The Paradox of Creative Courage

The best way to have creative courage as you work is to forget about creativity, courage, fear, or imagination, and simply SAY WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY.

The inner shakiness a lot of artists get is a lot like fear of public speaking: once the focus shifts to getting out what we have to say, with that becoming more important than how we're feeling, then the fear evaporates. Which we may not even realize until later.

Ever looked up and found that the time had passed and the work was done? (Well, a first draft of a piece of it, anyway.) It's a great feeling.


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A Positive View of Problems

Yesterday I paused at my local metaphysical bookstore Dancing Moon to buy a couple of birthday/housewarming presents. While checking out, I pulled one of the cards from the deck on the counter, the idea being that I would be guided to select one that would apply to me and my situation.

What the card said, in short: the problems you run into are chances to develop strengths and grow.

Okay, I'm willing to view dealing with the vast complications of the book business as weight-lifting. I don't know how long that attitude will last, but it did give me a brighter perspective yesterday that has lasted at least until today.

The attitude gibes with that of the admirable Ralph Waldo Emerson. From the Emerson on Man and God which was a gift to me in high school: "Difficulties exist to be surmounted. The great heart will no more complain of the obstructions that make success hard, than of the iron walls of the gun which hinder the shot from scattering. It was walled round with iron tube with that purpose, to give it irresistible force in one direction. A strenuous soul hates cheap successes."

I don't know any artist--or anyone, for that matter--who thinks of his or her successes as too easily won. Still, the obstacle-as-strengthener idea can take away some anger. I've developed an unnatural patience and a certainty of my own purpose through the years of obstacles (huge pain-in-the-ass interferences) that publishing so often presents.


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Courage

"The original notion of the word 'courage' means 'to stand by one's core,'"
says an Omega catalog description of a course taught by Mark Nepo, author of Facing the Lion, Being the Lion: Finding Inner Courage Where It Lives.

Podictionary.com says that the root of the word courage is the French for heart. "Bobby Kennedy ...said that for every ten men brave in battle there was only one with moral courage."

In either case, the word does not necessarily mean being on the front lines of just any battle. It means remaining steadfast to one's most strongly held passions and convictions. Which can refer to simply continuing to do your work, day after day.



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Grace Wang: Standing Her Ground

A Duke freshman from Qingdao, China, has stirred up world news in the last three weeks.

Twenty-year-old Grace Wang did this by trying to start a conversation between the two sides at a demonstration for and against independence for Tibet from China. On the evening of April 9, she was leaving a campus cafeteria and saw the two flag-bearing groups squaring off out on the main quad. She went over to check the situation out.

Then this young reader of Harvard Law School's Negotiation Journal decided to intervene, to get the two sides to talk. She had spent Christmas as the only Chinese student housed over the holiday in an apartment with three Tibetan students; it was too far for any of them to go home. Conversations with those three had been good and made her think that talking would be helpful for the two groups facing each other on the quad.

She wound up leaving the site under police protection. Now her parents in China have been forced into hiding. She and her parents are getting death threats. It's all a whole lot more than she had in mind.

But in an essay published in The Washington Post, she says: "I haven't shriveled up and slunk away. Instead, I've responded by publicizing this shameful incident, both to protect my parents and to get people to reflect on their behavior. I'm no longer afraid, and I'm determined to exercise my right to free speech."

I feel connected to this story. For one thing, when I taught creative writing at Duke last spring, a Tibetan student was in my more advanced class. I thought he had a lot of guts; just imagine taking an advanced fiction writing course in Tibetan.

Then too, forty years ago, I was a student at Duke making the same early evening trip Grace Wang was--between cafeteria and library--when trouble broke out. I wasn't involved in the campus demonstrations, but simply happened to come out onto the quad at the moment the National Guard entered the long drive up to the main quad and gassed anyone who happened to be there.

I remember running within the billows of eye-stinging smoke and seeing the narrowed silhouettes of others at a distance within the same yellowish cloud. I headed for what I hoped would be a building I could get into and breathe. I wound up in a men's dorm, stampeding with others down the halls until we finally came to a stop in a commons room, where the events outside were already on the national evening news.

