News

   I always find the labors of blogging a little surprising. When school is very busy, and family life is too, blogging has to fall away. So much is worthy of comment both at TAS and abroad, that I always feel a little guilty in my neglect. Needless to say, I get over it.

   This Friday is our first "Alumni and Former Student" get together. Should we just call everyone "alumni"? Not everyone graduates, and certainly TAS accommodates many various paths. At any rate, we are all hoping for a robust turnout with lots of surprises.

   Our Contemplative Ed group had its second retreat the other night, an after school meditation and dinner. Long standing (and sitting) Zen Mountain Monastery student Jinshen came by to lead the meditation.

    In other news, news classes have been announced for the winter term (more on that later), and there is burgeoning interest in student lead workshops and older students serving as teaching assistants.

    A couple of weeks ago, two graduates of the Developing Virtue Secondary School, a Buddhist High School outside of San Francisco, came by for a visit. Very impressive people. It is a deep interest of ours to develop ties with the two other schools in the country that share a Buddhist frame of reference.

    Other visitors: word is that two alumni will be joining TAS as interns sometime this year. How wonderful is that?

Apologies

Time to get blogging again. Schedule and content soon.

Various Updates

The Contemplation Ed program we have started at TAS is now underway. We have a weekend retreat scheduled for the October 2-4 in Pine Hill, NY. On the agenda are some lovely mountain hikes, a few instructional meditations, a visit to the source of the Delaware River, and morning services at the Zen Mountain Monastery.
The Arts program is now in readable form. Though far from complete, we are able to say that the program seems adequate to our goals of developing basic skills and historical context in the visual arts.
We have welcomed a couple of new students in the last week.

Drug Free School Zone News

Omaha, NE - Three Millard North High School students get busted for bringing drugs to school. The school resource officer discovered the drugs Friday.

Two students had marijuana, one had drug paraphernalia and two prescription drugs, Adderall and Seroquel, both are considered controlled substances.

When prescribed by doctors, Adderall is often used to treat ADHD, Seroquel is used to treat psychotic disorders like bipolar disease.

All three students are 17 years old. Two were sent to the youth center. The third was ticketed.

Ho hum...high school students busted for drug possession in a high school. Wait! Seroquel? An anti-psychotic with the usually horrible side effects for many, that earned its maker 4,700,000,000 in sales (yes, that's billion), and is used these days for the highly over-diagnosed bi-polar disorder, is now a street drug.

Like I said, "ho hum".

New Link

To Pete's Music History class blog:

http://tasmusichistory.blogspot.com/

New Link

To Pete's Music History class blog:

http://tasmusichistory.blogspot.com/

Some Thoughts

Generally speaking, I am not against the proscribing of certain drugs for psychological symptoms. They have their place, and to a limited degree, they work for some people. That is about it.
My objections to the way drugs are proscribed to teenagers and children are numerous, however:

1) The safety of the newer anti-depressants in developing bodies over the long term is not
established
2) Many times the drugs are proscribed for reasons that have never been studied
3) Medications do not work better than therapy
4) Most proscribers have a very limited working knowledge of their patients goals,
subjective experience, or social world
5) Interactions with other drugs have not been studied. The all too frequent cocktail of anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, anti-anxiety meds, seizure medications, et al have no basis in empirical research
6) Interactions with street drugs have not been studied, this includes street drugs such as Ritalin, Seraquel, and Xanax. Nor have interactions with pot or birth control pills. Or alcohol.
7) Many doctors, and of course ALL the drug companies, have a vested interest in increasing the number of prescriptions filled.
8) The diagnosis of a mental health problem has never been demonstrated to have any bearing on the outcome of the treatment. The diagnoses themselves- such as Bi-Poloar Disorder, Schizo-affective Disorder, Attention Deficit Disorder- are not distinct from one another, often blur into one another, and are rarely agreed upon by clinicians.

Safety, integrity of diagnosis, and transparency. These are the big, big problems with prescribing psychiatric medications to young people. Certainly there are times where there is no choice but to insist on meds. But the dangers are very real and the process is so murky that we should be very careful.

And most psychiatrists are not.

(edit: inexplicable misspelling of "prescriptions" and "prescribing")

Drug Free School Zone News

(from Furious Seasons) This is maddening: court documents released today show details of so-called call notes made by Lilly sales reps of visits and golf games with doctors in South Carolina, where the company was working hard to get doctors to switch patients to Zyprexa, even for unapproved uses. There were basically payoffs going on, the State of South Carolina alleges in a lawsuit against Lilly, and some of that involved reps making bets with doctors during golf games. One doc agreed that for each time a sales rep made par during one outing that he'd start a new patient on Zyprexa, according to Bloomberg.

And then there was this:

"Lawyers for the state pointed to a sales note from Sullivan in which he tells another salesman to tie a doctor’s Zyprexa prescriptions to participation in a speakers’ program.

"The company paid doctors and psychiatrists to address physician gatherings about the benefits of the antipsychotic. 'If his numbers go up, maybe he can talk,' Sullivan said in the August 2001 note."

The state's case against Lilly could go to trial later this month. Lilly told Bloomberg that the notes were taken out of context. Yeah, right.

At this point a question has got to be asked: why the hell are the doctors who keep taking payoffs from pharma companies--a la last week's Pfizer settlement--not named publicly? Why are they still practicing medicine? Why are they facing no discipline of any kind?

On the Contemplation Front

Today the TAS contemplative ed program begins. Seven students and I had a hour long meeting to discuss what they are interested and how the group should be formed. Generally speaking, they are highly interested in pursuing their art practice in a more self-learning mode, in various types of body practice and healing techniques, and going on retreats both in school and away. Of considerably less interest is sitting meditation.
Along the way manner interesting ideas were suggested: exploring hypnosis, care of animals, encouraging student teaching, fundraising for the school, exploring "spooky" stuff and how it relates to sprirituality, and finally, the idea of a Zen patch, a tiny, private plot on school property that a student takes care of. This is instead of a rather involved Zen garden.

For me, the most remarkable idea was suggested by one of the students when we were trying to figure out how to actually form (and allow) a membership. Basically, each interested student will pursue a project for a week, and while doing so, will allow those efforts to show them whether or not they want to join the program. For instance, one student, a guitarist, will approach his guitar practice as a meditation for the week. He will share his experience doing so with the others, and evaluate for himself joining the program. Another student is going to spend her week encouraging other students to come up with ideas for their own student teaching and student developed classes.

The beauty of it is their enthusiasm and openness. This is a real opportunity to create a group of "leaders"- not student council presidents, but young men and women who set an example for self-reflection and awareness.

Happy New Year!

    What is ahead?

   No one knows. Sure, we have orientation and schedule making and classes to sign up for, and some get to know get togethers and a few talks. And a satisfying meal, of course. There are new students and a new teachers. We must catch up on rumors and news, aspirations and worries. But there is no "year" ahead of us, only endless opportunity to be exactly and totally in the present.

   But first, let us tear the devil out by the roots. What devil? Ah, the devil of Multitasking, that handmaiden of mediocrity:

   ...researchers at Stanford University published a study showing that the most persistent multitaskers perform badly in a variety of tasks. They don’t focus as well as non-multitaskers. They’re more distractible. They’re weaker at shifting from one task to another and at organizing information. They are, as a matter of fact, worse at multitasking than people who don’t ordinarily multitask.

    So strive to do one thing at a time, and do it well. Watch and listen, and concentrate, as if your life depends on it! The link is here

The Big Wrap-Around

Over the summer a couple of fellow teachers and I have been pecking away at two major consolidations of TAS's programming. One is the Contemplation Concentration (CC), which I put into some context in the previous post. The other is an over-arching Art and Music curriculum.

One way of looking at adolescence is that even in the breeziest teenager these years are somewhat chaotic magnifications of adult life. Many deeply held beliefs and nearly unshakable habits are created during this time, partly as a function of neurology, partly as one of social and familial roles. Strong emotions create something of a whipsaw trajectory; these arise as the limbic system comes into its own. Judgment, perspective, functional empathy, and foresight are somewhat weak; this develops only as the frontal lobe becomes more dense and more connected with other regions of the brain.

None of these regions develop in isolation. The brain evolved to be profoundly shaped by its environment, which is why no genetic explanation for the vast range of normal behavior will ever be adequate. Conversely, this same brain-nature defies simplistic explanations based on social and environmental influences. Teenagers spend enormous amounts of time involved in school, and it is essential that this last, vast shaping opportunity not be wasted.

The word to keep in mind is "integration". This doesn't refer to a curriculum thoroughly determined, vetted and systematically relating one aspect of life to another, but rather a richly supportive emotional and social environment that makes each student's own integration and healing both possible and optimal.

