On LinkedIn’s Learning, Education, and Training Professionals group, two months ago, a member kicked off a discussion with this question: Increasingly, we are finding that people bring their phones, computers and Blackberrys to class expecting that it will be OK to use them. How are you dealing with this issue? As of this morning, there are 83 contributions to the discussing.  Although I’ve disagreed strongly with some of the opinions and suggestions, I’ve come to see this question as yet another example of a complex problem-in other words, one without a single, correct solution. Here’s my paraphrase of what several participants said.  To minimize my biases, I chose every 8th comment.  Well, I left out one, which happened to be my own.  (Just coincidence that it feel into the every-eighth sequence.) I display a slide with logistics (breaks, fire exits, etc.) that asks people to turn off phones or at least put them on vibrate. I show a humorous YouTube video and say this is what I did with the last phone that rang during my presentation. I make everyone take out their phone and turn them off in front of everyone.  I include a 20-30 minute break several times a day. Ask the class to set the rules.  You are there to learn.  If people were on vacation instead of training, why would they check email?  They can do that during lunch. Sometimes people are using BlackBerries and other devices to take notes. Lately I don’t even mention phones.  I trust adults to act like adults.  I do like (another person’s) suggestion of asking people to turn them on to integrate outside information. Set your phone to ring 3 minutes into the session.  Pretend to talk with the president of the company, who wants to know if everyone’s turned their phones off. Exception: if you expect the president to call, or if someone’s seriously ill. I also believe people are adults who must make their own decision. There’s no right or wrong answer.  Some teaching strategies are still focused on a society that no longer exists.  Use appropriate technology at the appropriate time. Go with the flow.  I can get irritated if a phone rings, but if the class is good and people are engaged, they’ll take their own responsibility. I like letting the learners decide how to deal with device interruptions. I don’t do much formal instruction any more, by which I mean acting as the primary source (and predominant voice) in a scheduled learning event.  I’ve done quite a bit of that, but over time found that people seemed to learn best when I talked less and they did more. Yes, when people are new to a topic, they generally need some grounding and some concepts.  Most of my experience is has not been with people new to the organization and the industry, however.  That means they tend to need less "before we begin" than a lot of instructors (and instructional designers) seem to think.  Even for a topic as information-dense as Amtrak’s reservation system, I found that a lean approach (less talking, more doing) suited the goal of having people able to use the system. The LinkedIn discussion does provide a glimpse at the many ways that people working in this field view cell phones, PDAs (does anyone say PDA any more?), and smartphones.  (Almost none of the comments address computers as such.) I see a kind of clustering around "they’re here to learn (from me)," and a smaller one around "I’m here to help them learn." My own phone, like my computer, is as basic a tool as pen and paper.  Yes, I take paper notes, but when I have the choice, I take electronic ones so I can tag, search, re-use, copy, paste-all of which are tougher to do with PowerPoint handouts or handwritten notes. I don’t want someone else telling me how to capture or retrieve information.   If they say things that I find condescending or just plain silly ("enter the world of civilized people,"  "phones are an interruption to learning"), I’ll get the message-though it may not be the one intended. CC-licensed images: Retro phone photo by Robert Bonnin.Classroom sign photo by Ben+Sam.

You wouldn’t know it by my recent output, but I’ve learned a lot this year, much of it helped by people I’ve never met in person.  I’d name you here if I were even mostly sure I wouldn’t leave someone out. Instead, I’m celebrating those connections and the holiday by posting this 1920 poem by Robert Frost, inexplicably little known.   Christmas Trees(A Christmas Circular Letter) The city had withdrawn into itself And left at last the country to the country; When between whirls of snow not come to lie And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove A stranger to our yard, who looked the city, Yet did in country fashion in that there He sat and waited till he drew us out A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was. He proved to be the city come again To look for something it had left behind And could not do without and keep its Christmas. He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees; My woods—the young fir balsams like a place Where houses all are churches and have spires. I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees. I doubt if I was tempted for a moment To sell them off their feet to go in cars And leave the slope behind the house all bare, Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon. I’d hate to have them know it if I was. Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees except As others hold theirs or refuse for them, Beyond the time of profitable growth, The trial by market everything must come to. I dallied so much with the thought of selling. Then whether from mistaken courtesy And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether From hope of hearing good of what was mine, I said, "There aren’t enough to be worth while." "I could soon tell how many they would cut, You let me look them over." "You could look. But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them." Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close That lop each other of boughs, but not a few Quite solitary and having equal boughs All round and round. The latter he nodded "Yes" to, Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one, With a buyer’s moderation, "That would do." I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so. We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over, And came down on the north. He said, "A thousand." "A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?" He felt some need of softening that to me: "A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars." Then I was certain I had never meant To let him have them. Never show surprise! But thirty dollars seemed so small beside The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents (For that was all they figured out apiece), Three cents so small beside the dollar friends I should be writing to within the hour Would pay in cities for good trees like those, Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools Could hang enough on to pick off enough. A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had! Worth three cents more to give away than sell, As may be shown by a simple calculation. Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter. I can’t help wishing I could send you one, In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas. CC-licensed photo of fir trees in Nova Scotia by Christopher Jackson.

