Stella thinks that it is more important to live her life (and write about it later) rather than live life so that you can write about it later. Understand the difference? If you don’t, it is entirely probable that you and Stella simply cannot be friends. The best stories have good middles, never mind the beginning and the end.

I like meetings. I declare meetings useful, valuable exercises, provided of course, that they are chaired, presented and attended with the intention of being useful and valuable.

A good quote about meetings:

I do not go to a meeting merely to give my own ideas. If that were all, I might write my fellow members a letter. But neither do I go simply to learn other people’s ideas. If that were all, I might ask each to write me a letter. I go to a meeting in order that all together we may create a group idea, an idea which will be better than all of our ideas added together. For this group idea will not be produced by any process of addition, but by the interpenetration of us all.

- Mary Parker Follett

I like the sound of that,  ”the interpenetration of us all”. Ah. Satisfyingly simple. If only the meeters thought so.

Breaking with Taylorism, social worker and consultant Mary Parker Follett stresses the importance of employee participation. She is also known as the “mother” of Scientific Management.

How do you stay quiet? How do you gather and arrive at peace? When do you find the quickest route to calm?

Snow Lady | Stephen Cefalo | oil on panel

When is the last time you had an amazing make out session? I mean, a really good one. Comfortable yet hot and tempting and gorgeous. Smooth. Heart-rate-increasing and somehow wild with breath and images. I plan to be making out healthily until the day I die.

One key factor to great make outs is humour. In this spirit, I direct you to How do you Make Out.com. Go. Immediately. There is something of value in there for everyone. I might have been high from making out but I laughed hard and long.

In Mexico’s Xochimilco district, there is a small island on Teshuilo Lake called La Isla de las Muñecas, or The Island of Dolls. Here is the short version of the story.

In the 1920′s three young girls were playing on the island when one of them drowned. Legend grew that the island was haunted causing locals to avoid the area. It was a perfect home for a reclusive individual named, Don Julian Santana Barrera, who settled on the island in the 1950′s.  Julian collected dolls, apparently to please and settle the spirit of the little girl who drowned.

In 1990, Xochimilco was made a site of national heritage, which drew attention to The Island of Dolls and the strange man who lived there. Although Julian drowned in 2001, the dolls remain. I read a story told by his nephew that water voices called Julian to death and that the dolls were spirited enough to move and speak. Today, the island is a source of curiosity for locals and tourists alike. I want to go there and see plants growing out of doll eye sockets. In the daytime. I am too imaginative and frightened by ghosts to experience something like that at night.

Fascinating, right? What can we learn from this story? People are strange, lonely beings? Dolls are symbolic of the timeless nature of memory? Sad stories draw tourists? It’s a lot to process, I think.

Bizarre has the full story, including some details on how to get there. It’s on my list of things to see.