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"Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you." - Wendell Berry

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

What would happen if thinking downstream were the table stakes? One can dream, right?

Speaking of dreaming, here in New England just a few days from the summer solstice, the smoke has cleared for now and it is a sweet summer day.

Happy Friday.

Retail, Corporate Social Responsibility, Community
Redefining the architecture of the neighborhood bakery

Image by Kat Antos-Lewis

GAIL’s bakery opened in London’s Hampstead High Street in 2005. Today, they have dozens of bakeries in neighborhoods in and around London, Oxford and Brighton. It’s a business committed to improving the end-to-end food system.

Architect Jonathan Harvey describes his firm's exploration of "how the bakery’s architecture can respond to and communicate company values, while also delivering a commercially successful space".

"Each bakery’s design begins with a conversation about what makes that site specific to that place. Whether it is a hyper-local reference such as a crest on the building in Clapham Old Town that talks about being content through enjoying the basics of life, or referencing past histories, like on the South Bank where ideas drew on the Festival of Britain as inspiration. Each bakery always seeks to tap into the history of the place it occupies to begin a conversation and engage with the local community. When each bakery opens, the stories we discover are always explained to the teams that run the bakeries to engage the customer and reflect the brand’s interest in the places they serve." - Jonathan Harvey.

Article: In Practice: Waste Not, Want Not – Designing for Gail’s Bakeries

Persuasion, Futures Thinking
Disney's Strange World is a surprisingly radical ecological parable.

"Solar punk is a relatively recent artistic, literary, and media trend that uses science fiction as a lens to tell stories about regenerating ecosystems, futuristic permaculture farming, mutual aid networks, and sustainable urban living. ...

"At its core solar punk is an optimistic reaction to the cynical dystopian narratives that saturate much of popular culture wherein hyper-capitalism has thoroughly ruined the world in one terrible way or another. At this point most of us have seen so many spectacular global catastrophes that the end of the world can start to feel both mundane and inevitable.

"...Disney's Strange World offers a refreshing break from that pattern because although the environment is in great peril, there’s still time to save it."

"There is no Disney villain to defeat. Instead the heroes must convince their society to abandon the fuel source that powers the comforts and conveniences of their daily lives before it destroys their world. As far as ecological parables go that’s a surprisingly radical one." - Pop Culture Detective

Video: In Defense of Disney’s Strange Solarpunk World

Creativity
"Art is for everybody." - Keith Haring

"The act of creation itself is very clear and pure. But this creation immediately results in a 'thing' that has a 'value' that must be reckoned with. Even the subway drawings, which were quite obviously about the 'act,' not the 'thing,' are now turning up, having been 'rescued' from destruction by would-be collectors." - Keith Haring

This week Jillian Hess, curator and writer of Notes, the amazing Substack celebration of the diaries and notebooks of creative people, did a deep dive into the meticulously-kept journals of Keith Haring. Her scholarship and attendant observations are inspiring in of themselves.

Article: Keith Haring's Street Notes

Related Article: Keith Haring‘s First-Ever Museum Exhibition in Los Angeles, Art Is for Everybody, is on View through October 8th.

Learning, Design Thinking
‘It’s something that people are trying to solve all over the United States, so how are fifth-graders going to tackle that piece?’

Fifth graders examine layers of a bee hive in the early stages of their research on honey bees and mites as teacher Jessica Ohly looks on. Jenny Brundin/CPR News

“That’s why I love talking to kids because they’re brains are just open, you know, ours aren’t and they will think outside the box.” - master beekeeper Carmen Weiland

Article: How Do You Remove a Mite From a Honey Bee’s Back? Ask These 5th Graders.

How We Live
We are not very good at understanding people we disagree with.

Behavioral Economist, Daniel Stone, says people are consistently too pessimistic about their partisan counter-parts. On both sides, people tend to overestimate the other side’s extremism, hostility, interest in political violence and selfishness. And the most affectively polarized people make the biggest mistakes

"Stone's thesis is that partisans in America dislike people they disagree with excessively, for a variety of reasons, but that dislike is often driven by mistaken beliefs and incorrect assumptions. To find evidence for his thesis, he reviewed studies on the accuracy of people's beliefs about opinions held by embers of the other political party. And what he found might surprise you: We are not particularly good at understanding our opposition." - Isaac Saul

Article: Why Do We Hate Each Other?

