Elephants

When I was a little girl, my Bubby had a set of wooden elephants that I loved to play with every time I went to her house. I remember sitting in front of the fireplace, stacking and re-stacking them, balancing them one on top of the other in endlessly changing configurations. They were one of my favorite toys, mostly because they were so simply made, and yet so versatile.

Now, those elephants are on top of my dresser at home. Last year when I was visiting my Bubby, she gave them to me. I tried stacking them, but opening and closing my dresser drawers tends to knock them over, so now they're just standing there. I smile every time I see them.

I don't know what it is about the elephants that I like so much. In real life, they are hairy and wrinkly, and ugly, even if they are smart. Next week in class, I'm going to be teaching Orwell's "Shooting and Elephant", and as a pre-reading activity I'm having my students look at several images of elephants. One of them is an abstract piece, which you can see here: http://tomseb1.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/elephant1.jpg

I am in love with this image. There is such beauty and power in it, and the colors are wonderful. I'd love to have this as an extremely large piece of wall art.

I Did, In Fact, Finish

I did, in fact, finish my 30-day photo project back in September, but I never posted the last set of images. Here they are.

Gift

Just Baked

Graded Papers

Sunlight Makes Lens Rainbows

National You-Are-Loved Chalk Message Project

Camera Phone Photo

Storms From The North

Afternoon Rainbow

Hush

This memory
tastes of salt tears and honey
and smells like twilight
in the fall.

This memory
resides in the shadow’s
stark contrast to the white
of her thigh.

This memory -
a keening wail
and the tearing of skin
in mourning anguish.

I have lost the sound of her voice.

I have lost the taste of her kiss.

I have

silence

and memories.

Week 3 of the 30-day Photo Project

Rustic Art


First Hot Cocoa of the Season


Books To Read


Formerly Known As


Morning Fog


Something's Dying


Bedtime

The Second Week of September

This week has really started to be fall-like. We're settling in to the rhythm of school, and my students are taking their first quiz today. Each day has been a bit cooler, and finally last night I put another comforter on the bed. This is one of my favorite times of year, and I am eagerly awaiting the blaze of color on the leaves this year. I think we're going to get a good show.

Finishing Work


Warning: Water Damage in Progress


Six-Kid Randori #6


Memorial Tribute


Teaching In The Library


The Scent of Fall


After the Rain

Updates Galore (w/ images)

It's been a very long time since I've updated, mostly because my summer has been spent trying to stay away from the computer as much as I can. I've enjoyed the break from technology, and instead have spent a lot of time enjoying other hobbies, such as aikido classes, cooking, gardening, and reading. I took very few photos this summer as well, and I've decided to start up my "creative engine" with a 30-day photo project. I'm posting my images daily on facebook and flickr, but I prefer to do a weekly collection on this blog.

Another Brick In The Wall


Curriculum Planning


The Disaster Zone


The Office On Day Two


Mt. Greenwood Cemetery


Structure


Preparation

Firing Range

I had an interesting experience today. I went to a shooting range for the first time, and I discovered that the activity needs a dislike button, at least for me. I tried two different guns, a .38 pistol and a .45 semi-automatic, and didn't particularly enjoy using either one. I learned two very important things. First, I'm not really strong enough to use a gun. The recoil on both of the guns was too powerful for me to enjoy shooting them; every time they kicked back they hurt my hands. Second, I don't particularly enjoy shooting because I find it difficult. I think that, if I'd found a gun that was easy to shoot, I might have liked it better, but I wasn't accurate enough to make slogging through the difficulty of handling the weapon worth it.

On the up side, I know that if I somehow come into contact with or possession of a loaded handgun, I can probably manage to not kill myself with it while I attempt to unload it. That strikes me as a useful skill.

From here on in, I think my shooting will be limited to photographs with cameras, rather than targets with firearms.

The Problem With Logic

This post grew out of a discussion I was having with some people over on facebook. I started to write a response to some of their comments, and the response kept growing, so I moved it over here. Hopefully they come take a look at it.

