Tea with McNair

• making "the pacific"

Here is the Making THE PACIFIC film on the new HBO series that is the "sequel" to their highly successful Band of Brothers.

• simply albert

.

• bending starlight: free

 .

GREAT NEWS!

You can watch EINSTEIN AND EDDINGTON, the BBC/HBO film I wrote about in my previous post, below, FREE, online at VEOH.com. You will need to join the site (see note below in red.)  This true story fascinating and inspiring—even if you are not a Quaker astronomer from Cambridge University or a German physicist. I am neither and have watched the film twice in three days. Do not miss the last ten minutes as they "bend starlight."

IF you are a teacher, show it to every kid you can Duct tape to a chair for an hour and twenty-eight minutes. (Remember it was made by BBC so there are high collars and no car chases, but brief, non-nude sexuality.)

Clicking on the name of the film will take you to the VEOH.COM site. Take a couple minutes to create a FREE account (user name, email, etc.) Then find the film in the Drama category. It will come up in the "Physics of WWI" (World War I) collection. As the film begins, there are no credits, but men hauling crates of heavy equipment up a hill with pulleys. The graphics say "Principe, West Africa, 1919." You can save this film to your My Veoh file and watch it anytime. It is neither difficult nor complicated. I am NOT a tech-savy fellow and I got through it easily—you will, too. Onward!

Be sure to click the icon in the far right of the video tool bar, just below the image to watch it in full screen.

Please come back share your reactions with all of us in the Comments section, below. If you love it, post a link to this blog so others can read my posts and watch the film.

• {acc: part duex} shortcut in the universe

.

My previous post — are you acc, i am? — really struck a chord with lots of you tea sippers. It elicited more comments than any post in quite a while.

Be sure to read the Comments as they are quite inspiring! I especially loved those of you who got IT. And IT is the big secret about creativity that we all have. We all use our creative spirit all the time and IT can show up in the tiniest of expressions: a short cut between two familiar points in our daily life. Short cuts are almost never shorter in time or miles. They are about letting our curiosity get the best of us: What's over here?

The "ACC" person asks, then goes and looks. They go because they are an Actively Creative Character and not to go is to deny a basic feature of who they are, an actively CURIOUS character.

CURIOSITY is one of the best tools we have to feed our creative spirit. It is also a naturally occurring human trait. We are each of us hard-wired for it. Have you ever met a child—especially when they are four years old or younger—who did not have lots of questions? They say if you ask an Irishman a question he will answer with a question. Really? Well then, all children must be Irish.

Where are we going?

When are we leaving?

Who's gonna be there?

Can we stop at ________ on the way?

Anthropologists have observed in all cultures that a child's natural proclivity to ask questions begins to diminish around ages five and six—about the time we begin formal education. Most education models are based on reading, memorizing, and filling in the blanks on the teat about what we read and memorized.

 The most conservative studies I have ever seen suggest that by the time that curious child is graduated out of high school her organic curiosity is diminished 70%. Some studies put it as high as 90% ! !

Where's the wonder? Where's the adventure, the discovery? To be an INactively Creative Character is "ICC." To be sure.

Quite by accident I discovered a wonderful little film (made for British TV) on HBO, just yesterday, Einstein and Eddington, click title for HBO site/trailer. [ Watch extended trailer HERE ] It is the story of British astronomer Arthur Eddington and a young, as-yet-little-known German physicist, Albert Einstein. Both are men of  enormous curiosity. IT is fascinating history and their revetting personal stories as they each fought forces beyond their control to pursue their scientific quest. (You will recognize Einstein as he is played by Andy Serkis who gave voice and life to Lord of the Rings' film trilogy characters of Sméagol/Gollum. ( See photo of Serkis/Einstein at top of this post, just below real Einstein.)

Here are two men, who had never met, but their work and singular drive for discovery inspire one another. Together they literally change the world. Einstein begins with questions for his young sons about the speed that his socks will travel when he throws them from a moving boat. Eddington wonders why one planet in our solar system seems not to be obeying Newton's laws. Meanwhile, Einstein, too, supposes the universe (time and space) is bent.

