A jazz combo is set up in one corner of the room — piano, drums, cello, two saxophones.

The musicians are young men, students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Music Conservatory. They are in the Jazz Program, led by Bobby Watson.

It’s a lovely time just being with friends; an evening made sweeter by a reunion with friends from 15 years past. We are eager to catch up and happily revisit old memories and restart old conversations.

Then the band starts.  In my memory of the night, everything else stops.

These young men are playing with a sophistication and touch beyond their years. It’s incongruous; baby-faced young men (no disrespect!) playing with joy, elan, and wisdom. It’s like they know a secret that the rest of us are searching for.

The drummer has blonde hair, tightly cropped. He’s slender and angular, and graceful. And when he plays, he is exuberant. Every note shows on him, in his eyes, his grin. He plays with an intensity, mindful of his part in the ensemble — at times caressing the cymbals, at times a dervish of motion. But the endearing trait is how much fun he’s having, the exuberance of his play.

I looked around the room at the rest of the crowd. All were transfixed, or transported, by the music and promise of these young men. We felt lucky to be there, to be a part of it.

The fact that it was happening here in Kansas City, just a few streets from our home, made it even better. We’d expect this in New York or maybe Chicago. It reminded me that magic is not tied to places, but hearts.

Don was in Kansas City to teach the techniques of running workshops for the siblings of developmentally disabled people. I expected to hear about issues of guardianship, health concerns, behavioral issues, overwhelming concern for challenges that loom large in so many families.

I had no idea it would be such a joy.

Don’s presentations are a delight. He is exuberant and funny, using humor and silliness.

He had the crowd of about 150 people do an exercise, without speaking, to sort ourselves into teams of “one’s,” “two’s” and “three’s.” The skeptical crowd got up reluctantly, some members heading for the doorways to slink out, but within three minutes, we were not only laughing out loud but holding hands in long conga-lines winding through the conference room, circling the round tables neatly organized. The simple handshake exercise forged bonds.

What did all this have to do with dealing with the many challenges of caring for a developmentally disabled family member?

Nothing, and everything. His workshops, he pronounced, are “unabashedly playful.”

“We have fun,” he explained. The workshops give siblings a chance to meet other siblings; there’s no “therapy,” just sharing experiences and feeling OK about it. You can’t underestimate how important it is to connect with others in similar situations.

My friends and I (all with siblings with Down Syndrome, from our own home-made support group) have been sharing stories and trading tips — how to measure signs of dementia, how to address changing health needs.

His advice to us? “Have wine at your meetings,” he said. “Make sure you have lots of laughs.” We left that day with an appreciation of the light touch.

In the same way that a whisper can be more compelling than a shout, so can a shared laugh be more powerful than the sobering narrative.  I’m thinking of a favorite quote from Maya Angelou that works to illustrate this:

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

It was partly out of pride and a sense of privacy. “It’s nobody’s business,” the matriarch would say. She’d decline to fill out the income questions on school forms and avoid letting others see the struggle. (Although, of course, they could still see.)

It also was partly a belief that asking for help was the same as admitting failure. The right thing to do was to soldier on and know that there are others even worse off than you. To prove it, it was important to always give to others, no matter what.

So it’s no surprise that the children in this family adopted that same belief structure.  They marched on, doing the best they could, while understanding that they also must help others. It was OK for others to ask for help, but not them – that’s where the pride came in.

For the most part, it worked out OK. The children all grew up to become modestly successful and mostly productive members of society.

Until one of them really, really needed help beyond what the family could provide.

Slowly and reluctantly, they broke the tradition. They took small steps to see about getting help from a local agency, affiliated with the state. They filled out forms. And more forms. They made appointments. They cautiously talked with the agency and government workers. Over time, they began to imagine letting others help them.

It started with very small steps. And it took a very long time (years) to even allow the smallest bits of support.

Looking in from the outside, I can understand the uncertainty, mistrust and shame they felt at asking for help. Asking for help is an admission of incapability, and it is difficult to hold onto anything like self-confidence or pride when you do so.

So it was an act of courage for them to ask for help.

I know it didn’t come easily; I know they are still quite tentative. They are learning how to behave in a new way, allowing others to see the condition of their lives – and participate in making it better.

I tell their story only because it seems worth noticing this component of the human condition. It may be an odd belief system, but it may be more prevalent than we notice.  And it seems timely as so many are struggling in this economy, in one way or another, perhaps with this same discomfort of learning how to behave differently.

