free hand ...hold on...reach

Orchid - read from the roots up.

2012-02-23T20:43:00.013-08:00

I bought this orchid for Beth. Kind of a combo valentine/birthday gift. It came with a poem. This is not that poem, but it came from that poem. For one thing, the original was written right side up. I started with the idea of a reed like visual form and nothing else really, except a light and loose meditation on cycles of bloom, decay, and regeneration. Then I decided to post the poem but when I returned to the text, I got intrigued by the idea of my poem growing up into the white space above it. If you think it's hard to read this way, I can only say that it's not easy getting word processor to help write in this manner either. I doubt I'll ever try this again. What that I'll leave you to it - remember you're at the end of it right here.

By Kevin Cahill 2/23/12

comes

early

too

always

dying,

always

coming,

always

late,

too

forever

never,

now,

cracking

and

crowned

head

bowed

empire,

infinite

shouldering

moment

little

below,

earth

the

husband

but

moon

nor

sun

neither

stem

leave

root,

things

All

things.

all

pour

Out

out.

coming

the

this,

only

nothing -

for

all

and

absolute,

time

tuned

perfectly,

pitched

less,

word

Up,

vanity.

perfect

so,

just

fast,

colors

the

cast,

all

dyes

their

air,

the

beetling

barely,

come

they

Out

side.

seminated

nately

fested

dirt,

terred

dark,

demented

tendrils,

cased

hard

ert

like,

death

life,

Less

earth.

credulous

the

enough

deep

just

buried

and

razed

sun

ous

bulb-

hands,

callous

ground

under

depressed

and

dressed

stemmed

seamed

curtain,

garish

slow

the

length

Then,

reason.

any

yond

be-

lovely,

lilting,

laden,

season,

full

end,

the

run,

long

full,

grace

yet

gaudy

budding,

orgasmic

Then,

plasm.

rapt

demurely

hues,

harlequin

dipped

brush

turned

stem

comes,

Early

Orchid

The joy of receiving

2012-01-02T11:47:00.000-08:00

A lot of smiles this year. Tess loves her doll, Beth loves her pillows, Erin loves her siblings (and "her" cat?), Colm loves carving soap into snowmen and xmas trees...and flying his helicopter. I too love my new cordless drill.

This and that

2011-12-10T14:54:00.001-08:00

Getting the firewood in.

We painted and recarpeted our bedroom which meant sleeping in the dining room for a couple of nights. It was like camping out.
Beth has been learning the banjo for one year now...she's been playing on a borrowed instrument all that time. I found a nice one for her last week on Ebay...a bit of a gamble but I actually managed to get some pretty solid info on both the seller and the banjo before pulling the trigger. This is her playing it right out of the box.

Remember Me?

2011-12-04T21:53:00.000-08:00

I used to blog almost every day... I read today that according to some researchers we have two minds, the experiencing mind and the remembering mind. The experiencing mind registers happy (and sad) moments as they occur whereas the remembering mind derives satisfaction from achievements completed. I've been busy experiencing happy things but have very little to show for it and am hence deeply unsatisfied with my accomplishments as family documentarian. So it goes...
I shall recommence with a single image to serve as the tip of the iceberg that was our weekend. More to follow.

Bootstrap bullcrap

2011-10-25T17:14:00.000-07:00

This photo has been making the rounds recently amongst critics of the OWS movement.
It purports to represent the story of a "bootstrap" college student and to juxtapose his/her work ethic with the whining, petulant, and pampered children purported to be the chief constituency of OWP. The only problem with the bootstrap story told in the photo is that it is pure bull. There's a detailed take down of it in Persephone Magazine, an online magazine, here, but let me just summarize the essentials in the article for you.

Lets start with the cost of a college degree. Here's the bill for Jane Doe for four years at the University of Washington (a moderately priced public school). In all cases the numbers represent low ball estimates.

tuition (in state): $42,300 (4 yrs)
rent : $460/month (not counting summers) $16,520
utilities: $5o/month $1,800
phone: $45/month $2,160 (no cable tv or internet fees are included)
bus pass (no car or car insurance) $76/quarter $912
food: $200/month $7,200 (not counting summer months)
books/supplies: $1,035/year $4,140 (according to UW)
health insurance: $502/quarter 6,024
total cost of 4 years at UW: $81,056 (no car, no new clothes, no eating out, no films, no trips, no haircuts, no emergency expenses, $75,030 if parents pay medical insurance)

Now, how does bootstrap Jane pay for this?
According to her sign on the photo she works 30 hours/week. Never mind that this is a very high number - give her the benefit of the doubt. Washington's minimum wage is $8.67/hour. If we give her 52 weeks per year that comes to $11,472/year or $45,891 for all four years. A little over half the entire bill.

But here's the part that doesn't hold up. Jane says on her sign that she got "decent grades" in high school and landed two scholarships that pay 90 percent of her tuition. I'm not sure what "decent" means but I think it's fair to say that getting 90 percent of one's tuition paid for someone in that category is very much the exception and not the rule for students with "decent" grades.

Chew on these figures (again from the article):
The UW says that it gave out $15 million in academic scholarships to a total of 2,700 students last year (that's 10 percent of the student population - UW has 27,000 undergrads enrolled). If you distributed that money equally amongst that 10 percent of the student body, that would amount to about $5,000/person or roughly half of the tuition costs at UW. This is not of course how the money is distributed. A select few may get something close to a full ride, meaning that the rest get less, considerably less. Let's be clear about who we're talking about. We're talking about the top ten percent, students who were deemed academically distinguished. The vast majority of that group are looking at a four year bill in the neighborhood of at least $20,000, probably much higher. The rest of the students, the other 90 percent, are going to pay out of their pocket, or their parents' pockets.

According to UW the midrange GPA group of incoming freshmen is 3.6 - 3.9 . Obviously, getting "decent grades" can get you into UW but it is not all likely that it will get you any academic scholarship money. Obviously, for the average and above average college student, a sizable debt is, unfortunately not a function of character or work ethic, it is rather a statistical probability. And let's not forget that we have not even begun to factor in the costs of graduate school where costs have risen as fast if not faster.

None of this is meant to disparage the example of someone who has worked hard and earned a degree without going into debt; rather, it is to call bullshit on the notion that someone who ends up with a ton of college debt is by definition a slacker and, worse, a whiner. The self congratulatory tone of that sign suggests a pretty shallow and self absorbed view of things.
K

Pairs to draw to

2011-10-16T20:12:00.000-07:00

Starting to get some actual housework out of the young'uns!

Occupy Wall Street...What are they so upset about?

2011-10-14T16:34:00.000-07:00

Maybe not all or even most of them can give a coherent response to that question but that doesn't mean America doesn't have a fundamental problem in dire need of attention. Try this quote from Henry Blodget,

The problem in a nutshell is this: Inequality in this country has hit a level that has been seen only once in the nation's history, and unemployment has reached a level that has been seen only once since the Great Depression. And, at the same time, corporate profits are at a record high.

If you think that's just the rhetoric of class warfare, perhaps you might find
the charts on this link a bit harder to dismiss.

Finally, a shout out to some local people who got busy with their sign making and sloganeering and then took a walk yesterday to Greg Walden's La Grande office and then to the Wells Fargo bank. Here's a four minute clip of their shenanigans.

3rd and 5th grade.

2011-10-05T19:37:00.000-07:00

A little retroactive updating of recent milestones.

Lighter than air

2011-10-05T16:52:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday late afternoon. Lazing around. Hearing Beth and Tess hammer out Heart and Soul. Seeing Colm from a slightly different angle as he methodically measures the gravity of a plastic pint crate versus the lift of a helium balloon coupled with the boost of a breath of air.

As unlikely as it may seem, I remember having the distinct impression at that moment that everyone (including me and the dog) could not be better engaged anywhere else doing anything else other than what we were doing right there, right then.

Silver Liight, Golden Water

2011-08-16T17:56:00.000-07:00

One last camping trip to close out the summer.

This time we spent two nights under a

gibbous moon and

two days sounding out the golden waters of the Wallowa River. I managed to slip away downstream to do some fly fishing.

I haven't done much fishing in recent times so the electric jolt of a 12 inch rainbow hitting my line and then cresting beyond the river's surface was almost more fun than I had remembered.

Beth fixed them up and we ate like royalty.

Beth took paints and brushes down to the river bank and Tess and Colm

painted rocks with strange symbols almost like runes and hid them as buried treasure. Their minds are currently in the thrall of wizardry and swarming in their imagination is the notion that even the strangest stories might well be true.

Much of their reading and viewing (Harry Potter,

Calvin and Hobbes, Over Sea Under Stone, and Avatar: the Last Air Bender) has nourished this appetite for the fantastic,

but it is first and foremost the emblem of childhood. Beth and I feel so fortunate to witness its flowering before our eyes. A recent ransacking of Beth's childhood things unearthed a ouija board. Tess and Colm have since been peppering it with questions and have come by intelligence from the future that great things await each of them. In the meantime, while at camp Tess thought to ask the board if it would give them a thousand dollars. The next thing we knew both kids were exiting the tent trailer excitedly saying something about a trash can. They returned empty handed and sought clarification from Father Time (that is what the ouija board calls itself, they claim). Off again they ran, this time saying something about the "third trash can of a neighbor". Once more they returned empty handed and a little deflated. I said to Colm that it seemed pretty unlikely that a ouija board could find you a thousand dollars; if so, everyone would be doing it. Colm replied that some things that happen today have to become legends much later on. I didn't even want to contest that one. Wasn't it me who told them that very day that you can't catch a fish if you don't cast something out onto the water?

Showtime

2011-08-14T08:45:00.000-07:00

Tess and Colm both had some nice opportunities this summer to showcase things they've been working and playing at.

For Colm it is soccer. He has fallen in love with the game and shows indications that he might be good at it too, though he's still only eight. Still, he sees the field better than most of the kids in his cohort and he shows some imagination with his passing. He has a pretty formidable right foot, scoring several goals with balls driven into the upper reaches of the net. He runs with enthusiasm and isn't shy about mixing it up though he is not aggressive by temperament. Mostly he has a big grin on his face whenever he comes off the field, as if to say, man that was fun. Coaching Colm is a pretty easy and rewarding experience. He likes to practice and he's receptive to suggestions. One game in which we were handling the other team pretty decisively, we sent Colm in to midfield the fourth quarter with the condition that he promise not to score, but that he set up his teammates for shots. Colm handled the situation flawlessly. He's such a good heart.

Tess has gotten a chance to learn the fundamentals of horse showmanship in the local 4H club. Beth, and her parents, Charlotte and Warner, have been instrumental in this experience as they have been down this path before when Beth and her brother did this some thirty odd years ago. For Tess this has been a real challenge of several dimensions. Stormy has not always inspired feelings of confidence in Tess and their relationship remains one that is a work in progress. Nevertheless, the two of them were on their best behavior at the county fair, a feat made all the more remarkable by the behavior of two other horses in her class. The kids were standing in line before the judge at the very beginning of the competition when suddenly one of the horses dropped to the ground and began rolling in the dirt like a big dog. The ten year old holding her was at a loss what to do in the face of the flailing hooves and billowing dust; then, suddenly a second horse did the same thing. From the stands it looked like the entire class might devolve into chaos, and we watched Tess and Stormy with apprehension while a couple of adults entered the ring to help the two kids with the delinquent horses. Tess moved Stormy deftly into the center of the ring and kept her under control. Very poised. As for the competition, here it is.

Beth was on pins and needles throughout. When the loudspeaker announced that Tess has won the class and earned a return to the championship round later, everyone including Tess was surprised and delighted. The championship round was an eye opener for Tess. They were asked to do some things that she and Stormy struggled with, but Tess persisted and completed the pattern. She got a chance to watch some very capable girls handle their horses.

June July recap

2011-07-31T10:25:00.000-07:00

My blogging practice has become consistently sporadic. As the kids grow older, our time together is both more consuming and less documented. Fewer photos get taken, often the camera is left behind. What you'll find here are shots from June and July, a potpourri of summer images that contain the shards of a summer family narrative. Images of home life and excursions into the outdoors. Sorry, there's no answer key provided.
K
one glaring omission, no soccer photos of Colm or Farmers Market shots of Beth...working on that

advice to graduates: fitting a job into a life's work

2011-06-11T17:01:00.000-07:00

I attended La Grande High School's commencement ceremony yesterday. In his remarks to the graduates, the superintendent made a comment that seemed innocuous enough but which roiled around in my brain and caused me to scribble on the back of my program much of what follows. He said that people should look for a job that they will like because it is important to love your work. On the surface, it's a harmless enough suggestion. I do think that there are such things as dream jobs, yet I find it to be a rather naive if not disingenuous proposition - namely that everyone has a dream job awaiting them out there if they can only find it. Young people probably know in their bones that this is untrue, and that what is going on is a kind of ritual fiction being palmed off from one generation to the next. I think we owe them a somewhat more hardheaded and honest appraisal of what awaits them after graduation. Here's what I think.

It is impossible for everyone of you to find a job you will love, but a few of you will. You lucky ones will experience how a job can become a vocation and, over time, a career and a life's work. But the rest of you will more likely lead a kind of divided life wherein you work at a job and while you nurture a vocation outside that job. A calling to some lifelong endeavor or purpose is an integral part to a person's sense of well being, but it is likely not to be found in the workplace. And so most of you are about to commence a pursuit of at least two distinct goals: one of working to support your life and another of surviving that work in order to live as fully as possible.

To admit this is the case is, I think, the only honest way to confront the constraining realities life will impose on each of you as you chart a course forward. What awaits you is work. Your labor, your talent, your ideas, your energy, your time will be traded for wages. The terms may or may not always be to your liking, and the work itself may be tedious or seem pointless or distasteful. You almost certainly will cast around for other work, better work if you are lucky. Changing jobs will become a kind of education in itself as you canvas the geography of the workplace and see how other people become lodged in certain jobs. You will compare their lot with your own; in every job you hold, you will try to imagine what it would mean to go to work for year after year after year. These thought experiments will very likely alarm you.

In my opinion, you should not be afraid of work. I believe there is dignity in all honest work. You earn self respect from doing work well, and you acquire a hard won sense of the value of things by getting a paycheck. But you should never confuse a job with your purpose in life. Trade your honest labor in good faith, but spend your spirit on what you love. You are not a tool; you have aspirations, and what you love defines you far better than what you earn.

For many of you the margins of time outside of work - lunch time, the weekends, the evenings, holidays - will become sacred to you. Do not fritter these times away, for it is outside the boundaries of the workplace where you will most likely discover your life's work, your true career, and as long as you are committed to this project, you will find that your job, whatever it is, will serve and support your life but not define it utterly. By contrast your career, may not pay the bills and it may not be a full time gig, but it will sustain you in ways your job cannot. In time it may even embolden or enable you to transform your job into something more than it was.

There is no guarantee that you will land your dream job, far from it. If you do not, you will be like most of the rest of us here today. But something unique and deeply satisfying awaits each of you if you have the wherewithal to pursue it. That something is your career. Don't let a job obscure the importance of that pursuit.
K

Looking up

2011-06-02T18:03:00.000-07:00

Running amok Memorial Day weekend

2011-06-01T20:26:00.000-07:00

Heidi hit her stride over the weekend. Was it the scent of wildflowers?

