#i spend most of my time enriching myself or engaging with my special interest

[w04hxo]

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[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

(1/2) hi there! so, i don't really consider myself a "new" christian- i've felt drawn to god since i was young- but i only started reading the bible about a week ago. i set a goal for myself of reading 20 chapters a day so that i will have read the entire bible in ~2 months, which was very manageable initially because april break was still in progress when i started. however, now that i have schoolwork to do, i'm finding that i just don't have enough time in the day to read that many chapters.

(2/2) i don't want to disregard my goal, but if i force myself to read too much each day, i fear that i won't be able to retain or appreciate much of what i read. i'm not sure what to do. should i lessen my ambitions at the cost of taking longer to read it overall, or somehow muscle through 20 chapters a day at the cost of not fully understanding them? sorry this isn't relevant to lgbt matters- i'm just always comforted by your advice and wasn't sure where else to turn. thank you for your time!

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Ah, don’t be sorry! If I could talk about the Bible all day every day, I’d be thrilled! (I’m autistic and scripture is my mainstay special interest haha)

This gets super long so tl;dr: I vote for revising your goal and reading less per day. You don’t wanna get burned out, and you want to be able to retain what you read and have the chance to really mull it over! 

It means a lot to me that folks like you come to me for suggestions; I’m by no means an expert but golly do I love the Bible, and I’ve been reading it since childhood -- first picture book & abridged versions, then the “real deal” starting in ninth grade, and these days I often translate passages from the original Greek and Hebrew. So I’m always joyful to share what I’ve learned about reading the Bible, particularly in ways that combine the spiritual and the scholarly. 

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I super admire your dedication to reading the entire Bible; most Christians never do so and while it’s by no means a prerequisite to being Christian, I find that actually reading it all can be a great help in many ways:

First, it means that no one can tell you what’s in the Bible without you being able to bring your point of view to the discussion, because you’ve read it too. You don’t have to just accept what others say about it, ya know? 

Secondly, there really is deep richness in the Bible; the Holy Spirit will breathe through the pages as you read and enliven your heart. You’ll learn more about what it means to be in relationship with God, with yourself, with other humans, and with all Creation. 

Finally, only in reading the entirety of the Bible to you come to see the overarching themes of scripture, the fullest glimpse of the God it reveals. The separate fragments and books of the Bible are distinct from one another in many ways, written by many authors with differing opinions and understandings of God; but once you’ve read them all it is possible to trace the path of the Divine across them all. 

Hopefully, you’ll grow more comfortable with things like contradiction and doubt. You’ll learn how to scoop up glimmers of the Divine even in Bible stories that make you shake with anger or scratch your head nonplussed. You’ll learn that being faithful doesn’t = having all the answers, but instead is about a willingness to engage in dialogue with God and with others, to constantly learn and question and grow. 

All that being said, 20 chapters is a lot to get through in a day!! Whew!! I do recommend reconsidering your goal. It was a valiant one and I’m impressed you were able to do it for a time, but it’s totally okay to re-plan things. I used to be really, like, averse to the idea of revising goals; I felt like a failure or like I was weak or something if I had to change them? So if that’s what you’re feeling, do what you can to let that feeling go. There is no shame or weakness in realizing that your current plan isn’t working for you. The true shame is in refusing to change your ways when everything is pointing to a need for change! 

Decrease your goal to something more manageable, so that you don’t start dreading your scripture reading and get burnt out. You don’t want to resent the time you reserve for reading! You want to be open to the Spirit’s wisdom as you read. 

Honestly, if your goal were to become as general as “read at least one chapter each day,” or even “read at least one paragraph each day,” that would be totally fine! There may be days when you get more done, but even a little passage of scripture is full of richness. And you’ll be showing your dedication and learning spiritual discipline in making time for even a little passage in a busy day. 

Yes, you’ll be reading for a lot longer; but there is no rush. Reading the whole Bible isn’t just about cramming all its contents into your brain; it’s also about letting the words seep into your heart. That takes years, lifetimes even. 

Still, I understand the desire to have the whole Bible in your head. So the rest of this post is going to try to balance the “scholarly knowledge” of the Bible that you logically want to get into your brain as soon as possible with the spiritual wisdom and impact of the Bible, which is cultivated over a lifetime.

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The spiritual side of Bible reading

I’m gonna share a passage from Sister Macrina Wiederkehr’s book A Tree Full of Angels about Bible reading, because she describes the richness held in the tiniest crumb of scripture and the wisdom in taking it a little at a time better than I can. 

Let’s start with her explanation of the spiritual discipline called “Lectio Divina,” reading the Bible in an embodied way that enriches our understandings of God’s presence in all Creation:

“Here is a way to harvest the Word of God. 

The monastic tradition to which I belong has always stressed the value of seeking intimate communion through persistent dwelling with and in the Word of God. We call this form of prayer Lectio Divina (Divine Reading). Lectio Divina is far more than what we ordinarily understand as spiritual reading. It is reading...with the eye of God, under the eye of God. It is reading with the desire to be totally transformed by the Word of God, rather than just to acquire facts about God.

The incarnational aspect of Christianity reminds us that all of life is full of God. God is in all. Lectio Divina, then, is a way of reading God in everything. ...

In the tradition of our desert fathers and mothers...the emphasis was on the reading of the Scriptures. This was the Word of God par excellence. The discple was encouraged to hover over the word of God in the Scriptures as the Spirit once hovered over the birthing world. ...The one who is immersed in the Word of God in the Scriptures is eventually able to read God in all things. ...

Macrina then brings up Guigo II, a monk from the 1100s who came up with four phases or degrees of the Lectio: reading, meditation, prayer, contemplation. 

It sounds to me like you’re currently most focused on the “reading” phase, since you’re busying yourself with getting through the whole Bible as soon as you can. That is totally cool! 

Guigo II described the reading phase as putting food in the mouth, while “meditation chews it, digs for the treasure. Prayer extracts the flavor and helps us get to know the treasure. Contemplation embraces and welcomes the thirsty soul.”

I know that there are days when I just can’t seem to get my spirit into the latter three phases of the Lectio; I can only manage the reading phase. So I read, with the faith that by absorbing the content of Bible pages into my brain, there will come a time when I chew on that content, digest it, find the treasure in it. Thus I don’t think it’s a bad thing to read the Bible primarily in that “info-gathering” mode -- the more scholarly mode -- but when you’re ready and able to wade in deeper, do so! That might be every day for you, especially if you don’t spend all your time and energy on cramming in as many passages as possible; or it might be something you don’t really get to until you’ve read whole books of the Bible. I’m not saying there’s one right way to do all this -- just stuff to consider! 

But I will emphasize the “meditation” phase Macrina describes next, because I think it might help you decide that yes, you do need to cut down on just how much of the Bible you read daily. Here’s what she says about how much of the Bible she reads in one sitting:

“Read until your heart is touched. When your heart is touched, stop reading. After all, if God comes in the first verse, why go on to the second? A touched heart means God has, in some way, come. God has entered that heart. Begin your meditation. 

Meditation is a process in which you struggle with the Word of God that has entered your heart. If this Word wants to be a guest in your heart, go forth to meet it. Welcome it in and try to understand it. Walk with it. Wrestle with it. Ask it questions. Tell it stories about yourself. Allow it to nourish you. Receive its blessing. To do this you must sink your heart into it as you would sink your teeth into food. You must chew it with your heart.

... You may ask if there is ever a day when my heart is not touched. Yes, there are many. On some days each psalm or gospel passage is like the parched earth. There is nothing moist or life-giving to be found in the words I read. I see this barrenness as a message from God also. ...God also speaks in silence and darkness. So when nothing comes, when darkness prevails, then too, I lay my Bible down. My word is silent darkness. I carry the dryness, the emptiness, the silent darkness with me through the day. It is only in darkness that one can see the stars. I have seen too many stars to let the darkness overwhelm me. Even though You are silent, still I will trust You.”

So, yeah. That’s Macrina’s instruction for reading the Bible -- it leans very heavily onto the spiritual side of Bible reading. But the scholarly side is important too, especially for your first go-around! Let’s get into that.

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The scholarly side of Bible reading

People who have to read part or all of the Bible for school know that Macrina’s method of reading only “till your heart is touched” is pretty, but not pragmatic. There were times when I’d be assigned all of Exodus, or all of John, or all of Paul’s letters to read within a few days or a week in seminary -- so I wasn’t that focused on getting spiritual fulfillment out of the words then! I just had to cram that info into my brain so my teacher would know I did the homework!

I feel like your first Bible read-through is probably going to lean more heavily on the scholarly side than the spiritual, because if the stories aren’t already in your head, getting them in there is your primary goal. 

As you read I cannot recommend enough the use of footnotes or commentaries or other resources to help you make sense of what you are reading. Especially when you come to the more problematic or culturally-complex parts of the Bible. You’re not the first to have questions and confusion and distress about things in scripture; so let others who’ve been in your shoes and done research help you out! By finding trusty resources, you’re leaning on a whole community, just as Christians are called to do. 

I’ve got a post here with recommendations for Bibles with good footnotes, for online Bible resources, etc.

One of the resources listed in that post is the Bible Project’s YouTube series that offers a short video for each book of the Bible. It might be cool for you to watch through all of those in the coming month, so that you can get those “main ideas” and Bible stories into your head now, even while your reading of the actual Bible slows down. Those videos can be like a “sneak peak” for what’s in store as you continue to read through scripture. 

If you prefer text to video, you could also consider getting a “family Bible” / “children’s Bible” to read through! I recommend the DK Illustrated Family Bible, because it has wonderful historical notes and images, and it quotes from the Bible verbatim rather than paraphrasing it in kid-friendly language. Reading through that Bible could totally be done in 2 months, no sweat, unlike getting through the whole Bible. And then you’ll have the main stories and themes in your head asap, while not letting your Bible reading overwhelm you or burn you out.

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To wrap up, here are a couple other resources you might find useful as you continue your reading:

A webpage I made discussing a framework for scripture that takes it seriously and affirms LGBTQ+ persons; concepts like divine inspiration, “cherry-picking,” and the rule of love are also discussed

A post addressing misogynistic passages of the Bible; oh and another post on sexism in the Bible

A post addressing the potential for antisemitism when reading the Bible through a Christian lens

And in my Rachel Held Evans tag you’ll find quotes from her wonderful book Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again, which is such a helpful little book for those wanting a crash-course in things like cultural context, divine inspiration vs. human authors, and grappling with violence in the Bible.

I hope that something in this post helps you out, anon! And best of luck to you as you continue your journey through scripture! 

[saintmachina]

What were some parts of seminary that you liked, versus ones you didn’t? I’m thinking about my future (read: freaking tf out) and I know I want to study theology in some way, I’m just not sure how exactly, ya feel?

Thanks for the question! Your mileage may vary: I went to a Princeton Seminary, which I would categorize as a theologically/politically moderate, academic, traditional Western-style seminary. Seminary culture varies WIDELY from school to school, so keep that in mind when choosing between, say, a Princeton, which may be a more insular academic community focused on research and internships, and a Fuller, which may be a larger community more integrated with the surrounding city concerned with practical training for missionaries, worship leaders, and Christian artists. This is NOT to say that you can’t learn to be an awesome worship leader at PTS (I know them) or an awesome theology professor at Fuller, but make sure you shop around for your particular cultural, career, and academic needs. 

Things I Loved

The residential experience. Nearly all students at PTS live in beautiful on-campus housing or in apartments specialized for families with children just a few miles away. Living a few minutes walk from the library, my professors’ offices, and the chapel was amazing, especially since students at PTS tend to be sociable with the others who live on their hall. I would often spend my evenings studying with friends in their dorm rooms, and since everyone on campus at any given time tends to eat their meals in the cafeteria together, I formed a strong clique of ten or so people who unpacked my readings + spiritual crises with me at the lunch table. 

Spiritual friendships. I was able to make deeper friends than ever before in my life from a variety of denominational and theological backgrounds. We saw each other through vocational shifts, prayed with each other, administered the Eucharist to each other, celebrated birthdays and ordinations together, and stayed up late into the night when anyone needed us. I would literally drive across the country to bail any of them out of jail at a moment’s notice.  

The emotional crucible. Seminary is bootcamp for the soul. You get exposed to so many new ideas and theologies, learn how to preach, sit at people’s bedside while they’re sick, pull together responses for every new act of violence in the news, and most of the time, are thrust into a leadership role at a church that is either going under and begging you to save them or so large and thriving that it nearly swallows you whole. Nothing will grow you up like that. I have an insane amount of poise now dealing with other people’s crises, rage, or grief, and that wasn’t the case when I matriculated. Pastors are all making it up as we go along, but seminary gives at least the appearance of sage wisdom under pressure. 

Academic engagement with theology. This one seems obvious, but after spending four years in a secular liberal arts university that was tolerant of my enduring interest in religion but didn’t offer me an outlet for it, seminary was balm in Gilead. I loved being able to dig into what I really cared about directly, be that metaphysics, church history, or the Bible as literature, and I thrived being surrounded by other people who cared about it and did the reading and wanted to explore together. 

Freedom to research what I wanted. There are plenty of demanding intro-level courses that throw you to the ground and kick you while you cry into your notecards (New Testament, what’s good) but it was fun being on that ride with the rest of your small cohort, and upper-level classes offered chances to research what you cared about. I got to present research on astrology in the book of Daniel, queer American Muslim communities, IVF treatments and theology in Ghana, overlap in myths about Odin and Jesus, and I did an independent research study linking the emergent church to the spike in Millennials re-discovering the Episcopal and Catholic churches.The library was stuffed to the brim with books I would kill for. What a treat.

The melting pot. PTS DEFINITELY has its ideological and admissions biases but they do work hard to create a diverse student body, and I was close with students from so many different counties, denominations, ethnicities, and political leanings, which was enriching beyond belief. It was one of the big reasons I chose a seminary degree. That said, not all schools skew diverse, and I was very specific about choosing a seminary that was explicitly affirming of women in ministry and the goodness and wholeness of LGBTQ+ folks, so I knew that I would be supported by general school policies. Getting that information up front is important. 

Access to university resources. This one is PTS specific, but I went to a independent seminary closely linked to and basically on the same campus as Princeton University (they were the same school back in the 1800s until an amicable split, but we’re still cozy). This meant that I had access to Princeton U libraries, free events, lectures, and religious life, and I was a member of the Episcopal Church at Princeton U for most of my time at seminary. People bribe admissions officials or work themselves to nervous breakdown to get access to the resources I had at my fingertips, and I don’t take that for granted. 

The aesthetic. If I’m gong to take tens of thousands dollars of loans out for graduate school you bet you’re ass I’m going to be sitting in American Hogwarts while I do it. 

Things I Did Not

The cliquishness. This one is a double-edged sword, because I thrived on having a clique of high-functioning. highly-educated pastors who ate at the same lunch table and gossiped about the same people and showed up to campus parties in a gang, but that’s not always healthy. People tended to fragment off by denomination or where they fall on the liberal-conservative scale, and differences can fester that way. Students of color were often implicitly excluded from certain spaces through this behavior. Humans skew towards tribalism to begin with, but when you put super socially-oriented people with strong beliefs in one space where they have to live on top of each other and are looking for low-effort socializing after a long day in the trauma ward, confessional, or picket line, it gets worse. 

Imposter syndrome. Maybe it’s grad school in general that does this, but I spent most of my degree fighting off the feeling that I was dumb, lazy, not serious enough about my “calling” or my research, and probably a heretic. Part of my character growth came from learning not to give a fuck about what people who didn’t share my passions thought of them, and from realizing that I wasn’t on the ordination or PhD track like most of my peers, and that was okay. So I grew from this, but it stung like hell. I cried a lot.

No handholding. The professors at PTS were, by and large, old school, and they were busy as hell. While there was opportunities for office hours, most engagement with professors came in the performative form of “a question, well, more of a comment really” during lectures. Students, (mostly men, I’m not going to lie to you) scrambling for a good letter of rec for a PhD tended to monopolize whatever time professors had. I can think of exceptions (Ellen Charry was exceptional and made time for me in her home when I was struggling to unpack antisemitic theology) but it was a far cry from the literature department in my undergrad, where professors were accessible and knew me personally as mentors and friends. 

Caregiver burnout. This is my big one, and is the reason I’m still in recoup mode doing the office job thing instead of working in formal ministry. Everyone at my school was a pastor, hospital chaplain, activist, or social worker. We are the people who care so much, and who are constantly doing emotional labor for those around us with no time off and usually, poor personal boundaries. Working in a field where it is your job to hold everyone’s hurt and be the face of God to them while their life falls apart is….hard. It was not unusual for me to work ten hours at Penn on my feet in campus ministry, helping people sort through whether or not they wanted to report their sexual assault, holding mini-interventions about excessive drinking, and scrambling to re-schedule worship night after my volunteer went to the hospital after a suicide attempt, and then ride the train home while my phone blew up with news of a new mass shooting that I would have to help host a candlelight vigil for. You hold your parishioner’s hand while they die in hospice. You watch social services take your client’s children away. You stand still while someone screams at you for being too political in your sermon, or not political enough. You sit down to do the budget only to realize the beloved pastor who just retired had been embezzling. Typical Tuesday. 

A lot of the items on these lists are specific to my temperament and the culture at PTS, but by and large I would say it was an amazing experience well worth my time, effort, and money. I pushed myself academically beyond what I believed I was capable of, made the deepest friends of my life, found a home denomination, learned how to effectively care for others and myself, and was met by God in transformative ways again and again. Someday I may get that ordination or work for a ministry nonprofit again, but I have skills now that no one can take away from me, skills I use every day in some capacity. 

Good luck in your discernment process, and I pray you find yourself in exactly the place you need to be!

[coloradoron]

Newt Gingrich will not Accept Joe Biden as President

Why I will not accept Joe Biden as president

Unwillingness to accept election result grows out of a level of outrage unlike anything previously experienced

By Newt Gingrich - - Washington Times, Monday, December 21, 2020

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

A smart friend of mine who is a moderate liberal asked why I was not recognizing Joe Biden’s victory.

The friend made the case that Mr. Biden had gotten more votes, and historically we recognize the person with the most votes. Normally, we accept the outcome of elections just as we accept the outcomes of sporting events.

So, my friend asked why was 2020 different?

Having spent more than four years watching the left #Resist President Donald Trump and focus entirely on undoing and undermining the 2016 election, it took me several days to understand the depth of my own feelings.

As I thought about it, I realized my anger and fear were not narrowly focused on votes. My unwillingness to relax and accept that the election was over grew out of a level of outrage and alienation unlike anything I had experienced in more than 60 years involvement in public affairs.

The challenge is that I — and other conservatives — are not disagreeing with the left within a commonly understood world. We live in alternative worlds.

