When I'm 64

Here's a little treat for all Beatles fans (that's pretty much everybody, right?) I found this picture for my brother, who turned 64 on Saturday.

What I Want in my New Little Home

Start with what you want and we’ll move on to what you need. Those were the first instructions from my brother (B) the architect. I’ve been thinking about this for years, so it wasn’t hard to put together my list.

I want one large loft-style room, open to the (smallish) kitchen. This is where I will work at the computer, read, watch TV and movies, dine, do crafts, and entertain the very few guests I allow into my inner sanctum. Hmmm. Maybe I should call the place the Auntie Sanctum instead of the Auntie Flat (see yesterday’s post).

I want a bedroom, which could be just an alcove, not necessarily a separate room, and a walk-in closet.

And a bathroom with a separate shower and tub. “What about a guest bathroom?” B asked. “Nope,” I insisted. “One bathroom.” My thinking here is that I hate to clean bathrooms, so why have more than one? Also, see “very few guests” above.

I would like to have a fireplace and recycle the mantel from my current house.
The kitchen should have a small apartment-sized dishwasher. (It’s been 23 years since I had a dishwasher and I’m tired of seeing dirty dishes on what little counterspace I have.) I’d also like a pantry and an island to separate the kitchen from the rest of the room.

The last apartment I lived in is my model for the Auntie Flat. On the second floor of an historic commercial building, it was brand new inside and contained all of the above (minus the fireplace and kitchen island) in 600 square feet. B was surprised to hear my low space estimate, but the truth is that my house now is only 900 square feet and roughly a third of that is just storage for things I don’t use but can’t bear to part with. Obviously, I will need to do a LOT of decluttering, but that’s another post.

New Learning Agenda

(Excerpts from A New Learning Agenda: "Putting People First." Palo Alto,
CA: Institute for Research on Learning, 1993.)

"Our research at IRL has led us to articulate Seven Principles of
learning-principles that present a serious challenge to the usual,
"comfortable" view of learning that dominates our institutions. These
principles call for change in schooling and workplace practice. They also
call for a change in the way we view and develop learning and learning
environments, and for change in the direction of policy and research.

1. LEARNING IS FUNDAMENTALLY SOCIAL. The choice between learning and social
fulfillment-a choice that dominates most schools and workplaces-should never
arise.

2. KNOWLEDGE IS INTEGRATED INTO THE LIFE OF COMMUNITIES. Knowledge,
activity and social relations are closely intertwined.

3. LEARNING IS AN ACT OF MEMBERSHIP. Learning is not just the activity of a
sole individual, but the primary vehicle for engagement with others.

4. KNOWING IS ENGAGEMENT IN PRACTICE. Only in the classroom is knowledge
presented in the abstract, and only in the classroom are people expected to
demonstrate knowledge through abstract performances.

5. ENGAGEMENT IS INSEPARABLE FROM EMPOWERMENT. Individuals perceive their
identities in terms of their ability to contribute-and in terms of their
contributions-to a community.

6. "FAILURE" TO LEARN IS THE NORMAL RESULT OF EXCLUSION FROM PARTICIPATION.
Learning requires access and opportunity.

7. WE ALREADY HAVE A SOCIETY OF LIFELONG LEARNERS. People are learning all
the time, but what they are learning is not necessarily in their best
interests or in the best interests of society."

Learning Art Journaling Online
I'm sold on online courses. These are not college courses, which have their place, but not in my universe right now. I've been finding courses on all kinds of things offered by ordinary people with expertise in certain areas. My current passion is art journaling, through a class offered by Kelly Kilmer. You can see examples of her work at her blog.
She charged only $50 for six months worth of prompts, templates and community with other students. The members post photos of their efforts and we all comment on them. Everyone is very supportive--I haven't seen a snarky comment yet--and I'm making friends across the country and around the world.
The photo to the left is my latest collage. I'm still waiting for that sunshine.

Innovation Corral

Recent resources for creativity/innovation

How to grow ideas. Tamsen at ’Round the Square compares the creative process to gardening. Hint: It takes more than planting seeds.

