Relaxing.

Easy Company relaxing at Hitler’s mountain retreat on VE Day, May 8, 1945 ...

Revolt.

Thanks, Kurt.

Happy Birthday, Hume

Ramsay, David Hume, 1754

Where we often find the one side excusing any seeming absurdity in the ancients from the manners of the age, and the other refusing to admit this excuse, or at least, admitting it only as an apology for the author, not for the performance. In my opinion, the proper boundaries in this subject have seldom been fixed between the contending parties. Where any innocent peculiarities of manners are represented, such as those above mentioned, they ought certainly to be admitted; and a man, who is shocked with them, gives an evident proof of false delicacy and refinement. The poet's monument more durable than brass, must fall to the ground like common brick or clay, were men to make no allowance for the continual revolutions of manners and customs, and would admit of nothing but what was suitable to the prevailing fashion. Must we throw aside the pictures of our ancestors, because of their ruffs and fardingales? But where the ideas of morality and decency alter from one age to another, and where vicious manners are described, without being marked with the proper characters of blame and disapprobation; this must be allowed to disfigure the poem, and to be a real deformity. I cannot, nor is it proper I should, enter into such sentiments; and however I may excuse the poet, on account of the manners in his age, I never can relish the composition. The want of humanity and of decency, so conspicuous in the characters drawn by several of the ancient poets, even sometimes by HOMER and the GREEK tragedians, diminishes considerably the merit of their noble performances, and gives modern authors an advantage over them. We are not interested in the fortunes and sentiments of such rough heroes: We are displeased to find the limits of vice and virtue so much confounded: And whatever indulgence we may give to the writer on account of his prejudices, we cannot prevail on ourself to enter into his sentiments, or bear an affection to characters, which we plainly discover to be blameable.

David Hume, born on this day in 1711, from "Of the Standard of Taste"

Happy Birthday, Brahms

Johannes Brahms was born on this day in 1812. 

Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducts Concentus Musicus Wien in a performance of the Requiem, Op. 45 ...

John Coltrane, "Giant Steps"

McCoy Tyner performs ...

Advances.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.  If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now, put the foundations under them.

Henry David Thoreau, from Walden

Paul Weller, "Above the Clouds"

Irreplaceable.

Paul Auster discusses time, choice and consequences, and the wonderful, irreplaceable privacy of reading ...

Mightn't've.

If I'd been a cowboy, it might've ended well.

Somewhere on the ramble, I'm sure I'd have to sell

My guns along the highway. My coins to the table

To make a gambler's double, I'd double debts to pay.

Prob'ly shrink and slink away, It mightn't've ended well.

What If I'd been a sailor? I think it might've ended well.

From August to May

For a searat of man drifting through eternal blue, aboard the finest Debris.

I might've called the shanties. From daybreak to storm's set, lines stay Taught, over rhythm unbroken.

But, oh, there's a schism unspoken, a mighty calling of the lee.

An absentminded Pirate, unaccustomed to the sea;

To the land, a traitor. I think it mightn't've ended well.

What might've worked for me? What might've ended well?

Soldier, to bloody sally forth through hell?

Teacher of glorious stories to tell?

Man of gold, or stores to sell?

Lover to a gentle belle?

Maybe a camel;

A seashell.

What mightn't've been a life where it mightn't've ended well?

Dylan Thomas

Journey.

Kurt points to "the mashed up and remixed tongue of the human race"...

It is not governed by rules or laws. It’s restless and often violent, with a streak of ugliness, of puritanism mixed with hooliganism, kept barely under control. The journey is always about personal freedom, but triumph over external tyranny only begins the struggle against oneself.

Useless.

Paul Auster on the value of uselessness ...

Art is useless, at least when compared, say, to the work of a plumber, or a doctor, or a railroad engineer. But is uselessness a bad thing? Does a lack of practical purpose mean that books and paintings and string quartets are simply a waste of our time? Many people think so. But I would argue that it is the very uselessness of art that gives it its value and that the making of art is what distinguishes us from all other creatures who inhabit this planet, that it is, essentially, what defines us as human beings.

