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"Everybody should be quiet near a little stream and listen." - Ruth Krauss in Open House for Butterflies

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

Perhaps even more upsetting than watching a past President of the United States be indicted for the third time in six months is the 24/7 news circus that comes to town with such outrageousness. The constant noise makes it harder for us to be amazed, surprised and enthralled by life all by itself, even though peace can be found there.

I hope that you can find your proverbial stream this weekend. I hope that you can just be quiet and listen.

Happy Friday.

Personal Development
“Today, amid our cult of productivity, we’ve come to see boredom as utterly inexcusable — the secular equivalent of a mortal sin."

Illustration by Maurice Sendak in Open House for Butterflies by Ruth Krauss.

"There is no better balm for the soul than quiet (or maybe a giant hug). But in an era of white noise, who has time for the soul when it’s all but impossible to think, feel, see, and listen. We’re tethered to devices, distracted by doomscrolling, in a panic to post, and beeps and buzzes turn us into Pavlov’s dog. Technology may make it is easier to be productive and connect us to a ginormous network of “relationships,” but it does little to help us be present to the relationship we have with ourselves, the one which holds us in relation to life itself." - Michele DeMarco, PhD

Article: “Everyone Should Be Quiet Near a Little Stream and Listen”

Democracy, Community
"'It’s pretty clear that the world we’ve known isn't working very well anymore; we need to reinvent it."

As Bill McKibben says in a cover blurb for this book, we need to reinvent the world. Tim Hollo has surveyed citizen efforts all over the world who are working to do so and he's brimming with news. He's found that many communities are living by "new models of change-making that are dissolving and distributing power". He calls this summary of findings "an ecological manifesto for the end of the world as we know it".

Yes, he says, the world as we know it is ending. But that doesn't mean it's the end of the world.

His is clearly a bottom-up approach. Gone are the fantasies we might change the system by changing our economy and governments from the top. I've linked to an introductory chapter below. In it he cites activist and blogger, Sophia Burns: "It begins with dropping conventional activism and finding ways to build institutions that can weave into people’s daily lives. It begins with taking on small projects that win credibility and expand capacity.”

Hollo finds hope in the power of local communities working together. As Rob Hopkins was quoted in this letter three weeks ago: ‘If we wait for governments, it will be too late. If we act as individuals, it will be too little. But if we act as communities, it might just be enough, and it might just be in time.’

Book Excerpt: Building a Living Practice of Democracy

Related Article: Living Democracy: Not a Blueprint, But a Pathway

Community
“A community is really just a group of people that help you and always look out for you”.

Image by guilherme jofili via CC

The Conversation asked 130 children aged between seven and 13 years what makes communities strong, supportive, and fair.

The kids identified five themes that matter in determining whether they have a "fair go" – or not.

1. Good Relationships. "When children know their neighbours and are treated with respect by caring people, they feel included, safe, and supported."
2. Feeling Safe. "But many described the frightening ways some adults behave in their communities, most often because of excessive alcohol or drug use."
3. Inclusive Places. "Some talked about places designed for very young children and places for teenagers to hang out – but said there was very little for those in middle childhood."
4. Household Resources. "Some children said their family had to move regularly because rent is so expensive."
5. Public Good and Infrastructure. "Health care is high on children’s list of what is most important. This is not what we might expect young children to focus on, but many described long waits in emergency rooms when they or their families were ill or injured."

Article: We Asked Australian Children What They Needed From Their Communities. Here’s What They Said.

Communication, Conversation
“Enough of me talking about stuff I like. Time for you to talk about stuff I like!”.

Image by Daniel via CC.

Adam Mastroianni has a lot of experience in live improv. He's also studied what makes good conversation at the grad school level. He sees a lot of parallels in the two arts. He says that what ignites good conversations is the "social equivalent of doorknobs".

"When done well, he says, "both giving and taking create what psychologists call affordances: features of the environment that allow you to do something. Physical affordances are things like stairs and handles and benches. Conversational affordances are things like digressions and confessions and bold claims that beg for a rejoinder."

According to Mastrioanni, what matters most in a good conversation is not how much we give or take, but whether we offer and accept affordances.

Article: Good Conversations Have Lots of Doorknobs.

Creativity
"If you scratch any interesting artist you’ll hear that one of the key components to how they do it is that they don’t really know what they’re doing."

