dogs like berries

This vacation has been filled with all the most delectable summer things:

- leisurely reading from borrowed/recommended books including Gilead and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (I'm stealing someone smart's observation that these are both about earthly truths, but at the opposite ends of that spectrum)
- sunscreen and sunning on a dock
- swimming in the Great Lakes
- an inordinate amount of mosquito bites, mostly on my feet
- berries...

...to which I will devote this post. For the past few years my parents have had an attractive gravel pile at the side of their house. In the best argument for the payoff that comes after waiting through ugly that I can imagine, the gravel pit has blossomed into a bunch of black raspberry bushes (I just learned they are black raspberries, also known as blackcaps, different from blackberries). Which happened to come to fruit during my visit home. Today we spent some minutes picking three containers of them, except the ones the dog got. Turns out dogs, at least my parents' healthy dog Roscoe who thinks that freshly picked peas are delicious, like berries.

midwest vacation, week 1

serendipitous delay in philly, catch up on ZZZZs
family reunion celebration, big house with Grandma Ada spirit:
We Get Too Soon Old and Too Late Schmart (or is it Shmart?) plus dinging clock
appleton over a lake from oshkosh; yes that one: overall
perfect-weather BBQ with cousins tall and small
lots of dancing and loving family like in dream weddings

up wisconsin; this state has lakes too
east to da U.P., Upper Peninsula of Michigan for all you non-ganders
stop in Wakefield, commune with the spirit of our Great Matriarch
north to get Ontonoganized
Jampot stop: monks appear loaded from bountiful jam sales
Eagle River, Lake Superior = wow is the only word that suffices (and cold)

...in marquette, i bought a guitar...

no chupacabras, just Pictured Rocks beauty to make you mute
what's a cell phone?
3 miles to the lake, 4 miles along, don't fall
3 miles back makes us tired
yes indeed we brought our dog
(take that, ranger lady)

south to st. ignace, look at all that beach
one margarita makes art buyer of me
evening by a fire - free for all who stay
i might be a folk singer but
play, play, wish i could play
someday

and then

the bridge.

farewell, remote Michigan. until the next time, and i hope people continue to forget about you, because you are an awesome vacation spot. (despite places named mosquito inn and misery bay: they will keep real tourism away).

if you only read one thing today

People write for lots of reasons, and those of us who write anything at all may confirm that indeed, it is because we feel compelled to do so, whether or not we are any good at it. Occasionally the gift, the muse, the energy of the universe and its ultimate intention for all of our small lives coincides in a time and place and person that allow the message to flow free in a beautiful way that others can read, understand, and be uplifted by it. From what I know of him, David Foster Wallace strikes me as a such a confluence of genius and muse, and no I haven't read any of his books (yet!). His story is a beautiful and sad one, and I won't repeat it here. I will only implore you, whomever you are, to read this speech, and see whether even just a bit of it touches you in a place that wants to awaken and experience life in a whole new way.

more about learning

Even though lots of experiments and observations of people learning tell us that reward-based systems are no good, we still do it. From stickers and candies for appropriate behavior in classrooms...to letter grades for everything from singing to language learning to mathematics...right up to tenure or not, Pulitzer and Nobel and such prizes - we like to arrange people along a line. It is tidier than reality, than acknowledging the true strengths, weaknesses, and chasms in people's skills and character, than saying: "Well, this person is the best scientist I know, but she can't cook with a darn." Or, "That dude can perform brain surgery with the best of them, but he's also having affairs with all the nurses."



I like this instead, from here:

"The proper stimulants to study," Haven added, "are not medals, or position in class, or prizes, but the gratification produced by an enlarged acquaintance with truth, and by the greater influence for good thereby produced."

Today I went to hear Lee Shulman, Professor Emeritus Somewhere, and former Something Else Important at Stanford, speak about teaching and learning in universities. He made lots of really good points, about collecting evidence of our efforts to teach students in academia, and turning an eye of inquiry on EVERYTHING, including how universities function.



That is excellent but if we're going to take this truly to heart, it might be time to question the tenure process. Bureaucratic machines comprised of lots of individual people tend to take over and become self-perpetuating.

My biggest concern about academia is that the pursuit of science and scholarship becomes - not for everyone of course but an influential group - an ego chase. People enter fields not to Do Good (whatever that is) but to make themselves Feel Good. The scary part (or the other scary part) is that this motivation is invisible to most - it lurks in a subconscious somewhere, not to be unearthed until some major psychic event or trauma. And we can't go around randomly assigning people to experience trauma.

So what do we do? I vote to try to remain cautious, skeptical, open-minded, conscious...sounds like true science, eh?

...that's what they call learning

This week I've attended two flash seminars, on the purpose of the university. The Big Questions come up repeatedly: what am I here on this planet to do? How can I learn what I need in order to do it? Who can help me? What is knowledge; what is information? What are schools good at and what could they be better at? What happens in reality - when real people run large social organizations, like schools, institutions, and governments - and what happens when those people are disconnected from themselves and impose restrictions on others?

I'm exploring all this in a new book idea...so stay tuned. And in the meantime, this is the best 15min I've spent recently.

Way to go 10-milers!!

This morning I got up at 6:30am - yes, on a Saturday! - to cheer on the Charlottesville 10-milers. The race is special this year because it has three generations of runners:

3 generations of family take on Ten Miler | Daily Progress

Conveniently, the race began and ended within walking distance from my place...wasn't that considerate of the planners? Actually I think it might have something to do with my living near UVA grounds. Just a thought. Here is near the beginning:




I considered running the 10-miler this year, for about a week. Then the cold weather settled deep into my bones and my running shoes began to give me some impressive blisters after 3 miles. Excuses, to be sure - and I'd love to run next year, if I'm still in the area. I'm new to the running/racing world but if anything could motivate me it's the energy. The runners, the cheerers, the early morning shivers. The anticipation at the beginning of the race, everyone's high hopes for how it will go. The setting in of reality, the cramp that takes you by surprise, the way you started out too fast but it was just so tough to hold back with all the throngs of people around you, moving through the air, defying gravity.

And let's not forget the person in the large red hat and purple fishnets.



Last night I began reading a book by a local C'ville-ian (I don't think we're called C-villains). It's called Live Like You Mean It and begins by painting a lovely image of how we came to be here, now, on this planet, and the rare orchestrations of the universe that had to align in a seemingly infinite number of unfathomable ways to produce something uncanny, mysterious, beautiful.

You.

Me.

So far, the book has told me to drop as many of the preconceptions about how to live as I can. Not the ones that make practical, and legal sense, such as following the rules of traffic and not stealing. But the more insidious and pervasive. The internal rules, the tiny voice that says "you should..."; "why did you..."; and my personal favorite, "You're not good enough."

I used to not want to run races. I didn't understand the point of getting all tired, possibly hurting myself, looking funny.

And now?

I would call that life.

life=growth

I'll admit it! I'm writing other things, beyond this blog. So I'll be lazy and recommend the following two articles:

On the Road to Recovery, Past Adversity Provides a Map

The Happy Marriage is the Me Marriage

For the latter, I would also venture to submit that it might be true of friendships, as well...