Clippings

Letter or Email?

Women's Wear Daily checked with magazine editors and found--no surprises here, methinks--that letters to the editor, while not completely dead, are far outpaced by emails, tweets and blog or website comments, as well as commentary on readers' own blogs. From the article:
Glamour receives 30 to 40 handwritten notes a week, compared with 1,000 e-mailed letters. Both are a fraction of the 5,000 comments glamour.com receives online. New York magazine editor in chief Adam Moss noted the publication gets roughly three snail mail letters and 100 e-mails a week — that’s only 1 percent of the feedback it compiles. One story on nymag.com can illicit [sic] 3,000 comments in a week on the site. In effect, letters to editors have not, or will not, die. Instead, they’ve simply morphed into different forms.
Now that we've settled that, perhaps I shall elicit an RSS subscription to my blog's weekly writing coach feature for the author of the illicit usage seen above....
via dontgetcaught.biz

For years I've been preaching about the power of a personal thank-you note. It's not exactly the same thing, but maybe it's time to rethink.

Searching for the Soul of Government | Innovating with Meaning | Fast Company

I would add that our nation, as well as so many others around the globe, suffers not so much from a "crisis of competence" but a "crisis of spirit."  In this regard, it is the essence of government, at its most fundamental level, that is at risk, not the capacity of elected, appointed, and career public officials to discharge their responsibilities effectively and efficiently.  Only by reconnecting with its "soul" can good government be exposed and the challenges of guarding the public's interest be accommodated with integrity, dignity, and, yes, transparency.
via fastcompany.com

From a thoughtful post by Alex Pattakos. I wish more people would not only read it, but think about it and act on it.

A quote to remember

What has happened to me has been the very reverse of what appears to be the experience of most of my friends. Instead of dwindling to a point, Santa Claus has grown larger and larger in my life until he fills almost the whole of it. It happened this way. As a child I was faced with a phenomenon requiring explanation. I hung up at the end of my bed an empty stocking, which in the morning became a full stocking. I had done nothing to produce the things that filled it. I had not worked for them, or made them or helped to make them. I had not even been good-far from it. And the explanation was that a certain being whom people called Santa Claus was benevolently disposed toward me. What we believed was that a certain benevolent agency did give us those toys for nothing. And, as I say, I believe it still. I have merely extended the idea. Then I only wondered who put the toys in the stocking; now I wonder who put the stocking by the bed, and the bed in the room, and the room in the house, and the house on the planet, and the great planet in the void. Once I only thanked Santa Claus for a few dolls and crackers; now I thank him for stars and street faces and wine and the great sea. Once I thought it delightful and astonishing to find a present so big that it only went halfway into the stocking. Now I am delighted and astonished every morning to find a present so big that it takes two stockings to hold it and then leaves a great deal outside; it is the large and preposterous present of myself, as to the origin of which I can offer no suggestion except that Santa Claus gave it to me in a fit of peculiarly fantastic goodwill.

G. K. Chesterton

This is a long remembered quotation that I spent most of the month looking for and found only now.

Brain injury inspiration!

So, the New Year not yet arrived, I’ve begun incorporating my resolutions into life a little early. Overcoming fear and doubt are perhaps rather ambiguous goals, but if living with a generalized anxiety of failure is possible, I assume the opposite, living with a generalized sense of purpose and accomplishment, is also possible. Yes, anything and everything is possible!

Michael Rost suffered a brain injury in a car crash. These days, he's adopted the motto "everything is possible," and is preparing to set out on a cross-country trip to raise money for brain injury research. This message of support on the CoTradeCo web site pretty much summarizes my attitude, too. It's a delicate balance though; I sometimes think I see too much attention paid to physical activity. I wish more people could understand and appreciate that just choosing to survive is sometimes a heroic act. 

Bioness device helps former Navy man walk after stroke - USATODAY.com

The cause of Peace's stroke is still unknown. He spent Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas that year in Scripps Memorial Hospital Encinitas in California with no use of his right side. After months in outpatient care at Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego, he could walk only with a hard-plastic leg brace and a cane.

Now, with the help of a cane and an electronic device called the NESS L300, Peace competes in triathlons and is training to bike for the U.S. Paralympic Military Program.

The stroke left him with about 10% to 15% use of his right arm and 60% of his right leg. He has occasional difficulties transforming thoughts into words and has "foot drop," a condition in which the foot remains pointed toward the ground, not parallel, when he picks up his right leg to walk. The NESS L300, which is manufactured by Bioness, helps correct the condition through electrical stimulation.

The device consists of three parts: a blood pressure-like cuff that wraps around the leg just below the knee, a heel switch worn in the shoe that senses the foot's movement, and a hand controller worn around the neck.

via usatoday.com

Another great story about Bioness.