Changing Places

Good article in the Atlantic on the financial crisis — worth a read.

The Quiet Coup – The Atlantic (May 2009).

As more and more of the rich made their money in finance, the cult of finance seeped into the culture at large. Works like Barbarians at the Gate, Wall Street, and Bonfire of the Vanities—all intended as cautionary tales—served only to increase Wall Street’s mystique. Michael Lewis noted in Portfolio last year that when he wrote Liar’s Poker, an insider’s account of the financial industry, in 1989, he had hoped the book might provoke outrage at Wall Street’s hubris and excess. Instead, he found himself “knee-deep in letters from students at Ohio State who wanted to know if I had any other secrets to share. … They’d read my book as a how-to manual.” Even Wall Street’s criminals, like Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky, became larger than life. In a society that celebrates the idea of making money, it was easy to infer that the interests of the financial sector were the same as the interests of the country—and that the winners in the financial sector knew better what was good for America than did the career civil servants in Washington. Faith in free financial markets grew into conventional wisdom—trumpeted on the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal and on the floor of Congress.

From this confluence of campaign finance, personal connections, and ideology there flowed, in just the past decade, a river of deregulatory policies that is, in hindsight, astonishing:

• insistence on free movement of capital across borders;
• the repeal of Depression-era regulations separating commercial and investment banking;
• a congressional ban on the regulation of credit-default swaps;
• major increases in the amount of leverage allowed to investment banks;
• a light (dare I say invisible?) hand at the Securities and Exchange Commission in its regulatory enforcement;
• an international agreement to allow banks to measure their own riskiness;
• and an intentional failure to update regulations so as to keep up with the tremendous pace of financial innovation.

The mood that accompanied these measures in Washington seemed to swing between nonchalance and outright celebration: finance unleashed, it was thought, would continue to propel the economy to greater heights.

…

The conventional wisdom among the elite is still that the current slump “cannot be as bad as the Great Depression.” This view is wrong. What we face now could, in fact, be worse than the Great Depression—because the world is now so much more interconnected and because the banking sector is now so big. We face a synchronized downturn in almost all countries, a weakening of confidence among individuals and firms, and major problems for government finances. If our leadership wakes up to the potential consequences, we may yet see dramatic action on the banking system and a breaking of the old elite. Let us hope it is not then too late.

From the SF Weekly:

It was midway through the Tom Morello hootenanny when Rage’s shredding machine grinned at the crowd and said, “Let me remind you, you all paid $15 to get in tonight. That’s like a buck a superstar.”

Actually, if you were gonna do the math, by the end of the night, we’d been entertained by Morello and his Freedom Fighter Orchestra, Steve Earle, Wayne Kramer of the MC5, Sammy Freakin’ Hagar, Boots Riley of The Coup, Corey Taylor of Slipknot (sans mask of course), Joe Satriani, and Damian Kulash of OK Go, so technically it came out to something like $1.87 a superstar. But really, everyone at Slim’s was too busy pounding fists with fierce excitement to remember exactly how much they’d spent to get in. No matter the cost, they were getting their pennies’ worth–both in the energy the audience fed to the stage to the goodwill the headliners shot back at their fans. There was a lot of love in the room, man (and a lot of men in the room). Not to mention a lot of dollar bills that went to a righteous cause, thanks to the activist concept behind Morello’s Justice Tour, a singular concert that has you leaving feeling real good.
The political thrust behind these tours is, as Morello explained, to “bail out people, not banks.” An alternate version of this mantra, which he also espoused during the three-hour long show: “Feed the poor, fight the war, rock the fuck out.”

The Rage/Audioslave/Nightwatchman succeeded on pulling off all fronts last night. He gathered together a gaggle of rock gods during the day to personally wrap and hand out burritos with Project Open Hand, a San Francisco organization that feeds the needy, and one that received 100 percent of the ticket sales for last night’s show (plus all the $1, $5, and $10 bills people stuffed in its coffers by the end of the night at Morello’s repeated suggestions). But equally importantly, he also gathered those same ax slingers to get rowdy from the stage at night…

I am stuffing my face with a warm snickerdoodle from Specialty Bakery. OMG, so good, must I go home? Sigh…

I suppose it will be best for my waistline, at least. And I am eating this after devouring a delicious roast turkey sandwich, also from Specialty.