Yesterday, I saw a tweet about Universal Subtitles, an open-source site to "make the work of subtitling and translating video simpler, more appealing, and, most of all, more collaborative."  The site lets you add captions, subtitles, or translations to videos online.  (They say they work with Ogg, WebM, FLV, Youtube, Vimeo, Blip or Dailymotion.) I’d been wanting to find out how to add captions to videos, the way I’d seen song translations done on Youtube.  On La charrette pélagique, the blog I (infrequently) write in French, I’ve tried translating some French songs into English.  The hard part there is that you can’t easily fit two translations side-by-side, so you end up alternating languages one verse or chorus at a time. In addition, if you’re trying to understand spoken (or sung) language, I think it helps at times to be able to see the words in sync with the audio stream. So, for a good part of yesterday afternoon and this morning, I used Universal Subtitles to create both an English translation and a French transcription of La berceuse ("The Lullaby") by the French singer Bénabar (Wikipedia bio in English, French; French-language website). (If you’re the parent of little kids, or know people who are, I think you’ll enjoy Bénabar’s take on lullabies.) I haven’t figured out how to embed the subtitled version here, so if you’re curious: Click this link: La Berceuse Below the video, choose the language for the subtitles ("original" [meaning French] or English) Play. Universal Subtitles is a collaborative effort, which means someone else can come along to edit my French-language transcript (I have my doubts about a word here and there), my English translation, or my synchronization.  For myself, I wish there were a way to save my own version-to keep it as I made it, for my own purposes-but that’s a minor point. What’s more important is the immediate usefulness of this tool.  

Hyperlink, schmyperlink.  I’m reposting my "decoder ring" for Robert Burns’ most famous song. Why decode?  People who sing Auld Lang Syne, especially those who do so only once a year, don’t always know what the song’s about. The lyrics are in Scots-a language or dialect* of Lowland Scotland (as distinct from the Gaelic [Gaidhlig] of the Highlands). * "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy." — Max Weinrich Also, overexposure tends to deaden perception.  Especially in the U.S., we associate the song with noisemakers and incoherent New Year’s Eve singing. I like revisiting the song.  Auld lang syne ("old long since") means something like "the days that are past," and especially "the times that we remember."  In a way, Burns is celebrating the treasure of a shared experience. (For extra credit:  "Syne" is pronounced like "sign."  No Z sound.  There’s a demo below the lyrics.) What Burns wrote The gist Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And auld lang syne? These are rhetorical questions: - Should we forget old friends and never think about them?  - Forget old friends along with everything that’s past? For auld lang syne, my dear, For auld lang syne. We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet, For auld lang syne. Not at all-in fact, we’ll still have a drink together for the times gone by. And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp! And surely I’ll be mine! And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet, For auld lang syne. (I know) you’re good for your drinks ( "be your pint-stowp" — "pay for your tankard" ), and you know I’m good for mine. We’ve still got that drink to share for the times gone by. We twa hae run about the braes, And pou’d the gowans fine; But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit, Sin’ auld lang syne. We two have run along the hillsides And picked the lovely daisies together- But we’ve wandered many a weary foot since the times gone by. We twa hae paidl’d in the burn Frae morning sun till dine; But seas between us braid hae roar’d Sin’ auld lang syne. We two have paddled in the stream From dawn till dusk But broad seas have roared between us Since those times gone by. And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere And gie’s a hand o’ thine And we’ll tak a right gude-willie waught For auld lang syne. So, here’s my hand, my trusty friend And give us (= give me) yours We’ll take a good, hearty drink For all the times gone by. Here are two versions, both sung by Eddi Reader at the opening of the Scottish Parliament’s new building. First she solos with a traditional but less-well-known melody, then has the assembly join in. Bliadhna mhath ùr (Happy new year).

