Author: admin

Hey, That Mistake Was One of My Best Creative Moments

I’ve had quite the 6 weeks.  Somebody somewhere posted the old story on Facebook about my resignation from MIT in 2007 as if it happened yesterday and many people chose to write to me with great emotion about that.  I got snarky tweets referencing me, hate mail from FB people I don’t even know, fan mail from FB people I don’t even know, and lots of phone calls from people I do know sending their love and admiration to buffer the vitriol.  This went on for several days around my birthday and I was struck by two things: how easy it is to manipulate crowds and how mistakes from the past are never allowed to be over, both compliments of social media.

Perhaps you are a more perfect version of me, but I’m guessing you’ve done a few things in your day that you wouldn’t want the world to know about, much less find exposed on the front page of the NYT.  As awful as my 15 minutes of fame was, it fulfilled its purpose of deepening my humanity, not by breaking me but by breaking me open in compassion instead.  When I do read the Times now and see the public scourging of others, my heart goes out to them and I send them a whole legion of angels to protect and carry them through. No one knows the hell they are living.

It bears remembering that we human beings are designed to make mistakes.  And because of this, we all deserve salvation. Period.

Moreover, consider the possibility that we Homo Sapiens were actually designed to create through mistakes, that our best creativity comes from our screw-ups.  Now that’s a mind-bender.  So once a mistake serves its purpose, it’s done and finished, water under the bridge.  Sorta like #36 of the 449 times we stood and fell trying to walk as toddlers.  Why remember that forever with shame when the fall was actually building neurons for balance so we could walk upright for the rest of our lives?

I’m choosing to let my mistakes serve their purpose.  I’m writing another book.

If you are someone wont to throw a dart at someone you don’t know because you don’t like what you think they did, hold your fire and ask yourself this question instead: “What part of me does this thing I hate and wish to see punished in the other? ”  How about you forgive that part and pay attention to how it’s actually trying to serve you?

In this Era of the Cyborg, let’s go all counter-culture and experience the pure pleasure of being imperfect for a change.

And then let’s get about the business of creating our lives for real.

Caveat Emptor – College Admissions Edition

I’ve been crazy busy with many different constituencies since the beginning of the year and though the spirit was willing and eager to write every few days, the flesh was too exhausted.  Today is another snow day in NYC, though (YAY!!! I think I must be the only person in this City who loves snow except for personal trainers who live for skiing on the weekends), so I finally have the bandwidth to put some words out into the ether.

Here’s another lesson in College Admissions Is A Business.  I share this with you because I want you to know the rules of the game you are about to play so you and your child have a better chance of making good decisions.

Colleges are sending their Search mailings now and it’s worth a column or two because it’s where the college admissions process begins and where truth begins to go off the rails.  Wonder why your child is beginning to get mail from colleges?  Here’s the skinny: colleges buy the names of students based on the PSAT score ranges and other demographic information desired by those individual schools (a process called Search).  A selective liberal arts college in the NorthEast, for example, might buy the names of males (under-represented in liberal arts colleges) with PSAT scores of 60+ in Critical Reading, 65+ in Math, 60+ in Writing.  That school might target students on the West Coast if it wants to bring in more Californians or target certain zip codes if it wants to reach out to more full-pay applicants.  Colleges can parse these parameters in many ways to fill or balance up their needs because this is the first big net they cast to scoop up lots of potential applicants.

The Search mailing is very important and is a large line item in the admissions office budget.

Once the names are purchased, the mailings are sent.  Yes, mailings.  As in, brochures and viewbooks large and small.  Colorful.  Glossy.  You might wonder in this age of virtual everything why colleges would continue to invest in paper (and such costly paper at that) when an email or tweet might do.  The simple answer is – parents.  If colleges did their Search outreach to students at this point, most of their efforts would be wasted because communicating with a teenager is notoriously difficult – kids have these nasty habits of ignoring email and most social media, actually.  They live in their own worlds and they rarely come up for air.  The point of sending a colorful publication through the US mail is for the parents to see it – get the full visual hit – and feel warm, happy and appreciative that this college has reached out to their child and thinks their child is special.  The parent will take it from there, nudging the poor kid to look at that school and maybe even apply.  Sadly, this is where parents begin to develop unrealistic expectations about their child’s chances of admission to some of these colleges because colleges know they’ll end up admitting just a fraction of the students who respond to the mailings.

