Shauna, this Blog’s for You

My Favorite Table Returned to Studio Eidolons

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us.

2 Corinthians 4:7

How satisfying to sit at this small, sturdy table once again! This was one of my favorite pieces of furniture in Studio Eidolons, but when we took ownership of The Gallery at Redlands over two years ago, we really needed furnishings, and this table went down there. I have missed it so! Yesterday, I finally brought it back “home” again, and this Sunday morning, with a grateful heart, I sit at it and work on this blog.

WARNING–This blog will be confessional. I’m usually not comfortable going into this mode, but what I’m about to write has flooded my thinking for several hours now, and I’m writing it for me. You of course are under no obligation to read all of it, or any of it. I’m writing for me . . .

I treasure every moment of my life when I’ve experienced a flood of inspiration from someone’s public speaking or presentation. My journals are packed with recorded notes of these sacred revival moments. And as a teacher and public speaker, I’ve always wished for that gift of inspiring others, touching others, as I have been touched. We don’t really know how to describe “presence” or “impact”. We just know it when it happens. Frankly, I’m a quiet guy. I’ve always wished I could fill a room with presence or electricity from the voice or physical gestures. But I’ve always known that I don’t really have that “It” factor. I even purchased Chris Anderson’s Ted Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking. I used it several times for college lectures, hoping to add some kind of “punch” to what I was trying to communicate. I have no evidence that any of it worked. My epitaph should read I TRIED.

Now I must confess that I have files filled with letters from folks who have told me how much they were moved by something I said in public. I take those out and read them from time to time, and I’m touched to know that sometimes what I presented made an impact.

Now I want to share one of the most precious memories from my life of teaching. I frequently volunteered to be on the program for teachers’ In-services in our school district. Most of us chafed at attending those mandatory sessions, and I thought maybe I would enjoy some of them more if I just got to “talk” instead of sitting for hours listening to others “talk.” Over the years, I presented many, many of those sessions, most of them forgettable, to me.

But one day in the fall semester of 1996, I received a manila envelope in my teacher’s mailbox, and found within a typed letter from Shauna Carroll, an English teacher in my district. I will share that letter in full at the end of this blog.

The letter launched a friendship between the two of us that didn’t last enough years. Though we taught on different campuses, we looked forward to every district event so we could seek out each other and catch up. She was truly an electric individual. About three years after we met, I still remember the first day of summer school when an administrator came up with the brilliant idea of switching out some classrooms. I gave up long ago any attempt to understand some of these administrative decisions. I was to trade rooms with an English teacher across the hall. Why? No one knows. So. As I hurriedly gathered up the course textbooks for my English subject, I heard this voice behind me shout: “Move your ass. This is my room!” It was Shauna. We laughed. “Did you request this change?” I asked. “Hell no,” her response. And that was that. But it was a fun moment.

A week later, Shauna died while driving to summer school. She suffered a heart attack behind the wheel of her car, drove into someone’s front yard, and died seated in the driver’s seat. My guess is that she was in her forties. No one saw this coming. I cannot describe the crush that overcame me that morning as I received the news. I don’t remember that day in the classroom. Or the next. But I do remember her funeral. The testimonials coming from her students still fill my memories with profound gratitude. She was loved. Adored. And funny. And the students were so pure in pouring out their sentiments that day that frankly, I remember nothing of the eulogy.

What Shauna wrote carries much more firepower than what I am able to write. So, if you’re still with me, I’ll now let Shauna speak to you.

8/30/96

Dr. David Tripp

Martin High School

Date: Beginning of the new school year

Place: Lamar High School, English Teacher’s In-service

When: I don’t know, a couple of weeks ago. I’m just now doing this.

Why: Listen. Because.

You’ve been there.

You know how you feel on the morning of in-service days, like a day-old doughnut languishing in a cup of warm milk. Weak. Coffee seems to be brewing somewhere else, tantalizing your senses, not available to you, even if you don’t want it. “How will I endure the mundane? Well, I’ve got to do it, so let’s go.” You are expected to listen. You expect boredom. You anticipate mediocrity.

