What Do Fleet, Massengill, and the Name of a Rush Album Have in Common?; or, My Apologies to Lee, Lifeson, and Peart

Something in me, dark and sticky

All the time it's getting strong

No way of dealing with this feeling

Can't go on like this too long

I'm digging in the dirt

Stay with me I need support

I'm digging in the dirt

To find the places I got hurt

To open up the places I got hurt

----excerpted lyrics from "Digging in the Dirt" by Peter Gabriel.

Tonight my county is beginning the observation of Domestic Violence Awareness Month a day early. The community event is called A Show of Hands.

For myself, the irony of naming the event after the easiest, and therefore, one of the most common weapons of choice in domestic violence situations is somewhat uncomfortable.I don't much care for the term domestic violence. It sanitizes it: pretties it up somehow.

For instance, in spoken language and in what is written on the package, an enema is just that: an enema; even the graphics on the box are generic, straightforward.

Yet a douche? It's feminine cleanser. The graphics on the box are most often limpid, flowery. Most importantly, those things aren't really of any use: a woman can actually do more harm to her body than good in using such a product.

Just tell it like it is: get rid of the crap; then leave well enough alone.

But I'm uncertain as to what to call it, this very specialized form of violence: a product of any silence that has ever met any violence against those perceived as weak---be it stranger-to-stranger; familiar-to-familiar. Putting words to things has never been my strongest suit.

But A Show of Hands?

Maybe my visual way of thinking is too informed by images of experience. I'll take good intentions wherever they may be found, dear reader; and really, we all help each other that way, don't we?

A Show of Hands

Hospital photo circa 1992

Nurses holding back hospital gown to show bruising---some of it taking the shape of the hand of the abuser.

Pop Art?; or, More Topography of Motion

Find this image, and the explanation behind it, here.
I find it most beautiful.
What do you think, dear reader?

Topography of Motion; or, Another Short Post

I love videos, as they are a way of showing motion as a visual. It's a favored form for me.
Often, when I hear sounds, they process for me in a very visual way; just as when you twirl a sparkler in the air, it leaves a light trail behind, ever so briefly, ever so brightly: topography of motion, fading to a still as it dims on the retinas, slowing to silence.
It looks something like this: though I see motion, not specific images that speak to a referent.
It's something that makes me happy.
How's your week been, dear reader?
I'm always glad to see you.

The Importance of Being Earnest; or, Can You Hear Me Now?

Julian Schnabel Ethnic Type #14 1984 oil, animal hide, wax and modeling paste on velvet; 108 x 120 http://www.artcritical.com/DavidCohen/SUN98.htm

Ecstasy of St. Theresa Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1647-1652
Marble, height 150 cm
Rome, Santa Maria della Vittoria
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Ecstasy_St_Theresa_SM_della_Vittoria.jpg

One of the things I enjoy about my friendship with the blogger Artist Formerly Known as Purple Worms is our ongoing dialogue about the nature of art, and the relationship of art to artist. We've been engaged in this topic, off-and-on, for several years now.
It never gets old.
So when I wrote an earlier post about kitsch in response to reading Howard Gardner's take on the matter, I was fairly confident that AFKAPW would definitely be game to engage in the matter. And so she did!

AFKAPW wrote about kitsch yesterday in response to my earlier post. She informs us as to the origins of the word, and all the cultural attachments that are both origins and results of the word's usage. Please follow the link to read; she is ever more erudite than I, and I therefore won't attempt to paraphrase her words.
In her conclusion, she ekes out the relationship, if any, of art to kitsch:
Is kitsch art? So that gets me back to one of my all time favorite paradoxes - trying to define Art. (Capital A art.) When push comes to shove, I guess I resolve the issue by narrowly defining what I believe to be art. FOR ME (please note that narrowing there),
Art must

1. Communicate some kind of message or meaning (The meaning may simply be that art in the past has been ovely wrought and fraught with meaning and I am protesting against this past idea or that art has ignored the craft of working carefully with its materials.)

