"Wilson!"

It is the end of an era.  Today is my last day at Wilson Library at Western Washington University. I will miss library work and the students, especially.  Working on University campuses and in academic libraries over the last 15 years has been a privilege that I have appreciated deeply.  

My tenure at Wilson Library has not been without excitement and growth.  I was laid off due to "budgetary cuts" and after giving my choice to stay in another position a serious amount of consideration, I opted to leave. 

Certainly I have learned things about myself in that library - things that one could never find in a book.  Who knew that I was so difficult and that  a "good job" comes with no guarantees of happiness or even stability?  These are blind spots and unconscious expectations that needed to be revealed and addressed when deciding what I need in a work environment.  There was difficulty.  I am difficult.  Everyone is.  How we manage our complexities in our relationships with others determines who we are.  In this case, I carry my complicated ways and my new awareness out the door and on to new horizons with a renewed sense of what is valuable and productive within me and my relationships with others.

The day that I was told that my position at the Music Library had been cut, I came home curled up on my couch and watched "Castaway".  Films, stories, poetry, music help when words fail and it was a capitol day for language dysfunction.  Art can take the worst day and make it the first day.  So it was as I watched Tom Hanks as Chuck Noland struggle to hold on to the plane and his precious time piece as his aircraft plummeted into the Pacific Ocean.  I took comfort in the story of his process of surviving an impossible situation by using only what knowledge he had and what happened his way.

I cried with renewed appreciation as he mourned the loss of his best friend and constant companion, Wilson.  Grief and loss.  It seems that I've seen plenty of this in the last five years.  I laughed again appreciating the subtlety of the symbolism of the whale that kept an eye on him on his floating journey home, reminding me that whatever element you are thrown into someone or something calls it home and wants to love you.

I started this blog NightMonkeyShines back in 2007 as a Library 2.0 exercise.  That was back in the phat days when we had time to actually learn things and try to develop a sense of integrity and involvement to our work in serving others. That was before Golem and the great baggage of budget woes darkened the door blowing out the side of my cargo plane.  

I've maintained two blogs. I suppose many people keep two blogs but I see no reason to continue. This one was primarily for work and for my association with a group of Elder Bloggers I enjoy at Time Goes By.  It was my thought that keeping two blogs would allow the option of sharing the tamer writing and putting more radical thoughts in the other blog.  Initially, as well, I thought I would be blogging more about things work related.  That is not what happened. I've used this blog for more local notices of events and such. I never hid the other blog but I realized that most people would not bother with digging any deeper.   I often double posted.

 I also have come to realize by now that I underestimated the mettle of my elder blogger friends.  There is little of strong language or scurrilous thinking that they have not already dealt with in spades!  The rest of cyberspace will just have to endure or skip my local fixations when they are posted.

I'm feeling hopeful, if a bit tremulous.  So in the in the spirit of change - doors closing and discovering others and opening them - I leave Wilson Library and this blog NightMonkeyShines with a link to my other blog and a nod of thanks to everyone who made my last six plus years an often enjoyable and an always enlightening enterprise. 

"...And I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?"

                                                        ~ Chuck Noland,

                                                                    Castaway

Hopefully, I will see you at my other digs and I will find something of interest to write about:

http://cilesfineline.blogspot.com

Cile

Hitchhiker

I am on the cusp of being unemployed with my position being eliminated due to budget cuts.  Consequently, I'm up at 4 AM  this  morning .  I'm 57 - not old enough to retire - not young enough to hire.  I'm not marketable. That is the fact of it.  What I bring to the work place of skill, enhancements and vision are not recognized as valuable by current standards.  In the bleary predawn I was trying to amuse myself  after a restless night by scrolling through songs.  I spent some time watching Johnny Cash videos, seeing as how that is the only cash I can spend right now.  I then moved into songs about the heart of the matter:  work and the economy...

For a long time I have been thinking in terms of the last twenty years when I think of America's dependence on oil and an inflated economy but as I looked at this video I realized that our dependence is really embedded deeper within the American psyche and it goes back farther than that.  It actually seems to reside on the level of myth for those of us born into the automobile culture. 

