Blogtrek

Toastmasters as a Canoe Trip

The scheduling of a Toastmasters club (or any other organization that meets regularly at night) resembles a canoeing trip over rapids and obstacles. We set our canoe out in a straight line (set a time for our meetings such as 1st and 3rd Thursdays). We encounter rock outcroppings, shoals and other obstacles in this path (July 4, Thanksgiving, meetings, and so forth) and so have to steer our craft around it (reschedule meetings). Toastmasters is a canoe trip. Toastmasters is a fire. Therefore, some canoe trips are fires.

On Beyond Zebra

As promised, my impressions of this Dr. Seuss classic. I also read this as a child; in fact, I remember my teacher read it to our class. My impression of it was that it was a cute strange creature story. I now recognize it as being a fine example of my personal slogan: Just add one. That slogan means that you can always go beyond something. You can't name the largest number because I will just add one to it. In this story, one can even go beyond the alphabet and make letters beyond Z. Dr. Seuss makes these up, with a drawing of a letter, and then says what it stands for; e.g., Yuzz for Yuzz-a-Ma-Tuzz. However, he begins the name of the creature with a Y, not a yuzz. So all he is doing is continuing the game of saying "A is for ape, B is for Bear, . . ." But I think his story works out well anyway, as we try to imagine what sort of creatures could exist. It is the same theme, really as with "Bartholomew and the Oobleck". Why can't it oobleck? Why can't there be a unicorn, or a yuzz-a-ma-tuzz? I think it is a good story, since it encourages children to reach out and find what's beyond something.