Tom Hanks Said It Best

This is a speech Tom Hanks gave in 2005. It’s a quick read and worth the three minutes of your time:

THE POWER OF FOUR
by Tom Hanks

 

Not long ago I was reading about the problem of gridlock on the freeways of Southern California–the traffic jams which cripple the city, stranding millions and laying waste to time, energy, and the environment. Gridlock is as serious and as impenetrable a problem as any we face, a dilemma without cure, without solution, like everything else in the world, it seems.

Some smart folks concocted a computer simulation of gridlock to determine how many cars should be taken off the road to turn a completely jammed and stilled highway into a free-flowing one. How many cars must be removed from that commute until a twenty-mile drive takes twenty-five minutes instead of two hours? The results were startling.

Four cars needed to be removed from that virtually stuck highway to free up that simulated commute… four cars out of each one hundred. Four cars per one hundred cars, four autos out of every one hundred autos, forty cars from each thousand, four hundred out of ten thousand. Four cars out of one hundred are not that many. Two cars out of every fifty–one driver out of twenty-five drivers.

 

Now, if this simulation is correct, it is the most dramatic definition in earthly science and human nature of how a simple choice will make a jaw-dropping difference to our world. Call it the Power of Four. One commuter in your neighborhood could put the rush back into rush hour. So, if merely four people out of a hundred can make gridlock go away by choosing not to use their car, imagine the other changes that can be wrought just by four of us–four of you–out of a hundred.

Take a hundred musicians in a depressed port city in Northern England, choose John, Paul, George, and Ringo and you have “Hey Jude”. Take a hundred computer geeks in Redmond, Washington, send 96 of them home and the remainder is called Microsoft.

Take the Power of Four and apply it to any and every area of your concern. Politics: Four votes swung from one hundred into another hundred is the difference between gaining control and losing clout. Culture: 2 ticket buyers out of fifty can make a small, odd film profitable. Economics: by boycotting a product 1 consumer out of 25 can move that product to the back of the shelf, and eventually off it altogether.

Four out of 100 is miniscule and yet can be the great lever of the Tipping Point. The Power of Four is the difference between helplessness and help. H-E-L-P: a four-letter word like some others with many meanings.

 

The graduating class of 2005 can claim, with perhaps more credibility than any other class in history, that during its four years of college the world went crazy. In the fall of 2001, our planet earth and the United States of America were different sorts of places–in tone, in tolerance, in peace and war, in ideas and in ideals–than they are on this spring day in 2005. These past years have been extraordinary in the express rate of change, well beyond the usual standards of culture, well above the personal watermarks you have stamped as college students. As college graduates, you now live in a brand new world, with new versions of political upheaval, global pandemic, world war and religious polarization, the likes of which have rarely visited our planet all at once–and thank God for that.

 

Today’s main purpose is to celebrate your entering into society, but the fact is you have all been very much steeped in it already- Poughkeepsie being the proxy and microcosm of the whole wide world. None of you were untouched by the events in September of your freshman year, none unaffected by the ideological movements of local and geo-politics since. All of you have been staring your individual fate and our collective future right in the eye for the last four years. The common stereotype would have you today, cap in the air, parchment in hand, asking yourself “what do I do now?” You, the class of 2005, have already had many, many moments during your time at Vassar when you asked yourself that question. You might have added the word ‘Hell’, or some such four-letter word to the phrase: “What the HELL do I do now?” In which case, today might not be all that different from other days on campus– except your parents are here and they might take you out for better food.

 

On Commencement Day, speechmakers are expected to offer advice–as though you need any, as though anything said today could aid your making sense of our one-damn-thing-after-another world. Things are too confused, too loud, and too dangerous to make ‘advice’ an option. You need to hear something much more relevant on this day. You need to hear the most important message thus far in the third millennium. You need to hear a maxim so simple, so clear and evocative that no one could misconstrue its meaning or miss its weighty issue.

So, here goes. It’s not a statement, but a request. Not a bit of advice, but a plea. It is, in fact, a single four-letter word, a verb and a noun which takes into account the reality of your four years at Vassar as well as the demands of the next four decades you spend beyond this campus.

It’s a message, once made familiar by the Beatles–those Northern English lads who embodied The Power of Four.

Help. HELP. HEEEELLLLLLPP!

