Sweet old world

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"This world of ours... must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

A notebook about how we work, learn, love and live.

Dwight Eisenhower made the statement quoted above in his farewell address to the nation on January 17, 1961. This is the speech in which he warned about the dangers of the growing military-industrial complex. In the same speech he beseeched his fellow Americans to always let democratic principles be our guide.

Of course an educated and an always learning citizenry is fundamental to the health and sustainability of a democracy. Here's a few examples I found this week of people expanding what they know.
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Happy Friday.

Civics, Belonging
To live means to be in relationship, and yet “othering” has become a present-day pandemic.

"There is an epidemic of loneliness. The U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, says, 'If we fail to build more connected lives…we will continue to splinter and divide until we can no longer stand as a community or a country.' As we try to understand this societal illness, I think we need to ask whether we are sick from loneliness or from not belonging — to each other and ourselves.

"...This pandemic of othering is sustained by binary thinking, which dismantles the inherent dignity of those different from us — religiously, racially, culturally, politically, intellectually, etc. Rather than thriving in relationship with each other, many groups find themselves in profound opposition. What is the point of this opposition? What are groups and people trying to protect? For some, it may be the comfort they find in their structure, order, and perspective. For some, it may be a desire to feel the nurturing and supportive sense of belonging, but the desire has become confused with fitting in."

"...The paradox of belonging is much like the paradox of love. Br. David Steindl-Rast says that 'to live means to be in relationship' and that requires 'love in action.' In order to put love into action and experience belonging, you also have to be at home in yourself. When you belong to yourself, you are better equipped to see, appreciate, and respect someone else’s dignity. This is because you can imagine, remember, or acknowledge the pain you’ve endured and how it has shaped your perspective and behavior ... When you can imagine being othered then you can see the only path is understanding." - Joe Primo

Article: Radical Belonging in an Age of Othering

Related Article: Why is Loneliness So Hard to Cure?

Communication, Body Language
The power of a smile, and five other things we can learn about body language from this week's debate

"What lessons can business leaders draw from the different body language styles displayed at the Harris-Trump debate and how can they leverage them in their own high-stakes appearances inside and outside their organizations?" - Harrison Monarth

Article: 6 Lessons in Body Language Leaders Can Take From the Harris-Trump Debate

Habitat, Public Spaces
Kids don't need special equipment or lessons; they just need to get outside.

Image by Bram Berkelmans, CC BY-SA 4.0

"In the summer of 2009, Amy Rose and Alice Ferguson, two mothers living on Greville Road in Bristol, a midsize city in southwest England, found themselves in a strange predicament: They saw entirely too much of their kids. 'We were going, like, Why are they here?' Rose told me. 'Why aren’t they outside?' The friends decided to run an experiment. They applied to shut their quarter-mile road to traffic for two hours after school on a June afternoon—not for a party or an event but just to let the children who lived there play. Intentionally, they didn’t prepare games or activities, Rose told me, as it would have defeated the purpose of the inquiry: 'With time, space, and permission, what happens?'

"The results were breathtaking. The dozens of kids who showed up had no problem finding things to do. One little girl cycled up and down the street '3,000 times,' Rose recalled. 'She was totally blissed out.' Suddenly, the modern approach to children’s play, in which parents shuttle their kids to playgrounds or other structured activities, seemed both needlessly extravagant and wholly insufficient. Kids didn’t need special equipment or lessons; they just needed to be less reliant on their time-strapped parents to get outside." - Stephanie H. Murray

Article: What Adults Lost When Kids Stopped Playing in the Street

Learning, Reading
Music can hep us study and learn.

Photo by nerissa's ring via CC

Yiren Ren, a sixth-year Ph.D. student in Georgia Tech’s School of Psychology, is studying how music impacts learning and memory. Writer Jerry Grillo conjectures that "possibly, she’s listening to Norah Jones, or another musician she’s comfortable with. Because that’s how it works: The music we know and might love, music that feels predictable or even safe — that music can help us study and learn. Meanwhile, Ren has also discovered, other kinds of music can influence our emotions and reshape old memories."

