What are the loves and passions of your life? Comment below to join the discussion.

Share those flavonoids and antioxidants: wrap some chocolate.

RECLAIMING OUR PRIDE
by Damaria Senne

Most of the time I’m very proud to be South African and am happy to chat with my international friends about events that are taking place in my country. I’m proud of the way we have managed to stop apartheid without having a protracted civil war. I’m proud of the way we have created laws that protect all our citizens regardless of their race, gender, age or sexual orientation. And I’m proud of our history, our culture, or food and the stories that I hope we will pass on to the next generation.

Unfortunately, there are times when I’m not proud to be South African. Our crime rates are high, and there are even claims that we have the highest rape and murder incidences in the world. I don’t know if that is true. What I do know is that for a country that has a relatively small population (46 million) we reported between 66,000 to 70,000 cases of rape or sexual assault every year, from 2003 to 2010. Many more cases remain unreported.

We also have a high rate of instances of women and child abuse. Some of the cases are reported and dealt with according to the law, but a high rate remain unreported, or don’t make it to court. The editor of one of the major newspapers in this country (The Mail and Guardian) even went so far as to say that there is a war against women in this country. That is very disturbing.

Which is the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign is a very big event in South Africa. Government departments, as well as non-profit organizations, have planned a number of activities to commemorate the event and to encourage South Africans to join the global campaign against gender violence.

About 16 Days Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign

The 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence is an international campaign originating from the first Women's Global Leadership Institute sponsored by the Center for Women's Global Leadership in 1991.
Participants chose the dates, November 25, International Day Against Violence Against Women and December 10, International Human Rights Day, in order to symbolically link violence against women and human rights and to emphasize that such violence is a violation of human rights.

This 16-day period also highlights other significant dates including November 29, International Women Human Rights Defenders Day, December 1, World AIDS Day, and December 6, which marks the Anniversary of the Montreal Massacre.

The 16 Days Campaign has been used as an organizing strategy by individuals and groups around the world to call for the elimination of all forms of violence against women.

Support the campaign

There are many things, big and small, that you can do to support the campaign. Here are some of them:

--Blog about violence against women some time during the campaign period. Get your readers thinking about this problem and what they can do to help.

--Volunteer at a women’s shelter

--Make it a point to talk to your children, grandchildren, and other young people in your life about violence against women.

--Report the abuse if someone within your family or community is perpetrating violence another individual. And let’s not be blind. Violence against men and boys also happens with disturbing frequency, though it is not talked about that much.

As for me, I’m working with Shukumisa, a campaign that is coordinated by 26 non-profit organizations, to shake up society’s views on sexual violence. The organizations operate nationally/locally. Many of them plan to visit communities, get people talking, distribute material which encourage citizens to take action or get help if they are being abused.

I'll leave you with a video of a public service announcement of an incident that took place in Johannesburg. This video was a test by a non-profit organization to assess our communities’ response to violence against women.

Mine? Since 2006 Pop and I have partnered on "Harvesting: Heritage and Lineage." This project continues as I trot along after him in Daddy Trailer fashion. Aunt Mim's (Amelia's) music from the 1890s to 1920s found a home at Alton's Hayner Library's Illinois Room. We're exploring Berea College as a place for Pop's sheet music collection for the songs from his youth. Pop's commissioned me to make cover art for his photo-documentation books How the River Road Was Made, The Bluffline Railroad, Glad Acres, and A Man Before His Time. Western Illinois University is starting a Thompson collection. And on and on.

As I work on harvesting the wealth of my father's experience and wisdom, I turn to harvesting my own. Papers and journals are strewn across the floors of my apartment. One day I'll combine my wheat field and store my crop in silos. It'll take awhile

What are your favorite things of summer? For me, it's the ripe peaches and tomatoes of August, swimming and kayaking in natural bodies of water, those summer trips & family reunions, staying in the shade with a Southern Belle fan at the ready, reading fiction without redeeming social value...

What about you?

The year my father was named Folk Treasure of Arts Across Illinois this song was captured on video in preparation for a TV show. It's haunting melody is filled with a genuine love of country. This song primarily portrays a young man's spirit and his desire to help create or preserve a free world.

