I Live in an Airplane

Bruce Campbell lives in an airplane. Yes, an actual jet. The Portland-based aeronautics enthusiast makes his home in a converted Boeing 727 that was once used as a Greek aircraft until the mid-1960s and now resides in a forest near Portland.

This story is a part of our Planet Earth series. From mammals to insects and birds to reptiles, we share this great big world with all manner of creatures, large and small. Come with us to faraway places as we explore our great big planet and meet some of its wildest inhabitants. (via)

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Photos of NYC in the early 1970s

In the early 1970s, Camilo José Vergara trained his camera on scenes of everyday street life in New York City. His photographs captured kids playing on the street, subway cars before graffiti, sections of the Bronx that look bombed out, and the construction of the World Trade Center in progress.

See also his Tracking Time project, specific locations around the US photographed repeatedly over periods of up to 40 years. Vergara was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2002 for this work (via). 

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An Open Letter To Trump. Signed by 65 Writers and Artists.

Photos by Gabriela Herman for The New York Times; Ian Langsdon/European Pressphoto Agency

PARIS — Sixty-five writers and artists have joined with the advocacy organization PEN America to send an open letter to President Trump, criticizing his executive order banning citizens from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States and urging against further measures that would impair “freedom of movement and the global exchange of arts and ideas.”

“Vibrant, open intercultural dialogue is indispensable in the fight against terror and oppression,” the letter reads. “Its restriction is inconsistent with the values of the United States and the freedoms for which it stands.”

“Preventing international artists from contributing to American cultural life will not make America safer, and will damage its international prestige and influence,” it adds.

The sentiment reminds me of another article by the NY Times entitled, "Diversity Makes us Brighter." In it SHEEN S. LEVINE and DAVID STARK found, "When surrounded by others of the same ethnicity or race, participants were more likely to copy others, in the wrong direction. Mistakes spread as participants seemingly put undue trust in others’ answers, mindlessly imitating them. In the diverse groups, across ethnicities and locales, participants were more likely to distinguish between wrong and accurate answers. Diversity brought cognitive friction that enhanced deliberation" (emphasis mine).

"Creativity is an antidote to isolationism, paranoia, misunderstanding, and violent intolerance," the letter to Trump adds. 

But first we must be willing to listen. Especially to those who bring cognitive friction. With respectful friction comes a refined truth and understanding. Silence and isolation exacerbates ignorance and hatred and fuels global conflict. 

The Chinese character for listening, or undivided attention, is this:

Listen with your ears, your eyes, and your heart, while treating them like a king.

Here is the letter: 

President Donald J. Trump
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:
As writers and artists, we join PEN America in calling on you to rescind your Executive Order of January 27, 2017, and refrain from introducing any alternative measure that similarly impairs freedom of movement and the global exchange of arts and ideas.

In barring people from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States for 90 days, barring all refugees from entering the country for 120 days, and blocking migration from Syria indefinitely, your January Executive Order caused the chaos and hardship of families divided, lives disrupted, and law-abiding faced with handcuffs, detention, and deportation. In so doing, the Executive Order also hindered the free flow of artists and thinkers — and did so at a time when vibrant, open intercultural dialogue is indispensable in the fight against terror and oppression. Its restriction is inconsistent with the values of the United States and the freedoms for which it stands.

The negative impact of the original Executive Order was felt immediately, creating stress and uncertainty for artists of global renown and disrupting major U.S. cultural events. Oscar-nominated director Asghar Farhadi, who is from Iran, expecting to be unable to travel to the Academy Awards ceremony in late February, announced that he will not attend. Syrian singer Omar Souleyman, who performed at the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway, may now be prevented from singing at Brooklyn’s World Music Institute in May 2017. The ability of Adonis, an 87-year-old globally celebrated poet who is a French national of Syrian extraction, to attend the May 2017 PEN World Voices Festival in New York remains in question.

Preventing international artists from contributing to American cultural life will not make America safer, and will damage its international prestige and influence. Not only will such a policy prevent great artists from performing, but it will constrict the interchange of important ideas, isolating the U.S. politically and culturally. Reciprocal actions against American citizens, such as those already taken by the governments of Iraq and Iran, will further limit the ability of American artists to move freely.

