‘Doing Nothing Often Leads to the Very Best of Something.’ – Pooh
‘You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.’ Winnie-the Pooh
‘If the person you are talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.’ Winnie-the-Pooh
‘What day is it?’
‘It’s Today,’ squeaked Piglet.
‘May favorite Day,’ said Pooh.
Today I saw the movie, Christopher Robin, and it was a delight!
I am a stuffed bear admirer and collector…but the calming wisdom of Pooh was a balm for the spirit.
The film focuses on Christopher Robin, as an adult, with a wife and daughter and corporate worries that have caused him to forget the joys of the Hundred Acre Wood.
At one point Christopher’s daughter, Evelyn, tells her father, ‘Your life is happening right now in front of you.’
Winnie is a proponent of doing nothing, leading to something…’People say ‘Nothing is impossible,’ but I do nothing every day.’ Pooh
The movie was a lesson in Winnie’s, old friend, Christopher Robin, not being able to, ‘see the forest for the trees.’ The Pooh’s philosophy is to let life happen and enjoy the experience.
‘Sometimes, when I’m going somewhere, I wait. Ant then somewhere comes to me.’ Pooh
The lessons of the movie and Winnie-the-Pooh…are simple and sweet…and profound. They are timely for all ages…and perhaps the older…the better?
‘I always get to where I’m going by walking away from were I have been.’ Pooh
The Real-Life Christopher Robin
‘Christopher Robin Milne was born in Chelsea, London, on August 21, 1920, just 21 months after the Great War ended. He was the first an only child born to former British officer Alan Alexander Milne and his wife Daphne de Selincourt. His father, a screenwriter and novelist by trade, drew inspiration from Christopher’s stuffed animals, particularly a teddy bear named Edward (the name ‘Winnie’ came from a bear they saw at the London Zoo), to create stories about the friends’ adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood. ‘ Country Living
Note: Photos from Disney and Country Living
Habits
‘Habit – A settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up. It was his habit to go for a run every morning.’ Dictionary
Since I retired, at the conclusion of 2010, I have noticed that good habits are difficult to form and bad habits are difficult to break.
Answers, on Google search, tells me that it takes 7 days to make a habit and 30 days to break one. However, the article goes on to say that, most people, believed that it takes 20-30 days to break a habit.
In order to break a bad habit you must replace it with something else.
Often we are governed by our learned behaviors.
As I am watching television and some eye pleasing food is part of the program…I want to join the actors with a tasty morsel…or more…from my refrigerator.
What activity do we, primarily engage in on; Christmas, birthdays, vacations, celebrations and almost any other event where we humans gather…eating!
Eating can be a substitute for; happiness, sadness, entertainment, and a multitude of other events that are not connected to our health or well being.
When I first retired I had the simple goals of more reading and writing and walking. I wanted these, self improvement ideas, to be realized…and I knew that if I had a long list that some, if not all, would never be accomplished.
Although I am closing in on 8 years of retirement…I have only been consistent on the walking goal for, about, the past 5 years. Prior to that my efforts achieved 2-3 times per week. Now I average 6-7 days a week.
The writing goal is something that I have talked about for the majority of my life. Until 4 years ago, I engaged in the lifelong goal…only periodically. Now I average 6-7 days per week.
My reading goal has been a more consistent project for me…due to audible books that I listen to on my walks. I have been averaging 25-30 books per year.
When I was employed at Southern Illinois University, I was ecstatic to have such a golden opportunity for a job that could be my career. I decided, from my first week with the organization, that I was going to be a professional custodial employee. Whatever I was assigned to do…I had the habit of doing more.
Addictions are nothing more than habits that have gone to the extreme.
You may enjoy a glass of wine with your dinner and it is a lovely adult beverage and experience…but if one glass leads to a bottle or more…perhaps it has become a bad habit?
I have worked with people that the habit of victimhood was a mindset that they lived their life by. They had decided that nothing ever was going to go their way and, thus, their lives were governed by the dark cloud that they were certain was hovering over their head.
As a manager, I worked with some staff who with my best efforts, could not be talked into success. They were determined that a job was ‘just a paycheck’ and that management had but one purpose, and that was to make their life miserable.
We can see our country as either a land of golden opportunity for all…or we can see it as a dark and stormy place that is full of broken promises and unrealized dreams.
Throughout my life I have discovered that I am the product of what I read and who I listen to and the habit of focusing on the improvement of myself and my environment.
Former Chancellor Argersinger told me, once, that she noticed that I worked to make Building Services, more, than most people would think of.
SIU Carbondale has the stellar opportunity for re-birth. The decision is ours…do we want to engage, once again, in the habit of the possible…and follow the famous Holiday movie, Its a Wonderful Life, character of George Bailey…and ‘lasso the moon’…for our students?