Ambushed by Heidi

2011-05-22T08:21:00.000-07:00

Before coming home from Walla Walla last Saturday we dropped by the animal shelter there. Here is who was waiting for us there. Can't tell you one fact about her parentage...she was abandoned and had been at the pound for a month. She's about four months old. Vet guesses she might hit 40 pounds full grown. Right now she has the body language of a lamb, kind of leggy and with a gamboling gait. Here we go.
K

The Zen of Ten

2011-05-08T10:46:00.000-07:00

Tess is ten. To celebrate we had eight of her friends over for a slumber party. Here's all but one of them in the apple tree. It was an epic evening though not in the tradition of previous theme parties. This more about feeling the synergistic force of so many ten year old girls in a single small area over an extended period of time. It really is something to experience, perhaps not twice in a lifetime.
We attempted a maypole, emphasis on attempted.

The girls then dressed in heels and whatever else they could find in the dress up box and walked in the drizzle to the nearby art center to see an exhibition of kids art about birds. It was a good reminder of how sometimes a walk in the rain stacks up well against just about any structured party game.

Back home again, Beth showed them a quirky method for decorating cupcakes that involved using a rolling pin on starburst candy and cutting large marshmellows among other things. Some of them even got eaten.

There was a double feature movie time which didn't begin till about nine. We saw Tangled followed by Ponyo. It was almost two in the morning when the final credits rolled. Some kids went to sleep, but not all.

The next morning bright and early we made french toast and sausage while the kids circled up on the floor and played telephone.
By ten thirty Saturday morning, everyone had packed up their things and left. In the suddenly still aftermath, with just my nuclear family around me on the curb of the street, I imagined that the need to exhale I was feeling right then might be something akin to how survivors of a hurricane feel.
Lots of fun, not much sleep, and, as I said earlier, not again (in the near future at least).
K

undone by one another

2011-04-10T09:25:00.000-07:00

While browsing Andrew Sullivan's blog, I came across this excerpt from an essay by Judith Butler, titled, "Violence, Mourning, Politics". It's prose that rewards close reading with a sense of recognition. a humbling quietude, and an impulse to whisper "amen".

… Perhaps one mourns when one accepts that by the loss one undergoes one will be changed, possibly for ever…I do not think, for instance, that one can invoke the Protestant ethic when it comes to loss. One cannot say, “Oh, I’ll go through loss this way, and that will be the result, and I’ll apply myself to the task, and I’ll endeavor to achieve the resolution of grief that is before me.” I think one is hit by waves, and that one starts out the day with an aim, a project, a plan, and finds oneself foiled. One finds oneself fallen. One is exhausted but does not know why. Something is larger than one’s own deliberate plan, one’s own project, one’s own knowing and choosing…

When we lose certain people, or when we are dispossessed from a place, or a community, we may simply feel that we are undergoing something temporary, that mourning will be over and some restoration of prior order will be achieved. But maybe when we undergo what we do, something about who we are is revealed, something that delineates the ties we have to others, that shows us that these ties constitute what we are, ties or bonds that compose us. It is not as if an “I” exists independently over here and then simply loses a “you” over there, especially if the attachment to “you” is part of what composes who “I” am. If I lose you, under these conditions, then I not only mourn the loss, but I become inscrutable to myself. Who “am” I, without you? When we lose some of these ties by which we are constituted, we do not know who we are or what to do. On one level, I think I have lost “you” only to discover that “I” have gone missing as well.

…What grief displays is the thrall in which our relations with others holds us, in ways that we cannot always recount or explain, in ways that often interrupt the self-conscious account of ourselves we might try to provide, in ways that challenge the very notion of ourselves as autonomous and in control. I might try to tell a story here, about what I am feeling, but it would have to be a story in which the very “I” who seeks to tell the story is stopped in the midst of the telling; the very “I” is called into question by its relation to the Other, a relation that does not precisely reduce me to speechlessness, but does nevertheless clutter my speech with signs of its undoing. I tell a story about the relations I choose, only to expose, somewhere along the way, the way I am gripped and undone by these very relations. My narrative falters, as it must.

Let’s face it. We’re undone by each other. And if we’re not, we’re missing something. This seems so clearly the case with grief, but it can be so only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact. One may want to, or manage to for a while, but despite one’s best efforts, one is undone, in the face of the other, by the touch, by the scent, by the feel, by the prospect of the touch, by the memory of the feel. And so, when we speak about “my sexuality” or “my gender,” as we do and as we must, we nevertheless mean something complicated that is partially concealed by our usage. As a mode of relation, neither gender nor sexuality is precisely a possession, but, rather, is a mode of being dispossessed, a way of being for another or by virtue of another.

Colm channels Harry Potter

2011-03-12T16:41:00.000-08:00

The boy who lived lived again in our house yesterday, and boy did he live it up. Colm turned eight in Hogwarts School for Would-Be Whizzes. We welcomed a new class of nine kids, five boys and four girls.

Faculty present included Prof. McGonnagal, Prof. Trelawny, and Dumbledore.

First the children were sorted by the sorting hat which was outfitted with a walkie/talkie and was able to issue uncanny and somewhat humorous remarks about the child sitting beneath the hat before assigning him/her to one of the two houses, Ravensclaw or Griffendore (bedrooms actually - it was a sleep over).
Next, everyone was issued new brooms, the patented Nimbus 2000.2 model (fortunately I'd pruned the apple trees the week before). We went outside for a fly around the garden and then some spirited games of quidditch.

Then we came back in and Dumbledore matched kids with wands.

Afterwards we were visited by Prof. Trawlenty who told everyone's fortunes. Some magic was done in the basement that produced bubbling potions of brightly colored liquid and also made water and aluminum bend in mysterious ways.

A tremendous amount of pizza was made to magically disappear and then of course out of nowhere McGonnagal produced a lovely chocolate cake. Young Colm barely breathed when he blew out the candles which made all of us wonder if he hadn't used magic instead.

At last there were the presents.
A lovely light emanated from everyone's faces...it lasted well into the wee hours of the night.

Somehow everyone began waking up around 5:30. After a mountain of pancakes and sausages they went back outside for another pickup quidditch match and then Dumbledore pronounced the semester finished and sent them all home with a gentle reminder that the power of magic is such that it never need shout it's own arrival or clamor for what it wants. Everyone parted already looking forward to the next term. Fortunately for the teachers, there is a substantial break in the academic year before resuming classes...

If you've followed this blog for a time, you know that once again Beth has produced a birthday miracle. Every year I ask myself, how long can this go on? Every year she comes through with something memorable. Love that; love her.
K

Human High School ... the road to production

2011-02-12T06:28:00.000-08:00

For about three weeks now I've been rehearsing the cast for my play Human High School. It is set to open at La Grande High School on March 31 and run through April 2. I began writing this script last summer after reading the screenplay of the sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I decided to use to idea of aliens walking amongst us as a kind of template for a modern day story set in an American high school. Typically I spent two or three hours most early mornings from late June to early August writing....about two or three pages of dialogue each day. I used a commercial online product called Celtx to write and format the script. It was really easy and fun to work with that kind of support. Celtx offers an online studio where all my work can be archived and is instantly retrievable.

I printed my first working draft on August 6. I remember the anticipation I felt as I pushed to the next stage, printing enough copies and getting them bound so that I could have a reading with some friends at the White House Cafe. Initially I had told myself that if all went well I might actually end up with a script that maybe I could put on stage, but that was just me talking to myself in the privacy of my own head. When I put it in the hands of other people to read aloud I realized that it would soon be put up or shut up time. I told myself that if it sucked I would just step back and put it on the shelf. The reading went well enough....it didn't suck, and I got some very useful and insightful feedback that opened up some clear paths to revisions of my script and I got enough encouragement that I became seriously intrigued by the prospect of putting this thing onstage at LHS.

In that middle part of August I must have reprinted the whole script a half dozen times. The guy working at the copy shop downtown began to recognize me and my script. I began looking forward to the fall and to giving the script to the principal to begin the approval process. At this point there were only a handful of people who had read it, another handful who I'd given the pitch/plot summary to orally. I started to talk up the play to students in order to attract interest in auditions in January. The fall was a time during which I entered a little squirrel cage with the script, tweaking things here and there but really not able to get distance and perspective on it.

It wasn't until I cast the show and held the first read through with my actors that got a glimpse of what I had done. It's hard to describe the satisfaction that comes from hearing your words come out of someone else's mouth, land in someone else's ear and produce a laugh or a smile or a pensive look. It's also hard to describe the sense of audacity such an undertaking invokes. As pleased as I was with first impression of the script on the cast, and as thrilled as I was with kids I had to work with, I was also immediately conscious of the fact that the script remained a work in progress. Rehearsals brought to light aspects of my script which were ill conceived, overwritten, or simply impractical.

I began making changes; I combined two characters into one, partly to make better use of a girl I had cast by giving her a larger role. Interestingly, that decision in retrospect appears to be one that was begging to be made regardless of the casting considerations. I also enlarged a different role to take advanatage of yet another actor whose talents I wanted to showcase. I began trimming some of the technical effects involving video and projection screens, bells and whistles that had been so easy to imagine at my laptop in the cafe but which would likely send us dangerously close to the realms of fiasco if they weren't handled flawlessly.

Rehearsals drove home another truth. I love my cast and feel very, very lucky to have them working on this project. I realized that I needed to trust my actors more by taking away some of the verbage and giving them the task of bringing certain realities to stage through means other than simply language. The director in me began to chafe at the writer's propensity for overly detailed stage directions. I began to sympathize with actors who said, "It says to lie down here, but do I have to do that?" We began joking about the writer as if he were absent or dead. In the middle of a scence I'd stop everything and say, "Good lord. Cut that line." Once though one of the actors offered his opinion that a certain line made no sense. "Why don't we just cut it?" he said matter of factly. It was an interesting moment. I remember feeling like my own impromptu revisions made in front of the cast had potentially opened the floodgates. Actors were now responding to lines with red pens rather than with motivation. Impulsively, I came to the defense of the script (and the writer, truth told). I challenged the actor to make it work, to view a problem line as a personal challenge and possibly even a gift. Cutting lines should not be a first resort, not for them.

Nevertheless, I began rewriting scenes and showing up with new pages. Actors began carrying around hybridized scripts containing mutliple incarnations of the play, page numbers didn't always match. I began promising the cast that these changes were very likely the last ones...mostly I meant it when I said it. The main thing for me though was the pleasure of seeing that this thing, while not perfect, was going to work, and that it was going to work ultimately because of the collabration that was unfolding with the group of kids I had assembled.

Layered over this was the other team of kids I was working with, the production team. Lights, sound, props, costumes, projection effects using video, art design...even though I had scaled back my original vision on the technical side, there were still myriad loose ends to bring together. The need to communicate effectively and instantaneously with cast and crew became paramount. The year before with Anne Frank I had used group emails with pretty good success, but this year I quickly discovered that email was largely passe. I turned, not without trepidation, to Facebook. With a cast member's help I set up a Facebook page just for the production. I confess to being a complete novice with Facebook and to not really understanding how using it for this purpose would play out. I think I can say a couple of things about it now. One, it seems to work from the standpoint of facilitating messaging to and from and amongst my Humans (that's what I call them). Word spreads quickly and efficiently which is exactly what I want. Two, I get access to way more information than I want. Most of it is benign, some of it would actually be interesting if I had more time and the inclination to delve, but a lot of it falls under the general category of the minutia and melodrama of high school life, a category that is, for the most par, not my business.

I'm not entirely comfortable therefore on Facebook but it seems to me that if I want to talk to these kids I'm going to have to go where they live. It's an environment that engenders in me some of the same feelings I've attempted to invest in the protagonists in my play - a palpable yet inchoate sense of dis-ease that seems at odds with the smiling but bland superficialities that greet one at every turn. I suspect that some kids feel the same way about the hallways and the classrooms of the school they attend...hence my play.

Today is a bad day

2011-01-27T19:11:00.001-08:00

Last night I posted this phot o of Colm and Sam. This morning before going to work I snapped this shot of a typical morning scene in our bed.

This evening, 24 hours later, I dug a grave and buried Sammy in the back yard under the walnut tree. Sammy was huge in this house, and now he's gone. Colm collected some thoughts about today in his journal...he pretty much tells it like it is.

Snug

2011-01-26T22:01:00.000-08:00

Morgan Lake is ice

2011-01-22T16:54:00.000-08:00

The eyes have it

2010-12-30T17:41:00.000-08:00

Colm and Tess both frequently sketch things. Under Beth's tutelage, the impulse to make things has become second nature to both of them. This Christmas both kids got an art kit.
Here is Colm trying his hand at a portrait of his new bear, Charles, who sat patiently for quite a long while.

Last night, after watching How To Train Your Dragon, they watched a short feature by one of the film's animators who offered a step by step approach to drawing a dragon. It was interesting to watch them watch the screen and then put their heads down and draw. Tess is the more experienced and also more instinctive artist, and while Colm has shown a penchant for closing the gap between himself and his sister in things like riding bikes and reading...he'll have to go some on this front as Tess has long had a flair for drawing.

2010-12-29T20:18:00.000-08:00

We went up to Cricket Flats for a couple of snowy days. It's always like going on a retreat up there. The snow was thick and wet, good for making things, so I built a snow man. Later on, after looking at this photo, I was reminded of this Wallace Stevens poem:

The Snow Man

by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Jellybean becomes Sofonisba

2010-12-19T17:05:00.000-08:00

Our great and dear friend Jessica and her partner Dean had a baby girl Friday. We brought the kids up for a visit just hours after "Nisba's" arrival. The kids took up places in the front row and never strayed from their vantage point throughout the duration of the visit. The glow was definitely on Jessica, and we all basked in it. Dean and her are a great pair. Great work all around, including Jessie's parents who flew in from the east coast to help out. Jessica and Beth met and became friends about fourteen years ago in Mexico. Not long after that, Jessie told Beth how one day she would like to have a little girl and name her after the artist, Sofonisba. After months of being referred to as "Jellybean", she's finally got a name for the ages.

This morning we woke up to fresh snow so the kids and I walked over to their house and made three snow figures in their front yard to mark the occasion. Colm claimed dubs on the beard and did a good job, I thought. When everyone comes home from the hospital they'll hopefully get a smile out of this.
K

Bringing home the tree

2010-12-11T09:26:00.000-08:00

Every year around this time we go looking for our Christmas tree at the foot of Mt. Emily. Beth is partial to the Noble Fir but so are the deer it seems; consequently, each year the pickings seem more sparse. Tess, on the other hand is drawn to the White Fir which are plentiful, and , to her eye, alluring.

The search goes on for awhile, with me and the kids alternately proposing this tree and that and Beth casting an appraising and skeptical eye on each one. This year, Beth relented and Tess got her White Fir.

We took the tree home, cleared a space in the living room, set up the tree and brought up the ornaments and lights from the basement. By the end of the day, our tree was dressed for the holidays.

The moment Tess and Colm enjoy the most is always when they run around the house turning off all the lights.

We then bask in the glow of the glittering lights and ornaments.

Our Lady of the Igloo

2010-11-28T19:57:00.000-08:00

Beth spent this afternoon getting in touch with her inner Aleut (or her inner Inuit, take your pick). Here are some pics of her hard at work ... for the record I supplied the grunt work and the snow bricks, using a small Coleman cooler. We're all keeping our fingers crossed for sub-freezing temperatures.
K

Sunday ritual...Dutch Babies!

