Keep being amazed.
Do you ever feel enormous gratitude for what you have witnessed in the span of your time on this planet? Do you wonder about past eras, when the power to capture images, voices and thoughts did not exist to the extent we now have? No matter how grey the days and head-smacking (currently my favorite emoji) the moments, we must celebrate the talent of our time and render thanks for our power to observe it.
Birds. American 19th century. 1840. Oil on canvas. Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch. National Gallery of Art.
How value insulates brands
Walker Smith: Peter Drucker once observed that what customers buy is rarely what a brand thinks it is selling them. Drucker was calling attention to the vulnerabilities a business inflicts on itself when it fails to see itself through the eyes of its customers.
Age and magnificence
The Economist: As a small child, bored on visits to her grandparents, she was allowed to sort through big pillowcases of fabric remnants, putting the scraps together as she pleased. It was great training. Like all the family (her grandfather was a master-tailor, her mother devoted to accessories, and money short during the Depression and the war) she learned early to sew, glue and paint to make something out of next to nothing. Improvisation was like jazz, she thought. You took patches and thread, or a ruby-red tunic, pyjamas and a torque, to build a marvellous ensemble out of the seemingly random.
A confession: abject failure of domesticity
Fran Moreland Johns: Despite a graduate degree and (usually) enough money to pay the bills, my mother was constitutionally unable to pay someone to do anything she could do herself. She tried really hard to instill this philosophy in her daughters. Being A Lady was of paramount importance, but if the toilet malfunctioned you went for the plunger yourself.
Common English words you didn't realize came from the Irish language
Anita McSorley: The language’s influence on modern English is evident and is responsible for many everyday words.