Crafting Gentleness

The Crafting Gentleness blog is moving to Tumblr

2010-01-26T04:13:00.000-08:00

Come and join me at craftinggentleness.tumblr.com I will keep this site live, if only because there are hundreds of posts archived here.

bua agus beannacht,

Anthony

"Education: My Partner & Vehicle for a Revolution in Midwifing Nonviolence."

2010-01-18T03:47:00.000-08:00

Patch Adam's 2009 keynote talk, "Education: My Partner & Vehicle for a Revolution in Midwifing Nonviolence," free online. Patch's talk drew over 700 attendees and received rave reviews. Scroll down the page and it's at the bottom ...

http://www.educationrevolution.org/conference.html

This is a powerful talk. For those who aren't familiar with Patch Adam's work, check out http://www.patchadams.org/ or watch the Robin Williams movie about his life, 'Patch Adams'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_Adams

The Cultural Work of Corporations

2010-01-18T03:46:00.000-08:00

"The Cultural Work of Corporations argues that corporate culture—the values, customs, and conventions of a business organization—has altered how workers conduct themselves both inside and outside the workplace. Brown demonstrates that corporate culture, an idea celebrated by business magazines and books, human resources departments, executives, and management theorists, is really a means of extending and strengthening work's presence in all aspects of workers' lives, even aspects generally categorized as private."

http://www.palgrave-usa.com/catalog/product.aspx?isbn=0230618723

“Despite its pervasiveness and power, few nonspecialists take corporate culture as seriously as it should be taken. Brown is an excellent exception. Her important book reminds us that corporate social norms shape how people behave and the dizzying bubble and bust cycles of postmodern capitalism. And she also shows that behind the crunchiest New Age talk about flexibility and diversity lies the old Social Darwinism in snazzy disguise, a crucial bit of truth-telling that the flacks don't want you to hear.”—Doug Henwood, editor of Left Business Observer and author of After the New Economy

The Gesundheit! Institute

2010-01-18T03:45:00.000-08:00

"The Gesundheit! Institute is a project in holistic medical care based on the belief that one cannot separate the health of the individual from the health of the family, the community, the world, and the health care system itself. Gesundheit’s model is designed to protect care as the core of the medical interaction. Our model is organized around these principles:
Care is free. Patients are treated as friends. Ample time is given to the care interaction (e.g. initial interviews with patients are 3 hours long). All complementary medicine is welcomed. The health of the staff is as important as the health of the patients. Care is infused with fun and play."

http://www.patchadams.org/

HAND/EYE

2010-01-18T03:44:00.000-08:00

"HAND/EYE is an independent, international publication which explores the nexus between design and development, culture and commerce, art and craft, and environment and ethics. HAND/EYE’s goal is to engender intelligent debate among artisans, exporters, designers, artists, wholesalers and importers, retailers, and consumers so that all may make smart, ethical, and inspired decisions about their activities."

http://handeyemagazine.com/

The School for Designing a Society

2010-01-18T03:41:00.000-08:00

From their website:

There are no more than a handful of schools, in any country, based on the desire for social change; this school proposes in addition, that social change be based on desires. In no other school are the desires of its students given such a high priority.

This school is organized by people who make a point of knowing how to accept an invitation.

There are no administrators.

Unusual stress is placed on performance; but, performance understood in a particular way. Not athletic performance, bottom-line year-to-date economic or competitive scholastic achievement award winning performance. Performance, rather, in the sense of having an intent and choosing, from alternatives, a preferred way of presenting that intent. Thus, this school emphasizes performance not only in the sense of practicing music, movement, speech, the "Performing Arts", but also in the sense of daily performance, the performance of social roles, the performance of our identities. And further, the interest in performance is not academic, reporting the way things are, but active: performances, including the daily seemingly natural ones, are treated as changeable and choosable. There will be many opportunities in this school to have fun with, to play with, to experiment with ways of presenting intent.

"We want to address language: how we speak and how language speaks us. Inherited linguistic patterns form one of the strong arms of a social system, often hiding and justifying oppressive structures while ruling out the creation of alternatives to these. This strong arm is frequently left unexamined or considered to be of minor importance. In this school, while studying a subject, discussing an event, making a decision, we will squint nervously at the language used, prodding each other into moments of created eloquence."
-- Susan Parenti

http://www.designingasociety.org/

What might I like my kids to learn about life?: in search of “tradition” (excerpt)

2010-01-18T03:39:00.000-08:00

What might I like my kids to learn about life?: in search of “tradition” (excerpt)
Anthony McCann

(Full version to be published in the conference proceedings from Local Knowledge and Open Borders: Creativity and Heritage, University of Tartu, July 30 - August 4, 2009.)

I was living the dream. There I was, 1997, sitting back in my chair in a café in Galway city, the sun (unusually) streaming through the window, me playing the role of music journalist. I was working part-time as a writer for a local free-sheet newspaper as a way to pay the bills while doing a Masters at the local university. This writing thing all happened somewhat by accident – I had written a short promotional article about a local songwriters’ collective that I was involved with, and the editor liked it. He asked me if I could write him more, so I did. I soon found myself with a regular spot in the paper. One day I was asked if I could write about Irish traditional music. I hadn’t any experience doing so, but why not? thought I.
So there’s me, an Irish traditional music journalist, working away, interviewing one of the local music entrepreneurs about a show she was producing down at the Town Hall. The interview had gone well, and I had all I needed for a one-page feature on the forthcoming show. All being well, it would be published by the weekend. I switched off my tape recorder and relaxed a bit. What follows is a half-remembered rendering of the conversation that ensued.
“So, where is it you’re from,” she asked.
“Warrenpoint, Up North, over in County Down. Along the coast, not too far from Newry. Up a bit from Dundalk.”
“Oh. Did I not hear a bit of the South in your accent?”
“My accent’s more than a little weird, all over the place. I grew up in New Zealand when I was a kid, then we spent a while in Dublin and Meath before settling in the North.”
“And were your parents into traditional music?”
“No, not really. There wasn’t much Irish music in the house, mainly just Dubliners records or The Clancy Brothers. I think there were a couple of Gallowglass Céilí Band records lying about, but they didn’t get played much.”
“Oh.” A pause. Her tone changed, perhaps resting somewhere between disappointment, betrayal, and disdain. “I thought you came from a traditional family.”

“I rhyme to see myself, to set the darkness echoing” (Seamus Heaney, ‘Personal Helicon’, 1966).

My father passed away last year. As I think on his passing, I find myself reaching out to understand what it has meant to be a son. What it still means. I find myself searching for words to express what I learned from the man I loved as a friend and mentor. I look for ways to speak about those things that I hold dear. I try to find better words to talk about the helpful things I have learned in the company of my parents, my family, my friends. I wonder how to think more clearly about the things I love about life. I wonder how to make sense of those ways of being human that I would hope any future kids of mine to learn about. I find myself looking for ways to speak of learnings, unlearnings, and relearnings. I find myself looking for ways to speak of the connections and the distances that persist between me and others, the play of influences in our lives, the ways we can always-already make a difference. It seems to me that "tradition" is a notion that may well be suited to speak of such things.

I remember talking to the accordion player Billy McComiskey about his sense of tradition, about why playing his accordion with those tunes, in those ways, was so important to him. "It gives me strength against oppression,” he said, “It keeps me warm at night". That made sense to me. Another time I was chatting over a drink with a couple of women from County Clare about the bitterness of a copyright dispute over tune ownership in Irish traditional music. The elder of the two, likely in her seventies, got very emotional, almost to the point of tears, as she struggled to express how wrong it all felt to her, saying, "It bites to the core of what it's all about." That made sense to me, too. These are people for whom the notion of "tradition" means something. I want it to continue to mean something for me. Or, to put it another way, there are people, values, and things in my life that mean something, that are important to me, that strengthen me in my sense of who I am and how I relate, and I think "tradition" is one of those words (among many) that can allow me to speak and think more clearly about this. "Tradition" is a word that can open up conversations I want to be part of.
Or is it? As much as "tradition" feels right to me on a deep, emotional level, I am aware of the shadowy, grappling gravities of certainty, ritual, obligation, belonging, memory, community, blood, and nation that come with my own and others' understandings of “tradition”, and they leave me suspicious. “Tradition” can wield considerable emotional power; I have learned to identify those places of strongest emotion within myself and to start my questioning there. I have come across uses of the term that make me angry; "tradition" and "traditional" can be easily deployed as ways to sanctify, segregate, categorise, denigrate, and exclude. I have come across uses of the term that leave me cold, satisfying the exigencies of academic analysis, allowing for grand, abstract statements that seem to have little connection to the lives of real people. I have come across uses of "tradition" that satisfy the bluster of rhetoricians, meaning little beyond the demands of a soundbite.

With all of my suspicions and misgivings, though, I keep coming back to "tradition". I keep returning to clarify, to re-articulate, to grapple with meanings of the term, because I have a feeling there is something valuable there. The notion of “tradition”, at least in the English language, tends to be deployed academically in the company of verbal shadow-play concerning, among other things, identity, everyday life, customs, community, intergenerational relationship, and social change. That said, how has the notion of “tradition” become so marginalised within the social sciences and humanities? How has it happened that notions of “tradition” have become so profoundly depoliticized that they are frequently considered to offer little of relevance to social and political thought? How is it that folklore studies and ethnology are not explicitly considered co-extensive with sociology? Is there something inherent in the notion of “tradition” that leaves it ill-suited as an analytic term for social and political analysis? I would think not, but it seems to be a bit of an uphill battle.

...

In this essay I am “in search of “tradition”.” I am exploring the notion to come to an understanding that for me will be personal, meaningful, and analytically helpful. I want to be able to work with an understanding of "tradition" that allows me to make sense of my relationship with my father and his death as much as it helps me to make sense of the conversations, communities, and contexts of, say, "Irish traditional music". I want to be able to think of the notion of “tradition” as a way to ground myself in socially responsible action, as a way to facilitate thoughtful analysis and political engagement. I am not interested in what “tradition” is. I am interested in what “tradition” can mean.

...

I don’t want to find myself in a situation where I champion “tradition” as an unqualified good, and neither do I wish to denigrate “tradition” as an unqualified bad. In any particular context of use, I’d like to lift up the term and look underneath it, to gauge the attitudes and meanings experienced by the people concerned. I’d like my understanding of “tradition” to remain context-sensitive. Another way of saying this is that I’d like my conversations about “tradition” to remain always-already “peopled”, with a wish that they would actively let me work against depeopling abstractions.

...

I want to work with an understanding of “tradition” that leaves me nowhere to hide. I want to work with an understanding of “tradition” that challenges me to remain transparent to myself in my specificity. Can it invite me to consider the quality of relationships that I experience with others? Can it support me in considering the ways I or others influence each other or always-already make a difference? Can it sink me deep into conversations about consequences and effects of power? Importantly, can it make visible aspects of life that I or others might wish to suppress, deny, denigrate, or silence?

I want to work with an understanding of “tradition” that keeps conversations open enough to encompass the whys and wherefores of “traditions of hate”, “traditions of prejudice”, and “traditions of killing”. It is important that the more toxic possibilities of being human get included in the discussions that “tradition” can open up. Does it make sense to celebrate such practices (e.g., militarism) because they are “traditional”, and thereby inherently good? Should we treat them with a casually descriptive empiricism, and bask in the glow of academic self-satisfaction? I don’t want my understandings of “tradition” to immunize me against consideration and critique of our most toxic possibilities. We can do better. The notion of “tradition” is of little use to me in scholarly analysis unless it can prise open the cans of worms, provide a GPS-location device for the elephants in our rooms, and support and encourage the wisdom of the child who proclaims the nakedness of the emperor.

...

There are two workaday approaches to “tradition” that I will remain cautious about. The first is the dominance of discourses of resource management in descriptions and explanations of “tradition” and processes of “tradition”, where discussions become more about stuff than people. The second is the common characterization of “tradition” as prescriptive invariance, ways of thinking or doing that do not change, and that become rules that we feel obliged to follow. For me, these approaches to “tradition” do us few favours, ... fostering and facilitating damagingly reductionist stories about what it might mean to be human.

...

We have archives, histories, institutions, and communities of academic discourse and academic practice to support the apparent adequacy of resource-management thinking. We have doctrines, texts, rules, institutions, and systems of formal schooling to support understandings of “tradition” as prescriptive invariance. But understandings of “tradition” that would reduce my experience of learning and withness to discussions about things, transactions, conduits, texts, and obligations, just don’t feel right to me. There’s a sense of missing, of not-enough, and significantly so. There’s a strength, a robustness, a relational substance to what I think about when I use “tradition” as a gateway to reflection. I lose that with resource management and prescriptive invariance. The poetics don’t fit.

...

Resource-management or prescriptive-invariance models of “tradition” leave us with reductive stereotypes about the learning we experience in the company of others as we bear withness. But they are not to be summarily dismissed, for, as Nigerian writer Adimanda Adichie has said, speaking of “The Danger of the Single Story”; “the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story” (Adichie 2009).

...