The left’s world is mostly the established world of the forces who have been dominant for most of my life. My world is the populist rebellion which believes we are being destroyed, our liberties are being cancelled and our religions are under assault. (Note the new Human Rights Campaign to decertify any religious school which does not accept secular sexual values — and that many Democrat governors have kept casinos open while closing churches though the COVID-19 pandemic.) We also believe other Democrat-led COVID-19 policies have enriched the wealthy while crushing middle class small business owners (some 160,000 restaurants may close).

In this context, let’s talk first about the recent past and the presidency.

In 2016, I supported an outsider candidate, who was rough around the edges and in the Andrew Jackson school of controversial assaults on the old order. When my candidate won, it was blamed on the Russians. We now know (four years later) Hillary Clinton’s own team financed the total lie that fueled this attack.

Members of the FBI twice engaged in criminal acts to help it along — once in avoiding prosecution of someone who had deleted 33,000 emails and had a subordinate use a hammer to physically destroy hard drives, and a second time by lying to FISA judges to destroy Gen. Michael Flynn and spy on then-candidate Donald Trump and his team. The national liberal media aided and abetted every step of the way. All this was purely an attempt to cripple the new president and lead to the appointment of a special counsel — who ultimately produced nothing.

Now, people in my world are told it is time to stop resisting and cooperate with the new president.

But we remember that the Democrats wanted to cooperate with Mr. Trump so much that they began talking about his impeachment before he even took office. The Washington Post ran a story on Democrat impeachment plots the day of the inauguration.

In fact, nearly 70 Democratic lawmakers boycotted his inauguration. A massive left-wing demonstration was staged in Washington the day after, where Madonna announced she dreamed of blowing up the White House to widespread applause. These same forces want me to cooperate with their new president. I find myself adopting the Nancy Pelosi model of constant resistance. Nothing I have seen from Mr. Biden since the election offers me any hope that he will reach out to the more than 74 million Americans who voted for President Trump.

So, I am not reacting to the votes so much as to the whole election environment.

When Twitter and Facebook censored the oldest and fourth largest newspaper (founded by Alexander Hamilton) because it accurately reported news that could hurt Mr. Biden’s chances — where were The New York Times and The Washington Post?

The truth of the Hunter Biden story is now becoming impossible to avoid or conceal. The family of the Democrat nominee for president received at least $5 million from an entity controlled by our greatest adversary. It was a blatant payoff, and most Americans who voted for Mr. Biden never heard of it — or were told before the election it was Russian disinformation. Once they did hear of it, 17% said they would have switched their votes, according to a poll by the Media Research Center. That’s the entire election. The censorship worked exactly as intended.

Typically, newspapers and media outlets band together when press freedom is threatened by censorship. Where was the sanctimonious “democracy dies in darkness?” Tragically, The Washington Post is now part of the darkness.

But this is just a start. When Twitter censors four of five Rush Limbaugh tweets in one day, I fear for the country.

When these monolithic Internet giants censor the president of the United States, I fear for the country.

When I see elite billionaires like Mark Zuckerburg are able to spend $400 million to hire city governments to maximize turnout in specifically Democratic districts — without any regard to election spending laws or good governance standards — I fear for the country.

When I read that Apple has a firm rule of never irritating China — and I watch the NBA kowtow to Beijing, I fear for our country.

When I watch story after story about election fraud being spiked — without even the appearance of journalistic due diligence or curiosity — I know something is sick.

The election process itself was the final straw in creating the crisis of confidence which is accelerating and deepening for many millions of Americans.

Aside from a constant stream of allegations of outright fraud, there are some specific outrages — any one of which was likely enough to swing the entire election.

Officials in virtually every swing state broke their states’ own laws to send out millions of ballots or ballot applications to every registered voter. It was all clearly documented in the Texas lawsuit, which was declined by the U.S. Supreme Court based on Texas’ procedural standing — not the merits of the case. That’s the election.

In addition, it’s clear that virtually every swing state essentially suspended normal requirements for verifying absentee ballots. Rejection rates were an order of magnitude lower than in a normal year. In Georgia, rejection rates dropped from 6.5% in 2016 to 0.2% in 2020. In Pennsylvania, it went from 1% in 2016 to .003% in 2020. Nevada fell from 1.6% to .75%. There is no plausible explanation other than that they were counting a huge number of ballots — disproportionately for Mr. Biden — that normally would not have passed muster. That’s the election.

The entire elite liberal media lied about the timeline of the COVID-19 vaccine. They blamed President Trump for the global pandemic even as he did literally everything top scientists instructed. In multiple debates, the moderators outright stated that he was lying about the U.S. having a vaccine before the end of the year (note Vice President Mike Pence received it this week). If Americans had known the pandemic was almost over, that too was likely the difference in the election.

The unanimously never-Trump debate commission spiked the second debate at a critical time in order to hurt President Trump. If there had been one more debate like the final one, it likely would have been pivotal.

This is just the beginning. But any one of those things alone is enough for Trump supporters to think we have been robbed by a ruthless establishment — which is likely to only get more corrupt and aggressive if it gets away with these blatant acts.

For more than four years, the entire establishment mobilized against the elected president of the United States as though they were an immune system trying to kill a virus. Now, they are telling us we are undermining democracy.

You have more than 74 million voters who supported President Trump despite everything — and given the election mess, the number could easily be significantly higher. The truth is tens of millions of Americans are deeply alienated and angry. If Mr. Biden governs from the left — and he will almost certainly be forced to — that number will grow rapidly, and we will win a massive election in 2022.

Given this environment, I have no interest in legitimizing the father of a son who Chinese Communist Party members boast about buying. Nor do I have any interest in pretending that the current result is legitimate or honorable. It is simply the final stroke of a four-year establishment-media power grab. It has been perpetrated by people who have broken the law, cheated the country of information, and smeared those of us who believe in America over China, history over revisionism, and the liberal ideal of free expression over the cancel culture.

I write this in genuine sorrow, because I think we are headed toward a serious, bitter struggle in America. This extraordinary, coordinated four-year power grab threatens the fabric of our country and the freedom of every American.

[trashcatsnark]

Yoosung Kim (INFP)

*Note: For the sake of this profile (for lack of a better word) I have to explain looping because I feel confident in saying the Yoosung is going through a Fi-Si loop in the game due to his depression. So, his might be a bit lengthier.

Fi (Introverted Feeling): Empathy isn’t Yoosung’s strong suit. He’s a sweetheart, he doesn’t like seeing the people he care’s about get hurt, he does like helping people, but genuinely putting himself in other’s situation is not something he’s fully capable of at most times. I imagine he’ll get better with time, but throughout his and most routes, his preoccupation is on what he feels. He’s consumed with his own pain and his own grief, rarely considering other people’s. As I said before, I believe that he’s going through a Fi-Si loop, meaning his first and third function are bouncing off each other with little to no input from his secondary function. He tends to be selfish in his feelings and while he does care what other’s think, rarely does it actually change his behavior. He gets judged for playing too much LOLOL, that’s mean and upsetting, he’s still gonna play it. This is painfully evident in V’s route when he’s at his absolute unhealthiest. He refuses to visit family members despite it upsetting his mom, cause he doesn’t want it. In Seven’s route we learn that after leaving for college, he barely even talks to his mom anymore, not even knowing when she got sick. He was so focused on himself. It’s also worth noting, originally, he didn’t care about volunteering. He was forced to do it and didn’t understand that helping can make you feel good. Rika had to teach him that helping people can enrich your life. Unhealthy Fi can be really painfully selfish at times.

Ne (Extroverted Intuition):  The future! And now if you listen closely you’ll hear the sound of Yoosung screaming in terror. Hes looping so badly throughout the game and avoids thinking about the future as much as possible. Cause, it scares him, so he spend all of his time wallowing in his own feelings, thinking about the past (Si) and escaping into video games. You do see glimpse of it, mostly in his route when he starts to break out of his loop, Every now in then it break through and he starts freaking out about what the fuck he’s gonna do with his life, so many possibilities. Should he stick to being a vet or should he work for Jumin’s company? Should he change his major, find something new, nothing thrills him. We also get glimpse of it with his tendency to change clubs, Ne gets bored, easily. He starts a thing then loses interest almost right away. I also see in his route the fact that some of the good Yoosung answers are about re-engaging his Ne, which is a huge part of getting out of a loop. Get your secondary function back into the process. A big part of him getting better is talking about what a future with you/mc looks like. Talking about things you can do as a couple in the future, wanting to go on a trip or having a garden. Ne is all about possibilities, fighting or the future he sees with you is a huge part of his growth within his route.

Si (Introverted Sensing): Rika,Rika, Rika, Rika, Rika, has he mentioned Rika lately? Again, he’s in a Fi-Si loop. He can’t move on from what he had, he can’t more forward. He even tells you, he feels stagnant, like everyone is moving towards the future and he can’t get himself going. He’s not even sure he wants to, cause god only know what the future holds. He wants to sit on his floor and look through albums, reminiscing about the past he can’t get back. And when things challenge his perception of the past, like learning Rika was mentally ill, it fucking shatters him. He relies on memories to comfort him when escapism fails, remember what things were like before her “death” it’s something he can depend on, so learning that that might not even be safe from change is terrifying. 

Te (Extroverted Thinking): While generally nice, when his emotions get the better of him, he’s not a pleasant human being. He’s blunt and will cut through the bullshit of things. The only two people who have hurt my feelings in this game, as in they said something that made me feel like shit aboutt myself, have been Jumin and Yoosung. Both Te users and honestly, Yoosung kind of hurt me more. Jumin has dominant Te which mean it comes out controlled and refined, usually. Yoosung has inferior Te which means it only comes out a lot when he’s going through some shit and pissed off. When Jumin hurt my feelings it didn’t feel personal, he was talking generally about his opinions on women, which as a woman upset me a bit but it wasn’t aimed to hurt me. In V’s route, when the truth has been revealed about Rika, there’s a conversation with Yoosung and Zen. You can choose some option to offer Yoosung comfort along the lines of “It’s going to be okay, everyone is going to be okay.” and he doesn’t waste a second saying that’s bullshit, cause Rika isn’t going to be okay in the end, how can you promise him that. He basically called my ass out on saying useless shit to placate him, when in reality I had neither the power or the desire to insure Rika’s well being. He showed this again, at the end of V’s route, when he intercepted Rika’s poison attempt. He steps up and takes control as much as he can, cause he knows in the end it’s what he has to do. He also showed it at the end of his route, taking control of a situation and getting a bit more badass when he feels he needs too. I also find it interesting that twice, at least in Yoosung’s route, Seven talks about how in a roundabout way he Yoosung as a potentially intimidating or threatening person. He says it’s scary seeing Yoosung get angry. He calls Yoosung a yandere, implying he could see Yoosung becoming aggressive. A trained special agent who’s life is in constant danger is at least a little scared of when Yoosung loses his temper, that says a lot.

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My 5 genres of video games

I used to spend my time on a variety of games from AAA open world titles to small flash tower defense games. I’m still quite fond of many of these games and Kingdom Rush in particular has a special place in my heart as the smoothest tower defense game I’ve ever played. I got obsessed over niche genres from time to time too. I had a short period, in which I read many articles on hg101. Naturally, I got super interested in shmups back then. I still like to play a simple free shmup from time to time, but I avoid more difficult entries these days and I can’t call myself a hardcore fan of the genre.

For the longest time I was big on RPGs and Boiware in particular. I loved Dragon Age and I still plan getting my hands on Inquisition one day. I need to replay Mass Effect 2 and finally finish the trilogy. Baldur’s Gate is still on my shortlist of games to finish and Jade Empire is one of my favourite underrated games to recommend. There were other RPGs than those from Bioware too. Gothic 3 probably qualifies for the game I spent most time with as completing it took me half a year. I still like low fiction of Gothic series and admire compact worlds of the first two games and Risen. Oblivion is my favourite roaming game. The best part about it was bumping into a small settlement in the middle of nature and just be there. The last not least I should mention RPG Maker.  I developed few small games in it and I still sometimes work on three more. 2 of them are actual RPGs. I played and enjoyed many RM games, some of them epic fantasies. So, why is this genre only a honorable mention? I don’t find myself as attracted to it and its power fantasies as I used to. I don’t have time for sprawling epic and there are certain strategy games fulfilling my lust for medieval and characters better. The two basic premises of RPGs aren’t as interesting for me as they used to be. I don’t really care about hero’s journey narrative and I’m little bored with basic mechanics. For example leveling up can be such a chore.

Now my choices are way narrower than they used to be. I still play other games and especially hobbyist and micro RPGs, which might enter my top 5 one day. These are the five genres I purposely follow, build up libraries or knowledge of their game design and talk about on Discord the most.

1. Non-linear platformers

I enjoy myself a good metroidvania. There’s only one thing, which makes a foggy, rainy better. It’s not alcohol. Also, I used term non-linear platformers on purpose. I enjoy sideview platforming and not every metroidvania’s that. There are many different movements and some of them are less fun and there are 3d games, which use Metroid inspired progression. Also, I haven’t played a single Metroid or Castlevania proper. I don’t have any excuse for the travesty. Ok, not being a console guy might give you an explanation of my situation. And with so many likes and clones on steam, I have enough to eat through without touching emulators.

I enjoy the genre’s level design in particular. I think that adding multiple layers and making souls inspired timing based combat or adding too many rpg elements rarely helps. Movement’s still the core. Upgrades/progression is at its best, when focused on obtaining new ways of movement and not stronger weapons. Clever boss fights are always important, but I prefer them to be a puzzle rather than an endurance competition. I have a huge, almost endless list of metroidvanias to play and to base my own one on.

2. Walking simulators

Sometimes I just need to turn off. Games in general are a good resting activity, walking sims and ambient games take it little further. And I usually feel enriched by playing them. I don’t feel like an overgrown child. Walking around studying original aesthetic of their creators. It’s a dialogue, in which I confront and reflect their approach to architecture and aesthetics They are definitely better enjoyed on a big screen with proper audio and smooth performance. They’re quite power hungry as even low poly ones are usually 3d. That’s a problem with my current hardware and software. In general I enjoy low poly and minimalist walking sims the most. They tend to focus more on composition.

Almost walking sims present you with a sense of wonder. You explore unknown and often massive lands. They should let you find your own way, but some of there are more focused and lead. Even if the land’s strange, it’s for the better when it rings a sense of familiar. Going cheap surreal isn’t the way. Landscapes in walking sims can be way weirder than Dali, but they should have their own nature. Walking sims are usually very slow. There’s no activity besides walking, maybe you can pick up an item. Sometimes, you follow a story. It’s hard to define a hard border, where walking sims end and other genres start. Gone Home is about something completely else than pure walking sims, but I still enjoy it for its pacing and ambiance. That brings it very close. Curtain certainly isn’t a walking sim, but the way you move around the apartment and then walk through a corridor to bend time is very much close to timeless scenes of walking sims.

3. Art games - game art

This is a difficult category to define. Art games are usually aiming for more than entertainment. They’re deeper with references to other media or filled with social critique. Having fun sometimes feels bad in them. Game art is even more difficult to define. To put it simply, it’s usually a piece of art using games as its medium. It can have a form of an interactive executable or weird modification of an existing game but the artistic concept is more important than it being a working game. In terms of mechanics, this is a diverse group and vague one, when it comes to game design. Here I can learn from areas more relevant in the real world. They often take on philosophy, ethics, politics, aesthetics and other fields I’m interested in more than in violence and loot.

Some game are clear art games. An easy example is Kentucky Route Zero, which despite it’s artsy nature is clearly defined by its mechanics and sense of progress. The other example from my favourite games would be Little Party. This one’s lighter on mechanics, but it tells a very subtle and civil story and it uses art and creativity more than being a product of it. Proteus would be my personal borderline example. The game’s about complementing and its island are small art pieces. This is actually very close to an ambient video installation and could be considered game art. 

4. Turn based strategy games 

Games my brain enjoys the most. I get satisfaction from solving. Solving concrete situations of strategy games is closer to me than abstract puzzles and logic games in general. Into the Breach is close to the latter in terms of mechanics but I love it, because it’s not cold, it makes me feel and every time I fail and an enemy hits one of the cities, I stop breathing for a moment. It makes me feel heroic to put one of my mechs in front of houses and almost sacrifice its pilot to save those lives.

There’s a huge influence of Heroes of Might and Magic. That game has many flaws, but its pace is perfect. Battles are usually either swift of epic. Heroes were my first love and I still fondly return to them from time to time. They’re not as challenging or complex as most tactics/strategy games, but they’re perfect rewarding fun. I only left them as my default turn based strategy to branch out. Series like Civilization and Warlock are building more consistent worlds. Especially in Civ its super fast turns and ties to the real world’s history make it a captivating game, in which you need to strategize on several fronts at once. Tactics are the second path I currently follow. There are closer to RPGs, but for reason your characters becoming stronger makes more sense here. It’s often because you can lose them and losing a level 10 character hurts more. I enjoy the small scale of tactics games too. The smaller the better. Again it’s a game design challenge of going further without sacrificing complexity.

5. Grand strategy games

I wonder how longer this one sticks. I love engrossing myself in Paradox games, losing track of real for weeks and becoming weirdo obsessed with my own history of the world. But it’s weird and disconnecting and you can’t talk about it with your friends, because explaining it is impossible. You can share some stories with fellow grand strategy players, but it’s not difficult to realize the weird nerdness of the company.

So, what’s so good about them? They simulate politics on a world-wide level with an amount of realism, which just feels right. You can change history, but only within borders set up by Paradox. For example you can conquer France as an Aztec, but it stays France. Shapes are the same, systems too. This shade of reality makes fiction in Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Victoria and other games much more easy to engage with. That’s also why I find Stellaris boring. Leaving reality, there’s nothing to compare your fiction with. It renders my choices irrelevant and different developments have same impact on me. Multiplayer probably changes this.

Civilization is far less complex than grand strategy games. It’s simple and easy to explain and to change. Yet it keeps certain connection to the real world and it has great modding scene. There isn’t an infinite number of expansions for it, which would make it bloated with features. And one run lasts a lot less. Civ isn’t a simulation, it’s still a very long puzzle. One day, I will only stick with one of the two. Now It looks better for Sid Mayer than Paradox.

Pictures are from following games: Caged Bird Dont Fly Caught in a Wire Sing Like a Good Canary Come When Called, Gunmetal Arcadia, Mura Toka (1 and 2), Morphblade, Victoria 2

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Sea Wall Dramaturgy: Eve Nicol @ The Pub

Theatre audiences pick the ticket price when Simon Stephen’s acclaimed monologue, Sea Wall, tours Glasgow bars in January 2017. 

Heroes Theatre presents 

Sea Wall

Written by Simon Stephens, directed by Eve Nicol and performed by Alan MacKenzie.

