"You have a right to know those people. You deserve to receive their kindness, camaraderie, and expertise. You don’t have to make the same choices your parents made for you. You get to have your real, giant, gorgeous life. As you so clearly articulated, your stutter is not what’s keeping you from that. Your ideas about what it means to have a stutter are. So you need to change them.

Nobody worth your attention gives a damn if you stutter. Write this down on pieces of paper and tape them all over your room. Put one in every pocket of all of your pants. Nobody worth my attention gives a damn if I stutter! They might blush when you stutter. They might awkwardly try to help you communicate. But not because they think you’ve got “one unforgivable thing.” They do that because they have a moment of surprise or discomfort, that in their desire to make you feel okay they don’t quite know what to do and some of them do the wrong thing."

"Despair is a black leather jacket in which everyone looks good, while hope is a frilly pink dress few dare to wear. Rebecca Solnit thinks this virtue needs to be redefined.

Here she takes to our pulpit to deliver a sermon that looks at the remarkable social changes of the past half century, the stories the mainstream media neglects and the big surprises that keep on landing.

She explores why disaster makes us behave better and why it's braver to hope than to hide behind despair's confidence and cynicism's safety.

History is not an army. It's more like a crab scuttling sideways. And we need to be brave enough to hope change is possible in order to have a chance of making it happen."

"…concerns about a character program…comprised only those kind of nice-guy values. “The danger w/ character is if you just revert to these general terms—respect, honesty, tolerance—it seems really vague. If I stand in front of kids & just say, ‘It’s really important for you to respect each other,’…they glaze over. But if you say, ‘Well, actually you need to exhibit self-control,’ or you explain the value of social intelligence—this will help you collaborate more effectively —…it seems…more tangible.”…

“Sure, a trait can backfire. Too much grit…you start to lose ability to have empathy for other people. If you’re so gritty that you don’t understand why everyone’s complaining about how hard things are, because nothing’s hard for you, because you’re Mr. Grit, you’re going to have a hard time being kind. Even love—being too loving might make you the kind of person who can get played…character is something you have to be careful about…strengths can become character weaknesses.”

"You have to be one school.<br />
<br />
You cannot want one thing for students and another for teachers…<br />
<br />
It's hard sometimes. Teachers are adults, and they get paid. So, as administrators, we want and expect more from them. But the values we hold as an administrator will be reflected in the values teachers manifest when they work with the kids. Both kindness and cruelty flow downstream. <br />
<br />
If we want classrooms to be active places, so must our faculty meetings be. <br />
<br />
If we want to feel cared for by teachers, then we must care for teachers.<br />
<br />
If we want students to be able to engage in powerful inquiry, so must teachers. <br />
<br />
The biggest crime of the story is that the principal wants kindness and care from the teachers to the students, but is unwilling to do the same for the adults in her care.<br />
<br />
We must endeavor to be one school."

"…story of Shinichi Yasutomo, extraordinary principal of a rural elementary school in Kanayama, central Hokkaido, Japan. Yasutomo is a man driven by his vision for learning & his passion for educating the heart as well as the mind. The film follows Yasutomo, his teachers & staff, students & their families over the course of one entire school year.<br />
<br />
The film is also the story of the families of Kanayama. Parents & elders of this once impoverished town embrace Yasutomo's vision, but not w/out wary glances back to past. This small community, bound together by love for its children, is also defined by its journey through the cultural upheavals of postwar Japan.<br />
<br />
Beyond intimate observation of everyday life, from morning gymnastics to the graduating ceremony, Heart of the Country takes viewers into the world of Japanese values, revealing how the school, family & community are bound together in a self-perpetuating relationship based upon obligation, mutual responsibility & trust."

Chaplin [unmixed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLci5DoZqHU ]: "Greed has poisoned men's souls; has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge as made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in man; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all."<br />
<br />
Koolhaas: "Conceptually, each monitor, each TV screen is a substitute for a window; real life is inside, cyberspace has become the great outdoors..."

“Watch out for people who have a situational value system, who can turn the charm on and off depending on the status of the person they are interacting with,” Swanson writes. “Be especially wary of those who are rude to people perceived to be in subordinate roles.”

