Tag Archives: Artisan

Assembly Required

The Avengers is Marvel/Disney’s hopeful blockbuster franchise slated to assemble at a theater near you during the summer of 2012.  Marvel studios and Walt Disney pictures have strategically released independent films providing backstory for the Avengers’ four major characters.  Those being Iron Man, the incredible Hulk, Captain America, and Thor.  And like any dynamic and complex set of major characters, these four ‘Avengers’ together represent all four basic personality types.  Captain America is of course the stalwart Guardian who defends justice with his iconic shield.  Hulk is likewise the emotional and impulsive Artisan who transforms into a raging beast when angered.  Iron Man is the Rational industrialist and ingenious engineer that utilizes a mechanical suit of armor.  Finally Thor is the championing Idealist god of thunder who fights ‘for Asgard’ and is constantly learning life’s lessons.  Together, they assemble to fight against threats to humanity.  Much like the four temperaments assemble to do the same.

Be A Viking Bystander

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” spoken by Atticus Finch, in To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee.

How do you “truly” climb into another’s skin and walk around?  It is a hard thing to do, well.  For that person may be a different kind of person from you, from a different time, and from a different place.

My avocation since I was a child was as a Viking bystander.  My vocation lately has been as a Viking reader of books and people.

One can try to “climb into another’s skin” through watching a movie or play, or reading a book.  This is something we can do as humans.   We can visit different lands and different tribes – the modern words for “lands” and “tribes” is countries and cultures.  We can also visit different “ages” – through movies and living in cultures that are “slower” than your “culture” – although there are limitations and there is a possibility to not really get the “gestalt” of that age and place.

Mostly, we don’t understand “truly” – the Temperament, the Tribe, the Age that is not like us

But we can try.

Here are some autobiographies of the various Temperaments, many from a different time and different place.  Climb into the person’s skin, and walk around in it – at least for awhile.

Rationals

Ben Franklin (Inventor)

Mark Twain (Inventor)

Margaret Thatcher (Fieldmarshal)

Ulysses S. Grant (Mastermind)

Charles Darwin (Architect)

Linus Torvalds (Architect)

Idealists

Jane Goodall (Counselor)

Mohandas Gandhi (Counselor)

Jane Fonda (Teacher)

Albert Schweitzer (Healer)

Karen Armstrong (Healer)

Joan Baez (Champion)

Artisans

Katherine Hepburn (Crafter)

Lance Armstrong (Crafter)

Donald Trump (Promoter)

Neil Simon (Composer)

Jim Cramer (Performer)

Bill Clinton (Performer)

Guardians

Barbara Walters (Provider)

Sam Walton (Provider)

Andrea Mitchell (Inspector)

Mike Wallace (Supervisor)

George H. W. Bush (Protector)

Two of Kind: On the Third Degree

They are two of kind; they are so… different.  They are same.  They are different.  He is the father, and she, the daughter.

Can they have a relationship?

They are alike in a fundamental way: they have the same Temperament and Type.  Different in other ways: male versus female, different generations, and different life experience.

Competitive.  Contending.

Two Crafter Artisans.

Co-stars in the hit movie, Paper Moon, the daughter, 10 years old at the time, Tatum O’Neal, won an Academy award for her performance, as a tough-kid in a father-daughter grifter team in the Depression.  She was the youngest actor to get an Oscar ever.  They were inseparable at the time, when Ryan O’Neal took care of her, because her mother and his ex-wife, Joanna Moore, was an alcoholic, and neglected to take care of  her.

“We were a team,” “we were very close; I was closer to her than any of my wives,”  Ryan O’Neal has said.

But then it all changed.

Continue reading Two of Kind: On the Third Degree

I Got You Babe: Isabel’s problem

Latin introvert: to turn within

“My daughter is not an introvert,
— she’s pretty”

An anonymous mother’s exclamation

One Babe had a problem.  She was an introvert – she was what they call shy — but she wanted to be an actress.

This Babe was lucky. At 17, she encountered “the most unforgettable character I’ve ever met.” The rest is history: for he, Salvatore, her unforgettable character, was not “intro-verted” — in fact he was far more gregarious than shy, or, in Latinized German jargon, he was “extro-verted.”  He had wiggled himself into the Los Angeles music scene; he had paid his dues as a gofer and backup singer for Phil Spector’s record company.

She had said: “For better or worse, I never plan my life. I focus on today. I love spontaneity. That is what has put me in some strange and wonderful places in my life.”

So how did this shy but ambitious teenager, a high school dropout, once one of Warren Beatty’s uncountable hook-ups, with no plans, become The Diva of Rock?

Continue reading I Got You Babe: Isabel’s problem

Amazing Grace or Amazing Disgrace

Charlie Sheen has a tiger by the tail.  It’s himself.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me,
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

So are the words of John Newton, once an infidel and libertine by his own account; the words are the beginning stanza of Amazing Grace, a famous Christian hymn about redemption. Despite the libertine ways of his younger days, Newton changed his ways, and spent the last 43 years of his life preaching the gospel.

There are two meanings to the phrase Amazing Grace: 1) the forgiveness of God and 2) the ability of some people to show amazing gracefulness.

The Artisans are known for their charm and grace.  Talented Artisans can be known for their amazing gracefulness.  However, those Artisans that are using the Dark Escape methods, methods of madness, can be amazing in their disgrace.
Continue reading Amazing Grace or Amazing Disgrace