It took me 14 years to write ‘Crazy Brave’ because I kept changing the form and I also kept running away from the story. I said I don’t really want to write about myself. But it’s about writing about memory.
Category Archive: 1951
If people really want to know and learn from history, why do they want bad history? Why don’t they want good history? Wouldn’t you rather know the truth, rather than the legend?
The first Elizabeth film was an absolute travesty historically. It really was sloppy. Things like ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’ and ‘The Tudors,’ people’s perception is distorted because of these. It matters to me as a historian, because I spend my life trying to get it right.
I hear from my Inuit and Yupik relatives up north that everything has changed. It’s so hot; there is not enough winter. Animals are confused. Ice is melting.
Frost isn’t exactly despised but not enough people have worked out what a brilliant poet he was.
When you play a sax, that saxophone is irreverent. It’s noisy; it’s a trickster… you cannot hide the saxophone in your hands, so it’s a good teacher.
If something comes that it is so extreme that you have difficulty thinking of it as a good thing, don’t think of it as a good thing and kid yourself. To the extent that you can, don’t label it a bad thing. Refusing to label something a bad thing opens you up to possibilities you would not have even considered otherwise.
No matter what happens to us in life, we tend to think of it as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ And most of us tend to use the ‘bad’ label three to 10 times as often as the ‘good’ label. And when we say something is bad, the odds grow overwhelming that we will experience it as such.
Market design is about understanding the details of markets in sufficient detail so that we can help fix them when they are broken.
If you have an ongoing relationship with a person, think of everything positive about that person that you possibly can and enter your interaction from that space. Ignore all the crap that used to drive you up the wall before. You will be amazed at what a change this attitude shift brings about.