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When I was still teaching music, my chorus sang a beautiful song comparing life to a ball of mixed up colored strings. Near the end, the singer tells a story of a young man trying to decide between two possible loves. He asks his mother for help with this very important decision. In the story, the mother meets each girl and tosses her a tangled ball of string. One girl works on untangling the knots and eventually gives in to her frustration, attacking it with scissors. The other girl gently works out all of the knots and tangles, one at a time, eventually sorting them by color into neat piles. The young man's mother suggests the second girl would be a more suitable wife because she is more likely to have the patient spirit she will need to work through the problems life is sure to throw their way.

It's been more than ten years since I've thought of that song. It seems the lit review process brought it to mind again. I started reading a literature review paper Joanne Carney presented at AERA 2004. Then I started following some of the threads she had in her paper. One thread led me to Vygotsky and mediation by tools. That led me to Activity Theory, which led me to Engestrom's work. When I went back to Joanne's lit review, I ended up in an online database hunting down another reference. Serendipity! That article was in a special issue devoted to teaching portfolios, so I've started reading all of those, too. They send me off in other directions......and on it goes.

For now, I've decided that I need to use more than just EndNote to keep track of two of the major threads. I've started a matrix for methodology and another for theory. I imagine I'll refine these as I move on but those are my starting threads and this is my plan to sort them out.

Song lyrics (as far as I can remember them):
Sometimes my life is like a ball of mixed up colored strings
So full of knots and tangles, I just can't do a thing
and when I try to sort it out I realize that I'm
gonna have to take it one string at a time.

One by one, each shining colored thread,
Blue by blue, green by green, and red by red.
‘Til the colors come untangled and the knots are all undone,
I’m gonna have to take it one string at a time.

UPDATE: Ian dropped by today (11/29/05) and added the full set of lyrics.

One By One (author uknown)

Sometimes my life is like a ball
of mixed up colored string
So full of knots and tangles
I just can't do a thing
And when I go to sort it out
I realize that I'm
Gonna have to take it
One string at a time

Chorus:
One by one, each shining colored thread
Blue by blue, green by green and red by red
Til the colors come untangled
And the knots are all undone
One by one, one by one

The mail I should have answered
The friends I ought to call
The gifts I haven't given
I just can't do it all
It lies on my horizon
like a mountain I must climb
And I'll have to take it
One thing at a time

Chorus

The songs I haven't finished
Unwritten and forlorn
Are stacked on my piano
Just waiting to be born
The tangled strings of melody
The ragged scraps of rhyme
I'll just have to spin out
One song at a time

One by one, each shining colored thread
Blue by blue, green by green and red by red
Til the colors come untangled
And the knots are all undone
One by one, one by one, one by one.