We Miss You, Milosz

Thanks to the daily message from Garrison Kiellor at The Writer's Almanac, I am reminded that it's the birthday of the poet Czeslaw Milosz, Nobel Prize-winning poet and survivor of the vivisection of Poland by Germany and Russia during World War II.

During my time as a student in Krakow, I witnessed Milosz's return to the country he had left 44 years earlier. The school I was attending had arranged for a special meeting with the man; so, a hundred of us foreigners crowded into a lecture hall to hear him read his work and answer questions.

By that time (1994), the poet was in his 80's and sharp as a tack, but deaf as a stone. A persnikity Polish professor served as moderator and translator. Two friends, first generation Chicago Polaks, elbowed me in the ribs until I stood to ask a question.

In my garbled Polish, I attempted to ask him how he felt coming back to his country after so many years in exile. I mentioned that he and anothe Nobel Laureate, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, had both returned to their respective homes that spring after decades in the West.

Slozhenitsyn had spent roughly a third of his life in the Russian army, a third in the dismal Russian prison system, and a third in exile. His observation of the vast Soviet prison network are detailed in Gulag Archipelago.

In the lecture hall, the Polish professor sneered at my butchering of the past perfect tense but passed on the question; my friends snickered.

Milosz replied that Slozhenitsyn was returning as a prophet, a saint, a guru; Milosz felt he was just and old poet coming home.

Later that week, I spotted Milosz in the literary cafe that has been around since he was a student at Jagiellonian University in the 30's. He was seated with a young student in the back courtyard at a small table nestled in an overgrown garden, laundry strung out between two pear trees and stray cats on the prowl. They were debating about poetry, about words.

The old man had seen so many people shot, bombed, imprisoned, exterminated, rubbed out--all because of language, because of ideas. The young man was coming of age during a time a vast awakening, of falling walls, of widening horizons, of increasing freedoms, of new dangers.

Eleven years later, I'm sitting in my own overgrown urban garden, ivy assaulting a three-story brick wall, crazy gee-gaws and wind chimes fluttering, a tight formation of invasive orange Tigerlillies. So much of my work has been to recreate that space in which I saw the ancient, venerated poet passing on a bit of electricity to the clean shaven young romantic, telling him: "Language is the only homeland."

Encounter

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going
The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

~ Czeslaw Milosz, Wilno, 1936

From The Writer's Almanac:

Born in Szetejnie, Lithuania (1911), Milosz grew up in a Polish-speaking family. He studied law rather than literature, but co-founded a literary group in 1931. The group was so pessimistic about the future, it was nicknamed the "Catastrophists." They predicted a coming world war, though nobody believed them.

Czeslaw Milosz wrote anti-Nazi poetry after the invasion of Poland in 1939. He witnessed the genocide of the Jews in Warsaw. He was one of the first poets to write about it in his book Rescue in 1945.

After the war, he got a job as a diplomat for communist Poland, though he was not a member of the communist party. One night, in the winter of 1949, on his way home from a government meeting, he saw jeeps filled with political prisoners, surrounded by soldiers. He said, "It was then that I realized what I was part of." He defected two years later and went to Paris.

Most intellectuals in Paris were pro-communist at the time. They thought of Milosz as a traitor. The poet Pablo Neruda attacked him. In 1953, Milosz published a book about communism called The Captive Mind. He moved to the United States and started teaching at Berkley in 1960. He had mixed feelings about the United States. He kept writing poetry in Polish, although almost nobody was reading it. His books had been banned in Poland, and his poems weren't translated into English until years later. In 1980, he got a phone call at three in the morning telling him that he'd won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

100 Miles for Kids

Zach Warren, former Alphachimp intern, is a divinity student and circus performer with a social mission.

After his first year at Harvard, Zach and his friends have been preparing for a massive trip to Afghanistan in order to support the Afghani Mobile Mini Circus for Children. Zach has been raising money through his 100 Miles for Kids Campaign.

To raise $10,000 for the Circus, Zach will attempt to break the GUINNESS WORLD RECORD™ for the “FASTEST 100 MILES ON A UNICYCLE”! One wheel, one clock, one pair of legs, one time to beat!

The current world record for 100miles on a unicycle was set in 1987 by Takayuki Koike of Japan. His average speed was 14.85 mph, resulting in a time of 6 hours, 44 minutes, and 21.84 seconds.

