Bird Droppings August 6, 2012

What about real planning?

 

It has been nearly ten years back I started setting up a new computer and in doing so one of my tasks was getting several years of writing, notes, books (started books), papers, poetry and misc. other information to my new computer. Not only that, but twenty years of printing contacts named addresses and data I Thought could one day be of use who knew what teaching had to offer. As we played around and did virus checks etc. my old computer locked up and needed a boot disc. Not a very happy ending to a new computer at that point I was constrained to the possibility that all my one hundred gigs of data was gone. Now back in the day one hundred gigs was like a lot even though today I may download that much in photos in a day.

I spoke with the tech guy at the county office and he told me procedures to follow I tried and all I got was the same thing over and over, was A:/cannot recognize C drive, so for four or five weeks I assumed the worse and really had little time to mess with it as I was busy with graduate school and several other activities. Then one night I sat down and checked the connections, all cables internal and external and tried to reboot again A:/ was all it would recognize. I had an epiphany when I got this computer over a lap top because it had a removable hard drive which when I first got it acted up and all it was that the drive had to be pushed into docking station tightly. I opened the door pulled out the drive checked for wires that might be loose and pushed it back in, My C drive worked. So often we look for difficult solutions to simple problems and we do not look for something as simple as the drive connection was loose but assume a crashed hard drive.

 

“Few people have any next; they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson  

 

Had we systematically eliminated problems rather than assume the worse I may have had access to papers and notes I had started although as a result I did more research on several topics and recreated several rubrics better than ones on disc. As I have said things always work out it is our perception that needs to change and develop.

 

“When planning for a year, plant corn. When planning for a decade, plant trees. When planning for life, train and educate people.” Chinese Proverb

As I sit here this morning this line really sounded good. It has been a number of years since I heard a good friend our former Co-operative extension agent tell this story. A farmer came into his office and was wondering why he could make no money on his farm raising corn. (I have been all over the United States and Georgia is lucky to get a hundred bushels of corn per acre even with irrigation while in Wisconsin three hundred is average) So the farmer tells my friend he has lost money the last ten years planting corn on his two hundred acres. My county agent friend recommends soil tests and such and after all the results suggests to the farmer that he raise watermelons. Soil tests land formation and the markets available lean that way. So the farmer plants watermelons and a few months later comes into my friends office with a huge watermelon for him and beaming ear to ear about how he had the best year ever on his farm. He was able to pay off his debt from all those bad years and buy a new tractor and even had money left to plant corn next year. How many of us are teachers like this farmer? Sitting here a thought from lunch the other day would it not be great to see ten years from now as to how our students will turn out or our own children or families. To know if that crazy idea works or not as I wonder and ponder this evening after receiving an email from a former student of nine years ago and she is now taking certification test to be a preschool teacher.

Yesterday I received an email and a story I shared about a disabled young fellow Shay. My mother emailed yesterday afternoon to ask if I knew it was my brother John’s birthday yesterday. John passed away a number of years back and never spoke a word. But be it synchronicity or as often my mother says John speaking to us it felt right to repost the story. Today as the week is near to ending please keep all in harm’s way in your hearts and on your mind and to always give thanks. Peace is an elusive word it seems but if we are diligent, a former vocabulary word of the week we can attain it namaste.

 

Wa do (Skee)

bird