Don't know whether to moan we should have a stamp this cool in the United States or wonder whether a postage stamp is the medium for calling attention to literature.

At Twitter, @dontgetcaught spotted another story, with audio this time.

The government is cutting music programmes in schools and slashing Arts grants as gleefully as a morbidly American kid in Baskin Robbins. So if only to stick it to the man, isn’t it worth fighting back in some small way? So write your damn book. Learn a Chopin prelude, get all Jackson Pollock with the kids, spend a few hours writing a Haiku. Do it because it counts even without the fanfare, the money, the fame… .

Concert pianist James Rhodes articulates the urgency of finding your purpose and doing what you love. As a wise woman eloquently put it, “Start with a big, fat lump in your throat, start with a profound sense of wrong, a deep homesickness, or a crazy lovesickness, and run with it.” (via explore-blog)

Here’s a radical proposal: Don’t check your e-mail at all tomorrow morning. Turn it off entirely. Instead, devote a designated period of uninterrupted time to a task that really matters.

At the New York Times, Tony Schwartz articulates a less dogmatic—and to my mind more realistic—kind of Sabbath. His practice is to work, not to unplug totally, and to free his attention from unnecessary distraction.

I like the "Quantified Self" idea, but using that name to describe recording one's life is like calling a wedding a "coital contract event".

— Anil Dash (@anildash) May 2, 2013

The way to mend the bad world, is to create the right world. #Emerson #TheConductofLife #Worship

— Ralph Waldo Emerson (@dailyemerson) May 2, 2013