Nerds Succeed

Watch out when nerds get successful. Like David Kwong on TED talks. He takes two nerdy obsessions- magic and crossword puzzles and puts them together. How does he do it? I have no idea but he's good.

Fun With Folk

Many years ago I met a fellow student in college who was a musician. Even more he was a folk singer musician. He helped start a folk music venue that is still there. Dave Fry is still at it and doing remarkable work.

Dave Fry's work has appeared on PBS-TV nationally, winning best Children's Programming in PA in 1991 with his RockRoots program. His Play Guitar with Dave Fry, an introduction to acoustic guitar was released on PBS-TV in 2005 and has been broadcast on over 150 stations. His I Like Peanut Butter CD won Best Re-release from the Children's Music Web in 1999. Dave has been associated with Young Audiences of New Jersey and Eastern PA for many years, and has been named Master Artist by the state of New Jersey and Teaching Artist by the state of Connecticut, as well. Dave also founded and was Artistic Director of Godfrey Daniels, nationally recognized folk club for 25 years.

So here is his TEDx talk. You will get the idea of his fun. I dare you not to smile.

What is There to Say?

About the time this post is published we will probably be above 0 degrees F. for the first time in about 80 hours. It sure has made the news, broken records, closed schools, and given us Minnesotans something more to talk about.

Cold? Eh?

Ya betcha'

Stay warm.

Yes, there were those who brought out the old trope

When I was young...

and proceed to tell us about the two-way uphill climb, at least 5 miles long, in shoulder-deep snow with cold enough to freeze...

...well you know the story.

Don't believe it. It didn't happen. These are called record colds because, simply, they have never happened before. One of our local TV weather forecasters said that the longest streak below zero was 7 days

• and it was in 1912... 102 years ago.

I know, you remember, like I do, those bitter cold mornings walking to school. I was a school crossing guard the winter of 1959-60 when I was in 6th grade. I swear it was bitterly cold. Frigid.

So, just to prove it I searched for weather records online and found out that, well, it was warmer than I remember it. For example, in January and February the lowest temp was 14 degrees F. on Feb.14. There were three days in the beginning of March when there were single digit lows, but the high temps got almost to freezing.

That may be why it seemed to be so cold. The temps were never all that cold (compared to what we have just been going through.) Many days actually had high temps above freezing, not something that happens around here this time of year. We never got accustomed to the lower temperatures, because they didn't stay around all that long.

Isn't it a shame that our memories are not nearly as perfect as we like to think they are. In fact they are quite subjective. Telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth- but only as I remember it.

Elizabeth Loftus has a TED talk on the fiction of memory.

It's times like this that I believe her.

A Meditation on Gratitude

Take the time to consider gratitude with this TED-based meditation on it.

Don't Let Your Jaw Drop Too Far

A Video of the week from TED.

Usman Riaz is a 21-year-old whiz at the percussive guitar, a style he learned to play by watching his heroes on YouTube. The TED Fellow plays onstage at TEDGlobal 2012 -- followed by a jawdropping solo from the master of percussive guitar, Preston Reed. And watch these two guitarists take on a very spur-of-the-moment improv.

“Throughout my guitar-playing career, I watched Preston Reed’s videos,” Riaz, a TEDGlobal Fellow, told the TED blog after the performance. “On stage, [Reed] was in the exact same pose as in the videos, with his hair hanging down from his right side, playing the guitar. It was funny to look over my shoulder and see him doing the same thing.”

A Magical Tale from TED

From TED 2012 an augmented reality from Marco Tempest. Enjoy the effects. Learn of story and magic.

A Different Take on Aging

Jane Fonda (yes, THAT Jane Fonda) has a talk to TED about the later years- Life's Third Act. In it she challenges a previous paradigm that had aging as "pathology." Again was what happened to us when we got "past our prime" and were unable to continue to do what we used to do. Life was an "arch" with childhood the upward arc toward the heights of middle-age and then the declining arc of later adulthood.

But, Fonda points out, we have added as much as 30 years to life expectancy over the past 60 - 75 years. That is a whole additional adult life.

Think about that.

One additional adult lifespan.

She sees aging as a

staircase. An upward ascension of the human spirit, bringing us into wisdom, wholeness, and authenticity. Age as potential. It is not just for the lucky few. People over 50 tend to be less stressed, ... even happier...

The human spirit can continue to ascend and does not fall prey to the otherwise hard and fast rule of entropy, the downward side of the arch.

Personally, as I am well past the age of my own parents early deaths, closer to 65 than 60, I find that she is right on target.

Here then are Jane Fonda's insights. Catch them.