2016 Fall October 4 2016

68 degrees this morning, walk 36:33 minutes 

High wind this morning.  Glad it wasn’t any colder.  Actually the wind hasn’t been that bad lately, until this morning.   

Listening to a book on “Great American Literature”, they mention that Ben Franklin said “Being a reasonable person is good because a reasonable person can find a reason for anything they want to do”.   (Obvious meant in a humorous way.)

He actually made the comment about it after he went off his vegetation diet.  He saw some fish being cooked, and noted some of the fish had eaten other fish. He  reasoned that if fish eat other fish, it is ok for him to eat fish also!  He said he throughly enjoyed his meal and basically enjoyed fish (and I assume other meat) for the rest of his life.

I didn’t realize that “Poor Richard’s Almanac” was the first best seller in America!  

He also is now reviewing Washington Irving (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and “Rip Van Winkle”. He has some interesting  comments on each.  

The lecturer  feels that a lot of Irving’s writing concerns the changes in America and his characters represented the past and the present of American, especially the “busy” ethnic and culture versus the slower pace of the past.  Sound familiar?

Somehow the past is alway romanticized, although there is no question that the pace of living has quickened.

One method I use to try to “permanently” learn something is to try to explain it to someone else.  I won’t try to do that here (at least to any degree), but I am thinking of giving some short speeches at Toastmasters about it or maybe even write a short article summarizing what I learned.  

One thing I like about the ICMA volunteer professional program is it requires you to write how you are going to use what you learned.  That is ideal for me.  Of course, you have to take the time to think about what you learned and how you would use it and then write it out. 

Some of the concepts I learned at the last conference I want to review further is making decisions and “Vampire Decisions”, and especially “Mindfulness” and experiencing the moment.  Also, I would like to review the “multitasking” concept.

Another concept that I found interesting was “crowdfunding” for pubic projects. There is actually a lot to the concept as far as the various aspects of it, both legal and otherwise. 

Back the Apple iWatch Fever I have recently developed, I have narrowed my selection down to two models, one quite a bit more expensive  It doesn’t really matter, since neither model is currently available  

There is a chance one may pop up in the local Apple Store (similar to the way Aliene’s iPhone popped up at the Apple Store), so I regularly check at 8 a.m. every morning, or sometime during the day.

Actually, the day we came back, the Apple Store had one of the watches I wanted, but I hadn’t decided enough yet which model I wanted to make the decision.

I have been reviewing available “apps” etc.for the iWatch.  The learning curve is always long for me!

That’s it for now, Tuesday, October 4, 2016.