These are the charmed years when you can, if you so choose, become anything you wish ... [you] also have the opportunity to survey your alternatives -- not merely those current in your time or provided by careers, but those available to you as human beings. The importance of these years for an American cannot be overestimated. They are civilization's only chance to get to him.
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Philosopher Francis Bacon once said, “Knowledge is power.” Deep knowledge, it seems reasonable to say then, would be wisdom. “Mother Trees” bring knowledge and wisdom that can be accessed by everyone in our organization. In fact, a few hours before the dinner on May 7, Joan will be teaching a class for Zingerman’s staff who would like to come and learn from her.At the start of Finding the Mother Tree, Simard says,This is not a book about how we can save the trees.This is a book about how the trees might save us.Following Simard’s insightful lead, we too might do well to look more closely at how the words and wisdom of our organizational “Mother Trees” can help us to reground and see things in more effectively holistic ways. If you have a few minutes, you might reflect on who the “Mother Trees” are in your ecosystem, how you have learned from them, and how you can continue to learn from them for many years to come. Wisdom, cultural insight, and the long-term health of our organizations might well depend on them. Let me know what you learn!The people I’m thinking of as organizational “Mother Trees” here at Zingerman’s have been such positive influences on what we have done over the years. Like Joan Nathan, it’s hard to imagine the Zingerman’s Community without their influence. In Joan’s case, it’s with food and cooking. With Peter Block (who I was honored to have interview me last week in Cincinnati at a book event at 50 West Brewing Company), it’s philosophy and learning to lead without relying on power and authority. With Wendell Berry, it’s about understanding old-school agriculture, traditional ways of life in rural communities, and developing more holistic and more helpful ways to see the world. Grace Lee Boggs teaches me how to push for positive change, honor the humanity of everyone we meet, and stick with what we believe in even if others around us have not. There are others as well, but you get the idea. All of these people, these “Mother Trees,” have a presence that contributes to the quality of the work we do. And all of them, quietly, without drama, inform and inspire. As Suzanne Simard says:It’s not always about becoming bigger and better in a traditional or a visible way that we might measure as wealth, for example, or power. You know, the most powerful parts of our social systems can be the elder that has aged and is guiding younger people, or guiding their culture. And yet, they can be almost invisible in the hierarchy of our social system.The “Mother Trees” in our organizational ecosystems do just that. Their impact is almost invisible to an average onlooker, but their impact is, ultimately holistically, enormous. Suzanne Simard summed up all this in a 2017 journal article about Mother Trees, in which, she writes,Elders fill a special role in any community, having earned the respect of the tribe for their life-long wisdom, knowledge, and teaching. They help link individuals to the broader community as a whole, and connect the past with the future. Not all old individuals are elders, nor are all elders old. In my family, grandmothers and grandfathers usually filled the role of elders … connecting the family through the ages.…I have taken to calling these elders “Mother Trees” because they appear to be nurturing their young. Mother Trees thus connect the forest through space and time, just like elders connect human families across generations.As I’ve said, this strikes me as very much the role that Joan and the others I’ve listed above have played here over the years. In the spirit of which, Zingerman’s would be a different organization without her and without the wisdom from all these other wonderful “Mother Trees.” Their wisdom, I’m confident, will continue to inform what we do for decades to come. Thankfully for me and so many others, most of them record their thoughts in the form of books and articles. It’s a lovely coincidence I suppose that their deeply rooted philosophies and perspectives will be kept alive on paper—from trees—for centuries to come.Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin said in an interview the other day,Think about the people we want as our leaders, and just look at that as sort of a template … Humility … Empathy … Resilience … Accountability, kindness, compassion, and ambition for something larger than themselves not for themselves. Those are the leaders that have led us. And that means the citizens respect those kinds of leaders.
The beauty of Quin’s atlas comes from this sense of mystery achieved by revealing the known parts of the World according to the period of the map, with the rest of the World covered by thick, dark billowing clouds. With our knowledge of the World growing with each map the clouds withdraw a little further and more of the World is revealed.
Argue for the Proms to be strictly classical and you’re likely to be told to lighten up. Yet one cannot fail to notice that our countless pop and rock festivals feel no similar obligation to include classical artists in their line-ups: they do what they do, loud and proud. Endless debates about the Radio 3 schedules go over similar ground, pitting “fusty” purists against more chilled-out listeners who insist the station will die if it doesn’t adapt to changing times. Meanwhile, Radio 1 continues to do its own thing. I like an eclectic mix of music as much as the next person, but I feel it is legitimate to ask why only one type has to make all the concessions.It is a similar story in universities. Most music lecturers who were students in the 1980s and 1990s will have taken an academic degree course devoted entirely to classical music. By the 2000s a wide array of different types of music started to feature on the curriculum, and this diversification was seen by most as a good thing.We have reached a point where the pendulum has swung so far the other way that classical music is struggling to maintain a foothold at all on some university music courses. If any academic were to propose a degree course based entirely around classical music — and I imagine few would dare — they would be regarded as eccentric at best, politically dubious at worst.This is the nub of the embarrassment. Classical music is no longer simply something that people enjoy listening to, playing, studying and writing about; rather, it has been intensely politicised. The relentless elitism barbs have already done a great deal to turn people off classical music, but in recent years these historically illiterate insults have morphed into something even worse, as the elitism stereotype has merged with wider debates about equality in ways that are making the classical music world very edgy indeed.There is no reason why classical music shouldn’t appeal to people from all social backgrounds as it used to in the past ... It is downright insulting to suggest that classical music cannot speak to people from non-white backgrounds. Yet narratives that construct such music as the preserve of a privileged, white “elite” abound, and they are even hinted at, or even asserted explicitly, by the very institutions we would expect to be championing the arts.
