your shirt.

I love this poem because not only does it show the love and blind devotion of a child for his father, but it is also a great discussion piece on the power of perspective (especially when compared to Hayden's Those Winter Days) . The father, although drunk and perhaps reckless, loves his son. Yet, the frustrated mother has every reason to be. You can almost hear her sigh and murmur in the kitchen while cleaning up the pots and pans.

The father is flawed, but not fully.

The son is ignorant, but not completely.

And the wife is justified, but not entirely.

What a great poem.

Key (Missing) Attributes of a Hero

Joseph Campbell wrote the blue print for the hero's journey, and it's almost spotless, but for one specific yet life-altering moment. A moment that separates the hero present from the hero past and what differentiates an adventure-seeking journey from the hero's journey. And he missed it.

According to Campbell, The Hero is the person who goes out and achieves great deeds on behalf of the group, tribe, or civilization and endures the following stages:

1.        THE ORDINARY WORLD.  The hero, uneasy, uncomfortable or unaware, is introduced sympathetically so the audience can identify with the situation or dilemma.  The hero is shown against a background of environment, heredity, and personal history.  Some kind of polarity in the hero’s life is pulling in different directions and causing stress.

2.        THE CALL TO ADVENTURE.  Something shakes up the situation, either from external pressures or from something rising up from deep within, so the hero must face the beginnings of change.  

3.        REFUSAL OF THE CALL.  The hero feels the fear of the unknown and tries to turn away from the adventure, however briefly.  Alternately, another character may express the uncertainty and danger ahead.

4.        MEETING WITH THE MENTOR.  The hero comes across a seasoned traveler of the worlds who gives him or her training, equipment, or advice that will help on the journey.  Or the hero reaches within to a source of courage and wisdom.

5.        CROSSING THE THRESHOLD.  At the end of Act One, the hero commits to leaving the Ordinary World and entering a new region or condition with unfamiliar rules and values.  

6.        TESTS, ALLIES AND ENEMIES.  The hero is tested and sorts out allegiances in the Special World.

7.        APPROACH.  The hero and newfound allies prepare for the major challenge in the Special world.

8.        THE ORDEAL.  Near the middle of the story, the hero enters a central space in the Special World and confronts death or faces his or her greatest fear.  Out of the moment of death comes a new life. 

9.        THE REWARD.  The hero takes possession of the treasure won by facing death.  There may be celebration, but there is also danger of losing the treasure again.

10.      THE ROAD BACK.  About three-fourths of the way through the story, the hero is driven to complete the adventure, leaving the Special World to be sure the treasure is brought home.  Often a chase scene signals the urgency and danger of the mission.

11.     THE RESURRECTION.  At the climax, the hero is severely tested once more on the threshold of home.  He or she is purified by a last sacrifice, another moment of death and rebirth, but on a higher and more complete level.  By the hero’s action, the polarities that were in conflict at the beginning are finally resolved.

12.       RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR.  The hero returns home or continues the journey, bearing some element of the treasure that has the power to transform the world as the hero has been transformed.

The critical moment for the hero is in #8, but Campbell's stroke is too broad to see it. Christopher Vogler gets a little close when he writes, "The hero endures the supreme ORDEAL."

This is the moment at which the hero touches bottom.  He/she faces the possibility of death, brought to the brink in a fight with a mythical beast.  For us, the audience standing outside the cave waiting for the victor to emerge, it’s a black moment.  In STAR WARS, it’s the harrowing moment in the bowels of the Death Star, where Luke, Leia and company are trapped in the giant trash-masher.  Luke is pulled under by the tentacled monster that lives in the sewage and is held down so long that the audience begins to wonder if he’s dead. 

This is a critical moment in any story, an ordeal in which the hero appears to die and be born again.  It’s a major source of the magic of the hero myth. 

It's not facing the possibility of death and surviving that creates a hero, it's the actual death. They're self, their glory, and their personal achievements must be laid down at the alter. Then and only then can they embrace humility and become the hero.