If you don’t know much about Scottish history, you’ll sometimes cause pain to Scots by telling them how much you loved Braveheart. One thing the film did convey, in its final scene, was a hint of the battle of Bannockburn (June 24, 1314).  King Robert I of Scotland ("Robert the Bruce") and his army confronted an English force three times their size, led by Edward II. The legend holds that the Bruce said to the Scots, "You have bled for Wallace — will you bleed for me?"  That legend, and the victory that followed, inspired the poem that Robert Burns entitled Robert Bruce’s March to Bannockburn. It’s as good a verse as any to mark the bard’s birthday. Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has aften led, Welcome to your gory bed, Or to Victorie! Now’s the day, and now’s the hour; See the front o’ battle lour; See approach proud Edward’s power- Chains and Slaverie! Wha will be a traitor knave? Wha can fill a coward’s grave? Wha sae base as be a Slave? Let him turn and flee! Wha, for Scotland’s King and Law, Freedom’s sword will strongly draw, Free-man stand, or Free-man fa’, Let him on wi’ me! By Oppression’s woes and pains! By your Sons in servile chains! We will drain our dearest veins, But they shall be free! Lay the proud Usurpers low! Tyrants fall in every foe! Liberty’s in every blow!- Let us Do or Die! Many people know this in song form as Scots Wha Hae.  Here’s a version by Dougie MacLean:

A while back, George Siemens wrote a post, Questions I’m No Longer Asking. I like the title, and the post even more-because the heart of the post is what he believes about learning, and it’s from that viewpoint that he talks about questions that don’t interest him any more. (Example: "How can educations implement [whatever tool] into their teaching?  Simple: do it.") Siemens lists several points that he’s firmly convinced of.  I read them with an eye toward what I believe in terms of learning in the workplace.  I think several of them are essential to an organization’s ability to effective encourage work-related learning. No, that’s not the most felicitious phrase I’ve ever written.  It’s apropos, though, because of how I see the way most people earn their living. Ideally, the workplace is a for-hire alliance.  Whosis, Incorporated (or, for some, the Department of Whosis) wants to get things done and will pay people to help do them.  Individuals presumably want to get paid and possibly have some interest in the things Whosis does. So there’s a partnership.  And the give-and-take of that partnership extends to work-related learning. You as an individual need the opportunity, support, resources, and systems to get better at what you do or what you’d like to do, while Whosis needs people who are more and more effective at achieving results that Whosis values. What does that mean in terms of some of Siemens’s points?  I want to take up this one: Learners should be in control of their own learning. Autonomy is key. For a successful partnership, those workplace learners should be able to relate what they’re learning to key parts of their own job, or to key results that the employer values.  Not every minute, not every task, but definitely over the long haul. I don’t have much argument with Siemens’s point that "meaningful learning requires learner-driven activity."  Neither would anyone who’s ever had to present a training course to people who didn’t need or  value the training. The difference is that in the workplace, over time, most of that meaningful learning has to connect to the organization’s goals.  If not, eventually you won’t have that workplace. If we’re the Fast Twitch Gym, the ultimate outcome is profitability.  To achieve that, we value things like the breadth and depth of workout options, the availability of a skilled and friendly staff, rate of renewals, class offerings that customers enroll in and stick with, and so on.  If as an organization we thought that we’d accomplish more profitability by selling cars, we probably wouldn’t be in the gym business. If we’re the Division of Motor Vehicles, then valuable outcomes are things like efficient and convenient issuing of driver licenses and license plates.  Related to those are quantity and quality measures for our record-keeping, our delivery of service, and our cost-effectiveness. So what?  Well, as an individual, if your personal goals and values press you toward becoming a paralegal, you might not always be able to satisfy those desires entirely through your job at Fast Twitch or the DMV, because these particular workplaces don’t employ that many paralegals. Siemens is certainly right: nobody’s going to be as interested in your learning as you are.  At the same time, if you’re an employee in an organization, that organization will have goals and values that aren’t necessarily identical with yours. For the individual, the challenge is to find a satisfactory degree of autonomy: working with problems that engage you; collaborating with coworkers or clients who encourage you do get better at what you do; finding assignments or specializations that are fulfilling. For the organization, the challenge is often getting away from a not-really-working, event-focused, dose-and-exposure-oriented approach toward skill in the workplace.  If standardization and compliance are important (as in, say, pharmaceuticals or high-tech manufacturing), your workforce already knows that. Workplace learning isn’t us versus them (or me versus them).  At its best, it’s the individual and the organization having interests and goals that mesh well. CC-licensed photos: collaborating at work by Christina Xu; boredom by Quinn Dombrowski.

