inspiring people

Jacques D’Amboise: “Friendship is Not a Straight Line”

We’ve watched this beautiful clip many times, delighting in the late, legendary dancer Jacques d’Amboise’s insights into the rituals that define friendships and social interaction. We hadn’t known we were dancing…

The Great Phyllida Barlow Leaves Us Her Illuminating Explorations of Chance, Control, Vulnerability*

We were dismayed to hear that artist Phyllida Barlow passed away. She was a kind of role model for us, a 78-year old woman who taught for decades until finding fame late in her life for her daring monumental sculptures. We first fell in love and admiration when we watched trailer to the film “Phyllida”…

For Yoko Ono on Her 90th Birthday

As we’ve read tributes in celebration of Yoko Ono’s 90th birthday, we’ve been thinking about her too and of the many amazing things she has put into the world. She has lived through so much and never stopped making her art, speaking up, working to antidote the violence of our age. The mindshifts her work catalyzes remain refreshing, heartening, helpful. Here are a few of our favorites:

Marsha Linehan on Building a Life Worth Living

We got interested in psychotherapist Marsha Linehan after a reader told us that it was she who first used the Buddhist concept of Radical Acceptance as a therapeutic tool in psychotherapy. It was a groundbreaking approach, as were the treatments she pioneered for patients who were previously written off as hopeless. The story of how she developed it — as a young woman she had been one of those “impossible” patients — is a marvel of resourcefulness and creativity.

A New Year’s Wish from Alexander and Louisa Calder Spirals On

In 1966, sculptor Alexander Calder and his wife Louisa published this full-page ad in the New York Times. Bold and hopeful, it is a fierce statement that resonates as much today as it did then. Every New Year’s Day, we remember that ad, finding it about the most perfect wish for the New Year.

Reason for Optimism in 2023: The Universe In Verse on “What is Life?”

The perfect accompaniment to the reflective week between Christmas and New Years is the Universe in Verse, an event masterminded by The Marginalian’s Maria Popova, to explore the question “What is Life?” through science and poetry. A gathering of extraordinary humans “celebrate the marvel and mystery of life, from the creaturely to the cosmic, with stories from the history of science and our search for truth, illustrated with poems spanning centuries of human thought and feeling”. It offers a mightily hopeful view.

Tricia Hersey’s Radical Nap Ministry: “Rest is Resistance”

During a particularly stressful and exhausting time in her life, Tricia Hersey had an epiphany: She started napping where ever she had a few moments. It was transformative and led her to research the idea of rest as a healing mechanism and form of resistance against societal oppression. It would become her ministry, and she The Nap Bishop.

George Booth, Chronicler of Our Sublime and Oddball Life

When a friend sent us news that legendary New Yorker cartoonist George Booth had died, we realized that his work has provided joy, comfort, and uplift throughout our entire adult life. In a single drawing, he managed to convey the wild complexity of ordinary lives through the simplest of details, embedded with a deeply life-affirming message.

Maurice Sendak’s Very Wise Words on Aging, Living, Loss

We recently stumbled on this video the great Chistophe Niemann created to accompany a clip from Terry Gross’ last interview with 80-year-old Maurice Sendak, a few months before his death. It is full of wise, achingly tender words. Our friend Maureen Rolla turned them into a kind of blessing.

A Streetside Vitrine Dispensing Free Handmade Pottery… and Joy

San Francisco ceramicist Nina Saltman created an inspired riff on the Little Free Libraries that have popped up across the nation. Nina’s Little Pott Shoppe is a tiny outdoor vitrine that offers her handmade cups and bowls for free. It’s a way she can give away “seconds”— work with minor flaws— and bring joy and serendipity to passersby. She never imagined how much her little offerings would affect people.

Leonard Cohen on the Meaning and World View of ‘Hallelujah’

It took over five years for Leonard Cohen to write Hallelulah, arguably his most beloved song. Although we’ve listened to Hallelulah many times, we did not get its simple message as powerfully as hearing Cohen’s words in an early interview, featured in the trailer of the just-released documentary about him.

Role Models for Those Feeling Ancient

As I was contemplating the mighty big birthday I will be celebrating this week, I stumbled on this tiny video. Yeah, that’s it. Role models.

In Ukraine’s Tragic War, Art Appeared

Early in the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 23rd, 2022, New York Magazine invited young Ukrainians — the first generation born after Ukraine won independence — to share their experiences. It offers a remarkable view into the fierce realities of escalating war, including this from a 25-year-old painter who fled Kyiv.

What Courage Looks Like

As tragic as the events in Ukraine are, we are deeply moved and heartened by the choices of many to confront fearsome danger, intimidation and uncertainty with astonishing acts of courage. Many are about voice. They got us thinking about our own.

Becca Eldemire’s Enduring Wisdom

This remarkable letter was found among Becca Eldemire’s letters after she was murdered. Copied and framed, it found its way to me as a gift, and onto a wall where I post things I need reminding of. Its spare, gentle wisdom reverberates in my life daily.

Sojourner Truth’s Fierce Poetry

When we saw this photograph of American abolitionist, former slave and women’s rights activist, Soujourner Truth we thought, ‘No description is necessary. There is a person who is completely herself, embodying strength, forthrightness, clarity’. Then we read the extemporaneous speech she gave in 1851.

Patti Smith Breaking the Strings She Plays

We love this clip of Patti Smith performing at Royal Albert Hall, in rumpled black, gray hair a wild frizz, singular, age-defying, theatrically, purposefully breaking each string until she was down to one, the broken strings shivering around like electricity. And especially, her words…

The Tender Message In Christo’s Arc de Triomphe Dream

Sixty years after the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s first visioned wrapping the Arc de Triumphe I’m fabric, the project has come to fruition for all to e see, touch, interact with, for free. In this short video, Christo gives insight into the meaning of their unusual — and ephemeral — life’s work spent transforming huge outdoor spaces at great cost in money and time.

Derek Jarman’s Gardens: ” a Testament, Blazing, Blatant, to Possibility”.

After being diagnosed with AIDS in 1986, filmmaker Derek Jarman bought an austere tar-painted fisherman’s cottage in sight of a nuclear power station in the bleak shingle landscape on the southeast coast of England. It would prove to be an act of creative vision as unique as those Jarman realized in his films.

A Blind Painter’s Lessons in Seeing (Sargy Mann)

When landscape artist Sargy Mann went totally blind in 2005, he assumed there were no options left. But since a blank canvas was stretched in his studio,and paints had been mixed, he thought, “I wonder would happen if I gave this a go?”

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