I'll never forget the events of that dusk. And, for me, there were no death threats, no buckets of feces dumped at the entrance to my family's home.

Grace Wang wasn't angling for that either. And she may not have been thinking too hard about the possible negative fallout when she made her first move.

But her actions since that night--in staying public and making her story and her positions known--have been pretty courageous. She's now truly standing her own ground for freedom of expression.

(Information for this post comes from The Washington Post and The News & Observer in Raleigh.)


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The Writer Daughter

Back in the 60s, my friend Connie and I used to hold long discussions not only about our fellow high school students but also, with at least as much enthusiasm, about books. From about age 14 on until our mid-twenties and the birth of her first child, these discussions were a big deal. Then I had an all-consuming newspaper job and she had a baby and a move with her new family to another state.

That daughter, in her mid-thirties and living in the Pacific Northwest, now has an agent for her first novel and an excited editor who is presenting the book to his house's acquisitions committee this week.

This news is to me gratifying beyond measure. It feels right! I feel as if it proves some sort of immortality for those long-ago conversations while walking from my house on Mimosa Place over to hang out at the shopping center on Oleander.

Somehow this development makes the universe feel less random, reminds me that everything matters. Which is kinda thrilling.


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One Small Step Today

A phrase I heard in a Creative Capital seminar about a year ago has stuck with me: No goal too large, no step too small.

The point is that all the steps toward the goal count, and if we keep taking them, they steadily accumulate and also inspire larger leaps. If we faithfully take one step each day and keep on and on, it's amazing how far we can go.

Last week wandering around the charming downtown of the tiny NC mountain community of Sylva I remembered this saying. All it took was the sight of the county courthouse, which has the most steps I've ever seen on a public building still in use.

(The Acropolis has a sort of winding trail up, and those pyramids in Mexico are a shockingly steep climb but you don't have to go there to buy a marriage license etc. so the trip is optional.)

Had I had a helicopter I could have shot a picture that did these steps justice; there are in fact a couple of more flights beynond the statue that may look like the top. That's also the way with most projects I've undertaken: there are a few extra sets of steps thrown in, not visible from the start. So just when you think you've arrived...there's still more climbing.
All of this is to say: Take a step today toward your big, big goal. Even a tiny one will put you closer.




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Woman Driver

At this point in history, it shouldn't be a surprise to see a woman doing "a man's job" and vice versa.

Still, I had a moment of startlement and delight when I realized that this mowing-person at Western Carolina was a girl. (She appeared to be under 21, thus the use of "girl", rather than "woman".)

And, on the national scene, we're still approaching a gender/minority first: the Democratic nominee will be either a woman or an African-American. So falling barriers aren't exactly old news yet.

Growing up in the South in the 50s, I will probably always experience startlement and delight at seeing these barriers eroded and removed.

I imagine that girl on the mowing machine might still have startled someone when she asked for the job.

I say: Yay! for her and for whoever gave her the job.




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A Religious Basis for Being Yourself

"God speaks to you not only through His supernatural grace, but also through the individual nature which He fashioned into the person you are today. He would have you make an intelligent, reasonable use of the gift that is 'you'."

From, Anthony J. Paone, S.J.
Confraternity Of The Precious Blood
(an order of cloistered contemplatives)

This appeared yesterday on Scott Burkhead 's Daily Spiritual Guide, a wildly eclectic daily mix of genuinely uplifting tidbits.

And now for my commentary on this text:

"Reasonable" worries me a little, because it's easy to view something difficult as impossible, and therefore unreasonable. The use of the male pronoun bothers me too. But with those caveats, I love this idea.

My own religion is a patchwork; and this belief of the authentic self being a gift fits into it nicely. Moreover, I like a moral basis for something I'm working on talking myself into. We all hear a lot about being "selfless." I think we have to be ourselves before we have anything to offer anyone else, and before we have a self to transcend.



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Today's Bold Move

I find that if I'm a tad cheeky about my choice of little things, it fires me up to be gutsier and more imaginative about more important things.

So today getting dressed I discovered that, to avoid the unseemly bare midriff, this sweater needed more than the one button the hip manufacturer provided.