See also: Dorothy Horstman, Sing Your Heart Out, Country Boy, New York, NY, 1976.

Lift up your voices. I look forward to reading your comments and the dialogue to follow.

Happy July 4th coming up. Let the fireworks provide some light on patriotism.

Curt Madison is a buddy from High School. This fact is distinctive in that he is the only person I continue to be in touch with from any of my schooling—either high school or colleges. We reconnected at the Alton [Senior] High School class of 1967 40th reunion. Over a malt Curt told me that what I call Jazz Conversations are known more formally as appreciative inquiry. The conversations here are like that. You can read his fascinating bio at the end of each conversation.

Does Competition Drive Collaboration? In Conversation with Curt Madison

CM: The greatest motivator for collaboration is competition. To collaborate you want to have competition.

JGR: That makes no sense to me. Explain.

CM: Why would you want to collaborate in the first place? To be better, right? Collaboration adds a layer of overhead beyond just doing something yourself. Collaboration requires communication with all its pitfalls.

JGR: And, to have more fun.

CM: Well, if we are talking about entertainment, then sure, it is more fun to do something with a friend than to do it alone. But if we take a larger view, remember people in the business world also collaborate. But they do it for a different reason. It has to do with where ideas come from and general efficiency. Let’s contrast competition with monopoly. We can apply it to writing. How do things get published?

JGR: Quality is at play, as is finding a match between market and material. There’s a degree of subjectivity, too, in how work is chosen to be published.

CM: So the writing is at different levels for different markets. Sometimes it is crucial to be absolutely the best—because there is a limiting market. Sometimes it is a matter of being appropriate to the goals of a group. When you write the minutes of a meeting for your own church group, the goal is to get down what is required. When you write a history of churches, the goal is to appeal to an audience that has a choice of what to read.

What if the only thing that kept you from writing more was typing faster? Would having another person typing produce twice the material, thus doubling your chance of being published?

JGR: No. That’s just stenography.

CM: There has to be some standard of what makes the work better. If you want to be published in any venue you have to be better than what could replace your work. Collaboration can make people more successful.

JGR: Hmmm. So you’re saying that without competition there’s no reason to collaborate because you wouldn't have to be any better than you are? I’m not sure about that.

CM: In a monopoly work is ordered to be done because it's appropriate. Employees in a monopoly can only stare morosely at the wall wondering if their work coincides with an enforced set of appropriate standards. Dull, or interesting by chance.
A monopoly (and a vacuum) is not natural. A monopoly exists only because it was created to exist. A monopoly serves a predetermined need – usually as long as it can hold on. Competition, on the other hand, is a way to constantly re-investigate fit and efficiency.

JGR: So, you’re saying that competition opens possibility?

CM: Yes. There’s a search for what hasn't been thought of so new ideas and elements come in.

JGR: What about famous inventors? Aren’t they driven by the hunt for truth or new territory? Isn’t there an intrinsic value? Isn’t it fun to invent?

CM: Sure it is fun to invent. But look at the story of inventions. How many times have you read a story about a person who produced a great invention and then was cheated out of the rewards of wealth and fame? Why is that even a story if the goal is purely intrinsic?

JGR: Well, yeah. They have to eat.

CM: If there were a better method of coming up with new ideas and gaining a reward, wouldn't you choose it? And, here is a question, “What if each person had his or her own agenda for work.” Is that collaboration?

JGR: That’s only half of collaboration.

CM: Clearly we are getting to a more nuanced sense of collaboration. Now we have half collaboration. OK, let’s say Ford is trying to make money selling cars. They hire a Chinese company to make tires. The Chinese engineers design tires for SUVs. But to make the tires cheaper, the Chinese company does not employ a marketing department. They like to sell to one company without overhead. Has the tire company been hired by Ford to make tires? Or has the tire company hired Ford to market their tires. Linking the two enterprises results in mutual efficiencies.

JGR: But, that still doesn’t fit my definition of collaboration. There are still two separate agendas.