THE JOURNEY SHOULD LOOK LIKE THIS:

1. 8a Failure: The hero must fail, he/she must realize that they cannot fulfill the task alone, that they need help to continue. Often, this is the hero's deepest and darkest moment. It is the climax of the conflict, and because such, it is the most revealing (which is the purpose of conflict - to reveal truth).
2. 8b Ownership: When the hero encounters this great of conflicts, they will be confronted with absolute Truth. To move on, they must take ownership and admit their faults, or as K.M. Weiland says, they must acknowledge that they've knocked down the first domino. 
   1. It's when Peter Parker realizes that, although he didn't pull the trigger, his inaction killed Uncle Ben.
   2. It's Andy Dufresne admitting that he killed his wife, by "driving her away" because he didn't know how to show his love. "She died because of me."
   3. It's Ivan Ilych admitting much too late that the way he had lived his whole life had been wrong, and he blames no one but himself.
3. 8c Restoration: After the Truth has been revealed and the hero no longer sees themselves as innocent, the helper shows up and restores the hero. The helper, or supernatural power, reminds and affirms the hero of their role, their task, and what still needs to be done. They pull the hero from the ashes and breath new life into them - the hero is then reborn. But he/she still needs direction.
4. 8d Humility: In Humilitas: a lost key to life, love, and leadership, John Dickson explains that humility, true humility, is not thinking lowly of oneself. Rather, it is the full acknowledgement of one's gifts, abilities, and strengths, but the choice to use them (or withhold them) for the benefit of others. 

It is this moment, this attribute, that has changed most since the ancient heroes and that Campbell never acknowledges. It's the difference between Odysseus and Batman, Achilles and Nelson Mandela. 

Heroes no longer return home for personal glory and family fame, they return home to save and protect the people - even if it means bearing the shame or enduring great loss. Because they can take it, because of the journey, and because that's what heroes do.

The reward then, in #9 isn't anything of great monetary value, it's a responsibility. And there is always danger in losing that because once the hero no longer lives with humility and for the benefit of others, they live for self, willing to sacrifice others for personal gain.

When they return home, they are resurrected - completely new and transformed. They've learned something and they have brought it home, "bearing some element of the treasure that has the power to transform the world as the hero has been transformed."

“The heroes of all time have gone before us,” Campbell writes in his concluding paragraph of the prologue, “the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path.  And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god.  And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with the world.” 

Game Night : A New Tradition, Much Like the Old

Board games have been around for a long time. According to Quatr.us, "Probably the first board games were scratched into dirt and played with stones or fruit pits for pieces." Some of the earlier board games that we know of come from Pre-dynastic Egypt called Senet - a modern backgammon which was also played in ancient Iran.

Growing up in the 80's and 90's the games we played were pretty common.

In my 20's and early 30's, we played:

And now it's time to add one more to the repertoire: Game Night in a Can. 

• GNIAC is a party game filled with 30 original challenges. Great for friends, families, co-workers, and humans of all ages who love to LAUGH.
• Create mythical animals, rewrite a national anthem, choreograph a new dance move...use your imagination for fame and glory. 
• When you randomly pull 7 game cards each night, you're in for over 3 MILLION VARIATIONS of game play. 

Time, Travel, and Road Signs

There is nothing quite like a good road trip. The music, the scenery, and the adventure of the road. It's simply the best. And America is made for it.

Steve Fitch, a photographer and anthropologist, has been photographing roadside motel signs since the late 1970s. He was inspired by road trips his family took when he was young, between Northern California and South Dakota.

The photographs, all taken in the same square composition, depict more than signs but rather unique highway sculptures of a lost era. While back in the 1970s there was no nostalgia for neon motel signs, Fitch says, I do think I had some kind of subconscious premonition that things were going to change; I think that my photographic interests have always been driven, to some extent, by an eye towards history.

