lintonchiswick.org

Common Good Books

Garrison Keillor's opened a bookshop in his home City of St Paul, Minnesota.

Getting Things Done

For a number of years, I've been interested in California's personal growth movement of the 1960s and '70s. And it was from that perspective that I became curious about the Getting Things Done meme that began replicating online in 2005 and continues to organise business leaders and the internet generation. I thought I'd put it to the test, see if it can do anything for me... and guess what? Anyway, for the Financial Times, I spoke to GTD's author David Allen, to GTD blogger and extreme multi-tasker Marc Orchant, and to lifehacker-provocateur and GTD blogger Merlin Mann. Click here to download the piece.

Bowdoin podcasts

Maine's oldest college - Bowdoin - is embracing the 21st Century and making free podcasts available of interviews, events and lectures. There's plenty of good stuff, including novelists (Matthew Pearl, Doris Kearns Goodwin, others) talking about their books in the Common Hour series, and original concert performances. Go here for more details.

Yiddish - Alive And Almost Kicking

The Times, June, 2005

Have you ever witnessed a proper blank stare? I hadn’t, until about three years ago when, in answer to a question about the “hieroglyphics” I’d been scribbling in a notebook, I told a friend I was learning Yiddish. I didn’t think it was so strange. I’m half-Jewish. The thousand-year Eastern European culture that left a heritage of literature, poetry, left-leaning political thought and klezmer music is inherently fascinating; and imagine reading Isaac Bashevis Singer in the original. “But,” asked my friend, “why don’t you learn a language that other people can speak too? It might be less... lonely.”

Actually, there are orthodox Jews who speak Yiddish on a daily basis; but he was right. On the eve of the Holocaust there had been 11 million Yiddish speakers; now there are perhaps one million. And its rarity was part of its attraction. I could play a part in the survival of a language all but wiped out. I would be a mixed-race foot soldier, spreading the secular Yiddish word(s). Three years of fragmented and interrupted study on, I realise how late I came to the party. Without any help from me, Yiddish is undergoing a dramatic resurgence of interest.