glilding through the sky on her broomy air craft, This seasonal lady of Hallow e'en night uses the light from a full yellow bewitching moon to guide her flight. I created this witchy decoration several years ago to hang on my grade 4 classroom wall, now in recent years it adorns my home hanging in a window on Halloween nights.
A Happy Halloween to all. May your night be one of amusement while greeting all of the delightful dressed visitors to your door and may it be trick free. Got pictures with yellow? Why not post them on the mellow yellow Monday meme by connecting to this link. http://mellowyellowmonday.blogspot.com/ Or You can click on its icon found on this page in the right column by finding it by scrolling down this page. If your plan is not to post a photo, then perhaps you will just want to enjoy all of the yellow contributions posted there.
The snow didn't amount to much Thank Goodness!, Just a soft covering which sent me searching through my archives to find this poem written by me a few years ago. Its a quilting poem. Needles of pine quilt a soft warm blanket using hushed hues of faded browns and yawning yellows as Autumn prepares its winter bed
Northern vagabonds of wind and snow whistle a warning lullaby of winter's approach and Autumn falls asleep upon a soft white pillow
Happy Hallowe'en to you all! Nearly. We have, of course, had two Hallowe'en parties already and I'm a little Halloverloaded with costumes and pumpkins already. But luckily Nanu's Poetry Jam challenge coincided nicely with Imaginary Garden with Toads Sunday challenge, here: http://withrealtoads.blogspot.com/2011/10/mini-challenge-for-sunday_30.html
I have thus merged the Waltz Wave Form with Nanu's direction: I don't want a spooky scary Halloween-as-usual poem. Give us a day-before poem. Something coming up to an event, after which all is different.
On leaving two children at his door I felt free, thinking him better than I to raise young spirits. Next day I grew up and took steps to fetch them. They were ghosts.
Running out of photos of bridges. This was taken when I went to Southport during one of my holidays. My sister Helen took us to a park. It was dusk, the lights were not very good.
For now the trails and paths are clear in the woods but soon, possibly this weekend the ground will be covered with snow, I hope not as I feel it is too soon to have to encounter and deal with the cold and slippert footing that often accompanies the winter season. Have a good weekend everyone! Ann
Wild Onion, the smell is pungent. Some people use them in their salads. Grow wild everywhere.
I used to dig up the bulbs of this wild onion weed. It was very difficult to get rid off and the stalk break off easily. They grow and grow profusely.
Then two things happened, I started blogging, and and was attracted to wild flowers. I found these patches very pretty. I went to a farmers' market to take photos for my blog, and found that they sell the stems. They are delicious, assures the seller.
I never looked at the wild onion patch the same way again, and I don't dig them up. I found myself sniffing in the intense aroma, or should I say, pungent odour, of onion weed (Allium triquetrum). the masses of white, bell-like flowers actually looked very pretty lining the roadside , the masses of white, bell-like flowers actually looked very pretty
It is known also as the three-cornered leek or angled onion, some describe the smell as leek or garlic-like.
The flowers are too little for me to take a macro flower. So a little bunch from a single stalk. Aren't they pretty?
I know I'm treading in scary waters right now. In a sport full of women that don't like authority... here I am giving advice!
Clearly, I'm totally cuckoo. With good reason, though.
When I travel to coach leagues, interpersonal relations are often the type of stuff people really need the most help with. Sometimes they're aware of it. Sometimes they're not.
I love coaching roller derby strategy and technique. But if a league is imploding from the inside out over personal conflicts...
All the strategy in the world's not gonna fix that.
I'm actually at a point where I can watch a team play and usually be able to tell right away if they really like each other or not.
Your interpersonal relations will inevitably effect every other aspect of your team dynamics.
And don't get me wrong, you can get to a pretty competitive level on talent and hard work alone. But without chemistry, can you stay there? Can you really reach your team's full potential?
Would you even want to anymore?
So Communication is pretty epically-imperatively-goddamn important. And when that's failed, it's Conflict Resolution time.
In this Blog I'll talk a little more about Expression, and the next one I'll get to Conflict Resolution.
