The Catalyst
In chemistry, when you add a catalyst to other substances, things change. Reactions are accelerated, modified, expanded, altered in some way by the simple addition of the catalyst. People can be catalytic too – add Ruth Ann, get a chemical reaction. Sometimes the results are beneficial to humankind. Sometimes things blow up.
You Got The Fever? I Got The Curator.
Day 226 I never thought of this as a philanthropy buzzword, but noted blogger Lucy Bernholz says it is: Curator. She cited the TED and TEDx conferences among others that have curators. That word used to refer to people who worked in museums and art galleries. I’ve known several curators and guest curators, and their jobs involved [...]
Full StorySix Things I Learned In Six Months Of Doing Nothing
Day 217 (The following is the text of the talk I gave at TED University on July 12, 2010.) Hi, I’m Ruth Ann. On January first, 2010, I began a one year sabbatical.I’m at the halfway mark, and I’d like to tell you Six Things I Learned In Six Months of Doing Nothing. OK, Obviously, I wasn’t [...]
Full StoryI Come For The One
Day 216 I still haven’t been able to bring myself to listen to my own TED University talk, which has been available online to attendees of TEDGlobal2010 for some time now. My experience was affected by a number of factors that combined to cast a shadow. First and foremost, my mother died. I received the [...]
Full StoryWiki W/ Me?
Day 215 When I read this article in the New York Times, I was glad I added the Wikimedia Foundation to my list of grantees a couple of years ago. I’m sure it gave Wikimedia’s counsel no joy to refuse the Bureau’s demand to remove the picture of the F.B.I. seal from Wikipedia. But when government [...]
Full StoryDream A Little Dream..of ME?
Day 213 My experiences as a media personality gave me a priceless education. One thing I learned: a life in the public eye puts you in private imaginations. Over the course of my career, thousands of people wrote or called to tell me how I showed up in their heads. Some of them were imagining [...]
Full StoryI <3 Kuwait Airways
Day 208 Yeah, I said it. I <3 Kuwait Airways. I was in Oxford when I learned that my mother had died. My husband and I made arrangements with Delta to change our return. When we arrived at the airport, we were told that our flight had been cancelled. The Delta agent handed us a [...]
Full StoryAll Is Vanity
Day 205 When the Book of Ecclesiastes was written, “vanity” referred not so much to self-adoration as to the futility of human endeavor. My late mother used to (misquote) scripture, “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” All our labor is in vain, all that we produce and collect and accomplish means…what? Many people described my mother as [...]
Full StorySomething From Nothing
Day 192 Ahem. You may now refer to this college dropout as “Professor.” (If you speak at TED University that’s what they call you.) (That photo was lifted from Flickr, shot by James Duncan Davidson for TED.) Maybe sometime next week I’ll upload the script and my faaaaabulous slides, which were conceived and produced by [...]
Full StoryBedazzled (No, Not That One)
Day 184 Oh, I love the movie Bedazzled . Not the one with Elizabeth Hurley and Brendan Fraser - no knock on the performers. It’s just that Peter Cook and Dudley Moore achieved such perfection that it’s really hard for anyone else to riff successfully on it. The premise is that poor Stanley sells his soul to the [...]
Full StoryAnd Another One Gone, And Another…
Day 180 Did you know that when people are in the process of dying, they might stop breathing for several minutes, and then gasp for breath again? I learned this several years ago from a helpful instruction manual given to us by the caring and sensitive people from the hospice that provided end-of-life care for someone close [...]
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