And the Pursuit of Happiness by Maira Kalman

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"All I can say is Hallelujah.... For Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, changing the words Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Property to the Pursuit of Happiness."

"Lincoln was always scribbling notes and putting them into his hat. With his hat on, he was seven feet tall."

"Everyone is beautiful. Everyone makes you proud. Everyone breaks your heart."

"[Jefferson's] friend, the Polish Freedom Fighter Tadeusz Kosciuszko, left money in his will to be given to Jefferson to free and educate his slaves. But the task was overwhelming and he did not get it done."

"The object of walking is to relax the mind. You should therefore not permit yourself even to think while you walk, but divert yourself by the objects surrounding you. Walking is the best possible exercise. - Jefferson"

"History makes you hungry."

"THINK SMALL is my new motto. It helps me handle the complicated too-muchedness of it all."

"[Benjamin Franklin] believed in doing good everyday. He made charts and had daily goals. The morning question: What good shall I do this day? Evening question: What good have I done today?"



5-8am / Rise, wash, and address Powerful Goodness; contrive day's business and take the resolution of the day; prosecute the present study; and breakfast.
8am-12pm / Work.
12-2pm / Read or overlook my accounts, and dine.
2-6pm / Work.
6-10pm / Put things in their places, supper, music, or diversion, or conversation; examination of the day.
10pm-5am / Sleep."

"He aspired to be a gentleman and, when he was still a teenager, wrote "George Washington's Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation."

Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation by Parker J. Palmer

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"Ask me whether what I have done is my life."

"... the life I am living is not the same as the life that wants to live in me... I sometimes catch a glimpse of my true life, a life hidden like the river beneath the ice."

"Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent."

"Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening."

"The word vocation itself is rooted in the Latin word for voice. Vocation does not mean a goal I pursue. It means a calling that I hear."

"An inevitable though often ignored dimension of the quest for 'wholeness' is that we must embrace what we dislike or find shameful about ourselves as well as what we are confident and proud of."

"The soul speaks its truth only under quiet, inviting, and trustworthy conditions. The soul is like a wild animal - tough, resilient, savvy, self-sufficient, and yet exceedingly shy. If we want to see a wild animal, the last thing we should do is go crashing through the woods, shouting for the creature to come out. But if we are willing to walk quietly into the woods ..."

"True vocation joins self and service, as Frederick Buechner asserts when he defines vocation as 'the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need.'"

"Quaker teacher Douglas Steere was fond of saying that the ancient human question 'Who am I' leads inevitably to the equally important question 'Whose am I?' - for there is no selfhood outside of relationship."

"Teaching, I was coming to understand, is my native way of being in the world. Make me a cleric, or a CEO or a poet or a politician and teaching is what I will do. Teaching is at the he

"We must withdraw the negative projections we make on people and situations - projections that serve mainly to mask our fears about ourselves - and acknowledge and embrace our own liabilities and limits."

"self-care is never a selfish act"

"Had I not followed my despair... I might have continued to pursue a work that was not mine to do, causing further harm to myself, to the people and projects with which I worked, and to a profession that is well worth doing - by those who are called to do it."

"no punishment anyone might inflict on them could possible worse than the punishment they inflict on themselves by conspiring in their own diminishment."

"A clearness committee -- a process in which the group refrains from giving you advice but spends three hours asking you honest, open questions to help you discover your own inner truth."

"By then it was obvious, even to me, that my desire to be president had much more to do with my ego than with the ecology of my life - so obvious that when the clearness committee ended, I called the school and withdrew my name from consideration. Had I taken the job, it would have been very bad for me and a disaster for the school."

"Dorothy Day -- Do not give to the poor expecting to get their gratitude so that you can feel good about yourself. If you do, your giving will be thin and short-lived, and that is not what the poor need; it will only impoverish them further. Give only if you have something you must give; give only if you are someone for whom giving is its own reward."

"One sign that I am violating with my own nature in the same of nobility is a condition called burnout. Though usually regarded as the result of trying to give too much, burnout in my experience results from trying to give what I do not possess. [Burnout] does not result from giving all I have: it merely reveals the nothingness from which I was trying to give in the first place."

"Depression is the ultimate state of disconnection."

"'You seem to look upon depression as the hand of an enemy trying to crush you... do you think you could see it instead as the hand of a friend, pressing you down to the ground on which it is safe to stand?'"

"The problem with living at the high altitude is simple: when we slip, as we always do, we have a long, long way to fall... I had been trained as an intellectual not only to think - an activity I greatly value - but also to live largely in my head, the place in the human body that is farther from the ground."

"There were the visitor's who began by saying, 'I know exactly how you feel...' Whatever comfort or counsel these people may have intended to speak, I heard nothing beyond their opening words, because I knew they were peddling a falsehood: no one can fully experience another person's mystery. Paradoxically, it was my friends' empathetic attempt to identify with me that made me feel even more isolated."

"One of the hardest things we must do sometimes is to be present to another person's pain without trying to fix it, to simply stand respectfully at the edge of that person's mystery and misery. Standing there, we feel useless and powerless.. In an effort to avoid those feelings, I give advice, which sets me, not you, free.

"Why must we go in and down? Because as we do so, we will meet the darkness that we carry within ourselves - the ultimate source of the shadows that we project onto other people. If we do not understand that the enemy is within, we will find a thousand ways of making someone 'out there' into the enemy, becoming leaders who oppress rather than liberate others."

"Good leadership comes from people who have penetrated their own inner darkness and arrived at the place where we are at one with one another, people who can lead the rest of us to a place of 'hidden wholeness' because they have been there and know the way."

"Emerge with the capacity to lead the rest of us toward community, toward our complex and inexplicable caring for each other."

"If you can't get out of it, get into it!"

"The average group can tolerate no more than fifteen seconds of silence: if we are not making noise, we believe nothing good is happening and something must be dying."

"The great community asks us to do only what we are able and trust the rest to other hands."

"The best leaders in every setting reward people for taking worthwhile risks even if they are likely to fail. These leaders know that the death of an initiative - if it was tested for good reasons - is always a source of new learning."

"By allowing something to die when its time is due, we create the conditions under which new life can emerge."

"We do not need to be the fear we have"

"Rilke--- living the questions"

"Metaphors are more than literary devices, of course: most of us use metaphors, albeit unconsciously, to name our experience of life."

"Faced with this inevitable winter, what does nature do in autumn? It scatters the seeds that will bring new growth in the spring - and scatters them with amazing abandon... I am rarely aware that seeds are being planted. Instead my mind is on the fact that the green growth of summer is browning and beginning to die... On the surface, it seemed that life was lessening, but silently and lavishly the seeds of new life were always being sown."