2. It must have access to and address society and issues important ot more than one person (thus be seen or heard - if it stays in the bottom drawer - for me it is not art - it is creative expression.)

3. (And here is the one that upsets lots of my colleagues in the Art department) It must have ideals, and have more than a superficial level - it must communicate about something metaphysically important (yes the nature of art itself fits in this category) In short for me art must speak to truth, justice, beauty or some such form.For me this solves the problem of kitsch. If the object is superficial with no depth, then it is kitsch. Now we have the question of audience - for me - if there is a group that finds depth in the object (it has a social/societal component) it is art. Of course that doesn't make it good art, but it is Art.

As is our custom, her words are most thought-provoking for me.

So under these conditions, how do each of the works above measure up?
One is Bernini, one is Schnabel; each labeled as Serious Art: yet the frequency of the transmission, the style of the communication is very similar.

Or is it?

AFKAPW speaks to the referent.
Is the referent absolutely necessary?

If so, how can each of us agree to the referent? Perhaps one could agree with others that the best referents that Art may address are the examples that AFKAPW gives: truth, beauty, justice, or some such form. Yet if this is the case, does it not also seem appropriate that such referents, such ideals, by their very nature, need many ways to be spoken of, the proverbial elephant to the blind men?

She then writes that :
I get tremendous joy in kitsch and alas I have to report it is in a different way than my tender and compassionate friend Neroli finds kitschy joy. I am at heart a nasty and critical individual. While my generous friend Neroli joys in the abundance of feelings and its excessive expression in kitsch, I have to admit to enjoying it as Schadenfreude 9another one of those untranslatable German terms). May the universe forgive me, but I get a certain vindictive glee out of laughing at the grotesquely exaggerated nature of kitsch and looking down my nose at. I just can't quite escape that one-up-man-ship inherent in being an insider looking at the ostracized outsider. In short I am the worst kind of snob. While Neroli laughs with, I alas laugh at. Now I will go to my zabuton and try to meditate on the nature and necessity of compassion and yes after all that I still love kitsch and find it stupidly reassuring.

And it is here that my experience with kids on the spectrum of autism and pervasive developmental disorders comes to bear: my feelings and thoughts about kitsch have everything to with my life experiences and nothing to do with any positive character attributes; all of us have generousity and compassion.
Communication, in all its forms, has become more and more my focus of interest. When I first came out of the gates of early adulthood, I thought that art was my passion; since my experiences of living so long with violence and isolation, and the subsequent implications of their workings in living without them, I've come to understand that it is really communication(Perhaps that in and of itself could be a component of a working definition of art?), particulary outside of the verbal realms , that engages me. Working with autism has brought this fact into focus.


Often, our kids with autism will speak to the same kind of referent that our kids without autism do; yet will do it in such a manner that would appear, if I may, kitschy: they are often displaying behaviors that anyone would be able to produce, and would be considered socially exuberant, exaggerated, or without any congruency at all to situational context. Yet, these behaviors are communciation nonetheless.
To extend the metaphor: often, these kids will produce opulent velvet paintings when their general-education-population peers are producing Zen brushwork: both are happy responses to the same experience.
For example, I've known one little person that we'll call Naples Yellow. In response to a happy feeling, Naples would jump up and down, pigeon-toed, all the while with one arm half-extended to the front, elbow bent, as if drawing another person into a one-armed hug; the opposite arm extended out, its hand moving in rapid circles, hitting that one-armed-hug-hand on the downstroke to affect a rapid and rhythmic clap, all in time to the jumping.
The other students?
To continue the metaphor: once they understood that this was Naples' way of saying "I'm really happy about this," they made room to hang this baroque, kitschy work next to their own.

