Draw your own conclusions.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Heart Container
Draw your own conclusions.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Let's go to the library!
Lately, I've been experiencing a bit of ennui: I want to have a career that both utilizes my skills and fulfills my creative needs. Yesterday I had a phone meeting with a career counselor in order to find what sort of business I ought to occupy. I found the advisor, Janet, to be initially very helpful in guiding me in the right direction. In her consultation, she outlined a few possibilities, and she explained exactly how she would aid me in discovering the perfect business to pursue. She made it clear that a career guide doesn't really "do the work," she just guides and advises. In our first meeting, we would sit down and discuss the various possibilities for my career arc, based upon my desires and frustrations. After such a discussion, we would develop a "career map" that would keep me on track for the day-to-day. I can tell you that, for a free meeting, I was very pleased with what I had learned and I now feel ready to formulate the perfect job for myself.
Then she told me about the fee for each session. As a UCLA student, she offered me a 25% discount from her regular rate, which brought the total for a single session to $112. That's just a single meeting, which is only one hour. And she's not "doing the work" either.
For a hundred-and-twelve bucks that career map better have a big "X" depicting where the treasure is buried. It had better be penned by a medieval scribe and printed in illuminated text upon parchment paper in golden ink, because there's no way I'm gonna shell out that kinda dough. Thanks for the meeting though, Janet, and for sending me in the right direction.
Brought to you (free!) by your local library, which probably retains every resource Janet does.
Draw your own conclusions.
Then she told me about the fee for each session. As a UCLA student, she offered me a 25% discount from her regular rate, which brought the total for a single session to $112. That's just a single meeting, which is only one hour. And she's not "doing the work" either.
For a hundred-and-twelve bucks that career map better have a big "X" depicting where the treasure is buried. It had better be penned by a medieval scribe and printed in illuminated text upon parchment paper in golden ink, because there's no way I'm gonna shell out that kinda dough. Thanks for the meeting though, Janet, and for sending me in the right direction.
Brought to you (free!) by your local library, which probably retains every resource Janet does.
Draw your own conclusions.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Would you adopt a bobcat?
Monday, May 27, 2013
I'm a collector of proverbs and phrases, by Dan Yashinsky
[I don't want to make a habit of reposting, but this was too good to pass up. From Dan Yashinsky's blog.]
I collect spoken words. Some people like to collect fishing lures, first editions, bird sightings or sports cars. I hunt and gather the chance phrases I overhear on the street, in cafés, in my own kitchen.
These words-of-mouth include family sayings, turns of phrase, proverbs, bons mots (and not-so- bons but still memorable mots), and every clever, impromptu phrase our sons have uttered over the years.
Our youngest, 7 at the time, announced at Hanukkah: "Dear family - I love you all very much so far." At the beginning of his science studies he told me, with some alarm, "Dad, did you know Mom is a mammal?" More recently, when I asked him what it was like being raised by artists, he said, "Inexpensively eventful." Every son or daughter of a storyteller, sculptor or actor would agree.
His older brother, in Grade 5, spoke on behalf of children around the world when he said, "It's play day! We're not supposed to learn anything!"
When he was 3, his mother was trying to put him to sleep by telling him a boring story in a monotonous voice. It was all about the animals in the barnyard going to sleep. "The piggies were getting sleepy … the cows were getting sleepy … the ponies were getting sleepy …" etc. etc.
I gather she listed quite a number of animals, but it didn't work. He lifted his head excitedly and said, "Then suddenly they heard footsteps!" So much for the soporific quality of her storytelling. His love of narrative suspense has carried over into his work as an actor and screenwriter.
Once, commenting on our sons' reluctance to move with alacrity when it came to doing chores, my wife coined the term "molassity" - now part of our oral lexicon. And when things aren't going so well chez nous, we recall what we overheard a young mother tell her fretful baby in a park in Paris: " La vie est plein d'emmerdements." Life is full of little shittinesses.
I revel in the way such words-of-mouth can strike my ear and stick in my memory. All of this daily, speakable feast is duly recorded in what my kids call my Book of Quotes.
My father was a fount of sayings, many of them inherited from his days selling used cars in Detroit. Even after he became a French professor at the University of Toronto, he had a way of bringing them forth when the occasion called for a wise or pointed comment.
Our most famous one is: Get out of the car!
My father worked with an African-American man named Jerry Morgan. Mr. Morgan was always getting pulled over by the police (in "De-troit" we say "po-lice", and in my hometown in the 1950s, Driving While Black was a risky activity - and still is, my friends tell me) who would yell: "Get out of the car!" Mr. Morgan, unabashed, took this as his subversive life motto, applicable in both good times and bad - to express wonder at life's absurdities, to sing the blues, to talk about the joys of love. It became part of our family's folklore.