"Opposites do not negate each other... they need each other for health"

"I confused the teaching with the teacher."

"Before spring becomes beautiful, it is plug ugly, nothing but mud and muck. I have walked in the early spring through fields that will suck your boots off, a world so wet and woeful it makes you yearn for the return of ice. But in that muddy mess, the conditions of rebirth are being created...It helps me understand that the humiliating events of life, the events that leave 'mud on my face' ... may create the fertile soil in which something new can grow."

"Though spring begins slowly and tentatively, it grows with a tenacity that never fails to touch me. The smallest and most tender shoots insist on having their way, coming up through ground that looked, only a few weeks earlier, as if it would never grow anything again."

"If you receive a gift, you keep it alive not by clinging to it but by passing it along."

"Whether the scarce resource is money or love or power or words, the true law of life is that we generate more of whatever seems scarce by trusting its supply and passing it around. Authentic abundance does not lie in secured stockpiles of food or cash or influence or affection but in belonging to a community where we can give those goods to others who need them - and receive them from others when we are in need."

"Here is a summertime truth: abundance is a communal act... Community doesn't just create abundance - community is abundance. If we could learn that equation from the world of nature, the human world might be transformed."

The Exquisite Book: 100 Artists Play a Collaborative Game by Julia Rothman, Jenny Volvovski, Matt Lamothe and Dave Eggers

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The Exquisite Book is a project based on the Surrealist game called the Exquisite Corpse. The book is a modified version of the game, played by one hundred contributing contemporary fine artists, illustrators, designers and comic artists. Each artist contributed one page to the book. The first artist was given a few words to inspire their drawing. Each of the following artists only saw the page that immediately preceded their own. Each artist had a horizon line in their image that starts on the left side of the page and ends on the right. Where the horizon line of the first artist’s page ends, is where it begins for the next artist. Each artist was given two weeks to complete their page.

Summerhill School: A New View of Childhood by A. S. Neill, edited by Albert Lamb

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Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future by Margaret Wheatley

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"The only way the world will change is if many more of us step forward, let go of our judgements, become curious about each other, and take the risk to begin a conversation."

"Fear destroys human capacity; therefore we are called to be fearless... If we don't learn how to move past our fears, we will not be able to host conversation or become active on behalf of this troubled, still beautiful world."

"What would it feel like again to be listening to each other again about what disturbs and troubles us? About what gives us energy and hope?"

"Conversation takes time. We need to sit together, to listen, to worry and dream together. As this age of turmoil tears us apart, we need to reclaim time to be together. Otherwise, we cannot stop the fragmentation."

"We need to be able to talk with those we have named enemy. Fear of each other also keeps us apart... We can't imagine what we would learn from them, or what might become possible if we spoke to those we most fear."

"How do we evoke people's innate creativity and caring?"

"We can't be creative if we refuse to be confused."

"Juanita Brown, community organizer -- All change, even very large and powerful change, begins when a few people start talking with one another about something they care about. Simple conversations held at kitchen tables, or seated on the ground, or leaning against doorways are powerful means to start influencing and changing our world."

"How can we become people we respect, people who are generous, loving, curious, open, energetic? How can we ensure at the end of our lives, we'll feel that we have done meaningful work, created something that endured?"

"I've found that I can only change how I act if I stay aware of my beliefs and assumptions. Thoughts always reveal themselves in behavior."

"Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation."

"We become hopeful when somebody tells the truth. I don't know why that is, but I experience it often."

"Truly connecting with another human being gives us joy. The circumstances that create this connection don't matter. Even those who work side by side in the worst natural disaster or crisis recall that experience as memorable. They are surprised to feel joy in the midst of tragedy, but they always do."

"We have to slow down. We need time to think, to learn, to get to know each other."

"In the presence of so many specialized techniques for doing simple things, we've become suspicious of anything that looks easy. And those of us who have technical expertise are especially suspicious. I've seen myself pull back from simple more than once because I realized I wouldn't be needed any longer."

"Scientists are taught to seek the simpler solution. If there's a choice between two possibilities, they choose the simpler one. Simple solutions are called "elegant" in science. The beauty of the universe expresses itself in simplicity."

"we acknowledge one another as equals
we try to stay curious about each other
we recognize that we need each other's help to become better listeners
we slow down so we have time to think and reflect
we remember that conversation is the natural way humans think together
we expect it to be messy at times"

"It's not differences that divide us. It's our judgements about each other that do."

"One question to ask of your conversation circle is: Who else should be here?"

"New voices revive our energy, and oftentimes help us discover solutions to problems that seem unsolvable. If your conversation circle is stuck, or getting bored, or becoming short-tempered, open the gates and bring in new people.
I work from the principle that if we want to change the conversation, we have to change who's in the conversation."

"We don't decide what our vocation is, we receive it. It always originates from outside us. Therefore, we can't talk about vocation or a calling without acknowledging that there is something going on beyond our narrow sense of self. It helps remind us that there's more than just me, that we're part of a larger and purpose-filled place."

"I believe we become more fully human with any gesture of generosity, any time we reach out to another rather than withdraw into our individual suffering."

"There are many people whose actions anger me and make me afraid - but I don't like how I feel when I respond to them from fear. At those times, I don't feel more human, but less. I become more fully human when I extend myself."

"Where does the future come from? It often feels these days as if the future arrives from nowhere. Suddenly things feel unfamiliar, we're behaving differently, the world doesn't work the way it used to. We're surprised to find ourselves in this new place - it's uncomfortable and we don't like it. The future doesn't take form irrationally, even though it feels that way. The future comes from where we are now. It materializes from the actions, values, and beliefs we're practicing now. We're creating the future everyday, by what we choose to do. If we want a different future, we have to take responsibility for what we are doing in the present."

"The gap between knowing and doing is only bridged by the human heart. If we are willing to open our hearts to what's really going on, we will find the energy to become active again."

"It is time for us to notice what's going on, to think about this together, and to make choices about how we will act. We can't keep rejecting solutions because they require us to change our behavior. We could start by talking about how we feel about what's going on."

"When obedience and compliance are the primary values, then creativity, commitment, and generosity are destroyed."

"We want to be reminded about human goodness."

"What becomes available to us when we greet each other as fully human? ... We can help one another by trusting that others, too, are fully human. And then we can invite them to step forward with their goodness."

"In a clear night sky, for every star we see, there are 50 million more behind it."

