Fiona Gardner

"One of the most important things about childhood is imagination.  All artists, on some level, are adults who still have access to their imagination, who have figured out a way to carry that into being an adult."

Fiona Gardner

American Photographer / Artist

Commentary

Potential creative projects are all around us.  It takes imagination to find them.  Fiona Gardner found hers at Ellen's Stardust Diner in New York in form of Miss Subways.  She spent several years of her life working on the project with Amy Zimmer.  

We all have ideas, but most of us never act upon those ideas, and if we act upon an idea, we often don't finish the project.  I have started two novels that I have never finished.  I began a haiku notecard business using my haiku with artwork that never made a sale.  I still have cards sitting on a shelf in a closet.  I had an idea for a sports newspaper that focused only on local sports like Little League, softball teams, etc.  I never even got to first base.  I struck out before I got started.  I once had the idea for a book about the history of Illinois High School Tournament basketball.  I wrote to the state high school basketball association proposing that they fund my writing of the book but received no answer.  A year later they published their own history using a retired sports writer.  They stole my idea and didn't even acknowledge the theft.

But there are projects that I have finished.  My wife had an idea about writing a book on pet loss and the grieving people experience.  We spend four years on the book and interviewed over 100 people.  We published the hardback version in 1998 and the paperback in 2000.  The paperback, It's Okay To Cry, can still be found on Amazon.  The driving force behind the book was my wife.  She held my feet to the fire until it was finished.

We all have ideas.  The key is acting upon our ideas.  What ideas have you had that are still resting in a file folder somewhere?  What ideas have you started but never finished?  What projects do you need to take off the back burner and finish?

Creative Practice
Review your files for past ideas that you have never brought to completion.  Choose the one that you are most passionate about and set a target date for its completion.  Begin working on the project this week.

Biography

Fiona Gardner is an artist and photographer based in New York.  She received a BFA in painting from Rhode Island School of Design and a MFA in photography from Columbia.  Her work focuses on women and performance in constructed environments.  She has photographed mermaids, Southern belles and Miss Subways.  Miss Subways was a beauty contest which ran between 1941 - 1976 in New York and used to promote the subways.

Video:

Here is journalist Amy Zimmer talking about Miss Subways.  Amy and Fiona collaborated to create the book, Meet Miss Subways: New York's Beauty Queens 1941 - 1976.

Reference Links:

Interview: 

http://www.thelmagazine.com/TheMeasure/archives/2012/10/19/interview-artist-fiona-gardner-on-meet-miss-subways

NPR Story: (See some of the Miss Subways, then and now.)

http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2012/12/20/167659444/miss-subways-a-trip-back-in-time-to-new-yorks-melting-pot

New York Times (Nine Miss Subways)

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/12/29/nyregion/thecity/20071230_MISSSUBWAYS_SLIDESHOW_index.html

Lucille Clifton

"I have a feeling that sometimes rather than wrestle and look for words, you have to be still and let them come."

Lucille Clifton

American Poet / Writer

1936 - 2010

Commentary

People sometimes perceive writers and poets as spending their days wrestling with words until they find the perfect word.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Yes, there a moments of revision and some will revise for years searching for the best word to convey the meaning.  But sometimes writers are lucky and the words appear as if out of nowhere.  A good writer, artist and creative leader learns how to remain still and listen.

Creative Exercise

Find a quiet spot where you will not be bothered by people and their electronic gadgets.  Spend 10 to 15 minutes listening to the sounds both within your head and outside.  Then take out your paper and pen and write for 10 minutes.  Repeat this process 5 times throughout the week.  At the end of the week review your work.  For an artist, repeat the same process and draw instead of write.

Biography
Lucille Clifton was born in Depew, New York.  She graduated from high school in 1953 and attended Howard University and the State University of New York at Fredonia.  She married Fred James Clifton, a professor of Philosophy and sculptor, in 1958.  The novelist Ishmael Reed introduced them while he was organizing the Buffalo Community Drama Workshop.  Reed also shared her poetry with Langston Hughes who included them in his anthology, The Poetry of the Negro.

Clifton's first poetry collection, Good Times, was published in 1969.  She was poet-in-residence at Coppin State College in Baltimore from 1971 - 1974.  She was the Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1979 - 1985.  Over the years she has taught at Columbia University, George Washington University, University of California at Santa Cruz, St. Mary's College of Maryland and Dartmouth College.

