Mom and Nature

Phyllis Mary Watson Curley, (May 16, 1926 - April 20, 2004), my mother, was a great lover of nature. As the months of April and May include her birth day, death day, Easter, and Mother's Day, her life and legacy always hit me hard this time of year.
One part of her legacy is that she loved nature, and especially birds, flowers and the ocean. Lillie's of the Field were one of her favorite flowers. Many times I heard her say, "Feed the birds and you'll never go hungry!" or "That little rose bush would produce one rose each day. I always thought God was telling me you can make it through one more day and here is my little miracle for you."

When time allowed, she would bundle and trundle all eight of us (Lynn, Bob, Hank, Bruce, Sue, Don, Steve and Jackie) off to Cape May, NJ in the summer to her mother-in-laws Victorian three blocks from the Atlantic, or to the parks in Germantown and West Oak Lane, or to Valley Green in the Wissahickon...or just to the nature to be found in our backyard.

She loved the ocean...everything about it...the smell, the way the waves cracking the beach were a meditation...swimming the waves...talking above them and catching up and being with her family on vacation. 
Now that so much propaganda and false science is daily being broadcast about nature and our impact on it, I thought I would honor my mother's memory here with photos of nature , photos she would have enjoyed...and maybe still can. 
The Safina Institute with its common sense approach to preserving marine life and their ocean home, would seem her kind of organized effort.

Blue Bird of Happiness


Journalists, media moguls
And Hollywood thespians
Appear daily to tell us
The world is ending,
The earth is warming.
And death, destruction,
Disease, starvation

And all form of pestilence
Are one more pollutant,
One more war,
One more way,
Other than their way,
Just about to strike.

And yet, the blue birds sing.
They arrive Christmas Day
Just when it seems
They would never appear
In the nest box some poet
Put in the middle of a garden.

They sing and sing
From God’s lips
To our hearts
To tell us the answers
Are with our Creator

If we are not so busy
Worrying and pontificating
To hear the bluebirds sing
From their holy nest box
Around the crypt, city and country
About The Gift in the manger.

Air and Space Museum

 

I spent an afternoon at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center with my son, Eamon. 

It was grand. 

The great American experiment continues. 

My father used to take us to the Franklin Institute, the U.S. Mint, the Liberty Bell, National Constitution Center (then Constitution Hall), Carpenter's Hall, the Betsy Ross House, Penn's Landing, and other cultural sites in Philadelphia when we were young, and I have continued that tradition raising my sons.

Eamon had a blast. 

He liked it all, but especially the Space Shuttle, the WWI planes, and the .50 caliber machine guns. I highly recommend a visit, especially if you have children.

The Imax movies are not to be missed. 

We saw Aliens of the Deep, which explores the creatures of a world we rarely visit or see, the deep ocean two miles down.

Vegas Consumer Electronic Show 2007

The Consumer Electronic Show (CES) of January 2007 in Las Vegas showed that there are technologies being released at warp speed right now. There are many bloggers out there who are trying to figure out what is going on. Here are two that I think get it.
Dabble... What the Dewey Decimal System is to organizing the books and media of libraries, Dabble is to organizing the chaos of video on the Web. Dabble understands that broadband access has created the pipeline and influence that only Hollywood has enjoyed to date...but unlike Hollywood, they care about the individual. They help filter out "what is not safe for work", which is valuable to many workers, companies, and families. And...it's FREE! Join! PodTech ... is a portal to Web 2.0 and all the technology, companies, and geeks who are changing the way the world works. They are doing a first-rate job of recording, analyzing, defining and presenting CES 2007. Robert Scoble works there everyday. Enough said. The Scoble Show is worth checking out daily, as was (and is) Scobalizer.

Rocky Mountain Voices and The Next Gear are two of my favorites.

Carroll County MD Rural Life

I took these in a half hour drive only two miles from my Mt. Airy, MD home. What good, hard working, and spirit-filled people have created this over the centuries. This is worth preserving and fighting for...for us, for our children, and for our children's children.
Like all great civilizations, ours is based on agriculture and we need to make national policy with that fact front and center.

Volunteer Mobilization Center

Know where your local Volunteer Mobilization Center is BEFORE disaster strikes!!!

