By if it makes you wiser or freer?
By echoes rung from mumbling lips?
By boats afloat on questing trips?
By whether it can start a war?
By poetry and metaphor?
By destruction of walls and fences?
Or inflation of pretenses?
By orators taking up the cause
for promulgation of new laws?
By if it gives your spirit wings
Or your pocket cash to spend on things?
Whatever thought quickens your blood,
If it leads a conference, it's a dud.
FIRST PRINCIPLE, n. An Afterthought.
5 comments:
I think, you haven't completely gotten over the idea that a conference should be about something yet. :-P
As you well know, D., I've been dreaming of starting a conference in collaboration with other passionate advocatess.
A conference to reflect the reality of our services. A conference designed to finally put advocates first! A conference with a "cracker barrel" session (many thanks to visionary T. H. of Oaktown for his passionate advocacy of the "cracker barrel" initiative).
After reading your little ditty, I can only assume that you wish for nothing less than to quash the dreams and fervent hopes of advocates such as we to lead and self-direct our own conferences . . . and thus, our own lives.
Ariel, pretty naïve, huh?
Andrew, who goes into this business except to crush dreams? Cracker barrel sessions are where good ideas come from. Keynote addresses is where they go to die.
Appropos of nothing previously written, your spirited defense of the "cracker barrel" raised a disturbing question. Why are these conference bull sessions called cracker barrels?
Was it not a pickle barrel next to the woodstove in the General Store where the town's men folk would gather to discuss the week's events or decide in which sharecropper's yard they were going to burn a cross? Pickles were, after all, cured or preserved in barrels for the long winter ahead. The same can hardly be said of crackers!
Perhaps it would be better to pose this question to the Oracle of Santa Clarita. An oracle's prominence was based on both its accuracy and lucidity (the Oracle at Dephi was renowned for its ambiguity, which, in no small way, boosted its claim to accuracy). The OSC being a rather low-rent oracle, I would not ask it at this time to fortell the future, as one does other oracles. Rather I think we lob it a softball over the middle . . . "Why is it called a cracker barrel?" If it gets this right, we can get into some futuristic stuff.
Time for new musings, Doug!
Post a Comment