I am a grown-up. Well, most of the time. But Facebook adds an element to my life sometimes that makes me feel like a gangling, unattractive 14 year old who wasn’t invited to the slumber party. It is a weird phenomenon to read about a bunch of my friends who got together and didn’t invite me. Now, I don’t intellectually think I need to be invited to everything. In fact, if I was invited, I might have even declined because we have a lot going on. And often on the weekends I am near socially phobic because I have talked to so many people that week in my professional life and I just want to chill. But when a bunch of “friends” post on Facebook about the great time they had together, and I wasn’t invited, it hurts my feelings sometimes. But this isn’t an article about my feelings. I’ll deal with my feeling on my own time. This is an article about this weird time we live in with social media and technology in general. Our parents didn’t have to deal with this! Their friends didn’t have Bridge parties and then post about it on Facebook. Talking about it would have been impolite. I can’t imagine one of my mom’s friends saying to her, “We had a party last night with about 20 people and we had a great time, but we just couldn’t invite you. But let me show you some pictures of us having fun. You are friends with all of us, so I am sure you would like to see them, wouldn’t you?” NO! Because it would be bad manners. But this is exactly what happens on Facebook all the time. I am not sure what our new etiquette around social media should be. Should we all just toughen up? I have a friend who has lots of friends and she is also troubled by this. When she invites a few people over, and they post on Facebook, her other...
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I always feel a little odd when I think about my “roots.” Same with blood and blood lines and “family ties.” It is because I am adopted and I simply don’t know how to “hold” these words in my soul. I simply haven’t ever been able to make a decision about how to think about these concepts. I have always known it would be easier if I had some… conviction about it. It is the indecision that comes with having to choose which family to identify with as my connection to the past, my ancestors. It leaves me feeling a bit lost. I know I could decide to call either my biological family my “roots” or my adopted family my “family ties.” But neither quite feels true to me. I have always been comforted by the stories in both families that I am a tiny bit Cherokee. Somehow by having the same lineage in both families, it is true. I feel connection to the possessions of those I loved and those of their ancestors that they loved. I feel less connected to family reunions, family trees, and the concept of “ancestors.” When I was 21 years old my birth mother searched for me. I met her and much of her family. They were nice people and I enjoyed visiting with them. I was in a relationship with them for a while and then for a variety of reasons backed away for a number of years. I reconnected with my birth mother a few years ago. It is a fairly casual relationship now–we talk by phone a few times a year. I have liked the concept of genealogy and tracing roots since I first heard of it. I love the idea of being a detective, tracing people through genealogical lines and learning their stories. But I always stop before I engage because I wouldn’t know which family to trace. Neither feels right. My biological family because it is lacking the love—I don’t really care how...
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I met a woman on an airplane this morning. We were sitting next to each other on a very long flight from Buffalo to Phoenix. We said hello and talked about general travel thoughts when we got on board, and then we both napped. Toward the end of the flight we started talking. She was from the Ukraine and had been living in Toronto for 25 years. I asked about how it was for her being an immigrant to Canada. She told me Canada saved her life. She told me how much she loves Canada and about her house she sold, moving to Newmarket, Ontario and retiring. And she said that now she is a little bored. We talked about mothers and mothers-in-law and children. She told me about her first marriage and how she had a mother-in-law that was great but a husband who wasn’t so great and that he had since died. And she told me that she had remarried. She shared stories of life in the Ukraine. She told me about being there when Chernobyl happened. She told me about not being able to get information and having to talk to family in Canada to find out what was happening in her own country. She told me about not being able to get food in the Ukraine before she left. She said there just wasn’t any food on the shelves to buy. She said now there is food on the shelves but no one has money to it. She told me about her step-son who raises chickens and grows his own vegetables because he has time but no money to buy food. It gave me a glimpse of a swing back to an agrarian society and how it might happen. It was a new and interesting thought to me. I felt connection from sharing the intimate details of our lives and our hearts. She was kind and passionate about her family. I felt a little pang of disappointment as we...