Touring Glasgow pubs 22 -26 January 2017

Sea Wall will see the emerging Glasgow-based company to break out of existing limiting structures for creating theatre, paying artists and talking directly to audiences in non-traditional spaces.

For their Glasgow pub new tour of Simon Stephens’ acclaimed monologue, Heroes Theatre are implementing the innovative Pay What You Decide pricing model pioneered by Slung Low and ARC, Stockton, where audiences are under no obligation to pay until after they see the show. Pay What You Decide allows audiences to pay only what they can afford and removes the financial risk of buying a ticket in advance without knowing if they are going to enjoy a production or not. For Sea Wall, audiences will get to set the price of their ticket, paying as little or as much as they think the show was worth.

Written by the Olivier and Tony award-winning author of the stage adaptation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Stephens’ Sea Wall is a portrait of guilt, grief and the still waters that run deep in us all. 

Sea Wall tells the story of young parent Alex. His life is going swimmingly - a great kid, a happy marriage, good job – when everything is swept from him in one devastating moment. Heroes Theatre invites audiences to join them at the table for Sea Wall, sharing this intimate story over a beer in the back rooms, snugs and dens of pubs across Glasgow. Previously seen at the National Theatre and The Bush, London, Sea Wall is pint-sized theatre that packs a crushing emotional punch.

I know that you like good quality, contemporary scripts... in fact, you got me into Philip Ridley, which means I kind of owe you one! So what was it that made you select Sea Wall?

Sea Wall is one of those stories that haunts you. My first encounter with Sea Wall was in performance with Paines Plough's touring production a few years ago. It blindsided me. The friends I was with all sat in the pub afterwards, hearts broken, needing the warmth of human company.

I had been looking for a script that would suit Alan MacKenzie, who I worked with on The Pitchfork Disney. Both Alan and the character in Sea Wall, Alex, have personalities that you make you want to have a drink with them, to spend time in their company. It’s a wonderful trait in a performer and for a writer to accomplish. Like Philip Ridley’s plays, I don’t think we see enough of Simon Stephens’ work in Scotland. I selected Sea Wall as it was an opportunity to work with actor I wanted to work with and a tell story I wanted to share. A perfect combination for me. As a resolute anti-social non-drinker (most of the time), I am both intrigued and slightly frightened by the idea of theatre in the pub. Can you persuade me why having a performance in a pub is a good idea?

Just as you might not feel at home in a bar, many regular pub goers would be apprehensive to step into a theatre. It’s probably healthy for theatre audiences to be a bit more awake to the real world they inhabit from time to time. The seclusion of theatres can be seductive but false.

Hospitality and a drink amongst friends is important to Heroes and pubs are geared up for this. Putting Sea Wall in a pub setting made me think of barflies who quietly nurse half a pint half the night then slip out into the dark. What’s their story? By inviting audiences to sit down at a table with Alex, I’m hoping to encourage people to consider the still waters that run deep in us all.

From a financial point of view as unfunded company, having a performance in a pub is an excellent idea. You get 90-100% of your box office takings whereas in a theatre 60% is seen as good deal. Heroes simply couldn't do this production in a theatre without breaking employment law. It’s an issue theatres who programme emerging companies need to address. Immediately. As we've removed the financial risk for Heroes by performing in a pub, we're able to share the benefits with audiences too. Sea Wall is running on a Pay What You Decide pricing model where audiences decide the price of their ticket post-performance based on their experience. We’re busking essentially. If money is a bit tight post-Christmas, we’re not excluding anyone because they’re skint.

Apart from your enthusiasm for a good script, it's clear that you have a passion for getting theatre back into a wider public attention. Was there a particular inspiration that made you think that theatre was the art form that you wanted to engage with, and what makes it special for you?

My parents instigated theatre trips regularly and I would dog school to go see Jesus Christ Superstar matinees, but it was the Citizens Theatre’s Circle Studio that did it for me as a fifteen year old. It was sexy and clever and it was right in front of you. Going to the theatre as a 30 year old still makes me feel like an impressionable teenager – it shows me new perspectives, new emotions, new images. I’m a fangirl. In sharing plays that excite me with other people, I get to express a little something of myself too.  

You know I have to do this - but can you tell me a little about your thoughts on dramaturgy? Do you have a particular process in creating theatre that can be described? 

My dramaturgy is in detail of the decisions I make to bring the text off the page and in to real space, in real time. Semiotics, right? What does the brand of beer Alex drinks communicate to an audience?  I am a big fan of Katie Mitchell’s preparation process outlined in her book. Her methodical approach of deep textual study and real world research opens doors to avenues of investigation that would otherwise remain hidden.

What am I doing with my life? I mean, seriously, I sit around all day reading about The Enlightenment and worrying about purpose... sorry, I am interested in how you use the theory that you have learnt in the rehearsal room. Does the academic have any use within the creative process?

Theory is fine but practice is everything. With study you learn a lot about what other people in the industry are doing but there’s not a lot of personal excavation going on. Theory can be an impediment. You’re more aware of all the things you don’t know. The books that remain unread. The individual human lifespan isn’t that long. “How do you do you” might be the most informative, surprising, uncomfortable but hopeful point of study for anyone. The art that inspires me - and which I aim to make - are stories that inspire people to take action, to live their lives with more vigour. To do.

The academic does have use within the creative process because they are human and in being human, they have a unique perspective to offer which can enrich the lives of other humans. I think we might only have purpose when it becomes a shared purpose.

How does Sea Wall relate to Nordic Noir?

You can see the influence of The Killing all over contemporary drama. The pacing of storytelling. There’s a slower, more contemplative, burn. It’s not the hyperactive cosmopolitan settings. There’s a lack, a missing. Space.  It’s concerned less with the glamour of the event – the explosion, the hit, the abduction, whatever - but with examining the effects human horrors have on the people left behind.

Sea Wall shares these qualities. Alex takes his time in unloading his story. For the audience there’s a puzzle to work out. What happened? Who is to blame? How do you carry on?

Sea Wall builds on the success of Heroes Theatre’s debut production of Philip Ridley’s The Pitchfork Disney at the Tron Theatre in 2014, and 2016’s storming punk performance poetry duet for words and drums, GLITTERED, created for Hidden Door Festival.

Join the conversation: #SeaWall

Touring Glasgow pubs 23 - 27 January 2017

The Bungo, 17 Nithsdale Road, G41 2AL 22 January 2017, 6pm & 7.30pm

Sloans, 108 Argyle St, G2 8BG 23 & 24 January 2017, 6.30 & 8.00pm

Dram!, 232 Woodlands Road, G3 6ND 25 & 26 January 2017, 6.30 & 8.00pm (18+ only at 8.00pm performances in Dram!)

Suitable for ages 14+ Running time: 35 minutes 

Artists’ Biographies

Simon Stephens – writer Simon Stephens is an Associate Artist of the Lyric Hammersmith and the Royal Court Theatre. His many plays include: a new adaptation of The Threepenny Opera, Carmen Disruption, Heisenberg, Birdland, Blindsided, Morning, Three Kingdoms, Wastwater, Punk Rock, Pornography (Best New Play at Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland 2008-9), Country Music, Christmas and Herons.  His adaptation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time for the National Theatre - concurrently touring the UK, in West End and on Broadway - won the Olivier Award for Best New Play 2013 and the Tony Award for Best Play 2015.

Eve Nicol – director Eve Nicol is Artistic Director of Heroes Theatre. Work includes GLITTERED at Hidden Door, The Pitchfork Disney and Fairytaleheart. She is a graduate of the Playwrights’ Studio, Scotland Mentoring Scheme and is currently supported by the Tom McGrath Trust and FST Assistant Director Bursary, working with David Greig on the premiere of a new play by Linda McLean at Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh.

Alan MacKenzie – Alex Alan has previously worked with Heroes on The Pitchfork Disney. His theatre credits include touring with Mull Theatre’s Movie Time and Visible Fictions’, Friends Electric and as Hamlet with Wilderness of Tigers for Bard In The Botanics.

Notes to the Editors 

About Heroes Theatre 

Formed in 2014, Heroes Theatre is led by theatre director and playwright Eve Nicol and creative collaborators from Glasgow’s grassroots theatre scene. Eve established Heroes to share brilliant contemporary plays and the text-based theatre of tomorrow. Heroes make shared cathartic experiences of hope, heartbreak and horror to make humans feel more human. 

from the vileblog http://ift.tt/2jc7m5k

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Leisure Quotes

Official Website: Leisure Quotes

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• A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars. – Henry David Thoreau • A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. – Henry David Thoreau • A healthy man, with steady employment, as wood-chopping at fifty cents a cord, and a camp in the woods, will not be a good subjectfor Christianity. The New Testament may be a choice book to him on some, but not on all or most of his days. He will rather go a-fishing in his leisure hours. The Apostles, though they were fishers too, were of the solemn race of sea-fishers, and never trolled for pickerel on inland streams. – Henry David Thoreau • A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. There will be sleeping enough in the grave. – Benjamin Franklin • A society that gives to one class all the opportunities for leisure, and to another all the burdens of work, dooms both classes to spiritual sterility. – Lewis Mumford • Action is the music of our life. Like music, it starts from a pause of leisure, a silence of activity which our initiative attacks; then it develops according to its inner logic, passes its climax, seeks its cadence, ends, and restores silence, leisure again. Action and leisure are thus interdependent; echoing and recalling each other, so that action enlivens leisure with its memories and anticipations, and leisure expands and raises action beyond its mere immediate self and gives it a permanent meaning. – Salvador de Madariaga • All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast. – John Gunther • All intellectual improvement arises from leisure. – Samuel Johnson • All this time I lived with my parents, and wrought on the plantation; and having had schooling pretty well for a planter, I used to improve myself in winter evenings, and other leisure times. – John Woolman • Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. – Anthony Burgess • Any notion of the serious life of leisure, as well as men’s taste and capacity to live it, had disappeared. Leisure became entertainment. – Allan Bloom • Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes. – James Madison • Anyone can see that to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the knee in the kitchen, with constant calls to cooking and other details of housework to punctuate the paragraphs, was a more difficult achievement than to write it at leisure in a quiet room. – Anna Garlin Spencer • As to that leisure evening of life, I must say that I do not want it. I can conceive of no contentment of which toil is not to be the immediate parent. – Anthony Trollope • As Western nations became more prosperous, leisure, which had been put off for several centuries in favor of the pursuit of property, the means to leisure, finally began to be of primary concern. But, in the meantime, any notion of the serious life of leisure, as well as men’s taste and capacity to live it, had disappeared. – Allan Bloom • As work weeks get longer and leisure time shrinks, people are becoming sicker, more distracted, absent, unproductive, and less innovative. – Brigid Schulte • At the root of our civilization, there is the freedom of each person of thought, of belief, of opinion, of work, of leisure. – Charles de Gaulle • Australians are coffee snobs. An influx of Italian immigrants after World War II ensured that – we probably had the word ‘cappuccino’ about 20 years before America. Cafe culture is really big for Aussies. We like to work hard, but we take our leisure time seriously. – Hugh Jackman • Automation and technology would be a great boon if it were creative, if there were more leisure, more opportunity to engage in raising a family, providing guidance to the young, all the stuff we say we need. America will work if we’re all in it together. It’ll work when there’s a shared sense of destiny. It can be done! – Jerry Brown

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  jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Leisure', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_leisure').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_leisure img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Basically, particularly in Britain, it’s a hegemonic thing that people who write tend to come from the leisure classes. They can afford the time and the books. – Irvine Welsh • Celebrating the future is about celebrating a better world: a world in which everyone’s life is easier and their health is maintained longer. It’ll be a life where there’s more time for leisure – for enriching each other’s lives rather than just running to stand still. In other words, more holiday time! So a holiday is absolutely the appropriate way to help us focus on it and make it a reality soon. – Aubrey de Grey • Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure. – Thorstein Veblen • Convent – a place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness. – Ambrose Bierce • Creativity is an innate function in a human being, as we see in tribal peoples, who spent their considerable leisure time making religious artifacts and sacred art. That is what I would call a direct culture, in that everybody in it is directly in touch with all the elements, both of the culture and of the environment. – Michael Ventura • Cultivated leisure is the aim of man. – Oscar Wilde

