Driftwood

 

DRIFTWOOD 

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

 

I saw a log of driftwood, resting inland from the shore.

Some would call it detritus, but I would call it more.

I looked it over carefully and traced its deep etched lines,

The weather told a story of twists and turns and time.

 

The driftwood lay above the tides, but not beyond the winds,

For they had sent its body to a spot where life begins.

Around it there grew seedlings, and they fluttered in the breeze,

As if announcing here begins and ends a story of the seas.

 

I sat upon that driftwood log and listened to the waves,

 I thought about the lives it knew, and how many had been saved,

As it drifted miles away from home, and lifted up the lost,

Helping them embrace its hope when fear around them tossed.

 

Beyond the rocks and tidal reach, more driftwood could be seen,

Where others there before me had found a space to lean,

By building little monuments and shelters made from limbs,

Though none might last the winter in the face of biting winds.

 

Yet driftwood lets us come to rest on a temporary plot,

That tells a changing story showing nothing ever rots,

The cycle just begins again and memories abide,

In places where there’s shelter and life beyond the tide.  

Why We Should Look Fear in the Face

 

 Why We Should Look Fear in the Face

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

 At his first inauguration in 1933, in the depths of the country’s Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt warned, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”  He described it as “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts.” 

 Things like fear of failure, social rejection, loss of employment, a diagnosis of cancer, and near-death experiences have freaked out many of us from time to time. The causes lie all around.  In their mildest form, they produce anxiety.  At the extreme, when we fixate on certain fears, they may morph into phobias or mental illness.

 Now more than usual, our country is struggling with fear.  What is worse, the problem is intensified by widespread anger, which works just as well at distorting our vision, warping our thinking, and spawning hate. Lately the dramas of fear and anger are causing us to “circle the wagons” to stop others from sharing our space.

 Fearfulness causes us to distrust others or even ourselves to do the right thing.  We sacrifice our sense of community and togetherness.  We stop listening or only listen to what we want to hear. 

 Under our fears grows a willingness to blame others instead of ourselves, never to admit guilt, or to insulate ourselves by litigation.   Stubborn ignorance leads us to deny science or delay giving it due consideration.  Tragically, the pandemic has played on some of our worst fears.  It has convinced a third of us to resist life-protecting immunizations, despite a 99 percent unvaccinated rate among related hospitalizations.   

 In no small measure our fears arise not from too little information, but too much, provided quickly by the media, typically undigested and spewed into our minds and ears, absent wisdom or perspective.  Awash in data, we grow inclined to ignore or reject it, believing we are powerless.  Sometimes we latch onto the wrong conclusions, for instance by insisting that shark attacks and snake bites far outnumber fatal traffic accidents or heart disease.

 Not always is fear a damaging emotion.  It can be a survival response as it releases empowering adrenaline.  The scariness of horror movies and roller coasters provides a satisfying rush of dopamine.  And sometimes fear and anger galvanize us into steps that may resolve an issue or strengthen a cause. Whenever there is time, we should stop to examine the underlying worthiness of purpose. 

 I always find it useful to explicitly name my sources of fear as a way to challenge them.  I try to separate anger from fear, and to consider whether threats are real or imagined. And before acting, I always ask myself, what are the best and worst things that can happen.   

 Fear can deeply affect family relationships.  My own mom provides a lesson in fears unintentionally nurtured by too much dependence on my dad who took care of everything.  Throughout her married life she remained fearful of bankbooks, swimming, driving a car, or using mechanical conveniences of all sorts.  When we insist on self-responsibility and independence at an early age, significant fears may never materialize.    

 Fears that edge into lasting illness may respond to behavior modification or more formal cognitive therapy.  Sometimes by seeking out mentors or sounding boards, little by little we may gain self-assurance, start to listen, consider a broader array of choices, and find common ground. 

 Whenever I start to feel afraid, I remember advice given not by FDR, but by his spouse Eleanor who said, “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.”  

 

 

The Galapagos Tortoise and the Snapping Turtle

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

 

We were witnessing a slow-motion confrontation between two giant creatures, each weighing hundreds of pounds, on the island of Santa Cruz in the Galapagos.  At issue was ownership of a muddy water hole nestled in the grassy surroundings of a tortoise farm.  About 200 of these strange helmeted creatures were slowly aging there, some of them more than 100 years old.  

