Category: Reading

“In 1980 … more than a hundred galleries in New York concentrate on showing contemporary work (as against a dozen or so in 1960), American colleges and universities turn out close to fifteen thousand arts graduates a year, young men and women schooled in the talismans of vanguardism and fully sympathetic to what Harold Rosenberg called “the tradition of the new.”

Nobody is obliged to cut off his ear in this society. Is it possible, in fact, that the practice of art today has become too easy? All those college grads know that art is whatever the artist decides to make (or not to make, if he happens to be a Conceptualist), and the key question–How Do You know You’re an Artist?–rarely gets asked. One decides to be an artist, acquires a B.F.A. or M.F.A. degree, and after that whatever one makes must be art.

Having no dominant style to assimilate or rebel against, the young artist confronts a limitless range of possibilities; it could also be argued that this makes the practice of art more difficult than ever. Where originality is so highly placed, mere novelty obtrudes. Any number of budding talents appear sui generis to a fault. “

“… the truth may surely be borne in mind, that the bustle, and triumph, and laughter, and gaiety which Vanity Fair exhibits in public, do not always pursue the performer into private life, and that the most dreary depression of spirits and dismal repentances sometimes overcome him.

Recollection of the best ordained banquets will scarcely cheer sick epicures. Reminiscences of the most becoming dresses and brilliant ball-triumphs will go very little way to console faded beauties. Perhaps statesmen, at a particular period of existence, are not much gratified at thinking over the most triumphant divisions; and the success of the pleasure of yesterday becomes of very small account when a certain (albeit uncertain) morrow is in view, about which all of us must some day or other be speculating.

O brother wearers of motley! Are there not moments when one grows sick of grinning and tumbling, and the jingling of cap and bells? This, dear friends and companions, is my amiable object–to walk with you through the Fair, to examine the shops and the shows there; and that we should all come home after the flare, and the noise, and the gaiety, and be perfectly miserable in private.”

“Unless, when one approaches an alien art, one makes a scholarly attempt to grasp its essence, one will grant recognition only to what one feels has a positive effect on one’s own personality and acts as a new and enriching element in one’s life. That is the natural way for a man to approach a strange work of art. In doing this he may calmly take appearance for reality, and fill the form, which would otherwise be dead for him, with new life; this is how many ideas become fruitful only when they are misunderstood. Any man, and that includes any artist, is entitled to do this, but not to make the arrogant assumption that he has found the key to a strange art in what he is thus able to perceive and appreciate of it.”

“The scholar, who struggles to understand the essence of Egyptian art without hoping to find in it some immediate gain in his responsiveness to life, cannot be satisfied with the kind of observation just described. Many people have probably been drawn to this art because at some time it appealed to their emotions. But the scholar must test whether the forms are really created with the intentions suggested to him by his emotions. … In order to achieve this he will have to stand at a distance and abandon his instinctive sympathy for the works.”

“Many people tend to be shocked when it is suggested that they apply their intellects to works of art. Yet for anyone who is seriously engaged in the study of art it is essential. At least the basic principles underlying the rendering of nature in Egyptian art are quite simply comprehensible only through thought; they must necessarily remain closed to unaided sensibility. This is an area where Goethe’s maxim that ‘a work of art should just be enjoyed, not dissected by analysis’ is invalid. “

“Those who compare the age on which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in their imagination may talk of degeneracy and decay: but no man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.”

“The present constitution of our country is, to the constitution under which she flourished five hundred years ago, what the tree is to the sapling, what the man is to the boy. The alteration has been great. Yet there never was a moment at which the chief part of what existed was not old. A polity thus formed must abound in anomalies. But for the evils arising from mere anomalies we have ample compensation. Other societies possess written constitutions more symmetrical. But no other society has yet succeeded in uniting revolution with prescription, progress with stability, the energy of youth with the majesty of immemorial antiquity.”

“The perfect wardrobe isn’t something that you can cook up in a weekend. Your personal style is the result of many different influences, all the people you have met over the years, all the places you have traveled. It’s a truly personal thing that can take a little digging to fully uncover.”

