Category: Senior Citizens

What if mothers did rule the world?

sally-field-reuters1.jpg

From QuakerDave we have a post we should all be asking – What if mothers did rule the world?

Funny. Sally Field is getting ripped by the Right because of her “insane ranting” at the Emmys last night. This savaging comes in spite of the fact that what she said (despite Fox’s attempt to censor her) is about as “family values” as you can get. The war-hawkers at Fox had to cut what she said because she had the audacity to mention war in the context of her being (and portraying) somebody’s mother, and Rupert couldn’t ever let that happen:

“This (award) belongs to all the mothers in the world – may they be seen, may their work be valued and raised – and especially to mothers who stand with an open heart and wait — wait for their children to come home – from danger, from harm’s way and from war. I am proud to be one of those women… If mothers ruled the world there would be no (expletive) wars.”

Here’s the question for the day: What if mothers did rule the world? ………………

I would say:

Those that live under terror might then have security.

Those that hunger might be fed.

Those that thirst might have clean water.

Those that long for education and a means to earn a living might be affirmed.

Those that seek justice and a respected place in the human family might be given a place at the human family’s ‘table’.

To read QuakerDave’s answers go HERE

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

Heart-rending testimony of an Afghan woman in Fazal Sheikh’s online book, ‘When Two Bulls Fight the Leg of the Calf is Broken’

afghan-woman.jpgBe sure to visit Fazal Sheikh’s on-line HERE

Take a look at the heart-rending testimony of an Afghan woman in ‘Fazal Sheikh’s online book When Two Bulls Fight the Leg of the Calf is Broken’.

Here is a short extract;

‘When our great Islamic revolution succeeded, we thought our day of deliverance had come. Finally we would be free and independent. Afghanistan was released. But once again women were treated as the goat in the game, pulled this way and that by one faction or another. Once again, on all sides, indiscriminate bombing and rocket-attacks, bullets and mines killed Afghan children in their mother’s wombs. We were forced to flee with bare feet and uncovered heads to escape the killing. Some of us fled to foreign countries and became refugees. It should not be forgotten that some of us were forced to flee to Moscow for our safety!

I shall never forget how so many of us spent frightened lonely nights waiting patiently in the front line for a single loaf of bread. How many of us were abducted by armed men from Mujahedin parties in the middle of the day in busy streets. How many of us were raped. How many of us threw themselves from buildings to keep their chastity. How many of us were taken from the scorching refugee camps in Jalalabad to become a commodity for men in neighboring countries. How many widows were forced to sell themselves to feed their families.

Those who have come to power, those with guns, continue to leer at us, to make fun of us, to take pleasure in harassing us. These men who think of themselves as the defenders of our faith, as our fathers and brothers sent to protect us, are the same ones who call us “Honey”. They say: “Don’t come out of your bottle, the flies might touch you.” The flies are the men that rush at you. Others tell us that we are “live wires that must be covered.” It is a pity they don’t recognize us as individuals, as fellow human beings. Over the loudspeakers they announce that years of holy war has simply been to cover Afghan women in Muslim dress.

That, dear brother, dear father and son, I am sure was not the purpose of the holy war……’

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Of course people need water and food but as Maslow pointed out long ago security is a comparably important need.

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NB All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

Key photography quotations toward defining a photographic aesthetic

This is a running list of quotations selected to help me move toward an understanding of my own photographic aesthetic – based on the SunWALK model.

“The camera is an instrument of detection. We photograph not only what we know, but also what we don’t know. ” Lisette Model

The book (Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes) develops the twin concepts of studium and punctum: studium denoting the cultural, linguistic, and political interpretation of a photograph, punctum denoting the wounding, personally touching detail which establishes a direct relationship with the object or person within it. Wiki

While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see. ~Dorothea Lange

A photograph is usually looked at – seldom looked into. ~Ansel Adams

There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer. ~Ansel Adams

The camera can photograph thought. ~Dirk Bogarde

I think the best pictures are often on the edges of any situation, I don’t find photographing the situation nearly as interesting as photographing the edges. ~William Albert Allard, “The Photographic Essay”

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence. ~Ansel Adams

The goal is not to change your subjects, but for the subject to change the photographer. ~Author Unknown

