“The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionists are philosophers and saints.” - Will & Ariel Durant
Love & Work A notebook about how we work, learn, love and live.
This week Debbie and I are joined by all three of our kids, their partners, our granddaughter and two dogs. We've rented a house in the woods of Wellfleet on Cape Cod. This town, Truro and Provincetown are very special places to all of us. It is so sweet to just stop and share life with those you know and love.
Happy Friday.
Inspiration, Learning "A story many of the world’s children might need."
Charlie with Mary Ann Cooper, his final romance. (Family photo)
"Charlie and the future grew up together. With one foot planted in the age of draft animals and diphtheria — when only 6 percent of Americans graduated from high school, and even middle-class people lived without electricity or running water — Charlie planted the other foot in the age of space stations and robotic surgery.
"He lived to be among the last surviving officers of World War II, among the last Americans who could say what it was like to drive an automobile before highways existed, among the last who felt amazement when pictures first moved on a screen. He lived from 'The Birth of a Nation' to Barack Obama. From women forbidden to vote to women running nations and corporations.
"Still, as I’ve reflected on this remarkable friend, I have come to see that he was more than a living history lesson, more than the winner of a genetic Powerball. He was one of the few children of the early 1900s who could tell my children of the 2000s how to thrive while lives and communities, work and worship, families and mores are shaken, inverted, blown up and remade...."
"...By the time he was done, he had lived nearly half the history of the United States.
"Among Charlie’s things after he was gone, his family found a single sheet of notepaper, on which Charlie had boiled 109 years into an operating code of life. He filled the sheet front and back in flowing ballpoint pen, writing in definitive commands. Among them:
"Think freely. Practice patience. Smile often. Forgive and seek forgiveness.
"Feel deeply. Tell loved ones how you feel.
"Be soft sometimes. Cry when you need to. Observe miracles." - David Von Drehle
Citizenship, Activism How independent bookstores—in the age of book banning and the pandemic’s lingering aftershocks—can change the world for the better.
Bookstore in a former Dominican church in Maastricht.Image via Wikimedia Commons
"Josh Cook, a veteran bookseller and co-owner at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, writes from the front lines of the sales floor and the stockroom, dissecting how booksellers evaluate what to sell and how to sell it. From making recommendations to organizing display tables to stocking books by politicians, these seemingly granular decisions are matters of moral urgency; as Cook reminds us, 'People use books to develop their morals, support and test their belief structures, come to conclusions about the state of the world, and make voting decisions.'
"The massive systemic pressures facing bookstores are enough to make anyone feel powerless, but Cook insists that booksellers have a powerful role to play in advancing social justice and shoring up community bonds. 'Person to person, display to display, reader to reader, event to event,' he tells Esquire, 'book sales have a real opportunity to shape publishing and the world of books in a way that creates a more sustainable books ecosystem and also a more sustainable world.'” - Adrienne Westenfeld
Storytelling, Social Messaging Stories can reinforce or they can disrupt troubling social norms or portrayals.
"For post-millennial activists, the participatory media age has empowered new creative ways of doing cultural representation business and new Hollywood relationships to get the job done. A formalized job title has emerged for this work: narrative or cultural strategist, often used interchangeably. As a concept, narrative strategy is a cultural and communication practice by which social justice practitioners collaborate with entertainment industry executives, writers, and producers to shape positive portrayals of marginalized communities and social issues in scripted and non-scripted entertaining narratives, critique negative portrayals, and produce and disseminate their own entertainment storytelling content." - City Borum
How We Work "Public libraries enable access to other worlds and ways, inspiring new perspectives and futures."
Photos — Seth Nicolas
This week Fast Company’s Innovation by Design Awards announced the 2023 winners of the Workplace category, "projects built to make workers happier and more productive." This year’s winner was the Copenhagen offices of research and design lab SPACE10.
"In a recent SPACE10 survey, we learned that 87 percent of our community engages with us for inspiration and new ideas, while 59 percent want to be part of a like-minded community. So we wanted to explore opening up our space in new ways. As the concepts of workplaces and third places continue to evolve, we recognize the need for more shared, communal spaces in our cities. Places where people can carve out solo creative time, places where people and ideas can collide, where networks and relationships can grow, and which aren’t dependent on monetary exchange.
"Libraries embody this. They are democratic havens for many people — safe, warm, accessible, and connected. They foster healthy communities and facilitate lifelong learning. Home to millions of ideas and experiences, public libraries enable access to other worlds and ways, inspiring new perspectives and futures." - Kevin Curran
Education These school's teachers spend little class time on lectures and assign little to no homework. Teachers teach teachers and diversity is celebrated.
Paramount Brookside teacher Layla Abdelhak helps students as they complete lessons on their laptops in class.Image by Patrick O’Donnell
"In the most recent state test results, released in July, between 34 and 57 percent of Black students were proficient in both English and Math at the three in-person Paramount schools, compared to just 5.4 percent in Indianapolis Public Schools.
"For students receiving free or reduced lunch, 38 to 58 percent were proficient in both at the three Paramount schools, compared to just eight percent in the district." - Patrick O’Donnell
L.L. Bean was one of the first brands to sell the promise of a lifestyle as their product. The company was also a pioneer in the use of a mail order catalog as a means to deliver that promise. Since Leon Leonwood (“L.L.”) Bean announced his new company with a three-page flyer in 1912, those catalogs have traditionally featured artwork that depicted people and scenes of outdoor life in Maine. It's refreshing to notice that this summer they hired illustrator Nick Liefhebber to employ a less literal graphic style to render flora and fauna—Lupine, Chickadee, Queen Anne's lace, blueberries, ferns, mussels—found in the Pine Tree State.
"At 39, Lafourcade is among the most successful artists in Spanish-language music, known for her measured, honest songwriting and her covers of Latin American, especially Mexican, folk songs. She holds the distinction of being the female artist with the most Latin Grammys — 14 — and has produced 10 albums in a little over two decades, collaborating with Latin American pop and rock superstars such as Julieta Venegas and Jorge Drexler, and with legendary Mexican guitar duo Los Macorinos." - Sofia Andrade
I shot this on my phone yesterday on Commercial Street in Provincetown. I don't know the woman sporting the t, but she was generous enough to stop and let me take a snap.
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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