1. I am of the firm belief that it is now impossible to get H5N1 out of the ecosystem of North America. Bluntly put, there is now simply too much virus present in wild birds and mammals to be able to contain it. There are also likely many more human cases than reported.
— Conor Browne (@brownecfm) January 18, 2025
It’s been a quiet couple weeks with us on holidays and then me busy with a conference for most of last week but time to get back to blogging. And I’ve got a perfect video for Music Monday falling on St. Patrick’s Day – a montage of pics I made against two Celtic-Canadian songs from my time at FIMS at Western University…
“My Old South London Home” – Uisce Beatha, “On That Day” – MacKeel
Shea and I have done three or four day trips to Isla Mujeres when we’ve stayed at all-inclusives in the Cancun area over the years.
And every time, we come home and say “That was the best part of our trip – we should stay there for our whole trip sometime!”
Isla Mujeres is a small island which is only seven kilometres long and less than a kilometre across at its widest point. It is commercialized to a degree, especially in the part of the island near the ferry terminal where hundreds of tourists disembark everyday.
But it is still a lot more rustic and low key compared to most tourist destinations in Mexico with tons of unique restaurants, minimal cars on the island (most people walk or rent a golf cart or scooter if they want to range further) and a calm, quiet vibe in general.
So this year, we finally pulled the trigger – instead of booking an all-inclusive (even on the island which has a few), we have booked a central hotel right on Playa Norte (regularly rated as one of the Top Ten beaches on earth!) and are going to have a pretty low key week of being on the beach, reading, eating and swimming.
Only a few days until we’re on this ferry!
A couple recent conversations got me thinking about the idea that “Work is 80% Relationships” and the vital importance of soft skills.
* A long time ago, the best manager we ever had at RPL talked to me about how the fact that her and another manager were really good friends outside of work and that made it much easier for them to disagree and even argue fiercely at work because they had a level of trust with each other which allowed them to understand that work was not personal.
I found a clip of them going to work one day:
* Another colleague told me about how they wrote a pre-screen question that is overtly about a person’s technical skills (“An elderly patron needs help with a computer problem.”) but the covert purpose is to assess the potential employee’s soft skills – how do they say they would interact with the non-tech savvy person? How would they “translate” their knowledge in a way the person could understand? How could they help the person learn some basics so they feel empowered?
* I guess I’ve also been thinking about how I literally spent the first week in my Organization Development role in HR at RPL in change management sessions that involved all staff as we moved towards a major reorganization and also towards a province-wide library system.
I don’t have it now but one slide the consultant showed in her presentation stayed with me to this day:
? Employees will embrace change where their input is included.
? Employees will support change where their input is considered.
? Employees will resist change that is imposed.
This seems like common sense but I’ve seen dozens of examples over the years where managers or directors impose change simply because they think they know best or they have their own agenda (and no trust to be honest about the real reasons for making changes.)
What gets missed is the damage that imposed decisions make to organizations in terms of trust, morale and loyalty.
One of my favourite creators on TalkTick…
Took Sasha and a friend to an inclusivity celebration triple-bill of Mother Mother, Cavetown and Winnetka Bowling League at the Brandt Centre on Monday night.
I knew the first two bands a little bit (mostly through Sasha) but didn’t really know the opener.
All were great in their own way but Winnetka Bowling League (terrible name for a band though!) ended up being my favourite of the night…catchy clever pop songs and always nice when you go into something with no or low expectations (“opener for the opener? Yawn.”) and get pleasantly surprised.
“Sha La La” – Winnetka Bowling League
Sometimes patrons think we’re helping them but they don’t realise that often they’re helping us too.
Always great to have moments that remind you of why libraries are so important and why you do the work that you do…
We’ll be visiting Isla Mujeres from March 2 to 9 and this will be the first time we haven’t stayed at an all-inclusive in all our various trips to Mexico/Cuba/Dominican Republic over the past 25 years.
One thing we might do is take a boat trip to an ecologically protected, undeveloped island…