People often reach for notions of “tradition” to speak of ways of thinking and ways of doing that were and continue to be important to them, especially when they feel that the persistence of their ways of life may be under threat by particular kinds of unhelpful social change. At such times, many people would like to speak about feelings of encroachment, a sense of injustice, anger about misrepresentations of what they believe and stand for, or maybe express their sense of deep relational connection with those who have gone before and who are yet to come. These deeply felt, profoundly emotional ways of thinking about “tradition” are nor readily articulable when the main ways of speaking about “tradition” centre on resource management or prescriptive invariance. The temptation is great, however, to accept the terms of discussion, and to join a reductionist dance that does violence to the experiential richness of what we can and do learn from those around us, both helpfully and unhelpfully. Fundamentally, dominant understandings of “tradition” leave little room for heart, for love, for people, or for hope.

Models of “tradition” based in resource management and prescriptive invariance leave hardly any room whatsoever for legacies of learning where questioning and critique are actively encouraged. They leave little room for us to speak of the courage that we learn from others to speak up and speak out, to face up to uncertainties, to challenge oppression. They do not easy facilitate conversations about agency, about uncertainty, about challenges, about learning to make sense of life for yourself. They don’t allow us to account much for the considerable differences that might develop between the lives of our most influential teachers and our own lives. Sometimes our greatest learning from another becomes the least visible. Sometimes what we get from somebody else is a learning about what we don’t want to do, what we don’t want to think. Those people are our teachers, too. Understandings of “tradition” as “that which is handed on” or “that which we must do” don’t in any way encompass those conversations.

Resource-management and prescriptive-invariance understandings of “tradition” leave us none the wiser in the face of aggressively intensifying social and environmental changes such as accelerative commodification, aggressive corporate industrialization, or climate change. They offer little room for voices of resistance or discontent. Understood as the transmission of single units, the units themselves do not contain their alternatives. Understood as aspects of people’s lives, they might. Understood as prescriptive invariance, thinking of “tradition” as the foundation for radical political alternatives becomes simply ridiculous. The mere acceptance and collation of “tradition” as “that which is given” can over time constrict the social imagination of other possibilities, of other ways of thinking, of other ways of being. Little wonder that people, particularly people of younger generations, often think that the only possibility to effect some sense of agency in the context of conversations about “tradition” is to radically separate themselves from what has been pre-sent, from the already-given. There are few stable conversations, few developed discourses, available for people who would like “tradition” to serve as a term that speaks of meaningful yet non-oppressive forces for personal and social transformation in our own lives and in the lives of our children. Surely there can be more helpful ways to think about “tradition” in the context of the social, political, and environmental challenges we face?

...

I thought a lot about that moment in Galway during the final months of my father’s life. Here was a man who had been my mentor and my friend, a touchstone for my thinking, a sounding board for my philosophical explorations. My Dad. Here we were, in the space between here and gone. Sitting with my father I understood a little better some of the emotional realities that these terms allow us to signpost for ourselves and others. For me, if the term “tradition” is to mean anything, it is to help me make sense of the question, “What have I learned from my Dad?” and, in turn, to open up the question, “what might I like my kids to learn about life?”

After many months of reflection, I finally decided that I was happy that the following understanding of “tradition” might allow me to open up the kinds of conversations I want to be part of:

“Ways of thinking, ways of doing considered within a learning context of relationship or community.”

This isn’t offered as a definition. I find definitions tends to reduce authorities for meaning, and establish hierarchies of knowledge, position, and perspective. Instead, it is offered simply as a positioning. For that positioning I shall remain accountable and responsible. This is what I would consider a helpful understanding of “tradition” in my own life. I may change it as I go along, but for the moment, I’m happy to work with it.

This understanding allows me to foreground and privilege people and their practices. I have not mentioned “things” in my understanding of “tradition”, primarily to leave a conversation open about reification, commodification, and thingification, considered as practices and particular (and peculiar) qualities of relationship.

This understanding invites me to consider conversations about “tradition” as also being conversations about learning. For a while I used the word “educational” in place of “learning”. I default to “learning,” as conversations about “education” tend to be dominated by discussions about formal, institutional learning, sedimented with hierarchies of knowledge and authority, and saturated with resource-management models of transmission. This isn’t necessarily the case, but I find that “learning” opens up a relationship-privileging, and agency-privileging perspective. It can also easily include both institutional and informal contexts of learning.

The inclusion of “context” is to invite me to specificity. I want my understandings and analyses of “tradition” to become always-already “peopled”, always-already relational. In this way, a conversation about “tradition” can become for me a series of challenges and questions about what it might mean to be human. I want to work with a notion of “tradition” that invites particularist analysis, that draws me down to the specificities of people’s lives, and thereby to the specificities of my own:

"If we are ever to remember what it is to be human beings, and if we are ever to hope to begin to live sustainably in place (which is the only way to live sustainably), we will have to remember that specificity is everything. It's the only thing we've got. In this moment I'm not abstractly writing: I'm writing these specific words on this specific piece of paper using this specific pen, lying on this specific bed next to this specific cat. There is nothing apart from the particular. Now, I can certainly generate abstract notions of writing or humanity or cities or nature or the world, but they're not real. What is real is immediate, present, particular, specific" (Jensen 2004:60).

By giving context due weighting in conversations about “tradition”, I remind myself that I am interested in the always-already hereness of relationship. I remind myself that casual abstractions can easily distance me from the nuances and subtleties of relationship that would otherwise challenge me any time I felt abstraction was a helpful way to proceed.

...

If I understand my own “traditions” as ways of thinking, ways of doing, considered within a learning context of relationship or community, then yes, I could consider myself to have come from a traditional family, indeed, anyone could. I don’t get any sense of status or superiority after claiming this for myself, but it does feel like the beginning of a whole range of exciting conversations. How have I learned in the company of both my parents? How have I learned in the company of my siblings? My friends? My lovers? How do I happen to be how I am and not some other way(s)?

And, crucially, what might I like my (future possible) kids to learn about life? What emotional climate and learning context would I work to provide for them? How might I encourage them to think about authority, about questioning, about working things out for themselves? How might I invite them to think about different qualities of relationship? About friendship? About love? About family? About relatives? How might I open up questions for them about their relationship to conflict, structural violence, oppressive systems, and social injustice? How might I encourage them to remain considerate of people that have passed on and of people who are yet to be born? How might I invite them to consider their role in social change and helpful social and political transformations? How might I encourage them to dream?

“What might I like my kids to learn about life?” invites a positioning, not only about which kinds of “traditions” of learning might be possible, but which might be preferable, which might be more helpful. Which in turn invites the questions, “more helpful for what?” and “according to what criteria?” I can continually return to clarify both what has become important to me, and what I would like to be important to me, being careful who I pretend to be for that is who I may become, and who others may learn from. I can become more accountable and responsible for my place in lives of interpersonal and intergenerational learning, holistically considered ...

"Calling All Clowns: A Creative Project and Personal Journey"

2010-01-18T03:36:00.000-08:00

by Linda Ann Elizabeth Cripps.

"The beginning of this journey was the creation of a large (120 inch by 40 inch) mask for the first Educational Foundation Fundraiser with a Mardi Gras theme for Delaware Technical & Community College, Newark, Delaware. The work continued as part of my First Year Creative Project for the Creative Pulse program with the study of the Commedia Dell’ Arte and the performance of Commedia characters. The 2nd Masks of Transition convention at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, in the fall of 2005 was a natural segue into the next phase of the project: preparation for professional clown school in the summer of 2006. The prime point of the plan was to study mask by doing, and making, in addition to traditional reading research. It was harmonious coincidence throughout the two years as the opportunities that presented themselves for study led through a similar path as formal Lecoq study. The first year of the Lecoq study begins with work with the neutral mask and expands through multidisciplinary experiences and experiments in basic materials and poetry, to animals to larval masks, which would include masks such as the Basel masks, to study of character, situation and emotion, and music. The second year of Lecoq study includes gestural language, melodrama, commedia dell’arte, bouffons, tragedy, and culminating in clowns (Lecoq, 2001). Without planning it or realizing it, the steps of my personal odyssey of study followed much a similar course, although much abbreviated. It is the journey of a broken-down dancer, who simultaneously discovers a new art and a mission."

http://etd.lib.umt.edu/theses/available/etd-07162007-085316/unrestricted/Cripps_Linda_ProfPaper.pdf

Change The World Without Taking Power

2010-01-18T03:32:00.000-08:00

Change The World Without Taking Power

http://libcom.org/library/change-world-without-taking-power-john-holloway

"John Holloway’s book, Change the World Without Taking Power (London, Pluto Press, 2002) has provoked wide-ranging debate on the left in Latin America (where Holloway is based) and beyond, and particularly in the global justice movement. We have brought together here a number of documents which reflect this debate – articles and speeches by some of Holloway’s critics, with replies by him."

Change the World Without Taking Power or Take Power to Change the World? http://archive.iire.org/pamphlet_nsf_2006.pdf

The problem with Big Green

2010-01-17T01:23:00.000-08:00

"How do we cut through the chatter to reach people with strong values-based messages?"

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008144.html

"Do small steps actually lead anywhere? We all know the theory that small steps lead to bigger steps, which lead in turn to real change. And there are certainly a lot of small steps on offer these days, from the latest home energy tracker to the solar bikini. But it's not at all clear that the ready abundance of small steps is actually making any difference. Indeed, between greenwashing and green fatigue, emphasizing little behavioral changes may actually be hurting."

Green Living Makes a Difference

2010-01-17T01:20:00.000-08:00

http://blogs.usatoday.com/sciencefair/2009/10/green-living-makes-a-difference.html

"Sure, “going green” around the home makes us feel good about the environment, but does it actually do anything? The answer is yes, according to research published this week in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"In the study, scientists found that even small actions around the house can reduce U.S. carbon emissions by more than 7% over the next decade, even before low-carbon energy technologies are developed and national cap-and-trade regimes for emissions are enacted."

Life After Poo

2010-01-17T01:18:00.001-08:00

"When we debate with farmers and growers about the need to give up meat and dairy, many can hardly wait to deliver the coup de grace to our arguments. “You can’t grow things without animal manure!” You can almost hear the triumph in their sniggers. They’re wrong and a couple of organisations have been proving it for a number of years now."

http://www.viva.org.uk/greenyourlife/lifeafterpoo.html

Life After Poo

2010-01-17T01:18:00.000-08:00

"When we debate with farmers and growers about the need to give up meat and dairy, many can hardly wait to deliver the coup de grace to our arguments. “You can’t grow things without animal manure!” You can almost hear the triumph in their sniggers. They’re wrong and a couple of organisations have been proving it for a number of years now."

http://www.viva.org.uk/greenyourlife/lifeafterpoo.html

RMIT (Australia): Think Green at Home, at Work

2010-01-17T01:15:00.000-08:00

Think Green at Home

http://www.rmit.edu.au/browse;ID=c7nhmvf1eqpl

Think Green at Work

http://www.rmit.edu.au/browse;ID=83gr5s12qic

Easy Ways for Teens to Go Green

2010-01-17T01:13:00.000-08:00

http://www.thedailygreen.com/going-green/6334

"Today's teens are more wired up, plugged in, worldly and savvy than ever. Many care deeply about the threats facing our environment, and are committed to making difference. But it's not always easy to know exactly what to do. Here are some suggestions to get started. ..."

Cultura21

2010-01-16T13:38:00.000-08:00

The International network of Cultura21 aims to bring together organizations and individuals across the globe striving to advance social, economic and ecological justice. Cultura21 stands for Cultures of Sustainability, allowing human social systems to evolve in harmony with one another and with their environment. See the Concept page for more details. The network gathers information on organizations and projects, identifies synergies, highlights 'best practice' cases from its members and facilitates the build-up of joint-projects and international events.

http://www.cultura21.net/

Michael Pollan's latest book ...

2010-01-16T13:35:00.000-08:00

Food Rules: An Eater's Manual.

"Eating doesn't have to be so complicated. In this age of ever-more elaborate diets and conflicting health advice, ... this indispensable handbook lays out a set of straightforward, memorable rules for eating wisely, one per page accompanied by a concise explanation. It's an easy-to-use guide that draws from a variety of traditions, suggesting how different cultures through the ages have arrived at the same enduring wisdom about food. Whether at the supermarket or an all-you-can-eat buffet, this is the perfect guide for anyone who ever wondered, "What should I eat?""

http://www.michaelpollan.com/foodrules.php

The Americanization of Mental Illness

2010-01-16T13:33:00.000-08:00

The Americanization of Mental Illness (New York Times)

"Americans, particularly if they are of a certain leftward-leaning, college-educated type, worry about our country’s blunders into other cultures. In some circles, it is easy to make friends with a rousing rant about the McDonald’s near Tiananmen Square, the Nike factory in Malaysia or the latest blowback from our political or military interventions abroad. For all our self-recrimination, however, we may have yet to face one of the most remarkable effects of American-led globalization. We have for many years been busily engaged in a grand project of Americanizing the world’s understanding of mental health and illness. We may indeed be far along in homogenizing the way the world goes mad."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10psyche-t.html

Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders

2010-01-16T13:29:00.000-08:00

http://www.msf.org/

Médecins Sans Frontières is an international, independent, medical humanitarian organisation that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, healthcare exclusion and natural or man-made disasters.