"What's happening to us as we continue to be bombarded by so much human suffering? What is our coping strategy, conscious or not? I sense that more of us are shutting down... Or if the suffering is close to home, we get angry..."

"When I bear witness. I turn toward another and am willing to let their experience enter my heart."

"Why is being heard so healing? I don't know the full answer to that question, but I do know it has something to do with the fact that listening creates relationship."

"[Many teenagers] feel ignored and discounted, and in pain they turn to each other to crete their own subcultures..."

"Her attentive silence gave him space to see himself, to hear himself..."

"You can't hate someone whose story you know."

"

"We ignored life's principle of restrained growth... We ignored life's cyclical nature, where decay is the most essential element in a healthy system, and instead assumed we could always be improving, never resting, never ill... We ignored life's mode of organizing in small, local systems, where small is beautiful, and instead took pride in building the biggest we could, create .. organizations so large they are unmanageable."

"biologist E.O. Wilson -- If all humanity disappeared, the rest of life would benefit enormously. However were any other major species to disappear, for example, ants, the results would be major extinctions of other species and probably partial collapse of some ecosystems. The whole earth would suffer if it lost any other species except humans."

"Life becomes stronger and more capable through systems of collaboration and partnering, not through competition."

"A healthy ecosystem is always composed of many diverse species living together as a network of cooperation. Each member of the network eats from a specific part of the food web and leaves the rest for others.... every species is essential to the entire web. We believe we can destroy those species that threaten or annoy us, and no harm will be done anywhere else in the web. We still act surprised, when efforts to eliminate one pest end up turning fertile fields into clay or desert, destroying birds, frogs, and thousands of species in the soil, air and water. We not only kill the pest, we also destroy all those species that are essential to healthy fields."

"Fiona Mitchell--- We have to take care of everything, because it's all part of the same thing."

"As we become busier, with less time to sit and talk to each other, we increasingly reach for these short-hand identifiers. The result is that we know less about each other, but assume we know more."

"When I identify myself as a white, American, middle-aged woman, of English and German heritage, how adequately does that describe me? These categories may give me a personal sense of location in the world, but over a lifetime, they aren't nearly big enough to describe who I am."

"If I want you to acknowledge my gifts, I have to be curious about yours. I have a responsibility to look for and honor yours. We create enough space for our own self-expression only by inviting in everybody else's uniqueness."

"Bernie Glassman, cofounder of the Zen Peacemaker Order, says the only thing we have in common is our differences. When we understand that, he says, we discover our oneness.... As paradoxical as it is, our unique expressions are the only source of light we have to see each other. We need the light from each unique jewel in order to illuminate our oneness."

"When we work for the common good, we experience each other in new ways. We don't worry about differences, or status, or traditional power relationships."

"These experiences give us the chance to change our minds about each other. We can see each other free from the roles and routines that conceal most of who we are... Free from the fatigue that keeps us too tired to be interested in each other."

"When we serve others, we gain more than hope. We gain energy. People who volunteer for a community... often arrive straight from work, exhausted. But after several hours of meaningful volunteer work, they go home energized."

"When sacred becomes a special rather than common experience, it become difficult to feel fully alive and human."

"In a sacred moment, I experience that wholeness. I know I belong here. I don't think about it, I simply feel it. Without any work on my part, my heart opens and my sense of "me" expands. I'm no longer locked inside a small self. I don't feel alone or isolated. I feel here. I feel welcomed."

"I felt joy, yet I was crying. I felt peaceful, yet very energized. I felt like me, but I was more than me."

"We can't experience sacred in isolation. It is always an experience of connecting. It doesn't have to be another person... It can be a connection with an idea, a feeing, an object, a tradition. The connection moves us outside ourselves into something greater. Because we move out beyond ourselves, the experience of sacred is often described as spacious, open, liberating. We learn that we are larger than we thought."

"We invite these moments when we open to life and to each other. In those grace-filled moments of greeting, we know we're part of all this, and that it's all right."

"Fearlessness, too, has love at its core, but it requires much more of us than instant action. If we react too quickly when we feel afraid, we either flee or act aggressively... Zen teacher Joan Halifax speaks about the practice of non-denial. When we feel afraid, we don't deny the fear. Instead we acknowledge that we're scared. But we don't flee... We turn toward [the fear], we become curious about it, its causes, its dimensions. We keep moving closer until we'e in relationship with it. And then fear changes. Most often it disappears."

"When we're brave enough to risk a conversation, we have the chance to rediscover what it means to be human. In conversation.. we become more visible to one another."

""Conversation can only take place among equals. If anyone feels superior, it destroys conversation... Those who act superior can't help but treat other as objects to accomplish their causes and plans."

"Speaking to each other involves risk. It's often difficult to extend ourselves, to let down our guard, especially with those we fear or avoid. When we're willing to overcome our fear and speak to them, that is a gesture of love. Strangely, what we say is not that important. We have ended the silence that keeps us apart."

"When we are courageous enough to honor ourselves, we offer everyone their humanity."

"Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters. Talk to people you know. Talk to people you don't know. Talk to people you never talk to."

"Treasure curiosity more than certainty."

"Remember, you don't fear people whose story you know."

Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community by Alfie Kohn

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"Beyond being a real person, what does it mean for an adult to be caring in a school context? It means remembering details about students' lives... It means being available for private conversations about nothing in particular."

"Educators who form truly caring relationships with students are not only meeting emotional needs; they are also setting a powerful example. Whenever an adult listens patiently, or shows concern for someone he doesn't know, or apologizes for something he regrets having said, he is modeling for students, teaching them how they might be with each other."

"The alternative [to punitive consequences], some educators assert, is to sit down with the student and work it out: get him to take responsibility for changing his behavior. But is that really the only other option? Both of these approaches identify the student as the sole source of the problem...

"Talk less; ask more."

"The problem was how students were behaving in the cafeteria, but the solution was not to discipline those who acted badly; it was to transform the lunchroom into a restaurant.... We no loger have a lunchroom discipline problem reports the principal, but we have achieved far more than that."

"The last few years have witness the appearance of still more programs that consist of doing things to children to elicit compliance (rather than working with children to solve problems and promote community).

"While it's true that kids sometimes test a sub, consider the possibility that what they're testing is not your ability to crack down on them and force them to comply. Maybe they're testing to see if you'll turn out to be just another authority figure or if instead you'll be the kind of teacher who responds with care and humor and respect."

"Ask [bus] drivers to be honest with kids, to apologize when they lose their tempers, to see the kids' help."