A photograph is memory in the raw. ~Carrie Latet

All photos are accurate. None of them is the truth. ~Richard Avedon

The camera cannot lie, but it can be an accessory to untruth. ~Harold Evans, “Pictures on a Page”

You don’t take a photograph, you make it. ~Ansel Adams

Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure. ~Tony Benn

A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense, and is, thereby, a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety. ~Ansel Adams

I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help. ~Ruth Bernhard

A Ming vase can be well-designed and well-made and is beautiful for that reason alone. I don’t think this can be true for photography. Unless there is something a little incomplete and a little strange, it will simply look like a copy of something pretty. We won’t take an interest in it. ~John Loengard, “Pictures Under Discussion”

I just think it’s important to be direct and honest with people about why you’re photographing them and what you’re doing. After all, you are taking some of their soul. ~Mary Ellen Mark

Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man. ~Edward Steichen

The photograph itself doesn’t interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality. ~Henri Cartier Bresson

The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box. ~Henri Cartier Bresson

Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again. ~Henri Cartier-Bresson

If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug around a camera. ~Lewis Hine

A photograph is like the recipe – a memory the finished dish. ~Carrie Latet

Everyone has a photographic memory, but not everyone has film. ~Author Unknown

Photographs that transcend but do not deny their literal situation appeal to me. ~Sam Abbel

A picture is worth a thousand words; a slide show is both. ~Author Unknown

One photo out of focus is a mistake, ten photo out of focus are an experimentation, one hundred photo out of focus are a style. ~Author Unknown

All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this – as in other ways – they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it. ~John Berger

I didn’t want to tell the tree or weed what it was. I wanted it to tell me something and through me express its meaning in nature. ~Wynn Bullock

Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be. ~Duane Michals

The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score, and the print the performance. ~Ansel Adams

Useful sites

http://www.photoquotes.com/ Blogs on Photography

http://photosleavehome.blogspot.com/2005/03/john-berger-understanding-photograph.html

http://www.temple.edu/photo/photographers/

http://moma.org/collection/depts/photography/index.html

http://www.photo-seminars.com/fame.htm

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NB All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

 

Story and storying: the teacher’s self as text in reform of education

Parker Palmer in, The Courage to Teach, (1998 p.3), says that his book:

explores the teacher’s inner life, but it also raises a question that goes beyond the solitude of the teacher’s soul: How can the teacher’s selfhood become a legitimate topic in education and in our public dialogues on educational reform?

It turns out that this site is an attempt to answer Palmer’s question.

In a similar vein Sondra Perl (1994), (in Laidlaw, Mellett and Whitehead 2003) says:

Stories have mythic powers. To know this … is to know the shaping power of the tale. But how, I wonder, do we see beyond the boundaries of a familiar story and envision a new one? What, in other words, are the connections between texts we read and the lives we live, between composing our stories and composing ourselves?

Stories are one answer to the question; ‘What is it that makes of the parts a whole?’.  Story-making of our experience is in-built.  Conversely we tend to read the world according to the stories to which we subscribe, or that we ourselves have created.  A religious world-view would be an example of the former.  Concerning personal stories and how we construe the world see the psychology, and methodology, of George Kelly HERE

I am seeking on this site, and have sought in my thesis, to see beyond the familiar stories of my life, and of education as it is has been, and, through ‘a re-composing’ of my life via autobiography, my teaching and dialogues, I have sought to envision a new story for education.  This is what is meant by ‘applied autoethnography’.

Starting your own school

Today someone wrote me from Mexico and asked about starting a holistic school or centre. Below is what I wrote back but I will add more as I think of it;

If I were much younger and was able to start a school, my hard-won general principles would include;

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1 Find the finance to buy a school that is already successful. Develop its potential further – including the summer period. Don’t change anything until you understand everything and fully have the trust of the parents staff and children. Alternatively if all you can do is teach 3 children under the village tree then do that. Or support others in home-schooling.

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2 Develop an MA course and get it accredited by an internationally acceptable university.