Smith Farm for healing and the arts

2010-01-12T04:21:00.000-08:00

http://www.smithfarm.com/

"At the core of our work is the belief that each of us harbors enormous powers of healing within. We also recognize that there are both new and time-tested techniques to enhance health and well-being- even in the midst of crisis. Our integrated approach of stress reduction and inner quiet, art-making and telling your story, supportive listening and loving community, healthy lifestyle choices and state-of-the-art medical care can birth simple yet profound changes that radically transform the experience of illness.

"Our Cancer Help Program Residential Retreats provide one of the foundations of our work. Nestled in a lodge setting amidst the rolling hills just beyond Washington DC, participants and caregivers explore, educate, nourish, renew and reclaim their inner resources for healing. These weeklong residential retreats—designed in partnership with the internationally recognized Commonweal Cancer Help program developed by Dr. Michael Lerner and Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen—offer a spectacular year-round environment for integration, reflection and healing transformation.

"We also offer range of day retreats, programs and workshops at our City Center in Washington, DC. These ongoing programs— easily accessible to residents of Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia— offer therapeutic yoga and meditation, cooking classes, support groups, book clubs, healing arts gallery events, workshops for healthcare professionals along with health, creativity, and nutrition programs. Our city location allows you to easily integrate the programs into your weekly schedule.

"Our artist-in-residence programs in major medical centers foster healing in clinical settings for thousands of adults and their caregivers. Through music, movement, poetry, storytelling and writing artists work alongside individuals and families in infusion centers, waiting areas and hospital rooms to foster hope, encouragement, laughter, deep healing and renewal."

The Nature Institute

2010-01-12T04:17:00.000-08:00

http://natureinstitute.org/

"Nature around us is whole and interconnected. Though we are part of nature, we do not yet fathom her depths, and our actions do not embody her wisdom. A fundamental shift in our way of viewing the world is necessary if we would contribute to nature's unity rather than dissolution. At The Nature Institute, we develop new qualitative and holistic approaches to seeing and understanding nature and technology. Through research, publications, and educational programs we work to create a new paradigm that embraces nature's wisdom in shaping a sustainable and healthy future."

"The Nature Institute, founded in 1998, is a small, independent not-for-profit organization in upstate New York with a proven track record for incisive and thoughtful research studies, publications, and education programs. The Institute serves as a local, national, and international forum for research, education, and the exchange of ideas about the re-visioning of science and technology in an effort to realign humanity with nature. Biologist and Institute founder and director Craig Holdrege, senior researcher and publications' editor Steve Talbott, associate researcher Henrike Holdrege, and affiliate researchers Michael D'Aleo, Johannes Wirz, and Ronald Brady (deceased) have authored books and articles while also speaking at conferences, leading workshops, training teachers, and lecturing widely."

The Future Does Not Compute (Full Text)

2010-01-12T04:16:00.001-08:00

Full text of Stephen L. Talbott's excellent book, The Future Does Not Compute. Stephen was one of the 'pioneers' of the Internet. He went on to establish The Nature Institute, which I'll post next.

http://netfuture.org/fdnc/index.html

Backstory café

2010-01-11T14:11:00.000-08:00

http://backstorycafe.com/home.html

"Backstory is a business venture that eschews capitalism; social change is our true bottom line.

"We believe stimulating public spaces play an important roll in fostering positive social change. Through our programming, we aim to become a hub for creative cultural activity and collective learning.

"Situated between the disparate neighborhoods of Woodlawn and Hyde Park, we serve as an inclusive gathering space where people from diverse backgrounds can meet, interact and build meaningful relationships. Please contact us if you have a community event you'd like us to host!" (Thanks, Tessy.)

The EYES Project

2010-01-11T14:07:00.001-08:00

http://www.eyesproject.com/index.html

"The EYES Project, founded in 2004, is a Canadian not-for-profit organization committed to promoting environmental and sustainability education. Through the design and delivery of innovative professional development initiatives for educators and engaging learning experiences for youth, we believe sustainable living practices can emerge.

"Our Mission is to foster a more socio-ecological consciousness in today's society through promoting the values, knowledge and skills of sustainable community building as priorities in the education of youth.

"Our Vision is to empower young citizens to embrace a triple bottom line imperative, in which environmental, social and economic well-being become pillars of a sustainable future.

"Our Approach, through a collaborative spirit, is to work at a bioregional, 'on the ground' level with practicing educators, students, and existing environmental education organizations to provide a meaningful context to emerging provincial, national, and international sustainable development education policies and curricula."

Free e-book: Cultural Borrowings: Appropriation, Reworking, Transformation

2010-01-11T14:04:00.000-08:00

http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/cultborr_cover.php

Scope: 10th Anniversary Special Issue and e-Book

"Scope is a fully peer-reviewed online journal edited by staff and students in the Institute of Film & Television Studies at the University of Nottingham. It is published three times a year, in February, June and October. Established in 1999, the journal changed to its current format after five years of continuous publication. All issues dated between May 1999 and November 2004 are now available in our Archive. The first issue of the new series appeared in February 2005.

"As our title suggests, Scope provides a forum for discussion of all aspects of film history, theory and criticism. Given contemporary film studies' varied concerns, it is our belief that we can best serve our readers interests by promoting as wide a range of approaches and critical methodologies as possible."

Green is Sexy website

2010-01-11T14:00:00.000-08:00

There's a straightforwardness and personability that comes with this site that I need to learn from as I think about redesigning my own (which is way too wordy at a time when I'm becoming less so). Fun, friendly, and smart environmental awareness is hard enough to achieve but they manage it effortlessly :)

http://www.greenissexy.org/

"green is sexy came about when three friends realized that exchanging quips & tips on ways to make an impact on the environment was becoming daily conversation. They decided that, with a bit of research and some help from their friends, they could spread the word to all sorts of people and really make a difference. green is sexy is about tiny changes, big impact.

Why sexy? Because being informed is sexy. Being responsible is sexy. Being eco-friendly is sexy. Making a difference is sexy. Green is sexy.

We invite you to become part of the green is sexy community by helping us change the world one day at a time."

Anxiety, Panic Attacks caused by Hormonal Imbalance

2010-01-11T13:58:00.000-08:00

Natural responses to anxiety attacks? Thankfully it's been years since I was anywhere near such a thing, but I know how distressing it can be. Helpful stuff here.

Cold weather, cold hearts?: Iris Robinson and ordinary cruelties

2010-01-11T11:38:00.001-08:00

I've been feeling very uncomfortable about the mockery of Iris Robinson. For those of you who don't know anything about her, she has been a member of the Northern Irish assembly, and is married to the Northern Irish first minister, Peter Robinson. Recently she has been in the news on account of an affair she had with a 19 year old son of a deceased friend. Before the revelations she was best known for her very public homophobic stance on homosexuality, drawing the attention of the international media for her bibilically sustained vitriol in that regard.

As much as I'm certainly not a fan of hers or of her opinions, I'm still feeling uncomfortable. When the news of the affair broke within the Robinson household, Mrs. Robinson (yes, I know) attempted suicide. This was quite a while ago, back in March 2009. A couple of weeks ago she resigned her position apparently due to long-term depression. Right now Iris is reportedly undergoing 'acute psychiatric treatment'.

If Iris was someone I knew personally, I would be being particularly careful about how I talk to her, and how I talk about her to others. I would be making a concerted attempt to not make the situation worse.

Apparently that doesn't seem to make sense to many people in Northern Ireland at the moment. Iris Robinson has become something of a punching bag in the last week. Distasteful jokes are flooding the system, a parody of Simon and Garfunkel's Mrs. Robinson may be a credible contender for the top of the Northern Irish charts, and Facebook is awash with groups emerging from the feeding frenzy. The international press are having a ball.

I'm going to come right out and say it - I think the badgering of Iris Robinson is irresponsible, possibly harmful, and very possibly in the spirit of what she herself was criticized for in her condemnation of homosexuality - spiteful, targeted villification.

I saw something similar happen with George Bush - apparently classifying another human being as a 'stupid chimp' can be excused in some circumstances. Why so? Human history is littered with humour that denigrates and demeans, but how is that helpful?

If Iris Robinson were to kill herself, and I hope she has enough support so that she doesn't, anyone who has fed the frenzy would play some part in the outcome. Our treatment of her is becoming inhumane, cold, and cruel.

I watched this week on Facebook as one person after another laughed with glee as some poor man in a video clip slipped and feel on ice on the streets of Dublin. That's not slapstick, that misfortune.

Laughing at other people's misfortune is something we could do without.

European Summit for Global Transformation

2009-11-24T02:07:00.001-08:00

http://blog.europeansummit.org/

TorrentFreak: Pirate Party Gets Second Seat in European Parliament

2009-11-24T01:38:00.000-08:00

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-gets-second-seat-in-european-parliament-091104/
Pirate Party Gets Second Seat in European Parliament
Written by Ernesto on November 04, 2009

With the Lisbon Treaty being signed by all European Union member states, the Pirate Party has gained another seat in the European Parliament. The second Pirate Party seat will be occupied by the 22 year old Amelia Andersdotter, who will become the youngest Member of the European Parliament.

With more than 7 percent of the vote, the Swedish Pirate Party secured a seat in the European Parliament in June, and the possibility of gaining another if the Lisbon Treaty was signed by all member states.

The Lisbon Treaty was ratified yesterday by Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, who was the last to sign the document.

Ironically, The Pirate Party was against the Lisbon Treaty, which has now doubled the number of seats the party has in the European Parliament.

The newly gained seat will be awarded to Amelia Andersdotter, who will become the youngest Member of the European Parliament. In order to free up time for her political career, Amelia recently decided to quit Economics and Spanish at Lund University in Sweden.

Besides fighting for fairer and more sensible copyright legislation, she will also spend time on education and the development of Europe’s knowledge economy.

“The Parliament needs to be going for a sustainable knowledge economy, and that’s where I come into play,” Amelia told TorrentFreak.

Amelia will officially take her seat in Brussels on December 1st, where she will be joining Christian Engstrom. The two will have plenty of work to do in the years to come, countering the growing influence from pro-copyright lobby groups.

Youthink - Engaging Students Through Art

2009-11-24T01:35:00.000-08:00

http://www.youthink.org/yT_new.html

youTHink utilizes the power of art to foster critical thinking about local and global contemporary issues.

youTHink works to empower youth to find and use their voices to take action for positive social change.

youTHink brings students from different walks of life together, creating just and inclusive communities.

youTHink helps students learn about the legislative process and the active role youth can play.

To fight aloud is very brave - Emily Dickinson

2009-11-24T01:33:00.000-08:00

To fight aloud is very brave,
But gallanter, I know,
Who charge within the bosom,
The cavalry of woe.

Who win, and nations do not see,
Who fall, and none observe,
Whose dying eyes no country
Regards with patriot love.

We trust, in plumed procession,
For such the angels go,
Rank after rank, with even feet
And uniforms of snow.

Emily Dickinson

Stevenson High School officials halt publication of student newspaper

2009-11-24T01:31:00.000-08:00

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-stevenson-school-paper-20-nov20,0,1175320.story

Administrators at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire spiked Friday's edition of the school's award-winning newspaper because of concerns about stories on drinking and smoking by honor students, teen pregnancy, and shoplifting, the editor said.

Advocates of press freedom bashed the decision to halt publication.

"It is irresponsible to withhold this information so they can protect their fantasy image of Stevenson as a place where no one has ever gotten pregnant or shoplifted," said Frank LoMante, executive director of the Virginia-based Student Press Law Center. The paper's faculty advisers, Matt Lockowitz and Lisa Lukens, as well as the school's spokesman, Jim Conrey, did not return phone messages.

The ban is the latest rift between administrators and student journalists for the Statesman, regarded as one of the premier student newspapers in Illinois and the nation. Concerns about content last year led to the resignation of the paper's faculty adviser, Barbara Thill.

The Charter for Compassion

2009-11-24T01:28:00.000-08:00

http://charterforcompassion.org/

"A call to bring the world together…

The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.

It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others—even our enemies—is a denial of our common humanity. We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion.

We therefore call upon all men and women ~ to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion ~ to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate ~ to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures ~ to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity ~ to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings—even those regarded as enemies.

We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensible to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community."

The Charter for Compassion on TED.com TV

2009-11-24T01:26:00.000-08:00

http://www.ted.com/themes/the_charter_for_compassion.html

Montessori School Of Dentistry Lets Students Discover Their Own Root Canal Procedures

2009-11-24T01:25:00.000-08:00

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/montessori_school_of_dentistry

NEW YORK—Inside the Montessori School of Dentistry, you won't find any old-fashioned cotton swabs, or so-called periodontal charts, or even any amalgam fillings. That's because at this alternative-learning institution, students are being encouraged to break away from medical tradition and discover their very own root canal procedures.