Perhaps I can come to recognize this and to understand that although they may not ask for help, I should be mindful enough to offer.

He can scan any kind of page and the error jumps out at him, as though it were in giant type and flashing colors. It’s a great talent, although even for him, reading material he’s already read (or material that he wrote), it sometimes fails.

Happens to the best of us. To prevent errors from sneaking into my clients’ copy, I’ve compiled a checklist of items I review in copy editing and proofreading.

I also try to have a night’s sleep before completing the project. That’s when my subconscious editor kicks in — that’s when I get a nagging feeling that something’s not right yet.

I have two other tricks that help me.

• Read it backwards. That is, start from the end.
• Read it out loud.

Sounds silly, I know, but both have helped me spot and fix the errors that were otherwise invisible to me.

So with that, here’s a list that I use and enjoy. I update it periodically, and will update it here as well. Hope you find it useful.

Nancy’s Copy Editing, Proofreading and Quality Control Checklist

It was the birds that made Australia feel so different to me. Flocks of sacred ibis soaring overhead or swooping at the treetops gave me an impression of pterodactyls; the kookaburra was just remarkably goofy and fun. Other birds (ones I haven’t yet looked up) were vaguely familiar — such as the one that reminded me of a killdeer only twice as large, the ducks with the bright teal and purple coloring, the black swans. I couldn’t get used to the cockatoos, lorikeet and parakeet screeching and zipping about. Or the giant furry fruit bats with their elegantly folded wings, hanging upside down, gently unfurling themselves and zooming into the dusk.

* * *

There’s something delicious about visiting a different season than the one you’re from. It’s autumn here, with leaves changing, cool evenings and the misty fogs in the morning. But in Australia, where it’s springtime, the air was fresh and everything was sprouting and full of promise. Cherry blossoms, tulips, primroses, daisies, and wisteria — oh, wisteria everywhere! — was a delight.  Coming back, it was jarring to see our trees turning flame-red and dropping leaves.

* * *

There was one photo in our hotel that put me in a storytelling frame of mind everytime I saw it, so that’s at least twice a day. The photo is a portrait of a man, working at what looks like a furniture warehouse. He’s facing the camera, has a pleasant-enough face so at first glance, it’s an unremarkable photo. Then you see that in one hand he’s holding a large yellow tiger cat, and in the other, a mouse — upside down, tail held between finger and thumb. The cat is the real subject of the portrait; it is a study in concentration, desire, lust, hunger and pure instinct. The cat is intensely focused on the mouse.

That’s where the imagination and storytelling comes in. What happened in the moment before the man scooped up the cat? And what happens in the moment after the photo?

This image was, oddly, one of my fondest delights of the trip. It reminded me to pause and take a second look at the sights of this beautiful city. It also served as a kind of symbol of the Australian sense of the world — one of adventure and willingness to explore, a kind of fearlessness, and a quirky sense of fun.

A thread running through the topic is the importance of play and creativity in solving the problems of the world. This isn’t hyperbole — the discussion really looked at the largest issues in the world.

From Jane McGonigal: the idea that in playing games, we are using our best version of ourselves; the mindpower that can be harnessed in playing games to make the world a better place.

Her goal: to make it as easy to save the world in real life, as it is in online games. And she’s not joking. If we could increase our game playing time from its current 3 billion hours a week to 21 billion hours a week, the world would be different place.

I look at gaming in a new light.

From Michael Wesch, social anthropologist from K-State: Good questions and illustrations of the world on fire — and brilliant insights on the changes technology offers. We can’t live the next 100 years like the last.

Media uses us as much as we use it; and there is no opting out. Media mediates relationships, when media changes, relationships change — including the structure of our culture.

Technology in our hands creates new potential. Question is how will we use it? How will it change us? Wesch articulates the razor’s edge between a hopeful future and a more ominous one with new openness and freedom, transparency, mass participation vs. the potential for more survelliance and control, deception, mass distraction.

His goal is to move his students from being knowlegeable to knowledge-able. He explains we need (and need to teach) skills to find, sort, analyze, organize and create knowledge.

He told the story of when the world was on fire. All the animals running to escape, but it was impossible — the fires were raging and soon they were trapped.

One little bird had an idea. The little bird flew to the stream and picked up a drop of water in its beak, flew back to the fire and dropped the water. And again, and again, and again.

What are you doing little bird? The best I can.

The heroics inspired the rest of the creatures (or variously, the gods) who joined in to save the day and put out the fire, by working together in the example of the littlest bird.

