The Ignorant Maestro

How Great Leaders Inspire Unpredictable Brilliance.
The wisdom of the ignorant schoolmaster

"An ignorant can teach another ignorant what he does not know himself" - Joesph Jacotot.

Jacques Ranciere

How unconferences unleash innovative ideas
 "The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides." - Artur Schnabel

On disadvantages of beaming, the author says that "Of stopping on the way for a short espresso, watching people go by, not thinking - at least not being aware of thinking - for a few moments? Give it up? and when on vacation, would you be happy to find your boss beaming up to you for just a short question?" (consistency of technology in a sci-fi)

In one meeting, the author asked the attendees to sing and dance and look at the participants. after a while, the audience didnt want to stop.

"Creativity in all forms of life, from arts to business to domestic situations, depends on our ability to recognize and explore gaps" - Itay Talgam.

Ensign Bickford recognized that they are in lifestyle business to embrace variety of innovations

anti-music

Sterling Silver Mom and Child Diamond Necklace

Sterling Silver Mom and Child Diamond Necklace has to be held in your hand to admire it. The necklace is 18" which makes it the perfect length to accentuate the pendant hanging to it. The pendant is a an asymmetrical heart, with the right auricle (now being called atrium) a little bigger than the left and the bottom on the left slightly curves. This skeleton has a natural flow which is covered with near colorless to faint yellow diamonds set in prong setting. To my untrained eye, the diamonds look colorless. But we will let the gemologist figure all that out. In the sunlight, the diamonds sparkle like they are supposed to. And in this safe haven of heart is an endearing mom holding child tiny sculpture set right above the bottom corner. Like Diamonds are forever and Diamonds are a girls best friend, this pendant is going to charm any mom not with just the two prongs of the reminder of her love for her child and the glitter of the diamonds but with all the diamonds set in the pendant.
A very good gift for Mothers Day.

The Seven Good years

Up in the air
Interview with Israeli author Etgar keret
Bulgakov
Converso
Goy
The Wire and Jimmy McNulty
requiem for a dream

I have never heard of Etgar Keret before. Its always refreshing to read books from other nations. 'The Seven Good Years' is a collection of flash stories with personal meandering about flight experience (where I began questioning if that fits in the memoir genre, where we want the writing to be about an experience more as a feeling than as a thought). Its a very quick read in the genre of 'I was told there'd be cake' by Sloane Crosley and work by Jane Borden. But there's another side to it, fostered by the author's uprooted past. He is a biblio nomad, who is doing book tours all around the world.
Every page of the book has some unexpected element in it. Right with the beginning interview by Miranda July (We think Alone project where some selected authors are to share an email on a selected topic), where his mom's independent childhood translated to non-over bearing upbringing, you never know whats going to happen next.
When by an error, he is double booked on a plane seat and ask to get off the plane by the flight crew. His reply is ".. If there arent enough seats on the plane, you can get off yourself. I'll serve the food to the passengers."
People either love or hate babies but the author for the purpose of the writing, sees his baby as 'a midget with a cable hanging from his belly button..' and as Chucky from Child's play.
Fictional Book signings for fiction.
War and peace. The local conditions are at unease to imagine peace and feel 'just like in the old days' if war starts.
Some stories have a pattern like the four fingered hand waving at Euro Disney which starts with a man losing his finger trying to reach for his watch that has fallen in a machine. The stories tie back to the beginning.
While looking up the author's works, I found that there is another side to his writing of thought experiments - "Kneller's Happy Campers" novel which inspired Wristcutter's story. In it, every dies by suicide. "Crazy Glue" where everything is glued.
Its hearty to know that finally he gets a house built in Poland, his real homeland.

Clay water brick

"Lawyers are trained to see barriers and help people avoid risk, while entrepreneurs  are trained to see possibilities and take smart risks" - Jessica Jackley


'Clay Water Brick: Finding inspiration from Entrepreneurs who do the most with the least' alternates with stories of microlending changing the lives of people, and the lessons author Jessica Jackley, founder of Kiva learns from those entrepreneurs. Those entrepreneurs who have almost nothing to their name but the drive to make brick out of clay and water, to help disabled by iterative design and so on.. shattering the idea of who is or who can be an entrepreneur.
The author understood that she had to 'use the right language .. also to tell stories to move people from a place of ignorance to a place of understanding. ' This is what the book does too, narrating stories to readers and make them see how the microfinancing changes the lives of people with small steps.
The stories make her 'redefine success not as destination but as away of operating and committing to a process of creation ..' From Li the tailor's wisdom of mending clothes from the inside and ripping the seams off and starting afresh for complex fixes, the author learns the lesson that 'understanding the fabric of your organization' is important for its success.
THe readers are also made aware of the legal impediments in crowdfunding. There have been articles if Kiva really has the person to person interaction between the lender and the entrepreneurs who take the loans. Where that debate may settle, the author shows that if you use your passion and stick to your mission, then a huge change is possible for anyone.