 As we watched, the two opponents faced off by bracing up their front legs, raising their surprisingly long necks, and opening their jaws wide while hissing.  By no coincidence, the one with the longer neck dominated and chased off his opponent at a snails’ pace.  It was just as likely, said our guide, that what we saw was a mating ritual.  A male and female might be inching their way toward an awkward tryst.   In the wild, the line between love and war may deceive us.   

 How did some 15 different species of tortoise find their way from mainland South America to the Galapagos archipelago?  No one really knows, but with no natural predators and mountains of lush grass, some of them grow up to six feet long and a thousand pounds.  After near extinction (their meat is a sailor’s delight), currently they number more than 15,000.  The tortoises are well prepared to survive since they can live without food or water for up to 16 months, and they spend up to 16 hours daily just resting.

 Tortoises remind me of other-worldly creatures because their kind faces and stretchable necks look just like E.T. trying to phone home.   They also remind me of a brontosaurus from millions of years ago, contentedly munching on vegetation in Jurassic Park.  

 In contrast, there is a reptilian relative, also a turtle, who looks and acts a bit like tyrannosaurus rex.  This creature is threatening, ugly, loves raw meat, and has a nasty bite.

We call him a snapper.  He lives nearby.   

 The snapping turtle was declared New York state’s reptile in 2006.  They may weigh up to 30 pounds, have shells up to 20 inches long, and they can live up to 50 years in captivity.

Unlike tortoises who dwell on land and may drink abundant amounts of water, the snapper seldom strays far from the water of ponds, lakes and streams and emerges only in the spring to lay eggs.   Wikipedia literature rightly describes them as aggressive predators with a belligerent disposition.  Their powerful beak-like jaws can snap off careless fingers.  And they have a surprisingly mobile head and neck and can move fast for a turtle – but only when they want to.

 Like many who live near rural ponds, we enjoy stories about snappers.  Several of these pre-historic looking creatures thrive in our pond.  A few years ago, one of them, in search of soft ground to lay eggs, decided to stop for a rest in our pool.  

 Every morning she would topple into our pool and glare menacingly at us.  During the night she would climb out and leave.  Meanwhile we tried hoisting her out with a shovel.  Unfortunately, she was too heavy.  One day we just happened to leave our radio on by the pool.  Upon returning, we were amazed to find her nestled right beside the speaker.  We had discovered a promising strategy for turtle removal.  It worked for us more than once.  Despite having no ear drums, apparently turtles can respond to lower or deeper sound frequencies and vibrations. 

 A Galapagos tortoise and a New York snapper seem worlds apart, but they share many similarities.  Technically, they are all turtles.  Both have a permanent domed carapace and scales made of the same substances as our own fingernails and hair.  Both need air to breathe.  Both lay eggs on land and go to great lengths to do so, then abandoning the result.  The temperature of the soil pre-determines the sex inside those eggs.   Both are cold-blooded creatures who need heat to activate.  Both live very long lives.  Neither has teeth (but this does not preclude nasty bites).  Both hiss when angry or threatened. 

 There are some big differences.  Turtles live in water, while tortoises live on land.  Most turtles have web feet.  Tortoises have clawed feet, powered by massive hind legs to push their weight up and forward.  Aesop’s fable suggests why the tortoise won his race with the hare.  Those sturdy legs pushed him to the finish while the cocky hare fell asleep.  Tortoises and turtles convince us that slow and steady wins the race.      

 

Taking Kanban To The Bank

 

Taking Kanban To the Bank 

by Jeffrey M. Bowen

 

For several years our son Seth was a technical writer for a large bank in the Midwest.   He became adept at translating a regular flow regulatory gobbledygook into clear written instructions.  His biggest surprise came when the bank experienced a tsunami of 14,000 federally mandated regulations with a deadline for full processing and compliance within six months.  

 

The bank’s officials realized they would need to think out of the box to meet this bureaucratic demand. Thus they turned to a project management system invented in the 1950s to expedite Japanese car manufacturing.  Kanban is named for a series of cards or signboards which help teams communicate the status of each phase in a process where cost control requires a continuously adjusted balance between inventory and production.  In other words, a project is broken into flexible, customized chunks and all of them moved forward simultaneously without backlogs and delay.  Sometimes this is called agile or just-in-time manufacturing.   Using kanban to process voluminous regulations was an unusual and innovative solution.     

 

This is where our son entered the picture.   A calm communicator and always able to teach and simply explain technical matters, Seth was given a lead role for a team of 15 employees from different bank divisions.  Expected to isolate themselves in a meeting room, surrounded by progress cards and lined with signboards, the group was charged with rapidly churning out 14,000 pieces of procedural guidance in short order.   As the first team progressed, two more teams were launched.   

