A Message for All of Humanity

The kingdom of God resides within us all. Whatever your belief system is, know this: you can change the world. In fact, you do every day, with every action, with every encounter. All that you need already lies within you. The question is how will you change the world today?

Here’s Charlie Chaplin’s suggestion. I agree. Do you?

Winking at the Perigee Moon

Unless you live in a box, or maybe were offline for the last, I don’t know, few weeks, you must have heard about 2012′s supermoon, the full moon that appears to be the largest all year. That is because it is actually 14% closer  and 30% brighter than it is at its farthest point. Given its elliptical orbit around the Earth, the moon loomed last night at the apex of proximity called “perigee”.

At its peak, it cut through the crack between our curtain and the wall. Although it was cloudy last night, its illumination pushed through the sky like a rocket. I rolled over, gave it a smile and a wink, then rolled over again to my dreams.

Here’s NASA’s take on the supermoon. They should know. They’ve been there!

Minding the Gap in Mobile Workforce Productivity

By the year 2016 it is estimated that 43 percent of all US workers will work from home. That’s good news for the morning commute. But what about workplace productivity? Will we become even more isolated without all that watercooler chat?

Human beings are social animals. We need each other. So if it’s via Skype instead of via Starbucks at lunch, I’m wondering if we’ll build other types of home-based communities to fulfill that need. What about the National Association for the At-Home Worker? NAAHW! Or is that a ‘yes’?

Cisco’s stats speak for themselves. Enjoy!

The Mobile Workforce

 

When We Go for the Gold

Living on purpose is a big topic here on the Power of Slow blog. What better way to exhibit your enthusiasm for life than by going for the gold? Literally. As in the Olympics. Or figuratively, as in blogging about the same?

The folks promoting the Samsung Global Blogger competition approached me as they liked this blog and thought maybe others would be equally interested in reports from the trenches during the London Summer Games. So I put together a 30-second audition video as a candidate in the blogger competition.

If you want to actually view it, vote for it, pin it, like it or tweet it, you can do so here.

To vote, you can either:

1) Register at Zoopa.com (follow the steps)

2) Log-in using your Facebook details (follow the steps to ad the zoopa app).

Once logged in (either way), note the sliding bar on the right. 5 is the best; 1 is the worst, then click ‘vote’.

Either way, please view the video as every pair of eyes counts! Imagine taking the Power of Slow to the Summer Games? It would be my honor!

Texting and Calling Habits of the Young

Remember when phones were large and looked like this?

A replica of my first telephone

 

We have moved on from the early 1980s when rotary was the norm and push-button was for ultra-modern folks. I had a phone just like the one pictured above. I paid $1.50 a month and shared the phone with my sisters. Those were the days.

Today our kids clog the talkwaves wherever they are. Only they usually aren’t talking, but typing.

According to a Vondane Mobile survey, texting and calling habits vary drastically between individuals ages 13-24 and 25+. Here are some highlights:

• Nine percent of people ages 13-24 send over 1000 text messages a week. (My thumbs hurt just reading this, much less typing it.)
• The majority of teens/young adults age 13-24 only make between 1-5 calls a week. (And usually not to Grandma, but to their friends ~ at least at my house!)
• Seventy-six percent of parents keep track of the number of calls/texts their children make. (I wouldn’t go near my daughter’s cell phone. “It’s like my diary, Mom. Hands off!” Okay…)
• The majority of those surveyed say cost is the most important consideration when deciding on cell phone service. (Agreed.)
• Seventy-five percent of those surveyed own an iPhone or Android phone.

Below is the state of telecommunications today. Where do you land on this spectrum? Text like a teen? Are you a Scrooge on Skype?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Instant America

Instant gratification, high-speed Internet access, speed dating. Now, now, yesterday!

We live in a culture of speed. This infographic proves it. Yet we get more accomplished (the real reason for why we want to go so fast) if we slow down.

How will you slow down today?

When Mountains Turn to Molehills

The kitchen emitted an eardrum-splicing pitch.

“The fridge is making weird sounds,” I said to Husband. He grunted. It was early.

Fretting about yet another household item that required repair, I set about my morning in the attempt to surpress the feeling that everything was going on the fritz simultaneously. I trudged the moutain of worry until I put my ear to the fridge door a few hours later.

It sounded like metal vibrating. Taking a deep breath, I entertained the idea that perhaps the sound was coming from a nearby cabinet instead.

It was.

The “fridge sound” was a metal drying rack atop a metal cake form. The refrigerator motor hummed soundlessly. The metal forms did not.

It was nothing really. A mountain that turned into a molehill.

How often do we fret, relentlessly perhaps, about things that are easily prevented? When we rush around without thought, we forget that perhaps the noise we are hearing isn’t what we think. Perhaps it is quite the opposite.

This morning was a lesson in slow. When we take a moment to view the Big Picture, we sometimes find things aren’t always what they seem!

Have you had a mountain-turned-molehill moment lately? Please share!

Life: Unplugged

If you don’t think you’re hooked on gadgets, think again. We all are. It’s unavoidable. Even if you’re the least techie person you know. It’s everywhere. Like the air you breathe.

