Quietudinousness
I know I haven’t said much around here of late. This’ll be short too, but I wanted to shake the crickets and tumbleweeds out of the blog briefly and ask you all how you’re doing.
What’s been up:
- The Raven had a week of vacation, much of which we spent offline or at least not writing
- I’m checking out a local writer’s group (in fact, I’m leaving in a few minutes for my second meeting of same)
- the months-long job search is starting to show, he said nonjinxingly, some results: i’ve been doing some freelance editing and have a couple solid leads for longer-term gigs, which is a huge sense of relief
- I built some Ikea furniture
- The Raven and I marched with a buncha angry people in West Hollywood over a California Supreme Court decision, and I thought for the first time in years about my Buffalo friend Ronnie Goralcyk, a disabled gay man who thugs killed some 32 years ago, as I laid a flower on a Matthew Shepard memorial
- went to see Up, which you should too
- following various melees and tempests in the blog world, many of which remind me uncomfortably of things like the Cultural Revolution, and have been shying away from writing online much as a result
- putting my online-writing energy into The Clade, which deserves more energy than I have been giving it, though see items one and three in this list.
How are you? What have you been doing?
Comments
My feelings exactly!
I’ve been piqued and haunted by your mussel elegy. Thank you.
I’ve been feeling bad that I’m not as active at The Clade as I’d wanted to be.
Oh, thanks! Now I’ve got damn bugs and sticks all over my blog. It’s all well and good for you to shake crickets and tumbleweeds out of your blog, but take care where they wind up next time.
Jayzus.
I thought of you last night while i was lounging at my concierge job. There had been a statewide conference on the new Science curriculum which beginning this year must include a major environmental component. Post conference the bulk of the new curriculum materials submitted for review by the DoE were left in my office; thus i had plenty of time to delve into the mass of the materials. Two major proposed texts and plans caught my attention:
The first (for 9th-12th grades) was titled “Living on an Ocean Planet; a substantive textbook with tons of supplemental and support materials (online resources, dvds, worksheet and experiment logs, etc.). Really quite outstanding effort on the part of the publisher to bring into cohesive focus the issues of absolute human dependence on this Earth for our survival, with the health of the oceans as fundamentally essential and necessary. Great chapters on the deserts of the world as part of the process and their role in the history of the planet and future as well (i.e. Sahara extreme high pressure spawns Atlantic hurricanes that spawn Sonoran monsoons, et al; and the microbial lifeforms in all environments that are necessary for the food nutrients of all lifeforms).
The second is a coordinated curriculum called Project Wild, with paperback texts, and vast online access to active local agencies and groups engaged in scientific research across the US. A k-12 curriculum, Project Wild seems focussed on putting kids in touch with researchers at every level, and providing hands-on interactive experience. It also had a great unit on guiding kids to propose new research based on their own observations and experience; plays the old adage that kids are closer to the ground and see details and changes we adults might overlook.
All in all, some good new direction in the education field, definitely opening up the factual real world (non-Fox realities) to students everywhere.
I’ve been spending quality time with our barn swallows. It’s a different pair this year - older and crankier. They’ve got used to me, but the old fellow still gives me the gimlet eye now and then. My new familiar.
I’m just back from the PNW. I’m missing mountains and oceans already.
Mostly, though, I’m trying to catch up on all the rest I didn’t get while there. I’m surprised at how exhausted I am, after the fact.
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