What writing is worth saving?

I recently read an article encouraging older adults to share their "stories" with their children and grandchildren. It changed the focus of my current writing project.

Originally I planned to write a sequel to my "back of the room book," Machines Are the Easy Part; People Are the Hard Part that I wrote and my son illustrated in 2004 (free download here). Unlike my other books, published by respectable national companies, this little 126 booklet I self-published, allowing me to be a bit more personal, less formal in sharing my pithy insights and riotous humor. (Hah). It's primary audience was teachers, librarians, and technologists. I'd bring a few print copies to my workshops and give them as door prizes. It was, and still is, a fun little book. And did I mention it is a free download?

The source of this Volume II was, of course, my Blue Skunk blog. So over the past couple years, I had been slowly re-reading and selecting posts or bits of posts for the new book. But my change in audience has given me a different set of selection criteria. And after 3000 posts over the past 15 years, I have a fair bit of selecting to do. Now that my home and physical possessions have been downsized, I'm going to tackle the intellectual propery.

So what might be of value to my grandsons in 20 years? I doubt either will be teachers or librarians. So unless there is a lesson to be learned from my experience in education that can be applied across a wide variety of fields, it will not make the cut. Most of what I have to say about education has already published in my books, articles, and columns anyway.

Technology will certainly be a part of their careers and personal lives - directly or indirectly. With the speed with which technology changes, writing about it today with application for next month, let alone next decade, is challenging.

What may not change for the boys are observations about on the job management and supervision. Choices we make about finance. What we want for our children. How are lives should be lived.

I don't remember much direct instruction from my dad or grandfathers. (Maybe - Don't ride the clutch!) but I am sure I've long shared their values, as well as those learned from my mom and grandmothers. One of the most precious items in my house is a small print of my grandsons and me together that my daughter gave me that reads "My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it."

So what is worth saving? It's like asking "What did I do in my career and life that had value?" Maybe I'll just save the funny bits.

Buses, jeepneys, and tricycles - mass transit in the Philippines

The definition of travel is moving from one location to another. And I do love to travel.

Travel here on the island of Luzon in the Philippines is a different breed of cat. Yesterday I traveled about 240 miles from Vigan City to a beach near Olongopo.

Were I to plan a drive in Minnesota of 250 miles (about the distance from my home near Minneapolis to my home town of Sac City, Iowa, I'd plan on the trip taking under 4 hours. A short drive in my own car to the interstate then 70-75 mph the rest of the way. Other than road construction or bad weather, these trips are fast and uneventful. To the point of being boring.

The 240 mile trip yesterday took 11 hours.

I boarded a bus at 6am. AC, fairly comfortable seats, and on-going Philippine sit-coms playing on a large screen on the front of the bus made this one of the "luxury" liners. The first 8 hours consisted of this barge maneuvering two lane (or less) roads shared with trucks, jeepneys, tricycles (tuk-tuks), motorcycles, bicycles, pedestrians, the occasional water-buffalo drawn cart, and young children playing on the shoulders. The bus stopped at least every 15 minutes to load or discharge a passenger. Top speed - maybe 40 mph on the very few straight shots. It was often standing room only. 

I transferred buses at the Dau bus station, a mad house with probably 50 buses going in and out of the large parking area. I found and caught the bus to Olongopo without much difficulty. There were no empty seats since I was the last one on as the bus was leaving the station. Happily, a young woman moved her small son on to her lap and I took his seat. (I gave him a packet of candy and paid her $3 bus ticket to say thank you.) This bus was a Victory Liner - no AC, hard seats, no movies - but only a 1 hour drive along expressways. Thank goodness.

I believe the total cost of my tickets for the day was less than $10. 

Mass transit is the only means of getting from one place to another, it seems, for many of the locals. While small motorcycles are plentiful, outside of Manila, private cars are few and far between. While I rode a bus yesterday, I've also ridden in jeeneys (trucks with long beds that have two hard benches in them and no way I can tell where they are going), motorcycles with enclosed sidecars (tricycles or tuk-tuks) in which I can never get in to or out of without bumping my head or knees, taxis (expensive), and vans.  Manila has some kind of light rail but I've never figured it out. There are very few motor expressways in the country. Those have toll booths every 10 miles.

While riding with the locals may not be very comfortable or efficient, I love it. I enjoy watching the views from the window. I like hearing the chicken under the seat behind me squawk. I am fascinated by the vendors who jump on the buses with packets of nuts and banana chips for sale. Just figuring out how to make transfers from one mode of transport to the next can be an engaging puzzle. I have always found the Philippine people to be extremely generous in their help of this grandfatherly figure, getting him from place to place.

Why travel half way around the world and then travel like you would at home? Travel should always have a sense of movement to it. Plop in the seat of a jet plane, the sense of movement is virtually absent. But in a tuk-tuk, dodging dogs and chickens and landslides, you know you are moving.

Walking the rice terraces requires focus

Much of my hiking over the past week has been done on the flat tops of rice terrace walls like the ones pictured above near Banaue. These 24-inch wide concrete lips come as a welcome relief from the steep and muddy paths up and down the mountains in the area,

This is not to say walking the walls is like strolling on a city sidewalk. The paths are fairly narrow and can, at times, shrink to about a foot in width. Sometimes they are irregular stone. Moss or moisture on them can make them slippery. The may have settled into a significant sideways tilt. Broken sections require stone or dirt detours and moving from one level to the next can be tricky. Oh, the drop off on one side is usually 2-3 feet into a muddy field; on the other side it can be over 30 feet down. Not for those who fear heights.

But what may be the most dangerous about walking these paths may be the false sense of security they engender. After walking a few minutes in a straight line, it's easy to not pay a lot of attention to where the next step needs to be placed. When I slipped on my hikes, it was usually because I was looking around at the scenery rather than looking where my next foot should be planted. On slippery slopes, this focus on foot placement is easy to maintain (even when the footing is not). It's when we get get complacent that we fall.

When I think about the qualities of a good hiker, I usually think of strength and stamina. To be sure, scrambling up rocks and going long distance require both of those. But we think little of the need for focus.

As I look back on a 40+ year career in education, I sometimes wonder if I should have been better focused. Would I now be the guru of some corner of the education field had I stuck to, say, information literacy as influenced by technology? Or technology ethics? Or young adult literature? Or creativity? Or any of the myriad of things which fascinated me and about which I researched, reflected, wrote about, and presented? Should I have spent more of my time focused on the day job a tech director for my schools and less time writing, speaking at conferences, and giving workshops for schools and other organizations?

I have zero regrets about my career, but just wonder if our feet too often slip on the career path for lack of focus?