3 X 5's: Index Card Wisdom from Best of Books

PROMISED LAND H. L.Goodall, Jr. (1989). Casing a Promised Land:                                                    The Autobiography of an Organizational                                                           Detective as Cultural Ethnographer. Goodall was a professor of Communication. This is the first of his trilogy of books...the other two books are Living in the Rock n' Roll Mystery , and Divine Signs . I read and took notes on Casing a Promised Land in May of 2003--20 years ago, and now (2023) i'm reading and documenting the best of the "best parts." Some of the many gems: 1)Academics need to get out of the office and into the world to hear stories, to b...

FACULTY X Gary Lachman (2016). Beyond the Robot:                                             The Life and Work of Colin Wilson. Lachman is a spiritual seeker and writer that chronicles the life of Colin Wilson, especially the ideas from the books Wilson wrote and the circumstances of publishing them.  The central question occupying most of Wilson's life was: how to transform consciousness at will. There are hints along the way, sensory deprivation, dreams, breaking the habitual robot mentality, using sex to intensify consciousness to obtain more energy and activate the imagination, occult practices...AND my main criticism is Wilson does not, in Lachman's book (he may in his own books which i have not read), get down to pragmatics, to method, to what one should DO to facilitate intentional shifts in consciousness. This is disappointing...after an entire l...

HEAVEN Todd Burpo (2010). Heaven Is For Real. Todd is the father of Colton who at 4 years of age underwent a surgery for a ruptured and over the course of time Colton reports what he experienced about heaven during the surgery.  One has to consider : the medical report did not include a "near death" experience, Colton's upbringing of 4 years with his father being a pastor, Sunday school, and media exposure are all potential sources of experience that he may be drawing on, possible distortions in memory recall, expectancies effects when parents ask children questions, and the role of childhood imagination. Colton says he was above his body looking down at the doctor performing surgery on him...he could see his father in another room praying, and his mother in a separate room on her phone and praying (both of these facts were confirmed by the parents).  Colton recounts his experience of being in heaven sitting on Jesus' lap--Jesus was dressed in white with a purple sash...

DETECTIVE H. L. Goodall, Jr. (1989). Casing a Promised Land:                                                    The Autobiography of an Organizational                                                    Detective as Cultural Ethnographer. Goodall was a professor of communication who believed in getting out of the office and into the field to discover principles of communication and life. This is the first of a triology of books he wrote on cultural ethnography which later became the field of autoethnography championed by Carol Ellis and Art Bochner in the field of Communication. Some of the best parts: Communication researchers need to be like detectives, looking for clues, going und...

SUPERBETTER  Jane McGonigal (2015). Superbetter:                                                    A Revolutionary Approach To Getting                                                           Stronger, Happier, Braver, and  More                                                              Resilient. McGonigal (PhD) spent 5 years researching and writing Superbetter...the gamification of life...grounded in her personal story of overcoming a severe concussion through gaming....

GARDEN Juanita Havill (2008). Grow: A Novel in Verse A delightful novel about a growing a community garden set in a verse and illustrated. Meet Berneetha the adult woman, Darlene the girl narrator and her friend Harlan the boy...together they tend a garden on a city plot with permission of the owner until he dies and his son takes over...the new owner of the plot uses the law to oust the gardeners because he wants to build a parking lot (reminds me of the song by Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ratQlft_G5c...they paved paradise to put up a parking lot...don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you got till it's gone...)...fortunately an amiable firefighter offers them a little plot next to the fire station to use as their newly transplanted garden...there are many "life lessons" throughout the story including:  walking slow in the morning is when i do my best thinking let the doodle grow into a lightbulb idea the land belong...

MILTON Ronald Havens (2005). The Wisdom of Milton H. Erickson . Havens read most of the writings of Milton H. Erickson and then curated and organized what he found into themes supported by ample quotes from Erickson. Some of the themes are: the clinician needs careful, detailed, objective observation of the person they are working with--this is the bedrock for all that follows. the unconscious mind  is always LISTENING and LEARNING  (Erickson views the unconscious as separate from the conscious mind that knows more than we can consciously know, that is a creative force, and that is also fallible). to create change, one needs to be creative about breaking/disrupting rigid habitual patterns of behavior using an individual's language, metaphors, and stories as the medium for the change inducing messages. hypnosis is focusing on internal experience, suggesting simple things a person can easily do, and building on that. we need to learn to put the self into a trance and let the unc...