To do something for the pure pleasure and beauty of doing it. Think of the effort involved, the long hours of practice and discipline required to become an accomplished pianist or dancer. All the suffering and hard work, all the sacrifices in order to achieve something that is utterly and magnificently…useless.

Happy Birthday, McCulloch

Ian McCulloch was born on this day in 1959.

"Honey Drip" ...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Released.

The Style Council released Home & Abroad on this day in 1986.

"My Ever Changing Moods" ...

Released.

Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers released Hard Promises on this day in 1981.

"A Thing about You" ...

Own.

You either learn your way towards writing your own script in life, or you unwittingly become an actor in someone else’s script.

John Taylor Gatto, from Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

Pass.

However tiresome to others, the most indefatigable orator is never tedious to himself. The sound of his own voice never loses its harmony to his own ear; and among the delusions, which self-love is ever assiduous in attempting to pass upon virtue, he fancies himself to be sounding the sweetest tones.

John Quincy Adams

Studying.

Kaufmann, Man Studying Torah, 1925

When, during the Hadrian persecution, the sages of Lydda met to debate the most pressing problems facing their imperiled community, one of those at the head of their list was: "Is studying more important or doing?"

Thanks, Kurt.

Telemann, Fantasia No.6 in D Minor, TWV 40:7

Dylan King performs on the tuba ...

Unlearned.

My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.

William Golding

A few months back, Kurt pointed to malignant narcissism and the manifestation of unlearned lessons.

Alone.

Firchau, The Rockhouse Trail, 2024

The PRAIRIES

  These are the gardens of the Desert, these

The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,

For which the speech of England has no name—

The Prairies. I behold them for the first,

And my heart swells, while the dilated sight

Takes in the encircling vastness. Lo! they stretch,

In airy undulations, far away,

As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell,

Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed,

And motionless forever. —Motionless?—

No—they are all unchained again. The clouds

Sweep over with their shadows, and, beneath,

The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye;

Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase

The sunny ridges. Breezes of the South!

Who toss the golden and the flame-like flowers,

And pass the prairie-hawk that, poised on high,

Flaps his broad wings, yet moves not—ye have played

Among the palms of Mexico and vines

Of Texas, and have crisped the limpid brooks

That from the fountains of Sonora glide

Into the calm Pacific—have ye fanned

A nobler or a lovelier scene than this?

Man hath no power in all this glorious work:

The hand that built the firmament hath heaved

And smoothed these verdant swells, and sown their slopes

With herbage, planted them with island groves,

And hedged them round with forests. Fitting floor

For this magnificent temple of the sky—

With flowers whose glory and whose multitude

Rival the constellations! The great heavens

Seem to stoop down upon the scene in love,—

A nearer vault, and of a tenderer blue,

Than that which bends above our eastern hills.

 

  As o’er the verdant waste I guide my steed,

Among the high rank grass that sweeps his sides

The hollow beating of his footsteps seems

A sacrilegious sound. I think of those

Upon whose rest he tramples. Are they here—

The dead of other days?—and did the dust

Of these fair solitudes once stir with life

And burn with passion? Let the mighty mounds

That overlook the rivers, or that rise

In the dim forest crowded with old oaks,

Answer. A race, that long has passed away,

Built them;—a disciplined and populous race

Heaped, with long toil, the earth, while yet the Greek

Was hewing the Pentelicus to forms

Of symmetry, and rearing on its rock

The glittering Parthenon. These ample fields

Nourished their harvest, here their herds were fed,

When haply by their stalls the bison lowed,

And bowed his maned shoulder to the yoke.

All day this desert murmured with their toils,

Till twilight blushed, and lovers walked, and wooed

In a forgotten language, and old tunes,

From instruments of unremembered form,

Gave the soft winds a voice. The red man came—

The roaming hunter tribes, warlike and fierce,

And the mound-builders vanished from the earth.