"Do we value students for who they are - or for what the do? One of the foundations of the working with approach is the relationship that a teacher nurtures with each student. Terrific educators are more concerned about connection than about control. ...The more challenging a student the more important it is to cultivate a trusting relationship with him or her. The use of behavior plans, punitive consequences, and the like will undermine such relationships. The willingness to persevere with care and trust is what makes all the difference."

teacher Laurie Walsh on a visit from one of her 8th grade students when he was an adult--- "He had been an angry kid, hard to teach, hard to like... I made your life miserable. Even when I was such a pain, you used to act like you were glad to see me the next day, he said. You were the only one who was ever glad to see me. I was a miserable kid at 14, I told him. I was mean, angry, mouthy, but inside I was frightened and sad. A teacher of mine saw right through it and kept on treating me with respect, giving me her time. I thought you might be a kid like I was."

"What kids most need is to know that we value them even when they screw up or fall short."

"It's easier to maintain [unconditional teaching] even with kids who are frequently insulting or aggressive, if we keep in mind why they're acting that way. The idea is for the adult to think about what these students need and probably haven't received. That way she can see the vulnerable child behind the bothersome or menacing exterior."

Principal in Ct--- "Our original goals were to control student behavior and build community, but along the way we learned that these are conflicting goals."

Educator Donna Marriot--- "If a child starts to act up, I have learned to ask myself: How have I failed this child?"

"Is it taken for granted that we should just change the student's behavior when he fails to comply, or is the possibility raised that the problem may lie with the adult's request, or with the curriculum?"

"Tossing someone out [of the classroom or program] does absolutely nothing to help that individual become more ethical or responsible."

"Robert Frost --- the best way out is always through."

"I don't see decision making as something granted to children conditionally, a kind of reward for compliance that can be yanked away when they act badly."

The Tao of Leadership Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New Age by John Heider

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"Learn to lead in a nourishing manner."

"Thirteen people sit in a circle, but it is the climate or the spirit in the center of the circle, where nothing is happening that determines the nature of the group field. Learn to see emptiness. When you enter an empty house, can you feel the mood of the place? It is the same with a vase or a pot; learn to see the emptiness inside, which is the usefulness of it."

"When you are puzzled by what you see or hear, do not strive to figure things out. Stand back for a moment and become calm. When a person is calm, complex events appear simple."

"To know what is happening, push less, open out and be aware. See without staring. Listen quietly rather than listening hard. Use intuition and reflection rather than trying to figure things out."

"Being a midwife: The wise leader does not intervene unnecessarily. The leader's presence is felt, but often the group runs itself."

"Remember that you are facilitating another person's process. It is not your process. Do not intrude. Do not control. Do not force your own needs and insights into the foreground. If you do not trust a person's process, that person will not trust you."

"Facilitate what is happening rather than what you think out to be happening."

"If you must take charge and lead, lead so that the mother is helped, yet still free and in charge."

"Clarify conflicts."

"Most people lead busy lives, but the wise leader is quiet and reflective."

"When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. When I let go of what I have, I receive what I need."

"When I feel most destroyed, I am about to grow."

"When I desire nothing, a great deal comes to me."

"No other natural outpouring goes on and on. It rains and then it stops. It thunders and then it stops."

"I can look at a person and see both principle and process in them. I can see how they work. I can see them actually working. That is the basis of my ability as a group leader."

"I also know the importance of staying flexible. Everything that grows is flexible."

"Let go in order to achieve."

"The fewer rules the better. Rules reduce freedom and responsibility. Enforcement of rules is coercive and manipulative, which diminishes spontaneity and absorbs group energy. The more coercive you are, the more resistant the group will become. Your manipulations will only breed evasions. Every law creates an outlaw. This is no way to run a group."

"When the leader practices silence, the group remains focused. When the leader does not impose rules, the group discovers is own goodness.

"Learn to trust what is happening. If there is silence, let it grow; something will emerge. If there is a storm, let it rage; it will resolve into calm."

"Is the group disconnected? You can't make it happy. Even if you could, your efforts might well deprive the group of a very creative struggle."

"If you are attached or criticized, react in a way that will shed light on the event. This is a matter of being centered and of knowing that an encounter is a dance and not a threat to your ego or existence. Tell the truth."

"The wise leader see things almost before they happen."

"The greatest martial arts are the gentlest. They allow an attacker the opportunity to fall down."

"It is far better to step back than to overstep yourself."

"Advance only where you encounter no resistance."

"If you make a point, do not cling to it. If you win, be gracious."

"The person who initiates the attack is off center and easily thrown. Even so, have respect for any attacker. Never surrender your compassion or use your skill to harm another needlessly."

"Harsh interventions are a warning that the leader may be uncentered or have an emotional attachment to whatever is happening. A special awareness is called for. Even if harsh interventions succeed brilliantly, there is no cause for celebration. There has been injury. Someone's process has been violated. Later on, the person who's process has been violated has may well become less open and more defended. There will be a deeper resistance and possibly even resentment. Making people do what you think they ought to do does not lend toward clarity and consciousness. While they may do what you tell them to do at the time, they will cringe inwardly, grow confused, and plot revenge. This is why your victory is actually a failure."

"That is the way of nature: to relax what is tense, to fill what is empty, to reduce what is overflowing."

"Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away a rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. The wise leader knows that yielding overcomes resistances and gentleness melts rigid defenses."

"Why is the ocean the greatest body of water? Because it lies below all the rivers and streams and is open to them all. What we call leadership consists mainly of knowing how to follow. The wise leader stays in the background and facilitates other people's process. The greatest things the leader does go largely unnoticed."

"The ability to be soft makes the leader a leader. This is another paradox: What is soft is strong."

"The wise leader is not collecting a string of successes. The leader is helping others to find their own success."

"The wise leader knows that the reward for doing the work arises naturally out of the work."

"Consider the lives of plants and trees: during their time of greatest growth, they are relatively tender and pliant. But when they are full grown or begin to die, they become tough and brittle. The tree which has grown up and become rigid is cut into lumber... Whatever is flexible and flowing will tend to grow. Whatever is rigid and blocked will atrophy and die." (151)

"It is not the leader's role to play judge and jury, to punish people for 'bad' behavior. In the first place, punishment does not effectively control behavior. But even if punishment did work, what leader would dare use fear as a teaching method? The wise leader knows that there are natural consequences for every act. The task is to shed light on these natural consequences, not to attack the behavior itself...[or] the leader will discover the instrument of justice cuts both ways. Punishing others is punishing work."

"If you don't trust the people, they will become untrustworthy."

Chicago's Proximity Magazine: Issue 8, Education as Art

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"How We Work is a collaborative research column exploring the working models of independent art spaces and groups."

