Proper Perspective Is Of Great Value To Each Of Us

Some thoughts on Perspective

It has been said that sometimes we are so closed to the forest that we can't see the trees. This statement refers to the notion that we need to move back from a situation sometimes to see it with adequate perspective. You might ask yourself the question, how close to the forest would you have to be so that you could not see the trees? Probably very, very close. If you were to back up the view of the forest would improve because you could probably see many trees and the surrounding landscape. If we take the concept of perspective with the forest and trees and apply it to challenges that seem to surround us we tend to get a different view.

In America and the world today, there are financial and political challenges each and every day. The perspective that one has helps in dealing with challenges that arise many dealing with health and safety. Over time as we study history and learn the lessons from those who have gone on before us, be begin to recognize evidences that some events will probably happen again. We learn that people in the end will be responsible for their own choices, and that government cannot effectively incentiveize the economy.

Have you ever heard of the depression of 1920? Probably not, it came and went so quickly because the government encouraged the people to save and get out of debt, the result was a depression lasting only a few months followed by the roaring 20s. It has been shown that the depression of 1929 was prolonged greatly by government intervention, manipulating the markets and throwing money at people. We have had a depression or recession every 7 to 9 years since, like clock work. How do we know this? Perspective.

Have you ever wondered how a parent could love each of their children in a special way and yet the children can be at odds with each other, the parent stays out of the fray and continues to love each child. Hopefully when they get older they will begin to treat each other as well as the parents have tried to over the years. How can parents do this, perspective tempered with love.

Sometimes those without correct perspective complain about what is happening in our country, dispairing over what we must pass through in life, they offer different solutions that squander our future and do not retain our eternal possibilities. If we are prepared we can discern the serious detour proposed and refuse to be diverted.

The value of perspective cannot be denied. Remember to back up far enough from the forest that you can see the trees, not only the trees of the forest but the lessons learned from history. If we don't understand history, we are bound to repeat the mistakes of the past.

--
Kimball Findlay Ed.S.
kc4rzw@gmail.com

Material Things Don't Last

My mom wrote this poem for Linnie. I have had conversations with my mom about your mom, and how difficult it has been for your mom to leave her home and everything that she has.  My mom sent me this poem to give to Linnie, but I didn't, I felt like it would just make it harder for her to leave.  I will let you read it now, - I should of given it to her.

 

(My mom writing to me)

I have been thinking about our conversation on Sunday night, I am getting
too close for comfort to the same thing and feel for your sister.

I wrote this for Linnie if you think she would like it.  I started to read
it to dad and couldn't for goodness sake!!

He said "Do you want me to tell you who to send this too?"
I said "Who?"
"All of them,"  he said.

No I'll just have it in my history in my "poetry" section.




             Just Things

³Just things,² you said, they¹re my life you know.
I want them to follow where ere I go.
They¹re echoes of happier days I deem
Much more to me, than to you, they seem.

The record player with love¹s sweet sound,
Things like this I want around!
The tapes and videos and slides galore
They tell me I won¹t need anymore.

The books in my library I seldom read
Now you want them gone with lightening speed.
The rows of pictures on my wall
Are now not needed it seems at all.

The scrap books and keepsakes that are so dear
No one wants them now I fear.
The children¹s table under the stair,
Is much too old, even for repair.

The dishes and pans in cupboards  kept ---
The easy chair where grandpa slept ---
All can be replaced by something new
It all depends on your point of view.

The toy box filled with half broken toys
The silent house without any noise
The  kitchen table once overflowing
Now is empty -- and it too is going.

Just things you say? You can¹t erase
The time when everything had it¹s place.
Memories grow stronger through the years
As we fondly remember with silent tears.

Norma L. Smith October 2008

--
Kimball Findlay Ed.S.
kc4rzw@gmail.com

National Signing Day

Wednesday the 4th of February, 2009 was indeed an exciting day. Football enthusiasts all over America had their attention focused on where the best players were going to play beginning this fall. Now to me this did not used to be such a big deal, but since Nick Saban came to Alabama a few years ago, my interest in college football and my understanding of what is really going on seems to be increasing.