Volunteers for America:Here are some tips for how to set up one piece of the an emergency management and continuity of operations plans, the Volunteer Mobilization Center (VMC).
Volunteer Mobilization Center Sample Floor Plan Click the Sample Volunteer Mobilization Center Floor Plan icon on the left to print a larger copy. Neighbors helping neighbors, strangers helping each other who then become friends...i.e. Volunteers... are essential to the American Way of Life. The Volunteer Mobilization Center is where it all comes together and those friendships are cemented.
The VMC sample floor plan here shows the arrangement of the supplies, furniture, and flow for the various volunteers and their duties. No matter what the emergency, this is a good place to greet, identify, organize, train and dispatch all the volunteers who arrive to assist.
Tip: Identify and prepare the VMC BEFORE a disaster. For example, establish the local library, a church basement, fire house basement, or other room as THE central location for volunteers to go to and be organized to deal with the event.
Stock the VMC with tables, chairs, white boards, pens, wrist band identity bracelets, thin film solar batteries for back power for laptop computers, water, food, and all other supplies necessary to get it going and to maintain it.
VMC Support Staff - Core Staff Roles: * VMC Manager * Logistics Coordinator * Security Coordinator * Data Entry Staff * Agency Liason * Runners * Media Coordinator * Greeters

There would be no America without volunteers Barn raisings that were critical to early farm life were done by volunteers. From the early settlers, to George Washington's Continental Army, to every religious, military, fraternal, association, we have depended on volunteers. There are cemeteries all over America with with white marble crosses and stars of David with hundreds of thousands of America's best volunteers.
Recently, just look at any area of America recently hit by earthquake, flood, ice storm, extreme wind, jihad's, hurricane, fire, chemical spill, or any of the other man-made or natural disasters that strike as regularly as the change of seasons.
Volunteers mitigate, plan for, respond to, fix, clean, repair, medically assist, and undertake the hundreds of thousands of individual tasks that mean survival, recovery, and a brighter day.
Basically, a core of professionals (fire fighters, police, emergency operations center managers and staff, doctors, nurses, and so forth) are supported by a deep bench of spontaneous volunteers who contribute mightily in any successful disaster mitigation, planning, response, and recovery.
It was true when the British occupied Philadelphia and American volunteers had to survive at Valley Forge, to World War Two when American's saved their spare iron coat hangers and oven grease for the war effort, to the thousands who showed up to help with the work to be done at the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attack to the current work of repairing the Gulf after Katrina.
To all the American volunteers who have given and now give their time, talent, treasure...and often their limbs and lives... for their family, friends and strangers...my and my family's deepest gratitude.


Additional Resources
Citizens Corps
Fire Corps
FEMA Training

Carroll County MD Links

Near-death experiences, in my experience (and I've had a number of them), lead to a high level of awareness soon afterwards. You look at things differently. A 20-year old in his grandfather's Jaguar cut in front of me and almost killed me recently. Here are some Web links and photos of rural Carroll County, MD where I live. These scenes are there every day. I just went out and captured them today because I'm still alive. And here area a few recent poems. Being alive is good.

ccgovernment.carr.org/ccg/default.asp

mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/mdmanual/36loc/carr/html/carr.html
carrollcountytourism.org/
westgov.com/
Town of Mt. Airy Website

Oak

There is a massive oak tree
I pass on my may to work.
Today, it was broken in half.
A proud oak
Brought down by forces of nature.
In my genes,
Is a code that can split me in two.
Unlike that great oak,
I can get up, replant myself
And grow again
With spirit, grit and grace.

Saving a Life

It’s true.
I dragged you from the fire
Half burned and unable to find the exit.
I guess you could say
I saved your life that day.
But it will never compare to the way that
Through food, warmth, hard work, laughter
And a woman’s love and life force
You have saved my life every day
Before and since that day.

Groove

I’m in a groove
Waiting for my oldest son Josh to show
To see Little Miss Sunshine
A movie with Steve Carell
A funny actor we both enjoy
When I think of my mom,
Dead three years now,
And how her face lit up
When any of her 8 children
Or 19 grandchildren would visit
And I know that, feel it,
The groove, that moment of happiness
Raised to a power of ten
Because here is my family,
Strong, shared, tender, good,
And even if people on the news
Are lobbing rockets and missiles
And bombing each others families,
My family here is safe,
And safe is oceans from sorrow.

Life School Dance

When I was young and naive
I splashed on too much cologne
And dressed to the nines
And headed to the school dance
To laugh with my friends
And to steal glances of lasses
With shy and bold smiles
Who flipped their long hair
And exposed their necks
And laughed some more until,
Tired of the teasing,
I asked them to dance
And the music took control
And everything was new
And mysterious and wondrous
Until, after more giggling and shy banter
If the girl was sweet or the timing was right
I would end up practicing at kissing
But mostly laughing because neither
Of us knew that this charged ritual
Eventually led to courting, marriage,
Children, mortgages, and bills,
Or the quarried heartache
Of a child lost in war.
Such a timeline is never revealed
In the first laugh or kiss.
Thank God.

