Editing Skills Quotes

How came the bodies of animals to be contrived with so much art, and for what ends were their several parts? Was the eye contrived without skill in Opticks, and the ear without knowledge of sounds?...and these things being rightly dispatch’d, does it not appear from phænomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent...?

The martial arts are based upon understanding, hard work and a total comprehension of skills. Power training and the use of force are easy, but total comprehension of all of the skills of the martial arts is very difficult to achieve.

When a leader was once asked how to develop the skill of quick decision-making, he answered, “Be around people who are not afraid of making mistakes.

Many aspects of our screen-bound lives are bad for our social skills simply because we get accustomed to controlling the information that comes in, managing our relationships electronically, deleting stuff that doesn't interest us. We edit the world; we select from menus; we pick and choose; our social 'group' focuses on us and disintegrates without us. This makes it rather confusing for us when we step outdoors and discover that other people's behaviour can't be deleted with a simple one-stroke command or dragged to the trash icon.

The internet is killing the art of writing. The big "publish" button begs you to publish even before you go back and make one single edit, and as if this was not enough, you have instant readers who praise your writing skills!-

As with any new skill, attitude, style, or belief, adopting a coaching ethos requires commitment, practice, and some time before it flows naturally and its effectiveness is optimized.

In ancient times, women who had ceased their monthly flow were believed to hold their life-giving powers within themselves, like the dark moon. They were thought to be creating something powerful with their retained womb blood—pregnant with wisdom instead of new life. Valued and honored in their communities, these sage women had skills and powers no younger woman could possess. Like Hekate, they were crones, crowned

The Advanced Level is Mastery of the Basics

She reflected that the Mad Max movies had been skillfully edited to erase the actual tedium of driving through outback Australia.

Jung has said that to be in a situation where there is no way out, or to be in a conflict where there is no solution, is the classical beginning of the process of individuation. It is meant to be a situation without solution: the unconscious wants the hopeless conflict in order to put ego-consciousness up against the wall, so that the man has to realise that whatever he does is wrong, whichever way he decides will be wrong. This is meant to knock out the superiority of the ego, which always acts from the illusion that it has the responsibility of decision. Naturally, if a man says, "Oh well, then I shall just let everything go and make no decision, but just protract and wriggle out of [it]," the whole thing is equally wrong, for then naturally nothing happens. But if he is ethical enough to suffer to the core of his personality, then generally because of the insolubility of the conscious situation, the Self manifests. In religious language you could say that the situation without issue is meant to force the man to rely on an act of God. In psychological language the situation without issue, which the anima arranges with great skill in a man's life, is meant to drive him into a condition in which he is capable of experiencing the Self. When thinking of the anima as the soul guide, we are apt to think of Beatrice leading Dante up to Paradise, but we should not forget that he experienced that only after he had gone through Hell. Normally, the anima does not take a man by the hand and lead him right up to Paradise; she puts him first into a hot cauldron where he is nicely roasted for a while.

Blackadder was fifty-four and had come to editing Ash out of pique. He was the son and grandson of Scottish schoolmasters. His grandfather recited poetry on firelight evenings: Marmion, Childe Harold, Ragnarok. His father sent him to Downing College in Cambridge to study under F. R. Leavis. Leavis did to Blackadder what he did to serious students; he showed him the terrible, the magnificent importance and urgency of English literature and simultaneously deprived him of any confidence in his own capacity to contribute to, or change it. The young Blackadder wrote poems, imagined Dr Leavis’s comments on them, and burned them.

Thus, Taiwan Strait may have served as the training ground where mainland Chinese developed the open-water maritime skills that would permit them to expand over the Pacific.

One of the most profound mysteries of autism has been the remarkable ability of most autistic people to excel at visual spatial skills while performing so poorly at verbal skills.

The practice of science was not itself a science; it was an art, to be passed from master to apprentice as the art of painting is passed or as the skills and traditions of the law or of medicine are passed.

As your skills increase, you will see your unique style become firm and recognizable. Guard it, nurture it, and cherish it, for your style expresses you. As with the Zen master-archer, the target is yourself.

A good mentor does not simply go through her life hoping that others will pick up what she knows, but is actively engaged in helping others learn. She is tuned in enough to notice what skills are needed and is patient enough to teach them.

An editor doesn't just read, he reads well, and reading well is a creative, powerful act. The ancients knew this and it frightened them. Mesopotamian society, for instance, did not want great reading from its scribes, only great writing. Scribes had to submit to a curious ruse: they had to downplay their reading skills lest they antagonize their employer. The Attic poet Menander wrote: "those who can read see twice as well." Ancient autocrats did not want their subjects to see that well. Order relied on obedience, not knowledge and reflection. So even though he was paid to read as much as write messages, the scribe's title cautiously referred to writing alone (scribere = "to write"); and the symbol for Nisaba, the Mesopotamian goddess of scribes, was not a tablet but a stylus. In his excellent book A History of Reading, Alberto Manguel writes, "It was safer for a scribe to be seen not as one who interpreted information, but who merely recorded it for the public good." In their fear of readers, ancients understood something we have forgotten about the magnitude of readership. Reading breeds the power of an independent mind. When we read well, we are thinking hard for ourselves—this is the essence of freedom. It is also the essence of editing. Editors are scribes liberated to not simply record and disseminate information, but think hard about it, interpret, and ultimately, influence it.

One of the most encouraging new discoveries that the human brain has made about itself is that it can physically change itself by changing its accustomed ways of thinking, by deliberately exposing itself to new ideas and routines, and by learning new skills.

but what is true in it, so it seemed to me, reviewing the story of Shakespeare’s sister as I had made it, is that any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at. For it needs little skill in psychology to be sure that a highly gifted girl who had tried to use her gift for poetry would have been so thwarted and hindered by other people, so tortured and pulled asunder by her own contrary instincts, that she must have lost her health and sanity to a certainty.

After graduating, I'd moved to the Washington D.C. area to see what I could do with the skills I'd picked up from a creative writing degree. The chief export of the nation's capital is, of course, paper work, so I reckoned I could land some kind of writing or editing position at one of the many nonprofits and associations in the area.

Writing is like painting; editing is like sculpture.  Same sensibilities, different skill set.

That’s precisely how I felt about editing Athena’s work. She made me a better writer. It was eerie, how quickly I absorbed her skill;

When children are not shamed for undeveloped skills but rather are loved quite fully just for being who they are, then competence becomes less important.