I'm not ready to leave the topic of Expression behind yet, because last post was mainly about In-Person Communication. Which is important.
But so much of roller derby communication happens Online!
And somehow careless things said in internet world have the power to destroy all kinds of good things happening in... the real world...
And for the two to be mutually beneficial and co-operative, online communication needs to be addressed.
Online Expression Advice:
1) Passion Posting
If you're pounding your keys loudly, re-reading and re-editing it to say exactly the right thing, if your blood is boiling...
That's not an email you can send and feel good about later.
Is it possible to be livid and reasonable at the same time? I would submit, for your consideration... No, it's not.
But it IS totally possible to ruin relationships with people in your league, alienate yourself and others, and cause all kinds of regrettable debate over one careless email.
So.... a No Passion Posting policy could serve you well. Make frequent use of your "DRAFT" button, in these cases.
(I'm a little embarrassed at how long it took me to figure this out.)
2) Group vs Individual Communication
I've seen a lot of people hide behind the anonymity of the group to get the attention of an individual.
But is it positive or negative attention that you want?
When you post a question/suggestion/thinly-veiled-passive-aggressive-complaint for one person to a whole group... or Facebook... the one may likely resent the fact that you did not have the spine to contact them directly.
Or feel that you tried to humiliate them, publicly.
Being heard, and communicating, are two different things.
When you communicate, everyone has a chance to win. When you're simply "heard," you can be kind of an exhausting person to deal with.
This also happens when you have a positive response for one person, but always make the whole group have to see it. We all get a lot of our own emails, who wants to have to read someone else's too?
Try to recognize if what you have to say is for an individual, or really for a group, and communicate accordingly.
3) Facebook, Twitter, and Blogs vs... A Diary
Some of your most intimate, passionate feelings... will pass and change tomorrow. But things that are put in print can leave an impression for a lifetime, if you're not careful.
Consider dumping your more explosive feelings in an actual Journal or Diary before going straight to telling every person you know how you feel.
Because you may have a more mature response 3 days from now than you do in the heat of the moment, where we're often taking no one else's feelings into consideration.
I would probably come off as the crabbiest bitch in the world if I didn't make a regular process of dumping negative/explosive/overwhelming feelings on paper, instead of people.
I'm not saying it's wrong to use social media as a form of self expression. I'm obviously doing it right now! Just consider your level of passion at the time of writing.
That's enough words for today. I know you're a busy person. : D
Have a cooled-out-well-considered-expertly-communicated-inspiring awesome rad day today!
This photo of Jupiter with two moons was taken by my son Davis in a late September or early October night sky. a great capture Davis!
A happy day for everyone and have a great weekend please. Skywatch Friday is a long standing meme where sky views from all over the world are posted at: http://skyley.blogspot.com/Why not participate as we
Monday was Monifieth, and Monifieth meant that after work I was able to have dinner with More About the Song Rachel, now of Slow Lane Shuffle, here: http://slowlaneshuffle.blogspot.com/ Dinner and company both very good.
I then spent the night in Dundee. The fourth largest city in Scotland, Dundee's growth and prosperity in the 19th Century was based, famously, on Jute, Jam and Journalism. A significant whaling industry was also based in Dundee, largely existing to supply the jute mills with whale oil. I like Dundee, it is one of those post-industrial cities that hasn't yet got the resources to obliterate the not-so-tourist-friendly aspects of its heritage.
Dundee also has Discovery Point, where a purpose-built dock houses the RSS Discovery. There is a super-duper museum detailing the three main Antarctic expeditions the ship was used for, as well as Scott's subsequent Terra Nova expedition and Shackleton's Endurance expedition.
It is rather wonderful on board the ship - in the Wardroom all the officers' cabins have the names of their occupants painted outside. My heart, of course, belongs to Shackleton. RSS Discovery was one of the last 3-masted wooden ships to be built in Britain. Though based on the template of the great Dundee whalers, it was designed specifically for Antarctic research. The cost, with engines and all the scientific specifications? In today's money (don't you love that phrase), just over £4 million. Here's to greenheart wood.