Southern Illinois University President Dorsey… Is a Breath of Fresh Air
‘Interim SIU president says he plans to operate ‘less driven by fear and more by opportunity.’ Southern Illinoisan
‘Clearly the system has to be healed, because if one part of us is sick, it’s going to infect the entire body or entire system,’ Dorsey said.’ Southern Illinoisan
‘We both know that this is not something I am going to wave a wand (and it’ll all be all better),’ Dorsey said. Everyone involved in both schools are going to have to shake off the negativity and adjust their focus, he said. Southern Illinoisan
‘My style is not to beat people into submission, that’s not going to do it.’ SI
‘He said he plans to operate on a system that is ‘less driven by fear and more by opportunity.’ SI
The interim president has called for the Carbondale campus community to look at things from a different perspective and to not be myopic.
Dorsey believes that we should focus on what is good for the ‘entire population and the ‘common good.’
SIUC is full of faculty and staff that have a burning desire to see their campus flourish, once again.
I have colleagues and friends that work countless hours endeavoring to create a renaissance at the flagship campus of Southern Illinois University.
The SIUC community has patiently waited for a leader to call on them to engage in a synergy that will unleash an explosion of entrepreneurship and energy that can not be contained in Little Egypt.
Peace and collaboration and working hand in hand as trusted colleagues and partners…is the clarion call of a wise leader.
Innovation and experimentation and the development of a hypothesis that leads to new academic understanding…is what university is all about.
Have you ever visited Oxford University in Oxford, England?
It is a small English hamlet that is rather nondescript. It is replete with many notable pubs and small shops and a university community that is known the world over for producing leaders in politics and academia and business….because it has taken hold of an unshakeable vision of who it is and what its mission is in the wider world.
Last week Apple became a trillion dollar industry. It was fashioned on the vision of a visionary, Steve Jobs, and his mission to combine art with technology.
Have you ever had the opportunity to see an artist at work? I have been fascinated by art, for many years, and love to learn of artist’s stories and the influences, on their lives, that formed their creations.
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale is the ideal rural and pastoral environment to foster thought.
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale is the ideal university to attract the innovators and geniuses and visionaries of the world…to come together and brainstorm on solutions for our troubled planet.
The university is about seeking…and breaking through the current understanding of the human family…and creating an end product that heals and helps the entire population.
Ghost Town
Have you ever been in a place, whether a town or a business or an educational institution, and been taken aback by the empirical fact that you are the only one there?
For the past seven and one half years I have enjoyed attending movies, matinees usually, and often at the multiplex in our local mall. Often I could not help but notice that there were only two or three patrons, other than myself, and many times I was privileged to a private showing.
Or, remembering our church, and the difficulty I had in finding a parking space…a few years ago.
I grew up in the little Southern Illinois town of Eldorado, Illinois. When I was a child the town of over ‘5,000 Friendly People and One Old Sore Head,’ was bustling with two drug stores and a Ben Franklin Dime Store and the Orpheum movie theatre and a hardware store and a music store and P.N. Hirsch clothing store and two banks and much more.
In Eldorado’s zenith it had three movie theaters and was a bustling coal mining town. The last time that I was there, the town was made up of, primarily, antique stores…as are many of Southern Illinois towns and hamlets.
I recall our mall, fondly, it’s plethora of stores and eateries and a theatre which had four theaters within it and the excitement that was occurring around the area and the invitation of the marquees to come in and lose yourself in a movie.
Mary Jane and I bought our wedding rings at the mall in 1978…they were about $100.00 apiece…and I was excited regarding the possibilities of living near Carbondale as a newly married man with the ability to purchase wedding rings.
The mall was a destination of choice for me when I lived fifteen miles away in the village of Elkville. Mary Jane and I often walked for health in the mall, and enjoyed the excitement of our region’s only small city.
I met the author Carl Bernstein at Southern Illinois University. I gave him a lapel pin, that former chancellor Jo Ann Argersinger, had given me…with the letters SIU. She had recently been unjustly terminated.
I met the author John Updike.
I also met the Holocaust survivor and author, Elie Wiesel.
Meeting Mr. Wiesel was a moving experience.
Carbondale had five, separate movie theatre locations when we moved here in 2001.
On a daily basis as I walked between campus buildings I experienced the crush of students endeavoring to change classes or, just, get to where they needed to be.
Famous Barr Department store built their facility at the mall. We had spent enough at Famous, in St. Louis, that we received an invitation for a pre-opening celebration. I saw my friend Dr. Beggs and his wife, Shirley, at the opening. I loved Famous Barr as it was the classiest store that I had ever been in. All of the sales staff were attired in dress clothes and if they waited on you, once or twice, they, thereafter, called you by name.
