A reward is something that accrues to someone by accomplishment or recognition. The future rewards those who press on. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I’m going to press on. [Barack Obama] Work is that which you dislike doing but perform for the sake of external rewards. At school, this takes…
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Value for Friday of Week 45 in the season of Assessing
Endurance – Stamina
We empower ourselves through persistence in action – through endurance and stamina.
- The key to doing eight shows a week is endurance, stamina. [attributed to Betty Buckley]
- Chess as a sport requires a lot of mental stamina, and this is what that makes it different from a physical sport. Chess players have a unique ability of taking in a lot of information and remembering relevant bits. So, memory and mental stamina are the key attributes. [attributed to Viswanathan Anand]
- Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough. [Franklin D. Roosevelt]
Endurance. or stamina, is vigor over an extended period of time. A person may be supremely skilled but with endurance that person can apply those skills over a greater time.
Real
True Narratives
The story of Ernest Shackleton is one among many several stories that could illustrate stamina and endurance. In 1914, he and his crew set out to explore Antarctica. After their ship ran aground, they were stranded for many months and then had to row more than eight hundred miles to survive.
- Caroline Alexander, The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antacrtic Expedition (Knopf, 1998).
- Alfred Lansing, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001).
- Ernest Henry Shackleton, South: The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition 1914-1917. (1917).
Other survival stories:
- Nando Parrando, Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home (Crown, 2006).
- Slavomir Rawicz, The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom (Lyons, 2010).
- Dean King, Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival (Little, Brown and Company, 2004).
- Edward E. Leslie, Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls: True Stories of Castaways and Other Survivors (Mariner Books, 1998).
- David Howarth, We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance (Adventure Library, 1996).
- Steven Callahan, Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea (Mariner Books, 2002).
- Joe Simpson, Touchitng the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival (HarperCollins, 1989).
- Malcolm McConnell, Into the Mouth of the Cat: The Story of Lance Sijan, Hero of Vietnam (W.W. Norton & Co., 2004).
- Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (Random House, 2010). (The writing of this book also illustrates endurance, as its author suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome throughout most of its preparation.)
- Scott Kelly, Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery Endurance (Alfred A. Knopf, 2017): “. . . it is easy to imagine future generations of explorers and daredevils harnessing the lessons and truths within the pages of ‘Endurance’ as the blueprints for their own trips into the unknown.”
- Ed Viesturs, K2: Life and Death on the World’s Most Dangerous Mountain (Broadway Books, 2009): “An American climber recounts some of the most dramatic attempts on the peak of K2.”
- David Grann, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder (Doubleday, 2023) “investigates the mysteries surrounding an 18th-century maritime disaster off Cape Horn.”
- József Debreczeni, Cold Crematorium: Reporting From the Land of Auschwitz (St. Martin’s Press, 2024): “Everything he encounters in what he calls the Land of Auschwitz — the work sites, the barracks, the bodies, the corpses, the hunger, the roll call, the labor, the insanity, the fear, the despair, the strangeness, the hope, the cruelty — is captured in terrifyingly sharp detail.”
Technical and Analytical Readings
Photographs
Documentary and Educational Films
Imaginary
Fictional Narratives
Novels:
- Allegra Goodman, Isola: A Novel (The Dial Press, 2025): “. . . a work of tremendous imagination that draws on harrowing historical records to spin a story of self-determination, courage and faith. The deaths of Marguerite’s parents damn her to an uncertain fate; her finances are handled by a male relative, Roberval, whose primary interest is maximizing her wealth to his advantage. Roberval spends months at sea, and every visit from him in Marguerite’s childhood brings the specter of a new horror. He is a shrewd, unscrupulous guardian — a cruelly inapt term for the individual entrusted to guide her to a suitable future.”
Poetry
Music: Composers, artists, and major works
On the Hindu holiday of Janmashtami in 1998, commemorating the supposed birth of Krishna, the master Indian flautist Hariprasad Chaurasia performed a ragamala based on Raag Khamaj and prepared for the occasion (200’). The lead performer was accompanied by two other flautists and a tabla player. (In Indian classical music, unlike in the Western concerto form, the soloist has very little time to rest.)
Also impressive is sitarist Nikhil Banerjee’s performance of the hundred-minute raga, Purabi Kalyan, in Berkeley, California, in 1982 (95’).
These compositions, for solo instrument, are to be played without a break:
- Dennis Johnson, November (293’ – see also the page on Cycles - Seasons): Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4. Nicolas Horvath has also recorded the work (377’).
- LaMonte Young, The Well-Tuned Piano (approximately 300’ – see also the page on Being Fully Engaged)
- Morton Feldman, String Quartet No. 2 (1983) (333’ – see also the page on Life)
Several artists have given lengthy concerts:
- Grateful Dead at Cornell University, May 8, 1977 (180’);
- Bruce Springsteen in Helsinki, Finland, July 31, 2012 (276’);
- Bob Dylan with Joan Baez and Bob Neuwirth at The Warehouse, May 3, 1976 (217’); and
- Phish in Raleigh, August 10, 2018 (196’).
Albums:
- Max Roach, “Members, Don’t Git Weary” (1968) (31’)
Music: songs and other short pieces
- Chumbawamba, “Tubthumping” (lyrics)
- Tinie Tempah, “Till I’m Gone” (lyrics)
- Eminem, “Till I Collapse” (lyrics)
Visual Arts
- Umberto Boccioni, Dynamism of a Cyclist (1913)
