Chorus of Cacophony

Friday, July 30, 2021

Sharing

It’s been three years or so since I’ve posted, so I guess I’m really not that big on sharing here. I’ve been wondering about this ability, this desire, this expectation to share in social media lately.

I started this blog several years ago as a way to document things in an egotistically attempt to entomb my personal space-time for my progeny. But my progeny will not have or take their time to fool with all of this; they will be interested and involved in their own immediacy.

Which brings me to this need to share here.

I used to think it was selfish to impose my ideas into a forum that may be preserved into the future, and now I wonder if it is now selfish to refuse to impose my digital life into the digital world.

Is it selfish for me to simply sit here and feel the wind and watch these birds and listen to the insects and simply soak in the broader same with my individual senses and somehow hope that others are doing a similar thing in their worlds?

Could the sharing of our experience be created by inhaling and remembering this world through our perceptions instead of eternally expelling it into electronica?

Instead of spending hours flipping and flipping and flipping through the flat colors and noise of temporary handheld entertainment could we instead simply share the wholeness of our lives through every glance we give the pupils of others- be they our loved ones or strangers? Would it be too honest and too vulnerable to expose our souls into the eyes of each other as we meet along our paths instead of looking down into our private worlds of blackened glass?

Well, absolutely! That’s why I will post these words here instead of turning off this phone, getting up out of this chair, and doing the things that make me sweat.

It’s interesting to see the things we share online though. I really like to know what’s going on with my friends and relatives and even strangers. Do all these things matter to me? Or does it matter to folks that I soak up their online worlds and appreciate them the way I would like them to appreciate me?

I think I’ve already spent too much time on this and I need to go cut some firewood for the winter, although the winter is getting warmer and the need for wood is lessened.

Sigh. I think the thing that makes me ponder this so heavily is the fact that the school where I have been teaching for over 20 years is celebrating a very fine young man as he enters his new life in professional basketball (and I celebrate him too and I’m proud of him for that), and yet I have not seen a similar extent of celebration for the young woman who just completed an advanced degree at an ivy league university, or of those who have become physicians, engineers, nurses, mechanics, laborers, musicians, artists, teachers…

And then I think that maybe it is up to me to celebrate them, and that I am just too lazy to do so.

And that is the truth of the sloth that I see within the soul of my own eyes as I stare into my selves within the mirror.

Laziness.

But enough of this.

It is time to cut the wood, and to sweat.

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Perspective

(created for submission to The Webb School's faculty/Staff blog)

Perspective.

I guess a more appropriate title for this would be “Splatter Painting,“ as it will tend to go all over the place, but I hope that it eventually wraps up in some meaningful direction.

When we approach perspective lessons in the Art I class, we usually begin with one point perspective, as it tends to be easier to comprehend and imitate. Most of the compositions studied converge their structural shapes into a single point of origin. From there we may move to two point and multi-point perspective. You are probably familiar with the cliché cityscape where the walls of buildings diverge in opposite directions. As we walk down the city street, we will be presented with a multitude of combinations and variations of perspectives, but when we return from our stroll to tell others about our journey we will share it from our singular point of view.

Right now I have quite a view, as I’m sitting on a big pile of dirt that rises from the top of a hill that is overlooking the Nashville Basin. I can see for miles on this clear December day. I can make out Mufreesboro for sure, Smyrna in the distance, and then if I pretend just a little bit, I think I can see the Batman building. That may be more of a belief than a fact, because I can’t really see it, but I know it’s there. At least it was there the last time I was in Nashville.

This is a special pile of dirt though. I call it the Mound of Knowledge. I like to think it began as a conceptual earth work similar to the likes of Smithson, but that’s just a lot of hubris. It actually started with a student, Tianlang (Ron) Gao. He graduated in 2015. I think any faculty member who remembers Ron will recall him as a model of the accurate scholar that we aspire to create and celebrate at The Webb School.