 

 Project management like this is a world away from my professional experience in public education.  The closest comparison might be a music director or a cafeteria manager.  Perhaps this is why I would fail as a chef who needs to have a multi-course dinner arrive on time.   The salad and dessert may involve only a step or two, but preparation of the main course may entail many more steps.  The ingredients for everything must be purchased, coordinated, be available when needed, and prepared simultaneously. 

 

 Motivation, training, and practice make a big difference.  Not long after diving into the kanban project, Seth became an enthusiastic advocate, often explaining what was going on in his conference room to visiting executives.   Also, he started to use an interesting new vocabulary.     

 

 One day he called to tell us he was planning to take a certification course to become a scrum master.  A what?  I almost told him he was too old to be taking up rugby where the game begins with a scum of two teams who lock arms in a circle and push each other around like sumo wrestlers until the ball gets kicked free.    

 

In agile project management, apparently a scrum is far afield from rugby.  It is a management framework introduced by the Japanese.  The central idea is for teams to be pursue separate, yet completable tasks, each focused on a “sprint” or relatively short period of time to complete and ship out the partial result.   A reassessment of progress, including any backlogs or lack of focus, occurs after each sprint, and changes may be made to improve effectiveness and efficiency.

 

 The scrum master’s role is to serve as a liaison between the product owner and the scrum sprinting team.  Speed is a priority for scrumming.   If something does not work, make it “fail fast” and move on to what works.  Internet literature on this topic describes Netflix as a prime example.   With the user’s experience as a priority, new listings are issued regularly, and video can be shipped or accessed fast.  What is not working can be excised quickly.   Whether it is kanban, or the more structured approach of scrum, all of these methods focus on responding to change instead of following a lockstep plan.  They lend themselves to the use of computer software.  All of them take a Japanese cue known as “kaizen”, in other words a process of continuous emphasis on efficiency, quality and improvement.  

 

 Our son’s kanban team reached their goal two months ahead of deadline.  The bank proved it was able to adjust quickly to new mandates, rely on teamwork, and ensure a continuous flow of productivity.  Agile systems like kanban and scrum  have surely become the cutting edge of our economic future.     

 

2/27/20

 

A Student Exchange Program Produces Memorable Experiences

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

 

We experienced pangs of anxiety as our son Seth boarded a plane for Tokyo, Japan in the late summer of 1991.  He would be gone for his entire junior year in high school.

 

A few months before he had attended an after-school meeting sponsored by the local Rotary, and had come home with the startling idea of going to Japan.  We had no idea he wanted this much adventure.  

 

 Rotary sponsors interviewed Seth to be sure he was mature enough to understand the rules and his responsibilities.  Then we as parents were asked to an interview.   They wanted assurance we knew what we were getting into, and they asked if we would support our son throughout the year.   We gulped and said yes of course.  

 

So began a remarkable experience for all of us.  We were told our son would stay with five different Rotary families over the year.  He would attend a Tokyo suburban high school.   Classes would be taught mostly in Japanese.

 

 His very first task would be to greet his classmates in Japanese at a school assembly.  What?  We rushed to find a tutor.  She tried, but at length he mastered only one simple sentence.    

 

After landing, Seth was greeted by a delegation of Rotarians who worried about whether he would eat Japanese cuisine and not lose weight.  Fortunately, he adjusted quickly to fish and seaweed dishes and even mastered an assembly greeting in the native language.   

 

The high school he attended championed most American sports, including our traditional football.  His tall height made our son a popular recruit for basketball.   The physical education curriculum required students to learn therapeutic massage.  I thought this was a wonderful idea!

 

  A photo he sent of the cafeteria’s perfectly packed and precisely measured steamed lunches in little cardboard boxes looked delicious   Once weekly, every uniformed student had to practice a tea ceremony after climbing into a small teahouse in the school front yard.  Our gangly son found this was a physical challenge.   

 

 

 Seth’s language learning gradually grew thanks to an unusual resource -- television.  After three months, he reported beginning to dream in Japanese.   Actually, he was mastering Japanese tv ads.  When he spoke with classmates using these promotional slogans, girls especially found it riotously funny. 

 

The year flew by even though we were never quite sure when Seth would call.  He shocked us by phoning from downtown Tokyo on New Year’s Eve.  With exchange student friends, he had transferred to several different trains on the way, but assured us it was absolutely safe.  Often he shared Rotary sponsored adventures, which included Disneyland and a climb up Mt. Fuji.