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3 Draw your MA students from around the world and pair them with classroom teachers for at least half of each day. The teachers with their MA student assistants would consequently be involved in on-going research that was classroom-inspired – what is the best way to teach Maths?, how can the spiritual dimension of all subjects be developed?, what is the optimum amount of physical expression e.g. drama, dance etc.

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4 Make sure that you eventually institutionalize the holistic procedures – one school I about to be holistic when the core charismatic teachers left.

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5 Live what you teach.

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6 Be democratic – use PFC Philosophy for Children but realize that your responsibilities as an adult mean that it is you that will be held to account! Make clear contracts between all stakeholders including children, teachers, parents, community members etc. Authority must be given to the Head – revising policy by others should be restricted to just a few meetings per year.

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7 If the children can help build and care for the school, along with community members, it would be very useful!

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Of course there are a whole bunch of more general principles that you can assemble – have sufficient finance to last if your development stages take 2 or 3 times as long as you expect. etc.

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One UK source of relevant advice is the Human-scale Education movement

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

Personal Helicon by Seamus Heaney; resonance, memory, self-understanding and depths of the soul

well-of-life.jpgSculpture the ‘Well of Life’, Zagreb – source

I chose the following poem by Seamus Heaney (1996 p.14) as ‘the poem’ for my doctoral thesis because it shows beautifully how we resonate now, in relation to what we sensed and experienced as children. It also shows how, through metaphor, the objective connects with the subjective to thrill, to the very quick of our being.

About the poem, Personal Helicon Pelligrino (2003 p.1) explains;
Mount Helicon is a mountain in Greece, that was, in classical mythology, sacred to Apollo and the Muses. From it flowed two fountains of poetic inspiration. Heaney is here presenting his own source of inspiration, the “dark drop” into personal and cultural memory, made present by the depths of the wells in his childhood. Now, as a man, he is too mature to scramble about on hands and knees, looking into the deep places of the earth, but he has his poetry – and, thank God, so do we.

Of course if Heaney was reading it we would have that wonderful voice, like an aromatic tree giving up the sap, and perfuming the air with all the good things from the soil.

Personal Helicon by Seamus Heaney
for Michael Longley

As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.
One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.
A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.
Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.
Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

From ‘Summer is a-coming in’ (1250) to ‘Cummin Thru Ya Fuckin Block’ (1994); each generation’s popular song lyrics – for cultural exploration

bob-dylan-freewheelin-lyrics.jpgSource – and lyrics for the Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan

From SUmair is IcUmin in (1250) to Cummin Thru Ya Fuckin Block (1994); each generation’s popular song lyrics – for cultural exploration of values and beliefs

Great song lyrics are inspiring. Of course when they are coupled with great music the two have a multiplier effect and become ‘transcendent’. Why? How do the words when combined with the music become so powerful – so powerful that they can ‘take us out of ourselves’ and transport us delightfully?

Once or twice I’ve heard teachers and/or preachers refer to lyrics in popular song and I’m sure a lot of work has been done in schools and colleges. Here I just post one or two ideas and hope that I get to hear about more such work.

 

I did look many many years ago at some of the lyrics used by Joan Baez and Bob Dylan with secondary school pupils in the context of teaching English in the first school in which I taught. (I’m afraid I am one of those who thought that Bob Dylan did fall from grace with the electric guitar – but no one can take away the diamond-like clarity and poetry of his early work!) Still good stuff!

 

If you can avoid too much initial resistance folk song is, of course, a very interesting vehicle to look at historical events and work-related and class and geographic issues.

 

One of the earliest songs is SUmair is IcUmin in (c.1250)

SUmair is IcUmin in, lU-duh sing cUckU
GrOweth sAd and blOweth mAd and springth the wUduh nU
ow-uh blAteth after lahhhmb, lOth after cal-vuh cU
Bullock stairteth, buck-uh vairteth, mUrI sing cUckU
Well singst thU cUckU; nA swick thU nevair nU
Sing cUckU, nU….

Translation:
Summer is coming in, loudly sings the cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo….
The seed grows; the meadow blossoms, and the woods alivens anew.
The ewe bleats after the lamb; the cow lows after the calf;
The bull leaps; the goat capers*; merrily sing cuckoo!
Well sing you, cuckoo–don’t ever stop now.
Sing cuckoo, now….

