Quote of the Day

Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

-- variously attributed to Einstein, Aesop's Fables, and other sources

Quote of the Day -- Audre Lorde

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.

-- Audre Lorde

Quote of the Day -- Medgar Evers

Our only hope is to control the vote. 

-- Medgar Evers

Quote of the Day -- Ruth Benedict

The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences.

-- Ruth Benedict

Quote of the Day -- Edward Luce

Cities are becoming too successful for their own good...  A thousand multicultural flowers are blooming. Yet in squeezing out income diversity, the new urban economies are also shutting off the scope of serendipity. The West's global cities are like tropical islands surrounded by oceans of resentment.

-- Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism

Quote of the Day -- David Brooks

The great achievement of the meritocracy is that it has widened opportunities to those who were formerly oppressed. But diversity is a midpoint, not an endpoint. Just as a mind has to be opened so that it can close on something, an organization has to be diverse so that different perspectives can serve some end. Diversity for its own sake, without a common telos, is infinitely centrifugal, and leads to social fragmentation.

-- David Brooks, NY Times, 28 May 2018

Quote of the Day -- Anne Perry

The worst fear of all was that people of another faith would make you question your own belief in your place and value in the world, the old certainties you had grown up with that kept the darkness inside imprisoned where it could not spread and consume you with doubt...

-- Anne Perry, The Echo of Murder

Quote of the Day -- William Cowper

Variety's the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavour.

-- William Cowper

The Art of Understanding -- the Guthrie's Disgraced

We recently had the opportunity to see the Guthrie's production of the relatively new play Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar. It received the 2013 Pulitzer Prize. Here's the intro from the playbill: 

"A rapid-fire, award-winning social drama

Amir Kapoor, a successful Pakistani-American lawyer, is happy, in love and about to land the biggest promotion of his life. But ethnicity collides with ambition when Amir and his wife, Emily, host a dinner party at their Upper East Side apartment. Friendly conversation turns confrontational, and Amir makes a costly decision."

In a few short, well-crafted scenes, Akhtar provides important insight into ethnicity, ambition, love, loyalty, cultural misunderstanding, and the pain of loss. The audiences cringes in anticipation of the consequences of inescapable actions and literally gasps when long-buried cultural biases and problem-resolution "techniques" rear their ugly heads. 

In an era when we are subjected to so many sound bites, stereotypes, and catch phrases, Disgraced demonstrates the tremendous value of the arts to explore deeper meaning and provide greater understanding. Each of the four participants in the conversation made unforgivable mistakes in the course of the story, but we the audience can understand if not forgive.

This is an important play that is being produced at regional theaters around the country. If you have the opportunity to see it, by all means, go!