TheListServe Blog

It's that time of the year when honey bees split their hives and search for a new home. And a favorite location of local bees are the plants and trees surrounding our home. We recently caught several swarms that we relocated to our Florida Bee Farm. Honey bees are fascinating and I love sitting outside their hives watching them come and go.Last night the leader of our local beekeeping group said she just found several of her hives with most of the bees dead inside and on the ground. Something to consider when thinking of spraying your plants with pesticides which may get carried back to bee colonies. Our Florida Bee Farm is an acre of land with a small house and a beautiful Banyan tree where we grow organic fruits, vegetables and flowers. The garden shed is solar powered and runs an irrigation system dispensing captured rain water. Bees even have their own flower garden. Building things, growing plants and interacting with nature is good for the soul. There's a goat, butterflie...

When you're 16, you can't wait until you're an "adult" because life will be so much easier. You'll have a job and money. You'll be able to stay up as late as you want! Now that I'm 26, things aren't much different. I can't stay up all night, because I have a real job and real responsibilities. It's not easier because now you have to make real decisions that affect the rest of your life. It is super lots more fun, though! Quick bio: Since graduating college in 2010, I traveled around some of Asia and Europe. I've lived in Thailand, Georgia, and the Czech Republic. I taught English to kids ages 3-25 at different points in time. I came back to that states, got my real teaching certification in Texas, and began working as a Geography teacher at a high school - NOT what I expected. Now I've just applied to online grad school to get my MBA. Goals: My original goal was to be a Foreign Service Officer with the Department of State...

What great news to open my entry to Listserve Lotter Winners' Circle on my birthday! (48) I live near the Hague in a lovely old university town, but I grew up in California. Most years around this time of year my wife and I visit family in Maryland for what we call Camp Pesach. When I was younger, we'd celebrate Passover with my mother's parents, her three siblings, as many of our cousins in that part of the family who could make it (and as most lived on the east coast, this was really just an issue for my sister, my parents, and me). Last night over shabbat supper, my Aunt Karen recounted what was essentially my grandmother's dying wish, that we continue to gather as a family, and not slip away from one another. So each year, Bobe's four children, their spouses, her eight grandchildren and their spouses and children gather in a big house on Chesapeake Bay. It's 28 of us this, the 20th, year of Camp Pesach. (For a variety of reasons we're gathering a little ...

Ro-Sham-Bot by Effie Seiberg (Originally published in Lightspeed Magazine) I found a robot’s heart today. I didn’t think they still made robots with hearts, but there it was, at the corner of Leary and Sycamore. It even looked like a heart: size of a fist, valves pulsing with pale ching ching noises each time they opened and shut. The metal was old and worn. I took it home and plugged it into my computer. It had a few jumbled videos—the way older robots used to store memories. I sorted by number and began to watch. The first video was in a warehouse. Lines of identical, still robots, presumably the same old-fashioned model as the one whose heart I’d found. The field of vision jerked to the left and found another robot looking straight at it. The other robot smiled, and glanced downwards. The camera followed it and saw the other robot’s hand clenched in a fist. One, two, three times it bobbed the fist up and down, and then extended two fingers. Rock, paper, scissors. The camera then cap...

I opened up to life, and now life has opened up to me in return. Just last night I was in a café, sharing my most inner thoughts with an acquaintance from high school who I hadn’t seen in a while. We were inspired by a “social study” that we read about in the NY Times, titled To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This. In the study, two strangers are placed in a room and ask each other a series of increasingly personal questions. We decided to try it out for ourselves. Two enlightening & emotional hours later, we reached the final question of the study: ‘Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it.’ I felt a lump in my throat grow as I tried to verbalize the thoughts whose only other location have been at the back of my mind. “I think I have a good life… and for the most part I do what I want that makes me happy… but it feels like there’s always something in my brain that feels… trapped. It’s telling me to do more, explore more, be more…I almos...

Dear awesome humans, I want to start by telling you that you are loved. I don’t know what your life is like right now, nor do I need to. The only thing you need to know is that despite what you may be thinking, you are most definitely loved, appreciated, and treasured. You matter. *** When I saw “You’ve won the Listserve!” in my inbox, I thought how clever an idea it was to punk 25,000 people by having that as a Listserve submission. Then I opened the mail and realized – holy mackerel, I actually won The Listserve! No pithy life advice, no memoirs, just a clarion call for others out there like me. I was born in Asia and spent all my life there before living 18 months in the States on a study abroad-cum-internship program. I vowed early on that I would not do the FOB thing and thus embraced arms-open lips-puckered all that the beautiful state of Washington had to offer me: its people, its culture, its eternal rain. The result of all those months engaging Americana? A blended accent, bl...