For those who don't know - you'll need to read this first in order for this post to make any sense:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/07/05/richard-dawkins-and-male-privilege/

Here is my original statement from when I posted the article: I'm not entirely sure what I think of all of this. I've read one of Dawkin's books, The God Delusion, and most of another, The Ancestors Tale, and although I find his work interesting, I've always had the nagging sense that there's some faulty logic in it somewhere. I don't know that this set of posts has anything to do with his academic work or his skepticism, except that it demonstrates very clearly Dawkins' lack of ability to think through all possible permutations or interpretations of a situation, and by simplifying the situation into its "basic" components, he is disregarding potentials. That, I think, might also be the deep flaw in in the reasoning in his books.

The first comment I am responding to is this: If that is what it takes to make people question his theories, they were never intellectually committed to them in the first place. Rather they are happy to find a way out of having to resolve things for themselves. I have not read Dawkins precisely because the non existence of any god is so self evident that I have never wanted to spend the time being persuaded of the obvious. As a result I cannot speak to whatever "deep flaw" you perceive and cannot identify. However, if his harsh response to a victim for some reason makes his reasoning "flawed" I would urger you to sort out feeling from thought more particularly.

It's not Dawkins' tone that bothers me, or his theories that I question (theories are inherently questionable anyway, as they are theories, and not fact), it's the reasoning that he uses to prove his theories. After reading The God Delusion I remember thinking that Dawkins had good ideas, but that there was some inherent bit of argument that didn't "fit" the way it needed to, but I couldn't figure out what it was. Now I have a sense of where to start looking, which is at the limited way he examines situations to pull evidence from them. Dawkins analysis of Rebecca's situation lacks a clear examination of all facets of the experience. He doesn't take into account cultural or social mores, and he ignores the influence of this woman's possible past history. His assumption that, "She was probably offended to about the same extent as I am offended if a man gets into an elevator with me chewing gum," limits his argument (not to mention trivializes the experience the woman had, but I'm writing about his logic here, not his lack of compassion) because it makes an assumption that he cannot substantiate. Perhaps this woman was the victim of a sexual assault. Perhaps her best friend was. Perhaps she watched one too many TV shows about women who have a couple drinks and then get on elevators with men who do them wrong. Maybe none of those things are true, but its bad science to draw conclusions based on unproven assumptions.

Now, I will grant that Rebecca didn't know any more about this man's true intentions than Dawkins does about her personal history, so there is a lot of assumption-making going on in this situation from all sides, but here's the trouble - people aren't solely logical. We're also emotional. Creative. Spontaneous. We can *think* logically about situations, if we have enough self-control to master out emotions, and we often do, but we are not machines.

So where does that leave us? Well, it leaves me with a second comment to respond to: Actually, I think he had a valid argument. I don't get how that was a "potential sexual assault". So, single guys aren't allowed to ask out a single woman who they find attractive and interesting? That's a very extreme view to have. So they were in an elevator. So what? He makes a compelling argument about how she could easily leave by pushing a button. Having someone compliment you makes you uncomfortable? How sheltered.

Frankly, I think that the author of the article I posted did a solid job of responding to this, but perhaps not with the clarity that is needed. Here is what the article author said: I can understand that it’s hard for men to truly grasp the woman’s point of view here, since men rarely feel in danger of sexual assault. But Jen McCrieght’s post, and many others, make it clear that to a woman, being alone on that elevator with that man was a potential threat, and a serious one. You may not be able to just press a button and walk away — perhaps he has a knife, or a gun, or will simply overpower you. When there’s no way to know, you err on the side of safety. And what makes this worse is that most men don’t understand this, so women are constantly put into situations ranging from uncomfortable to downright scary. Put even more simply: this wasn’t a guy chewing gum at her. This was a potential sexual assault.

Let's see if I can come up with a better analogy than gum-chewing that gives a different perspective here. Every time you drive your car, there is a potential for an accident. That potential changes depending on many factors, some within our control (amount of sleep we've had, condition of our vehicle), and some not in our control (the weather, the behavior of other drivers). Does that mean that we stop driving because there "might" be an accident. Only when we feel, or reason, that the potential for driving to end badly is high enough to make us feel unsafe. Do we expect other people to stop driving so we can have the road to ourselves? Of course not! Neither then, is Rebecca saying that she won't get into elevators, or that men shouldn't get into elevators with women. However, if you're driving in a snow storm, and you've got your baby asleep in the car seat, you're probably going to be a lot more careful - no cell phone, maybe even turning off the radio - than you would on a bright, sunny day when it was just you out on the highway. And, reasonably, I think you'd expect that other people would be more careful as well. Circumstances matter. Rebecca's circumstances were these: It was late at night. She had been drinking. She didn't know this man. They were alone together in a confined space. I don't think it's any more ridiculous for her to say, "I felt really uncomfortable" than it would be if she'd been driving through a snow storm and she said, "That was a tough, scary drive."

