Topic Tuesday #79 2014/01/21 - "MLK & Uncle Tom's Cabin"

Topic Tuesday #79 2014/01/21 - "MLK & Uncle Tom's Cabin"

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day. As I was driving for about 12 hours, I took the time to listen to Uncle Tom's Cabin through my Audible subscription. It has been many years I read the once banned book and I had paid it little attention since it was "required reading" and I was not one to like being told what to read. Now, with age and parenthood under me, I appreciate these classics perhaps as much as those dear teachers that made the lists.
I want to talk about it but I do not want to give spoilers. I will say that I have a sensitivity to slavery and the pain and loss of loved ones, in particular - children. I'm quite the sap and was weeping for several chapters.
The suffering of the (to use language from the story) negro, is the suffering of humanity. The telling of the tale is a glimpse of life in pre-Civil War America. The morality contained within and the religious machinations by the characters is handled between the issues of suffering and deliverance of Uncle Tom and his compatriots. The character development and switching of voice from third person (fourth wall breaking) to occasional first person lends a familiar air and really captures you into the story.
Given the gravity of the story and of course the deeds and dreams of Dr. King go hand in hand. The rise of equality has been a treacherous journey. There are still many regions where racial bigotry are as common as wearing mixed fabrics. As such, we must remain vigilant towards these shows of intolerance. The country continues to grow and move against inequality.
Have we learned how to treat our fellows?
I hope so.
And hey, read a book!

Topic Tuesday #74 2013/12/17 - "Language"

Topic Tuesday #74 2013/12/17 - "Language"

If you look around the world, there are anywhere from 7,000 to 10,000 languages exist. About 35 languages fade into obscurity every year. We speak a miss mash of fallen languages that have merged into one another from neighboring tribes. Slave speech flowed into the slavers, the slavers speech fell to the slaves. We listen to accents and naturally judge where someone if from, what their class level is, and what kind of education and intelligence they wield their words with. Do their words whip like lashes? Do they drip like honey? Do they say one thing and simply mean the opposite? Can you tell?
Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones But Words... They can kill you from the inside out - or not.
Words have meaning and by their usage and mastery they can invoke magic. They can call forth grand vistas, ugly smells, faces of such astonishing beauty that they could never actually exist. They can make you warm, make you blush, make you lie or make you tell the truth. You can be urged to hate and love. These words are thoughts. They are someone else's thoughts, being poured into you and you have to digest them, like it, or not...

Words can suffer over usage; they lose their power and become meaningless and flaccid. Obcinities are nothing but words that evoke strong feelings. By themselves, they are just words with basic definitions. It is their context that provides them power and their intent revealed. Words are nothing without the person composing them. They describe the character of the speaker. They provide a measure of the writer.
Pay close attention to the language you are exposed to for it is not always meant for you. Think carefully about how you use your own language. Seek to understand where it comes from. Try to be clear, but never boring. Try to be kind, if not forgiving.

Topic Tuesday #72 2013/12/03 - "Problem Management"

Topic Tuesday #72 2013/12/03 - "Problem Management"

We all have problems. Some are small like what to wear, what kind of salad dressing to use, where you left something, or if you left a poor impression. Some are large problems. Sometimes, my small problem will be monumental to someone else, and my greatest issue - insignificant to the right person.

Some words of advice:

We all share the same world.
We all are born & we will all die.
We all eat and drink and feel, though all differently.
"Enough" is relative.
There will always be someone with more and someone with less, than you. You are always going to be somewhere inbetween because the value of "things" change as you change. You can't eat a trophy. You can't drink a computer.
In the end, even the richest person in the world has something that he would trade their empire for one more moment of. You won't be taking anything with you, certainly nothing material.
Love will come and go. Friendship will do the same. Even family, is fluid.
Everyone is having a hard time with something. Being kind, goes much further than you will ever know, until someone is kind to you.
The sun will come up on our home world tomorrow as it has for all of recorded history an beyond, and lucky for us, it will continue to do so for billions of years more.

That is the human component of our shared existence. Materialisim, empathy, compassion, and mortality.
We all have our problems. Whatever is it, be it the right outfit to wear when you meat a prospective employer for the first time at a lunch and making sure to order the right dressing that won't dribble down your chin and stain that carefully chosen garment.... or whether or not to call someone or wait for them to apologize first, keep in mind that the human element is at work all around you, and is very complex.
You are not alone.

On to the management part of the problem.
A saying that I enjoy from the world of business project management, "you can't DO a project. You can only do tasks that will complete the project one step at a time." Or from myth, how do you eat a whale? One bite at a time.
Break it down. Whatever it is, it has smaller parts. Yes, they all go together to make an enormous scary boogyman, but where you can't defeat the boogyman, you can undress him. (Sorry for the visual, I didn't know you knew the boogyman. Awkward... anyway...)
Disect your boogyman into manageable steps. A list is a great tool. Just tick off the things that you can address about the boogyman.
Shoes, pants, coat, hat, gloves. Then address them one by one.
You'll often find you missed things, it's ok.
He had a vest on under the coat, and what looks like an ascot.  He's wearing other things, and you just keep taking them off until you have the boogyman defenseless.
Eventually your problem, your issue, your fear, your boogymen, will be taken care of.
     One
          step,
               at
                    a
                         time.

No problem, we're only human.

Images from http://idevourkidbooks.blogspot.com/2011/10/eating-whale-my-self-pub-story.html