Currently, there is an international competition to break the record, including an attempt made in February of 2005, by Ken Looi in New Zealand. Looi failed to break the 100-mile record but succeeded in breaking the 24-hour distance record. Looi will reattempt the record later this year, explaining that "I can't stand unfinished business."

Though the official attempt is Oct. 11, Zach is doing a pilot trial this Thursday, May 19, between 7am-2pm, on the 400m Kissena Velodrome Track, Queens, NY. The track was generously donated by the NYC Cycling Club.

“We cannot take the gift of laughter for granted. Thousands of children in Afghanistan have to relearn how to play because the line for them between playful imagination and violent reality is so fragile.

The Afghan Mobile Mini Circus for Children is an established "Child-Protection" NGO that helps Afghani kids relearn how to play. More than a circus, the MMCC empowers children to develop their own sense of identity and meaning through the arts."

- David Mason and Zach Warren, MMCC

The story that follows details his adventures with special needs kids in Ireland who are entertaining and delighting crowds. The real star of the show is Eogan, a great kid who plays the Devil and challenges members of the audience to wrestle.

For more detail and photos, read on!

From an email sent to Alphachimp Studio by Zach Warren:

After a string of circus adventures in the UK, Switzerland, and Italy, I'm back in Cambridge (USA) for a brief moment to collect my thoughts, and my belongings. In a few hours, I leave again for Delhi, India, to meet with some street performers, then head off to Kabul, where these bones will be living and learning the next ten weeks.

I'm feeling a bit uneasy about going just before elections, for fear that the violence will escalate, but am relieved to know that I will be in good hands with the circus and a longtime friend who's in Kabul now. I never expected to be doing anything quite like this, but I feel drawn to this work in this place.

In 2001, President George W. Bush stood amid the fallen towers of the World Trade Center and said, "They will hear from us." And he's right. The world is a connected place, and the "they's" and the "us'es" must hear from each other. In two hours, I am heading toward Afghanistan with a duffle bag full of juggling equipment, camera equipment for research on the healing effects of circus interventions, and a desire to listen, learn deeply, and share the transformative power of circus arts with children who have grown up with war, drought, poverty, and other forms of violence.

I'll arrive with aid in the form of circus donations, too. Steve Ragatz, an international circus performer and juggler in Cirque du Soleil, constructed juggling boxes, clubs, torches, and rings for me to give to the MMCC (see www.stevenragatz.com). David Ascroft of the Cirque Uplands Circus in Canada, another children's circus, sent over to Kabul $600 of circus equipment, including a custom unicycle (www.drkaboom.com). It's not enough for the nearly 50 kids in the circus, but every bit helps in a big way. I will send another email after I arrive and have settled.

But what happened to June, you may ask? How did the street performing experiment with special needs adults work out? If you're curious and have a moment, read on. I also invite you to check out a few photos.

Let's imagine, for a moment, that you are a circus performer and a divinity student. Imagine that tomorrow morning you will wake up not in your normal abode, but in a special needs community in Dingle, Ireland. Eogan, a 25-year old Irish lad with Downs Syndrome, sideburn chops, and an infectious sense of humour, taps you on the shoulder to wake you up. "Wake up or I'll arm wrestle you, I will," he quips with a thick accent. Eogan is a natural entertainer, and a character. He'll chat up nearly anyone on the street.

After raking the dust off your eyeballs, you rise, then glance out the window at cow pastures and the distant sea. It's beautiful. Rediculously green. Hobbling to the kitchen table, you meet John, a 29-year-old special needs man with a red beard, a slender frame some six feet tall, and the sort of facial expression you'd expect from someone who's just woken up. (John's not a morning person.) "Hi," he says in monotone, scraping some fresh strawberry jam onto white bread, always with intensity in his eyes. John is the philosopher in the group. Not the kind of philosopher who writes, reads heavy books, and wears black turtle necks, but the kind who makes those basic statements about life that are at once remarkably ordinary and remarkably profound. To get him talking, simply ask him about the meaning of life, and he'll give you a long soliloquoy, sometimes stuttering, sometimes changing his mind mid-sentence, but always with a sense of fervor and existential urgency.