Given that the oil industry provided the groundwork for the American economy for so very, very long, it stands to reason it will take some time and creativity to realign the structure of the economy on a new foundation.  With all the pressure for social reform, tea parties, posturing, posing and denial it seems I am part of a collective group of people who have driven the combustible engine to the end of the line and we just can't stand it.  Right and left both seem apoplectic over how they have been "wronged" by each other. I contend that the arguments are somewhat distracting from what has really happened to us all.  The gas guage is empty and we have run out of road. 

Just as sure as I have skittered along as a wage slave all of my life on the high tide of other people's wealth, taken my directives as a worker bee and carved out my niche of happiness, so have I reached the end of my working day as I have known it.  Nobody took me where I didn't want to go and the same goes for my post-war baby clan because on some level, we flow together and we are identified as a group.  We are the aging; we contributed ; we deserve respect for that because our work added to the greater good. We will never be young again and...I must say it, though it raises the shackles of my friends who design their very lives around raging against the tide of age, "I'm sorry, but young is NOT better than old; it is other than old".

When it comes to speed and efficiency in the workplace, we are not young and uncomplicated.  We bring the depth of experience into the bigger picture.  In most work environs, the older worker spells problems and without an understanding of the need for depth and value in the work environment, we become parodies of ourselves and a farce in the workplace.   We are living history and history has a vital and rewarding place in all aspects of society.  Not recognizing this fact is not only ageist (and a financial bonanza in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic field), but it is detrimental to the greater good of any organization or nation.  Elders are in jobs or needing work to make ends meet.  Some of the ends are not going to meet because, frankly, some people just don't "get" it. Sadly, some of the worst offenders are the old themselves who are so afraid of their own reflection that they can't stop staring at their wrinkles long enough to recognize the strength staring back at them.

Clearly these are hard times for everyone but if we do not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed and defeated over the loss of what was by busying ourselves with criticizing and commiserating over bits and pieces of our lost youth and arguing over our entitlements, we may just find the things that are possible and have enough strength left over to help develop positive changes.  I see this economic stop as a chance to build something not born of war or built on greed, self interest and suffering.  Anyway, this is my strategy for the time between now and my next mortgage payment.  ( I hear a Greek chorus in the chambers of my mind chanting, "Good luck with that.")

This flashback of Lucas' film "American Graffiti" as it is edited into this song inspired these thoughts in me. The combustible engine gave us a tremendous lift, didn't it?  Look where it took us all!  Some made piles of dough that they spent right away on novelties or adventures.  Some made a haul that they saved and lost in the stock market by trusting people who were greedy and disguised themselves as the status quo.  Some made the money and invested it in a better future for others.  Some made so much they did all three and then some! I think it is time to park it and take honest stock in what we think is our entitlement here.  It seems to me, if we did not enjoy the ride we were given when we were given it, we should check our complaining at the door. Whether we get paid for it or not, there is elder work to be done.

Thanks to AK47bandit for the "Get a Job" video

Strategic Plan - The Movie

This is for all the fine folks who worked so hard on the Strategic Plan for the Library. I think, perhaps, a thankless job in some ways. Well, I read it and I was very moved by the hard work and resourcefulness that obviously went into it. This morning when I read the story below, I thought immediately of the critical importance of these changes and the inherent difficulty in maintaining a vision that will obviously enhance the lives of so many employees and those who utilize the services the library provides. This post is for:

Tamara Belts, Dennis Matthews, Clarissa Mansfield, Rick Osen, Paul Piper, Andrea Peterson, Elizabeth Stephan and all of those on the sub committees.

Well, okay, it is a bit dramatic and whimsical but so is a strategic plan, when it comes right down to it. I hope you enjoy it:

***************************

THE LEGEND OF SHAHBAZ
.
Nobody gets through life without troubles but there was once a king who got himself into a terrible fix. He wasn’t bad, just a man who lost his way. Nothing new there.