Article: Georgia Tech Neuroscientists Explore the Intersection of Music and Memory

Related Video: New Study Suggests Music Can Impact Memory

Culture, Travel
A bookshop in Scotland will let you run the shop for a few days. They've got a waiting list of people who pay to do it.

Isabella Garcia waited years to spend her holidays running a bookshop in Wigtown. Image via BBC

"A shop on the corner of a small town in southern Scotland might not seem like a prime holiday destination. However, the Open Book in Wigtown - which has been running for a decade - now has a two-year waiting list.

"The brainchild of author and filmmaker Jessica Fox, the volunteer-run enterprise lets visitors live the dream of running their own bookshop. In the process, it now also contributes about £10,000-a-year to the Wigtown Festival Company's charitable work." - Giancarlo Rinaldi

Article: I Found the Book Lover's Dream Holiday in Scotland

Civics, Libraries
Share banned books.

"With more than 180,000 Little Free Library book-sharing boxes worldwide, there is a legion of stewards who take book access seriously — and many go above and beyond when protecting access to banned and challenged books. In a recent poll, 87% of Little Free Library stewards say they share banned books." - Margret Aldrich

Article: Reading Is a Right: How Little Free Library Fights Book Bans

Article: Little Free Library Has a New Map to Help Places Hit Hardest by Book Bans.

Article: Top 10 Banned and Challenged Books to Share in a Little Free Library

Communication, Media
The first daily newspaper in the U.S. to become a nonprofit has published a refreshingly readable and transparent annual report.

"It started when Andy Larsen, sports reporter and data columnist for The Salt Lake Tribune, got annoyed with an “obnoxious” ad on the Tribune’s own site. He brought his frustration about the digital clutter to someone else who happened to be working late in the newsroom — chief development officer Ciel Hunter.

“'I asked her: ‘Hey, how much money do we make on this? Is it really worth it?'' Larsen said. 'That led into a conversation about how much we make from digital ad revenue overall, when compared to sponsorships and donations, which then led to talks on everything else. I was pretty floored and impressed with her transparency on everything over the course of the next couple of hours, which then led me to ask about making those same numbers public, and if I could help with the project.'

"That’s how Larsen ended up writing an annual report that gives the public — including nosy newshounds like you and me — a look at the inner workings of the first legacy newspaper in the U.S. to become a nonprofit." - Sarah Scire

Article: The Salt Lake Tribune, Profitable and Growing, Seeks to Rid Itself of That “Necessary Evil” — The Paywall

One-liners

Article: Britain’s last coal-fired power station will close this year.

Article: In 2020 Montréal closed a two-kilometre stretch of Mont-Royal Avenue to motorists for a few months. By 2023, the avenue’s commercial vacancy rate plummeted from 14.5 percent in 2018 to 5.6 percent.

Article: Viewers experience different versions of the same film in their brains, and these differences can be predicted by their unique eye movements.

Article: UK public proud of the arts above all else—even sport—study says

Article: Stanford Continuing Studies is offering an online course that explores the music of the Grateful Dead.

Playlist

Video: Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Newport Folk Festival 2024, Everything Is Free

Gillian Welch met David Rawlings in 1990. They were both students at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and they were both auditioning to join the school's only country band.

This summer they released their 10th album together, Empty Trainload of Sky. They've been touring, including a wonderful set at the Newport Folk Festival, and a live concert recorded at Rawling's Woodland studio in Nashville.

I find the sad melancholy they conjure to be warm and comforting. Rooted in traditional country, Appalachian folk, and bluegrass it feels both familiar and brand new.

Video: Gillian Welch and David Rawlings on World Cafe (Full Interview & Performance)

Weekly Mixtape
The world comes together in American song.

Playlist: Sweet Old World

Image of the Week

A lector reads a newspaper to workers in a cigar factory, 1900s.

"In the past, factories often employed individuals known as 'lectores' to read stories aloud, providing entertainment and a break from the monotony of work.

"Once chosen, the lectores would read a combination of news and literature that appealed to the workforce, providing both entertainment and information.

"This tradition helped break the monotony of factory work, making the environment more engaging and intellectually stimulating for the employees." - Rare Historical Photos

Article: Obsolete Jobs: Forgotten Occupations That No Longer Exist Today

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