The solitude of centuries untold

Has settled where they dwelt. The prairie-wolf

Hunts in their meadows, and his fresh-dug den

Yawns by my path. The gopher mines the ground

Where stood their swarming cities. All is gone;

All—save the piles of earth that hold their bones,

The platforms where they worshipped unknown gods,

The barriers which they builded from the soil

To keep the foe at bay—till o’er the walls

The wild beleaguerers broke, and, one by one,

The strongholds of the plain were forced, and heaped

With corpses. The brown vultures of the wood

Flocked to those vast uncovered sepulchres,

And sat unscared and silent at their feast.

Haply some solitary fugitive,

Lurking in marsh and forest, till the sense

Of desolation and of fear became

Bitterer than death, yielded himself to die.

Man’s better nature triumphed then. Kind words

Welcomed and soothed him; the rude conquerors

Seated the captive with their chiefs; he chose

A bride among their maidens, and at length

Seemed to forget—yet ne’er forgot—the wife

Of his first love, and her sweet little ones,

Butchered, amid their shrieks, with all his race.

 

  Thus change the forms of being. Thus arise

Races of living things, glorious in strength,

And perish, as the quickening breath of God

Fills them, or is withdrawn. The red man, too,

Has left the blooming wilds he ranged so long,

And, nearer to the Rocky Mountains, sought

A wilder hunting-ground. The beaver builds

No longer by these streams, but far away,

On waters whose blue surface ne’er gave back

The white man’s face—among Missouri’s springs,

And pools whose issues swell the Oregon—

He rears his little Venice. In these plains

The bison feeds no more. Twice twenty leagues

Beyond remotest smoke of hunter’s camp,

Roams the majestic brute, in herds that shake

The earth with thundering steps—yet here I meet

His ancient footprints stamped beside the pool.

 

  Still this great solitude is quick with life.

Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers

They flutter over, gentle quadrupeds,

And birds, that scarce have learned the fear of man,

Are here, and sliding reptiles of the ground,

Startlingly beautiful. The graceful deer

Bounds to the wood at my approach. The bee,

A more adventurous colonist than man,

With whom he came across the eastern deep,

Fills the savannas with his murmurings,

And hides his sweets, as in the golden age,

Within the hollow oak. I listen long

To his domestic hum, and think I hear

The sound of that advancing multitude

Which soon shall fill these deserts. From the ground

Comes up the laugh of children, the soft voice

Of maidens, and the sweet and solemn hymn

Of Sabbath worshippers. The low of herds

Blends with the rustling of the heavy grain

Over the dark brown furrows. All at once

A fresher winds sweeps by, and breaks my dream,

And I am in the wilderness alone.

William Cullen Bryant

Challenge.

America is a grand example of the Biblical challenge: what does it profit an empire to gain the whole world and lose its soul?

Rev. Dr. Cornel West

Content.

If you ever happen to turn your attention to externals, for the pleasure of anyone, be assured that you have ruined your scheme of life. Be content, then, in everything, with being a philosopher; and if you wish to seem so likewise to anyone, appear so to yourself, and it will suffice you.

Epictetus, from The Enchiridion, Chapter XXIII

Love.

van Gogh, Self-Portrait, 1887

I’m always inclined to believe that the best way of knowing [the divine] is to love a great deal. Love that friend, that person, that thing, whatever you like, you’ll be on the right path to knowing more thoroughly, afterwards; that’s what I say to myself. But you must love with a high, serious intimate sympathy, with a will, with intelligence, and you must always seek to know more thoroughly, better, and more.

Vincent van Gogh, from a letter to his brother, Theo, June 1880

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

Courage.

We've forgotten that a rich life consists, most importantly, in serving others – trying to leave the world a little better than you found it. We need the courage to question the powers that be, the courage to be impatient with evil and patient with people, the courage to fight for social justice. In many instances we will be stepping out on nothing, and just hoping to land on something. But that's the struggle. To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.

 Reverend Dr. Cornel West

Released.

Echo & The Bunnymen released Ocean Rain on this day in 1984.

"My Kingdom" ...

Rothko.

Everywhere.

A delicate fabric of bird song

  Floats in the air,

The smell of wet wild earth

  Is everywhere.

Red small leaves of the maple

  Are clenched like a hand,

Like girls at their first communion

  The pear trees stand.