There's a much bigger issue here that I need to touch on as well. It's got little to do with Dawkins, and isn't intended as a response to any specific post at this point, but this entire argument about argument has raised a red flag for me about a major cultural problem. We have a culture where, often, victims are blamed for being victims, especially women in cases of sexual assault or rape. It is not uncommon in those situations to hear comments such as, "Look as how she dresses. She put herself out there. She should have known better." As a woman, I can say to that, I do know better. I know better than to get on an elevator with a strange man by myself when I've been drinking, or when it's late, or when I'm somewhere unfamiliar (think parking decks - they're damn creepy). I think twice about putting on a short skirt to go out somewhere unless I'm going to be with a group of people who I trust. When I'm somewhere new, I scan rooms for the exits, and I never sit with my back to the door. Ok, I grant you, the last two might be a bit of overreaction, but I know enough people who have ended up in bad situations that they seem to be prudent, rather than silly.

So long as our culture finds it acceptable to blame the victim, rather than the aggressor, women are going to be bothered by getting onto elevators late at night with strange men. They are going to be guarded when someone "hits on them" (Geh, the implications that "hitting on" is a good thing - the mafia "hit" people and they ended up dead) because they don't know that person or their intentions. They are going to worry when they walk back from their cars to their apartments after an evening class at a university. Until women can say, "I feel unsafe," and not be ridiculed for it, they aren't going to feel any safer. One unintended side effect of Dawkins' response is that he, I am assuming unintentionally, has compounded the problem by presenting a case for ignoring the feelings of women whose situations end differently. In cases of abuse, there is often a history of police reports of the woman feeling "unsafe", "threatened", or "in danger" that are ignored until a physical assault does take place. We don't ignore our children when they tell us they have a headache. Why do we ignore our mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters when they tell us they feel unsafe? Just wondering...

Always Fun

It's always fun to do this, mostly just to see what I get when I hit the randomizer.

step 1: put your music player on shuffle.
step 2: post the first line from the first 15 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing.
step 2a: Skip any instrumentals and songs where the first line is or contains the title.
step 2b: Also where the song is in a foreign language which you can't actually understand well enough to transcribe.
step 3: strike out the songs when someone guesses both artist and track correctly.
step 4: looking them up on google or any other search engine is CHEATING!
step 5: if you like the game, post your own.

1. Walking, waiting, alone without a care

2. You entail the spirit of who I used to be

3. Bought my lover a new best friend

4. She come down from Oklahoma

5. Subversive mystics taking over you

6. I can't wait to be with you

7. Let the phone ring

8. In this place the winds blow colder

9. A pushed patience will finally take its toll

10. You know that I'm a crazy b*&$^

11. Conceived in darkness, late at night

12. I should've quit you a long time ago

13. Answer me, why won't you answer me

14. I never should've traded you

15. Another aspect of me

What Could It Mean

Today I attended a memorial service for a man I never met. His name was Fumio Toyoda, Shihan, and he was one of the people who was instrumental in founding Ryoshinkan Dojo in Palatine, IL, and the dojo where I train, Soshinkan, is an offshoot of that dojo. Toyoda Shihan passed away ten years ago, and each year to make the anniversary of his death, there is a special training session. This year, Soshinkan dojo hosted the memorial service.

Several different senseis (is that really the correct plural?) demonstrated techniques, but the one person whose presentation moved me the most didn't demonstrate any techniques at all. Instead, Butler Sensei talked about his own personal experience of studying aikido, starting when he was a young man who was intent on "debunking" aikido techniques using his skills in MMA. He talked a lot about how his experiences with Toyoda Shihan helped him change his mind and his understanding of himself, and how the number one thing he was forced to confront in himself was his own fear.

Butler Sensei's talk makes me wonder:

What would it be like to live without fear?

I'm not talking about being a risk-taker or a thill-seeker, necessarily. I'm wondering what it would be like to live in a state of trust and love.