2010-11-28T09:30:00.000-08:00

They're amazing and easy to make, and our kids cannot imagine eating any other Sunday breakfast.
Simple ingredients: eggs, milk, flour and butter. Ratio: one egg: one quarter cup of flour: one quarter cup of milk. (roughly figure one egg per serving).
Blend ingredients together. Preheat pie dish to 400 degrees. Then add four tablespoons of butter to the hot dish. As soon as it melts, pour in the mixed ingredients. Any oven worthy container will do, but try to keep the depth of the mixture to about one inch. Bake for 15-20 minutes and then serve with syrup or fruit or sugar or all off the above.
This Dutch Baby recipe was passed on to Beth from her mother Charlotte, who got it from her mother...I'm not sure about the origins of the name...perhaps there was a Dutchman in the woodpile somewhere back there.
K

Flakes are falling

2010-11-28T09:12:00.000-08:00

Fire and Ice

2010-11-27T08:11:00.000-08:00

On Thanksgiving we did a little pre-meal dash in the snow followed by a dip in the tub and then a gorgeous meal by the fire. The kind of day that reminds you how good it is to be alive.
K

Beginning the banjo oddysey

2010-11-24T14:27:00.000-08:00

Beth brought home a banjo yesterday on a whim. Nobody really knows what to do with this thing yet. The kids are fascinated. The way they've been handling it reminds me a little of the cavemen in the opening sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey. So far it's not music but who knows what will evolve...or over how long a period of time. In the meantime, our house is suddenly cacophonous.
K

Thanks Grandpa!....and all the souls of Veterans

2010-11-11T10:03:00.000-08:00

A message from Colm to Grandpa on Veteran's Day. (Typed laboriously by his own hands):

dear grandpa, i am glad you survivd in the vietnam war.you are a very good grandpa!!!
love colm!

Me again...Colm is full of questions about war as is his sister. It may soon be time for a Q&A with grandpa on the subject.

Over the years I've watched students, boys and girls, enter military service. A few of them have served in combat zones. Their motivations for joining the military vary, as they always have I imagine. Some seek a place where they'll get paid and get their three squares a day; some seek the first concrete step in the project of starting a career path; some are lost and don't know what else to do; some seek a proving ground for their own sense of self worth; some are inspired by ideals of service and revolution...and of course some are a combination of all these things. One thing military service almost always seems to produce in many of these people is an outward change, a carriage, that signifies to some degree an inward state of confidence and purpose. For those people who find the kind of cohesive sense of belonging in the military, this confidence and sense of purpose endures and nourishes them in later life.

I tend to agree with Christopher Hitchens who asserts that if one wants to locate the spirit of idealism in today's generation, one would do well to start with the young men and women who volunteer for military service. They are the ones who are, as often as not, prone to romantic notions about transforming the world and bringing enduring change and lasting peace. All idealistic and utopian impulses are of course fraught with painful and even tragic contradictions ...they are often perfect illustrations of the law of unintended consequences. Still, idealism is a necessary component to our human search for meaning and progress and to our vision of the world we would bequeath to our children.

I would imagine that any veteran who has lived long enough to see grandchildren grow toward the age of young adulthood cannot help but wonder at the seemingly endless parade of youth toward the altar of sacrifice...we do what we can to make things better, but history's appetite for human souls seems boundless. Watching my son and daughter march in a Veterans Day parade - it is the very definition of poignancy.
K

Goodbye Old Barney (cont.)

2010-11-07T16:36:00.000-08:00

My dad wrote a thoughtful comment about Barney to Tess and Colm. I thought I'd post it for everyone to read.

Dear Tess and Colm,

Sorry to hear about Barney. I don't know how long ago the picture you sent of Colm on Barney was taken, but he looked good and I'm happy he was able to spend so many years with all of you in such a friendly and pleasant place. While not a very good cow horse, Barney was a very special horse in many ways. He was used by the Forest Service packing all kinds of equipment to build and manage trails and as a result he was great to ride in tight areas where there is always a good chance of getting scraped off the saddle by a limb or brush. It was always as if he knew just how much room you needed for your legs to get by an object. I rode him on trails with many good horses but none that could bring you back to camp any faster or more comfortably. As you may know I had to put Smokey down around a year ago when he was about 29 so Barney was probably close to that age and they were both wonderful horses that gave so much pleasure to us all. It is always sad and difficult to experience the death of a good animal as it also is with a good friend but we can take solace in knowing that while he gave us great pleasure, we lived up to our responsibility to take good care of him. The next time you come over, bring a halter that fits Stormy and I will make you a rope halter and lead rope to fit him.

Love,
Grandpa

Goodbye Old Barney

2010-11-06T19:33:00.000-07:00

It has been a week about horses. First we took the kids and watched "Secretariat". While I had a hard time reconciling myself to seeing John Malkovic in a Disney film, it was a fun movie to watch. Tess and Colm were completely mesmerized by the horse. At the end of the film, Tess beamed and said, "I want to do that with Stormy!" I couldn't argue with that sentiment. Within the space of five minutes however, Tess had worked out the fact that Secretariat had died years ago. The horse on screen had been so powerfully present to her. She took the realization of his death hard, like she had that very moment lost her best horse friend. She was pretty inconsolable for a nearly a half hour after that. A couple of days later, Beth and the kids were visiting her folks place where they keep the horses, Barney, Sadie and Stormy, who Tess is learning to train. The vet had come out to check on Barney but he couldn't really come up with any thing. Barney actually seemed a bit better. Everyone went inside and watched a documentary on the phenomenal racing mare, Zenyatta. Her final race was the next day. Plans were made to view it as a family. Everyone came home chattering about Zenyatta, how big and beautiful she was, how she danced a pranced and preened for the cameras, how she always won just like Secretariat, by starting last and finishing strong, only unlike Secretariat, she had never lost a single race. Later that night, I invented for Tess another installment about our favorite fictional horse character, Kadiddlehopper. It was a silly story about Kadiddlehopper trying to shoot snowballs out of his nose with the help of his friend raccoon. His nose got all plugged up with ice balls and when I tried to shoot the snowballs out of his nose his ears popped and he farted at the same time. This was right up Tess's alley, and she laughed uproariously. When I ended to story, we both settled down. I noticed Tess had almost immediately become pensive. She turned away and stared across her room. When I asked her if she was okay, she barely answered me. I climbed down off the loft bed. Her face was pressed against the safety rail. "What's wrong, sweetie?"

She said, "I'm worried about Zenyatta. What if Zenyatta loses tomorrow?"
I hadn't imagined where her mind was. "Don't worry," I said. "She's won lots of races. If she loses, she'll still be a great horse."
"But she's never lost."
"Secretariat lost his very first race. If she loses her last one, they'll be tied."
I left her in the dark and went to bed. Suddenly I felt like I had a vested interest in a horse that before that day I'd never even heard of.

The next morning, we were all in the kitchen just getting ready to sit down to some french toast and syrup when the phone rang. It was Charlotte, Beth's mom, calling to say that Warner had found Barney dead in the pasture that morning. Her voice seemed tired and burdened; Warner was at work taking care of getting someone to dispose of the body. I whispered the news to Beth. I commiserated with Charlotte for a bit. I told her what a good life I thought Barney had spent, first with my dad and then later with her and Warner.
She said, "I'll always remember seeing Tess and Colm riding Sadie and Barney along the fence line together singing "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" at the top their lungs. I'll always think of that when I think of Barney."
Charlotte said she'd called in case we were planning on showing up to their place early. I remembered then the plan to watch Zenyatta. I hung up and consulted briefly with Beth. It seemed like there would be no better time than the present to tell them. They were both in full Saturday morning chatter mode, alive and vibrating with energy. Halloween candy negotiations were still ongoing and Colm was working on a deal to trade his candy for money to spend on Legos at the toy store.
"Kids, listen up. I've got some bad news."
They both fell silent. Then Colm blurted, "Is the toy store closed?"
"I'm afraid it's worse than that, Colm."
Tess was studying my face intently. We made eye contact, and then she said, "Did Barney die?"
I nodded. I knew what was coming. While I watched Tess begin to tear up, I felt the weight of Colm's body land on my lap. His arms were around my neck and he was weeping. Beth had moved in to hold Tess. We all four sat like that at the breakfast table for a few minutes. Both of us, Beth and I, tried to console them. "I'm sure we'll get another horse."
Colm's reaction was instantaneous. He sobbed and said, "I don't want another horse. I want Barney."
I watched my kids work through it, and I marveled at the power animals have over us. I also appreciated the life lessons they bring before us by virtue of our caring for them. Charlotte called Barney an honest horse. That struck me as an apt phrase. I never once worried about my kids when they were around him or on his back. He was honest and true.
In time the kids came round. They loosened their hold on our necks. The air grew lighter; their eyes cleared. They even ate some of their breakfast. Both of them painted rocks with Barney's likeness on them to put over his resting place. Tess's stone had a horse standing beneath a brilliant but declining sun. It said, "Good Old Barney". Colm's stone showed a horse with a brilliant but declining sun overhead.
Later that afternoon we gathered round the tv with Warner and Charlotte, and, mesmerized once again, we watched Zenyatta lose her first and last race in the most improbable and nearly miraculous manner possible...done in by Blame, the pre-race favorite.
A little nervous, I checked Tess for a reaction. She was already leaping to Zenyatta's defense, "The other horses were younger than her, and she still almost won!" No tears, just a determined and even defiant effort to keep faith with a beautiful horse. Both of them honest and true.

Hoop Happy

2010-11-03T21:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes in life when you get too close, you just have to step back a bit and try again. Colm in action at a b-ball camp for little guys...he never stopped smiling from the moment he walked in the gym.
K

Fall comforts

2010-10-31T10:31:00.000-07:00

Autumn in Union County:

Our backyard view, plus the new "softub". Cold air never felt better.

Also some images from our Sunday-go-to-church walk on Mt. Emily. The larch accent the vibrant fall hues. Unreal.

gutting and cutting pumpkins

2010-10-26T20:34:00.000-07:00

The human thing

2010-10-25T18:55:00.000-07:00

It's been almost a month since my last blog post...I've haven't stayed away that long since I started this thing. Time has become scarce for me since school began...this year even more so than past years.
It's not like I haven't been writing though. In fact, I'm pretty excited about my latest project. I've written a full length play called "Human High School" which is a script inspired by "Invasion of the Body Snatchers".

I've got the okay to produce it at La Grande High School this spring, probably the first weekend in April. I wrote the working draft during the summer but have spent the fall taking it through a series of readings and revisions. I've let a few students read it and so far their reactions have been encouraging. I'm jazzed.
K

From the Ground Up....horse sense without the bees please

2010-10-01T21:26:00.000-07:00

Beth is working with Tess trying to build her confidence with the new horse, Stormy. The idea is to focus on ground work, lunging the horse, she calls it. Bit by bit Tess is getting the feel of being in charge, of getting accustomed to telling the horse what to do, all from the ground right now. Just as important, Stormy is learning to take orders from Tess. At some point in the future this will culminate in Tess climbing aboard but for now Tess is content to exercise her new-found power from the ground. The other two horses, Barney and Sadie in the pics above, both being old and even tempered, are easy rides for the kids. Stormy is only seven and represents a different kind of challenge which is why we're going slow.

It just so happens that last week while taking Sadie for a spin in the pasture, Tess suddenly found herself hanging on for dear life as the normally placid horse got stung by wasps and began a straight line gallop for the barn. Tess screamed the whole way back, but she held on and actually rode Sadie pretty well. Fortunately, Sadie's gallop is hardly more than a cantor but the spectacle of Tess hollering at the top of her lungs on the back of an old bag of bones hightailing it to the barn was surreal and a little nerve wracking to say the least. Tess was in tears afterwards and later on when Beth asked her if in retrospect she could have chosen between Sadie or herself being stung, Tess didn't hesitate to say she would rather have been stung by bees than be on Sadie when she was stung. That's quite a statement from a girl who absolutely hates bees. Anyway, Tess seems to have put it all behind her.
K

Tess on the fiddle...one year later

2010-10-01T17:24:00.000-07:00

Tess wanted family and friends to see how she's doing with the fiddle. She also suggested the closeup on the left hand "just in case people want to learn it."
K

Fall cometh

2010-09-19T15:04:00.000-07:00

A few harbingers of fall....wood gathering, first day of school, pie baking...

Headstrong and hair free

2010-09-04T09:32:00.001-07:00

Tess a week before....Tess after yesterday. This was all her idea...love her spirit. There are moments now when, for a split second, I don't know who I'm looking at. It helps that Colm doesn't brush his hair most of the time.

Summer fun (cont.)

2010-09-04T08:30:00.000-07:00

In no particular order: the Portland zoo with friends, Oneonta Gorge, Jubilee Lake with more friends.

A pace of asses, a shiver of sharks

2010-08-19T17:42:00.000-07:00

If you're curious about what collective nouns to use for specific animals here's a website to check out. Kinda fun.
K

summer light; summer spirits

2010-08-13T18:01:00.000-07:00

Watermelon margaritas...

The home stretch

2010-08-13T10:36:00.000-07:00

I'm trying everything I know to put the brakes on this summer. I've been writing a play which is why I haven't been blogging. Here are some images of summer fun we've had so far at places like Morgan Lake and the Wallowa River at the Minam Campground.

Down by the river

2010-07-15T22:52:00.000-07:00

Our first heat wave...still not a scorcher, but it's all relative.

A good place to escape the heat was Hilgard Park. It's funny...I swam in this same spot when I was about the same age as these kids. I remember hiking downstream along the highway with my cousins and signaling the truckers to sound their horns. They almost always did.
K

Lukianno Ouch

2010-07-15T22:42:00.000-07:00

Tess and Colm went to a magic show today. Later in the evening, at the supper table, Tess put on a mustache belonging to her brother, dubbed herself Lukianno Ouch, and performed a magic card trick with the aid of her magic stuffed dog who sniffed out the right card. Her trick was very good though since it took so long it had the unintended effect of melting her ice cream.
K

hot footin' it after the futbol

2010-07-12T21:31:00.000-07:00

When I watch my two kids play physical games, I am usually made mindful of their individual idiosyncrasies and how each of them has his or her own physical energy and style. Colm is much more the adventurous player; Tess prefers to skirt along the edges of the action.

Then I looked at these two photos I snapped today during their soccer games. Their bodies seem uncannily oriented in the same way. Two peas in a pod.
K

chess

2010-07-12T14:28:00.000-07:00

The new White House Cafe which just opened in La Grande has several very cool and appealing features among which are the chess tables upstairs. I took Colm in there this morning and we had a hot drink and played a game.

Since it was Colm's first game ever we started off with the basic rules of the game and the pieces on the board. As we began playing, I tried to furnish him opportunities for taking pieces and for losing them. Colm was an apt pupil and a good natured one. He seemed genuinely intrigued by the array of options and also by the chain of events that a given move might trigger. As we played I began to appreciate how the game provided a context for some thoughtful utterances.
"Check."
"I didn't see that."
"It's hard to see everything."
"There are so many moves."
"Yes. What are your possible moves?"
"If I take your knight will you take my bishop?
"Yes, and if I do, what will you do?"
"I can take it with my queen."
"Is it worth it to you?"
"I don't know, maybe."
"Try it, then."
"Okay."