 

Seth’s last host family took him to northern Japan where they purchased a snowboard for him.  In return he gifted his family and their children all his clothes.  He returned to the states with nothing more than that board and the clothes on his back.  He had grown five inches taller, but immeasurably more in maturity and confidence. As a bonus, he even got credit for his entire junior year.

 

I cannot say enough positive things about carefully organized and monitored student exchange programs like those of the Rotary Youth Exchange.  Theirs has been around since 1927, with the year-long program established in 1958.  Rotary clubs annually sponsor about 9,000 students, aged15-19, for exchanges with 80 different countries.   

 

Commitments usually involve not just sending your child to another country, but a child from abroad returning to stay with your family.  Our inbound visitor for three months   was a bubbly young Japanese girl who loved our son’s jokes and enthusiastically shared household cooking chores and country hikes.  

 

More details can be accessed at the Rotary International web site.   Every American student and their parents can gain an entirely new perspective from this kind of eye-opening, culturally enriching experience.    

 

2/27/20    

 

Lessons for Life in Three Stories

 

Lessons for Life in Three Stories

By Jeffrey M. Bowen 

 As a school administrator, I spent years attending workshops and conferences trying to glean lessons I could apply to my work.  Often I would return uninspired and frustrated because I could not see relevance in what I had learned.  In retrospect, I have discovered the real messages from those workshops came from life stories. Data may deaden the mind, and generalizations may weary us, but the stories still remain vital and memorable.   

 Therefore, I would like to introduce several characters whose experiences were described in workshops that taught me the most.    

 My first character is Jim Hayhurst who, in 1988, attempted to scale Mt. Everest.  His ordeal was harrowing.  Ultimately it failed, and more than one of his mountain climber colleagues died from altitude sickness.  Yet his year-long ordeal ultimately produced a self-revealing book titled “The Right Mountain”.  Every chapter contains a metaphor about success in life.  Factors like preparation, teamwork, shared expertise, slowing down to take one step at a time, and maintaining a balanced perspective come into play as Hayhurst and his companions face life-threatening encounters while they struggle toward the 30,000-foot summit. 

 The book title takes its lesson from the tragic death of an expert climber who joined the expedition and misjudged conditions because he tried to repeat the same strategies he used on another mountain.  Each mountain, each situation, Hayhurst tells us, involves a vital combination of factors.  You must know just who you are, your core values, the skills you can offer, how you like to operate, and your ability to compare what you can offer with the challenges you face.

 A very different cast of characters is described by Dr. Spencer Johnson in the short book titled “Who Moved My Cheese?”  They are imaginary mice, actually four of them.  Two are named Sniff and Scurry, and two others, Hem and Haw, are mice-like, but called “littlepeople” – beings who are as small as mice but who look and act much like people today.  The idea of the book is that these beings experience the challenges of life as they run through a maze looking for cheesy nourishment and happiness.

 Sniff and Scurry are said to possess only rodent brains, so their search for cheese is instinctive.  Hem and Haw, on the other hand, are looking for “a different kind of cheese” associated with happiness and success.   All four discover a huge cache of cheese in one of the corridors.   Soon Hem and Haw arrogantly regard the cheese pile as theirs, not noticing the pile has been dwindling.  Sniff and Scurry quickly and instinctively head off to find another supply, but the two littlepeople sit tight and grow angry and frustrated.

 Righteous indignation sums up their reaction.  After all, the cheese pile had been their material source of security, and the reason they felt like the “the big cheese”.  Ultimately, Hem clings to the same spot based on excuses like being comfortable, getting too old to move, and fear of failure.  Haw reluctantly leaves his friend behind, trusting the unknown and painting a positive picture of success in his mind.  Warnings include the dangers of fear becoming a habit and failing to notice small changes before the big ones happen.  In the end, Hem rejoins Haw.  The lessons of the book for us are that change is inevitable.  One should anticipate and monitor it, and adapt quickly to new circumstances.

 A third story is about Fred the mailman.  Author Mark Sanborn uses “The Fred Factor” to highlight how passion in one’s work and life can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary.  Fred is described as “a gold-plated example of what personalized service looks like.” Based on a true story, this mail carrier is a living parable of principles that confirm everyone makes a difference; success is built on relationships; it costs you nothing to create value for others; and reinventing your work will renew your perspective.