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These DIY “sun”dried tomatoes were easier than I expected and more delicious! My “sun” dried tomatoes are made in the oven. Since they take such a long time in the oven, I recommend you fill the oven with as many cookie sheets full of them as possible. My oven has 3 racks, so I do 3 sheets at a time. I tried both the convection oven and the regular oven as well as a dehydrator. I preferred the convection oven over both the regular oven and the dehydrator but use what you have, they will still be great. I tried this with both beefsteak and roma tomatoes. The roma tomatoes were substantially better than the beefsteak tomatoes from a cooking perspective and were what I was expecting to like best. The beefsteak tomatoes had an unexpected sweetness and could almost be eaten as dried fruit. I am looking forward to using them for some creative cooking! They are delicious. From a time perspective the beefsteak tomatoes take hours more. When I removed the roma tomatoes from the oven, I put the beefsteak tomatoes in the dehydrator for another 16 hours. 20 Roma Tomatoes per cookie sheet or jelly roll pan Parchment Slice the tomatoes longways and place cut-side up on parchment on a cookie sheet. Cook on your oven’s lowest temperature overnight. I removed the stems from the tomatoes but didn’t cut out the stem core. Cooking time at 170 degrees was about 16 hours on the oven setting. About 14 hours on the convection setting. After cooling, I used ziplock bags to store them. I cut the used parchment to create layers of them so I can grab a couple of tomatoes at a time from the...
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When my 4-year old twins, Emerson and Xander, were in kindergarten I got to visit their classroom. I noticed how many of the challenges we see in leadership teams have roots early on in the kindergarten classroom. I have to say, my children’s teacher was brilliant. I watched her blend great facilitation, inquiry, and relationship skills while keeping the interest of 17 busy 4 year olds for an hour. I saw her demonstrate great leadership skills herself, but I also saw her teaching leadership skills—something I work hard to teach leaders to do. Here’s what I saw: She has a busy classroom and sets it up in such a way that the children are rarely in trouble. She doesn’t keep them sitting too long or chastise them for talking. She creates time in the schedule for them to talk to each other—she believes in their relationships with each other. She fits the learning into their natural flow. She doesn’t keep herself at the center of their learning—she creates opportunities for them to learn in a variety of ways—she strategizes how they can learn from a variety of people. One of these opportunities is the third graders who come in to read to the kindergarteners once a week—they have a buddy system and they love it. This is teaching two skills: mentoring and helping others, and learning from others. She had another staff member come in and work with the children around the topic of responsibility. There was a book reading and a heated discussion led by the staff member, and I saw the teacher talking about responsibility during the time the kids got their coats and boots off and hung them up, and again when a child spilled a tub of small toys and they all helped pick them up. During circle time, I watched this teacher do 3 things that blew me away: the first was an inquiry session with my son Emerson. She asked him to figure out which of the children was...
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I don’t know about you but I feel an impending doom as we go back to school. I loved having my kids with me this summer. They are just so happy. I feel like we got into a groove when we were traveling and it was good for them. Since we got home, we have let them watch too much TV and be on their ipods way too much, but I want them to feel ready to do something interesting. We have been doing some good snuggling, too. We have been asking them how they are feeling and I am surprised how few words they have to talk about how they are feeling. Boys are so interesting that way. They will be in the same class this year which is different. They haven’t been in the same class since Junior Kindergarten. They have a myriad of after school activities, too. Also, Mel is teaching this fall. It is definitely going to be very busy. I look forward to the routine and I also feel the pressure of my life coming back. I have enjoyed taking a break this summer. I feel like we really did slow down and do life on our own terms. It was slower, it was more recreational. As we layer back the real life intensity, I feel like I am donning a cloak that doesn’t entirely fit. I am wearing it because I believe it is good for my family. They are faster paced than I am and although I can keep up most of the time, I know I get very fatigued from our fast-paced lifestyle. This summer the pace has been slower and one of my own...
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