Generousity? Tenderness and compassion?
Children making room for one another, often despite the models given to them by less enlightened adults.
Arguably the best Art of all; art with a capital 'A.'
There's the makings of that kind of Art within us all; there's the means of receiving that sort of communication within us all; and there's most definitely room to hang it all on the wall.
You'll know it when you see it, dear reader.


http://handicraft.indiamart.com/gifs/velvet-painting.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cd/Original_face_enso.jpg

Honey, We Redheads Always Could Accessorize; or, More Things to Look At

I've been working on a post since last week, and making slow progress for various reasons; hence, some visuals, as the second installment of "Crayfish Park" is also slow in coming. (Sorry! I want to know what happens as much as you!)
Thank you for coming by, dear reader. It's always good to see you. I'll talk with you soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynUcRKIbSns

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoSH2ETS3-4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEqYXPu0NII

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKiV8j_faSo

What Would Papageno Do; or, the Grecian Urn is a Decorative Peanut Butter Jar?

I want everyone to focus on the content of an education---the meat and potatoes: on how that content should be presented, mastered, put to use, and passed along to others. Specifically, I believe that three very important concerns should animate education; these concerns have names and histories that extend far back into the past. There is the realm of truth---and its underside, what is false and undeterminable. There is the realm of beauty---and its absence in experiences or objects that are ugly or kitschy. And there is the realm of morality---what we consider to be good, and what we consider to be evil.

---from Howard Gardner, The Disciplined Mind: What All Students Should Understand

http://www.muttscomics.com

I often feel, dear reader, as if in this blogosphere, I often find myself in a collaborative learning group: something I very much appreciate about this endeavor. Thank you so much for it!

Purple Worms has been holding a discussion on art over at her place, concerning a defaced statue of Mozart. Swampwitch is presiding over playtime, MI-style. Then I begin reading from one of my favorite educational theorists, Howard Gardner, and find the above quote (side note of interest/synchronicity: he goes on to give examples that embody each of those three sisters---and Mozart is given as the example of beauty), which speaks to the reference that PW made to truth is beauty, beauty is truth.

It makes me very happy, these connections.

I was somewhat surprised that Gardner used the kitschy as the antithesis of the beautiful. I've always regarded kitsch as pithy beauty: sort a zen take on baroque, or alternately, a baroque take on zen; it speaks to the referent from a different perspective, the "flip side" if you will, in a different dialect than is typical, and I like that very much. (I've become an object of amusement for Snowy at the times when I see something kitschy: I exclaim, it's so ugly that it's beautiful! and then Snowy rolls his eyes, hoping with all hope I don't bring whatever it may be home.)

Perhaps that's what Gardner was speaking to; if so, I then posit: the beauty is in the delivery.

To me, it's very much like a parlor game that allows participants to hold a conversation using only famous quotes: the quote becomes a picture, a signal, of the speaker's intent.To me, it's very much like the use of picture icons in communication systems we use to communicate with those whose language abilities differ from our own.

Or perhaps it's a game of exquisite corpse; cadavres exquis.

Communciation, in all its transmissions. The enjoyment and the challenge and the beauty arise in broadening the bands of reception, allowing for all frequencies; for their variance is the given, and not the exception.

Don't expect to hear anything: expectations are so much static. Just listen; and in so doing, the beauty is heard.

Communication begins.

What do you think?

I'm listening.

Note: I've fixed the hyperlink for exquisite corpse, and added a new one as well---dear reader, you know how I like to look at things in more than one way!

Oh, One More Thing; or,Same as It Ever Was

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NpiVTR11MI

On Time, Motion, and Momentum; or The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

Dear reader, the more I attempt to become facile in this practice of writing, the more visual my thinking becomes: an unexpected outcome of this behavior plan I've made for myself.

As the visual is a preferred activity/modality for me, I'll start off what I've been wishing to write about, about motion and time, solitude and isolation, and how we take it--- with some visuals.

I think in this schedule of reinforcement, I'm ready to be able to engage in preferred activity.

