EBN A Book by an Author You've Never Read: Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull

So, my sister is going to school to get her degree in illustration. As she has been working so hard to develop her skills and expand her repertoire, she has also learned a great deal about the industry. You worry about your kid when they tell you they want to become an artist, and for good reason. The industry is extremely competitive. Even after you find a position, you are constantly competing against your coworkers. The work is hard, demanding, and can become heartless. The alternative is to strike out on your own, develop some sort of e-business or become a selective freelance artist. The idea of being an artist full time is romantic and appealing to personalities like my sister, but the reality is harsh and depressing. Only people like my sister would see the value of spending all that tuition money and continuing. I did see a little glimmer of hope when I read this book. Disney and Pixar are such greatly successful companies, I hope that their models can inspire other creative industries and become the norm rather than the exception.

This was such an interesting book. For starters, I had never even heard of Ed Catmull and was astonished by his history and contribution to the field of computer graphics. He attended the University of Utah where Ivan Sutherland was teaching. To me, the U seems like such a normal school. My Dad went there for his engineering B.S., my older bother went there for his. My mother even took classes through them when she was on summer break from BYU. Come to find out it is one of the best schools in the nation for both medicine, video game design, and computer engineering. Go figure. The history he gives of the development of Pixar as a company was new to me too. I have a whole new respect for Steve Jobs now. 

The thing I found the most enlightening was the methods he described to help foster a creative environment. The methods are all directly applicable to any innovative business, but I found some elements that could be applied to the Language Arts classroom. The importance of candid feedback. The only way to foster collaborative creativity is to have a safe environment where people can speak openly, giving and receiving criticism. No trolling allowed. I also love how he described new ideas in his section of the beast and the baby. New ideas are always ugly when they first start out, but if they can be protected and allowed to develop for a time they can become amazing. The safe and candid environment is critical for this sort of creativity.

The other thing I really loved was how important the health and wellbeing of his employees is to the company. He describes how crazy the last six months of Toy Story 2's develop was. People were mentally and physically ragged. There was one terrifying episode where a baby was left in a hot car. In response to this, they did all they could to encourage their employees to live healthy active lives both at work and at home. Their company is very family friendly, and they take measures to ensure their employees to experience terrible burnout. My sister doesn't really want to go into animation, but the positive, hard working environment of the Pixar Studios is what she wants. Now, if only all creative industries could take note. 

EBN A Book With a U.S. President in It: Empire by Gore Vidal

I can't even begin to say how intensely crazy the last few weeks have been. We've had surprize baptisms, several weddings, a motorcycle mishap on the freeway, and a gallbladder removal. Obviously this all didn't happen personally to me, but it did all effect me directly. I wish I could say things are calming down now and we will be able to coast our way to the end of the school year and into summer, but I can't. We have at least another six weeks before there is any hope of let up. I've been struggling with my mood a bit and I genuinely hope that the crazy demands of the next month will help improve it and not make it worse.

I finally finished it. This book took quite a while for me to get through. Not only is it pretty epic in its length and scope, but I struggled getting through the lulls in the story. There were moments were it was really interesting and made great progress, and others where I got a little bored. It probably would have been more entertaining if I had been less distracted by life though. So don't take my judgments to heart.

I really liked how applicable the political commentary of this novel was to the modern day political scene. The book came out in the 1980's so things haven't changed a super ton since then. We are still fighting predominately muslim nations. Our votes are still largely economically driven. We still have an "actor" for president. I think that may have been Vidal's point though. The story takes place after the end of the Spanish American War when the United States takes dominion over different territories around the globe; most notably the Philippines. When he portrays the political climate of that time he shows the challenges of running a nation with new responsibilities and leaders that are not entirely up to the task. 

The coolest parallel I found between the events of the book and the events of recent months was the blatant manipulation of media. William Randolph Hearst successfully prints newspapers using what was called yellow journalism. He focused on the sensational, fabricated details to spin things his way, and controlled the beliefs of his readers with his lies. Just a few years ago I would have classified his method as something only silly tabloids use. You know, the ones that say things like "Hillary Clinton was abducted and probed by aliens from Jupiter". Now, it is the method used by many, previously trusted, media outlets. It doesn't matter if it is true, just get it out there so you can say you said it first. Stupid! Why is it that good things always seem to take a back seat to the crazy and negative?

One more thing about this book. One of the main character's is this young woman named Caroline. I kind of loved her and hated her. She was complex. One one hand she was a naive, and expected to follow the typical path women followed in her day. On the other she rebelled against it, taking on her own newspaper, rebelling against her brother for what was rightfully hers, and effectively slapping misogyny in the face.  I really liked her complexity but I didn't really connect to her as a woman. It may just be me, but she was extremely calculating, a characteristic I typically associate with men. Maybe she was just a cold b;#$h and I didn't want to associate that trait with my own sex.