Later on, the board had become somewhat depleted. We had traded pieces pretty freely. Both of us had captured pieces lined up in front of us. Colm had begun to focus on them as if they were booty and perhaps even the point of the game.

"I have eight and you have seven. I'm winning."
"Maybe. But it's not what you've captured; it's what you and I've got out there on the board. Your move."
Colm paused; he looked me square in the eye very much as if he were calling up a moment of truth.
"Daddy?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you have a plan?"

I smiled . Colm seemed to have momentarily achieved enough distance from the game on the board to see the other game, the one involving father and son. I chuckled and handed him the truth. He'd earned it. "No, I don't have a plan... But I kinda wish I did have a plan."

Colm smiled back at me. "Me too."
"Let's just play."
"Okay."
K

Fiddling around

2010-07-12T12:14:00.000-07:00

Tess is continuing fiddle lessons this summer. I love the fact that she picks up the fiddle every day without having to be told to do so. I also appreciate the way her teacher has allowed and encouraged Tess to play with other more advanced players, often in public venues.

Performing is becoming something that is not strange or intimidating to her. Last week they played in front of WalMart for a couple of hours. Afterwards they counted up their tips. They pulled in about 14 dollars each for about two hours of playing. Just another piece of the motivational puzzle. Tomorrow, Tess and I are going to Cove to take a look at a larger instrument. She's moving up from a 1/2 to a 3/4.
K

Hiking and hiding in the Elkhorns

2010-07-10T07:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we went up to Black Lake. Short hike, about a mile each way. There's a lot of water up there though the snow has pretty much melted off. I tried to get the kids to jump in the cold lake, but their better instincts restrained them. I offered Colm a dollar. That did the trick. One day he'll know the value of a dollar.

Tess was next, but she was still unsure so I sweetened the deal by promising to jump in myself if she went in. Finally, after counting to three about six times, she took the plunge. Right about this time, the clouds overhead began dropping rain lightly on us. The kids took shelter under some trees.

I stripped down and made good on my promise. I swam out a ways wondering just how far might be too far before I'd be laboring to maintain muscle control. In a word, it was breathtakingly cold.

We lunched under the shelter of the pines. There were large patches of blue above us, but far off we heard the sound of thunder rolling. We had imagined spending the rest of the day at the lake but the thunder and the skeeters changed our minds.

On the hike back I stopped to photograph the kids crossing a log that bridged the bog when out of the corner of my eye I spotted Sammy racing towards them. I only had time to guess at his point of intersection with them, refocus and shoot.

I snapped this at the precise moment Sammy completely disappeared from view into water hole below the log. I'm pretty sure Sammy did not realize how deep it was when he launched. Both kids kept their poise and their balance.

On our way back the kids morph from bedraggled, wet towel-swathed refugees to rock scrambling spy kids who constantly skirted the trail in favor of the rocky terrain above. They cleverly kept out of our sight, except of course when I was able to capture them on camera.
K

Wind Energy ... shooting the breeze

2010-06-29T07:57:00.000-07:00

The subject of wind farms in this area has triggered a lot of debate over the course of past few months or so. I don't pretend to be an expert on the subject, but my inclination is to support an energy resource that is not petroleum or coal based and which might provide a shot in the arm of the local economy.

A rather unlikely alliance of rural landowners and counterculture types (several of which are friends of mine) have assembled a pretty formidable media campaign against the proposed Antelope Ridge wind farm slated to go up in Union County. I decided to do a little online research to see if I could track down the validity of certain claims being made about the problems with wind power.

It only took a short time to locate what I'm assuming to be uber-source document for the wind power opponents. It's a paper titled "A Problem with Wind Power" authored by Eric Rosenbloom in 2006. This is an excellent place to begin reading if you want to understand the anti-wind farm perspective. It is cited on many sites which are devoted to the anti-wind farm movement.

For those of you who like to debate, there is a website called Debatepedia attempts to outline the forensics framework for pro and con arguments.

I also ran across a pdf document which summarizes a position paper published in 2010 by the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA). This paper evaluates the European Wind Integration Study (EWIS) conducted in 2007-09 which was financed by the European Commission. You can read the final report of that study here. For those of you who don't have time to read the whole thing, the first five pages contain summaries of major findings and recommendations...they're worth looking at.

The upshot for me is that wind power might fairly be described as being in need of further development in order for it to deliver on its promise as a substantial contributor to our overall energy needs. The wind turbine technology is not perfect; the connectivity to the grid is at present problematic, and economics of wind power seem dependent to a significant degree on public investment.

All of the aforementioned problems strike me as symptomatic of a new technology and therefore to be expected. The histories of railroad development and, later on, interstate highways, were ones which included, unless I am mistaken, significant public assistance in some form or other. In both cases parties got rich in the process, sometimes unfairly profiting from insider information and or governmental favor. My point is simply that transitions from old models to new models are seldom (never?) smooth, but if the long term vision is important enough, you have to begin somewhere.

Reading Rosenbloom I am struck by how certain problems with wind power trigger a summary dismissal of an entire technology. Every problem with wind power discloses a seemingly insidious intention on the part of shadowy profiteers. By contrast, reading EWIS one sees some of the same problems acknowledged but where those problems trigger a problem solving response...hence you read recommendations about how to improve the grid and how better distribute and harmonize production. The animating impulse is to make wind power work better.

One way to account for such divergent reactions to the same or similar information is rather obvious. Europe has already embraced wind power as part of its long range solution to its energy needs. It has embarked and is well on its way down the road. It is committed to solving the problems that arise along the way. Rosenbloom lives in Vermont and, like my friends in Union County, he has made no such commitment; instead, he embodies the not-in-my-backyard perspective. He is digging in his heels in an intense campaign to preserve a way of life that suits him and others who agree with him just fine, thank you very much.

It is telling (for me anyway) that Rosenbloom does not prioritize his criticisms of wind power in such a way as to plot a course, theoretically at least, toward some possible embrace of wind power in the future. Put another way, what one or two obstacles, if they were surmounted would make wind power palatable to him? Is it the cost of building the proper infrastructure? Is it the relative cost of oil? Is it the aesthetics? Is it foreign involvement? Is it the bird and bat mortality rate? Is it the environmental footprint of wind turbines? How do any of these compare, for example to the problems associated with nucleur energy? (an energy source I have become more and more attracted to over time, by the way)

My sense is that it is not any one of these claims anymore than it is all of them taken together...what I see Rosenbloom assembling is a time honored and all too familiar strategy for blocking change. If any of his objections are factually resolved, I get the sense that he will find new ones to replace the old ones because he's not interested in wind power that works, he's interested in keeping it out of Vermont. I could be reading Rosenbloom wrong of course.
Perhaps someone can set me straight.
In the meantime...let's not forget energy conservation.
K

What I did this summer vacation

2010-06-23T20:01:00.000-07:00

Started yesterday morning and finished about six hours ago.

Okay, okay it's still June and therefore much too early to be composing the obit for the summer, but if in September I'm asked to respond to the standard prompt, I can always say that I built a loft bed for my daughter. The day before yesterday, Beth said, "Why don't we build a new tree house this week?"

I didn't bite, just kept chewing on my cereal. That evening, Beth and Tess sat down and doodled some bedroom design ideas. I got up early the next day and played some golf while my family slept. When I got home, Tess hugged me and said, "Are you feeling up to building me a loft bed?" I mused over the wording of her question and glanced at Beth who smiled inscrutably.

Clearly it was time to make something...first step, Google "loft bed". Beth and I find a website with something that looks like it will work. Tess and I hop in the bus and go get lumber at Miller's. Once there, Tess sniffs out the free popcorn while I order the plywood and the other lumber. I love that we can fit a sheet of plywood into our VW Westfalia.

Before noon I had lumber stacked in the front yard, tools on the porch, and a tape measure in my hand. My process as a builder might be called methodical if there were more method to it, yet in terms of pace it is quite methodical, even in terms of visuals it qualifies, as at any given moment you are likely to observe me contemplating what lies before me.

I'd like to think that all my thinking saves me time having to undo bad decisions or erroneous measurements and bad cuts. A good example of this is my finally coming to the realization that I could not move a fully assembled bed from the porch to Tess' bedroom. I'm sure most people would have seen that one right at the start... not me. It came to me in a flash of insight just as I was about to bolt the eight foot 4x4 beams to the box. Even so, not all of my mistakes got caught in time. I had to dismantle the bed twice, once to re-size the box, and once because after bolting the beams to the legs (inside the bedroom), I discovered that I didn't have enough ceiling clearance to turn the bed upright. Throughout the entire building process, Beth was largely absent, occupied with Farmers' Market. When she did drop in, I found myself bristling at any remarks that I construed as critical of the design.
"I didn't think it would be that small."
Part of my problem, is that I am borderline competent and I'd prefer not to be reminded of that fact.
"Is that going to be strong enough?"
I'm not really competent to respond in a meaningful way; instead, I sulk and mutter, "I'm just following the plans." I don't have the lightness of spirit that I wish I did sometimes. I want to be Keebler elf, merrily swinging my hammer and bantering with onlookers instead of a grim faced man barely holding his own with a process he sees but darkly. Beth gives up and stalks away. I know that we'll sort it out later; in the meantime, I fold my arms and consider whether what she has said can in any way be incorporated into the design.
The kids hung about intermittently as did a couple of neighbor kids. Occasionally I was able to put them to useful work, balancing the box or fetching tools or the like. The neighbor girl, Mandy, says, "I was wondering if you could build stuff."
I pause a moment. "Really?"
"Yeah, I was wondering if you could build us a dog house."
"Really?"
"Yeah....but we found somebody to do it."
I am so relieved.
As the bed goes up, so do the kids' expectations.By the end of day one, the basic frame is standing in the middle of the room. It's unbraced and has no ladder yet, not to mention accessories like shelves and the desk. I have to warn the kids to stay away. That night, I sleep fitfully, tossing around possible bracing schemes in my mind. Finally at two-thirty in the morning I get up and go sit under the loft bed and try to visualize the finished product. Beth is leaving later in the morning for a two day retreat, and I want to have this thing done before she gets back. Actually, I had thought of getting in another early morning round of golf, but sleep deprivation is turning that idea into a long shot. Colm wanders by on his way to our bed. I decide to trade places with him. Before I go to sleep I compose a shopping list for the building supply store.

I wake up and gather my list, Beth comes in and looks at the frame. Her eyes turn again to the bracing that supports the mattress (and the child who will lie on it). The doubtful look on her face restarts our exchange from yesterday, almost word for word. She wants to be sure there won't be some catastrophic failure; I want to be believed, and I want to believe myself. I stalk out of the house and go to the lumber store. I come back, my head cleared. I can see the finish line.

Beth helps me hoist the plywood into place for the wall that will be opposite the desk. We then say goodbye to Beth and then the kids and I hit it. Tess dutifully clears out her room and her desktop to make room for all the maneuvering that's going to have to happen in a cramped space. She boxes up items as if preparing for a move. The first thing I do is use a skill saw and a jig saw to customize her desk so that it will fit between the posts of the bed. Next it's time for the ladder, but I'm stumped by the challenge of moving this thing from one side of the room to the other. It's an incredibly unwieldy (and heavy) thing to move about the room by myself.

I walk next door and knock, nobody home. I call John, not home. I go back in there and think about it some more, my signature process. Once upon a time, I managed to hoist a camper shell up onto my pickup all by myself. It was touch and go and could easily have ended badly for me and the shell, yet I somehow got it done. Another time I carried a full-size futon sofa frame, with folding out hide-a-bed attachment, from Colm's bedroom across the house, through the kitchen and mudroom, and down the basement stairs. It took me a half hour, but I made it. In both cases the difference between completing task and screwing myself up was small enough to appear negligible to some. Compared to those two examples, this bed was a piece of cake. The more I thought about it, I was almost embarrassed about having gone next door to ask for help. Once I had it where I wanted it, all that was left was to drill and bolt the cross pieces for climbing up and then using some scrap lumber to fashion a shelf for the desk and another small shelf on the headboard. Colm got a charge out of tightening the lag screws with a socket wrench; Tess got into the act too. I worked straight through the day. Tess fixed a lunch of cold cuts, crackers, cheese, and berries, and cold cereal for herself and Colm. It was endearing to see how well they fended for themselves, with hardly any direction...it put me in mind of the Truffaut film Argent de Poche where the two kids fix breakfast while we hear the song Les enfants s'ennuient les dimanches. When they finished eating, they came back in and helped some more.

When I finally allowed them up on the bed, they were elated. The task of putting the bedding back on the bed was an utterly novel and delightful undertaking...perhaps for the last time.

As I put away tools and cleaned up, I heard them already experimenting with the bed as a stage for some new play acting with their toys...like Kramer in that famous Seinfeld episode...they had discovered the intrigue of "levels".

Tonight they are sleeping together in the loft bed. It's only right since both of them helped to make it. The loft bed will impact our night time routines. I've been up there and found it comfortable, but I doubt I'll join both kids up there any time soon. Sammy is completely at a loss over being unable to jump up on the bed with Colm or Tess. When they leaned down over the rail to kiss me goodnight, they could barely reach the top of my bald head at first, but with practice we managed to touch noses. As I write, they are sleeping high above the ground, who knows where their dreams may land.

My work is largely done. It's all squares and stock lumber...no pretense to being furniture grade. I've decided to install a couple of handles on the posts to make getting up and down easier and safer. Beth will take up paint and brushes and involve the kids in a whole other level of creation. I've built a bed; she will make a dwelling place.
K

post script:

Just in case there are some carpenter-types out there checking the blog, I'm posting a couple of photos taken from underneath the bed of the support system for the mattress. It is recessed into a box made of 2x6 lumber. I've attached 2x2 strips, screwed in with 2 1/2 inch screws at ten inch intervals (approx) over which I've laid the plywood and then the mattress. The plywood is slightly smaller than the box (the primary source of concern for Beth...and me). The minimum coverage of of plywood over 2x2 is 7/8 inch...it's more than that in most spots. I've screwed the plywood down into the 2x2s to prevent it sliding. If you see a problem, please comment. I'd appreciate it.
K

Something grand...MCT comes to La Grande

2010-06-19T06:56:00.000-07:00

The Missoula Children's Theatre worked some magic in La Grande this week. Two young actors, Allison (the leprechaun) and John Thomas, assisted in their very first MCT gig by MCT veteran Samantha brought their know how, their enthusiasm, and the trademark MCT formula for success to sixty local children whose ages ranged from six to seventeen. The production was an original and very whimsical adaptation of The Princess and the Pea, created by Michael McGill.

MCT was founded in Missoula, Montana, forty years ago and now it is a world renowned organization that this year alone will bring theater to 65,000 kids in 1,200 communities in all 50 states as well as 17 countries. They train and send out pairs of actors whose focus is help teach kids life skills through the theater experience.

I was terrifically impressed by their work. The audition process alone is worth witnessing just to appreciate how seamless is their approach to both life and art. From the moment the kids walk in the door, they have begun their audition. The MCT actors initiate a series of mundane exercises, reciting names and ages and such. By degrees and according to individual inclinations, each kid realized that he was being observed not just as a performer but as a listener. The MCT actors set the tone in auditions by consistently alternating between high energy playfulness and no-nonsense attention to the rigors and requirements of working together effectively.At the end of two hours they have taken a group of sixty strangers and cast an entire show.
It was a fascinating illustration of how one can modulate between fun and focus. All week long, the kids found themselves coaxed and prodded and taxed to the limit. For the little ones especially, there were times when their weary expressions tugged at your heart. But always they rallied.