At the breakfast table to your right sits Duncan, a dear friend from Harvard, also a talented musician and a philosopher-theologian in his own right. After college, Duncan lived with these two fellows -- John and Eogan -- for two years in a Camphill special needs community in Callan, Ireland. This week, all four of you are taking a holiday -- not as tourists, but as street performers. A rare bunch. The likes of you may never come together again in this way, but the experience is built to be memorable.

Today, and each day, you spend a few hours dancing, whistling, singing, juggling, arm wrestling, and storytelling on the street. What's your act?? The goal for this experiment is to have something performative in which everybody can participate -- the four performers, and the audience, too. After a few days of planning and more than a few rounds of Guinness, you have it: a story to tell and a series of songs to narrate along the way. More importantly, you have roles that befit each of your strengths and personalities. Duncan sings with his guitar. John plays "The Meaning of Life." Eogan plays "the Devil." And you... you're the juggler.

Juggler Man sets out on a quest to find The Meaning of Life. Behind him, Duncan sings, Eogan blows into a recorder, and John looks at the audience with his typical intensity. Along the way, Juggler Man encounters the Devil, who tries to keep him from the Meaning of Life. Eogan seizes the imaginary stage wearing a full-body red wetsuit, a costume he picked out from a second-hand store. After a series of challenges -- juggling baseball bats, tennis rackets, even flaming torches -- Eogan calls you to an arm wrestling match, one of his favorite pasttimes. Inevitably, you lose, and must call to the audience for help. "You, sir, do you want to wrestle with the Devil?"

Someone, eventually, beats Eogan, who takes it all in good fun. Later, the Devil and Meaning of Life have a stare-down, a staring contest judged by the audience, after which John demonstrates his magical prowess as the Meaning of Life, balancing two spinning plates simultaneously atop long sticks, then giving an always impromptu piece of wisdom or poem, like, "Love, love, why the love?" A finale to celebrate the ending might be juggling knives, or balancing Duncan's guitar on your chin. At least, that was our story. John and Eogan loved it, and so did Duncan and me. For John and Eogan, it was a chance to show off just a few of their skills, proving that special needs can also come with special talents, and also nurturing their natural spirit of play. As performers, each of us can be special, and in ways that bring confidence and sociability rather than a sense of isolation or aloneness.

I better finish packing and scoot out the door. Forgive me if I haven't responded to your email, but know that I do read all my emails, even if there's no time to reply. Thanks for keeping me in your heart! You're certainly in mine.

Samantha Appleton, Photojournalist

There comes a time when you just have to brag about cool people you know.

One of them in our life is Samantha Appleton. Though she looks like a kind-hearted, easy-going young woman from Maine (she is), Samantha is a brave photojournalist who gets close--not just too the action, but to the humans at the center of the drama.

Whether she is photographing firefighters at ground zero, insurgents in Iraq, or Nepalese circus girls, Samantha's images uncover the very human elements beneath the headlines. She shows us the anxiety, the worry, but she also shows us the kindness, the unexpected joy, the gestures of empathy.

Her photos capture the vulnerability beneath the hard shell titles of Outsourcing, Insurgent, Resue Worker, Security Forces, Immigrant, Refugee.

Visit www.samanthaappleton.com to see photo essays: Nepali Circus Girls, Iraqi Militias and Civilians, Mexico's Southern Border, 9/11, Maine Handicapped Skiing, Lubec Maine, and India Outsourcing.

True Films

Tired of the big Hollywood summer blockbuster hype that so rarely delivers anything more than access air conditioning?

Thanks to the magic that is NetFlix and access to truly interesting films, you need not lament the absence of the latest John Sayles film or chase down a two-day screening of the riveting documentary Gunners Palace.

For a film that combines the best of documentary, fine art and nature, watch Rivers and Tides, the on-screen revelation of the work of Andy Goldworthy. Afterwards, you'll be inspired to venture outdoors and create beautiful works of your own from found objects a nature's own art supplies.

Film Movement was started in response to the regional hegemony of film distribution companies that squeeze out any indy film (unless it gets picked as an Academy Award front-runner!). The group's mission declares that...

Film Movement is for anyone who does not want to miss out on outstanding films because of where they live. Most films do not receive a national release despite critical acclaim and awards at Cannes, Sundance and other top film festivals. As a result, most of us don’t get to see many of the year’s best films. Film Movement is changing all that…

Similar to NetFlix, this is a subscribtion service of $19.95/mo. (or $159/year). However, the DVDs are your to keep instead of ship back, and it is limited to one per month. The upside: these are the primer DVD and include access to press kits, dicussion guides and insider information to assist teachers, discussion groups and cinemaphiles.