Together they "go around the bend" in the universe and come back with answers to questions no one else was asking. We are none of us the same afterward.

This little film is a most inspiring story. At 89 minutes it clips along as briskly as any modern action flic, but here it's all high-collared shirts and proper behavior in gentlemen's clubs and stuffy universities in Cambridge and Berlin.

 Though neither fellow was an artist, they are both high ACC's and accomplish their several ends with fountain pens and UNlined paper!

If you are not an HBO subscriber, ask a friend who is to make a DVD or VHS recording for you. They can watch it any hour on HBO on Demand.* You will watch it more than once.

Have I piqued your curiosity?

{ Please DO come back and leave a comment after you've watched the film. And tell us now how your CURIOSITY has gotten the best of you. I'm just curious.}

* Netflix does not (yet) have this film, but I see there are new and used copies on Amazon.com, so it is out on DVD. Find a friend with HBO—ask around at church, the bowling alley, school...this is a good exercise in networking.

• are you acc, i am?

Found myself spending too much time on Facebook: responding to this request and that..and, oh yeah I have to take the Which brand of motor oil are you? Quiz. (I'm a quart high. Ha!)

Actually I gave up taking ALL silly Facebook (and other online) surveys several months ago. (I do not care what my IQ is, this week.) Those surveys are not informative, and (for me) not even a little bit fun. I'd rather watch one of my Best of Rocky & Bullwinkle DVD's.

or...have a wisdom tooth removed without Novocaine.

In college I forced myself to develop the ability of NOT answering the phone just because it was ringing. "HEY, HEY, HEY, ANSWER ME...NOW!"

I do the same now with my iPhone—always on, always with me. Fortunately, I have scores of friends, and other important contacts in my cell so I can see who is calling. With friends, I answer the phone 97.2591% of the time when I see their name. Now and then, I am engaged in an activity that is worth staying focused on and calling my friend back.

Focus is important to the creative life. Especially for those of us who are "ACC." I suspect you are ACC, too. That's why you make frequent visits here to Tea Blog. If this is your first visit, it's because a friend has directed you here. (They know that you, too, are ACC—and might enjoy a cup of inspiration.)

Being ACC—an Actively Creative Character—your mind is constantly imagining new routes to a familiar destination, a new ingredient to add to your morning smoothie, a different way to answer the phone on your recorded greeting, a new custom iPod Playlist:  "S.I.U.T.L.A.H.L.T.I.A.L.T." (Songs I Used To Love And Haven't Listened To In A Long Time), or . . .

We are all busy. Everyone. My question is, "Are we making good creative use of our time?" Not every minute, but when we can. I believe we can find more places and spaces to exercise our Actively Creative Character-istics.

• I never leave home without my sketchbook-even on an 11 pm trip to the market. I have a mini backup sketchbook—right. (Click to enlarge any photo) I keep it in the outside pocket of my computer bag.  Mostly, it serves as a 2DO list book, but also for doodling and imagining "out loud" while waiting in line—any line—and "on hold."

• As good as the camera in my iPhone is (left), I carry an actual camera (palm size), in my computer case, to grab a hi-rez picture now and then. You will never come back and take a photo of an interesting place you discover, because you will forget what it is was and where it is. You DO have time to take the photo now, because you no longer waste time with Facebook surveys.

• In the front of every one of my 140+ sketchbooks I continue to write a sentence I came up with for the sketchbooks I was required to carry as a freshman at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design (in the late 1800's.) Here's a photo (right) of that sentence in my current always-with-me sketchbook.

• *** What are you doing to feed your Actively Creative Character? What creative habits have you developed to maximize the little moments or manage the 24 clock to make more room for your imagination to be present and alive in your daily life? Leave your tips, tricks, and helpful hints that the rest of us can emulate and be inspired by in our quest for richer, fuller, more remarkable lives. (Leave them in the Comments section below this blog post. Thanx.)

