My old shoes
fit like they were a part of me.
Though they couldn’t hold the shine I’d used to see;
I could not believe when they’d started to leak.

So I bought new shoes,
Though the old style’s discontinued now,
I found something close to my familiar style,
I’m not yet sure these’ll really work in the long run, still,
Time’ll tell.

It’s a new year,
foisted from some midnight haze;
they tell me it’s the end of the good old days,
I knew so well. I say, “Oh Hell, I know this well.”

It’s like new shoes.
An alien presence for a time,
but soon even these will loose their shine
and that curious smell, and I will come to know them as well
as my old ones.

Learning to ride a bicycle might be the perfect training for life. It teaches the same lesson we each encounter when learning to walk, but were too small to retain. Both teach the clear distinction between balance and balancing, which might be trying to impart some acknowledgement of the much more significant difference between being and becoming.

We ask our children just what we were asked as children: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Well-intended but none-the-less insidious, our question begs an unfortunate response. They’ll have to choose. They’ll aspire, then, to a notional state their earliest life lesson might have clearly demonstrated couldn’t exist.

At sixty, I’ve almost discarded the notion that I might be something when I finally grow up. I’m still wondering when my growing might slow enough that I might reasonably declare myself grown. But then I consider what might follow this curious achievement. Slip over here for more ...

This seems enough of a not-everyday experience that I feel especially blessed whenever I encounter it. I’m reasonably certain that I cannot, by mere volition or will, force it to occur. Perhaps I’m subtly letting go whenever this movie-like magic appears, unconsciously stepping aside from standing in my own path. How could I know?

I do know that a certain openness seems to surround me these days, as if my molecules had elbow room; space for the unexpected to nudge into play. I’m getting better at going with these surprising flows, acknowledging their presence, accepting their utility, and leveraging their possibilities. Slip over here for more ...

I questioned that my grandfather, who I remember as a grizzled coot with nicotine-stained fingertips and emphysema-thickened chuckle, ever was a boy, though he had a mile-wide mischievous streak and an unrelenting glint in his eye. His sixth grade school photo shows a barefoot Tom Sawyer look-alike, and I’m certain that he never fully out-grew those patched overalls and that soup bowl haircut. Slip over here for more ...

I remember debating with myself: to jog or not to jog. I’d had a roommate who jogged. He’d also played Pop Warner and high school football and even won a football scholarship, but blew out his knee, so he became a journalism major—covering sports. I tagged along with him once while he followed the UW golf team around a course. Aside from the mushrooms I found along the way, it was a most remarkably boring afternoon for me, though my roommate seemed endlessly interested in whatever might happen next.

It seemed that he was mostly living in the future, finding his energy in looking ahead. He seemed to do this when jogging, too.

My final answer to the Deal Or No Deal jogging question: No Deal! It was just too mind-numbingly boring. I took up stationary bike riding, which would have been equally mind-numbing had it not been for the book stand over the handlebars. I could read, which I never find boring, while engaging in unavoidably boring repetitive motion.

I called my bike-riding ‘leaning into it,’ because that was the sensation I felt when poised on that machine. I was certainly not making forward progress, but I was definitely leaning into it. I found the exercise refreshing and the leaning into it strangely rewarding. I began to understand why people jog. It’s an extreme leaning into it; they are chasing their future.

This insight returned yesterday, when I attended a meeting with a bunch of Russell Ackoff Systems Thinking people. Since Systems Thinking has never hit the mainstream... most organizations still cling to reductionist dominion tactics when trying to resolve difficulties (or, as they say, 'solve problems'), ...the Systems Thinkers feel marginalized. Rather like feathers.

This was a meeting of the club of people who never join clubs, so many felt isolated, misunderstood, out of community. Slip over here for more ...

From Page S1844/45: The Congressional Record 3/23/2010

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, let me first of all thank my great friend from Montana, Senator Baucus. We arrived in the Congress of the United States together on the same day, back about 35 years ago. We have been friends for 35 years. We arrived in the Senate at different times. He got here a little before me. We have been in this institution for 30 years. I cannot describe in the limited time I have what a difference he has made--the fact we are here debating, finally, the last piece of this legislative effort to give the Americans what they have sought for more than a century, and that is the basic right to health care.

   I always found it somewhat ironic in a way that we in this country provide for those accused of criminal offenses the right to a lawyer, the right to an attorney. I believe in that. I think it is correct. But isn't it somewhat ironic that the same country that would provide you with a right to a lawyer if you are charged with a criminal defense cannot provide you with a doctor if your child is sick? There is something fundamentally wrong with that, in my view. Slip over here for more ...

I do not can asparagus. Or freeze it for later. After its short season leaves, I’m on to whatever’s in season next. This practice ensures variety, which I agree is the essential spice of the good life. Though I admit, by the end of any season, I’m fairly sick of whatever was in season. Until next year. Slip over here for more ...

I ordered the Woodfired Seafood Combo, breaking a personal rule to avoid ordering anything advertised as a combo, but it was late and it seemed the simplest alternative. The wedge salad was fine. Slip over here for more ...

