Joyful Jubilant Learning

Time to rhyme and learn

While we are celebrating our digital learning here at JJL, April is also being celebrated as National Poetry Month in the United States.

• Did you have a Poem in Your Pocket on April 17th?
• Have you explored your calendar for any poetry events taking place locally?
• Have you read any good poems recently?

Yes, I recognize that there are those who would respond: "by definition, there is no such thing as a good poem". Alas, you do not fully understand what you are missing.

The opportunity to write with some restrictions and focus comes in many forms. One is via a theme. One is via the format.

Hence, a sherku which is my variation, really an extension of haiku.

sherku: defined

focus your writing, say it
all concentrated in just
nineteen syllables

This month I am working on a series of sherku on the stops along the Franklin Line. I ride the rails twice most days, I know the stops by heart but do I know much about what is at each stop? No, hence a little speculation and a little learning ensue on this series, along with a healthy dose of fun.

For the stops I knew very little of, I used Google and Wikipedia for some research. For example, I learned that the land next to Ruggles Station was the site of the South End Grounds where the old Boston Braves baseball team played. These are the Braves that now play in Atlanta.

Franklin Line: Ruggles Station

The old Braves outfield at the
South End Grounds is a
Parking garage at Ruggles

My posting on Steve's 2 Cents about this series got picked up by UniversalHub, a collection of Boston blogs. It inspired commuter-rail limericks. Wow!

I have long admire the work of Limerick Savant so I went back to my trusty companions (Google and Wikipedia) to learn more more about limericks. I read about the story of the limerick challenge that took place amongst some newspapers back in 1924.

This series of limericks first appeared in a June 14, 1924 edition of a Nantucket newspaper. It all began when the Princeton Tiger revived the then well-known limerick printed first below and the Chicago Tribune answered with the second limerick. The New York Exchange went one step further with the third rhyme, and the Pawtucket Times took over from there.

Click through to read the limericks here

As I grew up in Pawtucket (yes, really), I needed no further inspiration:

There once was a lad from Pawtucket
who now had to rhyme with suck it
but he did not dare
as he did not swear
so he found a way to duck it

Are you ready to Trade Up?

Just like people, books can come to us in a number of different ways. Sometimes, you get both books and people at the same time. Throw in a three-day immersion retreat type of conference with the author and about twenty other women, and that was my story with Trade Up! Five Steps for Redesigning Your Leadership and Life from the Inside Out by Rayona Sharpnack.

When I start my coaching work with new clients, I ask them about people they consider to be their mentors: Knowing who they are and why they are esteemed as a mentor will provide me with significant clues to the present-day state of my prospective client’s thinking. Invariably, much conversation also ensues about the kind of relationship they thrive in with a coach or mentor.

In one of these conversations about a year ago Rayona Sharpnack’s name came up. My client had read an interview that Rayona gave to Fast Company back in November of 2000. This was the tagline of the article:

Natural Leader

By: Cheryl Dahle

Rayona Sharpnack is a teacher and a mentor to some of the most powerful women in some of the most important companies around. Her message: Don't worry so much about what you need to know. Instead, figure out who you need to be.

In short, that was just the message my client needed at just the right time. Impulsively she searched for the phone number to Rayona’s company, dialed it, and was floored when Rayona answered it herself. They now have a friendship which continues to flourish in its seventh year, and will likely be co-mentoring each other for a long time to come.

I share the FC tagline and article with you, because I think it nicely sums up what Trade Up! and Rayona’s coaching with Redesigning Your Leadership and Life from the Inside Out is all about. I read Rayona’s book in-between the time that I signed up for her three-day seminar and actually attended it (just recently; it was held the last week of February). With a fast read of her book as my background preparation, I was to discover how the person I had grown up to be inside was affecting so many of my daily decisions without my even being aware of it.

By the way, Happy Easter

And no, I am not switching gears on you. As we finalized our editorial calendar for JJL and this, our annual Love Affair with Books, Easter seemed to be the perfect day for this book review. Similar to the rebirth this holiday celebrates for Christians everywhere, Trade Up! invites you to have new conversations with yourself, reborn for the possibilities you can begin to manifest in your life: You redesign your leadership of others by starting with the context you dwell within that determines how you are leading yourself.

