Live as if everything is a miracle

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"There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt is awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." - Albert Einstein

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

You won't be surprised that I come down on the side of seeing all life—even our colossal challenges and failures—as a miracle.

Here are some examples I found this week.

Happy Friday.

Teaching & Learning, Inspiration
"Oh, my God." "Holy shit." "No way." "Whaaat?"

Wylie Overstreet and Alex Gorosh make incredible short science films that examine the "most overlooked facet of our universe: its astonishing scale".

Wylie says that one night he was bored in his apartment and decided to take his telescope out to the sidewalk. He pointed it up and within a few minutes people started walking over and asking what this thing was. He invited them to look at the moon.

The commonality of reactions is a poignant reminder that we all share the same planet and we all have the same reaction to the universe we live in. As one of the many enthusiastic commenters says: "I can't be the only person who started crying while watching this."

Video: A New View of the Moon

Commerce, Manufacturing
"U.S. manufacturing is making a comeback."

Bollman Hat Company, Adamstown PA Photo by Christopher Payne

"In Christopher Payne’s new book of 'industrial' photographs, Made in America, he writes, 'Many people I know have never set foot in a factory. Decades of global outsourcing and a flood of cheap imports have decimated sectors of American manufacturing and hollowed out once-thriving communities.' So, he set out to explore the massive industrial power that still exists in this country—and the result is a set of photos that will make you proud.

"From the craft to the space industries, Payne cannot help but raise our expectations of what the American worker is capable of doing, and implicitly conveys an optimistic sense of what’s being accomplished, despite the realities of global manufacturing competition. This book is not patriotic propaganda. It is awesome and real. Or, as Payne writes, 'As environmental concerns and the pandemic have become urgent wake-up calls for us to rethink global supply chains, U.S. manufacturing is making a comeback.'” - Steven Heller

Book Review: The Daily Heller: The Beauty of American Industry

Civics, Common Good
"What if, over the next 11 years, a previously unimaginable transformation took place?"

"What if, over the next 11 years, a previously unimaginable transformation took place, sparked by Extinction Rebellion's non-violent direct action and by the student strikes, the subsequent election of a government committed to deep transformation, the reorienting of capital and business, the huge mobilization of communities across the country, the creation of the conditions in which the imagination can flourish?"

Rob Hopkins is a founder of the transition town movement. A transition town is a local community that designs and builds grassroot projects to reduce the potential effects of peak oil, climate destruction, social extremism, and economic instability. He's got a new book, ‘From What is to What If’: Unleashing the power of imagination to create the future we want’. In it he asks why true creative and positive thinking is in decline. He asserts that it’s more important now than ever and suggests ways our communities can revive and reclaim it.

In this video he sketches what a revived and reclaimed community can look like. He visits new schools, businesses, public spaces and social services that work for everyone, and for the planet. At the end, just about the time when you'd say "Wouldn't it be nice," he delivers the punch line: Each of the examples he shares already exist.

Video: 'From What Is to What If'. A Walk Through a Day in 2030.

Commerce, Business Model
From 1941–1969 this Massachusetts creative group produced over 300 textile designs, making it one of America’s longest-running artist collectives.

"The women of the Folly Cove Designers forged their own roles in the world, something that today's female printmakers find highly relatable.” Image via Cape Ann Museum

"A first glance over the block-printed fabric works of the Folly Cove Collective might make you think of William Morris, but look closer at the subject matter and you’ll find altogether more modern imagery. Baked bean suppers, square dancing, local architecture and skiing feature in the pattern designs – scenes drawn directly from the artists’ lives, making the works at once timeless and a unique window into a fascinating era and niche of society."

"...The designers of the grassroots collective were all women, and mostly had no previous artistic training, except for their leader Virginia Lee Burton Demetrios. Virginia studied printmaking as a teen, under printmaker Robert Hestwood, attended California School of Fine Arts, and became a published author and illustrator before she founded the Folly Cove Designers in 1941. She set out to create a group that gave women artistic training, creative independence and community, inviting her friends and neighbours to join, and teaching them techniques that Elena says “allowed even artistic novices to achieve incredible designs”. This included encouraging them to 'draw what they knew' and sketching their subjects over and over again, until their 'made them their own'." - Jenny Brewer

Article: Unearthing the Pioneering Print Designs of the All-Women Folly Cove Collective

Habitat, Shared space
Reintroducing public bathhouses could counter the loneliness that often accompanies modern living.