* * To cut down on the endless work of maintaining my personal Facebook page (C. McNair Wilson) I launched—at the suggestion of several "friends"—one of Facebook's now-famous "fan" pages:

McNair Wilson International Fan Club & Dry Cleaning

As much as I appreciate many of you who have sent your friends my way (on Facebook), I don't know these fine folks. My new "Dry Cleaning" Face-site is a way for anyone to be connect with all things McNair, but with far fewer ringing phones to answer ("Confirmations" to respond to.) I will always welcome long time friends to the personal page when we reconnect online, but anyone can join the new "Fan Club" site, anytime—we never close.

As of January of this year (2010) I am back to my wonderful life of traveling, speaking, teaching, consulting and coaching (speakers, authors, and others who talk-out-loud-in-public.) Thus, t  he fan site has grown at a surprising rate. Stop by, jump in, return ffffrequently.

Try the Puerh...and an almond cookie.

Pith helmet, optional.

Yours curiously,

Col. Bullmoose McNair

• spring: part II, the day before

The day after our big snow, the sun shone and blue skies gleamed. Here is another photo taken today (3.20.10, 11:55 am) from my desk in my new office. The pointed little mound of snow—directly above my desk lamp—is Pikes Peak. (The U.S. gov't officially dropped the apostrophe a while back. Really.)

* Re: SIZE [ Objects in iPhone appear smaller than in reality.It's a "depth of field" thing.]

It is about 10 miles away as the crow flies, though I am  not sure many crows go there. It is named for Zebulon Pike who first identified it, but never set foot on the peak. At 14,115 ft. it is one of fifty-four fourteeners (mountains over 14,000 ft.) in Colorado.

• spring hath spranged

Only two days until Spring! I'm tingling--make that shivering.

The view from my new office in my friend Bill G's home and the back deck. Anyone want to come over for a BBQ this weekend? We'll be featuring grilled steakcicles. 

• why we don't sing the 3rd verse of hymns in church

• hello?

 Everyday at 6:00 PM (Mountain) the folks at Typepad (provider of my blog service) reset their clocks. They are using Greenwich Mean Time, GMT, (a.k.a. Zulu) as their start point. That means that Typepad starts a new day seven hours before we hit midnight here in Colorado Springs.

The stat chart that tells me how many folks have stopped by for Tea With McNair on any day resets the counter to zero at 5 PM. I must confess when I see that (see screen capture at right) my heart sinks a little. I want that number to be 100, all the time—minimum—and thousands everyday. (I am a dreamer.) But for some silly reason I have tied a small bit of my success and self worth to how man people read my blog. I want to provide inspiration, creative tips, affirmation for everything and anything you TRY. I also want to be a cattle prod to your creative spirit to stay active, curious, adventuresome, rambunctious...

I used to have an umbilical chord that connected my self esteem to my itinerary. I worried about whether I was speaking at all the big events, important companies, well-known universities, huge mega churches, and important conferences. But no matter where I spoke—IBM, Apple, Disney, USC, Princeton, National (fill-in-the-blank) Convention, Lakewood and Willow Creek Churches, I still had a small voice ringing in my ear, "Yeah, but, what about...?"

I got past that, by realizing that I am as challenged and rewarded by speaking, consulting , or performing in "smaller" venues. There I will often heave more and closer interaction with people. In a smaller setting the impact can be more dynamic with closer contact with more individuals over meals and late-night conversations.

Getting past imbuing the lame "Today's Pageviews" number is aided by all the comments, emails, and Facebook messages you leave about the "prefect timing" of a post that you "need today." 

Funnily enough, I continue to be amused by how many of you will read about my  new blog post in an announcement on my two Facebook pages HERE and HERE and then go to Tea blog, read the post, and return to Facebook to leave your comment. Why not post in the "Comments" section of the blog so others can share in your reaction, suggestion, or story?

SO, the conversation with and between all of you is what buoys my spirits, and not the pesky little Pageviews number and Typepad's obsession with where the big hand is pointing on Big Ben's four faces. My face smiles when you check in with your pithy and moving comments.

And that's not zero.

• an irish blessing

May God give you...

For every storm, a rainbow,
For every tear, a smile,
For every care, a promise,
And a blessing in each trial.
For every problem life sends,
A faithful friend to share,
For every sigh, a sweet song,

And an answer for each prayer.

[I'll be at Quinn's from 4 Pm onward . . .in the back.]