Clifton published 14 collections of poetry and won numerous awards including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2007, the National Book Award in 2000 and the 1996 Lannan Literary Award for Poetry.  She also wrote and published 18 children's books.  Her children's book, Everett Anderson's Goodbye, won the Coretta Scott King Award in 1984.

In Clifton's interview with Bill Moyer for his series the Language of Life, she said: "I was not trained as a poet, and I've never taken poetry lessons or had workshops.  Nobody taught me anything much, really.  So, I learned how to learn, and what I learned is that I could be still and allow the world and the impressions and the feelings — I'm very good with feelings — to come to me, and I could use our language to write them down."

Video
Here is Lucille Clifton reading her poem, won't you celebrate with me.

John Holt

"We learn to do something by doing it.  There is no other way."

— John Holt

American Author, Educator

1923 - 1985

Commentary

We take in information about the world outside ourselves through our senses of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling and it is through these senses that we learn.  When it comes to the classroom, we learn primarily through seeing, hearing and doing.  Usually one or two of these ways of learning will be dominate in a person, but we learn through all three ways and we can improve our ability to learn in a given way.  

How do you learn?  Are you a life-long learner?  Are you a visual learner?  Do you learn best by seeing something?  There are two types of visual learners?  Those that learn through pictures and graphics and those that learn through the written words.  Are you an auditory learner?  Do you learn best by hearing something.  Do you listen to recorded books?  Are you a kinesthetic learner?  Do you learn best by doing?

So how does this apply to the creative leader?  First, how do you best learn your craft of drawing, writing, or acting?  By reading about it?  By watching others?  Or by doing it yourself?  I think that we learn in all three ways, but we learn best by doing.  No matter how much you read, you have to pick up the brush or pen to be successful.  No matter how much time you spend watching others, you have to pick up a pen or brush.  Only in doing can you put what you learned by reading and watching into practice.   If we pay attention to what we do, we can teach ourselves many things.  Reading and watching others, though, will speed up the learning process.

How about how your audience experiences your works of art.  Do they only experience it visually?  Can they hear it?  Can they smell it or taste it?  To me I experience a story or poem differently when I hear than when I read it on a page.  When I listen to a novel while driving, I become part of the world of the novel in a way that does not happen when I read about the world on the page.  I find my others senses are more engaged when I listen to the book.  I see, smell and taste the world in ways that often don't happen when I read.

Creative Practice:

Take a test to determine how you learn best.  Here is one free test that can be found on line. 

http://www.berghuis.co.nz/abiator/lsi/lsitest1.html

Background on Author

John Holt, born in New York City, was the oldest of three children.  He joined the navy and fought in World War II in the Pacific.  After the war, he became a school teacher and taught in Colorado and Boston.  He published his first book, How Children Fail, in 1964.  The controversial book blamed schools for the failure of children.   His follow-up book, How Children Learn, was published in 1967.  I remember in college that I bought bought books from the Doubleday book club.  He wrote 11 books of which two were published after his death.  Holt became disillusioned with the school system and became an early proponent of homeschooling.  His book, Teach Your Own was published in 1981.

Edgar Degas

"A picture is first of all a product of the imagination of the artist; it must never be a copy . . . . The air we see in the painting of the old masters is never the air that we breathe."

Edgar Degas

French Painter

1834 - 1917

Commentary

We all need to encourage, foster and invest in our imagination.  Without imagination, most art, writing and music fail.  Imagination is what we the creators bring to the table.  All creative people have the same raw material.  How we mold and shape that material is what makes each creative person different. 

If we merely copy the work of others, then we are technicians following a pattern.  We need to alter and reshape the landscape of the world we inhabit.  We must imagine new ways of seeing.

Young children are very imaginative.  We all need to become a child again and see the world through a child's eyes.  We need to see the world as if we have never seen it before.  We need to see the world with fresh eyes untainted by experience and knowledge.

Creative Practice

This week I want you to step outside your comfort zone and explore the movement of your body.  Find a large space and where you can move about freely.  Dress in loose-fitting clothes.  Move about the space and explore the following through movement.  (You may want to watch the video below before you start.)

• Become the color red.
• Change into a rabbit.
• Become light blue.
• Fly like an eagle.
• Become the color green.
• Climb like a monkey.
• Become the tree the monkey is climbing.
• Become bright pink.
• Become a runner who has just finished a marathon.
• Become the bride walking down the aisle to her future husband.

