Summer begins

After our first lunch outside on the deck I felt compelled to work on my MBA course for next sememster -- don't ask me why this desire came over me, probably it was because I've been reading Pfeffer and Sutton's Hard facts dangerous half truths & total nonsense: Profiting from evidence-based management, HBSP 2006. This book would make a good framework for the course, but so too would a couple of other texts. I set out a comaparison matrix for EBM against a competency approach, but the only thing I decided was that I couldn't use two frameworks. I put everything aside until the spirit moves me again! (August maybe?)

At lunch time Jack and I discussed going for our first "shakedown sail." But the surface of the water showed signs of "Indian wind" -- "a-pache here, a-pache there" -- and indeed, by 3 PM it was a flat calm. Maybe tomorrow.

The brown apron came out before dinner when we tried the shimp scampi (p. 386 in The 75th edition New Joy of Cooking) that Sue served last time we visited the Burlington, MA, gang. As promised, we experimented with different kind of shrimp. The verdit -- a good recipe no matter what the shrimp! The frozen bagged shrimp at 1/3 the price of that in the fishmonger's display case was almost as good as the higest priced ones. I tried to get a variation in shrimp size, but I couldn't tell the differenece beteween medium and large shrimp. Obviosly more trials are needed!

The striped apron

"The apron" (signifying the chef -- it's a striped one here at Lord's Point -- you'll have to go back to February postings to find pictures of the original chili apron) came out this evening to make 'Brick' Chicken -- a recipe from last Saturday's Wall Sreet Journal. It wasn't that difficult, and maybe not worth the fuss, but it was a good way of getting back to more relaxed habits. And it did taste good!

Work? Of course. Reading and notetaking for the paradignatic partnership, plus a Skype call with Ulla. Odds 'n ends of WCOB faculty qualifications, plus phone calls with Lynda and Steve. And a couple of email exchanges about the OBTC presentation. 'Nuff for this week.

Symbolism? My poscard display (not pictured) was seven "good vibes" cards picked at random. The Goog was decorated, and, best of all, it was a 'magic number' date -- 060708.

Official start of 2008 sailing season

Postcards of "tall ships" (and some others) provided a setting for toady's launch of Wind 'n Go. She left our "boatyard" by trailer, and returned under her own power (engine, not sails). The intervening part required some special manouvers -- the crane lift at Dodson Boatyard to move from the trailer to the water, riggers installing the mast, and shuttling of cars and dinghies. I look forward to our first sail.







Back at my desk (while Jack was in skipper role) I applied myself to organizing handouts and coordination for the OBTC presentation next week. I moved on to making the slides from the Barcelona Narratives Conference acceptable for publication -- I can make them balck and white, but several images culled from the inernet will need to be replaced due to copyright problems. I hadn't finished before I decided that I'd better spend some time on the narrative to accompany the slides. Enough for today! A walk round the block refreshed me.

However, the pile of needed AACSB reports seems to grow every time I think about it. I must stop thinking about them except on my designated AACSB day of the week! Tomorrow I will just choose seven nice postcards and work on the "paradigmatic partnership paper."

Faced with faces

Today's postcard display of "faces" did not inspire me as I dealt with college of business stuff -- assessment analysis, preparing coordination materials for next year, dealing with lingering emails, and so on. The faces just stared at me -- no comments, no jokes, not even a smile. I'd rather be in my campus office with living faces around me! I plan to find a more inspiring theme tomorrow.

Postcards as omens

Some of you know that I collect postcards -- any that interest me, or friends send me (I've even been known to send cards to myself!) In my LP office I have a perpetual calendar that I bought in London at the Tate Modern. It has transparent plastic pockets for cards that combine to make the day's date on one side and postcards of artwork on the other. It's mix and match.


I use the pockets to make daily postcard displays rather than as a calendar. While I fire up my computer for the day I pick a card at random from my collection. I use this as inspriration for a theme for the day and search though the rest of the pile to find others to fill the remianing six pockets. Often finding vertical postcards is a challenge -- there are many more horizonal than vertical scenes! Usually by going through my collection one by one I manage to complete the set; only very occasionally do I need to change themes.

The point of this post?

This morning I had the theme of "work" -- so all day I was inspired by a selection of postcards the cards showing women and men people working in different industries.


My postcards set the stage for a day of concentrated work on the trial Donor Decisions database The "trial" includes all possible variables from four different rating services (a total of 83) for the top 25 charities from the 2007 NPT Top 100.


Diana and I worked together on it this morning, then I checked several of the sources, added some more variable and completed the code book. I emailed the Excel spreadsheet to Diana this evening for her to convert it to SPSS. Then the fun part begins! We could have a 25x83 correlation matrix. And endless regression equations to test our hypothesis.


I wonder what theme I will come up with tomorrow for my postcard display. I hope I have a more leisurely inspiration.

A beautiful day

The weather was as beautiful today as it was ucky yesterday -- clear, sunny, warm -- and my work project matched the weather (I am not ususally prone to describe work as "beautiful", but because this is a blog some poetic license is called for!)

Two colleagues from Fairfield, Steve and Mary, joined Diana and me at Lord's Point to work on our presentation for the OBTC conference next week. Our session will be about designing courses using Howard Gardner's Five Mind for the Future as a framwork for student development. (Click here to link to a video of Gardner describing the minds.) For once we had the luxury of working away from campus interruptions and appointments, and enough time before the conference to reflect on and possibly adjust what seemed to be the best approach. We were able to explore the topic, engage ourselves in the activities we devised (rather than just deciding what to do and arbitrarily setting a time limit), and to gain insights into our own modeling of the various minds.






Jack wanted no part of the academic activity, and set himself to the task of preparing Wind 'n Go for launch





It was a very satisfying day.

June arrives

and with it the June fog! (That's Fishers Island Sound beyond the telephone wires.)