Dinesh's photos

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDe2sP7ubzQ

Then it was dusk in Illinois, the small boy After an afternoon of carting dung Hung on the rail fence, a sapped thing Weary of crying. Dark was growing tall And he began to hear the pond frogs all Calling on his ear with what seemed their joy. Soon their sound was pleasant for a boy Listening in the smoky dusk and the nightfall Of Illinois, and from the fields two small Boys came bearing cornstalk violins And they rubbed the cornstalk bows with resins And the three sat there scraping of their joy. It was now fine music the frogs and the boys Did in the towering Illinois twilight make And into dark in spite of shoulder’s ache The first song of his happiness and the song woke His heart to the darkness and into the sadness of joy “First Song” ~ Galway Kinnell

Without a wish, without a will, I stood upon that silent hill And stared into the sky until My eyes were blind with stars and still I stared into the sky. ~Ralph Hodgson

All the birds have flown up and gone; A lonely cloud floats leisurely by. We never tire of looking at each other - Only the mountain and I. Li Po

They shut the road through the woods Seventy years ago. Weather and rain have undone it again, And now you would never know There was once a road through the woods Before they planted the trees. It is underneath the coppice and heath, And the thin anemones. Only the keeper sees That, where the ring-dove broods, And the badgers roll at ease, There was once a road through the woods. Excerpt: "The Way Through The Woods" ~ Rudyard Kipling

HFF to all

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llanfairpwllgwyngyll

In the parade of progress, stationary telephone systems were not left behind. During the 1990s, the cornucopia of technical advancement was spilled over all of us. A gentle voice, conducted by a technology-driven, cost-cutting management, usually starts with the heartwarming affirmation, “Your call is important to us. Please hold while we ignore it.” That is, of course, only overture. “To listen to our 112 menu items press 1. for the latest running total of the numbers of customers who say they would rather than do business with us again, press 2. for someone who is very nice person but doesn’t have a clue, and in any case is on maternity leave, press 3.” After 11 minutes and 33 second, the finale comes in a crescendo: “The person you are trying to reach is either on the other line or not in the office. Please try later.” That rips it. The companies call the customer king and treat him worse than a supplicant. I say get rid of voice answering systems immediately. They are offending customers and putting them in telephone hell. Replace those machines with friendly high-touch operators. The corporations will see where the real cost efficiencies can be made. I urge any CEO whose company has a voice answering system to call his company and see whether he can get through it himself. That eye-opening exercise would hopefully trigger great entrepreneurial opportunities to create a useful customer service system tht doesn’t turn into an infuriating maze with no exit. Again, we have to think more about the ecology of technology. ~ Page 105