Journeys
Words
Images
Cloud
Timothy M. Leonard's books on Goodreads
A Century Is Nothing A Century Is Nothing
ratings: 4 (avg rating 4.50)

The Language Company The Language Company
ratings: 2 (avg rating 5.00)

Subject to Change Subject to Change
ratings: 2 (avg rating 4.50)

Ice girl in Banlung Ice girl in Banlung
ratings: 2 (avg rating 4.50)

Finch's Cage Finch's Cage
ratings: 2 (avg rating 3.50)

Amazon Associate
Contact

Entries in education (2)

Tuesday
Feb242009

The Art of Procrastination

Greetings,

From The Chronicle Review by W.W. Pannapacker.

..."Productive mediocrity requires discipline of an ordinary kind. It is safe and threatens no one. Nothing will be changed by mediocrity; mediocrity is completely predictable. It doesn't make the powerful and self-satisfied feel insecure. It doesn't require freedom, because it doesn't do anything unexpected. Mediocrity is the opposite of what we call "genius."

Mediocrity gets perfectly mundane things done on time. But genius is uncontrolled and uncontrollable. You cannot produce a work of genius according to a schedule or an outline. As Leonardo knew, it happens through random insights resulting from unforeseen combinations. Genius is inherently outside the realm of known disciplines and linear career paths. Mediocrity does exactly what it's told, like the docile factory workers envisioned by Frederick Winslow Taylor."

more...

Metta.

Sunday
Feb222009

Dysfunctional decisions

Greetings,

After the kind man flew away from the archipelago on short notice with years on his extensive resume, for a new job in the Middle Eats to pay life's support expenses I returned home from his fare-thee-well dinner of delicious grilled fired fish and giant prawns swimming in garlic to find a medium sized cock-a-roach scurrying in from the back garden heading toward the dark safety of bags and boxes in a spare room.

A room filled with Turkish delight, a sweet gooey substance made of nuts, berries and flakey pastry. A room resplendent with bird songs, echoes of silk warbling blues riffs, improvisational bass lines and the sweet smell of a flute.

A room filled with sad, lonely spoiled crying children. Dysfunctional family futures.

A room dancing with the autocratic sensation remembering how he perceived his past decision late last year to decline a doctor's advice and proceeded with a dangerous medical exploratory option to check out the source of his internal distress. "No anesthetic," he said to Doctor Death. 

How this decision almost killed him. How this decision at that microscopic moment inside time, oh time, such a valiant teacher, an educator, how this decision cost him vast quantities of flood blood. How he claimed he saw and felt a warm light swarming him, flashing along his skeleton bathing him. How he needed transfusions. Lots of transfusions. Understanding by design. A frayed fabric. A needle dripping volunteered slavery.

Why do simple medical problems escalate into a life threatening crisis? Rash misunderstanding of how and why the human body says one thing and the ego intellect extinguishes flashing emergency lights, ignoring warning signals? 

Being a Super Hero has it's risks.

Plant a seed.

So it goes.

Metta.