Arts and culture have the power to enable people to see beyond their differences. Creativity is an antidote to isolationism, paranoia, misunderstanding, and violent intolerance. In the countries most affected by the immigration ban, it is writers, artists, musicians, and filmmakers who are often at the vanguard in the fights against oppression and terror. Should it interrupt the ability of artists to travel, perform, and collaborate, such an Executive Order will aid those who would silence essential voices and exacerbate the hatreds that fuel global conflict.

We strongly believe that the immediate and long-term consequences of your original Executive Order are entirely at odds with the national interests of the United States. As you contemplate any potential new measures we respectfully urge you to tailor them narrowly to address only legitimate and substantiated threats and to avoid imposing broad bans that affect millions of people, including the writers, artists and thinkers whose voices and presence help foster international understanding.

Sincerely,

Anne Tyler
Lev Grossman
Jhumpa Lahiri
Norman Rush
Chang-rae Lee
Jane Smiley
Janet Malcolm
John Green
Mary Karr
Claire Messud
Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket)
Siri Hustvedt
Paul Auster
Francine Prose
Paul Muldoon
David Henry Hwang
Jessica Hagedorn
Martin Amis
Sandra Cisneros
Dave Eggers
Stephen Sondheim
Jonathan Lethem
Philip Roth
Andrew Solomon
Tobias Wolff
Robert Pinsky
Jonathan Franzen
Jay McInerney
Margaret Atwood
Azar Nafisi
Alec Soth
Nicole Krauss
Colm Toibin
Patrick Stewart
Philip Gourevitch
Robert Caro
Rita Dove
J.M. Coetzee
Anish Kapoor
Rosanne Cash
Zadie Smith
George Packer
John Waters
Art Spiegelman
Susan Orlean
Elizabeth Strout
Kwame Anthony Appiah
Teju Cole
Alice Sebold
Esmeralda Santiago
Stacy Schiff
Jeffrey Eugenides
Khaled Hosseini
Rick Moody
Hanya Yanagihara
Chimamanda Adichie
John Lithgow
Simon Schama
Colum McCann
Sally Mann
Jules Feiffer
Luc Tuymans
Michael Chabon
Ayelet Waldman
Orhan Pamuk

(Excerpts from RACHEL DONADIO FEB. 21, 2017 - New York Times)

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The Beyoncelogues: Irreplaceable

Actress Nina Millin performs Beyonce the only way she knows how: in dramatic monologue form.

And they're fantastic and almost as good as the originals.

You can watch her perform Single Ladies and If I Were A Boy, and Best Thing I Ever Had, to name a few. She even has The Swiftalogues. 

Beyonce's newest music video "Formation" was Grammy nominated for best video of the year. 

I look forward to Nina's interpretation. 

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Integrity and bar fights

Recently I've been challenged with integrity, and I've been challenged to truly live it. To submit to it.  But first, I need to understand it. 

I know the definition, the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness. Especially when no one is around, or when it's hard to do so. I've been told this since I was a young boy.

But recently, I've begun to wonder if it can also be something more. And not more as in better, but more as in more - more than what is commonly understood. In addition to.

Like this. Being a man or woman of integrity carries with it the understanding that one with strong moral principles or uprightness will not fail or make poor choices, because by the very definition of integrity, they wouldn't. That's why they have integrity. 

But what does it mean when people fail, when their moral principles crumble? Does that mean they are no longer men and women of integrity? That they are men and woman of fluid morals? Because, to be honest, although I try to live a life of integrity, of moral uprightness, I don't always. I don't commit any of the heavy hitters like cheat on my wife, steal money from my employers, or abuse the poor, but I do plenty of other bad things, some of which people are all to ready to point out but none of which even scrapes the surface. Because I'm good at secrets and putting on a tie and making people laugh. Sometimes.

So does that mean I am not a man of integrity?

When my friend struggles to keep his eyes from wondering and his fingers from clicking, does that mean he can no longer be trusted?  That he is a man without integrity? 

Maybe. I know my Mom would say so, but lately, I don't know.  And it's because of scenes like this:

A priest who gets into bar fights and who curses like a sailor could easily be described as a man without integrity. Yet, it is the very thing he accuses the young priest of - and it's the worst thing he could say about anybody!

What gives him the right for such an accusation? What sort of understanding does he have that I don't?

I wonder if its honesty. 

The older priest doesn't pretend to be someone he is not. He doesn't follow a bunch of religious rules because it looks good and puts him in good standing with the community (which is what I am often tempted to do), but does what he knows is right. Like apologize. 

Could a man or woman have integrity AND falter? Could their morals shake AND they maintain integrity?