Perhaps I could learn to make these, but — it would probably be best I didn’t. They are way too good…

Got to see a very cool show at Slim’s last night for our last night in San Francisco — best concert ever for $15!
Well, actually we paid for the dinner show, and dinner was great, too — steak and teriyaki chicken, quite good. So many cool performers, and all for charity, too:

The Justice Tour w/ Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman
Steve Earle
Wayne Kramer
Boots Riley (from The Coup)
Corey Taylor (Slipknot / Stone Sour)
Joe Satriani

***The special guests for this evening include: Steve Earle, Wayne Kramer, Boots Riley (from the Coup) & Corey Taylor (Slipknot/Stone Sour)*** (plus surprise guest Sammy Hagar!!!)

Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine released the solo album, “The Fabled City,” on September 30th, 2008 via Epic Records. The 11-song set is the anticipated follow up to the 2007 The Nightwatchman debut “One Man Revolution.” Now being billed as Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman, the album is the first release to bear the political and social activist’s birth name. “The Fabled City” was produced by Brendan O’Brien (Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam) and features appearances by System Of A Down’s Serj Tankian and Shooter Jennings.

In addition to his career as a critically acclaimed solo artist, Tom Morello is a founding member and guitarist of the rock bands Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave. The two bands are responsible for multiple Grammy Awards and a combined 30 million albums sold worldwide. Widely known for his unique voice as a master electric guitarist, his compositions as Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman have been primarily based around the acoustic guitar. However, as his Myspace page firmly states, “You don’t have to be loud, son, to be heavy as shit,” and the stories and sounds presented throughout the album showcases a depth and intelligence rarely heard in the modern musical climate surrounding it. With more complex electric arrangements than displayed on “One Man Revolution,” “The Fabled City” is the synthesis of his groundbreaking work as an innovative rock guitarist and revolutionary acoustic troubadour.

This special evening benefits Axis of Justice, a non-profit organization formed by Tom and Serj Tankian. Its purpose is to bring together musicians, fans of music, and grassroots political organizations to fight for social justice. “We aim to build a bridge between fans of music around the world and local political organizations to effectively organize around issues of peace, human rights, and economic justice.”

We had a great time, and it was neat to finally get to go to Slim’s, which I’ve wanted to do forever, having been a Boz Scaggs fan from my teen years on. So I feel like my trip here has been simply awesome now.

In David’s case, this feeling was brought on by being on a plane, but this is pretty much how I feel about TV most of the time…

Via Wondermark:

With my ear against the headrest, the entire airplane resonates. I bring work onto airplanes, my dear Internet, but it is impossible to think in here. Even watching television becomes a chore. Since when has watching television been a chore? Since we started to feel compelled to appreciate things. I do not like wasting time. I do not like watching things that I cannot appreciate. Everything is exhausting, now, even watching television. This time, I can’t manage it.

Off to the SF MOMA mueseum cafe for lunch, then more SF explorations!

I’ve struggled a lot with perfectionism in all kinds of things, even became an engineer and programmer in part because it was a place where my perfectionism actually paid off for me. But what I’ve learned in doing software and business process work is your process is never going to be perfect, so the way to get better is to do more of whatever it is that is working for you, and less of the things that don’t work for you and your business. It applies also to art and to all kinds of things you may do in your life.

Letting go of the need to be perfect, letting yourself make mistakes and giving yourself the space to make them, is what lets you develop and grow in your ability to do more and more. Roz’s points here aren’t just on journaling, but also on a creative approach to living your life in ways that encourage your creativity and abilities.

Via “Roz Wound Up”:

Here’s one way people get caught. They confuse art journals or art books or artists books with visual journals. An art journal over time, because of the word “art” in the naming, tends to take on a certain importance and preciousness. The maker begins to see it as art and as art the book has to be important, special…and all the related baggage those thoughts lead to.

The urge, need, and desire for profundity creeps in—only now it’s a need applied to technique. “If only I could sketch like [fill in the name of the artist whose work you admire],” “If only I had control of [fill in the medium you wish you had better skills with],” “If only I could [draw, understand color theory, grasp notan, etc.].”

If your skills are highly developed and you have a style or approach and each page you produce is a stunning work of art don’t change a thing. You’re producing and it’s working for you. Great. We all know artists like that.

For me, those books aren’t working journals in the way I need my journal to function. I don’t want the same things. If I want to do a finished piece I’ll do it outside my journal. Then it’s much easier for me to display it, reproduce it for print, etc.