Now, sit down and write for 30 minutes.  After you have finished writing, ask yourself what you learned through this process.  How did the movement influence your writing?

Background of Artist

Edgar Degas was born in Paris, France, the eldest of five children of a modestly wealthy family.  His mother died when he was thirteen.  He began painting at a young age.  His father wanted him to study law, but he did not apply himself to his studies.  He entered art school when he was twenty.  He also spent three years in Italy studying the Italian masters. In 1872 he traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana where his Creole mother was from.  He lived with relatives for a short period of time.

Degas is often identified with the Impressionists, though, he did not identify himself in that way.  He preferred to be called a realist.  His style showed a deep respect for the old masters whom he copied well into middle age.  He began by painting conventional historical paintings such as the Daughter of Jephthah (1859 - 1861) and the Young Spartans (1860 - 62).  In the late 1860's, Degas shifted his subject matter from historical events to contemporary life.  He painted women such as milliners and laundresses at work.  In 1868 he exhibited the first of his paintings of dancers.  More than half his creative output is of dancers.

Video

One of the most powerful classes I have ever taken was a class in in creative drama where we explored the world around us through our bodies.  In order to portray a character, actors have to have immense imagination.  Watch this video of a acting class.

Robert Greene

"At your birth a seed is planted.  That seed is your uniqueness.  It wants to grow, transform itself, and flower to its full potential.  It has a natural, assertive energy to it. Your Life's Task is to bring that seed to flower, to express your uniqueness through your work."

Robert Greene

American Writer/Speaker

1959 -

Commentary
What makes you unique?  What is your life's work?  Are you doing your life's work?  Have you found your passion?  What is the reason you were born?  What are the gifts that you have been given?  What skills do you need to master?

I think my life's work has been to inspire others to be better than they are.  The seed for my life's work found expression when I was young in my desire to be a preacher.  Later, the seed was expressed in my desire to rid the world of racism and war.  Ultimately, my life's work found expression in my speaking and training within health care.  I've touched people's lives through my voice and the telling of motivational stories.

Creative Practice
This week write about your life's work.  What is your purpose for being here?  If you don't know why you are here, then use this writing exercise to help you discover your purpose for being.

Biography
Robert Greene was raised in Los Angeles.  He attended the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  Greene estimated that he worked at 80 jobs, including construction, translation, and editing, before becoming a writer.  His first book, The 48 Laws of Power, was published in 2000 and has sold over 1.2 million copies in the United States alone.  His fifth book, Mastery, was published in 2012.  Green speaks five languages and is a student of Zen Buddhism.

A Book Review

Mastery
by Robert Greene

Mastery is a great inspirational book that every creative leader, who wants to master a skill or a talent, should read.  If you want to be a writer, an artist, or a musician, you should read this book.  If you want to own your own company, or be president of a company, or be a successful employee, you should read this book.  If you want to start a new career, become a doctor or a mechanic, or run a marathon, then read this book.

Robert Greene shares the stories of people who have become masters in their fields.  Using the stories of both dead and living masters, Greene reviews what it takes to become a master in a field of endeavor.  He shares the stories of Charles Darwin, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, John Coltrane, Martha Graham, Buckminster Fuller, Zora Neale Hurston and Wolfgang Mozart to name a few.  He also shares the stories of living masters like Yoky Matsuoko, Freddie Roach, Daniel Everett and Santiago Calatrava.  From these inspirational stories, Robert Greene identifies the keys to mastery.

This book is a must read for anyone who wants to become a master of some skill or talent.  Pick up a copy today and change your life.

Video

Here is Robert Greene discussing creativity and mastery at Google.

John W. Gardner

"Life is the art of drawing without an eraser."

— John W. Gardner

American Educator, Author

1912 -2002

Commentary

How would you feel if you did not have an eraser?  Or in our current language: a delete key?  How would you feel if whatever you typed into the computer or wrote on paper could not be changed?  Or if your brush strokes could not be covered up?  Or if the song you recorded could be done with only one take?

Some writers and artists suffer from writer's block because they feel their first draft or painting needs to be perfect.  They don't realize that they have an eraser and can change what they write.  We have all been given a great gift in the delete key.  Be sure that you use it responsibly. 