[clickbank-storefront-bestselling] • Destroy our leisure and you break love’s bow. – Ovid • Detest it [a certain difficult mathematics problem] just as much as lewd intercourse; it can deprive you of all your leisure, your health, your rest, and the whole happiness of your life. – Farkas Bolyai • Do not love leisure. Waste not a minute. Be bold. Realize the Truth, here and now! – Sivananda • Do not mistake a crowd of big wage earners for the leisure class. – Clive Bell • Do not say, ‘When I have leisure, I will study,’ because you may never have leisure. – Hillel the Elder • Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure. – W. Somerset Maugham • Eat good dinners and drink good wine; read good novels if you have the leisure and see good plays; fall in love, if there is no reason why you should not fall in love; but do not pore over influenza statistics. – Jerome K. Jerome • Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure. – Benjamin Franklin • Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed. – Prince Philip • For men who had easily endured hardship, danger and difficult uncertainty, leisure and riches, though in some ways desirable, proved burdensome and a source of grief. – Sallust • For mothers who must earn, there is indeed no leisure time problem. The long hours of earning are increased by the hours of domestic labor, until no slightest margin for relaxation or change of thought remains. – Katharine Anthony • Friendship is a very taxing and arduous form of leisure activity. – Mortimer Adler • From Alexander the Platonic, not frequently nor without necessity to say to any one, or to write in a letter, that I have no leisure; nor continually to excuse the neglect of duties required by our relation to those with whom we live, by alleging urgent occupations. – Marcus Aurelius • Good will, that curious product of consciousness, of leisure and energy to spare and share. That thing we put out against the forces of interest. That extra thing. Religions and nations and political parties have taken it and used it as coinage, have said you must only give it in exchange for value. – Naomi Mitchison • Happiness is thought to depend on leisure; for we are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace. – Aristotle • He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul’s estate. – Henry David Thoreau • He hath no leisure who useth it not. – George Herbert • Hospitality has never been about having House Beautiful with perfectly coordinated accessories and the most up-to-date equipment, nor is it dependent upon having large chunks of leisure time and a big entertainment budget to spend, nor does it require special training in the culinary arts or event planning. Hospitality is about a heart for service, the creativity to stretch whatever we do have available, and the energy to give the time necessary to add a flourish to the ordinary events of life. – Dorothy Kelley Patterson • How to use your leisure time is the biggest problem of a ballplayer. – Branch Rickey • I am an inveterate homemaker, it is at once my pleasure, my recreation, and my handicap. Were I a man, my books would have been written in leisure, protected by a wife and a secretary and various household officials. As it is, being a woman, my work has had to be done between bouts of homemaking. – Pearl S. Buck • I am in musical theatre, but it isn’t necessarily what I listen to in my leisure time, do you know what I mean? – Patti LuPone • I am moreover inclined to be concise when I reflect on the constant occupation of the citizens in public and private affairs, so that in their few leisure moments they may read and understand as much as possible. – Marcus Vitruvius Pollio I believe in manicures. I believe in overdressing. I believe in primping at leisure and wearing lipsitck. – Audrey Hepburn • I could do whatever I liked to do during the day. I didn’t have to work in an office. I could work at home. I could work at my leisure. I worked ’til four in the morning. I worked with the TV and radio on – it was a great setup. I was a night person and still am. – Jack Kirby • I hate leisure, except reading. I’m really a person made to work, if sketching is considered work. – Karl Lagerfeld • I hate to mention age, but I come from an era when we weren’t consumed by technology and television. My mother insisted that her children read. To describe my scarce leisure time in today’s terms, I always default to reading. – Jimmy Buffett • I have an inability to relax. I try to make every day a work day. I get pleasure from work… I try to think of sketch ideas, stand-up pieces. I am incapable of leisure and leisure time. – Fred Armisen • I have no leisure to think of style or of polish, or to select the best language, the best English – no time to shine as an authoress. I must just think aloud, so as not to keep the public waiting. – Isabel Burton • I keep telling people I’ll make movies until I’m fifty and then I’ll go and do something else. I’m going to be a professional gentleman of leisure. – Eddie Murphy • I love the joy of mountains Wandering free with no concerns Every day I find food for this old body There’s leisure for thinking, nothing to do Often I carry an ancient book Sometimes I climb a rock pavilion To look down a thousand foot precipice Overhead are swirling clouds A cold moon chilly cold My body feels like a flying crane – Hanshan • I remember in that red leisure suit I sort of felt like a Pizza Hut employee, and the white one was the ultimate, with the white turtleneck collar, that was the ultimate in bad taste. – Johnny Depp • I sort of leave the character at the end of the day. I don’t carry anything around with me – no excess baggage or unnecessary thoughts. I think it’s too exhausting to do that. To put things into perspective – your work is your work, and your leisure time is something else. – Sean Bean • I think this dichotomy or opposition between work and play, between leisure and serious stuff, is definitely a bad way of thinking about the useful insights that play provides. – Ian Bogost • I wish you could arrange your life so as to have a little more leisure. I do not want you to be lazy, but the passive conditions of the mind are quite as valuable as the active conditions. – Elsa Barker • I would not exchange my leisure hours for all the wealth in the world. – Honore Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau • I’d rather spend my leisure time doing what some people call my work and I call my fun. – Jared Diamond • If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means. – Alan Bennett • If I myself dominate myself, if my thoughts revolve round myself, if I am so occupied with myself I rarely have “a heart at leisure from itself,” then I know nothing of Calvary love. – Amy Carmichael • If the individuals who compose the purest circles of aristocracy in Europe, the guarded blood of centuries, should pass in review,in such manner as that we could, at leisure, and critically inspect their behavior, we might find no gentleman, and no lady; for, although excellent specimens of courtesy and high-breeding would gratify us in the assemblage, in the particulars, we should detect offence. Because, elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth. • If the life-supporting ecosystems of the planet are to survive for future generations, the consumer society will have to dramatically curtail its use of resources – partly by shifting to high-quality, low-input durable goods and partly by seeking fulfillment through leisure, human relationships, and other nonmaterial avenues. We in the consumer society will have to live a technologically sophisticated version of the life-style currently practiced lower on the economic ladder. – Alan Thein Durning • If there is such a thing as a workaholic, I’m it, and that’s what passes for leisure. – Steve Earle • If work and leisure are soon to be subordinated to this one utopian principle – absolute busyness – then utopia and melancholy will come to coincide: an age without conflict will dawn, perpetually busy – and without consciousness. – Gunter Grass • If you are losing your leisure, look out! You are losing your soul. – Logan Pearsall Smith • I’m never less at leisure than when at leisure, or less alone than when alone. – Scipio Africanus • In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men’s eyes. – Thorstein Veblen • In life, as in Chess, ones own Pawns block ones way. A mans very wealth, ease, leisure, children, books, which should help him to win, more often checkmate him – Charles Buxton • In the year 2000 you’re going to have a problem…Leisure time will be a problem in the year 2000. I just want you to realize, I just want to make sure that you know of it now. – Edie Sedgwick • Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man. – Benjamin Disraeli • It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful. – W. H. Auden • It is dainty to be sick if you have leisure and convenience for it. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self. – Agnes Repplier • It is just this rage for consideration that has betrayed the dog into his satellite position as the friend of man. The cat, an animal of franker appetites, preserves his independence. But the dog, with one eye ever on the audience, has been wheedled into slavery, and praised and patted into the renunciation of his nature. Once he ceased hunting and became man’s plate-licker, the Rubicon was crossed. Thenceforth he was a gentleman of leisure; and except the few whom we keep working, the whole race grew more and more self-conscious, mannered and affected. – Robert Louis Stevenson • It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says there is no wisdom without leisure. – William Butler Yeats • It may be said that an education which does not succeed in making poetry a resource in the business of life as well as in its leisure, has something the matter with it. – John Dewey • It takes application, a fine sense of value, and a powerful community-spirit for a people to have serious leisure, and this has not been the genius of the Americans. – Paul Goodman • Jupiter has no leisure to attend to little things. – Ovid • Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles. – Samuel Johnson • Leisure and the cultivation of human capacities are inextricably interdependent. – Margaret Mead • Leisure is a form of silence, not noiselessness. It is the silence of contemplation such as occurs when we let our minds rest on a rosebud, a child at play, a Divine mystery, or a waterfall. – Fulton J. Sheen • leisure is an attitude of mind, not simply remission of work. – Nan Fairbrother • Leisure is gone,–gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow wagons, and the peddlers, who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons. – George Eliot • Leisure is one of the three greatest rewards of being a teacher. It is, unfortunately, the privilege which teachers most often misuse. – Gilbert Highet • Leisure is pain; take off our chariot wheels; how heavily we drag the load of life! – Edward Young • Leisure is the handmaiden of the devil. – Branch Rickey • Leisure is the most challenging responsibility a man can be offered. – William Russell • Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy. – Thomas Hobbes • Leisure is the time for doing something useful. – Benjamin Franklin • Leisure is the time for doing something useful. This leisure the diligent person will obtain the lazy one never. – Benjamin Franklin • Leisure may be defined as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes, labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation. – George Bernard Shaw • Leisure only means a chance to do other jobs that demand attention. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. • Leisure was the sine qua non of the full Renaissance. The feudal nobility, having lost its martial function, sought diversion all over Europe in cultivated pastimes: sonneteering, the lute, games and acrostics, travel, gentlemanly studies and sports, hunting and hawking, treated as arts. – Mary McCarthy • Leisure with dignity. – Marcus Tullius Cicero • Leisure without study is death, and the grave of a living man. – Seneca the Younger • Leisure, the highest happiness on earth, is seldom enjoyed with perfect satisfaction, except in solitude. – George Zimmerman • Leisure, the highest happiness upon earth, is seldom enjoyed with perfect satisfaction, except in solitude. Indolence and indifference do not always afford leisure; for true leisure is frequently found in that interval of relaxation which divides a painful duty from an agreeable recreation; a toilsome business from the more agreeable occupations of literature and philosophy. – Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann • Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay. – Aldous Huxley • Literature is, in fact, the fruit of leisure. – Amelia B. Edwards • Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure. – Oliver Herford • Many people know how to work hard; many others know how to play well; but the rarest talent in the world is the ability to introduce elements of playfulness into work, and to put some constructive labor into our leisure. – Sydney J. Harris • Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure. – Lord Byron • Mend when thou canst; be better at thy leisure. – William Shakespeare • Much work is merely a way to make money; much leisure is merely a way to spend it. – C. Wright Mills • My hobbies and leisure activities include cars and golf. – Michael Strahan • NCL … stands to achieve greater success under the Carnival Corp. umbrella, which will provide NCL with economies of scale, greater access to capital, marketing and operating expertise and stronger credibility in the leisure and vacation industry. – Micky Arison • News-hunters have great leisure, with little thought; much petty ambition to be considered intelligent, without any other pretension than being able to communicate what they have just learned. – Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann • No blessed leisure for love or hope, But only time for grief. – Thomas Hood • No country can reach a high stage of civilization without a leisure class. – Gertrude Atherton • No man has a right to be idle. Where is it that in such a world as this, that health, and leisure, and affluence may not find some ignorance to instruct, some wrong to redress, some want to supply, some misery to alleviate? – William Wilberforce • No president who performs his duties faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure. – James K. Polk • Nothing increases the number of jobs so rapidly as labor-saving machinery, because it releases wants theretofore unknown, by permitting leisure. – Isabel Paterson • Nothing is as certain as that the vices of leisure are gotten rid of by being busy. – Seneca the Younger • Nothing makes God more supreme and more central in worship than when a people are utterly persuaded that nothing – not money or prestige or leisure or family or job or health or sports or toys or friends – nothing is going to bring satisfaction to their sinful, guilty, aching hearts besides God. – John Piper • O Holy Spirit of God, abide with us; inspire all our thoughts; pervade our imaginations; suggest all our decisions; order all our doings. Be with us in our silence and in our speech, in our haste and in our leisure, in company and in solitude, in the freshness of the morning and in the weariness of the evening; and give us grace at all times humbly to rejoice in Thy mysterious companionship. – John Baillie • One needs both leisure and money to make a successful book. – Frances Harper • One of the problems of the future world will be the use of leisure time. How will it be filled up? Maybe drugs will be distributed free of charge by the government. – Michelangelo Antonioni • One person may need (or want) more leisure, another more work; one more adventure, another more security, and so on. It is this diversity that makes a country, indeed a state, a city, a church, or a family, healthy. ‘One-size-fits-all,’ and that size determined by the State has a name, and that name is ‘slavery.’ – David Mamet • Our leisure is the time the Devil seizes upon to make us work for him; and the only way we can avoid conscription into his ranks is to keep all our leisure moments profitably employed. – James Ellis • Oxford lends sweetness to labour and dignity to leisure. – Henry James • People are often quite surprised by the sport and leisure activities practised by the blind. For example, tandem cycling is very popular. – Andrea Bocelli • People have become shallower. They view spending, entertaining, seeking leisure and enjoying as the main objectives of their life. – Zhang Yimou • People who know how to employ themselves, always find leisure moments, while those who do nothing are forever in a hurry. – Madame Roland • People without imagination are beginning to tire of the importance attached to comfort, to culture, to leisure, to all that destroys imagination. This means that people are not really tired of comfort, culture and leisure, but of the use to which they are. – Raoul Vaneigem • People would have more leisure time if it weren’t for all the leisure-time activities that use it up. – Peg Bracken • Pleasure seizes the whole man who addicts himself to it, and will not give him leisure for any good office in life which contradicts the gayety of the present hour. – Richard Steele • Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness. – Aristotle • Remove but the temptations of leisure, and the bow of Cupid will lose its effect. – Ovid • Reverend Fathers, my letters did not usually follow each other at such close intervals, nor were they so long…. This one would not be so long had I but the leisure to make it shorter. – Blaise Pascal • Society of leisure perhaps? Indeed, the most remarkable aspect of the transition we are living through is not so much the passage from want to affluence as the passage from labour to leisure. Leisure contains the future, it is the new horizon. The prospect then is one of unremitting labor to bequeath to future generations a chance of founding a society of leisure that will overcome the demands and compulsions of productive labor so that time may be devoted to creative activities or simply to pleasure and happiness. – Henri Lefebvre • Solitude is the surest nurse of all prurient passions, and a girl in the hurry of preparation, or tumult of gaiety, has neither inclination nor leisure to let tender expressions soften or sink into her heart. The ball, the show, are not the dangerous places: no, ’tis the private friend, the kind consoler, the companion of the easy vacant hour, whose compliance with her opinions can flatter her vanity, and whose conversation can sooth, without ever stretching her mind, that is the lover to be feared: he who buzzes in her ear at court, or at the opera, must be contented to buzz in vain. – Samuel Johnson • Some by experience find those words mis-placed: At leisure married, they repent in haste. – William Congreve • Some people get the impression that Buddhism talks too much about suffering. In order to become prosperous, a person must initially work very hard, so he or she has to sacrifice a lot of leisure time. Similarly, the Buddhist is willing to sacrifice immediate comfort so that he or she can achieve lasting happiness. – Dalai Lama • Spend your leisure time in cultivating an ear attentive to discourse, for in this way you will find that you learn with ease what others have found out with difficulty. – Isocrates • Sweet is the pleasure itself cannot spoil. Is not true leisure one with true toil? – John Sullivan Dwight • Take away leisure and Cupid’s bow is broken – Ovid • Technology affects everyone, from agriculture to broadcasting to automotive to content to travel to leisure to everything, so we’re seeing an incredible array of CEOs from every different industry. – Gary Shapiro • Temptation rarely comes in working hours. It is in their leisure time that men are made or marred. – William Taylor • That god forbid, that made me first your slave, I should in thought control your times of pleasure, Or at your hand th’ account of hours to crave, Being your vassal bound to stay your leisure. – William Shakespeare • The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure. – Cyril Connolly • The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods. – Thorstein Veblen • The best in business spend far more time on learning than in leisure. – Robin Sharma • The best intelligence test is what we do with our leisure. – Laurence J. Peter • The best test of the quality of a civilization is the quality of its leisure. – Irwin Edman • The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement – Raymond Chandler • The coming peril is the intellectual, educational, psychological and artistic overproduction, which, equally with economic overproduction, threatens the well-being of contemporary civilisation. People are inundated, blinded, deafened, and mentally paralysed by a flood of vulgar and tasteless externals, leaving them no time for leisure, thought, or creation from within themselves. – Gilbert K. Chesterton • The end of labor is to gain leisure. – Aristotle • The fight against unfair scheduling is like the fight for a regulated work day – it’s people fighting for reasonable conditions at work and to have a life, so you can have some leisure. – Rachel Holmes • The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time. – Henry David Thoreau • The goal of war is peace, of business, leisure – Aristotle • The idea that leisure is of value in itself is only conditionally true. The average man simply spends his leisure as a dog spends it. His recreations are all puerile, and the time supposed to benefit him really only stupefies him. – H. L. Mencken • The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich. – Bertrand Russell • The importance of the Beats is twofold: first, they act out a critique of the organized system that everybody in some sense agrees with. But second-and more important in the long run-they are a kind of major pilot study of the use of leisure in an economy of abundance. – Paul Goodman • The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he’s always doing both. – James A. Michener • The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have. – William Hazlitt • The most desirable thing in life after health and modest means is leisure with dignity. – Marcus Tullius Cicero • The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation. – Ezra Pound • The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not. – George Bernard Shaw • The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter. – Blaise Pascal • The preservation of parks, wilderness, and wildlife has also aided liberty by keeping alive the 19th century sense of adventure and awe with which our forefathers greeted the American West. Many laws protecting environmental quality have promoted liberty by securing property against the destructive trespass of pollution. In our own time, the nearly universal appreciation of these preserved landscapes, restored waters, and cleaner air through outdoor recreation is a modern expression of our freedom and leisure to enjoy the wonderful life that generations past have built for us. – Ronald Reagan • The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place in which to spend one’s leisure. – Sydney J. Harris • The real problem of leisure time is how to keep others from using yours. – Arthur Lacey • The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. – Henry David Thoreau • The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment. It is commonly observed, that among soldiers and seamen, though there is much kindness, there is little grief; they see their friend fall without any of that lamentation which is indulged in security and idleness, because they have no leisure to spare from the care of themselves; and whoever shall keep his thoughts equally busy will find himself equally unaffected with irretrievable losses. – Samuel Johnson • The slaves in Rome were incapable of leisure and so their masters gave them entertainment to keep them pacified. – Oliver DeMille • The thing that I should wish to obtain from money would be leisure with security. – Bertrand Russell • The trouble with the Internet is that it’s replacing masturbation as a leisure activity. – Patrick Murray • The walking stick serves the purpose of an advertisement that the bearer’s hands are employed otherwise than in useful effort, and it therefore has utility as an evidence of leisure. – Thorstein Veblen • There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature. – Henry David Thoreau • There can be no high civilization where there is not ample leisure. – Henry Ward Beecher • There is room enough in human life to crowd almost every art and science in it. If we pass “”no day without a line””-visit no place without the company of a book-we may with ease fill libraries or empty them of their contents. The more we do, the more busy we are, the more leisure we have. – William Hazlitt • They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure. – Herman Melville • Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good plays, good company, good conversation – what are they? They are the happiest people in the world. – William Lyon Phelps • Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure; Married in haste, we may repent at leisure. – William Congreve • To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level. – Bertrand Russell • To describe my scarce leisure time in today’s terms, I always default to reading. – Jimmy Buffett • To encounter Christ is to touch reality and experience transcendence. He gives us a sense of self-worth or personal significance, because He assures us of God’s love for us. He sets us free from guilt because He died for us and from paralyzing fear because He reigns. He gives meaning to marriage and home, work and leisure, personhood and citizenship. – John Stott • To work, to work hard, to see work steadily, and see it whole, was the way to be reputable. I think I always respected a goodblacksmith more than a lady of leisure. – Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward • Tourism, human circulation considered as consumption is fundamentally nothing more than the leisure of going to see what has become banal. – Guy Debord • Traditional education focuses on teaching, not learning. It incorrectly assumes that for every ounce of teaching there is an ounce of learning by those who are taught. However, most of what we learn before, during, and after attending schools is learned without its being taught to us. A child learns such fundamental things as how to walk, talk, eat, dress, and so on without being taught these things. Adults learn most of what they use at work or at leisure while at work or leisure. Most of what is taught in classroom settings is forgotten, and much or what is remembered is irrelevant. – Russell L. Ackoff • Unemployment diminishes people. Leisure enlarges them. – Mason Cooley • Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for nonactivity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture and ourselves. – Josef Pieper • Up until the middle of the nineteenth century, men of science were all believers. Most of the great early English naturalists were also ministers; they were the only ones who had education and leisure for such pursuits. Darwin himself almost became a minister. God’s power was always thought to be most easily and obviously revealed in the majestic works of nature. – Elizabeth Gilbert • Virtuous people are simply those who have not been tempted sufficiently, because they live in a vegetative state, or because their purposes are so concentrated in one direction that they have not had the leisure to glance around them. – Isadora Duncan • War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans. – Niccolo Machiavelli • We are assailed by the temptation of the love of money. If you wish to acquire riches ? they are the bait of the fishers hook ? by greed, by trafficking, by violence, by ruse or by excessive manual work that deprives you of leisure for the service of God ? in a word by any other means ? if you have desired to pile up gold or silver, remember what the Gospel says, ‘Fool! They will snatch your soul away during the night! Who will get your hoard’ (cf. Lk. 12:20)? Again, ‘He piles up money without knowing to whom it will go’ (Ps. 39:6). – Pachomius the Great • We are closer to the ants than to the butterflies. Very few people can endure much leisure. – Gerald Brenan • We are in hot haste to set the world right and to order all affairs; the Lord hath the leisure of conscious power and unerring wisdom, and it will be well for us to learn to wait. – Charles Spurgeon • We give up leisure in order that we may have leisure, just as we go to war in order that we may have peace. – Aristotle • We must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may polish it at leisure. – John Dryden • We seldom enjoy leisure we haven’t earned. – H. Jackson Brown, Jr. • What being at leisure means is more easily felt than defined. – Vernon Lee • What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures, to make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright. – Samuel Gompers • What happened in the interim is, billions of records have been digitized. Historians and scholars have always used genealogical records to tell the story of American history. It takes months and years of research. I can’t even tell you how laborious that is. You have to be somebody who has a lot of free time, like a professor who can take tenure or someone with a great deal of leisure. – Henry Louis Gates • What is the benefit of fasting in our body while filling our souls with innumerable evils? He who does not play at dice, but spends his leisure otherwise, what nonsense does he not utter? What absurdities does he not listen to? Leisure without the fear of God is, for those who do not know how to use time, the teacher of wickedness. – Saint Basil • What the banker sighs for, the meanest clown may have-leisure and a quiet mind. – Henry David Thoreau • What was more needed by this old man who divided the leisure hours of his life, where he had so little leisure, between gardening in the daytime, and contemplation at night? Was not this narrow enclosure, with the sky for a background, enough to enable him to adore God in his most beautiful as well as in his most sublime works? Indeed, is not that all, and what more can be desired? A little garden to walk, and immensity to reflect upon. At his feet something to cultivate and gather; above his head something to study and meditate upon: a few flowers on the earth, and all the stars in the sky. – Victor Hugo • What we do during our working hours determines what we have; what we do in our leisure hours determines what we are. – George Eastman • What we lack is not so much leisure to do as time to reflect and time to feel. What we seldom “take” is time to experience the things that have happened, the things that are happening, the things that are still ahead of us. – Margaret Mead • What with making their way and enjoying what they have won, heroes have no time to think. But the sons of heroes – ah, they have all the necessary leisure. – Aldous Huxley • When Culture Club broke up, I hadn’t been going out a lot because we’d been working all the time, so I suddenly had this period of leisure. And it was just around the time that the whole acid house thing kicked off in London. – Boy George • When you write an essay, of course you’re going to get pushback, but you’re going to be allowed to make your case at leisure. You’re going to be allowed to take into account possible objections and to fully humanize your reader. That feels to me like a much more sane thing to do. – George Saunders • Who will free me from hurry, flurry, the feeling of a crowd pushing behind me, of being hustled and crushed? How can I regain even for a minute the feeling of ample leisure I had during my early, my creative years? Then I seldom felt fussed, or hurried. There was time for work, for play, for love, the confidence that if a task was not done at the appointed time, I easily could fit it into another hour. I used to take leisure for granted, as I did time itself. – Bernard Berenson • Who wooed in haste, and means to wed at leisure. – William Shakespeare • Whoever is to acquire a competent knowledge of medicine, ought to be possessed of the following advantages: a natural disposition; instructionl a favorable place for the study; early tuition, love of labor; leisure. – Hippocrates • Why should any of these things that happen externally distract thee? Give thyself leisure to learn some good thing: cease roving to and fro. – Marcus Aurelius • Wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues. – Abigail Adams • Work! labor the asparagus me of life; the one great sacrament of humanity from which all other things flow – security, leisure, joy, art, literature, even divinity itself. – Sean O’Casey • You can give men food and leisure and amusements and good conditions of work, and still they will remain unsatisfied. You can deny them all these things, and they will not complain so long as they feel that they have something to die for – Christopher Dawson

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Leisure Quotes

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• A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars. – Henry David Thoreau • A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. – Henry David Thoreau • A healthy man, with steady employment, as wood-chopping at fifty cents a cord, and a camp in the woods, will not be a good subjectfor Christianity. The New Testament may be a choice book to him on some, but not on all or most of his days. He will rather go a-fishing in his leisure hours. The Apostles, though they were fishers too, were of the solemn race of sea-fishers, and never trolled for pickerel on inland streams. – Henry David Thoreau • A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. There will be sleeping enough in the grave. – Benjamin Franklin • A society that gives to one class all the opportunities for leisure, and to another all the burdens of work, dooms both classes to spiritual sterility. – Lewis Mumford • Action is the music of our life. Like music, it starts from a pause of leisure, a silence of activity which our initiative attacks; then it develops according to its inner logic, passes its climax, seeks its cadence, ends, and restores silence, leisure again. Action and leisure are thus interdependent; echoing and recalling each other, so that action enlivens leisure with its memories and anticipations, and leisure expands and raises action beyond its mere immediate self and gives it a permanent meaning. – Salvador de Madariaga • All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast. – John Gunther • All intellectual improvement arises from leisure. – Samuel Johnson • All this time I lived with my parents, and wrought on the plantation; and having had schooling pretty well for a planter, I used to improve myself in winter evenings, and other leisure times. – John Woolman • Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. – Anthony Burgess • Any notion of the serious life of leisure, as well as men’s taste and capacity to live it, had disappeared. Leisure became entertainment. – Allan Bloom • Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes. – James Madison • Anyone can see that to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the knee in the kitchen, with constant calls to cooking and other details of housework to punctuate the paragraphs, was a more difficult achievement than to write it at leisure in a quiet room. – Anna Garlin Spencer • As to that leisure evening of life, I must say that I do not want it. I can conceive of no contentment of which toil is not to be the immediate parent. – Anthony Trollope • As Western nations became more prosperous, leisure, which had been put off for several centuries in favor of the pursuit of property, the means to leisure, finally began to be of primary concern. But, in the meantime, any notion of the serious life of leisure, as well as men’s taste and capacity to live it, had disappeared. – Allan Bloom • As work weeks get longer and leisure time shrinks, people are becoming sicker, more distracted, absent, unproductive, and less innovative. – Brigid Schulte • At the root of our civilization, there is the freedom of each person of thought, of belief, of opinion, of work, of leisure. – Charles de Gaulle • Australians are coffee snobs. An influx of Italian immigrants after World War II ensured that – we probably had the word ‘cappuccino’ about 20 years before America. Cafe culture is really big for Aussies. We like to work hard, but we take our leisure time seriously. – Hugh Jackman • Automation and technology would be a great boon if it were creative, if there were more leisure, more opportunity to engage in raising a family, providing guidance to the young, all the stuff we say we need. America will work if we’re all in it together. It’ll work when there’s a shared sense of destiny. It can be done! – Jerry Brown

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  jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Leisure', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_leisure').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_leisure img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Basically, particularly in Britain, it’s a hegemonic thing that people who write tend to come from the leisure classes. They can afford the time and the books. – Irvine Welsh • Celebrating the future is about celebrating a better world: a world in which everyone’s life is easier and their health is maintained longer. It’ll be a life where there’s more time for leisure – for enriching each other’s lives rather than just running to stand still. In other words, more holiday time! So a holiday is absolutely the appropriate way to help us focus on it and make it a reality soon. – Aubrey de Grey • Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure. – Thorstein Veblen • Convent – a place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness. – Ambrose Bierce • Creativity is an innate function in a human being, as we see in tribal peoples, who spent their considerable leisure time making religious artifacts and sacred art. That is what I would call a direct culture, in that everybody in it is directly in touch with all the elements, both of the culture and of the environment. – Michael Ventura • Cultivated leisure is the aim of man. – Oscar Wilde

[clickbank-storefront-bestselling] • Destroy our leisure and you break love’s bow. – Ovid • Detest it [a certain difficult mathematics problem] just as much as lewd intercourse; it can deprive you of all your leisure, your health, your rest, and the whole happiness of your life. – Farkas Bolyai • Do not love leisure. Waste not a minute. Be bold. Realize the Truth, here and now! – Sivananda • Do not mistake a crowd of big wage earners for the leisure class. – Clive Bell • Do not say, ‘When I have leisure, I will study,’ because you may never have leisure. – Hillel the Elder • Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure. – W. Somerset Maugham • Eat good dinners and drink good wine; read good novels if you have the leisure and see good plays; fall in love, if there is no reason why you should not fall in love; but do not pore over influenza statistics. – Jerome K. Jerome • Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure. – Benjamin Franklin • Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed. – Prince Philip • For men who had easily endured hardship, danger and difficult uncertainty, leisure and riches, though in some ways desirable, proved burdensome and a source of grief. – Sallust • For mothers who must earn, there is indeed no leisure time problem. The long hours of earning are increased by the hours of domestic labor, until no slightest margin for relaxation or change of thought remains. – Katharine Anthony • Friendship is a very taxing and arduous form of leisure activity. – Mortimer Adler • From Alexander the Platonic, not frequently nor without necessity to say to any one, or to write in a letter, that I have no leisure; nor continually to excuse the neglect of duties required by our relation to those with whom we live, by alleging urgent occupations. – Marcus Aurelius • Good will, that curious product of consciousness, of leisure and energy to spare and share. That thing we put out against the forces of interest. That extra thing. Religions and nations and political parties have taken it and used it as coinage, have said you must only give it in exchange for value. – Naomi Mitchison • Happiness is thought to depend on leisure; for we are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace. – Aristotle • He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul’s estate. – Henry David Thoreau • He hath no leisure who useth it not. – George Herbert • Hospitality has never been about having House Beautiful with perfectly coordinated accessories and the most up-to-date equipment, nor is it dependent upon having large chunks of leisure time and a big entertainment budget to spend, nor does it require special training in the culinary arts or event planning. Hospitality is about a heart for service, the creativity to stretch whatever we do have available, and the energy to give the time necessary to add a flourish to the ordinary events of life. – Dorothy Kelley Patterson • How to use your leisure time is the biggest problem of a ballplayer. – Branch Rickey • I am an inveterate homemaker, it is at once my pleasure, my recreation, and my handicap. Were I a man, my books would have been written in leisure, protected by a wife and a secretary and various household officials. As it is, being a woman, my work has had to be done between bouts of homemaking. – Pearl S. Buck • I am in musical theatre, but it isn’t necessarily what I listen to in my leisure time, do you know what I mean? – Patti LuPone • I am moreover inclined to be concise when I reflect on the constant occupation of the citizens in public and private affairs, so that in their few leisure moments they may read and understand as much as possible. – Marcus Vitruvius Pollio I believe in manicures. I believe in overdressing. I believe in primping at leisure and wearing lipsitck. – Audrey Hepburn • I could do whatever I liked to do during the day. I didn’t have to work in an office. I could work at home. I could work at my leisure. I worked ’til four in the morning. I worked with the TV and radio on – it was a great setup. I was a night person and still am. – Jack Kirby • I hate leisure, except reading. I’m really a person made to work, if sketching is considered work. – Karl Lagerfeld • I hate to mention age, but I come from an era when we weren’t consumed by technology and television. My mother insisted that her children read. To describe my scarce leisure time in today’s terms, I always default to reading. – Jimmy Buffett • I have an inability to relax. I try to make every day a work day. I get pleasure from work… I try to think of sketch ideas, stand-up pieces. I am incapable of leisure and leisure time. – Fred Armisen • I have no leisure to think of style or of polish, or to select the best language, the best English – no time to shine as an authoress. I must just think aloud, so as not to keep the public waiting. – Isabel Burton • I keep telling people I’ll make movies until I’m fifty and then I’ll go and do something else. I’m going to be a professional gentleman of leisure. – Eddie Murphy • I love the joy of mountains Wandering free with no concerns Every day I find food for this old body There’s leisure for thinking, nothing to do Often I carry an ancient book Sometimes I climb a rock pavilion To look down a thousand foot precipice Overhead are swirling clouds A cold moon chilly cold My body feels like a flying crane – Hanshan • I remember in that red leisure suit I sort of felt like a Pizza Hut employee, and the white one was the ultimate, with the white turtleneck collar, that was the ultimate in bad taste. – Johnny Depp • I sort of leave the character at the end of the day. I don’t carry anything around with me – no excess baggage or unnecessary thoughts. I think it’s too exhausting to do that. To put things into perspective – your work is your work, and your leisure time is something else. – Sean Bean • I think this dichotomy or opposition between work and play, between leisure and serious stuff, is definitely a bad way of thinking about the useful insights that play provides. – Ian Bogost • I wish you could arrange your life so as to have a little more leisure. I do not want you to be lazy, but the passive conditions of the mind are quite as valuable as the active conditions. – Elsa Barker • I would not exchange my leisure hours for all the wealth in the world. – Honore Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau • I’d rather spend my leisure time doing what some people call my work and I call my fun. – Jared Diamond • If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means. – Alan Bennett • If I myself dominate myself, if my thoughts revolve round myself, if I am so occupied with myself I rarely have “a heart at leisure from itself,” then I know nothing of Calvary love. – Amy Carmichael • If the individuals who compose the purest circles of aristocracy in Europe, the guarded blood of centuries, should pass in review,in such manner as that we could, at leisure, and critically inspect their behavior, we might find no gentleman, and no lady; for, although excellent specimens of courtesy and high-breeding would gratify us in the assemblage, in the particulars, we should detect offence. Because, elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth. • If the life-supporting ecosystems of the planet are to survive for future generations, the consumer society will have to dramatically curtail its use of resources – partly by shifting to high-quality, low-input durable goods and partly by seeking fulfillment through leisure, human relationships, and other nonmaterial avenues. We in the consumer society will have to live a technologically sophisticated version of the life-style currently practiced lower on the economic ladder. – Alan Thein Durning • If there is such a thing as a workaholic, I’m it, and that’s what passes for leisure. – Steve Earle • If work and leisure are soon to be subordinated to this one utopian principle – absolute busyness – then utopia and melancholy will come to coincide: an age without conflict will dawn, perpetually busy – and without consciousness. – Gunter Grass • If you are losing your leisure, look out! You are losing your soul. – Logan Pearsall Smith • I’m never less at leisure than when at leisure, or less alone than when alone. – Scipio Africanus • In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men’s eyes. – Thorstein Veblen • In life, as in Chess, ones own Pawns block ones way. A mans very wealth, ease, leisure, children, books, which should help him to win, more often checkmate him – Charles Buxton • In the year 2000 you’re going to have a problem…Leisure time will be a problem in the year 2000. I just want you to realize, I just want to make sure that you know of it now. – Edie Sedgwick • Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man. – Benjamin Disraeli • It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful. – W. H. Auden • It is dainty to be sick if you have leisure and convenience for it. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self. – Agnes Repplier • It is just this rage for consideration that has betrayed the dog into his satellite position as the friend of man. The cat, an animal of franker appetites, preserves his independence. But the dog, with one eye ever on the audience, has been wheedled into slavery, and praised and patted into the renunciation of his nature. Once he ceased hunting and became man’s plate-licker, the Rubicon was crossed. Thenceforth he was a gentleman of leisure; and except the few whom we keep working, the whole race grew more and more self-conscious, mannered and affected. – Robert Louis Stevenson • It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says there is no wisdom without leisure. – William Butler Yeats • It may be said that an education which does not succeed in making poetry a resource in the business of life as well as in its leisure, has something the matter with it. – John Dewey • It takes application, a fine sense of value, and a powerful community-spirit for a people to have serious leisure, and this has not been the genius of the Americans. – Paul Goodman • Jupiter has no leisure to attend to little things. – Ovid • Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles. – Samuel Johnson • Leisure and the cultivation of human capacities are inextricably interdependent. – Margaret Mead • Leisure is a form of silence, not noiselessness. It is the silence of contemplation such as occurs when we let our minds rest on a rosebud, a child at play, a Divine mystery, or a waterfall. – Fulton J. Sheen • leisure is an attitude of mind, not simply remission of work. – Nan Fairbrother • Leisure is gone,–gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow wagons, and the peddlers, who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons. – George Eliot • Leisure is one of the three greatest rewards of being a teacher. It is, unfortunately, the privilege which teachers most often misuse. – Gilbert Highet • Leisure is pain; take off our chariot wheels; how heavily we drag the load of life! – Edward Young • Leisure is the handmaiden of the devil. – Branch Rickey • Leisure is the most challenging responsibility a man can be offered. – William Russell • Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy. – Thomas Hobbes • Leisure is the time for doing something useful. – Benjamin Franklin • Leisure is the time for doing something useful. This leisure the diligent person will obtain the lazy one never. – Benjamin Franklin • Leisure may be defined as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes, labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation. – George Bernard Shaw • Leisure only means a chance to do other jobs that demand attention. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. • Leisure was the sine qua non of the full Renaissance. The feudal nobility, having lost its martial function, sought diversion all over Europe in cultivated pastimes: sonneteering, the lute, games and acrostics, travel, gentlemanly studies and sports, hunting and hawking, treated as arts. – Mary McCarthy • Leisure with dignity. – Marcus Tullius Cicero • Leisure without study is death, and the grave of a living man. – Seneca the Younger • Leisure, the highest happiness on earth, is seldom enjoyed with perfect satisfaction, except in solitude. – George Zimmerman • Leisure, the highest happiness upon earth, is seldom enjoyed with perfect satisfaction, except in solitude. Indolence and indifference do not always afford leisure; for true leisure is frequently found in that interval of relaxation which divides a painful duty from an agreeable recreation; a toilsome business from the more agreeable occupations of literature and philosophy. – Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann • Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay. – Aldous Huxley • Literature is, in fact, the fruit of leisure. – Amelia B. Edwards • Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure. – Oliver Herford • Many people know how to work hard; many others know how to play well; but the rarest talent in the world is the ability to introduce elements of playfulness into work, and to put some constructive labor into our leisure. – Sydney J. Harris • Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure. – Lord Byron • Mend when thou canst; be better at thy leisure. – William Shakespeare • Much work is merely a way to make money; much leisure is merely a way to spend it. – C. Wright Mills • My hobbies and leisure activities include cars and golf. – Michael Strahan • NCL … stands to achieve greater success under the Carnival Corp. umbrella, which will provide NCL with economies of scale, greater access to capital, marketing and operating expertise and stronger credibility in the leisure and vacation industry. – Micky Arison • News-hunters have great leisure, with little thought; much petty ambition to be considered intelligent, without any other pretension than being able to communicate what they have just learned. – Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann • No blessed leisure for love or hope, But only time for grief. – Thomas Hood • No country can reach a high stage of civilization without a leisure class. – Gertrude Atherton • No man has a right to be idle. Where is it that in such a world as this, that health, and leisure, and affluence may not find some ignorance to instruct, some wrong to redress, some want to supply, some misery to alleviate? – William Wilberforce • No president who performs his duties faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure. – James K. Polk • Nothing increases the number of jobs so rapidly as labor-saving machinery, because it releases wants theretofore unknown, by permitting leisure. – Isabel Paterson • Nothing is as certain as that the vices of leisure are gotten rid of by being busy. – Seneca the Younger • Nothing makes God more supreme and more central in worship than when a people are utterly persuaded that nothing – not money or prestige or leisure or family or job or health or sports or toys or friends – nothing is going to bring satisfaction to their sinful, guilty, aching hearts besides God. – John Piper • O Holy Spirit of God, abide with us; inspire all our thoughts; pervade our imaginations; suggest all our decisions; order all our doings. Be with us in our silence and in our speech, in our haste and in our leisure, in company and in solitude, in the freshness of the morning and in the weariness of the evening; and give us grace at all times humbly to rejoice in Thy mysterious companionship. – John Baillie • One needs both leisure and money to make a successful book. – Frances Harper • One of the problems of the future world will be the use of leisure time. How will it be filled up? Maybe drugs will be distributed free of charge by the government. – Michelangelo Antonioni • One person may need (or want) more leisure, another more work; one more adventure, another more security, and so on. It is this diversity that makes a country, indeed a state, a city, a church, or a family, healthy. ‘One-size-fits-all,’ and that size determined by the State has a name, and that name is ‘slavery.’ – David Mamet • Our leisure is the time the Devil seizes upon to make us work for him; and the only way we can avoid conscription into his ranks is to keep all our leisure moments profitably employed. – James Ellis • Oxford lends sweetness to labour and dignity to leisure. – Henry James • People are often quite surprised by the sport and leisure activities practised by the blind. For example, tandem cycling is very popular. – Andrea Bocelli • People have become shallower. They view spending, entertaining, seeking leisure and enjoying as the main objectives of their life. – Zhang Yimou • People who know how to employ themselves, always find leisure moments, while those who do nothing are forever in a hurry. – Madame Roland • People without imagination are beginning to tire of the importance attached to comfort, to culture, to leisure, to all that destroys imagination. This means that people are not really tired of comfort, culture and leisure, but of the use to which they are. – Raoul Vaneigem • People would have more leisure time if it weren’t for all the leisure-time activities that use it up. – Peg Bracken • Pleasure seizes the whole man who addicts himself to it, and will not give him leisure for any good office in life which contradicts the gayety of the present hour. – Richard Steele • Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness. – Aristotle • Remove but the temptations of leisure, and the bow of Cupid will lose its effect. – Ovid • Reverend Fathers, my letters did not usually follow each other at such close intervals, nor were they so long…. This one would not be so long had I but the leisure to make it shorter. – Blaise Pascal • Society of leisure perhaps? Indeed, the most remarkable aspect of the transition we are living through is not so much the passage from want to affluence as the passage from labour to leisure. Leisure contains the future, it is the new horizon. The prospect then is one of unremitting labor to bequeath to future generations a chance of founding a society of leisure that will overcome the demands and compulsions of productive labor so that time may be devoted to creative activities or simply to pleasure and happiness. – Henri Lefebvre • Solitude is the surest nurse of all prurient passions, and a girl in the hurry of preparation, or tumult of gaiety, has neither inclination nor leisure to let tender expressions soften or sink into her heart. The ball, the show, are not the dangerous places: no, ’tis the private friend, the kind consoler, the companion of the easy vacant hour, whose compliance with her opinions can flatter her vanity, and whose conversation can sooth, without ever stretching her mind, that is the lover to be feared: he who buzzes in her ear at court, or at the opera, must be contented to buzz in vain. – Samuel Johnson • Some by experience find those words mis-placed: At leisure married, they repent in haste. – William Congreve • Some people get the impression that Buddhism talks too much about suffering. In order to become prosperous, a person must initially work very hard, so he or she has to sacrifice a lot of leisure time. Similarly, the Buddhist is willing to sacrifice immediate comfort so that he or she can achieve lasting happiness. – Dalai Lama • Spend your leisure time in cultivating an ear attentive to discourse, for in this way you will find that you learn with ease what others have found out with difficulty. – Isocrates • Sweet is the pleasure itself cannot spoil. Is not true leisure one with true toil? – John Sullivan Dwight • Take away leisure and Cupid’s bow is broken – Ovid • Technology affects everyone, from agriculture to broadcasting to automotive to content to travel to leisure to everything, so we’re seeing an incredible array of CEOs from every different industry. – Gary Shapiro • Temptation rarely comes in working hours. It is in their leisure time that men are made or marred. – William Taylor • That god forbid, that made me first your slave, I should in thought control your times of pleasure, Or at your hand th’ account of hours to crave, Being your vassal bound to stay your leisure. – William Shakespeare • The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure. – Cyril Connolly • The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods. – Thorstein Veblen • The best in business spend far more time on learning than in leisure. – Robin Sharma • The best intelligence test is what we do with our leisure. – Laurence J. Peter • The best test of the quality of a civilization is the quality of its leisure. – Irwin Edman • The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement – Raymond Chandler • The coming peril is the intellectual, educational, psychological and artistic overproduction, which, equally with economic overproduction, threatens the well-being of contemporary civilisation. People are inundated, blinded, deafened, and mentally paralysed by a flood of vulgar and tasteless externals, leaving them no time for leisure, thought, or creation from within themselves. – Gilbert K. Chesterton • The end of labor is to gain leisure. – Aristotle • The fight against unfair scheduling is like the fight for a regulated work day – it’s people fighting for reasonable conditions at work and to have a life, so you can have some leisure. – Rachel Holmes • The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time. – Henry David Thoreau • The goal of war is peace, of business, leisure – Aristotle • The idea that leisure is of value in itself is only conditionally true. The average man simply spends his leisure as a dog spends it. His recreations are all puerile, and the time supposed to benefit him really only stupefies him. – H. L. Mencken • The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich. – Bertrand Russell • The importance of the Beats is twofold: first, they act out a critique of the organized system that everybody in some sense agrees with. But second-and more important in the long run-they are a kind of major pilot study of the use of leisure in an economy of abundance. – Paul Goodman • The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he’s always doing both. – James A. Michener • The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have. – William Hazlitt • The most desirable thing in life after health and modest means is leisure with dignity. – Marcus Tullius Cicero • The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation. – Ezra Pound • The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not. – George Bernard Shaw • The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter. – Blaise Pascal • The preservation of parks, wilderness, and wildlife has also aided liberty by keeping alive the 19th century sense of adventure and awe with which our forefathers greeted the American West. Many laws protecting environmental quality have promoted liberty by securing property against the destructive trespass of pollution. In our own time, the nearly universal appreciation of these preserved landscapes, restored waters, and cleaner air through outdoor recreation is a modern expression of our freedom and leisure to enjoy the wonderful life that generations past have built for us. – Ronald Reagan • The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place in which to spend one’s leisure. – Sydney J. Harris • The real problem of leisure time is how to keep others from using yours. – Arthur Lacey • The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. – Henry David Thoreau • The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment. It is commonly observed, that among soldiers and seamen, though there is much kindness, there is little grief; they see their friend fall without any of that lamentation which is indulged in security and idleness, because they have no leisure to spare from the care of themselves; and whoever shall keep his thoughts equally busy will find himself equally unaffected with irretrievable losses. – Samuel Johnson • The slaves in Rome were incapable of leisure and so their masters gave them entertainment to keep them pacified. – Oliver DeMille • The thing that I should wish to obtain from money would be leisure with security. – Bertrand Russell • The trouble with the Internet is that it’s replacing masturbation as a leisure activity. – Patrick Murray • The walking stick serves the purpose of an advertisement that the bearer’s hands are employed otherwise than in useful effort, and it therefore has utility as an evidence of leisure. – Thorstein Veblen • There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature. – Henry David Thoreau • There can be no high civilization where there is not ample leisure. – Henry Ward Beecher • There is room enough in human life to crowd almost every art and science in it. If we pass “”no day without a line””-visit no place without the company of a book-we may with ease fill libraries or empty them of their contents. The more we do, the more busy we are, the more leisure we have. – William Hazlitt • They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure. – Herman Melville • Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good plays, good company, good conversation – what are they? They are the happiest people in the world. – William Lyon Phelps • Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure; Married in haste, we may repent at leisure. – William Congreve • To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level. – Bertrand Russell • To describe my scarce leisure time in today’s terms, I always default to reading. – Jimmy Buffett • To encounter Christ is to touch reality and experience transcendence. He gives us a sense of self-worth or personal significance, because He assures us of God’s love for us. He sets us free from guilt because He died for us and from paralyzing fear because He reigns. He gives meaning to marriage and home, work and leisure, personhood and citizenship. – John Stott • To work, to work hard, to see work steadily, and see it whole, was the way to be reputable. I think I always respected a goodblacksmith more than a lady of leisure. – Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward • Tourism, human circulation considered as consumption is fundamentally nothing more than the leisure of going to see what has become banal. – Guy Debord • Traditional education focuses on teaching, not learning. It incorrectly assumes that for every ounce of teaching there is an ounce of learning by those who are taught. However, most of what we learn before, during, and after attending schools is learned without its being taught to us. A child learns such fundamental things as how to walk, talk, eat, dress, and so on without being taught these things. Adults learn most of what they use at work or at leisure while at work or leisure. Most of what is taught in classroom settings is forgotten, and much or what is remembered is irrelevant. – Russell L. Ackoff • Unemployment diminishes people. Leisure enlarges them. – Mason Cooley • Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for nonactivity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture and ourselves. – Josef Pieper • Up until the middle of the nineteenth century, men of science were all believers. Most of the great early English naturalists were also ministers; they were the only ones who had education and leisure for such pursuits. Darwin himself almost became a minister. God’s power was always thought to be most easily and obviously revealed in the majestic works of nature. – Elizabeth Gilbert • Virtuous people are simply those who have not been tempted sufficiently, because they live in a vegetative state, or because their purposes are so concentrated in one direction that they have not had the leisure to glance around them. – Isadora Duncan • War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans. – Niccolo Machiavelli • We are assailed by the temptation of the love of money. If you wish to acquire riches ? they are the bait of the fishers hook ? by greed, by trafficking, by violence, by ruse or by excessive manual work that deprives you of leisure for the service of God ? in a word by any other means ? if you have desired to pile up gold or silver, remember what the Gospel says, ‘Fool! They will snatch your soul away during the night! Who will get your hoard’ (cf. Lk. 12:20)? Again, ‘He piles up money without knowing to whom it will go’ (Ps. 39:6). – Pachomius the Great • We are closer to the ants than to the butterflies. Very few people can endure much leisure. – Gerald Brenan • We are in hot haste to set the world right and to order all affairs; the Lord hath the leisure of conscious power and unerring wisdom, and it will be well for us to learn to wait. – Charles Spurgeon • We give up leisure in order that we may have leisure, just as we go to war in order that we may have peace. – Aristotle • We must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may polish it at leisure. – John Dryden • We seldom enjoy leisure we haven’t earned. – H. Jackson Brown, Jr. • What being at leisure means is more easily felt than defined. – Vernon Lee • What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures, to make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright. – Samuel Gompers • What happened in the interim is, billions of records have been digitized. Historians and scholars have always used genealogical records to tell the story of American history. It takes months and years of research. I can’t even tell you how laborious that is. You have to be somebody who has a lot of free time, like a professor who can take tenure or someone with a great deal of leisure. – Henry Louis Gates • What is the benefit of fasting in our body while filling our souls with innumerable evils? He who does not play at dice, but spends his leisure otherwise, what nonsense does he not utter? What absurdities does he not listen to? Leisure without the fear of God is, for those who do not know how to use time, the teacher of wickedness. – Saint Basil • What the banker sighs for, the meanest clown may have-leisure and a quiet mind. – Henry David Thoreau • What was more needed by this old man who divided the leisure hours of his life, where he had so little leisure, between gardening in the daytime, and contemplation at night? Was not this narrow enclosure, with the sky for a background, enough to enable him to adore God in his most beautiful as well as in his most sublime works? Indeed, is not that all, and what more can be desired? A little garden to walk, and immensity to reflect upon. At his feet something to cultivate and gather; above his head something to study and meditate upon: a few flowers on the earth, and all the stars in the sky. – Victor Hugo • What we do during our working hours determines what we have; what we do in our leisure hours determines what we are. – George Eastman • What we lack is not so much leisure to do as time to reflect and time to feel. What we seldom “take” is time to experience the things that have happened, the things that are happening, the things that are still ahead of us. – Margaret Mead • What with making their way and enjoying what they have won, heroes have no time to think. But the sons of heroes – ah, they have all the necessary leisure. – Aldous Huxley • When Culture Club broke up, I hadn’t been going out a lot because we’d been working all the time, so I suddenly had this period of leisure. And it was just around the time that the whole acid house thing kicked off in London. – Boy George • When you write an essay, of course you’re going to get pushback, but you’re going to be allowed to make your case at leisure. You’re going to be allowed to take into account possible objections and to fully humanize your reader. That feels to me like a much more sane thing to do. – George Saunders • Who will free me from hurry, flurry, the feeling of a crowd pushing behind me, of being hustled and crushed? How can I regain even for a minute the feeling of ample leisure I had during my early, my creative years? Then I seldom felt fussed, or hurried. There was time for work, for play, for love, the confidence that if a task was not done at the appointed time, I easily could fit it into another hour. I used to take leisure for granted, as I did time itself. – Bernard Berenson • Who wooed in haste, and means to wed at leisure. – William Shakespeare • Whoever is to acquire a competent knowledge of medicine, ought to be possessed of the following advantages: a natural disposition; instructionl a favorable place for the study; early tuition, love of labor; leisure. – Hippocrates • Why should any of these things that happen externally distract thee? Give thyself leisure to learn some good thing: cease roving to and fro. – Marcus Aurelius • Wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues. – Abigail Adams • Work! labor the asparagus me of life; the one great sacrament of humanity from which all other things flow – security, leisure, joy, art, literature, even divinity itself. – Sean O’Casey • You can give men food and leisure and amusements and good conditions of work, and still they will remain unsatisfied. You can deny them all these things, and they will not complain so long as they feel that they have something to die for – Christopher Dawson