The one art subject that we could easily afford is drawing, the skill that is basic to training visual perception and is therefore the entry-level subject—the ABCs—of perceptual skill-building.

Congratulations! You've correctly discerned the difference between a sitting U.S. senator and a slightly moldy root vegetable. For your skill, you'll receive this limited edition commemorative digital photo.

I'm an interesting guy. I have thrilling hobbies like sleeping, napping, and dozing. If we meet up and chat over coffee, your conversation will probably excite me enough to give you a demonstration of my skills.

That news was enough to induce 900 Maori to sail to the Chathams. The outcome clearly illustrates how environments can affect economy, technology, political organization, and fighting skills within a short time.

Epictetus nicely likened this process to gaming: “The counters are indifferent and the dice are indifferent: how do I know which way they will fall? But to use the throw carefully and skillfully, that is my job.

and not a day goes by when I don’t think of Silverstream, Feathertail, and Stormfur. But I have no quarrel with StarClan for the path they chose for me, and I’m proud of all my kits. Blossomfall for her courage and skill in battle; Bumblestripe for his loyalty and compassion; and Briarlight for her bravery, her humbling spirit, and her hopefulness. I shall be watching all of you from the elders’ den; you can be sure of that.

I took a job teaching private-school white teenagers how to edit video. They used their newly developed skills to make documentaries about poor brown people in other countries. It's not oil that runs the world, it's shame.

Just think what the ordeal must be like for less intellectually robust people, less equipped by education and rhetorical skill than they are, or than Julia Sweeney is, to argue their corner in the face of obdurate family members.

StarClan gave each Clan the skills it needs to survive in its own territory. RiverClan cats swim well. ThunderClan is good at stalking prey in the undergrowth. SkyClan cats can leap into trees because there’s not much cover in their territory.

Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats, there’s a reason to life! We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!

But while Poland had welcomed them, Russia despised them. Its economy was too primitive to need their commercial skills and it abhorred their religion. To Catherine the Great her one million new subjects were first and foremost “the enemies of Christ.

This book is, in a way, a scrapbook of my writing life. From shopping the cathedral flea market in Barcelona with David Sedaris to having drinks at Cognac with Nora Ephron just months before she died. To the years of sporadic correspondence I had with Thom Jones and Ira Levin. I’ve stalked my share of mentors, asking for advice. Therefore, if you came back another day and asked me to teach you, I’d tell you that becoming an author involves more than talent and skill. I’ve known fantastic writers who never finished a project. And writers who launched incredible ideas, then never fully executed them. And I’ve seen writers who sold a single book and became so disillusioned by the process that they never wrote another. I’d paraphrase the writer Joy Williams, who says that writers must be smart enough to hatch a brilliant idea—but dull enough to research it, keyboard it, edit and re-edit it, market the manuscript, revise it, revise it, re-revise it, review the copy edit, proofread the typeset galleys, slog through the interviews and write the essays to promote it, and finally to show up in a dozen cities and autograph copies for thousands or tens of thousands of people… And then I’d tell you, “Now get off my porch.” But if you came back to me a third time, I’d say, “Kid…” I’d say, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Brahms uses the horns with great skill, as if calling the audience deep into a German forest. The sound carries with it an important part of Brahms' internal spiritual world. Behind the horns, the timpani pulsate softly but insistently, as if secretly waiting for something with real meaning. This is a part well worth the great care that has been lavished on its editing.

For what felt like hours, we sucked on each other’s tongues while his hands seemed determined to search out and skillfully caress every spot on my body within reach that made me shudder and moan, his rock-hard erection equally determined to stimulate me into a frenzy as he sensually rubbed himself almost teasingly against my pelvis. Then before I knew it, his considerable girth was inside me,

For the global skill of drawing, the basic component skills, as I have defined them, are: The perception of edges (seeing where one thing ends and another starts) The perception of spaces (seeing what lies beside and beyond) The perception of relationships (seeing in perspective and in proportion) The perception of lights and shadows (seeing things in degrees of values) The perception of the gestalt (seeing the whole and its parts)

While researching bullying prevention programs for the first edition of this book, I was concerned that many of the programs developed for schools had as their foundation conflict resolution solutions. People who complete such well-intentioned bullying prevention programs become skilled at handling different kinds of conflict and learn effective anger management skills, but they still have no clue how to identify and effectively confront bullying. It is disturbing how often school districts’ procedural handbooks mention the use of a mediator “to resolve” a bullying issue, as if it is a conflict. In doing this we are asking targeted students to be willing to reach some sort of “agreement” with the perpetrators. In conflict, both parties must be willing to compromise or give something up in order to come to a resolution. The bullies are already in a position of power and have robbed the targets of their sense of well-being, dignity, and worth. How much are we asking the targets to give up? With

It is so rare to have a new tent appear that Celia considers canceling her performances entirely in order to spend the evening investigating it. Instead she waits, executing her standard number of shows, finishing the last a few hours before dawn. Only then does she navigate her way through nearly empty pathways to find the latest edition to the circus. The sign proclaims something called the Ice Garden. and Celia smiles at the addendum below which contains an apology for any thermal inconvenience. Despite the name, she is not prepared for what awaits her inside the tent. It is exactly what the sign described. But it is so much more than that. There are no stripes visible on the walls, everything is sparkling and white. She cannot tell how far it stretches, the size of the tent obscured by cascading willows and twisting vines. The air itself is magical. Crisp and sweet in her lungs as she breathes, sending a shiver down to her toes that is caused by more than the forewarned drop in temperature. There are no patrons in the tent as she explores, circling alone around trellises covered in pale roses and a softly bubbling, elaborately carved fountain. And everything, save for occasional lengths of whet silk ribbon strung like garlands, is made of ice. Curious, Celia picks a frosted peony from its branch, the stem breaking easily. But the layered petals shatter, falling from her fingers to the ground, disappearing in the blades of ivory grass below. When she looks back at the branch, an identical bloom has already appeared. Celia cannot imagine how much power and skill it would take not only to construct such a thing but to maintain it as well. And she longs to know how her opponent came up with the idea. Aware that each perfectly structured topiary, every detail down to the stones that line the paths like pearls, must have been planned.