I think so. I hope so. Because the men and women I respect most in this world are not the ones that do all things right all or most of the time, but the ones that have enough courage and humility and love to admit their faults, seek forgiveness, and try again tomorrow - with grace and understanding. With integrity. 

These men and women know what their looking for, they just find it hard to get there sometimes. They need help. And that is something I can relate to, and someone I want to follow.

If I'm honest.

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Men In Black : Imagine

"Imagine what we'll know tomorrow."

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Stealing from The Princess Bride

"Pablo Picasso is widely quoted as having said that “good artists borrow, great artists steal.” Whether or not Picasso was truly the first person to voice this idea is in some dispute. One can find passages in T. S. Eliot’s critical works which discuss how artistic theft of others’ work contributes to the creation of new art. The idea itself is probably much older. Shakespeare routinely stole plotlines and even whole scenes from other writers for his own plays." (via) Even Steve Jobs believed this ideology allowed for the best of what humanity had to offer to emerge. 

Recently, while reading The Princess Bride with my kids, I read the following scene and chuckled. Because I know of another artist who stole it.

The scene reads:

She was outside his hovel before dawn. Inside, she could hear him already awake. She knocked. He appeared, stood in the doorway. Behind him she could see a tiny candle, open books. He waited. She looked at him. Then she looked away.

He was too beautiful.

"I love you," Buttercup said. "I know this must come as something of a surprise, since all I've ever done is scorn you and degrade you and taunt you, but I have loved you for several hours now, and every second, more. I thought an hour ago that I loved you more than any woman has ever loved a man, but a half hour after that I knew that what I felt before was nothing compared to what I felt then. But ten minutes after that, I understood that my previous love was a puddle compared to the high seas before a storm. Your eyes are like that, did you know? Well they are. How many minutes ago was I? Twenty? Had I brought my feelings up to then? It doesn't matter." Buttercup still could not look at him. The sun was rising behind her now; she could feel the heat on her back, and it gave her courage. "I love you so much more now than twenty minutes ago that there cannot be comparison. I love ou so much more now than when you opened your hovel door, there cannot be comparison. There is no room in my body for anything but you. My arms love you, my ears adore you, knees shake with blind affection. My mind begs you to ask it something so it can obey. Do you want me to follow you for the rest of your days? I will do that. Do you want me to crawl? I will crawl. I will be quiet for you or sing for you, or if you are hungry, let me bring you food, or if you have thirst and nothing to quench it but Arabian wine, I will go to Araby, even though it is across the world, and bring a bottle back for your lunch. Anything there is that I can do for you, I will do for you; anything there is that I cannot do, i will learn to do. I know I cannot complete with the Countess in skills or wisdom or appeal, and I saw the way she looked at you. And I saw the way you looked at her. But remember, please that she is old and has other interests, while I am seventeen and for me there is only you. Dearest Wesley - I've never called you that before, have I? - Westley, Westley,, Westley, Westley, Westley, - darling Westley, adored Westley, sweet perfect Westley, whisper that I have a chance to win your love." 

And with that, she dared the bravest thing she'd ever done; she looked right into his eyes.

He closed the door in her face.

Without a word. 

Without a word.

Buttercup ran. She whirled and burst away and the tears came bitterly; she could not see, she stumbled, she slammed into a tree trunk, fell, arose, ran on; her shoulder throbbed from where the tree trunk hit her, and the pain was strong, but not enough to ease her shattered heart. Back to her room she fled, back to her pillow. Safe behind the locked door, she drenched the world with tears. (pg 49-51).

Here is M. Night Shyamalan's "stolen" version:

"Good artists borrow, great artists steal," and perhaps the greatest artists of them all steal from great artists.

Well done M. Night Shyamalan. Well done.

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Commercialized: Why, not What

"Our judgement concerning the worth of things, big or little, depend on the feelings the things arouse in us." - Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed the World

Commercials embody this. They thrive off it. Facts and figures and defenses of why a certain product is better than another does not sell a product - emotionally connecting is what sells.

It's Simon Sinek's, "Start with Why" argument, "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it." Nietzsche agrees, "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."

And commercials pull at the emotional whys of living,, not the rational whats. 

Commercials like this:

How a gorilla playing along to Phil Collins relates to milk is beyond me. But I'm hooked and have watched this video literally hundreds of times. I've even used it in class and professional development meetings because it is fully entertaining and emotionally appealing. Facts about Cadbury are boring and useless and, really, is it any better than the other 100 Dairy Products in the world? Probably not. But none of them have a drumming gorilla. 