But I really, surprisingly, enjoyed your in-service on teaching philosophy in literature. I really needed some umph, a bagel with some substance and a whole lot of garlic, cream cheese, chives and salt. Here’s a more realistic appraisal than the “scale of 1 to 10” form that we were given that day. Go back to the experience with me from an observer’s perspective.

You are truly irritating enough to elicit this response. Good for you. I’m proud of your audacity.

Listen.

There is a strange note in the air. Handel’s water music drips somewhere in my head, waiting to start. But it is really the sound of communication within the room. I’m hoping. I’m wondering.

A stray note on the board says, “Listen and Silent have the same letters.” Too cutesy. Too annoying.

It is not a note from our presenter, because we know that he doesn’t believe in this. We didn’t come here for this. We are borrowing this room for one hour. The inhabitants don’t like that concept on the board. But we have to endure the over-crowding, the restlessness. We talk. We listen. We exchange.

More chairs are hauled into the room. More teachers than the teacher-in-charge expected, than the administration that designed this holocaust-of-a-room expected. (Did they not have anything larger? What were they thinking? Do they not believe that there are so many of us interested in teaching philosophy in the classroom?!)

A small wrinkle appears on the presenter’s forehead; a wry smile, puzzled at the enthusiasm in the room, and we wonder, why? We all know why we are here, doesn’t he? Apparently he doesn’t believe in himself, because there weren’t enough copies of the outline to pass out to the participants. We chose this lecture, this in-service, because we want to know truth, that last horizon of philosophical endeavor, and how to teach it in today’s society within our curriculum. How to open-up kids’ intellectual curiosity.

But the room fills up quickly. Heat rises, that ghostly glare surfacing, dancing, from a black-top pavement in Texas August heat.

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The room is restless. Demanding.

Who would expect that there would be so many teachers interested in this particular style of teaching? Today, forty, fifty tops in the whole district of secondary education in Arlington. 52,000 students. We know that we are rare. We actually like questioning, answering, questioning again. We work a program that doesn’t have anything to do with a lesson plan. In fact, I call my lesson plan book a history book, because I write down what we have experienced that day in the classroom. Yes, we follow the curriculum guide, sort of. All of the sacred “Essential Elements” are there. But we teach to the students’ interests, abilities, expertise, desires. We care about their future. We want to see progress, and feel it and hear it, and ultimately sense it. It is there in our classrooms, and want it brought out.

We also know that we were right, because our students have increased their TAAS scores, that last bastion of credibility in Texas, particularly at Barnett Junior High, where we were awarded the mega-bucks to continue whatever it was that we were doing right. TEA didn’t know exactly what it was that we were doing or how we did it. We were just one of those schools that received this honor in Arlington. Non-specific encouragement. Just a lump-sum that said, “Oh, yes!” $20,000.00. OOOsh. Apparently, philosophy does matter in today’s materialistic society, and, in a spooky way, they are combined.

We care. We listen. We believe. We, in fact, Demand dialogue within the classroom.

Not silence.

The board that we are borrowing says, “Listen and Silent have the same letters.” It doesn’t know that it echoes ominously in our collective souls. We want to attack it. We’ve already said, “We don’t believe this.” We don’t agree with this philosophy. We expect a constant challenge that defies all odds, all principles. I’m antsy, write that preposterous slogan down on the back of my packet, and attack it with little dots from my pen. Disgusted with myself at that mindless activity, I look around the room at the other creatures. Who are we?

We came here today to hear a lecture on philosophical communication in literature. We don’t understand this concept of silence. We talk incessantly.

Because we don’t teach silence in our classrooms; we don’t adhere to that principle. We don’t even understand that anyone could teach this way. We are an annoying bunch of people that the administration doesn’t particularly understand, nor necessarily respects. To them, Aristotle is dead; Oh well. But to us, his brilliance is alive and intact. We don’t care about any negative attitudes that feed down to us when it comes to encouraging students to think, because we came into this profession knowing that what we wanted to do would not always be accepted, but that we had a goal a belief. If the administration believed in us, then we would believe in them. But ultimately, we needed for them to understand.