Jesus Sign

“Honk if you know Jesus!”
I read the sign and respond
Honking my horn
And the fellow who holds it
Raises his hands and thanks me.
That takes courage.
Not for me
For him
Standing by the side
Of a busy highway.
Some may gesture with a digit
Some may throw things at him
Some may almost run him over.
But some honk
And that’s enough for him.
Clap your hands if you know Jesus!
If you are at a reading.
Clap your hands if you love Jesus!
If you are reading this.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is happening...now. Here are some good insights as to why:

Debbie Weil
Gaping Void
PodTech
Yannick Lejeune

Knowledge at Wharton

If you ever wondered just who "The Man" is...the closest I ever got to The Man was going to school alongside Whartonites while attending The University of Pennsylvania. They think about money and wealth alot, as here.
They are unique. They help create this huge American economic miracle. Here is their intellectual jauggernaut: Knowledge at Wharton. If you are involved in any aspect of business, enjoy the articles, news, podcasts, analysis and data. They do a great job. Here is Wharton Publishing.

The Body Parts Market is a representative piece. This is particularly interesting to me because I was in Philadelphia for my niece's wedding recently and talked to my cousin who is a homicide detective there. He told me he just spent two years investigating a body parts ring that operated out of a back alley in North Philadelphia.
Bodies that were left to be creamataed were instead sent to this back alley where they were cut open for their very valuable body parts which were then stored in ice chests and sold to local doctors and hospitals. Who knew?

Robert Scoble Podtech Rocketboom

Robert Scoble is an extraordinary man who is flipping the business world on its head.
(That guy with the wild head of curly hair is my 20-year old, Josh, doing his flips on the backyard trampoline. He's a mechanical engineer entering his last year at the University of Maryland. He's bright, humble, athletic, and gifted in math and science. He just taught himself mandolin and guitar, recently recording a CD at a studio outside Pittsburgh. He's going to make a great employee and an even greater husband for some fortunate girl.)
 Robert Scoble wrote Naked Conversations.
He has what the Irish call "The Magics," an extraordinary ability in some endeavor. In Robert's case, it is introducing others to the wonders of technology and blogging and the fact that trust between people is what takes technology from a dead bit to a better life.
I stumbled upon Robert's magic when I read his book Naked Conversations that he co-authored with Shel Israel.
Having studied and written poetry, fiction, and technical writing for many years, I can usually tell a good deal about someone from their writing.
What struck me most about this tome was the genuine spirit in which it was written, the ease with technology and the good that it could bring to humanity if done correctly, the evident humility and lack of pretentiousness in the writing, the insights that talking...not technology...drive the blogosphere, and the impressive marshaling of facts to support the premise that we are in for a revolutionary change due to blogs as great as when Jonathan Edwards preached the Great Awakening up and down the 13 colonies in the 1740's.
Now...some was Shel and some was Robert...but even the fact that they co-authored this work and collaborated proved their point...blogs are the modern incarnation of Hegel's famous thesis -antithesis, synthesis idea.
You talk...I react...you react to my reaction...we talk some more, hash it over and reach consensus...then we act.
This has driven mankind from the hunters to the warriors to the businessman to the product team in any corporation.

I visited Scobalizer where Robert really has the magic's is his ability to wear his heart on his sleeve. Recently, he lost his mother.
He blogged about it in a very honest way. He said how boring it was to watch his mother die. I lost my mother two years ago and I have to agree.
As Christ said, "Let the dead bury the dead."
For what it's worth, Robert, if you ever read it, here are a few poems I wrote after my mother passed away that I hope helps you deal with the grief.
Poetry lets the mind and soul scream in the silence...and laugh as well.
He is one I wrote for my dear departed mother.

Dreaming of Maytag

"Regan Maud Good was a Maytag Fellow
at the Writers' Workshop in Iowa."
Contributors BioThe Antioch Review
P. 126, Vol. 53 No.1 1995

"MAYTAG!!!"
my mother's dream
for whom Sears Kenmore
was all she and my father
could afford to clean
1950's and 60's whites,diapers,
and clothes of eight children's sweat,
blood, dirt and life.

"MAYTAG!!!"
she would repeat
like a Buddhist chant to no one
in particular as she loaded
another two dozen diapers
into the Sears Kenmore.

Maytag to me ever since
has represented everything good
and right about America:
an extremely durable, practical,
and useful product that serves
the family needs for decades
and all at a fair price.