We accomplish all that we do through delegation—either to time or to other people. If we delegate to time, we think efficiency. If we delegate to other people, we think effectiveness. Many people refuse to delegate to other people because they feel it takes too much time and effort and they could do the job better themselves. But effectively delegating to others is perhaps the single most powerful high-leverage activity there is. Transferring responsibility to other skilled and trained people enables you to give your energies to other high-leverage activities. Delegation means growth, both for individuals and for organizations.

The Reagan formula featured a president with little comprehension of, indeed little interest in, most of the major issues of the day but with an actor’s skill in assuming a symbolic role, that of quasi-monarch. That same formula also aimed at replacing the idea of an engaged and informed citizenry with that of an audience which, fearful of nuclear war and Soviet aggression, welcomed a leader who could be trusted to protect and reassure them of their virtue by retelling familiar myths about national greatness, piety, and generosity. It was demagoguery adapted to the cinematic age: he played the leader while “we the people” relapsed into a predemotic state.

Whether working in the yard or just going about the daily business of life, you are continually adjusting, trimming, touching, shaping, and tinkering with the wealth of things around you. It may be difficult for you to know when to stop. We are all torn between the extremes of taking care of things and leaving them alone, and we question whether many things could ever get along without us. We find ourselves with pruning shears in hand, snipping away at this or that, telling ourselves that we're only being helpful, redefining something else's space, removing that which is unappealing to us. It's not that we really want to change the world. We just want to fix it up slightly. We'd like to lose a few pounds or rid ourselves of some small habit. Maybe we'd like to help a friend improve his situation or repair a few loose ends in the lives of our children. All of this shaping and controlling can have an adverse affect. Unlike someone skilled in the art of bonsai gardening, we may *unintentionally* stunt much natural growth before it occurs. And our meddling may not be appreciated by others. Most things will get along superbly without our editing, fussing, and intervention. We can learn to just let them be. As a poem of long ago puts it, "In the landscape of spring, the flowering branches grow naturally, some are long, some are short.

Many a morning I found myself waking up in America and being surprised to find myself in a bed. I had been having nightmares all night long, and I didn’t know where I was. It would take me awhile to adjust, because I couldn’t believe I was in a bed. What was I doing in a bed? After the war I never slept more than three or four hours a night. In those days you didn’t talk about stuff like that. There was no such thing as war syndrome, but you knew something was different. You tried not to remember anything from over there, but things came back to you. You had done every damn thing overseas, from killing in cold blood to destroying property to stealing whatever you wanted and to drinking as much wine and having as many women as you wanted. You lived every minute of every day in danger of your own life and limb. You couldn’t take chances. Many times you had a split second to decide to be judge, jury, and executioner. You had just two rules you had to obey. You had to be back in your outfit when you went back on the line. You had to obey a direct order in combat. Break one of those rules and you could be executed yourself, right on the spot even. Otherwise, you flaunted authority. You lost the moral skill you had built up in civilian life, and you replaced it with your own rules. You developed a hard covering, like being encased in lead. You were scared more than you’d ever been in your life. You did certain things, maybe against your will sometimes, but you did them, and if you stayed over there long enough you didn’t even think about them anymore. You did them like you might scratch your head if it itched. You

Bertrand Russell famously said: “It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true.” [but] Russell’s maxim is the luxury of a technologically advanced society with science, history, journalism, and their infrastructure of truth-seeking, including archival records, digital datasets, high-tech instruments, and communities of editing, fact-checking, and peer review. We children of the Enlightenment embrace the radical creed of universal realism: we hold that all our beliefs should fall within the reality mindset. We care about whether our creation story, our founding legends, our theories of invisible nutrients and germs and forces, our conceptions of the powerful, our suspicions about our enemies, are true or false. That’s because we have the tools to get answers to these questions, or at least to assign them warranted degrees of credence. And we have a technocratic state that should, in theory, put these beliefs into practice. But as desirable as that creed is, it is not the natural human way of believing. In granting an imperialistic mandate to the reality mindset to conquer the universe of belief and push mythology to the margins, we are the weird ones—or, as evolutionary social scientists like to say, the WEIRD ones: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic. At least, the highly educated among us are, in our best moments. The human mind is adapted to understanding remote spheres of existence through a mythology mindset. It’s not because we descended from Pleistocene hunter-gatherers specifically, but because we descended from people who could not or did not sign on to the Enlightenment ideal of universal realism. Submitting all of one’s beliefs to the trials of reason and evidence is an unnatural skill, like literacy and numeracy, and must be instilled and cultivated.

The Art of Subtraction If there is one habit that all of the investors in this chapter have in common, it’s this: They focus almost exclusively on what they’re best at and what matters most to them. Their success derives from this fierce insistence on concentrating deeply in a relatively narrow area while disregarding countless distractions that could interfere with their pursuit of excellence. Jason Zweig, an old friend who is a personal finance columnist at the Wall Street Journal and the editor of a revised edition of The Intelligent Investor, once wrote to me, “Think of Munger and Miller and Buffett: guys who just won’t spend a minute of time or an iota of mental energy doing or thinking about anything that doesn’t make them better. . . . Their skill is self-honesty. They don’t lie to themselves about what they are and aren’t good at. Being honest with yourself like that has to be part of the secret. It’s so hard and so painful to do, but so important.

A year ago I was myself intensely miserable, because I thought I had made a mistake in entering the ministry: its uniform duties wearied me to death. I burnt for the more active life of the world—for the more exciting toils of a literary career—for the destiny of an artist, author, orator; anything rather than that of a priest: yes, the heart of a politician, of a soldier, of a votary of glory, a lover of renown, a luster after power, beat under my curate’s surplice. I considered; my life was so wretched, it must be changed, or I must die. After a season of darkness and struggling, light broke and relief fell: my cramped existence all at once spread out to a plain without bounds—my powers heard a call from heaven to rise, gather their full strength, spread their wings, and mount beyond ken. God had an errand for me; to bear which afar, to deliver it well, skill and strength, courage and eloquence, the best qualifications of soldier, statesman, and orator, were all needed: for these all centre in the good missionary. “A