Page 3

I realize that I lucked out. The administration at my school is very positive. Glasser-oriented. They actually care about our classroom environments, and what we can achieve. My principal puts notes in our team’s boxes, saying, yes, you can order pillows for reading time if that keeps the students more focused and into reading and will ultimately improve their TAAS scores. She’s supportive. I have an Assistant Vice-Principal, that puts notes in my box on ways that I can better communicate with my students from a philosophical perspective. We communicate through the newspaper, magazine articles, essays, editorials, that we share with one another, and ultimately, with our students. We all actually believe in reading. We, as teachers, are given positive encouragement to work a program that is interesting, successful, and that broadens the minds of our students. We feel empowered to help our kids achieve.

I see my classroom now, before school starts. Within my room, there is a library of reading material, from science to math to history to foreign languages to government to origami to classical literature. There is a reading time, a moment in our day at school, structured in, when everyone drops everything and picks up a book to read. Mandatory reading. What a novel concept in education. Again given to us by the administration. Yep, I’m lucky.

If we talk about duality in the mainstream of life, about the need for harmony (“Practice Peace” poster in my room), and the conflicting need for uniqueness (multi-colored penguins that point to our own individuality, also in my room), then we ultimately come to some convergence in our literature, and hope that the concepts will blend. In 8th Grade mandatory-literature texts, there is a duality in harmony vs. individualism, and I see this in the literature of TOM SAWYER, FLOWERS FOR AGERNON, DIARY OF ANNE FRANK, and CALL OF THE WILD.

8th grade stuff.

No, college-stuff. Because these little 8th grade students are really young adults, and are figuring out their individuality (their need for acceptance as well as their rule over mankind), and their need for the pact mentality of the wolves in the CALL OF THE WILD. A blend. A wholeness.

A communication, borne out of the past, brought into a spiritual future, that has the audacity to combine that duality into the present.

And in my mindless ramblings that day that involved the charged atmosphere around me, you begin your presentation, and almost instantaneously, it ends.

Like a brief glimpse of a comet. I just thought, Wow. I felt small, like the time I was able to capture a double-rainbow on film, I wanted to be on those rainbows, both, but couldn’t. I wanted to ride on the comet, but knew that I couldn’t catch its tail. So now I am frozen in my chair, wondering how I can incorporate philosophy into my classroom.

But then I realize, I already have. Because I like conversation, dialogue, I turn to the nearest person and start talking, And in the back of my head, I begin to hear the students talking, my future students blended with the past, and know that I am now ready for the first day of school. I can’t wait for the process to begin.

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I ultimately realize that all I am doing is helping the students process information in an organizational way based on their heritage, their background, their goals.

Listen, can you hear them talking? Because I can.

They are the voices of tomorrow, and we should hear them.

Listen, can you hear them talking?

I will accept nothing that resembles silent. I adamantly refuse it.

“The two roads diverged in a narrow wood, and I, I took the one less traveled,” (Robert Frost)

I seriously believe in their future, and my own, in the cyclical rather than linear nature of life, and through as much chatter as I can irritate out of them.

Thanks for the wow. I needed that.

And I’m not even sure I understood all that you said. It was just an inspirational for me, a spur, I’m ready to go to class now.

Shauna Carroll

English-8

Barnett Junior High

Thanks for reading.

Grinding

Nothing memorable was ever accomplished in a prosaic mood of mind.

