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

Angela Garbes, author of “Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change.” (Elizabeth Rudge)

"When you see a book with a subtitle like “mothering as social change” — and you’re not a mother — you might think that this is not a book for you. You are wrong. This book is especially for you, because it invites all of us, whether we directly care for children in our daily lives or not, to think of ourselves as doing the truly essential work of caregiving, both for ourselves and for others. The more we see ourselves doing that labor, the more we understand that labor as part of what makes us human and life worth living, the more we can actually, genuinely value it: not just with our words, or with largely empty gestures like clapping for essential workers. 

"It’s about money, sure. But it’s really about priorities, and how we think about our responsibilities as humans to one another. Do we understand that caring for a child, or an elder, or someone who needs medical care as part of our responsibility as members of society? Of a community? Or will we continue to buy into the deeply atomized, individualistic norms of (white, patriarchal) American society that are, quite frankly, making even people with the most means and privilege pretty damn miserable?" - Anne Helen Petersen

Author Interview: "Raising Children is Not an Individual Responsibility. It is a Social One."

Media
"Education journalism is surprisingly well positioned to demonstrate how to cover the news in a way that doesn’t demoralize and alienate readers."


 

"The world is on fire. Inflation is spiraling out of control. A new variant of COVID is roaring back. The Supreme Court has gone rogue, and the Jan. 6 hearings have uncovered morale-crushing news about the former administration.

"So it’s understandable that Amanda Ripley’s Washington Post opinion piece denouncing the news industry for being unnecessarily negative didn’t receive a particularly large or warm reception when it came out last week."

"...In her July 8 op-ed, the author and longtime journalist confessed that she had begun actively avoiding the news — not because the world is in such bad shape, but because media coverage has become unnecessarily and relentlessly negative.

"Ripley is not alone among journalists who don’t read as much news as they used to or as you might expect them to. I know of several who feel alienated about the news they see — and sometimes about the coverage that they’re producing.

"In the meantime, many non-journalists (i.e., readers) have also begun avoiding the news, a trend that should worry even the most fervent adherents of how journalism is currently being practiced."

"And, hard as it may be to believe, Ripley’s column suggests that the education beat is well positioned to steer journalism towards a new, better, and more reader-popular way of informing the public.

"Some education reporters, teams, and outlets are already showing how it can be done. And if they’re right, then perhaps the education beat can help save journalism." - Alexander Russo

Article: How the Education Beat Could Save Journalism

 

Corporate Social Responsibility, Brand Purpose
There’s something to be said for brands who take a stand. 

Ivy Liu

"U.S. companies like Starbucks, Amazon and Nike have committed to cover travel-related costs for emplolyees wishing to obtain an abortion in another state."

"...That’s not to say every brand needs to have an opinion on everything. According to Deb Gabor, founder and CEO of Sol Marketing, a brand strategy consultancy, 'Sometimes, neutrality is a stance.' She added that a brand could ruin its reputation, and thus sales, by picking and choosing issues that aren’t aligned with its DNA. 

"It’s an ongoing debate in the marketing industry, considering the social responsibility of brands and businesses. Oftentimes, brands will find themselves pitted against making money or being ethical, as 'those two things are often in conflict,' said Rachael Kay Albers, creative director and brand strategist at RKA Ink, a branding and marketing agency. Still, as much power and influence companies have, there’s something to be said for brands who do take a stand." - Kimeko McCoy

Article: Why Brand Strategists are Revisiting the Idea of Brand Purpose in a Post Roe vs. Wade Society

How We Work
Carolyn Chen: “Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation.”



"In her new book, Work Pray Code, Carolyn Chen — a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley — argues that a new kind of American Buddhism has evolved, one which serves the logic of work and business. “Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation,” she writes. Chen spent five years studying American tech companies’ infatuation with Buddhist-inspired mindfulness and meditation practices. She participated in company meditation sessions; attended corporate mindfulness retreats; interviewed personal mindfulness coaches who help CEOs find their “authentic” selves; and spoke to tech workers who use meditation as a “self-hack” to improve focus, efficiency, creativity, and confidence. Her book describes a corporate culture where meditation and mindfulness address workers’ mental and spiritual needs, imbue work with a spiritual aura, and turn workplaces into productivity-centered 'faith communities.'" - Judith Hertog

Author Interview: Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley

Organizational Health
"Hear this prayer, O Tenure Gods of My University, and in the spirit of Teaching, Scholarship, Service, and in Your many-credentialed names, I pray."
 

"Please, Tenure Gods of My Institution, please find it within Yourselves to grant me tenure by looking to your own established criteria, which I’ve already demonstrably surpassed.

"Please do it by faculty vote so that we can introduce dramatic subjectivity into a process outlined by a clearly codified list of measurable requirements.

"Please do it by blind faculty vote so that personal agendas, crushes, and vendettas can be mapped onto my hard-earned professional existence and affect me for the rest of my life."... - Jennie Young

While written for academics, this summary of what a fair, open and transparent process for granting tenure would look like has implications for any major personnel decision in any organization.

Article: Prayer of the Assistant Professor Going Up for Tenure


One-liners
Article: How Planned Parenthood has increased ad spend with Meta, TikTok amid Roe vs. Wade overturn

Article: Employee explains mass resignation after company cancels WFH in a way that clueless director would understand.

Article: How London's River Thames came back after being declared biologically dead


Playlist

This week while cruising for music to share, I stumbled upon Brooklyn Vegan's call-out to Joyful Noise's Abortion Rights Benefit Compilation. I was attracted to names like Lou Barlow, The Orphelias, and Half-Japanese (whom I saw with the Breeders and Nirvana how many years ago?!).

It's a great playlist. I love any gateway to curated rock, old and new. But by about song three I found myself thinking: It's great that these artists donated a song they had already recorded. But whatever happened to benefit concerts like No Nukes, Farm Aid  and The Concert for Bangladesh? Those concerts, with their attendant press coverage and theatrical release films did a lot more than raise money. They brought energy and attention to important issues.



As if on cue, this was the very next headline in my RSS feed: Watch Bruce Springsteen play 'Sherry Darling' at the No Nukes concerts.

"After the Three Mile Island nuclear catastrophe in 1979, musicians from across the United States banded together to put on a series of concerts that aimed to raise awareness towards the dangers of nuclear energy. Spearheaded by the likes of Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, and Bonnie Raitt, the No Nukes concerts also benefited from featuring some of the biggest names in rock music at the height of their powers.

"Of all the participants in the concerts, nobody knew how to set the stage on fire quite like Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen and the E Street Band were in the middle of recording their fifth LP, The River, at the time and included a number of those tracks in their sets. Although audiences didn’t have the album as a reference point for some of the newer songs, it was easy to instantly get caught up in the energy of a song like ‘Sherry Darling’ even if you had never heard it before." - Tyler Golsen

Tyler is so right. This performance is positively electric. Bruce's long time film editor, Thom Zimny, said “I quickly realized that these were the best performances and best filming from the Band’s legendary Seventies.”
 
Now you get to watch Bruce and the band turn Madison Square Gardens into an intimate rock club.

Article: Watch Bruce Springsteen Play 'Sherry Darling' at the No Nukes Concerts.

Article: Bruce Springsteen to Release Legendary 'No Nukes' Concerts


Image of the Week

Oregon coast by Marcin Zając

Article: Brilliant Phenomena and Galactic Skies Light Up the 2022 Astronomy Photographer of the Year Shortlist



What's Love & Work?
Love & Work is the weekly newsletter by me, Mitch Anthony. I help people use their brand - their purpose, values, and stories - as a pedagogy and toolbox for transformation.