A local diamond

One of my favorite blogs is Chookooloonks. I started following her blog for many reasons - she's a great photographer, and a very creative and passionate person - and then discovered that she lives in Houston! I have not sited her around town (nor have I tried), but its neat to read her occasional stories about life in Houston.

My MIL and FIL gave me a book she co-authored for Christmas: Expressive Photography. I love it. It is all about the art of story-telling through photography.

She writes about many more things than Houston and photography and I really enjoyed reading her post yesterday. You might too. Here's a quote from the post:

From Chookooloonks "random thoughts: the parent trap and other musings:"

In other words, when corporations not only make it acceptable, but encourage their employees to focus on their personal lives in addition to their professional ones, it can only help to enhance the productivity of its workforce.  Moreover, when Corporate America  finally makes it okay for ALL its employees to be parents, then no one will have to sacrifice career for family (or vice versa).

Enjoy!

Mid-day diamond

I came across this post on marriage and thought it was worth sharing. In the post, Kristen, from Rage Against the Minivan, writes about the work of marriage (which speaks to the work associated with any relationship). I like it so I'm sharing it! Enjoy!

Here's a quick excerpt:

"While I think that marital relationships can and should maintain those warm feelings of love in the long-term, I also think that there are some seasons where that love is going to me more above loving behavior and less about loving feelings.  It’s trite but it’s true: love is a verb.  It’s a feeling, too, yes . . . but feelings are temperamental little buggers, and shouldn’t be followed at every whim.  Some seasons are not as conducive to loving feelings, and it’s in those moments that we have to “fake it till we make it” and work at loving behaviors with confidence that the loving feelings will follow."

A diamond for women (aren't they all supposed to be for women??)

Last year I taught a graduate level counseling course on women and one of the topics is career, which happens to be a very salient topic to me. I admire women who know what they want - to be a mother, to be a wife, to be a teacher, to be an engineer, to be (fill in the blank). Whatever it is, I understand we are all different and what we want, and sometimes what we can get, are different. This blog post describes the challenges women who work outside the home face. It is challenging for ALL women, regardless of where they spend their days or nights but I think she elegantly describes some of the nuances of this particular challenge.

Diamond

I've been thinking a lot about children lately - we have so many friends having children and I've been reading more family-related blogs that talk a lot about children. One topic that comes up over and over again is education. I recently read a post about homework for children in preschool and elementary school. Some of the cited information indicated that homework during these ages could actually be detrimental, undermining the child's natural problem-solving and creativity.

But this builds on other concerns - as a person who believes strongly in education, with a father who is an educator, with friends who are educators, with children whom I love going to school now and in the future - the continuing problems in our education system more than concern me.

Then I saw this: http://www.racetonowhere.com/home and the trailer for the movie.

Hope.
 

*Note: this is not a political statement

Powerful video on texting

It's a single video on texting. You may cry, it is sad but makes a powerful statement.

Challenging

Ok, so this diamond thing is challenging. This week (and yes, its only Tuesday) I've seen already three things I'd love to share. I'm going to focus on one (sort of) and I'll share the others later in the week! :)

I'm a big fan of TED videos. The TED logo is "ideas worth spreading" and on their website you can find incredible talks on pretty much any subject. I've watched a few and all were terrific - although I'm not currently teaching, for some reason education is always on my mind and the TED videos are a great way to educate yourself or would be great learning tools to integrate into education. I would recommend these: Sheryl Sandberg (COO Facebook), Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders; Chimamanda Adichie's The Danger of a Single Story; a TED best of the web, Fort Worth City Councilman Joel Burns "it gets better" (truly amazing testimonial);  Brene Brown's The Power of Vulnerability. If these aren't for you, you can find ANY topic on the TED site - these happen to be some of the ones I've been drawn to.

A diamond

Blogs seem to fall into several categories. You've got your blogs like this one, little ramblings about life. You've got your design and style blogs that focus on, well, design and style. You've got your famous blogs, you're multitasking blogs, your blogs that focus on one thing like cooking or politics or whatever. Although these blogs differ tremendously (well, if you follow enough design or style ones you know that they tend to blog about a lot of the same things). But MOST are written by people who are ok with sharing some bit about themselves - it might be their name, or their city, or whatever - the point is most blogs are not truly anonymous. Except the diamond today. Apparently anonymity opens up ALL kinds of potential blogging topics - you know, those things you would NEVER blog about in case your coworker or your great aunt read it.

Check out The Year of Blogging Dangerously for some extremely honest commentary on life (read: be prepared for discussions about more private topics). This weeks' posts have been particularly funny in regards to her children. Stories about children are the best and I'm lucky that in addition to the mostly hilarious (b/c I wasn't present to witness the mass chaos) stories I hear from my BFF, I'm sure I'll be hearing lots more as so many of our friends are having babies!! Anyways, back to the blog - she did an introduction of sorts post regarding herself here. She is hilariously refreshing in her commentary on all aspects of life. Enjoy!

A diamond!!!

Yes, it's a diamond but not what you're thinking (or maybe). This is the first in a new series I've decided to begin here in the world of messes. I am continuously moved by the great things I read on others' blogs and I want you to know about them too. So I'm starting a Diamond (in the rough) weekly post. I am not at all trying to say that the tons of blog posts out there each week are 'the rough' but just trying to highlight what I thought was a particularly shiny moment. And to give you some perspective, I currently follow 132 blogs. Um, did I mention I cleaned out my little google reader earlier in the week so that's a lower number for me? Scary. But I don't read everything all the time and I surely don't read them all each week. Anywho - if you judge me, its alright. At least you're reading the blog! :)

My first diamond comes straight from Attack of the Redneck Mommy, a blog I only recently began following. Sassy and fabulous, oh and did I mention Canadian??? But that's a story for another day.

Anywho, the blog touched me because it's about something that my husband shared with me many years ago when he did the Push America's Journey of Hope. The post, find it here, details her honest thoughts about the word "retard." She also has a mantra of which I'm a big fan - AIM HIGHER. Fitting.

A related post is also quite striking: Love That Max, If you ask people to not use the word "retard"

And if you want to learn more, check out R-word.

Thanks for stopping by!