“Training yourself to become more selective is the single most effective thing you can do to upgrade your wardrobe. … But because of our natural human tendency to conserve energy in the short term and choose the easiest route when possible, being more selective when it comes to your wardrobe is something you actively have to practice.”

“If you have picked up this book expecting a fail-proof wardrobe plan that you can replicate, I have to disappoint you. On no page of this book will I tell you what to wear, which pieces to include in your wardrobe, or what kind of top to match with which kind of bottom. What I will do is show you how you can figure all these things out for yourself.”

“Some of the biggest style icons of the last century were people who explicitly did not follow every new trend out there and instead had their own very distinctive looks from which they rarely strayed.”

“It takes time to train your eye, experiment with different aesthetics, and develop a sense of style that feels natural and effortless to you. It takes time to figure out which types of pieces work best for your lifestyle and to curate a versatile wardrobe.”

“Our clothes tell a story. Our clothes reflect our personality and what’s important to us.”

“To be comfortable and confident, we need clothes that feel like us.”

“To be functional, your wardrobe needs to be optimally tailored to your lifestyle, or in other words, what you are doing all day. Not what you would like to do, or what you will be doing sometime in the future if all goes well. But right now.”

“A great wardrobe is like a well-oiled machine that consists of interrelated parts that all work together, allowing you to mix and match freely and create a ton of different outfits that all suit your personal style.”

“If you’re on a tight budget, that’s all the reason to use your money well and not spread it across lots of imperfect things.”

“The way you shop is nothing but a set of habits you have picked up over the years. And if you want to change the way you shop and become more selective and thoughtful about what you buy and what goes into your wardrobe, then you need to gradually replace those habits with some new ones.”

“Your best defense is a clear, succinct shopping list. Get in the habit of deciding what you want to buy before you hit the shops, online or in person at a brick-and-mortar store.”

“After decades of research and number crunching, brands know exactly how to lure us in, point us toward the pricy stuff, and send us home with way more than we came in for.”

“Compared to the average shopper, people who own carefully curated wardrobes shop at a snail’s pace. They like to take their time to compare all options before they make a decision and will rarely buy a piece on the same day they first spotted it in a store or online.”

“… humans are pretty terrible at making decisions under pressure. We ignore crucial pieces of information, get hung up on irrelevant details, and overemphasize certain things just to reach a conclusion. Having to make a decision while stuck in a tiny compartment in various states of undress definitely classifies as an under-pressure situation. And I’m not just talking about time pressure … but also an internal pressure not to leave empty-handed. Because after you’ve already invested all that time and effort to come to the store and try everything on, of course you’d rather not leave without having anything to show for it. ”

“The hands-down best way to escape that feeling of being under pressure and improve your decision making when it comes to buying pieces for your wardrobe is to simply automate the entire process.”

“Just like your eating habits, your approach to shopping is something you have been cultivating your whole life. And that’s why changing it usually requires a good deal of effort and introspection.”

“… let’s not forget what discounts are: a marketing tool designed to get us to spend more money, not less. Price reductions are one of the most reliable sales strategies out there and a surefire way for a brand to increase profit. Why do discounts work so well? Because they tap right into our inherent fear of scarcity and trigger our instinct to hoard resources whenever we can. We tend to use the price of a product as a marker for its desirability, so when something is reduced, we feel as though by buying it we are making the best possible use of our most-valued resource: money. That coupled with the fact that time-limited discounts create a sense of urgency puts us straight back into hunter-gatherer mode.”

“No matter the price, a new piece is worth the money only if you need it, love it, and will wear it.”

“As men and women (and relations between them) change, their shopping behaviors do, too, which will have huge implications for American business.”

“Most purchasing traditionally falls to women, and they usually do it willingly–even when shopping for the mundane necessities, even when the experience brings no particular pleasure, women tend to do it in dependable, agreeable fashion. Women take pride in their ability to shop prudently and well. In a study we ran of baby products, women interviewed insisted that they knew the price of products by heart, without even having to look. (Upon further inquiry, we discovered that they were mostly wrong.) As women’s roles change, so does their shopping behavior–their becoming a lot more like men in that regard–but they’re still the primary buyer in the American marketplace.”