Plenty of people, kings and commoners alike, head straight into trouble, never once looking back. This man did stop and think, and that made all the difference. The land he ruled was far from the sea, far from the overland trade routes, far, it seemed, from any place anyone wanted to be. Still, his subjects were a sturdy lot. They endured, meeting hardship with a laugh and a smile whenever they could. The people comforted each other with the old saying, “A poor man living in peace is better off than a rich man in the midst of strife.” Deep inside, they held the hope that, someday, things would get better.

Early in his reign, the king kept to his father’s custom of moving among the people, listening to their stories, laughing at their jokes. He held court so that the people could seek justice from him. As years went by, the king set aside these old ways. He began staying up all night, scheming with his ministers and playing the lords and ladies against each other.

Heavy black curtains were hung over the windows in his room and he slept till noon. After lunch he called for his falcon and went hunting. This he loved above all else. At dinner, his belly full of ale, he roared, “Shahbaz,” for that was the falcon’s name, “has never failed and that is more than I can say for any of you.”

Life did not get better, it got worse. The kingdom grew disorderly. Fights broke out. Bandits patrolled the ridge tops and forests. Brother turned against brother, friend against friend. The people became afraid and Shahbaz saw it all. Her keen eyes found a house in flames, a woman crying, a child dressed in rags. She returned each day with game for the king’s table but something was changing inside of her. One day as she wheeled overhead in the sky, Shahbaz saw a man stumbling in a thicket. He had been chased from the roadway by a band of brigands and now had lost his way. Shahbaz lifted her left wing and arced toward the man as she came to the place where he was lost, she saw that he was cowering. In front of him was a mountain lion. The beast had him cornered and was now preparing to pounce.

Shahbaz felt her heart as it filled with compassion for the old man. Then, as never before, this compassion filled her entire being. Compassion settled into resolve and Shahbaz tucked her wings and dove. Streaking out of the sky like some angel of mercy she thrust out her talons and buried them in the lion’s neck. The beast whirled and roared as it struggled to free itself from the falcon’s grip. Teeth claws, beak and talons whirled in a frenzy of struggle until, at last, the lion signaled her submission. Shahbaz released her grip and took to flight, the lion fled into the brush. The man was safe. Shahbaz returned to the king but without any game for the dinner table. The king berated her, never noticing how worn and weary she appeared. The next day the king went out to hunt with Shahbaz on his arm. In the heat of the mid day he released the jesses and Shahbaz took flight. Immediately she set a course for where the area where the old man was lost. She found him even further from the road, in a ravine where there was no food or water. The old man looked wilted under the hot sun.

Again Shahbaz brimmed with compassion, forgetting the task of bringing food to the king, she hurtled out of the sky and landed in front of the astonished man. Some kind of power filled Shahbaz and she knew what to do. With a short hop, she came to a stone. She struck the stone, once, twice, thrice and the rock split apart and water, clean cold water flowed from its depth. The thirsty man drank. Shahbaz took wing and hunted, returning to the man with game. Then before leaving she approached a pile of brush striking it with her beak once, twice, thrice and with that it burst into flames. Having sustained him with food, water and fire she took wing and returned to the waiting king. Again she failed to supply the king’s table.

“Perhaps I have been feeding you to well,” he snapped, “a night without supper might focus your mind.” The next day the king took Shahbaz to the hunting grounds and released her. Again she hurtled skyward in search of the lost man. She searched long and hard for him and was ready to give up when she glimpsed him in the distance. Weak with hunger she made her way to him. He sat alone and in despair. Shahbaz came to rest on a branch near the man. He looked up at her through tear filled eyes. Here again was this remarkable bird that had fought off the mountain lion and fed him and given him water and a fire. The bird sat looking at him.

Thinking that perhaps this magical creature might understand his grief, he poured out his heart to Shahbaz. His brothers were dead, as was his wife and his children. He had been seeking the village of his father when the brigands had accosted him. He spat the name of the king and said that the man was a fool. As the great falcon listened, she was filled with compassion and her sense of rightness and justice boiled inside her. When the man finished his tale, the powerful sense of justice welled up and burst.