Life unlike art does not have a delete key?  Our actions cannot be erased as much as we would wish they could.  Have you ever done or said something that you wish you could undo?  We all have.  Art gives us this opportunity?  We can rewrite our story — repaint our world.

Creative Practice

This week identify 2 - 3 of your past actions that you wish you could erase.  Then rewrite the story and change your behavior and the outcome.  Or paint a scene from your new story.

Background

John W. Gardner is best known for serving as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under President Lyndon B. Johnson.  He also founded Common Cause in 1970.  Between 1955 and 1965, he served as president of the Carnegie Corporation where he helped to shape American education.

Gardner was born in Los Angeles to William and Marie Gardner.  His father died when he was one and he was raised by his mother.  He graduated from Stanford with a masters degree and earned a doctorate degree from the University of California.  In the late 1930's he taught college and then joined the Marines during World War II.

Gardner dropped out of college for a year and a half to try his hand at writing fiction before going back and finishing his degree.  His first of eleven non-fiction books was published in 1961.

Anne Tyler

"If I waited until I felt like writing, I'd never write at all."

— Anne Tyler

American Novelist

1941 -

Commentary

Many beginning writers feel that they can only write when the spirit strikes them.  They wait until they have the urge to write.  Unfortunately, they will write very little because the spirit is often on vacation.  Writers, artists and other creative leaders must develop the discipline and habit of working every day whether they are in the mood or not.  Somedays what they produce will be great and on other days it will be terrible.  The quality does not matter.  Just like there are bad hair days and good hair days, there are bad creative days and good creative days.  They will not always hit a home run or score the winning basket.

So what about you?  Do you wait until the spirit strikes?  Or are you up and at it every day?   Do you have the self-discipline to create something every day?  There is no boss looking over your shoulder or no parent coaxing you out of bed.  You have to be the one to get yourself up writing, painting or dancing.  No one can do it for you.

Creative Practice

Experts say it takes 21 days to form a habit.  So your assignment this week to choose a time every day when you will create.  Then for the next 21 days spend that time creating.  Begin now to form habits of a lifetime.  You are responsible for the life you live.

Background

Anne Tyler, the eldest of four children, was born in Minneapolis, MN.  Her father was a chemist and her mother a social worker.  Her youth was spent in several Quaker communities.  She did not attend public school until she was eleven. She graduated from Duke University and did graduate work in Russian studies.

Tyler has published 19 novels.  The first one, If Morning Ever Comes, was published in 1964.  She won the Pulitzer Prize for her 11th novel Breathing Lessons.

Tyler rarely gives face-to-face interviews.  In her first such interview in thirty-five years with Deirdre Donahue in 2012, she said: "I have to go to my writing room five days a week. I have to put in my time."  Donahue states that Tyler writes in longhand on unlined paper.

When I'm Sixty-Four

Today, I reach the ripe old age of 64 and must share with you the Beatles song: When I'm 64.  Listen!

To celebrate my birthday, I am giving away a free PDF copy of my book, Mother, Don't Lock Me In That Closet!  Here is a link to download.

https://www.yousendit.com/download/UVJqeEVhU1B6RStFQk1UQw

May your day be full of hope and joy!!!!

Jamaica Kincaid

"My writing depends on memory.  I have an unfortunate habit of remembering things that other people have forgotten and would like me to forget.  The trouble with remembering, is it makes it almost impossible to forgive."

— Jamaica Kincaid

Caribbean Novelist

1949 -

Commentary
I had the privilege of hearing Jamaica Kincaid speak for about forty minutes on Thursday night, March 28, at the Toledo Public Library.   She told a few stories, read from her new book, See Now Then, and talked about time and memory.

Writers are often encouraged to write about what they know, write about their own experiences, and if we do that, we often write from memory, and memory is very fragile and unreliable.  What we remember is not what really happened.  It is what our minds think happened, and the memory is altered and reshaped over time as it is retold again and again in our mind.  Our retelling reshapes the facts, leaving out some and embellishing others.

Readers often want to know what is autobiographical and what is fictional about a novel or a story or a poem, and sometimes they assume it is all autobiographical.  Yet for writers it is hard to distinguish between the two.  As you write your stories, as you share your stories, the two begin to blend together until we have no idea what actually happened and what we imagined happened.  

All great storytellers embellish and expand the truth.  We re-imagine ourselves and our place in events.  We change the events to fit the story we want to tell and this has recently gotten some memoir writers in trouble for adding events that did not happen.  What is truth?  What is fact?  Are they the same or different?  I think they overlap but they are not the same.  Just because something is factual does not mean it truthful.  And just because something is truthful does not mean it is factual.