Brunelleschi’s successor as a theorist of linear perspective was another of the towering Renaissance polymaths, Leon Battista Alberti (1404 –1472), who refined many of Brunelleschi’s experiments and extended his discoveries about perspective. An artist, architect, engineer, and writer, Alberti was like Leonardo in many ways: both were illegitimate sons of prosperous fathers, athletic and good-looking, never-married, and fascinated by everything from math to art. One difference is that Alberti’s illegitimacy did not prevent him from being given a classical education. His father helped him get a dispensation from the Church laws barring illegitimate children from taking holy orders or holding ecclesiastical offices, and he studied law at Bologna, was ordained as a priest, and became a writer for the pope. During his early thirties, Alberti wrote his masterpiece analyzing painting and perspective, On Painting, the Italian edition of which was dedicated to Brunelleschi. Alberti had an engineer’s instinct for collaboration and, like Leonardo, was “a lover of friendship” and “open-hearted,” according to the scholar Anthony Grafton. He also honed the skills of courtiership. Interested in every art and technology, he would grill people from all walks of life, from cobblers to university scholars, to learn their secrets. In other words, he was much like Leonardo, except in one respect: Leonardo was not strongly motivated by the goal of furthering human knowledge by openly disseminating and publishing his findings; Alberti, on the other hand, was dedicated to sharing his work, gathering a community of intellectual colleagues who could build on each other’s discoveries, and promoting open discussion and publication as a way to advance the accumulation of learning. A maestro of collaborative practices, he believed, according to Grafton, in “discourse in the public sphere.” When Leonardo was a teenager in Florence, Alberti was in his sixties and spending much of his time in Rome, so it is unlikely they spent time together. Alberti was a major influence nonetheless.

It’s clear that writing is a useful skill for any designer. Yet apart from a final-year dissertation or research paper, graphic designers are not encouraged to write at design school. This is odd, since words are the designer’s raw materials, much as coal is the raw material of the coal miner. Designers often say they can’t write. This is also odd, since many designers have a verbal facility for sharp phrases and economical expression. Most designers are better with words than they realize. This shyness with written language is partly caused by designers believing that they need to do everything visually. There’s a fear that they are betraying their design skills if they exhibit language skills. Yet the ability to handle text is a priceless attribute. Just think how often we struggle to make coherent typographic statements when forced to work with clumsy language: think of all those tortuous line breaks and bad configurations of type that could be eliminated with a few text edits. The ability to suggest and make text changes can often rescue work from second-rate status.

As we’ve seen, one of the most frequently pursued paths for achievement-minded college seniors is to spend several years advancing professionally and getting trained and paid by an investment bank, consulting firm, or law firm. Then, the thought process goes, they can set out to do something else with some exposure and experience under their belts. People are generally not making lifelong commitments to the field in their own minds. They’re “getting some skills” and making some connections before figuring out what they really want to do. I subscribed to a version of this mind-set when I graduated from Brown. In my case, I went to law school thinking I’d practice for a few years (and pay down my law school debt) before lining up another opportunity. It’s clear why this is such an attractive approach. There are some immensely constructive things about spending several years in professional services after graduating from college. Professional service firms are designed to train large groups of recruits annually, and they do so very successfully. After even just a year or two in a high-level bank or consulting firm, you emerge with a set of skills that can be applied in other contexts (financial modeling in Excel if you’re a financial analyst, PowerPoint and data organization and presentation if you’re a consultant, and editing and issue spotting if you’re a lawyer). This is very appealing to most any recent graduate who may not yet feel equipped with practical skills coming right out of college. Even more than the professional skill you gain, if you spend time at a bank, consultancy, or law firm, you will become excellent at producing world-class work. Every model, report, presentation, or contract needs to be sophisticated, well done, and error free, in large part because that’s one of the core value propositions of your organization. The people above you will push you to become more rigorous and disciplined, and your work product will improve across the board as a result. You’ll get used to dressing professionally, preparing for meetings, speaking appropriately, showing up on time, writing official correspondence, and so forth. You will be able to speak the corporate language. You’ll become accustomed to working very long hours doing detail-intensive work. These attributes are transferable to and helpful in many other contexts.

I pleaded with Norman to use my first name, and he always agreed to do so: “Okay, Mister Regan, I’ll remember in the future,” he’d say with a wicked grin on his face. Eventually Norman explained that he had a reputation for remembering all his customers’ names, and that if he had to learn first names as well as surnames, his workload would be doubled, so I backed down. All would have been well with this had I not introduced Norman to Roy Finamore, who was the editor of the first edition of this book, some six months later; Mister Finamore joined the ranks of thousands addicted to Norman’s wit and his cocktailian skills. A few months thereafter I was informed that Norman had taken to using Roy’s first name at the bar, and I was livid. This called for action. I made the pilgrimage to Norman’s bar. “I hear that Roy Finamore is a regular here now.” “That’s right, Mister Regan, he’s here three or four times a week.” “And what do you call him, Norman?” “I call him Roy.” “And why is that, Norman?” He leaned over the bar until our noses almost met. “Just to piss you off.” It had taken Norman months to set up this one glorious moment. In my opinion, I was looking into the eyes of Manhattan’s best bartender.

No man should ever make anything except in the spirit in which a woman bears a child, in the spirit in which Christ was formed in Mary's womb, in the love with which God created the world. The integral goodness and fittingness of the work of a man's hands or mind is sacred. He must have it in his heart to make it. His imagination must see it, and its purpose, before it exists in material. His whole life must be disciplined to gain and keep the skill to make it. He must, having conceived it, allow it to grow within him, until at last it flows from him and is woven of his life and is the visible proof that he has uttered his fiat: “Be it done unto me according to thy word!” Yes, according to the will of God, as an expression of the love of God. So that it is possible to whisper in wonder and awe, and without irreverence, on seeing the finished work: “The Word is made flesh.” Every work that we do should be a part of the Christ forming in us which is the meaning of our life, to it we must bring the patience, the self-giving, the time of secrecy, the gradual growth of Advent. This Advent in work applies to all work, not only that which produces something permanent in time but equally to the making of a carving in wood or

April 27 MORNING “God, even our own God.” — Psalm 67:6 IT is strange how little use we make of the spiritual blessings which God gives us, but it is stranger still how little use we make of God Himself. Though He is “our own God,” we apply ourselves but little to Him, and ask but little of Him. How seldom do we ask counsel at the hands of the Lord! How often do we go about our business, without seeking His guidance! In our troubles how constantly do we strive to bear our burdens ourselves, instead of casting them upon the Lord, that He may sustain us! This is not because we may not, for the Lord seems to say, “I am thine, soul, come and make use of me as thou wilt; thou mayst freely come to my store, and the oftener the more welcome.” It is our own fault if we make not free with the riches of our God. Then, since thou hast such a friend, and He invites thee, draw from Him daily. Never want whilst thou hast a God to go to; never fear or faint whilst thou hast God to help thee; go to thy treasure and take whatever thou needest — there is all that thou canst want. Learn the divine skill of making God all things to thee. He can supply thee with all, or, better still, He can be to thee instead of all. Let me urge thee, then, to make use of thy God. Make use of Him in prayer. Go to Him often, because He is thy God. O, wilt thou fail to use so great a privilege? Fly to Him, tell Him all thy wants. Use Him constantly by faith at all times. If some dark providence has beclouded thee, use thy God as a “sun;” if some strong enemy has beset thee, find in Jehovah a “shield,” for He is a sun and shield to His people. If thou hast lost thy way in the mazes of life, use Him as a “guide,” for He will direct thee. Whatever thou art, and wherever thou art, remember God is just what thou wantest, and just where thou wantest, and that He can do all thou wantest.