Some do have humor though:

During the Falcons vs Patriots Super Bowl, companies took to commercials to air their grievances (and probably hopefully boost their sales) and Trump didn't like it. Here are the Seven Super Bowl Commercials that were banned because they hoped to "increase awareness, not sales."

Solution: #EatTogether

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10 Maps that will Challenge the Way you see the World

(via)

Matadornetwork.com published 57 MAPS THAT WILL CHALLENGE WHAT YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW ABOUT THE WORLD and the results are pretty interesting, shocking, and insightful. But really, the underlining truth is this: Canada is the best place to live and a well constructed map is crazy fun to look at. And educational. 

And according to West Wing, maps have radically shaped the way we view the world - unfairly so.

Here are 9 of Matadornnetwork's 57 maps (1 from waitbutwhy) that can WoW us, challenge us, and reveal us:

1. There's an equal number of people in the blue and red areas

via waitbutwhy.com

 

2. Countries that don't use the metric system

 Those other countries are Liberia and Myanmar (Burma). (via)

 

3. World air travel routes

This map includes only the arcs made in air travel routes. (via)

 

4. Freedom of press map

From 2012, this map outlines the relative freedoms of press per country of the world.(via)

 

5. South-north world map

Breaking from the long-held convention of orienting north as “up” established by Ptolemy (90-168 AD), and resulting from the majority of cartography taking place in the Northern Hemisphere, this world map seems turned on its head (by orienting south as up). Fun fact: Evidently in the Middle Ages, cartographers routinely fixed east as up, “to orient.” (via)

6. Global internet usage based on time of day

With that orange upside-down “U” representing daylight hours, and a color spectrum spanning from red to blue (red indicating usage increase above average, blue indicating a usage decrease), this gif-map is visually stunning, but perhaps not terribly surprising. (via)

7. World map of countries England has not invaded

Of the 196 countries of the world today, there are only 22 of them that Britain has not invaded, though only 21 appear on this map (suspiciously absent is the island nation of Sao Tome and Principe). (via)

8. US auto-complete map

With the recent success of “crowdsourcing” for everything from ideas, to products, to scientific data, it would be difficult to deny there must be some horrifying truth to the information in this map. Populated by searching “State name is…” in Yahoo and allowing the “topmost satisfactory result” to represent each state, this map illustrates exactly what the internet seems to think about the states, and the US as a whole. (via)

9. US map of the highest-paid public employees by state

Clearly, America loves its football, to the tune of $5,545,852.00 (Head Coach Nick Saban of Alabama’s 2013 salary). (via)

10. US in seven deadly sins

While I don’t wholly agree with the criteria used to compose each sin-map, it was interesting to see the distribution of average income compared to the poverty line, total theft, number of violent crimes, entertainment expenditures, fast-food restaurants, number of STD cases, and an aggregate of the lot in a plain and clear representation. It would seem that Iowa is the most “saintly” by these standards. (via)

Click here for maps of our favorite fictional worlds, an infographic of how the world reads, or posts about random things you might find interesting. 

Thanks for reading!

Doubt and Gossip : Faith and Certainty, with Philip Seymour Hoffman

I can't stop thinking about this movie. Doubt, directed by John Patrick Shanley is a simple and chilling (literally) film that, unapologetically, exposes the hearts and minds of us all, warns us against pride and dogmatic practices, and pleads with us to be men and women defined by grace and kindness, not certainty. 

The story of Doubt is guided by a few choice sermons given by Philip Seymour Hoffman's character, Father Brendan Flynn. In or out of context, they are powerful and worth a watch.

His first is of the power and place of doubt within our lives:

Reminds me of the passage in Mark 9:24, "I believe; help my unbelief!" 

At the root of all humanity, doubt unites us all and should drive us toward a heart of compassion, not arrogance and piety. 

We all doubt. That's why faith is called, "faith," not certainty. 

The second sermon is on gossip:

"I know none of you have ever done this."

And may it never be. 

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Here’s How Fake News Works (and How the Internet Can Stop It)

Many fake news peddlers didn’t care if Trump won or lost the election. They only wanted to pocket money. But the consequences of what they did shook the world. This is how it happened.

From TheScene.com

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Chris Paul : How to Live, Forgive, and Love

I came across this article almost six years ago. It was before school started, but the second I finished, I printed several copies and read with my then 7th grade English class then shared it with everyone I taught or coached or spoke with. When life shifted to China, I forgot about it. This morning, my brother in-law referenced it and I had to find it again.