Rule 1:  Just because it sent your child a seductive mailing out of the blue and is encouraging them to apply, doesn’t mean that college wants to admit them.

The whole point of the mailing is to encourage the application because that college lives and dies by its application numbers.  Remember the Holy Trinity of the college admissions business:  high number of applications, low number of admits (called the admit rate), high number of enrollees (called the yield).  These are 3 of the 4 aspects of the 17 aspect algorithm of the USNWR ranking system that the admissions office has control over and these three numbers matter.  A lot.  (oh, BTW, did you know that 25% of the algorithm is based on the opinions of peer institutions, utterly and completely subjective?)

So when the mailings come in by the boxload, remember that what the schools are really looking for is an application, not you or your child.  With this filter in mind, now go read through the material and see how it feels.  Fore-warned is fore-armed.

Never let your child fall in love with a college that won’t love them back… that’s called unrequited love and it hurts.

What Hath Jobs Wrought?

I’m not sure whether Steve Jobs was the best thing that ever happened to our culture or the worst.  It’s clear that he was a modern day Edison, a genius with vision and a love of beautiful design (take that, HP and Dell et al).  His imagination changed our world so fast and so profoundly that we Mac users actually feel cool when using Apple products.  I depend on my MacBook Pro, my IPad and my IPhone to be connected to the world and therein lies the rub…

There are disturbing things afoot, friends, and though I risk sounding like some crazy luddite, I’m raising my concern because the health and right to privacy of an entire generation is at stake.

Last week when I went to my local Apple store to buy a replacement plug, I had to fight my way through a long line wrapped around the building to get ‘approved’ to enter by a security guard.  What’s this, I asked him, pointing to a few hundred people patiently waiting in line at 10am on a Wed. He looked at me like I had just flown in from Pluto and quipped, “The new IPhone.”  Later that day I met with a student who was thrilled to show me his new phone.  ”And wait, you haven’t seen the best thing yet”, he squealed, jumping up and down in his seat.  ”I don’t need a security code, just my fingerprint.“

Say whaaaat?  Your fingerprint??? OMG

So your new IPhone uses your fingerprint as its security code.  It also tracks your movements even when you turn it off.  And you can’t disable that.  There are back doors coded into its architecture, compliments of the NSA, placed there to, you know, capture terrorists.  Not that you are one, mind you.  But you are supposed to feel safe that your government is listening to everything you say and write and text, which is a violation of your PRIVACY.  And we have no idea why they are really doing this.  If you think it’s just to catch terrorists, you need to pay closer attention.

Then there are the social changes these devices have created.  I notice how nearly everyone on the subway is reading something on their smart phone or tuned out to music, head down, shoulders curled forward, chest collapsed. Personal trainers see the damage of this new posture problem.  I see people texting and reading their devices as they step out into on-coming traffic or bump into other pedestrians on crowded Manhattan streets.  People make business deals, discuss medical diagnoses, gossip, flirt and expose their private lives to the hundreds around them in restaurants and waiting rooms with no embarrassment or recognition that this is an annoyance to the others around them.  Now that wifi is on some subways, I recently stood next to a woman on a jammed #3 train who was raging and cursing at her husband on her phone for 3 full stops.  Hundreds of others listened in and squirmed.  Even in NYC, it’s all too much.

The evidence is mounting that the electro-magnetic fields created by these devices are dangerous over time to living cells.

And we’re giving IPads to kids as little as 18 months as if they were toys.  The directions that come with the IPhone instruct us to keep the phone at least 5/8ths of an inch away from the body and to avoid using it when the signal is weak because the phone will produce more radiation to compensate.  Oh, and not to wear it on our bodies.  Do you think anyone really knows this? This is all in the small print.

