Apple, Innovation, An Icon – Steve Job’s Legacy

“Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

~ Steve Jobs

The first thing my husband told me on October 5 was that Steve Jobs died. His death struck a chord in hearts around the world, including mine. Gerald born in February 1955, too, is the same age. I am not far behind. For my generation of fifty-somethings, it is a reminder that we are infallible, even geniuses are mortal. It is wake up call to take action before its too late.

Breaking news bulletins across Europe reported his passing and offered tributes to the man whose remarkable innovations changed our lifestyle. His death caused reflection as we enter the digital age.

Steve Jobs name is synonymous with Apple. In 1976, he helped usher in the age of the personal computer by creating the Apple I and then II. Then he further revolutionized the industry with the introduction of the Macintosh.

You didn’t need to know anything about computers to navigate the Mac. The user friendly Macintosh was designed for computer illiterate, technologically disabled folks, like myself. I still struggle working the television remote control and turning on the stereo system.

He gave me and millions of other writers a voice. When the printed paper began to die out, digital communication took off and blogging was born.

Not only has Steve Jobs contributions to society improved our lives, his own story is inspires our soul. He defied the odds. Abandoned as a child, adopted by a family of modest means, he dropped out of college and started the Apple empire in his garage. The computer geek struck gold, becoming a multimillionaire before the age of 30. After being fired from his own company, he created successful ventures as NeXt and Pixar, then was rehired to turn Apple around and make it the most valuable business in the world.

His rags-to-riches, self-made man story, is the essence of the America Dream. His contributions are a tribute to the American spirit of discovery. As a visionary, he transformed the markets of computers, digital music and cell phones. He launched the first iPod, iPhone and iPad. As an innovator and entrepreneur, he found a new frontier and then shared it with the world.

His renegade life is a reminder for teachers to encourage students to think outside the box, to foster other pathways to success than traditional education, and to acknowledge that learning is a lifelong endeavor.

His life, cut short too soon, reminds each of us to seize the day. Dare to “think different.” iLove it!

Brain Glitches, Genealogy and Grandpa

How do you get anything done with a brain that short-circuits like mine does? To prepare my English class lesson plans, I googled celebratory dates and found out American Indian Heritage Month is coming up in November, which reminds me of our trip to the Badlands and visit to the Red Cloud Indian School in South Dakota. That enticed me to read about the Battle of Wounded Knee. While admiring photographs of famous Native American Chiefs, I kept seeing images of my grandfather’s weather-beaten, chiseled face with his high cheekbones and prominent nose. Convinced that we have some degree of Indian blood, I am off on a wild goose chasing missing links to my ancestry.

One thing led to another. In the online census report of Madison County Iowa, I discovered my great grandfather, John, was part of a family of 14 children. John’s grandfather, Aaron was born in Osage Indian Territory of what later became Kentucky. His first cousin also named Aaron later lived on the Osage and Kaw Indian Reservation in Oklahoma, a stone’s throw from where my grandpa grew up when great grandfather moved his family West. Naturally, I filled in the gaps of history with my imagination, convinced mighty warriors are part of my ancestry.

Sound crazy? Not if you knew my grandpa, a.k.a. Coach Mac. If Coach Mac took off his glasses, folded his arms across his chest and replaced his baseball cap with a headdress, he ‘d look just like the Indian American, Afraid of Bear – proud, sage, ageless. How many white folks do you know with 40 second resting heart rate, like grandpa? And he was afraid of bears, too!

Coach "Mac" - Ralph McKinzie

One fact is sure. The census report answered a question that has perplexed my family for years. My grandpa, never sure of his birth date, thought he was born in early October. Well I found proof – Ralph Clyde McKinzie born Oct. 1, 1894. He had a middle name, which he never knew about either. No wonder. Imagine having the nickname R.C? Like the cola. If I had a middle name like Clyde I might tend to forget it, too.

As if working for the missing persons bureau, I spent a weekend cruising the web genealogy files. On Monday morning, when the class bell rang, I wondered where the heck did I put my lesson plan? I’ll have to confess to class that I got lost navigating the Internet looking for my McKinzie lineage.

My Grandpa Mac defied age by remaining active by coaching college football in his nineties. He died at the age of 96. He would’ve been 117 years old today; I still celebrate his life.

Have you discovered skeletons in your family closet? Do you have any links to genealogy search engines that you could share with readers?