The sun may be shining in New Zealand, but the day is bleak. There is a gas leak in the Maui gas pipeline, It is affecting many industries. Supermarket shelves are getting empty. Motel guests will have to have cold showers. Burger King, which shut most of its 41 restaurants Not very nice.
I'd like to start by giving a fun I'm-only-human disclaimer:
When I first started in roller derby I was a young fire-cracker with no passion-management or self-control, whatsoever.
So I steam-rolled my way into some pretty harsh social situations, and learned a lot by communicating in every worst way possible.
But... I did deeply reflect on and learn from these encounters.
Each time.
And by reflect, I mean I cried a lot.
Still do sometimes. Nobody's perfect.
Over time I've made every attempt to learn lessons-to-come the easy way instead:
Partly from considering the future potentialities of my planned actions, and partly from other people's mistakes and triumphs.
Every sports' (and non sports') success story (and epic fail) has been documented one way or another, and I've been gathering these stories through books, articles, and documentaries over the years.
So many lessons learned, I'm not even sure which source a lot of them came from at this point, except for the ones I've personally experienced.
So I'm gonna go ahead and share some of that with you, in hopes that you can glean some of what could easily be learned the hard way.... but... easily feels much better!
This blog post will be about Expression, and the next about Conflict Resolution. Most communication breakdowns seem to unravel from these two sources.
Expression Advice:
1) Consider Your Audience
Most people in roller derby do not like to be told what to do. So, try to avoid using demanding qualifying statements like "You should," or "We have to."
I'm still working on this, being as bossy as I am.
But I'm not trying to change who I am, as much as develop the greater aspects of leadership and diminish the lower potential that comes with this trait.
2) Consider Your Timing
One example:
When your Head of PR is lacing up her skates, she's not likely to be as interested in talking about your latest and greatest idea as you are, just because she's there and accessible.
She's probably more into the idea of just being a skater for a couple hours.
Set up meetings with people when you want to talk about stuff that isn't immediately fun or related to what's happening right-now-this-minute, even if that's when you're excited.
If the timing isn't right for both people, then it's not right to communicate.
If you're unsure if the timing is right, ask. "Is this a good time to talk to you about _______?" And if it isn't, don't push it. Just try again at a better time.
3) Consider Your Impact
Passionate people often just blurt out whatever they're feeling because they feel it.
But... other people can feel you too. People you train with can often be very intuitively connected to you, whether you're aware of it or not.
For example, if you're always saying something mean about yourself, I feel sorry for you.
I don't want to feel sorry for you, though! I want to feel good around my friends.
In fact, over time I may resent you for making me feel bad for you. I might even avoid you because you don't think about how what you say makes me feel. And that's kind of selfish.
Consider how it feels to be on the other end of what you have to say. About you, or someone else. Does it feel good or bad?
We can work on this together.
4) Consider Your Motivations
Do you have a reason for what you want to say to someone? Is it a positive reason? Or do you want to talk just to talk AT someone?
Because a discussion can be fun and interesting.
But listening to someone go on and on (without including anyone else in their one-person-conversation), or say a lot of negative things can be really exhausting.
And it's really hard to get heard, when you do have something to say, if you have a history of being exhausting to be around.
But, on the other side... if you are a considerate person in conversation... and know how to listen as well as share; you're interesting and feel good to be around.
And then what you have to say is easier to hear. It's something I think about a lot.
5) Consider Your Potential
I'm finding that quantifying statements can be alienating to others, or limiting to personal potential.
For example, "I hate it when people _____________." Or "I always________________."
Can sometimes close doors to communication with other people by unwittingly putting a wedge between you with statements like that.
Your potential could be to be the kind of person who gets along with all kinds of people. Even people you have nothing in common with.
But... you might not get to find out if the door is shut to some early on. Honesty is totally great, but sometimes less words is more... inclusive. (Note to self!)
OK, enough with the words, already! I hope some of this is helpful to you.
Whether it is or not, have a tremendously-credibly-considerately-consistantly-amazing rad day today!
glilding through the sky on her broomy air craft,
This seasonal lady of Hallow e'en night