For a while there, I thought Joe Gerstandt was full of crap. Somebody tweeted a line from one of Joe’s blog posts:  "We are not accountants. We are Jedi.  We play on a completely different field." "Jedi" alone is often enough to make me go find something else to do, but instead I read the full post, The False Tyranny of Metrics.  And for a while, I continued to think Gerstandt was full of crap.  Or maybe just way out there, because my initial skimming said that he was saying metrics don’t matter. That wasn’t the case.  It took me longer than I like to admit to realize that the Talent Anarchy blog is (at least in part) a dialog between Gerstandt and his business partner, Jason Lauritsen.  So this post was part of their thinking out loud about what matters. The heart of what Gerstandt is talking about emerges in a follow-up post (and at the end of my post, I’ve put links to several posts from Talent Anarchy): And maybe I do not think that measurement is evil…measurement is a tool after all, so it boils down to how you use it. But this is what I do believe: one: We over-prioritize things that come with metrics. two: We have told ourselves some great lies about what we can measure. three: The outcome of our use of metrics is often evil. The conversation really struck me because of several themes or issues  running through my life right now.  One of them is a client I’ll call Hephaestus. I’ll say they make  household fans and heaters.  As a manufacturer, Hephaestus has some serious metrics having to do with production-rate, quality, reject rate, cost, all the sorts of things you’d expect.  And the sorts of things that make sense there. Does Hephaestus have other ways of knowing how they’re doing?  I’m pretty sure they do, though the project I’m dealing with doesn’t extend that far.  I haven’t been called in by the CEO or the VP of manufacturing.  Even so, I see potential wisdom for me and for my client in the Talent Anarchy discussion. Our project is about how to bring new manufacturing workers to competency.  If you’ve worked in a plant, you have some idea what these jobs can be like.  At a GE appliance factory, I observed workers in charge of powder-paint application, wire-harness installation, and similar jobs. How do you help a new person do that safely and accurately-and with acceptable progress to the necessary speed? It’s not all feeds and speeds, either with regard to turning out those appliances, or with regard to how people learn.  I think there’s a lot of value in questioning assumptions, especially those we don’t even recognize as assumptions. Here are links to the posts in the discussion at Talent Anarchy, along with a quote pulled from each.  Worth the time to go through.  You’re likely to find value in the comments as well: The Measurement Imperative (Jason) (the post in which Jason starts the discussion)I know that measurement and metrics aren’t your favorite thing to talk about, but what do you think?  Where does measurement fit into the work we do? The False Tyranny of Metrics (Joe) (from a comment on this post)I was talking with my boss about the situation [of half the staff at a health facility frequently arriving late] when he asked me if my team cared about the people we served and if they were dedicated to helping those folks achieve outcomes. I answered yes - they excelled at achieving outcomes. He then challenged me by pointing out that the only reason I was on my time-clock tirade was because I could hit a button on the computer and spit out the metrics related to the situation. Punch reports were the metrics I had available so that was what I managed to. Despite What You May Have Heard, Measurement Isn’t Evil (Jason) What I heard you say is that putting metrics and measurement before the actual work, or worse, substituting it as the work is really damaging and counter-productive.  And I would agree with that.  When the metric becomes what you are trying to accomplish, you have lost. More Metrics Madness (Joe) I do understand the importance of profit.  I am a business owner myself…I get it.  But the purpose of my business is not profit. I work, at least partly, because I need to make a living, but I do the particular work that I do for reasons that have nothing to do with profit.  Profit is mandatory, I am not in any way confused about that, but saying that an organizations exists for the purpose of profit is kind of like saying that the purpose of a persons life is breathing (which also can be measured quite well by the way). A Defense (of a sort) of Metrics(a guest post by Mark D. Hirschfeld and F. Leigh Branham We may not be able to measure honesty, compassion, and courage, but we can measure the results that those traits produce-lower voluntary turnover, lower quit rates, fewer grievances filed, more internal job progressions allowed, more customers returning more frequently and referring their friends, more managers coaching (often confronting), recognizing (more often) and giving constructive feedback, more new employees being hired through referrals from happier, more engaged employees-all measures of not just more, but of better places to work that do indeed serve as measures of progress toward becoming a remarkable workplace. CC-licensed production parts image by iamphejom.