The wonder of the worldThe beauty and the powerThe shapes of things,Their colours, light and shadesThese I saw,Look ye also while life lasts.
Steve points to Matthew Crawford's essay on AI's ability to alleviate the burden of thinking ...
Mechanized judgment resembles liberal proceduralism. It relies on our habit of deference to rules, and our suspicion of visible, personified authority. But its effect is to erode precisely those procedural liberties that are the great accomplishment of the liberal tradition, and to place authority beyond scrutiny. I mean “authority” in the broadest sense, including our interactions with outsized commercial entities that play a quasi-governmental role in our lives. That is the first problem. A second problem is that decisions made by algorithm are often not explainable, even by those who wrote the algorithm, and for that reason cannot win rational assent. This is the more fundamental problem posed by mechanized decision-making, as it touches on the basis of political legitimacy in any liberal regime.
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Mackinac Island is one of the few places in the U.S. where cars are prohibited. Electric bicycles, which are supposed to be limited to people with mobility challenges, have become common there, however, and critics say they’re going too fast.To help remedy the situation, The state Senate passed legislation Tuesday that would set speed limits as low as 10 miles per hour for electric bikes on the island. The bill passed on a bipartisan vote.
Noticing signs of spring is not confined to the scientifically minded, of course. It is an idea with a long provenance. Buddhist monks in Japan were recording the arrival of the cherry blossom as far back as the ninth century. Some of Marsham’s “data points” (such as the swallow and the cuckoo) have long held a place in popular lore and folk songs. The old English saying “Ne’er cast a clout till May be out” — a warning not to remove outer clothes too soon in the year — is usually supposed to refer to the month of May. But English May weather is highly variable, and it is more likely that the saying refers to the May tree, or hawthorn, which generally flowers at some point during that month (long after it has come into leaf). Whether it does so early or late is determined chiefly by the weather conditions, making it a more reliable index for an appropriate choice of dress than a calendar date.Robert Marsham’s project was handed down in the family and only came to a halt in 1958 when his great-great-great-granddaughter Mary died and her descendants were advised that their amateur contribution was no longer required, presumably judged to be no match for modern scientific methods. Despite its abrupt termination, it is the unbroken long run — 222 years — of Marsham’s “Indications of Spring” that gives it lasting scientific worth. There are a few patchy early records for places in the UK, but Marsham’s is the first truly systematic dataset, according to Tim Sparks, a professor of zoology and quantitative biology at the universities of Cambridge, Liverpool, and Poznań. “It is the longest such record for the UK and has been of immense value in determining the variability in spring and in its response to prevailing weather conditions. He inspired many others to do likewise.” Marsham’s record stretches back far enough that it can serve as a baseline for the investigation of changes that have already happened in the more recent past as well as for ongoing studies of the present situation.One merit of Marsham’s idea is surely that it is so easily grasped. You do not need to be a scientist to understand his results — or to begin recording your own data. In the mid-nineteenth century, the observation of seasonal changes in nature acquired its own name — phenology — as the gentleman scientists of the Victorian age began to add their contributions. Today, Marsham’s pioneering work inspires successor projects around the world, many of them examples of “citizen science”, relying on the participation of members of the public.
Being attentive to little things that others might miss, Meyerowitz makes clear, is a skill we can work to master. It’s not, though, an exact science. As Meyerowitz says, “Be open to your own intuition and instincts and you will find your way.” What your way will reveal, I can’t know, but I do know that when we’re tuned in we start to see a wealth of amazing things that are all around us. Interesting insights may well ensue. As Meyerowitz says,At any given moment there is the possibility to say “Ah!” You catch your breath. You are inspired. You are at that moment suddenly feeling alive and awake. Some connection with the whole, has pressed itself to your senses. In that moment, there’s the tiniest little change—so tiny, it’s been smothered by all the energy around you—at that moment you stop.Meyerowitz shares a great example that came from his time in Paris many years ago. As he sets the scene: “You’re walking down the street and all of a sudden you come to this sweet spot where you catch the smell of a buttery croissant.” I can certainly relate and maybe you can as well. You notice the subtle smell, and in a wonderful way, it calls to you. But then, Meyerowitz reminds us, the logical mind might likely kick in: You probably weren’t looking for a croissant. Maybe you already ate breakfast earlier, and stopping to see more might make you a few minutes late for your meeting. The tendency for most of us, then, would simply be to keep walking. As Meyerowitz says, “You take two steps and it is gone!” Our mind is quickly occupied by other things. Meyerowitz suggests we do the opposite. We would do well, he says, to back up and follow our nose. Go closer. Explore. Learn more. What we find just might change our lives.
