The Penguin Book Truck and Pushcart
stocked with books from all of Penguin
Group's imprints, are hitting the
road this summer, heading for
book-related events, festivals and more.
Inspired by the design of the classic
New York City hot dog cart, the
Penguin pushcart will be transported
by the truck to various locations,
including bookstores, parks, beaches,
sidewalks in shopping districts,
summer theaters and green markets.
The truck is making its debut at BEA
this week.
Biking for Seattle's Readers: 'Full
Service Library on Wheels'
The Seattle Public Library has
launched its Books on Bikes
initiative, which features a
full-service library on wheels,
Book Patrol reported. The pilot
program will bring library services to
popular community events via bike
this summer. A total of 11 library
staff members make up the Books on
Bikes team.
Joss Whedon, creator/writer/director of such great shows as "Firefly," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Dollhouse" gave the graduates at Wesleyan College a fascinating commencement speech to chew on as they go off to make their way in the world.
What I’d like to say to all of you is that you
are all going to die. ... You have, in fact, already begun to die. You look
great. Don’t get me wrong. And you are youth and beauty. You are at the physical
peak. Your bodies have just gotten off the ski slope on the peak of growth,
potential, and now comes the black diamond mogul run to the grave. And the
weird thing is your body wants to die. On a cellular level, that’s what it
wants. And that’s probably not what you want.
I’m confronted by a great deal of grand and
worthy ambition from this student body. You want to be a politician, a social
worker. You want to be an artist. Your body’s ambition: Mulch. Your body wants
to make some babies and then go in the ground and fertilize things. That’s it.
And that seems like a bit of a contradiction. It doesn’t seem fair. For one
thing, we’re telling you, “Go out into the world!” exactly when your body is
saying, “Hey, let’s bring it down a notch. Let’s take it down.”
And that’s actually what I’d like to talk to you
about. The contradiction between your body and your mind, between your mind and
itself. I believe these contradictions and these tensions are the greatest gift
that we have.
You have, which is a rare thing, that ability and
the responsibility to listen to the dissent in yourself, to at least give it
the floor, because it is the key – not only to consciousness, but to real
growth. To accept duality is to earn identity. And identity is something that
you are constantly earning. It is not just who you are. It is a process that
you must be active in.
This contradiction, and this tension … it never
goes away. And if you think that achieving something, if you think that solving
something, if you think a career or a relationship will quiet that voice, it
will not. If you think that happiness means total peace, you will never be
happy. Peace comes from the acceptance of the part of you that can never be at
peace. It will always be in conflict. If you accept that, everything gets a lot
better.
Because you are establishing your identities and
your beliefs, you need to argue yourself down, because somebody else will.
Somebody’s going to come at you, and whatever your belief, your idea, your
ambition, somebody’s going to question it. And unless you have first, you won’t
be able to answer back, you won’t be able to hold your ground. You don’t
believe me, try taking a stand on just one leg. You need to see both sides.
[Our culture] is not long on contradiction or
ambiguity. … It likes things to be simple, it likes things to be
pigeonholed—good or bad, black or white, blue or red. And we’re not that. We’re
more interesting than that. And the way that we go into the world understanding
is to have these contradictions in ourselves and see them in other people and
not judge them for it. To know that, in a world where debate has kind of fallen
away and given way to shouting and bullying, that the best thing is not just
the idea of honest debate, the best thing is losing the debate, because it
means that you learn something and you changed your position. The only way
really to understand your position and its worth is to understand the opposite.
That doesn’t mean the crazy guy on the radio who
is spewing hate, it means the decent human truths of all the people who feel
the need to listen to that guy. You are connected to those people. They’re
connected to him. You can’t get away from it. This connection is part of
contradiction. It is the tension I was talking about. This tension isn’t about
two opposite points, it’s about the line in between them, and it’s being
stretched by them. We need to acknowledge and honor that tension, and the
connection that that tension is a part of. Our connection not just to the
people we love, but to everybody, including people we can’t stand and wish
weren’t around. The connection we have is part of what defines us on such a
basic level.
So here’s the thing about changing the world. It
turns out that’s not even the question, because you don’t have a choice. You
are going to change the world, because that is actually what the world is. You
do not pass through this life, it passes through you. You experience it, you
interpret it, you act, and then it is different. That happens constantly. You
are changing the world. You always have been, and now, it becomes real on a
level that it hasn’t been before. And that’s why I’ve been talking only about
you and the tension within you, because you are – not in a clichéd sense, but
in a weirdly literal sense – the future.
After you walk up here and walk back down, you’re
going to be the present. You will be the broken world and the act of changing
it, in a way that you haven’t been before. You will be so many things, and the
one thing that I wish I’d known and want to say is, don’t just be yourself. Be
all of yourselves. Don’t just live. Be that other thing connected to death. Be
life. Live all of your life. Understand it, see it, appreciate it. And have
fun.
Joss Whedon’ graduation address at Wesleyan
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