Teenagers crave variety, change, action, movement, trust, emotional charge, stories, and seeing themselves reflected in a world they help create. This is the momentum one must work with, not against. A teenager's brain generally lacks the capacity to hold a stable self-perspective and to then analyze that perspective. This may be why a great variety of experiences seem to slip by your average teenager without comment or thank you. Their brains are furiously processing multiple layers of experience; to speak of them in real time or just after is nearly impossible for most kids.

This means that these experiences are certainly not wasted. Nor are they being stored for later use. They are being integrated below the level of awareness, and this requires time and space that is both nurturing and unobtrusive.

This is where having both a contemplative and an applied art program comes in. Each program has elements of action, academic study, and contemplation; the difference is in the proportion of each and how the student is brought into a new level of awareness.

All TAS students are required to take four years of art. The CC program is voluntary, as it requires a degree of maturity to participate in. Taken together they should frame a student's experience during these years in a powerful, enduring way.

Why a Contemplative Program?

I grew up in a Catholic family. Our parish was close to the center of our family life and both my parents were deeply involved in various aspects of the church. We were friends with all the parish priests and my father's family had deep ties, well back into the late 1800's, to Catholic Church politics and the political emergence of the Catholic vote in southwestern Connecticut.

I mention this because my own ambivalence about religious practice arises from long and deep experience with religious practice. Long ago I came to the conclusion that, despite some rather profound experiences- call them mystical or deeply moving, call them each a crisis or a bout of religious melancholy, those experiences were largely emotional and arose from things much more pedestrian than "God". But that being said, I was also thankful to have had the vocabulary and syntax of a life-long religious education to make sense of the experience, whatever the outcome in terms of my faith. I had been educated by the Jesuits to be a skeptic and yet would forever be shaped by the Catholic tradition.

At TAS, I teach Zen Sword and lead meditation. I counsel students, teachers, and parents, and try to set the general, day to day tone of our educational practice. No doubt my own quirks and flaws are at play throughout, and perhaps no where is this more evident in the Contemplation Concentration. It has taken some work to get it to this point, and there is a lot more to do.

Buffy (our art, cooking, and yoga teacher) and I, with some contribution from Matt (our reading specialist), decided that it was time to re-ground what we do at TAS in some deeper practices. Jen, the school therapist (currently on maternity leave), joined the school this year, bringing her own deep and daily practice as a lens for the complex problems that arise for our students. Zen practice, we all concluded, is developmentally correct for teenagers. It has the right mix of skepticism, discipline, moral probity, and reflectiveness for that time of life. Ten years of success at TAS has demonstrated this.

America is a tremendously dynamic, cosmopolitan country, with all the world flowing in and out. Religious practice in our country reflects this. Religious practice is so central to so many contemporary and historical questions that it seems essential to a well rounded education to have some direct experience with it. Most of our students do not have any. Merely providing some emotional support, some meditation, and some martial arts and yoga is not enough, however effective this might be.

Big questions- of existence, of love, of the why and what of one's life- must be grappled with in the years between childhood and adulthood. At this age the mind is evolving the ability to consciously involve itself in the world and be changed by it. A point of reference is crucial, as is the understanding that there are many other points of reference, both inside and outside of oneself. That is where the integration of our world view truly begins. Our contemplation program is an attempt to help this process along.

So many people become fearful during these years, and slowly circumscribe their worlds. TAS is dedicated to the proposition that being open to the world makes your life better and makes everyone's lives better, that openness is itself an act of courage.

Academic classes can only hint at what is out there. They are a menu, not a meal. If you look carefully at the CC program, you will notice that intellectual study is only one part. The rest is about seeking whole-life engagement with the self and others, with a lot of guidance. If adults do not actively participate in the spiritual and philosophical lives of the children in their care, then all the great questions of childhood and adolescence will be framed by other children and adolescents.

Please give our new program a good, long look.

Here is an interesting little item from the Times, on proofs of God and one's own journey.

What a Shocker

CHICAGO — Calls to poison control centers about teens abusing attention-deficit drugs soared 76 percent over eight years, sobering evidence about the dangerous consequences of prescription misuse, a study shows.

The calls were from worried parents, emergency room doctors and others seeking advice on how to deal with the problem, which can be deadly. Four deaths were among cases evaluated in the study.

Kids taking ADHD drugs to get high or increase alertness may not realize that misuse of the drugs can cause serious, sometimes life-threatening symptoms, including agitation, rapid heartbeat, extremely high blood pressure.

"They say, 'It's FDA approved, how dangerous could it be?'" said Steve Pasierb, head of The Partnership for a Drug-Free America, based in New York.

In the study, researchers from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center evaluated 1998-2005 data from the American Association of Poison Control Centers. During that time, nationwide calls related to teen abuse of ADHD drugs, specifically stimulants, increased from 330 to 581 yearly, and there were four deaths. Overall, 42 percent of teens involved had moderate to severe side-effects and most ended up getting emergency-room treatment.

The true number of teen abusers who have bad side effects is likely much higher, because many cases don't result in calls to poison control centers, said study author Dr. Randall Bond, medical director of the hospital's Drug and Poison Information Center.

The surge, from 1998 to 2005, outpaced calls for teen substance abuse generally. It also paralleled an 86 percent rise in ADHD medicine prescriptions for kids aged 10 to 19, from about 4 million to nearly 8 million during that time.

"It's more bad news on an entrenched problem," Pasierb said. His nonprofit group was not involved in the study. Its own research suggests that about 19 percent of teens have abused prescription drugs including medicine for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

link

We're Back...

This marks the beginning of the school year for me...getting together budgets and curricula, putting some touches (by no means final) on the art and contemplative programs, and reconstructing a morning routine that is a little earlier and a little more focused than summer requires.

  One of the best things we do at TAS is allow students to relax, let their guard down, and learn. Who would of thought that those things are intimately related:

  Reporting earlier this summer in the journal Science, Nuno Sousa of the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute at the University of Minho in Portugal and his colleagues described experiments in which chronically stressed rats lost their elastic rat cunning and instead fell back on familiar routines and rote responses, like compulsively pressing a bar for food pellets they had no intention of eating.

Moreover, the rats’ behavioral perturbations were reflected by a pair of complementary changes in their underlying neural circuitry. On the one hand, regions of the brain associated with executive decision-making and goal-directed behaviors had shriveled, while, conversely, brain sectors linked to habit formation had bloomed.

 Executive decision making crumbles under chronic stress? Repetitive, non productive behavior increases as well? This doesn't sound like humans at all, does it? But the good news is the remarkable re-generative nature of the brain, across the life-span. The brain searches for change and connection, that is, opportunities for growth:

  But with only four weeks’ vacation in a supportive setting free of bullies and Tasers, the formerly stressed rats looked just like the controls, able to innovate, discriminate and lay off the bar. Atrophied synaptic connections in the decisive regions of the prefrontal cortex resprouted, while the overgrown dendritic vines of the habit-prone sensorimotor striatum retreated.

  "...[W]ith only four weeks' vacation in a supportive setting free of bullies and Tasers...": I like that line. It sounds like how some of students feel after their first month at TAS.

 

Busy on Vacation

  Lots of behind the scenes work has been getting done- especially on the office management side. The school year has begun, but slowly and invisibly, like the mycelia that establishes itself long before the mushroom pops up. Speaking of which, with all the rain we've had we can expect a great fungi season this fall: boletes, puffballs, bearded tooths, and so on. Look for TAS teachers in the woods and up in the trees.

  Parents: make your appointments for a visit and an interview soon. We have had a lot of inquiries over the last two weeks.

 

 I am going on vacation and will turn off my TAS thinking for a week, except for the couple of Kandinsky volumes I am hauling along with me. This is going to be a great school year, with some new programs and a whole batch of new students. 

 

 Back to blogging on August 18th. 

  Lots of behind the scenes work has been getting done- especially on the office management side. The school year has begun, but slowly and invisibly, like the mycelia that establishes itself long before the mushroom pops up. Speaking of which, with all the rain we've had we can expect a great fungi season this fall: boletes, puffballs, bearded tooths, and so on. Look for TAS teachers in the woods and up in the trees.

  Parents: make your appointments for a visit and an interview soon. We have had a lot of inquiries over the last two weeks.

 

 I am going on vacation and will turn off my TAS thinking for a week, except for the couple of Kandinsky volumes I am hauling along with me. This is going to be a great school year, with some new programs and a whole batch of new students. 

 

 Back to blogging on August 18th. 