At the time of his graduation Ron asked if I would “do something with” his class notes. He said he had worked hard on them and couldn’t bear to just throw them in the trash. I said, “Sure! I can burn them in a pyre! I like to burn stuff up!” “Oh no!” he said. Ron didn’t like the thought of them being destroyed, and so I told him that I could bury them. I could put them in the earthwork that I was thinking about building, and thus combine those two ideas.

Ron came to my house with boxes of meticulously organized notes. The instructor’s words in each class had been carefully written, kept in chronological order, placed into crisp envelopes and sealed with a wrap of string. Each folder was carefully labeled with the name of the respective course. If one wished, she could start at the beginning of the first folder, study Ron’s notes until they understood it all, and walk away from that pile of information with the equivalent of a summa cum laude diploma!

So I took Ron’s notes and laid them by a tree, preserving them as best I could, and covered them with dirt. Over the years that dirt pile has grown. I add to it from time to time, and as it grows I can see further and further from the top of it.

This leads me back to perspective, and the knowledge that we gain from the information that we embrace, the understanding that it can provide, and how it may affect our point of view. Mr. LR Smith often reads a passage from the Bible (or The Message) that has to do with understanding. I don’t think it is Proverbs 3:5, but that verse is potent, and although it is somewhat polar to my own viewpoint, I respect its intent to instill respect and humble ourselves. I tend toward Proverbs 4:6-7 myself. But I may be taking these scriptures out of their original context. Such context is sometimes hard to ascertain.

We hear the Christian viewpoint nearly every day in Chapel. Students often mention their desire to hear the views of other religions and philosophies. When they say this I encourage them to “take a hand in that game”, and offer to make a short presentation or daily reading themselves, and thankfully, some of them do! Sometimes I wonder if we would be reading from the Torah if Old Sawney happened to be Jewish, the Quran if he was Muslim, the Vedas if he was Hindu, the Book of Mormon if he was Mormon, the Sutras if he was Buddhist, or read from any of the other sacred texts if he happened to follow that particular faith.

But, Sawney held Christian Chapels, and we continue to emphasize that point of view today. The other day a Christian group came to Chapel to distribute New Testaments. They represented an organization called the Gideons. During their introduction, the speaker made reference to Gideon and his devotion to God, and how Gideon was taking care of the task at hand as led by his God. But the speaker didn’t mention exactly what the task at hand was, and so I looked it up. God was tasking Gideon to kill all of the Midianites. And this troubled me. I thought of the conflicts, past and present, that have arisen due to the differences in our religious perspectives.

And that reminded me of the program I had heard a few days before called the Hidden Brain. The name of the episode was “Creating God”:

“For most of human history, we lived in small groups of about 50 people. Everyone knew everybody. If you told a lie, stole someone's dinner, or failed to defend the group against its enemies, there was no way to disappear into the crowd. Everyone knew you, and you would get punished.

But in the last 12,000 years or so, human groups began to expand. It became more difficult to identify and punish the cheaters and free riders. So we needed something big — really big. An epic force that could see what everyone was doing, and enforce the rules. That force, according to social psychologist Azim Shariff, was the popular idea of a "supernatural punisher" – also known as God.”

This idea springs from a study that found that:

“Fear of supernatural punishment may serve as a deterrent to counternormative behavior, even in anonymous situations free from human social monitoring. The authors conducted two studies to test this hypothesis, examining the relationship between cheating behavior in an anonymous setting and views of God as loving and compassionate, or as an angry and punishing agent. Overall levels of religious devotion or belief in God did not directly predict cheating. However, viewing God as a more punishing, less loving figure was reliably associated with lower levels of cheating. This relationship remained after controlling for relevant personality dimensions, ethnicity, religious affiliation, and gender.”

The results of this scientific study disturbed me the most. Does it really take the threat of punishment to force us to be better humans? The study concludes:

“…that the connection between religion, measured as an individual difference variable, and counternormative behavior is more complex than simply finding relationships with trait religiosity. The current research is consistent with the prior findings that overall religiosity is unrelated to cheating but supports the hypothesis that belief in fearsome punishing supernatural agents—mean gods—does predict more honest behavior in anonymous situations.”

