It's no longer quite a surprise.
I love this story, and particularly the convincing evidence of inter-connectedness
that it portrays. And yet, I'm not really sure that what it shows is the serendipity
that Levine chooses to find in it.
I'm sure that random flower lovers scan flickr for photos of flowers, and there's
no reason to assume that some of these flower lovers live in Australia - even
in the remote corner of Tasmania where Levine's story takes place. But there's also good reason to assume that some
of the people who follow Levine's flickr account do so because they also read
his education blog, and certainly there can be flower lovers among these readers.
In turn, it makes sense that people who attended a lecture by Levine when he visited
Tasmania don't get there by chance, but because they were educators, and thus
readers of his blog. We might even say that there are certain logical educational
ramifications to Levine's practice of tagging flowers with "unknown",
so it also makes sense that he'd tell this story in a lecture devoted to education.
In this way, even though there's certainly something almost magical about meeting
someone who responded to his tag/query at a lecture that mentions just that activity,
it's perhaps quite a bit less serendipitous than it might at first appear.
Go to: Now what are the odds on that happening?