Colm had, in fact, tried to get out of going before the week began. We made him go, but kept an eye on him. No worries. He and Tess both enjoyed themselves enormously.

Part of the genius of the MCT approach is the way it provides the younger kids with lots of opportunities to observe and emulate the older ones. The cast featured some very capable youngsters, including a stellar pair playing the princess and the pea. Their inventiveness and investment proved contagious.

On the final day, the kids were delighted to finally see and wear their costumes and to get their makeup put on. Everything began to take shape. The kids began to sing with more gusto, they moved with more purpose and they smiled with conviction. They also displayed a collective discipline onstage and off - testimony to Samantha's relentless insistence on respectful listening and decorum.

Tess and Colm both became increasingly more bold and engaged as the week went on. It was great to see them work it out for themselves. By the end of the week, both kids were singing the show's tunes at home and performing their choreography just for fun. The first performance took place yesterday before a nearly full house. Everyone was charmed and even astonished by the quality of the show. As for the kids, they have a final performance this afternoon. When it's over, they will resume their summer routines, but each of them may carry some subtle sense of what if feels like to be part of something grand.
K
P.S. Beth, it was you who initiated the idea to bring in MCT...way to go!

she is a he

2010-06-15T13:37:00.000-07:00

Shocking bit of news left the kids saddened last week and cut our poulty population in half. We woke up one morning to the sound of a cock crowing...which was news since we only have hens, or so we thought. The culprit turned out to be a bantam named Sunny aka Sonny Boy. She/he was Colm's favorite. Crowing is definitely not allowed in our neighborhood. She/he and her/his friend Chirp now reside in a safe house in the Cove.

Baring my sole

2010-06-14T20:32:00.000-07:00

Life is slow once again.

During these slack times,Tess is periodically seized by an entrepreneurial spirit which usually results in her posting herself curbside in front of the house. This time she was offering to do your nails for three bits. Colm decided to add to the offerings by getting Beth to make him lemonade.

We live on a very slow street which almost always foils our kids' dreams of making a pile, but it never seems to take the luster off of the venture for them. The few pedestrians who do happen by have a hard time pretending to ignore these two. There's nowhere to hide. The mailman gave Tess some money and told her to give someone a free nail job.

I decided to have a relaxing read under the tree while having my toes painted some shiny metallic hue.

Tess announced yesterday that she is going to take her fiddle to the Farmer's Market Tuesday evening and play for tips. Colm is considering whether to do the hula hoop in a supporting role.

Pennies from heaven...
K

a teacher's reflections..28 to be exact

2010-06-12T16:18:00.000-07:00

The year is over. For awhile now I've been mulling over some fairly big picture notions regarding schools, but since I've embraced the art of "slow blogging" none of you out there would know about that would you?
Here are some shorthand statements and questions that represent a sketched outline of what's on my mind these days. Maybe someday they will cohere into essay form.

Too many kids and too many parents seem to uncritically accept college as the default post-high school option.
Too many educators at the high school and college level counsel too many kids towards college.
Getting accepted into a college is a far cry from being able or ready to flourish there.
Anything short of flourishing in college, represents an outcome that makes college a questionable investment.
Not all college degrees are worth the money, and some represent an ill advised accumulation of debt with little prospect of pay-off down the road.
Too many employers uncritically require college degrees as part of their job requirements.
Too many legal and cultural impediments exist to allow young people meaningful entrance into the adult world of work.
The boundaries between school and work need to be far more permeable.
Not enough value is placed on life/work experience or on portfolio's of work.
Not enough education and training is available in the workplace.
Credits and grades are profoundly distracting to the project of acquiring a good education.
Instead of or in addition to reporting out GPAs and credits, we should furnish narratives and impressions that accurately characterize each of our students.
What should matter most to educators, students, and parents in high schools are these four questions: What do you know? What can you do? What can you make? Who do you who can help you with the first three questions?
There is no substitute for the joy of creation, and there is no greater leverage in the quest for excellence than that joy.
Success in one domain, however narrow, should be mined for all its worth, even at the risk of ignoring other domains...over time, success spills across the board.
Grade level is a pernicious concept.
Teaching is a practice that must perpetually revised and refined over time...therefore, good teaching practices require quality time for review and reflection.
Schools should be places where reflection is a core value and a conspicuous practice.
Teachers should be practitioners in their areas of teaching, not just be certified.
Teachers should grade less and assess more authentically and effectively.
Teachers should be wary of textbooks and, at every opportunity, introduce their students to primary texts (contemporary and historical) and authentic materials that inform their discipline.
Teachers should teach intolerance of lazy thinking.
Teachers should solicit anonymous evaluations from their students...and read them.
Students should assemble their own portfolios of work to carry forward into life after school.
Students should expect to have to exhibit their work in a public way.
A principal should be the lead educator in the building, not merely the person enforcing policy and holding the purse strings.
Administrators spend almost no time in the classroom...this is exactly the opposite of what the case should be.
Administrators ought to be able to articulate forcefully and coherently all these things that are listed above in order that the public is not permitted to be ignorant of the true costs and benefits of a quality education.

Meet Stormy

2010-05-26T17:39:00.000-07:00

She's seven years old. Arabian/Pinto mix. Hails from Boise. Tess and Colm are both ready to learn. Thanks to Warner and Charlotte, they've got a nice horse to learn on.
K

Road School

2010-05-20T19:10:00.000-07:00

We decided to call it Road School.... serious stuff, we had a lot of ground to cover...there was only one way...strictly fun and games.
School opened on Hwy 84. It continued all the way to southern Utah. (click on pics for a larger view)

A fairly extensive traveling library in the back seat.
This part of Road School might be called Car Class.

At last, we got outside for...

Hands on study of geologic formations in Capitol Reef...

sedimentary rock...

climbing around erosion pockets...

scoping out boulder patches....

trekking miles to Lower Calf Creek Falls...

sketching thousand year old petroglyphs in travel journals...

hiking up a wash into the Narrows, imagining flash floods, playing acoustical games with the echoes of their own voices...

and in Arches the amazing labrynth of rock formations known as Fiery Furnace ...

the climb across slick rock and past intriguing quartz crystals to the famous Delicate Arch...

and, finally, earning their Junior Forest Ranger badges and sporting them proudly.

Road School took on a decidedly pop culture emphasis on the 800 mile return trip. We broke out for the first time the portable dvd player we had borrowed from friends. Our kids eyes grew large at the prospect of a movable feast of film. We leveraged their hunger for movies with a simple proposition....two pieces of homework completed earns you one film. They bit and we alternated movies with regular school homework until the homework was done and we, coincidentally, arrived home. Road School... a lot of seat time, even more miles, and more good memories than we can count.
K

Father's Eyes

2010-05-12T06:35:00.001-07:00

In honor of my oldest daughter Erin who graduated from college last weekend after a long, circuitous and often uncertain process. The tee shirts we're wearing in the photos below the poem bear the words, "In Geologic time, Erin is right on schedule."

Father’s Eyes

watched you before you knew what it meant

to exist, to be held,

the first time you collapsed the space between

my eyes and yours,

the world grew large, fitting neatly within

the palm of your hand,

you practiced dancing into that small

circle of light,

avoiding the darker regions where I could

not find you,

your face upturned always, the question ever

present, Father,do you see?

I played along conspicuous and clumsy,

yes sweetie.

You were impossible to ignore.

But my greatest pleasure was you not noticing

as I watched.

Seeing you, in repose, or awake and in your

own skin,

Then comes the hiding, the love of distance,

of veiled lids,

A father’s eyes, useless and prying, chasing

you into shadows,

Secrets sprout like mushrooms, hands fly up

and shield our faces,

It is better not to look, better not to see, better

to dream,

A father’s eyes grow more dim even as the world

around him blooms,

I hold what I see more dearly than ever, more

clearly than I remember,

For I remember only shadowy things flickering

on sheetrock walls,

Red stains on linen sheets, mud streaks upon

smooth cheeks,

Strands of dark hair framing dark beautiful

eyes, unblinking yet fearful,

My eyes speak to me of changes, and I am

tempted to ask you,

Do you see? Do you see? I imagine dancing

before you,

My head cocked coyly to one side, daring you

to ignore me.

A father’s eyes may yet twinkle, as yours did when

when balloons filled the sky,

And floated silently over hilltops, nestling

in open hands,

Held there by a strange child’s eyes full of wonder

and the present question,

Do you see? Do you see?

Kevin Cahill

4/30/10

The Diary of Anne Frank...production photos

2010-04-15T06:35:00.000-07:00

Dress rehearsal last night. Taking photos without a flash is pretty hit and miss under these conditions and with my camera, mostly miss, but if I take enough pictures it seems like I get a few worth saving. Click on them for a larger view.
Opening night, tonight!
K

The Diary of Anne Frank...opening at LHS

2010-04-11T20:00:00.000-07:00

Our production of The Diary of Anne Frank opens this Thursday at La Grande High School. Curtain at 7:30 pm. It runs through Saturday evening.

I love this cast. They have thrown themselves into this project with such enthusiasm and fearlessness. They are smart, generous, and creative people...and lots of fun to be around.

Here are some images from rehearsal Monday evening. Come and join us...we're looking for an audience.
K

Ch...ch...ch...changes

2010-04-10T18:54:00.000-07:00

Hair cut...teeth falling out...they'll all grow back.

The cloudy lens of confirmation bias

2010-04-07T19:39:00.000-07:00

Earlier in the week Wikileaks released a video, "Collateral Murder", leaked from the Pentagon by an unknown whistle blower. I came across it on Andrew Sullivan's blog where he tagged it as clear evidence of a war crime. I watched it, and for the next couple of days have been unable to shake what I saw. It is gut wrenching. The air of unreality is unnerving. The casual comportment of the Iraqi men, their seeming indifference to circling helicopters, the callow, disembodied voices of the pilots, the ever present and portentous cross-hairs on the video screen, the inexorable circling perspective of the helicopter, the audible gap between gun burst and vaporizing clouds of dust, and the muted, silent carnage...and then... the gruesome and shocking sequel. I've rerun the images in my head repeatedly, and I've wondered what they are telling me.

Part of what I'd been grappling with was the nagging feeling that seeing this video was not unlike looking at a densely written text. What it required was much more than a passive viewing. If ever something illustrated the power of framing and the awareness of context to alter and determine perception, this video does that.

Since that initial viewing, my reactions have literally been all over the map. I resisted early impulses to blog about it because I didn't trust myself. I knew that I didn't know enough yet, and I knew that if I waited just a bit, I'd encounter some perspectives that would help me arrive on firmer ground. Little by little those perspectives appeared in the blogosphere. There were, of course, bloggers like Salon's Glenn Greenwald who agreed with Andrew's initial war crimes perspective, but interestingly, it was on Andrew's blog that I found the first dissenting interpretations of the video and the incident captured therein. Others followed. I scanned some other blogs, ones I don't normally read. These perspectives came mostly from persons within the military, some active, some deployed, most apolitical, but all of them alarmed in some way by the video's capacity to tell a story that might not be as true as another story. I found Firedoglake's account persuasive.

But for me the past few days have resembled nothing quite as much as stirring a shallow pond with a stick and then trying to peer down through the cloudy water; the more patient I was, the clearer the water became. Paradoxically, when all had settled, what I finally saw was nothing more than a muddy bottom overlaid with my own reflection. For all my staring, all there is to see is the muck, the unimaginably deep sediment of human folly, born by the currents of time, deposited by degrees, sinking by its own negligible weight, settling down at length and swallowing every prior thing, summoning every living thing above it.
K

Chick-rules

2010-04-05T15:50:00.000-07:00

In the run-up to Easter, we brought a couple of new critters into the fold. Chirp and
As with the last chick parade, we are having to train our cats and dog what the chick-rules are.

Tess was given a water spray bottle and a simple rule of engagement: if a cat peeks over the edge of the box, let him have it. She took to the assignment with relish. Cinder is a pretty quick study, however, so she didn't get to unload on him more than a couple of times.

In addition to being cute, these chicks have a powerful calming effect on Tess and Colm who will sit with them for long stretches of time quietly stroking their feathers. They've also learned to roll with the occasional chick poop on the sleeve or hand. For the time being anyway, at our house, chicks rule.
K

Boys Will Be Girls

2010-04-04T18:01:00.000-07:00

I think this is pretty funny...as is the girls' response. Those Harvard kids are pretty creative.

Here's the girls response:

Why poetry matters....cont.

2010-03-29T15:22:00.000-07:00

A colleague and friend of mine left this in my mailbox this morning. To find something like this just before launching back into work after spring break...well, it's a lovely thing. Thanks Catherine.
K

If Found, Drop In Any Mail Box. Owner Will Pay Postage
- Jeanne Murray Walker

I'm grading papers in the motel room,
the teacher in me watching as my students
fumble with their keys in the lock of the world.

I crack down on the one who misspells
the minuet amount of imagination a person needs
to live well. And I give a C to the one I suspect

of telling me whatever I want: that summer is a newspaper
printed with no alphabet but pleasure. But I confess,
I feel a twinge for the one who postures,

as if he can't imagine anyone loving him for himself.
And I admit, I cheat on the good side to help the one
who writes that he and his girl are one cell,

sliced apart by the scalpel of her parents.
When I get to the one who says
that he's a lonely space ship flying between stars,

I put my red pen down. I could go under the knife
with him, I think, knowing that I won't.
But let's say this. It surprises me to find out I love them.

I'd like to tell someone, the woman in the next room, maybe,
like to spread this sweetness, to bring about some
minor good. Can I offer you this pale translation

of my students' essays? Nothing special.
The sound of their keys turning in the lock of the world.
I drop it as I close the door, in case you need it.

The poll that counts the most

2010-03-24T18:23:00.000-07:00

The chattering classes have spent a lot of time over the past several months trotting out and trumpeting various polls on the subject of health care reform. A herculean media effort has been made to completely erase the memory of the poll that should matter most...the 2008 presidential election.

Obama garnered about 70 million votes in an election that featured the highest voter turnout since 1968, that's forty years. He carried or tied every single age group in the electorate except the over 65 crowd. He staked his candidacy on health care reform. He won, and then he followed through on his campaign promise. That's the way it works sometimes; that's the way I wished it worked all the time.

Obama's opponents have done everything but engage Obama on the issues. They've indulged themselves and their fringe with cheap theatrics; they've turned ideas like socialism and facism into cartoon caricatures; they've lamely cloaked themselves under the mantle of victimhood; they've practiced ad nauseum the pose of outrage; they've hyperventilated about how how things are being jammed down the throats of the American people, about how Obama has frozen the GOP out of the process, and about how a rising tide of populist anger will sweep him and his ilk out of Washington in the next election cycle. Meanwhile Obama has refused to be baited; he's perservered - in short, he's behaved like the only the only adult in room.

