Our year in photos – 2008
The first of an annual tradition of family photos posted at Thanksgiving.
All posts tagged: Random DJB Thoughts
Slow Blogging
The Sunday New York Times included a story on “Slow Blogging.” I had never heard of the term (although I am aware of the slow food movement), but I found myself agreeing with the rejection of immediacy, the thought of blogging as meditation, and the precept that not all things worth reading are written quickly. This approach is a deliberate smack at the popular group blogs like Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, Valleywag and boing-bong, which can crank out as many as 50 items a day. On those sites, readers flood in and advertisers sign on. Spin and snark abound. Earnest descriptions of the first frost of the season are nowhere to be found. In between the slow bloggers and the rapid-fire ones, there is a vast middle, hundreds of thousands of writers who are not trying to attract advertising or buzz but do want to reach like-minded colleagues and friends. These people have been the bedrock of the genre since its start, yet recently there has been a sea change in their output: They are increasingly …
Searching the Internet and Finding…The Edge of the American West
In yet another of my posts on very interesting web sites found while searching the Internet, I bring you today The Edge of the American West. This is a site that contains writings by historians and philosophers, leading the site to suggest that “History is Philosophy teaching by examples. ” The interests of these men and women run the gamut, if recent posts are any example. They do a regular This Day in History type of post, one of the most recent being about the day that Richard Nixon declared he wasn’t a crook. To give you a sense of the politics here, the post is entitled “Yes You Are. And Also a Liar.” There are posts on camel metaphors (having to do with choosing cabinet members), and the day in 1972 when the Dow Jones Industrial Average first closed above 1,000. (We may be headed back there!) But I knew this was a website worth checking when I read Aw, that could have been MY head. Here the writer tells the story of how he …
A case of the slows
With two sophomores in Pre-Calculus, Spanish, Honors Chemistry, and the like, there’s not much I can do to help with homework these days. So when Claire asked me to come over to her chair tonight to look over a review sheet, I went with some trepidation. She must have seen my fear, so she added, “It is for history.” Whew. That I can handle. Her note sheet had some smudges, obscuring some of the answers. So she asked “Why did President Lincoln fire McClellan?” “The first or second time?” My response surprised her, but she re-read the question and realized it was referring to the second time. So I said, “because he refused to attack Lee’s retreating army after Antietam.” She looked at her sheet, figured out the missing words around the smudge, and decided I was right. One for the old man. “How did President Lincoln describe General McClellan?” Claire asked. “That’s easy,” I replied, “Lincoln said McClellan, ‘had a bad case of the slows.’” Now I had her! “How did you know that?!” she exclaimed. I …
Fired Up and Ready to Go
A friend recently pointed me to a blog posting entitled In Defense of Raising Money: A Manifesto for NonProfit CEOs written by a man by the name of Sasha Dichter. Now you may think that sounds like a very boring topic, but if you care about any cause – be it eradicating poverty, health care reform, the arts, AIDS, historic preservation, you name it – read this manifesto. It is a powerful piece that talks about how your dream and passion has to be bigger than your ego. Just a sampling… Spending your time talking to powerful, influential people about the change you hope to see in the world is a pretty far cry from having fundraising as a “necessary evil.” Do you really believe that the “real work” is JUST the “programs” you operate? (the school you run; the meals you serve; the vaccines you develop; the patients you treat?) Do you really believe that it ends there? Do you really believe that in today’s world, where change can come from anyone and anywhere, that convincing people …
Watching the U.S. Election from Vienna
As noted earlier in the week on More to Come…, I spent election night on a plane over the Atlantic. So I was so happy to see the video below. No matter your political persuasion, the historic nature of last Tuesday’s decision by the American people has to touch you. Sitting here in the lobby of a hotel in Austria, I got emotional watching this 10 minute video summary of election night and wanted to share it with you. More to come… DJB
What a strange, wonderful Election Day it has been
Greetings from Bratislava, Slovakia! Not your normal post-election day dateline for the More to Come…blog. Let me tell you how I ended up hearing about the presidential election results while flying over the Atlantic. I woke up at home on November 4th and after the normal morning chores, I headed down to the library to vote. Well, I wasn’t really surprised to find that the line ran around the edges of BOTH parking lots and extended almost to the street. Historic election indeed! It was great, even if I did stand in line for 2 hours and 10 minutes before casting my vote. But it felt good to be part of something so special and it felt REALLY good to vote with a positive feeling about a candidate (instead of the usual voting to play defense). The local high school had some kids out selling coffee and pastries to help with relief efforts in Africa. They did well, but they could have done gangbusters if they’d had chairs to rent or would have been able to …
Beauty in the Mountains
I spent the last two days in the mountains of North Carolina. A colleague and I had a meeting in the region and our timing could not have been better. Few things are as beautiful as the mountains of western Virginia and North Carolina during the fall. This was my favorite season during the 15 years we lived in Staunton, in the middle of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. So Tom and I were thrilled to find ourselves on a lake with a jaw-dropping historic dam and a shoreline filled with trees in all their fall glory. We viewed a great historic property with the owner on Tuesday afternoon, but knew we had to get up this morning to see more of this wonderful place. After a restful night’s sleep (boy it is dark in the country), Tom and I hit the hiking trail this morning to walk around the lake, enjoy the wonderful light, and examine the dam up close. As you can see from these pictures, the trees were spectacular and the dam was awesome in all …
7-Eleven Coffee Sales Predicting Election
I promised not to post much in the way of political coverage on More to Come…but I will put up the occasional note that might bring a smile. While searching the Internet, I found this fun poll – taken by 7-Eleven coffee drinkers. Every day 7-Eleven sells more than 1 million cups of coffee a day. And before the election, coffee drinkers can choose a McCain or an Obama cup to “cast” their vote. What a fun idea…and the results may surprise you. So check out the 7-Election 2008 web site for the up-to-date results. And drink your coffee to show that you’re a patriotic American. More to come… DJB
Baseball on the Radio
I love driving in a car and listening to baseball on the radio. That’s a good thing. Because I’m looking forward to tonight’s Game 6 of the ALCS between the Boston Red Sox and the Tampa Bay Rays AND as the father of teenagers who don’t drive, the weekend means that I run a taxi service. I expect I’ll listen to as much of tonight’s game on the car radio as I watch on television. ESPN radio carries all the baseball post-season games, with the wonderful Jon Miller doing the play-by-play. Miller is even better on the radio than he is on the Sunday night TV games. He’s thoughtful, entertaining, smart enough to know when to stop talking, and he’s not Tim McCarver. It speaks volumes about what’s been wrong with the Baltimore Orioles under the ownership of Peter Angelos that Miller – only a Hall-of-Famer-to-be announcer – was fired by Angelos as the voice of the Orioles. So in anticipation of hearing Miller tonight, I’ll repeat a quote of Miller’s from Paul Dickson’s Baseball’s Greatest Quotations: There’s just …
MORE TO COME... 