February 10 MORNING “I know how to abound.” — Philippians 4:12 THERE are many who know “how to be abased” who have not learned “how to abound.” When they are set upon the top of a pinnacle their heads grow dizzy, and they are ready to fall. The Christian far oftener disgraces his profession in prosperity than in adversity. It is a dangerous thing to be prosperous. The crucible of adversity is a less severe trial to the Christian than the fining-pot of prosperity. Oh, what leanness of soul and neglect of spiritual things have been brought on through the very mercies and bounties of God! Yet this is not a matter of necessity, for the apostle tells us that he knew how to abound. When he had much he knew how to use it. Abundant grace enabled him to bear abundant prosperity. When he had a full sail he was loaded with much ballast, and so floated safely. It needs more than human skill to carry the brimming cup of mortal joy with a steady hand, yet Paul had learned that skill, for he declares, “In all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry.” It is a divine lesson to know how to be full, for the Israelites were full once, but while the flesh was yet in their mouth, the wrath of God came upon them. Many have asked for mercies that they might satisfy their own hearts’ lust. Fulness of bread has often made fulness of blood, and that has brought on wantonness of spirit. When we have much of God’s providential mercies, it often happens that we have but little of God’s grace, and little gratitude for the bounties we have received. We are full and we forget God: satisfied with earth, we are content to do without heaven. Rest assured it is harder to know how to be full than it is to know how to be hungry — so desperate is the tendency of human nature to pride and forgetfulness of God. Take care that you ask in your prayers that God would teach you “how to be full.” “Let not the gifts Thy love bestows Estrange our hearts from Thee.

Scripture and Tradition Scriptural exegesis was no mere school exercise. The New Testament text became the battleground for the fierce debates over the nature of Jesus, God and man, that were waged in the fifth century and exegesis was the weapon that all the combatants wielded with both skill and conviction.23 The scriptural witness, often couched in familiar, popular, and even homely language, had to be converted into the abstract and learned currency of theology, the language of choice of the Church’s intelligentsia. Scripture, as it turned out, was merely the starting point. The steering mechanism was exegesis, and behind the exegesis, the helmsman at the rudder, stood another elemental principle: tradition.24 Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each possessed a Scripture that was, by universal consent, a closed Book. But God’s silence was a relative thing, and his providential direction of the community could be detected and “read” in other ways. Early within the development of Christianity, for example, one is aware of a subtle balance operating between appeals to Scripture and tradition. It was not a novel enterprise. By Jesus’ time the notion of an oral tradition separate from but obviously connected to the written Scriptures was already familiar, if not universally accepted, in Jewish circles. Jesus and the Pharisees debated the authority of the oral tradition more than once, and though he does not appear to have denied the premise, Jesus, his contemporaries remarked, “taught on his own authority,” not on that of some other sage. He substituted his authority for the tradition of the Fathers. Thus Jesus was proposing himself as the source of a new tradition handed on to his followers and confirmed by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. The Christian view that there was a tradition distinct from the Scriptures may have begun with the early understanding of Scripture as synonymous with the Bible—serious exegetical attention did not begin to be paid to the Gospels until the end of the second century—whereas the “tradition” was constituted of the teachings and redemptive death of Jesus, both of which Jesus himself had placed in their true “scriptural” context.25 Thus, even when parts of Jesus’ teachings and actions had been committed to writing in the Gospels, and so began to constitute a new, specifically Christian Scripture, the distinction between Scripture in the biblical sense and tradition in the Christian sense continued to be felt in the Christian community.26

Focus intently and beat procrastination.    Use the Pomodoro Technique (remove distractions, focus for 25 minutes, take a break).    Avoid multitasking unless you find yourself needing occasional fresh perspectives.    Create a ready-to-resume plan when an unavoidable interruption comes up.    Set up a distraction-free environment.    Take frequent short breaks. Overcome being stuck.    When stuck, switch your focus away from the problem at hand, or take a break to surface the diffuse mode.    After some time completely away from the problem, return to where you got stuck.    Use the Hard Start Technique for homework or tests.    When starting a report or essay, do not constantly stop to edit what is flowing out. Separate time spent writing from time spent editing. Learn deeply.    Study actively: practice active recall (“retrieval practice”) and elaborating.    Interleave and space out your learning to help build your intuition and speed.    Don’t just focus on the easy stuff; challenge yourself.    Get enough sleep and stay physically active. Maximize working memory.    Break learning material into small chunks and swap fancy terms for easier ones.    Use “to-do” lists to clear your working memory.    Take good notes and review them the same day you took them. Memorize more efficiently.    Use memory tricks to speed up memorization: acronyms, images, and the Memory Palace.    Use metaphors to quickly grasp new concepts. Gain intuition and think quickly.    Internalize (don’t just unthinkingly memorize) procedures for solving key scientific or mathematical problems.    Make up appropriate gestures to help you remember and understand new language vocabulary. Exert self-discipline even when you don’t have any.    Find ways to overcome challenges without having to rely on self-discipline.    Remove temptations, distractions, and obstacles from your surroundings.    Improve your habits.    Plan your goals and identify obstacles and the ideal way to respond to them ahead of time. Motivate yourself.    Remind yourself of all the benefits of completing tasks.    Reward yourself for completing difficult tasks.    Make sure that a task’s level of difficulty matches your skill set.    Set goals—long-term goals, milestone goals, and process goals. Read effectively.    Preview the text before reading it in detail.    Read actively: think about the text, practice active recall, and annotate. Win big on tests.    Learn as much as possible about the test itself and make a preparation plan.    Practice with previous test questions—from old tests, if possible.    During tests: read instructions carefully, keep track of time, and review answers.    Use the Hard Start Technique. Be a pro learner.    Be a metacognitive learner: understand the task, set goals and plan, learn, and monitor and adjust.    Learn from the past: evaluate what went well and where you can improve.