Kevin Kelly, formerly of WIRED and The Whole Earth Catalog, has compiled a review of 100 DVDs at his own True Films.

Kelly is a sponge for the useful, the quirky, the singular and the essential. His list of Cool Tools brings the top picks of gadgets, books, hacks, tips and manuals ranging from igloo making to reusable menstrual cups and extreme pogo sticks.

Art of the Mexican War Streets

Peter and Diane Durand will be participating in the open house celebration at the Firehouse Studios on Pittsburgh's North Side:

Firehouse Studios
1416 Arch Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15212
(located off North Ave. near Allegheny General Hospital see map)

Friday evening, June 24
Opening reception on from 6 to 10pm

Saturday & Sunday, June 25 & 26
Open studios from 12-4 pm

The Durands will display works inspired by their recent trip to Sante Fe, New Mexico. Dozens of local painters, photographers and ceramic artists will also be on show.

The Slings and Arrows of the Designer's Craft

My doctor friend has a theory: People tend to stick with the haircut they had at the moment in time when they felt at the top of their game, when all was right with the world, when they were cool.

Styles may change, and the common opinion about what defines cool may change too, but each of us clings to that haircut. (In fact, even Marge Simpson had to check with her children if the word "cool" was still cool.)

Same can be said for design and designers (or singers!). Once a certain way of composing a piece of work leads to success, the trap is sprung and they're stuck.

It is the very rare artist that can slalom between the demands of the market and the drive for authenticity. In the creative tension between the two, true genius thrives.

To get a glimpse of the process that such designers employ to propel them, check out the archived interviews conducted by designer, researcher, writer and teacher, Ellen Lupton at designwritingresearch.org.

Don't miss the free advice page with links to designers who've survived the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and the shifting technologies of the designer's craft.

Contributors include Pantagram's Michael Bierut, MIT's Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte and, my favorite Russian constructivist, Vladimir Mayakovskii.

Beirut, along with several other designers and critics, has launched a blog, DesignObserver, dedicated to keeping an eye on international design, evolutions in cyberspace, and (his word, not mine) design bullshit.

See full list of quotes.

Posters: A Way of Thinking

There you are: wandering the sprawling, urban landscape, cluttered with signage, garbage, traffic, human dwellings, human activity.

Here, among the refuse and decay--engineering and architecture slowly returning to nature really--you see a brilliant, colorful gem. A poster. A single spot of color on a grimey brick way holding up a parking structure, perhaps. Or a series of dozens of identical images plastering a surface the size of a tremendous movie screen, like a fim strip strung out life-sized.

A poster! Color and type and image all arranged perfectly so.

It jumps out as a paradox, a complexity of roles: they may serve a visual haiku, an inside joke, a political punch to the gut, an appeal to your moral core, but posters are so much more than just another pretty picture.

The city could be any city of any size, the preserved medeval center of Krakow in Poland, or the gianormous city-state of México City with a population larger than that of Canada (30-40 million!). But the poster plays the same role: it is a gift. A poster is a seed of art planted amidst the background scenery of daily life.

Milton Glaser, master of the poster, godfather of modern design, says, "Art performs a pacifying role in culture."

The practioners create commonalities between us. Glaser sites the writer Louis Hyde, who studied primative cultures, the passing on of gifts is a device that prevent people from killing one another. It is in the passing on of gifts, that we become part of a single experience. This is what role artists serve in a culture. Artists provide that gift to the culture so that people have something in common.

The 8th International Poster Biennial in México is organized by Trama Visual and endorsed by Icograda, the 8th International Poster Biennial in México featured posters from 145 graphic designers in 35 countries, selected from approximately 5,000 entries. [See article in Commarts.com]

“I cannot accept posters that are only a display or form, a fashionable design, but that lack content and have nothing to say. The poster is, first of all, a way of thinking. It should surprise, challenge and intrigue us. Although sometimes it looks like a sign, it should also be a symbol; it should possess a depth and a second plan. It should make us think!”

