More on practice

Malcolm Gladwell's latest, "Outliers" and Geoff Colvin's "Talent is Overrated." Their answer: practice, practice, practice. Each cite a study of music school graduates in Germany. The study followed them in school and after. The one variable between the grad who ended up at the Berlin Symphony and the grad who ended up teaching teenagers in his home was how hard and how long they practiced. There is a number: 10,000 hours over a 10 year period. Various studies cited by Gladwell and Colvin find pretty much the same thing as the German study. Gladwell says that's why the Beatles became so good. They were just another band until they went to Hamburg , Germany to play at strip clubs, 14 hours a day, day in and day out. Their sound coalesced after all that practice together. Colvin goes deeper into the concept of practice and cites studies on deliberate practice, which is a focused effort to move beyond a person's current level of ability.

I really think there is a great deal if importance to deliberate practice, the focused effort to move beyond your current level of ability. People need to be taught that the only practice worth doing well is deliberative practice.

Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin (Hardcover - Oct 16, 2008)

Buy new: $25.95 $16.35

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and

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell (Hardcover - Nov 18, 2008)

(click on the Amazon link, get the book numbers, etc. and then pick it up for free through interlibrary loan).

---

And ask yourself, when you read scripture, when you pray, when you meditate, are you engaged in deliberate practice or just vain repetition?

Good news from the Onion

Experts Agree Giant, Razor-Clawed Bioengineered Crabs Pose No Threat

Cat Bowling

By R. Marsh

My favorite game to play is called "Cat Bowling". You can only play Cat Bowling if you have stairs, extra toilet paper, and a cat. In Cat Bowling you have your cat on the stairs and try to hit your cat with individual rolls of wrapped toilet paper. Unlike many other games, cat bowling promotes better reflexes for your cat AND increases your aim and speed, all while having fun!!! Cat Bowling is not well known, but you can help change that by telling your friends about this special game of Cat Bowling!! Cat Bowling is ecosystem-friendly AND is completely safe!!!!!

P.S. If you have further questions about Cat Bowling, please ask the writer.

If you can't guess, this is what happened when Rachel and a friend started dropping rolls of toilet paper down the stairs and the cat jumped in and wanted to play with them. The cat liked it more than Rachel did at first. She was just moving rolls downstairs to stock the bathrooms with, then realized it made a fun game and started cooperating with the cat.

"Avoid the really tall guys, my wife said"

So, I talk myself into going to a karate tournament.

Of course I haven't been to a karate tournament for over twenty years. I'm in what the AAU calls the "executive" category (just like T-Nation has an over thirty-five lifter category, the AAU has an over thirty-five competitor category).

They put me in novice kata (up to purple belt) as I know only one solid Wado Ryu kata, and I end up in the "intermediate" sparring division (below black belt). They ask me if I mind being combined in, and I figure, its ok, I'm there to learn rather than to win.

Before the tournament, my wife's only advice had been "avoid the really tall guys."

So, does an almost seven foot tall brown belt (half brown, half black belt, whatever that means) count as "really tall?"

Someone I gave a ride to the tournament said when she saw the match start she thought "very bad things are going to happen to Mr. Marsh."

I won the division either 2 or 2 1/2 points to a half point in that final match (I wasn't keeping score and I've been told both, I only know I was up). Now I almost collapsed while taking my gear off as I ran out of juice getting ready for the division bow out and medals, I had really given it my all, but I won novice kata (I know, not a big thing) and intermediate (below black belt) sparring.

My wife worked a hard 24 shift, so she missed the tournament, but she laughed when she heard that I had not been able to avoid the really tall guys.

Problems with the book, Made to Stick

Well, at least with getting the book review done. I keep buying copies for friends who are writers.

Then they keep sending me e-mails like this one:

I just finished reading the Sticky Ideas book.

I cannot thank you enough for it. It most likely will be the most important book I've ever read in connection with PLS stuff. I am going to think long and hard about a lot of things, and make some major changes.

Thank you, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!!

Then we talk, and then the final version of the book review gets put off.

