Opening My Mind

When I was a kid, around thirty two years old I was a claim agent for the Grand Trunk Western Railroad in Battle Creek, Michigan.  My job was to handle employee injury claims and investigate crossing accidents. I was trying to improve my life by spending some time upstairs in my attic writing free lance stuff for fun and profit.  A friend of mine named Caesar was a railroad switchman and a very deep thinker. He was a humanitarian in action.  One day he invited me to attend a little meeting of sort of intellectuals at his friends home and I put on a suit to look proper and met some very fine people.  For entertainment they played a record of an anthropologist named Ashley Montegue. They served tea from a silver pot with cups from a silver tray.  I really did not know what an anthropologist was and that name sounded suspicious to me.  After listening to the record we all had a discussion on the subject. I said just a few words, and they were very polite to me and invited me to return the following month.

Let me just say that this opened my mind to a world I had not known.  Below you will find our new feature which have dubbed “Aha Stuff.” These are video lectures, mostly from TED.com  They differ in length but I believe that twenty minutes is maximum.  In some ways they are like that record I listened to some fifty years ago.  They could well shake the cobwebs in your mind.  It will be a gathering of some of the great minds of our time talking about what they know most about.  Nice thing though about opening up a site.  On TED.com  it will allow you to take your own adventure in so many other topics.  You can find an endless parade of experts.  It can be like going back to college and having only the very best professors at their very best but here you also might find people who are not professors who can help to open your mind. I know your time is precious.  No doubt I have worked somehow in your industry.  I’ve shared the workload many of you bear. I’m simply inviting you to take a side trip in your mind for twenty minutes now and then and let you find out how most everything you learn can be applied to making your job a little easier and happier. I wish you a pleasant mind adventure.