Désalpe- The Day Swiss Cows Take to the Streets

No wonder people love Switzerland. It’s a place where even the cows party. In October villagers throw a street bash in celebration of the livestock.

Cows were so commonplace in my childhood growing up in the Midwest, I couldn’t imagine why anyone would go out of their way to watch a herd of cattle, but during the désalpe, the day when cows come down from the mountains to the valley is a popular event, as much a part of Swiss tradition as Swiss cheese.

decorated cows

Thousands of visitors jam the cobblestone streets of Saint-Cergue perched on the Swiss side of the Jura, to applaud the herds of cows and sheep that parade through town. The désalpe festival honors the fat, four -legged fellows who keeps the country supplied in butter, milk and cheese.

The shepherds and herdsmen leave the highlands at the crack of dawn to arrive in the Swiss village on the lower slopes of the Jura mountains early in the day. The lead cows, wearing flowered headgear as elaborate as new brides wear, meander through town mooing. Leather collars a foot-wide hang around their necks, which attach to cow bells the size of lampshades.

For 24 hours at the end of summer, the quiet, ski village turns into a giant block party. The sidewalks and town square are filled with stands where merchants sell local Swiss specialties; raclette, crepes, sausages, soups, beer and wine. At overturned wine barrels tourists knock back white wine served in traditional tiny cups barely bigger than shot glasses.

Big burly-bearded men in jeans play the accordion, flute and violin. Bands of musicians dressed in traditional attire, black smocks embroidered with mountain flowers, black hats and gray pants, representing different mountain villages play the cor des alpes. The red-faced men blow into the the10-foot long straw-colored alpine horns creating sounds as forlorn as the nights of solitude that herders endure in the alpine pastures. Local choral groups sing equally mournful tunes. A short, stocky man in a black suit cackles when he demonstrates his whip cracking clearing a 100-foot circle in the crowd. A flag thrower twirls the red Swiss flag with a white cross.

Swiss horns

In Switzerland the cow is sacred. Senntumsmalerei, herd painting, is a special part of Swiss folk art, depicting the semi annual pilgrimage of the cows up and down the mountain.

In the spring another festival will honor the cows as they return up to the highlands for grazing in the summer. Most likely, I will be there paying homage. After seeing the désalpe, I’ll never take cows for granted again.

A Fond Farewell to Summer

On a steamy night in Chicago at the end of August, a symphony of crickets and katydids announce summer’s end. In a blink the hazy, lazy barefoot days of summer are over. Gone are morning sleep-ins, afternoon swims and evening backyard barbeques. School started with its frenzy of class lists, timetable changes, book buying, shoe tying and out-the-door-flying.

And I am back in the land of cheese and chocolate. From my back patio as the last rays of Indian summer sunshine shimmer over the white-peaked hood of Mt. Blanc, the end of the season melancholy hits me.

So how about a non-toxic, calorie-free pick me up? Nobody blasts away the blues better than the American saxophonist Grover Washington Jr’s window-shaking, horn blowing. R.I.P. Grover, your music lives on.

Thank you to the father of the smooth jazz genre for lifting up our spirits with the sounds of seventies. For a bit of nostalgia, kick back to a time when it was safe for children to play in the street after dusk, when neighbors helped raise all the kids in the hood and « drive by » was no more harmful than a McDonald’s lunch run.

TGIF from Switzerland!

Sending sunshine in a song!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMUn68nterI[/youtube]

Summer Song from the album Live at the Bijou (1977)

« Sing that Summer Song,

soon it will gone,

get that fever now,

come we’ll show you how,

sing it in the street »

September 11, 2001 – September 11, 2011 In Remembrance of 9/11

Ten years ago today, our sense of security was shattered instantly – the time it took passenger jets controlled by suicide bombers to crash into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania.

It was one of the moments in history where you will always remember what you were doing when you heard the news. When I arrived home from class, a friend was standing in my living room, her eyes glued to the TV screen. “Oh my God!” she cried, “The world is ending.”

I stared at replay of the film footage of planes crashing into the World Trade Center disintegrating 110-floors of metal and concrete, leaving 3051 children without a parent, and destroying the lives of thousands of families.

Terrorism. Live. Direct. In our homeland. At our hearth. In a heartbeat.

Suddenly we are all thrown into a real life horror show.

Yet no matter how many times we heard and saw the televised broadcast, we remained frozen in disbelief.