"There is a lot of research that shows the connection between creative play, and the development of social skills, problem-solving, and independently guided inquiry. We create opportunities for students to make their own discoveries, direct their own investigations, and have fun along the way." (Anne Frederick on the Hester Street Collaborative)

"We can't be sustainable as an institution if we can't at the very least exist as an experiment." (Steven Ptacek)

"Inquiry, failure, and learning -- the territories of art and education" (Andrew Oesch)

"There was very little adult leadership, the whole point was to allow kids to be in a place where the were doing things on their own terms. We were not always there to force success. There is opportunity to thrive and succeed but there is also equal opportunity to fail. It's a safe space. The kids are in kind of am incubator where it's okay to fall down." (Mike Bancroft)

"Who gets permission to live in that zone where failure is possible?" (Emmy Bright)

"The MCA Denver has billed itself as a Museum Without A Front Door and there are some unique and distinctive ways that the visitor is invited to utilize [the] space and site. For example, there is the library's Open Shelf Program that invites exhibiting artists to curate a shelf of objects, books and music - anything that inspires their work. There is The Lane: Place for Public Engagement, a pedestrian walk way beside the museum that is employed as a stage; and the Idea Box, a room dedicated to relating the museum to visitor's styles of engagement. (Daniel Fuller)

"I believe strongly that a museum needs to maintain a sense of magic. Science museums used to have a magic to them but now they are just places to learn about global warming. (Adam Lerner)

"Speaking in the Rounds --- We start by presenting ourselves, the room we are in, and why we had asked them to join us. We started by everybody saying his or her name and interest in the evening's topic, and then ended by letting everyone give a closing remark.(Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner, a feminist discussion series)

"For me making art is a way of learning and unlearning, it is a way of producing a platform for reflexive exchange." (Malin Arnell)

"But who has power in this society? Not artists. Finance, real estate, politics - people who are in those positions are there because they seek power. BUt I want visions to come true. Not just in one good classroom or art space or neighborhood. I want people who don't want power to get power. That's what's going to turn the Titanic around. It is a moral imperative for good people to get power. Other wise, we leave all the power in the hands of the people who are not oriented to constantly thin about how to do good." (William "Upski" Wimsitt)

The Language of School Design: Design Patterns for 21st Century Schools by Prakash Nair and Randall Fielding

Find details here.

"The old standard building block of a school was the classroom unit. A new standard has emerged.. the Small Learning Community (SLC)."

"A home-base function for between 80 and 150 students. Capping the number at 150 allows for every person in the SLC to know everyone else. Over 150 and a sense of isolation and anonymity increases exponentially."

"Students are not restricted in their use of the space and teachers are happy to let this occur thanks to design that maximizes opportunities for passive supervision."

"This is a significant contract to the message of most classroom spaces being the teacher's domain. 'Wait until the teacher enters the room and tells you what to do before you do anything. You are not capable of directing your own learning."

"The traditional classroom model calls for one teacher to manage 25 students in a tightly controlled territory; the teacher is the undisputed rule, burdened with the task of constant supervision. In contrast, the Small Learning Community model calls for four to five teachers to work collaboratively, sharing a suite of spaces of varying sizes and characteristics with permeable boundaries and strong outdoor connections whenever possible; students have access to each other and environmental resources."

"In discussion of Small Learning Communities the operative word is small. The idea, always, is to create small groupings where everyone knows everyone else."

"The key is that learning studios within a Small Learning Community are not owned by any particular teachers, as is the norm with classrooms, in traditional school design. Rather the idea is for the team of teachers to own the entire SLC and democratically decide who gets to use which space when."

"Multiple Modalities of Learning:

1. Independent Study
2. Peer Tutoring
3. Team Collaboration
4. One-on-one Learning
5. Lecture Format / teacher-directed
6. Project-based Learning
7. Technology with Mobile Computers
8. Distance Learning
9. Internet-based Research
10. Student Presentation
11. Performance-based Learning
12. Seminar-style Instruction
13. Interdisciplinary Learning
14. Naturalist Learning
15. Social / Emotional / Spiritual Learning
16. Art-based Learning
17. Storytelling
18. Design-based Learning
19. Team Teaching / Learning
20. Play-based Learning"

"flexibility / adaptability / variety"

"Of those rare occasions where students are given an opportunity to comment on the quality of their learning environment, one answer always seems to make the cut - MORE SOFT SEATING."

When designing soft furniture spaces:
1) "Moveable seating allows learners to modify their environment."
2) "Electrical power, wired and wireless connections turn soft seating ares into high powered work spaces."
3) Vistas to the city or nature (windows) foster broad-based rather than narrowly referenced thinking."

"Dr. David Thornburg's Primordial Learning Metaphors includes campfires, watering holes, caves and life."

"Campfires are a way to learn from experts or storytellers; Watering Holes help you learn from your peers, Caves are places to learn from yourself and Life is where you bring it all together by applying what you learn to the real world."

"informal campfire spaces can mean space for a group to sit in a circle"

"Watering holes space is able to provide for small group work and socializing. It is important not to label it as a social space since this perpetuates the idea that learning only happens under tutelage and does not embrace the concept of lifelong learning."

"The concept of Watering Holes in schools is alien to the traditional control model of education. Most traditional schools actually discourage social interaction in school as a distraction out of fear that when students socialize they threaten adult goal of discipline and compliance with adult rules."

"Cave Spaces - Places for individual study, reflection, quiet reading and creative flow... inviting but supervisable spaces where students can take a deep breath, albeit momentarily, from their hectic lives.... not all cave spaces need to be quiet ex: benches near a playfield..."

"Why cave space? in solitude students assimilate, synthesize and internalize learning so that it becomes knowledge and (sometimes) wisdom.

"dispersed technology vs computer labs"

"a 21st century approach to technology involves creating policies that emphasize the possibilities and opportunities for learning that new technologies provide" --VS-- "locking down, creating policies that treat technology as static, rather than a dynamic part of the learning equation."