From Francis Cholle:  We need a higher level of creativity to solve sustainability questions. Creativity will be the the No. 1 leadership competency in the future.We need to play more to become more creative — play eludes our analytical minds. Our analytical minds can be a handicap to creativity.

The most important skills to master:

• Think holistically; there’s more to consider than the P&L
• Think paradoxically
• Listen for the unusual. Or, stop thinking and start feeling.
• Lead by influence, not by control

Plenty to ponder.  Thanks, TEDxKC.

The first musing is about birds and business goals, or knowing what you really want.

The scene: I’m sitting out on the patio alone early one morning, a glorious sky, cottonwood leaves dancing in the breeze, the air full of pinon and dewy freshness. Quiet. Until something like a high-powered, bullet-speed drone circles my head. I ducked a few times until I realized they were hummingbirds.

No more ducking, just delight. They swirled and swarmed, one protecting his area more fiercely than I’ve ever seen a hummingbird behave. And the noise! I’d never heard them so close, so loud, the whirring noise they make an indication of their speed and agility. I sat unmoving and felt so privileged to have them so close to me; it was a joyful time.

Later, talking about the experience with my friends (my hosts), they related a tale of a friend of theirs.

This young woman had overheard them talking about their hummingbirds, and she had interjected that she, too, would like to have hummingbirds in her garden. My friends showed her their feeder and carefully explained the preparation of the nectar and other secrets for attracting the birds.

A couple of weeks later, they chanced to visit her. Her hummingbird feeder was hanging, but she was out batting at it with a broom, screaming.

“What’s going on?” they asked.

“Well, I put up the feeder but all I get are these big moths,” she replied.

Oh no!

“Those ‘big moths’ you’re swatting are hummingbirds,” my friend explained cautiously.

As it turned out, the young woman had never actually seen a hummingbird. She thought they’d be different from the annoying little ‘moths’ that she didn’t like at all.

Her expectation was different from reality; she didn’t know that she was terrorizing the very creatures she thought she wanted.

It was such a strange story, it made me think about some of my own expectations, especially as they relate to business and setting goals, dreaming about what I really want.  Always healthy to take stock of what you desire, and make sure that (a) you can recognize it for what it really is, and (b) you’re not unknowingly swatting it away.

The second musing came from a chance encounter with an Indian woman selling pottery downtown. Her work was nicely displayed and pieces caught my eye, so I stopped and we chatted.

She explained her product. “I find the right spot, I dig the earth, I mix the water and make the clay, I shape the vessel and bake it, and then I paint it,” she said simply. “I touch it, everyday, from when it is dirt until it is finished.”

The piece I was holding had a unusual design. “My great-grandmother designed that,” she said. The pictogram showed a bird in flight when looked at in one direction; when turned in the other, it became a flower like a tulip or trumpet vine.

Sold.

This businesswoman knew her product so intimately, and was so connected to it, her act of creating it was part of the bargain of owning the piece (at least for a short time, as it was a gift). Her story was simple, moving and effective. It’s exactly what we all need in our business storytelling.

***

Final random musings:

• Congratulations to the city of Santa Fe for controlling nighttime light pollution. It’s working and it’s brilliant to see the stars there.
• While I’m at it, congratulations to Santa Fe for its Plaza concert series of free excellent music — a wonderful community service. Last week’s bands were excellent, drawing crowds of dancers and music lovers. I can’t recall when I’ve seen so many smiling faces.

In the corporate world, I used to marvel at the degree of specialization in the workforce. Tasks were split into smaller and smaller bits and assembled across silo’ed organizations. And leaders wondered why it was so hard to get everyone focused on the same mission.

In technology, we continue to break everything into tinier and tinier bits. Think of network technology (packet switching, dissembling and reassembling bits right this instant!), and the increasingly specialized areas of research and academics. We keep slicing our focus smaller.

It’s the same with time. We’re driven by the clock, to make use of every minute. Too bad that too often we’re just satisfying ourselves with an illusion of activity.  Hmm, do I really need to check the stock market again? Or Facebook? Am I making a connection or avoiding one?

This week I found a nice way to connect. Individually, working alone but as part of a world movement. Another form of crowdsourcing, there’s a movement to make it easy for the app-carrying masses to spend a few seconds contributing money, time or intellect to others.

It’s a kind of hive-help to museums, schools and libraries. Called The Extraordinaries, it’s an app for micro-volunteering from your mobile phone. You can select a program to support, and within seconds, you can be helping with a project — for example, translating film dialog, tagging items from historic photo collections, supporting research.