Know what?...Elections are supposed to matter. I'm glad that all of us who voted for Barack Obama can say that in this instance anyway, we got what we voted for. I'm proud of the guy.
K

Counterfactual

2010-03-23T12:11:00.000-07:00

Jane Mayer whose acclaimed book, The Dark Side, chronicles the Bush Administration's handling of intelligence interrogation techniques, has written a must-read take down of Marc Thiessen's new book, Courting Disaster. Thiessen main claim to fame is that he was a speechwriter for Bush. His book is a no-holds-barred defense of the Bush-Cheney policies and a polemic against all things Obama. Take a look and weigh the facts and source material for yourselves.
K

Seven...Lucky and Good

2010-03-15T04:10:00.001-07:00

Seven years ago, Colm sounded his yawp and then settled in for a nurse and a nap. Now that he's reached the age of reason, he 's not so easily satisfied, and he's a bit more sophisticated in his modes of operation.

Colm wanted a ball party. Beth gave me the reins for this one. We started with an inflatable, oversized soccer ball. I improvised a game where three pairs of kids each defended their own tree. The object was to hit either of the other two trees with the soccer ball while protecting your own tree...kind of triangular game of shifting defensive alliances. Next we moved on to kick ball which is the huge favorite amongst these kids right now during recess at school. They would have played this game all day long. Next we played some baseball, first a version of work up with me pitching. We used foam balls which flew impressively but didn't leave a mark if they hit you (which they did). Then I set up a tee and we played tee ball in teams (until the tee broke).

Beth made another of her patented cakes. One of the kids was dumbfounded by this. "You made this?!" he exclaimed. We couldn't squeeze in any hoops due to the location and the limits of time and energy (mine mostly). Everyone had a blast.

Interestingly, Colm's favorite gift though, hands down, was the digital camera we got him. He carried it around all day. It has a nice set of features which allowed Colm to explore some options without getting too overwhelmed. He held it like a traditional camera until he realized that it had a digital display screen. He figured out the macro function which was pretty impressive...I told him that alone qualified him as an amateur photographer. Early in the morning he and I took a walk over to the high school as I had to do a little work on my set. Colm was busy snapping shots of Sammy and the street. I told him that he might start noticing photos taken by photographers in books and magazines and online. I asked him what his favorite subjects to shoot were. He said Sammy and everything. He asked me where my camera was. I pointed to my coat pocket. He looked at me and said, "We're both photographers."

This boy could hardly be more loved. His grandparents got him a remote control truck which he also loves. Beth wrapped him up with a soft blanket and wool lamb from the Pendleton Woolen Mills...he's her lamb. Lucky boy, good boy.
K

Getting outside the box

2010-03-12T20:21:00.001-08:00

Back in early winter as I began preparations for this spring's production of The Diary of Anne Frank, I decided to investigate the possibility of locating resources on the subject of the Holocaust that might enrich the theatrical experience for my cast, the student body, and the community as well. I contacted a couple of Jewish organizations in Portland, and one, the Oregon Holocaust Resource Center, eventually steered me in the direction of an intriguing idea for a field trip.

It so happens that during the months of February and March this year, the Jewish Theatre Collaborative is producing a play called Kindertransport, which explores the midlife crisis of Evelyn, a woman who as a nine year old Eva, was shipped to England by her German Jewish mother in an attempt to save her from increasingly virulent antisemitism triggered by the awful experiences of Kristallnacht. While Jews were free to leave Hitler's Germany in the months prior to the outbreak of WWII, there were precious few ports of entry willing to accept them. A few dedicated activists and organizations prevailed upon the British government to accept Jewish children to be placed with British families. The parents of these children were not allowed in and most of them perished in the nightmare that followed. The children were, like the protagonist in the play, mostly between the ages of three and fifteen; they were raised for the most part as English. Many of them lost all contact with their former lives and their former selves; they became English and many were baptized and became Christian.

The play revolves around a crisis of identity which breaks out when Evelyn's own daughter Faith, discovers letters and papers in an attic box that suggest a past which her mother has kept secret. What at first seems like an understandable desire to leave the past behind, slowly reveals itself to be something darker, more haunting and infinitely more heartbreaking. I won't spoil the plot for people who hope to see the production one day, but suffice it to say that I was more than a little excited about the opportunity to travel with my cast to see a play so topically relevant to our own and at such a timely stage of our own rehearsal process.
The people at the OHRC and the JTC arranged tickets at very cheap rates for a morning matinee production just for high school students. I was unable to secure any funding for our trip, though I was granted a sub for one day. We paid for the entire experience out of our own pockets.

We left La Grande immediately after school on Wednesday in three cars piloted by mothers of cast members. The kids proposed a stop at a supermarket just before Portland as a way of economizing on food costs. We hit Fred Meyer in The Dalles. I watched these kids choose their evening fare, mostly sandwichesm, crackers and hummus or dip, and fruit. One kid came out with a block of cheese, a jar of peanuts, and a 48 oz pop. I asked him what his favorite fruit was, thinking I might get him an apple. He shrugged. How about vegetable? "Pumpkin, " he said with a guileless grin on his face. I shrugged and gave up. Twenty four field trip, he won't starve on my watch.

We arrived in Portland at about 8:45. As I finished checking in I was taken aback when I saw two colleagues of mine from the English department of our high school standing in the hotel lobby; we all laughed and then I noticed about four more colleagues. Turns out the school district had sent a team of teachers and administrators for a two day, two night junket on writing across the curriculum, all expenses paid, one bed for each person. I felt a little twinge of envy, I suppose, but it didn't last long. Our group was fairly tingling with excitement, and I was pretty sure we were going to have a better time than my colleagues. Our group, which included three mothers who drove the cars, met up a half hour later in the lobby, and we walked to Powell's where we stayed until it closed at 11:00 pm. It was a kick seeing a few of the kids experience Powell's for the first time, kind of jaw dropping for the uninitiated. That night I shared a room with a couple of my actors and stayed up late talking about books and music. I told them that if I had hung out with guys like them when I was in high school, I surely would be smarter and more creative today. They laughed.

Early next morning we got breakfast. It was raining, and as we prepared to walk the twelve blocks to the Artists Repertory Theatre for the 10:00 am show, I noticed the kid who liked pumpkin standing there in cargo shorts and a tee shirt. "Where's your pants? You have a jacket?" He shrugged still wearing that smile. I hadn't thought to explicitly require my group to bring pants and coats. Maybe next time.

We watched the play. My actors, only four weeks out from their own opening night watched the performances with a keen interest. At intermission we compared notes about favorite moments, the set design, the actors, and the annoying habit some of the kids in the other groups had of texting and chattering during the show. One kid behind me munched on chips and crinkled the plastic wrapping during the first five minutes of act two. All that being said, the actors managed to win everyone's full attention at length.

The finale of the play has a bit of surreal staging which delighted all of us in much the same way a magic act might. The director came out immediately after the show and tossed a few questions to the audience, there were two other high school groups there, both from the Portland area. Initially the director's questions were met with silence, not altogether surprising. But then the kids opened up, several of my cast had things to say, including the one in cargo shorts. I was proud of them.

After that, we heard the testimony of a Dutch survivor of the Holocaust. Chella is an eighty-something who, like Anne Frank, hid for a time in an attic. The Nazis invaded her country on her fifteenth birthday. She and her sister and father evaded the Nazis for a time but ultimately were betrayed and sent to Auschwitz were she spent a year and a half. Her father was gassed upon arrival, but she and her sister survived the ordeal, including the death marches in the final winter as war came to an end. Chella, whose gentle, smiling demeanor make you anticipate the arrival of a plate of chocolate cookies and a glass of milk at any moment, fixed every teenager in the house with tales of her harrowing experience and the long and painful aftermath of coming to terms with what she had seen. She spoke of surviving her survival and how it took her thirty years to find her public voice, but when she told us "You have to fight to live...every day you must live," we all sat still and accepted her admonition. When she said, half to herself, half to us, "You must tell yourself, "I can do it." And then you must do it," we all nodded. She told us the survivor adage, "If you cry, you die." She had to pause more than once, to collect herself and continue on.

My eyes welled up with tears several times. I thought of all the hurt in the world, and of her brave stance vis a vis that hurt. I thought of how one lifetime is hardly enough time to heal some kinds of hurt, and how it is not nearly enough time more often than not. I thought of how important, how necessary, it is that people like Chella show the rest of us how to undertake that healing regardless of how little time might be left because the hurt in the world, left to its own devices survives every lifetime and is bequeathed to the newly born. Chella appeared to me in that moment to be a true hero. There was steel and milky human kindness mingled in her.

After Chella's talk my cast was given a private sit down with play's director, Sacha Reich, one her actors, Patricia Hunter, and Chella. The kids sat on the floor of the lobby and we carried on a rambling hour long conversation about the Kindertransport, The Diary of Anne Frank, acting (Patricia had also been in a production of The Diary of Anne Frank), and the Holocaust. My kids seemed willing to sit there and absorb every syllable, every story. The director had to, finally, tactfully suggest that it was time to go. Everyone hugged Chella, and she, though very hard of hearing, seemed delighted by all the enthusiasm and affection.

It was almost two o'clock in the afternoon when we finally walked back outside. I gave them an hour and a quarter free reign to walk the area. We had to head back to La Grande since we were all expected back in class the next day, a Friday. We hit the road right at rush hour. I felt grateful to the mothers who had volunteered to drive. I spent the trip down and back poring over the script of our play, finalizing my light and sound cues. Every so often one of the kids would call out a question about a movie or a music group and we'd toss it back and forth for awhile as we headed east.

My colleagues, some of them anyway, were sure to take advantage of the junket to spend part of the weekend down in the metro area, possibly catch our boys basketball team's quest for the state trophy in Corvallis. They've got a real good team, a fun team to watch, full of talented and dedicated players and led by an equally talented and dedicated coach. I look forward to hearing about it, and there is no doubt that I will hear about it. In the meantime, I thought I'd set down the tale of our own team's experience, just in case anyone might be curious.
K

Not my lunch table group blog

2010-03-07T08:29:00.000-08:00

I recently came across the blog Positive Liberty via a link from Andrew Sullivan. I've only given it a cursory examination. The blog's creator, Jonathen Rowe, describes his focus thusly:

Yet another social commentary blog by a libertarian lawyer and college professor. This blog focuses on religion, history, constitutional law, government policy, philosophy, sexuality, and the American Founding. Everything is fair game though. Over the past few years, I've done much historical research on the America's Founding and Religion.

A sampling of Rowe's interests, he is apparently at work on a review of a book on Joseph Priestly, the following quotes from Benjamin Franklin and his own pithy commentary in between:

Remember me affectionately to good Dr. Price and to the honest heretic Dr. Priestly. I do not call him honest by way of distinction; for I think all the heretics I have known have been virtuous men. They have the virtue of fortitude or they would not venture to own their heresy; and they cannot afford to be deficient in any of the other virtues, as that would give advantage to their many enemies; and they have not like orthodox sinners, such a number of friends to excuse or justify them. Do not, however mistake me. It is not to my good friend's heresy that I impute his honesty. On the contrary, 'tis his honesty that has brought upon him the character of heretic. ...

Franklin admired men honest enough in theology to come to terms with their heresy...

Here is my Creed: I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we can render to him, is doing Good to his other Children. That the Soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another Life respecting its Conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental Principles of all sound Religion, and I regard them as you do, in whatever Sect I meet with them. As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw, or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his Divinity: ...

"Corrupting changes" of course, refers to a term Priestley coined -- "the corruptions of Christianity." And it had specific meaning: 1) original sin, 2) trinity, 3) incarnation, 4) atonement, and 5) infallibility of the Bible.

Then there are Rowe's readers. Not exactly my lunch table group. Check out this post and follow up on its comment thread. Challenge yourself to read down through at least ten comments on the thread...even though I cannot begin to follow the substance of their mathematical discussions, I love the avuncular tone, the unabashedly esoteric references, the gentle remonstrances and reminders, and the idioms of address, especially when disagreeing with a previous commenter. "Well, no..." It makes me wonder if this is a trait of this particular community of blog visitors or if it is characteristic of a particular academic discipline (Mathematics, Philosophy, Physics...).
K

Poetry Slam...the voices of Daniel Beatty

2010-02-27T10:50:00.001-08:00

I teach Speech and so I'm always looking for material in the world of the spoken word. Lately I've been poking around Def Jam Poetry performances on YouTube. A couple of days ago, one of my students told me about Daniel Beatty.
This guy is a gem, a serious talent with a compelling vision. He's written a one man show called "Emergency" in which he plays 43 different characters. I haven't yet seen the whole thing, but several of the monologues which are part of the show can be found in clips on YouTube, some of them delivered as poetry slam performances for Def Jam Poetry. Check out "Knock Knock".

Some other ones include "Duality Duel" (aka "The Nig**r and the Nerd")

It's interesting to hear Daniel Beatty comment on his own work. You get a feel for how wide ranging his vision really is plus you get to contrast his own voice with those of the characters he has invented. The clip below intersperses cuts of him in performance and an interview on his play.

Truth and Consequences

2010-02-25T21:35:00.000-08:00

What follows may seem to readers of this blog as needing context...I don't disagree but I don't have time for that right now...I just want to post this before it slips away from entirely...suffice it to say that the issues addressed below are on my mind these days. Lastly, there are really two separate posts spliced together here...they may or may not read as a seamless text.

Let me begin by saying that I am unimpressed by the zero tolerance model of discipline for high schools. While it makes a great show of seriousness, I don't believe that it does much more than create the public perception that its proponents care more deeply about the problem than the rest of us who have learned to live within the ambiguities and gray areas of real life.

Regarding the issue of how best to deal with students who violate our school policies concerning drugs and alcohol, I think that we need to keep in mind always that we cannot help kids if we do not remain engaged with them in meaningful ways. The threat of expulsion should not be, in my opinion, the centerpiece of our approach to young offenders. I do not want to see education become co-opted by the ethos of law enforcement any more than I want to see it co-opted by the ethos of industry.

Any legitimate approach must begin with first principles which then become the animating forces promoting our school climate and culture. I propose three such principles which, taken together, describe the epicenter of our professional concerns as educators.

First, we recognize and respect the individual needs of each and every student enrolled at school.
Second, we believe that all people desire happiness and are always, within their own personal and social contexts, working to obtain it.
Third, all learning leads us inexorably and sometimes painfully in the direction of greater awareness of the possibility and the nature of happiness.

Ask yourselves, do you want a school culture defined by rules and penalties or one defined by human relationships and values? I would argue that a student offense ought to trigger an examination by the student of his behavior and choices, the formulation of a plan leading the student back into the classroom, and the exploration of experiences designed to enlarge and enrich the student's awareness of possible paths to joy, peak performance, or pleasure. In other words, our focus should not be punitive; rather, it should be educational.

I don't have time to explain how I am not proposing doing away with consequences or suggesting the abolition of harsh penalties like suspension or expulsion. If you are really curious about whether what I'm suggesting has any practical merit, visit the website of Park School here:

http://www.parkschool.net/academics/index.cfm?type=list&objectid=320

Park is a private school, yes, but I'm always struck by the paradox that what people with means will do for their children is somehow inappropriate for our own children. People pay good money for things they really believe in. Wouldn't it be nice if we could furnish taxpayers with the same sort of thing?

I am struck repeatedly by the way working inside an institution creates a rule bound mentality that tends to override human judgment and replace it with legalistic thinking.