A college team can win games sometimes with just good old 'grit' and 'determination.' But these are such vague terms and highly unmeasurable, it makes my college trained mind think we need a goal analysis here. I feel an analogy coming on. Someone recently explained to me that a college football teams success can be compared to a good restaurant, the players are the ingredients in the food served, the coach is the chef, the high school coaches are the supplier of ingredients. It can be said that a good chief can make lesser ingredients taste fabulous some times but the best path to having consistently fabulous food is to use the best ingredients possible. A plan to consistently have the best ingredients and the best coach would seem to insure a consistent winner. And that best coach will also be a great teacher as this will insure that the players advance and make progress during the season from week to week.

So National Signing Day is a big deal for those teams that want to compete for a national championship in the next few years. When you get the best horses in the stable you have a better chance to win the race. Alabama is a great place for football and the Crimson Tide program as setup by Coach Saban has a learning process along with procedures to bring new players in, get them acclimatized to college studies and also to advance through a winning football training program that addresses every aspect of a players needs. It is not just enough to tell a player what to do, they make sure that players understand their role and how to accomplish it. Meaningful practice is employed so those skills can be honed to a championship quality. Having only great players on the team adds competition and motivation for each to work hard and become better. This seems to be similar to the path for success in life.

So congratulations to Coach Saban and the Alabama Crimson Tide for their #1 recruiting class on rivals.com for the second year in a row. Instead of just one Julio Jones as wide receiver there will be four others just as good, and the depth on the offensive and defensive lines in improved considerably as well. The running back position also has much more depth. All of this seems to lead to greater anticipation and excitement for the Spring A Day game on April 18th, 2009. The place will be packed again is my guess.

Looking forward to another great year, ROLLIN WITH THE TIDE.

Some of my Favorite Quotes on Learning

Quotes On Learning

What's your favorite quote?   In today's sound-bite world, there is power in a well turned phrase, glory in a succinct, memorable statement. Since learning is one of my greatest passions, I'm fascinated by articulate quotes on learning, training, education, and development. Here are some of my favorites, listed aphabetically by source:
 

"They know enough who know how to learn."
-- Henry Adams
 

"There is no time of life past learning something."
-- Saint Ambrose
 

"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."
-- Aristotle
 

"Education in our times must try to find whatever there is in students that might yearn for completion, and to reconstruct the learning that would enable them autonomously to seek that completion. "
-- Allan Bloom

"It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them."
-- Leo Buscaglia

"Only those who have learned a lot are in a position to admit how little they know."
-- L. Carte

"Learning is like rowing upstream: not to advance is to drop back."
-- Chinese proverb
 

"Placing the learners in small groups allows them to not only receive and express linguistic information, but to also manipulate it in various forms to gain a full understanding of it."
-- Don Clark
 

"It seems that we learn lessons when we least expect them but always when we need them the most, and, the true 'gift' in these lessons always lies in the learning process itself."
-- Cathy Lee Crosby
 

"Learning is not so much an additive process, with new learning simply piling up on top of existing knowledge, as it is an active, dynamic process in which the connections are constantly changing and the structure reformatted."
-- K. Patricia Cross
 

"Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow."
-- Anthony J. D'Angelo

 

"Learning is not compulsory but neither is survival."
-- W. Edwards Deming
 

"We don't learn from experience.
We learn from reflecting on experience."
-- John Dewey


"Get over the idea that only children should spend their time in study. Be a student so long as you still have something to learn, and this will mean all your life."
-- Henry L. Doherty
 

"Every person in this life has something to teach me - and as soon as I accept that, I open myself to truly listening."
-- Catherine Doucette
 

"Just as I have always said that I learned more in university pubs and clubs than I every did in a university classroom, so also I say now that I learn more through online discussions and simulations than I ever did from an online course."
-- Stephen Downes
 
 

"Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth."
-- Umberto Eco
 

"I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn."
-- Albert Einstein
 

"Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson


"Nine tenths of education is encouragement."
-- Anatole France


"Learning is easier than doing and don't confuse the two."
-- Robert Gately
 

"Research shows that you begin learning in the womb and go right on learning until the moment you pass on. Your brain has a capacity for learning that is virtually limitless, which makes every human a potential genius."
-- Michael J. Gelb