Part of the realized nostalgia of these signs is the change in road culture: Fitch notes that there are now standard signs made by corporate-owned motels that create an unexciting monotony along the highway. But the old signs all stand out independently of one another, representing a sense of freedom and the spontaneity of road trips. From a wrapped gift at the Christmas Motel to an elaborate stagecoach at the Butterfield Stage Motel, the designs are matched to their locations.

Prints from the book are exhibited at Photo-Eye Bookstore Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, through February 18. And Fitch's book, American Motel Signs, is available to purchase online.

Repost from Yahoo Style

“It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

Bilbo Baggins

ZOHAB ZEE KHAN : RAPPER // POET // EDUCATOR

Zohab Khan is an educator, spoken word poet, motivational speaker, didgeridoo player, musician and hip-hop artist. Since 2006, Zohab has been building a formidable career in spoken word poetry, culminating in taking out the title of the Australian Poetry Slam Champion in 2014. In 2014 he was also a finalist in the International Poetry Slam in Madrid.

"It's time hatred is outdated

And our differences celebrated"

Sarah Kay: Project Voice

Sarah Kay is the founder and co-director of Project Voice which uses "spoken poetry to entertain, educate, and inspire" and is "dedicated to promoting empowerment, improving literacy, and encouraging empathy and creative collaboration in classrooms and communities around the world."

She's published a book of poems entitled "No Matter the Wreckage" and has several other projects worth hanging out with.  Projects like, Veterans Day 2011: Faces of Service, “B” with Sophia Janowitz, Square One - a "one-woman show about Charlotte Kramer, who is trying to check things off her list," and many more.

This poem, "An Origin Story" is about the many strange coincidences surrounding that her and her friend Phil share. You watch watch them try and explain it here.

When the fire takes all you have, my home will be your home. When you are old and can no longer remember my face, I will meet you for the first time again and again. When they make fun of your accent, I will take you swimming because we all sound the same under water. When Ellis Island tries to erase your past, I will call you by your real name. When they call your number for the draft, I will enlist to fight beside you and I will march with you from Selma to Montgomery and back as many times as it takes. We will stand together against the hoses and the dogs because it didn’t start with us. It started with Lennon and McCartney. It started with Thelma and Louise, Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin, Bert and Ernie, Abbott and Costello, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Mario and Luigi, Watson and Sherlock, Pikachu and Charizard. And they can tell you what a miracle this is. They can tell you how rare this is. But they could tell you how rare friendship always is. The chances are slim. The cards are always stacked against you, the odds are always low. But I have seen the best of you and the worst of you and I choose both. I want to share every single one of your sunshines and save some for later. I will tuck them into my pockets so I can give them back to you when the rains fall hard. Friend. I want to be the mirror that reminds you to love yourself. I want to be the air in your lungs that reminds you to breathe easy. When the walls come down, when the thunder rumbles, when nobody else is home, hold my hand and I promise, I won’t let go.

For more poems, videos, and information on Sarah Kay, click here.

Possible reading lists for 2017

Around the world in 80 books - Take a trip around the globe with these books from the eighty most populated countries in the world. 

A well rounded 2017 - A list of 12 books on three different tracks: Modern Classics, YA Novels for Adults too, and Genre Sampler Pack.

18 Books to fuel your wanderlust - both fiction and nonfiction, these books will inspire you to get off the couch and travel! But don't forget to bring a good book. 

37 books with mind-blowing plot twists - if you're into that sort of thing.

10 best selling (e)books from 2016 - if your feeling left out.

18 short classics you can read in one sitting - including publisher's descriptions, these books are 200 pages or less.

Or the book challenge, either a 26-book version or 56-book version (it's not too late to start).

The Mustard Seed - Author Unknown

The Mustard Seed - an old Chinese tale

Once there was a woman whose only son had died. In her sorrow she went to ask a wise holy man is there a way to bring her son back to life. “Fetch me a mustard seed from a home that has never known sorrow. We will use it to bring your son back to life.” He said to her instead of sending her away or try reasoning with her.

At once she quickly set off looking for that elusive mustard seed. The first place she came to was is a huge mansion. Knocking on the door, she asked “I am looking for a house that has never known suffering. Is this the place? It is very important to me.”