"Da Vinci Studio - adapts from science lab to and art studio in minutes"

"Research lab at Graiger Center for Imagination and Inquiry at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Illinois:
Inquiry Wall
Conservation Coves
Flexible Furniture Layout (tables and chairs moveable)
Soft Seating - think tank area for debate and deliberation (areas usually overlooked in typical science labs)"

"student lockers should be 12-15" wide and 18" deep... avoid use of metal"

"small banks of open cubbies augmented with coat hooks, and smaller lockables can provide secure storage for valuable"

"standing-height or seated-height desktop computer stations for immediate access to a powered up computer for quick tasks such as checking email or uploading a photo to a class blog"

"Howard Gardner's 8 Multiple Intelligences:

1. Linguistic - Word Smart
2. Logical - Numbers Smart
3. Musical - Sounds Smart
4. Kinesthetic - Body/Sports Smart
5. Spatial - Picture/3D Smart
6. Naturalist - Nature Smart
7. Interpersonal - Social Smart
8. Intrapersonal - Self Smart"

"Traditional Classroom (1/2)
Learning Studio (1/2/3/5/6/7)
Cave Space (1/2/8)?



"spaces to nurture interpersonal intelligence"

"Of all the elements that make up a high performance school, none has greater impact on the quality of learning than daylight."

"Research demonstrates that small is defined as 150 students or less. A recent study by Albuquerque Public Schools demonstrates conclusively that the positive effects of 120 student academies are completely lost when the academies grow to 180."

"One way to leverage the positive effects of small learning communities is to break down the scale of the environment into smaller buildings or clusters of spaces. The entry of each can be individualized, reinforcing its unique identity.."

"myth - neutral colors are best ... research shows that learning benefits from a stimulus rich environment..."

"myth- performance spaces should not have any windows ... a better term for a black box might be a white box - a kind of Tubla Rasa - a blank canvas for students to design, rather than have the structure of the theater itself dictate the creative approach."

"ecology... is a web of interrelated relationships."

"David Engwicht refers to most urban design as being fundamentalist. By this he means that we view each part of our urban landscape as being useful for one particular function. With that mindset we might say that homes are for living, workplaces are for working, schools are for learning, shops are for buying and roads are for transport. We can see that the definitions of these things - learning, living, buying, working, transport- are often interpreted narrowly as well, with the attitudes that streets are for cars and schools are for classes. A good rule of thumb for creating community-friendly spaces is to use human beings, not cars or classes, as the primary unit of design."

"A school designed as a series of classrooms reduces opportunities for student-directed learning because it is difficult to passively supervise."

"human scaled entrance and entrance that blends with most major parts of surrounding community (ie shops)"

"homelike bathrooms" ---
"Our children spend most of their days for many years of their lives in school buildings. They should be nurturing, caring places where students are encouraged to develop socially, emotionally, and academically. But none of this would be possible unless the simple, natural routine of going to the bathroom becomes no more stressful or complicated than it is at home."

"to combat bullying and gathering in bathrooms... bathrooms must be small and distributed throughout the school"

"passive supervision"

"The simplest materials are often the most useful learning tools because their use isn't prescribed or implied."

"A principal with foresight called for his library to be housed in the school's main entrance - a space which doubled as the cafeteria and thoroughfare. 'But you can't!' cried the librarian/ 'All the books will be stolen!' The principal replied, 'I will measure the success of this library according to the number of books that go missing. I want our students to value books!'

"There are two key components to effective management of learning resources. One is that the resources themselves are relevant and useful, and the other is that they are accessible."

teacher / staff workspace--- "multiple personal storage options (locked, shelving, rolling, etc), ability to make private phone calls, conference table and white board for teacher collaboration, (outdoor) views and vistas...a space dedicated to assessment and recordkeeping shared by all teachers...."



"Good libraries have always been places where personalized learning has taken place."

"The hidden curriculum of traditional school architecture ... sends messages such as "you are not responsible for your own learning" ... Good libraries on the other hand ... the message is "Here are some of the tools for you to learn with. You are a trusted learner. Go for it!"

"A good library makes interacting with texts of all kinds irresistible. It's comfortable and peaceful. Particularly for children, it is rare to be in a space in which the rules and expectations are not controlled by others.... use of the space is up to the user...
kids generally don't just walk in, sit down and wait to be directed or spoon-fed by the 'owner' of the space."

"The current revolution in school learning spaces is long overdue, but it will be many years before all students are touched by a humanizing curriculum, supported by humanizing spaces. In the meantime, libraries will be the place where students can engage in their own projects, explore topics and texts at their own pace, according to their own interests, on their own whims."

"One of the greatest things about facebook, youtube and myspace is their focus on sharing..."

(on hallways designed as "learning streets"): "It has been a sad commentary that any space that does not look like a classroom has been seen as having no educational value."

"Social Artery: A good Learning Street is primarily a social artery of the school. It is a place for informal meetings, spontaneous conversation, unhurried movement."

"Nooks & Crannies: A learning Street must have stuff happening on either side to make it worth stopping along the way. Nooks and Crannies can be simple niches for seating or they can be actual activities along the way like a small cafe... school store, media center, broadcast studio, art room, sculpture exhibit, technology corners, reading nooks with window seats and so on. A quintessential Learning Street is the suburban shopping mall. Though it serves to link anchor stores at either end, it does not hurry the patrons from one end to the other but gives them ample opportunities to mender along the way.

"Ample Daylight: Ideally, the Learning Street should have outside visibility but if this is not possible, daylight should be introduced via clear-story windows or atrium-type glass roofs."

"Spacious: one of the most important aspects of a Learning Street - it needs to be wide enough not to read like a corridor and tall enough not to feel closed in."

"Frequency: Learning Street would probably be used to access the various areas in the school that are shared by the academics like the media center, gymnasium, the central administrative areas, and if the food is served from a central kitchen, the cafeteria."

"Learning is a social process and close interpersonal relations are central to the quality of learning."

"Collaboration and working together in partnerships is a key characteristic of living successfully in the 21st century."


"It's not just a building... Make it a place that celebrates lifelong learning. Make the center flexible to accommodate more or less students... Make it so kids and adults have access to a wide range of learning resources but can still fell like they belong to a small, caring learning community. Make it safe but in a way that doesn't feel prison like. Connect it through technology to the rest of the world and prepare all learners for the new global society they will inherit."

The Alphabet Of The Trees: A Guide To Nature Writing edited by Christian McEwen and Mark Statman

Find details here.

(Janine Pommy Vega on persona poems)

"I tell my students that the traditional Native Americans believe that everything alive is part of a circle, and in the circle we are all people -- rock people, tree people, coyote people, people people -- and that we talk to each other across the circle. Native Americans believe that everything in nature has a voice and a spirit. I tell my students that today we'll be tapping into the spirit of a particular thing in nature, and speaking with its voice. This does not mean your dog or your hamster. This is bigger, more mysterious and wilder than that...."

"Where is the mystery in it?"

(Jack Collom on the acrostic poem)

"A word is set vertically, and lines of a poem spill out of the letters. Acrostics serve any topic with great structural readiness, since the spine word resonates through the poem."