Even though, I lived far away in Geneva, home of world’s greatest peacekeeping organizations, and in a safe environment in a neutral country, the news stunned my international community of globetrotters. That year, my English class students at a Swiss international school wrote to the children of the UN school in New York, whose students lost family in the bombing.

Today, a decade after 9/11, my new students can’t remember a world without terror. They all know someone who knows someone, who was at the wrong spot at the wrong time in Bali, Jakarta, London, Paris, New York.

Today, even the most seasoned travelers step on the plane with trepidation. And anyone with a conscience wonders, what kind of world are we leaving our children? A world where commercial flights become deadly human missiles, where buildings dissolve like sand castles in the storm, and where innocent lives are annihilated in the blink of an eye.

The Ground Zero monuments, museum and 10^th anniversary commemorations offer a tribute to the families of victims of 9/11 and to the American spirit of resiliency. As we take a moment of silence to reflect and honor the men and women who perished during the attack or rescue mission, may be we also say a prayer for those people of other lands who have also lost loved ones in the fall out of terrorism.

One of my former students was 12-years-old when her mom died in the bombing of the American Embassy in Nairobi. She wrote about it in class.

“When they told me, I was so upset I tried to run through a glass door. Now I write until my fingers bleed.”

Alone at night we still shake, terrified and powerless to curtail the madness of our 21^st century world; together in the light of day, we stand tall and reach out in small steps. Healing begins in our homeland, at our hearth, in a heartbeat.

Weather Predictions From the Front Porch

Weather is a safe topic in social circles unless you are a meteorologist. The weather journalist has a no win gig. If he/she warns viewers of the upcoming tornado, hurricane, cyclone, blizzard, we lament they are sensationalizing the news when the weather pattern changes direction/velocity/impact. Case in point Hurricane Irene. With an estimated 65 million people from the Carolinas to Cape Cod at risk of being in Irene’s projected path, governments declared a state of emergency. Yet afterwards journalists’ interviewed irate New Yorkers and tourists from abroad (all male) who cursed the evacuation warning and felt the stay indoors policy was over the top. I am sure the people in areas harder hit like North Carolina or Vermont were grateful for the warning. If the meteorologist neglects to alert viewers to dangers lurking in the clouds, then he/she is at bigger fault. Case in point, Hurricane Katrina.

I know only one weatherman who is right all the time. My dad. He inherited the weather forecasting gene from my grandpa. As soon as inclement weather is forecast anywhere within a 500 mile vicinity, he turns on his storm buster box, a static sounding, battery-run weather radio. Then just like his dad used to do, he’ll stand on the porch admiring the clouds and yelling at family, « Take cover. Now !» This may be a guy thing. One brother-in-law chases tornadoes on bike in Minneapolis. The other one, who farms in Illinois, can read the clouds like the back of his hand.

Unless you grew up in the Midwest though, you can’t fathom how fast storms can roll across the plains. This summer my folks were at a picnic at the other side of the lake, when a guy there saw storm warning on his Blackberry. My parents hopped in the car and drove a mile back to our cabin on the other side of the lake.

canoeing in front of torn up shoreline

«Bat down the hatches !» my dad hollered from the driveway just as my French husband was heading out to sea on his toy boat, a catamaran.

The Frenchman had no sooner lowered the sails, when the winds hit. My son saw the tarp over the motorboat go air born, raced down to the waterfront to fix it and came back up the hill yelling, « the sailboat is gone. »

Oops, there goes the brains of the family – the doc, the professor, the business exec – out into the torrential rain on a rescue mission to catch the runaway sailboat. While they dashed into the churning black water in 60mph winds, I paced in front of the picture window thinking OMG, « My family is going down! »

The storm lasted less than 10 minutes, yet wiped out a wide swath of forest 20 yards from us. The sun came out as if nothing had happened, but the straight line wind peeled bark from elms, uprooted cedars on the shoreline and toppled thousand year old trees onto rooftops. Nearby areas looked like a bombed out war zone.

uprooted trees

If a strong wind can wreak that much devastation in an isolated forest, imagine the fall out from a hurricane hitting the the urbanized, densely populated east coast. My thoughts and prayers go out to people caught in Hurricane Irene’s path.

We are so quick to blame the meteorologists for misreading storms and creating false alarms, yet with global warming, the weather has gone crazy. The adage- better safe than sorry – applies especially in storm season. If you question your local meteorologist’s predication, take my advice. Have the man of the house to stand on the porch and give you a play by play of the cloud action.