Several principles are illustrated by this experience. The value of a program intended to reduce injuries is not necessarily a function of the good intentions of the program's proponents. Skill or behavior change programs can have unintended harmful effects and those effects are often found only by well-designed research. This is particularly true of programs that have the potential to increase exposure to hazards. Once a program becomes institutionalized, it is difficult to remove it no matter how ineffective or harmful its consequences.    A major barrier to the scientific evaluation of programs is the reluctance of those who develop, advocate or profit from programs to have them evaluated objectively. In some cases, their investment in the programs is only psychological, but in others it is economic.

10Who can find350 a woman of worth?a Far beyond jewels is her value. 11Her husband trusts her judgment; he does not lack income. 12She brings him profit, not loss,351 all the days of her life. 13She seeks out wool and flax and weaves with skillful hands. 14Like a merchant fleet,352 she secures her provisions from afar. 15She rises while it is still night, and distributes food to her household, a portion to her maidservants. 16She picks out a field and acquires it; from her earnings she plants a vineyard. 17She girds herself with strength; she exerts her arms with vigor.353 18She enjoys the profit from her dealings; her lamp is never extinguished at night.354 19She puts her hands to the distaff, and her fingers ply the spindle.355 20She reaches out her hands to the poor, and extends her arms to the needy. 21She is not concerned for her household when it snows— all her charges are doubly clothed. 22She makes her own coverlets; fine linen and purple are her clothing. 23Her husband is prominent at the city gates as he sits with the elders of the land.356 24She makes garments and sells them, and stocks the merchants with belts. 25She is clothed with strength and dignity, and laughs at the days to come.357 26She opens her mouth in wisdom; kindly instruction is on her tongue. 27She watches over358 the affairs of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness. 28Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband, too, praises her: 29“Many are the women of proven worth, but you have excelled them all.” 30Charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting; the woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.359 31Acclaim her for the work of her hands, and let her deeds praise her at the city gates.

Praise the LORD, who is my rock.        He trains my hands for war        and gives my fingers skill for battle.

The late Dag Hammarskjöld, once the secretary general of the United Nations, suggested that we have become adept at exploring outer space, but we have not developed similar skills in exploring our own personal inner spaces. He wrote, “The longest journey of any person is the journey inward.”4 Most of us feel much more equipped to manipulate objects, control situations, and “do” things than to take that very long journey inward. Painful Honesty

Alternatives to time-out Isolating children for a period of time has become a popular discipline strategy advocated by many child psychologists and pediatricians. However, newly adopted toddlers seem to be more upset than helped by time-outs. Time-outs are intended to provide an opportunity for both parents and children to calm down and change their behaviors, but it isn’t effective for children who do not have self-calming strategies. Isolation can be traumatic for a toddler who is struggling with grief and/or attachment, and so perceives time-out as further rejection. If the child becomes angrier or more withdrawn as a result of being timed-out, try another strategy. One alternative is for parents to impose a brief time-out on themselves by temporarily withdrawing their attention from their child. For example, the parent whose child is throwing toys stops playing, looks away, and firmly tells the child, “I can’t continue playing until you stop throwing your toys.” Sitting passively next to the child may be effective, especially if the child previously was engaged in an enjoyable activity with the parent. Another alternative to parent enforced time-outs is self-determined time-outs, where the child is provided the opportunity to withdraw from a conflict voluntarily or at least have some input into the time-out arrangement. The parent could say, “I understand that you got very upset when you had to go to your room yesterday after you hit Sara. Can you think of a different place you would like to go to calm down if you feel like getting in a fight?” If the child suggests going out on the porch, the next time a battle seems to be brewing, Mom or Dad can say, “Do you need to go outside to the porch and calm down before we talk more?” Some children eventually reach the level of self-control where they remove themselves from a volatile situation without encouragement from Mom or Dad. These types of negotiations usually work better with older preschoolers or school-age children than they do with toddlers because of the reasoning skills involved. As an alternative to being timed-out, toddlers also can be timed-in while in the safety of a parent’s lap. Holding allows parents to talk to their child about why she’s being removed from an activity. For example, the toddler who has thrown her truck at the cat could be picked up and held for a few minutes while being told, “I can’t let you throw your toys at Misty. That hurts her, and in our family we don’t hurt animals. We’ll sit here together until you’re able to calm down.” Calming strategies could incorporate music, back rubs, or encouraging the child to breathe slowly. Objects that children are misusing should also be removed. For example, in the situation just discussed, the truck could be timed-out to a high shelf. If parents still decide to physically remove their child for a time-out, it should never be done in a way or place that frightens a toddler. Toddlers who have been frightened in the past by closed doors, dark rooms, or a particular room such as a bathroom should never be subjected to those settings. I know toddlers who, in their terror, have literally trashed the furniture and broken windows when they were locked in their rooms for a time-out. If parents feel a time-out is essential, it should be very brief, and in a location where the child can be supervised.

Enron. One: The firm endorsed Enron’s asset-light strategy. In a 1997 edition of the Quarterly, consultants wrote that “Enron was not distinctive at building and operating power stations, but it didn’t matter; these skills could be contracted out. Rather, it was good at negotiating contracts, financing, and government guarantee—precisely the skills that distinguished successful players.” Two: The firm endorsed Enron’s “loose-tight” culture. Or, more precisely, McKinsey endorsed Enron’s use of a term that came straight out of In Search of Excellence. In a 1998 Quarterly, the consultants peripherally praised Enron’s culture of “[allowing executives] to make decisions without seeking constant approval from above; a clear link between daily activities and business results (even if not a P&L); something new to work on as often as possible.” Three: The firm endorsed Enron’s use of off–balance-sheet financing. In that same 1997 Quarterly, the consultants wrote that “the deployment of off–balance-sheet funds using institutional investment money fostered [Enron’s] securitization skills and granted it access to capital at below the hurdle rates of major oil companies.” McKinsey heavyweight Lowell Bryan—godfather of the firm’s financial institutions practice—put it another way: “Securitization’s potential is great because it removes capital and balance sheets as constraints on growth.” Four: The firm endorsed Enron’s approach to “atomization.” In a 2001 Quarterly, the consultants wrote: “Enron has built a reputation as one of the world’s most innovative companies by attacking and atomizing traditional industry structures—first in natural gas and later in such diverse businesses as electric power, Internet bandwidth, and pulp and paper. In each case, Enron focused on the business sliver of intermediation while avoiding the incumbency problems created by a large asset base and vertical integration.