I am not embarrassed to say that I intentionally treat kids and other people on a case by case basis, that I care enough about consequences to tailor them to the person and the circumstance, and that simply laying down a rule and then waiting for a kid to make a bad choice is not my idea of constructive intervention.

I absolutely believe in consequences. I have no problem with expulsion for the young person who is a repeat offender of a drug/alcohol policy or who is unrepentant and unwilling to make an effort to learn after a first offense. I do not believe that failure to adhere to one component of an action plan (tardies for example) or behavior contract (late work for example) should put a student in jeopardy of expulsion. Expulsion should be reserved for violations of serious policies like drug/alcohol.

We seem to lack the imagination to fashion consequences that will actually trigger a process of reflection and perhaps reintegration.

My concern always revolves around a bias I carry against institutions, namely that they tend to act in their own interests and not in the interests of individual people. People make institutions less efficient, more problematic, they tax the patience of those charged with enforcing rules. The message I hear is, " if only people would read the policy book and abide by it, life would be simpler"...sorry but that's not my idea of a healthy human place. I got into this line of work in part because I'm drawn to the messiness of learning. Until and unless an institution has exhausted itself in the service of or at the very least inconvenienced itself on behalf of it's clientele it is not fulfilling its mission.

I'm deeply suspicious of the impulse to cleanse our population of ne'er-do-wells, to remove kids from our presence who don't believe us, to create through attrition and subtraction a more compliant population. It smacks of a desire to make our own lives easier. I don't think that's what we're paid to do....then again, maybe that's exactly what we're paid to do.
K

kidnapped?

2010-02-24T20:18:00.001-08:00

My kids disappear into rooms; sometimes strangers and strange creatures come out.

The one month dragon

2010-02-21T08:21:00.001-08:00

Beth recently led her art class on a month long paper mache adventure. She got the idea from a video called "How to make a 4 Minute Dragon". Watch the video and you'll realize that the video is four minutes but the actual process is much longer. Beth tried a dragon of her own. I found it hanging in shower one day...a bit unsettling.

She took what she learned from the dragon and helped the kids in her class create their own creatures.

It was an epic experience in every sense of the word. Each week the kids had one hour with Beth. Week one was devoted to creating body parts with paper and tape.

In week two those parts were then put through a paper mache process using flour and water, no glue.

Week three parts were attached and again covered in paper mache.

Week four was about painting the animals. Sessions went long, cleanup was even longer. I never saw a kid complain or whine about the time; in fact, at least one kid sought permission to come in for some extra time to finish what he was working on.

Kids threw themselves into it, materials (flour, water, tape and paper mostly) everywhere, body parts scattered about waiting to be attached.

There were times when Beth must have wondered aloud why she had embarked on this project, but in the end everything came together. The animals were released from captivity into the world.

Very cool.
K

The 20 funniest faces in Olympic figure skating

2010-02-20T12:56:00.000-08:00

Click here.

Welcome to my fortune cookie

2010-02-18T06:26:00.000-08:00

Got another response in Chinese. it was to this post...whoever the commentor is he/she is welcome but I honestly can't tell if I'm the random target of a light hearted jest or what... not that it matters that much.

The latest comment is from 裕瑤 aka "Abundant Precious":
生命是一頓豐富的宴席，有人卻寧可挨餓
which means, according to an online translator:
Life is a banquet, but some people prefer to starve.

makes me hungry for some takeout.
K

Educational Mainfestos....a response

2010-02-06T07:53:00.000-08:00

This reply via email from my father....

I have been reading your explorations fo educational manifestos the last few days and found a couple of them interesting and even understandable. I like the portion off Hirsch’s manifesto you provided. I also appreciated John Holt’s ideas; however, I can’t help but think that most home school parents either have some special skills or are committed to the belief that education of their children is their primary responsibility – not that of the state or the school board or any other institution to whom they choose to delegate that responsibility. The problem I have with Holt’s idea is that we have largely skipped at least a generation where parents by necessity made things, worked with and solved problems that had to do with survival and getting on to an improved although more sedentary life. Back in the first half of the last century when America still had a significant rural culture, Holt’s idea may have been more workable, but I’m not so confident that our present society could with single parent families and questionable work ethics handle Holt’s ideas.

Not surprisingly, I find a lot to agree with in my dad's thinking. Hirsch has something important to say, but I'm disheartened by the way his ideas are so often hitched to the test score bandwagon. I don't think that teaching content and teaching children are mutually exclusive propositions, yet this seems to me to be the rhetorical dividing point when it comes to Hirsch sympathisers.

As for the point about Holt, I'm intrigued but not necessarily persuaded by the notion that the disappearance of skills and habits of mind that were part and parcel of rural culture have in some meaningful way depleted the home school educational repertoire of parents...more handicapping in my opinion are the societal and legal barriers that have been erected preventing a child's access to the adult world of experience, both work and social. The great loss in the passing of rural culture is not so much the specific skill sets that are gone; rather, it is the disappearance of an alternative life path for young people who cannot flourish in a classroom. Without romanticizing the life of kids who left school early in the era of my father's youth, I can't help but feel like we've traded freedom and striving for shackles and compliance.

Children since time immemorial have been put to work or sent to school. Abraham Lincoln was literally an indentured servant to his father, and it was his most fervent hope to one day be delivered from that bondage. He seized upon learning, something his father derided, as his ticket out. I wonder if perhaps both worlds, the world of work and the world of school, need to be open and permeable in order for young people and people in general to better appreciate each one for what it is and what it could lead to.

Perhaps Holt's ideas are unworkable in a society that has so thoroughly institutionalized its people, but Hirsch's ideas seem premised on accepting this institutionalization and focused on shaping and defining its character rather than on loosening its grip on us.
K

Stupid

2010-02-03T07:07:00.000-08:00

I jumped on an inflatable sled last Sunday from the top of a very high place on a very steep slope. I did not see the jump which had been built at the very bottom of what I thought was a large bowl. I hit the jump going backwards and was launched high into the air. I came down squarely on my back, my arms and legs flailing above me. Couldn't breathe for about a minute. A snowboarder who was sitting nearby and watched the whole thing, smiled at me as I lay there, my glasses near his boots, my mouth open waiting for air to flow. "Dude! That was the most air I've seen any catch here...you probably broke two or three vertebrae, huh?" He laughed amiably. I spent the next hour trying to determine whether or not I had really messed up my spine or if it was only ribs and muscles. I settled on ribs and muscles eventually. It only hurt when I breathed, or coughed, or sneezed, or laughed or tried to turn one or the other...in the last twenty four hours I've regained a lot more range of motion and am feeling better finally. Going to the doctor today...sigh. It's alarming how easyily I lapse into stupid and impulsive decisions. I feel like a prospective Darwin award winner.
K

Education Mainifestos...part 7, Horace Mann

2010-01-31T16:46:00.000-08:00

I don't know how many people know about Horace Mann (1796-1859), that he is the father of tax-supported, secular public education in America so I decided to do a little cursory reading on the subject. The quotes that appear below all come from this site sponsored by the Macinac Center, an educational non-profit in Michigan, dedicated to providing educational resources to teachers and lay people.

Perspectives on Mann differ widely, shaped in no small part by how people feel about the importance of compulsory public education to the fabric of American culture and democracy.

For some like John Gatto, a former teacher of the year in New York who, after nearly thirty years in the classroom, became a self-styled iconoclast and fierce critic of America's public school system, Horace Mann imported from Prussia the ethos of bureaucratic authoritarianism to American schools in an explicit attempt to control and domesticate a burgeoning immigrant population (largely Catholic) that was threatening the status quo of the commonwealth of Massachusetts. Gatto sees Mann's agenda as essentially antithetical to the American ethos, a Trojan horse for the captains of industry seeking a compliant work force, and a frontal assault on the authority of the family unit.

For others, Mann is the patron saint of the progressive institution charged with leveling the social playing field of America, strengthening democracy, and producing good citizens and good workers for America. Many of the Founding Fathers, Jefferson among them, espoused ideals similar to the ones that Mann would later succeed in implementing on a limited scale in Massachusetts.

What follows are some excerpts from the Macinac Center's summary of Mann's efforts:

During the three decades preceding the Civil War, two significant developments occurred in popular education in the United States. The first is that the foundations were laid for a government takeover of education, and the second is that the historic role of schools in transmitting religious traditions gave way to more secular goals.

Horace Mann and the education reformers' primary purpose was to bring local school districts under centralized town authority and to achieve some degree of uniformity among the towns through a state agency. They believed that popular schooling could be transformed into a powerful instrument for social unity.

The organizational model Mann and others adopted for use in Massachusetts and elsewhere was the Prussian educational system as described by French philosopher Victor Cousin in his 1833 book Report on the Condition of Public Instruction in Germany, and Particularly Prussia.22 The Prussian system of state-controlled education extended from the lower grades through the university levels. Schools were established, supported, and administered by a central authority: The state supervised the training of teachers, attendance was compulsory, parents were punished for withholding their children from school, and efforts were made to make curricula and instruction uniform.

As president of the State Senate, Mann was instrumental in establishing the Massachusetts Board of Education in 1837 ...Mann combined an evangelical fervor for the common school with adroit political skills to accomplish three objectives: (1) state collection of education data; (2) state adoption of textbooks through the establishment of state-approved school libraries in each district; and (3) state control of teacher preparation through the establishment of "Normal Schools" (teacher colleges).

Mr. President

2010-01-30T08:45:00.000-08:00

Watch President Obama taking questions from the GOP caucus in Baltimore yesterday. You can also view the speech he gave prior the Q & A here. If every American took the time to digest this hour long exchange I think we would all be better for the experience. Agree with him or not, the man in the Oval Office right now has the skills and the temperament to accomplish some good things for this country. I hope others will step up to the plate and accept his challenge.

Education manifestos... part 6, Howard Gardner

2010-01-27T07:18:00.000-08:00

Howard Gardner is most well known for his seminal work, Frames of mind: the theory of multiple intelligences.. Initially Gardner did not insert himself and his theory into debates on educational reform. He focused instead on the effort to enumerate and define the intellignces he believed comprised the entirety of human cognitive apparatus. He claimed that there were seven discreet intelligences:

Linguistic intelligence involves sensitivity to spoken and written language, the ability to learn languages, and the capacity to use language to accomplish certain goals. This intelligence includes the ability to effectively use language to express oneself rhetorically or poetically; and language as a means to remember information. Writers, poets, lawyers and speakers are among those that Howard Gardner sees as having high linguistic intelligence.

Logical-mathematical intelligence consists of the capacity to analyze problems logically, carry out mathematical operations, and investigate issues scientifically. In Howard Gardner's words, it entails the ability to detect patterns, reason deductively and think logically. This intelligence is most often associated with scientific and mathematical thinking.

Musical intelligence involves skill in the performance, composition, and appreciation of musical patterns. It encompasses the capacity to recognize and compose musical pitches, tones, and rhythms. According to Howard Gardner musical intelligence runs in an almost structural parallel to linguistic intelligence.

Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence entails the potential of using one's whole body or parts of the body to solve problems. It is the ability to use mental abilities to coordinate bodily movements. Howard Gardner sees mental and physical activity as related.

Spatial intelligence involves the potential to recognize and use the patterns of wide space and more confined areas.

Interpersonal intelligence is concerned with the capacity to understand the intentions, motivations and desires of other people. It allows people to work effectively with others. Educators, salespeople, religious and political leaders and counsellors all need a well-developed interpersonal intelligence.

Intrapersonal intelligence

Later however Gardner did join the conversation about education. Gardner's personal preferences represent a blend of classical liberal arts curriculum sifted through the prism of mulitiple intelligences. Here is a quote from his book, The Disciplined Mind.

"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 or indeterminable. 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 the first chapter of 'The Disciplined Mind'

Education manifestos...part 5, Ivan Illich and John Holt

2010-01-26T06:20:00.000-08:00

The late sixties and early seventies were marked by clarion calls from critics of public education. In 1971, an Austrian Catholic priest serving in the New York City diocese,Ivan Illich, published the radical book, Deschooling Society. He attacked the dehumanizing forces of western economies and the public institutions which served them. In an almost clairvoyant passage that seems to intuit a technological landscape that had the potential to reverse or mitigate these forces, he wrote:

Universal education through schooling is not feasible. It would be no more feasible if it were attempted by means of alternative institutions built on the style of present schools. Neither new attitudes of teachers toward their pupils nor the proliferation of educational hardware or software (in classroom or bedroom), nor finally the attempt to expand the pedagogue's responsibility until it engulfs his pupils' lifetimes will deliver universal education. The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring. We hope to contribute concepts needed by those who conduct such counterfoil research on education--and also to those who seek alternatives to other established service industries.

In 1969, John Holt published How Children Fail, an indictment of public education. Holt became the intellectual father of the home school movement. His 1981 book, Teach Your Ownn became a touchstone for the home school movement. What follows are some notable quotes from Holt which I cherry picked from Wikipedia:

"... the human animal is a learning animal; we like to learn; we are good at it; we don't need to be shown how or made to do it. What kills the processes are the people interfering with it or trying to regulate it or control it."[4]

"I want to make it clear that I don’t see homeschooling as some kind of answer to badness of schools. I think that the home is the proper base for the exploration of the world which we call learning or education. Home would be the best base no matter how good the schools were."[5]

“ Education... now seems to me perhaps the most authoritarian and dangerous of all the social inventions of mankind. It is the deepest foundation of the modern slave state, in which most people feel themselves to be nothing but producers, consumers, spectators, and 'fans,' driven more and more, in all parts of their lives, by greed, envy, and fear. My concern is not to improve 'education' but to do away with it, to end the ugly and antihuman business of people-shaping and to allow and help people to shape themselves. ”
“ The most important thing any teacher has to learn, not to be learned in any school of education I ever heard of, can be expressed in seven words: Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners. ”
“ It's not that I feel that school is a good idea gone wrong, but a wrong idea from the word go. It's a nutty notion that we can have a place where nothing but learning happens, cut off from the rest of life. ”
“ No one is more truly helpless, more completely a victim, than he who can neither choose nor change nor escape his protectors. ”

Education manifestos...part 4, the Storyline Method

2010-01-25T07:07:00.000-08:00

The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget introduced theories of child development that became powerful shaping forces in educational reform in the sixties and on up to the present. In simplistic terms, Piaget asserted that children pass through four stages of development from sensory experience, to magical thinking, to concrete thinking to formal thinking. In addition he argued that children construct their own meaning out of their own experience. From his work sprang the educational concepts of developmental readiness and of child centered curriculum.

In the late sixties a group of Scottish educators set out to develop an thematic, interdisciplinary method of instruction for elementary students. What they came up with has come to be known as The Scottish Storyline Method. The Storyline Method was introduced to the US in the eighties by an American Fulbright teacher, . There are now Storyline schools in California and the Northwest, including Highland Magnet School in Bend and Creative Science School @ Clark in Portland.