Soon we’ll be a wi-fi nation and we have no idea what that will mean to our overall health.  This reminds me of an earlier era – the ’50s and ’60s – when “better living through chemistry” was the rage and our environment was nearly wrecked by the recklessness of the chemical companies and lax government oversight.  Think SuperFund cleanups that cost us all billions of dollars and untold lives lost to cancer and auto-immune diseases triggered by substances created in a the laboratory our bodies were not designed to contain and destroy.  All I can think of is here we go again.  Lesson not learned.

So, hmmm, let’s see…  Convenience and cool vs radiation, compulsion and invasion of privacy.

What will we ultimately choose?

So What Is Our Obligation to Our Fellow Citizens of The World Anyway?

This topic of our ultimate responsibility to civilization is on my mind a lot.  I’ve been writing non-stop about how college admissions must serve the nation and not just the individual university because education is the fastest way to broaden and deepen a middle class and a broad and deep middle class equals peace and prosperity well into the future.  I recall years ago hearing a BBC reporter who had covered Sarajevo’s destruction succinctly describe the ultimate tragedy of that war.  He said that if only they’d had one more generation to build their middle class, the war would never had happened “because people who have mortgages and appliances and who send their kids to private schools do not want to do war.”

I hear his voice in my head today and I take that as a warning for America, because whatever we’ve been doing since the 1980s is taking us in the wrong direction.

Colleges routinely give away millions of dollars in merit aid to students who can afford the bill, strategically choosing to invest their own monies to create future major donors, while admitting and not funding needy applicants.  While this strategy makes sense for the individual college and that individual student, it sucks for the nation in the long run.  The gap between haves and have nots hasn’t been this wide since the 1930s.  75% of all Americans live paycheck to paycheck.  The middle class is eroding. Where, exactly, did our sense of The Greater Good go?  And how do we get it back?

In the same vein, I’m listening to the Syria story and thinking about our moral duty as human beings in light of chemical weapons being used on Syrian civilians.  In 1994, I heard a BBC report that a whole unit of Belgian UN peacekeeping soldiers had been murdered in Rwanda after the Rwandan president was killed when his plane was brought down by a surface-to-air missile. This began the Rwandan genocide.  The head of the UN Peacekeepers there, the great Canadian Lt. General Romeo Dallaire whom many consider to be a hero, tried valiantly and unsuccessfully to get the world to intervene.  He saved as many lives as he personally could.  After that war, suffering from severe PTSD, this honorable man tried to commit suicide out of despair for the lives he couldn’t save.  (How come he never got the Noble Peace Prize?)

The US, like the rest of the world, did nothing as one million people (20% of Rwanda’s population) were murdered over the course of 100 days.  That would’ve been the sixth genocide of the 20th century.

In hindsight, Bill Clinton says that this was one of the biggest mistakes of his presidency.

My dear friends Lori Leyden and Rosemary Dowling are in Rwanda as I write this, still working with the orphans of that genocide, kids who are now in their late teens/early 20s, raising money and sending many of them to university.  If only we’d intervened in 1994.  So much human talent lost to the world.  What happened there really was a crime against humanity.

And so it is with Syria today.

My problem is that I don’t know who gassed those poor people in Damascus.  The government?  The rebels as a false flag event?

There is so much disinformation now, so little truth coming out of any government, since business interests seem to trump everything in this period of transition.  I’d like to believe Obama.  I’d like to believe that he cares about the Syrian people and the 1 million children officially suffering from the PTSD resulting from the bombing and mayhem.

I’d like to think that leaders of both of our  parties understand the oneness of all human beings and see the unacceptability of using chemical weapons on anyone.  But I suspect they don’t and deals will be struck where money is to be made.  As Bill Maher says about Americans, “Why are we always the stupid people?”

So instead of murdering entire families at weddings by drone strike, how about we use those drones to stop the use of chemical weapons in Syria?  I do not support war in general, or violence of any kind, but I do believe in drawing the line at weapons of mass destruction.  It should be just as unacceptable to use chemical weapons on this planet as it is to use nuclear ones.  I get that the effects of the former are local and those of the latter spread worldwide.  (And thank God, too, or I’m sure we would’ve had nuclear war by now.)