I need to experiment in my journal, constantly, all the time. It’s the experimentation that moves me forward. It is this need to experiment that has moved me forward my whole journaling life, which started when I was a child.

The risk taking involved in this approach is play for me. And the results don’t matter because I’m the audience and what matters is the process, not the finished product. The process is happening now; I’m learning from the process and it’s all good, even if the pages aren’t “perfect.”

…You are starting where you are, right now. That’s a wonderful gift. It’s a gift you get to open everyday, each time you open your journal, and you begin that conversation between yourself and the page.

Each time you hold that conversation the dialog deepens, the vocabulary expands, the felicity increases, the dance becomes more effortless. Everything else falls away. That’s the perfection.

“The great thing about collecting words is they’re free; you can borrow them, trade them in, or toss them out. Words are lightweight, unbreakable, portable, and they’re everywhere.”

– Poemcrazy, Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge

Garden writing is often very tame, a real waste when you think how opinionated, inquisitive, irreverent and lascivious gardeners themselves tend to be. Nobody talks much about the muscular limbs, dark, swollen buds, strip-tease trees and unholy beauty that have made us all slaves of the Goddess Flora. ~Ketzel Levine

Off to the SF MOMA! I can see it from my hotel window right now. I also overlook the Yerba Buena Gardens, which are gorgeous. Pics later, maybe (forgot to bring the computer cable, duh.) Also very tired from shopping yesterday, and hardly bought a thing. But had a good time, anyway. I did get a cute litte tiny Japanese-made notebook with a neko (cat) on it, which will be handy for collecting words. Here’s my poem from yesterday afternoon while sitting at the Samovar Tea Lounge drinking Schizandra Berry Herbal Infusion Tea and eating cracked wheat rooibos shortbread, a lavender butter cookie, and an oat crumble
mini-cake:

Samovar Tea Lounge
In Yerba Buena Gardens
Berry Tea and Cookies!

I’ve written about Ada Lovelace in a book I wrote 12 years ago on the Internet for Girls. (never published, unfortunately, and sadly out of date now….). I also have a friend who named his daughter Ada after Ada Lovelace. We don’t often remember the women who were important to technological and scientific developments, and this is sad since so many young girls are still discouraged from entering scientific and technical fields. So, even if you don’t know about Ada Lovelace, consider finding out about her and posting a blog post today! Do it for a girl you know who just might want to consider a career in science, math, engineering or technology!

Pledge “AdaLovelaceDay”

“I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if 1,000 other people will do the same.”

— Suw Charman-Anderson (contact)

Deadline to sign up by: 24th March 2009

376 people have signed up, 624 more needed

More details

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements.

It doesn’t matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, or what you normally blog about – everyone is invited to take part. All you need to do is sign up to this pledge and then publish your blog post any time on Tuesday 24th March 2009. If you’re going to be away that day, feel free to write your post in advance and set your blogging system to publish it that day.

We will gather as many of the posts together on the day as we can, and we’ll let you know exactly how we’re going to do that nearer the time. For ongoing updates about Ada Lovelace day, please follow us on Twitter, join our mailing list or see our blog.

http://findingada.com/

http://twitter.com/FindingAda

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/findingada

Who was Ada?

Ada Lovelace was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programmes for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.

via ‘I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire’ – PledgeBank.

Ada Lovelace Day at The Science Museum
As you may know, The Science Museum has a reconstruction of
Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine on display, which is worth
a visit on its own. But on 24th March the museum is putting on
a special treat: Ada herself will be will be walking the floors
throughout the museum, telling her story.

Visit http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/ for more information,
especially on the day as an article about Ada by Tilly Blyth,
the computing curator, will be featured on the front page.

Computer Weekly is  featuring Ada Lovelace Day in the magazine, and
will be blogging as well. So take a look if you see it on the
news stands, or visit their website and the WITsend blog:

http://www.computerweekly.com/

Ada Lovelace Day on Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/groups/adalovelaceday/

“She said she usually cried at least once each day not because she was sad, but because the world was so beautiful and life was so short.
Brian Andreas”

via Silent K

SF is gorgeous today — off to explore and shop….

Darwin was full of win today, and covered in awesome sauce — he passed his Therapy Dogs International test with flying colors, and will now be an internationally certified therapy dog! Yay!

Also,  I’m off to San Francisco for the week, so blogging will be light if at all.  See you soon!

Please support Darwin (and me) for PAWS in the Park if you have a bit to spare!

