Carriers of arts, letters, and dumplings

Notable Quotables

"If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
William Morris, from his lecture "The Beauty of Life"

"‘Never look at an ugly thing twice. It is fatally easy to get accustomed to corrupting influences."
English architect CFA Voysey (1857-1941)

"The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall, nations perish, civilizations grow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again, and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men’s hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead."
Clarence Day

"Anyone who has a library and a garden wants for nothing."
Cicero

"Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend."
Sir Francis Bacon, "Essays"

"The chief aim of education is to show you, after you make a livelihood, how to enjoy living; and you can live longest and best and most rewardingly by attaining and preserving the happiness of learning."
Gilbert Highet, "The Immortal Profession: The Joys of Teaching and Learning"

"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."
Walter Wriston

"I'd like to give you a piece of my mind."
"Oh, I couldn't take the last piece."
Ginger Rogers to Frances Mercer in "Vivacious Lady" (1938)

"No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem."
Booker T. Washington

"Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member."
Attributed to Groucho Marx in "The Groucho Letters" by Arthur Sheekman

"If you can't say something good about someone, sit right here by me."
Alice Roosevelt Longworth

"If we bring a little joy into your humdrum lives, we feel all our hard work ain't been in vain for nothin'."
Jean Hagen as "Lina Lamont" in "Singin' in the Rain" (1952)

Carriers of arts, letters, and dumplings

Posted on June 3, 2010 by Becky

I had a post yesterday on Rebecca Mead’s current New Yorker essay, “Learning by Degrees”, on the purpose of education, which I agree with her should not be to “compete in the global economy”, as our politicians like to natter on about, but as Ms. Mead wrote, to “nurture critical thought; to expose individuals to the signal accomplishments of humankind; to develop in them an ability not just to listen actively but to respond intelligently.”

So I was interested last night to read in yesterday’s New York Times Wednesday food section the article, “Their Future, Made By Hand” about a new twist in the road for “young, college-educated, Internet-savvy, and unemployed” New Yorkers who now find themselves at “the intersection of the economic downturn and the rise of the local artisanal food movement”, leading to “the recent flowering of small culinary start-ups” and food entrepreneurs:

As the next generation of cooks comes of age, it seems that many might bypass restaurant kitchens [and possibly college…] altogether. Instead, they see themselves driving trucks full of artisanal cheese around the country, founding organic breweries, bartering vegan pâtés for grass-fed local beef, or (most often) making it big in baking as the next Magnolia Bakery.

That “ability not just to listen actively but to respond intelligently”, learned in high school or in college (if not afterwards for many of us), can come in very, very handy. Keep your mind and your options open, and your future might well be delicious. Read the rest of the Times article here. (And while you’re at it, go get the recipe for 1989 Rhubarb-Strawberry Mousse. Yummy.)

Related Farm School posts:

Moving in a common rhythm; from which one of my favorite Andy Rooney quotes, from his 2000 commencement address at the University of Virginia, “Don’t rule out working with your hands. It does not preclude using your head. There’s no reason why education should be incompatible with craftsmanship.”

Craftsmanship

Hands

Tonic and toast

Further thoughts on self-esteem and self-confidence

All roads lead to home and hard work

More thoughts on independence and freedom