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"Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world." - bell hooks

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

Joanna Macy and David Korten have named the shift from an industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization The Great Turning. Macy is a teacher of Buddism, and the law of karma is a fundamental principle of the Buddhist worldview. Karma is the idea that intentional actions have consequences.

I thought of cultural karma this week when my friend, Reggie Marra, reminded our men's group that if a country's DNA includes strong threads of racism, misogyny, cultural inequality and corporate capitalism we shouldn't be surprised when voter suppression, censorship, extreme income inequality, rampant addiction, widespread homelessness and random acts of violence start to seem normal. And when that same country's media is motivated by the principle of profit at any cost which is the root of corporate capitalism, we shouldn't be surprised when that media celebrates the resulting divisiveness, because bad news sells. In turn, the really good news about an amazingly smart species is often completely lost.

Yes, the news sucks. But we are also experiencing a great turning, and we can all play a part as co-developers of new ways of working, learning, loving and living.

Happy Friday.

How We Live, Media
"Pessimism runs the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, and if we want to build a better future, we have to change how we relate to the news."

Emma Varvaloucas Photograph courtesy Kevin Condon

"According to the recently released COVID Response Tracking Study, Americans are the unhappiest they’ve been in fifty years. With the pandemic, mass shootings, and ongoing environmental catastrophes, it can be easy to feel like we’re always in crisis—and to believe that the world is coming to an end. But journalist Emma Varvaloucas believes that this pessimism runs the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, and if we want to build a better future, we have to change how we relate to the news.

"Previously the executive editor at the Buddhist review Tricycle, Varvaloucas now serves as the executive director of the Progress Network, a nonprofit media organization dedicated to countering the negativity of the mainstream news cycle. Through amplifying stories and statistics that often go unnoticed, the Progress Network aims to serve as an antidote to doomscrolling and to offer a more constructive take on current events." - James Shaheen

Article: An Antidote to Doomscrolling

Futures Thinking
"Post-industrial society is neither the next vaunted stage of human progress, nor the prelude to a catastrophic reversion to pre-industrial ways of life."

"Dillon Supply, post-industrial simulacrum" by Payton Chung is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

"Every civilization rests on a core stack of social technology that coordinates and sustains its vital institutions. Social technologies—intentionally designed ways for the people in a society to operate—form the basis of the varied systems of material production and material technology that we see in every society. These social technology cores decay with time as they obsolete their own foundations, and as errors and parasitism build up. This decay can be circumvented, and the decaying core social technologies can be swapped for new ones, but this is a process of immense historical difficulty. What, then, is the core engine of our own civilization, and in what way might it decay? While we lack an incontrovertible answer, the Industrial Revolution appears to be a leading candidate." - Samo Burja

Article: The End of Industrial Society

Teaching and Learning
Researchers asked students what makes a caring teacher.

Image by US Department of Education via CC

Jenna Whitehead studies the social and emotional development of children and adolescents, with particular interest in the role of student-teacher relationships on student well-being, prosociality, and school success. Last year she and colleagues published a study in the Journal of Adolescent Research in which they shared what students said when asked what makes a caring teacher. She says that "their responses aligned with an emerging perspective from education researchers: that the most authentic, wholehearted educators are calm, clear, and kind. The good news is that these characteristics may not only help students but also support teacher well-being during these difficult times."

It strikes me that these qualities would be welcome and effective in any learning environment, including the workplace.

Article: Calm, Clear, and Kind: What Students Want From Their Teachers

How We Work
What mom's want for Mother's Day: put them in charge of return-to-office plans

"i'm home" by iBjorn is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

"How do we explain what we need to bosses? Or: How do we negotiate the right to parent, a 24-7 job, as a part of our alleged day jobs? But here’s what I’ve learned after being at this for a while, and I share with hopes that it can be others’ truth, too: Some aspects of our lives, namely the most important job we will ever have, are just non-negotiable." - S. Mitra Kalita

Article: Put Moms in Charge of Return-to-Office Plans.

Visual Identity, Packaging
A brand known for its dedication to sustainable farming, ethical business practices, and respect for people embodies "the spirit of the 1960s era and progressive change" in new packaging.

A shout-out to our Pioneer Valley neighbors Deans Beans and BRIGADE. Dean Cycon has been demonstrating how a for-profit business can root its practices in respect for the earth, the farmer and co-workers, and has been doing it for 30 years right in Orange, Mass. And since opening as a one-woman shop in 2005, team BRIGADE has been proving that world-class creative just might best come from places like Florence, Mass. instead of name-brand cities. It's terrific to see them partner on a great product launch. Kudos.