Departure, Max Beckmann www.moma.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij738Q-wWmk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LHhcx52CF0

Surprise; or, More Things to Learn

Dear reader, I'm glad that you enjoyed the poem "Watermelons" by Charles Simic, the newly-ensconced US Poet Laureate.
I was so glad to be listening to National Public Radio's Weekend Edition yesterday and to be able to hear Mr. Simic speak about writing, as well as to hear his reading of what I understand to be one of his most well-known works, wherein he imagines what it would be like to be a stone.
You may find the audio from the broadcast here. (I was sorry that the interviewer asked him questions about immigration and national identity when she could have been asking him more about his working with words; should you wish to go directly to the poem in question, it begins at about mark 4:24.)
What a simple joy it was to be washing up the dishes, the sun streaming in the window, the dish soap sliding down the china, and listen to this broadcast.
When I went to wipe the kitchen counter, I picked up an aluminum foil packet, a piece of cornbread I had made for supper a day or so ago. Unexpectedly, it was hot to the touch, the cornbread inside beginning to mold. When I held its warmth in my hand, I saw and felt the energy: the hum and the swarm of my old hive of bees rising up through the wood and wax of the hive, heavily fragrant and smokily humming; the body of my cello against my body, its throat, its bow the words of its song humming in my hand; the murmuring of the molecules as the metal is heated, excitement expressed in malleability, a fevered pitch; the eager feeding of simple organisms upon simple food, creating a funk, creating warmth.
I understood what Simic was speaking to--- of stones struck together, and sparks flying out: a moon that shines from somewhere, with just enough light to read by. It was a wonderful thing.
Cognitive dissonance: nobody expects the unexpected.
When it comes, may it more often than not be a happy visit.

Pictionary, Abstract Expressionism Edition; or, More Signal to Noise

http://en.easyart.com/art-prints/Mark-Rothko/Untitled-Violet--Black--Orange--Yellow-on-White-and-Red-135567.html

Fibonacci MI-style; or, Late Night Web Surfing

http://pbskids.org/cgi-registry/shareables/retrieve.pl?94a4b04e8f6d7ad9

Please know in advance: if you play too, I would love to see it!
(I'm bookmarking this one. I see this one may come in handy when I am procrastinating--
um--in need of a creative boost!)

Like Nacha for Tita; or, Just Do It (Getting Over Yourself)

Those happy days when Nacha was with her seemed so distant now. Nacha! The smells: her noodle soup, her chilaquiles, her champurrado, her molcajete sauce, her bread with cream, all were far away in a distant past. They could never be surpassed, her seasoning, her atole drinks, her teas, her laugh, her herbal remedies, the way she braided her hair and tucked Tita in at night, took care of her when she was sick, and cooked what she craved and whipped the chocolate! If she could bring back a single moment from that time, a little of the happiness from those days, she could prepare the King's Day bread with the same enthusiasm she had felt then!---Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate




One of the reasons for my procrastination of yesterday's homework was my feeling of intimidation. Or, to put it into behavioral terms: I engaged in procrastinating behavior (form) to avoid my feelings of inadequacy and intimidation (function).
This is a pattern that sometimes emerges for me. It's an old monkey that, though banished, will sometimes attempt to drop out of a a tree, and land squarely on my back. Every now and again, he'll try to keep a hold, but usually slides off and hits the dirt in short order; and by that time, my coordinates have already changed. As monkeys-on-the-back are, he's a lazy sort; so he'll take his time getting back up into the tree. The other side to that particular coin is that one never knows when he'll drop out of the trees again. So being ready for it is essential.

To deal with this particular monkey-on-the-back, I need to employ tactics which will decrease my thoughts of inadequacy and intimidation, and therefore my behavior to avoid the task and the situation triggering these behaviors.
The best tool in the toolkit for me when this occurs is a tandem one: the one-two punch of dedicating the merit of others (the "rejoicing" limb of 7-limb practice) and mudita. Quite simply, I contemplate upon the good qualities in the people that seem to trigger my intimidation. I think about how these qualities are not cause for anxiety, but rather, for real joy and excitement. And just as Gardner's MI theory or Shantideva's Engaging in Boddhisattva Behavior or the New Testament would tell us, that good stuff that we recognize and rejoice in others is also ours. We all have the good stuff: how we manifest it to ourselves and to the world is what matters.