Oh I must pass nothing by

  Without loving it much,

The raindrop try with my lips,

  The grass with my touch;

For how can I be sure

  I shall see again

The world on the first of May

  Shining after the rain?

Sara Teasdale

Jethro Tull, "Beltane"

Mozart, Bassoon Concerto B-Flat Major, K.191

Katrin Lazar performs with the Barocksolisten München ...

Happy Birthday, Beaux

Beaux, Half-Tide, Annisquam River, 1905

Never was a word more abused than "technique." To many "technique" means the purely mechanical, material side of a work, something generally found to be hard, shiny, even vulgar. Just now, to be clumsy is to be admired. Indeed bungling is much in fashion. And if one does not bungle naturally, one may easily learn how to do it from the experts.  But the true definition of "technique" is very simple. A perfect technique in anything only means that there has been no break in continuity between thought and the act of performance.

Cecilia Beaux, born on this day in 1855

Paying.

Nathan Heller on paying attention to what matters ...

“Attention as a category isn’t that salient for younger folks,” Jac Mullen, a writer and a high-school teacher in New Haven, told me recently. “It takes a lot to show that how you pay attention affects the outcome—that if you focus your attention on one thing, rather than dispersing it across many things, the one thing you think is hard will become easier—but that’s a level of instruction I often find myself giving.” It’s not the students’ fault, he thinks; multitasking and its euphemism, “time management,” have become goals across the pedagogic field. The SAT was redesigned this spring to be forty-five minutes shorter, with many reading-comprehension passages trimmed to two or three sentences. Some Ivy League professors report being counselled to switch up what they’re doing every ten minutes or so to avoid falling behind their students’ churn. What appears at first to be a crisis of attention may be a narrowing of the way we interpret its value: an emergency about where—and with what goal—we look.

The process ...

Knauss eyed some passersby. “The first seven-minute phase is known as Encounter,” she said. “I think of it as entering a party. First, you take a look around the scene.” On arriving at the action site, the Birds wander. The subject of an action is rarely, if ever, identified in advance, but usually it is the most desperate-looking work in sight. (“In a museum, it will be, like, the painting next to the bathroom or on the wall opposite the ‘Mona Lisa,’ ” Burnett told me.) The work is unnamed because the Birds are supposed to find it by paying attention. Those who don’t can follow the flock.

Next comes Attending, announced by the first bell. “At the party, that’s when you maybe settle into conversation with someone,” Knauss explained. The Birds line up before the work, side by side, in what is known as the phalanx. For seven minutes, they silently give the work their full attention. Three things are discouraged during this period, Knauss told me. “One is what we call studium”—analysis from study. Another is interpretation, and the third is judgment. If Birds find a work offensive (or simply bad), they’re meant to put aside that response. Alyssa Loh, Burnett’s partner, who is also a Bird, told me that she understands the injunctions as a guard against the ways that people shut down their attention. “There’s a question you often hear in relation to art objects: What is it for and what do you do with it?” she said. “In the Bird practice, we mostly answer that in negatives—you can’t ‘solve’ it, can’t decide if it’s good, can’t victoriously declare that you have correctly identified its origins or that it’s an example of an eighteenth-century whatever.” You just keep attending.

The second bell heralds the start of Negation, a phase in which Birds try to clear the object from their minds. Some lie down; some close their eyes. At the third bell, seven minutes later, the group reconvenes in the phalanx for Realizing.

Knauss said, “A good way to think of Realizing is the question: What does the work need ?” In some cases, the answer may be concrete—to be moved to a nearby wall—but it is often abstract. Perhaps a sculpture needs children climbing on it. “It might need you to hear its song,” Knauss somewhat mysteriously noted. At the final bell, the Birds disperse. “Leave the scene, find somewhere quiet to sit, and write down your experience of the four phases,” Knauss said.

A short while later, they meet up, usually in a café, for Colloquy, in which they take turns describing what they went through, distractions and all. Some Birds consider Colloquy the most important stage; it distinguishes their approach from “mindfulness” and other solo pursuits. The discussion can take on an uncanny charge. “It’s unusual to spend so much time in a small group looking at one thing, and even more unusual to talk about your impressions to the point of the ultra-thin vibrations and the associations they give rise to,” a Bird named Adam Jasper, an assistant professor of architectural history at the Chinese University in Hong Kong, told me. “With people I’ve Birded with more than a few times, I know more about how they work emotionally and mentally than I have any right to.” The writer Brad Fox described the experience as “seeing people at their best.”