It has not been so long ago that our church was full and we, often, had to put out folding chairs to accommodate the parishioners and many visitors.
Our friend, Carol, cautioned us to come early to the Christmas Eve service…or it would be difficult to get a parking place or a seat.
When I began working for Building Services at SIU, in October, 1978…there was 175 full time staff and 120 student staff.
SIU is a ‘working family’s university’ and most of the students who attend desperately require their student work position in order to continue their studies.
A few years after I began my university career the housing department had to squeeze an additional bed into the two bed dormitory rooms…along with a third desk for the trio to all have a space to perform their ciphers.
For the first several years of my time at Southern, we received 8% pay raises annually.
Recently the civil service staff received 1%…and had received no raise for the past several years.
It would be an understatement to proclaim that now is the time for change!
Now is the time to unify around cogent and sincere university leaders who are striving to increase our university’s enrollment and magnify to the state and the country and the world…what a great place Southern Illinois University at Carbondale is.
The other day, and remember it is break, I sat by my favorite fountain…lonely.
Lies And Witch Trials and Character Assassination!
‘The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. The trials resulted in the execution of twenty people, fourteen of them women, and all but one by hanging. Five others (including two infant children) died in prison.’ Wikipedia
‘The episode is one of Colonial America’s most notorious cases of mass hysteria. It has been used in political rhetoric and popular literature as a vivid cautionary tale about the dangers of isolationism, religious extremism, false accusations, and lapses in due process.’ Wikipedia
‘The McMartin preschool trial was a day care sexual abuse case in the 1980’s, prosecuted by the Los Angeles District Attorney Ira Reiner. Members of he McMartin family, who operated a preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, were charged with numerous acts of sexual abuse of children in their care. Accusations were made in 1983. Arrests and the pretrial investigation ran from 1987 – 1990. After six years of criminal trials, no convictions were obtained and all charges were dropped in 1990. When the trial ended in 1990, it had been the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history. The case was part of day-care sex-abuse hysteria, a moral panic over alleged Satanic ritual abuse in the 1980’s and early 1990’s.’ Wikipedia
‘The McMartin preschool was closed and the building was dismantled, several of the accused have since died, In 2005, one of the children (as an adult) retracted the allegations of abuse.’
‘Never did anyone do anything to me, and I never saw them doing anything. I said a lot of things that they didn’t like, they would ask again and encourage me to give them the answer they were looking for….I felt uncomfortable and a little ashamed that I was being dishonest. But at the same time, being the type of person I was, whatever my parents wanted me to do, I would do.’ Wikipedia
The old term for character execution is gossip. I often told my staff to not disclose to me the lies and mistruths that they heard being said about me…unless someone was planning on murdering me or getting me fired…because I had to treat everyone in the department that I managed, of 350 – 400 people, fairly and without bias.
So, now, we live in a world of character assassination and, at times, mob mentality, that rises from believing the worse about someone…without facts or evidence to support the egregious claims.
President Trump, often calls the press, ‘the enemy of the people.’ and points to them in all of his rallies, across the country, and incites the audience, of thousands, who subsequently jeer and curse the press and throw things at them and give them the ‘finger.’
Members of the press have expressed shock and fear that the, naked, anger and hate that the president has engendered against them by his continual bullying remarks regarding their attempt to perform their jobs.
As a manager at Southern Illinois University for 25 years, I was involved in the resolution of many interpersonal disputes among staff and members of the university community. The first element of resolving accusations is fact finding.
A person may be accused of many things…but that does not mean that they are guilty of the accusation…there must be an un-biased finding of the facts and then the dispute can be resolved according to the governing rules of the organization and laws of the land.
Confidentiality is another extremely important component of resolving either personal or workplace disputes.
You should not yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre…if there is no evidence of fire.
I will never forget a visitor to the little church that I attended, many years ago, who asked me if I wanted to be one of his disciples? I responded that I did not…but that if he actively sought disciples…I was certain that he would find some.
There is a magnetism associated with bad, or negative, news and conspiracy theories. We love stories…and the protagonist and the antagonist of the yarn is what makes it a page turner.
Have you ever noticed that when a person is accused of something awful…it is front page news…and if they are found innocent…it is a small paragraph in the middle or end of the newspaper…if at all?
‘Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.’ Matthew 18:15 KJV
I have known people who were crushed by false accusations. What was fun and sport and the ‘glue’ that bonded the mob together…destroyed lives of decent and hard working human beings.
I believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant and that wrongs, that are substantiated by fact, must be righted…but the caviler engaging in hurtful rumor and innuendo…has hurt many good people.
The Happy Traveler 