• M Patrick Photography
    Lifestyle

    The year is 1982, and my little family was green before green was cool

    The year is 1982, and my little family was green before green was cool. Fast-forward to today, I wonder if our ideas and what we learned in the early 80’s could outlast the years. I thought so. If nothing else, it would get those creative juices flowing for those who like to tinker with new ideas. We were green before green was cool. We were green before green was cool. As I have aged, I’ve been judged for a lot of things – one being that I’m not an environmentalist. I think too “locally” to ever be a true environmentalist. I’m too old school. That term environmentalist (or conservationist) unfortunately, has been…

  • a gentleman
    Business

    A Gentlemen’s Agreement

    HONOR What Ever Happened to the term A Gentlemen’s Agreement? There was a day when men shook hands and agreed a gentlemen’s agreement between two. A man’s word was his honor.   Now days attorneys draft up legal documents that are crafted to look for deception and deceit.  Where has honor gone? Speaking the truth should never be hard to do. Many preach about truth and justice, yet they drag out an attorney when the truth is directed at them. RESPECT Along with honor comes respect. Respect for your fellow man or woman. Meeting a call to justice to help someone in need. Believing in others, and relying on a friendly hand. Honor, respect, and dignity, are the strength and…

  • Business

    Is change a distraction to cover up disruption

    Is change a distraction to cover up disruption? You can have all the systems in place that you want, but if you don’t know who to call when trouble happens, what good will your systems be? Fifteen years later and businesses still call on their past employees for help. There are some skills that cannot be easily shared, or packaged in a system.  Licenses and professional trades that only a few aspire to ever learn.  Hands-on crafts and design work are true pieces of wonder.  You can’t systemize dreams, and you can’t bottle creativity.  What makes people think they can systemize another man’s or woman’s thoughts?  Processes can be systemized,…

  • Education

    Creating Innovative Students

    Creating Innovative Students in an online classroom and making sure that the students can be successful in them is a craft,.  A craft that instructional designers and instructors work on endlessly. Building online and blended content for the new technological classrooms requires more time and energy than the traditional classroom that most of us grew up with. However, online instruction offers something that the traditional classroom doesn’t offer – the ability of the student to actively engage in the technological learning process, and gain hands-on experiences that push them to really think about how things work in an innovative way within the field of emerging technology. That is one of…

  • Change is positive
    Wellness and Fitness

    Winds of Change

    Winds of Change  Time changes everything, and we need to be able to re-evaluate our own lives and the direction we are headed in. It doesn’t matter if the direction is one we have selected for ourselves, or one where life itself has lead us there unaware. Sometimes those things that we thought mattered most, are not important any longer. Rather, things that we overlooked or have forgotten from the past come closer to our new reality. Change is an emotional experience that reminds us that nothing is permanent. It teaches us to prioritize those things that are really important. Change can mean loss, but it can also mean gaining…