Henry David Thoreau, Journal (undated, but among his pages written while residing at Walden Pond)

My coffe mug has “Daily Grind” wrapped around the outside.  I pulled it from my cupboard this morning as my message for the day.  As a school teacher for twenty-eight years, I know the daily grind–too many subjects to teach to too many students in too many class periods with too little time for absorption per day.  In twenty-eight years that has not changed, and I’m confident will not change.  I love the film Rounders and the role played by John Turturro whom they refer to as “The Grinder.”  He makes a living playing cards, finding a way to pay the mortgage, alimony and child support (“My kids eat.”).  He is portrayed as a rather joyless sage who knows what he has to do daily to pay his bills.

But the paragraph just written is not what I consider the core of my life.  For twenty-eight years, though grinding, I have blissfully educated myself, poring over the texts and materials necessary to put fresh bread before the students.  And even if they did not absorb that daily nourishment, I did, incrementally, semester after semester, year after year. And I felt the growth of my own soul, appreciating every new shoot.  My life has been enriched through the decades, doing what I’ve been hired to do.

For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.

Mark 4:28

I echo the sentiments of Thoreau.  I don’t sense within me a “prosaic mood of mind.” Throughout life, I have found a way to celebrate as I have fed on the religious sentiment, the literary and the artistic.  It has all been good.  And this day particularly has been good. Rising to my first cold morning of the season, I chose not to turn on central heating, but to go out back to my woodpile, fill the fireplace and begin a day-long fire.  For four hours now, the crackling sound has soothed me as I’ve labored over a watercolor commission in my living room studio, enjoying the crisp winter light slanting across the drafting table and listening to Copland’s “Appalachian Spring.” This day has been filled with splendor because it marks the commencement of the Thanksgiving Holiday.  Our schools are closed the entire week, so I will not be returning to the workplace on Monday.  My holiday schedule is not exactly set in stone, but at least I know I have all the time necessary before me to complete this commission, then move on to the holidays.

Thanks for reading.  The morning has been truly delicious.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

Ruminations During a Three-Day Holiday Respite

I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourselves. Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

All good poetry is the overflow of powerful feelings . . . The imagination must learn to ply her craft by judgment studied.

William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads

The first key to writing is to write, not to think. . . . You write your first draft with your heart; you rewrite with your head.

Sean Connery, Finding Forrester

I awoke this morning to my blog alerting me that thirteen days have passed since my last post. That was not intentional, though unplugging for a season has its rewards, so argues William Powers in his excellent book Hamlet’s Blackberry: Building a Good Life in the Digital Age. 

Two weeks of high school are now in the books, and the three-day holiday weekend respite has been delicious so far. From the moment I walked out of the school Friday afternoon, my mind has been seething with memories of the past two weeks of classes–all of them invigorating. In the philosophy and art history classes, I’ve been employing Nietzsche’s model of Apollo vs. Dionysus, which he set forth in his 1872 work The Birth of Tragedy. In this work he argues that the creative life is a constant struggle between the forces of Apollo (order, structure, reason) and Dionysus (chaos, spontaneity, passion). As an artist I have grown to appreciate that attempt for balance over the years. I have posted quotes above from Nietzsche’s novel as well as Wordsworth’s theory of poetry and the excellent lines from the motion picture Finding Forrester. All creative attempts embody a shaky counterbalance of order and spontaneity, and I for one like to lead out with my passion, then let reason clean it up subsequently.

For the past several days, I have experienced a series of delightful explosions in my philosophy and art history classes as we have explored the thought and creations of the ancient Greeks. I have studied this material throughout most of my life, and believed I had it organized in a logical (boring) way in the form of “lesson plans”. But the students’ questions and my serious responses never follow the lesson plans, and I find that delightful, always. And I’m confident that many of the students do as well.  After all, the questions are theirs. Nevertheless, there remain those students who prefer to have everything laid out in logical order so they can study their material, write their essays properly (boring) and take their tests (boring) and see their scores (which to me are always imperfect indicators of their excellence in thinking). My sentiments are about as subtle as a freight train, yes?