"Change is only another word for learning, therefore, the theories of learning will also be the theories of changing. If you want to change, try learning, one might say, or more precisely, if you want to be more in control of your change, take learning more seriously."
-- Charles Handy  (quoted at the introdduction to The Dialogue of Learning and Change)
 

"Read books, listen to tapes, attend seminars - they are decades of wisdom reduced to invaluable hours."
 -- Mark Victor Hansen
 

"If you're not learning while you're earning, you're cheating yourself of the better portion of your just compensation."
-- Napoleon Hill
 

"In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."
-- Eric Hoffer

"There is no difference between living and learning . . . it is impossible and misleading and harmful to think of them as being separate. Teaching is human communication and like all communication, elusive and difficult...we must be wary of the feeling that we know what we are doing in class. When we are most sure of what we are doing, we may be closest to being a bore."
-- John Holt, What Do I Do On Monday?
 

"No one limits your growth but you. If you want to earn more, learn more."
--Tom Hopkins
 

"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something."
--Thomas H. Huxley
 

"Learning from programmed information always hides reality behind a screen."
-- Ivan Illich
 

"The brain develops better in concert with others…"
-- Eric Jensen
 
 

"Meaning is more important to the brain than information"
-- Eric Jensen
 

"Everyone and everything around you is your teacher."
-- Ken Keyes Jr
 

"Nothing can be effectively controlled, in the long run, from the top of a hierarchy-- or from any one perspective.  People are basically trustworthy. Only workplaces that give their members the chance to learn and add value through their work will succeed in the long run."
-- Art Kleiner
 

"When you want to win a game, you have to teach. When you lose a game, you have to learn."
--Tom Landry
 

"The trouble with learning from experience is that you never graduate."
-- Doug Larson
 

"All of life is learning; therefore education can never end."
-- Eduard Lindemann


"The best of all things is to learn.  Money can be lost or stolen, health and strength may fail, but what you have committed to your mind is yours forever."
-- Louis L'Amour

 
 

"If telling were the same as training, we'd all be so smart we could hardly stand ourselves."
-- Robert Mager


"Take the attitude of a student. Never be too big to ask questions. Never know too much to learn something new."
-- Og Mandino
 

"Education is not something which the teacher does... it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being."
-- Maria Montessori
 

"When I learn something new-and it happens every day-I feel a little more at home in this universe, a little more comfortable in the nest."
-- Bill Moyers

"Learning is the best of all wealth;
it is easy to carry,
thieves cannot steal it,
the tyrants cannot seize it;
neither water nor fire can destroy it;
and far from decreasing, it increases by giving."
-- Naladiyar (c.5th-6th century), Tamil ethical literature
 

"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
-- Pablo Picasso

"It is best to learn as we go, not go as we have learned."
-- Leslie Jeanne Sahler
 

"You can learn new things at any time in your life if you're willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you."
-- Barbara Sher


"What have you learned today? Asking -- and answering that question every day is a launch pad to success."
-- Doug Smith


"Many instructional arrangements seem "contrived," but there is nothing wrong with that. It is the teacher's function to contrive conditions under which students learn. It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student's life."
-- B.F. Skinner  

 

"To learn anything fast and effectively, you have to see it, hear it, and feel it."
-- Tony Stockwell
 

"When an automobile maker is designing a new model, he does not ask the people in charge of wheels and tires to do an ROI study to justify having wheels and tires on the new model. It is accepted that the new model will not be complete, will not work, without wheels and tires. Learning should be viewed as the wheels and tires of any organizational change effort - no change effort can be successful without learning."
-- Daniel R. Tobin
 
 

"Knowledge itself, therefore, turns out to be not only the source of the highest-quality power, but also the most important ingredient of force and wealth. Put differently, knowledge has gone from being an adjunct of money power and muscle power, to being their very essence. It is, in fact, the ultimate amplifier."
-- Alvin Toffler
 

"Ignorance breeds fear; the more you learn about your subject, the less fear it holds for you."
-- Brian Tracy
 

 "Growth is the only evidence of life."
-- Herb True
 

"Our best chance for happiness is education."
-- Mark VanDorn
 

"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."
-- John Wooden
 

"It's not whether we have learned from history--we have--but our awareness of what we have learned."
-- John Woods



--
Kimball Findlay Ed.S.
kc4rzw@gmail.com

Keep Working To Fulfill Your Dreams, They Will Be Fulfilled

Sometimes we get an opportunity to do something that is important to us quickly when the dream comes to life inside of us, but seldom do we get that chance more than once in our lives, unless we persevere.