“You’ll see a man impatiently move through a store to the section he wants, pick something up, and then, almost abruptly, he’s ready to buy, having taken no apparent joy in the process of finding. You’ve practically got to get out of his way. ”

“The great traditional arena for male shopping behavior has always been the supermarket. It’s here, with thousands of products within easy reach, that you can witness the carefree abandon and restless lack of discipline for which the gender is known. In one supermarket study, we counted how many shoppers came armed with lists. Almost all of the women had them. Less than a quarter of the men did. Any wife who’s watching the family budget knows better than to send her husband to the supermarket unchaperoned. … Throw a couple of kids in with Dad and you’ve got a lethal combination; he’s notoriously bad at saying no when there’s grocery acquisitioning to be done.”

“Supermarkets are places of high impulse buying for both sexes–fully 60 to 70 percent of purchases there were unplanned, grocery industry studies have shown us.”

“Paper grocery store coupons? Gone. Whoosh! Today less than 3 percent of all manufacturers’ coupons are ever redeemed. Women’s lives changed, and the thought of sitting hunched over the kitchen table scissoring away at the Daily Bugle suddenly seemed as cost-effective as churning your own butter. Oh, there are some major pockets of coupon-clipping resistance–senior citizens, the highly budget-conscious and motivated, mostly women who aren’t working at jobs all day. But otherwise–outtahere!”

“Under the old division of labor, the job of acquiring fell mainly to women, who did it willingly, ably, systematically. It was … women’s main realm of public life. If, as individuals, they had little influence in the world of business, in the marketplace they collectively called the shots. Shopping gave women a good excuse to sally forth, sometimes even in blissful solitude, beyond the clutches of family.”

“As women’s lives change, their relationship to shopping must evolve. Today most American women hold jobs, so they get all the impersonal, businesslike contact with other adults they want … They also get plenty of time away from the comforts of home. And so the routine shopping trip is no longer the great escape. It’s now something that must be crammed in … Catalogs, TV shopping channels and Web shopping all have flourished thanks mainly to the changes in women’s responsibilities. And the less time they spend in stores, the less they buy there. … Women may even become more male in their shopping habits–hurried hit-and-run artists instead of dedicated browsers and searchers. … women have more money … women have less time and inclination to spend it in stores.”

“Women can go into a kind of reverie when they shop–they become absorbed in the ritual of seeking and comparing, of imagining and envisioning merchandise in use. They then coolly tally up the pros and cons of this purchase over that, and once they’ve found what they want at the proper price, they buy it. Women generally care that they do well in even the smallest act of purchasing, and take pride in their ability to select the perfect thing, whether it’s cantaloupe or a house or a husband.”

“…the basics of publishing as I learned it and tried to practice it: “Publishing is the business of conveying your own honest enthusiasm for a book and a writer to the rest of the world.”

“If you believe in a book, there are others who will too, because you’re not special.”

“Every book has its own potential readership–figure out what it is and reach for it, don’t try to sell every book to everyone.”

“Take every detail seriously, since we just don’t know what makes certain books do better than others. Except, of course, their innate qualities.”

And, perhaps hardest to accept, “Readers aren’t stupid–their instincts may prove to be sounder than yours.””

“Men think that because everybody remembers a memorable event soon after it is done, it will never be forgotten; and so it ends up not being registered and cast into oblivion.

I have always done my best to rescue and preserve antiquities, which would otherwise have been utterly lost and forgotten, even though it has been my strange fate never to enjoy one entire month, or six weeks, of leisure for contemplation.

I have rescued what I could of the past from the teeth of time.

Matters of antiquity are like the light after sunset – clear at first – but by and by crepusculum – the twilight – comes – then total darkness.”

Calgacus, leader of the Britons, rallies his men for battle against Agricola:
“We, the last men on earth, the last of the free, have been shielded till today by the very remoteness and the seclusion for which we are famed. We have enjoyed the impressiveness of the unknown. But today the boundary of Britain is exposed; beyond us lies no nation, nothing but waves and rocks and the Romans, more deadly still than they, for you find in them an arrogance which no reasonable submission can elude.”

