Dr George Blue Spruce Jr

Last night I attended the book signing of Dr George Blue Spruce Jr (Laguna Pueblo / Ohkay Owingeh) and was very delighted to meet him for the very first time. The room was full of family, friends, & most of all future medical students. Roughly about 100 people were in the room to hear Dr Blue Spruce Jr talk about his life story. A story he finally wrote down into a book titled “Searching For My Destiny”. I have a previous post on my blog here, which contain some of what I was able to find on the internet about him.

I particularly enjoyed his jokes and how he overcame adversity being the only American Indian among many groups growing up. What struck me most was how Dr Blue Spruce Jr had to develop the independence and sense of self worth to continue alone for many years away from his tribal home. His life dedication and thoughtfulness of others helped craft Indian health policy to benefit not only the tribes he was from but those of so many others as well.

I am proud to have met this man, and I sincerely hope to continue the conversation again.

Dr Blue Spruce Jr and the family allowed me to video the event and share it. Here is the full MP3 audio & download link from his talk (almost 43 minutes long, and 20MB in size), and a highlight video. Enjoy!

– Dom

Full Audio:

http://tribalgrowth.com/files/2010-06-26_DrGBSwIntro.mp3

Highlight Video:

Liz’s Green Chile Stew

At all of the Pueblos in New Mexico you will find the women make some of the most wonderful food using local ingredients, in particular red & green chile. One type of dish found at almost every house is chile stew. Stews in their various forms are a very common occurrence, and as a kid I remember my grandmother’s kitchen always cooking some kind of red or green chile stew.

There is one stew in particular that I loved, and it was from my late aunt Liz. I loved it so much that I asked her how to make it one day. I wanted to be able to re-create her stew since I lived away from New Mexico either going to school or having a career.

It’s a simple dish and I want to share it with you.

Ingredients:

1 to 1.5 lbs of some stew meat (I like using pork & made it with chicken once, tofu would be interesting)
One 28oz container of Bueno Chopped Green Chile (found in most NM supermarkets) or Two 13oz containers … using the 13oz allows one to mix chile heat levels (mild & mild, mild & hot, hot & hot, also throw autumn roast in there).
Two 14.5oz cans of Stewed tomatoes (I’ve used the Del Monte Original Recipe)
Two 11oz cans of White Shoepeg Corn (I’ve used the Green Giant brand)
2 to 3 Yellow Squash
2 to 3 Green Squash
Optional, can add a diced onion & cilantro for different flavors.

Preparation:

I like to cut the stew meat down to smaller bite size pieces, so I prep the meat.
In a large stew pot (mine is 20qts), brown the meat using a little oil (here is where the onion can be added)
Once the meat is thoroughly cooked, I add the stewed tomatoes (an additional step one can take is to break up the tomatoes into smaller chunks)
Add the shoepeg corn
Add the chopped green chile
Add one to two 28oz chile containers full of water to the pot (2 to 4 of the 13oz), enough to create a thick stew, or more water if you like a thinner stew (be sure you leave room for the squash)
Bring to a rolling boil, then lower the heat and cook for about 2 hours
Cut up the yellow & green squash (I like thick cuts like the pic above)
Add the squash to the pot about 1.5 hours in or earlier if you like softer squash or later if you want firmer squash (can add cilantro at this time also).
Done, finished stew for about 6-8 people.

Add some Pueblo oven bread and you have a wonderful New Mexico meal.

– Dom

The Secret Powers of Time

This video is another result of a twitter tangent I was sent on yesterday from a tweet on the Zeigarnik effect. I found the short video (below) from Professor Philip Zimbardo to be very interesting, especially the part on kids who have spent hours in the digital world (another 10,000 hour example). Kids become accustomed to controlling their environments through the games they play, and it’s this game playing frame-of-mind that is brought to the traditional classroom where there is no (or very little) player/student control. The lack of control then contributes to boredom and a sense of helplessness in the classroom. The video was worth 10 minutes of my time, I can apply the ideas to guiding my own kids.

– Dom

Taught Not To Fail

One of the things I love about Twitter is that at any given moment (when I’m paying attention), I can be introduced to some brand new idea or some great piece of information that has been around for a long time.

I experienced this today, one of the people I have personally met and follow (@bfeld) came across the following Nike Michael Jordan commercial on youtube and shared it with us (this video has been on youtube for 3 years at the time of this writing):

With a little more poking around I found another MJ video out on youtube also (been there for about a year):

The videos reminded me that today’s school systems teach our kids on how “NOT TO FAIL”. Our kids then become so afraid to fail they no longer take any risk and start making excuses. This sets up most kids to eventually be just workers in the world after school, the business world where most employees are paid “not to fail”.

Taking on risk and learning from FAILURE is something our kids should be taught to embrace as a constant learning activity with positive attributes, that it takes & requires effort to become good at anything.

I remember reading in the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell recently, that it takes 10,000 hours for an individual to become an expert and to master anything.

Boiling it down, this means 1,000 hours over 10 years, with 365 days in a year, this means practicing (or failing) 2.74 hours a day. Almost 3 hours a day, every day, for 10 years. Wow! For most people the only activity one spends more than 3 hours on is sleeping, after that maybe driving.

Most of us know how amazing of a athlete Michael Jordan was at the height of his career, and we all know NOW that it was not luck that got him to greatness.

The videos above serve to remind all of us that becoming good at something takes effort, time, commitment, and a lot of “failures”.

With more kids “failing”, we might see more entrepreneurial thinking to grow our local communities and economies.

I’ll be teaching my kids to “fail” more, who knows where that perspective or frame of mind might lead?

– Dom

CVFNM Social Media Marketing

I attended this event tonight -> June 17: Social Media Marketing – A Web 2.0 Fairy Tale? held by the Coronado Ventures Forum at the Prarie Star resturant.

I primarily went to meet some new people since moving back home to the Albuquerque area in January this year. A good friend of mine Will Reichard (met through twitter) was one of the panel speakers for the evening. Another recent friend Mick Thompson was on the panel also. I wanted to hear what they both had to say on the subject. It was a real learning experience, for me, hearing what social media facts the NM investor community was interested in, and how they really support technology start ups.

Since I’m a real believer that people can learn anytime anywhere, I like to capture content whenever I can from whoever will let me. So I offered to record the event for those who could not attend.

Enjoy!

– Dom

*****

Here is the MP3 audio from the video recording (54 minutes, 25MB, link also included below):