Hidden safety pins didn't work at all.

My cool solution (oh, I'm so pleased) was a couple of pins of the decorative sort. The possibilities are tremendous: we could do this with political buttons. Two Barack Obama buttons, or two Hillary Clinton buttons, as the case may be.

Campaigners, listen up! I hope you jump on this idea. It's yours at no charge.



These "buttons" are acting as booster rockets to my day.

Any little boldness boosters of your own you'd be willing to pass on?





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How To Ward Off Writer's Block

“The second that I think that I have a fear of writing, (I think) ‘No, no, this is just a joyous thing to sit down and tell a story,’” he said.

This is the strategy of writer and fourth grade teacher Ross Modlin, as reported by Cameron Macdonald in The Elk Grove Citizen in Elk Grove, California.

I like simple strategies the best. The complicated ones just seem an additional burden.

This one is flexible because we could take the beginning of the sentence and finish it with anything that needs unsticking.

For example: This is just a joyous thing to design a new course...to begin the revisions that will make this piece so much stronger...to draw a picture....

Also, note that Modlin uses this thought the instant he notices fear coming on.

(The teacher who helped me the most toward becoming a writer was also named Modlin--Mildred Modlin, teaching in Wilmington, NC in the 1960s. So I'm predisposed to thinking this fellow is offering good advice.

One other auspicious sign: Elk Grove was a home base for many gold miners during the Gold Rush. Of course practicing any art is a process of mining for the gold.)

So today's work is just a joyous thing: to go digging for gold, in the company of other miners scattered here and there about the land.



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A Bold Idea: Sabbatical

I can now shut up about the fact that when I was in high school I was not selected to go to Governor's School in the summer. In the last week I got my own mini-Governor's School.

About 25 years ago, North Carolina Teacher of the Year Jean Powell suggested in a speech that there be a sort of Governor's School for teachers. The (few and fortunate) high-performing high school kids chosen each year to attend this advanced and fabulously enriching boarding school session always came back so excited about learning.

So, Powell said, why not do the same thing for teachers? And send them back to the classroom re-excited about teaching and learning.

Then-Governor Jim Hunt jumped on the idea and the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching was born.

This week I've been teaching a class here called "Write from your Roots." I feel I'm the one who is refreshed and re-excited about learning...and about my own teaching and writing and living.

The 22 guests--teachers, counselors, and librarians--and the staff I worked with here (Jane Dalton, author of The Compassionate Classroom and Tara Melton-Miller) could teach anybody anything. I hope the "students" have gotten even a fraction of the good from the experience that I have.

If you happen to work for the NC public schools, take a bold step and apply to come here. There's a magic chemistry happening on this 30-acre mountain campus--and no doubt at the coastal Ocracoke site as well.

If you aren't eligible, TAKE A BOLD STEP AND FIND YOUR OWN SABBATICAL SOMEWHERE. Even a few days can be a small lifetime tucked into the big one.

Thanks to Jean Powell who boldly spoke up about a good idea and to Jim Hunt who said: let's do it. And to the Legislature that helps it continue. And of course to NCCAT.

Woohoo! I'm coming back! Take that, Governor's School selection panel of 1965-66!



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Teachers as Writers

I do some teaching, but am primarily a writer. Not unusual. Many, if not most, career writers also teach. But perhaps unlike those who are drawn to teaching first, lots of the writers-who-teach are pretty introverted.

This week I'm leading a group made up of people who are career public school educators and are spending this week (at the NC Center for the Advancement of Teaching) doing some writing.

After four days, I find myself fascinated by the good things I see in the way teachers conduct themselves as writers.

Almost all of these people are used to "presenting" all day. They are not shy. Or if they are, they're hiding it well. They're also very practiced communicators, with a lot of experience in giving feedback, getting people's attention, laying down the law, and making sure people understand the assignment.

These strengths show in their writing. As writers, they're clear. Bold. They get their message out. Not once have I had the impulse to say: I'm not getting what you mean here.

Whereas, my biggest struggle as a writer is to be sure I'm not too understated. And that's a fairly common piece of feedback in the writing group I've been in for years.