Paul McCartney recording drums in a bathroom for McCartney II, 1980. Image via The McCartney Project.

Paul McCartney has long insisted that he doesn’t really know where the music comes from. He didn't learn to read or write music, afraid that to do so would interrupt or break the way he works. He also places great emphasis on starting and finishing work immediately, before you have had the chance to overanalyze or come up with an excuse not to do it.

Article: McCartney on Not-Knowing and Doing it Now

Customer Experience
The remarkable power of giving people more than they expect.

Will Guidara helped make Eleven Madison Park one of the world’s best restaurants. He did it by practicing what he calls "unreasonable hospitality." He says that their food was as good as it could be, that their service was as close to technically perfect as possible, that their room was one of the most beautiful in the world, yet it wasn’t any of those things that actually got them to the top. In his view their success was based on unreasonable hospitality, the art of turning ordinary transactions into extraordinary experiences.

I thought of Guidara this week when I initiated what I thought would be an ordinary transaction. 22 years ago Debbie and I bought two wooden storm/screen doors from Vintage Woodworks, who promises "architectural details direct." This week I emailed them, asking if they sold replacement gasket tape for the storm windows.

They don't. And that was the beginning of my extraordinary experience. Annette, now "my" customer service rep, called me to tell me that I could get what I needed at any big-box retailer. Then she emailed me to reiterate what she had left on my voice mail. She said "if you have any other questions, just ask". I replied by saying "since you've offered, will you tell me the size and type of foam I should look for?". She said she didn't know, but she would find out. The next day she wrote back to give me very specific product details.

Let's do the math: This is one phone call, three emails and personal research for a product that I am going to buy somewhere else. This is for a homeowner who is going to buy two screen doors in his life, and he did that 22 years ago.

Will Guidara says that he hopes that in the future what he describes as unreasonable hospitality "feels very reasonable. Right now it’s unreasonable because so few people approach these kind of grace notes and relationship building with any spirit of creativity or relentlessness. But if everyone did that all the time, businesses would be better, people would feel good, and the world would be a better place.

Thank you Annette and the team you represent for making me feel good, and for making the world a better place.

Article: Why Every Business Needs to Embrace ‘Unreasonable Hospitality’.

Related Article: 5 Key insights About Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect

Brand Perception
Poll: Patagonia has best brand reputation, ranking first in the Character, Trajectory, Ethics, Citizenship, and Products & Services categories.

"The Axios Harris Poll 100 has been measuring the reputations of the most visible companies in the United States for over two decades. In the graphic above, we’ve visualized the results for 2023, which are based on a survey of over 16,000 Americans from a nationally representative sample.

"Each company’s score in the ranking is based on nine underlying categories. These are Character, Trajectory, Trust, Culture, Ethics, Citizenship, Vision, Growth, and Products & Services." - Marcus Lu

Spoiler alert: This year Patagonia took the top spot overall. The Trump brand took the bottom.

Article: Brand Reputations: Ranking the Best and Worst in 2023

One-liners

Article: Cycling to work may cut your risk of premature death by 40%.

Article: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in the city of London.

Article: Whatever the problem, it’s probably solved by walking.

Article: V olunteering may protect older adults against dementia.

Playlist

Ted Gioia has called Susana Raya "the Andalusian Eva Cassidy”. Ira Coleman says that "she has developed a style where voice and guitar seem to breathe at the same time."

Classically trained with deep roots in jazz, born in Spain and living in the Netherlands, Raya reinvents the terms "global," and "singer-songwriter."

This song though is not one of her compositions. It is a summer-fresh take on Nick Drake's River Man. Jeroen Vierdag is on double bass and Timothy Banchet is on piano.

Video: River Man - Nick Drake (cover by Susana Raya)

Weekly Mixtape
Music for a quiet summer day.

Playlist: River Man. Easy Now #13

Image of the Week

The Image of the Week is Reading in a Deck Chair Under Branches (1913) by Leo Putz.

Born in 1869 in Merano, Austria-Hungary, Putz opened his first studio in 1897, worked with the weekly magazine Jugend, and also worked as a commercial artist creating many posters in Art Nouveau style. Between 1909 and 1914 he spent his summers at Schloss Hartmannsberg near Chiemgau to practice plein-air painting. This painting was most likely created there.

I lifted this image from a fantastic Instagram account, Portraits of Women Reading.

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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