“You have come to the wrong place” they told her. They begin to pour out all the tragic things that have befallen upon them.

“Who is better to be able to help these poor unfortunate souls than I who has experience sadness and can understand them?” she thought. Therefore she stayed behind and consoled and comforted them before going to another house that has never known sorrow before.

However, wherever she goes, from huts to palaces, there is never one without tales of sadness and misfortunes. In time to come, she became so involved in listening to other people’s sad stories that she forgot about her quest for that elusive mustard seed. By listening to other people, she had actually driven the grieving out of her life.

Maps of Favorite Fictional Worlds

For months and years, sometimes decades, we live in these worlds - in both books and movies. But sometimes, its hard to connect the dots, of where each place is located, of what it looks like as a whole. Here are some great interpretations of our favorite worlds.

J.R.R. Tolkein

The Hobbit (from The Awl)

This map of Frodo’s journey if he had Google Maps (from Buzzfeed).

Suzanne Collins

Hunger Games (from Livejournal)

The Capitol is in Denver.

D12 is Appalachia.

D11 shares a border with D12, is one of the largest districts, is South of D12, and is primarily used for growing grain and produce.

D10 is primarily used for raising livestock. They do NOT process the livestock in D10. However, to feed an entire nation, D10 is likely another very large District.

D9 processes food for the Capitol and the tesserae; therefore, it likely shares borders with the food production Districts (D4, D10, D11).

D8 produces and treats textiles and is a factory District. It is POSSIBLE to reach D12 from D8 on foot over a course of weeks/months. Therefore, it does not cross a large body of water.

D7 specializes in lumber. It's probably large. It has no role in food processing or manufacture.

D6 works closely with the Capitol in the research and manufacture of drugs (morphling, medicines). It likely has close ties to D5 in the production of mutts.

D5 is entirely dependent on the Capitol, so it's probably somewhat nearby, and specializes in genetic research and manipulation. Because of the necessity of creative thought and intellect, it's most likely a smaller District so that it's easier to monitor and control.

D4 is the ocean. It does have a role in food production. It's very large. It is a Career District, so it likely is near the Capitol and has some self-sufficiency, but not enough that it doesn't engender loyalty. (Aside from that, D4 = perfect.)

D3 has extremely close ties to the Capitol and works with electronics and technology. It is likely small, the Capitol can closely monitor its scientific minds. It has no role in food manufacture or processing.

D2 specializes in weaponry, is the most loyal District (because the Capitol needs to keep its weapon specialists happy, non?), and has no role in food production. D2 also works in some minor Mining elements and trains Peacekeepers. The Panem railroad is easily accessible in D2.

D1 produces luxury goods for the Capitol -- INCLUDING having a diamond mine.  Kelsey Lake Diamond Mine is a defunct diamond mine in Colorado, USA. It is located in the State Line Kimberlite District, near the Wyoming border.

D13 specialized in nuclear power, shares a border with D12, is both visible and reachable from D12 by foot, and is North of West Virginia. Three Mile Island was in New YorkPennsylvania, and probably remained a nuclear reactor or was co-opted again as a reactor. D13 is small but mighty and is surrounded by Wilderness. It is self-sufficient.

A.A. Milne 

Winnie the Pooh (from the Awl)

L. Frank Baum

Wizard of Oz (from Buzzfeed)

from the awl

J.K. Rowling

Hogwarts (from tumbler)

from livejournal

William Goldman

The Princess Bride

Walt Disney

The location of Disney movies around the world (from buzzfeed)

George Orwell

1984 (from buzzfeed)

According to the Washington Post, sales of Orwell’s ‘1984’ have spiked since Kellyanne Conway’s ‘alternative facts’ speech. 

A map of the galaxy depicted in the Star Wars movies (from buzzfeed)

Mark Twain

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (from The Huffington Post)

And if they all existed together, as they often do in our minds and conversations, the world might look like this:

I love this <3 by ida-is-the-half-blood-prince on Polyvore

Writing and Life, and the Advice We're Misusing.

