From a pre-school:
~ No hurts.
~ Be kind.
~ Have fun.
Useful for later life too.
[“No hurts,” as explained to me: “Keep your hands to yourself.”]
Monday, September 18, 2023
The rules
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Michael Leddy“Orange Crate Art” is a song by Van Dyke Parks and the title of a 1995 album by Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson. “Orange Crate Art” is for me one of the great American songs: “Orange crate art was a place to start.”
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Nancy, October 19, 1950.
“Who are we as a country?”
Michael Leddy
Don’t look for premiums or
coupons, as the cost of
the thoughts blended in
ORANGE CRATE ART pro-
hibits the use of them.
Comments are welcome, appended to posts or by e-mail. I moderate comments to keep out spam, so please be patient.
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Words to live by
Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
*
Νέος ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ ἥλιος. [The sun is new every day.]
Heraclitus
*
Every day is a new deal.
Harvey Pekar, “Alice Quinn”
*
Nos plus grandes craintes, comme nos plus grandes espérances, ne sont pas au-dessus de nos forces, et nous pouvons finir par dominer les unes et réaliser les autres. [Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.]
Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again
*
Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.
Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living
*
I don’t really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it’s always nice, I’ll grant you, if he has one.
J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction
*
I’m not afraid to get it right
I turn around and I give it
one more try
Sufjan Stevens, “Jacksonville”
*
L’attention est la forme la plus rare et la plus pure de la générosité. [Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.]
Simone Weil, in a letter
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
*
Νέος ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ ἥλιος. [The sun is new every day.]
Heraclitus
*
Every day is a new deal.
Harvey Pekar, “Alice Quinn”
*
Nos plus grandes craintes, comme nos plus grandes espérances, ne sont pas au-dessus de nos forces, et nous pouvons finir par dominer les unes et réaliser les autres. [Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.]
Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again
*
Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.
Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living
*
I don’t really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it’s always nice, I’ll grant you, if he has one.
J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction
*
I’m not afraid to get it right
I turn around and I give it
one more try
Sufjan Stevens, “Jacksonville”
*
L’attention est la forme la plus rare et la plus pure de la générosité. [Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.]
Simone Weil, in a letter
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Nancy, October 19, 1950.
comments: 5
I think about the difference between the meaning of "kind" and "nice." Without looking them up, I'd say the first is more active. While they're both good, "niceness" is part of civility, while "kindness" goes beyond that to empathy and maybe even mutual aid. You can't be kind without being nice, I think, but you can be nice without being kind.
Everything we needed to know we learned in pre-K?
At least a lot of what one needs to learn. Henry James said (really said) that there are three important things in life: to be kind, to be kind, and to be kind.
I checked the index card I had in my pocket to make sure that it said kind, not nice. I agree with DN3: kindness is different and bigger. Nice to my ear suggests kids acting like little ladies and gentlemen.
“No hurts,” as I now know, names an approach to early childhood education.
I looked up the etymology—
Fowler in 1926 said “nice” has been diluted to “a mere diffuser of vague and mild agreeableness."
There’s something to be said for niceness though—I always loved in “Lucky Jim” when Jim thinks,
“nice things are so much nicer than nasty ones.”
Kindness need not be nice—
—it’s kind (we think) to put down a suffering animal, for instance.
Yes, and painful honesty can be a form of kindness too.
But don’t you cringe when you hear someone say they like “nice things”? (That is, expensive things.)
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