 

We need help. Your help. You must help. Please help. Please provide Help. Please be willing to help. Help… and you will make a huge impact in the life of the street, the town, the country, and our planet. If only one out of four of each one hundred of you choose to help on any given day, in any given cause– incredible things will happen in the world you live in.

Help publicly. Help privately. Help in your actions by recycling and conserving and protecting, but help also in your attitude. Help make sense where sense has gone missing. Help bring reason and respect to discourse and debate. Help science to solve and faith to soothe. Help law bring justice, until justice is commonplace. Help and you will abolish apathy– the void that is so quickly filled by ignorance and evil.

 

Life outside of college is just like life in it: one nutty thing after another, some of them horrible, but all interspersed with enough beauty and goodness to keep you going. That’s your job, to keep going. Your duty is to help– without ceasing. The art you create can glorify it. The science you pursue can prove its value. The law you practice can pass on its benefits. The faith you embrace will make it the earthly manifestation of your God.

Here at Vassar whatever your discipline, whatever your passion you have already experienced the exhausting reality that there is always something going on and there is always something to do. And most assuredly you have sensed how effective and empowering it can be when more than four out of one hundred make the same choice to help.

You will always be able to help.

So do it. Make peace where it is precious. Help plant trees. Help embrace diversity and celebrate differences. Help stop gridlock.

In other words, help solve every problem we face – every single one of them–with the Power of Four out of a hundred. Help and we will save the world. If we don’t help–it won’t get done.

 

Congratulations. Good luck. Thank you.

 

Reprinted from the Plant Tea Gardener, www.plantea.com

 

NWPCG Clay Camp is Coming!

Yahoo! It’s Clay Camp again! I can’t tell you how many stories I have from years and years of Clay Camp. Hilarious weekend adventures with other artists at play, where your meals are cooked for you, someone else does the dishes and at night you go to bed knowing you spent hours in the pursuit of your own art and witnessing others inspiration first hand. Every year I go and savor the drive, shedding my every day concerns with each mile of solid green trees and the sound of the river to my right. It’s only about an hour away (actually less, traffic permitting), but I take my time so I can transition my mind from mentoring others to thinking about what I want to do with my precious, precious time.

It’s not just about snagging some studio time in a great supportive space but it’s also about community. For quite a number of years we had mostly the same people. I always have an extra chair by my place that I call the ‘visitor’s chair’. When my friend Linda Goff was alive she would come and sit and we would chat and laugh, people would bring their chairs over after dinner and we would all laugh even more. I didn’t get much work done but gosh we had a lot of fun. There were photo opportunities like the ‘Kumquat Shot’ where 5 or 6 people lined up to try a kumquat at the same time. The resulting facial expressions and sudden movements caught by my camera were hilarious! I’ll have to dig that photo up.

Now Linda is gone and some people have moved on or like my friend Jayne (I call her Sayne), they’ve moved. Sayne came to camp every year for 10 hears from Portland, OR but she has now moved to Florida so we don’t see her at camp anymore. I was just visiting Sayne in Florida last week and we reminisced about a particularly rich event at camp where a friend of ours finally got that it how much more important it was to experience the color than worry about the mess, (thanks to Sayne!). It brought tears to our eyes just to remember this touching moment and I’ll never forget Sayne’s great, good work that day. My young friend Autumn is building her life now – she just got engaged! So instead of hanging with us older gals she’s nesting…and I often wonder what happened to many others when camp rolls around, (Lexi? Julia? Susan? Jan?). Our Noisy Late Nighter’s cabin used to be overbooked and now it’s our Light Sleepers/Early Riser’s that are in the majority. Not many sit in my visitor’s chair anymore and the Sunday night rabble rousers have definitely dwindled in the last 3 years or so. I actually make more stuff now but I miss the community we had that made so many memories together. We still have our hilarity, even on the low attendance years and this year we have many new faces. I’m sure there are great senses of humor and design to be discovered anew.

 

I Love Technology

I know the big tech companies are soaking us all for every last dollar. That’s pretty clear when Apple comes out with a phone that talks back using an app that was previously available to everyone in the App Store. Yes, Siri was there for the taking before Apple bought the software and put it into one phone model. An all inclusive piece of tech was hobbled to become exclusive tech; another carrot for a device that wasn’t earth shaking or innovative with new wing dings or googaws. I had Siri but once Apple got it they deactivated all previous versions of the app on Oct. 15 so we, the rabble out here with Apple devices other than THE iPhone 4S, could not use it. Selling out and shooting fish in a barrel has become a marketing strategy. How odd.