We’re getting ready for the Escondido Humane Society’s Paws in the Park 2009 walk! Thank you for your support of my walk to raise funding and awareness for animals in need.

The Escondido Humane Society (EHS) cares for thousands of homeless, abused, neglected or abandoned animals every year. As a nonprofit organization, they depend upon animal lovers like us to support their lifesaving work. Animals cannot ask for help themselves – but animal lovers like you and I can ask on their behalf, and together, we can give them what they need and deserve.

This year has been difficult on so many, and animals are no different. More and more animals come to shelters every year, and it’s in times like these that they need us the most. Even if you cannot give as much as you would like to, know that every bit that you give makes a difference in the life of an animal. 100% of your donation to sponsor our walk at Paws in the Park cares for the animals at the Escondido Humane Society, who will transform your gift into safe shelter, healthy food, medical care, and TLC for an animal who truly needs us.

Think of an animal who has made a difference in your life, and do what you can to help other animals just like him or her. Please sponsor me as I walk in honor of all animals who need and deserve our support! Your gift is fully tax-deductible (Escondido Humane Society’s Tax ID #95-1661662), and will do so much good for dogs, cats, and all companion animals who need our help. Together, with other walkers, we hope to raise $100,000 for animals at the Escondido Humane Society. Join me today in saving lives – four paws at a time!

http://www.firstgiving.com/donnawoodka

*** Message from Donna ***

Please support me and the Escondido Humane Society for Paws in the Park 2009!

About Donating Online
————————
Donating through firstgiving.com is simple, fast and totally secure. It is also the most efficient way to support Donna Woodka’s fundraising efforts.

“Among the Mattole, conduct toward waves is prescribed: The water watches you and has a definite attitude, favorable or otherwise, toward you. Do not speak just before a wave breaks. Do not speak to passing rough water in a stream. Do not look at water very long for any one time, unless you have been to this spot ten times or more.

Then the water is used to you and does not mind if you’re looking at it. Older men can talk in the presence of the water because they have been about it so long that the water knows them. Until the water at any one spot does know you, however, it becomes very rough if you talk in its presence or look at it too long.”

And if it is salmon that chooses to lead some of us back to our immersion in the natural world, then our first order of business must be the survival of the salmon, the health of the waters.

– Freeman House, Totem Salmon

Days and nights, summers and winters.
Waves curling up, consumed by new waves.
The ongoing march of generations,
The vapor of water congealing into clouds -
Tao is cyclical, not linear.

The multitude of things are innumerable,
But they travel circularly.
Those who accord with Tao
Understand rise and fall
And gain clarity and insight.
Those who do not accept rise and fall,
Ride recklessly with misfortune.

Thus it is said: the secret of Tao lies in returning.

Deng Ming-Dao, Everyday Dao

The wen person is someone who can read not just human language, but the languages of nature as well. There are patterns and secrets throughout the world — the rings of trees, and tracks of animals, and the traces of water down the sides of a valley are as clear as any scripture. The person who follows Tao does not blindly go through life, but is able to read it on every level. Those who follow Tao are those who know the many languages of life.

Deng Ming Dao, Everyday Tao

Water wears away rock.
Spirit overcomes force.
The weak will undo the mighty.

Learn to see things backwards, inside out, and upside down.

Tao of Leadership

Under heaven nothing is more soft and yielding than water.
Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better;
It has no equal.
The weak can overcome the strong;
The supple can overcome the stiff.
Under heaven everyone knows this, yet no one puts it into practice.
Therefore the sage says:
He who takes upon himself the humiliation of the people is fit to rule them.
He who takes upon himself the country’s disasters deserves to be king of the universe.
The truth often seems paradoxical.

– Tao Te Ching 78

I think Cramer’s statement is telling about the entire American psyche today — we want to be entertained, not informed. We don’t even really care if our products work or not, as long as the ads are entertaining or it amuses us for a while, we’ll just throw it away and get a new toy then. We don’t care about our political system as long as Rush Limbaugh  and Bill O Reilly and John Stewart feed our outrage. We don’t care if our food is good for us as long as it tastes good. Etc, etc….

“Listen, you knew what the banks were doing and yet were touting it for months and months,” said “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart to CNBC superstar Jim Cramer in their much-discussed confrontation last week. “The entire network was, and so now to pretend that this was some sort of crazy, once-in-a-lifetime tsunami that nobody could have seen coming is disingenuous at best and criminal at worst.”