In all of sports, this might be my most favorite story.

The lessons of Nathaniel Jones

by Rick Reilly - espn.com

Wednesday, April 27, 2011 : 

On the moonless night of Nov. 15, 2002, five young boys ran across a park, jumped a 61-year-old man, bound his wrists, duct-taped his mouth, and beat him with pipes until his heart stopped. 

All for his wallet.

That man was Nathaniel Jones, the grandfather of future NBA star Chris Paul.

Today, those boys are men, sitting in prisons across the state of North Carolina, some serving 14-year terms, some life. On the TV sets in their prison rec rooms this week, the Hornets point guard has been wrecking the Los Angeles Lakers, averaging nearly a triple-double, the shiniest star of these playoffs.

The five are all about the same age as Paul, same race, same height, and from the same hometown. 

They have one other thing in common with Chris Paul: All six wish they were free.

It's something Paul told me during a "Homecoming" episode once on ESPN, and every time I watch him play I can't get it out of my mind. Paul, now 25, said: "These guys were 14 and 15 years old [at the time], with a lot of life ahead of them. I wish I could talk to them and tell them, 'I forgive you. Honestly.' I hate to know that they're going to be in jail for such a long time. I hate it."

Whose heart has that much room? 

"Chris Paul hates it?" says Geneva Bryant, the mother of one of the five, Christopher Bryant. "Well, so do I. My boy is 23 now. He's been in since he was 15."

Chris Paul is overcome with emotion while talking about the death of his grandfather to students at West Forsyth High in Clemmons, N.C.

Her son has six years to go. Dorrell Brayboy, 23, has six years to go. Jermal Tolliver, 23, has seven. Two brothers -- Nathaniel Cauthen, 24, and Rayshawn Banner, 23 -- are in until they die.

Paul's attitude stuns one of the defense attorneys who appealed the verdict and lost.

"I've probably tried 30 homicide cases," says Paul Herzog, of Fayetteville. "It's very rare for a family survivor in a murder case to feel that way. You just don't see that ever. That's incredibly generous of Mr. Paul."

To understand how generous, you have to know how close Paul was to his granddad.

The man everybody called "PaPa Chili" was the first black man to open a service station in North Carolina and both Chris and his brother worked at it. PaPa Chili was known to let people run tabs when times got tough. Plenty of times, he'd hand people money out of the cash register to get by. Paul called him "my best friend."

The day Paul signed with nearby Wake Forest, the first person to put a Demon Deacons hat on him was his grandfather. 

The next day, he was dead. 

None of the five boys were particularly hardened criminals. Only Cauthen had been previously arrested -- twice for running away and once for stealing his mom's car. They decided they wanted to rob somebody. Around the corner, in his white van, came that somebody -- Jones. He'd closed the filling station and was now getting grocery bags out of his van. "Let's go get him," one of them said. They sprinted across Belview Park and jumped him. 

Using tape they'd bought that day at a drugstore, they bound his head, neck and hands and began a "relentless, remorseless, conscienceless" attack, according to the judge who sentenced them. Jones died in his carport. 

His grief was bottomless. Every national anthem in college, he'd hold his grandfather's laminated obituary in his hand and pray. And now he wants the murderers set free?

Paul, a high school senior, was so woebegone he was literally sick. Two days later, he scored 61 points for West Forsyth High School, one for every year of Papa Chili's life. He purposely missed a free throw at the end, then collapsed into the arms of his father in tears.

His grief was bottomless. Every national anthem in college, he'd hold his grandfather's laminated obituary in his hand and pray. 

And now he wants the murderers set free?

"Even though I miss my granddad," Paul told me, "I understand that he's not coming back. At the time, it made me feel good when I heard they went away for life. But now that I'm older, when I think of all the things I've seen in my life? No, I don't want it. I don't want it."

This is the kind of man Chris Paul is: He was president of his high school class all three years. When LeBron James' girlfriend had a baby, James made sure Paul was there. He's so humble that if you didn't know who he was, you'd swear he was the pool man.

So what can Paul do? 

He can appeal to the governor of North Carolina, Bev Perdue, and ask for their sentences to be commuted. North Carolina is not big on commuting murderers' sentences, but I'd put nothing past the powers of Paul.

