Joseph Smith

Junior

What can you say about Joseph Smith? That doesn’t run the risk of offending somebody?

On the other hand, the creators of the musical, The Book of Mormon, have probably already taken care of that. Offending everybody, I mean.

Clearly, this is a highly influential Smith. Arguably, the only modern-day founder of a religion—assuming that you think of Mormonism as a separate religion rather than another denomination of Christianity.

I don’t know enough about Mormonism to speak knowledgeably on the subject. I don’t know all that much about Joseph Smith.

I will say, after perusing the Wikipedia entry, that it sure sounds like his life would make a great movie. The only trouble is that you’d almost have to take a position on the theological questions and that would certainly pose problems.

It’s a fascinating story, though.

Today, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has over 6 million followers in the United States. One of their members ran for President as the nominee of the Republican Party.

So, I say again—Joseph was and is a highly influential Smith.

Truth is stranger than fiction.

Sillier, too.

Writers are always trying to dream up things that are original. Strange, even. (Hence, you may imagine, almost any Stephen King novel.)

I think we should just give it up.

Because, here are a bunch of purportedly true stories. And if I put any one of them in a play, nobody would believe it. Although, I’m thinking that Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin could have made good use of a few of them.

The gentleman with the insurance claim and the tools in the barrel was made for Keaton, for sure.

The man in the lawn chair with the balloons—a Chaplin short, undoubtedly.

I don’t know what to make of poor Brian Finnegan, though.

The Secret Door

Artist Dates made easy.

One of the main tools of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way is the Artist Date, where you take your inner artist on a weekly excursion to spark your imagination. It is, for me, and I think for other people, the most easily overlooked and often skipped of all the components of the 12-week journey back to creativity.

Now, however, for the armchair traveler in all of us, there is The Secret Door.

Using Google Maps street view, a company in the U.K. (selling windows and doors, of course) has built a website that takes you on a random visual excursion all over the world. You won’t always know where you are, but the images are extraordinary.

So, go ahead.

Step through the Secret Door.

The Secret Door is presented by Safestyle UK

You never know

When, where, how and by whom you’re gonna get inspired.

How cool is that?!

So, today, I am thankful for unexpected inspiration.

I’m not talking about inspiration for my next play or novel—although, Universe, if you’re listening—bring it on!

I’m talking about inspiration for how to live better, how to bring more joy into our lives, how to increase our sense of connection.

It’s not like these are not things that most of us know on some level. But it is true that we tend to forget. We get busy. We get anxious. We get stuck.

The thing that is so great is that we run into reminders everywhere.

I’m thinking right now about this post by Brené Brown, scholar and author, about rebranding Valentine’s Day into a day of generosity. The idea is to take the Hallmark holiday and make it meaningful by practicing random acts of kindness and generosity.

Even better, you don’t have to wait for Valentine’s Day.

I re-read the post just now, and I see no reason to wait. I can give it a shot any time.

Just thinking about it makes the sun shine a little brighter. A sense of mischief and interest has entered my day.

So, that’s all well and good, and if you have similar thoughts, more power to you. The point, however, is that I wasn’t looking for this the day I logged into Facebook and followed a link to Brené Brown’s TED talk. (Watch it below for yourself.)

I just found the little blurb intriguing, listened to the talk, thought it was very interesting and subscribed to her blog.

And out of that, this.

Not a new idea.

Just a good one.

You never know.

What in the world?!

Or, to be less politically correct…

WTF?!

There are people who just have too much time on their hands.

Which is fine.

Most of us do, really, now that we have achieved the 40 hour work week and vacuum cleaners.

I guess I’m just wondering today about what some people choose to do with it.

I’m not sure whether to call this wild originality (it is), or total ridiculousness (also true).

But, seriously. Which is stranger? That somebody actually came up with these two ideas for web pages, or that I found them, or that I am spending time writing about them, and…let’s be honest…you are spending time looking at them.

I do apologize. But it’s like a train wreck. You can’t help but look.

I am a Turtle

and

Postbox or Cheese?

If you have any explanation, any, that doesn’t involve the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), feel free to attempt to explain it.

In the meantime:

Saya kura-kura.*

Or, I wish I were, anyway. Then I would get some use out of that website.

*”I am a turtle” in Indonesian.

Creativity in everything

Make choices!

If I remember correctly, one of Jack Canfield’s tips in his book, The Success Principles is about making choices. The point, I think, was to get in the habit of making choices rather than just going along with things. If somebody asked you where you wanted to eat, Canfield suggested that you make a choice, advance an opinion, pick a restaurant rather than say, “I don’t care.”

Obviously, there will be times when you really don’t care where you eat. You have more important things on your mind. But making choices in small things helps you to make choices in big things. You may remember that I’ve used this quote before from Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love.

Will you be a poet, or a scholar?
I don’t mind.
Oh, it helps to mind. Life is in the minding.