I would discover that "context" is Rayona’s favorite word. Trade Up! is about "contextual leadership."

These are the five steps the book outlines and explains, "to help leaders gain awareness of these assumptions and trade up from limiting beliefs and behaviors to those that will help them change the world.":

Inside the Dark Tide

What do molasses, Italian immigrants, influenza, Prohibition, J Edgar Hoover, and good old New England weather have in common?

These are the main threads woven together to tell the tale of one of the major industrial disasters to have occurred in these United States. Stephen Puleo tells the story in Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. In meticulous detail, the threads build upon each other from building the tank in 1915 to set the stage for the event itself on January 15, 1919, and through to the trial that rendered its verdict in April of 1925.

Dark Tide is the selection of the Franklin Public Library for this year’s On the Same Page program. Supported by a grant from the Library Services and Technology Act, a federal source of library funding provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, On the Same Page is a community-wide reading project designed to bring members of the community together around the ideas shared through reading the same book.

Dark Tide was a natural fit for my own evolutionary blogging journey and my entry for this ALAWB.

The story is centered on an enormous steel tank (50 foot tall by 90 foot wide) that held 2.3 million gallons of molasses weighing about 26 million pounds. The tank was located on the water front of Boston’s North End surrounded on three sides by a heavily residential area. The water front made an easy connection from ship to rail for the US Industrial Alcohol (USIA) company that built and operated the tank to supply their refinery in nearby Cambridge.

Here are some passages that I think will give you a flavor of the story that Stephen Puleo has crafted.

Molasses:

Frank Van Gelder transported molasses along the East Coast following the same route that captains before him had traveled since the early 1600’s. For three centuries, the molasses trade has been a vital part of the American and New England economy, as important as fishing or textiles, and a critical component in the country’s political and social development. The dark brown viscous liquid, a by-product in the processing of sugar cane, played a major part in some of the biggest events in American history: in the colonial discontent that lead directly to the Revolution; in the introduction of slavery to the New World and, thus, the Civil War; in the growth of rum and liquor distilleries throughout the United States, and the resulting Prohibition movement; and in ensuring the superiority of Allied firepower that would eventually lead to victory in the First World War/ It all started in Boston and New England.

Italian immigrants:

As Irish and Jews assimilated and earned more money, both ethnic groups moved out of the North End to better areas of the city, although small enclaves remained in the neighborhood until well into the 1930’s. … the Italian population in the North End continued to soar --- by 1910, after a decade of unprecedented immigration, the neighborhood’s population approached thirty thousand people, of whom more than twenty-eight thousand were Italian.

Armistice and Influenza:

The armistice had occurred at the right time for Bostonians, who needed a reason to celebrate after they, and much of the world, had endured a dreadful 1918 autumn battling an influenza epidemic that first showed up in early September. In a little more than two months, it had wrecked havoc of biblical proportions. When it was over more than five hundred thousand Americans would lie dead, and estimates ranged from 20 million to 100 million worldwide. More than 25 percent of the U.S. population became ill, and an estimated eighteen thousand servicemen died of the virus; the government estimated that it would pay the beneficiaries of soldiers and sailors a total of $170 million in insurance premiums.

Prohibition:

Now that the war had ended, USIA had to find additional sources of revenue to tide it over until the country could fully make the transition to a peacetime economy, and the demand for non-military industrial alcohol grew again. … Company executives decided they could retool the Cambridge plant’s manufacturing processes to produce grain alcohol for the rum and liquor industries. … But even this strategy represented a timing challenge, one to be managed carefully for the company to benefit. After years of momentum, it now appeared certain that a Prohibition amendment would be ratified shortly by three-quarters of the states and that an 18th amendment would be added to the U.S. Constitution, banning the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages.

J. Edgar Hoover:

Four days before Christmas (1919), at 5 A.M., the Buford set sail from New York harbor for Russia, carrying 249 passengers, including renowned anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. J. Edgar Hoover, who was special assistant to Attorney General Palmer, watched the ship pull away. Hoover had strongly advocated the Goldman and Berkman deportations, branding them as “beyond doubt, two of the most dangerous anarchists in this country.” The Cleveland Plain Dealer echoed the feelings of the vast majority of the general public: “It is to be hoped and expected that other vessels, larger, more commodious, carrying similar cargoes, will follow in her wake.