This kid floors me. Not just with the way he can dominate an NBA playoff game at 6 feet tall in elevator sneakers. Not just for the way he can twist Kobe Bryant into a Crazy Straw. Not just for the way he'd rather pass through a doughnut hole than take the shot himself.

No, what floors me about Chris Paul is his humanity. If strangers had bound my weak-hearted grandfather, beat him for no reason and killed him for the cash in his wallet -- strangers who to this day have not shown a thimbleful of contrition -- I'd want them in prison 100 years after they were in the dirt.

Chris Paul once wrote that his grandfather "taught me more things than I could ever learn with a Ph.D."

One of them must've been love.

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INFOGRAPHIC: How the World Reads

From Electric Lit

Did you know that people in India read an average of 10.4 hours a week? Or that regular readers are 2.5 times less likely to develop Alzheimer’s Syndrome? This handy infographic from FeelGood puts a bunch of different interesting facts together in one infograhpic. Check it out… and then go read a book!

A Brief History of Red

ARTSY EDITORIAL

BY ABIGAIL CAIN

FEB 13TH, 2017 10:23 PM

“Red,” writes historian Michel Pastoureau in Red: The History of a Color, “is the archetypal color, the first color humans mastered, fabricated, reproduced, and broke down into different shades.” As such, it dominated visual culture for centuries. With the advent of the Protestant Reformation, however, people began to view the shade as gaudy, even immoral, and its preeminence began to fade. Today, both blue and green surpass red as the West’s favorite colors. 

But the bold hue—whether crimson, vermilion, cardinal, or scarlet—still retains power. Red artworks fetch the highest prices at auction. Red is the color of revolution, of seduction. And its story is far from over. The scientists who last year announced the discovery of a new blue pigment are now hunting for a never-before-seen red. From some of humanity’s earliest cave paintings to Mark Rothko’s immersive abstract canvases, here is a brief history of red in art.

Red Ochre

Cave paintings at Cueva de los Manos, Argentina. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Cave paintings at Altamira, Spain. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Red has been part of our palette since the very beginning of human history. Ochre—a naturally occurring pigment that is the source of earthy shades of brown, orange, and yellow—is red when it is composed of hematite. Neanderthals were using red ochre as far back as 250,000 years ago, in a region that has since become the Netherlands. Some scientists believe that these early cultures applied the color to their bodies as decoration; others think it may have been used in more practical ways, perhaps as an adhesive or a method of softening animal hides. Later, during the Upper Paleolithic period, early artists began employing the pigment as paint. The dusky red bison dotting the cave walls of Altamira in Spain are some of the oldest, dated between 20,000 and 14,000 BC.

 

Cinnabar

Mural at Pompeii, Italy. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

“Box with Camellias,” China, 13th Century. Image via The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

By the time pharaohs ruled Egypt, the number of reds used in artmaking had multiplied to include cinnabar, a natural mercuric sulfide that was also incredibly toxic. (The mercury mine in Almadén, Spain, where Rome later extracted its cinnabar, was basically a death sentence for workers.) Ancient Romans loved the brilliant red pigment, a preference reflected in its high prices during that time. Pliny the Younger wrote that cinnabar cost 15 times more than red ochre from Africa and was equal in price to the precious Egyptian blue. Gladiators who emerged victorious from the Colosseum might be smeared with the shiny red mineral and then paraded through the streets of Rome. Cinnabar is also prominently featured in the murals that grace the walls of upper-class villas in Pompeii.

Cinnabar later became synonymous with the carved lacquer produced in China beginning in the 12th century. These elaborately patterned luxury items, which could be anything from vases to incense holders, were typically colored with the powdery red pigment that gave them its name.

Minium

Albrecht Dürer, Virgin and child with St Anna, 1519.

Like cinnabar, minium (also called “red lead”) is a highly poisonous material. Scholars consider it one of the first synthetic pigments, with Romans heating white lead to extreme temperatures to produce the paint. Its eye-popping orange shade showed up well against marble and gold, and it was often used for inscriptions. Later, medieval illustrators would employ the pigment in their illuminated manuscripts. But it was most popular with Mughal artists from India and Persia in the 17th and 18th centuries—so much so that their paintings became known as “miniatures,” after the minium that accented their works.

Vincent van Gogh was an avid user of red lead, a decision that has frustrated conservators centuries later. As it turns out, minium “whitens” under light, and many of the Dutch painter’s most famous works have seen their red accents fade over time.