“Life is in the minding.”

I think, too, that creativity is in the minding.

This is a tip for me, especially, more, even, than you, because I think I am often guilty of trying to find the easiest way rather than the most creative. But I am going to start asking myself more often if there is a more interesting way to do something. Can I take a little more effort and arrange this furniture in a more pleasing pattern? Is there something interesting I can do with these plants? Other than stick them in the ground and hope that they grow? What do I really want my new kitchen to look like? How should it operate? What gadgets are useful? Or fun?

This is going to be a hard tip for me to follow. I want things done easily. Fast. Inexpensively.

Creativity is, often, the opposite of all that.

I suspect, though, that practice helps.

And to that end, I’m going to see if I can’t do something interesting with my shoelaces.

Why don’t you take a look at that link, too? And, when next we meet, we’ll compare patterns!

The miracle of the finite goal

Cross it off!

There is something so extremely satisfying about crossing things off a check-list that I have one friend who adds already completed items to her list just so she can mark them off. (I wish I’d thought of that!)

Anyway, I am especially appreciative of this miracle today on this Miracle Monday because I have managed—more by luck, possibly, than good management—to wrestle my recent To Do lists into a level of such granularity as to make it possible for me to cross a number of things off.

One of the most interesting—to me—concepts in David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done, is the idea that most To Do lists fail because they mix projects and tasks. According to Allen, you need separate lists.

Projects are things you can’t complete without taking multiple steps. “Buy new windows,” for example, cannot be crossed off your list unless you have already done the research, gotten the estimates, and made your decisions about type and style and when and where and so on.

“Call glass company for appointment,” however, is a thing you can do and cross off.

So, I try to keep a list of projects from which I try to pull out tasks in the smallest increments possible. Because then, I get to cross things off the list! Which, of course, is only the visible and supremely satisfying proof that the project has been advanced.

But, oh! How satisfying it is!

And how tangled things get when I forget that.

The item on the To Do list that sits there day after day, week after week, is almost always, upon closer investigation, a project. It doesn’t get done because it is not something a person can do.

Which is why I try to remember to take a step back whenever I am confronted by those lingering, uncrossed-off entries and realize that the actual task is to make a plan. Move it off the task list onto the project list. Break it down into the actual steps that need to be accomplished.

Those are the things that should be put on the To Do lists.

And today, I can celebrate moderate success at remembering that and the advancement—incremental though it may be—of several projects.

Yay!

Gig Smith

Helen, that is.

Helen “Gig” Smith is one of those girls in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

You know? A League of their Own?

According to her Wikipedia entry, she’s 91.

You’d think being a professional ball player and making it to 91 would be enough interesting stories for anybody’s life, but Ms. Smith was also an artist. She enlisted in World War II as a WAC and, eventually, worked for Army Intelligence on top secret cartography.

The nickname “Gig” was acquired her first day in the WACs. It stands for “government issued gripe,” and I’m thinking there’s a story or two behind that, as well.

Maybe even another movie?

Miss Mary Mack

All grown up.

Remember those clapping games?

You and a partner singing a little ditty and clapping out some more-or-less elaborate pattern?

Well!

Check this out:

Okay, so maybe it’s not so much Miss Mary Mack as it is River Dance with hands.

What I really want to know is how the choreographer explains it. What’s the terminology? Are they doing falap, ball changes? Shuffling off to Buffalo? Or do they have a whole new language?

If you find out, let me know!

Life’s Little Mysteries

Stuff you didn’t even know you should wonder about.

(It pains me to end that sub-head with a preposition. I know it should be “Stuff about which you didn’t even know you should wonder,” but I couldn’t quite bring myself to be pedantically correct about a sub-head beginning with the word “Stuff.” Kindly overlook it, please.)

Now, where were we?

Oh, yes. Stuff you didn’t know you should wonder about.

I found this website.

Lifeslittlemysteries.com

It’s full of stuff that fascinates me. Stuff about which I never even thought to wonder.

Why is the glass in airport control towers slanted?

Why have doctors switched from white scrubs to green?

What makes some meat white meat and some meat dark meat?

What makes an Etch-a-Sketch work? (Actually, I think I had figured this out myself at one point—minus the technical details.)

The site is also full of stuff about which I have wondered from time to time.

Why cats hate car rides, for example.

No one who was on that car trip when I helped move my sister from Connecticut to Michigan could help wondering about that. That journey is one of those stories best saved for when I write my screenplay about a road trip—except a) no one would believe it and b) nobody could train a cat to behave that way on camera.

We will draw a veil over that trip except to say that I have been held prisoner by cats in a car, in a hotel room, and in an apartment, and someday, there will be a reckoning.

Anyway, all that is kind of beside the point of this post which is just to introduce you to yet another time-wasting website and/or help to prepare you for your next audition for Jeopardy!

It’s up to you what you do with that info. Proceed with caution.

Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants