Cotton-Pickin’ Days

For my dad. Thanks for reminding me of the power of peace and tranquility. (Two things I’ve often lacked. But I’m working on it!)

A master of the tea ceremony in old Japan once accidentally slighted a soldier. He quickly apologized, but the rather impetuous soldier demanded that the matter be settled in a sword duel. The tea master, who had no experience with swords, asked the advice of a fellow Zen master who did possess such skill.

As he was served by his friend, the Zen swordsman could not help but notice how the tea master performed his art with perfect concentration and tranquility.

“Tomorrow,” the Zen swordsman said, “when you duel the soldier, hold your weapon above your head, as if ready to strike, and face him with the same concentration and tranquility with which you perform the tea ceremony.”

The next day, at the appointed time and place for the duel, the tea master followed this advice. The soldier, readying himself to strike, stared for a long time into the fully attentive but calm face of the tea master.

Finally, the soldier lowered his sword, apologized for his arrogance, and left without a blow being struck.

From Zen Stories to Tell Your Neighbors

And a little rebuttal from me:

Peaceful is nice but not good if it means stagnation.

Even a tranquil pond needs fresh, moving water once in a while.

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Writers are no longer just writers but, in H.G. Wells’s term, “originative intellectual workers“.

Finding a top-gun agent or publisher is all but impossible these days unless you subscribe to the block- and bonk-buster paradigm. On the other hand, the originative intellectual worker quickly masters a skill-set allowing proficiency across crafts and technologies. The OIW emerges on both sides of the track, as producer and consumer. In blogging it’s almost impossible to separate the two.

~SYNTAGMA

I’d like to be an originative intellectual worker. It sounds both romantic and omnipotent at the same time. I’ve been trying to find more about this reference all day, but haven’t succeeded. Has anyone else heard of “originative intellectual workers” before?

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“He married an Armani. Now I’ve become America’s low-priced Kmart department store,” said Taiwanese actress Chen Chen, whose weight has more than doubled since she married composer-director Liu Chia-chang in 1977.

When I married Marv in 1994, I was J.Crew. Now I’ve become Hanna Andersson.

Then and Now

What clothing line were you 10 years ago and what are you now?

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From June sidebar.

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.
~George Bernard Shaw

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.
~Linus Pauling

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.
~Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

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Internews founder and president, David Hoffman, is counting down the days with marbles.

Hoffman points to a basin full of marbles he keeps in his office. His two younger daughters, by a second and recently ended marriage, gave it to him. They used actuarial tables to calculate his life expectancy and put in the bowl one marble for each week the tables say he has left. Every Monday, he takes one and puts it in his pocket, carries it all week, then on Sunday throws it away. He takes this week’s marble from his pocket and rubs it, then says, “There are plenty of marbles left.”

~Johns Hopkins Magazine, June 2005

If I tried this, I’d be tempted to add marbles every now and then instead of taking them out.

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Many of you reminded me yesterday that news is depressing and scary because that’s what sells to readers.

Rebecca MacKinnon, a former CNN reporter, told the Columbia Journalism Review,

As it was put to me, you’re fighting with Fox for every fifteen seconds of airtime. You’re trying to put on whatever is the most titillating, gripping stuff to keep people from changing the channel. What that means is that if there is something that one thinks the American public needs to know, but it is not as sexy as Michael Jackson, then they’ll go with Michael Jackson.

I’ve completely given up on popular mainstream media like CNN, Time, Discovery, or Reader’s Digest. I prefer instead sources that provide more in-depth reporting and which don’t talk down to its audience, such as The Atlantic, Scientific American, and smart blogs.

Personally, I wouldn’t care if I never saw another picture or story about Michael Jackson again. And who ever said Jackson was sexy?*

*I know she was not speaking specifically of Michael Jackson.

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This poem hung on the wall of an orphanage Mother Teresa founded in Calcutta. The author is unknown.

Anyway

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

Depending on your faith, subsitute God with a higher power, the universe, eternity, history, or yourself and the poem will still inspire.

First seen at Crossroads Dispatches

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From May sidebar.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.
~Thomas Edison

Opportunity is a haughty goddess who wastes no time with those who are unprepared.
~George S. Clason

Too often, the opportunity knocks, but by the time you push back the chain, push back the bolt, unhook the two locks and shut off the burglar alarm, it’s too late.
~Rita Coolidge Singer

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Levenger’s Living Your Well-Read Life, Writers on Reading

Joe Finder still reads like a writer. “I’ll admire a passage or a bit of prose or even the way a novel is constructed, and I’ll make a mental note to myself,” he says.

“The one thing I don’t want is for them to do the worst thing of all,” he adds, “to read ten minutes in bed before falling asleep. That way you read little bits and pieces. But you never get carried away.”

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Quotes from April sidebar.

One moment of patience may ward off great disaster. One moment of impatience may ruin a whole life.
~Chinese Proverb

You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.
~Franklin P. Jones

We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.
~Helen Keller

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