However, I have this material to use, with permission, to give you an idea of the book:

Unsticking an Idea
by Chip Heath & Dan Heath,
Authors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Since Made to Stick came out, many anxious people have asked us, "How do I unstick a sticky idea?" They want to unstick a rumor about their company or a false perception of a particular product. They want to unstick whispered mistruths about political candidates. Once, we were even asked, "How would you unstick Paris Hilton?"

Our answer on that last one was a bit slow in coming. We finally admitted, "You can't." There's no Goo Gone for ideas. Sticky ideas stick. There are millions of people who've come to follow, willingly or unwillingly, the antics of a party-girl heiress. There's no magic sticky incantation that will make us divert our attention to alternative energy, or some other worthy topic. Our best advice, on the Paris Hilton matter, was: Just wait it out. As we age, the memories will fade, and perhaps those neurons will die off entirely. (With any luck, they'll go before the "dress ourselves" neurons.)

But the question -- How do I unstick an idea? -- nagged at us. So we dug into the relevant academic research. It was a long and frustrating search, because there's not much research tackling this topic. But we did find one promising lead that was about sixty-five years old.

During World War II, social scientists had a keen patriotic interest in rumor control. About two-thirds of the rumors during were "wedge-drivers," accusations that provoked anger at various social groups (blacks, Jews, the Brits). These rumors were false and socially destructive, so the government wanted to fight back aggressively. One tactic that seemed to work against wedge-drivers was to redirect the anger and make people mad at the rumormongers. For instance, the rumor-control people would put up posters of Nazi spies spreading rumors to gullible dupes. This primed listeners to react angrily when someone spread a rumor: You're undermining the American war effort by spreading Nazi untruths!

At first, this work in wartime propaganda seemed pretty removed from the concerns of our readers, who want their ideas to stick in business or in school. But then it dawned on us: Trying to unstick an idea is a bad strategy. The World War II rumor-control people weren't trying to unstick an idea. They were shifting the turf and propagating a different, competing idea. Instead of arguing that the rumors themselves were baseless, they argued: The Nazis are trying to trick you. Are you going to fall for that?

This suggests that we shouldn't try to unstick ideas. We should fight sticky with stickier, meet Scotch tape with duct tape.

For decades, McDonald's fought rumors that it used earthworms as filler in its burgers. At first, the company tried to unstick the idea. In 1978, McDonald's officials had denounced the rumors as "completely unfounded and unsubstantiated." (Quotes taken from Newsweek via Snopes.com, the mecca of urban-legend debunking.) Guess which idea was stickier: "earthworms in your meat patties" or "unfounded and unsubstantiated"?

By 1992, Ray Kroc, McDonald's most famous CEO, had come up with a better approach. He said, "We couldn't afford to grind worms into meat. Hamburger costs a dollar and a half a pound, and night crawlers cost six dollars!" That's nice; Kroc is fighting sticky with sticky. Notice the elements of credibility (dollars per pound) and unexpectedness (We can't afford to serve you earthworms). He might even have gone a step further and made a joke about it: "If someone ever tries to sell you a WormBurger, you should worry about them secretly filling it with beef."

Another case of fighting sticky with sticky came during the late 1990s, when e-mailed rumors about nasty computer viruses circulated constantly. According to these rumors, if you clicked the wrong link, or opened the wrong e-mail, you'd destroy your computer. One day, a young systems operator, fed up with the dozens of bogus warnings he received every day, wrote a parody of the rumors:

Warning: if you receive an e-mail with "Goodtimes" in the subject line, DO NOT OPEN IT!!!!! Goodtimes will rewrite your hard drive. It will also scramble any disks that are even close to your computer. It will recalibrate your refrigerator's coolness setting so all your ice cream goes melty. It will demagnetize the strips on your credit cards and use subspace field harmonics to scratch your CDs. It will give your ex your new phone number. It will mix Kool-Aid into your fish tank. It moves your car randomly around parking lots so you can't find it.

The parody became a viral hit, as popular as the rumors it mocked. Bill Ellis, a folklorist at Penn State Hazleton, has documented that, as this parody spread, the apocalyptic virus warnings faded away. The parody cleverly provided people with a schema of an overhyped warning. Afterward, if you received more e-mails that fit the schema -- full of overheated language and dire warnings -- you knew to laugh rather than get worried. The young systems operator fought a sticky idea with a stickier idea.