Many years ago during the 1960's as a Jr. high and high school student, it was my goal (dream) to get the highest radio telephone license. This would require many months of study and preparation. In high school I obtained my 3rd Class RT FCC license needed to operate a commercial radio station at the time. To move closer to this goal I attended Snow College and studied Electronics Technology and even attended on Electronics and Radio scholarships. These were very instructional and formative days in a great electronics program that has since gone away. I got a job working in commercial broadcasting at a regional radio station and was able to employ some of the skills learned from my early college work as it often became necessary to rebuild portions of the transmitter that were burned out by static electricity hits during stormy weather, and other things. I took the Cleveland Institute 1st Class FCC License course by correspondence course but got stalled out, without a way to get the help I needed. When it became clear that commercial broadcasting was not the professional activity I was prepared to lead out in, I had to face the decision to go back to college for more education and leave my fun with radio behind, translated into go and get a real job, all things considered this was a tough decision but one that was made not looking back but only forward to greater opportunities.

So what was going to happen to my goal of getting the highest FCC Electronics and radio license? What happened over the next decade was unpredictable to me at the time. I earned my BS degree in education and taught public school. later returned to graduate school and earned two higher degrees in Instructional Technology. I found that blending hardware and software in a meaningful way to make learning systems was what I loved to do.

After graduating with an advanced degree and a terminal degree in Instructional Technology, and a move across the country to north Alabama, it may have seemed that the dream to obtain the highest FCC license was out of reach. In my work the radio aspect was gone but inside I knew that it was still something that was important. It had now been about 20 years since I started working to reach the highest FCC license goal.

Enter KK4AI better known as Bart, a new aquaintance in Alabama, a seasoned amateur radio operator who invited me to study for the Novice Exam, something that was interesting but was unsure about the possibility for success since a 5 wpm morse code test was part of the test. At the last minute I went to the class and took the test, to my astonishment I passed, that was a real boost.

In the next few years other tests were taken with upgrades to technician and having passed code translated into tech plus, then general came a few years later. HF operations were now possible to go along with the 2Meter operations that Technician made possible. By now the FCC had realigned the class structure, and Novice and Advanced classes were eliminated but grandfathered. So to upgrade from General the only option was Extra Class, this was the highest FCC license you could get.

I determined to 'geterdone', here was the opportunity to get the highest FCC license again, repackaged in a different way, but just as difficult in my mind to obtain. Much of the electronics and radio theory from my college days was in my head but covered with rust it seemed. Having had success with Gordan West study guides in my previous Technicial and General upgrades, I decided to let 'Gordo' help again in upgrading to Extra Class, using his manual and audio tape set. I purchased a good portable audio cassette player and scheduled my study. Also began taking the online tests on QRZ.com. After a couple of months the formulas, procedures and thoery was really fitting together well.

On the 2nd of October in 2007 I successfully passed my Extra Class exam, talk about excitement. No longer was I going to be at the level just below the top, but rise to the very top class. This was a very exciting and ecellerating accomplishment, after notifying Gordon West of the successful completion a certificate was sent in the mail commending the achievement, something that I was very pleased about.

Then to may great delight, The following year at the Huntsville Hamfest who should be present but 'Gordo' himself. After learning that 'Gordo' was coming, I put my completion certificate in my bag and headed off to the great Huntsville Hamfest. There I had an opportunity to thank Gordan West personnaly for his assistance in successfully completing my Extra Class training by obtaining my license. The accompanying photo was taken at the hamfest with myself and Gordan West with the congratulatory certificate he had sent, it was the fullfilment of a wish that had been carried for over 30 years but finally fulfilled.

There is great meaning to everyone from this experience, and I guess that is what this post is all about. When you are working at making your dreams come true, just keep praying and working at it, sooner or later you will achieve what you desire, and usually in ways that you never dreamed possible.

Thrilling Opportunity to personally meet and thank Gordon West