 The essential point about Fred is how changing the way you look at your job helps you to transform it, even if nothing in the nature of the work changes.  At the same time, focusing on service yields terrific rewards for everyone who is involved.   The people we remember most are those whose inspiration, commitment, and inclination to view us as friends make all the difference.

 Every day I find new ways to use the key ideas found in the three books I have described here.  I think you might too.  The challenges are these: to assess situations in terms of your personal values and the skills you can bring; to break through habits of fear and the arrogance of comfort; and to view work as way to affirm service and the value of others. All of these are top qualities of administrative leadership.  Better yet, they provide marvelous lessons for life.      

 

The English Language Is Endlessly Fascinating

 

The English Language is Endlessly Fascinating

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

 

Recently I spotted a shabby old Merriam-Webster pocket dictionary in my bookcase.  Held together with masking tape, the binding reminded me of the countless times I riffled through it on my mission to become a dedicated wordsmith. 

 

I have loved words my entire life, starting with mimicking nursery rhymes my grandmother read to me as a three-year-old, through several professional careers that constantly depended on words of analysis and inspiration.  In fact, when I retired a few years ago, my school district colleagues gifted me with a plaque that reads, “Words are the voice of the heart.” Most likely they meant I use way too many words to explain things.

 

I have had plenty to choose from over the years since the English language has millions of words.  They have bubbled up in our dictionaries from an ancient British melting pot of origins beginning with Germanic, Anglo-Saxon, and Old Norse (think Viking), followed in the last millenium by French and Latin.  More or less, our words reflect about 29 percent Latin, 29 percent French, 26 percent German, six percent Greek, and 10 percent “other”.  American English adds a distinctive twist due to the historical assimilation of Mexican Spanish, including terms that name our geography, weather, cowboy life, and even ballroom dancing.   

 

English is endlessly fascinating.  Digging for its roots can be revealing and entertaining.  I am sorry I did not take Latin in school because so many medical, technical, and legal words spring from this so-called dead language. Instead, I learned to speak poor French, though it does offer an amazing variety of terms to describe everything from meats and cooking to money and denim.  We borrow many French words without bothering to change them.      

 

Pronunciation varies tremendously. We violate rules of grammar at every turn.  Because our language derives from so many sources, there are thousands of ways to say essentially the same thing, so a thesaurus outweighs any dictionary.  What is more, jargon and special expressions may overwhelm English language learners.  As for spelling, I heard an English teacher recently describe it as something invented by a seven-year-old who had eaten too much sugar candy. 

 

Despite these challenges, English has become the international “lingua franca” -- that is, a bridge for worldwide communication.  This is partly because of our wandering commercial ways, but earlier because the British managed to colonize most of the world.

 

 Another reason for my passion comes from having spent a year teaching English in Vietnam.  While stationed there, my charge was to teach military cadets enough conversational English so they could be sent stateside to learn the technical side of aircraft.  I remain unsure of the logic here, but the military’s language learning method of modeling terms and sentences worked wonders.  My students proved to be quick learners.  

 

Remember that old pocket dictionary I mentioned?  It became my bible in Vietnam.  During our free time there was little to do, so I decided to memorize any words I did not know in the dictionary.  Of course, context was missing, but it never stopped me from excelling at Scrabble or frustrating editors of my future articles.  On balance, I concluded that one can find more unhappy than happy words in our language.

 

Different types of knowledge call for different types of learning and vocabulary. One can make a convincing case that each word we learn is like a signal flag, below which are planted whole networks of meaning. Our vocabulary is strongly correlated with intelligence, ability to comprehend new information, and even one’s level of wealth.  When children are not exposed to a rich vocabulary at home (reading aloud to them is key) especially in their pre-school years, they struggle to catch up in school.

 

One of the reasons why schools shy away from explicit vocabulary instruction is that there are so many words.  It is said that the number of printed school English words is around 85,000.  Rest assured, there are effective ways to teach ourselves vocabulary.  We can make these work for us anytime.

 

Here is how.  First, expose yourself to new words in different contexts an ample number of times – reportedly at least six.  Then use the word at every opportunity (even if you bore your friends).  Associate your new words with memorable images.  Direct vocabulary instruction definitely does work, particularly when the words are critically important to new content.  A teacher is not always necessary, but it does help immeasurably to be curious and to read anything and everything whenever possible.  Finally, when you run onto a word you don’t know, stop to look it up on your cell phone or in your dusty dictionary.