Editor makes pottery in Fez, Morocco.
Lifelong Learning
What’s on our mind in this issue is the amazing pursuit of LIFELONG LEARNING. That, obviously, can have all sorts of wide-reaching ramifications, but the main one is staying wildly open to new ideas and horizons at any age, as evinced in the profiles here of Ralph Lee, Anne Kreamer, and Lee Joseph.
Even beyond that is the challenge to keep being productive, keep moving into new arenas, the way Patricia Bransford (on our cover) has done. Here is a woman who could have retired on a nice IBM pension but instead launched herself full-force into opening up the world of technology to schoolkids who might otherwise be excluded from or merely on the fringes of such passports to the future.
I am a famous hungry learner; my family and friends sometimes mock my “I am interested in everything“ attitude, but it is real. New stuff really makes my brain itchy. I am still leaning to play the cello, and believe I may get past squeaky this year. I love language and words, and still have the vocabulary notebook my mother coerced me into starting when I was 15. One word I stumbled on recently made me run to my fabulous 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary, a wedding gift from my husband, who obviously loves the dork in me. The word is abecedarian and it means “One who is learning the alphabet, hence a beginner.”
In many ways we are all abecedarians as the world beneath our feet spins fast and asks us to learn, morph, and then take on new things daily. What makes this drudgery or joy is one’s attitude, and at THRIVEnyc we are all attempting to both be and discover ardent lifelong learners and bring their stories to you.
Wickham Boyle
