The power of words
A word after a word after a word is power.
All posts filed under: Recommended Readings
Books (along with a smattering of movies and plays) that I have found of interest and want to share
Not Your Summer Reading List
Summer reading lists can be fun. I’ve enjoyed compiling my annual list since I started this blog ten years ago. I also enjoy reading lists developed by others, as you often get insights into both great new books and the thoughts of the individual who passes along recommendations. My criteria for good summer reading lists include: they must be focused on a short period of time when the compiler is away (e.g., for an August vacation), and the reading can’t be too heavy, as there are 10 other months to read tomes about how the world is going to hell in a handbasket. What follows is not a summer reading list. I’ve fallen so far behind in updating readers about the books I’ve found interesting, challenging, refreshing, and—yes—troublesome that I’ve decided to take a Twitter-like approach and provide two-four sentence summaries of everything I’ve read between Memorial Day and Labor Day this year. Since I can’t remember the order in which I read them, I’m listing them in alphabetical order (by author). Let me know …
Pacific Grove-by-God
For several years I’ve regularly traveled for work to Monterey, California, a small coastal city some two hours south of San Francisco. So when we went looking for a west coast destination for this year’s family vacation, I suggested we check out the Monterey Peninsula. Now that we’ve wrapped up a week-long visit to Pacific Grove—next-door neighbor to the city of Monterey—we’re just coming to realize how much we’ve seen and explored in this new (to us) part of the world. Let’s begin with the coastline, the attraction to visitors for thousands of years. I awoke every day shortly after 6 a.m. and went for walks of as much as two hours along the well-used (and well-loved) Monterey Bay Coastal Trail. Pacific Grove’s portion of this 18-mile trail, which follows the path of the old Southern Pacific Railroad train tracks, hews close to the water and rock-strewn coastline, while Monterey’s comes inland a bit to incorporate Cannery Row, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and Fisherman’s Wharf. My walk often began before sunrise and was shrouded in …
Think slow
Our 15-year-old nephew — a budding musician — was in town this past weekend, so I took him to the House of Musical Traditions in Takoma Park. There he could see every type of musical instrument known to humankind (plus some) and, frankly, it gave me an excuse to play a few good guitars. Not that I don’t have good guitars at home. Later in the day my nephew had a chance to see and play my two prized Running Dog guitars made by luthier Rick Davis. Davis was profiled in Tim Brookes’ 2005 book Guitar: An American Life, where the author seeks to replace a badly damaged first guitar with a hand-crafted one “for the second half of my life.” He writes that as he nears 50 years of age, he finds an itch that can only be scratched with a new guitar. And as Brookes notes, “Guitar makers even have a word for these baby-boomers-who-always-wanted-to-be-great-guitarists-and-now-have-the-money-to-indulge-those-dreams: dentists.” “Much later, after the guitar is finished, Rick will refer to ‘the eternal and infinite capacity of …
Would you rather be the ornithologist or the bird?
The human brain is wired for story. We process our world in narrative, we talk in narrative and—most important for leadership—people recall and retain information more effectively when it’s presented in the form of a story, not bullet points.
What you know that just ain’t so
In the midst of the disruption and turmoil that can be found around us, I have been reminded of the quote that began with Mark Twain and then was adapted by the great Negro League pitcher and philosopher Satchel Paige: “It’s not what you don’t know that hurts you, it’s what you know that just ain’t so.” We seem to be having an epidemic these days of “what you know that just ain’t so-itis.” There are many reasons this could be the case, but an important one is that we’re bombarded with information that requires work on our part to filter and understand. Warren Bennis has written that “adults learn best when they take charge of their own learning. Taking charge of your own learning is a part of taking charge of your life, which is the sine qua non in becoming an integrated person.” Consider where we get information today. In our interconnected yet at times isolated world, we all fall into the trap of letting others tell us how to think. It is easy …
What a Wonderful Washington Weekend!
It is a great weekend to live in Washington… Stanley Cup Celebrations Continue — From bars in Arlington to today’s game at National Park to the Georgetown Waterfront, the Stanley Cup Champion Washington Capitals are having a great time celebrating the franchise’s first Stanley Cup championship with the hometown fans. While I was across the country when they clinched on Thursday evening, I could hear the city explode from Phoenix. We’re ALL CAPS here in D.C. It was an especially satisfying run, given 1) that they weren’t expected to go very deep due to losses of players to the expansion draft, and 2) that they got through a couple of perennial stumbling blocks: John (Torts) Tortorella of the Columbus Blue Jackets and—most significantly—the Pittsburgh Penguins. Too bad Martin St. Louis—who was always a playoff pest—no longer plays for Tampa Bay. If you want another thrill, watch the highlights from the cup-clinching game. Pride 2018 Celebration — Thousands have descended on DC this weekend for the annual Pride celebration. Andrew almost always makes it to Pride, but because of …
Bad stories
I am in the middle of an impressive yet troubling book by Steve Almond entitled Bad Stories. This work about the American psyche in 2018, by the New York Times best-selling author and co-host of the Dear Sugars podcast (with fellow writer Cheryl Strayed), looks at the many reasons we came to be where we are today as a nation. There is much to consider in this work. But for now, I want to focus on stories — good and bad — and what they can mean personally and professionally for those of us who look to “tell the full American story.” Almond writes, “I’ve placed my faith in stories because I believe them to be the basic unit of human consciousness. The stories we tell, and the ones we absorb, are what allow us to pluck meaning from the rush of experience.” He then quotes the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, who insists that our species came to dominate the world in part because of “our unique cognitive ability to believe in the imagined, …
Sometimes the only way is the long one
During a 2013 vacation where each family member chose an activity close-to-home for us to share, my wife’s selection was a day at a local retreat center.* Upon arrival, I was pleased to see that the center had created a labyrinth in the woods. Labyrinths have come to have a special place in my heart. A dear friend of our family who died in his early 20s was memorialized with a labyrinth designed for people of all physical abilities. Andrew had spent the majority of his life in a wheelchair, but that never constrained his spirit. Back at the retreat center, “walking the labyrinth” became my activity for the morning. I was reminded of this recently while re-reading Rebecca Solnit’s wonderful book Wanderlust: A History of Walking. An early chapter is titled “Labyrinths and Cadillacs: Walking Into the Land of the Symbolic.” (I told you it was a wonderful book!) Solnit, who describes herself as “having been raised as nothing in particular by a lapsed Catholic and a nonpracticing Jew,” found herself walking the labyrinth …
What do you think about in the shower
“It’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower.”
MORE TO COME... 