first day discoveries

I am reminded that the routines of preparing for a first day of a new semester should not be completely crowded out by preparations for something more exciting.

1. Copying a syllabus a week in advance, putting it on color paper, and stapling the two pages together is all wasted effort if you fail to move it from your home-office floor into your book bag for the first day of class.
2. Emailing your syllabi to your department's administrative assistant, even before it is requested, means you have copies in your email outbox -- even if you wrote the syllabi on a different computer.
3. Baking soda dissolves and mixes with water much more readily that does corn starch. While green and semi-solid, unless oobleck is made from a box that say CORN STARCH instead of BAKING SODA (even though they look like the same box) then it's just as well to dump the slurry down the drain.
4. Recycling an old powerpoint slide show can, with just a little bit of Q&A, fill the time during which students would have been investigating oobleck.
5. Except for the corn starch, I have all the equipment needed to make oobleck for the next time class meets. Since Labor Day is next Monday, that means there are two weeks to remember to buy the right box.
   

geography lesson

According to my traffic widget, I has a visitor to this blog from Kuala Lumpur. No, I didn't know where this was but now know it is in Malaysia. Halfway between Australia and India. I wondered whether I might have a new science education colleague reaching out from southeast Asia. Too late for him or her to come to Crossroads in 3 weeks. Pity.

Actually the link that brought this web surfer to my blog was also included: it was a Yahoo search of Statistical Projection of Kentucky Fried Chicken Company. Really? This has to be some scam. Could someone legitimately stumble across my blog using those words? Maybe they were writing a report for an economics class or doing some work for the government about whether to let KFC into the country.

The hit was due to excerpts from my rant about having a hick heritage along with my ramblings about mental illness among faculty:

Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan arrived from search.yahoo.com on "Brewing Trouble"
... suits (except for on the Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets rolling around in pickup ... Because of criticisms that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Disorders ...

Sure enough, when I ran that search this blog was the tenth on the list of sites. I couldn't replicate this result with a Google search. I feel bad for my Malaysian pal and wish there was a way to discourage him from using Yahoo anymore. Otherwise, he's going to develop an even more bizarre impression of America -- or crash and burn on that Econ assignmet.

bus to school

A concern raised about the proposed magnet school site is that the country road is dangerous. One citizen recommended that we travel that road when buses are on it. So Wednesday, first day of school in town, I did. First time was from 7 to 7:30 a.m. and then later around 4 o'clock. While somewhat narrow, I didn't find the road to be any more hazardous than most two-lane roads. No drop-offs, no suspension bridges, no firing range. But in that calim, I realized I had forgotten the significance of this annual rite, waiting for the first bus ride of the new school year. I suppose because two or three buses stop twice a day at the building across the street from us, the symbolism of boarding a bus to school has faded. I also saw moms and dads waiting with children at the bus stops in town -- some had cameras to presumably capture the moment. All the hope and possibilities in the minds of the family along with the uncertainty and optimism of/for the children.

Without any office on campus, I decided it made no sense to buy a parking pass. This decision was partly economic but the situation also makes it a minuscule amount less easy to drive to campus because I have to make sure I have enough cash to exit the garage. Plus, there is a local bus from our town to campus that is free with a university identification card. I took a couple test runs this week to see how dependable it was. Unlike with a car where being late to an appointment is almost entirely under my control, when someone else drives I trade the time to daydream or read in exchange for a sacrifice over my schedule. So far, so good. Yesterday, I became so comfortable on the bus (my 4th trip: heading home on the second day) that I fell asleep a couple of times.