But sometimes the best way to fight a sticky idea is not with a message at all, even a stickier one. Sometimes what you need is a sticky action. Consider the dawn of the automobile era. As described in Hayagreeva Rao's book Market Rebels: How Activists Make or Break Radical Innovations, the gasoline-powered car was greeted, at first, with skepticism and outright fear. People called it a "devilish contraption." It spawned rabid opposition. The Farmer's Anti-Automobile Society of Pennsylvania, for example, demanded that cars traveling at night on country roads "must send up a rocket every mile, then wait ten minutes for the road to clear. If a driver sees a team of horses, he is to pull to one side of the road and cover his machine with a blanket or dust cover that has been painted to blend into the scenery." One technologist of the time scoffed at the idea that gasoline engines would ever be widely adopted: "You can't get people to sit on an explosion."

That's a sticky idea: simple, concrete, emotional. If you were an entrepreneurial automaker, how would you combat it? Well, the dumb thing to do would be to try to "unstick it" with a message: Go ahead, try telling potential customers, "Don't worry, you're actually sitting on a contained explosion." Oh, and all the top automotive authorities say your fears are "unfounded and unsubstantiated."

Auto enthusiasts chose to act. They created a series of "reliability races" in which automobile inventors would bring their autos together and have them compete on endurance, fuel economy, and hill-climbing ability. Reliability contests were one part product testing and one part festival. The first contest took place in 1895, and by 1912 they had been discontinued, because cars were an accepted social reality. What happened in between was that the automakers gave thousands of people the chance to see firsthand the promise of automobiles -- to see that there was nothing to fear. (In fact, the acclaim Henry Ford received from his performance in the reliability contests enabled him to launch the Ford Motor Company in 1903.)

Note that the auto enthusiasts didn't try to argue their way out of the fears; they acted their way out. They chose a demonstration that was Unexpected (Until today I thought cars were dangerous and unreliable); Concrete (Did you see it take that hill?); Emotional (I can see myself becoming one of those liberated drivers); and Credible (I saw it all with my own eyes!).

So how do you unstick an idea? First of all, be realistic. It took seventeen years for reliability races to establish public trust in the automobile. The rumor about earthworms in McDonald's hamburgers still circulates in some places, despite Ray Kroc's brilliant response. Sticky ideas endure, and, as we've seen in the book, that can be a great thing. It can also be a real nuisance if you're working against a sticky idea that's false.

Our advice is simple: Fight sticky ideas with stickier ideas. We hope we've given you some useful tools for making your ideas sticky. And if you want to unstick Paris Hilton, maybe you should be looking for another fame-hungry heiress to take her place? (We're not sure heiress races will do the trick.)

The above is an excerpt from the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath & Dan Heath. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Excerpted from Made to Stick by Chip Heath & Dan Heath Copyright © 2007 by Chip Heath & Dan Heath. Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Author Bio
Chip Heath, co-author of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, is a professor of organizational behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. He lives in Los Gatos, California.

Dan Heath, co-author of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, is a Consultant to the Policy Programs of the Aspen Institute. A former researcher at Harvard Business School, he is a co-founder of Thinkwell, an innovative new-media textbook company. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

http://www.madetostick.com/

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (Hardcover - Jan 2, 2007)

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First night in our new house

We have our first night in our new house. Now, if I can just get Rachel into her pajamas and to bed so Win and I can go to sleep. A long day, but a good one.

World Class Success

I've read some articles recently on world class success in athletics. Outside of some biology limited sports (e.g. woman's volleyball where if you don't have the kangaroo build you are not going to compete), in many sports about 3% of the population has the physical ability to be world class.

Which is amazing. 3 million people or more in the United States have the physical ability to be in the top 100 in the world in a sport. Obviously there is more.

• http://drannmaria.blogspot.com/2009/02/if-i-have-to-explain-it-maybe-you-cant.html
• http://www.24fightingchickens.com/2009/02/15/how-to-become-a-world-champion/
• http://www.thejudocrusader.com/?p=489

Those links pretty much set out the details. It is a matter of drive and intensity and opportunity. I'm still thinking about how to apply those lessons and insights into what it takes to be a world class father.