Vermilion

Titian Madonna and Child with Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Dominic, and a Donor, About 1513 Denver Art Museum

This is where names start to get tricky. Ancient authors used the word “vermilion” to describe the pigment made from grinding up cinnabar. But vermilion also refers to the synthetic version of the color, invented in China thousands of years before it was brought to the West by Arab alchemists during the Middle Ages. This vermillion was used extensively by Renaissance painters, including Titian, who is renowned for his luxuriant reds. Although the pigment is normally an orangey-red, when exposed to sunlight it can darken to black.

Vermilion became increasingly popular beginning in the 16th century, and the industry for the pigment boomed—first in Venice, and later in the Netherlands and Germany. It appeared on shelves everywhere from hardware stores to apothecaries to paint shops. In the end, although it was pricier and less stable than minium, vermilion won out in a battle of the reds.

Carmine

Anthony van Dyck Portrait of Agostino Pallavicini, 1621 J. Paul Getty Museum

El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos) Saint Jerome as a Scholar, ca. 1610 "El Greco in New York" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2014-2015)

Cochineal bugs were the third most valuable export from the New World in the 16th century, right behind gold and silver. These white, pellet-shaped insects didn’t look like much when attached to the pads of Mexico’s prickly pear cacti, but when dried and crushed they produced a vivid red hue that would take Europe by storm. Although originally a dye, cochineal was soon transformed into a paint called “carmine,” which took up residence in 15th- and 16th-century painters’ palettes—Rembrandt, Anthony van Dyck, Rubens, and Vermeer among them.

It persisted into later centuries, with artists including J.M.W. Turner and Thomas Gainsborough incorporating the paint into their works. Although carmine produced a rich crimson glaze, often used on top of other reds like vermilion, it also had a tendency to fade in sunlight. The compositions of 18th-century portrait painter Joshua Reynolds fell victim to this phenomenon; his subjects look pale and ghostly today, more like marble sculptures than living beings.

Cadmium Red

Will Ryman The Classroom (Cadmium) (detail), 2015 Paul Kasmin Gallery

It would be several centuries before the next major innovation in red pigment came along. In 1817, a German chemist uncovered a new element, cadmium, which became the foundation for new shades of yellow and orange paint. But it wasn’t until 1910 that cadmium red was available as a commercial product, offering an alternative to the traditional vermilion. Henri Matisse was the first major champion of the new pigment, trying in vain to get his friend Renoir to make the switch. Like most Impressionist painters, Renoir was loyal to his original palette. (Since the plein air technique favored by Impressionists privileged speed, it was helpful to know exactly how paints would mix together.) When Matisse loaned him a tube of cadmium red, the older painter responded, “It is very irksome to change,” and promptly returned the paint.

Lithol

Mark Rothko’s Panel One, Panel Two, and Panel Three (Harvard Mural Triptych), with restored colors using light from digital projectors. © 2014 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Peter Vanderwarker, © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Mark Rothko Untitled (Red, Orange), 1968 Fondation Beyeler

In the late 1940s, Jackson Pollock started splattering commercial house paint across his canvases in huge, sweeping gestures. These iconic works offer a striking and high-profile example of artists’ increasing experimentation with materials throughout the mid-20th century. Rothko, too, dabbled with untested pigments in his work with various results. In 1962, he incorporated two brand-new organic reds into his palette for a series of murals at Harvard University. One of these pigments, Naphthol, had no ill effects. But Rothko’s other choice, Lithol, eventually doomed the works. Still in use today as a low-cost ink in the printing industry, Lithol red is highly sensitive to light. After several years hanging in the university’s penthouse dining room, Rothko’s deep reds and pinks had faded to light blue. By 1979, the paintings were so damaged that they had to be permanently removed.

—Abigail Cain

The Best That Ever Was . . . a waste.

"If you have dreams of being a rock-star public speaker, pumping up an audience as you stride the stage and proclaim your brilliance, I beg you to reconsider. Don’t dream of that. Dream of something much bigger than you are.”  (TED Talks: the official TED guide to public speaking)

Matt Damon agrees.

"Imagine chasing that, and not getting it, and getting it finally in your eighties or nineties  with all of life behind you" or broken relationships or abandoned friends or ruined lives "and realizing . . . what an unbelievable waste." 

Because

"It can't fill you up. If that's a whole that you have, that won't fill it."

It's the difference between eulogy virtues and resume virtues; the BIG ME and little me.