And from the Southern Ontario side of the family comes the punchline, now a well-used saying: "You go ahead, Mary, I'll go back for the lantern." It comes from a story my in-laws tell about a nervous farmer who went with his wife to investigate a suspicious noise coming from their barn. At the last minute, our not-so-brave farmer turned back with that unforgettable phrase. We remember it in situations that call for courage, to remind ourselves how not to act.
Every family has its own mini-folk tradition, a private heritage of favourite sayings that connect us to the philosophy of our ancestors. An Italian friend told me that her grandmother used to say, "Grow old, red socks." It means that, at a certain age, you can wear anything you damn well please. Ever since I heard it, I've only worn purple socks.
"You can't dance at two weddings with one tuches," my Yiddish-speaking friend says, quoting her late father. A useful motto when it comes to making difficult choices.
"What's for you won't go by you," a teacher once said at a workshop I was leading. The zen-like quality of this has stayed with me. One of the most powerful things about traditional proverbs is that they can speak to us in different ways at different moments of our lives.
Sometimes I catch a phrase that would require a novel to explain. I overheard a young woman at one of my favourite cafés (not that I was eavesdropping, of course, but you probably wouldn't want to sit next to me at a café) say to her companion, "Cause the reason was, my mom had another lover."
My ears grew bigger and my mouth grew smaller (as I once heard a Danish storyteller describe it). "Your mother's got another lover?" I wanted to ask the woman. "Isn't one enough?" But I was discreet, and simply noted it in my Book of Quotes.
We live in a time where voice, memory and the ability to listen are all under threat. Kids retell television episodes more than anecdotes or folk tales heard from their grandparents. Maybe that's what I love so much about the oral culture that still survives. Even in the miniature form of sayings and proverbs, this marvellously expressive language needs a speaker, a listener and its own timely moment. The love of the spoken word comes from societies where prime time means story time.
Speaking of which, a Ghanaian friend once told me, "The white man has the watches, but the black man has the time." We traded proverbs for a while (he liked this one from Southern Ontario: "Never say 'Whoa!' in a mudhole"). Then he told me one I remember every day: "If you want to walk fast, walk alone; if you want to walk far, walk with friends."
Dan Yashinsky lives in Toronto.
I collect spoken words. Some people like to collect fishing lures, first editions, bird sightings or sports cars. I hunt and gather the chance phrases I overhear on the street, in cafés, in my own kitchen.
These words-of-mouth include family sayings, turns of phrase, proverbs, bons mots (and not-so- bons but still memorable mots), and every clever, impromptu phrase our sons have uttered over the years.
Our youngest, 7 at the time, announced at Hanukkah: "Dear family - I love you all very much so far." At the beginning of his science studies he told me, with some alarm, "Dad, did you know Mom is a mammal?" More recently, when I asked him what it was like being raised by artists, he said, "Inexpensively eventful." Every son or daughter of a storyteller, sculptor or actor would agree.
His older brother, in Grade 5, spoke on behalf of children around the world when he said, "It's play day! We're not supposed to learn anything!"
When he was 3, his mother was trying to put him to sleep by telling him a boring story in a monotonous voice. It was all about the animals in the barnyard going to sleep. "The piggies were getting sleepy … the cows were getting sleepy … the ponies were getting sleepy …" etc. etc.
I gather she listed quite a number of animals, but it didn't work. He lifted his head excitedly and said, "Then suddenly they heard footsteps!" So much for the soporific quality of her storytelling. His love of narrative suspense has carried over into his work as an actor and screenwriter.
Once, commenting on our sons' reluctance to move with alacrity when it came to doing chores, my wife coined the term "molassity" - now part of our oral lexicon. And when things aren't going so well chez nous, we recall what we overheard a young mother tell her fretful baby in a park in Paris: " La vie est plein d'emmerdements." Life is full of little shittinesses.
I revel in the way such words-of-mouth can strike my ear and stick in my memory. All of this daily, speakable feast is duly recorded in what my kids call my Book of Quotes.
My father was a fount of sayings, many of them inherited from his days selling used cars in Detroit. Even after he became a French professor at the University of Toronto, he had a way of bringing them forth when the occasion called for a wise or pointed comment.
Our most famous one is: Get out of the car!