The advocates of republicanism proposed a blend of Machiavellian competence with Puritan notions of an “elect” to produce a new variant of elitism, actors as confident of their skills as of their rectitude.

As a result, the emphasis is not only on understanding different cultures, but also on problem solving and effective adaptations for various cultural settings.

three recurrent elements or prerequisites in many visions of utopia. One is that the founders of utopia possess some form of knowledge, some unquestionable truth, concerning what the right order of society should be, what should be the proper arrangement of its major institutions. The second element is that utopians must imagine it possible to possess the powers capable of establishing and realizing the utopian order. The third element is the opportunity of bringing utopia into existence and the skill in seizing and exploiting that moment.

Il y a longtemps que je ne l'ai pas vue.

a déjà hâte d'y être.

If only one lesson is to be chosen from a package of lessons involving Social-Proof Tendency,and used in self improvement, my favorite would be: Learn how to ignore the examples from others when they are wrong, because few skills are more worth having.

I came to the realization that nearly all the social and emotional behaviors students need to learn are best developed through effective classroom management, group and partner work, and questioning.

Throughout his life, a wise man engages in practice of all his useful, rarely used skills, many of them outside his discipline, as a sort of duty to his better self. If he reduces the number of skills, he practices and, therefore, the number of skills he retains, he will naturally drift into error from man with a hammer tendency. His learning capacity will also shrink as he creates gaps in the latticework of theory he needs as a framework for understanding new experience. It is also essential for a thinking man to assemble his skills into a checklist that he routinely uses. Any other mode of operation will cause him to miss much that is important.

Recent research has found that when empathy and trust-building become part of the disciplinary approach of the entire school, relationships improve and suspensions drop by as much as half in some schools. (Okonofua, J. A. et al., 2016)

Thus, teachers need to have cultural awareness and to work to understand the different cultures and expectations that students bring to the classroom and, as important, they need to understand the cultures they are creating.

The recommended time from most experts is 10 minutes per grade level, maxing out at 80 minutes for middle school and two hours for high school. Beyond that amount of time, homework does not have an appreciable positive impact on academics and may result in a negative attitude toward school (Xu, 2013, pp. 97-100).

Deci and Ryan identified three key human needs—competence, autonomy, and relatedness or personal connection. Students feel a sense of relatedness when they perceive that their teachers like, value, and respect them. They feel competent when they work at challenging tasks (Tough, 2013, pp. 74-5). These three feelings are far more effective motivators for students than “a deskful of gold stars and blue ribbons.” Deci and Ryan recognize that throughout the day, teachers convey to their students “deep messages about belonging, connection, ability, and opportunity” (quoted by Tough, 2013).

It is far more effective to arrange classroom furniture and move about the room while teaching in ways that ensures proximity to all students at various points in the lesson. This movement will proactively decrease acting-out behavior, rather than putting teachers in the position of reactively responding to inappropriate behavior. Marzano states that “desk arrangements should provide access to any student within four steps from where the teacher spends most of his time” (2007, p. 121). Students’ social-emotional development can be improved by proactively setting up the room for student academic and behavioral success. As we saw in the cycles of deficit mindset and growth mindset in Chapter 1, the fewer instances when we need to address misbehavior, the more we can affirm appropriate behavior, and the more likely we are to reverse the cycle of deficit mindset. Room arrangement and teacher proximity is an important first step in creating a positive learning environment.

Teachers sometimes view students with disabilities who act out because of their disorder as oppositional and defiant. Teachers who understand the cycle of fear, avoidance, stress, and escape (FASE) understand what “saving FASE” means. Teachers learn not to react to the behavior but to the underlying cause of the behavior. Teachers who understand FASE recognize that all human behavior sends a message. By looking for the message and reframing the behavior as a way of communicating, teachers can see the oppositional behaviors, frequent trips to the nurse, being unprepared for class, and frequent absences as attempts to avoid the shame of underperforming in the classroom (Schultz, 2011, pp. 137-142). For teachers to have success with managing their classrooms, it is imperative for them to understand that the students are not unmotivated or oppositional, but are sending a message about their need for help.

In addition, teachers who can manage their emotions are more likely to display positive affect and higher job satisfaction (Brackett et al., 2010). Thus, looking at their own emotional response helps teachers recognize the emotional nature of their work, identify and reflect on their emotions and their causes, and cope with difficult emotions through reframing, problem solving, and emotional management (Chang, 2009).

Jennings’ and Greenberg’s Prosocial Classroom Model suggests that teachers’ social-emotional competence and well-being affect the classroom management strategies they use, the relationships they form with students, and their ability to implement SEL programs and practices. These factors, in turn, can contribute to a healthy classroom climate that then leads to students’ own academic and SEL success (from Schonert-Reichel, K. 2017, pp. 137-155).

Educators’ lives are filled with opportunities to develop their own social awareness during student and adult interactions. They participate in work groups, such as co-teaching, professional learning programs, faculty meetings, team meetings, data analysis teams, developing common assessments, lesson-study groups, and curriculum development committees. The checklist in the figure below can be modified to fit any type of group activity. It can be reviewed by the supervisor or coach and the educator prior to the activity. After the activity, the educator can be asked to confidentially self-assess his or skills, thereby increasing self-awareness of his/her relationship skills and self-management skills.

As educators, we can best help our students by working to understand our belief systems as well as those of our students, our teaching team, our school, and the parents and guardians of our students.

At the heart of what determines a person’s behaviors related to self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision making, relationship skills, and social awareness is their belief system. This includes both their conscious and unconscious belief systems. Becoming self-aware of these beliefs is a prerequisite to changing a person’s social-emotional behaviors. As educators, we can best help our students by working to understand our belief systems as well as those of our students, our teaching team, our school, and the parents and guardians of our students.

