Author: Laura Grace Weldon

All Day Every Day Video Game Learning

/ Laura Grace Weldon / 7 Comments

All day, every day video game based schooling. Great.

A Popular Science article (print version, Jan 2010) extolls the virtues of a recently opened school in Manhattan designed around a  spanking new videogame curricula. Called Quest to Learn (Q2L) the school is heavily funded by interests (such as Intel) outside the NYC school district. And yes, every subject is taught via the medium of video games.

Another oh-gosh-isn’t-this-fabulous article appeared in the mass market magazine Parade and the flurry of media attention continues to accelerate. Soon every school child will be agitating to replace the boredom of classwork with the excitement of gaming.

Their eagerness will be nothing compared to the frenzy of those who make Big Decisions in education. Anything having to do with technology seems to make these folks feel they’re finally hip. Actually, they toss money at any curricula that promises to keep the little darlings quiet, busy and able to pass proficiency tests. In a few years you won’t be able to spit without hitting a school district boasting a version of this all day, every day video game schooling. Just great.

Q2L sounds impressive. Designed by the (soon to be rolling in bucks) Institute of Play, its curricula isn’t structured around ordinary educational games. Learning is integrated between subjects, offers hands-on components and promises to put the student in charge of his or her education. Q2L promotional materials assure parents their kids won’t be glassy-eyed screen droolers. But, and this is a huge but, it’s all day, every day.

Research tells us that high quality video games are known to promote rapid decision-making, logic, visual-spatial skills, risk assessment and intense focus. Author Steven Johnson notes in Everything Bad is Good for You that today’s technologies offer complex intellectual challenges that engage students in ways never before seen. All great. Except for a little thing we call balance.

Candy substituted for every meal, even with all the required vitamins, fiber and omega 3 fatty acids packed into it by a clever non-profit candy making institute, may make kids wildly happy but it still isn’t a real meal. An all day video gaming educational model may be new, shiny and sound perfectly thrilling but without balance it’s simply another way to train the next generation of workers to ignore the vital need for balance in their lives.

A truly balanced education is one that can’t be prescribed or predetermined by any curricula developer because each child is different. That’s that beauty of Democractic Schools, relaxed styles of homeschooling and unschooling. Those of us who educate this way know from experience that children, when raised in an atmosphere of loving trust and fully involved in the life of the community around them, tend naturally toward balance.

Video games may indeed be a wonderful way to learn but not all day, every day. They can be part of a wider concept of education.  It would be wonderful to see schools reverse the trends that have segregated and stymied the maturation of young people ever since modernization forced them into mandatory schooling.

For starters, today’s students could use a whole lot more of these missing elements to restore balance in each educational day.

Play. Not the sort of play that happens on carefully designed liability-friendly playgrounds or within the limits of       supervised games, but unstructured free play.  This sort of fun is actually essential for the development of imagination and innovative thinking as well as social and cognitive maturation.

Creative, hands-on engagement in open-ended work. The high scoring Icelandic and Finnish schools that keep our educational Big Deciders in a jealous froth aren’t test happy. Instead they include daily arts such as knitting, woodwork and felting while U.S. school kids rarely get to work with metal or wood in shop class let alone have the opportunity to paint at an easel.

Pursuit of interests. There may be no greater motivator than the ability to engage in one’s interests for hours, days, weeks or longer plus the freedom to move on when those interests are depleted.

Community involvement. Schools segregate young people from vibrant adults in the community precisely at the developmental stages when kids are primed to imitate, help and adhere to role models. No rote field trip or Skype interview can come close to collaboration and engagement in the real world around them.

Nature. People of all ages are missing out on the invigorating and focusing effects of spending regular time in nature.  Most of us suffer from Nature Deficit Disorder without recognizing how much is missing from our lives.  Even our eyes indicate that we’re intrinsically structured to be outdoors. New research indicates children who spend more time outdoors are much less likely to need eyeglasses. Something about the intensity of sunlight or the benefits of looking across wide open spaces seems to be a protective factor.

All day, every day video game based schooling. Another example of an educational trend taken too far in one direction. How great is that?

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Creative Commons image credit http://www.glyphjockey.com/pix2/nsg2.jpg

 

Materialism: What’s With Wanting So Much Stuff Anyway?

/ Laura Grace Weldon / 20 Comments

 

“You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?” Steven Wright

 

When times are hard, my husband and I tend to quote a few lines from an old movie called “The Jerk.”  Lines like, “All I need is this lamp and this chair, that’s all I need.”  Or, “It’s not the money, it’s the stuff.”  We chortle like merry imbeciles at our bad Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters impressions but really, materialism itself is pretty ridiculous.  What’s with wanting so much stuff anyway?