Franklin played a part in this story:

… Italian anarchist Luigi Galleani, himself awaiting deportation, delivered an incendiary speech in Taunton, Massachusetts. The next evening, in the nearby town of Franklin, four Italian anarchists, all ardent Galleanists, blew themselves up in what police believe was a botched plot to destroy the mill of the American Woolen Company where they worked and where a strike was in progress.

The weather:

On December 13 and 14, a vicious storm with gale-force winds pounded Boston. The newspapers called it a “superstorm”, the worst in a dozen years. Two massive fronts collided in upstate New York and dumped more than twenty inches of snow west of Boston as well as torrential rain and a driving sleet within the city. Trains were delayed and streets were rendered impassable due to flooding. Heavy wind knocked down electric power lines, chimneys, trees, and signs outside of store fronts.

Gee, just this past December 14th, a similar storm hit Boston and New England paralyzing it with almost as much snow. Are we really seeing the effects of global warming?

Has much else changed since 1919?

• Is the war on terror any different than combating the anarchists
• Molasses may have seceded its place of prominence; only to be replaced by another dark thick liquid (oil) which is wrecking economic and political havoc around the world
• War has moved from Europe to the Middle East and Africa
• The threat of a pandemic is real
• Immigration is still a major issue for America.

There is so much more to the story. As the Library holds additional events for On the Same Page, I want to participate. As the year progresses, I will share what I learn.

In the meantime, I would recommend that amongst the wonderful opportunities to read that we have, pick up a book of your local history.

• What can you learn about your area?
• What role did it play in history?
• Do you find any parallels to current events?

Recall that George Santayana wrote:
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." 

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Steve Sherlock writes his 2 cents exploring the "good experience", "life long learning" and life in general, after handling the "before you blog" list his wonderful wife Dolores  provides him. Together, they are enjoying the empty nest while their daughters are away at college. His sherku and other poetry can be found at quiet poet. More information about his current home town of Franklin, MA can be found at Franklin Matters

Beware the meme, it may contain more than it seems

Have you taken part in a meme? I have. I don’t jump on every one that comes along but once in awhile, I do find time to participate when it catches my interest. A meme can take many forms. It can be a set of questions to answer (Five things you don’t know about me, is a popular one). Or a set of instructions to follow (like one book meme I recall, that had you go to the first book in your pile, turn to x page, etc.). Or you input the URL of a blog and it does some analysis to produce a widget to post on your blog and attract additional folks to the meme. Like how much is your blog worth? For grins, I checked on this Joyful Jubilant Learning blog to find:

My blog is worth $127,586.04.
How much is your blog worth?

Of course, we are all richer for the learning we share!

I think this example helps to show that memes like this are generally good fun. They tend to further the sharing of information about one another. They do take time and depending upon the viral nature of them, an individual could get tagged about the same time from a couple of different folks.

Some folks decide not to partake in them and I respect their decision. If the person is one I want to know more about, then it is not a big deal. It actually provides a opportunity to further the conversation outside the meme and achieve the same goal; a deeper relationship.

The most recent widget meme I participated in occurred early in January this year. I picked it up from one blog in my PodCamp group. The meme in this case was a widget that advertised the readability of the blog. I had seen a similar one a year or so ago and was curious to see if there were any changes in readability since then. I posted the results and went on my way.

A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Michael Pollitt, a free-lance writer for the Guardian (UK). He wrote:

My bag gets filled

In this monthly theme of "Packing Our Bags of 2008", I have already learned to pack gratitude and to unpack my ears to listen.

I am a wordsmith of sorts and pack my bag with words where ever I go. Writing about the detritus was not enough. As an optimizer, I felt the need to do more.

I am packing my bag with some stuff but not like Rosa's stuff.

I am packing my bag with stuff that could go into a skip.

As my wife, Dolores, and I go for our weekly walk, I am carrying a bag that starts empty. I pack it with bottles and cans that I find along the road. Yes, Dolores gave me that look, too. You know the kind only a loved one can give when they think you are acting crazy. Heaven forbid someone think I am destitute and picking up the cans for the money.