If you use social media, you see status updates about attempts to achieve InBox Zero. I hadn’t probed that phrase much, so didn’t realize its connection to Merlin Mann of 43folders.  I had figured out that people were struggling to empty their email in-boxes.  I’d also guessed that many  people were not necessarily following a strict regimen, just using the phrase loosely, the way they say "best practice" or "customer focus."  Or, after a sneeze, "bless you." The loose sense of inbox zero is an email counterpart to the Cleared-Off Desk.  Either of these things can be ripped from context, turned from a possible indicator of progress  into the Talisman of Virtue. Recently I spent a distressing  amount of time mucking around with my email, especially the rules I’ve created to initially process stuff.  This felt a lot like work (in the "chores you need to get around to" sense), which had me musing yet again on training versus learning. I had this idea: training is about YOU; learning is about ME. To generalize energetically, one of the most common meanings for "training" in organizations is: A planned, focused, structured approach… over a limited amount of time… for novices, especially in groups… to develop competence they currently lack… in applying mainly procedural skills… in a limited amount of time. That’s what’s behind how to use the email system, how to manufacture ceramic heaters, how to write a flood insurance policy" or how to open savings accounts.  Those are examples of predominantly procedural tasks from projects I’ve worked on, either for newly hired employees or people needing to learn a  process significantly different from the old one. "Training is for you" is shorthand for saying that someone’s delineated this cluster of skill.  Yes, I know that often the delineation isn’t that great-but for now assume  somebody did sufficient analysis to say: These people can’t do these things They can’t because they don’t know how Knowing how will enable them to produce these results to this level of quality. At the risk of seeming to lowball, I’m thinking about that end-of-training level of quality as competence.  Competence, as opposed to mastery.  In that highly-conditional context in the box above, you develop training for others ("training is for you") to help them become competent-to perform adequately in a new environment. Remember, though, they’re the people doing the learning ("learning is for me").  What’s more, as on-the-job performance moves from the relatively narrow context of isolated procedural skills (how to complete a mortgage application) to more complex situations (how to help clients understand and choose a mortgage option), you can’t help people achieve competence, let alone mastery, through traditional training and development approaches. Even in the small area of dealing with email, I noticed the value of clusters of skills, not all of which would fit easily into a cookbook-style job aid. * Like understanding and applying tools.  Not just to create email rules in Outlook (in my case), but to apply options that mark, sort, auto-delete incoming mail-and to handle my replies, a harder task when you’re not on a corporate server. Or like periodically perform maintenance, like tracking down the causes of persistent problems, or like reviewing, editing, and pruning existing rules. Or like knowing when to stop doing more of what you’ve been doing. On that last point, I’m thinking of GE’s Jack Welch.  He talked once about inventory turns, a way to measure how you’re controlling inventory costs.  If you try to keep 100 niblicks on hand, and you sell 500 a year, you have 5 inventory turns.  In general, a lower number of turns means higher cost. If the niblick group tries to improve from 10 to 11 turns a year, they’ll probably do the same things, only faster.  To go from 10 to 15 turns  in one year, "faster" won’t work.  They’ll have to rethink assumptions, re-examine givens, see the parts and the whole.  As as Welch saw, even if they don’t hit 15, they’re likely to far surpass what they would have done incrementally. If you focus simply on getting your inbox to zero, there’s a risk that you’re just moving and deleting stuff faster.  You’re dealing with procedural specifics at a task level.  If instead you focus on processing information that comes to you, you’re do this right now, put this on the afternoon’s schedule, file this with that project, route these to the keep-for-now-but-autodelete-in-a-month folder. Part of Merlin Mann’s approach is to route incoming items to logical next steps.  In other words, inbox zero doesn’t mean you’re done; it means you’re ready to start with things that matter. That more complex cluster of skills isn’t something that traditional training will achieve.  It’s a performance improvement that depends on individuals learning and on various kinds of collaborative work that’s encouraged and supported by the workplace.  The kind of better practice that surpasses "best practice." * How clever of you to notice that I was happy to stop editing email rules for a while so I could sit back and philosophize analyze at a higher level.