I do love technology despite humans with poor ethics giving it a bad name. I love my iPad. I couldn’t do what I do without it. So what do I do? I create and print my handouts for classes, create and maintain spreadsheets for the art center; sign, return in email and organize all of my contracts, and other forms or agreements; create art (yep! Paint, draw, collage!), process photos for PR, for fun and to share; I maintain multiple calendars: one for bookings and schedules for the art center, one for me (for classes, travel dates, appts., you name it); create PR pieces for myself and the art center, play games sitting in the airport and thanks to my iPad: I’ve read more books and magazines this last year than I have in the last three years because they’re always with me in my iPad or in my iPhone! So sitting in the Drs office I can read some of my current book while I wait. I love that.

A great app I found is called ReQall. It’s like Jot was but better because it integrates into your Outlook or Google calendar, automatically organizes things for you and reminds you of stuff. You talk into your phone and it takes it from there. For example: I recorded ‘Tuesday night dinner at xxxx’ and it appeared on May 15 in my ToDo list. You can arrange your own categories, tags and locations so that if you’re going by the store the app can remind you to get bread… I haven’t figured out how that works yet but I will.

There is also a setting to use it in ‘eyes free’ mode so when you’re in the car and think of something to note you can without having to look at your phone to do it.

There is an iOS and Android version so no one is left out really (well, you folks with Blackberries/RIM might feel left out but you have your own stuff).

 

Make Your Own…Monday

It seems I’ve gotten out of my regular blogging habit. That and I’m on the road a lot this year so far. I just got back from teaching in Philadelphia a bit over a week ago and I’m leaving for Florida. This bouncing around has been disruptive to, well, everything. I have one more event after this trip that’s nearer the end of May and then I stay home until August, (back to Philadelphia for Bead Fest!).

I am really looking forward to a good long dose of studio time. It’s like a good drink of water for the thirsty at this point. I do make things in between everything. For example, I was able to start on an experiment for work I’ve had on my mind for awhile now: window jewelry. They have windows In them so whatever you’re wearing shows thru a bit. Then the jewelry always matches! I got the basics of a pin made in my hotel room in Philadelphia one night. I can’t wait to explore that series of ideas more.

This picture is the sunset in Oaks, PA from my hotel window. I seem to collect sunsets from every hotel window so far this year. Something must be percolating there. Either it’s jewelry or a new book that I’m going to make or both, I don’t know…

So in honor of making, I declare it Make Your Own Monday. Check out how to make your own fresh ginger ale! Check out: http://joythebaker.com/2011/06/homemade-ginger-syrup-for-ginger-ale/

 

I Just Want to Make Stuff

Artist’s are always saying ‘I just want to make stuff’. It’s not so easy sometimes. I’m sure we all know that I had my arm reconstructed. Things have been improving over this last year and a half until…this last month or so. I was beginning to think I undid my surgery somehow, (hauling luggage?). Then last week I get a hard painful lump right under some of the smaller incision scars that I have. By the next day the thing is standing up like a cartoon lump on Popeye’s head. Ahh, so that’s where this pain has been coming from. What to do? My Dr tells me it’s a ganglion cyst and to see my hand surgeon this week. Really? Again? And here I have all these trips going this year, hauling luggage and equipment. When will there be time to deal with this?

Of course I’ve backed off from using my hand but carrying everything on one side throws out my back. Sigh. I just want to make stuff.

Snow in March?

Okay, I’m sure no one is looking for my blog posts anymore after all the lag time between posts. Life is busy and there’s just so much to do: teaching, mentoring artists, travel teaching which has a lot of details that go with it, and I’m running the EDGE program right now. I just got back from Tucson two weeks ago and I leave soon for Santa Fe to teach at Bead Fest. Then my EDGE students graduate. Beyond that I’ll be off to Wild at Heart Studios on San Juan Island, WA, Bead Fest Spring in Philadelphia, Clay Fandango in the Orlando area, and I can’t even think where else right now. I just put one foot in front of the other, looking at the next thing and not all the rest. I don’t get overwhelmed that way.