The applause Mr. Stewart has received for his j’accuse is the sound of the old order cracking. We have turned on the financial CEOs, inducting them one by one into the Predator Hall of Fame. We have gone deaf to the seductive rhythms of the culture wars. We have tossed out the politicians whose antigovernment rhetoric seemed invincible for so long.

And now comes the turn of the bubble-blowers of pop culture, the army of fake populists who have prospered for years by depicting the stock market as an expression of the general will, as the trustworthy friend of the little guy buffeted by a globalizing economy.

We know — or we think we know — about the roles played by other culprits in the debacle. The government regulators, for example: How could they have ignored the coming disaster? Well, they were incapacitated by decades of deregulation. What about the market’s own watchdogs? Well, from appraisers to ratings agencies the whole tough-minded system was apparently undermined by conflicts of interest.

But what about the syndicated columnists and the beloved stock pickers and the authors of personal finance best-sellers, the industry for which CNBC is the perfect symbol? How did they manage to miss the volcano under their feet?

Mr. Cramer, for his part, had the forthrightness to confess his errors and admit his limitations. “I’m not Eric Sevareid. I’m not Edward R. Murrow,” he pleaded. “I’m a guy trying to do an entertainment show about business for people to watch.”

via Financial Journalists Fail Upward – WSJ.com.

This sounds very cool! A lot like some of the work I was doing when I was working on Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems in the 80s, combined with massive computational power. Awesome. Nice to see some of the stuff from 25 years ago coming back in a new form again. Of course, I can’t believe it’s been that long… the funny part is a lot of this went away as we moved to smaller computers that didn’t have the computational power of mainframes. Now, an average laptop has more computing power than mainframes did then, and we’re capable of building very powerful distributed systems that are even more powerful. But the simplicity of breaking things down into their very basic cellular structure and then being able to recombine them mathematically and THEN add natural language questioning ability is a really powerful thing.

The scientific and philosophical underpinnings of Wolfram Alpha are similar to those of the cellular automata systems he describes in his book, “A New Kind of Science” (NKS). Just as with cellular automata (such as the famous “Game of Life” algorithm that many have seen on screensavers), a set of simple rules and data can be used to generate surprisingly diverse, even lifelike patterns. One of the observations of NKS is that incredibly rich, even unpredictable patterns, can be generated from tiny sets of simple rules and data, when they are applied to their own output over and over again.

In fact, cellular automata, by using just a few simple repetitive rules, can compute anything any computer or computer program can compute, in theory at least. But actually using such systems to build real computers or useful programs (such as Web browsers) has never been practical because they are so low-level it would not be efficient (it would be like trying to build a giant computer, starting from the atomic level).

The simplicity and elegance of cellular automata proves that anything that may be computed — and potentially anything that may exist in nature — can be generated from very simple building blocks and rules that interact locally with one another. There is no top-down control, there is no overarching model. Instead, from a bunch of low-level parts that interact only with other nearby parts, complex global behaviors emerge that, for example, can simulate physical systems such as fluid flow, optics, population dynamics in nature, voting behaviors, and perhaps even the very nature of space-time. This is the main point of the NKS book in fact, and Wolfram draws numerous examples from nature and cellular automata to make his case.

But with all its focus on recombining simple bits of information and simple rules, cellular automata is not a reductionist approach to science — in fact, it is much more focused on synthesizing complex emergent behaviors from simple elements than in reducing complexity back to simple units. The highly synthetic philosophy behind NKS is the paradigm shift at the basis of Wolfram Alpha’s approach too. It is a system that is very much “bottom-up” in orientation.

Wolfram has created a set of building blocks for working with formal knowledge to generate useful computations, and in turn, by putting these computations together you can answer even more sophisticated questions and so on. It’s a system for synthesizing sophisticated computations from simple computations. Of course anyone who understands computer programming will recognize this as the very essence of good software design. But the key is that instead of forcing users to write programs to do this in Mathematica, Wolfram Alpha enables them to simply ask questions in natural language questions and then automatically assembles the programs to compute the answers they need.

via Wolfram Alpha Computes Answers To Factual Questions. This Is Going To Be Big..

There’s no one as Irish as Barack Obama!

Museumr lets you put your work on display in the gallery of your choice. Fun toy!

This piece actually looks better than this now — this was an early photo of it. But, you get the idea. It actually is a really big piece, too — the figures are full-size bodyprints I did at a bodywriting class. But not this large!