"MAYTAG!!!"
I can still hear my mother say
looking at the Appalachian mountain
of soiled laundry
on the concrete floor before her:
six mountains of socks,
five mountains of underwear,
four mountains of shirts,
three mountains of pants,
two mountains of diapers,
one mountains of separates.

"MAYTAG!!!"
my mother would repeat
with each and every load.
Here, thirty-five years later
in the contributors notes
when trying to discern
the kinds of poetry and poets
the Antioch Review accepts,
I find Maytag offers a "Maytag Fellow."

Free money and two free years of writing time.
I look over at my Appalachian mountains:
six mountains of credit card statements,
five mountains of IRS bills,
four mountains of mortgage,
three mountains of car bills,
two mountains of utility bills,
one mountain of children's bills.

"MAYTAG!!!"
I chant like my mother now.
"MAYTAG!!! MAYTAG!!! MAYTAG!!!"

That Laugh

That laugh would start
like an ocean wave
"AAAAAA…AAAAA
…AAAAAA…AAAAA "
and build in volume, depth, and pitch
until it became a tidal wave
"AAAA…AAAAAA
…AAAAA…AAAAA
and washed over
my brothers and sisters and I,
to our delight as children and adults,
to our embarrassment when teenagers
out in public, over everyone
within a half mile round
and continue in undulating wave
after wave until you wondered
how she got oxygen fast enough
to supply those great waves
of laughter that seemed to plumb
the very depths of a joyful heart.

It wasn't all laughter, of course.
There were Harry's diseases…
but even during the worst days
the laughter continued
in great bursts and passion.
And among her many sayings:
"God doesn't close one door
that he doesn't open another!"
"The lint on your clothes
means your going to come into money!"
she expressed the desire:
"I pray to God every night for each
one of you and that I go first.
It must be the hardest thing on earth
to lose one of your children first."
Now your prayer has been answered.

If we are allowed to carry
one talent from earth into heaven
when my time comes, and if
God decides to take me in,
I expect I will hear that laugh rising,
as it did on earth, louder and higher
than all the others to say, as she had
so many times when she was alive
and knew that it was only half true,
"You did it all on your own, kid,
and I'm very, very proud of you!"

Directory of Small Business Blogs

Read a brief and tightly-written review of two books, Blogwild! by Andy Wibbels and Naked Conversations by Shel Israel and ubberblogger Robert Scoble, by Richard Pachter of the Miami Herald, here. His headline reads, Can your business benefit from blogging? and his review and these two blog books will help you decide.

A directory of small businesses that have blogs can be found at the Small Business Blog Directory. Moveable type is worth looking into as well.

Another small business blog resource is pajama marketing. The link to the small Aldo Coffee Company in Mt. Lebanon, PA is worth reading and analyzing as it shows a small business blog that is well designed, easy to use, effective, current...and drives increased sales.

For productivity tips useful to small businesses, such as how to deal with email quickly, efficiently, and productively, you should visit 43 Folders.

For cheap advertising, find and use other business blogs that are in your market or a closely related market. Find out how at Blog News Channel by Nathan Weinberg, who says: I would suggest most bloggers give this a shot. The cost is minor, the exposure can be huge. Talk about using the long tail of advertising! I think that if we see more of these ads on blogs, and less ads for “valuable xml feeds”, AdSense will be more useful and entertaining for everyone.
This is the ad he has piggybacked onto Google ads: An Excellent Blog Nathan Weinberg knows what he’s talking about. Read his stupid blog [His words...not mine...in his ad] google.blognc.com

For more information, here is the Table of Contents of the Small Business Blog Directory:

Table of contents

1 Weblogs about Small Business Topics
1.1 Accounting-Finance, Small Business
1.2 Advertising, Small Business
1.3 Company Blogs (Blogs about a specific small business)
1.4 Content Management
1.5 Entrepreneurship & Business Ownership
1.6 Human Resources, Small Business
1.7 Intellectual Property Issues, Small Business
1.8 Legal Issues (blawgs), Small Business
1.9 Management, Small Business
1.10 Marketing, Small Business
1.11 Minority - Business Ownership
1.12 Motivation
1.13 News & Trends, Small Business
1.14 Online Marketing (including Search), Small Business
1.15 Organization (Getting Organized)
1.16 Public Policy & Regulations, Small Business
1.17 Public Relations, Small Business
1.18 Research, Small Business
1.19 Rural and Small Town, Small Business
1.20 Sales, Small Business
1.21 Selling to Small Business (The Small Business Marketplace)
1.22 Technology, Small Business
1.23 Weblogs About Small Business Blogging
1.24 Women - Business Ownership
1.25 Work-Life Balance

2 Guidelines regarding adding links to this directory

3 See also