Article: BRIGADE And Dean’s Beans Lead With Love In The Nitro Coffee World.

And speaking of neighbors doing good work, this week Ralph Brill wrote to say that their PureHempNY Division in nearby Hudson has been selected as a Shortlist Finalist in Dieline’s International Next Generation Packaging Competition in the Plastic-Free Category.

Article: Chip Clips - 100% Hemp Papers Replace Millions Of White Plastic Clips

Learning, AI
Use ChatGPT to create daily itineraries for vacation trips

Happy Hours, Tokyo, Japan by inkelv1122 via CC

"I used ChatGPT to create a daily itinerary for a family trip to Tokyo and it was a success. First, I asked it to give me a list of 10 interesting places and neighborhoods less than 90 minutes by Tokyo. Then I asked it to give me the top ten things to do at each place. I fined tuned the lists by asking ChatGPT to include the best shopping streets in each areas. The lists it generated, which include dining suggestions. I’m going to do this for every trip I take." — Mark Frauenfelder

Post: AI Vacation Itinerary

Advice
Howard Zinn on collective power

Howard Zinn at Pathfinder Bookstore Los Angeles, 2000 via Slobodandimitrov/Wikicommons

"Understand that money and weapons are fragile forms of power, that human beings, when united in a cause, can make money worthless and weapons futile, that powerless people can create power by unity, sacrifice, risk, commitment." - Howard Zinn

Book: Take My Advice. Letters to the Next Generation from People Who Know a Thing or Two

One-liners

Article: A book illustrator has pulled out of Bradford Literature Festival because artificial intelligence (AI) was used to produce its publicity images.

Article: Skittles partners with LGBTQ+ designers for limited-edition Pride Packs

Article: The big idea: what if censoring books only makes them more popular?

Article: Children’s museums are growing intellectually and emotionally.

Playlist

Video: This Is The Kit en session live | Nova Rec.

This Is the Kit is the alias of British musician, Kate Stables, as well as the various arrangements of bands that she has been fronting since 2003. This has included configurations from duo to quintet, with the core band consisting of Kate on vocals, guitar and banjo, Rozi Plain on bass and vocals, Neil Smith on guitar, and Jamie Whitby-Coles on drums.

I love their music which is quiet and emotive and virtually impossible to pigeon-hole. The first of their songs to be released on record was on a Sunday Best Recordings compilation called Folk Off, and Kate plays banjo, so some initially described their music as having a folk-flavored groove. Then their first album, Krülle Bol, was produced by John Parish, best known as PJ Harvey's longtime producer. So some put her in the alternative rock box. I'll settle for the term chamber-rock. It's music made by a small ensemble that would warm any chamber in which it's played. They warmed the La Ciergerie studio in Lyon, France in January of 2022 with this delightful performance.

Weekly Mixtape
Speaking of music that is delightfully impossible to classify, I've noticed over the years that the best ambient soundtracks are often found in independent coffee shops. So I was thrilled this week to learn that SOLO, "a project and printed magazine around specialty coffee culture, lifestyle and design that aims to approach the coffee scene from a different point of view", is encouraging coffee shops to share playlists on SOLO Magazine's Spotify page. This one was posted by Senzu Coffee Roasters of Porto, Portugal in September, 2022.

Public Playlist: No.20 - Senzu Coffee Roasters

Image of the Week
The image of the week is of Japanese refugees photographed by Dorothea Lange in Turlock, California, May 2, 1942. Commissioned by the U.S. War Relocation Authority (WRA), "Lange made over 750 photographs of Japanese American citizens – before the evacuation, during the roundup, at temporary evacuation centers, and finally at Manzanar, the largest internment camp in California." (Source.)

The image is featured in Katy Hessel’s The Story of Art Without Men.

"Did you know that the German nature painter Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717), who was an insect fanatic, laid the foundations of modern zoology with fantastic illustrations of more than 200 insect species? Have you heard of the English paper collagist Mary Delany (1700–1788), postwar Japanese photographer Ishiuchi Miyako (b. 1947), and Venezuelan Minimalist Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994)?

"After reading Katy Hessel’s The Story of Art Without Men (W. W. Norton & Company, 2023, US edition), several educators may aspire to redesign their art history surveys and syllabi — and perhaps trade some Picassos or Pollocks for Merians and Gegos." - Nageen Shaikh

Article: Katy Hessel Kicks Men Out of the Western Art Canon

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.

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