We’re all free to look at science and choose to accept it and try to understand it as we wish, or not. I guess you could say the same thing about religion, but the scientist constantly tries to interpret the evidence in front of her and explain it in an understandable manner. I appreciate this attempt at objectively seeking Truth.

But getting back to perspective, and the point I should be making, because writings like this must have a point, right?

My current perspective is based on my view as I sit upon this big absurd pile of dirt. I scan the horizon for the points of origin, and all I can I see is haze, but it’s a haze that unifies earth and sky.

And somehow that makes me wonder if all of the religions in the world could ever converge into such a glorious haze, one that unites our multitude of individual, linear perspectives into one horizon of common Goodness. Until that time, I hope we shall attempt to perceive each other’s perspectives, and do so with respect and genuine effort toward understanding.

Proverbs 4:23-27

“Above all else, guard your heart,

for everything you do flows from it.

Keep your mouth free of perversity;

keep corrupt talk far from your lips.

Let your eyes look straight ahead;

fix your gaze directly before you.

Give careful thought to the paths for your feet

and be steadfast in all your ways.

Do not turn to the right or the left;

keep your foot from evil.”

Mike Quinn

18 December, 2018

(References are included in the hyperlinked text.)

Monday, May 29, 2017

Selfish

I don't know why I am tending more and more to not recognize, or absolutely ignore, opportunities to assist others when I can.

I'd like to say I'm becoming older are more tired and oblivious, but I am really just becoming more selfish.

A good turn is needed.

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May 31 -

And as it usually and serendipitously goes, the very next day we faculty are asked to read "UnSelfie" over the summer:

https://books.google.com/books/about/UnSelfie.html?id=dD-1DAEACAAJ&hl=en

Monday, March 20, 2017

Many things happen...

...and I am too lazy to write about them.

I put some of them on Facebook, like my Dad's passing, but I don't know that it matters either way.

Life goes on, whether or not I attempt to preserve it here.

And that's what matters.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Dress Coded

Patrick Bassett, President of the National Association of Independent Schools, began an article back in 2009 with the following:

“At the NAIS Institute for New Heads each year, I give school leaders a wry piece of advice: “If something goes terribly askew at school, and you need to buy time to rectify it before your parent body finds out, suggest a change to the dress code. This tactic will keep parents distracted for at least 18 months in dress-code debates, giving you plenty of time to quietly fix the problem.”

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This morning I heard someone say “Not all of you are turning kids in (for dress code violations)...”

I guess I am not doing my job. I have not “turned anyone in” for dress code violations in quite a while. Not ever, really, that I can recall.

I have asked students to tuck in shirts and button buttons from time to time, but I hate to think I am shirking my responsibilities as a teacher for not imposing a penalty that may accumulate in a demerit for wayward dress violations. In all honesty, I usually just don’t see them.

Now, I have to tell you, I like human bodies. I like looking at them. They are the coolest thing to draw and paint, and I appreciate the bulbous and the billowy as much as the slender and the graceful. I usually just don’t pay that much attention to how they are covered, or not (Victoria’s Secret and Men’s Fitness notwithstanding).

I honestly do not understand all the fuss about dress code, unless it is indeed meant as a distraction, a diversion to prevent us from noticing something more substantive that should be addressed.

But if we are going to require a dress code, and especially uniforms, then we should, indeed be uniform. Let’s all wear robes, similar to Monks.

Thick black robes in winter, and thin white robes in summer.

We can even be naked underneath...who will know the difference? I’m naked under the clothes I wear everyday anyway.

But if we do so, let us hope the winds never blow in a wayward direction. Gods forbid the visible body.