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[ileftyoulongbeforeyouleftme]

Even Artichokes Have Doubts by Marina Keegan

If this year is anything like the last 10, around 25 percent of employed Yale graduates will enter the consulting or finance industry*. This is a big deal. This is a huge deal. This is so many people! This is one-fourth of our people! Regardless of what you think or with whom you’re interviewing, we ought to be pausing for a second to ask why.

I don’t pretend to know anymore about this world than the rest of us. In fact, I probably know less. (According to the Internet, a consultant is “someone who consults someone or something.”) But I do know that this statistic is utterly and entirely shocking to me. In a place as diverse and disparate as Yale, it’s remarkable that such a large percentage of people are doing anything the same — not to mention something as significant as their postgraduate plans.

I want to understand.

In the spring of my sophomore year, I got my first email from McKinsey & Company. “Dear Marina,” it read, “Now that you have finished your sophomore year, I am sure that you’re starting to think about what the future may have in store for you,” (I hadn’t), “Perhaps you are starting to experience that nervous, exciting, overwhelming feeling that comes with exploring the options that are coming your way at Yale, especially given your involvement in the Yale College Democrats. To help you get a better sense of what is out there, I thought I would take the opportunity to provide some more insight into McKinsey & Company.”

This weirded me out. How did they know I was involved with the Yale College Democrats? (How did they know about that nervous, exciting, overwhelming feeling!?) As a sophomore, I’d hardly settled on a major, let alone a career path. But despite myself, it made me feel special. Who were these people? Why were they interested in me? Why were they inviting me to events at nice hotels? Maybe I perused their websites, WHO KNOWS? The point is: they got me, for at least an evening, to look into this thing and see what it was all about.

Of course, everyone gets these emails. I’m not special. Their team of recruiters is really good. They come at Yale with a myriad of other consultant firms and banks and sell themselves shamelessly and brilliantly to us from the time we turn 20. We get emails and career fair booths, letters and deadlines. I don’t know much about consulting but I do know if I were having trouble recruiting smart kids for a job, I’d hire a consulting firm to help me out.

But it’s not just them. It’s us, too. I conducted a credible and scientific study in L-Dub courtyard earlier this week — asking freshman after freshman what they thought they might be doing upon graduation. Not one of them said they wanted to be a consultant or an investment banker. Now I’m sure that these people do exist — but they certainly weren’t expressing interest at a rate of 25 percent. Unsurprisingly, most students don’t seem to come to Yale with explicit passions for these fields. Yet sometime between Freshman Screw and The Last Chance Dance something in our collective cogs shift and these jobs become attractive. We’re told they will help us gain valuable skills. We’re told a lot of things.

One senior I spoke with (whom we’ll refer to as Shloe Carbib for the sake of Google anonymity) has known what she’s wanted since freshman year. When asked what she hopes to do with her life, Shloe responded immediately: “Oh you know, I want to write and direct films or be an indie music celebrity.” Ironies of expression aside, there was a sincerity to her avowal. “I want to devote my life to the things that I love. I want to create something lasting that I’m really proud of.”

At Yale, she’s worked hard in pursuit of these goals — directing theatrical productions, playing in a band and collaborating on the 2012 Class Day Video. Yet on Monday evening at 8 p.m., she found herself at a top-tier consulting firm event at the Study — meeting and greeting in anticipation of her interview the next morning.

“Of course I don’t want to be a consultant,” she said the night before, clutching a borrowed copy of Mark Cosentino’s “Case in Point” (the aspiring-consultant bible), “It’s just very scary to watch as many of your friends have already secured six-figure salaries and are going to be living in luxury next year. I’m trying to figure out if I love art enough to be poor.”

Like many students, Carbib was roped in by the easy application process. All she had to do to apply to the firm was submit a resume, cover letter and transcript by the drop deadline.

“Oh, it’s brilliant of them to make their first round of applications so easy,” she said. “It was so little work that I felt like I might as well try.”

Indeed, the recruiting tactics of these companies are undeniably effective. They express interest in us personally — complimenting our intelligence and general aptitude and convincing us that those skills ought to be utilized to their full capacity (with them, of course).

Tatiana Schlossberg ’12 admits she initially fell for the same trick I did.

“I got a personal email and went to their event because I couldn’t believe that they were interested in me and I wanted to find out why,” she said. But when she got there, she wasn’t sure why she came in the first place. “I looked around and felt that I not only didn’t belong with the group of people but that I didn’t believe in what the organization stands for or does,” she said. “There’s definitely a compulsion element to it. You feel like so many people are doing it and talking about it all the time like it’s interesting, so you start to wonder if maybe it really is.”

Mark Sonnenblick ’12 wonders if it might be. A musician, writer and improvisational comedian at Yale, Mark is looking (among other things) into a job at a hedge fund next year. “I want a job that will dynamically engage me,” he said. “But I guess the bottom line is that I want a job in general and I don’t really know how to get a job. This is easy to apply for and would make me a lot of money.” Ultimately, he hopes to work writing music and theater, but understands that’s not exactly a field with an application form.

Of course, many of the people I talked to expressed more explicit interest in the industry. Well, to be fair, most people didn’t want to say anything at all. For every student I interviewed, at least four others refused. In the age of digital print, applicants are (understandably) worried about potential employers searching their names and finding angsty quotes about Their Doubts and Their Hopes. One Saybrook senior declined an interview because he reckoned there was no way to “not sound like a douche bag.” Either he’d come off as pompous for sounding excited about his future job or superior for sounding too good for it. In the words of Michael Blume ’12, “They don’t wanna be interviewed cause they already be on the path to making mad bills.”

However, a few people with offers and interest were willing to talk to me. Their stories and motivations for pursuing consulting or finance had remarkable similarities. The narrative goes something like this: Eventually, I want to save the world in some way. Right now, the best way for me to do that is to gain essential skills by working in this industry for a few years.

Former YCC President, Jeff Gordon ’12 is a great example. Jeff wants to devote his life to public education policy reform but is considering a job at a hedge fund among other options for next year.

“I guess the appeal of that kind of job is more in personal development than in any content area,” he said. “It’s appealing because it seems challenging and because it involves interaction with smart and talented people. There are also some transferable skills.” Yet Jeff claims he could not see himself working in the industry forever.

“I couldn’t imagine myself doing something outside the content area that I care about for more than a few years,” he added. “I take something of a long view on this — I want to place myself in a position to make a very positive difference in social justice.”

But at the same time he has some doubts about these motives: “I think the last time that most of us went through something like this was when we were applying to college and we’re conditioned to accept the ready-made established process. The problem is, most places don’t have something like that. It’s messy and confusing and we’re often afraid of dealing with that mess,” he said. “Second of all, a lot of people, myself included, are very worried about narrowing their options or specializing, and consulting firms do a great job of convincing us that we still have many options open.”

“I think it’s a combination of that and prestige,” he added.

Annie Shi ’12 has similar justifications for her job at J.P. Morgan next year. When asked what she might be most interested in doing with her life, she mentioned a fantasy of opening a restaurant that supports local artists and sustainable food. Eventually, she’s “aiming for something that does more good than just enriching [her]self.” She just doesn’t think she’s ready for anything like that quite yet.

“How can I change the world as a 21- or 22-year-old?” she said. “I know that’s a very pessimistic view, but I don’t feel like I have enough knowledge or experience to step into those shoes. Even if you know that you want to go into the public sector you’d benefit from experience in the private sector.”

Annie also considers the financial incentives of the position.

“I’m practical,” she says. “I’m not going to work at a non-profit for my entire life; I know that’s not possible. I’m realistic about the things that I need for a lifestyle that I’ve become accustomed to.” Though she admits she’s at least partially worried of ending up at the bank “longer than [she] sees [her]self there now,” at present she sees it as a “hugely stimulating and educational” way to spend the next few years.

Others disagree. One senior who interned with J.P. Morgan (and who requested anonymity) had a very different experience with the bank.

“Working there was a combination of the least fulfilling, least interesting and least educational experiences of my life. I guess I did learn something, but I learned it in the first two days and could have stopped my internship then. In the next two months I learned nothing but still came into work early and for some reason had to stay until ten,” he said. “I would see these people who loved it but honestly it seemed like they were either uninteresting or lying to themselves.”

But Annie and Jeff weren’t the only two students I spoke with that prescribed to this notion of the private sector as a kind of training ground. The industries certainly work hard to advance this idea — marketing themselves as the best and fastest way to train oneself for … anything.

Kevin Hicks ’89, former dean of Berkeley College thinks it’s a load of crap.

“As for the argument that consulting provides an extraordinary skill set with which one can eventually change the world, I just don’t buy it,” he said. “Everyone knows what the skill set is for most entry-level consultants: PowerPoint and Excel.” He sees a huge problem with the idea that consulting and finance are good ways to prepare oneself for a career elsewhere.