Just yesterday life got off to a whirring start. That is, to the whirring of a dead car battery whose juice had been sucked dry by a deadbeat radio that, go figure, still had enough gumption to bring down the car’s central operating system simply because it could.

I was not amused.

So instead of taking the sporty, two-seater, I-am-free-to-zip-to-the-TV-studio-mobile, I was obliged to wait for the tow truck to plow through a zillion snowflakes to my rescue. Watching my husband tear off into the blizzard in our blue Mazda, I dialed up the emergency assistance number to see what could be done.

Admittedly, I was in the dry, warm comfort of my very own home. It could have been worse, like waiting on the side of the Autobahn, risking life and limb to get to where I needed to be.

The tow truck guy came forty-five minutes later, sporting a heavy-duty battery smaller than a briefcase.

“This’ll do the trick,” he winked. While the car revved up to an acceptable level, we did some paperwork in his truck. He took a call, chat up a storm and finally released me to drive myself to the repair shop. It felt like an eternity, knowing I had to be at the TV studio by 1 pm. Remembering to breathe the slow, I hopped into the flow of the moment, riptide and all.

“Glad the battery charged up again because there’s no way I can make it down your driveway and back again,” he winked again.

I plowed my way through the snow drift that was the common driveway (my neighbor doesn’t like to shovel). Peeling a wheelie around the corner, I zig-zagged my way to the nearby town to deinstall the rogue radio. Or, at least, I thought.

Another thirty minutes went by before the repair guy could say, “All done!” he winked too.

I could feel the skin just above my eye begin to twitch.

“So….whadya do?”

“Oh, I unplugged the radio, then plugged it in again. You’ll get a new one by Friday. It’s a common manufacturer’s error with this car model. Only they don’t replace it until you have a problem.”

So Renault (there, I said the name) leaves it up to fate as to whether you come unplugged in the middle of, well, anywhere?

For a second time that morning, I was not amused.

Our cars operate with computers. Our lives are dictated by them too. But another unplugged moment the day before had me laughing so hard I almost cried.

My Internet was winking (do you see a theme here?) on and off until it finally disengaged altogether. So I patiently called the phone company to get to the bottom of the matter. Much like the tow truck guy, the dude on the phone was extremely helpful and chatty.

“Is it plugged in?” he asked flatly.

I’m sure he could hear my eyes rolling until I said, “Oh…” The cord had jiggled loose from the router during a particularly vigorous vacuuming session, I suppose. It’s hard to nudge all those cables out of the way to clear the dust, don’t you know?

I quietly pushed the plug back into its place, thanked the phone guy and watched my computer blink back to life.

The next time you want to throw your laptop/cell phone/tow truck guy out the window, remember this: It is amazing how much we rely on automation and when it doesn’t work, we think our lives just might end. Only they won’t. It’s after days like these that we could all use some truly unplugged time!

 

The Pros and Cons of Renewable Energy

Renewable energy production has been on my mind lately. Maybe it’s because our little town is divided on wind power. Some think plunking down a huge windmill at the edge of town is a little spooky.

This infographic points to the pros and cons of alternative energy generation. I was startled to find that wind power eats up habitats too. Those poor bats (see the box to the right of the water buffalo). Now I’m uncertain whether a wind mill is such a good idea…what do you think?

Courtesy of 2GreenEnergy.com

A Short History of Life at Home

Are you looking for a nice, slow read to fill your evenings this February? Well, do I have a treasure for you.

We tend to skim-read through stuff without the lingering pleasure of allowing a well-constructed sentence, filled with juicy elements, to land on our skin and shimmy up our spines. Not all writing is meant for deep reading. I admit to retweeting links to articles I’ve not read in depth. But writers such as Bill Bryson deserve our attention head-on. His brilliant lyricism and command of the English language made me want his latest book, At Home: A Short History of Private Life, simply not to end.

Using each room in his own home, once a rectory built in 1851, as a point of reference, he takes his readers on a journey into the past. Sometimes with an architectural focus, sometimes with a societal one, Bryson never loses sight of how technological innovation has impacted us to this day. From the pre-Civil War in America to Victoria England to today, we get to tramp alongside the author as he unearths historical facts that would make Wikipedia green with envy.

Consider his description of the German schoolteacher Johann Philipp Reis whose prototype telephone came fifteen years before Alexander Graham Bell filed his patent. The phone never worked and here’s why:

[I]t was later discovered that when the contact points on Reis’s device became fouled with dust or dirt, they were able to transmit speech with starling fidelity. Unfortunately, Reis, with Teutonic punctiliousness, had always kept his equipment impeccably shiny and clean, and so went to his grave never knowing how close he had come to producing a working instrument.

His description of bathroom habits, a relatively new discovery for mankind, is a real hoot, not to mention how the role of the hallway has changed from gathering space to a cheerless, empty one on your way to somewhere else.

As my dad, who kindly gave me the book, so rightly said: “It’s a book so full of information, you have to put it down after fifteen pages to simply digest it all.” So true. But you’ll want to pick it right back up again the next day to explore the next cavern of human existence and the house that has turned into our home.

What good reads would you suggest?