Via Making a Mark.

Palmer Hayden, Jeunesse

Gifted at both oils and watercolors, Palmer Hayden became a well-known Harlem artist and folklorist. Most of his early paintings were landscapes. In 1926, the Harmon Foundation awarded first prize to a Maine seascape of Hayden’s creation.

With the backing of wealthy art patron, Hayden moved to Paris in 1927 and studied there for the next five years. It was a richly productive period for the painter, as evidenced by the stack of sketchbooks he brought home in 1932 that vividly capture Parisian society. Hayden went to work that year for the U.S. Treasury Art Project and the Depression-era government-funded Works Progress Administration (WPA). His work began to concern itself with scenes of daily life in Harlem.

From this:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2003

The main thing that seems so different going through this battle with depression is I am so lonely. I haven’t ever really been bothered by loneliness that much in my life – I always sort of liked being alone. But now I want people around to be with and talk to and there is so seldom anyone available – it is very difficult. And I find the internet, which used to be a link to the world for me, is really not a replacement – I physically want people with me. I go out to various places just to be around people but the interaction and connection with others is really not the same. Strangely, sometimes even when I am with people I feel rather disconnected, because they cannot really feel the things I feel and the deep need I have for them. It is all so hard…

To this:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

I feel much better now, knowing our nation is on the right track again, moving away from the mistakes of the last eight years. My main feeling today is relief, mixed with a lot of pride and an underlying happiness. I didn’t go to any of the big screenings of the inauguration, didn’t do anything special, just sat on my couch and watched, but I feel a part of it all anyway. We are all a part of it now, and that is a very good feeling, to know that what each of us does matters. We are all called to responsibility by our new president, to a new era of being accountable for our actions.

After eight years of “it’s not my fault, bail me out for my mistakes”, that’s a nice feeling.

How much my own journey the last few years reflects our national journey, from all of us feeling disconnected and alone, each fighting our own individual battles in a feeling of “you’re on your own” to finding ways to connect with each other, communicate with each other, and achieve larger goals through this medium of exchange we call the Internet. Whether we blog at large community blogs or in our own small spaces, whether we connect with thousands and have a national audience or just connect with friends and family on facebook, we are all finding a place here to express ourselves and find others who share our values and ideals. And we’ve come together in ways we never might have expected. I certainly didn’t see myself in those dark days of depression coming into a politically active community of people who have grown to be good friends and who have achieved so much together. My personal and political journey as an individual reflects a larger national journey that we all have walked or are now learning to walk, as even the most selfish among us start to be called to a new age of accountability and responsibility for others. It is in helping to create new possibilities for others that we are often able to connect with ourselves and find our own way again.

I hope our feelings of community and learning to share this space in our world can lead us all to value our own communities and spaces, help us connect with the places we live in and build them into larger wholes, too. And I hope, perhaps just as the WPA created a place for so many artists to be able to express themselves, we can find room in our public works for art again, and help another generation of talent come to express themselves artistically, too.

Been at the Sustainable Urban Landscape Conference the last couple of days. Posted lots of links here at Native Growers.

Unfortunately forgot to take my blood pressure medicine this morning, so was really dragging all day and am very tired now…. so not posting much else right now.

“Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.”
– Ludwig Wittgenstein, from the collection Culture and Value, translated by Peter Winch.

“I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.”
– Oscar Wilde

“Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.”
– Plato

“It is great cleverness to know when to conceal one’s cleverness”
– François de la Rochefoucauld

“I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; poetry = the best words in the best order”
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves. One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.”
– Will Durant

“Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare” — George Bernard Shaw

“Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a life is to go on asking them.”
– Frank Moore Colby

“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.”
– Abraham J. Heschel

“The next best thing to being clever is being able to quote someone who is.”
– Mary Pettibone Poole

“Rabbit’s clever,” said Pooh thoughtfully.
“Yes,” said Piglet. “Rabbit’s clever.”
“And he has a Brain.”
“Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit has a Brain.”
There was a long silence.
“I suppose,” said Pooh, “that that’s why he never understands anything.”
– A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner

“Really to know is to know also that you know, and know that those who know, know, and that those who don’t know, don’t know. In other words, your knowing is tested by your ability to distinguish between those who know and those who are only pretending, or deceiving themselves.”
- R. H. Blyth (via Whiskey River)

The seal generator… (via Five Acres with a View)