I was trained to teach high school English. If you want to try a presentation skills challenge, try presenting poetry structure to the non college-bound freshmen at 8:30 in the morning. You almost have to set yourself on fire to get their full attention and many mornings I had a can of lighter fluid in hand as I reached my wit’s end. But then I realized that all I had to do was shut up. Inevitably, the class would calm down and listen up, often to hear who was on their way to the dean’s office. Continue reading
Tag Archives: technology
Content Tapas
I love tapas. You probably do too although you may not think of them as such. In Spain, these are little plates of food – a few bites – that traditionally have been eaten while you’re at a bar. In Italy, particularly in Venice, they’re called cicchetti – bite sized appetizers. Bar food. Go on, admit it. How often have you looked at a menu and ordered 3 or 4 appetizers while skipping an entrée? They’re the stuff of which great bar hopping experiences are made. Meals you eat in snack-able portions. We’ve become a culture of snackers, and it’s not just in food. Continue reading
Filed under digital media, food, Thinking Aloud
Painting The Foundation
One Summer, my friend T and I painted houses. After doing what had been my other job that Summer – selling encyclopedias door to door (and these weren’t Encarta discs, kids) – sweltering under the eaves wasn’t such a big deal. The woman whose house we were painting turned out to be a real pain – switching shades after we had done quite a bit, finding invisible missed spots, and, at the end, demanding we paint the foundation even though that hadn’t been part of the original job quote. It wasn’t so much the additional labor – only an extra day or so – but the fact that to do it right we had to rent a power washer to clean off the foundation so it could be painted as well as buy a lot of extra paint. Goodbye profits! Honest young men that we were, we bought what amounted to white-wash, threw it on to a foundation we had cleaned off with a hose, and prayed it wouldn’t rain until the check cleared. I’m still bothered by it 35+ years later. Continue reading
Filed under Growing up, Reality checks
Consult Keith 