Berenice "Bee" Bleedorn -- Celebrating and Remembering a Great Educator, Philosopher, Humanist, Artist

To my fellow creative dreamers,

This morning I received word that we have lost one of The Great Ones in the creativity field. My dear friend -- our dear friend -- Berenice "Bee" D. Bahr Bleedorn has died. She was my friend and mentor and inspiration and colleague and teacher who got me into the creativity field 20 years ago this fall at the University of St. Thomas. Her passing leaves a (w)hole in the world. When Bee's 2005 book came out, the "book warming" invitation had a poem on it that was written for her by a Metropolitan State University student in the early 1970s. It really states the impact of Bee on us, and the way we should continue to always see the creative potential in others:

SEED WOMAN
By Kathleen Kuehnast

Seed Woman
Sower of human potentials,
Like a chemist
You experiment with possibilities
And mix together the unordinary
Until it becomes extraordinary.

We will always need in this world
Flowers and roots, seeds and ground,
and a sower -- whether it be the wind
Or you.

For those of you on Facebook, several comments have been left. Please add your thoughts, if you would like.

It looks like the funeral will be Tuesday afternoon at St. Joan of Arc in Richfield, Minnesota. Bee's daughters will confirm this on Friday. A full obituary will be in the papers on Sunday. You can also add comments to the online legacy in the Star Tribune obituary listing.

FRIENDS, please plan to come and join us to celebrate Bee's life with us ... most likely after the funeral on Tuesday. Please share this information and invitation with others, and we will update you with the specifics in the next day or so.

With a heavy heart, filled with gratitude for the 20 years of knowing Bee ...

Steve Dahlberg
International Centre for Creativity and Imagination
http://www.appliedimagination.org/

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On Purpose, Learning and Strengths

“(Teaching) children is vastly more than fixing what is wrong with them. It is about identifying and nurturing their strongest qualities, what they own and are best at, and helping them find niches in which they can best live out their strengths.” -- Martin E.P. Seligman

“If you don’t recognize a young man’s will for meaning, you make him worse, you make him dull, you make him frustrated, you still add and contribute to his frustration … there must be a spark, a search for meaning. Let’s recognize this, let’s presuppose it and then you will elicit it from him and make him become in principle what he is capable of becoming.” “If you take man as he really is, you make him worse. But if we seem to be idealists in our overestimating, overrating man and looking at him that high … you know what happens? We promote him to what he really can be.” -- Victor Frankl

(h/t David A. Weisberg)

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Check out this new book by Rian Hughes ... visually appealing ... imagination provoking ... creativity inspiring. Read it and view it to challenge yourself and learn something new.

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Even companies serious about innovation can fall victim to their own, well-meaning creative process.In most companies, there's a profound tension between the right-brainers (for lack of a better term) espousing design, design thinking and user-centered approaches to innovation and the left-brained, more spreadsheet-minded among us. Most C-suites are dominated by the latter, all of whom are big fans of nice neat processes and who pay good money to get them implemented rigorously. So often, the innovation process is treated as a simple, neat little machine. Put in a little cash and install the right process, and six months later, out pops your new game-changing innovation -- just like toast, right from the toaster. But that, of course, is wrong. [9 February 2011 - Co.Design - More]