But there is a serious moral argument to be made by all free people on behalf of those who are not.  Every life is precious and necessary in the same way all living creatures hold their unique places in the ecosystems.

The Prime Directive for Humans should be “No Matter What, Do No Harm and for God’s sake DON’T FU*K THINGS UP”.

I would love to see Obama, on behalf of me and all Americans, destroy those chemical weapon sites and production plants in Syria as well as in our own country with as much attention as we’ve placed on destroying nuclear weapons. Then we might really live up to our reputation as “the home of the brave”.

So What Is Our Obligation to Our Fellow Citizens of The World Anyway?

This topic of our ultimate responsibility to civilization is on my mind a lot.  I’ve been writing non-stop about how college admissions must serve the nation and not just the individual university because education is the fastest way to broaden and deepen a middle class and a broad and deep middle class equals peace and prosperity well into the future.  I recall years ago hearing a BBC reporter who had covered Sarajevo’s destruction succinctly describe the ultimate tragedy of that war.  He said that if only they’d had one more generation to build their middle class, the war would never had happened “because people who have mortgages and appliances and who send their kids to private schools do not want to do war.”

I hear his voice in my head today and I take that as a warning for America, because whatever we’ve been doing since the 1980s is taking us in the wrong direction.

Colleges routinely give away millions of dollars in merit aid to students who can afford the bill, strategically choosing to invest their own monies to create future major donors, while admitting and not funding needy applicants.  While this strategy makes sense for the individual college and that individual student, it sucks for the nation in the long run.  The gap between haves and have nots hasn’t been this wide since the 1930s.  75% of all Americans live paycheck to paycheck.  The middle class is eroding. Where, exactly, did our sense of The Greater Good go?  And how do we get it back?

In the same vein, I’m listening to the Syria story and thinking about our moral duty as human beings in light of chemical weapons being used on Syrian civilians.  In 1994, I heard a BBC report that a whole unit of Belgian UN peacekeeping soldiers had been murdered in Rwanda after the Rwandan president was killed when his plane was brought down by a surface-to-air missile. This began the Rwandan genocide.  The head of the UN Peacekeepers there, the great Canadian Lt. General Romeo Dallaire whom many consider to be a hero, tried valiantly and unsuccessfully to get the world to intervene.  He saved as many lives as he personally could.  After that war, suffering from severe PTSD, this honorable man tried to commit suicide out of despair for the lives he couldn’t save.  (How come he never got the Noble Peace Prize?)

The US, like the rest of the world, did nothing as one million people (20% of Rwanda’s population) were murdered over the course of 100 days.  That would’ve been the sixth genocide of the 20th century.

In hindsight, Bill Clinton says that this was one of the biggest mistakes of his presidency.

My dear friends Lori Leyden and Rosemary Dowling are in Rwanda as I write this, still working with the orphans of that genocide, kids who are now in their late teens/early 20s, raising money and sending many of them to university.  If only we’d intervened in 1994.  So much human talent lost to the world.  What happened there really was a crime against humanity.

And so it is with Syria today.

My problem is that I don’t know who gassed those poor people in Damascus.  The government?  The rebels as a false flag event?

There is so much disinformation now, so little truth coming out of any government, since business interests seem to trump everything in this period of transition.  I’d like to believe Obama.  I’d like to believe that he cares about the Syrian people and the 1 million children officially suffering from the PTSD resulting from the bombing and mayhem.

I’d like to think that leaders of both of our  parties understand the oneness of all human beings and see the unacceptability of using chemical weapons on anyone.  But I suspect they don’t and deals will be struck where money is to be made.  As Bill Maher says about Americans, “Why are we always the stupid people?”

So instead of murdering entire families at weddings by drone strike, how about we use those drones to stop the use of chemical weapons in Syria?  I do not support war in general, or violence of any kind, but I do believe in drawing the line at weapons of mass destruction.  It should be just as unacceptable to use chemical weapons on this planet as it is to use nuclear ones.  I get that the effects of the former are local and those of the latter spread worldwide.  (And thank God, too, or I’m sure we would’ve had nuclear war by now.)