So . . . I am using this three-day holiday to clean up my lesson plans and present a more orderly package next week. Meanwhile I will continue to explore this Apollo/Dionysus balance. I just finished reading The Poisonwood Bible, a very sobering and deeply gratifying experience in thoughtful reading. My favorite character is Ada, a crippled teenager with deep thoughts, who experienced healing later in life.  Her creed was expressed as follows:

Tall and straight I may appear, but I will always be Ada inside. A crooked little person trying to tell the truth. The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to find out.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

 

 

Philosophy is Next

 

Exhausted but Content, after Day One

No more will I dismiss, with haste, the visions which flash and sparkle across my sky; but observe them, approach them, domesticate them, brood on them, and thus draw out of the past, genuine life for the present hour.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Literary Ethics”

Emerson delivered these bold words at Dartmouth College, two weeks after infuriating the Harvard Divinity School faculty with his infamous (and still unnamed) “Address” of 1838. Choosing not to grouse over the public rejection he endured, Emerson continued to play ball, pitching these encouraging words to young minds who dared to think independently. Emerson, immortalized by his “Self-Reliance” essay, pointed out how dismissive we are of our own independent ideas.

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

Tomorrow is the second day of school for me, and the first meeting of my Philosophy class. Every time I open a new semester with this class, I try to challenge the students to find their own voice and dare to speak their own mind. In 1784, when the European Enlightenment was at its peak, Immanuel Kant published his essay, What is Enlightenment (Was ist Aufklärung?). He described the experience as the individual emerging from his/her own tutelage, daring to think independently (Sapere aude). That’s what I wish to challenge my students to do: dare to know. We stand on the stratified centuries of intellectual tradition, yet too often pride ourselves only in mastering and reciting the material rather than believing that we can do it better, that we can push the envelope further than earlier visionaries saw or dared to push.

This day has been very satisfying. I’m hoping that tomorrow is as well.

Thanks for reading.

 

Altar Building

My Favorite Room on this Planet–a Sacred Space

Emerson knew there was “an innavigable sea of silent waves between us and the things we aim at”.

Robert D. Richardson, Jr., Emerson: The Mind on Fire

Sunday is a day set aside for worship by many. Personally, I feel that I worship far more frequently than weekly. Nevertheless, throughout this day, I’ve been building an altar in preparation for tomorrow morning when school begins for the 2016-2017 term. I could easily say that the altar preparation began when I left the last day of the Spring term. But it would be even more accurate to say that this altar has been under construction for decades. I don’t know when I first thought I would actually be an educator by profession. I signed my first contract in 1985 when the University of North Texas offered me an adjunct post, teaching Introduction to Philosophy. It was then that I knew for certain how I wished to live out the rest of my life.

Tomorrow I meet my sections of Advanced Placement and Regular Art History, three ninety-minute classes total. I’m gratified to see a roster filled with familiar names–students I have already had in Regular Art History, Philosophy or A.V.I.D. When I see their faces, I will experience a homecoming of sorts. And knowing they chose this elective class gratifies me even more deeply. I hear many teachers express that they want to be liked, and of course I know that feeling. But far more satisfying to me is the idea that these students trust me.  They chose to return because they trust me. And I trust them. That is why I feel so much potential for good as we enter this relationship for a second year. Two of these students entered my classroom last week when I was setting things in order. I can’t explain what I felt when I saw them come through that door. I had no idea how much this summer I had missed their enthusiasm and positive contributions to the classroom environment. And now tomorrow, I get to see them again, and begin a new chapter in this odyssey.

Altar building. A teacher invests a great deal of time and effort, assembling material for the day’s learning, enters the room and tries to set the materials afire. It doesn’t always work. Sometimes the match is wet and won’t strike. Sometimes the match ignites, but the material isn’t combustible. Sometimes the match ignites, the materials flame up, but the students are looking at their phones and don’t notice any of it. There is so much that can go wrong, even when one spends hours, days, indeed a lifetime preparing for the Event. But there is so much that can go right. And that thought is what keeps us coming back.

