Christmas and the Hundred Acre Wood

Christmas is just a week away. We've been getting just enough snow flurries around here to put a coating on the ground and a feeling of Christmas in the air. Are you excited? If I were more like Tigger than like Eeyore, I would be. (I'll pr'olly never be well adjusted enough to be like Winnie-the-Pooh.) Although I'm embarrassed to admit it, I've either never known or forgotten that

Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared by name on 24 December 1925, in a Christmas story commissioned and published by the London newspaper The Evening News.

not Winnie-the-Pooh eating not honey

Photo by J. Harrington

I'm heartened and encouraged to learn the relationship between Pooh Bear and Christmas isn't dependent on Disney's doings. Much of what I believe about the inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood, I learned from television and from reading Winnie-the-Pooh on Management, The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet and wearing my Joan Baez - Grateful Dead Peace Concert sweatshirt with Pooh and Piglet on it. I am firmly of the conviction that the world would be a much better place if each of us studied these works as part of every standard curriculum (curricula?). A world in which our "bear of very little brains" is the leading management and philosophy resource would be a marked improvement over what we have today.

Unfortunately, I don't seem to be able to locate any tomes about Winnie-the-Pooh on Sustainability. We need some of those too, don't you think? After all, look below at how the six functions in the work of a manager are germaine to implementing the climate agreement. They might even work for making mining and agriculture more sustainable:

1. Establishing Objectives
2. Organizing
3. Motivating
4. Developing People
5. Communicating
6. Measurement and Analysis

This requires further thinking. That requires seeing if there's any honey to sweeten a cup of coffee to wash down some Christmas cookies. While I'm busy eating thinking, please keep this in mind for this season:

"Christmas is a togethery sort of holiday" said Pooh "Thats my favorite kind" said Piglet, "Togethery and Remembery"
— A. A. Milne

Pooh and Piglet know "Togethery and Remembery" are found in our hearts, not in Christmas stockings nor under the tree. You can't buy them, only share them.

Furry Bear

By A. A. Milne 

If I were a bear,

   And a big bear too,

I shouldn’t much care

   If it froze or snew;

I shouldn’t much mind

   If it snowed or friz—

I’d be all fur-lined

   With a coat like his!

For I’d have fur boots and a brown fur wrap,

And brown fur knickers and a big fur cap.

I’d have a fur muffle-ruff to cover my jaws,

And brown fur mittens on my big brown paws.

With a big brown furry-down up to my head,

I’d sleep all the winter in a big fur bed.

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