Do the Kind thing

bars that are under weight and we have to give those bars away for free as samples

Flexitol

Flexitol packaging has all the marketing devices. Testimonials, graphs, results.

Selling Your House

In the recent times, I have learnt from friends that you can claim your house on Zillow and update its value according to your upgrades (Now I should find from this friend if he read this book or how he found out). A house in our neighbourhood is being leased now and will then be sold to the person leasing. In 'Selling Your House: Nolo's essential Guide', its referred to as 'Lease-to-Own'. Author Ilona Bray explains the advantages and disadvantages of a Lease-to-Own.
The book runs in a very interesting manner about what months are likely to be well received in terms of home selling. Did you know that your home owners insurance might not be valid if its vacant? Have you heard of transfer tax, discount brokers, listing agreement (which is better - exclusive right to sell, exclusive agency, open listing), FSBO (For sale by owner), broker's tour, seller rent-back.
Should you stage your house?
The book is also interesting because of the numbers. For example, staged houses moved 87% faster.
Should you hire an agent?
89% do. Why not?
With these statistics, you get a good grip of the real market and buyers profile. You will be surprised at the number of contingencies a house sale could face.
Redfin - hybrid model

Poetry in Medicine

"The cry of a door is a pitiable thing." - Thomas James, In Fever.
the only parts of the body the same size at birth as they’ll always be.
Mummy of a lady named
Pathology of colours
Ode on my belly button
Fear of Grays Anatomy
Clarinda Harriss
I'm like a rifle that's a little out of date but very accurate: when I love, there's a strong recoil, back to childhood, and it hurts
Epilepsy petit mal

"the plastic tubing whispers blood through

her flesh, .." - Transfusion, Kate Kimball

more brain mashed because of the probe’s braille path;
The Urine Specimen
Ode on my episiotomy

"and the faith of that stranger

who answers when my name is called" - Dennis Nurkse, Things I forget to tell my Doctor
But someone I know is dying- And though one might say glibly, "everyone is," The different pace makes the difference absolute.

"When we are sleeping

alone, and we wake, and the walls are breathing

and they are the company we keep" - Florence Weinberger, Getting in Bed With a Man who is sick.

"Count Dracula was right, she says it (blood) makes you look good" - Harvey Shapiro

poetry prompt

1. Nude Descending. Write  a poem with a title after a painting title or inspired by it.

Excuses

Chicken Biryani rife with spices
tastes good with hot peanut chutney
A spoon of chutney left on the plate
begs for a helping of chicken biryani
Some left rice on the plate
calls for chutney

Morning walk

The girl who walked to school yesterday
is late today
I meet her at the corner as opposed
to the dead end
The sophomore who biked yesterday to school
isnt out yet or has left already
The neighbour who dropped her kids yesterday
and said hi
has just entered the community today
Morning walk puts you
in the routine of others

The pole hides the flag
The wind reveals it

Baby is not in your tummy anymore

Come bathe me
Baby is not in your tummy anymore
Sit with me on the floor
Baby is not in your tummy anymore
Can you lift my scooty over the threshold


This is what my daughter says after her little sis is in her hands.
Once she asked me if the baby will go back into tummy.
Digital nest making for babies - unsubscribing from all groupon and other daily emails that are anyways not used during the first 6 weeks immobility of having a new baby.

Planet of the Bugs

Molting habits may have led to extinction of once hardy trilobite
Semiaquatic Silurian Scorpions

Poems that make grown men cry

She was deep within herself, like a woman heavy with child
Ithaka
Better by far you should forget and smile Than that you should remember and be sad
Peer Gynt: The Priest's Monologue
while grass and buildings and the somnolent river, who know they are allowed to last forever,
- Not all rivers are allowed to last forever. Our village's river has dried up.
That everything's remade With shovel and spade;
No painting had ever made me cry
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day.
"Paternal Love will only use Force in the last resort On those too bumptious to repent."
So many poems about the deaths of animals. Wilbur’s toad, Kinnell’s porcupine, Eberhart’s squirrel,

Photorealism

When a photo is taken in a studio, some elements are crafted. Will it make us understand photorealism better that it is an inclusion of everything in daily life without craft?