Related Article: Your Political Rivals Aren’t as Bad as You Think – Here’s How Misunderstandings Amplify Hostility

How We Work
"Our economies are at an inflection point and the way many people think about work is being shaped by this wider context."

In the US and UK, almost two thirds of employees say efforts by business to tackle environmental and societal challenges do not go far enough. Many believe the CEO and senior leaders don’t care.

Nearly half of employees say they would consider resigning if the company’s values don’t align with their own, even in these difficult economic times.

A third of employees say they have already resigned for this reason.

"The numerous studies that employees want better pay, more flexibility and greater wellbeing are absolutely right. But, to be candid, shouldn’t this be rather obvious to senior leaders?" - Paul Polman

Report: 2023 Net Positive Employee Barometer

Related Article: Your Boss Has No Clue

Social Messaging, Advertising
"Wait, are you, like, a future person?"

Video: Future Woman - Public Transit, a delightfully simple and entertaining 30-second spot

"That a city has a climate action plan is no longer novel. But a plan alone doesn’t move the needle on decarbonization nor does it inherently motivate the city’s stakeholders—both public and private—to act on that plan.

"That’s why cities like San Francisco, London, New York, and Helsinki are investing in campaigns to communicate their climate action plans to citizens. And they’re doing so not only to raise awareness about the plan but to identify easy, everyday actions that people can take to make it more tangible, relatable, and actionable." - Michael Shank

Article: How San Francisco Translated its 300-Page Climate Plan Into Tangible Actions for Residents

One-liners

Article: How the city of Portland, OR pulled off one of the most pro-housing reforms in America by playing nice.

Article: Canada's traditional shopping centers are turning into mall cities.

Article: For Pride Month, H&M just set a new Guinness World Record for the "Most People Attending a Drag Brunch."

Article: Why Pride Month shouldn’t just be a once a year event for brands.

Article: What we lose when psychedelics are medicalized.

Playlist

The Green River Festival is coming again to our town, Greenfield, from June 23-25. Rolling Stone, The New York Times and NPR have all extolled its specialness. Locals know it as a perennial feel-good gathering that celebrates this community's openness and warmth.

The festival's roots go back to1986, to a 5th birthday celebration for our then local and then still alternative radio station, WRSI. 2,000 people came that year to be entertained by 10,000 Maniacs and NRBQ. Within a few years the festival was attracting major talent like Dr. John, Taj Mahal, and Gillian Welch & David Rawlings. Since then acts like Lake Street Dive, Father John Misty, Guster, Allison Russell, Calexico, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, CAKE, Molly Tuttle, Fountains Of Wayne, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Emmylou Harris, Buddy Guy, Lucinda Williams, Mavis Staples, Arlo Guthrie and Steve Earle have graced Green River's stages.

Paste Magazine on the Road has produced some great videos of artists performing at Green River backstage, but I've yet to see any Main Stage performances on film. So I found this clip of Lakestreet Dive and Eilen Jewell on eTown. But it's a minor cheat. Lake Street Dive headlined the festival last year, Eilen played here for the first time in 2009, and this year she'll be on the Main Stage on Saturday.

Video: eTown Finale with Lake Street Dive & Eilen Jewell - Don't Let Me Down

Weekly Mixtape
In 37 years the folks at Green River have earned a stellar reputation for having their ear to the ground. I lean on them as arbiters of excellent taste. This year they've invited 33 artists to their stages. Here's a playlist with one song from each.

Playlist: Green River Festival 2023

Image of the Week

The Image of the Week is titled Thoughts and Prayers, by Francine Martin. She describes herself as "Dark, surreal and often humorous. Self-taught artist working in assemblage, mixed media and paper collage...plus a little street photography."

Instagram Page: Francine Martin

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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