Blog Entries
Blog entries, here and from elsewhere.
Can it be that it was all so simple then?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 18:58The idyllic evening light faded on the children as they ran across the school ground. Inside, parents were chatting over the remains of a potluck dinner. It had brought back memories of my childhood, when I was one of the children running with the pack. The only thing that was missing was the fireflies, but it was still a little too chilly and too early in the year for them to be out. Sure, I spent time talking about town politics with new friends and Kim was at home feeling ill, but perhaps it was all that simple.
That was last night at the Multi-Age Group dinner at Beecher Road School in Woodbridge, CT. This morning, we continued with the spring idylls. Yes, the first stop was to get new medications for Kim, but while she was waiting to have her prescription filled, Fiona and I raced across the street to buy seeds and gardening tools.
Our yard is mossy and well shaded; not a prime location for a vegetable garden. We still manage to dry our clothes outside, and I gathered in some clothes this morning before the coming rain.
For our garden, the town of Woodbridge has community gardens. People can go rent a nice sunny and fertile plot of land to grow their own vegetables. We currently get our vegetables from a local community supported agriculture, or CSA farm. For our small family, we have difficulties using up all the vegetables we get each week. We don’t really need to raise additional vegetables.
Yet for me, the eighty dollars that we’ve spent on tools, seeds and the plot itself is perhaps more about relaxation, therapy, exercise and education for Fiona than about whatever we might ever get for food from our garden.
Our plot has lain fallow for a few years, and needs a lot of work. We’ve been doing all of it by hand, slowly clearing a bed and in the process discovering a small rose bush we hope to nurture back to health. Yet today, a man with a tractor at a neighboring plot offered to plow the whole plot under for us. We gladly took him up on the offer and when he was done, we started our planting.
At home in the evening, we had a simple meal; sausage, roasted potatoes and salad. The sausage was raised here in Connecticut and salad was made from greens in our CSA box. We washed it down with some hard cider that we had brewed from fresh cider from a local cider mill and bottled last fall.
Soon, we will sit back and watch a video that we checked out of the local library as we wait for the band of thunderstorms expected to pass through in the middle of the night.
Yes, it could be that it was all that simple then. It could be that through the current economic woes, more of us will find our way back to the simple pleasures of yesteryear. If so, wave at me when you pull up weeds in your plot in the community garden. I’ll give you a hand the way a neighbor gave me a hand today, and perhaps we can all share a couple bottles of home brewed hard cider afterwards.
A Mother's Day Reflection
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 05/10/2009 - 10:26Over at Duck and Wheel with String, Lin has a wonderful reflection on Mother's Day cards.
She writes:
I have this theory about Mother's Day. Did you ever take a good look at the Mother's Day cards? They all show the mom with her apron on, surrounded by her family. She's standing there smiling with all the kids around her, and Dad's there--I think he's smiling too. Then there is lots of mushy writing about how wonderful mom's are and how much we love them and all that stuff...blah, blah, blah.
Then look at Father's Day cards. There's Dad on the hammock--alone. He's on the golf course--alone. Then he's taking a nap on the couch--alone. Where is the picture of him being surrounded by his obnoxious smiling family??? They always show the dad enjoying his peace and quiet, while the stupid mom cards have her spending even more time with the kids--like she needs more of that. And there are always fewer sappy words on Father's Day cards too. Always.
Me? I want the Dad card.
It made me think of a discussion I had with Kim the other day about the chocolates that we always get one another on days like these.
I left the following comment over on Lin's blog:
The other day, my wife told me that she doesn't really like those truffles I get her every year for Mother's day. She really wanted a different sort of truffles. I was shocked. I've been getting her my favorite type of truffles all these years. She's always been getting me her favorite type of chocolates on Father's day as well. They are okay, but not as good as the ones I always got for my wife.
Perhaps, that is the real hidden secret. On Mother's Day, Father's Day, and other such holidays, we get our beloved what we think they would like. We think they would like it, because it is the things we would like.
So yes, perhaps all us Fathers are out getting Mother's Day cards reflecting the joy of the family, because that is what we really want. Perhaps all of the Mothers will go out and get cards reflecting what they really want, a chance to simply relax alone on the hammock.
