Tonkin to You!

My wife and I are more obsessed with our dog Willis than Thanos was about finding all the Infinity Stones. He is handsome, smart as hell, and a born comedian….a textbook Jack Russell terrier. This slightly mighty canine is a perpetual motion machine stuffed into nine lbs of muscle, attitude, and spunk. Seldom a day has gone by in the Tonkin household since his arrival four years ago that Willis hasn’t inspired a laugh or brought more light into a room. He is my teaching assistant, hiking partner, confident, and best bud. Recently, Mr. Willis (as my wife has taken to calling him) earned a new title: Mentor. A little over a week ago, a two pound ball of fluff showed up at my house (courtesy of my brother-in-law Raife). Looking like a wet rat and smelling of cigarettes, this little terrier/chihuahua mix (a “cherrier”) was wobbly, thin, and in dire need of a home. Raife’s rescues were not a new phenomena in the family; as a landlord, he often comes across “unplanned” critters needing a ...

  The number “7” is frequently associated with good luck or perfection.  Christians believe that the world was created in six days, with the seventh being a day of rest.  The seven-day week is a global standard. When asked to pick a number between one and ten, people disproportionately will pick seven ( https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11803762 ).  The liberal arts, the basis for all modern education, was based upon the original seven disciplines: Grammar, rhetoric, logic, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy ( https://employedhistorian.com/liberal-arts/7-liberal-arts/ ).  We even see 7 show up in pop music (Duran Duran’s pop masterpiece “7 and the Ragged Tiger,” Prince’s metaphysical explorations in “7” and Fleetwood Mac’s catchy “Seven Wonders”) and films (“Seven,” “Seven Samurai,” and the “Seventh Seal,” to name a few).   Seven seems to be a very significant and noteworthy digit for sure; how coincidental that I’m finishin...

Growing up in the 80's, I loved Paul Simon's super-groovy tune "You Can Call Me Al."  As a pre-teen, I paid little attention to the seemingly-abstract lyrics.  Now, with a window seat on the downhill train to age 50 (I turned 48 last month), the opening stanza seems like it was written for me:  A man walks down the street He says, "Why am I soft in the middle, now? Why am I soft in the middle? The rest of my life is so hard Yep, all the clichés are true.  As we move into the true "middle" of middle age, life gets simultaneously easier and harder.  Slower and faster.  Many of us find ourselves in the throws of the busiest and most important parts of our careers, becoming leaders and role models, maybe even doing our best work.  At the same time, others in our cohort are watching sons and daughters leave for school, tying up the last delicate work of ensuring their progeny are prepared for the challenges ahead.   We are often rewarded with the ...

  "Life happens," has become a favorite expression for many of us during the pandemic.  It's helped us explain missing deadlines, being emotionally disengaged, and in resolving the cognitive dissonance of the world we long for versus the one we witness.  The lack of updates to this blog recently are because "life happened" to my family back in February. On February 10, I received a panicked phone call from my brother's girlfriend that their house (the old family home) was on fire.  By the time I arrived, the place where I had grown up was still smoldering, brave fire crews doing their best to save the actual structure and whatever belongings could be salvaged. I found my brother at the neighbor's place, on a recliner and covered in blankets.  The fire, it turned out, had been an accident...a simple home maintenance error that had gotten out of control quickly.   Despite the potentially imminent danger to their own home, my brother's neighbors had mad...

Read any career self-actualization book or talk to a life coach and you're likely to hear a lot about finding your "true self."  One of the biggest movements of the last decade is the push for greater sincerity and transparency in the workplace.  Everyone, it seems, is urging us to bring more of our real personalities to work, to let our spirits be on full display and to live our truth. I've personally experienced the power of bringing more of my "whole self" to work with me.  Seven years back, I transitioned from a job in technology middle management to being a full-time college professor.  Although I had always tapped parts of my non-work self before (particularly my experiences as a musician and performer), I found more opportunities to let my personality creep into my daily endeavors on the education "stage."   At the head of the classroom, this behavior is not just tolerated--it's encouraged!  One of the quickest lessons learned by most co...

Before you read another word of this blog, know that I'm guilty.  I do it too.  I sometimes post things on social media or via text that I later regret.  I let my emotions get the best of me and I take the bait to respond to someone's ill-informed or rude posting, only to find that my temper flares and my words get the best of me.  Even more than politics, I think the general inability of much of the population to effectively discern between "your" and "you're" is probably my biggest hot button.  I'm in favor of a constitutional amendment requiring basic grammar literacy training prior to online political debate, but I digress..... There is a permanence to just about anything we decide to post online.  Facebook's delete account option, for example, really is a temporary deactivation feature; you can still reactivate your page for 30 days.  More problematic is that posts that you assumed had been deleted may still show up on search engines.  For t...

 "He's not concerned with yesterday He knows constant change is here today He's noble enough to know what's right But weak enough not to choose it He's wise enough to win the world But fool enough to lose it" So go the lyrics to Canadian power trio Rush's 1982 single "New World Man."  Drummer and lyricist Neil Peart passed away from cancer this past January, casting a shadow on the hearts of many music fans (including this author).  His great drumming, and, just as importantly, poetic musings on the human condition, remain as a soundtrack to our lives.  Neil's prediction that "constant change is here today" could also have ended with the phrase "to stay."  The COVID-19 pandemic thrust nearly every working person and student on the planet into a churning snow-globe of both complications and possibilities.  Concepts once considered experimental or theoretical (i.e. an entire population working from home) materialized in fron...