I used to try to be like that all the time - open, accepting, compassionate, loving. Somewhere along the line I lost that.

That openness fell away in stages, I think. My first broken heart. My second broken heart. Confronting my own inadequacies. Struggling through differences of opinion and giving in. Deciding that it's easier to go with the flow than to engage in conflict. Each of those experiences, along with countless small moments of strife, rubbed my soul raw and then gave me emotional callouses.

The most major change occurred when I started teaching. I decided that I was going to have to get a thicker skin, because I was worried (afraid) that the students wouldn't take me seriously unless I could present myself as more of an authority figure. I didn't trust my own skills in managing a classroom or in relating to students, and I let my concerns (fears) change the way that I presented myself. Did I learn something about myself in the process? Sure. And it was a lesson worth learning. I can, in fact, be an authority figure. But beyond that, the last five years have shown me that I do better when I approach teaching with love and compassion, rather than fear.

What would happen if I could go back to openness?

The very idea is terrifying.

Which, I suppose, is the entire point.

Primal

The storm comes from the east this time. The smell of the wind brings sadness and anger. When storms blow up from the Southwest, they smell like dreams and hope and the future, but this storm just smells like bad news and bad business. It's as dark as a winter afternoon, even though it's mid-day. I stand outside to take pictures of the sky, and my hair whips my face as bits of tree branches snap and scatter around me.

It's probably not the safest thing in the world, to stand and watch the lightning, but it is a lot of fun. I've always been one who opens my windows to the storm and lets it flow over me and through my room. I remember, when I was younger, thinking that there was nothing more beautiful that opening all my windows and lighting all my candles and watching the flames twist and dance and leap in the wind that comes before a storm. There was a power there - I could taste it, feel it. When I moved to Chicago, that feeling went away. Cities aren't places where there's a lot of feeling connected with nature. Everything is glass and steel and stone, and when the wind blows it cuts like a knife, channeled artificially between the buildings. There's no blending with it, or opening to it. With wind like that, you can't spread your arms and feel like you're about to fly. This storm is different. This storm feels like home.

Progress

Sometimes all it takes is a few minutes to sit down and see just how far I've come, and then I feel much better about almost everything in the world.

So, a progress review of my garden:

April 30, 2011:


June 27, 2011:


May 1, 2010:


May 29, 2011:

Trajectories

Do you ever get the feeling that you and the rest of the world are out of sync with each other? It's a feeling I'm not particularly fond of, but it's been happening more and more frequently, so maybe I ought to get used to it. It feels as though I'm moving along a slightly different trajectory from everyone around me, but not by much, maybe half a degree, give or take a smidgeon. When I started my journey, it seemed like I was heading in the same direction as everyone else, but the farther along I go, the more I find that my path is divergent. I'm not sure what to do about this, or whether I should do anything about it at all. It's frustrating to be out of step with the people I enjoy spending time with, because this loss of synchronicity means so many missed moments. At the same time, I'm trying to come to an acceptance of the idea that my path and my life are mine, and that I shouldn't necessarily twist and bend every which way just to stay in step with other people. Some flex is good. Too much flex means I've lost myself. I don't know where the line between those two is yet, but learning it isn't turning out to be all that much fun.

Completed and Hung

I attached the hardware and figured out how to hang my masks today, so my New Orleans assemblage is finished now.

The base is 1/4-inch plywood, and the center square is 1-inch pine. The decorative paper came from Michaels Crafts, and the photos I took myself. The masks are from a shop called Maskerade, which is about half a block from Jackson Square in New Orleans.

Chicago Botanic Gardens

On Wednesday

I'm going to be 30 on Wednesday. I'm feeling somewhat more settled about this than I was a few months ago, but it's still very peculiar. I had a good talk with my father last night, and he told me that he hadn't been too keen on turning 30 (or 40, or 50 either), which helped a bit. It's good to know that I'm not the only person who feels the way I do. Happily, this looks like it's going to be a fairly laid-back birthday. Tuesday is the last day of school for this year, so Wednesday I'll be able to sleep in. Over the weekend we had people over for Father's Day barbecue and birthday cake, and spent the evening in quiet conversation. Aside from that, I've got no major plans, and that'll all right with me.