Some of The Extraordinaries’ projects:  for Cornell University, collect data on urban birds; for the Smithsonian, help build a search engine for vintage photos and artwork by tagging images; help the Bibliotheque de Toulouse or the Brooklyn Museum tag their photo collections. You can help Greenpeace or the Library of Congress. Non-profits can apply to add their work to The Extraordinaries’ portfolio of projects.

The Extraordinaries, backed by a strong investment team featuring Kapor Ventures of Silicon Valley and Esther Dyson, among others, has secured $1.135 million in funding.  The company describes itself as for-profit social enterprise and is applying to become a B-corp.  (More on that later.)

Tiny bits of time, given to a bigger cause. This can’t help but catch on.

A son, husband, father, successful businessman, a rugby player. The service was overflowing, and speaker after speaker talked about how beloved he was.

It was profoundly sad — made nearly unbearable by all the funny photos of him clowning with his kids, grinning like mad, adoring them. The photos ran in a loop on a giant screen, continuously reminding us of his life.

I realized that I only knew part of him.

We had been acquaintances, tied by the rugby circle. But as an outsider to this theater, I only saw him from the sidelines. I thought he was loud and crude, and yes, funny in that rugby way — but not much more. I didn’t see him as the best athlete in the group, nor the smartest strategist. But he did bring the team together, usually with laughter. So I liked him but I didn’t get to know him well.

It wasn’t until much later, when he contracted the disease and decided to use his very existence for something larger, that I saw him from another perspective. And I wished I’d paid attention to him sooner.

He was in a wheelchair but not not relenting from fighting that f***ing disease as he called it — he was loud, lively and brash, still outspoken and sometimes crude. Since he couldn’t make an entrance quietly, he made everything larger than life. He was a spokesman for the cure, he was an advocate for stem cell research and he challenged everyone to help beat it.

Last September, he traveled to Aspen to watch his Kansas City Blues teammates at the annual rugby tournament there, easily one of the best events in this sport. The Blues have never missed a tournament and frequently win. This year, as always, every level of the club was gunning to beat the Gentlemen of Aspen.

He gave a little talk at the halftime of the game, over the loudspeakers, for the work that would lead to an ALS cure. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it wasn’t about him, it was about winning. It was emotional only for its bold statements of truth.

At the end of the final game, a rough battle, hard fought between the Blues and the Gentlemen, the entire Aspen team walked to the far corner of the pitch to shake his hand or give him a hug. It was an extraordinarily gracious gesture from a team of rugby warriors, brothers all.

It was larger than life, just like him. Full of courage, laughter, love.

It’s happened. (Actually, it had already been described in a YouTube video from about a year ago, once again demonstrating that there are no new ideas — everything already exists on the internet. Sigh.)

The MIT Technology Review story explains how this new application combines facial recognition, database lookup and cloud computing, with augmented reality.

It’s a little creepy and raises potential issues about invasion of privacy and misuse (police, CIA, insurance companies?). The Recognizr, described in the article, takes the issue seriously and offers its service as an opt-in only, which means it can only recognize you if you’ve agreed to be recogized.

This one is going to be interesting to watch. How long before this technology shows up in a spy thriller movie? My bet — less than a year.

* * *

At the beginning of the year, I told the story of my sister’s travels from Kansas City to Columbus and the extraordinary care she received from Southwest Airlines. (“Travel Vignette on Caring“)

There’s a little bit of followup, unremarkable except that it proves, once again, that there are real people at Southwest Airlines, and they are willing to act like real people. I’m impressed, again.

After I wrote the story, my brother took the step of alerting Southwest to the post.  He got a response:

Dear John,

Thank you for your e-mail. I was thrilled to learn about your sister’s experience when she traveled with us to Columbus on January 2. We truly appreciate your family’s kind words of our airline, and we hope to welcome you all onboard a Southwest flight very soon!

Sincerely,

Lindsay, Southwest Airlines

The reminder I takeaway from this is about the power of human interaction.

Just being willing to be human — to listen, to respond, especially in a meaningful way with empathy, gratitude, care — shouldn’t be an extraordinary occurrence.

But we’ve become so accustomed to being treated as just a wallet, a sale, that when we’re treated with respect it becomes an outstanding event.

So, kudos to Southwest Airlines. Again, I’m impressed and inspired by the people there. Thanks for modeling the way it can be.