An online commonplace book
I dropped out of school, but I didn’t drop out of life.
– August Wilson
Try not to drop out of either.
Bryant, Jen. Feed Your Mind: A Story of August Wilson. New York: Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2019.
Baker took interest in the language of falconry and its history. At one point in the Peregrine he wondered whether the phrase taken by surprise came from hawking. He might well have been correct: many of these terms from falconry have crossed into everyday use and lost their hawking roots. ‘Disclosed’, for example, comes from an Old French word that described a hawk that just hatched. ‘Reclaim’, also from Old French, meant ‘to make a hawk tame, gentle, and familiar’, or to call it back to the glove. To ‘make a point’ in an argument, say, comes, too, from hunting: used of dogs but also of hawks, it describes the action when a hawk throws herself up into the air above the spot where her quarry has been driven into a covert.
Saunders, Hetty. My House of Sky: The life and work of J.A. Baker. Lower Dairy, Toller Fratrum, Dorset: Little Toller Books, 2017.
The falconry terms Baker studied aren’t obscure, or restrained to a specific discipline. Phrases like “Make a point” and words like “disclose” often appear in office conversations and emails. Considering how old falconry is, these could be considered the first sports cliches.
The simple fact is that there is no job or career in which keeping track of your learning isn’t useful.
Ted Gioia
We tend to think of note taking as short hand, or jotting down quick partial sentences. Lamp post notes that will shine a glimmer on a distant a idea when we revisit them. (If we revisit them).
Some examples of lamp post notes are:
Cornell notes.
Bullet journaling.
But Gioia’s note taking method advocates for writing notes in complete sentences and connecting paragraphs. A more demanding, but more rewarding form of note-taking.
Read the entire piece here.
The greatest reward from reading is in the ways it improves and broadens you the reader.
Ted Gioia
Gioia, Ted. How I Take Notes. https://www.honest-broker.com/p/how-i-take-notes, August 7, 2023
From Chapter XIII, Not at Home:
“While there’s life there’s hope!”
“Third time pay’s for all”
Bilbo –
From chapter XII, Inside Information:
‘Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!’
– Bilbo
From chapter IX, Barrels out of Bond:
you cannot count friends that are all packed up in barrels
From chapter XVII , The Return Journey
‘May your beards never grow thin!’
Bilbo
From chapter XVII, The Return Journey:
‘If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.’
Thorin
From chapter VII, Queer Lodgings, the polite thing to say among eagles:
‘Farewell! Wherever you fare, till your eyries receive you at the journey’s end!’
and the proper response:
‘May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks’
Gandolf
From chapter I, An Unexpected Party. Act as if:
If I say he is a Burglar, a Burglar he is, or will be when the time comes.
Gandolf
Everyone has something stopping them from writing. Confronting the blank page isn’t hard because of your circumstances, it’s just hard. For sure, it’s harder for many people, but the advice applies all the same that you need to sit your ass in the chair and type.
Oliver, Henry. https://commonreader.substack.com/p/there-is-only-one-piece-of-writing. July 25, 2023
Writing excuses pile up. But if we admit writing is hard, not because of our circumstances, but because it’s hard, we could make progress.
“Just keep telling the story”. – Schubert Green
You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep. I think this is as close as Wes Anderson has ever come to explaining and defending his very peculiar style of filmmaking. What he’s telling us is that the most vital and the most painful things in life cannot be confronted directly, explicitly, artlessly. There must be masks — contrivances, artifice — that distract us, lull us, distract our agitated minds. Tragic experience, to be properly worked through, must wear the mask of comedy. And perhaps for the deepest griefs a single mask is insufficient; you may need several. So here we see layer after layer being peeled away, but no matter how many layers we remove we just find more artifice.
Jacobs, Alan. https://blog.ayjay.org/what-the-bird-said/. August 21, 2023
Professor Alan Jacobs’ explanation of Asteroid City is the most considered I’ve read so far. Many puzzled observers want to dismiss it. I was puzzled by it after my first viewing.
Why does does Augie burn his hand on the Quickie Griddle?