Busy on Vacation

Lots of behind the scenes work has been getting done- especially on the office management side. The school year has begun, but slowly and invisibly, like the mycelia that establishes itself long before the mushroom pops up. Speaking of which, with all the rain we've had we can expect a great fungi season this fall: boletes, puffballs, bearded tooths, and so on. Look for TAS teachers in the woods and up in the trees.

  Parents: make your appointments for a visit and an interview soon. We have had a lot of inquiries over the last two weeks.

 I am going on vacation and will turn off my TAS thinking for a week, except for the couple of Kandinsky volumes I am hauling along with me. This is going to be a great school year, with some new programs and a whole batch of new students. 

 Back to blogging on August 18th.

Hello Tuesday!

News update: Coming soon, a framework for the arts program...Chrissy has uncorked a brilliant scheme that will somehow reconcile the simplicity colleges want on our transcripts with the jungle like complexity of our course selection...A well known art historian from NYC has agreed to help out with our Kandinsky and Gorky expeditions...Chang Sik Kim, Zen Master, Swordsman, and founder of Shim Gum Do, will be visiting us in the fall...
Those are a few of the developments. There is quite a bit of work to do: the mundane stuff of painting and organizing, curriculum and budgets, but with more than a month left of summer, I for one, am feeling rested and almost ready.
I hope everyone else is moving that way, too. Just keep saying that summer is long; be sure to attend to every moment and it will become so. Don't repeat cliches of "where did the summer go" blah blah blah- it is right all around you, isn't it? When that thought creeps in, simply take a moment to survey all that has happened in the last few days...

No Meditation Thursday July 23rd

In Boston through the weekend.

Post Slow Down, next two weeks...

Keep an eye on the Artblogg and on Birds of Appetite, that's where any posting action will be. I am leaving for Boston on Wednesday for a bit of a retreat at the Shim Gum Do temple up there. Regular posting will resume Tuesday the 28th.

Contemplative Education at TAS

You might want to check out the website for our proposed Contemplative Education Program. The site is called The Birds of Appetite and is open for comments.

If any of our readers are interested in volunteering for this program please let me know. We are looking for speakers, workshops, retreats, trainings, and so on.

Most Posts over at the ArtBlogg

That is where we are working these days, for the most part. Join us.

Poetry Day, late and small edition...

What can I say? Been busy gardening and working on curriculum. Here is a poem from a favorite anthology of mine, The Penguin Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry:

The Death of Irish

The tide gone out for good,
Thirty-one words for seaweed
Whiten on the foreshore.

-Aidan Carl Matthews

All Kinds of Difference

As one conservative friend said after Obama's election, "It seems that America is growing up". By this he didn't mean politics per se, but the mere fact that a black man with an incredibly foreign sounding name became president. The electorate has become, well, pretty cosmopolitan.
That is the main thing, after all. Eighty percent of Americans live in urban areas. Waves of immigration continually rework the demographics of four-fifths of the country. People are getting used to difference. It isn't so scary any more.
There remain many areas of resistance to full rights, access, and representation: one of the more heartening things about being in grad school is exposure to how integrated that awareness is becoming in psychological practice. Race is big, and ethnicity. Permanent injury, trauma, and various disabilities have vast social and psychological implications. So as it is heartening to see
attitudes soften towards sexuality that doesn't fit in a neat little box, it is also interesting to read new perspectives on how we are creeping toward a more open, accepting, helping society.
But there are dangers. To wit:

...with the Human Genome Project finding in 2000 that all humans are more than 99 per cent alike, many thought genomics would put the final nail in the race coffin.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the funeral. Shortly after the HGP's finding, several research projects began focusing on mapping this less than 1 per cent of human genetic variation onto social categories of race.

This small variation reflects millions of SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms), some of which may loosely correlate with geography. Yet the resilience of linking such differences and disparities to biological mechanisms is striking, since most analysis of the data cautions otherwise.

Some uses of new technologies also reflect this renewed effort. Though they explicitly reject the scientific racism of the past, race is given genetic significance in an effort to resolve health disparities, provide a richer sense of ancestry, and aid law enforcement.

If technology is for the moment knocking down old notions about the immutability (or even relevance) of race, it also holds the potential for reinforcing those same notions is the information is misused. True enough.

On the language side, here is an interesting discussion of the language of disability, from the blog Feministe:

Before we go any further, you guys are going to need a quick tutorial on models of disability.

There are a number of models, but the two primary models are the medical model and the social model. These are the two most often discussed because of the particular ways they conflict with one another.

The medical model centers around the individual. The medical model defines disability in opposition to the normal body/brain, as deviating from that model of normalcy, and any problems that arise in your life are seen as arising from your deviation. Thus, these problems are to be solved by addressing that deviation — by bringing your body/brain closer to the normal model.

The social model centers around the structure of society. The social model does not seek to define disability: instead, it proposes that the problem is that society is built such that many people are prohibited from full participation in society because of their differences. Under the social model, the problem is not the difference, the problem is that society does not accommodate that difference. “The problem is not the person” is a common refrain from champions of the social model.

In short, you might say: The cause of exclusion is not the disability. The cause of exclusion is how the rest of society treats disability. Therefore, what needs to be addressed to eliminate this exclusion is not the individual person’s condition. What needs to be addressed is how society is set up in such a way that this person faces trouble when attempting to exercise hir right to participation equal to that of a non-disabled person. What do you change? Not the person. Society.

Enjoy. See you tomorrow.

Give a Thirteen Year Old a Walkman

...As I boarded the school bus, where I live in Aberdeenshire, I was greeted with laughter. One boy said: "No-one uses them any more." Another said: "Groovy." Yet another one quipped: "That would be hard to lose."

My friends couldn't imagine their parents using this monstrous box, but there was interest in what the thing was and how it worked.

In some classes in school they let me listen to music and one teacher recognised it and got nostalgic.

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equalizer, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

I picked this up at Andrew Sullivan's site- check out the whole story.

A Little Ramble: Industrial Agriculture and Paw-Paws

West of Riegelsville, where I live, are hundreds of acres of rolling fields, divided by dense windbreaks and small woods. I've seen grey and red fox, bear scat, and eagles, as well as tracks of everything that usually lives around here. There is a thick and palatial wetlands, home to huge populations of peepers and bullfrogs, and a shelter for the Merganser ducks who bounce between here and the river. It seems healthy and alive. In winter it is dramatic: cold and windswept, looking east the hills are cut steeply by the river, exposing the hard, ancient rock that is the heart of the Appalachian chain. Great clouds of mist rise from the river in spring and fall, and the sun glances the fields sometimes a full seventy minutes after sunrise, with bright swaths of frost remaining late into morning as the sun finally surmounts the cliffs of Warren County.
Early summer that
Come spring is the plowing, and then around Mother's Day, just as the lilac blooms, the farmers manure the fields. The wave of shit smell is intense, and not altogether unpleasant. At the very least, it means no houses are being built this year. I run throughout those fields much of the year; I know them well and have come to depend on them.
Then the planting. Field after field, in succession, corn, alfalfa, and in the upper fields, soy. And then, the herbicides. Roundup ready seeds, and Roundup applications. I loathe Monsanto.
Roundup's dangers are largely unknown- glyphospate is dangerous, but the other, "inert" ingredient are kept secret. With a company like Monsanto, which has a long history of playing fast and loose with the law, one should worry.
Worse, these seeds- or more specifically, the pollen, contaminates the gene pool of every other corn, soy, and alfalfa planting in the area. For instance, many think that organic soy is no longer possible, as all commercial plantings of it are mixed up with the Roundup Ready gene, the gene or genes that make the plant unkillable by the Roundup pesticide.

So this has driven me from the fields, and I now run in all directions, the Mariton Wildlife Preserve just north, the woods and old mill just south, the cliffs across the river. Me and the dog.
One sees pristine fields, but in truth, it is no less industrial than a factory. The soy and corn is silage, it is pig and cow food. Cow's shouldn't be eating corn (their stomachs do not handle it well), so one has to wonder about the effects down the line on milk and meat when genes are involved. In a nutshell, its the problem with how we produce food in this country.

But the frogs seems fine, for now. Soon I will be inspecting them for physical malformations, I've heard it happens. Also: the milkweed population is huge, and the colonies of insects seem healthy. I don't know. Maybe the dangers are overstated. I don't know.

Being pushed out into the surrounding lands have led to some interesting discoveries: one, the stand of Paw-Paw trees that some people at TAS tried to keep secret (to be honest, they told me where I could find it). It is a lovely little patch, with lots of little ones and some tall ones. They flower and don't set fruit for some reason. But I have a paw-paw secret of my own. I found a large, fruiting specimen. Very exciting. And I ain't telling where it is. Maybe.