"All advice is autobiographical.<br />
<br />
It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past. This list is me talking to a previous version of myself.<br />
<br />
Your mileage may vary…<br />
<br />
1. Steal like an artist… 2. Don’t wait until you know who you are to start making things…  3. Write the book you want to read… 4. Use your hands… 5. Side projects and hobbies are important… 6. The secret: do good work and put it where people can see it… 7. Geography is no longer our master… 8. Be nice. The world is a small town… 9. Be boring. It’s the only way to get work done… 10. Creativity is subtraction…"

"Brene Brown studies human connection -- our ability to empathize, belong, love. In a poignant, funny talk at TEDxHouston, she shares a deep insight from her research, one that sent her on a personal quest to know herself as well as to understand humanity. A talk to share."

"But you know who came to my rescue all three times? Immigrants. Mexican immigrants. None of them spoke a lick of the language. But one of those dudes had a profound affect on me.<br />
<br />
He was the guy that stopped to help me with a blow out with his whole family of 6 in tow… [Great story here.]<br />
<br />
So, to clarify, a family that is undoubtedly poorer than you, me, and just about everyone else on that stretch of road, working on a seasonal basis where time is money, took an hour or two out of their day to help some strange dude on the side of the road when people in tow trucks were just passing me by. Wow...<br />
<br />
But we aren't done yet… [story continues]"

"…rarely do I make it to the end of day & look back at a purposeful, sustained march…In spite of ability to adapt to unexpected & turn surprise into teachable moment, teachers…are often uncomfortable w/ change & uncertainty…there may be something inherent about middle schoolers that requires, even dictates, a more flexible, free flowing style of management…There is probably no age group in a greater state of flux & transformation…In some ways, life in MS may mirror…world of quantum physics.…random events that seem to defy pattern & determinism…relationships btwn students, teacher & parents give meaning to our action…in seemingly endless series of encounters…saving grace, redeeming motif that makes it all worth it is the quality of the relationships & one’s ability to alter & affect life in MS by the humanity, kindness & humor one brings to each new crisis/encounter/situation."

"In this episode, a question that haunted Charles Darwin: if natural selection boils down to survival of the fittest, how do you explain why one creature might stick its neck out for another?<br />
<br />
The standard view of evolution is that living things are shaped by cold-hearted competition. And there is no doubt that today's plants and animals carry the genetic legacy of ancestors who fought fiercely to survive and reproduce. But in this hour, we wonder whether there might also be a logic behind sharing, niceness, kindness ... or even, self-sacrifice. Is altruism an aberration, or just an elaborate guise for sneaky self-interest? Do we really live in a selfish, dog-eat-dog world? Or has evolution carved out a hidden code that rewards genuine cooperation?" [Related: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/books/review/deWaal-t.html?pagewanted=all ]

"in US curriculums, a growing emphasis on standardized test scores as primary measure of “successful” schools has crowded out what should be an essential criterion for well-educated students: a sense of responsibility for the well-being of others...

"What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy -- they're given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you're not careful, and if you do, it'll probably be to the detriment of your choices."

"The concept of this blog is in response to requests from people who have participated in one or more of the online kindness classes offered by Andy Smallman and the Puget Sound Community School in Seattle. People were hoping to be provided some inspirational ideas for acts of kindness they could perform, much as is done in the regular classes. For those of you looking for a full-blown kindness class, Andy plans to offer them again in the fall."

"A small private school in Seattle offered a kindness class this fall, part of a larger movement that started more than a decade ago. Offered online, the class had 250 people — the most ever — who lived as far away as Poland."

"We've written about several technology-enhanced games that aim to get kids to exercise; one we hadn't seen, however, was an online game that strives to promote social change. Sure enough, though, Akoha is a new, reality-based game that uses mobile, web and real-world challenges to ask the question, “What if playing a game could make the world a better place?”

"wait a minute. You forgot something. If you're going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm."...Diaz says he asked for something in return [after dinner] — the teen's knife — "and he gave it to

"During the moment the stranger offers his or her goodness, the person being aided offers degrees of humility, dependency, gratitude, surprise, trust, delight, relief, and amusement to the stranger."