Juror Bojidar Ikonomov of Bulgaria,
Director of the International Triennial of the Stage Poster

Interactive designer-turned-videographer Hillman Curtis has produced a series of video portraits of poster designers at work, including the rabbi of poster design, Milton Glaser.

Take an inspiring tour through Glaser's studio and warehouse that holds two to three hundred thousand posters. It will inspire you, bring you peace, and change the way that you look at any poster!

See more of Glaser's work (and purchase his posters) at miltonglaser.com.

World Citizens: Travel Bravely, Travel Safely

A winner of the 2005 Webby Award for activism, this on-line guide is designed to raise awareness of travelers, especially young Americans.

It has a wonderful Flash interface and a downloadable PDF version.

Among the contents, a list of 25 simple suggestions to make travel safer, more interesting and more authentic. Also included is an information graphic depicting the demographic makeup of the world if we shrank the earth’s population to a “global village” of only 100 people and kept all the existing human ratios.

[Thanks to Leah Silverman for the link.]

The World Citizens Guide

25 Simple Suggestions:

1. Look. Listen. Learn.
2. Smile. Genuinely.
3. Think big. Act small. Be humble.
4. Live, eat and play local.
5. Be patient.
6. Celebrate our diversity.
7. Become a student again.
8. Try the language.
9. Refrain from lecturing.
10. Dialogue instead of monolougue.
11. Use your hands. Watch your feet.
12. Leave the clicjes at home.
13. Be proud, not arrogant.
14. Keep religion private.
15. Be quiet.
16. Check the atlas.
17. Agree to disagree respectfully.
18. Talk about something besides politics.
19. Be safety conscious, not fearful.
20. Dress for respect.
21. Know some global sports trivia.
22. Keep your word.
23. Show your best side.
24. Be a traveler, not a tourist.
25. Have a wonderful trip!The guide also has tons of pertinent links to help travelers identify embassies in different countries, seek health advisories from the Center for Disease Control, including vaccines, travel insurance, customs, study abroad programs and more.

Almost 15 years ago, I set out with two friends to backpack across Europe. This led to a five year stint on the road, hitchhiking and catching trains as far East as the Crimean coast and Moscow, and back again across Western Europe to England. It was the early 1990's and a time of tremendous openness.

Now young travelers are looking over their shoulders. Nervous. Knowing that being American, being "western" makes them a target.

In Young travelers face potential dangers outside U.S. by Kimberly Durnan and April Kinser appearing June 14 in The Dallas Morning News, the article admonishes:

"[When] young people and other travelers go abroad, their safety is not something parents or even the U.S. government can guarantee. Following the recent disappearance in Aruba of an 18-year-old from Alabama, law enforcement officials, schools and travel agents are warning parents and their children to follow some basic steps that can increase the odds of a safe trip abroad."

Anxiety about allowing young people to travel abraod is high. Understandably so. Family and friends are still frantically searching for Natalee Holloway, who was in Aruba with classmates to celebrate high school graduation when she disappeared May 30 after a night out at a popular bar. It is a terrifying scenario, one that strikes fear in the heart of every parent watching their child venture out into the world.

However, if it is a choice of whether to travel or not, I'd say YES! Especially if one can committ to a year or more. That year will resonate for the rest of your life and define your personality into the future.

I was very fortunate to have traveling grandparents on both side; my grandmother's last trip was to China when she was 80 years old. My father lived and worked in Asia and Africa for seven years, and my very American mother chose to give birth to her first child (me) in East Africa.

Special hellos go out to friends of the Studio who are world travelers, especially Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar Tereneh Mosley in Kenya (above) and Peace Corps Volunteer Jacquelyn Jancius in Romania.

Recipes for Design, Recipes for Disaster?

In his weekly newsletter/blog, Mark Hurst, founder of Good Experience, warns of the dangers of looking for rules for good design.

In his post titled The Good Experience Worldview, Mark writes:

To be sure, there are some user experience experts who assert "the 205 rules of proper design," as though being a good practitioner merely means memorizing the tactical rules and methods. Call these the "gurus"; there are plenty of followers who want, and demand, what they're offering.

It seems that Hurst's irony was lost on a few. One frustrated reader responded to his criticism with a plea for even more structure and guidance:

Guess I've been too busy over the past 11 years to learn the rules. Feeling the fool, I googled "205 rules of proper design' and got zilch. Since my marketing and design techniques have developed from doing, as opposed to reading about them, can you provide a reference?

