Personal
Personal reflections, comments about things I've been doing, etc.
Random Lunacy
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 12/21/2010 - 04:32Wikipedia starts off describing technological singularity this way:
A technological singularity is a hypothetical event occurring when technological progress becomes so rapid that it makes the future after the singularity qualitatively different and harder to predict.
Some have linked the 2012 prophecies to singularity. Meanwhile, we are having an interesting event right now. The total lunar eclipse on the same day of the winter solstice. Granted, the eclipse is at the beginning of the day and the solstice is at the end of the day, but even that hasn’t happened in nearly 400 years.
Outside, it is windy and mostly cloudy. I catch brief glimpses of the eclipse through breaks in the clouds. It isn’t as cold as I expected, but Fiona doesn’t want to get out of bed. We have a couple sets of wind chimes, as do our neighbors, and there is a veritable symphony going on out side.
Inside, I check my twitter feed. It is pretty lively for this time of the morning. Here are a few qutoes:
All of us looking at Eclipse r nerds. All of us looking at Twitter r nerds. All of us tweeting about Eclipse r Mega-nerds
Eclipse is awesome
Red moon rising...creepy beautiful.
Watching the eclipse in a perfectly dark field near new paltz, ny- magnificent!!
Woke the kids to see the eclipse. Really nifty.
Send moon pictures we are so cloudy rainy here in Riverside!
Let's all take a moment of silence for the planet Pluto, who cldnt join us this evening.
and when the night is through, I'll be looking at the moon, but I'll be seeing you." Wish Dad were alive 2 see the #eclipse. He'd love it.
Everyone who doesn't have clouds covering the eclipse SFU
As I'm sure has been written many times tonight, "Goodnight, Moon." Been really fun seeing friends', Twitter's reactions. G'nite, all.
Everyone simultaneously Tweeting about the #eclipse all over the world right now. For one moment, we are all a community. Literally awesome.
When the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars.
Meanwhile, it is National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day. Wherever You Are Healthcare for the Homeless, a program of Community Health Center, Inc. (CHC), my new employer, will be hosting a memorial services and candlelight vigils in memory of the areas’ homeless residents who died in 2010 today and tomorrow. Then, on Thursday, I will go to the funeral for my aunt and rush back home for a birthday party for my father-in-law.
Between a new job, the loss of a family member, the stress of the holidays, I’m pretty raw. The wind chimes and the moon help a little. All of this returns me to the old Zen story:
Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing to steal.
Ryokan returned and caught him. "You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler, "and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift."
The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.
Ryoken sat naked, watching the moon. "Poor fellow," he mused, "I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon."
The Heroism of Ordinary Life - Susie LeMieux
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 12/19/2010 - 11:44Susie LeMieux had Parkinson’s disease, as did her father Vivien Cota. Yet the disease took different courses in these two different people. Grampa showed signs of belligerence and spent his final days in a nursing home. When Aunt Susie’s husband, Fred LeMieux went to visit my Grampa, Grampa would ask Uncle Fred if he had brought guns to help him escape. Aunt Susie, on the other hand became peaceful and spent her final days in the loving company of her family.
Yesterday, I received a message on Facebook from one of Susie’s grandchildren. The family new that Facebook was perhaps one of the quickest and most reliable ways of reaching me these days. Aunt Susie died yesterday afternoon. While she had been fighting Parkinson’s disease for some time, her passing was sudden and unexpected. The doctor believes she my have had a pulmonary embolism. Even her final hours reflected Susie’s peacefulness. Her daughter, my cousin Dorian was helping her get ready for a family holiday party. She had just put on a festive sweater and a pretty necklace. Her family was by her side as she died.
Dylan Thomas urged his father not to go gently into that good night. I’m not sure how gently Susie’s father entered that good night, but Susie entrance did not show rage against the dying of the light. Perhaps this too, reflects a bit on Susie’s life.
