Baobab trees are pretty amazing. They can survive in hot and dry areas, and are exceedingly long-lived. Some trees have been dated to be over 2,000 years old. When they flower, the flower will only stay open for 24 hours. They store water in their trunks: as much as 136,400 liters.
Two Interesting Quotes
“A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again"
- Alexander Pope
"About the only value the story of my life may have is to show that one can, even without any particular gifts, overcome obstacles that seem insurmountable if one is willing to face the fact that they must be overcome; that, in spite of timidity and fear, in spite of a lack of special talents, one can find a way to life widely and fully."
- Eleanor Roosevelt (who in spite of her humility expressed above was a remarkable person. In fact, she is going to be one of our interesting persons this week.)
Two Interesting People
Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington was a jazz composer, pianist and leader of jazz orchestra. Ellington wrote or collaborated on more than one thousand compositions; his extensive body of work is the largest recorded personal jazz legacy.
Even though his parents were pianists, he disliked his piano lessons and focused instead on baseball and drawing. He also worked as a sign painter. When he heard ragtime he sat down after a 7 year hiatus at the piano to try and copy it. Even though he was a musical genius, he did not learn how to write musical notation, employing others to transcribe his music.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt was first lady of the USA from 1933 - 1945. In spite of her shyness, she took advantage of her position to advocate widely for the underprivileged. She was the first First lady to hold press conferences, write a newspaper column (daily!) and host a weekly radio show. She wrote seventy-three hundred newspaper columns and twenty-seven books. She was afraid of public speaking, but gave an estimated 1400 speeches, with minimal notes. She is still known as one of the most popular orators of all time.
She was controversial at the time, because of her outspokenness on issues such as civil rights for African-Americans. She once attended a meeting in Birmingham, Alabama. Back in 1938, state law prohibited blacks and whites from sitting together at public gatherings. She walked in and sat on the black side with her friend, civil rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune. The police informed her she was breaking the law and so she picked up her chair and placed it in the center aisle.
In 1958, she received a call from the FBI saying they couldn't guarantee her safety as she was about to fly to Tennessee to speak at a civil-rights workshop. The KKK had put a $25,000 bounty on her head. "We can’t protect you.” they said. “I didn’t ask for your protection,” she replied. “I have a commitment. I’m going.” she met up with a friend, a seventy-one-year-old white woman and drove off into the night with only a loaded pistol placed on the front seat between them. She was seventy-four.
Two Interesting Ideas
The ability to do hard things is an asset
Doing hard things is a skill in itself. As we develop it, we lose fear of hard things to be done in the future.
We can build this skill by doing progressively harder things and building confidence. It doesn't matter what the hard thing is: running a marathon, weight lifting, learning a language, rebuilding a car or learning to play a musical instrument.
As Nate Eliason puts it: "The proof you can do hard things is one of the most powerful gifts you can give yourself."
All work is collaborative
No matter what we do, all work is collaborative.
We are inspired by others, even as we inspire others by our work. We collaborate with the art that came before us. And the art that will come after us. We collaborate with the world we live in, the experiences we have had and with our tools. We collaborate with our audience.