Why are people dying in Africa?

MOYO Forty years ago, China was poorer than many African countries. Yes, they have money today, but where did that money come from? They built that, they worked very hard to create a situation where they are not dependent on aid.

SOLOMON What do you think has held back Africans?

MOYO I believe it’s largely aid. You get the corruption — historically, leaders have stolen the money without penalty — and you get the dependency, which kills entrepreneurship. You also disenfranchise African citizens, because the government is beholden to foreign donors and not accountable to its people.

Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa by Dambisa Moyo and Niall Ferguson

My parents told me the same thing when they came back from a mission to Kenya (though they spent most of it in Tanzania). The places doing the best were those without foreign aid.

They said that Africans were bright, energetic and the equal of any other group on earth, but for what was being done to them in the name of helping them.

It is amazing that there is actually a surplus of food in the world, yet people starve in Africa.

An old book that captures that is:

Malaria Dreams: An African Adventure by Stuart Stevens (Paperback - Jan 13, 1994)

Pick up a copy at your library. (The review below links to a different review than the one quoted -- but one that captures the book well, down to the book's flaws -- and why I recommend getting this book through your library, not buying it.).

From the Inside Flap
Malaria Dreams is a tale of high adventure across Africa, recounted with the wit and humor that delighted readers of Night Train to Turkistan, Stuart Stevens's highly praised first book.

The story begins when a "geologist" friend mentions to Stevens that he has a Land Rover in the Central African Republic which he'd like to get back to Europe. It's only later, when Stevens discovers that half of Africa thinks his friend is a spy and the other half is convinced he's a diamond smuggler, that the intrepid author begins to realize he should have asked a few more questions before leaving home. And then there's the small problem of the Land Rover's seizure by the minister of mines, who has appropriated it as his personal car. It is a new Land Rover. The minister likes it very much.

Three months later, Stevens and his twenty-three-year-old companion (the only woman to ever transfer from Bryn Mawr to the University of Oklahoma) have somehow managed to drive-though not in the ill-fated Land Rover-across the wildest part of Africa, emerging scathed but still alive on the shores of the Mediterranean.

Malaria Dreams takes readers along on close encounters with killer ants in Cameroon, revolutionary soldiers in the middle of Lake Chad (a huge mudhole lacking any water), and strangely frenzied Peace Corps parties in Niger. There's a long search for a functional set of springs in Timbuktu and near disastrous bouts with sickness and automotive malfunctions in the middle of the Sahara.

Through it all, Stevens and his ex-fashion model companion battle the odds, and often each other, to return home to tell this unlikely, highly amusing tale.

"One of the funniest tales of misadventure to come along in quite a while.... Mr. Stevens has a wonderful eye for the curiosities of human behavior, Third World variety; he is witty, but not at the expense of the Africans."--The New Yorker

"Mr. Stevens emerges from the book not only as an engaging, picaresque hero, but also as a clever and observant writer."--The New York Times

"For an...Africa veteran, Stuart Stevens's Malaria Dreams will bring the pleasure of recognition. For all readers it brings much laughter."--The Wall Street Journal

"[Stevens's] depiction of exotic people and locales is often eloquent. And he succinctly limns the opulent and squalid vestiges of colonialism. Thankfully, he survived the adventure with his dry sense of humor intact."--The Cleveland Plain Dealer

"You would have to be out of your mind to go anywhere with Stuart Stevens, but when the travel is only mental, he is the perfect companion: brave, funny, and ever-watchful."--Martin Amis

A great quote about how culture and tradition inhibits the spirit

Brigham Young:

“[God] would be glad to send angels to communicate further to this people, but there is no room to receive it, consequently, He cannot come and dwell with you. There is a further reason: we are not capacitated to throw off in one day all our traditions, and our prepossessed feelings and notions, but have to do it little by little. It is a gradual process, advancing from one step to another; and as we layoff our false traditions and foolish notions, we receive more and more light, and thus we grow in grace; and if we continue so to grow we shall be prepared eventually to receive the Son of Man, and that is what we are after.” (Journal of Discourses 2:309-318).

My thanks to Lorin for the reminder.