I never thought about who would ride the bus. Yesterday morning, I was the only white person among 2 dozen passengers. The rest were Asian and live in apartments on the north end of town. They seem familiar to the bus drivers and it's fascinating for me to be in the minority on a country bus in New England. While waiting for the trip home, I had 3 different guys asked for help with the schedule: an eastern European, a Chinese guy (trying to get to Wal-Mart), and a Bangladeshi doc student in economics who is just starting this fall. Students also use the bus to visit a large grocery store since there is not one within walking distance of campus -- beer is available nearby but not bread loaves. One of my international grad students has suggested that I keep a journal of all the people I meet -- she's bitten by the "every person is a potential data point" bug. I'm not sure if there's a connection, but last night was the first in a week where I didn't suffer from sleeplessness. Don't know if it's being around the interesting mix of people, the calm that comes from knowing I can now plan trips to campus without fear of being late, or the healthful benefits of a brief doze as the diesel rumbles beneath my seat.

to be so happy

Ever since I first saw the apprenticeship video that Zero included in his keynote address back in 2007, I find myself emotionally overwhelmed when I see examples of pure joy. This is not usually wistful thinking because I'm not longing for times when I was as joyful. As far as I'm concerned, those aren't events that live in my past:I expect it to happen a few times during our time in Portland. Rather, I am so drawn to the purity of such moments: rare, crystal clear and brilliant.

Evidence of this type of happiness leapt from the computer screen the other day. I'd heard an interview with the 3 kids you make up the Homemade Jamz Blues Band. Their name comes from the fact that their father built the lead and bass guitars himself. Actually, he assembled them using old guitars and new auto parts, especially mail-order exhaust systems. There's evidence of joy when hearing them perform. But when I watched a clip from the Tavis Smiley show, that's when I saw genuine happiness. And of all places, it comes from a young girl during her musical performance. There are many places to witness this but a good place to jump in is when at 14:10 and again at 13:08 (time left in the video). I tried to capture a good still shot but it's the happiness in motion that is part of the magic.

In a similar fashion, Naomi Shihab Nye (a future poet for our conference -- she lives in San Antonio) uses her poem So Much Happiness to capture the surprise and delight that happiness provides:

Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.

This runs somewhat counter to the adage that we're each responsible for our own happiness. But what makes most sense to me is that when happiness arrives, it's best to just let it flow -- and become known for doing so.

lake and mountains, men and mortal

A colleague who was with me for one year in Ohio and with whom I've now reunited in New England introduced me to the essay "The Student, The Fish and Agassiz." I don't know whether that first exposure stuck with me or whether that was the first of many encounters with it. Somewhere over the years, I became sufficiently impressed with it to include in within our book chapter about observing. Here is an excerpt as a reminder:

On my return, I learned that Professor Agassiz had been at the museum, but had gone and would not return for several hours. Slowly I drew forth that hideous fish, and with a feeling of desperation again looked at it. I might not use a magnifying glass; instruments of all kinds were interdicted. My two hands, my two eyes, and the fish; it seemed a most limited field. I pushed my fingers down its throat to see how sharp its teeth were. I began to count the scales in the different rows until I was convinced that that was nonsense. At last a happy thought struck me—I would draw the fish; and now with surprise I began to discover new features in the creature. Just then the professor returned.

“That is right,” said he, “a pencil is one of the best eyes.” (Scudder, 1879, p. 450)

It turns out that my guide was correct in speculating that two significant features of our recent expedition were obviously connected to this fish tale. First, Mount Agassiz was the dominating peak that we looked up to throughout our expedition. The other was Lake Scudder, the calm lake next to our final campsite. According to the Utah Geologic Survey, these two features are named after these two scientists. Our worry that the calm water boasting of so many large dragonflies was named after a different Scudder can now be dispelled. The Scudder of insect paleontology fame is that same guy who was made to stare at a fish.

Turns out that a Google search to find the burial site of a paleontologist produces LOTS of links, none of which reveal his gravesite. Instead, lots of older fossils are described.

new chapters

There is a niche of "movements" out there that appeals to the more privileged and experienced among us. For example, one Marc Freedman has written books such as Prime Time: How Baby Boomers Will Reinvent Retirement and Revolutionize America which is part of his Civic Ventures program. In a nutshell, he focuses upon directing baby boomers toward post-career lives that are personally fulfilling and civicly minded. One of my favorite parts of this initiative is the logo they use for their Encore Careers website. This site purports to connect "retired" professionals with new work that fills the void presumably left by lucrative yet hollow careers. The use of a semi-colon designates as work-life separating then from now. For some writers, a comma signifies one beat, a semi-colon two beats, and a period represents four beats. The appropriate use of a semi-colon indicates that the idea is continuing but their is a slight pause along with a possible change in direction. Thus, the semi-colon is a perfect little squiggle to represent transitions and also a sly wink to those whose college education trained them on the use of this form of punctuation.

