Prig offered Pig the first chance at dessert,
So Pig reached out and speared the bigger part.

"Now that," cried Prig, "is extremely rude of you!"
Pig, with his mouth full, said, "Wha, wha' wou' 'ou do?"

"I would have taken the littler bit," said Prig.
"Stop kvetching, then it's what you've got," said Pig.

           So virtue is its own reward, you see.
           And that is all it's ever going to be.

This time of year, I nearly come to terms with entropy. The grass has stopped growing, and so has the wild mint and spotted touch-me-knot. The snow hasn’t begun to fall. Most of the firewood is stacked, as is the hay. The thistle-down has blown, milkweed ditto. The leaves are down. That’s about as organized as it gets around here.

For a few weeks in midautumn, I feel as though I can see the farm plain. I get a clear picture of what needs doing, and I rediscover the simple pleasure of doing those things one at a time. A rubber feed pan needs moving from the chicken yard to the barn. I walk it down, and it stays put. In summer, every object on this place gravitates freely from place to place. Every morning, I get up and everything is everywhere else. That feeling goes away when fall comes. Fall is the season of staying put, except for the leaves.

There was a wet, sloppy, dousing of snow the other night, heavy as a deep depression. The dogs and I looked at it regretfully, as if the darkness were growing even thicker as the snow fell. But that, too, is the beauty of this time of year. Darkness can only get so dark, so deep. What it does get is longer, and yet even that’s good news. We’ve already been there in the past — in the long dark of December, the deep chill of January. This is not some galaxy we’ve never visited before.

As the snow melted the next morning, I found myself wondering how it all feels to the striped-bark maple I planted a decade ago. Its leaves were among the first to fall, but now its twigs are stark with dull ruby buds. They are poised for a season I can’t quite imagine yet. It’s tempting to believe that all of that maple’s strength has swollen precariously in those buds, but it hasn’t. It’s deep underground, rooted in the equilibrium of earth itself.

Horticulturists say that a good wind just firms up a young tree’s root hold, and that’s how I’ll think of this season. Here in the clarity of fall — before the weather gathers and snow climbs up and down the storm — I look for ways of increasing the order in life, firming a root hold I too seldom feel.

I appreciate Verlyn Klinkenborg as a successor to Hal Borland. It starts with observation and knowledge and ends in beauty and repose. If he could write for the paper every day, I'd be happy to read it.

Transformational Speaking

BY FC Expert Blogger Seth KahanFri Nov 13, 2009 at 11:08 PM

This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert's views alone.

Do you have a message deep in your soul that you need help getting out into the world? Do you have a calling, a vision that you want to articulate with more power? Do you want to learn how to express your inner intents in ways that effectively communicate while at the same time motivating people to act? Then, I have the book for you: Transformational Speaking - If You Want to Change the World, Tell a Better Story by Gail Larsen.

This is no ordinary book, but an alchemical read that will transform your relationship to your voice via the deepest stirrings of your soul. Larsen combines her personal insights - she is former Executive VP of the National Speakers Association - with a distinctly spiritual approach to help you explore and uncover your most compelling material. She also provides valuable guidance on execution. From her point of view technique is always second to the inner resource from which your authentic self emanates.

Gail said to me recently, I worked to structure the book so it doesn't begin with tools and techniques. Until we do the inner work, it is difficult to show up in a whole and confident way. Even though that work takes some time and investigation, I think it's absolutely necessary if we're going to bring the fullness of who we are to the speaking platform. So, I started the book by going to the heart of transformational speaking, which is literally in the heart. 

I found tremendous resource in indigenous teachings and I share these in the book. I find these concepts, like original medicine, so helpful to people. Once someone can put their words around their core impetus and stand in their power, they are less likely to shrink when they step up to the stage. I teach a creative process that allows what we care deeply about to come up naturally. Then it can surprise us! Material we have yet to make conscious is often the best we have to give. Great speaking to me doesn't come from dictation from an old mindset. Instead it allows life to move through us, to speak not only from what we have prepared but also to trust what emerges in the moment.

Gail highlights something that is rarely talked about - the inner resource that informs our words, our actions. Her book is less about technique and product. It is much more about learning how to tap into the inner source of creativity that gives expression through the spoken word. If you are looking for a journey that leads to better expression from the platform, or anywhere else you happen to be standing, this book is your ticket.

The citizens of Coshocton, Ohio are without their free Internet after a single download prompted the Motion Picture Association of America to shut down the town's municipal Wi-Fi network.

This is by no means the first time the MPAA has stepped on the little guy in their crusade to eradicate piracy, but it is a particularly egregious instance of it. The free Wi-Fi network in Coshocton, Ohio supported anywhere from "a dozen people a day to 100 during busy times," all of whom are left without Internet after the shut down. As nations like Finland move to make broadband access a legal right, it is unfortunately clear that some powerful people in our country still consider it a privilege and not a necessity.

Let this be a lesson to those who not only enjoy but depend on free Wi-Fi networks. Enjoy it while it lasts, because if Dennis the Menace down the block can't wait for Transformers 3 to come out on DVD, you might be out a connection.

And also unbelievable.

Paul Smith's "Old Mill"

Paul Smith.

The name is simple, common.

A google search of the name yields 69 million hits (mine yields 417,000). 

There is one Paul Smith that was anything but common. 

Born September 21, 1921, Paul had spastic cerebral palsy.   He wasn’t able to attend school but his love of life propelled him into becoming a self-taught master in two things: chess and art.

It’ s the art that truly is amazing.  You see, Paul taught himself to use his typewriter as an easel.  But he didn’t use brushes.

… just one finger…

….of one hand…

… while the other hand held the typing hand steady.

The typewriter was a pretty basic and common writing tool of the time, yet Paul didn’t use it to simply string letters into words.  Actually he usually didn’t even use the letters of the typewriter, but instead used the @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ characters. 

As he became more familiar with the typewriter he experimented with colored ribbons and a technique whereby he created smudged shading on the paper by pushing against the ribbon with his thumb.  What is even more amazing, is that unlike other paintings where things are painted over and changed as the painting evolves, Paul had to see the final work in his mind’s eye before he even started… and work one character at a time.

Today we open Photoshop or some other graphic arts program, and occasionally even use pencil and paper.

He placed a piece of paper in a typewriter, hit a character, readjusted the paper orientation, hit another character….

…and Beauty emerged…

He didn’t complain about not having the most high-tech tool.  In fact, the manual, no frills typewriter was perfectly suited to him.  It didn’t matter that he would hit a key and stay on the key.  After all, he used the typewriter in a way it wasn’t really designed for.  Add to the mix that he experimented with it and created techniques for embellishing his images and it’s clear that Paul Smith was an innovator, and a testimony to what we’re all capable of doing if we embrace who we are as humans,

dream,

and share

 from the overflowing well of inspiration that bubbles and dances in each of us.

Paul Smith died on June 25, 2007, but the lessons we can learn from him are timeless

Maybe not a great story, but definitely a hopeful story.

… just one finger…
….of one hand…
… while the other hand held the typing hand steady.

reminds me of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and of the book a stroke patient wrote by blinking.

And no more than half an hour later, Gizmodo posted a story of someone who painted in spite of paralysis.