"At Montessori, we believe dentistry is more than just the medical practice of treating tooth and gum disorders," school director Dr. Howard Bundt told reporters Tuesday. "It's about fostering creativity. It's about promoting self-expression and individuality. It's about looking at a decayed and rotten nerve pulp and drawing your own unique conclusions."

"In fact, here at Montessori, dentistry is whatever our students want it to be," Bundt continued.

Disobedience Makes History

2009-11-24T01:23:00.000-08:00

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/coursesworkshops/20641.htm

Disobedience Makes History

Led by the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination

Saturday 23 January 2010, 10.30–17.30
Saturday 30 January 2010, 10.30–17.30

In 1989 thousands of citizens defied the law and brought down the authoritarian regimes that were already crumbling under economic burdens across Eastern Europe. Many of the seeds of these revolutions were planted by artists and subcultures who devised forms of civil disobedience and opened up a space for dissent.

Twenty years later we are in the midst of an unprecedented economic and ecological crisis not unlike that which swept across the east in 1989 and yet voices of dissent are being increasingly repressed. There has never been a more urgent time to develop new forms of creative disobedience and artists have the skills and imagination to do this. This workshop will explore the history and practice of creative disobedience and will culminate in a co-created intervention.

No arts or activism experience necessary.

Tate Modern Level 7 East Room
£50 (£35 concessions), booking recommended
Price includes refreshments

For tickets book online
or call 020 7887 8888

Many killed in Phillipine elections

2009-11-24T01:18:00.000-08:00

Any work on gentleness is of little value to me unless it allows us to stand in awareness of events like this, and reaffirm that there can be an otherwise, that other ways of being are already possible. But also that such as this are not 'outside humanity' but very much 'of humanity', part of the possible, how particular people make sense of their lives in certain circumstances. These killings made sense to those who carried them out. How did that happen? How can we work to lessen the possibilities of it happening again, and maybe closer to home?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/nov/24/press-freedom-philippines

Twelve journalists were among 24 people murdered yesterday in the Philippines in what is thought to be the greatest loss of life by news media in a single day. Several of the victims were beheaded in the massacre carried out by a huge force of gunmen.

The journalists were among a group of about 50 people travelling in a convoy in Maguindanao province, on the southern island of Mindanao, to register candidacy papers for a local mayor planning to stand in a governorship election.

As the convoy reached the village of Masalay it was ambushed by a 100-strong armed gang said to have been led by a politician and a police inspector who opposed the candidacy of Esmael Mangudadatu.

The group, which included his wife and other relatives, were kidnapped and then systematically murdered. Mangudadatu, who wasn't travelling with the convoy, said female members of the group were raped before they were killed.

PostSecret

2009-10-08T11:04:00.000-07:00

Beautiful :)

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

Our Kinder, Gentler Ancestors

2009-10-04T14:06:00.000-07:00

Our Kinder, Gentler Ancestors
Ardi casts doubt on the notion that we have an innate killer instinct

By Frans de Waal

Are humans hard-wired to be ruthlessly competitive or supportive of one another?
The behavior of our ape relatives, known as peaceful vegetarians, once bolstered the view that our actions could not be traced to an impulse to dominate. But in the late 1970s, when chimpanzees were discovered to hunt monkeys and kill each other, they became the poster boys for our violent origins and aggressive instinct.

I use the term "boys" on purpose because the theory was all about males without much attention to the females of the species, who just tagged along evolutionarily. It was hard to escape the notion that we are essentially "killer apes" destined to wage war forever.
Doubts about this macho origin myth have been on the rise, however, culminating in the announcement this past week of the discovery of a fossil of a 4.4 million year old ancestor that may have been gentler than previously thought. Considered close to the last common ancestor of apes and humans, this ancestral type, named Ardipithecus ramidus (or "Ardi"), had a less protruding mouth equipped with considerably smaller, blunter canine teeth than the chimpanzee's impressive fangs. This ape's canines serve as deadly knives, capable of slashing open an enemy's face and skin, causing either a quick death through blood loss or a slow one through festering infections. Wild chimps have been observed to use this weaponry to lethal effect in territorial combat. But the aggressiveness of chimpanzees obviously loses some of its significance if our ancestors were built quite differently. What if chimps are outliers in an otherwise relatively peaceful lineage?

More

Making is Connecting

2009-09-21T23:13:00.000-07:00

http://www.makingisconnecting.org/

Owners of the Water

2009-09-19T00:36:00.000-07:00

A Manifesto for Slow Communication

2009-09-11T08:13:00.000-07:00

Manifesto for Slow Communication

John Freeman

"The boundlessness of the Internet always runs into the hard fact of our animal nature, our physical limits, the dimensions of our cognitive present, the overheated capacity of our minds. "My friend has just had his PC wired for broadband," writes the poet Don Paterson. "I meet him in the café; he looks terrible—his face puffy and pale, his eyes bloodshot. . . . He tells me he is now detained, night and day, in downloading every album he ever owned, lost, desired, or was casually intrigued by; he has now stopped even listening to them, and spends his time sleeplessly monitoring a progress bar. . . . He says it's like all my birthdays have come at once, by which I can see he means, precisely, that he feels he is going to die."

"We will die, that much is certain; and everyone we have ever loved and cared about will die, too, sometimes—heartbreakingly—before us. Being someone else, traveling the world, making new friends gives us a temporary reprieve from this knowledge, which is spared most of the animal kingdom. Busyness—or the simulated busyness of email addiction—numbs the pain of this awareness, but it can never totally submerge it. Given that our days are limited, our hours precious, we have to decide what we want to do, what we want to say, what and who we care about, and how we want to allocate our time to these things within the limits that do not and cannot change. In short, we need to slow down. "

more

Raging Grannies International

2009-08-24T11:05:00.000-07:00

http://raginggrannies.org/

"Let us be clear about the Grannies. We are totally non-violent, believe in only peaceful protest (with lots of laughter), work for the ‘many not the few’ (motto of the old Mechanics’ Institute) and see our work as the spreading green branches of a great tree, rising up to provide shelter and nourishment for those who will come after us.
Grannies are best equipped to make public, corrupt things that have been hidden (often for profit). Local toxic waste sites that no-one seems prepared to tackle, asbestos sites employing young people desperate for work, nuclear waste products being dumped outside an uninformed small town, laws that affect an entire community, passed quickly with no opportunity for study. The list goes on.
Grannies always check their facts before acting, discarding rumours, conspiracy theories and the agendas of others. They wait patiently till the whole picture is clear before hitting the street with their pointed, original and devastating songs, written by any old gran who feels inspired.
The delights of grannying include: dressing like innocent little old ladies so we can get close to our ‘target’, writing songs from old favourites that skewer modern wrongs, satirizing evil-doing in public and getting everyone singing about it, watching a wrong back down and turn tail and run, sharing a history with other women who know who they are and what they’re about. Grannying is the least understood yet most powerful weapon we have. Sometimes, looking back, we can see grannying was the only thing that could have met the need.
From the most ancient times, the strong, wise, older women were the ones who advised, mediated and fought for what was right. Belief in the Disir or Divine Grandmothers, the Mothers of Time, is ancient and runs through all societies. The Celts listened to their older spokeswomen since they believe that Kali-The-Crone had the power to create their mountain ranges. The Malay thought there were three grandmothers, the Kari-Under-The-Earth who would cause floods if not listened to respectfully. There were the Druids who believed that the souls of old wise women lived on in the trees that surrounded them. The Norse Nanna or Anna doubled as Earth Mother. And on this Turtle Island where we live (North America), the Iroquois teach that the Woman who fell down from the sky was the Mother of All. So their older women are the clan mothers who guide all decisions.
What an inheritance. And what a history of trouble-raising when not listened to. Even in our times, we grannies have raised a few mountains, caused a few floods.
What do you need to be a granny? A sense of humour and an ability both to be objective and to compromise when working with others. Willingness to make noise. An open heart to learn something new. No singing ability. Passion. Joy. Delight. No colour sense, obviously. A friendly disposition. Kindness. Scientific curiosity can’t hurt. Maybe a sense of history and our place in it. There is so much more to be written on being a granny by those yet to come."

Rose DeShaw
Kingston Raging Grannies

Oren Lavie - Her Morning Elegance

2009-08-23T07:20:00.001-07:00

John Paul Lederach talk at Regis University

2009-08-22T00:27:00.000-07:00

Coming to the Table

2009-08-22T00:25:00.001-07:00

Aiki Conflict Transformation (brief excerpt)

2009-08-22T00:16:00.000-07:00

The Meaning of The Commons

2009-08-18T10:08:00.000-07:00

The Coconut Revolution (2001)

2009-08-16T04:45:00.000-07:00

Psychosis and Spirituality

2009-08-16T04:08:00.000-07:00

Uri Gordon, author of Anarchy Alive! interviewed 2008

2009-08-16T03:27:00.000-07:00

"After we have burnt everything" ...

2009-08-10T09:34:00.000-07:00

I just received this link from a friend. It's a very powerful piece about 'Black Bloc' activism.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/08/435985.html

"For ten years I have run with the black bloc, seizing every chance, every moment we were strong enough, to run riot and fill the air with the sound of breaking glass and baton rounds, and the heady smells of adrenaline, gasoline, testosterone and teargas. For ten years I have stood up for the “diversity of tactics” and pushed for radicalization: from social movement to social struggle to social war. So this text is difficult for me to write...

During the days in Strasbourg I was always in or close to the black bloc-style actions, because that is where my affinity lies. For me it was appropriate to react to Police complicity in yet another death, this time at the G20 demonstrations in London; we were right to be angry at the way the demonstration in Strasbourg was relegated to an abandoned industrial estate and divided by thousands of riot police across the French-German border; I supported the decision to fight the police to try to break out of the space they had pushed us into with their negotiations and their crowd control weapons, and to try to take our actions somewhere more meaningful; and it filled me with joy to see the border post burn.

Even the Ibis Hotel action made me smile. It is a more complex issue: I don't think our actions on Saturday (or possibly ever?) are worth risking someone being seriously hurt for. However, I understand that no one was hurt in the action, and it is important to remember that the Hotel was part of the NATO summit, one of five Hotels in Strasbourg publicly set aside to house the thousands of journalists there to cover the “celebrations”, and a place from which police were spying on the demonstrators. So, even if we ignore the fact that Ibis profit from the deportations of sans papier, it is difficult to say that it was not a legitimate target.

But despite all that, the experience of that week left me feeling uncomfortable, alienated and confused. We took advantage of a peace march to make it look like war... We used the camp space, ate the food, and shat in the toilets. But, compared to previous self-managed events and camps, our participation in the village life was mostly limited to drinking beer, hiding in closed action meetings, or fighting the cops around the camp-site, building burning barricades, and making it look like war... And through it all I found myself questioning more and more how our actions relate to our politics, ourselves, our interactions and our values."

Read more.

Kids and Caring

2009-08-09T00:03:00.000-07:00

From the American Psychological Association website ...

What Makes Kids Care? Teaching Gentleness in a Violent World

"It seems as though we are surrounded by violence and cruelty. According to the National Crime Survey, almost 3 million crimes occur on or near school campuses every year; that's 16,000 per school day, or one every 6 seconds. A recent study on domestic violence found that many high school boys thought it was all right for a boy to strike his girlfriend if she angered him; meanwhile, during the early 1980's, nearly 17,000 people were killed by their domestic partners.

In a world where violence and cruelty seem to be common and almost acceptable, a lot of parents wonder what they can do to help their children become 'kinder and gentler'--to develop a sense of caring and compassion for others. Raising kids who care isn't a solution to violence by itself, but you might worry that being exposed to a lot of violence -- whether it's on television or on the streets -- could make your children 'hard' and uncaring.

Parents, of course, can't completely control all of the things that affect their children's lives -- after all, children spend a lot of time out in the 'real world' which can often be harsh, uncaring, or just plain unhappy -- and children have their own personalities and characteristics that parents can't change or control. But there are some things that a parent can try to help encourage their children to become caring, just and responsible. ..."

The rest of the article is on the website at: http://www.apa.org/topics/kidscare.html

Kindness

2009-08-05T23:57:00.001-07:00

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window for ever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you into the day to mail letter and purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Pax Educare

2009-07-21T07:25:00.000-07:00

The Connecticut Center for Peace Education
http://www.paxeducare.org/index.shtml

Still here

2009-06-11T14:54:00.001-07:00

Sorry - remiss in my duties! Back soon :)

Disney, Casino Capitalism and the Exploitation of Young Boys: Beyond the Politics of Innocence

2009-04-17T01:40:00.000-07:00

http://www.truthout.org/041509J

Rapid-fire media may confuse your moral compass ...

2009-04-17T01:37:00.001-07:00

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090413180703.htm

Cure for Honey Bee Collapse?