“THE SECRET TO HAPPINESS IS: FIND SOMETHING MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOU ARE, AND DEDICATE YOUR LIFE TO IT.” – DAN DENNETT

Or as Chris McCandless wrote during his last days, "Happiness is only realized when shared."

A grim yet poignant reminder for those of us pursuing dreams.

Indispensable Verse

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,

Sometime when you're feeling important;
Sometime when your ego 's in bloom;
Sometime when you take it for granted,
You're the best qualified in the room:

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,

Sometime when you feel that your going,
Would leave an unfillable hole,
Just follow these simple instructions,
And see how they humble your soul.  

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,

Take a bucket and fill it with water,
Put your hand in it up to the wrist,
Pull it out and the hole that's remaining,
Is a measure of how much you'll be missed.

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

You can splash all you wish when you enter,
You may stir up the water galore,
But stop, and you'll find that in no time,
It looks quite the same as before.  

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The moral of this quaint example,
Is to do just the best that you can,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Be proud of yourself but remember,
There's no indispensable man.

 Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

The Indispensable Man (by Saxon White Kessinger)

 O Me! O Life! (by Walt Whitman)

Oldest Living Veteran - 109 Years Old

Richard Overton fought in the South Pacific in World War II, is 109 years old, still drives, sometimes drinks whiskey with breakfast, smokes 12 cigars a day (but doesn’t inhale), and still lives in the house he built himself in 1945. In this video from National Geographic, Overton talks about his military service, his faith, his long life, and soup. Overton’s short summary of World War II:

"It wasn’t good, but we had to go."

I don’t really care to live to 100, but if I had Overton’s spirit and attitude, perhaps I’d consider it (via). 

For more on . . .

-N- Stuff  :  Real People  :  Humanity

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37 Nonfiction Books Every Artist Should Read

Creativity

• Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils and Rewards of Artmaking, David Bayles and Ted Orland
• Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert
• Steal Like An Artist, Austin Kleon
• What It Is, Lynda Barry
• In the Company of Women: Inspiration and Advice from over 100 Makers, Artists, and Entrepreneurs, Grace Bonney
• The Cheese Monkeys, Chip Kidd

Drawing

• Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes: Volume 1: The Walt Stanchfield Lectures, Walt Stanchfield
• Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter, James Gurney
• Creative Illustration, Andrew Loomis
• Picture This: How Pictures Work, Molly Bang

Writing

• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King
• Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Anne Lamott
• The Elements of Style, William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White
• Walking on Water: Reading, Writing, and Revolution, by Derrick Jensen

Typography

• Thinking with Type, Ellen Lupton
• Hand Job: A Catalog of Type, Michael Perry
• The Elements of Typographic Style, Robert Bringhurst

Picture Books

• Writing Picture Books, Ann Whitford Paul
• Caldecott and Co.: Notes on Books and Pictures, Maurice Sendak
• Writing with Pictures, Uri Shulevitz
• Words and Pictures, Quentin Blake
• Illustrating Children’s Books, Martin Salisbury

Comics

• Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud
• Making Comics, Scott McCloud
• Comics and Sequential Art, Will Eisner
• Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative, Will Eisner
• Drawing Words and Writing Pictures: Making Comics: Manga, Graphic Novels, and Beyond, Jessica Abel and Matt Madden

Storytelling

• The New Kings of Nonfiction, Short stories collected and edited by Ira Glass
• Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion

Business

• The 4-Hour Workweek, Timothy Ferriss (I don’t agree with everything he says, but there are some real gems here.)
• The Freelancer’s Bible: Everything You Need to Know to Have the Career of Your Dreams — On Your Terms, Sara Horowitz
• My So-Called Freelance Life: How to Survive and Thrive as a Creative Professional for Hire, Michelle Goodman

Psychology

• When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Pema Chödrön
• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain
• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami
• The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, Charles Duhigg
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change, Stephen R. Covey

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” 

— W.B. Yeats

From Christine Nishiyama

Hong Kong in the 1950s

These stunning photographs of Hong Kong in the 1950s are captured beautifully by a teenager. Ho Fan who arrived from Shanghai in 1949. The streets, filled with vendors, coolies and rickshaw drivers, fascinated Ho. Taking pictures in a studio was the norm then, but the Ho was more interested in random, candid shots of strangers. His targets, however, did not always smile into the lens of his Rolleiflex. But it is great street photography that gives a peek into daily life in Hong Kong at that time. The photography is part of his book “A Hong Kong Memoir”