Baigneuses (Bathers) Jean-Léon Gérôme, circa 1889, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

"It is difficult to imagine a more powerful counter-image to the dominant picture of modernity than the archetypal bathhouse. Of course, these spaces vary greatly. The Japanese sento, with its strict rules and fastidious emphasis on hygiene, could hardly be more different from the infamously squalid wash houses of Victorian Britain. Hungary’s vast fürdő, some of which spread over several floors, provide a different emotional experience to the intensity of the lakȟóta sweat-lodge of Native America. What links all these examples, however, is the role such spaces have in bringing together people who might otherwise remain separate, and placing them in a situation of direct physical contact. It is this aspect of proximity that remains significant today.

"Reintroducing bathhouses with such a principle in mind could be a means of tackling the loneliness of living in contemporary megacities. These would not be the luxury spas and beauty salons that promise eternal youth for those who can afford them, nor the gay bathhouses of the world’s metropolises, but real public spaces: cheap, multi-purpose and accessible to all." - Jamie Mackay

Article: Why We Need to Bring Back the Art of Communal Bathing

History
We've relied on electric cars before.

Tumblr Page: Electric Car Charging Stations in Chicago, 1916

Related Article: By 1900, a Third of all Cars on the Road in the US Were Electric.

Communication, Packaging
Is this really the best way to sell a bar of shampoo?

One of the basic rules of positioning is this: if your audience doesn't understand your offer then compare it to something that they do understand. Thus automobiles were first called horseless-carriages.

And hence this effort to position bars of shampoo as "The Dissolving Bottle".

The concept has earned a lot of headlines. And as the idea was developed by an office of the BBDO ad agency, the idea, the campaign and videos likely cost a lot of money. But it begs a terribly embarrassing question: are we really this stupid? I mean, I get the idea of a bar of soap. The idea of bar of quality shampoo is hardly a leap. And leave out the artificial colors and corny headlines, please.

Website: The Dissolving Bottle

Related Article: Why The Next Big Haircare Brand Might Be Selling Showerheads, Not Shampoos

Visual Identity
A modern graphics palette for a modern bakery

Early in my career I worked for a whole grain bakery that served about 40 natural foods stores. It being the 70s, and being about whole foods our identity leaned on antique imagery of harvest.

This decade when Lineage Roasting of Orlando, FL evolved their offering to include a bakery they went clean and modern. They hired Poolboy to develop an elegantly simple identity that includes two smart icons, a sans-serif typeface, and a black and white color palette. They're using it consistently on point of purchase, packaging, retail environments and social media. Nice work.

Photo Essay: Lineage Bakery

One-liners

Article: Why buying stuff never makes you happy

Study: Black female science teachers find ways to incorporate anti-racist teaching into their classrooms.

Article: Report reveals that one in five London jobs now in the creative economy.

Article: Advertisers don’t want sites like Jezebel to exist.

Article: Meet the companies using AI to solve the world’s greatest environmental challenges.

Article: Children who use their bodies to shape letter sounds improve their spelling skills more than those who receive traditional classroom instruction, a study finds.

Playlist

Video: Digable Planets - Full Performance (Live on KEXP)

Digable Planets is a trio of rappers, Ishmael Butler (“Butterfly”), Craig Irving (“Doodlebug”) and Mary Ann Vieira (“Ladybug Mecca”). They released their first single, “Rebirth Of Slick (Cool Like Dat)” in 1993, a cut that went on to win a Grammy.

They named their first album Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time And Space), an effort that firmly established them as masters of the art of mixing jazz samples with complex rhymes.

This year the group is celebrating the 30th anniversary of Reachin’ with a tour. In August they played the THING Festival at Fort Warden in Port Townsend, Washington. KEXP recorded and posted the show. Given how timeless their groove is it is not surprising to hear how well their material has aged.

Website: Digable Planets

Weekly Mixtape
Mix a little Digable Planets with tunes that have been made since '93 and you appreciate both the timelessness of their music and its profound influence.

Playlist: Cool like dat

Image of the Week

Magic Wand, Indiana, by Ben Geier. This image is one of an ongoing gallery of neon signs on Behance called Viewing Hours: Neon Signs.

Geier is a designer and photographer who is inspired, in his words, by "travel, architecture, bright colors, abandoned relics, everything spooky, horror, and pop culture".

His portraits and landscapes of the natural world are beautiful. This ability to capture and convey the majesty and wonder of the planet makes his uncanny knack to frame the sheer absurdity of much our cultural and built environment especially powerful.

Behance Page: Ben Geier

Website: BenGeier.com

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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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