K.M. Weiland work has been posted in the past and probably will be in the future, because it's just good stuff.

Her latest post, "6 Bits of Common Writing Advice You're Misusing," is another great resource for writers, but it's also a great resources of life.

Here are a few most notables:

1. Write a Likable Character

You hear it all the time. If you don’t create characters readers like—and especially a protagonist readers like—why would they ever want to read your story? Stories are made or broken on the strength of their characters, which means you must get readers invested in your main character right from go.

Common writing advice says your protagonist must be likable. But don’t confuse likability with perfection. Readers love flawed characters.

What Writers Sometimes Think This Means:

The problem is that writers sometimes think this means they must write a character who is an utter saint. If he makes a mistake, if he speaks in anger, if he’s selfish, if he sins—readers will instantly judge him, hate him, and drop him. Instead of creating a realistically flawed (andinteresting) human being, these writers end up with either a

a) a self-righteous goody-goody

b) a self-flagellating goody-goody

The irony here is that “perfect” characters are hardly ever likable characters.

What This Bit of Writing Advice Really Means:

Because we often equate other people’s ability to like us with our ability to avoid of messing up, we think the same must apply to our characters. But (aside from the fact this is an utterly false paradigm) consider some of your favorite characters. I’m willing to bet most of them are egregiously flawed. And don’t you love them the more for those flaws?

When you’re told to “write a likable character,” what you’re really be told is to “write a realistic, compelling, relatable, interesting character.” So give him a relatable motivation and pile on the sins, because readers have a high capacity for forgiveness.

Application to Life:

We love flawed fictional characters because they are relatable. Characters that are to goody-goody become distant because we know ourselves. We know that, try as we might, we are deeply flawed and fully sinful - that we have ghosts. 

When we read the struggles and failures of fictional characters, we see ourselves, and we have compassion, and we end up loving them more.

Characters like Cora who kills a white boy while trying to escape North, the adulterous John Proctor in The Crucible, and lying, scared, and over emotional disciple, Peter.

But not so much with the non-fictional characters of our daily workplaces, the family members that gather around the Thanksgiving table, and the members of our churches. Their faults are not lovable but deplorable. They drive us apart, they seep into our thoughts while driving or washing the dishes. They're the subjects of our cryptic blog posts. 

Suddenly, the realistic, compelling, relatable, interesting characters that are so lovable in books are our enemies in life.

Patrick Lencioni refers to this as the Fundamental Attribution Error, "The tendency of human beings to attribute the negative or frustrating behaviors of {others} to their intentions and personalities, while attributing their own negative or frustrating behaviors to environmental factors" (The Advantage).

Reading and writing stories can remind that, just as we and our favorite characters are flawed, so to is our neighbor. And that makes them realistic, compelling, relatable, and interesting . . . if only we choose to keep reading and not close the book.

4. Flesh Out Your Minor Characters

Your protagonist may make or break the show, but the supporting cast is just as important to the success of his story. If your minor characters are boring, flat, and clichéd, your entire story will suffer. This means you must lavish just as much attention on the little people as you do your shakers and movers. Even your smallest of walk-on characters need to strike readers with just as much realism and charisma as your larger-than-life protagonist.

Common writing advice says you must flesh out even your minor characters—and you should! But you must do it artfully, using only story-pertinent details.

What Writers Sometimes Think This Means:

Every character is the hero of his own story, right? And that’s exactly what some writers seem bent on doing: writing an entire story for every minor character, however insignificant they actually are within the plot. When you end up telling a minor character’s entire life story just to “flesh him out,” you know you’ve gone too far. In fact, even just sharing a single detail about this character if it is not pertinent to the story is a bridge too far.

If you introduce your walk-on taxi driver with a lengthy conversation about his large family, you’re telling readers this man and his family are important—to the plot, to the protagonist’s development, or to the thematic premise. In short, every minor-character detail you include had better be doing double or triple duty, rather than simply serving to tell readers, “See, look, this guy is a real human being! No, really!”