My memories of my childhood are few and they usually come from stories that were told over and over in my family or from events that were traumatic to the young me.  So while my poems will start with a simple phrase from some memory it will grow and morph into something of its own that may bear no resemblance to fact.

Creative Practice
Your creative challenge this week is to select a memory to write or paint about.  I have a painting hanging in our personal art gallery where the painter paints a scene from her childhood of her mother hanging the wash on the clothesline.  What memory can you paint?  What memory can you write about?

Background
Jamaica Kincaid was born Elaine Cynthia Potter Richardson on May 25,1949 in St. John's on the island of Antigua 51 days after I was born in Washington, Illinois.  She and I are celebrating our 64th birthday this year.  Jamaica grew up with a passion for reading although her reading matter was limited to the Kings James Bible, the dictionary, and epic poetry.  Once she was punished for misbehaving by having to copy books one and two Milton's Paradise Lost.

At the age of seventeen, Kincaid left her family, the island and her name behind.  She entered the U.S. under the name of Jamaica Kincaid.  Her first job was an au pair for upper class family in New York City.  She became a regular contributor to the New Yorker magazine for twenty years.  She tells the story that the first piece she  submitted was 300 words in length and composed of only one sentence.  Long sentences is her trademark style.

Kincaid has published more than a dozen books.  Her most recent novel, See Now Then, her first in ten years, tells the story of a family living in a small town in New England.  Some claim the book is autobiographical and based on her marriage to ex-husband, Allen Shawn, son of the New Yorker's long-time editor William Shawn.

Video:
Here is an interview with Jamaica Kincaid.

Leo Tolstoy

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."

— Leo Tolstoy

Russian Writer

1828 - 1910

Commentary:

Most of us at some point in our lives have a desire to change the world — to change how the world works and how others behave.  Some of us outgrow these desires and others spend a lifetime of activism.  Some of us become cynical and dropout.  Others rant and rave against the system.  Yet few of us ever think about changing ourselves.  

The perfect example is marriage.  I bet everyone whoever marries attempts at some point to change the behavior of his or her spouse.  Maybe it is putting down the toilet seat.  Or trying to change the spending habits.  We have all tried to change a spouse and nine times of ten we have failed.  You cannot change other people easily because most people resisted the efforts of others to change them.  If you want the marriage to be successful, you must learn to first change yourself.  And if you are successful, you will change the other person in the process.

As creative leaders, we must learn to work on ourselves first.  If your writing or your paintings are rejected, don't blame the editors and the gallery owners.  Look inside.  What do you need to do differently?  What do you need to change?  

Lasting change comes from within, not from without.  What work habits do you need to change?  What habits of procrastination do you need to change?  What attitudes do you need to change?  Changing a habit does not happen overnight.  Some experts say that it takes a minimum of 21 days to change a habit.  Changing yourself is not easy, but with hard work it can be done.  You can change who you are by changing what goes into your mind and heart.  

I believe the heart drives change more than the brain.  Most people know intellectually that smoking is harmful to one's life and yet many people are unable to stop.  You have to emotionally want to change for change to happen.  Our emotions are the basis for change.  Love for another person can motivate someone to change his behavior.  Fear can be a powerful motivation for change.

Creative Practice:

This week choose some habit that you would like to change and begin the work necessary for the change.  Remember that it takes at least three weeks for the change to take hold.  Commit yourself to the change.  Believe that you can change.  Choose to change.  Plant seeds of hope in your heart.

Background:

Born in the Tula Province of Russia, Tolstoy was the youngest of four boys.  He was two when his mother died and nine when his father passed away.  He was raised by his aunts.  French and German tutors provided his early education at home.  At fifteen he enrolled at the University of Kazan but failed to graduate because of partying to excess instead of studying.  He attempted to become a farmer on his parents' estate but failed as well.  He did develop the habit of keeping a journal.  After failing at farming, he joined the army and fought in the Crimean War.

Tolstoy published his first story, Childhood, in The Contemporary when he was 24.  His greatest novel, War and Peace, was published in 1869.  Anna Karenina, the second of his best novels, was published in installments between 1873 - 1877 to critical and public acclaim.