2009-04-17T01:35:00.001-07:00

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090414084627.htm

Dark Mountain

2009-04-17T01:33:00.001-07:00

http://www.dark-mountain.net/

Combatants for Peace

2009-04-17T01:23:00.001-07:00

http://www.combatantsforpeace.org/

The Gentle Art of Saying 'No'

2009-04-17T01:22:00.001-07:00

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/the-gentle-art-of-saying-no.html

PEACE MEDIA Clearinghouse

2009-03-30T03:44:00.000-07:00

PEACE MEDIA Online Clearinghouse for Conflict Management-Related Multimedia
http://peacemedia.usip.org/

Georgetown University’s Conflict Resolution Program and USIP have created an online database of multimedia resources related to conflict management, as well as best practices for designing and using them. The resources include films, radio and TV programs, video games, music, and more. Many of these materials are accompanied by teaching guides that help educators and conflict management practitioners facilitate discussion or community action.

The goal of this clearinghouse is to provide a central site where individuals and organizations working in the conflict management field can access materials that support conflict analysis and prevention, conflict resolution, and post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation. At the same time, the site will encourage development of the field itself by distilling best practices for creating and using multimedia in support of conflict management activities.

The multimedia tools in the database are drawn from conflict management activities around the world, developed by a wide range of talent from non-governmental organizations, academia, and the private sector. Some were generated specifically for peacemaking purposes, while others are simply explorations of conflicts or issues that we believe can be useful to those trying to understand or manage conflict.

MLK, India, Gandhi

2009-01-20T01:53:00.000-08:00

A rare clip of Martin Luther King addressing Indians via All India Radio in 1959 is available here along with transcript. The speech is about violence and the role of US and what India could do about it:

http://subalternmedia.com/?p=2579

(from Kishore Budha via a media studies list)

Scything

2009-01-20T01:25:00.000-08:00

I must thank my friend Lawrence for the following ...

Jan 2009 Scything Calendar

IF YOU WISH TO SUBSCRIBE OR UNSUBSCRIBE TO THIS MAIL OUT PLEASE EMAIL ME, SIMON FAIRLIE,
at chapter7@tlio.org.uk; tel 01460 249204

CONTENTS

1. The Scythe Festival and S Somerset Green Fair 2009

2. The Grib Forest Gathering, Denmark

3. Course in Ireland

4. Other Scythe Courses

Somerset, Devon, Notts, Bristol, Hackney, Anywhere Else?

5. World Championships (in Germany?)

6. Haymaking Festival in the Serbian Mountains

7. Coppicing Weekend

8. The Recession and the Price of Snaths

9. Poem The Scythe, by Stanley Snaith

1. The Scythe Festival and S Somerset Green Fair 2009 will take place on Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 June at the same place as last year:

Thorney Lakes, Muchelney, Near Langport, Somerset .

On the 13th there will be courses for both beginners and for mowers with some experience.

On Sunday, which is the festival proper, there will be a wider range of events than we have held previously. More details will be given in the next mail-out, and posted on the website, but if you want to pencil in a place on the course, please contact me [Simon].

For the results of last years festival see http://www.thescytheshop.co.uk/festival.html and for information about the Green Fair side of the event see http://www.greenfair.org.uk/

If anybody is interested in helping organize events for the festival, we are holding a meeting on 21 February in Oxford. Contact me [Simon] for details.

2. The Gribskov Forest Gathering

Last July Ray Lister and Simon Fairlie visited the Grib Forest Gathering deep in the woods north of Copenhagen where a group of Danish scythesmen have been mowing a 12 acre (or was it hectares?) clearing in the forest for the last 10 years. We were part of the “rest of the world team” (together with a Swede and a Belgian), who competed in a gang mowing contest with a Canadian team (the Vido family) an Austrian team, and a Danish team. In the spirit of Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards we came a glorious last, and made up for the unseemly obsession with medals that so marred the UK performance at Beijing.

This year, just prior to mowing their meadow on 4 July, the Danes are holding an informal instruction course for “improvers” with some experience of mowing. They have places for a limited number from England. We highly recommend this course as the Danes are good mowers, most hospitable, and the venue is lovely. It can be reached easily from Copenhagen by public transport — the single track railway stops in the middle of the forest at Gribskov Halt where there is nothing, not even a paved road. The Grib mowers are also astonishingly knowledgeable about single malt Scotch whisky. To find out more about the event contact Henrik Jorgensen at HJG@sns.dk

3. Course in Ireland

Simon will be holding a two day scything and hand haymaking course at a farm near Mullingar, Co Westmeath, Ireland on 20 - 21 of June. Two days gives more time for practising different peening and mowing techniques — and also allows time to cover haymaking and grassland management techniques.

The event takes place at Porterstown Lodge Farm, Killucan, on the banks of the Royal Canal in Co Westmeath, Ireland’s lakeland. Food is provided and camping, or else you can lodge at a B and B nearby.

For more details contact Jo Dalton on +353 (0) 44 9358916 or jodaltonuk@yahoo.com

If anybody has an opportunity to e-mail this information out to other people in Ireland, or even better to an appropriate e-mail list in Ireland, we’d be very grateful.

4. Other Scythe Courses

Somerset

Simon will be giving courses at South Petherton on Saturday May 2 and Saturday May 23

For information about these courses see http://www.thescytheshop.co.uk/courses.html

To register e-mail chapter7@tlio.org.uk

Devon

I [Simon] will also be giving a two-day course in Devon on 4-5 July. Ring Gill Westcott on 01647 24789

Bristol and Hackney

LILI (the Low Impact Living Initiative are holding two courses this year, run by Simon (again!) on April 18 at Windmill Hill City Farm, Bristol (let’s hope its an early Spring) and on 15 August at Hackney City Farm. See http://www.lowimpact.org/courses.htm LILI also provide lots of other practical courses.

Notts

Ray Lister will be giving his courses in Nottinghamshire.

Raymond Lister, 22 Hind Street, Retford, Notts DN22 7EN; 01777 710091.

Anyone Else?

Is anyone else out there doing courses? If so, if you want to advertise them there will put them in the next mail out, round about April.

Anywhere Else?

If you are interested in organizing a scything course in another part of Britain, I might be able to do it. Please contact Simon to enquire about rates, dates etc.

5. World Championships

Martin Hierstetter writes:

Ichteile ihnen mit wir veranstalten am 1./2.August 2009 die Weltmeisterschaften im Mannschaftsmähen.

Wenn interesse besteht dann geben Sie mir bitte die Adresse und ich sende die Unterlagen.

Herzliche Grüße Martin Hierstetter Sensle2@aol.com

1.Sensenmähverein BaWü 1999 e.V.

I think this means that the world mowing championships are taking place, presumably in Germany, on 1-2 August, and if you want more information contact Martin Hierstetter at Sensle2@aol.com

6. Haymaking Festival and Walking Holiday in the Serbian Mountains (7-8 Nights)

British couple Rob and Trish MacCurrach will take you to the annual haymaking festival on Rajac Mountain. This is both a festival of mountain culture with grass scything events and a colourful homecoming for Serbs. Plus 3 days walking in the little visited and remote flowered meadows of the Western Serbia mountains.

Accommodation is authentically simple and rural; the food traditional and tasty. It is an opportunity to visit places few foreigners have had the privilege to experience.

For more information contact Trish at trish@maccurrach.com

7. Coppicing Weekend

If you want to keep yourself in trim until the grass grows, how about going to Tinker’s Bubble’s coppicing weekend, on 21 and 22 February? Two days in a Somerset wood with billhook and saw, picnics and cider. Free. Telephone 01935 881975.

8. The Recession and the Price of Snaths

The volatility of the pound has meant that anyone who imports goods from Europe has to become a currency speculator, which I am not very good at, so virtually all the scythe equipment I sell will become more expensive. Most worryingly the Swiss snaths will be well over £50 unless there is a complete reverse in the rate of exchange in the near future. However I am unwilling to stock cheaper snaths as they are all so inferior to the Swiss model (designed by Peter Vido and the Schroeckenfux technicians), and I have had almost no-one who has tried the adjustable wooden snaths telling me I should stock a cheaper kind. The snaths arriving this Spring will have new handgrips angled slightly outwards (ie as if having to make space for a pair of very wide hips).

I am still open to any proposals from UK woodworkers interested in producing adjustable wooden snaths in this country and happy to co-operate on design. Many have thought about it, but nobody yet has come up with anything.

9. Poem

The scythe maybe more elegant than the spade, but the following poem is not quite as elegant as Seamus Heaney’s “Digging”, though it shares the same message.

THE SCYTHE by Stanley Snaith

This morning as the scythe swung in my grasp
I thought of the sinewy craft my fathers plied,
Those men whose hedgerow name has come to me,
Those soil-bred Yorkshiremen who fashioned snathes.
They lopped and barked and seasoned the leafy staff
To bear the blade with balance. There is a stern
Puritan cleanness in a true-made scythe.
A scythe purges the hands of awkwardness.
It has its own instinct, a subtle weighting
That pulls it round in a rich curve of motion;
And when the steel, fined to a creepy edge,
Rips and rings through the stalks, and the swath sighs over,
And the cropped circle widens at each stroke,
What a singing power flows from the hands!
The old rhythm came smoothly to my wrist.
I seemed to feel my ancestry move within me.
For though I left their soil, I found a craft
Nourished with a tradition choice as theirs:
They toiled in wood, I curb the grain of words,
Both winning grace and service from what's wild,
Scythe and sentence share one craftsmanship.

Back

2009-01-20T01:03:00.000-08:00

Hi,

To be honest, I really don't mind when technology takes a back seat to real life. What seems like silence on this blog is anything but silence in my everyday life. Life has been good for me in the last few weeks, and also sad.

The violence in Gaza has been horrific, and the cold, lame rhetoric that has been used to justify slaughter has been despicable, heinous, and mechanical, in ways that cannot but remind me of other rhetorics and slaughters throughout our histories. And some of them not so far from Israeli imaginaries.

While the killing continued in Gaza, there were small, hidden reports in the media of the continuing tragedies within the Congo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm8qXdEaGXo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1FQmUQ1-mM

Or the death toll of 'civilians' in Iraq, which is reaching the 1,00,000 mark.

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

People die every day. Violence of various sorts continues to be generated and perpetuated within our lives. What are we doing about it? To what extent do we even understand it?

Christmas

2008-12-21T01:43:00.000-08:00

It's going to be a little bit of a strange Christmas this year. Not having Dad around is an obvious reason. Another, though, is that this is the first time I have felt properly uncanny in the midst of the celebrations - uncanny in the psychological (Freudian) sense of feeling out-of-place-at-home. I talked about this somewhat on my Strule FM radio show last week with my guest Kerill Winters, the way that being an untheist (not an agnostic - I just don't engage with the question) has me reflecting on the habits of a lifetime - the religious ceremonies, the money spent on presents, the hypercorporatism, the Christmas lights that fly in the face of the calls for us all to be more circumspect in our use of electricity, the branding saturation of our everyday with Christian symbolism completely disregarding that there are plenty of people out there who aren't Christians.

I like that we get an excuse to think more about family and relationship. I like that we get an excuse to speak more openly about listening out for people who might (but might not) like our help. But I would like it more if we didn't need the excuse in the first place.

This was the year I found out that many Quakers don't celebrate Christmas like other Christians tend to. It was the excellent BBC drama on Eddington and Einstein that let me into the open secret.

Quakers, Christmas and worship
http://www.newstatesman.com/200612190001

Candles in the Window: A Quaker Christmas Story
http://www.kimopress.com/candles.html

Friends (Quakers) and Christmas
http://www.quakerinfo.com/quakxmas.shtml

Quaker Open Christmas
http://www.thefriend.org/articledisplay.asp?articleid=1748

This resonates very strongly with me, a return to notions of simplicity. In my own terms, perhaps a commitment to a predominantly uncommodifying quality of relationship.

How is it helpful if I buy someone a present yet do not work at being loving with them during the coming year?

There are a few writings out there for a more thoughtful Christmas ...

Reasoning Through the Season
http://thepublicsphere.com/2008/12/reasoning-through-the-season/

Stan Freberg's "Green Christmas"
http://www.wepsite.de/Freberg,%20GREEN%20CHRI$TMA$.htm

What Would Jesus Buy?
http://wwjbmovie.com/trailer.html

The Battle for Christmas, by Steve Nissenbaum
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl/9780679740384.html

Christmas, consumerism, and climate change
http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-vision_reflections/christmas_4201.jsp

Christmas Consumerism
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/consumer_culture/54854

Gene Halton from Notre Dame Sociology Department speaking on Christmas (Youtube)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=I0QFrWR49uE

A Charlie Brown Christmas
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=icB7_Lh_M-w&feature=related

Words Can Heal

2008-12-20T08:03:00.001-08:00

I thought that this site/campaign had gone by the wayside, but I'm glad to see that it's still up and running ...

http://www.wordscanheal.org/

"Words Can Heal is a national campaign to eliminate verbal violence, curb gossip and promote the healing power of words to enhance relationships at every level."

"At a time when so many feel that outside events are beyond their control, we offer concrete tools and know-how to dramatically rebuild our communities and relationships through the words we speak and the way we communicate."

You are sufficient!