What This Bit of Writing Advice Really Means:

By all means, bring your minor characters to life. But do it deftly. Do it in a way that creates irony and subtext—and most importantly moves the plot forward.

Application to Life:

"You must lavish just as much attention on the little people as you do your shakers and movers." And how much more this applies to life.

How we treat those who can do nothing for us, who can provide little or no return, defines our character more than anything else. Being kind to those who are kind is easy. Being kind to those who are undeserving, who are cruel and seemingly fully selfish, is not. But it's what makes a "successful story."

In life, there are not minor or flat characters, there is only people - humans who want and love and fail and feel just like the rest of us - who want to be the hero. Lavishing attention on the "little people," those who cannot speak for themselves, fight for themselves, or think for themselves, is the mark and beauty of the best of humanity - it's humility. It's the mark of a hero.

People like Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, and those whose names will never appear in blogs or headlines because they didn't do what they did for attention, but because it was the right thing to do. And at the end of their lives, their funeral parlor is full.

5. Add Conflict to Every Scene

Here’s one you hear a lot these days: conflict, conflict, conflict. Without it, you have no plot and no story. If characters aren’t fighting, struggling, overcoming in every single scene, the forward momentum of the plot will founder, and readers will grow bored and give up on the book. More than that, conflict is directly related to the pertinence of any scene within your story. If something isn’t happening to push the conflict forward, then chances are high that scene can and should be trimmed from the story.

Common writing advice says you must include conflict in every scene—and you should! But you must make sure it is story-driving conflict, rather than random arguments.

What Writers Sometimes Think This Means:

In their determination to include the magic story elixir of conflict, writers sometimes end up manufacturing it. The result is random conflict—arguments, obstacles, and even physical altercations that actually do nothing to move the plot.

Turns out, conflict all by itself is not a surefire indicator of a scene’s plot-progressing necessity. Too often, writers feel their story is lagging (particularly in the Second Act), so they throw in a random argument between allies—or the neighborhood bully attacks—or there’s a car wreck—or who knows what else. The result is, at best, melodrama. At worst, readers will be just as bored as if the characters really were doing nothing.

What This Bit of Writing Advice Really Means:

It’s not enough to throw in a random argument to spice things up. Every bit of conflict in every scene must function as part of the overall plot, creating a seamless line of scene dominoes—one knocking into the next—that progresses your story from beginning to end.

Just as importantly, every bit of this conflict must pertinently impact your character’s arc and your story’s theme. If it misfires on any of these three levels—plot, character, or theme—it risks irrelevance and must be reexamined to strengthen it into something with the ability to truly power your story.

Application to Life:

Saying that a story without conflict is boring and will cause the readers to lose interest is perhaps true, but it is also shallow at the least - inaccurate and unhelpful at most because it doesn't relate to life. Try telling a middle school child struggling with the harshness of an overwhelming bully that it's what makes his life - his story- interesting. Tell a father whose searching for answer after losing his job or a wife and mother of three who has recently discovered that she a widow and must carry the burden alone that this is what moves their story along, "from beginning to end," and see if they are comforted. 

It won't. Because the purpose of conflict is not to move the story along. 

Conflict and hardship is a part of life, we know that. But how we interpret conflict can change how we view life.

"It’s not enough to throw in a random argument to spice things up," Weiland writes, and that is true, and it's probably good advice for writers. But in life, there is no "random argument" because, to paraphrase Weiland, every bit of conflict in every moment of life functions as part of the overall story, "creating a seamless line of scene dominoes—one knocking into the next."

The argument with a loved one that seemed to spawn from nothing and that ended nowhere is part of the seamless line of dominoes that was knocked, sometimes days or even years prior.

A blowup is never just a single isolated blowup. Somewhere, someone has pushed a domino. 

Knowing this can remind us perhaps of a few things.