So it's refreshing and inspiring to sit with writers who, with very little hesitation, get their thoughts on the page and their writing out to others. And, for the teacher-writers, it's a great advantage they have as they begin a new kind of writing, for self-expression.




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Courage for the Inner Journey

Here's the scenery outside the classroom window where I'm leading a group this week on Writing from Your Roots. (My seat faces the wall of windows, I'm happy to say.)

The group is a couple of dozen teachers from all over North Carolina, meeting at the NC Center for the Advancement of Teaching in Cullowhee.

Seminars here are designed to refresh and re-inspire the teachers. This particular topic is also one that requires of them a fair amount of courage, because writing from the deepest part of oneself takes some digging. And there's often material that's painful, sometimes material that's a surprise.

Tough prose has been read around our table this week: about dealing with a parent's suicide, an early widowhood, and being a refugee from the war in Bosnia, about facing one's buried angers and fears, as well as more joyful experience.

People have leaped over their in-the-moment fears and hesitation and written strong stories. It has been exciting and gratifying to watch and hear.

I applaud these writers and will keep their courage in mind as an example when I'm back at my own manuscript. Because writing fiction also requires some well-digging, before the fountain rises shining in the air.



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40 Inspiring Writing Blogs

Kathryn Vercillo has posted links to "40 Inspiring Writing Blogs that you Don’t Already Read" on her site Real Words from a Real Writer.

You'll find that there's at least one on the list that you do already read. And thanks to Kathryn for including this site.


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If It Scares You...

The seminar I'm leading this week of 22 NC public school teachers got rolling last night and I discovered that teachers are the ideal folks to have in a discussion group. Wow, what a bunch of thoughtful live wires.

This gathering is at NCCAT in Cullowhee in the NC mountains. That's the NC Center for the Advancement of Teaching. Gorgeous campus. From where I sit in our meeting room I can watch the spire of water in the fountain in the center of the pond next to the dining room.

So yesterday I was going on about my pre-teaching nervousness. It's gone. As always, getting moving makes the difference.

In our discussion last night, one person volunteered some wisdom from her sister: If it scares the shit out of you, do it.

I'd qualify that a tad: if the risk is reasonably low and the gain is significant, do it. I still don't see the point of bungee jumping.

Otherwise, doing what we want to do is worth weathering a bit of initial uneasiness. It's more than worth it.


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A Teaching Week

I just arrived in Cullowhee in the NC mountains where I'm leading a writing group for NCCAT--the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

I meet with the group for the first time twenty minutes from now. I always have "green room" nervousness just before starting. Once we get going I'm fine. But still these twenty minutes to go.

It's curious to me that I'm edgy like this before running a group. Public speaking never worries me at all. It feels completely different; it's just talking. Whereas, a class needs to really deliver something.

18 minutes now.

Think I'll go for a walk. Or talk to people, that always distracts me and gets me pumped up.



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A Creativity Site Recommendation

Kay from California just sent an address to a mind-stirring site from the guy who wrote A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative, just re-released in a 25th anniversary edition.

The same fellow also produced the Creative Whack Pack, a set of cards with 64 different imaginative idea-producing strategies and the Ball of Whacks, "a creativity workshop in a ball."

I have a set of those cards in my bottom desk drawer, but I'd never before gone looking for the site: Creative Think by Roger von Oech. It's a plenty lively place.

In a recent post, von Oech suggests having a "mantra" for your work, but using the word more in the sense of a motto. His is "Look for a second right answer." That's bound to produce interesting outcomes, and it contains a strategy not simply a goal.

My own is "Go after the best result," with the fuller version being: "I unhesitatingly, serenely, joyfully go after the best result." I want to figure out a way to build in the kind of strategy his offers. I'm convinced that having a pithy statement of guiding principle installed in my brain is a bit like having a centerboard in a sailboat.





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Make A Mistake Today!

This quote arrived at the bottom of an email this week:

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." Scott Adams

I love the idea because it's true and it has the potential to take away the destructive performance pressure so many of us put on ourselves.

