Russ Towne's A Grateful Man

I’ve always been very interested in personality tests. I think it’s because I love the idea of teams working together and if I understand what makes individuals tick, I can more easily figure out how to get a group of individuals to work together toward a common goal.

Just in case you’re curious, I’m an ENFP according to Myers Brigg, a Number 7 (generalist, visionary) according to Enneagram and Orange in the True Colors Personality test.

Anyway, you have no idea how excited I was when I had the opportunity several years ago to attend a Body Language workshop facilitated by an experienced police investigator!

In this workshop we learned, among other things, how to tell when someone is being deceitful. To practice what we had learned, we were divided into groups of 3 or 4 people and given time to come up with two truths and one lie about ourselves and then try to catch each other in the lie. I was amazingly…

had a little caucus practice

with my class of kinders

to help them

to understand

the process.

they all began by

standing on one side

or

somewhere in the middle.

we also had two happy monkeys,

curious george on one side

and 

soft cuddly monkey on the other.

each made big promises,

each told

what they would do for the kinders

if they picked them.

each worked

to get the kinders on their side.

one promised 

ice cream every day

one promised 

3-hour recesses

one promised 

no naps

and

on and on

went the promises.

and the littles

ran

back and forth

back and forth

as they heard

the promises made.

yet

one stood alone

and

never wavered

knowing what she wanted

and what she believed in

right from the beginning.

no naps.

ever.

and

when it was over

and the rest

had run

back and forth

and

back and…

And he reads to them, as he does every night, as if watering them, as if turning the earth at their feet. There are stories he has never heard of, and others he has known as a child, these stepping stones that are there for everyone. What is the real meaning of these stories, he wonders, of creatures that no longer exist even in the imagination: princes, woodcutters, honest fishermen who live in hovels. He wants his children to have an old life and a new life, a life that is indivisible from all lives past, that grows from them, exceeds them, and another that is original, pure, free, that is beyond the prejudice which protects us, the habit which gives us shape. He wants them to know both degradation and sainthood, the one without humiliation, the other without ignorance. He is preparing them for this voyage. It is as…

“Old Boat”
Painting by Tracy Effinger Upton
From tracyeffingerart.blogspot.com

the rowboat
bumps gently
in moorage
asleep in her
dreams of
summertime
voyages cross
silver ponds
along banks of
svelte streams
iron oarlocks
intoning the
stout chants
of hardwood
in swivel and
swim through
deep pools of
cool fisheries
halting above
rower’s secret
most spot for
new mornings
of lazy delight
where the low
rising sun skims
and glances off
sparkling surfaces

all of a unit
the wood and
the rower
the water and
all of their
summertimes
sprung from
the dreamstuff
of one grieving
widow boat
left to her
paint crumbled
reverie missing
her untethered
days pulled with
pride and an
effortless glide
through the life
of the two arms
and hands that so
lovingly built her