I persisted. I stopped here and there to pick up a bottle along the walk until my bag was full. I will not get it all at once. I know that. I am also patient. I plan on walking regularly. With a little time, a little effort here and there, the bottles and cans will gradually go away.

I may even get a logo bag to advertise my local blog. Other walkers in town could do the same thing. And then with apologies to Arlo Guthrie,

Should you Learn the Story or the Data?

I love this posting by marketing guru Seth Godin, called Permeability for the management lesson it gives. However there is another quote within it that brought me back here to JJL to re-read the RFL contribution that David Zinger had posted for us too. In his post, Seth says,

“That's how most CEOs and top managers make decisions. Not based on unemotional data, but on emotion-rich, experience-based stories.”

I think that’s how most of us make decisions, not just CEOs. Many times we look for the data after our gut-level, visceral decisions have been made. We look for the data to give us affirmation that our emotional intelligence is just that – intelligent!

David Zinger recently wrote that,

“Sometimes I read an article here [at JJL] and don't even know the impact. I will write about something 3 weeks later and find that the article I read influenced me without any conscious awareness.”

Well, I confess that this permeable posting from Seth may have jumped out at me because of David’s conversation here this morning with Bridget about creating your signature story. David had said that, “We do not only tell stories, we are stories,” and Bridget asked,

“Signature Stories...give me more details, how do I create mine? What exactly is a signature story? Is this a story about who you are in a nutshell, where you want to go, where you've been, and where you are going?”

In part, David replied,

“Here are a few tips to find your signature story:
It is the story you love to read.
It is the story you can't help but tell.
You keep learning from your signature story.
It embraces a fundamental element of your life and work.”

David, Bridget, Seth... you ... I want to learn more... it is so cool the way that the comments work around here!
~ Rosa Say, JJL Contributor, and author of Managing with Aloha Coaching.

Notes to Make a Difference by (text)

The collaboration and learning here during this month is quite amazing. I was beginning to panic on what I could add to this impressive discussion. Fortunately, the radio was on. Pat Benetar was belting out:

"We are strong, no one can tell us we are wrong."

We are strong and look how much stronger we are getting! Then Neil Diamond chimed in:

"I am," I said
To no one there
And no one heard at all
Not even the chair

Thanks to the read/write web, the days that Neil sang of I think are mostly behind us. We can still be reflective, but someone will hear or read it when we post. And then the conversation will start, and if we take the blog off the blog, who knows what will happen!

What I Learned From Writing Online: It DOES make a difference

Preface: This is an entry for Robert Hzurek’s September writing project, hosted by Middle Zone Musings. I have showcased Robert’s monthly efforts here before, and will likely continue to do so, for he has our magic, magnetic word in them – learning!

There seems to be a kind of convergence brewing in our blogging communities: Here at JJL we have focused our September Forum on Making A Difference. Over on Great Circle, Pete Aldin and company are going to War. Many bloggers are gearing up for Blog Action Day on October 15th. Then last week, this came from Robert Hzurek: Don’t Just Sit There, Change Something!

“So, your challenge, should you decide to accept it, is to a) make a change (big or small, no matter - as long it gets you out of a comfort zone), then b) write about your experience (sure, maybe you just started, but so what?) So, just tell me about what you did, why you did it, and what happened; you know, that sort of thing.”

What does it all mean?

This convergence I refer to seems to be a restlessness, a need for all this reading and writing we do to mean something – a difference, a call for change, for real and tangible action as opposed to just gathering ideas, writing posts or essays about them, and then … nothing beyond yet another round of essays for another month ... another theme ... another march of days spent writing about more ideas unfulfilled.

Well, this is what I have learned: Stuff does happen offline, and in the “real world” because of triggers that were written online, catapulting someone to action. Real stuff, meaningful to someone. Just because you don’t always hear back about it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.

You have to write for the possibility.

When you write something online, whether in a guest posting, or within a comment, bravely willing to share, and give voice to your ideas, stuff happens.

How do I know? Two ways;

I learned about movers and shakers Taylor Mali and Mark Goren today

woah ... I am catching my breath. Truth told, I should not be online right now, but the heck with should-ing. This is one of those times I am not making any excuse for my web-surfing and chalking it up to providence.

