May 22nds Evening

Yesterday at Kawa (May 22) we heard two short stories read by the authors, did some pastel watercolor art, and talked about an idea from one of the poems of Rumi.

The Book Share included four books published by the Harvard Business Review Press: on managing yourself, on mental toughness, on emotional intelligence, and on how to get the right work done. From Penguin, there was a timely and important book, Negotiating the Nonnegotiable, by Daniel Shapiro.

Today (Wednesday May 23) the six o'clock news on CBC Radio included a segment about Alzheimer's disease, which is now seen as a major factor in a decline in life expectancy, reported three years in a row in the United States. That report highlights the importance of another recent book share, Dale Bredesen's The End of Alzheimer's. However, the CBC radio report provided essentially no information on what Bredesen and others have begun to see as an effective way to prevent Alzheimer's disease: a set of factors that can be summarized as "lifestyle changes." We will be paying some attention to these from time to time on Tuesday evenings at Kawa.

And yet for me, the highlight of last Tuesday's event at Kawa came when we generated a menu of ideas for June. Each Tuesday we'll brainstorm ideas for the menu, and then early the following month we'll select one of those ideas, and actually do it by the end of the month. This is a form of imagination exercise.

Fresh ideas often arise from new combinations of things that had not previously been associated.

Tuesdays at Kawa is a weekly forum for generating fresh ideas.

We'll be there this coming Tuesday May 29, inventing imagination exercises, sharing books, and creating a moveable feast.

Just imagine!

Arthur