Pick a number between 1 and 500. In rare moments I become aware, deep in my bones or at least somewhere that is not in my brain, of a fundamental truth so overwhelmingly important that it really should derail me: the fact that we are meaningless; that there is this something called "existence" here floating around, and that I and everyone around me is constructed haphazardly and magnificently out of this something for no particular or general reason, an accident of time and fundamental forces and particles being pushed together/apart. This is a realization of the fact that we are not only nothing but in fact a nothing that is utterly crushed by itself, meaningless on a cosmological scale that dwarfs all of our daily actions and routines. These moments sometimes come to me on the packed train in to work, cramped into a tiny space with far too many other people, all of us silently and conspicuously traveling together toward presumed lives we are leading. I want to ask the other...

Hi fellow listservers, just a shout out to you about flying potatoes and happy mondays ! Check out your white feathers indicators more often than not. Srsly ?? Yes, dead seriously, sincerely yours. P.S. Keep posting Kecii kglistserve[AT]gmx.fr France, near Paris

Like Penelope in The Brother's Bloom, I collect hobbies. Penelope Stamp: I collect hobbies. I see someone doing something I like, and I get books and learn how to do it. If you'd like to give it a go, here are some recommendations: Dabbler--a monthly email newsletter featuring a new hobby or interest and informtation about how to get started. Become a Digital Volunteer for the Smithsonian Institution-- Transcribe journals of some of history's great minds. Listen carefully when someone talks about their passion--Especially if they start with "This may sound boring, but..." KipKay--learn to build a new gadget or electronics project every month. Read old handbooks and pamphlets--I especially enjoyed the first edition of the Boy Scout Manual. Please email if you'd like to tell me about your hobbies or passions or favorite books. I love learning new things. Thanks for all of the interesting emails, fellow members. JP Shechoosescheeses[AT]gmail.com South Korea

A young boy asks a wise man, "What is heaven and hell like? Is it true that hell is full of hot flames and heaven is filled with soft clouds?" The wise man answered, "In hell, there is a big, round table with a banquet of delicious food. Around the table are frail, emaciated people staring hungrily at the food for they have eating utensils tied to their hands that are three meters long leaving them unable to feed themselves." The boy asks, "If that is what hell is like, then what is heaven like?" The wise man replies, "In heaven there is also a large, round table with a delicious banquet served. The people sitting around it also have long utensils tied to their hands, but everyone is well fed and happy. This is because in heaven, people feed one another across the table." A special thank you to George Russell who wrote the Listserve some time ago and shared a documentary he created about the high school kids in my hometown of Compton, CA (Teachin...

"The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed yet." -William Gibson. Three months ago, I left my job. My “big” west coast tech company job. I started to feel like I was getting further and further away from my dream and that scared me. I was tired. Tired of the company and the culture it fostered. Against family and friend’s persistent advice, I left without another job lined up. I wanted to travel, I wanted to spend some time detached and thinking about my next move and I wanted to see family and friends. I needed to see family and friends. It was an incredible month. I visited San Francisco, San Diego, New York, Philadelphia, Ann Arbor and finally, home. Oh man, was it good to be home… My mini hiatus ends…I head back to Seattle with a choice: Move forward or else. I remember my first morning back, feeling a pit in my stomach, thinking, “Ok, this is it. Its time to make something happen.” I started creatively applying to companies, trying to get in the door, tryi...

I am 73 years old, an officially "retired" educator. Many of my activities, however, answer a Buckminster Fuller question, paraphrased as, "What in my community needs doing that I know something about, which probably won't happen unless I take responsibility for it?" The things I "know something about" are mostly related to communication, which I taught (at KU), and which I enjoy applying--as a volunteer--to a wide range of activities. If these activities interest you, too, I'll suggest some Google terms to check out (no specific links allowed on the ListServe). They include: a) Offering classes and workshops in our local (Yavapai College) Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), sometimes on communication-related topics, but also on other themes that interest me (1-2 per term). (For example, this year it's been "Transpartisan Dialogue," "Stories in Thought and Talk," "The Best of TED Talks,...