In honor of this find, I'm thinking that we need to add a category here at JJL called "Raw Passion." The problem is that it may get misinterpreted and so for now I'll settle on the Schooling and Education one for Taylor Mali and Content and Context for Mark Goren.

Who is Mark Goren?

First, this hat-tip goes to Mark Goren of Transmission Content + Creative, and his post What do you make? Do please read the whole posting that he has written "(on behalf of all bloggers)."

In fact, to get you to read it twice, here's the main part of it without its treasure-trove of links other than for the post and his About Page - go get the rest of them at Mark's:

So, what is it that we make? Do you really want to know?

We make an effort to build a community. To meet new friends. To build relationships. We make people learn, think, talk, debate and discuss. Because we make conversations happen. And we make it happen from across the ocean. And we make people want to reach out to others.

We make companies listen. And we make suggestions to make them better. We make companies realize that fake is not good, and that nothing short of honesty and authenticity will do. We make companies accountable.

We make people believe in students who believe in their schools. We make students a little more knowledgeable going into their job search. And we make navigating the workforce a little easier too. In fact, we make students want to make us smarter as well – even well after they graduate.

We make people understand technology in very simple ways. Virtual worlds too. We make powerful charts that make social concepts easier to understand. And we make wonderfully simple hand sketched graphs that inspire.

We write books. Important ones. Landmark level. And we make people collaborate to create ones for charity (in a nice way, of course.) Of course, we also make time for people to share their thoughts on them. We also make people care about an industry that’s taking shots left and right. At least we try real hard.

In short, we make each other better.

~Mark Goren

Mark, if you see this post, send me a better picture so I can give you equal photo-billing!

Who is Taylor Mali?

I want to reform education in America from top to bottom. I want to be the individual responsible for making an entire generation of college graduates consider teaching before business or law school. I want to make it easier for smart, successful, and qualified people in their 30s and older to become teachers as well. I want to get America ready for an Education Tax if that's what it's going to take. But most of all, I want to be the spokesman for teaching's nobility, the poet laureate of passion in the classroom.
~From the Taylor Mali website, on a page titled, "Mission Statement"

Makes you ask yourself how you would speak of, and write out your mission, doesn't it. (As a side note, I agree we probably have enough lawyers, but I personally think we need more college graduates who teach well in business too.)

If not for Mark Goren, I would not have been moved and shaken by Taylor Mali.

One of Mark's links had taken me to this You Tube short of Taylor Mali speaking with that passion of the poet laureate, and in Mark's words,

"It’s unbelievably passionate, emotional and powerful. It’s a teacher’s response to the question, “What do you make.”

Go ahead, hit the triangle. The video is here."

We all have passion. We all can be movers and shakers. Only question is if we choose to be, and I fervently believe that lifelong learners take deliberate, daily steps closer to those choices.

Joyful Jubilant Learning is about choosing to be passionate with positive, joyful voices. On his website, Taylor Mali also says he is on a “quest to create 1000 new teachers through poetry, persuasion, and perseverance.”

I wouldn't at all be surprised if some of those teachers he is looking for are right here.

 

JJL LP2 Post18: Our 5 Distinctions of Leadership

Last Saturday I urged you to bring Part One of our learning project to a strong finish, one that was leader-worthy for you. I hoped that we could lift up the work we have done so far, by giving this project-learning CONTENT the better CONTEXT of our uniquely personal situations.

Learn to Lead with Your Strengths

Week 1: This week, through next Saturday, June 16. Reflect on those five distinctions of leadership I’ve offered you and finish Go Put Your Strengths to Work as you need to, with the self-directed reflection necessary. Make it count for you.

It was to be the beginning of our Part Two in the project. This can just be a different kind of book club on the two titles we've chosen, or we can Learn to Lead with our Strengths as we set out to do.

Fully aware that I should be leading this project by example, this posting is the story of my personal application of the assignment this past week. I had a series of MWA classes to teach a brand new client, and

1. my objective was to emerge with great capture of my strengths and weaknesses in the before, during, and after of the engagement,
2. with the greater goal of discovering how I could lead more than I normally would.

This is what I did, working with those 5 Distinctions of Leadership.