Why some ideas thrive, some die

A friend of mine who is an emeritus professor at Berkeley at a New York Times best seller author had read and commented positively on a book about ideas. I put it on the list of things that some day I'd like to pay attention to. Then I got a review copy.

I'm not finished, I had to take a break and buy copies for a couple of friends, then go to a closing on selling my house and the follow-up closing on the house we are buying. Heather was home for the weekend (to see the house -- I had planned on blogging about how wonderful she is, then found out she knows people who read my blog, so I'm not going to embarrass her by writing in public about how much her mother and I are so really pleased with her) and Rachel was sick (antibiotics seem to have solved that).

But the book is incredible. Even better, it has free, great on-line resources (http://madetostick.com/resources/) and some interesting comments on Amazon.com

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (Hardcover - Jan 2, 2007)

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If you've ever wondered why some ideas thrive and spread and some just do not get anywhere, this book is for you. Even more so if you have an idea you want to have spread and thrive.

The Untold Story of Black Mormons

Now available at www.untoldstoryofblackmormons.com

Paypal button and all, for only $25.00 (including shipping and handling).



For a link to their paypal purchase form.

My congratulations to Margaret Young and Darius Gray.

Resilience, then comments on life from my Mom

"I'm not convinced that all the recipients possess remarkable intellectual talents. I am certain, though, that every one has demonstrated the power to persevere."

Resilience is an incredibly useful ability or attribute. Like integrity, it is a matter of training as much as it is of aptitude and inherent attitude. Emotional/social intelligence and resilience are the two most important attributes or characteristics in finding success. Interestingly enough, they are two things badly hampered by ADD and Asperger Syndrome. Further, both are culturally influenced, good social and emotional intelligence in one setting will not always transfer into another.

If you've ever wondered why gpa and lsat scores (for example, both indicators of academic and regular intelligence) actually over predict the success of black law students (meaning that if you have a black and a white student with the same gpa/lsat indicators, the white student will perform significantly better), the cultural differences are the key. How important parts of emotional and social intelligence are came home to me when studying some parts of legal education on a project.

But if you can teach your children something, rather than tutoring them in math, or music lessons or any of the other myriads of things out there, if you can help them learn social and emotional intelligence/skills, and help them gain resilience, you've taught them the key to succeeding in life.

---

Now for my mother's comments. When she was in Saudia, she would meet people who would state that they were doing something extravagant and then they would state "but I deserve it." She finally found herself saying "It isn't that you deserve it, it is that you can afford it." Material things are not the result of some virtue or moral entitlement, they are merely a matter of financial success.

Certainly where she and the others were they had had to work very hard, sacrifice and continue in perseverance, but she had known a large number of people who had done all those things and not made money. She felt that money and moral entitlement were two different things. It was interesting to hear her talk.

Later, I knew a friend's son, who became very uncertain about life as a result of the charitable work his surgeon father had embroiled him in. Time after time he met people who were smarter than he was, physically more capable, and who worked very, very, very hard and who were very poor. He began to worry about what would become of him if that was what had become of them.

But he had realized the disconnect between mere hard work, mere intelligence and success.

Need I say that developing social and emotional intelligence, applied in the right circumstances, resolved his issues. The last time I saw him I would say that by any standard you can think of, almost everyone would consider him a success. I know I was pleased.

Will we need resilience? I think we will, everyone. http://www.iousathemovie.com/

---

And, returning to my "did God really mean that" series:

Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto me.

Confusing your financial interest with what is right

I see it a lot. I'm quoting an example from someone else's blog, but think of it only as an example, not sui generis.

Seltzer told me that big-spending doctors typically explain their treatment by insisting they have sicker patients than their colleagues. In response he has made charts breaking down the costs of care into thin diagnostic categories, like “respiratory-system diagnosis with ventilator support, severity: 4,” in order to compare doctors who were treating the same ailment. The charts make the point clearly. Doctors who spent more — on extra tests or high-tech treatments, for instance — didn’t get better results than their more conservative colleagues. In many cases, patients of the aggressive doctors stay sicker longer and die sooner because of the risks that come with invasive care.

---

Read some of the comments too. The writers talk past each other, which is too bad.

No ifs, ands or buts ...

