Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Maira Kalman is brilliant. Check out her blog, "And the Pursuit of Happiness", in the opinion section of the NYT.
Who said opinion sections only included cramped, dry, pretentious words?


Where is happiness?<br /> What is happiness?<br /> What did Thomas Jefferson mean?<br /> The pursuit of happiness.<br /> I visited Dr. James Watson.<br /> Maybe there is a genetic explanation for happiness.<br />And all we need to do is take a pill that puts it into action. I asked him. He could not tell me because no one really knows.<br /> And anyway, everyone has to be sad part of the time; otherwise, you would be insane.<br /> I looked at him. He takes walks. Plays tennis.<br /> He works. He looks at trees. Those are good ways to find happiness.<br /> To find peace of mind. Me? I work. And walk. And go to museums.<br />I look at Velázquez's infanta.Early one morning I go for a walk. I see a woman who I know is a bit out of her mind. I like her. she is walking in a kind of trance, going from tree to tree, stopping at each one to look up at the leaves. Is she acting this way because she drank soda for breakfast her whole life? Once again, I walk across the country. In my head.<br />I visit another school that will have an Edible Schoolyard. This will be the first one in New York City. At the Arturo Toscanini Elementary School on Avenue X in Brooklyn, Celia Kaplinsky, the captivating principal, tells me what Cicero said: “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” There will be a vegetable and fruit garden where a parking lot is now. The children will work and cook and take that experience to their families. And then there will be bounty of a different kind in this country. The United States of America could be less fastly fastly and more slowly slowly. We could think small and shift to a new (old) way of growing food and eating and being. Something that would make the founders happy.

XX, Valerie Muvdi
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