I hope you have a wonderful Mother's day. Enjoy the game.
However you choose to celebrate Mother's Day, I hope it is a wonderful day. Here in Connecticut, the sun is shining after what feels like forty days and forty nights. It is still chilly, but where headed off to the beach, to just chill.
Passionate Blogging and Earth Day
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 04/23/2009 - 14:31A couple weeks ago, Shari at Shari’s Gone Country awarded me a ‘Passionate Blogger Award’. I don’t do award memes that often, but I thought I would use it to highlight a few blogs that I think are worthy of mention.
My first nominee is Duck and Wheel with String. First off, I think it is great title for a blog. She has many great posts about everyday life. Her Earth Day post, Me and my underpants are saving the Earth talks about simple things we can do to make the earth a better place.
My second nominee follows on this theme. Peanut Butter and Smelly’s Dad is another great title for a blog. It is a great Dad blog. His blog post,
Earth Week - Cloth Diapers talks about another simple thing to do to make the earth a little bit better.
Honorable mention goes to Grandmother Wren for her blog post about Cold Blooded Friends at the Library.
As a final note, Shari named four other great blogs in her post, and I encourage you to check out the blogs she has recommended as well.
DailyKos and the Future of Journalism
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 04/19/2009 - 10:46On a mailing list on the future of journalism that I’m a member of, a person recently sent an email about this article on DailyKos about where people get their sources for diaries on DailyKos.
Kos notes that less than 20% of the primary sources are from newspapers. Other important sources include Advocacy organizations, Political trade press, Government, and campaigns. This seems to reinforce the idea of blogs, at least DailyKos is an echo chamber repeating what they’ve heard from groups trying to push out their message.
Another stereotype of bloggers is that many of them are people that sit at home typing on their computers, but don’t actually get out and do primary research or get involved in local politics. Aspects of this criticism comes out in the comments to Kos’ post.
The first comment, which was also the most highly rated comment observed,
“the thing about newspapers is they have reporters that go to the city council meetings, the school board meetings, the planning commission meetings, the high school sports events, the church easter egg hunt. That is what we will be losing out on, that local coverage that doesn't come from alternative media. It is that mundane stuff that affects people's lives more than ever changing cable news and blog chatter.
This generated a great discussion. People noted that a lot of local newspapers do really poor jobs of covering local news, and small towns often never have anyone covering important meetings.
One person noted,
It's one thing to go to the meetings. It's another to read the agendas and build contacts between you and the councilors and other government types.
It's a huge time investment to do it right. It's a lot more than just an afternoon trip to an hour-long meeting.
Yet this is what local elected officials do. If we want to have an effect, we need to spend the time reading the minutes and agendas of local meetings. We need to spend the time getting to know our local elected officials and having meaningful discussions about what is best for our communities. If we had more bloggers doing this, it would go a long way to dispel the notion of bloggers are armchair critics that never really get anything done.
So, what are you going to do to improve government and the local coverage of it in your area?
(Originally published at DailyKos, including a poll. If you are active on DailyKos, please stop by and vote on the poll.)
Social Dreams and Blogs
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 02/14/2009 - 09:32Years ago, I worked with an organizational consultant who was steeped in the Group Relations tradition, and through her, I developed an interest in the work of Wilfred Bion, Tavistock and many aspects of psychology and group dynamics. One area that particularly caught my attention was the work of Gordon Lawrence and others in Social Dreaming.
The idea is to share a dream in a social context, and instead of focusing on the interpretation of the dream, focus on the free associations to the dream to gain insight into social situations. It is with this in mind that I share three dreams that I had last night.
Only a snippet of the first dream remains. In this dream, I was participating in some sort of group and the group leader asked why I was not sharing anything. My reaction was that my thoughts were not well formed enough to be shared. Yet as I thought about the dream, I realized what really matters is sharing the not yet well-formed thoughts so that people could work together and we could all form even better thoughts.
To a certain extent, this is part of my philosophy of blogging. I perhaps do it best when I write about technology. I describe a project I’ve been working on, what works, what doesn’t, and then ask other people to share their experiences. Sometimes people share their experiences via comments, emails or instant messages and when this happens usually both of us learn more.
