Ho’okipa has been causing some excitement, as it well should!
Ho’okipa has been on my mind for months now. I’ve felt the need to write more about this value of hospitality since last December during Ho’omaha, my annual sabbatical, when I realized that Ho’okipa had never been our value of the month in the then-two years I have written online. I was as guilty of neglecting it as the businesses I have urged to consider it – nay, worse, for I know better. Earlier, I had set my plan to write about the MWA values in chapter order in 2007, and knew it would be a long wait until July arrived!
Ho’okipa then built in intensity within my writer’s urges when I read Setting the Table, The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer: I chose his book for the review I would contribute to Joyful Jubilant Learning’s A Love Affair with Books back in March. Meyer says he wrote his book to help us understand the difference between service and “the transforming hospitality in business.”
And I know that Ho’okipa is transforming. Aloha transforming.
As July drew closer, I couldn’t help but talk about Ho’okipa’s arrival with the bloggers of our Ho’ohana Community, asking them to participate in a Talking Story Forum on hospitality this month. You will see that they will be posting here through-out the month, so be sure to check in regularly or pick up a feed.
It may be that I cannot take any credit for this, but I can give it to the desire we all have for Ho’okipa, that a few posts on hospitality started to show up in BlogLand before July was due to arrive. Read these, and get inspired for the month we have ahead of us!
Running Ho’okipa Starts in our Ho’ohana Community;
Making Space for Other People, by Liz Strauss
Hospitality . . . my grandmother knew what it meant. Though she
never had but a few words of English when I visited her as a child,
even in my youngest years, we always communicated with out frustration.
Most of what she said was with her smile, her eyes, the tone of her
voice, and her facial expressions. The memory of us spending time
making surprised faces at each other still delights me and is the first
that comes to mind when I think of sitting at her dining room table.Her dining room table. We sat at her dining room table. Folks in the
Illinois village of Italian immigrants, where she lived in my lifetime,
enjoyed it at her tavern there. She welcomed everyone there as she
welcomed folks into her home, by making room for them. I could see it
in her smile, her eyes, the tone or her voice, and facial expressions.
I bet she learned those in Ospitale… keep reading…
10 ways to make your readers feel at home, by Joanna Young
I don’t know if you ever get a sense of recognition when you’re reading, a sense of familiarity maybe, or a feeling of being at home? I know I do. It’s a mixture of feeling comfortable and relaxed in the ‘space’ that they’ve created for me, and the sense that I ‘know’ the writer behind the words.
So, what techniques can writers use to make their readers feel at home? … keep reading…
Hello Rosa, you can definitely claim some credit for this one :)
Your invitation to talk about hospitality got me thinking about what it means to be hospitable, and how we can build that into our writing.
Who knows, you might even find me returning to this subject very soon (yes, this one was kind of the warm up act)
Best wishes
Joanna