A Magical Weekend

This post doesn't tie directly to school, per se, but it does tie in with learning. I have the best time with people from whom I can learn something. I can do idle chit-chat, but to really capture my attention, the best thing to do is to tell me about something I know very little (or especially) nothing about. I had a dear friend come and spend the weekend with me. We hadn't seen each other in months, so we spent the greater majority of the day playing catch-up. She is a recently converted Catholic, so she asked if I could find a Catholic bookstore that might be nearby. I found one in Farmers Branch and we went there on Saturday afternoon. We had a delightful time. I had been in Christian bookstores many times over the years, but none of them affected me as much as this Catholic bookstore did. The store was completely modern, yet you could feel the history and tradition of the Catholic faith. My friend patiently explained what she was going there to get (a monthly book of daily prayers and scripture readings) and she explained more about the daily rituals of practicing the Catholic faith. She showed me how you use a rosary. I don't know that I had ever seen one. She also showed me these lovely miniature paintings of the 12 stations and told me what they symbolized. We walked around the store, which sold everything from priestly robes to incense to crucifixes (some lovely crucifixes - I saw a striking metal one), to all kinds of study bibles. They even had a rack of DVDs with popular movies that had Catholic themes, such as the Ingrid Bergman version of Joan of Arc and the popular comedy from the 1960s, The Trouble With Angels. Our next errand was the flagship Half-Price Books on Northwest Highway, so we discussed religion on our way to the next bookstore. I learned all kinds of information that I didn't know before.

We revisited the topic several times during her stay and she was always a fountain of helpful information. I rarely, if ever, discuss religion with anyone because I feel that it is extremely personal and really no one's business. Additionally, I resented the teachings of the church I grew up in that encouraged us to be witnesses and proselytize others, so I dug my heels in and decided that if I ever went back to church, it would be my business and no one else's.

She wrote me today to tell me what a wonderful time she had. She was able to relax and get away, even though she didn't travel all that far, and that helped her tremendously. I was glad to hear it, but I had a wonderful time too.

Falling into Fall!

School starts in just over a week, and we're getting ready for a new school year. I really don't think I can handle more than 6 graduate hours per semester and work full-time, so I'm taking two classes: New Technologies of Instruction and Instructional Systems Design. I'm excited about taking my first ID class. I do instructional design work, of a sort, but I've never really learned much about techniques or processes. I do it all by instinct, and while that seems to work a good deal of the time, I'm sure it's not the best way. It's like a story I read about Tallulah Bankhead, who stormed the American and British stages (along with radio and a few films, including Hitchock's Lifeboat) with her vibrant personality. She was starring in a (then) brand new play written by Lillian Hellman, The Little Foxes. She had never really trained much as an actress and had gotten by mostly on instinct and personality, but her director really bore down hard on her during rehearsals and forced her to learn technique so she would be good not only on opening night, but every night. I look forward to large, steaming helpings of learning this semester. It's hard to believe that I will graduate in a year!

Wiki, Schmiki!

My post title notwithstanding, we recently launched a corporate wiki and it's a good thing that we're embracing Web 2.0 tools. It has been online for not quite a month and we've been getting some good participation from our customers. However, since this is a corporate wiki being used by corporate employees, there is a great deal of concern in HR and Legal about possible inappropriate wiki postings. Ideally, a wiki is supposed to monitor itself and users would resolve inappropriate postings without having to get a moderator involved. I hope that we can get to that point, but for right now, we check the wiki several times a day to see if anything obscene or obviously against company policy has been posted. I think that once the wiki is more self-monitoring, we will see some more effective participation and get better results out of it.

We've also learned that we have to market the wiki so that people don't forget about it!