Storyline is an innovative approach to curriculum integration. The essential elements of a Storyline are setting, characters and events or incidents. The unfolding of the story each day in the classroom provides a structure and logical connection to the curriculum. The difference between thematic teaching using a topic web and Storyline is the presentation of key questions which moves the story along. In a topic web the activities are random, whereas the investigations which take place during a Storyline are in a logical sequence which is dependent upon the preceding episode.
The critical elements of a storyline are:

* Setting the scene in a particular time and place--Students create a "frieze" or 3D representation of the setting in their classroom.
* People or animals or both--Each student creates a character which he or she then becomes throughout the "storyline." This provides students with a chance to be someone else of a different age, race, culture, personality, time period, etc.
* A way of life to investigate--Daily life is explored as well as rules and expectations of that particular day and age.
* Real problems to be solved--The teacher and students create incidents which could possibly come up in the given setting. Students then must work together or individually (in character) to solve these challenges.
* Celebration or Culminating Activity--Each storyline ends in a way which students are able to share their knowledge with others. Often this is through a presentation for parents, a field trip or community outreach.
* Reflection and Assessment--Students are always given opportunities to reflect and assess their learning in a variety of ways.

For example, with an Oregon Trail topic, the students become pioneers leaving home in the East to settle in the West. The journey requires students to investigate why people migrate, what supplies are needed, what rules they must follow along the trail, what are the possible hardships and challenges. Carefully planned episodes engage students in actual practice and application of basic skills within the context of the storyline. The story motivates students to extend those skills and refine them for "real life" challenges.

The development of the storyline is guided by the following features:

* The story is progressive and sequential.
* The teacher sets out key questions within each episode that the students must address.
* Each episode has limitless potential as every student investigates and contributes depending on their personal experiences and innovation.
* Each student will reach different levels within each key question and will return to the storyline for the next question.

In 1997 Jeff Creswell published Creating Worlds, Creating Meaning: The Scottish Storyline Method. You can read a review of it here.

Education manifestos...part 3, Neil Postman

2010-01-23T16:18:00.000-08:00

In 1969 Neil Postman, along with Charles Weingartner, published the book, Teaching as a Subversive Activity. I remember reading that book while going through teacher training in the late seventies. The book snapped me out of the doldrums; it challenged me to think about teaching in a way that was both romantic and rigorous. I've never really gotten over that book.

"The children know that none of these questions has anything to do with them, and the game that is being played does not require that the questions do. The game is called ‘Let’s Pretend,’ and if its name were chiseled into the front of every school building in America, we would at least have an honest announcement of what takes place there. The game is based on a series of pretenses which include: Let’s pretend that you are not what you are and that this sort of work makes a difference to your lives; let’s pretend that what bores you is important, and that the more you are bored, the more important it is; let’s pretend that there are certain things everyone must know, and that both the questions and answers about them have been fixed for all time; let’s pretend that your intellectual competence can be judged on the basis of how well you can play Let’s Pretend. (p. 49)

As soon as students realize that their lessons are about their meanings, then the entire psychological context of schools is different. Learning is no longer a contest between them and something outside of them, whether the problem be a poem, a historical conclusion, a scientific theory, or anything else. There is, then, no need for the kinds of "motivation" found in the conventional Trivia content. There are few occasions for feelings of inadequacy, few threats to their sense of dignity, less reason to resist changing perspectives. In short, the meaning-maker metaphor puts the student at the center of the learning process. It makes both possible and acceptable a plurality of meanings, for the environment does not exist only to impose standardized meanings but rather to help students improve their unique meaning-making capabilities. And this is the basis of the process of learning how to learn, how to deal with the otherwise ‘meaningless,’ how to cope with change that requires new meanings to be made. (p. 97)

One of Postmans most subversive assertions is that teachers out to be primarily concerned with outfitting their students with fully functioning and highly sensitive "crap-detectors". In a famous essay,

Bullshit and the Art of Crap-Detection

, Postman enumerated several varieties of bullshit that people should become practiced at identifying and avoiding at all costs. They include:

Pomposity
Fanaticim
Inanity
Superstition

Postman was a serious thinker but he was also a committed ironist. Here he cites Postman's third and fourth laws.

Postman's Third Law:

"At any given time, the chief source of bullshit with which you have to contend is yourself."

The reason for this is explained in Postman's Fourth Law, which is;

"Almost nothing is about what you think it is about--including you."

His preoccupation with bullshit was, and is, for me a tonic. It reminded me that the worst trap a teacher can fall into is the trap of taking oneself too seriously. I have waged a lifelong and unequal battle with myself over this one. Here's Postman again:

An idealist usually cannot acknowledge his own bullshit, because it is in the nature of his "ism" that he must pretend it does not exist. In fact, I should say that anyone who is devoted to an "ism"--Fascism, Communism, Capital-ism--probably has a seriously defective crap-detector. This is especially true of those devoted to "patriotism."

Postman later wrote another provocative book entitled The Disappearance of Childhood. In it he argued that today's media environment threatens the very concept and viability of that idea and stage of life we call "childhood."

Education manifestos... part 2, Theodore Sizer

2010-01-21T20:34:00.000-08:00

Ted Sizer, author of Horace's Compromise and founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools made these remarks in a speech in Washington D.C. in 2002. Notice how he uses the claim that the mainstream educational voices have labeled him and the Coalition as "radical" is similar to the claim made by E.D. Hirsch, who also describes himself and his followers as distinctly out of step with accepted educational doctrine. It's hardly surprising if you think about it....after all who needs a manifesto if everything is as it should be?

Neither you nor I should be surprised that some of our shared ideas and the practices that flow from them mesh poorly with some current educational policies and political opinions. So be it. We cannot pretend and should not pretend otherwise, even as some dismiss us as unwisely "radical" in our beliefs, "radical" in the pejorative, the opposite is the truth.

It is a radical idea that all children grow at the same rate and in the same way and thus can thereby be accurately classified and "graded" in narrow, standardized ways.

It is a radical idea that the power of a child's mind can be plumbed by a single test and reduced to a small clutch of numbers.

It is a radical idea that people of any age can learn well in crowded, noisy, and ill-equipped places.

It is a radical idea that serious learning can best emerge from a student's exposure to short blasts of "delivered" content, each of less than an hour in length, and unified by no coherent set of common ideas.

It is a radical idea that a child can learn what is needed to live well in a complex society with schooling that encompasses barely half the days of a calendar year; and that ignores the opportunities —or lack of opportunities— available to each child.

In the following remarks Sizer made in a speech he gave in Providence in 2000 he articulates the fundamental premise of his movement.

Let me just mention three of the most familiar examples. "I cannot teach a child well, whom I do not know well. How can I teach that child well, if I do not know her enthusiasms or why she makes mistakes or what seems to be out of sorts for her at a given moment, or what is behind her at home. And no two of our children are alike. And so the question for all of us is: how many children can I get to know well enough to know them and their families and their situations well at once? And you and I struggle in high schools to get that number to no more than 80, knowing full well that in many schools it is routinely 120 to 150. And, by in large, the lower the income of the students, the larger the load you and I are asked to cover. I think most of us, if we were rewriting those principles again, at the high school level, would say 50 to 1. 50 kids and 50 for the whole year, not 50 who are rescheduled in the middle of the year. 50, you can really get to know 50 well. And in an elementary school, 20 on the outside, but it really should be 12-15.

He goes on to describe the hallmark instructional assessment tool of the CES - the student exhibition.

And finally we say that students should be able both to display their knowledge, and also to use it, ideally use it in an unfamiliar situation. The real test for a student is when she is presented with something which is unfamiliar and asked to use what she has learned and the habits of hard thinking to make sense of it. That is, to make the unfamiliar, familiar. And if we hold this as the standard-the ability to display the habit of using one's knowledge and one's mind to make sense of the unfamiliar, to give meaning to what may initially appear to be meaningless-you have to show it to us. And we have to ask you about it, and you have to show us again, and we have to see you do it. And that's serious learning, very serious learning. It's very easy, indeed criminally cheap, to reduce learning to any kind of one shot performance. Whether it's a standardized test or an essay, or one 10 minute prepared speech. Our function is ultimately about our students' habits. What we really care about, the ultimate assessment of your and my work, is what those young people do when we're not looking. And how you build that objective in a practical sense into the life of a school, with all its chaos and noisiness and peanut butter sandwiches, which drop in the middle of a hall and somebody steps on it, all of that. How you build that in, is very much a function of who you are and where you are. You can't mass-produce the ways and means of encouraging our young people to use their minds powerfully over ideas and things and artifacts and arts, which are worth spending time on.

The emphasis in bold is mine. I confess that reading Sizer always stirs me up and I particularly like his emphasis on using novel circumstances and problems to ascertain just what habits a student has in place. As we all know, however, good habits are hard to acquire and bad ones are even harder to lose.
K

Education manifestos... part 1, E.D. Hirsch

2010-01-20T16:31:00.000-08:00

I could really go for a nice juicy manifesto. It would be nice to wake up and have a nice raison d'etre to go with your morning coffee...
from Picasso at the Lapin Agile by Steve Martin

I'm lately disenchanted by my workplace, not my classroom but the wider workplace, the system if you will...it too often has the feel of an episode in "The Office". Our school system and the people in it are for the most part amiable, good natured folk, but it seems to me like we're all adrift on some wide, slow river...in my darker moments, I wonder if I don't hear the faint rumblings of a great waterfall somewhere downstream.

I'm not a utopian by nature; in fact, I don't trust utopians at all. But I do envy them. I envy the sense of mission, the direction which stem, I imagine, from their animating principles. And so I'm in the mood to sample claims made by educational reformers (utopians?) as to what those animating principles out to or ought not to be. This will be the first in a series of postings on educational manifestos. I'm not sure how often I'll post them or how many I'll find, but I aim for a wide sampling. I don't expect necessarily to find one to call my very own; perhaps this exercise will help me accept and appreciate anew my own non-utopian leanings.

The first manifesto comes from E.D. Hirsch, author of Cultural Literacy and more recently the founder of the Core Knowledge movement which has sponsored schools all over the country. He has published a series of books with titles like What Every First Grader Needs to Know in which he offers content prescriptions for grade levels K-8. He has positioned himself in opposition to the professional teacher training programs operating in most American universities. He describes himself as a political liberal and an educational conservative. Here's an excerpt from his book The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them.

We cannot afford any more decades dominated by ideas that promote natural, integrated project-learning over focused instruction leading to well-practiced operational skills in reading and mathematics, and well-stocked minds conversant with individual subject matters like history and biology. We need to reject the ill-founded notions that every child learns naturally at his or her own pace and that teaching the child is more important than teaching the subject (whatever that means, beyond failure to teach the subject). We must not accept the claim that knowing how to learn (which is an abstract skill that does not even exist) is more important than having a broad foundation of factual knowledge that really does enable further learning. We must reject the disparagement of verbal learning and the celebration of 'hands-on' learning, based on the false Romantic premise that mere words are inauthentic components of human understanding. We cannot afford still to accept the untrue belief that adequate schooling is natural and painless, and mainly a function of individual talent rather than hard work. We must reject the false claim that delaying learning until the child is 'ready' will speed up learning in the long run. We must cease listening to the siren call that learning should be motivated entirely by inward love of the subject and interest in it, without a significant admixture of external incentive. In short, we must cease attending to the Romantic ideas that the reformers of the 1990s, echoing the reformers of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s and all the decades in between, have been pronouncing in chorus. These ideas are emphatically not reforms. They are the long-dominant controlling ideas of our failed schools(p.216-217).

Zombie Dad cont.

2010-01-19T15:38:00.000-08:00

The video company for which I played Zombie Dad just posted a Picasa Web album of our weekend photo shoot. You can go to it here. Then click on "Fun in the Morgue: Makeup Test". I think it may be my best work yet.
K

Zombie Dad

2010-01-18T09:25:00.000-08:00

I got asked to play the role of Zombie Dad for a local film company that is putting together a promo trailer for its video business. They do a lot of weddings and the like so they decided to play with idea of a zombie family album, a zombie funeral and a zombie funeral.
I went in Saturday morning for makeup. The makeup artist brought in from Portland turned out to be a former student who graduated in 92. He took the better part of an hour to transform me into a state of being more "undead" than alive. When I saw my family after the shoot, the kids were intrigued. Colm asked me, "Does it hurt?" Later he asked me to tell him the story of zombies. I might need some help with that one. Beth was the most troubled by my look. She was adamant that I take it off my makeup as soon as possible.
K

The life of a kid

2010-01-17T09:35:00.000-08:00

Our kids have been slipping into spy mode again. Every now and then, I catch glimpses of them darting, creeping, stalking furtively through doorways and under tables, peering around corners. They typically set up spy headquarters under a blanket draped over chairs where they can plan clandestine operations under the cloak of invisibility. They make use of a wide range of spy tools including paper and pencil and sun glasses. It's all very hush hush which makes for a rather quiet house though sometimes the tension is palpable and the smiles impossibly wide in anticipation of discovery.

Last week Beth was poking around in Tess' things when she came across these scribblings:

One day my mom sent me to my room for two minutes. Only I don't know why, because I was at the piano first. And whoever gets there first gets to play the piano. And I got there first! But she sent both of us to our rooms. And that's why I'm writing this thingie. But she's letting us out now.
from Tess C.C.
P.S. I'm going to eat breakfast now.

A moment later, Beth found this:

Things we need
1. a new hut - Biger
2. More glasses - Sunglasses
3. More disgises - Like prinsseses
4. More pencils - Sharp
5. New names - Misterious
6. More notebooks - With lined pages
7. A camera - Dietal
8. New distractions - Realistic
9. New Code - Something no one will figure out
10. New make believe voices - Like old
11. New activetis - Spy Like
12. Pizza! - half peparoni, half sosage
13. food - like apple

whirrrrrrr...the sound of these kids' minds ceaselessly turning.
K

Their world's a stage

2010-01-02T22:07:00.000-08:00

I went to the high school auditorium over the break to do some prep work for an upcoming production of The Diary of Anne Frank. Tess and Colm came along. I gave them walkietalkies so that I could focus lights up in the attic while they played down below onstage. I darkened the auditorium and put a spot of light center stage about twelve feet in diameter. The kids played in the light. Every once in awhile I'd buzz them and request a light check, "Bring up number 20 to level 4."
"Roger." One of them would run over to the light board and set circuit 20 to level 4.
"OK, turn it off."
"Roger."
I love my little tech crew.
Afterwards, I came down and found them in that silly space they often inhabit together. It seemed like a chance to put it on video under somewhat controlled lighting. I told them I needed a sound check and suggested the song "Over the Rainbow."
"Oh, and give me some gestures to help highlight the words, okay?"
"Roger."
Here's what I got.

Okay, okay...they don't know the words and they drift around the melody...but they do love the light, and, as for me, I love my little hamsters.
K

Egging on the New Year...a poem

2010-01-01T09:52:00.000-08:00

Trudged out across the snow to the chicken house and found these this New Year's morning, compliments of Telulah and Robin. A fine start for them, I think.
I'm inspired to lay my own...

EGG
Each night you drop down in straw
Glowing, greased with shit
Grown full, unhatched, yoked with promise.

Kevin Cahill

Morgan Lake under ice

2009-12-25T19:30:00.000-08:00

We took a walk around Morgan Lake. It's frozen pretty solid. We hugged the shore, stomped about for awhile just to be sure.

Don't how deep the ice goes, but we couldn't produce so much as a crack as we walked, ran, and jumped about. Didn't take long for us to venture further out...the deep end so to speak.

Every once in awhile though we did hear a giant air bubble burp beneath the ice. It was eerily like the sound of a whale. Made walking out on the ice lake seem miraculous.

Brilliant day.
K