Music and Art Blogging

Teachers,

Head over to the protected teacher's blog to get access info for posting on the music blog.

Sexuality

TAS is a pretty gracious place. We treat each other well, for the most part, and the students thrive. Life is more complex than ever for a young person and the TAS approach is that curiosity, relationship skills, and self-awareness will always be relevant, whatever the technological, political, or emotional landscape may be in the future.
For instance, several of us teachers went to the graduation for the Bucks County Community College LPN program. What a varied and impressive group of nurses. Our graduate, Crystal Connolly stood out: she was awarded a scholarship based on her academic quality and was the only one who declared the intention of going into anesthetic nursing. That's a tough field and the life and death dimension is right in front of you. It takes nerve and ambition.

Now, this graduate might not mind me saying that she had everything working against her when she came to Tinicum. School, home, and her social life were extremely problematic. But her own verve and intensity, and our patience, eventually combined pretty well. At the time, she felt that the academic skills she got from us were woefully inadequate. Perhaps that is true. Of course, we can't force a person to study, write, do homework, or get enough rest. Several years down the road, I still haven't figured out how to make a horse drink water. Yet enough room was provided for her character to come together independent of all the other circumstances, and enough support was there for her to take some chances. And look at her now.

She was intense, strong, willful, fierce, and couldn't rely on anyone but herself. This is the kind of young person who makes her own luck.

Towards the end of the school year several boys and girls were lounging in the lobby (or foyer, or hallway...whatever it is) doing what some kids do: a rapid fire engagement of warmth and teasing, with many layers of irony and some pretty sharp jabs. I had to point out, however, that their constant use of the word "fag" could really shut a kid down. What if someone in school was struggling with whether or not it is "right" to be attracted to someone of their own sex, and who had likely suffered a lot in his or her previous school? To their credit, they got it. They hadn't considered that, and they are proud of the fact that our school could be a shelter from that particular storm.

Years ago we had a (nearly) openly gay student. Since then, we've had none. Of course we have had gay students, but even a place like TAS isn't safe enough for that. And the news would get around anyway.

Are we doing enough to ensure that a student who struggles with his or her sexuality is getting the kind of care our nursing school graduate received? Do we realize how much pain he or she carries? Or is what we do just enough?

Buddhism is the practice of dropping categories and letting experience speak for itself. Every person has their own way through the world. It should be relatively easy for a contemporary American Buddhist to drop the fixed notions of male and female, straight and gay. After all, as Walt Whitman put it, we "contain multitudes".

To wit:

The standard model of human development is built on 46 chromosomes, including two that determine sex: XX for female, XY for male. But, as Callahan points out, not everyone ends up 46XX or 46XY.

Variations in sperm or egg, in the mixing of cells from mother and father and in the cell division that follows can all stir the genetic soup into alternative outcomes. The possibilities, Callahan writes, "are as grand and as varietal as the fragrances of flowers: 45X; 47XXX; 48XXXX; 49XXXXX; 47XYY; 47XXY; 48XXXY; 49XXXXY; and 49XXXYY." These variations are familiar to geneticists - the first on the list, for instance, is known as Turner's syndrome - but the general public is still stuck in a black and white, XX/XY world.

New Scientist has an interesting book review up about the intersex world. Over the course of a lifetime we all must realize that the world is far more complex, and far more interesting, than the version of it we carry around in our heads.

This is worth reading too, for the difficult, practical problems of the intersex world:

Now imagine what you do in a Customs line when you enter a country. Imagine you’ve heard from acquaintances who’ve been turned away by the US, or that worst-case-scenario lurking at the back of your head about Homeland Security issuing a memo about “cross-dressed terrorists.” What do you put then? What do you wear then? How do you present?

Imagine how vulnerable you feel. Driving (what if a cop pulls me over). At the bank (what if they think I’m trying to scam my own money). At the doctors. At school. At work. At anywhere they want a piece of ID, anywhere they want you to tick a box that divides humanity into two. Anywhere they want you to fill out a form. Confess, little tranny girl, confess. Tell them what in their minds what you “really” are. Or else. And they’ll get you anyway.

Because it’s not likely to be a problem for most of y’all, this is something that I’d wager the average cissexual person has rarely to never thought about. That tiny little box is the epicenter of governmental interest, of laws, of bureaucratic guidelines. Lawsuits are fought over the right to change the letter in that little box.

Why is this important to TAS? Students fall apart in other schools for a multitude of reasons. We always have a higher percentage of neglected, sexually abused, and otherwise victimized kids that your average school. A teenager who doesn't fit the mold is going to have trouble, and when it comes to enforcing sexuality, violence usually isn't far behind. It is a human rights issue.

Happy Monday!

So summer is underway, the rains of the late spring a distant memory. The Delaware is finally dropping and those of us lucky enough to have well-draining soil have marvelous things waving to us in our yards.
Interestingly, most of my hybrid tomatoes are doing well, but the heirlooms are struggling a bit. My guess is that the all the moisture trapped CO2 in the soil, lowering the ph and locking out a bunch of key nutrients like magnesium. Some of the plants haven't bounced back, and the earliest fruit to set looks pinched and frightened.
My compost has been incredible: all I keep is a pile, nothing fancy. I have an encroaching patch of bamboo which is home to dozens of birds, and produces endless structural matter for the garden. I have a patch of nettles which I cut and soak in five gallon buckets until they ferment. It stinks like a swamp, or lets say, a strongly biological, living stink. I fed the tomaters with it- nettles are rich in silica (little glass needles cover the plant, when handled, they snap and release an irritant) and brew uniquely. I'm hoping it is the bounce they need.

Today I settle down to work on the music/art and contemplative education curricula. I will be posting both here, and cross-posting to the music blog. Stay tuned.

Poetry Friday

A friend of mine, poet and filmmaker Vasiliki Katsarou, is the editor of a new and interesting volume of poetry titled Eating Her Wedding Dress. It has some pretty well known and wonderful poets in it, such as Margaret Atwood and Jorie Graham, but is much more than that. It is fun and multi-dimensional (and selling pretty well). It is an anthology of Clothing Poems, which I thought was an excellent idea when I heard about it. Vasiliki has taught at TAS. Here is one poem, by Maxine Susman:

A week before you leave
we're in the bedroom sorting clothes.
Three piles: to take, to toss, to leave at home.
Part of me says I'll do your clothes
forever if you'll stay with us. Part says
here's your own jug of detergent,
don't forget to read the labels.
Part says take the other sweatshirt,
it will come in handy, part says
leave it for me to wear around the house
when I miss you. Some things
in your toss pile I regret, but why
should I save what you don't want?
What seemed a closetful of everything
squeezes into one bulging duffle.
I see you there, your quilt on your new bed,
CD's in their rack, posters on the walls,
clothes piled on another floor,
while I sit here in your old room
sorting the come and go between us.

Family Conflict

One of the more frustrating and saddening things we see happen to a family are the throes of a bitter divorce. The kids get caught in the middle, and the adults are so stuck, so attached to their anger and disappointment, that their suffering is actually lost in the storm.
On the other hand, a wise and well-planned separation can still be terribly painful to a kid, but it can be a time of growth and deepening understanding of their parents as well, so long as the kid's needs come first, always.

This comes to mind because my favorite law-blog, the Volokh Conspiracy (which is written by a Russian emigre who is also quite conservative, politically speaking) posted the following (if you are interested the comments are quite worth reading):

From Upton v. Upton, 1996 WL 397706 (Conn. Super. Ct.) (emphasis added):

Counsel for the minor children [age 14 and 17 -EV] articulate their strong desire to be primarily cared for in their father's home. Counsel is able to argue that the children are of a sufficient age to tell the court what their preference is, and that that preference is not for a manipulative purpose. The court has some concern as to the identification of these male children with not only their father, but more damaging to them, with their grandfather. Whether or not the children feel economic pressure to side with their father is unknown.

The deed has been done, however, and only healing over time will determine whether or not these children have an adult relationship with their mother. Hating one-half of themselves will not help them into the future. The court orders that counsel for the minor children read the opinion of the court to the children, and the court further requires that the children engage in supportive counseling to assist them in expressing their anger with their mother, and with their father for bringing them into this battle, and leaving them there for so long.