So yeah, it snowed at my house today. More snow in Seattle? Really? So I made a little Snow Door Guardian to greet my guy when he got home. It was a silly moment of creativity. It was fun, cold and reminded me of being a kid in the snow. It also reminded me of how every moment was not planned but my time was still full. As a kid I didn’t have to work, of course, but it reminded me to remember to stop once in awhile, to take the time to just play. So remember to do just that. Take some time to play every day.

 

On the Road Again

 It’s time to get to Tucson for the last week of the big gem show.  I’ll try to post some pix of this Year’s adventures!  In the meantime, I’m going to leave you with some ideas for surfing Pinterest!  Try searching for:

Hello Kitty – I saw some pretty hilarious things when I did this

Sharks

Socks

Television

Retro

Have fun!

 

Do You Use Pinterest?

 If you don’t know about Pinterest check it out.  I think it was made with visual artists in mind.  It is essentially a site that lets you create a variety of electronic bulletin boards and pin all sorts of things to those bulletin boards such as pictures, ideas, books you like or would like to read and so on.  You get to decide what each bulletin board will be about.  I have 12 I think.  Some of the categories I’ve given them include Polka Dots, Fun Stuff, Sharkey Loves, My Style, Jewelry AHA!, Cozy Spaces and Small Houses and more.  in pursuit of things to pin to my boards I’ve found a step by step picture tutorial on how to make your own paper clay, cool lamps that would be easy and fun to make (like out of straws and liter bottles!), great genie shoes, jewelry ideas and garden houses I wish I could have in my yard.

  To pin something to a board:  you can RePin items from other people’s Pinterest pages, upload your own things or add pins from websites online.  In this way you can collect all sorts of things and keep them in one place.  People will visit your boards and see what you’ve collected.  Some may even RePin some of the things you’ve collected to have them on their own boards on their Pinterest page.  It’s pretty interesting actually. Or would that be pinteresting?  Www.pinterest.com

Organizing Your Artistic Year

 Okay, it’s a new year and the proverbial time to start afresh.  It’s amazing how much stuff accumulates every year and how much I find to donate or get rid of.  Truly there must be some mountain of stuff somewhere with my name on it.

  So here I am mucking out the studio so I can get more productive this year.  I have a monster show in Switzerland in November and know from the last time I did this show there were 8,000 people opening night.  I am not a production artist so I have to get with it now to have enough stuff for that show as well as the two galleries that carry my things.  So back to the business at hand: I’m re-organizing some things in the studio and refining the space like I do from time to time.  I think I have a dream of the uber organized space that I can walk into feely, sit down and start creating…why is that do hard?  I can rarely do that in my studio so thank gawk I can do that at ArtWorks.  Anyway, in scoping out options and trying to get a handle on that tiger named ‘DISorganized’ I found an interesting website I thought I would share: lifeorganizers.com 

Maybe you’ll find something there that is helpful.

 

I’m Never Where I Want to Be, Part 2

   With the way that I am I’ve found that usually wherever I am is where I want to be.  It’s the ‘getting there’ part that’s hard.  It may be because I have a lot of disruption in my life due to traveling to teach or I have an issue with transitions that I haven’t really looked at, I’m not sure.  However once I get to where I’m going I’m fine.  It could be I just hate to leave home…=)

  I’ve been working on just being glad I am here wherever that might be instead of looking at all the things I wish I were doing or could be.  In other words, there is a point to be made for just really looking at where you are and making the most of that.  Does this make sense?  It’s okay that your work isn’t earth shattering Monet level or on the lips of every person on the planet.

    The American culture has a preoccupation with being famous.  It’s obvious to me now that this comes back to seeing oneself as special.  If others see you as special then there’s the proof that you are.  But guess what?  You should know this without that external validation.  If you love your art then that’s enough.  So if you find yourself envying others that ‘seem’ more visible, become more visible to yourself.  The rest will follow.  I can tell you from experience that having people know your name in a random elevator is not a comfortable position to be in.  Think about it: you don’t know them but they ‘know’ you.  It’s actually disconcerting especially at night when away from home.  And what is it that these people ‘know’ about you anyway?  I mean really.  So understand that being known shouldn’t ever be a goal.  It’s so much better for your work to be what’s known, isn’t it?