1: I'm the only oldest (old-ER, even) child in my entire immediate family– my mom, dad, brother, and all four grandparents are the youngest children in their families. Call me indecisive, call me a walking contradiction, but growing up as an Oldest surrounded by Youngests has given me a weird set of ways. 2: Most of the time, I'm walking the fuzzy line that separates a lot of things: homebody/socializer, independent/needy, afraid/confident, friendly/awkward, thinker/doer. And a lot more. I took an enneagram personality test once (I'm a type Six) that summed it up perfectly: No matter what is said about a Six, the opposite is often true. 3: Moms. My favorite thing about mine is that I didn't even realize until I left for college that a lot of the words she uses aren't… common? The first time I referred to a pilling sweater as "nubby," it was obvious my family's vocabulary didn't match most people's. My grandma used to call our cat a "britze...

In the last year I have lost, the company I started, my best friend, my business partner, a lot of friends who sided with him in what I call, "the great divorce," and a lot of respect for an industry I so loved. Let me back up... I started a small winery with my two best friends. It was amazing...at first. Then, it became apparent that one had to go. (See also: stealing, lying, over all assery). A couple years later, at a point when we were at our most successful, our investors decided... along with my best friend and co-founder, to vote me out. (See also: Greed) So then why am I so lucky, well dear friends, and I do truly mean dear friends, because I read each and every one of these emails with care and great admiration.I am so lucky because I hit the surprise, unplanned, genetic lottery, without which I might not have survived the last year. (See also: Charlotte June, we call her Charlie) Last August, I received a text, from a friend that I worked with at a restaurant who I...

My name is Adam. I am 28 years old and I was born in Maryland, USA. I studied Criminal Justice at Penn State University and graduated in 2008. Then I spent my early 20's living abroad in Spain, China, Argentina, and Brazil. Three years ago I settled in San Francisco, California and became an English teacher. I would liken my (or, the ubiquitous) first year teaching experience to learning how to swim by method of being chucked mercilessly into a frigid, choppy, bottomless ocean. And as you drift away, excited to learn or just terrified, you’re not sure which, you barely hear the last words of encouragement you’re going to hear in what will feel like eternities: "Swimming's easy! You'll figure it out eventually! Careful not to drown first! And watch out for the Sharks!” The students call me Mr. Hurwitz and I hear my name ALL day – both a point of pride and an enormous burden. I teach 6th grade English at a large public middle school in Oakland, California. Monday through...

Hello, Internet strangers (and my good friend Denise: hi Denise)! Like many former winners, I thought long and hard these last 36 hours about what to write. I considered: … Trying to express why I think it’s so important for human beings to continually and consciously attempt to think at scales that are beyond (unassisted) human perception—atoms, global warming, space—while at the same time accepting (even taking a certain kind of pleasure in? well, I do, at least) our limits … That’s why I love movies like Tree of Life and Melancholia that either jump-cut between the mundane events of a single human life and, say, the surface of the sun -or- require something crazily vast to tell a story like a rogue planet about to crash into the earth. Or books like Climate Changed: A Personal Journey through the Science (graphic novel) or a poem like “Unnamed Dragonfly Species” by Juliana Spahr (she’s amazing) in which her singular speaker, referred to using the pronoun “they,” sit(s) at a computer...

Here is a eulogy I wrote for my Sea-Monkeys when they all perished in a tragicomic accident. Life is short, friends. You swam in the palm of bright salty life With peppery eyes and long waving tails But this life that so seemed to hold you securely The dark grasp of death now against it prevails Dull are your eyes that once glimmered faintly And held the whole world in your minuscule view Still are your tails that once waved so freely And black are the waters that sparkled so blue Death’s cold iron talons caught you and held you In the small violent waves and the algae and foam But the water that carried you now will receive you In the calm starry waves may you find yourself home Caroline caromac8[AT]gmail.com USA

I am not supposed to be cliche here, but I have no idea what to write to everyone. So, here's a quote I love: "In the end, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about you. People are going to forget you about ten minutes after you die, anyway. The point is, you have to be exactly who and what you want to be. Most everybody’s coasting along on phony public relations. People who say being beautiful or rich or thin makes them happy, people who are trying to make their marriages or their children seem better than they actually are. And for what? Appearances! Appearances don’t count for diddly. When it’s all said and done, all that counts is what was true, and truly felt, and how we treated one another. And that’s it.” — Julia Sugarbaker (Dixie Carter), “They Shoot Fat Women, Don’t They?” - Designing Women, 1989 Be Good. Be Happy. Be Yourself. - Jay wings1295[AT]gmail.com New England