Shim Gum Do and Meditation

Today at 4:00, Shim Gum Do for TAS students who took the class this past term
Today at 5:00, Meditation until 5:40

Shakespeare in the Park

Two of my favorite plays are playing at the Public Theater in Central Park this summer. The first is Twelfth Night, whose ending song "When That I Was" is reason enough to consider Shakespeare as one of the very best songwriters in English. Shakespeare's comedies vary in quality, to be sure, but As You Like It and this one are so filled with music and kindheartedness, so suffused with sweet melancholia, that they seem to embody the England That Never Was better than anything else.
Far darker and weirder is Euripides' The Bacchae. There is so much to recommend this play: the western sweep of eastern religions, the conflict between the rational political state and the mysterious upwellings of passion and ecstasy, the crescendo of blind, mob violence...tremendous stuff.
The performances are supposed to be first rate.

Autism and the Environment

I think the autism/vaccination link has been put to rest but perhaps it is only a distraction from the real problem: the thousands and thousands of new chemical compounds released into the environment without any real safety testing. Here is a series of articles that consider the subject deftly and straightforwardly. It worth reading.

Wednesday...

For an interesting look at the value of a Masters Degree over its costs, take a look at this Times article. Clearly there are significant differences from field to field, but the perspective of several long time academics and administrators is interesting:

The next bubble to burst will be the education bubble. Make no mistake about it, education is big business and, like other big businesses, it is in big trouble. What people outside the education bubble don’t realize and people inside won’t admit is that many colleges and universities are in the same position that major banks and financial institutions are: their assets (endowments down 30-40 percent this year) are plummeting, their liabilities (debts) are growing, most of their costs are fixed and rising, and their income (return on investments, support from government and private donations, etc.) is falling.

This is a darker perspective, and one I share, but it is interesting, isn't it? The whole industry doesn't seem sustainable. Check the debate out, there are three perspectives to consider.

MJ

I have largely ignored Jackson's passing, not for lack of interest but for general revulsion at the whole celebrity/tragedy angle. Let me leave it at this, he was obviously and chronically terrorized by his father and exploited by just about everyone else. Then the pharmaceuticals found a home, to wit, his being sued a couple of years ago for 100,000 in pharmacy bills.

as per Furious Seasons:

I was blown away on Saturday when, during cable news coverage of Michael Jackson's death, two doctors offering analysis were very critical of Jackson's reported long-term, chronic use of both painkillers and anti-depressants and noted that they could affect someone's heart health (while that's likely obvious to one and all with painkillers, it's probably not so obvious with anti-depressants). Sadly, I cannot find transcripts of either doctor on Fox News and CNN, but I can assure you they said it and it was a stunner to me, given how the mainstream media ignored the connection between anti-depressant use and sudden cardiac death in women, as reported by researchers in the Nurse's Health Study. It's also a stunner to me in light of how naive we've been as a culture when it comes to using anti-depressants very casually while assuming that there's no long-term impact from using the drugs.

Jackson was allegedly on a staggering cocktail of prescription drugs: thrice daily injections of Demerol; Dilaudid; Viccodine; and 120 mgs. a day of Zoloft and 40 mgs. a day of Paxil. He was supposedly taking the anti-depressants for OCD and social phobia issues. What Jackson was taking at the time of his death isn't entirely clear, since his toxicology report won't be available for many weeks and also since last night his personal physician, Conrad Murray, reportedly told Los Angeles police detectives that he hadn't injected Jackson with Demerol and, in the words of the doctor's lawyer, "There was no Demerol. No OxyContin."

He said nothing about anti-depressants, however.

So we shall see how all this prescription business plays out. Of course, Jackson was known to have used painkillers for many years to treat chronic pain problems and it's entirely possible that he'd become addicted to them. It's entirely possible that Michael was hooked on anti-depressants as well. Certainly, SSRIs can be very addictive (or create physical dependency, if you prefer) for some people.

That said, I want to make it clear that I am not blaming Zoloft and Paxil for Jackson's death. I am not saying that taking either drug will give any specific person a heart attack. But I am saying that, for now, that the two anti-depressants are inextricably entwined and linked to the death of MJ.

The research on long-term anti-depressant use is thin to begin with and there's not a lot of research on links between anti-depressant use and heart problems, but it is obvious to me that there is clearly something going on here and, as I wrote back in March, the nurse's study should be a big wake up call to doctors who've had patients on anti-depressants for many years and for patients themselves.

An Estimable Monday...

It is a little cool, but my summer begins with my first swim in the very chilly Cook's Creek. Last nights swim was a bit of a shock, but this morning after a longish run in the hills me and my hot pup Milton splashed around until our bones began to crack from the cold.
Whenever I take him running in a new place I leave a long rope on him. It gives me an extra moment to grab him, should we run into anything untoward (like the skunk that pasted us last week). Milton isn't terribly obedient; he is, however, fairly reasonable. Our interests largely overlap.
I noticed this morning something about the processes of information. Picture this: You are running down a steep, narrow, wooded path. It is mostly stones jutting this way and that, green and blue-grey with moss and lichen. The soil is damp, and the small logs here and there are slippery. A large, red-brown, and joyful dog runs ahead of you, dragging behind him an eight foot long yellow rope which drifts side to side and occasionally under your feet as you run.
Your footing is very particular, and a fall would be pretty painful. Yet your brain negotiates the whole complex exercise smoothly, despite very different foot falls being required every running step.
What complicates things is the rope. If I step on the rope I will suddenly yank Milton's neck, which I do not want to do; if I hesitate, I would likely twist an ankle and fall. Unfortunately, the rope is necessary at this stage of Milton's "training", especially in those woods.

While running I recognized three rather distinct and surprisingly non-influencing lines of mental activity. By this I mean that the first two did not effect each other and the third, though a product of the first two, took a while to come to any action:

1) running down the rocky path requires snap experience- and coordination-based judgments that also tap into a feedback loop regarding the body's strength and performance. These tiny adjustments seem to use primarily the eyes, the conforming of the feet on the uneven ground, an awareness of general inertia, and an awareness of general ability to meet each feature of the path safely.

2) tracking the rope and not wanting to land land on it made no difference whatsoever whether or not I landed on it. I was running quite fast, for me anyway, and clearly the judgments about what my feet should do and what I should do were insulated from each other. A safe step trumped skipping the rope.

3) lastly, the awareness of these two processes not only operating, but of their each having an independent time sense. And then there is the recursive aspect of being aware of being aware, etc etc.

Normally, we assume that time is relatively uniform, at least subjectively speaking. Anyone reading this blog probably has some idea of Einstein's frames of reference in his Special Relativity (i.e. time elapses at different rates for different observers of a given event). Interesting to think, then, that within our own brains are very different rates of time.

Think of summer. I can hold these two thoughts simultaneaously: it seems like a long time ago that we had graduation/I can't believe it is almost July, summer is evaporating. Or, when each day seems so long and the weeks shoot by. Time is not uniform even for ourselves.

Fortunately, someone is working on it:

Your brain, after all, is encased in darkness and silence in the vault of the skull. Its only contact with the outside world is via the electrical signals exiting and entering along the super-highways of nerve bundles. Because different types of sensory information (hearing, seeing, touch, and so on) are processed at different speeds by different neural architectures, your brain faces an enormous challenge: what is the best story that can be constructed about the outside world?

Here's a link to the rest.

Milton Erickson

There are a lot of very interesting Miltons out there. John Milton Cage, John Milton, Milton Friedmen (this is not an endorsement of his economics!), and Milton Erickson. Who?
There are a lot of therapists who consider this self-taught American one of the very greatest clinicians ever. Here is a passage I stumbled over this morning:

At age 17, he contracted polio, and was so severely paralysed that the doctors believed he would die. On the critical night where he was at his worst, he had another formative "autohypnotic experience".

E: As I lay in bed that night, I overheard the three doctors tell my parents in the other room that their boy would be dead in the morning. I felt intense anger that anyone should tell a mother her boy would be dead by morning. My mother then came in with as serene a face as can be. I asked her to arrange the dresser, push it up against the side of the bed at an angle. She did not understand why, she thought I was delirious. My speech was difficult. But at that angle by virtue of the mirror on the dresser I could see through the doorway, through the west window of the other room. I was damned if I would die without seeing one more sunset. If I had any skill in drawing, I could still sketch that sunset...

I saw that vast sunset covering the whole sky. But I know there was also a tree there outside the window, but I blocked it out.

(interviewer): You blocked it out? It was that selective perception that enables you to say you were in an altered state?

E: Yes, I did not do it consciously. I saw all the sunset, but I didn't see the fence and large boulder that were there. I blocked out everything except the sunset. After I saw the sunset, I lost consciousness for three days. When I finally awakened, I asked my father why they had taken out that fence, tree, and boulder. I did not realize I had blotted them out when I fixed my attention so intensely on the sunset. Then, as I recovered and became aware of my lack of abilities, I wondered how I was going to earn a living. I had already published a paper in a national agricultural journal. "Why Young Folks Leave the Farm." I no longer had the strength to be a farmer, but maybe I could make it as a doctor.