Then Bassett went on to say:

“Next July, for the new group of school heads, I’m going to add a similar strategy for keeping the faculty preoccupied: “If you need to implement a change that would normally cause gnashing of teeth and drawing of battle lines among your teachers, do it after you form a task force to study changing the compensation system to a merit-pay model. The faculty will be so annoyed and preoccupied by the merit-pay proposal that the other change will seem minor by comparison.”

Funny. That seems vaguely relatable as well...

http://www.nais.org/Magazines-Newsletters/ISMagazine/Pages/Change-Leadership.aspx

http://www.nais.org/Articles/Pages/100-Ways-To-Promote-Character-Education.aspx

Dress code is no. 88

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/16/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/17Runiforms.html?pagewanted=print&_r=0

http://www.marshallschool.org/uploaded/Shared_Portal_Documents/14-15_School_Year/Dress_Code_2014.pdf

Saturday, August 9, 2014

Teach like a Monkey!

Or, you can teach like:

a Champion.

a Rockstar.

a Pirate.

a Peace Corp Volunteer

a Techie.

it's Summer

Your hair is on fire.

or even (gods forbid) YOU!!

This post is in response to a requirement that I implement 3-5 of Doug Lemov's "Teach Like a Champion" techniques in my classroom. In truth, I already implement many of them, but do not do so consciously or consistently.

Although I am not opposed to exposure to and consideration of the effective teaching methods of others, I am vehemently opposed to being told exactly how I must teach, even when the tactics are administratively implemented in minuscule increments.

Sure, the effort here is to make me a better teacher, and I'm all for becoming better, but I will not be treated like a trained monkey, and I refuse to treat my students as such.

http://www.chicagonow.com/white-rhino/2011/09/this-school-year-dont-teach-like-a-champion/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-chaltain/how-to-really-teach-like-_b_813853.html

http://dianeravitch.net/2014/02/13/ex-kipp-teacher-why-i-could-not-teach-like-a-champion/

http://numberwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/06/08/the-problems-with-lemovs-teach-like-a-champion/

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/dec10/vol68/num04/Book-Review.aspx

http://www.edweek.org/forums/education-week-teacher-book-club_education-week-teacher-book-club_teach-like-champion-doug-lemov

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html?pagewanted=9&_r=1&

http://www.amazon.com/ss/customer-reviews/0470550473/ref=?_encoding=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

This could go on and on, and so it goes.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

It’s only a dream. (Reykjavic, 7 July 2014)

I was standing less than twenty feet from Neil Young and Crazy Horse (Rick Rosas stood in for the healing Billy Talbot ) with my wife and new friends. Here we were, in Iceland, at a small venue, right in front of the stage, right in front of Poncho, with Neil cranking away a few feet to our right. This was only my sixth time to see Neil, and the first to be on the rail.

The dream was passing before my eyes and through my ears, I was soaking it in, but earlier I was distracted but my desire to contribute to a greater community; to somehow pay a self imposed debt to those dedicated souls who have devoted themselves to the love of all things Neil, sharing so much over the years.

How could I provide anything of importance to folks who have Neil data spilling out of their pores? I can’t even remember the names of songs, much less what was played when or with whom or what instrument was used and whatnot. All I wanted to do was let the music and the moment flow through me, but I also wanted to gift the experience to those who could not be here. I had two things in mind, to present a Memorial and to memorialize the moments.

The Memorial was simple; a shirt, a logo of the Human Highway. I pretended that it represented the Man who seemed to me to be totally devoted to sharing the life and principles of Neil Young with the world. He ran a server out of Germany that he called Cortez. It hosted websites mostly dedicated to Neil Young and his antics. I never met the Host in person, but he impressed me with his ability to act as a gentle ganglion in a global network, with the clever and compassionate skills that synthesized and disseminated information and opinions in a manner that humans of extreme diversity would allow to flow into and out of each other.

He had passed away earlier in the year.

I had a t-shirt that bore the design that He seemed to cherish; a design He used when He worked with others to unite virtual veterans of the Human Highway at a real place in real time, last summer in Minnesota. He flew across the ocean to meet and be with his friends.

