QAIS Staff Profile of the Week – Jon Springer, Communications Officer and Global Issues & Entrepreneurship Instructor
What famous person do you admire most and why?
I admire Humaira Bachal. She is a great teacher in Pakistan. She began her own school when she was 12 years old. Today she runs a flourishing school and foundation. I could go on about her for more than 2,000 words, but I already did in this article.
What is your favorite museum and why?
I have two: Tinkertown Museum and the Will Rogers Memorial.
Tinkertown Museum is in one of my former homes: Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. It is a carved wood wonderland and collection of Americana by Ross Ward who liked to say, “I did all this while you were watching TV.” I am fond of a little hyperbole and telling people Tinkertown “is the best place in the world” to get them to go this fabulous place beyond description unless you see it. The picture with this article is my youngest son Solomon and I visiting Tinkertown this past summer – see how happy we are!
(If you wondering what the quote behind our heads says. It is: “The greatest mistake we make is to neglect what is possible while brooding over what is difficult.” – Harry Meech)
I also love the Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore, Oklahoma, USA. Will Rogers was an early 1900s everyman: cowboy, vaudeville performer, rope trick master, world traveller, humorist, radio talkshow host, movie star. His most famous saying is “I never met a man I didn’t like.” He also had a way of turning a phrase such as other great quotes:
- “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”
- “Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.”
- “I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.”
- “Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people that they don’t like.”
- “Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.”
- “The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces.”
What is your favorite book and why?
It would have to be either Ishmael by Daniel Quinn or If On A Winter’s Night, A Traveller by Italo Calvino.Ishmael is a nice quick read that challenges the philosophy of how the world has developed in an unexpected way if you give it time to simmer in your brain.If On A Winter’s Night, A Traveller is a novel about trying to read a novel. In fact, it was a crafty way for Italo Calvino to string together a series of diverse stories into a unified one. As an aspiring novelist still trying to complete a novel that will get published – as opposed to the two I completed that are unpublished – I feel a quirky bond with this book and the sly grin behind the clean writing in it.
