Headphoneless: connecting to community

As part of a conference on Convergent Friends I went to a few weekends ago, I realized that one of my urban tools, headphones, were getting in the way of my connection to my community.
One of my previous posts mentioned my love, fascination, and complex relationship I have with my noise-canceling headphones.  I fell in [...]

Secret readers

Remember when reading comics was considered uncouth by the literati.  Well, I do and I know that it wasn’t that long ago, and that it took Maus and Batman: the Dark Knight to bring the light of day to the rest of the world on comics as art that is now upon us.

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Children’s books redux

Every year I get to go on a binge of children’s lit, taking a survey of what is out there, what are the trends, how things have(n’t) changed, and discover new pearls among…well.  What’s challenging is to realize that, in actuality, children’s book publishing is becoming more extensive than in the past.  This might go [...]

One for the po-mo business world

I’m digging on Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: the Power of Organizing Without Organizations.  It’s outside my normal range of reading, but I’m interested in what he has to say on how “flat” organizations structures can actually come into fruition in today’s educational and/or Quaker environment (my spin on reading this).  I’m no business management [...]

The golden handcuffs, for tweens

Oh man, is this a soft-sell on parents protecting their children or am I just cynical?  The NY Times is so biased.