"It would be hardly too much to say that modern science began when people became accustomed to the idea of changes changing, e.g. to the idea of acceleration as opposed to simple motion." Arthur N. Prior

Changing the whole idea of change has occurred a few times in the history of science. Transcendent moments where some quiet, previously undiscovered truth emerged from an unlikely place. Those who were trudging the straight and narrow were surprised, often angry. Several of these game-changing insights were not accepted or even recognized until their discoverer was long gone. Slip over here for more ...

I entered the seventh grade a successful student. In grade school, I had lived among the top tier of students, participating in an array of extracurricular activities. I played a decent (though never distinguished) second chair clarinet, squaredanced, Cub Scouted, and ran my own paper route. I’d written and produced a play in my fifth grade class for scholastic achievers, and even conquered the dreaded long division. I left grade school college bound. By the end of my first term in junior high school, I was certain that college would be beyond my reach.

What happened? Slip over here for more ...

Father is the painting of a blue house green. Father lives on the other side of the sky. Father is a cloudy day with sun. Father is an email, a phone call. Father is paperwork and publishers. Father is books and drives in the country. Father is fireplaces and snow. Father is the ocean I swim in. Father is a cascades volcano, a skyscraper. Father is large and powerful. Father is a bold line across a blank page. Father is a bowl of pasta, an arugula salad, a Christmas goose. Father is a day in June. A long day, where the sun shines almost till midnight.

Love,

Heidi

©2009 by Heidi Astrid Schmaltz, all rights reserved

Perfect until it came time to store our wonderful finds. This little apartment doesn't have a root cellar or an auxiliary beer fridge in the garage, not even a garage. It was time to clean out the also-rans. Time to make stock. Slip over here for more ...

Crash is mostly sociable. He seems pleased whenever either one of us returns, but also crying plaintively as if mourning. I've taken to offering a few kitty treats when I return, which, I know!, encourages infantile behavior. I scratch heads and switch out their water bowl for some cold water from the filter pitcher from the fridge. I don't expect them to drink the musty tap water here either.

Slip over here for more ...

If only every map-maker was this thoughtful. It seems to me that every map suffers from the same shortcoming as Prague's. Whether it's a hastily-drawn scribble intended to guide someone to the neighborhood deli or some laminated intended-to-be permanent portrait of a city's streets, it's wrong, and wrong in some indefinable but none-the-less situationally significant aspect. The value of each incorrect projection ultimately depends upon the perspective of the user, not the accuracy of the map.

And there's no better perspective for any map user than the one reminding themselves that the guide they are following is wrong in some indefinable way. This to avoid over-dependence and to help each remain open to accepting the unavoidable misunderstandings encountered when following any map. Slip over here for more ...

And we know when it's present and when it isn't.

This has nothing much to do with following the score and everything to do with satisfying, even exceeding the audience's highest expectations. This is not schlock improv, nor is it simply showing off. It's more like really showing up. Slip over here for more ...

Paper, Scissors, Stone
by Tom Wayman

An executive's salary for working with paper
beats the wage in a metal shop operating shears
which beats what a gardener earns arranging stone.

But the pay for a surgeon's use of scissors
is larger than that of a heavy equipment driver removing stone
which in turn beats a secretary's cheque for handling paper.

Completed over here: Link

I take a break from the Covenant series today to reflect on change. I know, I know, change has been so done, we're sick to death of it. The endless strategies for inducing it, for enforcing it, for managing it. But today, I want to reflect on a different kind of change. Second Order Change.

Some background: Google Second Order Change and you'll get something like 132 million hits, most of the resulting links guide you to indecipherable pages. (One notable exception here.) Bergquist knows his stuff, but few seem to be able to explain, describe, or coherently define second order change.

Let me add to that body of obfuscation! Slip over here for more ...

Me, I’ve tried—maybe not THAT hard—
to build my tenuous house of cards
with rains and winds, my chief assistants,
confused if this defines what isn’t.

Me, I’m dangling from bare threads,
turning on nonexistent treads,
hatless here on weathered ground,
mere threadbare glove without a hand. Slip over here for more ...

Slip over here for more ...

Once? You tried it once? Then concluded that it never would work?

Well, it wasn't just them saying this, I've said it myself.

What happened to "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again?"

Not in the modern corporation, thank yew. Not in my backyard, either. There, the phrase is , "if at first you don't succeed, you've failed." Utterly. Supported by, "We tried that once and it didn't work." Slip over here for more ...

It was Easter when we'd moved the poles and bracing down the wall
and all through May I watched each day usher in the fall.
For I was working some other walls while this one stood half-scraped
Though I hoped I could get back to here before this summer escaped Slip over here for more ...

I delivered this eulogy for my father today:

My father was a gentleman,

A gentle man.

A Republican.

He didn’t have a mean bone in his body.

He was a soft touch;

He loaned much but borrowed little.

My father was a noble man,

A nobleman,

An able man.

He wasn’t handy, but he was persistent!

He persevered much

And gave so freely, he seemed rich.

Slip over here for more ...

The evening before my dad died, a praying Mantis landed on the front screen door. Mother recalled that a mantis takes up temporary residence on that porch this time every year.

Slip over here for more ...

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