My father worked with an African-American man named Jerry Morgan. Mr. Morgan was always getting pulled over by the police (in "De-troit" we say "po-lice", and in my hometown in the 1950s, Driving While Black was a risky activity - and still is, my friends tell me) who would yell: "Get out of the car!" Mr. Morgan, unabashed, took this as his subversive life motto, applicable in both good times and bad - to express wonder at life's absurdities, to sing the blues, to talk about the joys of love. It became part of our family's folklore.
And from the Southern Ontario side of the family comes the punchline, now a well-used saying: "You go ahead, Mary, I'll go back for the lantern." It comes from a story my in-laws tell about a nervous farmer who went with his wife to investigate a suspicious noise coming from their barn. At the last minute, our not-so-brave farmer turned back with that unforgettable phrase. We remember it in situations that call for courage, to remind ourselves how not to act.
Every family has its own mini-folk tradition, a private heritage of favourite sayings that connect us to the philosophy of our ancestors. An Italian friend told me that her grandmother used to say, "Grow old, red socks." It means that, at a certain age, you can wear anything you damn well please. Ever since I heard it, I've only worn purple socks.
"You can't dance at two weddings with one tuches," my Yiddish-speaking friend says, quoting her late father. A useful motto when it comes to making difficult choices.
"What's for you won't go by you," a teacher once said at a workshop I was leading. The zen-like quality of this has stayed with me. One of the most powerful things about traditional proverbs is that they can speak to us in different ways at different moments of our lives.
Sometimes I catch a phrase that would require a novel to explain. I overheard a young woman at one of my favourite cafés (not that I was eavesdropping, of course, but you probably wouldn't want to sit next to me at a café) say to her companion, "Cause the reason was, my mom had another lover."
My ears grew bigger and my mouth grew smaller (as I once heard a Danish storyteller describe it). "Your mother's got another lover?" I wanted to ask the woman. "Isn't one enough?" But I was discreet, and simply noted it in my Book of Quotes.
We live in a time where voice, memory and the ability to listen are all under threat. Kids retell television episodes more than anecdotes or folk tales heard from their grandparents. Maybe that's what I love so much about the oral culture that still survives. Even in the miniature form of sayings and proverbs, this marvellously expressive language needs a speaker, a listener and its own timely moment. The love of the spoken word comes from societies where prime time means story time.
Speaking of which, a Ghanaian friend once told me, "The white man has the watches, but the black man has the time." We traded proverbs for a while (he liked this one from Southern Ontario: "Never say 'Whoa!' in a mudhole"). Then he told me one I remember every day: "If you want to walk fast, walk alone; if you want to walk far, walk with friends."
Dan Yashinsky lives in Toronto.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Midnight Punk
Friday, May 24, 2013
Bricks and Pigs: the New Global
If you haven't heard about it yet, the world stage claims that America is on
its way out as the most powerful nation on planet Earth. Though my opinion on this subject fluctuates, I thought it worthy to mention the buzz surrounding this idea before I address the "bricks and pigs."
Yesterday, at the aforementioned UCLA seminar, I asked an anonymous Latin American college administrator about the persistence of male Caucasian teachers in American higher education, a sort of "what are your thoughts" kind of question.
"What are the strategies that administrators intend to employ to meet these professors' resistance to diversity?" I asked.
He replied: "I would tell these professors to 'get with the program'."
Furthermore, the administrator iterated to the attendees of the seminar that, in this era of globalization, there are "bricks," and then, there are "pigs." At the time, I had no idea what he was referring to. So I decided to get with the program - here are some of my findings.
***
The term "brick" is actually the acronym BRIC, which refers to world powers that, according to many reliable sources, shall eclipse the United States in power and product in the next several years. BRIC stands for:
Brazil
Russia
India
China
This term is actually about ten years old, and we are only hearing about it now because of certain shifts in monetary power. Brazil has authorized offshore drilling for the acquisition of oil, which they intend to sell exclusively to China. Russia is beginning to see the first sustainable economic success since the Cold War; India, of course, answers the phone whenever we call for customer service. And, of course, China makes many of the products we buy. Moreover, as of May 2011, China remains the largest single holder of U.S. government debt with 26 percent of all foreign-held U.S. Treasury securities, which is about 8% of total U.S. public debt (http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/mfh.txt).
On the other end of the spectrum, we have PIGS:
Portugal
Italy (or Ireland, perhaps)
Greece
Spain
Portugal and Italy are out of Euros. The green movement in Spain hasn't generated enough jobs: the unemployment rate reached “a record high of 27.2% in the first quarter of 2013” (http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/25/world/europe/spain-unemployment). And Greece is Greece. (If you don't know about Greece, please type Greece into your Google search bar now.)