Knauss, checking her phone, seemed suddenly in a hurry. “I’m going to leave you,” she said. “But first there’s a tradition that I give you this.” She pulled a piece of saffron-colored cloth from one of her belt loops, tore off a strip, and handed it to me. It was how the Birds recognized one another, she said.

Happy Birthday, Duke

Somehow, I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself—he’d appreciate the combination of spirit and informality, of knowledge and humor, all the elements that go into a great jazz performance. And I am sure he would agree with the simple and axiomatic statement that is so important to all of us—when it sounds good, it is good.

Duke Ellington, born on this day in 1899

"It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" ...

Alternatives.

Allan Bloom, speaking at DePauw University, September 11, 1987 ...

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.

Process.

The unforeseen is the most beautiful gift life can give us. That is what we must think of multiplying in our domain. Art is inconceivable without risk, without inner sacrifice; freedom and boldness of imagination can be won only in the process of work, and it is there the unforeseen I spoke of a moment ago must intervene, and there no directives can help.

Boris Pasternak

Mac.

Healthy.

Mr. Wade lists the elements of a healthy temperament ...

• Courage and Kindness
• Patience and Urgency
• Range and Focus
• Feeling and Detachment
• Curiosity and Indifference
• Thought and Action

Great list.  

I would add listening and speaking out.

Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, "Emperor"

Alina Bercu performs with the Orchestra of the Liszt University, under the direction of Nicolás Pasquet ...

Devotion.

van Eyck, Man in a Red Turban, 1433

Steve has data on college regrets.

I thoroughly enjoyed over twenty-five years in the food service industry (I miss it like an addict) which overlapped into my career as a teacher, which I have been aspiring to for twenty years.  I was kicked out of college twice before I finally figured myself out. My undergraduate degrees in the History of Art and Historic Preservation of Architecture have made every single day of my life full and more greatly appreciated.  Any success I have enjoyed in my personal and professional lives is due to my training and continued devotion to the arts.  

Shimmering.

Light’s hand is swift, its penmanship

neat and precise. It jotted down a memo

on this square of paper, then left it behind,

a lost list of shadows burned by a paper clip

rusting away. Five men in half-light,

standing under the roof of an open porch,

holding a string of dead mallards.

One man grins and points at the camera,

his fingertip bright as a spark, reaching out,

touching the shimmering film of the future.

Ted Kooser

Connect.

Ari Weinzweig on Mother Trees ...

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.

Bach, Cello Suite No.2 in D Minor, BWV 1008

Yo-Yo Ma performs the Prelude ...

Revealed.

Hall, The Deluge, 1830

The Bodleian Map Room explores Edward Quin's 1830 atlas ...

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.

Interest-Free.

Thanks, Ann.

Image.

A woman I know says that to look at the Sleeping Bear late in the day is to feel the same emotion that comes when you listen to Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto, and she is entirely right. The message is the same. The only trouble is that you have to compose a planet, or great music, to say it persuasively. Maybe man–some men, anyway–was made in the image of God, after all.

Bruce Catton, from Waiting for the Morning Train

Help.

A rabbi was asked by one of his students “Why did God create atheists?” After a long pause, the rabbi finally responded with a soft but sincere voice. “God created atheists” he said, “to teach us the most important lesson of them all – the lesson of true compassion. You see, when an atheist performs an act of charity, visits someone who is sick, helps someone in need, and cares for the world, he is not doing so because of some religious teaching. He does not believe that God commanded him to perform this act. In fact, he does not believe in God at all, so his actions are based on his sense of morality. Look at the kindness he bestows on others simply because he feels it to be right. When someone reaches out to you for help. You should never say "I’ll pray that God will help you."  Instead, for that moment, you should become an atheist – imagine there is no God who could help, and say "I will help you."

Martin Buber

Thank you, Karen.