Another Glorious Day, this time on a Wednesday...

And we open with great news for TAS from SCOTUS. The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 ruling, held that a school district can be required to reimburse a family for private school if the student's need were not adquately met. This includes situations in which the student did not have a prior IEP. Here is a quote from the dissent:

“Special education can be immensely expensive, amounting to tens of billions of dollars annually and as much as 20 percent of public schools’ general operating budgets,” Justice Souter wrote. “Given the burden of private school placement, it makes good sense to require parents to try to devise a satisfactory alternative within the public schools.”

Obviously, that sort of reasoning, were it guiding the majority opinion, wouldn't help TAS very much. But thanks to a combination of conservatives (Alito, Roberts), quasi-progressives (Ginsburg, Stevens, Breyer) and the usual swing-vote Kennedy, the interests of individual students are being asserted over that of a school district's management problems. Interestingly,
both pro-voucher and usually reactionary justices joined Souter's dissent. Go figure. I look forward to reading the whole opinion.

Here is a good summary from the reliable SCOTUSBLOG (and here for the NYT article)

Today, the Supreme Court held that parents of disabled children can seek reimbursement for private education expenses regardless whether their child had previously received special-education services from a public school. By a vote of six to three, the Court held that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) authorizes reimbursement whenever a public school fails to make a free appropriate public education (FAPE) available to a disabled child. Interestingly, the Court granted certiorari on the same question in 2007 but affirmed the opinion below by an equally divided court (Justice Kennedy recused himself), indicating that at least one Justice changed his or her vote.

A dispatch from Iran, fascinating

via Washington Note:

Dispatches from Iran -- sent 7:15 am, 22 June 2009

The Coward -- Saturday afternoon

I come out of the coffee-net and the first thing I see is the row of green and white police trucks lined up perpendicular to the square. I scan away toward the square itself and there behold an impressive sight: row after row of cops in riot gear. All of the maidoon is occupied, the four roads that led in and out marked at their corners by uniformed police wearing dark green. Inside the stone and grass plaza located in the central part of the square, a place where just a week ago Mousavi supporters had nightly gathered to chant and cheer, there are police in Robocop riot gear standing, waiting, looking back out towards the perimeter of the traffic circle.

"Az enqelab mirisim be azadi!" From Revolution we'll get to Freedom! The kid in the internet cafe had minutes earlier made a clever pun, referring to today's march from Revolution Square to Freedom Square. Saturday afternoon was to be a repeat of last Monday's millions but after the most recent Friday Prayers and the Leader's injunctions, the march had been called into doubt. Around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, there came word that another warning had just been issued to not come, that patience had run out. The kid was putting on a strong, defiant face.

Standing outside, looking at this show of force, his bravura and mine seemed silly. Power is about this. It is quickly becoming about place, about who can stand where and when.

Spooked, I walk away from the square and make my way home using alternate routes.

Back at my apartment, I realize that, like an idiot, I had left a newspaper (Karrobi's Etemaad Melli) with notes scribbled all over it (in English) in the internet cafe, source material for these dispatches. I go back to retrieve it, taking back alleys.

I call a few folks along the way, the cell phones for some reason are working, perhaps so that people can tell each other not to go to the march. That is more or less the message I received from my friends. It's becoming less and less worth it, only the fully committed to seeing this thing through would show and their numbers would no doubt be dwindling...

I go back, I get the paper. Time to make the return walk home again. I stiffen my spine, walk right into the circle, the newspaper curled up into my hand. I need to do this. I make a point of walking pass a row of the officers waiting at one corner of the plaza. I need to do this. Some are bored, others are keeping themselves busy with stupid things. They help each other strap and tighten their helmets, one taps his fingers against the top of his plastic shield. I see that one or two of the guys have on fashionable glasses, vestiges of their other life...

As I pass, I look them in the eye. Iranians in general stare. It took me a long time to realize that this habit wasn't antagonistic or "mad-dogging"...Fixed eye-contact is a normal thing, part curiosity and partly a way to size up the person walking towards them. A friend observes that Iranians have been lied to so much the only device left to them for ascertaining Truth is the zaher, or appearance. Like the ancient Greeks, the assumption is that the external reveals true character.

The cops look back at me with little interest.

I receive a very different response from the young basijis coming up the road. They show up after the police, in beige cammie trucks traveling in convoy. Today, under daylight, they emerge from whatever hole it is they hide in wearing uniforms to go with their oversized helmets (think Spaceballs).

Really, it's becoming more and more like the original Star Wars, by the end they were coming up with new uniforms for the same old Stormtroopers just to be able to market more action figures to punk kids like me. In the back of each transport truck a large red flag is flapping, casting yellow and green print of faith into the wind.

When I fix my eyes on them, the look is deadly, menacing.

Basijis. The lesser cousin of the police, they are more the serious of the two. For the cops it's a job, and so far at least their hearts don't seem to be into it. For these basijis, today's a hobby. They bring an enthusiasm to their "work" that only an ardent hobbyist can. A member of my family notes, This is their good time. They don't screw, they don't drink or smoke pot (bet you didn't know that went on in Iran), what else are they going to do with all of that energy? For 360 days of the year basijis don't do shit, but for those
5 days...

Ke chi bishe? What's the point? It feels so unnecessary. Every rally had been peaceful, folks had really done their best, truly taken great care to not antagonize. They deserved better than this. Delam vaghan misooze. My heart aches...

You notice the pronoun? Up until now the stories have been replete with "we" and "they," references to the collective. Feeling isolated, seeing nothing going on, I lose my nerve, I figure it's all over, I give up.

The Shit Hits the Fan -- Saturday evening, not yet sunset

The little guy was cracking himself up silly. "Moo...! Moo...! Akharesh shod...Mousavi!" I sat in the front of the shared taxi ride. The small boy wraps his hands around my headrest and repeats the chant. "Moo...! Moo...! Akharesh shod...Mousavi!" Moo...! Moo...! At the end it became Mousavi! His mom sitting in the back, her voice barely above a whisper, tells him, "Na azizam, aqasare agha ye Mousavi na shod..." No dear, at the end it did not...

The three of us, the adults in the car, groused about everything that was happening. Ba zoor hamichi ra mikhand...Yemosh havoon...They want everything by force...Animals...

We are on Sattar Khan Street, heading south towards Tohid Square, or Unity Square. Tohid, formerly known as Kennedy, was once an up-and-coming neighborhood, a fashionable enclave for young and newly-married couples to make their first move outside of their parents' home. Duplex-style housing from the mid and late 1970s still lines the street, the bottom floors of many now converted into offices and small shops. Later, in a different context, the area around Tohid would be where the first fast food joints opened up, some of the original pahtoghs, or hangouts. Though no longer unique in Tehran, on Thursday nights certain stretches and bends of Satter Khan above Tohid are full of cars filled with families. Tehran has elements of the small-town in America. For want of better options, diversions consist of cruising and hanging out at burger and ice cream joints late into the night.

The traffic was horrific. No one was moving. Cars stop, engines turn off, people get out to see what is happening. There is dark smoke ahead. We can see at least two helicopters circling above. I see families gathered on the rooftops, everyone is looking south towards the square. What has happened?

On the other side of the street comes a pack of protestors chanting. I didn't expect this. I was wrong. It is not over: "Marq bar diktator! Marq bar diktator!" Unable to move, the vehicles have effectively become the fixed seats of a street theater. With nowhere to go, drivers and their passengers get out, they stand up on the edge of their doors to take pictures with their mobile phones.

One of the marchers points across at us, her face screwed up in anger and frustration: "Hemayat, hemayat, Iraniane BIGHEIRAT!" Help, help, Iranians WITHOUT honor!

What's going on ahead? Why aren't we moving? Motorists coming back the other way tell us that Tohid is on fire, they've burned Cinema Bahman, they tell us to turn back, turn back. Our taxi driver, a young man sporting a beard ("I just grew it out so that they won't mess me!"), pulls a classic Tehran move and wheels the old Iranian-made Paykon 180 degrees. He cuts into an alley. Maybe we can get to Tohid this way. He's not the only one with this idea and as he pulls the car down towards the square we get stuck again, this time it's worse.

It's not looking good, cars are backing up and we're off the main road. Our driver gives up. "Sharmandam, I am deeply sorry, but I've got to go back home. Please, forget the fare, I'm so sorry..." The mom and her son get out, she tries to take his hand but he rushes forward between the cars, then stops. Karate stance.