After the writing of Anna Karenina, Tolstoy suffered a spiritual crisis.  He rejected the Russian Orthodox Church because he felt it was corrupt.  He developed his own unconventional  and controversial spiritual beliefs.  His later fiction was more moralistic than his earlier work.

Video:

The Last Station, a movie about the last year of Tolstoy's life, was released in 2009.  Here is the trailer.

Les Brown

"Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago."

— Les Brown

American Speaker, Author

1945 -

Commentary:

What are you doing today that will help someone a generation from now?  We all need to be planting seeds today that will bear fruit tomorrow.  Whether you are a writer, an artist or a singer, you need to be giving back.  None of us have gotten where we are without the help of others.  And each of us owes something to future generations.

Years ago, when we lived in Indiana, we had sold our house and were moving to Minnesota.  My wife and I planted a flowering tree in the backyard.  We knew we would never see it grow, but we also knew that someone would enjoy its beauty some day.

As creative leaders, our gift to future generations is often our creative work.  People may not read our writing and buy our paintings while we are alive, but sometime in the future people will come to appreciate what we created.  People will be inspired by our work.  We will touch lives and change hearts.

Creative Practice:

This week do something that won't bear fruit for years to come.  Give back to future generations.  Create a masterpiece.  Plant a tree.

Background:

I have listened to Les Brown often on tape and CD.  He tells a powerful story about growing up poor in Miami, Florida.  He was born in an abandoned building in Liberty City, a low-income section of Miami.  He was adopted at six weeks of age by Mamie Brown.  Mamie was a 38 year old single woman, cafeteria cook and domestic worker, with little education or financial means.  The one thing she did have was love which she gave in bushel baskets to Les and his twin brother, Wesley.

In the fifth grade, Les was labeled, "educably mentally retarded" and returned to the fourth grade.  He later flunked the eighth grade and he was often call DT for dumb twin.  Les began his career as a DJ.  He has been a broadcast manager, community activist, political commentator, state legislator, nightclub emcee and keynote speaker.  In 1992, he was selected as one of the top five outstanding speakers by Toastmasters International.  He is the author of the books, Live Your Dreams, and It's Not Over Until You Win.

Video:

Here is Les Brown speaking:

Alan Alda

"If you are just looking to take bows, you'll almost always be disappointed, because the applause is never loud enough."

— Alan Alda

American Actor, Director, Writer

1936 -

Commentary:

As a speaker, I understand almost immediately what Alan Alda is talking about.  There are speakers who brag about getting a standing ovation every time they speak.  The applause is more important than touching the lives of people.  Applause is very short-lived.  If you blink, it might have faded away.  Yet, people yearn for the applause.  Whether you are a writer, a comedian, an artist or an actor, we all crave recognition and praise.  Yet the novel, the poem, the painting, or the performance are more important than the reward.

There are writers who become so caught up in the applause that they stop writing and instead live the life of a writer going from party to party enjoying the praise and recognition.  Some live off their reputation for the remainder of their lives.

Too much praise and recognition from the general public can be harmful to a person's creativity.  They may stop growing and maturing.  The key to avoiding the negative impact of applause is to remain humble.  True humility will free most people from the harmful impact of praise.  

Don't believe your own press releases.  You are not as good as people say.  And on the flip side, you are not as bad as people say.  I have had people tell me that I am the best speaker they have ever heard.  Now, either they have never heard any other speakers or they say that to every speaker.  Within 15 minutes of the end of the speech the meeting room is empty except for the speaker and the staff who are cleaning up.  Most people have moved on with their lives and the applause has faded.

The person we have to learn to please is ourselves, not our readers or our audience.  Our readers can be very fickle — love you today and hate you tomorrow.  Have you applauded yourself lately?  Have you given yourself a standing ovation lately?

Creative Practice:

Cast of M*A*S*H

This week find reasons to give yourself standing ovations.  Review previous poems, paintings and stories that you have written or painted and praise the good that you find.  Ignore the bad.  Be thankful for the gifts that you have been given.

Background:

Alan Alda was born Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo in The Bronx, New York City.  His father was an actor and singer and his mother was a showgirl.  Alda began his acting career in the 1950's as a member of the Compass Players.  In 1966, he starred in the musical, The Apple Tree, on Broadway.  Alda is remembered most for his role as Hawkeye Pierce in in the TV series, M*A*S*H.  He was nominated for 21 Emmy Awards for the show and won five.  He also wrote and directed many of the shows.  He appeared in all 251 episodes of the series.