The altar has been prepared, and I’m praying for fire.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to learn.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

 

Words, Words, Words

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless 

As wind in dry grass

T. S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”

Relaxing over coffee and books this morning, I found myself dragged into some deep sentiments while reading T. S. Eliot. In less than two weeks, I’ll return for a week of Inservice in preparation for a new school year. Throughout that week, words will fill the rooms in which we sit and listen, words that probably originated in Washington D. C., then filtered through Austin, Texas, then on to Arlington ISD, then to my high school, then to us educators.

Nietzsche pleaded for as few mediators as possible between the creating spirits and those spirits hungry to receive them. The more voices standing in the gap, the greater the distortion of the Word. As a solitary teacher, I am painfully aware of the fractures created in my classroom when the light of a Nietzsche or Emerson or Shakespeare passes through the prism of my being, breaking apart their precious insights into my own categories, thus weakening the impact.  I always hope that I can steer my students directly toward the geniuses as my art teacher steered me to Andrew Wyeth and Harold Bloom steered me to Shakespeare.

This summer has been a precious odyssey to me, with many valuable life lessons gleaned. I can only hope that this fall I will step into classrooms with some souls hungry to feed from life experience, and that I don’t find ways to fill the gap between the geniuses and the students with pedagogical debris.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to learn.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

 

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving

Life is being wasted.  The human family is not having half the fun that is its due, not making the beautiful things it would make, and each one is not as good news to the other as he might be, just because we are educated off our natural track.  We need another form of education.

Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

Happy Thanksgiving to anyone out there reading this.  I don’t think I could have planned a better one for myself.  Waking in the darkness before dawn, enjoying the warmth of covers, and thinking good thoughts, I decided the first thing I wanted to do once I got up was go back to the third watercolor I started over the past three days, and see if I could finish it.  I did.  I took some chances in color that I’m not used to taking, and am glad I did.  I also tried out some new techniques in drybrush with the foreground–a combination of masquing, staining with a drybrush, and pencil rendering/scribbling–which was also enjoyable.

Returning to a book I’ve read once all the way through and am nearly finished with my second reading, I’m amazed at the insight and clarity with which Robert Henri wrote.  The man was truly a prophet, a seer, a visionary, and I’m grateful that he recorded his thoughts for posterity.  He has been a real gift to me personally.  I love the quote posted above.  And I’m glad, in retrospect, that I returned to my artistic roots.  I laid down the pencil and brush to pursue graduate studies in academic subjects, and followed a career in education.  But one day I woke up and decided to return to what gives me the most deep-seated pleasure in life–making art.  My job is still a good experience for me, but I live to pursue my passion when not on the job, and the activity never lets me down.  The holidays have been meaningful this year because I’ve had uninterrupted time to pursue painting and thinking, and it’s all been very, very good.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not really alone.

 

 

A Day of Contemplation

It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works.

Ezra Pound, “A Retrospect”

I open today’s bog entry with this word: I may be blogging with less frequency these days, but with time spent away from social media, I am discovering more quality time for reading and journaling. Hopefully this will result in a blog with greater quality, and not just a daily quota of words flung into the chattersphere, hoping for relevance.

Reaching the halfway point of a three-day Labor Day hiatus, my soul is awash with sentiments of gratitude–I needed the rest from the daily school grind, though school has only ground for two weeks. I must be aging and slowing. I have laughed and cried my way through 150 pages of Don Quixote. The book is an excellent mirror I suppose for any reader, but particularly for anyone who has devoted most of his/her life to public school teaching. I don’t believe I speak only for myself when I confess to living in a world partially constructed after my own imagination. Daydreams and fantasies aided me in coping with my own public education which I found largely boring and unimaginative. It would seem that karma induced my return to the public school arena once I completed my education. And now, twenty-seven years later, imagination and fantasies still aid me in coping with much of the boredom that surrounds me daily.

Sancho Panza mocked his noble Don Quixote of La Mancha with these words:

Sancho, my friend, know that I was born, by the will of heaven, in this our iron age, to revive the one of gold, or the Golden Age.