CM: OK. Here’s another shot at the nuance. Let’s say two people are car designers. Each one has only $50. They both need software that costs $100 available at www.AnyCarDesign.com [fantasy site].One person wants to design a Hummer, and the other wants to design a motorcycle. The same software can do both.

They go out for coffee even though they don’t particularly like to talk. They find that they both share the goal of getting the means of production. And they find that they both have the same problem designing a universal joint. So they pool their money, buy the software, and design a joint. They “collaborate” to complete their vehicles.

Together they found a solution to overcome an obstacle. They created a single thing. They collaborated on a means to the end. But their end goals of designing a Hummer and a motorcycle are vastly different.

But wait there is more. Why not just call MIT? Surely there is an engineer there who could design a joint for them. They don’t because they don’t have money. They could give up on doing it, or put heads together and do it themselves. If they don't do it together, they have to drop out of competition.

They either retreat from competition or stay in the game. They have to collaborate to become more competitive.

JGR: What if there isn’t any competition?

CM: Back to our contrast of competition versus monopoly. In a monopoly our heroes only work on problems deemed important enough to be solved by the appropriateness functions of the monopoly. This state of affairs prevents disruptive innovations, the messiness, and the oily, slippery enjoyment of life. If there’s no competition, the organization loses one of major motivators for collaboration. It is possible to look at collaboration as a strategy to be employed with its costs and rewards.

JGR: I don’t’ like your argument. Collaboration is something creative happening that people are doing together. You're talking at a systemic and organizational level. I believe that within the collaborative unit that competition is destructive.

CM: Let’s talk some more about when collaboration is fun and when it is a pain in the ass. The next topic could be intellectual bandwidth.

Part 2 of our conversation discusses degrees of capacity for working together (cooperation, collaboration, and concerted effort).

You might also read our Creative Catalyst column written by Stephanie Farrow and myself. Here are the first two posts of a three-part cycle for Telling Her Stories, the Story Circle Network blog.

5.1 Collaboration: How to Make It Work
5.2 Collaboration: Trust Floats the Boat
__________________

Curt Madison’s Bio

Curt Madison came to Alaska in 1971 direct from an undergraduate psychology degree at Stanford University. In Alaska, Curt has worked as a riverboat pilot, filmmaker, and biographer collaborating on 22 biographies of elders in rural Alaska with Yvonne Yarber. He has a MA in Political Science from University of Hawaii-Manoa (1976) which included thesis research in Samoa and a PhD from the University of Arizona (1999) in Communication. Dr. Madison flies a two-seat antique airplane on cross country trips whenever his heart needs restarting. He currently is the Director of eLearning Program Development at the School of Management, University of Alaska Fairbanks.

In our first 2-part interview Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler told us how they met and shared five tips for successful collaboration.

How Stephanie & I met and began our collaboration

Today we offer the first of a second two-part interview on collaboration between Stephanie Farrow and myself. It’s a working relationship within the context of a long friendship that’s been going on for 37 years, longer than many marriages.

Stephanie and I have collaborated on many writing and training projects. Most recently we’ve joined up to write our Creative Catalyst column for Telling Her Stories, the Story Circle Network blog.
In our column from February-March-April we're running a 3-post Creative Catalyst cycle.

5.1 Collaboration: How to Make It Work
5.2 Collaboration: Trust Floats the Boat

Stephanie lives in New Mexico while I live in St. Louis. We haven’t seen each other for four years. Our collaboration takes place via phone and email.

For this interview we experimented chatting by Gmail. Our phone time tends toward delightful jazz conversations as we branch out discursively and then pull it back in to a point. We found we enjoyed the Gmail technology to capture conversation. It allowed time for on-the-spot reflection.

We first met in Ghana in 1973 when we were both teaching in Peace Corps. She lived in the South while I lived in the North. When I traveled to Kumasi during school breaks, we’d spend time visiting over tea. Those conversations began building the foundation of our collaboration back in the United States in New Mexico, and then continued when I moved to California and then to Missouri.

#1 Shared experience to build upon.