2008-12-20T02:58:00.000-08:00

Quite a while ago I mentioned an Inside the Actors Studio interview with William H. Macy in which he states "You are sufficient!" Here it is:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma-lB2NR1vg

New School in Exile

2008-12-18T02:31:00.000-08:00

http://www.newschoolinexile.com/

"The original idea of the University in Exile, and the New School in general, was to be a safe-haven for academic freedom and scholarship free of oppressive political regimes, be they in Europe or America, and to be a center for critical engagement with important issues of our times. It was known for its deep thinkers, its innovative academics, and its committment to social and political justice as a bedrock of all other scholarship. The New School, under its current administration, is no longer able to fulfill that role of critical engagement and dissent. This continued betryal of our founding principles cannot be tolerated any longer, and the time has come to revive the University in Exile. This is a call for student action!"

A gem

2008-12-09T00:43:00.001-08:00

A primary school teacher friend of mine told me last week that she teaches the children that 'happy people don't do nasty things'. It's so simple, it's a gem.

Time out

2008-12-07T10:45:00.000-08:00

I have a copy of the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying on my shelf, but I haven't picked it up yet. I holed up for three weeks from the world to work out where I was at, to settle into what it feels like to be a son without a father, and to take time out to work out again what's important to me in a load of areas in my life. I spent the time avoiding public social events, turning down friends' requests to go out, staying in, going for walks, and thinking, a lot, and not thinking, a lot. I suppose I needed to regain stewardship of what was going on in my life, and to allow myself time to cry when I needed to, and I needed to. Losing my Dad sucks.

2008-12-07T05:56:00.000-08:00

And all the things you taught me
And all the things you braved
I kept them all inside me
They’re with me everyday
With the things I didn’t say

http://www.janetaylor.co.uk/lyrics_fall.php

A good week

2008-12-07T04:49:00.000-08:00

This has been a good week for making connections.

It's important for me to meet people in person. I am not terribly interested in championing causes or organisations (does that make me a bad Aquarius?), but I am interested in championing particular textures of attitude or approach. Meeting people allows me to feel affiliations from heartlogic rather than justify them on the basis of headlogic. When heartlogic then gives way to heartpresence, the fun starts! :)

I had the privilege this week to finally meet Hetty Van Gurp, who runs Peaceful Schools International. Hetty was originally brought to my attention after she had a chance meeting with a friend and colleague of mine, Sharon Porter, after Sharon had travelled to Nova Scotia. They got to talking, and one thing led to another, and we all connected up, and so it continues.

The documentaries Teaching Peace in a Time of War (both on Youtube) give a good sense of what Hetty does. There's also an interview with the director of Teaching Peace in a Time of War, which I think is a great introduction.

Anyway, it happened that a friend of my Dad's, Kevin Cassidy, is a member of the Peace People, and I mentioned Hetty's work to him, and he invited Hetty to Belfast for dinner at Peace House on the Lisburn Road, and Sharon and myself got invited along as well. Sharon and myself met up with Hetty for coffee beforehand, and we also got to meet a colleague of Hetty's, Rick Lewis, which was an unexpected bonus. Rick works as a Safe Schools Coordinator in Palm Beach, Florida. I am very interested in his work on emotional climate in schools, on account of my own research interests relating to affectual registers, the tranmission of affect, and emotional intensity. A Google search for information about Rick also brought me to these sites:

Safe School Ambassadors
http://www.safeschoolambassadors.org/

Crisis Response: Creating Safe Schools http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/safety/training/responding/crisis_pg22.html

What I find particularly impressive about Hetty's and Rick's work is that they do it voluntarily, they do not advertise, and they only go where they are invited to go. I have often wondered how to negotiate the notion of 'speak not to those who aren't willing to listen, for your words will be poison', and this seems to be a very practical way. Personally, I wonder whether doing such work voluntarily might be sustainable in my own case. I would hope that it could be, if I could find other ways to ensure that life and limb were sorted.

The dinner with the Peace People was a good night with good food in good company. Led by Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Corrigan they are working to promote the Charter for a World Without Violence, an open meeting about which is being organised at Peace House on the Lisburn Road in Belfast on the 24th January, 2009, from 10am-6pm. Mairead also told me about the work of Glenn Paige and the Center for Global Nonviolence. Glenn's work looks very helpful for me, particularly his book, Nonkilling Global Political Science.

Doing a search for Glenn Paige also brought me to the name of Petra K. Kelly. There's a webpage dedicated to her memory at http://www.macronet.org/women/petra.html . Her book Fighting for Hope is still available, and the introduction to her book, Nonviolence Speaks to Power, is available online (PDF).

Other books I've come across this week on my cybertravels:

Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea - Mark Kurlansky

Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination - Walter Wink

Peace Is the Way: Writings on Non-violence - edited by Walter Wink

I'll try to comment on some of these as I get a chance to read them, although that won't be before the end of the year, I imagine.

'Soulmate'

2008-12-07T04:18:00.000-08:00

Any time I have found myself in an intimate relationship where nurturing and loving are possible, where a commitment to caring and emotional vulnerability is taken up, at such times I am reminded of the notion of a 'soulmate'. It's a word that has certain resonances for me, and not only because I was told by a psychic friend once, in a spontaneous reading, that I was looking for a soulmate when it came to matters of the heart. To be honest, I don't disagree. But I think it's important to draw out some of the nuances of the notion.

I think it's a word that can drag along a lot of unnecessary baggage, the kind of baggage that comes with the worst excesses of soppy love songs (and yes, I have written a few). But I don't think it has to come with that baggage, all that language of destiny and only-one-ness. I think if I lift the word up and look underneath to what it can helpfully mean for me it can speak to a quality of possibility in relationship that is really beautiful.

In the film (pronounced 'fillim' in my universe) Good Will Hunting there is a scene where Robin Williams' character Sean asks Matt Damon's Will if he has a soulmate. Will asks what he means.

SEAN Someone who challenges you in every way. Who takes you places, opens things up for you. A soul-mate.

In Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love a helpful Texan offers the following suggestion:

…A true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever. Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it (Eat Pray Love, p.149)

Whatever a soulmate is or isn't, what I would hope for in an intimate, caring, emotionally committed and responsible relationship is a person that invites that vulnerability, that transparency, a person that invites me to The Work in every aspect of my life, by simple virtue of their being alive. A person to encourage and support, to challenge and critique, to nourish and cuddle (etc.!).

But I don't know if meeting such a person is something that's too painful, as that quotation suggests. I think that once you sit through the painful part, that's where the gentleness can flourish.

I think I've referred to this before, but Bell Hooks speaks about the practice of love and loving in All About Love: New Visions:

"We can only move from perfect passion to perfect love when the illusions pass and we are able to use the energy and intensity generated by intense, overwhelming, erotic bonding to heighten self-discovery. Perfect passions usually end when we awaken from our enchantment and find only that we have been carried away from ourselves. It becomes perfect love when our passion gives us the courage to face reality to embrace our true selves. Acknowledging this meaningful link between perfect passion and perfect love from the onset of a relationship can be the necessary inspiration that empowers us to choose love. When we love by intention and will, by showing care, respect, knowledge, and responsibility, our love satisfies. ...

"All relationships have ups and downs. Romantic fantasy often nurtures the belief that difficulties and down times are an indication of a lack of love rather than part of the process. In actuality, true love thrives on the difficulties. The foundation of such love is the assumption that we want to grow and expand, to become more fully ourselves. There is no change that does not bring with it a feeling of challenge and loss. When we experience true love it may feel as though our lives are in danger we may feel threatened.
True love is different from the love that is rooted in basic care, goodwill, and just plain old everyday attraction. We are continually attracted to folks ... whom we know that, given a chance, we could love in a heartbeat. ...

"The essence of true love is mutual recognition - two individuals seeing each other as they really are. We all know that the usual approach is to meet someone we like and put our best self forward, or even at times a false self, one we believe will be more appealing to the person we want to attract. When our real self appears in its entirety, when the good behavior becomes too much to maintain or the masks are taken away, disappointment comes. ...
True love is a different story. When it happens, individuals usually feel in touch with each other's core identity. Embarking on such a relationship is frightening precisely because we feel there is no place to hide. We are known. All the ecstasy that we feel emerges as this love nurtures us and challenges us to grow and transform."

Yes, being with someone who is loving also invites me to a loving presencing of myself, also invites me to allow myself the same gentleness, and sometimes that's something I'm just not willing to do. Someone that invites me to acknowledge and accept the more painful parts of myself. Warts and all, as they say. But that's a good thing, no?

The Work

2008-12-07T03:56:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about this a bit. I find that in my thinking I often refer to what I aspire to as The Work. What I mean by this is whatever I can do as a human being to reduce the possibilities of violence, coercion, domination, and oppression in my life, in my relationships. I don't think that there are areas of my life in which that work doesn't apply, and I think that commitment to The Work most helpfully involves a commitment not to just do 'gentleness work' in contexts that are formally identified as places for 'gentleness work'. Learning to live the attitude I aspire to means working to walk with an attitude of listening, with an openness to situations, with an openness to vulnerabilities, whenever I can, wherever I can. I find that hard, because it means I can't pretend that I'm not hiding from that challenge when I actually am. But it doesn't mean that it's always hard, just when I fight it. It's easier when I let it happen, or often when I simply get out of my own bloody way. Does The Work have to be hard work?

Doing and Being?

2008-12-07T03:46:00.000-08:00

I do what I do, and there's not much that I can do differently once it's done, but I don't tend to be what I think 'I am', despite my frequent protestations to the contrary. If I protest that 'it's just the way I am', that's surely a low-grade cop-out that facilitates a whole clatter of denials. There isn't an identity category out there that can adequately leave me safe from the change or challenge of circumstance. If I reframe that as 'it's just the way I tend to be', then fine, I can tend to be differently, if I make the effort. I remember reading once, in a movie review, of all places, 'be careful who you pretend to be for that is who you may become'. I would maybe re-word that awkwardly as, 'be careful who I (pre)tend to be as that is (w)ho(w) I may become'.

Disbeliever

2008-11-28T06:10:00.000-08:00

From a colleague on an email list. He lives in Mumbai.

On January 11, 1998, unidentified gunmen entered a movie theater and a small mosque in Sidi Ahmed near Algiers and massacred 120 men, women, and children at close range during Algeria's ongoing civil conflict.

Disbeliever

By the limping of the people of Iraq
By the sound of frantic running in Qana, in Kosovo
By the men and boys of Hama massacred
By the swollen bodies in a river in Rwanda
and Afghani women and the writers of Algiers,
I am a disbeliever

in everything that refuses to kiss
full on the lips the ones still living
and receive them into the bosom of the self,
no matter the religion or the nation or race
I am a disbeliever in everything
that does not say "How was the movie? I love you"

I need a body outside my life that can travel and kneel
on the sidewalk beside a movie theater in Algiers
over the bodies of the supple children
who will never be my children's playmates or marry them
over the bodies of the men and the women
who will never write a letter,
will never phone me from Algiers:"How was the movie? I love you. I love you."

I need time outside this history
where I can whisper in the ear of each of them,
By God, you will never be forgotten
By God, I will make sure the world
buries its face in your beautiful hair,
sings to you, learns your name and your music,
lifts you up in the crook of its arm like a gift

I am a disbeliever
in everything but the purity of the bodies
of the men and women–with or without the veil,
with or without the markings of the right identity–
in everything but the suppleness of children
I am a disbeliever in every scripture
in the world that leaves out
"How was the movie? I love you. I love you."

Mohja Kahf

Rock and Water

2008-11-25T12:18:00.001-08:00

When I was in Liverpool recently I met up with Sue and Graham Lane from Newcastle, Australia. Graham knew people I knew, through the Social Ecology programme at the University of Western Sydney. They told me about a program called Rock and Water, run from the University of Newcastle. It looks really interesting, and maybe some day I'll be able to get out there to find out more. In the meantime, a collection of essays has emerged from the programme . They have also developed teaching materials.

Cuddles

2008-11-22T02:25:00.001-08:00

I'm sitting in my front room with my cat, Nila, stretched blissfully across my chest. She seems pretty content, sounds pretty content, purrpurr. There's an effortless generosity that comes with Nila. Yes, she can seem a bit needy sometimes, especially when I've been away for a bit, but I love her anyway. Yes, Cassie (dog), I love you too, with your boundless enthusiasm.

One of Nila's ways of showing affection is biting. At first I would pull away, and end up getting scars to record her attentions. Then I worked out that if I gently lean my hand into her as she bites, the bite turns to a lick, and scars are averted. It was a hard learning.

Nila likes a little human warmth and a quiet cuddle. As do I. The online etymological dictionary refers to 'cuddle' as follows

"c.1520, probably a variant of obs. cull, coll "to embrace" (see collar), or perhaps M.E. *couthelen, from couth "known," hence "comfortable with." The word has a spotty early history, and it seems to have been a nursery word at first."