1. Patience - because if we love that person, we want to know what's really going on. We want to lay a domino on its side and stop the progression.
2. Empathy - because we know ourselves and that really, when we are frustrated over a dirty kitchen, there is really something bigger we're wrestling with. So we listen.
3. Forgiveness - when we are close to someone, we are the ones they fall on. And sometimes,, they can't do anything about it - they've just been pushed over. So we bare it.

Thank you K.M. Weiland for the post, and thank you for reading!

Dangers of A Single Story - Chimamanda Adichie

 Good God, Chimamanda Adichie is good. 

You can read the transcript here.

Here is a list of Mrs. Adichie's books. Amazon doesn't carry them all.

• Decisions
• For Love of Biafra
• Purpose Hibiscus 
• Half of a Yellow Sun
• The Thing Around Your Neck
• Americanah
• We Should All be Feminists 

Hemingway's Cocktail for Rough Times

Eighty years ago, Ernest Hemingway invented the perfect cocktail for the times.

“Death in the Gulf Stream,” as he called it, was Hemingway’s salve for 1937—a dark year marked by an economic recession in the US, Joseph Stalin’s wrenching Purge Trials, a new war between China and Japan, and the Spanish Civil War which he covered as a journalist for the North American Newspaper Alliance.

War corespondent Ernest Hemingway, 1937.(AP Photo)

That year, the then-38-year old Farewell to Arms writer was emerging from a creative slump. He published To Have and Have Not, a novel about a desperate fishing-boat captain forced to engage in contraband operations between Key West, Florida, and Cuba in order to make ends meet. Hemingway devised what he called a “reviving and refreshing” gin based highball that “cools the blood and inspires renewed interest in food, companions and life.”

Hemingway describes it as a cocktail to be enjoyed from 11:00am on.

Take a tall thin water tumbler and fill it with finely cracked ice.

Lace this broken debris with 4 good purple splashes of Angostura, add the juice and crushed peel of 1 green lime, and fill glass almost full with Holland gin…

No sugar, no fancying. It’s strong, it’s bitter—but so is English ale strong and bitter, in many cases.

We don’t add sugar to ale, and we don’t need sugar in a “Death in the Gulf Stream”—or at least not more than 1 tsp. Its tartness and its bitterness are its chief charm.

Hemingway’s recipe was documented in Charles Baker’s 1946 compendium, The Gentleman’s Companion, An Exotic Cookery and Drinking Book. It’s also included in a book of cocktail recipes compiled by Colin Field, the head bartender of the Ritz Hotel Paris, who created a themed bar in honor of the Nobel Prize winning writer.

From Quartz.

For what it's worth, thank you.

All images are from the Lens of White House Photographer Pete Souza.

You took on one of the most scrutinized, difficult, and public offices this country has to offer, and you did so with a weight no other president had to endure - being the first black president of a country with a deep and dark history of racism.

For that, thank you.

You weren't perfect, but you served.

You found time to play.

To inspire.

To love and honor your wife.

To comfort.

For eight years, you represented this beautiful country and all that it holds dear - the right to be heard, to pursue happiness, and to expect equality. 

For these and the many other sacrifices you made,

thank you.

All of you.

President Obama's Library, From the Past Eight Years

President Obama is a reader. NY Times book critic Michiko Kakutani interviewed Obama about his reading just before he left office.

Last Friday, seven days before his departure from the White House, Mr. Obama sat down in the Oval Office and talked about the indispensable role that books have played during his presidency and throughout his life — from his peripatetic and sometimes lonely boyhood, when “these worlds that were portable” provided companionship, to his youth when they helped him to figure out who he was, what he thought and what was important.

During his eight years in the White House — in a noisy era of information overload, extreme partisanship and knee-jerk reactions — books were a sustaining source of ideas and inspiration, and gave him a renewed appreciation for the complexities and ambiguities of the human condition.