Janet: Stephanie, I remember sitting in your house outside Kumasi visiting and sipping tea as we first got to know each other. It seems to me that beginning started building the foundation of our collaboration.
Stephanie: I remember first meeting you when we got in country the first day. You and your husband came to our room and we lounged on the beds. Everything seemed so new—Africa, that is—and here you were—old Africa hands with experience in Botswana.
Janet: With your perspective of coming from Honduras and Guatemala, you and your husband John quickly became old hands yourselves. You spoke flawless French and Spanish. Coming from Botswana we knew Setswana. Those two perspectives gave us a point to start our long conversation of 37 years.

Stephanie: You're right, in some ways Ghana didn't seem strange at all—it was just different—another 3rd World country. I think that previous experience made it easier for me to adjust and feel at home straight away.

When you share an overseas experience of any sort—even just going to France to visit the Eiffel Tower or whatever—it changes your perspective on the world. Others who've been outside the country understand what this means in a way others can't.

#2 Knowing and liking each other. Work as an extension of friendship and the other way around.

Stephanie: I can hear your typing over the speaker phone. It sounds like there's a demented mouse gnawing away.

Janet: Gnaw, Gnaw! We were so fortunate to meet up again in New Mexico in 1979 when we'd both been back in the States a short time going through cultural transition and getting settled in the United States. That reconnection became one of the most important shaping influences of my life. For one, it gave me one of the longest-term friends I've ever had in my life.

Stephanie: It's rare these days to have such a long-term friend. Connections seem much more tenuous these days. We're such a mobile society that it's hard to stay connected—especially those of us who don't even stay in the country!

#3 Interlocking Strengths & Skills

Janet: In the 1980s in New Mexico working together emerged organically from our friendship and similar work interests.
You worked with a variety of nonprofit volunteer organizations—like Amigos de las Americas, Parentcraft, Partners of the Americas, and Coalition for Children. Mostly your work then centered on children and overseas, cross-cultural issues. I worked with community education and later in my consulting firm Clear Communication.

The underlying skills for us both were training and development and communication. With this bond in place we began designing and giving workshops together.

During our three years in the Kellogg Leadership Fellowship for Partners of the Americas that our relationship became closer and we collaborated more frequently as we traveled to Latin America and the Caribbean experiencing places and development issues first hand. I’d never participated in seminars like that before—or met socially with high-level officials.
Stephanie: I hadn't experienced that before either, so our bond grew. The work we’ve done together since then sprung from that time. The joint understanding we have of the world and of each other informs our work today.

In the second part of our interview we'll continue our discussion on how to make collaboration work.

In the Creative Catalyst column which Stephanie Farrow and I write for Telling Her Stories you can learn more about collaboration. From February through April Creative Catalyst explores collaboration--that most relational of art forms. present three posts on collaboration.

Riehlife: Say more about the process of working together and the lessons you’ve learned.

Matilda: Let me start our response to those two points because it is fairly hard for me to separate them. When I asked Kendra if she would co-author Rosie’s Daughters with me, she agreed before she even knew what I meant by that proposal. Why?

Ingredient #1, Trust. You need to spell collaboration with a capital "T". What I mean by that is a fully functioning recipe for collaboration needs a healthy dose of Trust. Kendra and I had known each other for a long time. She knew that I wouldn’t take advantage of her, and I knew she wouldn’t take advantage of me. Trust doesn’t happen in one day. Therefore, if you are just starting to work with someone as a co-author or a business partner, determine a number of small steps that allow you to build trust. It doesn’t have to take 30 years, but it definitely takes longer than 30 minutes.

Kendra: Since Matilda is turning this into a recipe for collaboration, let me mention that she and I both love cooking. She knew she could mention ingredients and my mind could quickly think up a second ingredient for a successful collaboration.

Ingredient #2, Shared interests: Share interests outside the narrow focus of the collaboration. Matilda and I talk multiple times a day. There are posts to plan and write for our website ( http://womensmemoirs.com ), marketing campaigns to develop and launch, online class assignments to review, email responses to discuss, order fulfillments to assign, workshop presentations and social media fan sites to develop and maintain. All of this focuses on our business.

But we also share interests outside our business. This is an important ingredient in our developing friendship that even today is stronger than six months or a year or 30-years ago. In other words, it shouldn’t be all work and no play.