Shit. I get out. Ahead I see a group of basijis. They are lined up against a wall, awaiting their orders. I notice that one holds a lead pipe at his side. The pipe is the length of his leg...

Can anyone help me? I am trying to find a way to Tohid. I want to go to Vali Asr. "Go that way, but I don't think that you''ll make it, Tohid is a mess, they say that they burned a 13 year old girl..." I keep cutting south. Cars that have come off of the main road and into the warren of this neighborhood remain stuck, not moving. I weave my way through the grid, leaning into windows, asking here and there how things are from where they've come. Agha, in var shoolooq e? Sir, is it safe? The answer is always, "Yes." I begin to worry...I don't know this neighborhood, I don't have anyone to take me in just in case, and it's getting close to sunset. I have to laugh. It's like a disaster and zombie movie all rolled up in one. I am Snake Plissken and Candide set off on my uncertain adventure...

I continue to cut south towards Tohid. The black smoke coming from Satter Khan and the square grows thicker, continues to climb into the pale evening light. The neighborhood that I am in is faring no better. At a corner I see an incredible sight, two street battles raging perpendicular to each other. I stand at their juncture. In one direction, at least three fiery heaps stretch out straight down the middle of the street, there is smoke everywhere, and beyond the haze a crowd of men marches towards a line of armed and waiting basijis...At the top of the street is the burned and tinny carcass of a motorcycle, a basiji mount, its rider nowhere to be found...

To my left, at the end of the street, another group of young men face off against the paramilitaries. They show no fear, the chants come faster and faster...

I turn back. This is not going to work, I need to get back home.

Back on Satter Khan, now heading north, it only gets worse. It's really an unbelievable scene. Every 50 to 100 meters there is a confrontation or a fire, people are chanting, they are defiant. And in between there are the cars, in both directions just sitting there, not moving, engines off. Everyone is out and watching. This has become an accidental march. Everyone, without planning to, has taken the side of protest.

What are they going to do with all of these people? What's going to happen when the cops pour in? I wonder. These people can't move. At bus stops I see citizens sitting on the benches and railings, either waiting for the bus or hanging around until the commotion passes. One old lady is peeling oranges and sharing with her husband and the others seeking refuge inside of the shelter. Car horns up and down the road are honking, nearly in unison, "doot-doot-de-doot-doot, doot-doot-de-doot-doot." There is no let up.

Near Patrice Lumumba Street I stop to get something to drink. I've got several kilometers to go yet. Bottled water is out at all of the stores and kiosks. All that is left is Rani, a juice drink (with real but unnervingly way-too-big fruit chunks inside) and Delster, Iranian non-alcoholic beer. It's quite a sight, people kicking back a few brews, watchin' a riot, no
worries at all...

A pedestrian asks me what is happening further down the road, using the alliterative phrasing that Iranians are so fond of: "Bezan bezan hast?" "Na, bekosh bekosh." Is it hitting hitting going on? No, comes the answer from a man standing next to me, it's killing killing...

***********************************

Across from a police sub-station, officers stand poised with their plastic shields in front of them, facing north. Rocks are being thrown at them, one by one, then two by two. The officers stand their ground. I am on the other side of the street, watching. Two young men turn the corner and walk towards me. They are both eating chocolate-glazed donuts. I tell them, Bi khial, Wow, you two are really taking it easy! One of them answers, Come on man, gotta take care of the stomach first...

The rocks now start to rain in by the dozen and the police run. They rush to their motorcycles and hop on, flying south. Protesters pour down the street, a full assault. One of the officers awkwardly throws rocks back at his tormentors. Unable to get off a good shot he wheels towards us and throws in our direction and I, the Donut Brothers, and about 20 other people run away, around the corner.

******************************

This is a glimpse of what is to come. The decision to prevent people from marching calmly and peacefully through the squares and main boulevards has thrown the action into the kuches and mahals of Tehran. It's gone into the neighborhoods, the alleys and corners of where people permanently live, not the public squares and intersections that they occasionally pass through.

You have to understand the importance of the "kuche" or alley if you want to understand Tehran, especially now. Sar e kuche, too ye kuche, boro kuche...the beginning and end of everyday life happens in a kuche, the alley.

"Alley" as it is used here isn't the same as what we might imagine in the U.S., the dark and dangerous spaces of New York, for instance, where bad things happen. Back in the day, neighborhoods consisted primarily of single-family homes, many with a hayat or yard with a central hoz, or fountain (the film "Children of Heaven" is a good depiction of what I'm talking about).

The buildings were close to each other and the kuche served as the shared ground between entrances. You had to walk down an alley to get home and the odds were that you would run into your neighbor along the way. Likewise, the alley provided a crude form of security. If someone had no business being there or was up to no good it would be immediately known...

Neighbors knew who belonged there. Years ago Tehran was like a live version of those black and white Italian movies from the 40s and 50s, neighborhoods were populated by men with colorful names: Behrooz Sibili (Moustache Behrooz), Ali Hezar Dawshi (Ali 10 Cents), Mahmad Damagh (Mahmad Nose), Jangir Khiki (Fat Jangir). Neighbors simultaneously spied on and looked after each other. A patriarchal code of honor, with all of its blessings and vices, held sway and woe onto the young man who wandered into the neighborhood. Hava ye ham digar ra dashtand. While this code has dimmed considerably because of shifts in demographic and housing patterns---more and more people live away from their families in apartment towers, the familiarity remains. As I noted in an earlier post, Tehran, despite its size, remains an intimate big city, the reason no doubt being that the base of social life outside of the family remains the kuche. Even if they don't personally know their neighbor nor care to, residents of a block will come to each other's aid when threatened from without (Asef Bayat's important book, "Street Politics" captures well what I am talking about).

The geography of Tehran's urban life is going to play a big role in the coming days and months. Every time the police manage to squeeze down on protestors on the main road, the kids run sideways and backwards into the criss-crossing alleys. It will be different now...

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Under a bridge a crowd is chanting. Half of a car is on fire and a host of people has gathered to watch. A fire truck shows up, the crowd hoots and whistles. They rush over and surround the truck. Do they want it to leave? Before I can figure it out the truck abandons the street.

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The walk is many kilometers and it takes me nearly two hours. Along the way there is wonderment. I smell freshly sliced cucumber. A young boy sits on a storefront stoop and sees about the business of eating folded flatbread with feta and cucumber. Kids on bikes race each other. Three boys walk past with me on the sidewalk with ping pong paddles, they are coming back from the park (Tehran's parks, like those of Paris, come equipped with ping pong tables). Satter Khan Park is filled with families and couples on blankets eating seeds and sharing tea. Many are enjoying traditional ice cream, Akbar Mashti made with pistachio and cardamom. There is a guy selling fish, a guy selling meat.

Old men stand outside their fruit stand. The car wash under Satter Khan Bridge continues its business. A father and his daughter come plodding down the sidewalk, three grocery sacks hangs between them, cucumbur, tomatoes, watermelons.

I finally make it to where I need to be. I spot a man selling DVDs. Iranians are notorious film buffs (a topic worthy of its own post) and before this ruckus began if you were to see a crowd gathered on the street in Tehran odds were they were buying up the latest Hollywood film, frequently while the picture was still in the theaters. I flip through the pile of plastic sleeves and choose "Night at the Museum, Part Two" and "Frost Nixon." How's business in all of this haye hoo, I ask the man? Eh, it's not bad, what can I say?

Don't you want to buy more, he asks me. No, this'll do...

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That night, with reports coming in of the newly dead and wounded, they sang "Allah Akbar" with renewed verve. "ALLAH u AKBAR!!!! ALLAH u AKBAR!!!!" The calls had never been louder. We sit in the kitchen and listen. A girl's voice leads. Tonight she is without restraint. She doesn't wait for the response. Voices heave, swinging back and forth, call and response.

Natarsin! Natarsin! Ma hame ba ham hastim! Don't be scared! Don't be scared! We are all in this together...

-- Anonymous Student in Tehran, Shane M.

Some Ron Miller

Within the public system there are now many alternative programs for students "at risk" of dropping out because they are so completely alienated by the impersonal routines of conventional schooling. And there are still significant pockets of progressive educators and related groups--such as those promoting whole language and cooperative learning--who remain determined to infuse public education with more democratic, humanistic purposes. But despite these oases of student-centered learning, the educational climate during the past decade has been affected by ever tighter state and federal control over learning, leading to still further testing, politically mandated "outcomes," and national standards. There is some hope in the relatively new concept of "charter schools," which allow parents and innovative educators to receive public funding with less bureaucratic intervention, although it remains to be seen how much freedom such schools will be allowed if national standards begin to be enforced.

