From an essay called “Statesmen, please step forawrd,” by Father Eugene Hemrick in the May 10, 2013 issue of Catholic San Francisco.

From Elaine Louie’s Q&A interview with designer Milton Glaser in the November 22, 2012 issue of The New York Times.

The immediate idea came when Ms. Hirshfield walked into an empty kitchen where the scent of recently cleaned wild mushrooms lingered.  That triggered two memories — of being asked to write a poem about mushrooms for an anthology some years earlier, and of reading a review of a science book about light.  ”That was the precipitating moment when I said, ‘Oh, there’s a poem here.’”  All of a sudden, she needed to write a new poem — and many, many drafts later, she had her finished poem.

And what went on in between?   In the article, Ms. Hirshfield presented the first draft of the poem and the final version, and told how and why certain lines had morphed.  Included was this advice: “I read a lot of science.  I think one way poets prime the imagination is by knowing a lot of different things, which can then get pulled forward when you need them.”

“A.  That’s a good question.  People have asked us that, and over the years we’ve tried to re-engineer it: maybe it stands for Better Architectural Methods.  But it wasn’t where the name came from.  We tend to do more complex, sophisticated projects, where there’s a lot of thought required for the design aspect.  So the idea was: Bam!  What’s the big idea?”

From a Q&A interview beween Vivian Marino and Ross Adam Cole, founder and pirncipal of BAM Architecture Studio, in the March 27, 2013 issue of The New York Times.

From the one-paragaph profile of rapper Nas by Dave Itzkoff in the February 3, 2012 issue of The New York Times Magazine.

Here’s a description of a typical editorial meeting at Vogue under the leadership of Anna Wintour, with Ms. Coddington as creative director: “To mark the end of a season’s shows, you would be summoned to a fashion ideas meeting.  It was like a final exam, and we all dreaded it. … You had to stand up, sing for your supper, and offer your ideas — although you didn’t really want to reveal your ideas for fear someone would poach them.”

Fear?  And creativity?  How can they co-exist?

Well, according to the Pacific Sun, Marin County student Haley Pavone paid attention to what I haven’t.  Annie Spiegelman, writing in the March 1-7, 2013 issue, quotes Ms. Pavone about seeing a lemon tree last year that, because it “was producing too much fruit for the family to consume, with some surplus fruit falling on the ground, inviting pests and disease, it sparked an idea.”  That idea is now  a now thriving volunteer effort called Project Abundance.  Ms. Pavone and 30 other student volunteers routinely rescue home-grown produce and direct it to the Marin Food Bank, which in turn supplies 37 locations with food.  While the “gleaning” of many thousands of pounds of surplus crops annually from Marin County farms has been a practice for some time now, this project was apparently the first to target the home garden.

From “A Kingdom United,” a meditation by Elizabeth Leseur (died 1914) published on March 7, 2013 in Magnificat. 

From Karen Bannan’s March 21, 2013 New York Times Q&A-style interview with Long Island woodcarver Gregg Klewicki, who has found many new clients among those Hurricane Sandy folks who “have embraced the wreckage by turning their downed trees into sculpture.”

And there it was in the February 2013 issue of Inc. Magazine, an article by Jason Fried about lessons learned from pruning the apple trees on his rural property — lessons that he put to work in his company.  The initial pain of seeing a just-pruned tree — “looking thinner and weaker than it did before” — gave way to delight in, as I saw with my tree, new light and air and growth.  ”If you did the pruning right, you’ve given your tree a stronger foundation for the future.”  It seems that the same thing worked in the workplace.  ”A few months after cutting back our product line, something unexpected happened: We sprouted some new ideas.  Duirng a discussion about one of our products, a couple of ideas suddenly emerged for new ones.”  New ideas, energies and offerings and — yes, it’s a business — profits.