I made my weekly trek to campus today including a stop at the library to return one book and check out 9 others, most of which were poetry. And once I'm home again, I received notice that another Interlibrary loan book I requested was in. I'd forgotten the title and when it appeared in an email, it was cryptic enough to startle me: "The third chapter : passion, risk, and adventure in the 25 years after 50." It refers to a book by Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot and I'd watched part of an interview of her by Bill Moyers. The book she wrote was based upon interviews of people in the later part of their lives who were trying to find meaning to what they do. She mentions developmental psychologist Erik Erikson who in the 1950s divided life into chapters and stages.

Each one of these stages is characterized by a crisis, a crisis of whether we're going to move forward, progress, or whether we're going to move back, regress. So, it is this tension always, at each of our developmental stages, between progression and regression. And this third stage is a crisis between what he calls "generativity" and stagnation. Sounds very dramatic. Generativity, having to do with using your energies to serve, to teach, to mentor, to express through art, to innovate, to give something to society, right? To leave a legacy. And stagnation, meaning, "I'm going to stay right here, and make my mark, continue to make my mark, in an individual pursuit."

What I understand is her belief that many people reach a certain age and then decide they ought to be making a difference in the lives of others. What I would respectfully dispute is whether this is necessarily restricted to those in the penultimate chapter of their lives. I suspect that this may be a common message for many people but there are a lot who, because they are caught up in careers or other distraction, may not hear until their worries have subsided. The reasons I requested this book (as a prelude to an actual purchase) is to see whether she uncover phenomena similar to what many seem to acquire from Crossroads.

There's a tale about another developmental psychologist titled "the American question." As Piaget described childhood stages of development and the ages at which changes occurred, there were often Americans who wanted to know how to accelerate that process. Of course, this amused him because he believed his sequence and timing was perfect. I recognize the humorous parallels to my question, but I'll pose it anyway: is the generativity vs. stagnation tension restricted to those in the final third of their lives — or is it possible to encourage and provoke individuals to listen to their internal passions and desires to leave a legacy, to make a lasting mark, to serve others' needs through one's exceptional efforts? I already know the answer to this question given what I witness among those audacious to take on new challenges even though they've earned the leather recliner of tenure. I suppose I'll be looking for evidence to support my beliefs by reading Lawrence-LIghtfoot's book. I do not expect to disagree with what she reports. However, I plan to appropriate her discoveries for my own purposes.

forms of hunger and gluttony

After two weeks of contrasting vacation experiences, I'm struggling to get back into a productive groove. I believe the core problem is my gluttony. When on trails in the Uintas, I was constantly shoving mountain scenery and trail food into my face. At the beach, I was continually ingesting seawater, sugar-cereal, and time with the most enjoyable segment of my biological family. Now that I'm home and freed of distractions from nephew/nieces or alpine meadows, I'm shoving information into my mind. I already have a few books requested online via inter-library loan, I have spent time looking for poetic references to "zero" for a pending proposal, and am listenining to music from an odd array of online sources.

I confess to having insufficient discipline. There are plenty of important and pressing tasks that need my attention, the most important of which is catching up on a backlog of emails from my secondary science methods students. There is also the matter of reviewing conference proposals, providing feedback and formatting resubmissions. And yet, I'm checking a recent email announcing the pictorial evidence of backpacking and then listening for the third time to a tune by the Rural Alberta Advantage and wondering whether to download some tracks. I've not been deprived: the coffee was good and strong over the past two weeks and I have ingested too many cups this morning along with a heaping bowl of Frosted Flakes that were leftover. Can't quite understand why the letters on my monitor keep jumping around.