tammytoes

Human Fund Development: A Meeting Poem

Tammy — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 03:09:28 +0000

A couple of years ago, my friend Joe tipped me off to a great use of corporate meetings: poetry! Crafting poetry using only the words or phrases spoken at a meeting (and, if you like, only in the order spoken or repeated). This is much better than even buzzword bingo, and has the added advantage of making you pay very. close. attention. to everything said. I wrote a fair bit of meeting poetry during my last few months in the non-profit management world, but have largely discarded the practice as a freelancer.

While sifting through closet junk, I just stumbled upon what I consider to be my greatest meeting poem, composed about two years ago during a marathon day of meetings (Entenmann’s for breakfast, take-out for lunch, fun size candy bars for afternoon snack…). This poem was created from words and phrases as they were spoken or repeated. (People actually repeat a lot of what’s said at meetings, after all).

Posted here well after the fact for all the world to read.

(It’s long, so it’s after the jump…)

Human Fund Development: A Meeting Poem

Everyone go down at once from the field.
Show hands!
Get the 10″ inflated balls out of Ohio.
Really cool.
Juvenile extras,
Be nice to Bill.
Gidget from Rochester
Learns Spanish 101 and a half.
Universal handshake customers
Acknowledge that you see them.
Sign up, coordinate cross-functional relationships.
Executive housekeeping list? Email for details.
Parking PowerPoint requests,
Mary Kaye budgets,
and extra testing for social security.

Focus on skills training.
Focus, global focus.
The rich get richer and the poor have children.
Radiation machine, punch a button,
Talk about STDs.
Running against the TANF clock.
The waiting list is long, extensions are not granted,
Thank you for moving on.

Legislative breakfast will only be used in case of an emergency.

We are bombarded by change all the time,
Comes from
People, technology, knowledge, 60 billion people,
Can you imagine?
Have you seemed busier?

Digest the chaos as a trapeze artist.
Information, information, information.
The steering committee, those jerks, say
Speed it up. Deal with change. Easily.

Pivot tables, visuals, executive summaries, satisfaction survyes
Can cause traumatic brain injury,
are not covered by under worker’s comp.

The clients upstairs represent a call to action.

Business as usual.
Business as usual.
Work through lunch.
Business as usual.
Order Chinese food.
Pilot a budget for mimosas for Spring, and Google
June for deliverables.

Mucky mucks provide computers, workshop freshman
for community relations. Jealous?
Here’s my wish list:
Cultivate standards
More mentoring
Wide open possibilities
Distance management
Nice climate
Scholarships for excitement.

Nearly Ninety

Tammy — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 02:00:13 +0000

This afternoon, I went to see a matinee performance of Nearly Ninety, a new work by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company to celebrate Merce’s 90th birthday. Sonic Youth and John Paul Jones wrote and performed the music in collaboration for the event. They performed it in a giant, futuristic soundship treehouse. I can’t really describe it any better than that, and I don’t think I should try. The music was dissonant, oddly joyful despite being dark, and very lovely.

But I went for the dancing. I would have gone for the dancing even if there had been no music at all.

I can’t even pretend to have an extensive knowledge of dance, but I know just enough to know who inspires me. And I am inspired by Merce Cunningham. Inspired by his dedication to exploration of movement, inspired by the strength and grace he requires of his dancers, and inspired by his lifetime of collaboration (and partnership) with John Cage. I’ve seen his work on video and read quite about about him (I actually completed an undergrad paper on his work a long time ago). But I’ve never seen any of his choreography performed live prior to this. And I feel blessed – finally – to have seen his work. It was moving and challenging and strange and strong and warm and angular and engaging.

It was also the most relaxing artistic experience I’ve had in a very long time. Lacking narrative, independent of words and story, the interplay between movement and music purely accidental (serendipity!): such welcome change. I’ve missed relaxing and enjoying. I’ve traded those wholesale for criticism and assessment, in so many ways.

How marvelous to be returned, again, to wonder-eyed spectator.

Thank you, Merce.

Gluestick Reverie (from 4.19.09)

Tammy — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 01:23:18 +0000

This was the small collage I made from the Nearly Ninety/BAM Program.

Gluestick Reverie (from 4.10.09)

Tammy — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:53:28 +0000

I’ve started making small collages. Small, short burts of cutting and gluing, mostly of words. I’m wondering if it’s a good idea to share them?

Robots Confirm that New York is a Friendly Place

Tammy — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:42:48 +0000

Kacie Kinzer’s human-robot interaction project, Tweenbots, is a brilliant combination of sharp theory, smart questions, and engaging (nay, supercute!) implementation.

