I'm Back!

My dear readers,

Thank you for your patience, and your concern.
I have been flying under the radar for more than a few months, attending to personal issues. Your emails have been heartening; it is good to be missed.

This week I was goaded into writing once again from a very unexpected source.
Here's the story:

Teachers in Ohio are required to take graduate courses in education in order to maintain our license. My license expires in 2007 and I needed six semester hours, so I signed up for a couple of classes at Notre Dame College.

My first class, "Self Directed Learning", was scheduled to begin at 8:30 AM yesterday and last until 4:30, continuing all week. I have taken these all day intensive classes before, and they have been just as exciting as they sound. I walked into the classroom armed with a magazine, prepared to be bored. I waited with about ten other teachers for the professor.

The door opened and the theme to "Mission Impossible filled the room.
A young woman, who was not the professor, wearing a trench coat, dark wig, sunglasses, and carrying a briefcase, entered. She opened the briefcase and took out a tape recorder...Silence.

Damn! Malfunction.
Barely flustered, she took out a letter from the professor and read it out loud. It was our class assignment, which I will summarize (roughly):

Go out into the community, talk to strangers, meet new people, learn something, keep a record of your activities, and report back on Friday. If we wanted to meet the professor, she would be at Civilization in Tremont on Wednesday between 10:00 and 12:00. Friday we will present our experiences to the class in any creative fashion of our own choice.

We then were free to go.

So many choices. So much freedom. Where should I start?
When I have a quandary I call my friends.
Martha is always busy with one community project or another, and her cause du jour is lead abatement. She would be meeting with a young woman in the afternoon to discuss setting up a lead poisoning information table at the Ingenuity Festival, but I could catch up with her before that at the old Hough Bakery Building in East Cleveland where a group of civic entrepreneurs would be gathering to look at the space, in the hopes of cleaning it up and launching a small business incubator. There would certainly be some new people I could talk to at this meeting.

One of the members of the group was my friend, Brewed Fresh Daily's George Nemeth. When I explained the class assignment to him, he responded,
"Blog about it."

Of course!
I am a consumate multi-tasker, always looking for a new way to kill several birds with one stone.
If I took George's suggestion, I could return to the blogosphere, have a unique format for my class presentation, and log my learning experience all simultaneously. Taking the idea one step further, if I did my work at a coffee house with wifi, who knows what new people (or old ones)I will run into, and what serendipitous adventures will be launched.

So this morning I am sitting and typing at the Arabica on East 185th in North Collinwood, and have already met several fascinating people who I will be including in a post later this week, when I will write about all my new acquaintances.

I'm BACK!