But there is a serious moral argument to be made by all free people on behalf of those who are not.  Every life is precious and necessary in the same way all living creatures hold their unique places in the ecosystems.

The Prime Directive for Humans should be “No Matter What, Do No Harm and for God’s sake DON’T FU*K THINGS UP”.

I would love to see Obama, on behalf of me and all Americans, destroy those chemical weapon sites and production plants in Syria as well as in our own country with as much attention as we’ve placed on destroying nuclear weapons. Then we might really live up to our reputation as “the home of the brave”.

So Are You a Bad Person If You Send Your Kid To Private School?

Let me preface this with a big shout-out to Parke Muth, a true Wise Elder in education, whose blogs I read religiously.  I’m on the hunt, you see, for the Deep Thinkers and Big Visionaries of education with the hopes that we can convene together one day and bring some wisdom and sanity to this greatest-of-all-human-endeavors.  I don’t feel comfortable criticizing from the sidelines…I want to actively engage in the solution.  Until then, I keep calling out to my kindred spirits out there, asking if you see what I see and what we might do about it.  Many people are in these discussions and I’m beginning to hear certain voices emerge.  Parke’s is one.  His is a voice of reason, compassion and intelligence and thank God he’s motivated to write for the rest of us, provoking the Deep Think stuff I love.

A few days ago he posted an op-ed from Slate entitled, “If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person.  A Manifesto.”  The author believes that all children in the US should be forced to attend public school in order to protect that system.  She attended public schools and admits that while she didn’t get a good education, she landed OK and so will everyone else.  She makes the argument that sometimes individuals should have to take the hit for the greater good.

I love this kind of piece because it’s provocative.  If we’re honest, we see the truth in her argument while also knowing that we might not’ve made the same decision because there are so many variables and humans are so darned independent and diversified.

Oh, and not everyone learns the same way, so one system just cannot fit all.

Now for the scary, heretical stuff…

That being said, I completely support her belief that all kinds of kids should be educated together.  I no longer believe in stratifying the classroom.  Slower learners should be elbow to elbow with quicker learners.  Kids with LDs should be working with kids who have none.  Advantaged ones should be seated next to poorer kids.  Think one-room schoolhouse.  Think we all learn differently and all help each other learn.

(I know, I know.  Please don’t send me hate mail. )

I hear teachers say that there is just too much to teach now and the stakes are too high with state exams and NCLB rules.  I hear that they often feel overwhelmed and disrespected and that this idea calls for a new skill set they might not have, so the status quo seems just fine.  And the ACT tells us this summer that according to their exam results, fewer than 39% of the test takers are adequately prepared for college…

I hear friends say how the gifted and talented students are neglected and need so much more because, well, they are gifted and talented (meaning that they’re worth more to society somehow) and they get so easily BORED.  Hmmm.  Yeah, I drank the kool-aid on that one long ago but I’ve since changed my mind.  I’ve met G&T kids who were just plain snobs or even worse, social brats.  They typically don’t need more intellectual stimulation – smart kids create their own – but they often do need the reality check that in the scheme of things, emotional IQ matters more than intellectual IQ.  (I wonder what would happen if the G&T teachers used their best skills with ‘average’ or ‘C’ students?)  Learning to accept and work with others is crucial to our survival in the future.

What kids need more than anything in this era is compassion for themselves and others, to develop respect and civility.  The learning will follow because kids are just as hardwired to learn as they are to walk.

Creating haves and have nots in education plants the seeds for civic discontent in the future.  We keep patching a system that needs a fundamental shake-up since we can all agree that we don’t all agree about what kids should actually be learning now.  In 1970, the US led the world in high school graduation.  Today we’ve slipped to 21st.  Only 21 states actually require mandatory high school attendance (there’s that state’s rights thing again).  While more kids are graduating now than before (thanks, grade inflation!), there is still an unacceptable difference.  80% of whites and asians are graduating while only 55% of black and hispanic students are.   Think about that.  What is going on here and why is this OK?