Aunt Susie, like my mother and their sisters and brother grew up on a small farm on the banks of the Connecticut river during the depression. There is something about the look, the sound of the voice, the mannerisms that say, ‘kin’, to me, and on rare occasions, I’ve run into people with similar mannerism or tones of voice and I’ve wondered if they grew up on the banks of the northern Connecticut River or if they were descendents of the Gordons, Chases, Eastmans, Merrills or Cotas.
My mother often told stories of growing up on the farm during the depression. Life did not sound easy back then, but it sounded as if they managed to find joy and happiness in spite of the struggles. It seems to me that this was a lesson Susie learned early and carried with her through her life.
When my Grampa was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, he and his wife were living with my Aunt Susie. My grandmother, Dorothy Cota, nee Gordon was also advanced in years and fighting her own battles with age. She died a couple weeks after her husband did. These days you hear more and more stories about boomers caring for aging parents. From my perspective, Aunt Susie appeared to be a model for such people. Just like on the farm, she handled the struggles of the day with joy and happiness.
It is a trait that she passed on to her daughter and it seems only appropriate that she should pass on in the loving embrace of her family.
Recently, I wrote a blog post about heroism. Philip Zimbardo has started the Heroic Imagination Project which believes “heroism can be learned by example and reinforced with practice.” Friends have asked if what Zimbardo is describing is really heroism or simply practicing kindness. Heroism, they say shown through extraordinary acts.
Perhaps Aunt Susie embodied what Zimbardo is really talking about. She probably didn’t think of herself as a hero and I suspect that those around her might not have thought of her that way either. Yet in her quiet kindness Aunt Susie showed the sort of heroism of ordinary life that we should all aspire to. Rest in peace, Susie LeMieux.
Contest Updates
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 08:29Back in November, I ran my first blog contest, The Buckyballs Contest. Since starting my new job, I’ve been slow about getting the results up. Finally, here are the winners:
Cheryl at Cheryl Budge
Chris at Christopher Adams Connecticut Business & Marketing Coach & Consultant and
Tina at There is more to me
Each of them should be getting a set of Buckyballs in the mail and hopefully a visit from you after you finish reading this blog post. As a final note, through December 15th, you can still get a 15% discount if you go to their site and use “orientlodge” as a promotion code,
What goes round comes round.
I also received a notice that I’ve won a flexible tripod from Photography Exposure. This is another interesting blog worth exploring. I’m very interested in HDR photography, which really benefits from a good tripod, and I’ve been interested in reading Evan’s HDR posts.
Finally, I should get a little work done. The Community Health Center, Inc. where I now work runs a program called Recess Rocks. It is aimed at addressing issues of childhood obesity. They have just run a video contest and the results should be coming up in January. I hope you check it out.
Where were you when you heard the news of John Lennon's murder?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 12/11/2010 - 14:14It has been a long week, the first full week of my new job. To make things worse, I’ve been fighting a cold that I believe Fiona brought to the house. I’ve been tired and when I’ve gotten home, often gone straight to bed. My personal writing and my visit to friends blogs have suffered considerably. John from Ask The Blogster left a nice comment yesterday mentioning that I was missed from the Adgitize community.
I describe it as a community, instead of an advertising network or some sort of blogging network, because that is what it is. It relates back to any sort of good social media activity. It is about the community.
Dick, another active member of the Adgitize community, over at Dickster’s Random Thoughts asked in a recent blog post, "Where were you when you heard the news of John Lennon's murder?”. He talks about getting dressed in black and heading off to open up the store he worked at.
I’m a few years older than Dick. I was living in an old spice factory that had been converted into artists’ loft spaces in Brooklyn, NY. One of my loftmates was a photographer supporting himself working for CBS news doing food service. I remember that he told me that Lennon had been shot. The details are now a little bit blurry in my mind. My recollection was that at some point, he had gotten a call from work. He was told that Lennon had been shot and that it was going to be a busy long cold night at CBS news, and he had better get in to make sure there would be enough coffee and hot chocolate for people working long hours.