Accumulating material goods, past the point of sustaining a reasonably enjoyable and healthy lifestyle, is ironic if you think about it.  The simple equation of working for wages means that each expenditure represents more hours of life that you have to trade in to buy them.  You also require an ever larger space to store what you own.  If you run out of living quarters and garage space, you’ll wind up filling storage space too, then devote more working hours to paying rent on that.  Silly.

Sure, I hanker to own beautiful things. I particularly adore buying original art. That way I get the excuse of supporting someone else’s creative process while adding some beauty to my home.  I haven’t hung a new painting on our walls for too long because there are pesky bills to pay, but I still buy artwork to give as gifts.

Fortunately I’m twisted enough to get a kick out of frugality. For example, my husband and I still refuse to replace the last blanket we received as a wedding gift. It’s pretty tattered, but there’s something about waking up with our toes in blanket holes that strikes us funny.

We’ve also spared our kids indulgences like fancy toys, designer clothes or the thrill of being ferried around in a late model car.  For the first eight or so years of their lives they weren’t exposed to commercial television (except those glimpses at grandma’s house) and we didn’t make shopping a recreation, so they didn’t notice any painful contrast. Judging by peace they show now with worn jeans and scuffed shoes, they still don’t care too much.

There are reasons why some kids are more materialistic than others. A fascinating post on Half Full: Science for Raising Happy Kids explains,

“Turns out that there are two things that influence how materialistic kids are. The first is obvious: Consciously or not, we adults socialize kids to be materialistic. When parents—as well as peers and celebrities—model materialism, kids care more about wealth and luxury. So when parents are materialistic, kids are likely to follow suit. Same thing with television viewing: The more TV kids watch, the more likely they are to be materialistic.

The less obvious factor behind materialism has to do with the degree to which our needs are being filled. When people feel insecure or unfulfilled—because of poverty or because a basic psychological need like safety, competence, connectedness, or autonomy isn’t being met—they often to try to quell their insecurity by striving for wealth and a lot of fancy stuff. Because of this, relatively poor teenagers ironically tend to be more materialistic than wealthy ones. And less nurturing and more emotionally cold mothers tend to have more materialistic offspring.”

Yikes.

I can’t help but wonder if, metaphorically, this says something about our larger cultural obsession with stuff.  Are we as a people suffering from insecurity?  Sure.  And the more we listen to political pundits, the more insecure we feel.  Is there something about this current time that causes us to have unfilled needs for connectedness?  Having read Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community I’d have to agree with this too.

Materialism may feel good ever so briefly. Maybe seeking out, buying and bringing home the goods stimulates some primal instinct to hunt and gather. Maybe owning things makes us feel safe from deprivation (even while it increases our debt). Or it maybe it makes us feel worthwhile, at least on a superficial level.

Let’s face it, mindless consumption isn’t great for the planet. The developing world can’t live as we do in the U.S. without critically depleting what’s left of global resources. A shift of priorities is in order, one that asks us to be less selfish. Really, how hard can it be to give up lifestyles based on driving to big box stores in gas guzzlers to buy too much crap, then never paying off the resulting credit card debt? Better for us, better for the planet. Yet research indicates that people with the most materialistic attitudes care less about the environment than folks with stronger value systems.

Interestingly, materialistic attitudes aren’t good for individuals either. Studies have repeatedly found that the more a person focuses on the accumulation and ownership of stuff the less happy they are. They are more likely to suffer from depression, narcissism, low self-esteem, antisocial behavior and substance abuse. They’re also more likely to have health problems including headaches, backaches and digestive disorders. Clearly the gimme gimme approach doesn’t do squat for happiness. And really, whether we raise our children in a grand mansion or a small apartment the factors that go into making a family have very little to do with the things money can buy.

Happiness can be as simple as waking up next to someone you love, laughing because the blanket covering you is riddled with holes. What else do you need? Okay, maybe a lamp. And a chair.

Research cited from the following books:
Simple Prosperity: Finding Real Wealth in a Sustainable Lifestyle
The High Price of Materialism,
Less is More: Embracing Simplicity for a Healthy Planet, a Caring Economy and Lasting Happiness

Getting and Giving, Big Time

/ Laura Grace Weldon / 3 Comments

We haven’t gotten this far through brutal force or greed.

Nope. It has taken cooperation, curiosity and cleverness.

Ninety-nine percent of our time on earth as a species has been spent as hunter-gatherers. Our ancestors wouldn’t have survived without collaborating to find food, raise children and stay safe from large predators.

