Posts

Showing posts from September, 2013

Anonymous

Image
According to a new article in Scientific American, people lose civility when they don't talk to each other eye to eye.  In fact, the popular magazine with impeccable credentials is going one step further by eliminating the Comments section form its online publication. http://gu.com/p/3j3dv Who among us has not engaged in a simple act of sharing ideas with someone we don't know and possibly don't agree with...Online. We call them trolls, but these angry responders who feel empowered with their anonymity, are everywhere.  For many, this is a new phenomena.  Not so.  There have been few but definitely other opportunities for the exchange of ideas without revealing one's identity. About 15 years ago, in our pre internet savvy world I chanced to come upon an idea that would allow students in a classroom to exchange ideas with an anonymous identity and hopefully extend an exchange that moved far beyond the confines of a classroom.  I heard about something called anony

Listen Up

Image
It sits calmly in the bottom drawer of a file cabinet.  Not sure how long it's been since the electricity has brought the small black box to life.  It's outdated.  Another example of how the new technology has replaced what once was state of the art.  It's a small portable tape recorder. For the better part of three decades, this was my teaching tool of choice.  Funny how in a culture that is so visually oriented, there is much merit in hearing only sound. I wonder now if this is something to be concerned about or another inconsequential thing to simply let go.  Seems like something that impacted my students lives in so many ways deserves better treatment.  Oh, I know that You Tube and Pandora and many other web sites have everything you need, but I can recall a few techniques/strategies that just can't be duplicated. When students are asked to simply listen to a voice or a piece of music, it helps them focus.  It requires attention, it demands no outside distract

Cloudy Day

Image
Small complete poems go through my mind, When I'm without pen or keyboard, Driving my truck, Navigating a lake, Walking in a river. Like wispy clouds, once formed, They dissipate overhead, Never formed quite the same again. As a writer, I'm always looking at things.  Perhaps even staring.  At people when I walk, when I drive, when I go to the grocery store.  Sometimes, while waiting for a light to turn green, the best poems come to mind.  They begin as images or little scenes that play out and the evolve into something bigger, deeper, or universal.  Then they vanish. In the turn of a color on a traffic light, or the beginning of a new conversation they disappear like vapor, like wispy clouds, drifting through and then over and then gone. Sometimes I wonder how many of these little gems have come and gone.  There is a little trick they often play on me too.  In the minutes after I awake, before I get up, I re-play ideas, events, interactions.  Those puffy clouds so

Sex, Religion, and Politics

Image
Watching TV to keep up with the news is like going to a party.  Sex, religion and politics, in any order.  Those are the topics of choice.  We hear about "twerking," and are confronted with all manner of exhibitionism in local news.  Should women be wearing yoga pants in non-yoga areas.  The office, the workplace, school, church...and that's just the teachers! Religion encroaches in all the right places.  Christian Mingle, the online dating service pops up on the screen during the grisliest of crime shows, the politician's speeches and the sit-coms so full of sexual innuendo that every second of canned laughter barely hides the grins, the gasps, the outcries, or the mindless guffaws. So what's the message?  Are we a society and culture in decline or just rapidly changing?  Probably both.  I recall a student once coming to school with a most offensive tee shirt.  Offensive in that the cartoon image on the front made it impossible for him to be taken seriously at

Saving Our Land

Image
While reading the morning paper (as long as there still is one, I'll read it) I came across a fascinating piece detailing a historic meeting between an official of the Ku Klux Klan and a local NAACP leader.  What made this encounter even more improbable was that it occurred in Casper, Wyoming.  Yes, there are African American people in Wyoming.  There is also a KKK chapter too.  The Klan official was from Great Falls, Montana.  Must be some kind of a regional leader. In the photograph which accompanied the article, the NAACP president was smiling.  The Klan official was grinning too.  The latter carried an attache case and wore a business suit. Apparently there have been some hate crimes in Casper and at the invitation of the NAACP, the Klan leader wanted to assure them that his organization is no longer committed to violence to further its ideals. http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/index.ssf/story/naacp-kkk-meeting-in-wyo-believed-to-be/3ba7bf8bb9bd400dbbc47432fb9e14e7 Who k