First, the desire to lead. Management is my forte. So clear is my own awareness of this, that I purposely named my company Say Leadership Coaching to force me to live up to that name, feeling it was high time I took up that  self-challenge; you could say that I actually incorporated into being what I hoped would be a self-fulfilling prophecy!

From the perspective of working with my clients, my desire to lead comes from knowing that without that desire being strong enough, my natural tendency will be to micro-manage them instead of empowering them to learn what I consider great management to be (and what I know works). If I allow myself to fall into managing for them (as easy for me as breathing, and thus a huge trap) I rob them of the learning I should be delivering.

I go into a new engagement fully intending to create a new relationship, so that a one-shot program requested, will result into desire for more from me. However this time, I gave myself I totally new mindset with this scenario:

They will never work with you again, except for this one engagement. You MUST lead and must not manage, because this will be the only opportunity you will ever have to do so. It is now or never.

I asked myself; What strengths will you lead with? and planned them into the activities of the engagement.

Learning to Talk to Each Other

I hope you will read this, even though you have decided not to participate in JJL LP2, for I would love to talk story with all of you about this particular learning. I suspect that the struggle some of us encountered with this step is one you might encounter with some other projects of your own choosing. When I chose the TypePad categories for this particular post, so many of them were appropriate (as you can see in the footer.)

My Step 5 Results? Relationship First

Learn to Lead with your Strengths has been an online and offline project for me. When we started it here on JJL, I also bought a half-dozen books for a few managers I know (two each in three different companies, also as a 70+ contribution) and asked them to do the project along with us.

Lot of reasons for me, the primal one being my ho‘ohana (mission) as a workplace coach, and these;

• As you’d expect from someone who started blogging with one called “Talking Story,” talking to my own managers about my strengths and weaknesses would never have been a challenge for me, and I know I’m “not normal” in that respect. I needed a task force of sorts with this project so I’d have more empathy and a real-time project laboratory.

• Before reading the book, I had already heard from our JJL community that Step 5 was where they met challenges, and this was coming from people I know are already high up the dial on their SET scores. Their cautions were not to be ignored.

• Because my personal blog is called Talking Story, and has three years of posts for the search spiders to gobble up, my stats reveal that someone searches for “how do I talk to my manager about _______” nearly every day. Once infancy is over, we talk as unconsciously as we breathe, yet silly as it sounds, we do have to continually learn to talk to each other, especially when it comes to challenging or more difficult conversations.

I’ll share more from my six managers’ results in total later, but in regard to Step 5 I’ve come to this conclusion;

This Web 2.0 Thing Explained

Settle in for a few minutes to watch this. Fasten your seatbelt as it moves quickly.

Found via Will Richardson writing at Weblogg-ed

Steve Sherlock is your collaboration teammate who believes commencement begins everyday.

Writing, Blogging, Business, and Learning Through it All

Steve Sherlock asked how we blog, and this is my sharing.

I do believe that blogging is a huge catalyst for learning, yet when Steve first proposed this series I honestly wondered why people would be interested in reading about how I do it. There are a wealth of bloggers who blog about blogging and offer terrific advice, such as Wayne Hurlburt of our Ho‘ohana Community who writes Blog Business World. Chris Cree has also started a great new series recently he calls Helping Businesses Fuel Growth Through Blogging (Start at Blog Shift ... Ho‘ohana unfolding in action!)

Then I read what Steve shared in kicking this off, and it struck me how different our approach. Soon after, I read a letter to the editor in Oprah’s magazine about an interview she’d done with Janet Fitch, the author of White Oleander. A reader had written in,

“Please give us more interviews with writers. We love to know how authors work, what they think, where their inspiration comes from – many of us find them much more fascinating than actors. Thank you for all the emphasis on books and reading.”
— Heide Manfredi

In short, that is the “why” I blog; to continually practice and add to my writing. I love thinking of myself as a writer first and a coach second, but in my real life it has to be the other way around (for now). If I were wealthy enough to have complete financial freedom, I’d opt for a literary life without hesitation, cocooning myself more often than I am now able to, in a sparse writer’s nook furnished with few distractions and the stuff of my best inspirations – other books. In my perfect world, everything I post on a blog would have been written in advance.