I find it really interesting that the possible etymology through 'couth' refers to knowledge as a question of presence, of being-with, of relationship, and of emotional comfort or familiarity. This is very different from later dominant understandings of knowledge that abstract knowledge from relationships, link knowledge to mental cognition, and anchor knowledge to certitude, the absence of doubt.

Cuddles aren't about certitude for me. But they allow for a confidence about being-with, a confidence in being-present-with, a familiarity with bodily warmth, gentle breathing, and fitting-together. Cuddles tend to be unregulated; what I mean by that is that they allow us a space where we aren't enticed to manage ourselves or another, a space where the headiness of logic doesn't really get a look-in, where words often simply get in the way. Cuddles for me often constitute the quintessential uncommodifying moment.

A cuddle isn't just a hug with benefits. You can hug someone you don't really know. A cuddle implies a comfort, but a comfort that comes with familiarity and trust, a comfort that comes with a vital vulnerability that opens a space for gentleness to just happen. Whether it's Nila on my lap, or my niece cuddling up with her Granda to hear a story, or the comfort of a romantic moment, cuddles are for me about as beautiful as being human gets. I'm pleased that the word cuddle may have been a nursery word first. Babies are about as vulnerable as we ever get, and any words we might use are only helpful insofar as they communicate a soothing tone, an emotional texture, another reminder of being-with; without agendas, without schedules, without a felt need to control.

So, yes, if you want to understand what I mean by gentleness, think on cuddles for a while. Or, better still, go and find some.

Nila, at this point, has decided that lounging in the sun streaming in through the french windows is way more attractive than cuddles with me.

Fare well, Da

2008-11-22T02:13:00.001-08:00

Hi all,

I haven't been blogging for the last while because my Dad died. My Dad was my mentor, a prince of a man, a man of deep gentleness, a man of great dignity. I'll miss him.

Now that he has passed, I am very conscious that any work I might do relating to gentleness is very much part of his legacy. He may have used other words, he may have spoken about his path in ways that I would not, but I aspire to the kind of relationship with others that he lived.

What he had to teach me, I eventually realised, wasn't really any sort of information I needed to remember; rather, what I needed to learn from him was a way of being-with, a way of being present, a way of sitting. If I can remember a little of what that feels like and try to put it into practice, I'll be doing okay.

I dedicate this work to my parents.

Relational Genes

2008-11-11T07:06:00.000-08:00

New York Times
November 11, 2008
Scientists and Philosophers Find That ‘Gene’ Has a Multitude of Meanings

By Natalie Angier

I owe an apology to my genes. For years I offhandedly blamed them for certain personal defects conventionally associated with one’s hereditary starter pack — my Graves’ autoimmune disease, for example, or my hair, which looks like the fibers left behind on the rim of an aspirin bottle after the cotton ball has been removed, only wispier.

Now it turns out that genes, per se, are simply too feeble to accept responsibility for much of anything. By the traditional definition, genes are those lineups of DNA letters that serve as instructions for piecing together the body’s proteins, and, I’m sorry, but the closer we look, the less instructive they seem, less a “blueprint for life” than one of those disappointing two-page Basic Setup booklets that comes with your computer, tells you where to plug it in and then directs you to a Web site for more information.

Scientists have learned that the canonical “genes” account for an embarrassingly tiny part of the human genome: maybe 1 percent of the three billion paired subunits of DNA that are stuffed into nearly every cell of the body qualify as indisputable protein codes. Scientists are also learning that many of the gene-free regions of our DNA are far more loquacious than previously believed, far more willing to express themselves in ways that have nothing to do with protein manufacture.

In fact, I can’t even make the easy linguistic transition from blaming my genes to blaming my whole DNA, because it’s not just about DNA anymore. It’s also about DNA’s chemical cousin RNA, doing complicated things it wasn’t supposed to do. Not long ago, RNA was seen as a bureaucrat, the middle molecule between a gene and a protein, as exemplified by the tidy aphorism, “DNA makes RNA makes protein.” Now we find cases of short clips of RNA acting like DNA, transmitting genetic secrets to the next generation directly, without bothering to ask permission. We find cases of RNA acting like a protein, catalyzing chemical reactions, pushing other molecules around or tearing them down. RNA is like the vice presidency: it’s executive, it’s legislative, it’s furtive.

For many scientists, the increasingly baroque portrait of the genome that their latest research has revealed, along with the muddying of molecular categories, is to be expected. “It’s the normal process of doing science,” said Jonathan R. Beckwith of Harvard Medical School. “You start off simple and you develop complexity.” Nor are researchers disturbed by any linguistic turbulence that may arise, any confusion over what they mean when they talk about genes. “Geneticists happily abuse ‘gene’ to mean many things in many settings,” said Eric S. Lander of the Broad Institute. “This can be a source of enormous consternation to onlookers who want to understand the conversation, but geneticists aren’t bothered.”

In Dr. Lander’s view, the “kluges upon kluges” are an occupational hazard. “We’re trying to parse an incredibly complex system,” he said. “It’s like the U.S. economy. What are your functional units? Employees and employers? Consumers and producers? What if you’re a freelancer with multiple employers? Where do farmers’ markets and eBay map onto your taxonomy?”

“You shouldn’t be worried about the fact that you have to layer on other things as you go along,” he said. “You can never capture something like an economy, a genome or an ecosystem with one model or one taxonomy — it all depends on the questions you want to ask.”

Dr. Lander added: “You have to be able to say, this is Tuesday’s simplification; Wednesday’s may be different, because incredible progress has been made by those simplifications.”
For other researchers, though, the parlance of molecular biology is desperately in need of an overhaul, starting with our folksy friend, gene. “The language is historical baggage,” said Evelyn Fox Keller, a science historian and professor emeritus at M.I.T. “It comes from the expectation that if we could find the fundamental units that make stuff happen, if we could find the atoms of biology, then we would understand the process.”

“But the notion of the gene as the atom of biology is very mistaken,” said Dr. Keller, author of “The Century of the Gene” and other books. “DNA does not come equipped with genes. It comes with sequences that are acted on in certain ways by cells. Before you have cells you don’t have genes. We have to get away from the underlying assumption of the particulate units of inheritance that we seem so attached to.”

Dr. Keller is a big fan of the double helix considered both in toto and in situ — in its native cellular setting. “DNA is an enormously powerful resource, the most brilliant invention in evolutionary history,” she said. “It is a far richer and more interesting molecule than we could have imagined when we first started studying it.”

Still, she said, “it doesn’t do anything by itself.” It is a profoundly relational molecule, she said, and it has meaning only in the context of the cell. To focus endlessly on genes, she said, keeps us stuck in a linear, unidirectional and two-dimensional view of life, in which instructions are read out and dutifully followed.

“What makes DNA a living molecule is the dynamics of it, and a dynamic vocabulary would be helpful,” she said. “I talk about trying to verb biology.” And to renoun it as well. Writing last year in the journal PloS One, Dr. Keller and David Harel of the Weizmann Institute of Science suggested as an alternative to gene the word dene, which they said could be used to connote any DNA sequence that plays a role in the cell. So far, Dr. Keller admits, it has yet to catch on.
Complex as our genome is, it obviously can be comprehended: our cells do it every day. Yet as the physician and essayist Lewis Thomas once noted, his liver was much smarter than he was, and he would rather be asked to pilot a 747 jet 40,000 feet over Denver than to assume control of his liver. “Nothing would save me or my liver, if I were in charge,” he wrote.
In a similar vein, we may never understand the workings of our cells and genomes as comfortably and cockily as we understand the artifacts of our own design. “We have evolved to solve problems,” Dr. Keller said. “Those do not include an understanding of the operation of our own systems — that doesn’t have much evolutionary advantage.” It’s quite possible, she said, that biology is “irreducibly complex,” and not entirely accessible to rational analysis. Which is not to say we’re anywhere near being stymied, she said: “Our biology is stretching our minds. It’s another loop in the evolutionary process.”

And if canonical genes are too thin a gruel to explain yourself to yourself, you can always reach for the stalwart of scapegoats. Blame it all on your mother, who surely loved you too much or too little or in all the wrong ways.

Back soon.

2008-11-06T08:13:00.000-08:00

Hi, I'll be back soon.

Mindapples

2008-10-07T09:42:00.000-07:00

Check out the Mindapples Website. It's been started by a friend of mine, and it's a really simple and generous idea that seems to be taking off.

"Mindapples is a social movement to promote individual self-management of mental wellbeing. The original “5-a-day” campaign encouraged people to take care of their physical health through simple daily activities, and we want to do the same thing for mental health. We aim to create a stigma-free public debate about mental wellbeing, simply by asking everybody the question: “What’s your five-a-day?”"

Anticraft

2008-10-07T03:30:00.000-07:00

http://www.theanticraft.com/antifesto.htm

"We were deep in the clutches of a weeklong absinthe binge when the Divine Hand of Brilliance touched us in an inappropriate place. When this vision came, we knew we must create a haven for all the sinister crafters of the world. No more would we be cowed into silence by cheerful scrapbook stickers. Never again would we be forced to gleefully execute a sweater of intarsia puppies. The green fairy had blessed us with an exotic vision we were powerless to deny."

(thanks, Sharon)

Nonviolence weekend

2008-10-06T01:18:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend at a nonviolence workshop hosted by the Irish Network for Nonviolent Action Training and Education (INNATE) and Kilcranny House. The weekend took place at Kilcranny and was led by Joanne Sheehan, an experienced veteran of non-violent activism in the United States. It was my first extended encounter with people who work for the cause of nonviolence, and it was a great opportunity to meet new people with similar approaches to life and relationship. There were some things I loved about the weekend, and some things that gave me pause for thought, but I think I'll need to mull them over before putting anything in print ... :)

Before I went on the weekend someone had emailed me asking what I thought the difference was between an approach of nonviolence and an approach of gentleness. I think this weekend has really helped me to make some sense of what my response might be to that. Again, I'll need to mull it over for a while before manifesting anything on the blog ... :)

Alcohol and Violence: No Simple Solutions

2008-10-06T01:14:00.000-07:00

Press release from the The International Center for Alcohol Policies (ICAP).

WASHINGTON, DC, 2 SEPTEMBER 2008

The International Center for Alcohol Policies announces the release of, “Alcohol and Violence: Exploring Patterns and Responses,” a report that discusses the association between alcohol and violence.

[The report can be read here]

Given that there is no simple causative relationship between alcohol consumption and violence, the report approaches this complex topic through the disciplines of anthropology, clinical psychology, human rights law, gender, and public health.

Patterns of violence at the societal level are explored in “Sociocultural Factors that Foster or Inhibit Alcohol-related Violence” and at the individual level in “The Role of Drinking Patterns and Acute Intoxication in Violent Interpersonal Behaviors.”

“Working with Culture to Prevent Violence and Reckless Drinking” looks at alcohol and violence from a gender perspective and identifies strategies used to respond to analogous social problems. This paper offers some promising opportunities for future action.

“Practical Responses: Communications Guidelines for First Responders in Cases of Alcohol-related Violence” presents international guidelines for enhanced communication among first responders (police, emergency room staff, social workders) to alcohol-related violence, particularly between the health and law enforcement sectors.

ICAP has been engaged in the relationship between alcohol and violence since 1998, including a literature review and a report on violence in licensed premises. The organization has engaged is discussions with a variety of international bodies, including the World Bank, the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW), the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the International Center for the Prevention of Crime, and the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women. In 2005, the World Bank hosted a meeting organized by ICAP and co-chaired by UNIFEM to discuss how best to move forward on the issue through some form of public-private cooperation. This report is a result of ongoing international collaboration to contribute to greater international understanding on the intersection between alcohol and violence.

Green idealists fail to make grade, says study

2008-09-24T02:38:00.000-07:00

David Adam, environment correspondent
The Guardian, September 24, 2008

People who believe they have the greenest lifestyles can be seen as some of the main culprits behind global warming, says a team of researchers, who claim that many ideas about sustainable living are a myth.

According to the researchers, people who regularly recycle rubbish and save energy at home are also the most likely to take frequent long-haul flights abroad. The carbon emissions from such flights can swamp the green savings made at home, the researchers claim.
Stewart Barr, of Exeter University, who led the research, said: "Green living is largely something of a myth. (more)

(Thanks, Nico)

Call for Resignation of Prof. Michael Reiss over Creationism controversy

2008-09-17T02:01:00.000-07:00

Copy of email sent to the Times Educational Supplement

I was saddened to learn of the Royal Society's decision (announced today at http://royalsociety .org/) to ask Prof. Michael Reiss to stand down form his post as Director of Education following widespread coverage of remarks he made about teaching evolution to students with creationist world-views.

The gist of Prof. Reiss' argument was that the appropriate response to students who raise their beliefs in class when they are taught the scientific theory of natural selection should not be to ignore, dismiss or ridicule the students' views, but rather to respect their ideas as a starting point for discussion, and to challenge them through the scientific arguments that have led to evolution by natural selection becoming some a strongly supported and widely accepted model for how life on earth has developed.