This is still true now no matter what 24 hour news channels tell us. Each moment of the day we’re more likely to react with compassion, calm interest or cleverness than with any form of overt negativity.

Cooperative efforts abound all around us. Perhaps we simply need to look at life-enhancing innovations we take for granted in a new way. Consider these examples.

Want to travel the world finding friendly strangers offering you a place to sleep for free? You can through CouchSurfing. Their motto encourages everyone to “Participate in Creating a Better World, One Couch at a Time.”  Started in 2004, this non-profit network has connected travelers with locals in 232 countries. This has resulted in nearly 3 million positive experiences, almost 2 million reported as friendships. People who never would have met are connecting, sharing experiences and developing greater cultural understanding.

How about Freecycle? Nearly 7 million members across the world make up this grassroots, non-profit movement of people who give and get goods for free in their own communities. The Freecycle Network, which started humbly in 2003, says, “Our mission is to build a worldwide gifting movement that reduces waste, saves precious resources & eases the burden on our landfills while enabling our members to benefit from the strength of a larger community.”

Or consider books set free to find new readers. Since 2001, BookCrossing members in more than 130 countries have shared millions of books with strangers. They’ve also enjoyed the treasure-hunt pleasure of finding books they want to read. It’s all part of an innovative network linking books and readers.  More local book-sharing concepts are springing up everywhere. Recently a small town in the UK transformed an unused phone booth into a book exchange. They outfitted the booth with shelves and waited to see if anyone would participate. Residents continue to share books and movies anonymously at the booth, which is always open.

Maybe you need a bigger example. There’s always the Internet. Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain notes in a TED talk that the net itself is built by millions of “disinterested acts of kindness” and based on trust, curiosity and reciprocity.

Giving and collaborating seem to be an intrinsic part of human nature. That may be why people freely share their expertise by editing Wikipedia entries, providing support online or otherwise helping people they’ll never meet via the net. That may be why giving inspires people to greater heights of generosity or creative expression, even when the act remains anonymous. The blogosphere abounds with art, craft and music exchanges.  Increasingly this is taking place IRL more often too.  In October an art collective calling themselves the Future Machine transformed an unused newspaper box into a “Stranger Exchange.”  Located in Boston, the box features simple instructions on the side.

1. Leave an item; 2. Take an Item and 3. Don’t be a Stranger.

Their website offers a simple way to link people who give and take items in the box.  Items in the box have included a map of Luxembourg, AA batteries and an invitation to a long ago New Year’s Eve party. They’ve also included projects created specifically for Stranger Exchange such as artwork and a mix tape made in response to another mix tape found in the box.

A post about this phenomenon by Rachael Botsman noted, “Interestingly, the early ‘members’ of the Stranger Exchange seem be participating for similar intrinsic motivations that are fueling the open peer-to-peer movements such as Flickr, Wikipedia, BitTorrent, BePress and so on. For these systems to keep flourishing, people need to “give before they get,” a dynamic that is built on a new kind of trust, trust in people you don’t know or are not even friends with.

This in turn reinforces certain behaviors—collaboration, kindness, openness and honor—that are critical for sharing to happen between strangers. What’s interesting is that once people participate in these exchanges, they experience the proverbial “warm inner glow” and they crave that experience again. In other words, the altruistic action and indirect reciprocity becomes self-reinforcing.”

Botsman is co-author of a book coming out next fall titled What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption. I’m looking forward to what the book will tell us about the rise in sharing, trading, gifting and swapping in communities around the world. I suspect it will have to do with the cooperation, curiosity and cleverness—-the foundations of our early survival and the building blocks of our shared future.

Creative Commons photo courtesy of Erica Reid’s Flickr photostream

Crazy Busy

/ Laura Grace Weldon / 3 Comments

simplify holidays, crazy busy, holiday frenzy solutions,

Orin Zebest’s work on Flickr

Who isn’t busy all the time? But around the holidays we’re crazy busy. At least women are, and those lights in our lives we call children make the pace even more frantic.

Sure we make all sorts of efforts to simplify and de-stress but for most of us the joys of holiday shopping, gifting, cooking, decorating, visiting, hosting, and merrymaking have to fit right into our regular (overburdened) schedules.

It’s not like we can make more time where there is none. Well, maybe we can. Or at least use our time differently. I confess to the Crazy Busy Syndrome but I fight back with these tactics.

Renounce the How-Does-She-Do-It-All Disease. You know the symptoms. You show excessive responsible because you’re sure no one else will do it (or do it right). You uphold traditions your family counts on. You pay close attention to get just the right gifts. You worry about money more than usual. You try to keep the focus on intangibles like faith and togetherness. When the frenzy is over you end up with an empty feeling. I’m the first to stand and admit that I’m still in recovery from this disease.