Benjamin Franklin, the Writer
Benjamin Franklin loved to read. When he was young, he borrowed books from anyone who would lend them. He read about all kinds of subjects. Franklin also wanted to write, but he didn't know how. He only had two years of school, so he taught himself. He found stories that he liked and rewrote them. Some he rewrote from memory. Others he turned into poetry and then rewrote back into stories. Sometimes he took notes on a story, then mixed up his notes and tried to put them back in the correct order. His hard work paid off. When he was 16 years old, he submitted 14 letters to his brother's newspaper, the New England Courant, and his brother published them. Photo credit.

I believe that writing is good for one’s soul, and for the energy of our spirit. Words, luscious words, and the stringing together of them in expressive thought, is a creative and empowering force. Reading, writing, reading some more, and then writing with the renewed energy of cascading thinking is a kind of continuous feedback loop for me, comfortable yet unpredictable all at the same time, for at some point the words take over if the writing has been any good. The all of it thrills and nourishes me.

That’s how I think of blogging now, as the writing practice I like to thrive on. However there is a catch; the reading communities of blogs need constant care and feeding. It becomes about people, and not just about the stuff of dynamic words. People cannot be kept waiting like a book or pre-published article can. Blogs can distract, and they constantly do, keeping a working writer who does not yet have that luxury of a literary life from the writing of their next book.

I don’t consider my blog posts to be book worthy. I take much care in posting my articles for the blogs I write, and I’ll post less rather than add to the blog clutter which now contributes to our RSS overload, however in my mind, blog posts are very far removed from the writing of a book. They don’t have the constancy of focus, the consistent narrative, and the discipline of well crafted editing. Blogging is writing practice, and the fun stuff of constant short-lived experiments.

This may sound sacrilegious to some, but I think that the best bloggers are those who aren’t trying to write a book. I’m a “Begin with the End in Mind” kind of writer, and to me, blogs and books are like oil and water. I’m one who believes blogs are conversations. In comparison, books are passionate presentations of ideas, and once you sit to write it, conversation is interruption and distraction.

Learning Over the Holidays

Learning does have seasonal character to it; have you noticed?

—In the beginning of the year we learn about our capacity for dreaming up big steps forward; we learn how brave we are in imagining how the rest of the year will emerge, and if we have become confident enough for new commitments we’ve never made before. There is such bountiful possibility in January when the entire year stretches out before you, welcoming your leap of faith.

—Come February it is time for love, and learning about those romantic, fun and fanciful relationships which both bedevil and delight us in life. How many of you learned to write your first letters as I did, to schoolmates with whom you’d trade valentines?

—In the Spring, we seem to learn a lot about most things financial; in America Uncle Sam has made sure of that with his income tax deadlines, and business budgets everywhere get their first quarterly reckoning.

—Come summer we tend to be in hobby mode, and we test our physical limits taking advantage of the opportunity to be one with the great outdoors. My grandmother was an avid gardener, and she’d always say that summer was the time she belonged to her flowers and fruit trees, and  that she wasn’t foolish or vain enough to think it was the other way around.

—September will always be about reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic, and all the learning we have traditionally associated with the classroom. Back to strict teachers, back to after-school sports and all things team, back to renewing friendships which waned over the summer, but mostly, indisputably, back to the learning which is school.

So what about now, these days we call the holidays of fall and winter? What are those things we learn only now, or best right now?

The Kaona of our CONTENT

In just 3 more days, Joyful Jubilant Learning will be a month old.

I keep thinking about the word ‘content,’ and that we have envisioned JJLN as a “content network” for new learning. What exactly will that come to mean here?

So far, we have talked a good deal about what learning means to us, and I keep wondering, and imagining, about the goodies to result, i.e. about the CONTENT which will eventually be experienced, showcased, and archived here as a perpetual resource for new JJLN students and community members.

The word is in caps because it calls for that distinction: It didn’t take us long at all to realize that CONTENT will be all-important here.

I have the word ‘kaona’ in this posting’s title because that is the way I have most instinctively come to think of ‘meaning’ in the context of my Hawai‘i roots, and for our purposes here, I do believe it is a very liberating, empowering, and all-inclusive way to think about this, that is, about defining CONTENT.