yeah but who was sam when he was at home?

Thanks to Wikipedia I can give you this information....


I'm a year older than Samuel Taylor Coleridge was when he died of pneumonia...oops wrong Sam, that was the composer. He looks pretty interesting too....

Woah now I've found my Sam - he's the one on the right, the other one was far groovier looking (on the left)

Sam (the first) hung out with Bill Wordsworth and started the Romantic movement. The two famous poems that he wrote were the Kubla Khan and the Rime of the Ancient Mariner (that's the one with the albatross). The famous "water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink" was from that poem too.

The kubla Khan poem was apparently written in an opium haze.I believe that Alice in Wonderland was written in that way too. This is the poem that Xanadua winery is named after:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

The wikipedia goes into how he grew up, sounds from them as though he admired his Dad - thought he was a good guy, but didn't like his mum much. Sounds like they didn't like him much either - they didn't let him come home from boarding school much.

Being a boarding school girl I can imagine how that would feel ... it was always so good to walk up the steps to the car park with my overnight bag in hand. The LTD's leather seats ready to take me to Chateau La Mer for the weekend with Mum, or a long drive home for a long weekend on the farm. Trips to Dad's were ususally by train which were pretty cool too, the old Australind with clicking joiner doorw where we would hang out in the fresh air. If Tracey was on the train we would stand there and smoke Salems, blowing the fumes out into the cool evening air, one of us with an eye out for the conductor who would bust us. I digress .... wasn't me who said all those incredible smart, sharp and on the noggin things, it was Sam!

Pantisocracy - sounds like the condition of stealing undies from clothes lines eh? Ah but no! It's the utopian society Sam wanted to set up.

Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm

Samuel Taylor Coleridge said or wrote all these things:

This is the one I would put on a name badge or a TShirt and wear every day:
Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm.

pure of heart! Thou needest not ask of me what this strong music in the soul may be!

Our own heart, and not other men's opinions form our true honor.

Advice is like snow - the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.

Friendship is a sheltering tree.

He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.

If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awake - Aye, what then?

A man may devote himself to death and destruction to save a nation; but no nation will devote itself to death and destruction to save mankind.

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.

Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.

General principles... are to the facts as the root and sap of a tree are to its leaves.

Good and bad men are less than they seem.

Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends.

He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order.

No one does anything from a single motive.

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never.

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions - the little, soon forgotten charities of a kiss or a smile, a kind look or heartfelt compliment.


http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/samuel_taylor_coleridge.html

Nigel's Visit - Contagious Enthusiasm

So I'm a bit out of order ... I've posted Nancy's presentation before news about Nigel's visit. Alliteration going crazy here!

Nigel Paine used to head up the learning and development department at the BBC and I helped organise for him to come to Perth to do a few presentations. His energy and ability to create a sense of excitement for all the people was unbelievable. I was talking to someone in the office and we just couldn't figure out what his secret is! Magician!

Funniest thing about it was, when wandering around the office, people would come up to me and say thanks, presentation was great, feeling really inspired (yeah that was the general comment). I'd ask what specifically did you get from it and everyone had a different and very varied answer.

So I guess in trying to unravel the secret, it might be about presenting concepts that are really quite broad, but that are palatable and relevant to real live people - and I think he does that.

Nancy is not West Australian

Not many Australians are called Nancy. We had a Nancy in primary school ... fascinating girl. So last week I went to a conference workshop thingy and Nancy White presented at it. I really liked her presentation. Was pretty bloody impressed too when she said she hung out (ok that's an exaggeration, she said she works with ...) Etienne Wenger.

Nancy is from WA - that's Washington not WA. Ok that's the title solved, but will you read on?

Unfortunately we didn't get to hear as much as I would have liked from her but she did a great job of packing a heap of information into a pretty short period.

She talked about facilitating online stuff, a couple of things really struck me as important:
Don't over committ, online communities and forums require you to take your whole self there. Just like in a real time community, it's really important to develop a sense of trust between members and it's pretty hard to trust someone who is only half there. This doesn't take into account lurkers though, who can and should hang out and well, lurk to their hearts content.

What else? Well communities of practice got a bit of an airing out. I think communities are still largely unrealised in their potential. Certainly in my organisation they are. Maybe I should do something about that!

Another bonus was seeing my old mates from my past work life, they're a good bunch! Was so refreshing to talk to such real and good people.

Ouch!

I have ...Greater trochanteric bursitis...so my physio reckons anyhow. And it's really disrupted my detoxification program. Poor 'ole me, I should be up to fasting and enemas by now and there's not much point becuase I've had to adjust the program - while I've been good at eliminating all the banned substances (milk products, nicotene, alcohol, wheat products, deadly nightshades) - I've had a fair bit of panadol to get rid of the pain from teh trochanteric bursitis so have stopped taking the herbs and am just eating all the right stuff. At least its something.

It makes it almost impossible to sleep, I feel like I've got babies again. Pop off to bed early to get a bit of rest in before the hip cries out, get up and have a stretch ...oh I'm bored already describing this.

The treatment sucks, nothing as glamourous as the leather gear you get strapped up in when you go in for neck treatment, or when you have to put your body in contortions so he can twist and turn you til you hear the big cracking noises. No, this is seriously painful, he rubs the heel of his hand into the muscle of my thigh and pushes really hard so it really really really hurts! (I did get to lie around and read the Cleo for half and hour beforehand while he warmed up the muscle with the electric sucker cap things on though). Oh, the classic comment of the day when telling me about how the thigh muscle causes the issue by rubbing against the hip bursar because the muscle is tight, "see your muscle is rock hard!"And I though rock hard muscles were good!

So ..there's my drama.

But here's the best bit ......

8 Days no cigarettes...yay double triple quadruple yay.

Resonations

I remember sitting on the verhanda at a friend's place at sunset. They have an old weatherboard house that sits almost on the ocean at Cottlesloe. My friend Heidi had recently died in a car crash, my two brothers were in the same car. The sun was setting and great orange clouds were swooshing across the sky. In that moment the world was all right and it was just because those clouds were moving at just the right pace and shining just the right tone of orange. I've carried a slip of paper with me for twenty years now, it was a transcription of something she said to me, a quote from Bhagwhan (!) "Sometimes you have to go away and just be".

Talking to a girlfriend who raised up her kids with me, we were talking about those moments when everything seems to align and you sense a wholeness. We talked about when that happens and you can kinda look and see all the manifestations of yourself. We compared it to looking a the Terracotta army, an assemblage of iconic figures all massed in cave. (imagine how the farmers felt when they found them) Not easy, but not uncommon to be able to view these masks or identities or selves that you have been or are currently in the mode of, much more difficult and rewarding and sometimes shocking when you get a glimpse of a figure that is strange or frightening or even glorious!

Dunny Paper

Purex dunny paper gives my gal a headache ... what on earth do they put in the scented loo paper? Who needs it anyway. Maybe they should give away a free box of matches instead - works better I reckon, at least a match extinguishes the smell. Scented paper doesn't reallly cut it, just causes an awful merging.