I’ve had this file, 20111229_fa_02.mp3 sitting on my desktop for a while. It’s Terry Gross’s final interview with Maurice Sendak, on the occasion of the publication of his book, Bumble-Ardy. I knew that, in 2011, it made me think when I heard it, but I had forgotten what it was: a creative human, successful in his time, looking back with his hand lightly brushing old scars and lamenting the accretion of new cuts as he watches, unable to affect the marching-on of time:
“Let’s talk about margins” by Craig Mod:
On the other hand, cheap, rough paper with a beautifully set textblock hanging just so on the page makes those in the know, smile (and those who don’t, feel welcome). It says: We may not have had the money to print on better paper, but man, we give a shit. Giving a shit does not require capital, simply attention and humility and diligence. Giving a shit is the best feeling you can imbue craft with.
I am reading the conclusions in Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (It is rather unreasonable to try to wade through the 300 pages separating my progress in the book and the conclusions, given our two week old! So, I skipped to the end…). Here are some interesting quotes:
Someday, I hope to have a place with a bookcase like this:
However, I’d be fine if I had these cool suspended bookcases like this:
From a review of Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl:
“Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is,” Frankl writes. “After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.”
Just got done reading Steve Martin’s autobiography Born Standing Up. Given his immense success (45,000+ attendance at his concerts at the height of his career), his look back was remarkably down-to-earth. His descriptions of his early career, is humorously self-effacing—just like his stand-up. You don’t get the sense that he is writing to brag about what happened — it’s a lucid, funny, reasonable description of exactly what it takes to become a really really popular entertainer. There’s a picture toward the end of the book (at the height of his stand-up success), showing him from behind, walking toward a massive audience and wearing his King Tut headpiece. It’s perfect because (1) it’s a fantastic photograph capturing a moment in time and (2) the text surrounding the photograph describes how Martin felt, essentially, trapped in a wildly successful act whose contractual agreements he felt compelled to fulfill. His phrase “professional ennui” was perfect.
Just got done reading Atul Gawande’s book Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance. First off, it’s a fantastic title: it reflects the simplicity of Gawande’s language and the complexity he manages to express with those words. The book explains how, through “diligence”, “doing right”, and “ingenuity”, surgeons can improve. The anecdotal essays are fascinating and well-written… and the ideas are inspiring. The idea is, the greatest gains we will see in the delivery and efficacy of healthcare lie not in the raw advances in science, but in the persistent, thoughtful efforts of those “on the ground” fighting the same problems every day. Here’s a bit where Gawande describes the thinking of a surgeon turned malpractice lawyer:
Coralie Bickford-Smith designs covers for Penguin Books. A few years ago, she did an amazing series for Penguin Classics.
The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future… I wish I had time to read this book (oh, the irony) by Emory University English professor Mark Bauerlein. Reviewer David Pitt summarizes the central thesis of Bauerlein’s book (emphasis mine):
Merlin Mann has some great ideas about taking back control of your life. He emphasizes not seizing control, but constructively yielding to the unknown and managing the interplay between urgent and important tasks. Now I’ve gone and made it sound boring. AU CONTRAIRE! Merlin is endlessly entertaining! In this hilarious video, he talks about some of the ideas in the book he is writing, “Inbox Zero”:
More good stuff from Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, The Best Kids’ Books Ever. Here’s his final selection:
13. “Lad, a Dog” is simply the best book ever about a pet, a collie. This is to “Lassie” what Shakespeare is to CliffsNotes. The book was published 90 years ago, and readers are still visiting Lad’s real grave in New Jersey — plus, this is a book so full of SAT words it could put Stanley Kaplan out of business.
The New York Times has an article about a family in Akron, Ohio who restored a 1913 house over 12 years:
It was, in fact, as the couple learned only at the closing, about to be condemned. There were large holes in the roof, various furry woodland animals in residence, a barely functional heating and plumbing system. The roof over the master bedroom leaked so badly that the previous owner had placed 55 aluminum baking pans on the floor to catch the rain.
A recent book called Devices of the Soul by Steve Talbott argues how the preponderance of technology that claims to make life easier seems to, in a fundamental sense, make life harder. That, admittedly, is a rather poor exposition of the thesis… but you need know only the general idea here. Incidentally, this book is predated by a rather more famous example of a similar philosophical exploration called The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul. Basically, both works discuss the implications of “technology.” Don’t think of technology as simply computers, however. Here’s a helpful comment from the Amazon page selling The Technological Society (emphasis mine):
I was listening to NPR’s program called Midday this past Monday, and the topic was the final Harry Potter book. One of the speakers on the show was from the Red Balloon Bookshop, and her name was Maureen Sackmaster-Carpenter. Sackmaster. What an awesome last name.
As the human body ages, certain immune system organs actually shrink. For example, there’s the thymus: here, T cells (one of the primary components of the immune system’s ability to recognize and eliminate foreign antigen) are converted from naïve to mature. If you look at a picture of the thymus of a teen next to one of an 80 year old, the difference is striking. It’s not like the color and texture difference between a cancerous lung and a normal lung—there’s actually hardly any thymus left in the 80 year old’s picture. Why the geriatric thymus continues to function effectively is the topic of another post. But the fact remains: there’s a definite change in the immune system with the passage of time.
Ahh, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, this is a page from that wonderful treasury. A nice treat: it has all the watercolor art that Waterson did throughout all the treasuries.
Henri Cartier-Bresson (Aperture Masters of Photography Series) - I’d really like to purchase this book, if only because the stunningly great picture of a girl running in a courtyard can not be found in poster form anywhere.
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