Hi..Family and friends….

Greetings from India….

Here is the poem:

Isn’t that good?
Yes behind every tear is a story, some may 
be genuine and some fake but when we judge quickly we wound the hurting…:(

Is there something you’ve been wanting to learn? A musical instrument maybe, or how to write poetry? Or is it science that interests you, or photography? As soon as you are done reading this, write down three things you’d like to learn. Then, pick the one that is the most immediately doable and take one more step: Research workshops online or in your local newspaper. Call a friend who might be interested as well, so you encourage each other. Find a free class, a neighbor who can teach you, a group, even a book on the subject. By this time next week, you could finally be learning that topic, skill or instrument that piques your interest every time it comes to mind.

A note: The Community College of Vermont and Vermont Technical College offer fantastic, very inexpensive online classes and many free workshops.

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Don’t wait for a birthday or a national holiday. Make up your own reason to celebrate. Pick a day, any day. If it’s one when you’re off, fine, but it’s even better if you pick a work day. You will call this day “The day of me.” On this day, get flowers for your work space, eat what you want, get ice cream at lunch time, stop by your favorite gift shop or book store. Get a little something, a small reward, a token to remember this day by; a gift to remind yourself that you deserve good things. It’s just a symbolic gesture, but the ramifications are significant. If anything, giving yourself permission to indulge a little, out of the blue, symbolizes to your self-restricting voice (we all have one) that you believe you are a free spirit. And making a small detour to get something for yourself will break with routine, just like that, in the middle of the week. This can be quite refreshing.

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“What did you do?” I ask hoping to forestall taking my pasty flesh outside.

“Come see,” she says as she bolts for the door.

Reluctantly I follow her to the door to our porch.

“See? See what I did?” she is gesturing to the porch which is covered in chalk heiroglpyhs or at least that is what they look like to me; lots of colored circles, squares, and triangles.

“I hate ants!” she says and leaps onto the porch and begins to stomp on some hapless ant.

Ant sufficiently smushed she turns to me and says, “I am a killer.”

She grabs a piece of chalk and draws a circle around her fresh kill.

“I think Milton Friedman was right that in a sense we are all Keynesians and not Keynesians at the same time. What I think he meant is that no one advocates Keynesian stimulus at all times, but that there are times, like now, when it is desperately needed. At other times we may need to be monetarists, institutionalists or whatever. We should avoid dogmatic attachment to any particular school of economic thought and use proper analysis to figure out the nature of our economic problem at that particular moment and the proper policy to deal with it.”

You will be stupid. You will worry your parents. You will question your own choices, your relationships, your jobs, your friends, where you live, what you studied in college, that you went to college at all… If that happens, you’re doing it right.
— Ira Glass

A good friend of mine introduced this quote to me last week.  As my move from Seattle to Chapel Hill, North Carolina creeps up on me, this quote sums up exactly where my head is at in life.  I’m growing up.  

People grow up and mature at their own paces.  Some grow up real fast, some people take a while, and some don’t at all.  For me, I’m in the midst of it all, and I am so proud to say that through my 23 years of living, I look back on the decisions I’ve made, the experiences I’ve had, and the lessons I’ve learned with absolutely no regrets.  It all has brought me to this point in my life right now.

I’m a 23 year old woman about to make the biggest move in my entire life from the west coast to the east coast, and I can not wait.

Life is truly beautiful.

“If she is like me,” Barb started.

“She never will,” I interrupted.

“I still fall down,” Barb finished.

Our girl fell down for the fourth time about ten feet later.  She is getting better at falling down though she rolls more and cries less.

http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/05/robots-modern-unimate-watson-roomba-timeline

While thumbing through trade journals and seeing other advertisements on the Internet I see ladder classes being taught by firefighters from the FDNY, fire ground size-up by seasoned veterans from Boston, and ventilation techniques being taught by some experienced “Truckies” from Philadelphia. There may also be a panel discussion conducted by highly revered fire chiefs from various departments across the country. This is all very important and critical training. I then thought about why is 95% of the training being dedicated to only 5% of what we actually do?

Now before fire comes spewing out of your ears and your head spins off your shoulders, let me explain. We should, as a profession attend and train at every opportunity with different instructors to increase the “tools” we can use to mitigate incidents and save our own lives. Emergency events are low frequency, high risk events, and training is the way to stay alive, but what are you doing to train for the 95% of the job you do as a fire officer, or mentoring fire officers? The other 95% is dealing with people. Properly managing the crew. Trying to balance the different personalities on your team to work as a group no matter what. Knowing who can do what and how well they can do it. Believe it or not, most people in groups get a great deal of satisfaction by feeling they are contributing to the goals of the group. Maslow has been stating it for years. They may not seems interested because “paperwork is for the chief”, but the reality is most people want to do well and get a level of satisfaction if given the opportunity.

Here are a few things I did (and was mentored to do) to help provide the need for responsibility and ownership of crews I have worked with in the past.

• Allow the crew to decide among themselves on items that impact them such as housework duties, fair rotation of riding positions, and in-house training subjects.

• Train personnel to complete daily staffing and training reports.

• Assign training subjects to personnel who have good knowledge of a subject. This is a “low stress, high success” route that helps build self-esteem.

• Use You Tube to search videos on personnel issues (use discretion and good judgment). Using your department policies, have an open discussion on how the situation could be handled.

• Use situations from other departments, such as the shooting gag conducted by a department in Georgia, discuss what the outcome was for that department and compare it to what your department polices are.

• Allow your crewmembers to fill out their own performance evaluation. You would not use the one they wrote but this allows them the opportunity to see and use the form before they become company officers themselves. It has been my experience that people will rate them selves lower than the supervisors does.

Every little bit helps. The more personnel are allowed to provide input, the more buy-in, the better the results. I am not saying let “the tail wag the dog”, just listen. Most importantly make sure they understand the parameters and they may not always like the final decision. They already know who is in charge; they just want to take part. The key is to balance the training now to have a balanced fire officer later.

Stay Safe and Trust!

Jimmy Ghi

You do not need to live in the big city to know what “morning rush” means, and the morning rush begins before you even embark on your commute to work, doesn’t it? We work hard and we’re tired. Getting going in the morning is not easy, unless of course there is something exciting for us to look forward to. Tomorrow morning, set your clock to wake up at least 20 minutes earlier than usual. When you awake, sit up in bed and spend those 20 minutes revisiting some detail you remember from your dreams. If you do not remember your dreams, bring to mind bits and pieces you can recall from other recent ones. That’s it. You have just tweaked your internal rhythm to a more peaceful beat by not jumping in the day thinking about the actual tasks and obligations that await. Try this several days in a row, just for fun.

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“No I don’t want to go to the store,” she says when asked if she wants to go to the store with either of us.

A few minutes later when the door closed.

“Why didn’t I get to go to the store!”

****

“I only want four inches of ramen,” she says holding her fingers apart less than an inch.

“What?”

“I will only eat the ramen if you give me four inches.  No more no less,” her fingers have gotten a bit farther apart.

“Four inches fills the bowl,” I say pointing at the ramen bowl.

“NO! Four inches,” she say holding her hand level no higher than a small indentation on the bottom of the bowl.

“You sure about that?”

Two noodles and a slurp of broth later, “Can I have more ramen?”

****

“I don’t think she will eat this because of how spicy it is,” I am saying over dinner to Barb.

“I like spicy food,” our girl says.

“You didn’t like those spicy chips,” one of says.

“Those were red, red not good spice.  I like good spice.  Good spice not red.”

One bite, one funny scrunched up face, and a glare later.

“Too spicy.”