Expand Your Mind: Hodgepodge II
by Miki Saxon
Maybe because it is finally spring where I live, but my mind is skipping around topics like a butterfly (although I haven’t seen any yet).
Everywhere you go the tech world, especially startups, are scrambling to hire and moaning over the perceived lack of candidates. But finding talented engineers is a snap in comparison to finding women willing to commit to a convent. Being that it’s 2012, both groups have turned to social media to solve the problem.
Rather than leave the future of the convents to prayer and chance, Sister Elaine Lachance has turned to the Internet. She’s using social media and blogging to attract women who feel the calling to serve God and their community. “But I knew I had to go there, that I had to do it,” said Lachance, who turned 70 on Sunday. “You have to go where the young people are. And that’s where they are.”
Bend, Oregon is the backdrop of an encouraging story on jobs thanks to Gary Fish, who founded Deschutes Brewery in 1988.
With 80,000 people surrounded by not much of anything — with no Interstate, no university, and the closest major city 160 miles away across steep and snowy mountains — beer has had room to make a difference. (…) “You have to thank Gary Fish for kind of creating that culture,” said Larry Sidor, a former brew master at Deschutes who left last year to open a brewery of his own this summer, CRUX Fermentation Project. “It’s been kind of a training ground, a spawning ground for the craft movement.”
I have to admit I don’t understand the willingness of people to hire strangers to do both everyday and more exotic “life stuff” for them, but doing so is more tsunami than trend.
We’ve put a self-perpetuating cycle in motion. The more anxious, isolated and time-deprived we are, the more likely we are to turn to paid personal services. To finance these extra services, we work longer hours. This leaves less time to spend with family, friends and neighbors; we become less likely to call on them for help, and they on us.
Finally, I was reminded that short-term thinking always comes back to bite when I read in January that teens were “showing their love” by sharing everything, including passwords; actions guaranteed to create mayhem as teen feelings shift.
Young couples have long signaled their devotion to each other by various means — the gift of a letterman jacket, or an exchange of class rings or ID bracelets. (…) It has become fashionable for young people to express their affection for each other by sharing their passwords to e-mail, Facebook and other accounts.
Fast forward to adulthood and that tell-the-world social sharing is still creating mayhem, although not because of changing affections.
After a few relationship-testing episodes, some spouses have started insisting that their partners ask for approval before posting comments and photographs that include them. Couples also are talking through rules as early as the first date (a kind of social media prenup) about what is O.K. to share. Even tweeting about something as seemingly innocent as a house repair can become a lesson in boundary-setting.
Enjoy today and have a memorable Mother’s Day tomorrow.
Flickr image credit: pedroelcarvalho