“Most firms are looking for people who will stay up until 3 a.m. seven nights a week making slides for a partner who goes home to Wellesley for dinner every night at 5 p.m. — and who will do so thinking that they’re ‘winning.’ Look at it this way: most firms assume that you’ll leave for law school or business school within three years, and they invest in your training accordingly. Quality mentoring when you’re young is worth whatever you pay for it. Sometimes that means less money, sometimes that means less of a life beyond work. But quality mentoring is not going to be delivered by someone who is 26, and just one tidal cycle ahead of you.”

Hicks believes this idea of skill set development is a product of fantastic marketing by the firms themselves.

“There are a half-dozen more life-affirming ways you can acquire those same skills, including taking a class at night at a junior college while you do something more interesting. I suppose I’m open to the idea that consulting may truly be a great first job for someone, but too many seniors march lemming-like towards it because everyone else seems to be doing it, and it’s the next opportunity for extrinsic validation. If McKinsey says you’re okay, you’re okay.”

“The danger in doing a prefabricated thing after graduation,” he continued, “is that there’s no unique story to tell about it. If there was ever a moment to be entrepreneurial and daring — whether in terms of business or social change, and really test yourself, this is it.”

“If you’re like most people, you’ll do one thing for two to three years, then something else for two to three years, and then — somewhere in that five- to seven-year distance from Yale — you’ll see a need to fully commit to something that’s a longer term project: graduate school, for example, or a job you need to stick with for some real time. The question is: where do you need to be with yourself such that when the time comes to ‘cast your whole vote,’ you’re reasonably confident you’re not being either fear-based or ego-driven in your choice … that the journey you’re on is really yours, and not someone else’s. If you think of your first few jobs after Yale in this way — holistically and in terms of your growth as a person rather than as ladder-rungs to a specific material outcome — you’re less likely to wake up at age 45 married to a stranger.”

Yikes!

Professor Charles Hill also believes it’s an unproductive use of Yalies’ time — but for slightly different reasons. He sees the job world as split into two categories: primary functions and secondary functions; productive and unproductive. Unlike straight-up corporations, he doesn’t see these banks or consultant agencies as contributing to the world in a primary, meaningful way.

“People go into it without knowing why,” he said. “They consider you a crop. They harvest you, put you in their grinder, pay you well and off-load you.” He sees consulting services as something companies invest in to protect against potential lawsuits — providing somewhere for C.E.Os to point the finger in the event of legal trouble. When the economy goes down, corporations cut back on the use of consultants — Hill argues that if their services were truly needed, the exact opposite would occur (i.e. the corporate use of consultants would increase.)

His alternative? Professor Hill wishes more Yalies would go into the productive economy, i.e. work for the corporations themselves.

“Students have these ideologies dropped down on them from the ’60s and ’70s about corporations being evil,” he said. “For some reason people will work for consultants and banks but not for PepsiCo or General Motors.” As for the non-profit world, Hill sees it as a waste of our talents. “It’s a question of grand strategy,” he said, insisting that our energy is better spent elsewhere.

Yikes!

In terms of OTHER IMPORTANT PEOPLE, University President Richard Levin believes “there are many ways to contribute to the well being of society, and there are many forms of public service.” He rejects the notion that “people who choose a business career aren’t interested in being public spirited,” asserting that “what’s outstanding about Yale graduates is that whatever career they choose they end up being active participants in the civic life of the communities in which they live.”

Harold Bloom disagrees.

“Alas,” he groaned, “This is the death of the mind. That is not my vision of Yale University.”

Inevitably, some of the students I spoke with aren’t interested in the industry at all. “I can never say for an individual person because I don’t know their financial circumstances,” Alexandra Brodsky ’12 said, “but 25 percent is a lot of talent that could do a hell of a lot for the world elsewhere. I think that we have to be aware of that when we make these choices.” Brodsky, the co-coordinator of Dwight Hall, spends a lot of her time at Yale surrounded by non-profit management. For her, the argument that working in the private sector is the best way to prepare oneself for this line of work is faulty.

“I think the best way to get the skills to work for a non profit is to work for a non profit,” she said. “The answer people give about skills acquisition is very convenient.”

Sam Schoenburg ’12, a political activist and campaigner, is on the same page. “I’ve always been interested in government work or advocacy and I don’t feel that [consulting or finance] would satisfy me in the same way — even if it was only for a couple of years,” he said.

“There seems to be a great disconnect between the lofty speeches we hear at commencement from Yale administrators about devoting ourselves to public service and the career advice we’re presented with during the rest of the year.”

Still, some people I talked to were interested in the industry for its own sake — fascinated and excited by the work itself. Three such students requested to remain anonymous, but one, Sam Beckinstein ’12, was willing to comment on his genuine interest in consulting as a career choice in itself, not as a means to another end.

“In my everyday decision-making, I want to be doing something that has an impact,” he said, “and when I think about how best to be in that position, I usually think of some kind of strategic management.”

Joe Breen ’12 is caught somewhere in the middle. He’s interested in eventually going into affordable housing development, running a non-profit that improves services for a community or provides services that do not yet exist. But he’s applying for a series of jobs in the real estate private sector and isn’t sure how he feels about it morally.

“It’s hard to say which types of things are improving communities and which are exploiting communities,” he said. “But ultimately, I want to work for an organization that I’m positive is not exploiting communities for profit.”

Joe isn’t sure where commercial real estate falls on that spectrum, and it frustrates him.

“I would love for there to be a great two-year program that helps you gain all of these skills and gets you to start helping people right away, but I haven’t found that yet,” he said. “It’s pretty hard to be proactive in finding your own alternative, meaningful experience when you’re running an organization and taking classes. These commercial systems are already in place. They have deadlines. They present themselves to you.”

At times, Breen admits, he worries we’re sending our “best and brightest” into jobs that “abuse communities for profit.” (He also worries that every quote he gave for this article has the word “community” in it.)

The Office of Yale Undergraduate Career Services is well aware of these complaints. But Associate Dean and UCS Director Allyson Moore contends that they’re seeking to answer them.

“We recognize that financial services and management consulting firms have a wealth of resources at their disposal and that their on-campus recruiting efforts are thus highly visible,” she said via email. “That means there is a responsibility for UCS to help those industries with fewer resources, such as arts, non-profit and public sectors to receive equal visibility.” This year, they made sure that one third of the organizations at the career fair were from these categories.

“We were quite pleased with that,” she said, “and will continue these efforts within the coming months.” One such initiative is an online self-assessment service designed to identify students’ passions so they can “hone in on motivations” to better address their needs.

Honestly, I think UCS is an easy scapegoat. The real reason so many of us pursue careers in consulting and finance is far more complicated than that. Of course the word scapegoat is problematic to begin with. Are consulting firms inherently evil? Probably not. Are banks inherently evil? Probably not. Frankly, I don’t know enough about EVERYTHING to make a statement like that one way or another. So is there anything intrinsically wrong with the fact that 25 percent of employed Yale graduates end up in this industry?

Yeah. I think so.

Of course this is my own opinion, but to me there’s something sad about so many of us entering a line of work in which we’re not (for the most part) producing something, or helping someone, or engaging in something that we’re explicitly passionate about. Even if it’s just for two or three years. That’s a lot of years! And these aren’t just years. This is 23 and 24 and 25. If it were a smaller percentage of people, perhaps it wouldn’t bother me so much. But it’s not.

What it boils down to is that we could be doing other things. Sure, working at Bain or McKinsey or J.P. Morgan might be one way to gain skills to help us get hired elsewhere, but it’s obviously not the only option. There’s a lot of cool shit we could all be doing — and I don’t need to enumerate the clichés.

Obviously, some people need to make money. They have school loans to pay off and families to support. For those of us with an actual need to make money quickly, these industries might make a lot of sense. In fact, I think that working hard to earn a decent amount of money can be quite noble. I’m still struggling with the fact that due to my own (selfish) desire to be a writer, my children probably won’t have the same opportunities I had growing up. For most students, however, I genuinely don’t think it’s about the money. It’s a factor, sure. But it just feels like a factor.

What bothers me is this idea of validation, of rationalization. The notion that some of us (regardless of what we tell ourselves) are doing this because we’re not sure what else to do and it’s easy to apply to and it will pay us decently and it will make us feel like we’re still successful. I just haven’t met that many people who sound genuinely excited about these jobs. That’s super depressing! I don’t understand why no one is talking about it.

Often times at Yale, I’ll be sitting around studying or drinking or hanging out when I’ll hear one of my friends talk about a project they’re doing for a class or a rally they’re organizing or a play they’re putting on. And I’ll just think, really, honestly, how remarkably privileged we are to hang around with such a talented group of people around here. I am constantly reminded of the immense passion and creativity of those with whom I get to spend time everyday.

Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe it really is a fantastic way to gain valuable, real-world skills. And maybe everyone will quit these jobs in a few years and do something else.

But it worries me.

I want to watch Shloe’s movies and I want to see Mark’s musicals and I want to volunteer with Joe’s non-profit and eat at Annie’s restaurant and send my kids to schools Jeff’s reformed and I’m JUST SCARED about this industry that’s taking all my friends and telling them this is the best way for them to be spending their time. Any of their time. Maybe I’m ignorant and idealistic but I just feel like that can’t possibly be true. I feel like we know that. I feel like we can do something really cool to this world. And I fear — at 23, 24, 25 — we might forget.

[swipestream]

Seven (Plus Or Minus Two) Reasons You Should Consider Using Maps in Your Game

Image courtesy of Blue Sword Games:

If you’re like most people, you’re capable of effectively keeping track of seven plus or minus two “things” at a time. This phenomenon is sometimes called “the magical number seven plus or minus two.” We can remember and juggle around seven pieces of information—numbers, words, names—and use them without too much effort. Much more than seven, and we start to lose track, dropping details and never quite picking them back up.

These “things” are chunked together in our minds in ways that make them meaningful as a unit to us, so we can remember a “cat” as “that furry thing that keeps knocking my coffee off of the table” (one “unit” of information) rather than as a collection of cat-like traits, with each trait being its own “unit”.

We’re a tool-using species—when we find ourselves reaching the limit of our abilities or our willingness to expend effort, we find ways to offload some of that work to things we make. When we’re sick of lifting things, we use levers. When we want to move farther than it’s convenient to walk, we use wheels. When we need to remember what more than seven things are, we use lists. When we need to remember where more than seven things are, we use maps.

When we need to remember what more than seven things are, we use lists. When we need to remember where more than seven things are, we use maps. 

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It’s tempting to think of maps as suitable only for huge set-piece battles and aggressively tactical games that linger over detailed rulings on range and movement. There’s nothing wrong with that, but having a physical representation of characters and objects in space is useful for so much more than just dungeon crawls and skirmish games. So with that in mind, here are seven (plus or minus two) reasons why you may want to inject some more maps into your game.

1. Because your players might “chunk” information differently than you do

I’m really, really bad about getting lost when I go places. Not “loses track of routes after two or three turns” bad at directions, but “ends up in the wrong ZIP code” bad. “Donner Party” bad. While I haven’t yet had to eat any of my passengers, I wouldn’t recommend myself as a partner for a road trip through any place that has bad GPS reception or barbecue restaurants with lax supply standards.

Image courtesy of Joseph Carriker:

For me, even the most basic directions are not a matter of “remember this distinct route,” but a string of relationships that require all of my attention to manage. Directions that would be a single “chunk” of information for many (maybe most) drivers instead require all of my memory to keep straight.

Your players may be having a similar problem when it comes to imagining the situations their characters are in. This isn’t necessarily just the case with battles, either. Relative positioning matters in games for everything from picking pockets to genteel but vicious cocktail parties. For some people, keeping track of where all the moving pieces are while also keeping track of the board they’re moving on is a really difficult task.

Players who are spending all of their mental energy trying to juggle what is going on in the room aren’t concentrating on adding to the game; they’re struggling just to keep up with what’s already there. A map—even a simple one—provides an easy reference for everyone at the table.

2. Because maps don’t need to be a big deal

To expand on the pickpocketing example, a “map” can be something as simple as setting up a handful of coins to represent where the party leader is standing while they distract the guard, where the guard is, and where the party thief is sneaking from to try to snag the key to the cell your bard is being held in after yet another disastrous liaison.

If you’re feeling ambitious, you can sketch out a couple of lines to represent the alleyway where all of this is taking place in case the thief wants to take the roof approach. It takes seconds to draw two lines and set down three coins, but it saves time, frustration, and confusion when the dice start rolling.

3. Because it helps clarify the confusing

Your players only have the information you give them, and as anyone who has ever tried to give instructions can tell you, there are a lot of wrong ways to interpret a sentence. For instance, take the statement “there are two goblins in the corner of this room.” The GM could mean to communicate this (goblins in green):

Meanwhile, the players are imagining this:

These are two very different configurations, and the difference between them becomes very important when the party wizard says those three words every GM longs to hear:

“I cast fireball.”

4. Because creating stuff is fun

Tabletop RPGs throw a pretty long shadow—almost any skill you can think of has a place somewhere in it.

Tabletop RPGs throw a pretty long shadow—almost any skill you can think of has a place somewhere in it. 

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If you like woodworking, your table is likely to have some pretty neat wooden props. If you’re a writer, your game’s fiction (or your characters’ backstories) are likely to be deeper and richer for it. Even folks who do statistics for fun add to our games in ways that someone without those skills or interests couldn’t.

Maps, like props or probability curves, are a way to bring your creativity and valued skills to the table—it doesn’t take being a cartographer or an artist to add to the game, but more than a few times, making maps for games has awakened an interest in art or cartography.

5. Because it encourages players to engage the details of the environment

There are probably people out there who really enjoy listening to the GM recite lengthy, detailed descriptions of everything in a room from lighting placement to the number and types of pieces of furniture. I have never met any of these people, and I’m not entirely sure I could stay awake in their games.

Practically, there’s a limit to the number of things in the environment that are available for players to remember their characters can interact with (that limit is probably right around seven). But with the details that come with even a simple map, that list expands dramatically, limited only by the detail that the GM or players are willing to add. Tables exist to be flipped over, cupboards are filled with cutlery for hurling, and windows provide curtains for swashbuckling swings. The map provides a concrete reminder of the availability of those things, and prompts players and GMs to use them.

Image courtesy of Blue Sword Games:

6. Because it improves immersion

Theater of the mind is wonderful. I don’t want to downplay it or say that it doesn’t have its place, but not everyone has the creativity or attention necessary to see a masterpiece in every blank canvas. Having details available for players to look at and think about when the GM isn’t directly talking to them invites players to speculate about (and add to) the world that the GM is building, rather than letting their attention wander.

7. Because it encourages the GM and players to add and flesh out detail they may otherwise miss

Drawing boxes for rooms is quick, but boring.  With a few extra seconds, GMs can look at a room and think about details that a verbal description could easily gloss over. Does the room have a door (probably)? What about windows (sure)? A spike-lined pit full of snakes (always)? 

With a few extra seconds, GMs can look at a room and think about details that a verbal description could easily gloss over. Does the room have a door (probably)? What about windows (sure)? A spike-lined pit full of snakes (always)? 

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By seeing all the elements of a room at once, the places where more can be added become more apparent. Even better, it encourages players to add their own flourishes to the imaginary space where the game is taking place.

When players ask “is there a campfire?” if you place a coin or a die or even a piece of pocket lint to represent that fire, it becomes a persistent detail that otherwise may not have existed, and that adds to the options players have to interact with the world, improving gameplay and verisimilitude.

  7+1: There are a lot of cool maps already out there, many of them free

If you’re into quickly providing lots of detail for your players to engage with in your games, there are a lot of maps already out there, ranging from the expensive but awesome, like map packs/tiles put out by Paizo and Wizards of the Coast, to cheap or free options on Patreon or DeviantArt. If you have access to a printer, you can print out and tape even the free options together to add a “wow factor” to any game. Building up a library of these gives you the option of flexibility when your players go in an unexpected direction, and provides inspiration when you’re brainstorming session ideas.

7+2: There are great tabletop crafting and mapping communities out there

There are large communities of people who make maps for fun, sometimes using specialized software and sometimes using more standard office products. If you find yourself going down a deeper rabbit hole than you expected, there’s a whole world of tabletop crafting out there. Some crafters make entire cities out of foam and paint; others use 3D printing, and at least one designer is making animated maps for display on TV screens. Here are few resources to get you started.

Cartographer’s Guild (

Tabletop Crafter’s Guild (

Thingiverse: a free site with files for 3D printing (

DeviantArt (

Final Thoughts

Maps aren’t all gridded excuses for arguments about bonus actions and five-foot steps; they can serve a variety of purposes: enriching the game world and providing clarity so that all players are operating with the same set of assumptions being only two. As a player and as a GM, I find that having visual references greatly improves the experience of everyone involved, but I’m interested to hear if your groups have a different perspective. What do you think; do maps have a place at your table?

Seven (Plus Or Minus Two) Reasons You Should Consider Using Maps in Your Game published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[trillian8]

“Finding the Sun”--New Beginnings and Groundhog Day

Hi. I’m Sara.

(*takes anxiety-ridden inhale & exhale*)

Let’s Do This . . . .

I’ve never been one for flashy displays, or really calling attention to myself in any manner, so you can imagine I have had little to no use for social media like this. Maybe it was watching too much Twilight Zone as a kid, being warrey of intrusive technology. More than likely I figured that no one has ever really wanted to hear my thoughts so far in my 28 years of existence, why would that change? Best just surf the vast Inter-Web in silence, enjoy from the shadows.

Then came Groundhog Day: The Musical

I first heard of it while watching  The Late Show with Stephen Colbert absentmindedly one night. Andy Karl (who I would eventually come to know and love as the insanely talented lead of the production) was one of the guests, and while he was charming and engaging, my main take-away was . . .”Why?”

Why would someone make a Musical out of Groundhog Day? What crazy random thought process would lead someone to put music to that story? How would that even work?

Slightly intrigued, I made a mental note to look it up sometime, then went about my business, paying it no mind.

I wouldn’t think of it again till a month or so later when I caught the tail-end of the Tony’s. While too late to see their performance, just being reminded of it’s existence through the Best Actor & Musical awards inspired me to try and get more info. It wasn’t long until I come upon the soundtrack on YouTube.

Being the weirdo I am, the 1st song I listen to was “Day 2”. I’m a big fan of characters being put into odd situations--Sci-fi, Fantasy, the Supernatural, you name it--and the “Oh God, What’s Happening?!” reaction tends to be among my favorite parts, and since I was already familiar with the story, I started there. And . . .I thought it was pretty neat! The tempo had a nice pace, the melody was hummable, and I loved hearing Phil trying to rationalize with his “List O’ Possibilities” . Moving on to “Day 3” heightened my interest more with the distorted melody over Phil’s distressed cries.