(Jack Collom on list poems)

"Lists, or catalogues, have been a common element of both poetry and practical life for millennia. They are packed with information and encourage students to use surprise, to play with odd or wide-ranging juxtapositions. List poems tend to be rhythmic and full of energy. I suggested that we make list poems from the idea "Things to Save." To give the word save the right context, I said a little about the looming ecological problems facing the world, but I didn't want to preach to the students. I also let the students know that they didn't have to feel restricted to "nature items" for their things to save; they should feel free to include personal things and favorite things - little sisters, books, or the teddy bear with a missing arm and its eye pulled out on a rusty spring. In this way, we could indicate that nature and civilization are interconnected. I told them that details are better than generalities. (Don't simply save "trees, animals, and water," save the lopsided old sycamore by Salt Creek where the grey-cheeked thrushes sing.) It takes imagination not only to create fantasies, but just to see what's in front of you, to go beyond a "bird' or a "bush." I also tried to show the students that it's both fun and necessary to create variety in their "things to save" writings, variety not only in the items listed but also in the kinds of items ("wild horses, acorns, smiles"). I asked them also to vary syntax in their pieces - not to get into the rut of "Save the blank / save the blink / save the blonk."

I'd like to save the sweet chocolaty chewy candy bars
that melt in your mouth, the warm cozy pillow that you
can't wait to sleep on, I'd like to save green meadows
that you run barefoot across running and running until
you collapse on the wet soft grass, the hot days when
you try to eat ice cream but it melts and plops on your
foot, I'd like to save the amusement parks where you go
on a twisty ride and throw up all over yourself but that's
just what you thought would happen, I'd like to save the
little green bug my big brother viciously killed six
months ago, I'd like to save the world all green and blue
and beautiful, I'd like to save the little things that
everyone enjoys.

--Juli Koski, fifth grade



"Everybody has a water story," exulted poet Sheryl Noethe. Here is an example of the form from Eco-Lit:

Water Autobiography

3 A.M. Longs Peak Trailhead: I strap two liters of water to my pack.
2 P.M. Fredericksted: Hot, very hot. I roll off the raft and into the cooling Caribbean Sea, and bob like a cork
11 A.M. San Juan River, Utah: A wave catches me. I'm pulled under and am embraced by the current.
10 P.M. New York: We took long hot shower together, saving water in the 60s drought.
8 A.M. Lyons: A dead battery on cold winter morning I was late, late for school, late for work - the battery needed water.
4 P.M. Taj Mahal: Two naked children's bodies lie lifeless by the Ganges, their innocence swept away by the lapping holy waters.
11 P.M. Tip of Long Island: With our toes in the icy waters, we sent our spirits to Kohotec to become One with the Universe.
1 P.M. Hesperus: Very pregnant with my own, I break the water sack of a cria (baby llama) and help him emerge, feeling my own child move within me.
5 A.M. Hesperus: The warm soothing bathwater eases the labor pains as I wait for the midwife to arrive.
2 A.M. Lyons: "Maaaaaaaam ¾ Maaaaaaaam, I want some water."
5 P.M. Mediterranean: The sea is calm, eerily calm, not a ripple, just the slightest telling whisper from the north.
9 A.M. Top Longs Peak: The first liter of water was drunk on the way up - now with the second we toast our success.
6 A.M. Outside New Delhi: "Water is running." I slipped from my tent wrapped in a lungi with my towel, soap, and cup in hand to perform our morning ablutions with the women in the irrigation ditch.
8 P.M. Lyons: What it was specifically I don't remember, except perhaps that impish look, but we started to laugh and giggle, the three of us together laughing, laughing so hard that the tears rolled down our cheeks. We embraced with contagious giggles, my girls and I.
6 P.M. Bedminster: Old Tom and I sat on the river bank fishing and drinking beer and talking of life. He was 72 and I was 7 ½.
3 P.M. Fredericksted: It hadn't rained for weeks, the cisterns were empty. A crack of thunder the skies opened and we ran about dancing and shouting and tried to drink the sky.
7 A.M. Wherever: I splash the marvelously cold water on my face - Good Morning!
9 P.M. Far Hills: The rains just didn't stop, the water rose and rose, it was brown and muddy, it took the old cow, the footbridge, and the willow, then it stopped and slowly receded.
12 P.M. Kabul: The fact that he said it was the water gave me little consolation as I lay there bathed in sweat, folded in agony and praying for relief or death.
4 A.M. Mediterranean: The waves buffeted the Eostra about, the skipper yelled orders, the jib was in shreds: Poseidon had definitely lost his cool.
1 A.M. Amsterdam: The subtle movement of the houseboat lulled me into a deep sensuous sleep and dreams of Eros.
7 A.M. Blair's Lake: We scattered his ashes as he had wished - void of emotion.
10 A.M. High Time Farm: Dressed in a long white gown, my tiny bald head sprinkled with water, I received my name.
12 A.M. 12th Street: It was some movie, she said goodbye and I let go like a tropical storm, the tears flowing for every goodbye I ever said or that was said to me.
--Suki Dewey




h consists of variation even more than breadth does.

* * *


ANATOMY POEMS - personifications of body parts (the bones strike up a conversation with the heart, for example).

BUMPERSTICKERS - inventing these (e.g., REMEMBER WATER?) is fun.

"CAPTURED TALK" (students pull language from all around them: signs, books, overheard chat, TV, etc.)

COMPOST-BASED POEMS (after Walt Whitman's "This Compost") - rot, and how life is fed by it.

CONCRETE POETRY - language forming aural or visual patterns, even recapitulating natural shapes.

"I REMEMBERS" - list poems composed of lines each beginning "I remember" can release hundreds of intricate memories, making nature immediate.

METAPHORS - I see exercises in metaphor as objective correlatives of the relational.

ORIGINS (after Jacques Prévert's poems, "Pages from a Notebook") - playful little reverse creation myths ("The music teacher turns back to music," wrote one first grader).

PANTOUMS (Southeast Asian form with a weave of repeated lines) - like the cycles of nature.

QUESTIONS WITHOUT ANSWERS - "Where do all the noises go?" The poem is a response (but not closure) to the question posed.

THINGS TO DO IN -- another way to project the mind outward (into the Brain of the Bumblebee, the Bottom of the Sea - or one's own kitchen).

RECIPES - show how elements can be combined to create new elements. They have a distinct vocabulary that is familiar to everyone. Recipe poems encourage wild imaginative leaps - but no food allowed!