Hear the music HERE

Lastly I want to mention films – probably like me you are astonished in having watched a film to see that it had used 30 or so songs and yet you were not aware of them – so looking at the use of popular music in films is another very interesting area.

TASK/LESSONs – a few ideas

1 Look at some lyrics that stand up as poetry and some that don’t but get transformed when coupled with the music.

2 Explore the multiplier effect’ when lyrics and song come together – via a good/great singer.

3 Use song lyrics (and photographs/photography) in ‘reminiscence work’ with senior citizens and multi-generational work.

4 Explore why each generation gets attached to and is defined by (?) the songs that are popular.

5 what are the down-sides of music in films? What part does music play in ‘Hollywood’ type movies?

6 Watch some key/favourite/ important sections of films with and without the music sound-track – what’s the difference and what’s going on?

7 Cows are said to like music – why. If its true and what is known about music in the work-place?

8 Get children to interview parents grand-parents about key music in relation to key events in their lives.

9 Get children to develop a set of images in relations to a particular song that is important to them e.g. Strange Fruit

HERE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE LYRICS AND EDUCATIONAL SOURCES FOR THEM

Every time we say good bye (Cole Porter)

We love each other so deeply
that I ask you this, sweetheart,
why should we quarrel ever,
why can’t we be enough clever,
never to part.
Ev’ry time we say goodbye
I die a little,
ev’ry time we say goodbye
I wonder why a little,
why the gods above me
who must be in the know
think so little of me
they allow you to go.
When you’re near
there’s such an air
of spring about it,
I can hear a lark somewhere
begin to sing about it,
there’s no love song finer,
but how strange the change
from major to minor…
ev’ry time we say goodbye.
Ev’ry time we say goodbye
I die a little,
ev’ry time we say goodbye
I wonder why a little,
why the gods above me
who must be in the know
think so little of me
they allow you to go.
When you’re near
there’s such an air
of spring about it,
I can hear a lark somewhere
begin to sing about it,
there’s no love song finer,
but how strange the change
from major to minor…
ev’ry time we say goodbye.
Ev’ry single time
we say goodbye

Source

Miss Otis Regrets
“Oh, hi! A-heh heh! Is Miss Otis in?”
“Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today.”

Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today, madam.
Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today, mmmmmm.
And she’s sorry to be delayed,
but last evening down at lover’s lane
she strayed, madam.
Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today.

When she woke up and found
that her dream of love was gone, madam,
she ran to the man
who had lead her so far astray.
And from under her velvet gown
she drew a gun and shot her lover down, madam.
Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today.

When the mob came and got her
and dragged her from the jail, madam,
they strung her up
on the willow across the way.
And the moment before she died
she lifted up her lovely head and cried, madam.
Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch.
Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today.

Source

Strange Fruit

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Source

All the things You Are

You are the promised breath of springtime
That makes the lonely winter seem long
You are the breathless hush of evening
That trembles on the brink of a lovely song
You are the angel glow that lights the stars
The dearest thing I know are what you are
Someday my happy arms will hold you
And some day I’ll know that moment divine
When all the things you are, are mine

 

Source

There is a very funny (and strangely moving) version of All the Things You Are by Peter Sellers – you can hear a bit HERE

 

Of course neither have the lyric and romantic charm and transcendental sweetness of Cummin Thru Ya Fuckin Block;

 

Author/Artist/Singer: Artifacts
Music Title/Track: Cummin Thru Ya Fuckin Block
Theme ID: 31545
N/A

 

featuring RedmanTo the beat y’all
*rat-a-tat drumming sound*[all] Make it funky (4X)
[Red] My nigga Tame [all] makes it funky
[Red] My nigga El [all] makes it funky
[Red] Redman [all] makes it funky
[Red] Huh, check it outVerse One: El Da SensaiI Ego Trip like Ultramag, sag my Girbauds I drag
competition so listen and raise the white flag
Cause the instructor, of the New Jerz verse dusts
another motherfucker I discover what no other brother
can do, hard to handle and to, stamp
I play Tramp like Grace Jones in that movie Vamp
I’m fit to wreck shit, I dip into the skit
Spit lyrics exquisite, blitted as I hit it
I suppose I knows the ways of the pros
Bros be like, “Oh that nigga’s got mad flows”
Creep’ll get it deep, I got it when it’s strict against
ducks who suck, and didn’t have the best defense
I make shit nice, defies with my device
And if I’m in a rap fight, you can catch a cap, right
Bust it, whassup what did ya ask me?
Crafty with my sassafrass P-Funk, thought been handy
Dandy Mayor Ave., back in the lab create my trap
Dibble dabble in the midst of the Artifact we have
swiftness, I blitz, specific and you dig it
from N.J., the Notty Headed Terror and da SensaiChorus: Artifacts, Redman

