Donations

Recently, the wife of a former colleague of Michael's passed away. She died of a stroke. Going to donate money to the Heart and Stroke foundation. Seems like the right thing to do. Flowers are nice but the flowers that were at the funeral were given to some of the attendees at the funeral. We were lucky recipients of an arrangement. How much better to give money to the foundation. Hopefully some of the money actually goes to research.
Think about what you can do.

Black Dressmaker: Slavery to White House

Recently, I noticed on a friend's blog posting an article about a Black Dressmaker who went from Slavery to the White House. Elizabeth Keckley was the former slave who bought her freedom and became the personal dressmaker, stylist and confidant to First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. What an incredible story. This would be amazing today but in the early 1800's for a person to be born into slavery in 1818 and then to sew her way out of servitude and into the White House is an incredible story. One that we do not hear about.
Keckly who became skilled as a dressmaker managed to negotiate and arrange for her freedom paying it off in 1860. By 1861, she had a full atelier in Washington, D.C. She became the dressmaker and confidant to Mary Todd Lincoln.
You can read her story at www.styleite.com/media/elizabeth-keckly-black-history-month/
Maybe you will discover the story of others who deserve to have their story told.

Music motivates us

The other day, there was an article in the Globe and Mail by Mark Fenske about how to "Power up with music: How it motivates us". Music can be a powerful force. In fact, it is sometimes banned (along with steroids and stimulant drugs) to prevent athletes from gaining an unfair advantage during competitions. Why? Because of its capacity to energize and increase endurance.
The driving beats and locomotive thunder of bass-heavy dance music have undoubtedly fuelled many of running sessions.
One of music's energizing effects comes from its ability to engage the body's sympathetic nervous system. The activation of this system readies the body for action whenever we face a challenge in our environment.
Music is comprised of patterns of sounds that have been shown to affect levels of physical excitability. A simple increase in the pace of the music we listen can quicken our pulse and accelerate our breathing And this can be great for physical exercise or a boring task that might lull you to sleep.
The article suggests further ways that music motivates us. Wonderful.

My Pop Choir

I have been involved in music most of my life and it is with great pleasure that I see that others are finding an outlet in music. Recently, My Pop choir which seems to have modeled itself after Glee (however I do realize that the Glee choir is a course and probably auditioned- it is the repertoire that attracts singers)or choirs of that ilk is expanding. The choir costs $20 per session or $200 per ten week term. This means that the directors have found a means of making money. Interesting. It seems that the original session was a great success and all but two people signed up again. The two that did not sign up have headed south for the winter.
Hope that it continues because this is a wonderful outlet for people. The next step will be to put on some concerts. Wonder if that will happen?

Access codes

Do you have this problem? How to keep track of the many access codes and passwords that you have? I believe that I will have to do what Martha Stewart does and keep a log of all the codes. I have e-mails out to two different groups about account access. Thank goodness, it is not an emergency. Wish that I could just use the same code or password but that does not seem acceptable. Even if you had a wonderful memory, it would be very difficult to keep the many accounts all lined up.
Decided that I need to be more proactive about keeping track of all these accounts and that seems more difficult than I thought.
Hopefully, I will find a way to do this without too much difficulty. Will let you know once I get a handle on all the accounts.

Other leaders

Now that I have checked some innovators, two to be exact, it will be interesting to see how many others have issues. Does the ability to be a leader require attributes that are outside the norm? Wonder. If it is true, then what do we do to foster the talents of those outside the usual paths?
Some food for thought.

Aspergers

Right now, I am listening to a recording of the book about Steven Jobs. From what I can tell, he had a degree of Aspergers. At least that would help explain his unusual behaviours and difficult interpersonal relationships. Interestingly, today there is an article in the business section of the Toronto Star about Mark Zuckerberg, founder of facebook and he seems to exhibit some of the same kind of behaviours toward employees as Steve Job. Sadly, each of them abused their employees to a certain extent. Steve Wozniak was a different kind of boss but did not want to get involved in the kind of interplay that Steve Jobs did. In the article about Mark Zuckerberg, a former employee Yishan Wong found that after awhile he could not continue to work in the pressure cooker. He was a good employee but left. The article does not get into what caused him to leave. Probably in a number of years, there will be someone who writes about Zuckerberg. Wonder if anyone will see the similarities in behaviours.