Having read this item and pondered it, I then went looking for the identity of the to-me mysterious Scott Adams. Turns out he's famous: the creator of Dilbert.
He's also quite an aphorist. Brainy Quote has a long list of good sayings from him, ranging from wry to inspiring.

Here's another sample from the inspirational end of his spectrum: "Most success springs from an obstacle or failure. I became a cartoonist largely because I failed in my goal of becoming a successful executive."




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The Closet Challenge

A few days ago, Mamie Potter of the Can I Do It? blog posted a photo of her closet and an invitation on this blog for others to do the same.

She was simply considering cleaning hers out. In response, Billie Hinton posted a shot of hers on her blog, Camera Obscura saying, "I don't know why but I love the idea of exposing my junky inner self to the world."

Not having anything to hide is a very freeing thing. I never thought of my closet as being hidden, but "in the closet" is certainly the classic phrase used for keeping a large secret.

So I think Mamie's really onto something with this idea. And here is the unveiling of my own junky inner self. It is so much neater than my mental world--or the inside of my car.



If any of the rest of you decide to take part in this closet experiment, do let us all know.



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Getting to the Real Reason

Yesterday, I was griping about being in a nasty mood about a list of annoyances.

This morning, my husband Bob, who is a psychologist, suggested that maybe my irritation list wasn't the main thing that's bothering me. Maybe instead it's that a family member is showing undeniable and troubling symptoms.

The truth swept over me--slo-mo. He was right. That was it, I could feel the certainty of it in my jaw muscles, which I've been (destructively) clenching in my sleep.

Now, why can't I always figure out for myself what's bothering me? Is it aversion to facing the real reason? Lack of courage/boldness?

I had even questioned earlier how I could feel so sad and mean over stuff that's pretty familiar and doesn't usually get to me at all.

I'd like to have a procedure for: getting to the real reason for whatever is going on in my own head. Because just identifying it is a tremendous relief. And because I don't like deceiving myself.

Again, I welcome your ideas.

Upcoming: in response to the dare/meme from Mamie Potter at Can I Do It?, tomorrow I post my closet picture, thus letting it all hang out.



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What to Do for a Bad Mood

First let me say that there's nothing life-and-death troubling me just now. But at the moment I do have computer problems, dental problems, agent problems, and book problems. I'm sure I could think of something else to put on that list if I put my irritated mind to it.

Last night my husband asked me what he could to cheer me (he's a large bright spot, that's for sure.) I told him he could bring me home a gooey dessert. He brought a slice of cheesecake with a layer of chocolate crumbles on the top. Good man. Good cheesecake.

Gooey chocolate dessert: That's one thing to do for a bad mood, as long as the cure doesn't get out of hand. (I also meditated for half a hour which helped too.)

What do you do for a minor but brain-numbing multi-day bad mood? (Better come up with something or I'm likely to get out of hand.)



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Write from Our Roots

Next week I'll be teaching a workshop in the North Carolina mountains titled "Write From Our Roots", for the NC Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

A piece I read yesterday in The New York Times Book Review reminded me that roots can be understood in a variety of ways. In an essay on the excellent Jhumpa Lahiri's new book Unaccustomed Earth, Liesl Schillinger noted that the writer "shows that the place to which you feel the strongest attachment isn't necessarily the country you're tied to by blood or birth: it's the place that allows you to become yourself. This place, she quietly indicates, may not lie on any map."

I ask myself what that "place" is for me and I suspect that it's my love for and memory of my hometown of Wilmington, NC. Paradoxically, it's the place that I tried hardest to be like everyone else.

The biography I'm researching is about an artist who lived there before me and who was at least as peculiar as I was naturally inclined to be.

There's one writer/therapist (Harville Hendrix, Getting the Love You Want) who says that we choose as mates people who have the traits that challenged us as kids. The idea is: this time I'm going to get it right.

Maybe something similar is going on with my selection of subject. But the fact is: I mostly don't regret my efforts back then to fit in. That's a reasonable choice, and can be a bold choice; just as it's possible to be both a feminist and a housewife. (I never know where I'm going to wind up when I start writing one of these posts, same with novels.)