Matilda: Kendra that reminds me of the next ingredient.

Ingredient #3, Honor the other person’s ideas. If Kendra comes up with a new marketing plan, I never think to immediately reject it, even if it doesn’t strike me as quite right. She cuts me the same slack. Recently, for example, I wrote a description of a workshop to submit. I sent it to her in an email and didn’t hear back. I waited, figuring that it wasn’t on target. I knew she was just thinking about it. I didn’t take it personally and knew she would honor the concepts I had presented, just make them better.

Kendra: Matilda is getting a little wordy, as usual. I always tease her that she’s never met a word she doesn’t like. Let me move us on to two last ingredients. See how gently I moved this discussion forward? Since I already tease her about being long-winded, she won’t get upset.

Ingredient #4, Divide the work load. Matilda told me about five women who decided to write mysteries together since individually they never could get a book finished. Once they got started, they realized that each had strengths. For instance: one was really great at dialogue; another liked to do the research that became the use of place and history in the story; another person turned out to be great with character development.

Matilda and I could do the same tasks although we have somewhat different strengths. For example, I do more of the social networking and marketing. She does more of the product development and analytical tracking. When we work with clients, we help them to find their strengths and to focus on them. For example, we are working with three women who are developing an online business. One loves to blog; the second is working on a product for them to market; and the third is tied into local communities.

Matilda: Who’s wordy now? I think I can guess Kendra’s suggestion for the final ingredient because it is one that we talk about a lot.

Ingredient #5, Know your collaborator’s work ethic. Kendra and I are workaholics. We both work long hours and value getting tasks finished at an agreed time. If you don’t know the work ethic of a possible co-author or online business partner, find a small project or two as a testing ground. Be sure to cut the other person slack when needed. We all get sick or have a family emergency. But a similar work ethic is necessary for success.

Kendra: That last ingredient is important, Matilda, because different work ethics can breed resentment.
Working with the right person is like adding yeast to individually premium ingredients. We spark ideas together that we’d never develop alone. We can’t really imagine any other way to work. Yet, we hesitate to recommend it for everyone. You might want to think of starting a collaboration on a small scale and then expanding it if it works. For example, before writing together you might want to co-teach a class.

Matilda: Kendra, thanks for helping to make this collaboration work. Here’s to our next 30 years.
Kendra: Yikes, do you know how old I’ll be by then?

Matilda: Yes. Nine years younger than I’ll be!

Riehlife: Goodbye, Matilda and Kendra. Thanks for telling about your form of collaboration.

How do we do that to make our work better, further-reaching, and...more fun? I invited Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler of Women's Memoirs to tell us the story of how they met and what makes their sizzling and productive collaboration work.

This two-part interview with Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler kicks off our Riehlife Blog-of-the-Month series. It’s a linked interview with Creative Catalyst, the column Stephanie Farrow and I write for Telling Her Stories. From February through April on Story Circle Network's blog we’ll present three posts on collaboration.

I first met Kendra and Matilda through Story Circle Network. Together they write and manage an ambitious, productive, and helpful blog Women's Memoirs. The entire range of their creative and entrepreneurial collaborations are beyond my ability to describe or even list. I’m constantly agape at the amount and quality of their work.

During last summer’s blog tour to launch my audio book “Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music,” Kendra and Matilda were generous collaborators. We blog for Story Circle Network’s “Telling Her Stories.” My column is Creative Catalyst. Kendra’s is "Getting Read," and Matilda's is "Opening Salvos." At the February Story Circle Network Memoir Conference in Austin we’ll be there together presenting workshops, coaching, reading…and, generally having a good time.

Here's Part 1 of Kendra and Matilda's interview. Here they tell us how they met and began working together.

Women’s Memoir Duo on Collaboration

Riehlife: Kendra and Matilda, this year marks your 30th year of collaboration. That’s a long time! I’m glad you’re here to share with us what you’ve learned about working together as a team. First, tell us the story of how you started working together.