The same thing should happen, perhaps, for politics, education, and for that matter anything else that interests us. Yet this is very different from the dominant model. Newspapers, politicians and educators seem to believe they have to get it right the first time. They need to be the ‘sage on the stage’ and tell everyone what to think, instead of sharing information and encouraging people to think and to share their own thoughts. Perhaps the Internet will help change this model.
Yet this sort of change could have massive results, and it takes me to my second dream. In this dream, I am near a river that has been flooding. Coming down the stream are all kinds of object from the flood. Much of it household objects. I gather these objects out of the stream to repair and use. Another person owns some sort of market on the side of the river and is retrieving objects to barter or sell. I work out a deal with this person to gain access to the river across his property if I help bring in additional objects from the river for him. From this, I get to choose the five best objects that he has.
The final dream was also a water related dream. Instead of a river, I am at the shore of an ocean. There is a storm and the surf is high. Some people are out playing in the ocean. Off to the right there is a small cove, where the surf is not as high that seems fairly safe. Straight ahead is the expanse of the sea and the surf is rougher. People are playing in this surf as well, and at times people get pulled out to sea. Some get rescued, others do not. During this, a bright golden sandbar emerges going out into the sea, and some people go very far out on the sandbar playing safely. I know they are safe as long as the sandbar is there, but I know that the sandbar could easily shift and they could all be in peril.
Unlike the first dream, to which I have some clear reactions, my reactions to these later two dreams are less clear. What comes to your mind when you read these dreams? I’m perhaps more interested in related dreams, songs or movies that it makes you think of, or other things going on in our society, then I am in interpretations about what it might mean, but I welcome all comments.
Years ago, I worked with an organizational consultant who was steeped in the Group Relations tradition, and through her, I developed an interest in the work of Wilfred Bion, Tavistock and many aspects of psychology and group dynamics. One area that particularly caught my attention was the work of Gordon Lawrence and others in Social Dreaming.
The idea is to share a dream in a social context, and instead of focusing on the interpretation of the dream, focus on the free associations to the dream to gain insight into social situations. It is with this in mind that I share three dreams that I had last night.
Only a snippet of the first dream remains. In this dream, I was participating in some sort of group and the group leader asked why I was not sharing anything. My reaction was that my thoughts were not well formed enough to be shared. Yet as I thought about it, I realized what really matters is sharing the not yet well formed thoughts so that people could work together and we could all form even better thoughts.
To a certain extent, this is part of my philosophy of blogging. I perhaps do it best when I write about technology. I describe a project I’ve been working on, what works, what doesn’t and ask other people to share their experiences. Sometimes people share their experiences via comments, emails or instant messages and when this happens usually both of us learn more.
The same thing should happen, perhaps, for politics, education, and for that matter anything that interests us. Yet this is very different from the dominant model. Newspapers, politicians and educators have to get it right the first time. They need to be the ‘sage on the stage’ and tell everyone what to think, instead of encouraging people how to think and to share their thoughts. Perhaps the Internet will help change this model.
Yet this sort of change could have massive results, and it takes me to my second dream. In this dream, I am near a river that has been flooding. Coming down the stream are all kinds of object from the flood. Much of it household objects. I gather these objects out of the stream to repair and use. Another person owns some sort of market on the side of the river and is retrieving objects to barter or sell. I work out a deal with this person to gain access to the river across his property if I help bring in additional objects from the river for him. From this, I get to choose the five best objects that he has.
The final dream was also a water related dream. Instead of a river, I am at the shore of an ocean. There is a storm and the surf is high. Some people are out playing in the ocean. Off to the right there is a small cove, where the surf is not as high that seems fairly safe. Straight ahead is the expanse of the sea and the surf is rougher. People are playing in this surf as well, and at times people get pulled out to sea. Some get rescued, others do not. During this, a sandbar emerges going out into the sea, and some people go very far out on the sandbar playing safely. I know they are safe as long as the sandbar is there, but I know that the sandbar could easily shift and they could all be in peril.
Unlike the first dream, to which I have some clear reactions, my reactions to these later two dreams are less clear. What comes to your mind when you read these dreams? I’m perhaps more interested in related dreams, songs or movies that it makes you think of, or other things going on in our society, then I am in interpretations about what it might mean, but I welcome all comments.