I've been teaching my child about apologies. When you make them, you say "I'm sorry." You don't say "I'm sorry, but" or "I'm sorry, and" or "I'm sorry, but if" -- no explanations, no excuses. Those things make an apology into something less and usually make the person you are apologizing to less happy, not more happy.

I just read a post about saying "I love you." Same rules apply to saying "I love you" as do to saying "I'm sorry." You wouldn't say "I'm sorry, even though ..." and you don't do that with "I love you." (Even more so, "I love you even though" carries the message "I love you even though you aren't lovable.")

The only difference is that if someone says something, you can say "what do I care, I love you" in response or similar words. But, you can't say "I don't care about x, I love you anyway." That "anyway" is a killer, though the "I don't care" might be appropriate. Kind of like if you are apologizing and the other person says "yeah, but it was really my fault because" you might say "I don't care about" "I'm sorry."

In an apology, the only "and" you can add is "and I won't do that again." In "I love you" the only "and" you can add is "and I always will."

And always should.

Law school sure seems better than grad school in the humanities

From an article I read today:

Most undergraduates don't realize that there is a shrinking percentage of positions in the humanities that offer job security, benefits, and a livable salary (though it is generally much lower than salaries in other fields requiring as many years of training). They don't know that you probably will have to accept living almost anywhere, and that you must also go through a six-year probationary period at the end of which you may be fired for any number of reasons and find yourself exiled from the profession. They seem to think becoming a humanities professor is a reliable prospect — a more responsible and secure choice than, say, attempting to make it as a freelance writer, or an actor, or a professional athlete — and, as a result, they don't make any fallback plans until it is too late.

---

And, switching topics, have you ever noticed that no matter how people feel about gay marriage, everyone I know seems to be in favor of weddings no matter who is getting married. I'm glad there is common ground in joy.

What net benefit did slavery create?

One of the interesting things about slavery and its progeny (such as bond servants and abusive share cropping) is that they created a legacy of economic morasses and stagnation. America was not only worse off morally for the slave trade, but the lingering legacy of slavery has made us all poorer as well.

I am not going to address academic or educational affirmative action. Outside of those, in the free market, those companies that have embraced affirmative action have profited economically. That indicates that in corporate entities, efforts to find equality result in workers closer to their most productive placement than proceeding without such efforts.

Discrimination, like slavery, built only a net economic loss, a smaller pie for everyone.

Being Grateful For Everything

I had a chance to talk about gratitude with a friend of mine whom I admire. Both of us have been through things that are hard to be grateful for. It was a good time for me to be thinking about gratitude as I have been feeling very grateful for my life. There are knots in my life's skein that are starting to untangle.

I'm not quite able to encompass everything yet, much like he still has trouble feeling grateful for his marriage, but it is starting to happen. From an eternal perspective, the separation from my daughters is a short moment. Their lives are theirs, as were their deaths.

My life is mine.

I'm grateful for my life. Step by step, day by day, grateful for everything.

---

Though obviously, more grateful for somethings than others. Today's my anniversary, and I am truly grateful for my dear wife, who is my life.

My house is for sale (at least through Monday)

At least that is the current news. We have one offer coming for the full asking price and another that would involve the full price and no commission payments. We will be looking them over Monday, with some others that we are told are pending. Since we had it listed for less than twenty-four hours when we started getting calls Saturday, that seems like it is moving quickly.

We also have a closing date, the completed inspection and the financing approved on the house we are buying. Another step forward from linking our wounds and surviving to doing better.

So, for our wedding anniversary, I'm buying my wife a house and she is taking me to a karate work-out. She brought the idea up only about a week ago. Things are moving fast.

I'm even going to the Opera this week as well (http://www.dallasopera.org/musichall/). We need to get out more, and late in a run when there are lots of inexpensive seats is a great time sometimes.

If you are curious, go to http://adrr.com/house/ for some pictures of the inside of our current house. Since we are in Texas, our house was less than the median house price in the United States. The one we are buying isn't that expensive either. I'm grateful. For many things, I'm grateful. I've a post on that topic coming up soon (it is written, I just need to type it).

---

Found the MLS listing on-line: http://www.idxre.com/idx/detail.cfm?cid=11419&bid=51&pid=11138366&fspm=1

Hmm, they only added one picture, guess I should toss in a couple external pictures.