“…The fact that this ad-hoc crowdsourcing was driven primarily by human empathy for an anthropomorphized object. The journey the Tweenbots take each time they are released in the city becomes a story of people’s willingness to engage with a creature that mirrors human characteristics of vulnerability, of being lost, and of having intention without the means of achieving its goal alone.”

I love this exploration of human-robot interaction. I also love that it proves, once again, that this place is a friendly place. (Yes, New Yorkers might tell you what they think you need to know, even if it’s not what you really need to know. It comes from the heart…)

Tweenbots!

this i want to remember

Tammy — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 04:23:11 +0000

a sense of urgency about this:

morning, on the couch, ehren says to me, “i love your elf face.”

and my heart runs over.

the span of 52 weeks

Tammy — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 04:04:40 +0000

It was more than a year ago when I had brunch with my two Brooklyn Es at the Dumbo General Store and talked about the relative length of a year. 52 weeks? I kept shaking my head, running the palms of my hands along my cool bottle of soda. 52 weeks? How can anyone get anything done in 52 weeks? We have so little time each year! I kept exclaiming it to my friends, who laughed with me. But I haven’t gotten over it, really.

As these 52 weeks draw to a close, I’m still completely bewildered. What happened in all that/so little time? This is about when the same time last year when I said, with unswerving confidence, 2008 will be a great year. I knew it. I know it. It was. Even when it sucked, it was great. Considerable. Appreciable. Whopping. Important.

2008: the year I learned how to write a joke.

I embraced the love right in front of my nose and the object of it.

I made some sort of stupidly successful go at this self-employment thing. So I made my own huge tax bill. I made my own jerkface boss.

I flattened out my spine and sat in my chair too long and gave myself a chronic back condition. And was in constant pain for more months than I’d care to count.

This means that 2009 will have to be the year that I fix my bad back.

I networked. Oh man, I networked.

I never got over my indecisiveness about my hair. But I learned to love accessories.

I went to the south for the first time, proper.

I started writing The Female Gaze, which is a plan I hatched at that same Dumbo brunch over a year ago. Yay.

Moderately famous people let me ask them questions. And they answered.

I volunteered, and realized how much I missed it.

And there were lots and lots of good times. And too many times I didn’t have fun because I was too busy. 2008 was not a year that I achieved any kind of balance. But, I lived through it and I’ll learn. More learning, 2009.

And going into it, I have no cavities.

So. It was great. And 2009 will be so much better.

We did.

Tammy — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 06:24:12 +0000

I’ve been holding my breath for over a month now, not really able to articulate how much an Obama presidency would mean to me, to the U.S., and to the world. And now that it’s happened, I am beyond speechless.

But two simple words will do for now: joy & hope.

We’ve got a lot of work to do, America. But this, this is the right first step. I am very, very proud.

we must.

Tammy — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 02:26:39 +0000

colorado

Tammy — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 23:51:39 +0000

i just got home yesterday from 5 days in colorado – denver, silverthorne, colorado springs. what a joyful mess that was – some consulting work, a lot of catching up, some late night drinking, and a fat lot of altitude adjustment. there was delicious chips and salsa, and many flipcharts with strategic planning notes on them, and the I-70 corridor that I can drive with my eyes closed, and a ridiculous rental car, and my favorite thrift store, and there were friends who had as much to tell me about their lives as I had to tell them. it was nice. it was cozy. it was fun. it was… not home anymore.

there was an article in last week’s New York Magazine about some kind of a NYC exodus to Buffalo occuring among those who were seeking a more economically feasible place to live, start over. the reason i’m relating this is that the article included a quote from a new Buffalo resident who reflected that the NYC life she missed was the one she could never have.

this comment rattled in my brain as i drove, drove, drove through my home state over the weekend. that colorado life? not going to happen. NEVER going to happen, prolly. it dawned on me: no subaru, no crazy big dogs, no hikes on weeknights, no effortless camping and annual aspen-changing rituals. nope nope nope.

am i sad about that? sure i am, even though i prolly really knew when i lived there that i would never really own that life, in its entirety. but pieces of it, well, yeah, i’m sad that i don’t have those.

but this life? it feels more right. it also feels more difficult. but it’s right.

i had to go back home to realize (and didn’t i know it all along?) that my home is truly here now.

i hope that i get the chance to share this home with my good, good friends from colorado in the same way that they shared their homes with me last week.