I use this tandem tool for all manner of situations. For example, on one of the most hot and humid days of the summer thus far, Little Guy and I picked cherries. Upon returning home, LG asked for a cherry pie. I must tell you that the making of the pastry for pie has always been an undertaking with uncertain results in my hands. Though I have been enjoying more consistent results since using my long-gone grandmother's recipe, hand-written, well-worn, the results are never completely assured. As it should be, I suppose, in life and pastry; and there's some joy to that.
With my love for LG as primary agent, I began to think about my grandmother, my Almeda, and how well she loved us: how she taught us to bake, to do needlework; how she let us fill her bathtub to the brim and soak until we were wrinkled as raisins; how from her hands we received cakes, and pies, those plump cookies pressed together like hands in namaste: how, Almeda, can I make pie dough on such an infernal day?

With clarity, I unfolded her tattered recipe. I placed a metal tray into the freezer to roll the dough out when it was complete; I filled an enamel roaster with ice and placed the mixing bowl into it. Without thinking, I measured out proportions of white cake flour, whole wheat flour, and chappatti flour into the freezing bowl, as we were out of our usual pastry flour.
As I pressed the tines of my pastry fork against the sides of the frosty mixing bowl, smashing the butter into the flour, the gentle insistence, that scritch-scritch-swish sound of the fork, bowl, and mealy-butter-flour-meal that was to become dough was as sweet as if I had heard Almeda speaking to me. The pastry began to come together, just so.
Chill for fifteen minutes, Almeda wrote in her recipe.
After rolling out the pastry and assembling the pie, I took a little paring knife to cut vents into the top crust. I cut a heart-shape in the middle, with lines radiating out from it in all directions, Radiant Baby-style, and put the pie into the oven.
It was so very beautiful and good when it came out, and we devoured every juicy bite.

After my procrastinating behavior yesterday, I finally returned home and seriously turned my mind to work. I thought about the wonderful qualities of the people I've just met. I thought about how LG and BG were so happy that afternoon. I thought about the wonderful qualities of my grandmother, my Almeda, and how they made themselves present for me in the here-and-now in the making of LG's cherry pie. And how we did benefit from the sweetness!
I gathered all these things together, whipped the chocolate in my Chocolate Mainline, and did my homework. And that, dear reader, is How I Got Over Myself.
Thank you so much, dear reader, for your kindness.


Have a wonderful day.

------------------------
Almeda's Pie Crust

Sift together:
3 cups flour
1 tablespoon of sugar
3/4 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
Cut in:
1 1/4 cup shortening
Combine:
1 beaten egg
5 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon vinegar
Sprinkle:
4 tablespoons of mixture
Mix with fork
add 4 more
continue till
pastry holds
chill 15 minutes

Ebbets Field is Dead; or, That's the Krump

In yesterday's post, I spoke with you about a simple joy that is available to all of us: laughter. That the laughter was considered to be part of bodywork by the kundalini kriya that I referenced was quite a pleasing idea for me, one that I find most welcome.

It is my wish for you, dear reader, to laugh, and laugh really well, mind you, at least once a day. (Did you follow the embedded Darth Vader link from that post? It's a secret vice, looking at those images. But most definitely good for a laugh.)

Dear reader, since I made a resolution here to you and to myself to practice the craft of writing, I feel compelled to write further on the subject of violence that I began earlier; for it is specifically because of the violence that I have received in the past that I have difficulty with words in the present.

The life that was mine in the past of violence was one wherein one of the most oft-cited reasons for the beginning of violence was the extinction of Ebbets Field.

How can one not develop a sense of humor, an appreciation of the finer points of What Is Funny, when such a thing as the loss of that field is the gravity that holds you to that place, that one place, without seeming recourse?