I had moved to New York to be a writer. I was supporting myself by writing computer programs for New York Life Insurance company. In the morning, I got on the subway into Manhattan. I don’t know if there really was a strange hush over the crowd in the subways, or it was just my reaction to all the people. I remember seeing a poster for some movie titled something like “The Starmaker” and I thought about how we deal with stars, making stars, killing stars. I stopped and wrote a poem about it in a park on the way to work. I suspect the poem was lost a long time ago, and it was probably a proto-emo type poem that is just as well lost.
Now, thirty years later, I’m still writing. I’m writing my blog posts. I’m working on using social media to improve communities’ health, and I’m tired. I’ll post this as is, rest, visit a few other blogs and head off to some social engagements for the day.
Changing How We Talk About Health
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 12/05/2010 - 12:30Today is my fifth day working at Community Health Center, Inc. Well, it is Sunday and a day of rest, so maybe it doesn’t count. Yet here I am, writing another blog post about my job. Some of it is clearly because it is new. I like writing about things that are new to me, and my job still fits in that category. Some of it is because I get my work emails on my cellphone and so I’m on 24x7, or at least as much as I am willing to carry around my cellphone and respond to messages.
There are so many things that need to be worked out. What is CHC’s voice? How does it relate to my voice? Should I set up a CHC blog and put these posts there? If so, on what platform? Should I copy such posts here? Who else would write in such a blog?
Then, there is the classic work/life balance issue. Weekends are time for resting, relaxation, and doing fun things. But what if you find writing about interesting issues, including those where you work, fun and relaxing?
Some of it comes back to an old union chant, our life is more than our work, and our work is more than our job. However, it is really great when all of these things over lap really nicely.
So, for fun, I’ve been participating in discussionx on a mailing list of group psychotherapists. A current topic is about cultural and legal issues that can get in the way of addressing mental health issues. There is a lot packed into that discussion, and I’ll probably not try to unpack it hear right away.
I announced my new job there, and spoke about seeking ideas on how we can use social media to improve communities’ health. Many of the therapists on the list are quite reticent about social media. They have big concerns about privacy as well as things like the addictive nature of social media or the potentially negative effects of continuous partial attention. One pioneer in the use of Internet tools in psychotherapy wrote about his recent experimentation with Twitter which sounds really interesting.
Another person suggested that we need to better understand what it means to improve communities health. I explored this a little bit on Thursday as I visited the Community Health Center in New Britain. The founder and director of Community Health Center, Inc. spoke with me about their efforts to find new ways of providing health, particularly to under served populations. He challenged me to explore ways that social media can be used above and beyond simply enhanced publicity.
Looking at the Google Analytics for the main website, much of the traffic appears to come from job searchers. Indeed, the Human Resources department seems to be making a strong effort to use social media to assist recruitment and this is an area where I hope we can make significant progress. There are the obvious areas of reaching out to people that do not realize they have health care options and of reaching out to professionals to talk about best practices. There are opportunities to use social media to explore how to affect public policy.
Yet perhaps the most exciting area is when we really take advantage of social media and make it a conversation. Can we change the way we think and talk about health care and our communities? I think some of this is happening. Take a look at Blame Drew’s Cancer. At the surface, it is about raising money for the battle against cancer and raising awareness. At a deeper level, it reflects how social media is changing the way we talk about health.
When Kim’s mother was fighting cancer, we joked with friends about how whenever someone talked about fighting cancer, they always said the word cancer in hushed, almost reverent tones. The same applied to therapy or counseling. Drew’s cancer has become a chance to turn it on its head, to talk of cancer in mocking tones.
Then, there is Sarge Charlie. I don’t exactly see eye to eye with Charlie on political issues, but I love his spirit in his battle against cancer. Some of what he and his friends have written reflect a similar shift in how we talk about health.
Back at home, Fiona had a sore throat this morning. So, she has been resting. It seems to be passing. I sure hope so. Every Sunday evening, Fiona and I do an Internet radio show. Since last Wednesday was World AIDS day, I figured I would talk with her about HIV/AIDS. We have an activist or two calling in and it should be a great show also aimed at changing how we talk about health.
Enough for now. It is a day off, a day of rest. Time to visit a few friends’ blogs.
