Reflected Best

Some have written lovely notes about my positive traits for a class that I am taking. It feels a little bit decadent to ask for them. It reminds me of when a friend would pass along good things she heard about me in exchange for good things I heard about her. Delicious.

It makes me a little bit uncomfortable and at the same time flattered to read these memories. I've had to close emails to come back to them...

Now, I'm off to San Francisco to see my new friends. Andy teases that I like Alessia (the 12 year old) the best because I came home with stories that had a lot of, "And then, Alessia..." She is sassy and has an old soul.

Ode to Accounting

Strophe (pronounced /ˈstroʊfiː/; Greek στροφή, turn, bend, twist, see also phrase) is a concept in versification which properly means a turn, as from one foot to another, or from one side of a chorus to the other.

Oh, Net Income why do you take me from the east to the west? I've subtracted the dividends declared and dispersed to those stockholders. And now I just want to know your number. Now the school system is in maintenance mode and I can't even log on.
I just want to look at Pottery Barn catalogues and dream up a house on Cape Cod. I want to bake cookies and write letters to my friends. I want to go for runs and drink beer at 4pm. I want to read poetry and think, "Ooh, isn't that interesting."

Antistrophe (Greek: ἀντιστροφή, "a turning back") is the portion of an ode sung by the chorus in its returning movement from west to east, in response to the strophe, which was sung from east to west.

I guess I could read my text book or write another one of those papers... I guess I could go back east and do what I need to...

Epode, in verse, is the third part of an ode, which followed the strophe and the antistrophe, and completed the movement.

At a certain point in time the choirs, which had previously chanted to right of the altar or stage, and then to left of it, combined and sang in unison, or permitted the coryphaeus to sing for them all, while standing in the centre.

Out to the text books I go. A beer and a run after work is done.

Thursday the 17th

As we've read on Writer's Almanac.

It's William Carlos Williams birthday today. Here are his words:

It is difficult
to get the news from poems,
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

We were asked to respond to Peter Drucker's quote that said organizations and enterprises have the ability to enable ordinary people to do extraordinary things. I wrote about the need for extraordinary people to create these organizations; of course one needs collaboration to make things happen, but groups also need a burst of individual energy. I wonder what other people think. Here is my post:


My friend, Doc, was appointed to represent the Outward Bound School in a Florida Coalition meeting. This group, mostly consisting of politicians, environmentalists, and activists joined to discuss how to protect the Florida Everglades, especially as the sugar industry was polluting Lake Okeechobee. As the first day of the meeting went on, no one seemed to listen to Doc; they seemed to discount his opinion because of their perception of Outward Bound and of him as an instructor.

Before the panel discussion on the second day, Doc slipped into the conference center and wrote the same question on each participant’s notepad. It read, “Are you creating the future that you want to see or just reacting to the sugar industry?”

When the panel discussion started, one panel member huffed into the microphone, “Who wrote this?” No one responded. He continued, “I just want to address this right now. I am not just reacting, I’m creating the future!”

Someone from the audience asked, “Well, how are you creating an image of the future instead of just reacting?” And with that reaction, with that question, the conversation shifted.

Although I agree with Peter Drucker that when the working well, “Organizations and enterprises enable ordinary people to do extraordinary things,” I’d also like to challenge it. Sometimes, I think that it takes extraordinary people to shake up, create, or re-create the extraordinary organizations and enterprises by finding creative ways to ask big and difficult questions or shift conversations.

Additionally, the world needs the spark of visionaries such as the physician and anthropologist Paul Farmer, who helped start Partners in Health, which is working to fight tuberculosis and other health issues in the poorest nations in the world. It needs innovators to lead the way and create new technology or ways of thinking.

Conversely, if someone is focused on being the extraordinary person, then organizations run the risk of falling into what Maurice Evans identified as “process loss” in his forum post. Feeding status or personal goals instead of feeding the direction of the organization creates a stagnant or even failing organization.

There was another paragraph about Presidio, but that seems less relevant to the subject. Here is a link for a 15 minute Parker Palmer interview. If you go to the second section, the link that says, "The Divided Life and the Quest for True Self" is the free excerpt. It was a nice reminder about making a single mission that everything else (work, relationships, spirituality) feed into.

San Francisco Photos

My first residency went well. Ben sent "business buddy," a replica of Connor, with me so that I wouldn't be lonely. He also sent a framed photo of himself. Here's my suitcase:


The Isolani family has taken me in. We had a dinner party one night. Here are some photos:




I sure had a wholesome time in San Francisco and Berkeley. Here's a photo of the girls reading Archie comics.
Here are some of my classmates outside on a break. That's Alcatraz in the distance.

Now, I've been busy studying and adjusting to a completely new life. I hope to post at least once a week.