The falcon, in that moment found the gift of speech for the first time. She spoke of knowing love and loss. She spoke of all that she had seen in the many years she had soared above the kingdom. She told the man not to despair, because she knew the way home for him. She stayed with him through the night lulling him to sleep with stories of the great and noble people she had seen and known. When the morning dawned, she took flight and led the man to a stream that led to the river which flowed past the village of his fathers. This being done she returned to the king’s castle.

Alighting on the wall of the castle she found the king preparing to begin his hunt, another falcon on his arm. As the hunting party rode forth, she settled onto a low branch that hung over their path. The king saw her and called out that she was an unworthy traitor and that she did not deserve the right to be a royal falcon, another would take her place with no matter to him. The king raged at Shahbaz. The bird did not stir but concentrated her gaze on him.

Finally, his rage spent, the king fell silent.

Then Shahbaz spoke. “I have watched you and I have watched your kingdom. You are full of your own bravado, but you have ruled poorly. The people suffer, they cry but from fear, from hunger and thirst, they are lost and yet you hear them not.” The entire party sat stock still and listened. A royal counselor cried out, “This is an abomination. A dumb beast can not speak, this must be evil of the most terrible kind. I plead with your majesty to destroy this foul creature at once.” At this, an archer drew his bow and aimed at the falcon. Shahbaz did not hesitate, did not move, she kept her unwavering gaze on the king. There was silence until she spoke again. “You are not a bad man, you could do much for the people of this land, even yet. But all must change.”

Again the counselor asked for permission to kill the bird. The king waved him off.

The truth of these words was powerful. Shahbaz offered the king a partnership. She and her kind would sail in the skies above this land seeking always to protect, sustain and nurture the people. The king would set aside his scepter and become a royal falconer, and devote himself to the training and well-being of these great birds.

With time, the king was transformed into a great falconer. All of these great birds came to be known by the name of the first, Shahbaz. The people were comforted then they would look up into the great blue sky and see the Shahbaz circling gracefully overhead. The time of the King and his servants passed from memory and a new partnership was created which has endured since.

Adapted from What Are Old People For? How Elders Will Save the World
by William H. Thomas, M.D.

Love your MOTHER!

We have many Mothers. No one knows this better than women - especially women who have given birth or realized children in their lives because as soon as this happens (in reality or in a spiritual sense) there is a keen awareness that we are not and will never be "alone". Many women have come before us. We are but spawn, essentially, of an accumulated experience of women. Like Chief Seattle stated,

"The earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth"

...so it is with our Mothers. We sometimes refer to the Earth as our Mother. Replace the words The Earth with the Our Mother in the quote above and you begin to feel the weight of it. My word of the year is value. In these terms, I find myself contemplating the value of all of our Mothers these days.

I can hardly turn a blind eye to the opportunity these times are offering at every bend for our reinventing the economy. Not with a word like "value" wending it's way into my daily thoughts. So lets take a look at what we commonly buy for our Mothers on Mother's Day, shall we? Florist flowers and potted plants that have been genetically altered to last 48 hours longer than the plant you bought last year. A dinner at a restaurant, perhaps? There are any number of things that might be a tradition. I want to explore outside that tradition here for a moment and look at the bigger picture.

We all are beginning to understand that we have a responsibility to learn new ways to get where we are going, whether it is opting to taking a bus or biking downtown or sending a message that actually speaks from our hearts. I am thinking now of gift giving - shopping, if you will - that is an act of supporting Motherhood while honoring our sisters and womankind and, while we are it, the earth as well. Shopping as a political act?

As I stated in a previous post, I blew through Portland town in March and had the good fortune to visit with my friend Kristi Jo Lewis. KJ is a new mother of a beautiful baby girl and the creator of a business that she shares with her sister and associates called Global Sistergoods. KJ is a woman of conscience and when she imagined her ideal job she did so with her compassion for women of the world and alternative ways of economics firmly in mind. Recognize a woman's talent, support it and let her support her family. Yes she can! ...and she did. Basically KJ and Global Sistergoods fences finely crafted goods made from artisans who are Mothers and Sisters themselves....are you following where this is going?

From "About Us":
Global Sistergoods was founded in 2006 by two sisters, Beth Kapsch and Kristi Jo (KJ) Lewis, who combined their professional backgrounds in living wage issues, international development, public policy and women's equality and their personal love of beautiful, handmade goods to create this marketplace for women artisans from around the world.