4​Jones’s research (2007, p. 187) indicates that 80 percent of the student misbehavior in classrooms is students talking to their neighbors. Think how much easier classroom management would be if we could do away with this one behavior!

A good relationship between the student and the teacher is a strong motivator for positive behavior and academic achievement.

Impactful relationship is a term we coined for adult relationships that can positively “impact” a student’s academic success, social awareness, self-awareness, decision making, relationship skills, and self-management skills. These relationships result in the student having great respect for a person and valuing this person’s opinions and advice.

Robert Marzano (2007, p. 150) reviewed 100 studies related to classroom management. His metaanalysis found that “teachers who had high-quality relationships with their students had 31 percent fewer discipline problems, rule violations, and related problems over a year’s time than did teachers who did not have high-quality relationships with their students.” That means the outcome is 31% fewer negative interactions and 31% or more positive interactions with students—interactions that can include statements and questions that develop social-emotional learning. For

We can only reduce the stress in teaching if we have the self-awareness to know we feel negatively about one or more students and have self-management tactics to use cognitive override to change our behavior.

Students who lack social skills are distracted from learning by the tremendous amount of energy they expend trying to fit in. Teachers cite social skills deficits as the most frequent cause of classroom behavior problems (Brophy and Good, 2000). Marzano states, “The teacher must provide clear direction to students and generate an atmosphere in which all students feel valued and intellectually challenged” (Marzano, 2011, p. 85).

If you really seek to understand, without hypocrisy and without guile, there will be times when you will be literally stunned with the pure knowledge and understanding that will flow to you from another human being. It isn’t even always necessary to talk in order to empathize. In fact, sometimes words may just get in your way. That’s one very important reason why technique alone will not work. That kind of understanding transcends technique. Isolated technique only gets in the way. I have gone through the skills of empathic listening because skill is an important part of any habit. We need to have the skills. But let me reiterate that the skills will not be effective unless they come from a sincere desire to understand.

Life is a team sport, and with the right attitude and skills, you can find synergistic answers to complex problems—not all of the time, but most of the time. To find 3rd Alternatives, you have to believe they exist. You have to believe in the idea that by working together, we can find a solution that is better than what either of us had in mind. If you don’t believe this—if you’re thinking synergy is unrealistic and that it is either your way or my way—you will never master it.

but claiming no earlier date than the settlement of New England, it will be seen that the white race has been slow to learn or the red man has been skillful in withholding knowledge which, if imparted, would have lessened friction and done much to preserve and assimilate a race that, in spite of some serious defects of character, will for all time to come be looked upon as "the noble savage.

I’ve met and worked with many great achievers, CEOs, and “superstars,” and I can tell you they all share one common trait—they all have good habits. That’s not to say they don’t have bad habits; they do. But not many. A daily routine built on good habits is the difference that separates the most successful amongst us from everyone else. And doesn’t that make sense? From what we’ve already discussed, you know successful people aren’t necessarily more intelligent or more talented than anyone else. But their habits take them in the direction of becoming more informed, more knowledgeable, more competent, better skilled, and better prepared.

did a little bit of everything at This American Life. I pitched stories, helped design shows, reported and narrated stories, edited others’ work, and did a lot of sound design. My first month, I produced a kick-ass story and was told that the music I’d scored it with was excellent. This was a skill I was particularly proud of. I’d mixed hundreds of pieces at Snap Judgment and was known for my speed and music taste. But then I was reassigned to a different boss. He listened to five seconds of one of my stories before recoiling. “Can you hear that?” he asked, playing it again. “Can you hear how this piece of tape is coming in too early? It’s two-tenths of a second too early. Can you hear it?” He played it again. “I guess so. Maybe? Okay, I’ll note that. I’m sorry,” I said. “You can’t? What’s wrong with you?” He played it again. “You can’t hear that? I thought you were supposed to be good at mixing? But this needs space. No, no, no.” He played it again and again. “Okay, I’ll fix it right away. I’m sorry,” I said.

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Sweden’s Air Intelligence Service told the Americans that ‘these phenomena are obviously the result of a high technical skill which cannot be credited to any presently known culture on earth’4

With this thoroughly established, complete and autonomous plays can unfold in us line by line. We may no longer have the energy to write them, but that won’t be necessary. We’ll be able to create secondhand; we can imagine one poet writing in us in one way, while another poet will write in a different way. I, having refined this skill to a considerable degree, can write in countlessly different ways, all of them original.

You have to build the skills of empathic listening on a base of character that inspires openness and trust. And you have to build the Emotional Bank Accounts that create a commerce between hearts.

First, the concept of "all needed skills" lets us recognize that we don't have to raise everyone's skill in celestial mechanics to that of Laplace and also ask everyone to achieve a similar skill level in all other knowledge. Instead, it turns out that the truly big ideas in each discipline, learned only in essence, carry most of the freight. And they are not so numerous, nor are their interactions so complex, that a large and multidisciplinary understanding is impossible for many, given large amounts of talent and time.

After all, not everything in a memoir is factually accurate: who can remember the exact dialogue that took place at breakfast forty years ago? And if you can make up dialogue, change the name and hair color of a character to protect the privacy of the living, or even—as some memoirists do—reorder events to make the story work better, how is that different from fiction? In memoir, the author stands behind her story saying to the world: this happened; this is true. What is important about this assertion is that it has an effect on the reader—he reads it believing it to be remembered experience, which in turn requires the writer to be an unflinchingly reliable narrator. In fiction, a story may be skillfully designed to sound like a true story told in the first person by a fictional character (who may be a quite unreliable narrator), but if the writer presents it as fiction, the reader will usually perceive it as fiction. Readers tend to look for, even to assume, the autobiographical in fiction, but they also recognize the writer’s attempt to fictionalize, just as they recognize in memoir the central commitment not to fictionalize. In

For example, one key character who was definitely not supposed to die did just that. I did everything I could to get her up again, but she just... died on me.

We did meet and talk; we even had a relatively relaxed meeting in 1984 at a Japanese restaurant, soothed by sushi and sake, to discuss all the things we weren’t going to do – and then Steve joined us to hear about it. Roger was doubtless misled by our general bonhomie and acquiescence into believing that we accepted Pink Floyd was almost over. David and I meanwhile thought that after Roger had finished Pros And Cons, life could continue. We had, after all, had a number of hiatuses before. Roger sees this meeting as duplicity, rather than diplomacy – I disagree. Clearly, our communication skills were still troublingly non-existent.