Video: 

Here is a video of Alan Alda being interviewed on CBS about his memoir, Things I Overheard While Talking To Myself.

Quote Source:

Things I Overheard While Talking To Myself, by Alan Alda

Albert Einstein

"Don't think about why you question, simply don't stop questioning.  Don't worry about what you can't answer, and don't try to explain what you can't know.  Curiosity is its own reason."

— Albert Einstein

German Theoretical Physicist

1879 - 1955

Commentary

Do you question the world around you?  Do you ask: why? how? when? where?  Do you challenge the assumptions of others?  Do you challenge your own assumptions?  Do you challenge your beliefs?  Do you question your habits?  Or do you simply accept what was taught you?  Do you accept without question the statements of experts?  Do you question what you read in the newspaper or hear on television?  Are you willing to think differently than those around you?  Do you hang out with people who think like you do?  Or do you surround yourself with people who think differently than you?

There is so much that we don't know.  The more I learn; the less I feel I know.  Are you curious about the world in which you live?  Are you curious about your neighbors?  Your friends?  The physical world?  The world of the mind?  Are you curious about what you do not know?  Have you stopped learning?  Stopped reading?  Stopped growing?

There is a story of a man who was watching his wife cook a pot roast.  She cut off the end of the pot roast before putting it in the pot.  He asked her why?  She said that was what her mother always did.  Since she was curious, she called her mother and asked her why she cut off the end of the pot roast?  Her mother said because her grandmother did.  The woman called her grandmother and asked her why she always cut off the end of the pot roast.  And the grandmother said that she cut off the end because the pot was too small.  What habits have you formed that are based on out-of-date information?  What habits do you need to change?

Creative Practice

This week take a belief, an assumption or a habit that you have held your for most of your life and question it?  Challenge your assumptions. What assumptions have you made about the creative process?  Or creative people?  Painters?  Writers?  Actors?  Find out why you believe what you believe.  Where did the belief come from?  Where did the habit come from?  What makes it valid?  Is it true?  Or is it false?

Biography

Albert Einstein was born In Ulm, Germany on March 14, 1879 to Hermann Einstein and Pauline Einstein.  His father was a salesman and an engineer.  The Einsteins were non-observant Jews.  Albert attended a Catholic elementary school for three years.  Einstein built models and mechanical devices and showed a talent for mathematics.  In 1900, Einstein earned a Zurich Polytechnic teaching diploma.  He married Mileva Maric in 1903.  They had two sons born in 1904 and 1910.  They divorced in 1914 and less than 4 months later he married Elsa Lowenthal, his first cousin.  She died in 1936.  Albert and Elsa immigrated to the United States in 1933.  Einstein became a U. S. citizen in 1940.

Albert Einstein experienced internal bleeding caused by the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm in 1955.  When he was admitted to the hospital, he refused surgery, saying: "I want to go when I want.  It is tasteless to prolong life artificially.  I have done my share, it is time to go.  I will do it elegantly.  He died the next morning at the age of 76.

Naomi Shihab Nye

"The story is given to you through the process of writing.  I always encourage my students to trust the process of writing.  It will take them somewhere, and it may not be where they thought they were going."

Naomi Shihab Nye

American Poet

1952 -

Commentary

Sometimes we plan too much.  We want to control every detail.  We need to learn to follow the story.  It is a gift.  We need to trust the discovery process.  The story will not betray us.  

Creative Practice

This week write a poem or short story starting with the phrase, "On the day that I died ..."  Follow where the story leads.  Trust the writing.  Go where it goes.

Background on Poet

Naomi Shihab Nye was born to a Palestinian father and American mother in St. Louis, Missouri.  She began writing poetry at the age of six.  She spent her high school years in both Jerusalem and San Antonio, Texas.  She received her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio.

Nye described her writing experience in the Four Winds Press:  "My poems and stories often begin with the voices of our neighbors, mostly Mexican American, always inventive and surprising.  I never get tired of mixtures."  She describes herself as the wandering poet and interacts with different cultures.

Video

Here is a video of Naomi Shihab Nye talking about inspiration:

I believe that people have more similarities than differences.  Yet people tend to focus on what makes them different than what makes them the same.  In this next video Nye describes a poetry class she taught where she used poems written by both Jewish and Palestinian women.  She used poetry to show that we are more alike than different.