Could Your Child Be a Surfer Dog?

I love this short video because it reminds me of parents and how we so often try to create a child in our image and likeness.  But kids have this confounding way of being themselves, of being quite different from what we’d expected.

Watch this video and then look at your child again.  It will help you see them for who they really are.

And this is an homage to assistance dogs everywhere.

I once raised an assistance dog for Canine Companions for Independence (CCI).  Huntington started school in a class of 19 other service-dog wannabes.  After 9 months, most were released from the program and returned to their puppy raisers.  He graduated with the remaining 6 others who made it, one of only 2 to make it as both a service dog and a social dog.  A two-fer!  I was so proud of my boy (OK, I was living vicariously through him, back before I even understood that concept).  And then, drama!

At graduation, as I stood on the stage behind him and his new owner/partner Gary, who was wheel-chair bound at 19 from a motorcycle accident, Huntie turned his back to the audience and sat facing me, staring directly up into my eyes.  I spoke with him telepathically, urging him to settle down and turn around to Gary, but as usual he insisted on his own way (Huntie was a highly non-compliant dog by nature, which is why it was so surprising that he graduated at all) and continued to stare directly into my eyes.  He was clearly telling me something.  It sure seemed like he wanted to come home to us in Concord, running in the fields behind our house, eating raw corn and horse manure (hey, he was a dog), chasing birds and horses.  We did raise him in a dog-heaven environment.  It seemed as if that charming rascal dog was changing his mind about a life of service.  My heart was breaking.

Tears streamed down my face and I struggled to keep from sobbing because I wanted him to come home more than anything in the world…he was my dog first, after all.

I’d raised him from the age of 7 weeks until almost 2 years before returning him to service school.  He went everywhere with me, including MIT.  At the end of each of those 9 months of training, I’d call to see how he was doing and heard the same thing, “I don’t know about this dog.  He’s too independent and smart.  I don’t think he’s going to make it.”  While I was disappointed, deep down I was thrilled because we’d get him back upon his release.  It sure looked like he was going to flunk out when at the last second, his last month there, he seemed to change his mind, get it in gear and did what he needed to do to pass.  Huntie picked Gary (the dogs pick their new partners) and they bonded for 2 weeks before graduation.

At this last moment, at graduation, Huntie was wavering and I knew what to do.

With the heaviest of hearts, like one of those mother birds, I kicked him out of the nest on stage that night by breaking off all eye-contact and telepathy.  It seemed like forever (really only about 10 minutes), but Huntington finally gave up trying to reach me, turned around to face the audience and leaned into Gary’s wheelchair.  He stopped connecting with me completely.  The transfer was made and they left together without so much as a backwards glance from him. I was nearly inconsolable all the way home and am crying now as I recall those powerful emotions filled with deep, deep love, devotion and right action.  And even in the midst of my grief over having lost him forever, I was so proud of my dog and of the conscious choice he made to be of service.

Huntington lived with Gary 7 years and gave him a life.  Together, my golden retriever and his energetic paraplegic partner went swimming, white water rafting, wheelchair hiking and any outdoor thing Gary could think up.  They went to work together each day.  Gary was a counselor for vets suffering from PTSD at a VA Hospital down South and took Huntie along because “you know, those Southern boys love their dogs.”  Huntie’s presence brought about deep healing for so many wounded hearts.

They adored each other and were never separated.  Years later, when Gary came to Boston for a special treatment at MGH, he insisted on leaving Huntington with us overnight, his gift to his partner’s family. Very quickly that working dog reverted to a puppy again, jumping on the beds with Nora like he used to, running around chasing our cat and his old friend Harry, racing into the back fields for some serious dog foraging. He slept with us that night.  It was heaven.  But early the next morning, Huntie was up and waiting at the front door, urgently pacing, eager to get back to Gary, his vacation over and heeding the call to service once again.  He knew full well that Gary needed him and he got very impatient to get back to business.  Their reunion at a local motel was beyond touching.

