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I love baseball! I'm so excited for it to be back. I though it would be fun to share this article on a local upstate New York man who was recently promoted to be the bullpen coach for the Cleveland Indians. But he is also a volunteer firefighter! It is a great story, that I thought many would enjoy.
Read the article by clicking here: Brian Sweeney Article
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We seem to like streaks.
For those of you engaged in Snapchat, streaks are counted for the number of consecutive days you snap with someone else. At least, that is what my teenage daughter tells me. Age is a streak - how many days have you woken up to live another day. In sports, we measure all sorts of streaks, in particular in baseball. Winning and losing streaks, hitting streaks and scoreless innings streaks. We celebrate athletes like Cal Ripken and Eli Manning that play in in every game without taking one off. One of my favorite is a green-light streak. Anyone who has driven uptown on 3rd Avenue in Manhattan can appreciate the thrill of hitting 10 green lights in a row! Writing this blog post is the result of a streak. The archives section to the right, before this is published, shows a post in every month from February 2019 to December 2019. I need to keep the streak going for January 2020, and today is the last day to keep the streak going. There are some volunteer fire departments with impressive streaks. Like the City of Hudson Fire Department, which has been serving their City since 1794! That is a 200+ year streak! Streaks are powerful because they create habits. Once it becomes a habit, the action is no longer forced - it becomes natural. Of course, it is possible that the habits are negative ones, but let's stick to the positive. We need to encourage the positive streak of volunteer firefighting. 40 years ago, we didn't have the overwhelming options of entertainment to compete with community service. Now, the volunteer fire service has to compete for attention. LOSAP is not the only thing that will keep people on their streak of volunteering, but it certainly helps. The goal of accumulating 50 points each year to earn the LOSAP benefit can encourage someone to stay active longer than he/she would have otherwise stayed. Our property taxes and safety depend on our dedicated volunteer fire departments keeping up their long-standing history of service to their communities. Let's continue to support them and root for the streak to continue!  We are taking a few days off. Thank you to all who have served our country, and we remember those who gave their lives.
Memory is a funny thing. Someone can be really good at memorizing facts and recalling those facts. But memory of an event that happens in real time is completely different, and very hard to recall with 100% accuracy. Two or more people can be at the very same event, and remember that event very differently. One of the books I read and have gifted many, many times is "A Drive into the Gap" by Kevin Guilfoile. This is a very short book that contains a powerful story about how different people remember the same event - the day Roberto Clemente reached 3,000 hits in his career. The author was able to piece the mystery together as a result of his father's journal and other evidence. I don't want to give too much of it away. Even if you don't like baseball, I think you would like this book. Here is a link to the book: One of my favorite bloggers, Seth Godin, has many great blog posts about memory. He explains how the memories we rehearse are the ones we live with. You can read two posts about that subject here: I know this is not about LOSAP, but I think it is important enough to share. I hope you find it as interesting as I have and learn a few things. A year or two ago I attended some training given by Krieger Solutions. The training was called "Communicating to Connect", and in the training we learned how to understand our own communication style and how others communicate. By having this understanding, we are then able to more effectively communicate with one another. It was a fantastic training exercise that I recommend for anyone and everyone!
Since that training, I've been following Kreiger's blog. Today's post is about Strategic Thinking, and I thought I'd share it with you. The reason being that these are many of the steps I take internally when answering questions or solving problems. Note I said many - after reading this I understand I have even more to learn! I hope you find this interesting! |