Anyway, as I prepare to teach this short course next week, I'm examining my own roots once again, including those that don't lie on a map.





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All Comparisons Are Odious

I don't know who first said that, but I do think we all suffer from comparisons.

I just visited Debbie Whaley's wonderful blog, Four Angels' Momma . It was such a pleasure and an uplift to be there. After a few minutes, a familiar destructive thought crept in: why am I not writing a warm blog like this, that feels, not sappy, but more like hot chocolate and excellent slippers and a reading chair, even when it's about the beach.

Then I remembered: this is a clear example of why I'm writing this blog as I am. To encourage us each to do our own thing. Me, especially.

I need to write about the sneaking destructive thoughts and how to catch and make friends with them. (This process is for me crucial to the process of writing--grabbing the fleeting creatures and interviewing them.)

So again I say to myself and anyone else interested: the world loses when any of us abandons her/his own dharma and goes to imitating.



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"The Anxiety of Nothingness"

What could possibly ever be scary about writing, painting, the blank page, etc? Rollo May, author of The Courage to Create, says it's fear of going into the chaotic unknown.

“This is what the existentialists call the anxiety of nothingness." (quote from La Bloga, a litblog about Chicana/Chicano writers.

My feeling is that it's not necessarily because of the fear of confronting nothing; it's also because of the snakes and spiders one might find.

The novel I'm working on--particularly intensely yesterday--will likely be considered by some to be a rather nasty book. It has some scenes that might be called hard-core.

Why have I written this? I don't altogether know. But I can say that it's a combo of calling and desire and some weird feeling of inevitability, karma or dharma. (I also think it's a damn good book, hope it will appeal to fans of the superb literary and erotic writer Susanna Moore, among others.)

Some years ago, I made a promise to myself to write what emerged from my depths, however strange. I'm doing it, and watching the process with curiousity, defiance, uneasiness, pride, puzzlement, and gusto.



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Writing Trance

Too caught up in my novel to switch gears for blogging today. Hope your project is also deeply engrossing.



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The Power of Each Pair of Hands

At a cleanup at North Carolina's Jordan Lake (near my house) a few weeks ago, about 50 volunteers picked up trash over a period of 4.5 hours. (Previous post title: So Glad I Did)

The results: 110 old tires and roughly 250 large bags of trash.

The bold move: getting out there when you might think lots of people are going and two more hands won't make all that much difference.

The pictures are from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which organized the effort and grilled hotdogs afterwards.





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Ode

Just ran across a magazine "for intelligent optimists" that is both predictably upbeat and appealingly unpredictable. Ode Magazine started in Rotterdam in 1995 and has been publishing out of San Francisco since 2004.

The current April issue includes a piece by William Stimson, a proponent of "radical simplicity," titled "How to Move a Tree: Why Attempting the Impossible Is Always the Right Thing to Do."

And, in the surprising category, is a story: "Tax the Beautiful: Ugly People Should Be Compensated for their Obvious Disadvantage in Society, argues Gonzalo Otaloro." (by Marco Fisher)

Taxing the beautiful is the most outrageous idea I've heard since a few days ago when a Republican candidate for statewide office in NC was reported as favoring merger of the U.S. and Canada.

I can't say that I support either of those, but I love the wide-ranging thinking they show.



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Do One Nice Thing

Doing a nice thing for someone can also be encouraging and empowering, as well as health-improving, for the do-er. (See The Healing Power of Doing Good, by Allan Luks with me, Peggy Payne.)

My local paper Sunday ran a piece by Jane Lampman from The Christian Science Monitor about a woman and her website who promote doing a nice thing every Monday. DoOneNiceThing.com offers specific suggestions and addresses if you'd like to send a nice thing: for example, a packet of pencils, notebook, etc. for a child in Afghanistan. This one idea has resulted in the delivery of 70 tons of school supplies.

The originator of the site, Debbie Tenzer, an LA marketing pro, also found that it perked up her sometimes discouraging Mondays.

I do realize that today is Tuesday, but we could secretly pretend it's Monday and do something nice anyway. As Martha might say, It's a bold thing.



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