Kurt Kohlstedt
99% Invisible
A Podcast by Roman Mars & Kurt KohlstedtInheriting Froebel's Gifts
A Podcast by Kurt KohlstedtFroebel’s Gifts were meant to be given in a particular order, growing more complex over time and teaching different lessons about shape, structure and perception along the way. A soft knitted ball could be given to a child just six weeks old, followed by a wooden ball and then a cube, illustrating similarities and differences in shapes and materials. Then kids would get a cylinder (which combines elements of both the ball and the cube) and it would blow their little minds. Some objects were pierced by strings or rods so kids could spin them and see how one shapes morphs into another when set into motion. Later came cubes made up of smaller cubes and other hybrids, showing children how parts relate to a whole through deconstruction and reassembly.
These perception-oriented “Gifts” would then give way to construction-oriented “Occupations.” Kids would be told to build things out of materials like paper, string, wire, or little sticks and peas that could be connected and stacked into structures.
The 99% Invisible City
A Book by Roman Mars & Kurt Kohlstedt
Meditations
Gravity without affectation
From Sextus: The idea of what it means to live in accordance with nature; gravity without affectation, and a careful regard for the interests of one's friends.
Flesh and a bit of breath
Whatever it is that I am is flesh and a bit of breath.
Any life
Even if you were to live for three thousand years or ten times as long, you should still remember this, that no one loses any life other than the one that he is living, nor does he live any life other than the one that he loses, so the shortest life and the longest amount to the same.
A little thing
Cast everything else aside, then, and hold to these few truths alone; and remember, furthermore, that each of us lives only in the present, this fleeting moment of time, and that the rest of one's life has either has either already been lived or lies in an unknowable future. The space of each person's existence is thus a little thing, and little too is the corner of earth on which it is lived.
Praise has no part in it
Everything that is in any way beautiful is beautiful of itself and complete in itself, and praise has no part in it; for nothing comes to be better or worse for being praised.
Carrying a corpse around
You are a little soul carrying a corpse around.
As Epictetus used to say.
Avenge yourself!
The best way to avenge yourself is not to become as they are.
The clapping of tongues
(for praise from the crowd is simply the clapping of tongues)
Giving up the struggle
How shameful it is that, in this life, when your body does not give up the struggle, your soul should do so first.
Why?
The cucumber is bitter? Then cast it aside. There are brambles in the path? Step out of the way. That will suffice, and you need not ask in addition, "Why did such things ever come into the world?"
Poured
The light of the sun seems to be poured down, and to be poured, indeed, in every direction, but not poured away.
Wanting for nothing
Some day, will you be satisfied and want for nothing, yearning for nothing, and desiring nothing, animate or inanimate, to cater to your pleasures?
Laughter
—and my heart laughed within me.