The kindest thing I can think of for myself is space. The space and time and breath to do what I know to be essential to my own flourishing.

Michael Herman from his new blog, GlobalChicago

The other day my father told us about our grandmother who was one of the senior Italian women gifted with the ability to lift the curse of the evil eye, called the mal oik. According to Italian folklore, the source of many untoward personal conditions like headaches originated from someone having been cursed, often for some social infraction. The cure involved a complex ritual of incantations and annointings with oil that revealed the nature of the curse and delivered a remedy for it.

The interesting part of the story was that, although this traditionally involved a hands-on interaction, my grandmother got to the point of being quite successful removing mal oiks over the phone. A true pioneer in using new technologies in ancient cultural rituals.

In his new book, Good Business, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi proposes that a person who is willing to be unique and connected has the best chance at leading a happy, vital, and a meaningful life.

Last night heard NY sculptor John Newman talk about and show his work. One of the more brilliant, honest, and down to earth artists I’ve ever met, he made an interesting disctinction between size and scale in sculpture. Size is the geometric measurement of a piece; scale is the conceptual measurement. Two pieces of the same size can have infintely different scales, in part because of how they do or don’t take us into spaces beyond their size. A great metaphor for how ideas, questions, conversations, networks, and technologies also have their own size and scale. Some are more inclusive and expansive in scale than others of similar size.

A great story of the kind of anonymity so many entertainment stars cherish. My nephew John worked a Jacobs Field tour last week. It was the usual taking people around and sitting with them through a couple of innings. At the wrap up, the entourage closed with, well, we’ve got to get to work (next door at the Gund Arena). And in response to John’s inquiry into the nature of their work, his surprise: it’s Fleetwood Mac.

A headline this weekend declared that War Defines Reason For Memorial Day. I was offended by the idea in my youth and am no less annoyed today. Specifically that we have a Hallmark day celebrating people who contributed to wars, but not an equivalent day marked for the decades of people who have also contributed to peace. When do we celebrate the fact that we have worked hard and smart to be at peace in at least as many ways we’ve been in aggression? When do the next generations hear those stories and walk in those parades?

Just caught the story (today’s NY Times Mag) about the guy protesting the Augusta National protestors. The front of his sign: Make my dinner, and the back: Iron my shirt. That’s the thing today; there are people who live in caves we don’t see until they express the perspective only a cave affords.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart
and try to love the questions themselves
like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.
Do not now seek the answers,
which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it,
and live along some distant day into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Great chat yesterday with a law professor from University of Westminster, London about preventive law in corporate and global contexts where precedents don’t exist and how it requires a different set of skills than adversarial law — creativity and collaboration being among two of the core competencies. If that isn’t enough cultural jarring for the uncivilized contrasts here in the States, we went on to talking about the primacy of being (think Buber, for example) in understanding the value of trust and consensus building in the design of ethical and sustainable contracts. Quite amazing.

Let yourself be silently drawn
by the stronger pull
of what you really love. Rumi