When Huntie died, after a life of primo service, Gary sent me his ashes.  How’s that for love given and for love’s return?

The Power of Retreat

After a frenzied summer given over to clients and trainings and filming and writing, I’m tired and need some serious off-the-grid time, so I’ve come to my RI beach and my little cottage for my 2nd annual retreat.  One of my revered teachers, Dr. Monica, working with me through the darkest days of my life last year, suggested that I create a retreat for myself, spending as many weeks as I could alone at my beach house, asking questions and listening.  Uh, listening for what exactly, I’d asked her.  You’ll find out, she replied.  Go away with no plans, no script?  Are you kidding?  She told me that once I understood the power of the retreat and the questions I’d ask, I’d create one every year forever more.  I was highly doubtful, but agreed to the plan, reluctantly giving it a try.

The rules of this retreat, as laid out by Monica, were simple.  I was to do whatever I wanted in the moment for as long as I wanted.  Listen.  Have no plan, just desires in the moment.  Listen.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Listen. For as long as I could arrange.

The only question I need ask, Monica suggested, was “what do I want to do now?”

I won’t lie, the first 2 days were excruciating, since I’m a planner who doesn’t know the meaning of ‘spontaneous’.

But as the days went by, I got into the pattern of no-pattern and soon began to seriously dig it.  I meditated with Deepak Chopra, weeded my beach roses listening to certain recordings of Coast to Coast AM (don’t scoff…this show does a huge service by discussing things the main stream media won’t touch, like their Lyme Disease show last week…and I love the quantum physics stuff), walked the beach for hours, drove to Rhody Joe’s for their chicken wings, drank martinis, communed in my neighbor’s hot tub, all spur of the moment, none of it planned.  I slept late sometimes, got up early other times, watched ‘on demand’ movies and went for days with no TV or music.  I wrote and cried…a lot. It was glorious.

Little by little, I started hearing myself again (albeit faintly) after a lifetime of internal deafness.  I settled down and took a few baby steps back to myself because I had truly lost my bearings and maybe even a bit of my mind in the previous few years and it was time for that to stop.  Fast forward to now…

All this month I found myself looking forward to retreat again

and now that I made it back here, I’m in that early what-was-I-thinking stage that I know will settle into the pattern of no-pattern.  I jump up to eat my favorite steak and eggs at Hungry Haven (where the wait staff knows me now and already knows what I want), then drive to Java Madness, my favorite place to write on the planet, where I know the owner now and have my choice of open tables inside since in the nice weather everyone sits out on the large deck overlooking a sleepy marina.  Although I love the water, I want to write tucked away in the corner inside, with live music drifting in from the deck.  It’s the end of the summer and people are still pretty relaxed. I’m settling in, doing what I want in the moment and listening.

Soon the academic year will start again, and I wonder which of my many ventures will take off this year.  At the moment, I have a new idea.  I’d like to write a book about fall from grace moments and form a group of others like me, publicly identified as flawed.  When I had my 15 minutes of fame, despite all of the loving support extended to me (THANK YOU!!), I felt very alone and so I isolated, as is my nature.  I’m thinking that my little group of kindreds would be willing and available to reach out to those who fall in the future, offering a spirit of camaraderie and an action plan based on our experiences.   Cool idea, huh?   And really needed, too, since mistakes no longer have a half-life thanks to the internet and its forever memory, and the fact that we’re talking about human beings.   People screwing up and making mistakes?  Yup.  Just as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow, humans will be flawed.  And that is what makes us all such miraculous creatures.

I screw up, therefore I create.

Love that mantra…

Our Newest Endangered Species: Leaders in Higher Ed

Everyday I read so many articles and blogs about higher ed that my eyes blur.  They generally cover just a few categories: innovation through MOOCs (massive open online courses) or the new skill sets needed by higher ed leaders (social media, business strategy, IT) or the bijillion websites that students can use to find the right match school.  There are blogs about  how to write an essay,  how to create the application timeline and even explaining the rules of the new Common App.  But nowhere – nowhere – can I find the Voice of Big Vision that we used to know as Leadership.

In short, folks, nobody is driving this bus.