"No one knows that the floppy disk means save." At least that's what the campus librarian insisted when she reviewed the website I worked on for her university. I had done research on just this issue, proving that over 90% of college students I asked could identify what the floppy disk meant. And though I beamed with excitement as I showed her this data, it wasn't enough. New students are always coming in, she said, much younger than the ones I polled. So I went back and surveyed 526 high schoolers to find out definitively: Do teenagers understand the outdated tech in our icons? The survey says yes. 91% of the high school students were able to identify the icon as a floppy disk. And 91% knew that when they saw that icon on a computer screen, clicking it would save their work. Case closed, right? Nope. Despite this research, I still hear about web designers who think the floppy disk icon should be retired. They claim that younger computer users (kids who have never see...

Brains are evil. They will be the cause of human extinction. Don’t believe it? That’s ok, it’s basically a fail-safe switch in your brain to prevent you from reaching this conclusion. Here are the facts: 1. There is an alien race at the center of the universe – let’s just call them the Mindvourers. Interestingly enough, as we are not fully able to comprehend their shape the closest approximation that makes sense to us is an image of energy sucking vortexes on 4 hairy legs. No, the legs don’t get sucked into the vortex. 2. The Mindvourers’ only source of food is brains – brains of the kind found for example in all vertebrates and most invertebrate animals on earth. 3. Around the time they ran out of food sources on their home planet the Mindvourers came up with a cunning plan – a “fertilizer” for organic brain tissue that could be distributed across the universe with the goal to grow underdeveloped organic brain tissue into super brains. 4. Super brains would eventually convince the hos...

“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.” ― Henry James I lost my father this past September. I lost my only sibling, my brother, in November 2010. He was only 46. My dad, 69. I just turned 46 and I’m mildly freaked out that I will die this year - just because, yanno, my brother went at this age. It’s one of those irrational thoughts that occasionally crosses my mind and decides to sit there for a while to see how I will react. It would be one thing if I lived my brothers life style, but I don’t and if there is anything my father taught me, it was to take care of my body and pay attention to the signs it gives me. He did not. He suffered. A lot. It was painful to watch, but how could I not? At least I could be there for him when he needed me. And he did need me - and that felt good. When he died, I was by his side, holding his hand. He went peacefully. My brother left with no warning and, maybe because he...

Hi there Sean Williams is a #1 New York Times-bestselling novelist. He or she is also an ethnomusicologist, a social media manager for Hyundai, an electronic musician, a police officer who shot a 22-year old man for no good reason, a basketballer, a cricketer, a comic book writer who lives in the Spam capital of the US, and many other things. Can you guess which one I am? As a kid I decided that “Jonathan Silver” was what I would change my name to when I grew up, because that sounded like a good name for a cowboy. This was before I read Treasure Island. When I made my first professional sale, it was under my best friend’s name. At the last minute I decided to use my own instead, and have continued doing so for the rest of my career. My mother says that I was named after James Bond, and my father, whose surname I share, was fond of his roots (something I call “Welsh-fulfilment”). Neither is enough to make me comfortable with the name I was christened. And yet . . . In Dutch there’s a wo...

Everything is caught up, pushing, scrambled. I'm dragged around - drinks, smokes, food, pussy, coffee. Always coffee.I order the same thing I order everyday from the same cute barista. I feel cocksure, unstoppable, drunken - or greasy, fat, leprous, diseased. There's a cloud blown across my mind, my calm. No clarity, it's all shouting, noise and clamour, or whispers that wake me at night, pulling out my muscles like old rope and making my back grind and squeal like icebergs colliding. I'm waiting for a huge crack and half of me to slide off into the sea. I'm waiting for my coffee. I'm trying to sneak a futile glance at Sophie's rack while she makes it. Is it being back home? I want to run again, lost in the winds. Laughing down alleyways - the sounds falling out of me and cracking against stones and shuttered windows, yellow streetlights pooling in the dirty runoff of 2am. I want to drink rum and spit spanish and blow smoke in some tiny apartment. Taste viol...

