1 Thomas Drambo's trolls
2 TV Friends and real adult friendships
3 The famous pick their fav Dylan song
His Bobness has had his 80th birthday doncha know.
This is mesmerising!
Overtime: Downhill serenity
1 Be there, be present - Greg Dennis
Greg Dennis photography
2 Rest in peace: actor Charles Grodin, age 86.
3 Beautiful people
Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler Ross on how beautiful people are made:
"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen."
Source: Death: The Final Stage of Growth (via James Clear's newsletter - great edition - you can also follow him via this link: https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1/may-20-2021?rh_ref=25fec73b)
4 Knowing loss
Author T.H. White on learning as a cure for sadness:
"The best thing for being sad… is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting."
Source: The Once and Future King (also via James Clear's newsletter)
5 During the impossible age for everyone
There are so many people who’ve come before us,
arrows and wagon wheels, obsidian tools, buffalo.
Look out at the meadow, you can almost see them,
generations dissolved in the bluegrass and hay.
I want to try and be terrific. Even for an hour.
(2)
If you walk long enough, your crowded head clears,
like how all the cattle run off loudly as you approach.
This fence is a good fence, but I doubt my own haywire
will hold up to all this blank sky, so open and explicit.
I’m like a fence, or a cow, or that word, yonder.
(3)
There is a slow tractor traffic hollering outside,
and I’d like not to be traffic, but the window shaking.
Your shoes are piled up with mine, and the heat
comes on, makes a simple noise, a dog-yawn.
People have done this before, but not us.
—Ada Limón, "During the Impossible Age of Everyone" (from Laura Olin's newsletter)
Overtime: No is a decision
"Saying no saves you time in the future. Saying yes costs you time in the future.
No is like a time credit. You can spend that block of time in the future.
Yes is like a time debt. You have to repay that commitment at some point.
No is a decision. Yes is a responsibility." - James Clear
1 Hot jazz!
My love affair with vinyl continues unabated! This week I bought John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band - the new 2LP re-released set. The packaging is superb and the album still gives me tingles (and tears - the bit where he declares that he 'just believes in me, Yoko and me' - the bare honesty gets me!).
2 Not worried, now that I've been vaccinated
I've now had my two doses of the vaccine and I am relieved to think that my chances of any serious covid-19 infection are extremely low. Really.
3 Photography at the centre of the art world?
4 Ballad - Diane Seuss
5 Experience: I've had the same supper for 10 years
Loved this story (and the subject).
Overtime: San Francisco's street signs.
Overtime: Marvel lettering (both of the overtimes from Laura Olin's newsletter)
Enjoyed this article on Michael Curtiz' use of shadows. Watching a Netflix documentary on Elvis Presley I realised that I've never seen Curtiz' King Creole starring Elvis (still from KC in black and white above). Need to correct that.
2 The kindest people
“The kindest people are not born that way, they are made. They are the sounds that have experienced so much at the hands of life, they are the ones who have dug themselves out of the dark, who have fought to turn every loss into a lesson. The kindest people do not just exist – they choose to soften where circumstance has tried to harden them, they choose to believe in goodness, because they have seen firsthand why compassion is so necessary. They have seen firsthand why tenderness is so important in this world.”
– Bianca Sparacino (via Swiss Miss)
3 Maya
Author and poet Maya Angelou on how hard it is to make it look easy:
"I try to pull the language into such a sharpness that it jumps off the page. It must look easy, but it takes me forever to get it to look so easy. Of course, there are those critics — New York critics as a rule — who say, Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer. Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language."
Source: The Paris Review Interviews: Volume IV (via James Clear)
4 Austin on Star Wars
Fun group of random thoughts as Austin shows SW Episode 4 to his 8 year old.
5 Walking!
The benefits of my walking around the Sports Park at lunchtime (not pictured above) are explained here.
Overtime: The story of Mary Ann Vecchio - the 14 year old girl in that famous Kent State shooting photo (yes - 14 - I was unaware of that as well).