I wanted to be close enough that Neil and the other band members could see the image well enough to read “Human Highway”. I had no idea if they were even aware that the dedicated group existed, but I knew the band would at least know the song, and since it’s all the same... I pretended the Image would be looking back at them and appreciating the opportunity to be there.

I heard about online listserves from someone I was standing next to during the Crazy Horse appearance at Bonnaroo 2003. She kept yelling, "Billy! Billy!" and I was impressed that she knew the names of band members other than Neil. I had always just listened to Neil’s music, my main source since high school, but I had never paid much attention to everyone else involved. I wasn’t, and still am not, a Rustie. She told me about the Human Highway.

So I joined the Human Highway backed then, and just lurked. Folks talked about Neil stuff and other stuff as well. I eventually fizzled away, but rejoined in 2013 and paid more attention. I joined a couple of other lists and such but never really dove in with anything of substance. Human Highway seemed more human oriented and meandering, whereas other sites appeared to be more objective and strictly Neil based. I was most impressed with the sense of community and belonging that seemed to drive participation, in addition to all things Neil and offshoot topics.

The Human Highway took a hiatus when its gracious Host passed away.

I stayed up until 4 am the previous February to purchase tickets when they went on sale. I was right on it when they opened it up, but tickets were still on sale the day before the concert.

Even so, we only arrived 45 minutes early and were still about twelfth in line outside the venue. We met folks from Norway who were following the tour for several more shows, and we became friends. When the doors opened, the Security guard was hesitant to take our printed paper tickets, and I anxiously waited on his decision while others filed past. He eventually let us in and we made our way to the floor. By then the center was taken but there were good spots on either side. I was amazed to be on the front row.

Presenting the Memorial was easy enough; I just had to stand with my over-shirt open so the design on my chest was in full view. Collecting the visual memory was to be more complicated.

I knew Neil did not like the distraction of constant fidgeting with cameras and phones, and who wants to watch a concert from behind someone else’s screen? So I figured I could just use a head mounted Gopro, backed up with a Bloggie in my shirt pocket. The Gopro looks ridiculous, but these gadgets would not block anyone else’s view. I used it at Lockn’ and Rick nodded at it with a smile while Pegi sang. No one seemed to mind it. I could hopefully record a presentable version of the show to share with those who were there in heart but could not make the trip. I knew others would be in the audience to take care of this as well, but I had a front row access!

But my plan to gather and share this show was quickly shattered by tight security. Our experience of Iceland up until the concert indicated a loose and organic social flow with very few worries about rules. Folks seemed to just get along. I knew some venues allowed recording, especially large festivals, but this was a small indoor venue. I had asked someone in line if cameras were allowed, and he answered, “As long as it’s not a good one…”

Anyway, I did not try to hide the cameras and security lost no time in telling me no video was allowed, not even photos. So I put the Gopro away. Gopros are obnoxious for sure, but I was sorry to lose the potential. The Bloggie took HD video and fit in my shirt pocket so I figured I would still try to use it. The only problem was that I couldn’t check the view on the screen without causing suspicion by security. Theguards were immediately on top of anyone with a camera in the first two rows. I was never sure if I had properly turned it on to record, much less if the field of view was capturing the band.

All of this was of no matter as the Neil and the band entered the stage.

Poncho was right in front of us, all smiles and love.

Rick stood toward the back, but ventured up now and again.

Ralph and the singers were almost hidden.

Neil thrashed enough to wander in front of us a bit as he played.

I just let it wash over me, but tried to remember to hold my shirt open.

I could have buttoned it to stabilize the camera, but the Memorial was more important than the memorializing.

Such a strange and superstitious thing, now that I think of it, but somehow I hope that the Host was with us.

It was over all too soon, and Neil and the band were on their way to Ireland, England, Turkey...

When I got home and checked the video it was all askew.

When the Horse got to Germany, they played Cortez.

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