Wallace Stevens's great poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" gives us the perfect form for looking into multiple truths:

seven ways of looking at a cloud

1 i, a disappointed child
when told that clouds weren't solid
2 clouds gathering into massive anvil fist
muttering over the silent desert
splitting rain onto cracked red ground
3 the rain-giving clouds are distinctive
with their countless pouchy buttocks
mooning the earth below
4 Lenny the lenticular was a
mean machine, leaning out across the sky
a speeding ellipse against the blue
5 cumulette puffs of white dropped like wads of cookie dough
their cloudbottoms dark and flat against an unseen nonstick pan
6 a cloud is the ultimate philanthropist
poor in his youth, he becomes generous
with age and girth
sharing his water-horde at last
7 in ancient days a man was turned into a cloud
forever banned from the earth
but at night his form loosened into mist
and he touched the face of his love as she slumbered
--Chris Burk

Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community by Martin B. Duberman

Visit here for details.

"In a welcoming talk to new arrivals in the fall of 1943. Wunsch, who could be self-conscious and timid and timid, found words on this occasion as any ever spoken at Black Mountain...

I want to say now, at the beginning, that while we declare we are beginning the eleventh year of Black Mountain College, we are really beginning a new college. I think we must say this to ourselves each year, lest we begin to let the past become the dominant force in our lives, and already there are too many institutions throttled by the dead and the departed. Many of the people who helped make last year what it was have gone; most of the people who started the College have left. On the other hand there are here this year many new people. An institution, to serve the most people in the best way, should take something of the shape of the people who make it up - have a form somewhat organic with their needs, their desires, their beliefs. I do not mean to belittle the people who have gone before us, nor to infer that we should throw them into the discard. What the did and what they said are woven somehow into the texture of the campus, into the texture of the lives of us who are still here. We who knew the, and believe what they believed will be their spokesmen in this new planning. But there should be new planning; and everyone should be in on the planning. In this planning you will find that the most conservative people here, generally, are the ones who have been here the longest. That's just as true among the students as among the teachers. They would like to keep things as they were. Now I am not pleading for eternal change, nothing today as it was yesterday, but I am earnestly challenging myself and all of you to look at things anew, to examine critically..... Black Mountain is first a community, then a College.... the definition of a 'good' member of the community is one who works out a good relationships with all the people in it." (168)

"All genuine learning... is self learning" (John Wallen) "by which he did not mean isolation and self absorption: "since interpersonal activity is an inevitable component of human affairs, learning can only occur (in the deepest sense of personality reorganization and growth) in an interpersonal relation." The teacher's job, in his view, was to free the student from feelings of inferiority, lack of self-esteem, lack of self-confidence, fear of authority, lack of trust in himself, anxiety, guilt, etc to help him formulate the problems that are of current importance in his own life.... to help him reach his own conclusion..."

"A successful teacher in Warren's view set in process a cycle of readjustment and reevaluation that was lifelong."

"The prime function of knowledge and education, then, is to make living meaningful - both in terms of personal values and of interpersonal relations"

"In 1945 Black Mountain had lost its Rice, but also some of the assertive questioning and innovative emphasis associated with its presence. The question was how the community, now a dozen years old, and more than an institution than an outpost, would react to someone quoting its own sacred scriptures - and in fundamentalist tones no less..... Black Mountain had become used to critics (both within and without the community) mocking its ideals. It had not yet had to deal with someone who took those ideals, quite literally at face value...."

"There were no formal code of rules, the entire community agreeding at the beginning of each year what its guiding princeiples were to be.... constant contact between students and faculty, no degrees, no grades, no requirements - the studnet is the curriculum and the teacher free to teach what he wants in anyway he wants. The emphasis was on the person"

"a free, informal, exploratory setting"

"Understand your workers, help them plan, sing with them when necessary to get them into the rhythm of the work"
(Molly Gregory)

"for a time 'community' and 'art' appear antagonistic forces..."

"An institution is like a person. And just as a person in his formative years deveops a particular life style and a particular way of looking at the world which will filter his experiences from then on, so the same thing happens in an institution. ... year after year, you could see the same kind of things happening. It's as if the cultural pattern is independent of the carriers of it almost." (John Wallen)

"Wallen added that any institution liek Black Mountain born in revolt and rebellion could ever develop a positive goal that will unify the people within it ... the whole life style at Black Mountain was essentially a rebellious life style. When he would ask what kind of education Black Mountain stood for he was usually told it didn't stand for anything..."

"Wallen lamented the lack of understanding, affectionate relationships with other faculty members, that was due less to everyone being busy, he felt, than to the semiconscious fear that constant proximity to one another made relationships more difficult to control and therefore more threatening. Paradoxically, intimate living conditions can militate against closeness... but Wallen believe it is possible to have a group who live closely together and would develop a relationship that would be a virtuous circle instead of a vicious circle."

"In late 1953 the college came very close to closing,; enrollment was down to a feeble two-dozen students, and the faculty hadn't been paid any cash salary in months... the college went on a quarter system, student fees were reduced by almost half, and the lower campus from the dining hall to the Studies Building was first closed and then leased - putting an end to the twenty year tradition of communal dining, but also cutting the estimated operating budget to $25,000 a year. The essential purposes of the college weren't tampered with -- ownership remained with faculty, the educational emphasis remained on the individual and on close student-faculty association, and the arts remained at the center of the curriculum. Miraculously, the college not only hung on, but also.... made a decisive shift into the literary arts and into a lustrous final few years. A handful of remarkable students and teachers some at times neither or both created for Black Mountain in a few short years (roughly 1953-1956) a reputation for innovation and accomplishment to match any period in its history - a reputation that grows in magnitude down to the present day."

(about Charles Olson) "the way he explained things, the way he was able to talk to students, there was something about it which I've never experienced..."

(about Charles Olson) "(He's ruthlessly honest and great about detecting any kind of fraud or dishonesty in another person... And he also has this kind of magic ability to draw - if he loves you, if he cares a great deal about you - he has the ability to draw out of you the very best that's in you; what you should be doing..."

(about Charles Olson) "he plays greatly by ear and intuitively And that leaves a great deal of room for error..."

"writing is something we're given to do, rather than choose to do" (Robert Creeley)

"we're all concerned with finding our own voice- that is, literally, in the sound texture of the poem.....the poem should read on the page as I myself read it to you aloud. It should have my breath in it..." (Joel Oppenheimer)

(author on the completion of the book) "I 've looked forward for so long to having the weight removed, to getting on to other things. Yet I'll miss the weight itself; it filled such a space." (439)