What was with the You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep chanting at the end?
The flash mob hoedown?
But professor Jacobs seeks to understand what Wes was trying to achieve.
Read his full take here.
Quit your complaining. It’s not the world’s fault that you wanted to be an artist. It’s not the world’s job to enjoy the films you make, and it’s certainly not the world’s obligation to pay for your dreams. Nobody wants to hear it. Steal a camera if you must, but stop whining and get back to work.
– Werner Herzog
Good to have our wise old uncle Werner dispense the real talk.
Most of us don’t even need to steal a camera anymore. His words apply to any ambitious pursuit.
Print this out. Keep in view.
As quoted from:
Gilbert, Elizabeth. Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. New York: Riverhead Books, 2015. pp 115,116
In the top of the fourth, Jennifer T. came up to bat again. She carried her slim blond bat over her shoulder like a fishing pole. She stepped up to home plate with her gaze at her shoetops. You could tell she that she was thinking, and that what she was thinking about was getting a hit. Jennifer T. was the only member of the Roosters–maybe the only kid on the whole Island of Clam–who truly loved baseball. She loved to wear a bright smear of green grass on her uniform pants and to hear her bat ringing in her hands like a bell. She could hit for average and with power, turn a double play all by herself, stretch a base hit into a triple and a triple into an inside-the-park home run. She never bragged about how good she was, or did anything to try to make the other players look bad. She did, however, insist that you call her “Jennifer T.,” and not just “Jennifer” or, worst of all, “Jenny.”
Chabon, Michael. Summerland: A Novel. New York: Hyperion Books for Children, 2002. (pp 22-23)
I’m picking up this book now because I’ve always wanted to read a book set in the season that I was living through. Summerland is that book. Bought it used, at the library ages ago. It sat on my shelf. Then it called out.
Also, I wanted to see if Summerland has been underrated. 21 years have past since it’s publication. Is it an overlooked gem in Chabon’s canon?
Joseph Roth is a master of writing images and crafting metaphors. They are true, surprising, and specific.
Consider the following passages:
He observed the immense shadows cast by small objects on the bare blue walls; the gently curved shimmering outline of his sword hanging from its hook by the door, its dark ribbon tucked into the hilt. He listened to the ceaseless rain outside drumming on leaded window frames; and rose at last, having decided to go and see his father the following week,
and
He found the old gentleman in his shirtsleeves sitting in the kitchen of his quarters at a plain deal table covered with a dark-blue cloth edged in scarlet, a large cup of steaming, fragrant coffee in front of him.
This one he repeats:
His consonants rumbled like thunderbolts, the final syllables laden with small weights.
and
“shaking him as a hurricane shakes a feeble shrub”
From:
Roth, Joseph. “The Hero of Solferino.” Leadership: Essential Writings by Our Greatest Thinkers (Norton Anthology), edited by Elizabeth D. Samet, W. W. Norton & Company, 2015, pp. 69-82.
To perfect the art of becoming such a reliable person, Franklin wrote out a “Plan for Future Conduct” during his eleven-week voyage back to Philadelphia. It would be the first of many personal credos that laid out pragmatic rules for success and made him the patron saint of self-improvement guides. He lamented that because he had never outlined a design for how he should conduct himself, his life so far had been somewhat confused. “Let me, therefore, make some resolutions, and some form of action, that, henceforth, I may live in all respects like a rational creature,” There were four rules:
- It is necessary for me to be extremely frugal for some time, till I have paid what I owe.
- To endeavor to speak truth in every instance; to give nobody expectations that are not likely to be answered, but aim at sincerity in every word and action–the most amiable excellence in a rational being.
- To apply myself industriously to whatever business I take in hand, and not divert my mind from my business by any foolish project of suddenly growing rich; for industry and patience are the surest means of plenty.
- I resolve to speak ill of no man whatever.
Happy Fourth of July!
If you were to write your own Plan for Future Conduct what would it be?
Four rules only!
Go.
From: Isaacson, Walter. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. (see pgs. 229-230)