We provide a living wage to economically disadvantaged women in fragile economies by supporting entrepreneurship, self-reliance and microenterprise development through fair trade. We partner with international non-government organizations who provide resources to women, governmental trade associations who support women's economic empowerment, women's cooperatives/collectives, and individual women artisans. We sustain traditional craftmaking techniques, provide high-quality products and educate consumers about women's issues in the countries our partner artisans live in.

I am suggesting you take a few minutes and take a look at what Global Sistergoods is offering. I'm suggesting, as well, that we all begin to realize that our spending habits are essentially a political act. When one trades with Global Sistergoods, this is what happens: You get a superior gift for your Mom made by women who are Mothers and you support a woman who is supporting her family. When you choose to trade with conscience, perhaps forgoing the florist's forced attempt at beauty, you are supporting much more than some strange person 1000 of miles away. You are engaging in an alternative way of doing business that gets you what you want while supporting the people that you want to help.

Kristi Jo and her sister are people who are dreaming of a better way and giving birth to it everyday. Love your Mother and hold your sister close. They just might be able to show us how to heal our economy by trading in new, alternative and exciting ways. These are brave and intelligent women who are teaching a new meaning of value. I am learning that conscious action coupled with value has a strange and powerful positive implication, while tacit in its employ, it is dynamic in its execution. Making a conscious choice is one of those things that requires doing to understand. I'm suggesting you try it and see how it feels.

The best way to spend time with your Mother on her day is to sit with her and ask her who she is on her own terms. Perhaps go for a walk with her or enjoy the outdoor market with locally supported goods on display. Or even go to an independently owned bistro for lunch. Whatever you choose to do make it an active choice with intention and love at it's core...like a Mother's love.

Photo credit: blawk359

Let us converse about the elephant in the room

I wish I had someone to talk to in conversation about all the turmoil that everyone is experiencing in the room, in the workplace, at the University and in the country. It is a load.

I have just finished reading a book I wish my co-workers would read and we could join in conversation about. The book is called, "Crossing the Unknown Sea; Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity". If I hadn't stumbled upon David Whyte's work through the back door of my own personal troubled voyage, I would run like hell from that title myself, likewise I don't suspect many will be thrilled at the prospect of reading it. I urge you to move past that because I must say that it has helped me immensely to understand - if ever so slightly - how I might have an opportunity to play a positive role in these horrendous changes that are underfoot. After ordering the title through ILL, I got 30 pages into it and knew I had to go buy my own copy if I was going to make it through these "interesting times" at work and in the world at large. It resonates quite loudly within me to seek some sense of this situation to which I have opted for. Finding a place to stand and function at one's best abilities seems to be the order of the day at work. At least for me, I am finding a welcome if tenuous solitary grip within these writings. It occurred to me this morning that others at work might also find strength here.

It is the business of poets to live and examine the edges of things and when a poet with the vision and scope of David Whyte says the game has changed forever for business, I have to pay attention. I am reading something everyone senses, of course, and he goes one step further. He gives tools for facing disease, the unknown and really, really bad weather endemic to these types of changes that we all feel are coming but really do not know how to acknowledge well. We are on the threshold of what will be and hurling towards the essence of our work in a very different work world from whence we entered. In this book, I realize, if we take the time to understand the language of these changes, we can move this troubled situation from invisible ideas onto welcoming and sustainable shores. It is a journey we could do better with wise council. I haven't found better than Whyte:

"In order to get a real conversation with the world you have to drop artificial language, you have to drop politics, and you have to drop an environment based on fear and hiding. People must be encouraged not only to know their craft, their products, their work and the people they serve, but to know a little of themselves. In order to respond to the world of wants, they must know something of what they want themselves. Just as importantly they must know what they do not want. They must also look at their inherited fears around conversation, particularly the conversation about their own gifts. This personal conversation can be very frightening but it is an increasingly necessary one, especially for those who have any leadership role in the organization."

If you have already read it or you read it as a result of this posting, I would be interested in your thoughts.

