Hearth

Day 29 (Thursday 29th December 2016)

29 days - the number of days over which football was played during Euro 2016.
It was the 15th UEFA European Championship and was held in France from 10th June
to 10th July 2016. Portugal won the tournament for the first time, following a 1–0
victory after extra time over the host team, France.

The year is rushing towards its close. Today we have our second post from "Across the Pond". The author of this warming post is Christopher Demers, who is based in Austin, Texas. 

Christopher has worked with many of the big names in Tech: Dell, Apple, Home Depot's Technology Center, all in an HR capacity. He is currently at VMWare, where he is the Senior Manager for Employee Relations. Christopher cares deeply about people and is a highly effective coach. He is driven to help individuals and the organisation thrive as a result of his HR expertise and the service and support he can provide. Christopher has been described as "the happiest man on LinkedIn" and he is active on social media. He is an excellent blogger - you can read his thoughts on ChristopherinHR. 

I love the fact that Christopher has played on the heart in the blog theme of this year and shifted it into a warming hearth, often the centre of a home - usually a refuge from the heights and hollows outside.

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Hearth

Home is where the hearth is.

The end of year is oft a time to look back with some remiss and forward with some hope. We tend to think of highs and lows - heights and hollows - yet I find I think more of hearth as the years continue to pass.

There is a mythology about home for the holidays and renewal of vows to be more conscious of family and friend but these commitments often fade. So let's think about the end of year slightly differently.

Let's think about hearth this year.

Hearth is that place of warmth and comfort, but it need not be a physical spot. We have within our own psyche those experiences and moments that represent hearth. My home life is no Norman Rockwell painting (is anyone's?)  and as often as not my family is scattered to the winds with family and friends of their own to be with during the end of year. One rule for happy healthy adult children: never guilt them into spending the holidays with you - you have several hundred other days for that.

Yet I experience hearth in many ways throughout the year:

• The cashier who calmly worked with a customer who - wrongly - thought she'd been cheated. When I complimented the cashier she just said, "People get confused, so you have to help them." Were you that calm the last time you were chewed out in front of others?

• The neighbor who always takes in the trash can of his next-door neighbors even though they don't ask him to. His neighbors go away for the weekend a lot and he simply doesn't want burglars to get any ideas.

• The kid at school who sticks up for another, shy and quiet, so the bullying never begins.

• The landlady I've had for years who does everything with a handshake. We've never had a written piece of paper - or a problem - with anything. Some people you can just take at their word.

• The businessman who loads an old woman's (overstuffed) bag in the overhead without being asked. Just because.

The beauty in all these vignettes is they just happen as a part of life. It's what these people do when no one is watching.

As I get older the highs and the lows have smoothed out a little bit. Maybe it’s having grown children or not worrying about promotions at the office anymore or simply having gotten over myself: who knows? The point is I experience the warmth and hope of hearth throughout the year in the goodness of those around me.

The hearth is a touchstone. It gives us relief and resolve. I hope the hearth in your life is broad and strong and warm and safe as you find those moments throughout the year that remind you of what really matters.

Coal Dust and Women’s Work

Day 39 (Friday 8th January 2016)

39 percent of UK transport users would consider using a driverless car,
this number rose to 62% amongst young urban professionals, according to research conducted by
Transport Systems Catapult on behalf of the Department for Transport, the Department for Business
Innovation and Skills and Innovate UK.
Photo of Toyota Prius self-driving car Photo: EPA/GOOGLE

Today's blog is by Rachael Burnham, an excellent Learning and Development expert based in Manchester, with a particular interest in informal and blended learning. She has worked as a specialist consultant for over 14 years and is highly rated by her clients. She started her career working for a voluntary organisation preparing young people for leaving home and this gave her the opportunity to deliver training for the first time. She was good at it and enjoyed helping people grow, hence she started working in a more conventional staff development and training capacity. Rachael is active on social media, her Twitter handle is @BurnhamLandD and she writes a great blog: L&D Matters. Outside work she values spending time with her family and is a keen jazz fan, as well as having a passion for gardening.

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When the theme for this year’s Advent Blog was announced of ‘Comets and Coal Dust’, I was immediately drawn to that second part – Coal Dust – and transported back to my earliest childhood memories.

We lived in a terraced house in that part of Blackburn known as Wilpshire.  Our house was part of a little row along an un-made up road, which you went down to under a bridge.  Our house was somewhere in the middle of the row and behind the houses, at the end of the small gardens, was a path that ran along the back of the houses.   And the other side of that path was a stream, which I loved.  

Across the stream was a field in which cows were kept.  In those days, it was quite typical to leave a baby or small child out in a pram in the garden unattended and I remember looking at those cows with deep fascination and that they seemed to look right back at me!

Our house had coal fires. Just the phrase ‘coal dust’ brought to mind the sights, sounds and smells of those fires.  

My mother on her hands and knees bent down sweeping out the hearth, 

the grey, pinkish ash, 

the distinctive sounds of the coal tongs and poker knocking against the grate and slightly acrid smell of the coal.
  

To be honest I don’t really remember the sight of the fire lit with the flames – what I remember is the big brass fire guard which dominated the fire place – a sort of metallic cage 

and in front of this on the mat, in the warmth, I remember building wooden brick towers 

and playing with a pull-along elephant.  

I still have the elephant – he is made of chestnut coloured wood and is the most delicious rounded shape, with a very cheerful face – having survived two generations of Burnham’s play!

As a teenager, I remarked one time to my mother about how nice it would be to have a real fire again and was firmly brought back to reality by being reminded of how much work they involve.  Filling the coal bucket, sweeping out the hearth each morning, laying the fire, getting it to light and all that bending and being on your knees, 

in addition to having three children under four (by the time we moved to Blackpool) and all the other work that that involved.  ‘That’s why there is that phrase ‘A woman’s work is never done!’ ‘my mother would say.

When I became a parent myself and sometimes struggled with the care of my one child, I would think about how much easier I had things compared to my mother.  If I had been doing #3goodthings in those early years I would have frequently  tweeted 1) central heating 2) automatic washing machine 3) disposable nappies   ( ‘warm baby to snuggle, baby giggles and at sleep at last!’ would also have been popular choices).

About the time that this Advent Blog series was launched, we reached that point in the calender, 9 November, at which in Britain women are effectively working for free compared to men due to the gender pay gap.  This currently stands at a difference of 14.2%.  At the current rate of change it is estimated that it will take another 54 years for us to reach parity of pay – even over 40 years after the Equal Pay Act was introduced!

At the same time, Maternity Action were running a campaign drawing attention to the astounding fact that the number of women in the UK losing their job as a result of pregnancy discrimination had risen in the past decade from 30,000 in 2005 to a deeply shocking 54,000 in 2015.

Much of the workplace is still effectively sex segregated, with so many jobs primarily done by women or by men. Women are desperately under-represented in science, engineering and maths- related roles and over-dominate in education, health care and social care.  We miss out on women in science and in men in education and caring roles.  And there is the vertical sex segregation too – too few women in senior decision-making roles in organisations and in politics.

Then there is the continuing taboo around the menopause and work – it would be good to start talking about this.  And whilst access to work across the board for over 5Os is hard, there also seems to be an element of extra discrimination at play for women over 50.

I know that there is lots to tackle on other fronts too – disability discrimination, greater acknowledgement and acceptance of mental health issues in the workplace, a disturbing trend of increased race discrimination in the workplace and more.  But it does particularly feel like a ‘feminist’s work is never done’ at the moment.

The need for change doesn’t go away – it may seem to disappear from public view – but like a comet returns and galvanises us to action afresh.