Ah, the rules. We clammer for them later in life after spending our youth flaunting them.

I agree that adhering to any "dogma of design" can lead an individual or group down a dangerous--or worse, a predictable--path. However, I find so many organizations begging to learn the process of creativity, and that of creativity's persnickety step-sister, design.

It is easy to say that no rules is good rules [sic] when one has experience. Now, what if I wanted to learn another complex art form or practice, like, say, Kung Fu. When I was ten-years-old, my friends and I were convinced we knew all about this martial art from watching Bruce Lee's "Enter the Dragon".

God help us if we ever did battle with a real evil genius!

I often see the same phenomenon after a group of MBAs watch the episode of Nightline that profiles IDEO's ideation process used to redesign the shopping cart.

Perhaps the best "toolkit" includes fewer rules and more guidance on appropriate questions to ask, for example:

- What is the need?
- Where can we find inspiration?
- Have we defined the problem?
- Are we asking the appropriate questions?

Bruce Mau's famous incomplete manifesto offers curt aphorisms such as:

Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.

After the launch of the major exhibit Massive Change (the rules of which are 1. LEARN and 2. ACT), Bruce Mau has shuffled off the title of designer, and taking a more expansive view of design itself. Even lending a hand at redesigning the rules of engagement by the UN. You can hear a presentation by Bruce Mau on "global creativity" presented at Pop!Tech at IT Conversations.

Dominic Muren of ID Fuel describes the job as a designer as "...someone who finds new ways to solve problems using the materials, processes, and understanding that we have now."

For those of you who are on the path of uncovering the problems, principles, processes, questions and dilemmas of design, I do recommend Mark Hurst's Good Experience newsletter as well as the product design site, ID Fuel.

As for Alphachimp Studio, we have avery simple rule set: "Make stuff. Makes stuff happen."

Richard Florida, Tracking the 'Creative Class'

Creative competitiveness seems to be the key to success in any business, in any country.

Living on the edge of the creative process involves innovation of existing products, services and systems; it requires the creation of inspirational experiences, fantastic landscapes, and intellectually stimulating communities.

It requires an ever-bubbling pool of talent. It requires access to the latest technology. And, most important, according to creative class expert, Richard Florida, "..there's this third T -- apart from Technology and Talent -- called Tolerance."

In an interview detailed in the article The Flight From America by Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet, Florida goes on to say:

The reason this third T is an important part of economic growth and economic advantage is because it attracts talented creative people from all races, ethnicities, income ranges, -- whether they're white, black, Hispanic, Latino, Asia, Indian, women, men, single, married, or gay. So places that are the most tolerant, the most diverse, the most, in words of the new book, "proactively inclusive" have an addition economical advantage.

In the latest installment in his career as experienced tracker of creative populations, Florida details the dangers and unintended consequences of America's increased security requirements. Namely, he takes a critical look at the increasingly restrictive policies towards foreign students, immigration, and the all-important creative class.

The same phenomenon can be said to exist in the ever-expanding "red states": diversity of ideas and ethnicities are facing policies of discrimination and atmospheres of religious and intellectual intolerance. Bill Savage of Seattle's The Stranger writes of the important influence of blue cities, particularly college towns, in culturally homogenous, and politically conservative, red states.

If I just take a look at the paternal side of my family, chock full of lawyers (a father, an uncle, and two cousins), I also find an engineer, two physics professors, three designers, three fiber arts, two amateur birdwatchers, a master chef, a stuntman and a self-described advertising huckster who spends his retirement decking out his "Elvismobile" (click to see Quicktime of his Elvis Shrine Room).

And, to be fair, the lawyers in our family consist of a professional percussionist, an amazing singer/songwriter/marathon runner, and martial arts/meditation expert. My father the lawyer taught me everything I know about cartooning.

In daily life, it is the eccentric element, the rebel, the quirky friend, the flake, the loveable spaz, who makes life interesting--and enriching--by taking the train off the tracks of predictability and taking flight.

Who knew that it would also become the secret to our nation's sustainability as well!

MORE:

Cities Seek to Prosper by Luring Creative People
NPR's Morning Edition,September 7, 2004

Richard Florida, Tracking the 'Creative Class'
NPR's Weekend Edition - Sunday, May 22, 2005