cultivate love.

"Our personal attempts to live humanely in this world are never wasted. Choosing to cultivate love rather than anger just might be what it takes to save the planet from extinction.

What is it that allows our goodwill to expand and our prejudice and anger to decrease? This is a significant question. Traditionally it is said that the root of aggression and suffering is ignorance. But what is it that we are ignoring? Entrenched in the tunnel vision of our personal concerns, what we ignore is our kinship with others."

- Pema Chodron -

troisième semaine - 7e chose. technology that matters to me.

bearing the rare brand of a native of this transient state, Florida, i've long grown up under the shadow of an architectural invention envisioned by one of my long geek crushes and endless self-study fascination. thing is, when the Epcot center opened at Disney World in october of 1982, i had no idea its iconic golfball-like dome could be the precise shape that someday saves my life.

buckyballs - as the specific arrangement of carbon molecules or Fullerenes are known - were named after the noted architect and futurist Richard Buckminster Fuller, who popularized the geodesic dome.

now, i have long been drawn to the legacy of such an intriguing man who, in his life formulated over 28 patents…and countless other inventions that were scoffed at and never pursued by industry. but what keeps drawing me to him as an orient point in my own bookish, rambling-student-of-life education and exploration is that Buckminster Fuller was a remarkable visionary.



demonstrating a prescient understanding for how things work, R.Buckminster invented and streamlined his inventions from his earliest years. he was such a charismatic tinkerer in fact, that he was expelled from Harvard University twice: once for entertaining an entire dance troupe, and eventually for his seeming lack of interest and general irresponsibility. but it wasn't until 1927 when he lost his young daughter to polio and spinal meningitis that he determined to embark on "an experiment, to find what a single individual [could] contribute to changing the world ... benefiting all humanity."



his own tragedy focused his intentions on tackling the question of whether humanity really has hope of surviving on this planet and how to most successfully do so. how fitting then, to return to that image of the dome in consideration of why technology matters to me.

the discoverers of Fullerenes won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1996, but the remarkable trends incorporating their studies have recently been making a lot of noise in the scientific community. seems like buckyballs are transforming developments in nanotechnology to make the most microscopic elements of medicine more stable, improving the eventual success of transplants.

living daily with juvenile diabetes it's eerie to think of how the globe-like dome of a nearby tourist destination could symbolize my hope for a better life. for more about how the physical structure of Fullerenes are transforming the realm of nanotechnology. click here.

seems like the smallest things in the realm of science might just offer me and countless others living with this potentially life-limiting disease the greatest hope. work is already being done to make the practice of daily blood glucose testing more streamlined. and further developments in nanotechnology will only increase the efficacy of experiments to ultimately cure diabetes like those being done at the University of Alberta, Canada.

somehow, i think Buckminster would be honored. his lifetime of renegade scientific vision coupled with humanitarian imperative might exponentially improve the chances for survival on this planet after all.

troisième semaine - 5e chose.

psssst. click and follow the birdy.

purpose.

photo by helen levitt

If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to,
no one with which to share the beauty of the stars,
to laugh with, to touch,
what would be your purpose in life?
It is other life,
it is love, which
gives your life meaning.
This is harmony.
We must discover the joy of each other,
the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.

- mitsugi saotome -

semaine, deux - 4ème chose - blog nombre deux.

per prompting for assignment number 2, i have given some thought to how blogs can be used in libraries. i think it's only a matter of time before professionally utilizing such tools of pop culture is not just an innovative concept, but a necessary function for doing business. looking ahead, how could this kind of progress not be an evolutional track for our industry? we have always been in the business of information technology...from the era in which library pages carved out their living by sleeping in the stacks of the monolithic Great library at Alexandria to the construction of the high-speed information superhighway of today.

what's unique about blogs is they demand a kind of personal investment. all around the globe...it is understood that the thoughts/blogs/twitter that are blossoming daily

broadcasting people's current pontifications...all arise from a set of hands typing away at some keyboard/somewhere.

it's precisely that tête-à-tête reality that makes the medium an important consideration for libraries. let's face it. the simple wonders of technology put the miraculous power of learning into anyone's hands. sure, there is the age-old argument that given the proliferation of detritus, the responsible average Joe researcher should appreciate assistance from the learned librarian professionally trained to sift through and separate the chaff from the wheat. but in reality, how do we continue to build these relationships with the seeking public? i envision the library of the future, much less a simple repository for information [whatever the format], and more a hub for the community.

the realization of need for community is only now dawning with the mass appeal of virtual alterna-realities like Second Life. how exciting would the opportunity be for someone in the library to be so passionate about her interests, that the mere expression of her own discoveries would reach out and draw the public to interact and be inspired toward the same. it's not impossible that, say a love of reading, could ignite a spur of the populace to pursue titles a blogger has reviewed. [the music world sees this all the time with a groundswell of music blogs] and if said blogger were a hip, connected library employee, what a perfect introduction to draw potential traffic to the services the library could provide. it's a formula that's been known to work. In our own system, in fact. i've seen it myself, having worked at Southwest County Regional Library with Stacy Alesi, whose personal blog and website has long been a mainstay of local readers and those beyond [thanks to the universal audience of the internet] looking for a trusted voice and champion of reader's advisory. i have witnessed new patrons wander into the library after having made a connection with Stacy online, and established patrons ramble in waiting to ply Stacy with suggestions for the latest greatest read. she is obviously someone whose own passion has helped to ignite enthusiasm in others. and she regularly bridges the gap between the publishing world and authors and the reading public in one forum. what a community relations powerhouse she could be.

sadly, she remains a cloaked, [not always be-spectacled] library worker by day, blogging powerhouse superdiva by night, as the verbage in her long-held web persona doesn't fly with an [aherm] stodgier set of library system guidelines.



lastly, I've perused some of the following librarian blogs. here's just a start:

the shifted librarian [one of the more renowned]
librarians index
"shift happened."
"play more video games."