Tacitus remembering his father-in-law, Agricola:
“May we honour you in better ways – by our admiration, by our undying praise, even, if our powers permit, by following your example! That is true honour, the true affection of souls knit close to yours. … Not that I would place an absolute ban on likenesses of marble or of bronze. But the image of the human face, like that face itself, is feeble and perishable, whereas the essence of the soul is eternal, never to be caught and expressed by the material and skill of a stranger, but only by you in your own living.”

Found at Harrisonburg’s greatest thrift shop, the ‘Gift and Thrift’.

Many of the techniques in this book I’ve used for years, such as going to the store alone during off hours, using a grocery list system, purchasing produce only when in season, etc. But now I have ideas for more.

Thanks to their advice I’ve just created a spreadsheet, accessible on my phone, that allows me to compare unit prices for regularly purchased items across stores. This list has already been incredibly helpful for decision making. It isn’t always obvious which stores will have the best prices on which items, and in many cases my intuition was wrong.

Good advice from this book:

– Go to the store as little as possible. Try to reduce trips to once a month. (I now go every two weeks.)
– Know your prices. Compare unit prices only! Bring a calculator to the store if necessary. (I’m now using the spreadsheet mentioned above.)
– Establish a ‘buy price’ for frequently purchased items. Wait until they are on sale at or below your ‘buy price’ and then buy them in bulk.
– Use coupons when possible. Avoid purchasing items that you wouldn’t normally purchase just because you have a coupon. Use coupons on smaller containers for a better unit price.
– Avoid warehouse clubs and memberships. Go occasionally with a friend who has a card to check for occasional deals. Most prices at warehouse clubs are not a deal! (I just found out that this is true after visiting Costco with my aunt. By using my spreadsheet with unit prices I saw that most of the sale prices at my usual store were lower than the Costco prices, often for better quality items.)
– Use ‘rain checks’ if the grocer is out of a sale item. Pick up the item later at the sale price.
– Watch closely at the checkout and carefully check all receipts for errors.
– Bagged produce is usually much cheaper than per-piece produce items. Bags are often slightly over the declared weight. Check carefully for damage however.

I read this book while falling asleep nearly every night for the last few months. It isn’t terribly quotable and it put me to sleep very well, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fascinating.

What did I learn?

There is far, far more dark matter in the universe than baryonic matter. In fact it is the distribution of dark matter that determines the visible distribution of matter that we see. Understanding the properties of dark matter is essential to understanding large-scale structure formation in the universe.

There is plenty of stuff, intergalactic gas and such, between galaxies. I had somehow imagined that it was all pure voids between them. Even metals make it out into intergalactic clouds. This makes perfect sense when one considers that galaxies collide and form clusters.

Quasars were far more common in the early universe. It may be that most galaxies pass through a phase of having active nuclei.

“Get out of the building.”

“I thought of something I learned from reading Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas by Mari Sandoz. Crazy Horse believes that he will be victorious in battle, but if he stops to take spoils from the battlefield, he will be defeated. He tattoos lighting bolts on the ears of his horses so the sight of them will remind him of this as he rides. I tried to apply this lesson to the things at hand, careful not to take spoils that were not rightfully mine.”

“I flung my jacket over my shoulder, Frank Sinatra style. I was full of references. He was full of light and shadow. … He took twelve pictures that day. Within a few days he showed me the contact sheet. ‘This one has the magic,’ he said. When I look at it now, I never see me. I see us.”

“I left Mephistopheles, the angels, and the remnants of our handmade world, saying, ‘I choose Earth.'”

“‘Patti’, he drawled, ‘you got famous before me.'”

“Why can’t I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply. I got over the loss of his desk and chair, but never the desire to produce a string of words more precious than the emeralds of Cortés.”

“…he wanted people to like his mind again–after a while it might be such a nice place in which to live.”

“Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don’t. They just want the fun of eating it all over again. … I don’t want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.”

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