Extra little touches can make all the difference. Management guru Tom Peters on the importance of design and making your products/services stand out.

Five creativity killers and how to get your creative juices flowing again.

Jon Phillips at Freelance Folder describes bad habits that interfere with creativity and how to beat them.

Blog for Creativity: Ten Reasons Your Muse Will Love Blogging. Cynthia Morris at Journey JuJu lists ways to use blogging to spark your creativity.

Addicted to the search. Emily Yoffe at Slate magazine explains why it’s so easy to lose time online and get addicted to things like Twitter and texting.

I'm rerunning this post in honor of the late, great Les Paul. For more information, Click Here.

Question Everything

Curiosity may be the primary ingredient for imagination innovation. It made Leonardo da Vinci the quintessential renaissance man. In his book, How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, Michael J. Gelb lists curiosità: “An insatiably curious approach to life and an unrelenting quest for continuous learning” as the first of his seven Da Vincian principles. A later book, Innovate Like Edison, advises readers to “seek knowledge relentlessly.”

Albert Einstein famously said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” But he also warned, “It’s a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”

Maybe dropping out of high school allowed Les Paul to pursue his curiosity and develop the electric guitar and the recording innovations of overdubbing and multitrack recording. In the documentary, Les Paul Chasing Sound, Paul recalls that when his brother flicked a light switch the light came on. When he flicked the switch he wanted to know why the light came on. He continued his search for a sound that no one had ever made before that led to his many inventions, took him to the top of the record charts in the 40s and 50s. Remember Mockingbird Hill and Vaya Con Dios with Mary Ford? Paul’s curiosity eventually took him to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The DVD shows him being admired by musicians from Bing Crosby to Paul McCartney. An insatiable curiosity doesn’t retire at 65. At the age of 90, he won two Grammys at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards for his album Les Paul & Friends: American Made World Played.

Gelb suggests several exercises to increase your curiosity, including make a list of 100 questions that are important to you. “Do the entire list in one sitting. Write quickly, don’t worry about spelling, grammar, or repeating the same question in different words.” Then go about finding some answers.

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Learning History through Fiction

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is my all-time favorite book. I first read it and saw the movie in the early 60s when they first came out. I watched the movie again a couple of years ago and was surprised and pleased at how well it stood up after almost 50 years. This year the book was selected for the One Book One Denver program. I found the CD version (narrated by Sissy Spacek—a perfect choice) at the library. It tells the story of a young girl, Scout Finch, in Maycomb, Alabama during the Depression who watches her lawyer father take on the other white people in town by defending a black man who could not possibly have committed the rape he is accused of. Maybe because it was told through the perspective of a girl about my own age, it taught me more about prejudice than stories of the civil rights movement on the TV news could.

Decades later, I encountered The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

and added it to my list of favorite books. I’ve read it two or three times, listened to the CD book, and watched the movie. Last month the pastor at my church preached on the movie about Lily, a teenager in the South in the 60s. Abused by her father and believing that, at four years old, she accidentally shot and killed her mother, she runs away with the black housekeeper, who was beaten and then arrested when she tried to register to vote. Searching for her mother’s history, they find a household of black women who raise bees and sell honey.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett is a current bestseller also set in the early 60s in the South with the Civil Rights movement swirling in the background. I downloaded the audio version from my local library.

A young white woman, nicknamed Skeeter, from the privileged class returns to Jackson, Mississippi, after graduating college. She wants to be a writer and lands a job at the local newspaper writing a column on housekeeping, a subject she knows absolutely nothing about because she grew up with a maid. She takes her questions about housekeeping to the black woman who works as a maid and nanny for her friend, beginning an uneasy alliance between the two women.

Another of Skeeter’s friends, a leader among the young white women in town, begins a campaign to install toilets for the black maids in unheated garages and sheds, so they do not have to use guest bathrooms, which white people are expected to use too. As Skeeter learns more and more about the life of the maids, she decides to write a book from their point of view.

I spent six hours one Saturday listening to the final disks to find out what happened. I sure never did that with a history textbook.