Anyone wishing to parody my persona could chant those same words in derision. But I own them. Classical studies and forays into the humanities saved my life at the university, and by the time I entered the high school classroom as instructor, they had become the blood that courses through my veins. When I was growing up in public school, some of my teachers tried to be cool, drawing daily soundbites and lesson ideas from Leave it to Beaver and later M.A.S.H. Pop culture didn’t mature me then, and it doesn’t feed me now, nor does it nourish the students of today, as far as I’m concerned. No student in my classroom will hear me reciting anecdotes from Miley Cyrus, lyrics from Justin Bieber or soundbites from Donald Trump. Pop icons such as these are not worth my time, and they contribute nothing of value to one wishing to improve life, as far as I am concerned. As a fan of Rene Descartes, I have always enjoyed leading my philosophy classes through his cogito ergo sum–“I think, therefore I am.” I used to have a bumper sticker on the window outside my classroom door that said: I think. Therefore I don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh. I came to school of course one day to find it had been removed. Sometimes I wonder if the one who removed it thinks and finds a reason to be.

When it comes to course content, I am grateful that I get to select and share the works of those minds who tried to improve society, tried to challenge young minds to become better. I make no apology for anchoring my course content in the humanities. Talking heads of education can lay out all the data they please, crow about job training all they please, and lay out social programs all they please. But these days, I still glean value from the works of Emerson, Thoreau, Cervantes, Eliot, Pound, Aristotle, Augustine and Shakespeare, and will continue bringing ideas to my classes from these great minds who dared to think big, dream big, imagine big.

At the top of this post, I quoted Ezra Pound, and with his challenge launched my latest watercolor, begun this morning, always with the hope that this could be my best Image produced during my lifetime.

Working on Foreground Foliage

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to explore.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

Pondering New Directions in Watercolor

A Dark, Rainy Friday Made for Books and Reflective Thought

There are men charged with the duty of examining the construction of the plants, animals and soils which are the instruments of the great orchestra.  These men are called professors.  Each selects one instrument and spends his life taking it apart and describing its strings and sounding boards.  This process of dismemberment is called research.  The place for dismemberment is called a university.

A professor may pluck the strings of his own instrument, but never that of another, and if he listens for music he must never admit it to his fellows or to his students.  For all are restrainted by an ironbound taboo which decrees that the construction of instruments is the domain of science, while the detection of harmony is the domain of poets.

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

How delightful to be finished with my holiday travels, home again, and still possess time for quiet reflection before returning to school next week.  Today (Friday) is dark and rainy and well-suited for staying indoors.  The coffee pot is full, the books are stacked high, Mozart is playing on the stereo, and I’m grazing from a number of ideological pastures as I figure out what to do next with my time.  Today I have watched again the film “A Beautiful Mind,” and have felt so inspired at the thought of John Nash wrestling with the implications of a new idea.  The film has spurred me to dig deeper into journals and art books in a quest for some kind of direction in my artistic pursuits.  While re-reading one of my favorite books, Wyeth at Kuerners, I suddenly saw in my mind’s eye the subject that I want to try next.  I’m waiting for it to get dark outside so I can work in my garage studio, relying on spotlighting effects rather than the natural light flooding through the windows of the door.

The Aldo Leopold quote posted above I culled from a journal I kept during the final quarter of 2013.  I enjoy perusing old journals, especially at this age when I seem to forget about 90% of what I’ve written in prior years that I thought so important then.  I was delighted to find Leopold tagging on to the same idea I published yesterday,separating Art from works of art.  For most of my life, I have attempted to make art, and always realized that my creations pointed toward Art but never seemed to cross the threshold.  And when it comes to assessing the strength of various works of art, I always seem to find myself tongue-tied.  Currently I’m working on this idea of how we as artists break works of art into their component elements of design, analyze techniques applied, and ultimately conclude that the composition is always more, much more than its parts.