I'm not sure there is much I can tell you about life since I am still trying to figure it at at 33 but I can tell you that a few days ago a booked a plane ticket for Spain for a trip that I can barely afford to do something (Camino De Santiago) that I'm not sure yet I can physically do. Why? The better question is why not? I haven't take many chances in my life but now feels like the right time to throw caution to the wind and do something amazing. I may come back unemployed and drowning in debt but I will also come back enlightened and ready to take on life's challenges.Who's with me? No more boxes! Mary Clare Dougherty mdougherty[AT]rippd.org White Plains, NY

Take a minute today to think about someone else besides yourself. What can you do to make their day better? Your family, friends, co-worker? The random guy you sit next to on the bus? Maybe you can slide over an inch in your bus seat and give him more room--- rather than focusing on how much he's encroaching on your personal space. Take a positive spin for a day. We get so involved in our own lives and taking selfies to show off--that our culture is becoming extremely self-centered. Let's take a stab at reversing that with baby steps of thoughtfulness. Give it a try. If we all did this think about how much more enjoyable normal life would be. Enjoy your day. Liz G.

How do you make friends? It's something that people do all the time, and it amazes me. I'm no good at it -- never developed the knack, never developed the skills. I don't know how to become friends with someone.* I know it can be done -- people do it all the time! But I don't know how to do it myself. Let me talk about me a little, so you'll have a better idea. I'm autistic, of the high-functioning aspergers variety, which for me essentially means I don't really have an emotional/social language. Because of this, I've somehow managed to grow up** without developing empathy. I've managed to cobble together a working replacement; if I'm paying attention, actively thinking about it, I can see what people are feeling, how they're doing, but I have to stop and work it out. If I don't focus on it, because I'm distracted or because it's hard to remember to think about something all the time, I am blissfully unaware that people have feeli...

When I was about 7 or 8 years old, I was skiing and met a kid named Oliver from England. We became best friends over hot chocolate and vowed to find each other someday. I’ve always wondered if he’s forgotten, or if he’s still searching as well. Rather than bombard you with long paragraphs, I thought I would give you short, quick statements, stories and thoughts with an action item at the end, in hopes that you only spend a few minutes reading and that you enjoy yourself. - The sound of a ticking clock reminds me of my Baba’s house. I wear his Mickey Mouse watch every day. It doesn’t work, which I love, and it reminds me to stay young and to not take life too seriously. - Stepping onto a soccer field is a euphoric feeling that I will never grow old of. - I’m 21 years old, from San Diego, CA, and I graduate this May from the George Washington University in DC. - Don’t ever underestimate the power of a thorough and thoughtful “thank you”. I spent 365 days doing so to someone different ea...

Hi! I never actually thought that I would win this, so I'm not sure what to say. Instead, I'm going to ask for advice. I'm a junior English major at Clemson Univedsity about to enter the real world. If you were given the chance a 20 year-old all over again, what would you do differently? What would you say to your 20 year-old self? Send me your responses! Thanks y'all! *Shout out* to my former professor Mrs. Leslie Salley for introducing me to the Listserve. With love from SC, Catie catiemfoley[AT]gmail.com South Carolina, USA

Privacy Your Privacy is very important to us. We will never use your sensitive personal information unless you want extra Twitter followers, got a gig next week, have a Kickstarter to plug, are doing some sort of art thing, or really crave attention. Terms of Use By continuing to use The Listserve, skimming The Listserve, filtering The Listserve into your junk folder, or thinking about The Listserve, you agree to the following terms of use. 1. You will undergo at least one (1) Life Change over the course of a morning or afternoon, in perpetuity. Life Changes consist of one (1) or more (7?) of the following: *appreciating the Little Things in life *traveling (international travel only; Africa counts twice) *“getting over it” *meeting your biological father/mother *discovering/abandoning religion *accepting your mortality (if applicable) 2. You will tolerate (barely) any “insights” and “revelations” from those younger than you, although seriously, everybody knows you don’t actually reali...

About four years ago, I sat in a hospital in the Dominican Republic while a serene nun quietly delivered the news that my friend’s only son had died. For the last three weeks his parents, residents of a slum over an hour away, had sat vigil at the hospital. That is to say, his mother didn’t leave her boy’s side, while his father slept on a bench outside at night – only one person was permitted in the hospital room at a time. Their son had leukemia - a form of it that comes with a good prognosis here in the United States. But without access to proper care or lifesaving bone marrow transplants, my friend’s son was swallowed up by the gap that persists between rich and poor. I watched as the doctors hurriedly explained that their son had died from caca en el sangre (“poop in his blood”). The nuns sent them away with a small, ceramic angel to take his place. I spent the next few weeks in a haze of self-indulgent bitterness; homesick and self-loathing and fed-up with the state of the world...