And in that place I was kept in solitary confinement, a party of one; with a maitre d', of course: one who was very taken with all manner of ideas, and the loss of elegaic beauty that was Ebbets Field one of the most consuming of many that consumed. Needless to say, dear reader, I did not have great opportunity to engage with other people; to have conversation about stimulating things, much less the mundane things.

Use it or lose it as the saying goes. So I lost it.

I managed to escape once. I made small talk with the driver of the taxi. I cannot begin to describe to you to this very day, dear reader, the thrill, the joy, the absolute wonder in being able to speak to someone about the weather. The weather.

But as in most of these situations, these engagements between opposing forces (cat and mouse), I made a strategic error, and had to return, in order to win the war; in this case, the safety and custody of my son. Needless to say my return necessitated further isolation, and more strenous treatment to permanently affix my position.

One of the fundamental teachings of Buddhism is that suffering, dukkha, is caused by our attachment to things. We don't always get what we want when we want it, and perhaps we never do get it. It causes us to suffer, and our suffering plays out in inordinate ways: we might seek comfort from our suffering by using alcohol, by becoming a workaholic, by taking what we want by force. Perhaps we might take out our suffering on others without meaning to do so.

Yet again, we might mean exactly that.

And in the receiving end of that situation, words have no currency for your survival. You would be surprised how quickly verbal intelligences fade when they have no validity.

Visualization (backyard tree, running free) and laughter (say what?!?) are, again, a most welcome pair, in most every situation one may imagine.

And so, dear reader, from upstream I can practice non-attachment.

I am no longer attached to Ebbets Field with the same old ropes, with the black, the blue, and the stench of confinement. No, I believe that my dukkha was my silence; my particular brand of samsara was to deny that the range of voice available to each and every one of us as humans was also available for me.

By virtue of my experience, of being cut off from what is considered the average day-to-day, I am practicing non-attachment. In the classroom, I do my best to always see a child as a child, and not as a diagnosis. I am more reminded to meet these students where they are at, and to do so every day: the range of voice available to each and every one of us is no less available to them, and happily so!

I am reminded of the value of other intelligences outside of the linguistic realm, and it is in these places that I can most often look to meet these special students.

Where we go from there is up to them.

Non-attachment seems difficult to practice.

I believe that it is most often a case of seeming more difficult than it truly is. And if it becomes difficult, well, then, I am reminded of a skit from the television show, MadTV. The sketch features a male and female pair of dancers, who perform in a style that is known as krumping. In each of the skits, someone is always put at a disadvantage, to which the rejoinder is: "that's the krump."

So, dear reader, Ebbets Field is gone. People dress up their dog as el luchador. Darfur burns. Kids with autism are kids, first and foremost.

You and I, dear reader, are free.

We can talk about the weather, or not.

We can laugh all day long at whatever we please.

And that's the krump.

Independence Day; or, How MI Theory Helped Save My Life

Visual/spatial intelligence
• Capacities to perceive the visual-spatial world accurately and to perform transformations on one’s initial perceptions.
• End states: navigator, sculptor----Gardner, H., & Hatch, T. (1989). Multiple intelligences go to school: Educational implications of the theory of multiple intelligences. Educational Researcher, 18(8), 4-10.

A system that's neat and orderly and hast to keep struggling to fight off randomness, and when randomness inevitably leaks in, the system is thrown off. Being open to a certain level of randomness, on the other hand, allows it to work in your favor.----Abrahamson, E., & Freedman, D. (2006) A Perfect Mess. New York: Little, Brown, and Company

Dear reader, please know that I do so appreciate your visits here. Such seemingly small acts of kindness are most important, and I just wanted to begin here today by thanking you. You do have the power to impact for such good in the world, and limitless opportunities in which to do it.

