lqb2weekly #154 (21 may 2021)
hey,
i’m keeping this opening passage this newsletter v short in order to make space for a shitton of quotes. if they’re overwhelming, just scroll right on past ‘em. ^_^
also, the final three episodes of life radio for season 2 are out, but i’ll drip them over the next couple newsletters, hoping that you will listen to them all :D — Season 2 Episode 07: Innovation with Felicia Perez
on to the things!
(!!) pick of the pack
writing
some things i’ve written since the last newsletter:
May 14, 2021 | book review: the pocket thich nhat hanh
May 13, 2021 | 4-day work weeks
May 8, 2021 | colonial mindset: want to change others without being changed
May 3, 2021 | book review: how we show up: reclaiming family, friendship, and community by mia birdsong (sidenote: i’m quoted in this book 🤯)
quotes
there is nothing new under the sun…
You can have it all. Just not all at once. — Oprah Winfrey
When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid. — Audre Lorde
Listening in dialogue is listening more to meaning than to words… In true listening, we reach behind the words, see through them, to find the person who is being revealed. Listening is a search to find the treasure of the true person as revealed verbally and nonverbally. There is the semantic problem, of course. The words bear a different connotation for you than they do for me. Consequently, I can never tell you what you said, but only what I heard. I will have to rephrase what you have said, and check it out with you to make sure that what left your mind and heart arrived in my mind and heart intact and without distortion. — john powell
Now the other myth that gets around is the idea that legislation cannot really solve the problem and that it has no great role to play in this period of social change because you’ve got to change the heart and you can’t change the heart through legislation. You can’t legislate morals. The job must be done through education and religion.
Well, there’s half-truth involved here.
Certainly, if the problem is to be solved then in the final sense, hearts must be changed. Religion and education must play a great role in changing the heart.
But we must go on to say that while it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, behavior can be regulated.
It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless.
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me but it can keep him from lynching me and I think that is pretty important, also.
So there is a need for executive orders. There is a need for judicial decrees. There is a need for civil rights legislation on the local scale within states and on the national scale from the federal government. — Martin Luther King Jr'.’s address at Western Michigan University
The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness … to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone. — David Whyte on friendship
If I need things to be a certain way, I’m held hostage by them. — Jonny Wilkinson on maintaining a mindset of flexibility
I try to pull the language into such a sharpness that it jumps off the page. It must look easy, but it takes me forever to get it to look so easy. Of course, there are those critics — New York critics as a rule — who say, Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer. Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language. — Maya Angelou on how hard it is to make it look easy
The most reliable way to change your life is by not changing your entire life.
If you try to change everything all at once, you will quickly find yourself pulled back into the same patterns as before. But if you merely focus on changing one specific habit and work on it until it becomes part of your normal day, you will find your life changes naturally as a side effect.
Improve the whole by mastering one thing. — James Clear
“How did you accomplish that?”
“Same as everything else. Gradually, then all at once.” — James Clear
Books for mindset.
Quiet time to think for strategy.
Conversations with successful peers for tactics. — James Clear
The best index to a person’s character is (a) how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can’t fight back. — Abigail Van Buren on character
poetry
love after love by derek walcott
readings
some things i’ve read since the last newsletter:
6 tips for making online collaboration more productive and engaging | Network Weaver
How to Become the Best in the World at Something | Forge (!)
Hawthorn: Herb of the Week | CommonWealth Center for Holistic Herbalism
listenings
some audio and/or podcasts i’ve listened to since the last newsletter:
The Perfect Nap with Tricia Hersey of The Nap Ministry | Irresistible (!!)
Indigenous Motherhood: Birth Is Ceremony | All My Relations Podcast
Dreaming While Black with Walidah Imarisha and Calvin Williams | The Emergent Strategy Podcast (!)
How to End the Dominion of Men | The United States of Anxiety
watchings
some videos i watched since the last newsletter:
jams
some things i’ve been (aurally) enjoying since the last newsletter:
Healing — Jaime Lee Lewis feat. MMYYKK
jobs
Program Administrator | Builders of Color Coalition | $60-75k
Director of Development | The African American Policy Forum | $85-95k salary
Program Associate, Social Justice Ecology | The Boston Foundation | $48-53k salary
Racial Equity and Leadership Initiative Consultant | Health Resources in Action | $100/hour | Boston
resource generation is hiring a new ED or some co-directors and several other positions, too.
note - any recipient of this newsletter is welcome to send me job postings to share in future editions. however, i only share job descriptions with listed salary ranges.
upcoming events
$$ (fun-raising)
other opportunities
Blackout Collective Action Fund ($1,000 for black direction action practitioners on the ground!)
Pre-order: The Monster I Am Today by Leontyne Price and a Life in Verse
Roddenberry Fellowship (full disclosure: i am a coach for the 2021 fellows)
newsletters
Solstice newsletter: newsletter #3
emet ezell: stitch and un-stitch a family; grow and wilt a heart.
building belonging: Your boundaries set you free
astroradicals: THE MOOD: Pollinating the Profound
right now i’m learning…
how to be a liberatory coach! the 9 month training program i’m in started today, woot.
i‘m also learning, after taking the art of leadership training at the rockwood institute, that i have HELLA blindspots in my leadership. but now i know and can be working on them. ^_^
mood