Pump! Pump! We’re lickin off the mad shots
[Red] It’s the Artifacts and Redman cummin thru ya fuckin block
(repeat 3X)
Pump! Pump! We’re lickin off the mad shots
[Red] It’s the Artifacts and Redman cummin thru ya fuckin!!

Verse Two: Tame One

Well I come live from the Artifact exhibit as a misfit
Larger than Jurassic Park I lick off like Wilson Pickett
Drama like a talk show I hit more cheese than nacho
Feelin Machu when I Pi on; a Coltrane like Roscoe
Hostile underground fossil, nigga bout to rock ya
So peep it how I freak it check the technique yeah I rock ya
I glide like drips and blaze a trail like I was Portland
When ill stressed, I still rock a vest like Ed Norton
The ill king, taking all things cash, crash, and asses
Backstage passes, V.I.P. all access
I got the props pon cock, fuck the know-nots
Whose techniques are weaker than the graphics for the Gobots
I rock with raw steel like Sue Richards, when Rick smacks her
Up motherfuck that I got more funk than muskrats
With my hocus pocus I can fuck up where ya focus
wit my left hook, dip right jab shuffle I can smoke ya
it don’t matter, cause all my shit is fatter than the
pads on MPC-60’s, hit me you got five second to jet G
Straight from the Bricks, now back to the N.J.
The Notty Headed Nigga and da motherfuckin Sensai

[Red] Hoooaaaahhh! One two, one two, one two
This is for Jersey, haha ahh, ah hah
One two, one two

Verse Three: Tame One, MC El

I’m the black king, quick to grease my naps with Royal Crown
and aloe vera representin for the Notty Headed nigga era
However whatever my Posse Packs the Pistols
and my Skwad got the Boom, rid the room, get the bitches

The exact Artifact, who is that, you speak of
Leak my speakers, unique and freakin beats track in fact
I be dat, nigga who you look for, in your worst fears
Peace to my nigga Lord Sear and Samere
Display, niggaz from N.J.
Notty Headed Terror and da motherfuckin Sensai

Outro: Artifacts, Redman

Pump! Pump! We’re lickin off the mad shots
[Red] It’s that Notty Headed Nigga cummin thru ya fuckin block
Pump! Pump! We’re lickin off the mad shots
[Red] It’s the Artifacts and Redman cummin thru ya fuckin block
Pump! Pump! We’re lickin off the mad shots
[Red] Big up to Boom Skwad’s cummin thru ya fuckin block
Pump! Pump! We’re lickin off the mad shots
[Red] It’s the Artifacts and Redman cummin thru ya fuckin block
Pump! Pump!
[Red] Booyaka
Pump! Pump! (6X)
[Red] For nine-fo’
Pump! Pump!
[Red] Artifacts get dapped like that y’all
*sound of rat-a-tat drumming again*
[Red] Jersey’s in the fuckin house y’all
New York’s live in the house y’all
Newark is live in the house y’all
E-O’s live in the house y’all
Word is bond in the hizouse y’all
I’m in the motherfuckin hizouse y’all
So niggaz get the fuckin balls y’all

 

Source

 

Endpoint

Question: If ‘sewage’ is the spiritual food of choice how precisely did we fail to develop the appetite for the sublime?

 

In parenting we go from almost total control to indirect influence. Intrinsic worth, value, meaning, taste, discrimination are the kinds of qualities most of us hope our children acquire. In this process we have to stay conscious of the fact that if we don’t have (a reasonable degree of) control over our children’s environment someone far less benign will be manipulating them.