Kendra: I always feel this is my story. You see, Matilda was my first boss. Just out of graduate school at UC Santa Barbara I felt I needed to go to the city to get a good job. Even though I’m originally from the East Coast, I didn’t feel ready to tackle New York City. Instead, I choose a city where I felt very comfortable--San Francisco.
A friend helped me become a temp at the Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development. After a few months, I was getting a pretty good reputation for my editing and writing skills, and that’s when the editor position opened with the Women’s Educational Equity Communication Network. I interviewed with the associate director along with about 25 others (although I didn’t know that at the time).

Matilda: Kendra, let me jump in here. My associate director was Jean Marzone. After the interviews, she told me that Kendra was her first choice. I looked at her resume and hesitated to even include Kendra in the top three candidates I’d interview. I remember saying, “Jean, she doesn’t have the right experiences and hasn’t written about women’s issues.” But Jean insisted, and I agreed to the interview. Even after I talked with Kendra, I was somewhat hesitant.

Kendra: Matilda, I knew I was a quick study and obviously persuaded you to give me a try. Being editor turned into a great learning experience. I was responsible for dozens of publications each year. I remember the first time I was faced with a publication layout, I sneaked in on the weekend, and found the mechanicals for some previously published materials piled in the closet. I pulled them out and began taking one apart.

“Rubber cement!” I shouted to the empty office. You have to remember that this was 30 years ago. Our page layouts were still done with rubber cement and layout boards. Well, my mother was a commercial artist, and she’d taught me long ago the proper way to work with rubber cement. That was when I was certain I could do the job.

Matilda: That was the fall of 1979. We could never have imagined that 30 years later, we’d continue to be friends and now co-authors, colleagues and business partners.

Riehlife: How did your collaboration develop across time?

Kendra: Matilda left Far West Lab in 1982 to co-found her own company, Knowledge Access, a CD-ROM indexing and retrieval software company. We continued to stay in touch and became more friends than business colleagues. However, there were always shared professional interests in the air. For example, when I was editor in chief of IBM’s Profit Magazine, I had an opportunity to feature Matilda and her company on the cover of an issue we did about CD-ROM technology.

Somehow the years passed. I now lived on the East Coast and worked in marketing for several companies. If I was in California, I visited Matilda. When she found herself in NYC on business, she’d call me and I’d come into the city for a museum visit and a meal. Since we’re talking about collaboration, I’ll skip the things we individually did professionally in those years and bring us to 2004.

Matilda: Well, let me back up just a little. Once I sold my company, I was eager to return to research and writing. At my 40th high school reunion in 2000, I became intrigued by the changing expectations and experiences of women in the various graduating classes.

I was struck by the mismatch between the expectations and experiences of women in my class. Our main expectation was to become wives and mothers. In our actual experience we also became judges, lawyers, doctors, and business executives. I decided to research this topic and write a book. After interviewing more than 100 women born during World War II and writing a first draft of the book, I asked Kendra to read it during her 2004 visit. She was polite, even helped me get an agent. However, I knew Kendra well enough to know that the book wasn’t all that I wanted it to be.

Kendra: Gee, I thought I had hidden my initial concerns better than that. I remember the phone call in early 2005, Matilda, when you asked if I’d co-author the book with you. I don’t think I missed a beat and replied, “Of course. How do you want me to help?” The business-minded of you may notice that I agreed before I even knew what she wanted me to do or how we would share royalties. We’ll get back to this point about our collaboration in a minute.

The outcome of our co-authorship of what became the award-winning collective memoir Rosie’s Daughters: The “First Woman To” Generation Tells Its Story. This project re-focused our lives on memoir writing—especially women’s memoir. Research for Rosie’s Daughters showed us the power of helping women tell their stories. Initially, Matilda began teaching memoir writing workshops and I began coaching women on writing and publishing their memoirs. We started co-teaching online classes, and are now working on a book about writing.

Riehlife: This is an amazing story.

Read part 2 as Kendra and Matilda tell more about their working process and share five lessons they've learned about effective and fun collaboration.

Later in February Riehlife will run another two-part interview between my collaborator Stephanie Farrow and myself.

These four posts anchor the theme of collaboration for Riehlife's Blog-of-the-Month. Please leave your ideas about collaboration and your collaboration stories in the comment section of these posts.