Prof. Reiss' comments are said to have damaged the reputation of the Royal Society. As it seems accepted that, as Prof. Reiss has made it absolutely clear, he was not suggesting teaching creationist ideas (as some misleading media reports implied or suggested); and that his views about the status of evolution (as a successful scientific theory) and creationism (as something that is not scientifically supported and so not a scientific theory or model) seem totally in keeping with the broad scientific consensus, it is hard to see how his comments are objectionable. If the mis-reporting was seen as potentially damaging to the Royal Society, then it should have taken the opportunity to use the widespread media interest to reiterate and explain its own position.

I can only conclude that what was found objectionable about Prof. Reiss' position was that he was using his vast experience as a science teacher and researcher of science classrooms to suggest that certain approaches naively offered by some academic scientists with no experience of teaching in the school system, are likely to be ineffective. Rather, he draws upon the widely accepted, evidence-based position adopted by most science educators, that the best way to develop children's thinking is to give them the chance to talk about their ideas, and to explore and understand why scientists have come to understand things differently. This general principle is central to science education, and is strongly supported by research evidence: just as natural selection is in biology. It reflects the scientific values of maintaining an open mind, and of considering and evaluating evidence, that we hope to instill in students. Of course, children with strong creationist views may not be prepared to question their existing ideas if these are central to their cultural and family identities: but Reiss' recommendations make more sense than simply dismissing their ideas as irrelevant and telling them to instead learn something that contradicts their own strong convictions. Children's creationist views may be irrelevant to science, but they are highly significant to both their learning of the science, and their developing attitudes to science as a source of reliable knowledge. Those FRS who decided to ignore this and call for Reiss dismissal, seem to be forgetting that their own expertise is in science, not schooling, which is presumably why they appointed a science teacher and educational researcher to high office in the Society.

In summary, the decision to dismiss Reiss seems to suggests that some academic scientists feel they know best in education, and are not prepared to listen to experts informed by a different field of research than their own. I fear that it will be this decision to sack rather than explain which could bring the Royal Society in disrepute, not the inaccurate reporting of a talk in the media. In my view, the Royal Society has today done a disservice to science education in the UK, and so indirectly to the future of science.

-- Dr. Keith S. Taber

http://www.educ. cam.ac.uk/ staff/taber. html
http://people. pwf.cam.ac. uk/kst24/
University Senior Lecturer in Science Education
Science Education Centre
University of Cambridge
Faculty of Education
184 Hills Road
Cambridge CB2 8PQ
United Kingdom

When Academia Puts Profit Ahead of Wonder

2008-09-15T00:16:00.001-07:00

From the New York Times ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/technology/07unbox.html?_r=1&ref=business&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

"It is the policy and objective of the Congress to use the patent system to promote the utilization of inventions arising from federally supported research or development" and "to promote collaboration between commercial concerns and nonprofit organizations, including universities."
— The Bayh-Dole Act, a k a the University Small Business Patent Procedures Act

THE law of unintended consequences is perhaps less a "law" than a simple statement of fact: We cannot accurately predict all the results of our actions. We may do something with the best of intentions, and sometimes even accomplish the good toward which we aim. Yet, at the same time, we are all too often surprised by results that didn't occur to us beforehand.

The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 started out with the best of intentions. By clearing away the thicket of conflicting rules and regulations at various federal agencies, it set out to encourage universities to patent and license results of federally financed research. For the first time, academicians were able to profit personally from the market transfer of their work. For the first time, academia could be powered as much by a profit motive as by the psychic reward of new discovery.

University "tech transfer" offices have boomed from a couple dozen before the law's passage to nearly 300 today. University patents have leapt a hundredfold. Professors are stepping away from the lab and lecture hall to navigate the thicket of venture capital, business regulations and commercial competition.

None of these are necessarily negative outcomes. But more than a quarter-century after President Jimmy Carter signed it into law, the Bayh-Dole Act, sponsored by the former Senators Birch Bayh, Democrat of Indiana, and Robert Dole, Republican of Kansas, is under increasing scrutiny by swelling ranks of critics. The primary concern is that its original intent — to infuse the American marketplace with the fruits of academic innovation — has also distorted the fundamental mission of universities.

In the past, discovery for its own sake provided academic motivation, but today's universities function more like corporate research laboratories. Rather than freely sharing techniques and results, researchers increasingly keep new findings under wraps to maintain a competitive edge. What used to be peer-reviewed is now proprietary. "Share and share alike" has devolved into "every laboratory for itself."

In trying to power the innovation economy, we have turned America's universities into cutthroat business competitors, zealously guarding the very innovations we so desperately want behind a hopelessly tangled web of patents and royalty licenses.

Of course, there is precedent for scientific secrecy, notes Daniel S. Greenberg , author of "Science for Sale: The Perils, Rewards and Delusions of Campus Capitalism" (University of Chicago Press, 2007). When James Watson and Francis Crick were homing in on DNA's double-helix structure in the 1950s, they zealously guarded their work from prying eyes until they could publish their findings, to be certain that they would get the credit for making the discovery.

"They didn't try to patent it," Mr. Greenberg notes, "but somebody doing the same work today would certainly take a crack at patenting the double helix."

In fact, it was the life sciences — in particular, biotechnology — that started universities down the slippery commercial slope in the first place. Even before the Bayh-Dole Act, pharmaceutical companies were eagerly trolling campuses, looking for projects to finance. After the law was passed, they stepped up their efforts, but now with renewed zeal for keeping potential trade secrets from competitors.

While patients have benefited from the growing supply of new medications, the universities have obtained patents not only for the actual substances but also for the processes and methods used to make them, potentially hampering discovery of even more beneficial treatments.

"Bayh-Dole tore down the taboos that existed against universities engaging in overtly commercial activity. Universities really thought that they were going to make it rich," said Jennifer Washburn, author of "University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education" (Basic Books, 2005). "Each school was convinced that if they came up with that one blockbuster invention, they could solve all their financial problems."

Ms. Washburn says that was "extremely wrong-headed." Initially reacting to the law by slapping patents on every possible innovation, universities quickly discovered that patents were an expensive proposition. The fees and legal costs involved in obtaining a single patent can run upward of $15,000, and that doesn't count the salaries of administrative staff members. Instead of bringing home the bacon, university tech transfer offices were throwing money into the void with little hope of returns.

To date, Ms. Washburn says, data gathered by the Association of University Technology Managers, a trade group, show that fewer than half of the 300 research universities actively seeking patents have managed to break even from technology transfer efforts. Instead, two-thirds of the revenue tracked by the association has gone to only 13 institutions.

Part of the problem has been a lingering misunderstanding about where the value lies in innovation. Patenting a new basic science technique, or platform technology, puts it out of the reach of graduate students who might have made tremendous progress using it.

Similarly, exclusive licensing of a discovery to a single company thwarts that innovation's use in any number of other fields. R. Stanley Williams, a nanotechnologist from Hewlett-Packard, testified to Congress in 2002 that much of the academic research to which H.P. has had difficulty gaining access could be licensed to several companies without eroding its intellectual property value.

"Severe disagreements have arisen over conflicting interpretations of the Bayh-Dole Act," he said. "Large U.S.-based corporations have become so disheartened and disgusted with the situation, they are now working with foreign universities, especially the elite institutions in France, Russia and China."

THE issue is further clouded by "reach through" licenses, complex arrangements used by many tech transfer offices. A reach-through lets the patent holder claim a share of any profits that result from using, say, an enabling technology, even if those profits come several steps down the market transfer line. Several universities are already embroiled in messy lawsuits trying to sort out who is entitled to what.

Perhaps the most troublesome aspect of campus commercialization is that research decisions are now being based on possible profits, not on the inherent value of knowledge. "Blue sky" research — the kind of basic experimentation that leads to a greater understanding of how the world works — has largely been set aside in favor of projects considered to have more immediate market potential.

In academia's continuing pursuit of profit, the wonder of simple serendipitous discovery has been left on the curb.

Janet Rae-Dupree writes about science and emerging technology in Silicon Valley.

Back in the saddle

2008-09-12T01:26:00.001-07:00

I've left it a bit long, such that I now have way too much to writethink, and it's a little overwhelming. I'll try bullet points ...

I went to a great Anarchist Studies Network conference in Loughborough last week. I took part in Jamie Heckert's session on listening, and I think I'll post a separate post on the event ...

I'm hoping to go to an econonviolence weekend at the beginning of October, the first time I'll be attending an event like this since moving back to Northern Ireland. I'm really looking forward to it. I need to send off the form today, though!

I have been a lot more successful this year dealing with work stuff than in previous years, and am slowly learning the dance of 'sidestep-enter-turn'. I'll try to explain later :)

Every now and then I meet a person that lights me up. I like it when that happens :)

It freaks me out a little that the US Whitehouse may possibly once again be led by a human being who thinks that God planned and executed the 2001ff invasion of Iraq.

I've started writing again, and I think this time I may have a clear run at it, if I keep doing it!

More later today or tomorrow.

Holidays

2008-09-02T00:33:00.000-07:00

Hiya, just taking a break for a bit. Back in a week or so :)

Facing History

2008-08-15T07:50:00.000-07:00

http://www.facinghistory.org/

"Facing History and Ourselves delivers classroom strategies, resources and lessons that inspire young people to take responsibility for their world. Internationally recognized for our quality and effectiveness, Facing History harnesses the power of the Internet and partners with school systems, universities and ministries of education worldwide."

"At the heart of our work is the resource book Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior, which explores the consequences of hatred. Students all over the world learn to recognize bigotry and indifference. They also meet exemplars of courage and compassion in the face of injustice and see that their own daily choices can have major impacts and perhaps even be a critical link to a safer future."

Garbage Warrior

2008-07-24T23:45:00.000-07:00

http://www.garbagewarrior.com/index.php

"The epic story of radical Earthship eco architect Michael Reynolds, and his fight to build off-the-grid self-sufficient communities."

(Thanks, Brett)

Sightsavers

2008-07-22T13:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.sightsavers.org/default.asp

Sightsavers works to combat blindness in developing countries, restoring sight through specialist treatment and eye care. They also support people who are irreversibly blind by providing education, counselling and training.

WorldChanging.org

2008-07-17T01:13:00.000-07:00

http://www.worldchanging.com/

"Worldchanging is a solutions-based online magazine that works from a simple premise: that the tools, models and ideas for building a better future lie all around us. That plenty of people are working on tools for change, but the fields in which they work remain unconnected. That the motive, means and opportunity for profound positive change are already present. That another world is not just possible, it's here. We only need to put the pieces together."

(Thanks, Brett)

Slow Down

2008-07-16T23:34:00.001-07:00

http://www.metafilter.com/66879/Slow-Down

Slow Food (UK)

2008-07-16T23:24:00.001-07:00

http://www.slowfood.org.uk

"The Slow Food movement began in 1986 when an Italian journalist visited Rome and saw a brand new branch of McDonalds at the foot of the Spanish Steps.

"Carlo Petrini was horrified. To him, it seemed that a global takeover of industrialised, standardised fast food was well on the way - and it could be the beginning of the end for the huge variety of good, traditional, regional Italian food. He decided that it was necessary to set up a 'slow food' movement to counteract the potential for 'fast food' world domination.

"Eco-gastronomy: Between the 1980s and now, Slow Food has become an international organisation of members who not only care about retaining our diverse heritage of regional food and drink, and protecting it from unthinking globalisation, but are increasingly aware of the associated environmental issues.

"Read the Slow Food Manifesto - it sums it all up better than I can!

"What does Slow Food actually do?

· The local branch, or Convivium is the grassroots heart of Slow Food. It organises a variety of events such as tastings, dinners with a particular theme, and visits to places of food and drink interest. Education is an important purpose for a convivium - whether it be organising initiatives in schools, such as the school gardens project, or educating people about real food with taste! The convivium collects information about regional food and drink, whether it be good shops or restaurants, or food and drink products under threat - and passes on this information to Slow Food members worldwide. Conviviality and enjoying yourself are essential features of Slow Food membership! List of UK convivia here.

"· Members receive receive 'Snail Mail', the Slow Food UK quarterly newsletter, convivium newsletters and information about forthcoming Slow Food events and activities, as well as the 'Slow Food Companion' - a fascinating summary of everything that the Slow Food movement does, and other international publications. (The Slow Food Companion can be downloaded from here.)

"· Collectively Slow Food has initiatives ('the Ark of Taste' and the 'Presidia') designed to identify, preserve and protect threatened food and drink products, rare breeds or species. Examples of UK presidia include artisan Cheddar cheese hand-made in Somerset from unpasteurised milk, Three Counties Perry, and Old Gloucester Beef. More about Slow Food's biodiversity programmes.

"· Slow Food continues to develop taste education programmes for children and adults, including the new University of Gastronomic Sciences, established in Italy in 2003. It also campaigns to sustain quality agriculture and to maintain the biodiversity of our food supply. It does not restrict itself to the developed nations - Slow Food is active in promoting projects to sustain food production in the world's poorer countries."

Slow Cycling

2008-07-16T23:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.upstateturtles.com/

http://www.slowfoodvancouver.com/index.php/BikeBlossoms/

http://www.slowfoodcyclesunday.com/