Senses working overtime #472

1 Autumn at Maple Grove

The camelia by Jacky's tack shed has had a blooming great autumn and now is shedding a blizzard of pink flowers.

2 Reading: The Road To Woodstock - Michael Lang

Still reading this when I can (another super frenetic work week). 

The book concentrates on the preparations and three days of the original Woodstock Music and Art Festival of 1969 and it is fascinating! So many great details; Michael shares the stage with quotes from many of the performers and his fellow organisers. 

3 Listening: Joan Baez - Live at Woodstock 

Joan is an amazing person and singer. I was drawn back to this incandescent moment in time thanks to reading Michael Lang's book. 

No single highlight - you need to experience this performance from start to finish.

4 Watching: Page 8 

Bill Nighy is awesome in this. A spellbinding performance. See it on Netflix.

5 Watching: Break Point

Generally, I enjoy these sports series on Netflix. This one focusing on the tennis tour is not as frenetic as others which suits the sport. Worth dipping into from time to time.

Overtime: 

Sociology professor Daniel Chambliss, who spent years researching the qualities of elite swimmers, on what creates excellence:

"Excellence is mundane. Superlative performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities, each one learned or stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then are fitted together in a synthesized whole. There is nothing extraordinary or superhuman in any one of those actions; only the fact that they are done consistently and correctly, and all together, produce excellence.

When a swimmer learns a proper flip turn in the freestyle races, she will swim the race a bit faster; then a streamlined push off from the wall, with the arms squeezed together over the head, and a little faster; then how to place the hands in the water so no air is cupped in them; then how to lift them over the water; then how to lift weights to properly build strength, and how to eat the right foods, and to wear the best suits for racing, and on and on.

Each of those tasks seems small in itself, but each allows the athlete to swim a bit faster. And having learned and consistently practiced all of them together, and many more besides, the swimmer may compete in the Olympic Games... the little things really do count."

(Courtesy James Clear)