We know that the human knowledge set – everything that humans have learned – doubles in less than a decade now because of the web (or the interwebs, as my hilarious friend calls it ), and technology innovations double every 8 months.  All of this change is not only hard to keep up with, it’s hard to place in context.

Because of this rapid change, more than 40 career fields were created in the past decade alone.  More than half of the employers surveyed in a recent survey say that college graduates are not prepared for the current work place.  New brain science is revealing how kids learn best even as private colleges charge upwards of $60K/year for educating in the old, less-effective way, for universities like all big systems are the last to change in the face of new information.  A small and disturbing trend is developing as trustees are offering college presidencies to MBAs instead of to academics, replacing education leaders with financial stewards.  These are mismatches if ever I’ve seen one.

When I first entered the field of college admissions, I was trained to believe that every decision we made would change the world and would affect the nation’s future 3 generations out.  I was taught that education is the quickest way into the middle class and that a robust middle class makes for a happy, safe and prosperous nation.  Since the 1980s I’ve watched us turn away from these beliefs and, not surprisingly, the gap between haves and have nots has grown wider now than its been since the 1930s.

Holy sh*t!  We’re going backwards.

So where are the leaders?  Where are the men and women who are willing to hold the Big Vision that education matters on so many levels and that it’s the best investment we can make as a country?  Where are the men and women who are willing to make the case to their Boards that are stocked with major donors and business people with sharp pencils who want that return on their investments?  Where are the ones with clear voices willing to jump into this mess and speak truth to us all?  Where are the leaders in education who truly think long term and care about the fate of children one hundred years from now, children they will never know?

We need a Transformational Leadership Council for Education made up of courageous educators willing to be the tip of the spear for the human race going forward, because make no mistake, our future is at stake.  The wider the gap between those with and those without, the more unstable America will become over time and maybe we’ll lose the whole thing, all because of fear and lack of vision now.

I’m in the arena.  Who else will join me?

We Have Babies!

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge aren’t the only ones to bring new life into the world this week (and welcome to you, George).  Life is coming in all the time, though it is rarely noticed by as many as have followed the Little Prince’s arrival.

Check out this healthy sparrow nest in the rafters at my beach house in RI.  This rafter area in my eaves has always been the perfect shelter for the little guys who live there year round. Many times when I’ve arrived late at night, turning the lights on as I carried in my bags, I’ve been glared at by one of the braver sparrows who would lean way out, shoot me with a hard and withering look that spoke volumes… there was no mistaking that look and the thought bubble over his little head that said, “WTF?  Turn that *&#* light off.  People are sleeping here!”

There are many different species of wildlife and I love them all.  I had a robin family build their home above the light fixture by my back door a few years ago, but the comings and goings, the ins and outs through that door, drove them away.  After so much effort building a solid nest in a seemingly safe place,  they abandoned the nest and I felt terrible because babies are welcome here.  The robin family never came back.

A robin family has created a nest in the rhododendron in front of my neighbors’ house next door.  From inside Sue and Greg’s picture window you can look down into the bush and the nest and see the little birds.  There is one more blue egg to hatch.  I run next door a lot and now I go to the back door so I don’t scare the robin mother into leaving.

There are baby bunnies everywhere and I wonder when the owls will move in. That circle of life thing…

In the meantime, yesterday I saw the weirdest bird ever looking all disoriented on my large lawn. I think it must be a green heron baby.  It looked like a large brownish, speckled football with an orange beak and long green legs with sharp talons.  I got my binocs out to get a good look because it was so unusual looking (is that an alien bird??).  My neighbor saw it too and we’ve been trying to figure out what it is and why it’s in our yards.  This area is on the flyway for migratory birds and sometimes birds, like people, get lost.  I wish that little guy the best.

Back to my nest.  There are baby sparrows all around the property, birds so tiny my heart just breaks to see them.  Mom and Dad are valiant in their protection of their little ones and I’m grateful to be counted as a neighbor to them all, grateful that we share the same space at the same time.

Now the chipmunks who live in my basement, however, are a different matter…