Impact of Home Appliances in Morrison's Paradise

In Paradise by Toni Morrison, there is a paragraph that connects the prosperity of a small town with impact of home appliances.

     The garden battles – won, lost, still at bay – were mostly over.  They had raged for ten years, having begun suddenly in 1963, when there was time.  The women who were in their twenties when Ruby was founded, in 1950, watched for thirteen years an increase in bounty that had never entered their dreams.  They bought soft toilet paper, used washcloths instead of rags, soap for the face alone or diapers only.  In every Rudy household appliances pumped, hummed, sucked, purred, whispered and flowed.  And there was time:  fifteen minutes when no firewood needed tending in a kitchen stove; one whole hour when no sheets or overalls needed slapping or scrubbing on a washboard; ten minutes gained becuase no rug needed to be beaten, no curtains pinned on a stretcher; two hours because food lasted and therefore could be picked or purchased in greater quantity.  Their husbands and sons, tickled to death and no less proud than the women, translated a five-time markup, a price per pound, bale, or live weight, into Kelvinators as well as John Deere; into Philco as well as Body by Fisher.  The white porcelain layered over steel, the belts, valves and Bakelite parts gave them deep satisfaction,  The humming, throbbing and softly purring gave the women time.  


Toni Morrison, Paradise (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1998) p. 93.

Humility and Leadership: Goldman on Popovich

In a National Public Radio interview, sports journalist Tom Goldman reflected on the recent interactions that professional basketball coach Gregg Popovich had with a player.  By better connecting with the unhappy player, Popovich realized that he was over-coaching the player.

“Here's the best coach in the NBA, one of the best in all of major pro sports, willing to be honest, self-aware and humble. A sports story that reminds us what good leadership can be."

Link to NPR interview:
https://www.npr.org/2018/01/13/577833727/saturday-sports-north-korea-at-the-winter-olympics

Good Quotes 2018

"One of the functions of art is to give people the words to know their own experience. There are always areas of vast silence in any culture, and part of an artist’s job is to go into those areas and come back from the silence with something to say. It’s one reason why we read poetry, because poets can give us the words we need. When we read good poetry, we often say, ‘Yeah, that’s it. That’s how I feel.’
--Ursula K. Le Guin

“The duty of a leader is to create an organization where it is easy to practice kindness.”
– Kim Cameron

"Moments, ideas, a single poem in a collection — a work of genius, no matter how individually wrought — is never the product of a single individual. We should stop thinking of genius as an attribute and instead start to think of it as a condition, a circumstance."
--Yuval Sharon, essay at Los Angeles Review of Books website

“That experience of touching down in a totally foreign place is like having a blank canvas: You begin with nothing, but stroke by stroke you build a life. This process requires everything great art requires — risk-tasking, hope, a great deal of imagination, all the qualities that are the building blocks of art.”
-- Edwidge Danticat

"The Internet and the connection economy turn the economics of mass on its head.  It's now cheaper and more efficient to make edgy, amazing products for the weird edge cases (who are listening and talking and who care) than it is to push yet another average product onto the already overloaded average people in the middle of the curve."
--Seth Godin, The Icarus Deception

"Childhood dreams are not kicked awake by nightmares of abuse."
--Maya Angelou, "A Brave and Startling Truth"

"It is well to fly towards the light, even where there may be some fluttering and bruising of wings against the windowpanes, is it not?"
--Elizabeth Barrett Browning on the Challenge of Happiness, in a letter to Robert Browning

"In an age when the meaning of words are squeezed into the speaker's mold, marble values such as integrity can be pulverized overnight."
--John Maxwell, Developing the Leader Within You

“Champions don’t do extraordinary things, they do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the other team to react. They follow the habits they’ve learned.”
--Tony Dungy, as found in The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

"Nobody hiding in the school bathroom/Or home alone/Pulling open the drawer/Where the pills are kept."
--Marie Howe, "Singularity"

CEO's and Charlottesville: Climate in Washington

Here are two comments reflecting the climate in Washington, in general and around the best way to respond to Charlottesville.  This issue involves many aspects for leadership.

When I asked one chief executive Monday morning why he had remained publicly silent, he told me: “Just look at what he did to {Ken Fraizer of Merck]. I’m not sticking my head up.” Which, of course, is the reason he said I could not quote him by name.
-- Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times

I resigned because I want to make progress, while many in Washington seem more concerned with attacking anyone who disagrees with them.
--Brian Krzanich, Intel



Source for Andrew Sorkin:  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/business/dealbook/merck-trump-charlottesville-ceos.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Source for Brian Krzanich:  http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2017/08/14/intel-ceo-leaves-manufacturing-council/

More Good Quotes 2017

"I am always looking for fresh language for the important ordinary things we do."
--Krista Tippett, in an interview with Joan Halifax

"Normal, in our house, is like a blanket too short for a bed--sometimes it covers you just fine, and other times it leaves you cold and shaking; and worst of all, you never know which of the two it's going to be."
--Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

"Perhaps that you're searching far too much?  That in all that searching, you don't find the time for finding."
--Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

"I have never been compelled by Ellaria or the Sand Snakes—none of the actresses can maneuver around Game of Thrones’s script, which requires women—Lena Headey, Sophie Turner, and Maisie Williams are all brilliant at this—to get most of their character development done with their eyebrows rather than their words."
--Aaron Bady reviewing "Game of Thrones" at Los Angeles Review of Books

"Critical thinking without hope is cynicism, but hope without critical thinking is naïveté."
--Maria Popov, interview with Krista Tippett

"Radio Journalist Jacque Ooko loved politics, and she loved Kenya. She always told me that she dreamed of a home country that shed tribalism and punished corruption. Like all good journalists she was a skeptic, but not once did I ever see that erase her hope."
--Tribute by Eyder Peralta, npr.org

Dickens on Invasive Hunger

Upon them, and upon the grown faces, and ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afreshed, was the sigh, Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off; Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and started up from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker's shelves, written in every small loaf of this scanty stock of bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomies in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fired with some reluctant drops of oil.

From Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, Chapter 5:  A Wine Shop

Downed Pilot Savior--World War Z by Brooks

In the novel, World War Z: An Oral History of The Zombie War, Max Brook uses a documentary format to tell some great stories about the fictional Zombie War.  Survivors they their stories.

One very interesting story was from a Air Force Pilot, Colonel Christina Eliopolis.  A mid-air accident lead to her ejecting and parachuting into a zombie-infested area.

To support downed pilots, a network of Skywatchers existed.  Over the course of two days, Col. Eliopolis was supported by a Skywatcher in a nearby cabin with the call sign "Mets Fan."

Interviewer:  They never found your Skywatcher.

Eliopolis:  No

Or her cabin.

No

And the Government never had a record of a Skywatcher with the call sign Mets Fan.

You've done your homework.

I . . . 

You probably also read my after-action report, right?

Yes.

And the psych evaluation they racked on after my official debriefing.

Well . . . 

Well, it's bullshit, okay?  So what if everything she told me was information I'd already been briefed on; so what if the psych team "claim" my radio was knocked out before I hit the mud, and so the f*** what if Mets is short for Metis, the mother of Athena, the Greek goddess with the stormy gray eyes.  Oh, the shrinks had a ball with that one, especially when they "discovered" that my mother grew up in the Bronx.

And that remark she made about your mother?

Who the hell doesn't have mother issues?  If Mets was a pilot, she was a natural gambler.  She knew she had a good chance of scoring a hit with "mom."  She knew the risk, took her shot . . . Look, if they thought I'd cracked up, why didn't I lose my flight status?  Why did they let me have this job? Mybe she wasn't a pilot herself, maybe she was married to one, maybe she'd wanted to be one but never made it as far as I did.  Maybe she was just a scared, lonely voice that did what she could to help another scared lonely voice from ending up like her.  Who cares who she was, or is?  She was there when I needed her, and for the rest of my life, she'll always be with me.


Max Brook, World War Z: An Oral History of The Zombie War (New York, Broadway Paperbacks, 2006),pp 227-230.

Reflections on The Refugee Crisis and Character--TED Talk by David Miliband

David Miliband's Talk at TED 2017 was highlighted by the TED Website for World Refugee Day. Here are a few excerpts.

"I truly believe this, that the biggest question in the 21st century concerns our duty to strangers. The future "you" is about your duties to strangers. You know better than anyone, the world is more connected than ever before, yet the great danger is that we're consumed by our divisions. And there is no better test of that than how we treat refugees."

"When Pope Francis went to Lampedusa, off the coast of Italy, in 2014, he accused all of us and the global population of what he called "the globalization of indifference." It's a haunting phrase. It means that our hearts have turned to stone. Now, I don't know, you tell me. Are you allowed to argue with the Pope, even at a TED conference? But I think it's not right. I think people do want to make a difference, but they just don't know whether there are any solutions to this crisis. And what I want to tell you today is that though the problems are real, the solutions are real, too."

"Remember, anyone who asks you, "Are they properly vetted?" that's a really sensible and good question to ask. The truth is, refugees arriving for resettlement are more vetted than any other population arriving in our countries. So while it's reasonable to ask the question, it's not reasonable to say that refugee is another word for terrorist."


From TED Talk:  David Miliband: The refugee crisis is a test of our character
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_miliband_the_refugee_crisis_is_a_test_of_our_character/transcript?language=en
April 2017

Eco on Pace in The Name of the Rose

Great reflections on a the pace of literature in the Postscript of The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco about a crime investigation in a medieval monastery.

"But there was another reason for including those long didactic passages.  After reading the manuscript, my friends and editors suggested I abbreviate the first hundred pages, which they found very difficult and demanding.  Without thinking twice, I refused, because, as I insisted, if somebody wanted to enter the abbey and live there for seven days, he had to accept the abbey's own pace.  If he could not, he would never manage to read the whole book.  Therefore those first hundred pages are like a penance or an initiation, and if someone does not like them, as much the worse for him.  He can stay at the foot of the hill.

"Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains; you have to learn the rhythm of respiration, acquire the pace, otherwise you stop right away. . . .

"In narrative, the breathing is derived not from the sentences but from the broader units, from the scansion of events.  Some novels breathe like gazelles, others like whales or elephants.  Harmony lies not in the length of the breath but it its regularity."

Zócalo Book Prize: Winners List

Winners of the Zócalo Book Prize
Sponsored by Zócalo Public Square
Founded by Gregory Rodriguez

2017
Mitchell Duneier, Princeton University
Ghetto:  The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea

2016
Sherry Turkle, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Reclaiming Conversation:  The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

2015
Danielle Allen, Harvard Univesity
Our Declaration:  A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality

2014
Ethan Zuckerman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Rewire:  Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection

2013
Jonathan Haidt, New York University
The Righteous Mind:  Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

2012
Richard Sennett, London School of Economics
Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation

2011
Peter Lovenheim, New York Times
In the Neighborhood:  The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time

Link to Website:  http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2017/03/31/princeton-sociologist-mitchell-duneier-wins-2017-zocalo-book-prize/inquiries/prizes/