I’m a big believer in the curse of knowledge-the idea, as Chip and Dan Heath phrase it, that once we know something, it’s hard to imagine not knowing it.  Consider the way you pronounce "often" — do  you sound the T, or not? — and how bizarre it seemed when you first met someone who pronounces it the other way. Recently someone asked whether I’d be interested in working on a project as a "user experience strategist."  I don’t think I have the necessary qualifications, whatever they might be, but I do have a growing collection of items that fall into the intersection of user experience and curse of knowledge. This, for instance, is a message I encountered while waiting for some online animation to start: I actually don’t remember what the animation was about.  I do remember that the entire load took perhaps 25 seconds, a span of time for which ten-thousandths of one percent rarely matter.  Even if the load took 25 minutes, 1% of that time would be 15 seconds.  Two decimal places (0.01%) would be 0.15 seconds.  Close enough. The next example is from a local government authority in Scotland.  "Council" here means something like the town or county government in the U.S., with responsibility for things like public safety, roads, and schools.  While the page does have a sidebar for "quick links," what you see in the box below is the entire text for frequently asked questions. Not only are questions frequently asked, they’re frequently anticipated, which may explain this FAQ example from a long-distance phone service: And as we turn to the last example-I know peeves are often kept as pets, but this one I think has gone feral: I don’t understand why so many websites and blogs fail to include a preview button for comments. So, in this next example (from an advertising-industry publication), the upper section shows what you see when you want to make a comment.  The lower section shows a result that isn’t all that surprising.   Behind all of these, I think, is likely someone whose assumption was "people will know what this means" or "this will help them do X."

My wife and I were married on the last day of February, three years ago.  I had asked my daughter, who’s a poet, if she would read something at the ceremony.  She did that doubly: first,  a poem by Robert Burns.  Next, an unexpected gift-a poem she wrote for us. So, two poems, which goes well with how we mark our anniversary. As I said, we were married on the last day of February, which in 2008 was the 29th. I’m glad for the two poems, since during non-leap-years I tell people our anniversary is the day after February 28 and the day before March 1. Love for Love Ithers seek they ken na what,Features, carriage, and a’ that;Gie me love in her I court,Love to love maks a’ the sport. Let love sparkle in her e’e;Let her lo’e nae man but me;That’s the tocher-gude I prize,There the luver’s treasure lies. - Robert Burns tocher-gude: dowry, marriage portion A Roof Against the Rain We did not always marry for love. Marriage began as business, a mode of commerce, a means of conquest. The right wife provides heirs, status, income. So a rich man chooses his bride without ever consulting his heart. And the poor man, too, for he cannot afford to dwell on a girl’s pretty face or sweet nature. Both men must instead consider the count: the number of cattle, or gold coins, or allies that he needs. The number he desires. So wives take lovers. Or their husbands do. Every consort pays the price. Some are happy. Some not. But kings die, and countries fall. Livestock is eaten. Money is spent. A loveless life lasts as long as any other. And is our modern world so very different? We come home to darkened rooms, sleep between cold sheets, wake to a blinding silence. We buy, and sell, and collect all the trappings of civilization. Sex is a biological function, like eating, or breathing. Love is a myth, perpetuated by popular culture. And yet we seek companionship. We long for the quickened heartbeat, the flushed cheek. We savor the first kiss, the next meeting. We will the phone to ring, linger over coffee with strangers, wanting to become friends, wanting to hold hands in the dark, wanting the happier life, where marriage is a choice, and love a refuge, a roof against the rain. - Gillian Devereux