I've provided a link to an article speaking about the suicide of a young man, David Ritchenson. He was the victim of an extremely hateful and brutally violent act. He testifed before Congress this April during hearings concerning a proposed hate-crimes bill. He jumped to his death from a cruise ship earlier this week.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/4941295.html

Mr. Ritchenson's story resonated with me. Simply put, I have been on the receiving end of violence. I express it this way, as it is one of the most apt ways I might convey to you in words what occurred. Violence was put forth, and I received it, completely. And this is the thing about receiving something so completely: you have room for nothing else; this, this becomes what is your sustenance.

Perchance, maybe, just maybe, you had digested just enough to make a little room for something different, something good. You can scarcely believe it's there, that little space; it's a secret, you see, like a little life itself within you. Furtively, because, really, it's dubious how long that little space will remain; it's in doubt how long you can keep it, really---you reach for something good, just a little, for there's such a small space, you can only manage a little sliver: and violence hands you your order (but it's not really, it's a dis-order: it's violence's order), and shoves it down to cram that little space full.

It is considered best practice to fill the tea vessel with boiling water before brewing the leaves with fresh, hot water. A hot vessel is considered to bring forth the most fragrant tea.

The method that I eventually deployed to tailor the disorder of violence so that I might stomach it without its poisoning me completely was to visualize other things whilst the violence was active and open. It's not a new method, for many of us in these situations, and indeed, situations far removed and in much happier light, do use visualization techniques.

So whilst, say, I assented to the perpetration of most abjectly humiliating and violent acts lest my-then-toddler child be taken away for the night in a car piloted by one in an alcoholic stupor; or, say, being restrained and used as an ashtray, I would smile, picturing completely in my mind such things as say, the sunlight and shadow coming down on me as I climbed the large tree in my childhood home backyard. Or my grandmother's plump raisin cookies, always wrapped in waxed paper in pairs, flat sides pressed together (like two hands, like namaste) and presented with simple, complete affection. And so I would smile; and so violence would spit in my face or decide to go an extra hour, or light another cigarette.

Who is to say what is a good way to cope with violence and what is not a good way? And does it matter if the violence came suddenly and left, or if the violence was sustained over time? When I wrote in a previous post about wishes that one could communicate with the future in some way, so that the message was, hey, this is the picture---dear reader, I was thinking very much of myself at this time. How I would love to be like Admiral Janeway, and tell that person what will happen. That little boy so fiercely protected is now so grown and smart, so gifted, so himself. That another little boy would come, marvelous himself, with a marriage that is not picture-perfect, but perfectly suited, to someone I saw in my dreams long ago as a child. Summer nights sleeping out with the stars and the crickets and the rain on the tent lulling us all to sleep. That there are classrooms full of lively, funny, wonderful kids. Good friends, great friends. That this person's life will be so different, so good, so full of flavor and sustenance.

Would that have been true for Mr. Ritchenson. I would have loved to have been able to tell him.

I truly believe, my friends, we have infinite chances. We do have infininte possibilities to find what we need, what we love; who we need and who we love: to find home.

"Set a course...for home."

Captain Janeway, Endgame (Star Trek: Voyager)











http://www.wga.hu/support/viewer/z.html

Through a Glass Darkly; or, How I Did On My Presentation

Last Thursday was our last day of our summer session class. We took a final; the professor passed out our grades for our presentations.

Yes anyway, how did that go?

Dear reader, I must begin the account by telling you that I am inordinately excited by the implications one can glean from spending time with Gardner's multiple intelligence theory. Really, really excited. Eight different ways to be intelligent. Eight. (Gardner now cops to 8.5: waiting for more hard data on the intelligence he calls existential)

What else?

The theory posits that each and every one of us possesses each and every intelligence. This isn't up for speculation, it is a given. A given! How beautifully generous is that? Every person has it all. It's hardwired within the brain.

Great, yes! What is even greater is to consider the other part of this axiom: each intelligence operates as a separate modality. Each has its own input that it alone can process; and indeed, it is the presence of the input for which it is wired that activates that particular intelligence.

So of course, I am really, really excited for many reasons.