We, the United States, contribute a great deal of money to these nations in the form of foreign aid. We do this because our nation is concerned with the well-being of these countries and, as a successful country ourselves, we wish to provide opportunities in globalist fashion. This concludes your lesson in contemporary nomenclature.
Draw your own conclusions.
Yesterday, at the aforementioned UCLA seminar, I asked an anonymous Latin American college administrator about the persistence of male Caucasian teachers in American higher education, a sort of "what are your thoughts" kind of question.
"What are the strategies that administrators intend to employ to meet these professors' resistance to diversity?" I asked.
He replied: "I would tell these professors to 'get with the program'."
Furthermore, the administrator iterated to the attendees of the seminar that, in this era of globalization, there are "bricks," and then, there are "pigs." At the time, I had no idea what he was referring to. So I decided to get with the program - here are some of my findings.
***
The term "brick" is actually the acronym BRIC, which refers to world powers that, according to many reliable sources, shall eclipse the United States in power and product in the next several years. BRIC stands for:
Brazil
Russia
India
China
This term is actually about ten years old, and we are only hearing about it now because of certain shifts in monetary power. Brazil has authorized offshore drilling for the acquisition of oil, which they intend to sell exclusively to China. Russia is beginning to see the first sustainable economic success since the Cold War; India, of course, answers the phone whenever we call for customer service. And, of course, China makes many of the products we buy. Moreover, as of May 2011, China remains the largest single holder of U.S. government debt with 26 percent of all foreign-held U.S. Treasury securities, which is about 8% of total U.S. public debt (http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/mfh.txt).
On the other end of the spectrum, we have PIGS:
Portugal
Italy (or Ireland, perhaps)
Greece
Spain
Portugal and Italy are out of Euros. The green movement in Spain hasn't generated enough jobs: the unemployment rate reached “a record high of 27.2% in the first quarter of 2013” (http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/25/world/europe/spain-unemployment). And Greece is Greece. (If you don't know about Greece, please type Greece into your Google search bar now.)
We, the United States, contribute a great deal of money to these nations in the form of foreign aid. We do this because our nation is concerned with the well-being of these countries and, as a successful country ourselves, we wish to provide opportunities in globalist fashion. This concludes your lesson in contemporary nomenclature.
Draw your own conclusions.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
All the world's a classroom
Today I attended a series of seminars at UCLA regarding the role of higher education in the 21st Century. After six hours, I can distill most of the presentations into a struggle between two opposing ideas.
The first idea argued that academic studies found in effective learning centers (i.e. colleges) promote the cultivation of experts in every given field, and this system must be adhered to in the future in order to stave off a homogenization of mediocre learning methods that are becoming prevalent in today's digitally-modern education. The second idea argued that rapid globalization must account for the new majority: a diverse student populace that craves localized access to higher education. Each speaker argued their points well, but each speaker also leaned heavily toward one of these ideas or the other. Very subtly, these diametrically-fueled arguments slowed down the debate process in general, and there were even moments when presenters failed to maintain a healthy dialogue, which resulted in some pointed remarks and, at times, a lack of listening across the aisle, if you will.
Perhaps these concepts do not have to be opposed to one another; I am of a mind to believe that there must be some way to combine the two ideas. Education of any level must be accessible to all kinds of eager people in coming decades, but I also feel that the level of accountability found in most universities nowadays must be preserved.
Simply put: access is tantamount, but quality must not be sacrificed for permeability.
Draw your own conclusions.
The first idea argued that academic studies found in effective learning centers (i.e. colleges) promote the cultivation of experts in every given field, and this system must be adhered to in the future in order to stave off a homogenization of mediocre learning methods that are becoming prevalent in today's digitally-modern education. The second idea argued that rapid globalization must account for the new majority: a diverse student populace that craves localized access to higher education. Each speaker argued their points well, but each speaker also leaned heavily toward one of these ideas or the other. Very subtly, these diametrically-fueled arguments slowed down the debate process in general, and there were even moments when presenters failed to maintain a healthy dialogue, which resulted in some pointed remarks and, at times, a lack of listening across the aisle, if you will.
Perhaps these concepts do not have to be opposed to one another; I am of a mind to believe that there must be some way to combine the two ideas. Education of any level must be accessible to all kinds of eager people in coming decades, but I also feel that the level of accountability found in most universities nowadays must be preserved.
Simply put: access is tantamount, but quality must not be sacrificed for permeability.
Draw your own conclusions.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
A woman's scorn
The journey begins
From this day forth, I vow to write. I wish to feel the pulse of the world keenly, and here I will affix each discovery. My interests are myriad, and my excuses are dwindling. Find me, inspiration - I double dog dare you.
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