reading

The Best Place to Work

Aside from reading books on creativity, I have a tendency to pick books about human behavior and the social sciences. I have three of them by my bedside now, checked out from the library. The one I just finished reading is called, “The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace” by Ron Friedman. This book was an easy read, presenting research that has been done on creating workplaces that…

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Frankensteining the Talent Pool: Devin Townsend + David Draiman

Shazam! Another Frankensteining the Talent Pool idea! This one sparked by my husband playing a couple of videos by the band Disturbed on YouTube this evening. The kicker was Disturbed’s version of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence.” The way Disturbed performs this song made me listen more carefully to the lyrics because they start slowly and quietly, with the music becoming louder and more emotional as it continues, until there is a pause…

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My Beautiful New 2016 Day Book

It’s that time of year again … time to buy a new calendar/day book for the upcoming year. I’ve been keeping a day book for years and years now, probably since the 1990s, when my sister-in-law bought me my first one. At the time, I was journaling long-hand in notebooks, trying to follow the suggestion in “The Artist’s Way” about writing three pages per day. The long-hand requirement drove me crazy because I didn’t always…

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Olio: December 13, 2015

  Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things — My recent internet findings … I had not heard the terms “trigger warnings” or “microagressions” until the past month. Now I’m seeing the whole phenomenon surrounding me. For a good article that explains both, see “The Coddling of the American Mind” from The Atlantic. South Park has also been exploring the issue in recent episodes with the character P.C. Principal. “i will let go of my darkness when…

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The Architecture of Happiness

The book I just finished, “The Architecture of Happiness” by Alain de Botton, is one that I read slowly in order to savor the language. This is the second book I’ve read by de Botton and he is a smart writer, putting together words in unexpected ways to create insights that make you think. One of his make-you-think statements is the following: “It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value.”…

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