As I have the pleasure of sharing a classroom with children who are not "neurotypical," this knowledge, this familiarity of the nature of intelligences as laid out by Gardner, in conjunction with the knowledge that all the intelligences can and will be activated in some capacity, given the proper input---it is as if MI theory is the "cash on the barrelhead," the insurance, if you will, that backs up what we as teachers believe about our students: they are smart, they are special, and they will succeed.

Operating with Gardner's theory as home base, our students can believe us when we say that they can and will be great students. We're putting our money where our mouths are when we meet our students "where they are," and provide an environment that allows their unique intelligence profiles the most fitting expression. It's not a matter of speculation or faith; it's a given. There is a lot of relief in that, and in that, a release from pressure: a lot of lovely, lovely room in which to expand and explore.

Operating with Gardner's theory as home base, we have a construct with which to advocate for our students to others who do not know our students in the same ways that we do. Simply put, there are many in public schools who are lacking the confidence to be able to meet our kids where they are. Appy a label to a student, and that label can nag and pick away at our feelings of efficacy in relating to that student. Apply a label of autism, I've found, and this effect is often greatly exacerbated. MI theory is beautifully suited to shifting our thinking from labels and concerns about our abilities to thinking about how a student's intelligences manifest. It shifts our thinking to the student's abilities, not our own.

So of course, when I presented this paper, my heart rate was already up, for I'm just so excited about MI theory. My cello intro was full of vibrato, but it came from my bow hand. Time seemed to go very quickly. I talked, and did my slide presentation on the big screen. I was very excited about the ideas. At one point, and I believe this is what happened, two sentences hybridized themselves in my brain: "we give our students expectations," and "we set expectations for our students," and what I did in fact say was that "we give our students sex."

(Oh, really, Neroli. Way to go. Not.)

I tried to do my best to be articulate. Everyone seemed to regard me with a neutral to bored expression. No one but the professor had comments or questions when I was finished. I didn't feel positively or negatively about the presentation: just empty, as if I had taken such a large breath, and had left it all out slowly. So when my friend the Artist FKAPW asked me about the presentation, I truly didn't know what to say.

So it was with trepidation that I looked at my grade on Thursday night. It was an "A." The professor noted that he liked the use of the cello, the pacing was good, my answers to his questions were well thought out, and he liked the point of MI theory as a way to enable students to have power within the classroom environment.

I was surprised. But glad. And glad to know that I still have some work to do when it comes to perception.

It is another beautiful sunny day here, as it has been for some days. Yesterday as my Little Guy and I went to sit on the back stoop by the apple tree to wait for his brother, the Big Guy, to join us, LG said, well, let's just sit out here and enjoy ourselves.

Yes, I said, let's do. You do, too, dear reader.

Kiss Me Goodnite, Eddie!

Dear reader, I spent most of today writing my term paper that is due tomorrow. Since I am also required to present the paper tomorrow evening, I made a PowerPoint slide presentation as well.

The slide show is so that the people in the class have something to look at other than myself, dear reader, for I am pretty well petrified of the thought of giving this presentation.

As I am wont to have props and manipulatives on hand, most especially in front of a room of adults, I am enlisting my cello to be my service prop.

My presentation is on "Integrating Multiple Intelligence Theory with the Basic Student Needs of Belonging, Power, and Achievement."

8 human intelligences. We all have each and every one of them in some measure.
Like the notes of an octave.

We all have our own intelligence profile, unique and unlike no other.
How many songs can be made? I'll play snippets from a few oldies but goodies for you.


Our intelligences are made manifest in the pursuit of goals, and in the context of the pursuit.
I'm glad that you like the Ode to Joy chorus as well; I'm sorry you don't agree with my choice to play a riff from Pop Goes the Weasel at the end!

Borge, Gardner, Wences: I'll be imagining they are there in the room.


So much better than picturing people in their underwear.
members.aol.com/dwmyers/images/senorwences.jpg