As government school systems become increasingly yoked to the purposes of the corporate economy, it is likely that thousands more families and educators will turn to the more democratic and person-centered values represented by alternative schools and home education. For the past century and half, alternative schools have been isolated countercultural enclaves with little influence on mainstream educational thinking and policy. But in the "postindustrial" or "postmodern" era that appears to be emerging now, the industrial-age model of "social efficiency" is possibly starting to become obsolete.

Perhaps, as Ivan Illich envisioned in his 1970 book Deschooling Society and James Moffett describes in his recent book The Universal Schoolhouse, the idea of a public school system may have outlived its usefulness. According to these and other authors, in a democratic, information-rich society, learning should take place everywhere in the community, and young people should have access to mentors who nourish their diverse personal interests and styles of learning. We have a long way to go before this sort of system is in place, but if our society does in fact move in this direction, it may well be alternative educators who show the way.

read the article

It is Tuesday, and it is not raining.

Another beautiful day, and like last year, summer began on just about the first day of summer. After all these years of summer starting so early, it is finally fixed. Whew.

One of my goals for TAS over the next year is to create a more formal feedback/criticism system for the students. They do have quite a lot of input into their schedule, their curricula, and in many classes, the day to day direction of the classes. For instance, the first part of my psychology class was very reading heavy. This was objected to on many reasonable grounds. For one thing, it really limited how much certain students could participate. Of course the could do the reading...but on the other hand, we are quite different than other schools and many of our students suffered enormously under the read-a-pile, write-a-pile regime. So we switched to another mode altogether: to watching certain movies in a particular way, discussing them, as well as doing some basic peer counseling training and role-playing. It worked out well. Was it a rigorous class? No. But all the student indicated that they learned quite a lot and now feel more comfortable in helping situations.

Here is an article from Edutopia, a public education reform organization, with a nice little item on using feedback in the classroom:

At the end of the year, the student survey can be your best friend -- that honest and supportive friend that gives you meaningful feedback and leaves you with something to think about. Your job is to set the stage for your friend to perform on, and then listen with an open mind. I've given surveys to every group of kids I've ever taught -- as young as second graders -- and I've found them invaluable in improving my practice.

First, let's consider the purpose of the survey. Though it can be a tool for reflection, primarily, it's a way for students to give you feedback...

This isn't rocket science. But in psychology having a clear and formal avenue for a client's negative feedback is one of the strongest predictors for success. After all, in a trusting relationship negative feedback is appreciated, and in psychology the quality of the relationship is far more consequential than any technique or theory or medication. This is absolutely, quantifiably the case. Why would it be any different for education?

Welcome, Monday!

It isn't raining. That in itself is news. General strikes may be called in Iran by the reformists, this, and the mourning cycle that is set to begin for the many dead, will be the backdrop for the next phase of the struggle. Absolutely fascinating.

The new school year begins around now, with several of us poking away at all sorts of sundry tasks, both at school and at home. For my part, I have settled on Thursday afternoon for Shim Gum Do classes and meditation periods. Please feel free to drop by. I will have the times set by this Wednesday. Please email me if you have any preferences.

Iran pt 8

More. via Hilzoy at Washington Monthly:

Carnegie Endowment Iran analyst Karim Sadjadpour:

"The weight of the world now rests on the shoulders of Mir Hossein Mousavi. I expect that Khamenei's people have privately sent signals to him that they're ready for a bloodbath, they're prepared to use overwhelming force to crush this, and is he willing to lead the people in the streets to slaughter?
Mousavi is not Khomeini, and Khamenei is not the Shah. Meaning, Khomeini would not hesitate to lead his followers to "martyrdom", and the Shah did not have the stomach for mass bloodshed. This time the religious zealots are the ones holding power.

The anger and the rage and sense of injustice people feel will not subside anytime soon, but if Mousavi concedes defeat he will demoralize millions of people. At the moment the demonstrations really have no other leadership. It's become a symbiotic relationship, Mousavi feeds off people's support, and the popular support allows Mousavi the political capital to remain defiant. So Mousavi truly has some agonizing decisions to make.

Rafsanjani's role also remains critical. Can he co-opt disaffected revolutionary elites to undermine Khamenei? As Khamenei said, they've known each other for 52 years, when they were young apostles of Ayatollah Khomeini. I expect that Khamenei's people have told Rafsanjani that if he continues to agitate against Khamenei behind the scenes, he and his family will be either imprisoned or killed, and that the people of Iran are unlikely to weep for the corrupt Rafsanjani family.

Whatever happens, and I know I shouldn't be saying this as an analyst, but my eyes well when I think of the tremendous bravery and fortitude of the Iranian people. They deserve a much better regime than the one they have."

From NIAC, a translation of a blog post:

"I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I'm listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It's worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again. All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I'm two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow's children..."

Iran pt 7

I thought I would pass this along, as things there are looking polarized and grim (from The Washington Note):

One of my colleagues at the New America Foundation's Global Strategic Finance Initiative, Douglas Rediker, received this note from a friend abroad. It's illuminating as to how a well-connected Iranian internationalist who has been in Tehran during much of the post-election unrest sees matters now. To protect Rediker's source, I can't make references about where he is today.

The email:

As of yesterday the options facing the country were well summarised by Simon Tisdall and Ellie Rose in The Guardian:

1 - Happy ending

To widespread surprise, the hardline Guardian Council conducts a thorough recount of votes, as ordered by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and decides, amid much embarrassment, that there should be a new election. Mir Hossein Mousavi wins. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accepts defeat. Pro-democracy demonstrators celebrate triumph of "green revolution". New government responds positively to US invitation to "unclench fist" and open talks on nuclear issue.

2 - Damp squib

The partial recount ordered by the Supreme Leader concludes Ahmadinejad won a clear victory, although by a narrower margin. Despite lingering suspicions of foul play, the opposition is forced to accept the verdict amid a continuing nationwide crackdown on dissent and warnings that further disorder will be dealt with harshly. Ahmadinejad, in bad odour with the Supreme Leader for provoking demonstrators, moderates his line on policy issues. Mousavi vows to fight again.

3 - Confrontation

The Guardian Council's partial vote recount and investigation into electoral fraud are rejected by the opposition. Demonstrations spread and intensify, with ever greater numbers of Iranians taking to the streets calling for the resignation of Khamenei and Ahmadinejad. Security forces respond with increasing force, arresting thousands and closing down media coverage, texting networks, websites and Twitter. Purge of reformist leaders, intellectuals, students and journalists continues. Leaderless demos gradually peter out, leaving resentment. Ahmadinejad steps up anti-western rhetoric. Resumed protests at a later date considered highly likely.

4 - A second revolution

An insider cabal of senior clerical and establishment conservatives challenges Khamenei and forces his resignation after a vote in the Assembly of Experts. Former president Hashemi Rafsanjani is elected in his stead and orders an investigation into the actions of Ahmadinejad and other senior members of the regime. Hardliners rally round the president while reformists demand new elections. Amid growing instability, Iran's unique Islamic/secular system of governance appears in danger of collapse".

As of Mr. Khameneni's speech today it seems that (1) above is no longer an option. For everything that Mousavi has publically announced option (2) also seems unlikely.

Unfortunately for everything I know, it now seems its either (3) or (4).

By the way, two nights ago I went out to see a few things ... as the general crowds spread into their homes militia style Mousavi supporters were out on the streets 'Basiji hunting'.

Their resolve is no less than these thugs -- they after hunting them down. They use their phones, their childhood friends, their intimate knowledge of their districts and neighbours to plan their attacks -- they're organised and they're supported by their community so they have little fear. They create the havoc they're after, ambush the thugs, use their Cocktail Molotovs, disperse and re-assemble elsewhere and then start again - and the door of every house is open to them as safe harbour -- they're community-connected.

The Basiji's are not.

These are not the students in the dorms, they're the street young -- they know the ways better than most thugs - and these young, a surprising number of them girls, are becoming more agile in their ways as each night passes on.

Also, with $10K every local police station lock can be broken and guns taken out...the police too are crowd friendly...for sure put a gun in their hands and these young become a serious counter-balance to the Basij...call them 10% of 18-22 year olds - that makes circa 10 million around the country versus max 4 million Basijis.

For all I've seen, discussed and observed on the ground I wouldn't dismiss option (4) too easily.

I hope Mousavi has thought through strategy and next steps. Where his protesters have come to was predictable up to a point.

What is the unpredictable thing he may do to change the board?