Here is one of the back yard, Rachel's fort and all, can't really see the landscaping. I'll note that the potted lime tree seems to hold its leaves better than the lemon tree.



From the front of the house:




The famous polydactyl cat on our back patio.




A different angle on the back yard (the squirrel proof bird feeder and the live oak tree we planted).




The front of our house.


A lot of good history in that house. A great neighborhood and ward.

Maybe I'll have to add a picture of the school down the way.

Prayer and Grief

In recovery, both science and the logic of the heart tell us that in grief, prayer is important. Finding your way through prayer can be hard. Without talking about the form of prayer, this essay is about an approach to prayer.

1. Honesty. Honesty is essential. God sees it, we can't hide the truth from God, but we can hide the truth from ourselves, which cuts us off from God. Prayer should approach honesty as a foundation. If you have pain, anger, hurt, doubt, or fear, unburden yourself truthfully with God.
2. Trust. You need to trust in God as a power greater than yourself who can do things for you that you can not do for yourself. Combining faith and honesty is very powerful.
3. Apply the two tools of honesty and trust to find a place of peace by taking inventory so you can repent and so you can be grateful. Reflecting actively, not passively, is what taking inventory means. Making amends to others and finding gratitude within you are the two places reflection needs to lead you.
4. Listen. Prayer is a conversation. All good conversationalists listen. The same may well be true of prayer. In listening expect that God may well tell you things that you do not know, expect or understand. Without the trust and humility it takes to listen, prayer can not lead you far.
   

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Did God really mean it when He said ... (with thanks to Suzette Haden Elgin, I'm thinking of adding these in from time to time)

"my ways are not your ways, neither are my thoughts your thoughts"

Yes.

Introducing Myself

I was over at Zelophehad’s Daughters and they were celebrating being on-line for a while and both introduced themselves and suggested that their readers introduce themselves.

I actually have an introduction from my website, http://www.adrr.com/ that I put up.

I'm copying it, because it is probably more than enough.

Not all that long ago, a group reviewed this site, ranked it in the top one hundred small firm legal sites and had a strong criticism because the site is not strongly tied to my identity. Often I receive feedback, comments or questions from people reared in the "context is everything" school who feel you can not separate the person from the writing.

So, like all things that end up on my screen too often, this goes into the FAQ. If you feel a need to know more about me, I have a personal philosophy section of this web site (not connected to the dispute resolution section) and a section based on my personal experiences that receives about ten thousand hits a month from people completely uninterested in dispute resolution. I am also a working professional and I teach a little dispute resolution. Links to those of my website are here:

• Stephen R. Marsh, Attorney at Law:
• Ethesis:
• Class materials from the my educational endeavors:
• Surviving Grief, Loss and Death:

That is more than enough about me.

I'm not big on the "context is everything" school, but it does have a place some times. That's my introduction.

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On another topic, I love my daughter's current girl scout troop. The last one had gone a little "Plano" or "mean girls." Seemed silly to me, the people who were the most fixated on money and status probably had household incomes a third to a fourth the size of ours. But they took our efforts to be concerned about costs (which came, somewhat, from helping some of the poorer kids in the group and being aware of the problems money causes) as proof we really were not the right kind of people.

Ok, I'm certain we were not the right kind of people to associate with them. We switched groups.

The current group is wonderful.

Which, I guess, does validate context. If my exposure had just been what the last group had morphed into, I would think of Girl Scouts as the worst of all possible environments. Instead, from what went before and what has gone after, I am more than pleased to support Rachel in it.

Ah, it has been a busy week. Forgive me for not blogging more.

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Thinking of context, introductions, etc. I just realized that perhaps I should take a lesson from what a friend of mine and I have been trying to get another friend to do. He is a harpist and vocalist, who plays the harp for weddings, funerals and special occasions, as well as teaches.

We've been trying to get him to introduce himself that way. Every time he does, people are delighted to know that about him. Heck, I'm going to post a link here for him.

Dallas Texas Harpist who teaches harp and performs at weddings funerals and special occasions.

Maybe I'll learn something from this all about introducing myself.