sincerity is scary

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Through the Years

A groundbreaking litigator for women’s rights before being appointed to the bench, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has worn many aspects in her eighty-five years. On the Justice’s birthday, flip through some photographs of her as a girl in Brooklyn, as a law graduate who left Columbia as co-valedictorian (but with no job offers), as a young mother, and as an advocate whose greatest legacy may be in the cases that she argued before what was then an all-male Supreme Court—and won.  (Photographs from the collection of the Supreme Court of the United States.)

Back in early summer I stumbled upon this pile of wood while strolling in a pasture with Pan (to meet baby cows), and it looked quite dry and good quality and it’s never too early to worry about your winter’s supply of firewood, so I went in search of the farm and asked the owner about it. He said it was at least 3 years-old and after a lot of mandatory small talk and hints, he agreed to deliver it at my house “at some point” when he was done haying.

I think last year I would have been stressed by the total vagueness re: date of delivery and cost (if I’d asked how much he wanted for his wood I would have received at best a noncommittal shrug), but I’m starting to figure things out, so I made no mention of money, and just waited, and two months later he delivered my wood as promised, then took a look at the forest behind my house and said I had some nice ash trees. I ended up offering him an ash tree in exchange for his already-cured wood and he said yes, that’s fine. I warned him that I might only have it cut in a few months and that was fine too.

Transactions are a lot less stressful now that I have a better grasp of how things work around here—time and money are often irrelevant in a way that feels disconcerting to someone raised in cities where you get things with money and without delay. Last summer when my donkey was injured and I needed an enclosure for him, the mason came to build a corral and when I asked him how much it would cost, he said “don’t worry, we’ll figure it out.” A perplexing answer for me because what is there to figure out? You give me a price and I pay. I tried to remind him of the corral later on but he never seemed to want to be paid for his work. Months later, I was chatting with the postwoman (his wife) who said their daughter struggled with English at school, and I offered some tutoring, and she said oh that would be great, then later added “see! we figured it out for your corral.” And if she hadn’t said that I don’t think I would have linked the two, and realised we had made a trade.

Since everyone loves these so much! credit: @itsmaeril

Sometimes classics can be improved upon.

The Tree Who Set Healthy Boundaries : an alternate ending for Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree by Topher Payne 💯🌳❤️

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!

Kurt Vonnegut

And he went WOW.  That’s amazing!  And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.” 

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them.  I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”