Progress

The kitchen floor project is moving toward completion. This entire event started because the stick-down tiles were finally starting to pop off the kitchen floor. With a few missing tiles and several loose ones, it was time to tackle replacing the floor. This is the mostly-finished new tile that we're laying.

More Beauty

I spent last weekend in a nice balance of activity and do-nothing-ness. It was a three-day weekend in honor of Memorial Day, and although it was in turns both hot and rainy, much of the gardening work still got completed. One major issue in my back yard is that the dog runs through the gardens frequently enough to destroy them. The solution? Build her a path, and plant some "stepables", which are plants designed to be part of walkways because they can take being walked on a bit. The flagstones for the pathway came from under the deck. At some point there was a patio there, and someone built a very nice deck over the top of it. I don't know why, since the patio itself was well-laid. As I was digging out the stones, I realized that they'd been set in a bed of gravel and sand, so whoever laid it knew what they were doing. There are still many more stones under there, which makes me happy, because now I've got plans for laying them other places as well.

The Finished Garden



I also finished another assemblage. This one was originally meant to be a box project, with a bottom piece and a lid, but once I started working on it, it evolved into two separate but related pieces. Both pieces use similar materials, white ribbon, broken pieces of glass and a mirror, and words cut from magazines. When I started the pieces, I didn't have a specific concept in mind. I had the box, and I had the piece of mirror, which I knew I wanted to put inside the box somehow. Once I did that, adding the broken safety glass inside the lid made sense. It echoed the idea without copying it, and there's something evocative to me about the entire idea of broken safety glass and broken mirrors. The perfume bottle is one that I got from a girl I had a major crush (obsession might be a better word) on in high school, and the red glass and hematite star beads came from my personal collection.

Lid Side


Inside



Then yesterday I scored a big find. There's a consignment shop that I drive past every single week, and I've always wanted to see what was inside. I finally stopped yesterday, and in the back room, behind a bunch of other things, I found a type tray. I've wanted one for a while, ever since I saw an art project that someone had done where they cut decorative paper and lined the bottoms of all the sections, then hung the tray on their wall. I'd like to do something similar, but instead of just paper, I'm thinking about adding other embellishments and making a Goddess-themed piece, making each section something to represent and honor a goddess.

Hamilton Type Tray

Living Is So Much More Than Survival

I've been very busy living my life over the last few weeks, and so I haven't stopped to reflect on it much. It's time to take stock of where I am.

I'll be turning 30 in twenty-six days. School will be over for the year in twenty-five days. A while ago I was struggling with the inevitability of turning 30, but in the last couple weeks, my attention has gotten caught up in the end of school instead. I've got so much to finish here - papers to grade, finals to give, books to shelve, clutter to dispose of. It's very time-and-energy consuming.

My time at home has been mostly spent outside. The gardens are filling in, finally. I knew when I started planting perennials, that it was going to take a few years for them to get established the way I wanted them to. This year, everything has come together perfectly. The older plants have had two or three years to establish themselves, and the newer plants are being treated to a perfect combination of cold rain and hot sun, and they are growing and blooming as well.

I'm taking steps now to make my life more what I imagined that it would be at this point. I've started taking aikido lessons again, and even though I've managed to injure myself all ready (cramped my hip flexor and strained my quad), I'm feeling better than I have in a long time. My sensei says that I need to work on being more aggressive with my movements, which I totally agree with. In aikido, and in life, I'm not very good about standing my ground or being forceful. I would rather "bend and blend", which is good sometimes, but not always. My hope is that I'll be able to learn with my body what I need to do with my heart and my mind, and that there will be some transference between one and the other.

Garden Work

I did another bundle of work in my garden this weekend.

Added two new containers to corners of the deck yesterday. This one contains Catchfly, petunias, and some other annual that I don't know the name of.


This one contains Japanese Blood Grass, petunias, and some other annual that I don't know the name of.


I planted lavender in my front garden last fall, but it didn't do very well because it's too shady. Yesterday I rescued two of the three plants and put them in containers on my deck where they can get enough light.


I took the not-so-happy plants out of the front garden and moved them, and put in a few new things. This is actually a shade garden, it gets about three hours of morning sun, so I hope my ferns are happy here.


My lily-of-the-valley are blooming.


My Japanese peony flowered as well. It took three years.