Then came “Stuck”, and I found that my heart was no longer my own.

The song was so clever, funny, intricate, and insanely catchy with a hint of sad desperation as Phil is grasping at straws. I adored it. I started it over again, and then proceed to replay it a few times just trying to get more of the lyrics before moving on.

“One Day” and “Hope” just made it official--This show was my life now-my new Pop Culture focus.

I can’t accurately describe how wonderful it felt to fall in love with a media property again. While there are plenty of things that I like and enjoy, Groundhog Day was something else, something that touched me at my core. I went back to the beginning and cycled through the tracks, absorbing the hilarious, heartfelt, fun, smart, sorrowful, and enlightening arrangements like I was breathing. I would spend those 76 mins trying to construct the show in my mind, knowing that my job (Teacher’s Aid at a Special Needs School) and my location (Florida) would more than likely keep me from ever seeing it in person. But it wasn’t enough-I needed more.

So I ventured out in search of the fandom.

I’ve always considered the sharing of ideas, theories, and opinions to be one of the best things about consuming different media. To take a group of people and have them all come to different conclusions after watching, reading, or listening to the same thing has been a constant point of fascination for me. I love seeing all the varied creative endeavors that one thing  can inspire, and the relationships it can bring together. I believe that Fandom, at it’s core, is a perfect example of the interconnected-ness and imagination of the human spirit.

The Groundhog Day Fandom did not disappoint. In fact, it exceeded expectations greatly by being so close-nit, creative, and passionate. There were theories and cordial discussions as far as the eye could see with such detailed and sweet fan-art. And while still in the growing stages, the fanficiton archive has stories that are just as thought provoking and soul-enriching as the show itself. Though small, it left quite an impact on me. For the first time, actually engaging instead of watching from the sidelines was a strong desire.

Once I finally came across the illustrious “Boot”, it became more clear what drew me to this show, what touched me so deeply. I felt very much like Phil, years of isolation had made me tired and distrusting of those around me (though, I’d like to think I’m not as big of an asshole-being at least to courteous others). I have been living each day as interchangeable pieces of nothingness, the same old-same old. It all seemed set in stone, that this is all I should ever hope to have.

But this show emphatically says “Suck my Balls!” to that kind of thinking. Nothing is forever, everyone has a chance to learn and grow into new people. That if you work at it, even just a little bit at a time, the world will seem like a brand new place. I also love the notion that changing your outlook and position in life has just as much to do with the people around you as it does with yourself. Once Phil is able to let people in, get close to him, he is able to let go of a lot of his hang-ups in favor of filling that void with the positive feelings of connecting with and ultimately helping others. Then he is able to have relationships built on mutual respect and truth. This is a paradigm we all aspire to, and the good people of Punx., PA give us the hope that it’s possible.

So, to make a long post short (readers-”too late” :) ), I like to wholeheartedly, and with much adoration, thank the creators, actors, and all the behind the scenes crew on crafting a truly magical piece of theater. I hope that although this show’s life is being criminally and drastically cut short, you know the true impact your work left on the people who saw it and the hordes of people still to come. I’m holding on to the dream that most, if not all of you, will be involved in the tour and that we are able to grow the production’s popularity-- grass-roots style :)

I also want to thank the Fandom, or “Small Fandom USA” as it has come to be known, for being so open and welcoming and providing such wonderfully interesting writings & art work to consume.

(* With a special shout-out to @itsqueermrmarvin for not being creeped out by some random weirdo joining in on your live-streams. Those are so much fun and gave me the final push I needed to join Fandom proper! *)

Taking a page out of the GHD playbook, I intend to use this blog to engage more with the world and to improve my writings (My ultimate goal-could you tell? ;p). Hopefully I can keep things fun & engaging. And I promise to try to be less long-winded in the future

“Tomorrow, there will be Sun! And if not tomorrow, perhaps the day after . . .”

[photosofusly]

Remembering Khadija Saye, the artist who died in the Grenfell Tower fire

A series of self-portraits by Khadija Saye (1992-2017) are now on show in the Diaspora Pavilion, a collateral event in this years Venice Biennale, the opening of which the artist attended in May. Saye and her Gambian-born mother, Mary Mendy, died in the Grenfell Tower fire in west London on 14 June. As a memorial to the artist and all the victims of the disaster, which claimed at least 80 lives, Tate Britain is displaying a print from Sayes final series, Dwelling: in this space we breathe (2017). 

Remembering Khadija, by Ingrid Swenson and Andrew Wilson Khadija Saye completed her photography degree in 2013 and, as an aspiring artist, did a variety of paid work, which fed into her growing knowledge of art and broadened her networks. As part of this she joined up to Creative Access, a London-based charity that promotes diversity within the creative industries by providing work experience for young people from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds through a range of paid internship programme partnerships. Both the Tate and PEER, a small arts charity on Hoxton Street, east London, are part of this programme. At her interview, Khadija was the outstanding candidate for the exhibition assistant role at PEER, and she started work in July 2015.

Joining a staff of just two, Khadija played a key role in a range of the charitys activities. It had recently embarked on a project to improve the gallery and the public space outside, and she was involved with raising support from local and arts communities to attract funding from the Mayor of Londons High Street Fund.

She was also very engaged with the planning and planting of a community garden outside PEER which, along with other landscaping work, began in September 2015. The charity and the local tenant management organisation are organising a memorial and naming ceremony in July to call this Khadijas Garden. She continued to work on plans for the second phase of capital works to the gallery, including a fundraising auction with Sothebys, as well as the reopening exhibition and events.

Over the past two years Khadija has became a dear friend to us both. Her upbringing and her part-time work as a carer (like her mother) are a reflection of her relationship to the world. Quiet, calm and calming, generous, sympathetic, warm, giving, gentleshe was comfortable talking to anyone and would always put people at their ease.

In a way she cared for us all; the idea of community meant a lot to her. Early on we heard how she suffered racist abuse and on one occasion gently turned the tables so that such hate was shown to be irrational. Most importantly, in her photography she had a caring eye that was fitting for her chosen subject of portraiture. After her internship she was employed to interview and photograph visitors to PEERs reopening exhibition by Angela de la Cruz. The resulting pictures, produced as a poster, are evidence of her sensitive 

and compassionate eye, and as she said later, breaking down barrierswhich is something I strive to pursue within my career.

Blossoming of an artist

It was only with the approach of the Venice Biennale that we saw her latest work. A few weeks beforehand she came and laid out a large group of these photographs in our kitchen at home for us to look at and talk with her about. We were both excited and overwhelmed by what we saw. We were witnessing the further blossoming of an artist. With this group of tintype photographs Khadija had found a material, a subject and a way of working through artistic traditions and cultural languages that was unique to her and lay realised in this group of photographs, to which she gave the title Dwelling: in this space we breathe.

There was something utterly instinctive in these photographs, which were in part a working through of a trauma that she had recently suffered. In doing so she was making a new and enriching space for herself and her work. To then see her work in the Diaspora Pavilion in Venice, to meet her there with her mentor, the artist Dave Lewis, and witness her experiencing the positive reaction to her work at the opening was a really special moment.

She wrote that the blessings are abundant and we were excited for her future. She had gone from being a mostly unknown artist to someone who had made work people were talking about. We discussed with her about perhaps doing an MA and how this could be made to happen. We are left with images and memories of her work, the powerful force of her being, and Khadijas Garden.

Ingrid Swenson is the director of PEER; Andrew Wilson is the senior curator, Modern and contemporary British art and archives, at Tate Britain

Remembering Khadija, by Nicola Green During this time of tragedy, anger, disquiet and fear, Khadija Saye remains a source of light. Her warmth has been widely written about and, like so many others, I found her unusual in her gracious, kind and determined beauty, which is reflected so powerfully in her work.

I met Khadija when she had just finished her photography BA at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham. I was a judge on a panel of the Discerning Eye exhibition in 2014 and selected her series, Crowned. She came to the opening night so excitedit was her first exhibition after her degree show.

She stood with her mother Mary next to her art work brimming with enthusiasm. This genuine joy at any one of her successes was a trait that continued. Exploring the identity and power of black women through images of the hair of women close to her, Khadijas Crowned series left a lasting impression and moved me deeply. She said recently that she made this series with zero money, just some black velvet with beautiful friends and family.

As I got to know Khadija more in the following years her interest in identity, activism, heritage and faith steadily grew and informed her practice in deeper ways. During her time assisting me she was working on her series Eid. Khadija spoke often about her multifaith heritage, which was a source of constant inspiration in both her work and her search for self-understanding.

Khadija travelled to Gambia and made a series of portrait and landscape photographs entitled Home. Cominga powerfully personal and generous window into her discovery and understanding of the heritage that meant so much to her.

Spiritual grounding

Her work, made with the help of the artist Almudena Romero, exhibited in the Diaspora Pavilion in Venice, is titled Dwelling: in this space we breathe. In the photographs she took that she used as source images for Dwelling, she combined relics from her heritage with elements of pop culture including Beyonc and RuPaul. The final work is a series of wet-plate collodion tintype self-portraits. Khadija always focused intently on channelling her experiences into her art. I think the inherent strength that is seen in this series mirrors that of Khadija herself.

She wrote herself about this work that this series was created from a personal need for spiritual grounding after experiencing trauma. The search for what gives meaning to our lives and what we hold on to in times of despair and life changing challenges. We exist in the marriage of physical and spiritual remembrance. Its in these spaces that we identify with our physical and imagined bodies. Using myself as the subject, I felt it necessary to physically explore how trauma is embodied in the black experience.

While exploring the notions of spirituality and rituals, the process of image making became a ritual in itself. The journey of making wet-plate collodion tintypes is unique in the sense that no image can be replicated and the final outcome is out of the creators control. Within this process, you surrender yourself to the unknown, similar to what is required by all spiritual higher powers: surrender and sacrifice.

In 2015 Khadija was part of a group of artists and curators who went to Venice as part of the Diaspora Platform. At the opening week Khadija tweeted a photo of herself in front of Lorna Simpsons work. Two years later in Venice during the opening week Simpson saw and admired Khadijas series Dwelling so much that she invited Khadija to come and spend time at her studio in New York. When I called Khadija recently to tell her this, she made a squeaking sound and said: Im so sorry, I actually dont know what that sound is. She paused, and before laughing with uncontrollable joy, said: I can only respond with noises from my soul.

Like so many others touched by Khadija, I had the privilege of watching her rise from a shining light of emerging talent, who was struggling to get her work into the world, to a star at the crest of a wave of international success.

It is impossible to believe that such a positive force of energy and power is gone from this world.

Nicola Green is an artist

Appeals launched

Two complementary memorial appeals have been launched to remember Khadija Saye. The appeal target for Creative Access internships for young people from the black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) community is around 10,000. The general memorial fund aims to raise around 50,000 to support young artists like Saye to realise their potential.

To support paid internships in Khadija Sayes name, visit www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/khadijasayeinternshipfund

To support the Khadija Saye Memorial Fund, visit www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/khadija-saye-memorial-fund

There will also be a Grenfell Tower Benefit auction (18 July-1 August) of works donated by 25 artists, which has been organised by the art advisor Lucy Meakin and Artsy. For more information, visit www.artsy.net

View Full Article Here: Remembering Khadija Saye, the artist who died in the Grenfell Tower fire

Remembering Khadija Saye, the artist who died in the Grenfell Tower fire was originally published on CALM | We Drive The Calmest, Strive Regardless

[atticusblog2016-blog]

New Post has been published on Atticusblog

New Post has been published on https://atticusblog.com/blogger-spells-out-the-dangers-for-investors-of-following-crowd/

Blogger spells out the dangers for investors of following crowd

How nicely are fairness crowdfunding investments acting? It depends on who you ask. In November, AltFi Statistics published a have a look at saying that crowdfunded agencies had executed “impressively”.

The alternative finance analyst tracked each deal due to the fact 2011, while crowdfunding first emerged, and said that maximum companies that had used this shape of fundraising remained active. The common annual paper (or notional) go back across those corporations have been 8.55p for each £1 invested.

So are tips that the rising industry is giving retail traders a uncooked deal unfounded? Now not in step with a blogger, who arguably has spent greater time than all people tracking crowdfunding.

Overcoming Writer’s Block for the Newbie Blogger

Blogging is some thing I have been captivated with for quite a while, and people that recognize me properly have witnessed me begin and cease many blogs through the years. My adventure to becoming a blogger has been an endless journey of trial and blunders, and to be quite sincere, it still is.

Once I first commenced Running a blog, I concept all I needed to do was pick a subject to write about, sit down at my computer and permit the phrases to waft freely from my thoughts all the way down to my fingertips. I speedily learned that wasn’t how Running a blog worked. I struggled with my writing, because I did not recognize what I wanted to put in writing approximately, and finally I lost the momentum to hold Blogging.

I’d say to myself “Why is this so tough for me? I love to put in writing, so this must be a breeze. Plus there are so many blogs out there if different humans can do it without problems, why the hell cannot I?”

However sooner or later I learned – through my many tries at Running a blog – that to be a hit blogger, one need to plan and follow a component. Now with regards to Running a blog, there is not a one length suit all method; this is because every and every blog is unique. every blogger could have their personal fashion of writing, and their own cause and cause at the back of why they blog about a selected topic.

Blogging is greater than just a creative outlet in an effort to explicit your thoughts, thoughts, and feelings; particularly if you need to build a following of actively engaged readers.

For plenty, Blogging can be a tricky ability to comprehend – it simply was for me. I failed to understand wherein to begin, what to consciousness on and how to conclude; till I came up with my very own weblog writing components; which goes a little some thing like this:

Join emotionally & address your audience’s goal/choice

  As an aspiring Writer who has started out many not-so-a hit blogs – and is in the manner of beginning yet some other new blog – I want to have the ability to triumph over the struggle and pressure of writing a new weblog submit. Most significantly, I desired to tap into the feelings of other aspiring writers/bloggers who additionally battle with this problem.

  The Dangers Of False Assumptions

On account that most people, in positions of leadership, base their methods, plans, packages, desires, and moves, on sure assumptions, doesn’t it make sense, to cognizance on the system, actual leaders frequently use, to assure they’re using records, as opposed to evaluations, etc? maximum folks have, at some point, been warned about the Dangers indicated, within the word, Assume, and the chance of making an ass, out of you, and me! As authentic as that is, for all and sundry, it’s far even extra so, while in it comes to leaders! Therefore, using the mnemonic method, let’s assessment some of the Dangers of Fake assumptions.

1. facts; figures; pals: Are those, you do not forget and/ or agree with, to be pals, actually that? How do you determine facts from fiction, and avoid assuming something to be actual, due to the fact someone else, advised you it become so? Do not rely on a person else’s interpretations, but rather, have a look at the raw statistics, and/ or figures, and ask questions, till you’re happy, whether or not something is actual!

2. Mindset; attention; attitude: Just as it is risky to rely upon Fake assumptions, it is equally sick – recommended, to consider someone who constantly claims, whatever which disagrees with him, is glaringly a False reality, or Fake information! Proceed with a superb, can – do Mindset, and pay keen interest, to the system, interpretation, and potential ramifications. avoid alternate – for – exchange – sake, or throwing the baby out with the bathtub water! Constantly teach, examine, beautify your competencies, judgment, end up wiser, and expand the finest feasible flair!

three. Leading; lessons; classes: It is no longer Leading, in case you are pushing a personal agenda, or attitude, rather than prioritizing service on your ingredients! while one makes Fake assumptions, it lessens the ability to Proceed, within the most perfect manner! Ask yourself, what classes you could study, from every experience and scenario!

4. Machine; strengths; solutions; seek: in case you need to be a powerful, meaningful chief, you may need to broaden a Device, which fits! Understand your employer, as well as your own, strengths and weaknesses, and fine use the strengths, while efficiently addressing and minimizing the weaknesses. A true leader ought to are seeking for answers, which address needs, priorities, and worries, in addition to perceiving of, developing, developing and imposing an excellent, sustainable Machine.

5. Excellence; efforts; empathy: at the same time as an actual chef does all he can, to achieve the highest diploma of excellence, he must be sure, what he considers to be a reality, is indeed one! Dissipate all your efforts, to Proceed, with the empathy, your components deserve!

Top 5 App Primarily based Fin Tech Startups for Young Buyers

In his e-book “Only the Paranoid Live to tell the tale”, semiconductor enterprise legend and Intel’s founder, Andrew S. Grove gives an in-depth concept approximately Strategic Inflection Factor (SIP). Describing it as a vital transformation in an industry, Andrew justifies how a SIP influences an organization and forces it to alternate itself in phrases of the system, systems, merchandise and at times, identity. The sphere of finance, despite the fact that ultimate same in its motive of saving and finding better methods to invest money, has come a protracted way from Banks to Mutual Funds, Stocks, and Bonds.

1. Inuit Mint: Mint is a private banking cum investment advising software, designed in an easy access interface. It keeps a track of your earnings, savings, investments and Based on these creates finances and recommends custom spending. With Mint, you don’t want to worry to test your account statements or take a look at on any bills that are pending. In addition, you could discover methods to hold your credit score up and steady. This one touch economic manager automates your costs in your profits to make you attain your economic dreams in a reasonable amount of time.

2. Stash: Bringing investment threshold to something as small as $five, Stash creates a special area of interest for potential Buyers. Stash is a newbie degree funding platform that promotes around 30 specific investment opportunities from which possible selected as in line with his desire and desires. those funding alternatives are curated through excessive technical and marketplace overall performance reports. Similarly, while you begin making an investment via Stash, it provides you custom suggestions and investment possibilities to make you get higher returns.

3. Analyze and invest via Rubicon: “Studying through Doing”, whilst you surf the internet site of Rubicon, you find their purpose on the very sight. They have popped out with apps: Study and invest, whose final aim are crystal clean of their name itself. thru Examine, you get admission to some treasured micro lessons over making an investment, that is posted in layman language and may be without problems understood through all. It goals to create expertise over making an investment wishes and usher self-belief into you whilst investing. Updated and enriched all the time, Analyze offers access to video, textual content or even audio training over making an investment.

4. Acorns: with the aid of some distance, one of the maximum progressive idea to automate your savings and take care of your exchange is Acorn. Acorn is a begin-up approximately Micro making an investment. This concept of micro-investing isn’t always associated with startups, however, to the small amount of cash, this is being invested. On the way to use Acorn, you need to first join all your bills and cards in this app. Then, whenever you make a purchase through those debts, and the spare change you get in the one’s spendings is invested.

5. FinoZen: FinoZen believes in a philosophy of making an investment in quick term liquid mutual Funds than preserving your money in lower hobby reaping financial savings account. An Indian startup, Frozen has attracted plenty of interns and Young employed who want ease of having Finances at disposal without buying and selling off the advantage of higher returns on their investments. This Android finch app may be used for as little as $2 and reaps up around 7-eight%.