During his tenure in office, the President publicly recommended 86 different books, compiled into one list by Entertainment Weekly. Here are several of them, some of which I have also read and recommended on this very site:

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, Dr. Atul Gawande
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
Seveneves, Neal Stephenson
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari
The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert
Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan
The Power Broker, Robert A. Caro
Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois
The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
Working, Studs Terkel
Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow
The Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin
What Is the What, Dave Eggers

Not a bad list.

Repost from kottke.org

How Does it Feel : Patti Smith

PHOTOGRAPH BY PHILIP MONTGOMERY / THE NEW YORK TIMES / REDUX

By now, we all know the story of Patti Smith faltering during Dylan's Nobel Price ceremony.

Beautiful. In spite of and perhaps even more so because of the such obvious failure.  In an interview with the New Yorker Patti Smith shared that she "conflicting emotions." "In his absence," she asked herself, "was I qualified for the task?" She didn't want to displease Bob Dylan. But she committed herself to it and decided to sing 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, a song she "'loved since {she} was a teen-ager, a favorite of {her} late husband."

Then she fell, and fell hard. When she took her seat, she "felt the humiliating sting of failure, but also the strong realization that I had somehow entered and truly lived the world of the lyrics."

When I arose the next morning, it was snowing. In the breakfast room, I was greeted by many of the Nobel scientists. They showed appreciation for my very public struggle. They told me I did a good job. I wish I would have done better, I said. No, no, they replied, none of us wish that. For us, your performance seemed a metaphor for our own struggles. Words of kindness continued through the day, and in the end I had to come to terms with the truer nature of my duty. Why do we commit our work? Why do we perform? It is above all for the entertainment and transformation of the people. It is all for them. The song asked for nothing. The creator of the song asked for nothing. So why should I ask for anything?

When my husband, Fred, died, my father told me that time does not heal all wounds but gives us the tools to endure them. I have found this to be true in the greatest and smallest of matters. Looking to the future, I am certain that the hard rain will not cease falling, and that we will all need to be vigilant. The year is coming to an end; on December 30th, I will perform “Horses” with my band, and my son and daughter, in the city where I was born. And all the things I have seen and experienced and remember will be within me, and the remorse I had felt so heavily will joyfully meld with all other moments. Seventy years of moments, seventy years of being human.

A metaphor for our own struggles - of being human. And beautiful.

You can read the full lyrics here.

And watch Dylan sing it here.

Embrace the Shake

One of my favorites. 

PostSecret : Thoughts and Deeds That Expose Us All

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard. Their secrets are posted every Sunday.

Some are funny and innocent.

Some are not.

All, in a strange way, are relatable.

We all understand pain, embarrassment, and loneliness.

In the social media age, putting the best images, ideas, and moments of ourselves forward is expected. Which, in moments of despair and grief, isolates even more. 

To steal a concept from Stranger Things, PostSecret reveals the Upside Down dimension - the existing yet hidden parallel dimension of sorrow and fear inhabited by all human beings.

All human beings.

So even if we've never done this:

we can all relate to having our own secrets of stupidity that have been tucked away in the attic of shame and regret, only be unpacked and shared on a postcard. Not Facebook.

We are beautiful and wonderful, we are flawed and broken, and we all carry secrets.

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer, by Walt Whitman

When I heard the learn’d astronomer, 

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, 

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, 

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, 

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, 

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, 

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, 

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Yet, how much MORE mystical the perfect silence of the stars when we're also able to measure them, their distance, their mass, and their purpose - what they mean for all that we cannot see. 

There has to be a balance. Too much of either and not enough of both lends itself to error on both sides.

So, yes, Mr. Whitman. But also, incomplete.

jtinseoul : Loud yet Clear

JT White is a street and documentary photographer based in Seoul, South Korea. "Noise" in digital photographs is used to describe visual distortion - grain for example, and JT White's photography has a lot of noise. But it works.

Each photograph is full of emotion - tone even.

And his ability to capture a moment is truly mesmerizing. 

Here's a few images from his tattoo project entitled, "The Culture."

JT White has also been featured at Lensculture and can be followed on instagram: @jt_inseoul.