The Quest for Education

 

Don't take my education!!

Don’t take my education!!

In the southern part of the state and mainly greater-Portland, events at the University of Southern Maine have highlighted for me (and maybe a small cadre of others) the challenges inherent in maintaining the status quo relative to higher education.

Is it possible and even feasible given the current landscape of diminishing public resources for taxpayers to be on the hook for what some consider an outdated education model? Along those same lines, is the current statewide higher education complex and namely, the University of Maine system, viable and more important, sustainable? Continue reading

2013 Booklist

Another year, another 32 books.

Another year, another 32 books.

There was a public service campaign using the acronym, RIF; Reading Is Fundamental. The purpose of that effort was to promote reading, especially among poor children. I remember seeing their public service announcements on television, most likely during the 1970s.

Reading was a central components of my own reinvention. It was reading, and books like Gregg LeVoy’s, Po Bronson’s, and Scott Peck’s that got me up and out of my corporate prison at Moscow Mutual. If I wasn’t a reader, I’d still be stuck, probably not there, but someplace just like it, if not worse. Continue reading

Reading books 2012

Books 2012 01

Why read? That seems to be the question at hand since I’m once more at the end of a calendar year with another assortment of books read over the course of the past 12 months. With a list like this comes some sort of requirement to justify the time I invested in making my way through these books. Hence, I report back to you, dear reader.

The rediscovery of reading transformed my life back in 1997. I say “rediscovery” because like so many, I’d found other second rate substitutes for books and reading in the course of leaving school and entering the realm of work. Now I’ve come back to an even more essential task—reading broadly. I wish a few more of you would begin wrestling with this task. Continue reading