Many of my ideas about art parallel my views on education.  Since I’ll be returning to school next week, my mind is full of these ideas as well, especially my view that education, like art, cannot be distilled into a few basic principles.  Education is an art, not a toolbox of techniques.  The assessment of a quality education (to me) cannot be divined from a sheet of statistics, cannot be discovered by analyzing data, and cannot be disseminated by training a group of teachers to follow a lesson plan template.  As an educator, I have no gimmicks, no magic tricks.  I study hard. collect myriads of words and ideas, assemble and arrange them and then communicate them to listeners.  Sometimes what I pass on is “caught” much as one would catch the measles.  As to the art arena, my watercolors are the same thing–an assemblage of objects, techniques, moods and ideas that sometimes work.  And in ways that I still do not understand, certain paintings of mine will reach viewers, will draw them in.  I’m eternally grateful for those encounters, though I have no idea how these things happen.

Looking Over my Recent History of Work, Trying to Determime What to Try Next

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am never alone.

Sundry Reasons to Smile Tonight

Friday Night at my Writing Table

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour.  For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem.  These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought.  One tendency unites them all.  The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.  See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”

It is turning out to be an excellent night for putting some thoughts down in my journal, despite the reality that my furnace broke down 24 hours ago, and will not be repaired before tomorrow.  Temperatures dipped to 30 last night, and threaten to do so again tonight.  The house is cold, but things are not so bad–in fact they are quite good.  A small electric space heater is adequate to warm the space that I occupy, and so I am finding ways to live in a smaller space until the cavalry arrives tomorrow.

As I shambled through my crowded chamber earlier this evening, I sensed that I was smiling, and wondered what exactly that was all about.  In my younger years, these physical circumstances would have left me fuming.  So why is tonight so good, after all?  Simply put, the recollections of all the experiences that wove together throughout this day to produce a beautiful existence.  All I have to do is recall them, one by one, and then smile at them collectively.

It was a profound honor this morning to be invited to sit beside a struggling, yet determined A.V.I.D. student wrestling with an assignment for A. P. English over an Emerson essay.  As she read aloud pointed texts from this sage and faced specific questions, I happily asked her questions the way these A.V.I.D. students do when collectively learning in their tutorial circles.  I didn’t have to give her any answers.  One by one, she solved each problem, then moved on to the next, and I just felt joy brimming inside me, watching her countenance brighten and her eyes focus every time she “got it.”  All I could hope is that she would come to love this man’s words as much as I have in my later years.

After that session, my Philosophy class came in for their scheduled exam (which may not have been a natural high), followed by a roundtable discussion on Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” essay.  I shall always remember and cherish what transpired in today’s discussion, watching the sincerity of students willing to explore difficult questions that took them to the edge of their own traditions.  I shall never forget the words of one of the girls expressing that Emerson’s “American Scholar” speech “resonated” with her.  She left me her journal to read which included a poem she composed about a particular experience of driving through the night that brought her to enlightenment.  The vocabulary was charged with Emersonian sentiment, and I felt tears as I read it, and recalled the expressions on her thoughtful countenance every time she responded to the discussions of today.

The bell rang.  It was time to go to lunch.  But one young man remained behind to talk, to give up the early part of his lunch period.  He talked of the values which so deeply stir him at this stage in his life, and then, as he was preparing to leave, told me that this class was undoubtedly the best he has ever had in his educational odyssey.  I believe him, and it stirs me deeply, because I have had this unspeakable honor to join his hands with those outstretched hands of Plato, Augustine, Descartes, Kant and Emerson among others.  And we still have a few weeks left to learn from others before this young man continues the rest of his journey without me.  I am pleased to know that he has been transformed, and grateful that he, the afore-mentioned young ladies, and all the rest of the students passing through, have given color and texture to my life. Who needs a furnace tonight?!

Yes, tonight I have sundry reasons to smile.  Life is complex with these myriads of details and decisions that zigzag our way through each day.  But I am convinced that we are going somewhere.  And the journey has quality.

Thanks for reading, and sharing this night with me.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.