"Good work is grateful surprise." ~D.W.

...and why not?

Zen and the Art of Service with Sincerity

My colleagues and I wanted to give a presentation to our students on customer service. We had a movie about customer service. I was thinking there has to be something more than following a set of good “practices” so I decided I would explore sincerity at work at a public desk.

One of my student’s requested a copy of what I wrote (sadly I am not a very coherent public speaker as I fight with the sensation of wearing a collar of bees as I speak, I sometimes can’t breathe) and so I thought I would blog about what I presented. I’m sure it will be easier to follow written down than how it stumbled out of me.

Be Here Now

I want to talk to you today about the work experience and I want to start with a few facts I wish someone would have reminded me about when I was in my twenties. Here goes:

1. There is a voice in your head that will kill your courage and deprive you of every happiness known to humanity if you let it.

This voice is you and it is comprised of every sound bite your parents and the great American wall of advertising has hurled at you - amongst other things. The Bad News: it is the time of your life you can assimilate all that and default to becoming your parent's or someone else’s expectation of you. The Good News: this is the time of your life when you can choose to step out of that carnival of noise and decide what is true for YOU and decide what you want to think.

2. Behold the self fulfilled prophesy! No one is doing your life but you.

The voice says: “ that person (situation, event…whatever) is making me crazy!” Actually you are allowing yourself to be made CRAZY by something. Everyday we get up and choose who we want to be, like it or not. The Bad News: we invite most despair into our life and we find it certain miseries comfortable; The Good News is we are in charge of our own comfort zones and we have tons of control over how our life plays out.

3. Happiness and satisfaction is not contingent upon outside forces.

This one everyone gives lip service to and no one seems to actually understand how it unreels out in our heads. Everyday this voice blabs: I need to graduate! I need money! I need to loose 10 pounds! I need to gain 10 pounds! I need a boyfriend or girl friend! I need a boyfriend AND a girlfriend! I need to see if that person accepted my facebook invite! I need to be more! Blah blah blah…and when this happens I will experience great joy and be happy. Actually, happiness does not arrive as a contingency. Happiness is available to us all everyday in every way. It is totally provided and built in to every breath. Happiness does not evade us because of things that we are not – it appears to take its ball home and leave us to chase after it but, in truth, we remove ourselves from the game by not showing up or running away. We cannot be present to play if we are spending all our time cultivating the habit of listing out everything that we are NOT with everything that has not yet happened. The Bad News: We all want to be right more than we want to be happy. We have a lot more training in our culture in finding the right answer than we do in discovering what makes us happy. The Good News: we can all learn to recognize our habits of distraction and find what allows us great joy. We can be honest about why we are not playing.

Down with “THE MAN”: Transparency and Changes in the American Workplace

• Nobody is asking you to be insincere.
  
• How to apply the above to the task at hand.

Consider these Scenarios:

• Someone approaches the desk and they are wearing a really neat hat. You think to yourself “MY GOD I love that hat! I wish I had that hat.” And then you fantasize a mini-sized fantasy about wearing the hat and your friend Sam sees it and cracks up, and you have a good experience thinking that…blah blah blah…by this time the person is at the counter and you smile and help them and you watch them walking away wearing the hat that you love. Then the phone rings – and you are off into the next thing - end of story.

• Someone approaches the desk and they are wearing a really neat hat. You think to yourself “MY GOD I love that hat! I wish I had that hat”. You make eye contact with the person who is now at the counter and you smile and say, “I love your hat!” They smile back and maybe they tell you a story about the hat or just say thank you…any number of things can happen from this exchange. You helped them and you shared yourself a little in a sincere manner. At the very least you have initiated a positive exchange with another individual. You stepped up and allowed yourself to be present.

Both of these experiences are pleasant – both of these scenarios are correct. One, however, happens primarily in your head and one happens in real time with a real individual. Again, you are choosing how rich your experience can be. Your day is full of these kinds of choices. Get the dialog going with yourself about what you’re choosing to do in this way.