Paintings of still life that at once look real and as a photograph are very often in your mailbox forwarded by friends who cant believe that paintings can be done so realistically. Photorealism is one subject which divides a clear line between those who get it and those who dont. For one side if its skill and tradition, for the others it lacks artists perspective. For such a disputed topic, 'Photorealism: Beginnings to Today" has a great section of Artists Biographies which summarise the artists view of why they do photorealistic paintings.
For one artist, "changing the size of an object lets them explore its reality" like Georgia O keefe's flower paintings, for another, "cropping of the subject enforces tight composition", yet another shows "how people need chrome in a painting to see themselves". One artist convinces himself that he is creating everything he is painting.
For such a divisive topic, I would have liked more essays than available in the book.

In 'the Ignorant Maestro', Itay Talgam asks "How would you like walking into a Van Gogh exhibition in which all the paintings had recently been "upgraded" so the gaps between the painter's view of the landscape and the "real" view we know from everyday experience has been eliminated?". Perhaps the photorealistic is to show that there is always a gap, even if the painter tries to make the painting seem real, as there is his interpretation present in it always. Zeno's paradox.


poetry prompt:
1. Aging, Beauty and Appearance
Find groups of three words from dictionary that make for an interesting beading.

2. "By radically changing the size of everyday objects we can get into them and more easily explore their surfaces and construction -their reality" - Charles Bell

3. Black Glass Still Life with Fish, Pear, Skeleton
What are you likely to compose in your still life?

4. The cropping of the subject enforces a tight composition ..  according to Gus Heinze. What would you choose to crop out?

5. It isnt the reflective quality of chrome as a painting that interests me - its the evidence that they need a certain amount of chrome in their lives, in a figurative sense, in order to see themselves"
What else do people need to see themselves?

6. When I paint water, rocks, sky, trees, chairs, etc., I must imagine touching them, convincing myself, as it were, that I am creating these things in a very real sense. The magic occurs when I believe I have done this
What would you paint to create?

Map

Museum

Ballad
Understanding Wislawa Szymborska
Conversation with a stone

".. lake
that goes unnamed
and doesnt exist on this earth, just as the star
reflected in it is not in the sky."  - Water

Fish to Fish
Inventor of Zero

"The boat from which he stepped into the world, into un-eternity" - Born

Census

The legend of Owl was a baker's daughter in Beheading

children of  Vietnam

Thomas Mann

The Cave

Map Collected and Last poems of Wislawa Szymborska begins with her work from 1944. I am glad I stuck to the book. From Salt 1962 is when I started reading the book with fire. From then on, each poem had something to offer.
If the poet Wislawa Szymborska were a painter, her painting would be a montage that morphs from a hyperrealistic painting to a revelatory painting, retaining only the necessary objects.
Her poems deal with plain opposites - In 'To My Heart, On Sunday' - its the restlessly working heart on Sabbath rest day.
Her poems deal with movement - In 'The Acrobat' - movement in time (present and future) and space. Sometimes calculated like this and other times, its a huge push to future of

"Nothing - but after us,
who were here before
and ate our hearts
and drank our blood" - Cave poem

Her poems, zoom in on a single in a multitude in 'Snapshot of a Crowd'

Her poems use literary devices like alliteration, string of words
"Moraines and morays and morasses and mussels,
the flame, the flamingo, he flounder, the feather-" - Birthday poem
Her poems usually a page and a half long arrive by the end of the page, the next half is a bonus. Unlike some poets, you dont have to wait
till the end.

poetry prompt

1. write an  Inverted poem
2. write a Soliloquy
3. I prefer earth in civvies. Write a 'I prefer' poem.
4. I am Tarsier. Write from a different point of view.
5. To my heart on Sunday. Heart works endlessly even on Sabbath rest day. Any such opposites strike you?
6. The Acrobat places the performer in time and space, weaves through it as he moves. Are you amazed by any movement?
7. Snapshot of a Crowd. Multitude to a single. Can you zoom in on a tree in  a forest, grain in sand?
8. Dinosaur Skeleton. Addressing in many different ways, mocking the addressed.
9. Pi