Being a library assistant is declared as your job but it can also be a part of your school work. While you are at University, you are formulating your pattern of approach to work and laying the foundation of how YOU do work in the world. I think it is important to remember that this is not something that magically happens LATER when you have a REAL job. That is what the voice in your head may tell you. The truth is you are doing it now. You are developing the habit of being yourself everyday – right now.

On the plus side this is a little easier to examine when you have just a few hour chunks of time to do so. When you work 9 hours a day (with commute, maybe 10) at a job and you find yourself in the mix of the life you have created, it is hard to find time to reflect on these things and fine tune your presence.

Consider your library assistant job as a lab.

You have an opportunity in this job to track the voice in your head and make choices that are better suited to the you you intend on being. Try and define what is performance from you and what is sincere in yourself through what you share with people as an exercise. If you are feeling forced with people, ask yourself why and answer the question honestly. If you feel stuck and stubborn, sometimes it is just a matter of putting habitual thinking of being distant on hold and smiling at someone to break out.

Being disinterested is a habit and possibly an ill fitting by-product of being a teenager – it is a valuable survival skill as a teenager to allow space to develop as an adult and it will mess you up in any attempt you make to leave its confines. It gets under control by our simply opting out and choosing an alternate behavior that satisfies. The dirty job in this is finding an alternate behavior to replace it that works for you and reflects a little more of who you really are. Start an adult dialog with yourself on these issues. Know you are choosing what you want to do - try and understand the consequence of choosing to stay disengaged and distant from what is going on around you and accept the responsibility for it.

Having said all of this, I hope we, as your supervisors and confidantes, do not let you down in your efforts. The work world is changing from a hierarchal system to a transparent one making the playing field more level and everyone’s creativity and input more valuable. Many of us are still not used to listening and we want to.

The workplace is going to be the structure of your work/playground where you make your mark in the world. This change is happening now in the library and across the campus. You have a unique opportunity to be involved in how this complex transition evolves. At the library we certainly invite you to do so! For one thing, you can make customer service videos on-the-fly that work better than what is available currently! You KNOW you CAN! There is actual support existing within the library to help you be involved that way, if you choose.

Then I thanked everyone and no one had any comments. Well, Jenny wanted a copy of what I said. That made me feel good and a small swarm of bees lifted gracefully aside to accommodate my smile. I find it truly sad that somewhere across the trajectory of my life I managed to loose my ability to speak in public and draw people out because much of what I spoke to the students about is what I am actually going through myself – only the 55 year old version. With all the changes in the workplace and inspiration rising from the upheaval of the existing status quo, I would have liked to have been persuasive enough in the sharing to have stimulated a conversation and had a chance to hear to what their experiences are. Perhaps they will share them with me in time. I hope I remember to listen. As it is, that was my 10 minutes.

Back to School Sale

Something everyone can afford: the truth about attending school.



The more one listens to people telling the truth, the more one develops an ear for it.

What is right with the world?

I received an interesting video feed from my friend, singer-songwriter, Esther Golton, today . She shared a clip that she found and I think I may be dropping the baton here if I don't share it in light of the Trust Workshop that was attended yesterday.


My co-workers and myself were treated to the consciousness raising experience of Janet Ott, writer, speaker and relationship coach yesterday. The focus was on issues of trust. One of the many things that Janet spoke about was our relationship to our stories or our perceptions of what we are seeing and how it is seen through a series of choices we make in how we look at it. This video clip that Esther sent seems particularly relevant in light of this subject. I feel compelled to share it.


It is a preview called Celebrate what is right with the world, by DeWitt Jones, photographer for the National Geographic. In it he shares his process of learning to see things differently and I found it quite illustrative of what happens when we trust to take something one step further and alter the perspective. The revelation one tiny twist of perspective can manifest can be quite astounding. I think it is interesting too that Mr. DeWitt comments that:

"...it's a national sacrilege to throw away a Geographic because it celebrates what is right with the world and nobody wants to throw that away."

When I heard him say that, I realized he could have been talking about libraries just as easily as National Geographic Magazine. I don't think our culture wants to throw out libraries either because libraries, too, celebrate what is right with the world.


The video is about 22 minutes long and I don't think you will regret taking the break in such good company.