The cure? Talk to your loved ones about what means the most to them, then slice away the rest. If there’s disagreement, slice anyway.

Shun Those Voices. They’re everywhere around the holidays. They seem so genuine and alluring but their sole aim is to make you feel insufficient. They speak to you from TV, magazines, websites, blogs, store displays— let’s admit they’re ubiquitous. These voices tell you that you’re not enough. To compensate you must do more. Dress beautifully, make elaborate meals, buy lavish gifts and wrap them more ingeniously.

This is the only diet you need to go on. Don’t watch a single cooking show, don’t open one slick women’s magazine, stay away from Pinterest, and avoid stores as much as possible. You’ll have a lot more time, plus you won’t have to reassemble what’s left of your self esteem.

Screw Tradition. No, I don’t mean avoiding your house of worship or shunning Grandma’s house. I do mean it’s possible to celebrate the season without so much of the heavy Gotta Do It weight hanging over you.

Some of my most memorable holidays have actually been those that veered wildly from tradition. My family will not forget a holiday dinner at Rebecca’s house complete with walls of wet paint, an oven on fire, and a dog getting sick everywhere. The zinger, she was eager to show foreign guests how we celebrate here in the U.S!

If you’ve always gone to the movie theater to see the newest holiday releases after a day of shopping, skip both and go to a play at your community theater. If you’ve accepted every holiday invitation despite the costs of babysitters and lost sleep, limit your yes RSVPs to those events that are the most warm and wonderful. If you’ve always accommodated your kids’ requests for gifts because it’s Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, put new limits on materialism —try emphasizing non-toy gifts or give four gifts in the categories of Want, Need, Wear, Read. If you’ve always driven around to see the holiday lights, instead go outside on a frosty night to sing together (even if only to a lone tree lit by moonlight). You’ll not only save time and money, you’ll also create new traditions.

Rethink Gift-Giving. Things have gotten out of hand. Children in this country once looked forward to a fresh orange, maybe a piece of candy and if they were lucky a toy or useful gift like a pocketknife or sewing kit. Historian Howard Chudacoff writes in Children at Play: An American History that most toys co-opt and control a child’s play. They’re better off with free time and objects they can use to fuel their imaginations (yes, a cardboard box).

I admit things got out of hand in my own house. In a quest for meaning (let’s rephrase that to my quest for meaning) we’ve always had handmade holidays. Yes, I’m one of those annoying people….. Meals from scratch, homemade organic cookies, handmade gifts. Each of my four children made gifts for everyone every year, gifts that took substantial effort such as woodworking, felting, and ceramics. My teens still make some of the gifts they give although thankfully I’m not the one coming up with the ideas and supervising the process. The last few years economic realities have made hand made gifts ever more necessary, for other gifts I turn to non-profit and artisan sources. Try products offered by non-profits you support, works of art sold at local galleries, and these resources for simple holiday giving.

Last Resort. This tactic is heavy duty, the one I bring out when I start to feel sorry for myself. Because we’re not crazy busy in comparison to women throughout history. We think we’re stressed? Our foremothers hauled water; carded, spun and sewed clothes; chopped firewood and maintained the stove they cooked on; ground grain and made bread each day; planted and weeded gardens, then canned or dried the harvest; stretched limited food reserves with careful planning to last until the next harvest; cared for babies, children and the elderly with no professional help; treated the sick, stitched wounds and prepared the dead for burial; well, you get the idea.

Worse, many many women in the world still do this sort of grinding labor each day. Typically, women in developing countries work 17 hours a day.  Our sisters receive a tenth of the world’s income while performing two-thirds of the world’s work. These harsh realities put any concept of busy or stressed right out of my head. For more information and ways to help, check out the wonderful book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.

So fight the Crazy Busy Syndrome with all you’ve got. Remember to count your blessings, including the joy of not eating my homemade buckwheat cookies!

 

Sock Monsters Take On The World

/ Laura Grace Weldon / 11 Comments

Okay, maybe not the world, but these guys are trying.

I started making sock monsters a few weeks ago in hopes of earning some money for the holidays. The monsters require little in the way of new materials other than stuffing and socks. Their features are created out of vintage buttons, embroidery floss, rick rack, even thread so old it’s wrapped around wooden spools. This makes them extra special because these notions were left to me by my mother and grandmother. It’s also, frankly, necessary frugality. I’m grateful every day to be writing and living on our little farm especially when others have greater struggles. But I do notice that smaller portions of bliss pie are particularly sweet, perhaps because each morsel is savored.

As I stitch odd little ears, embroider asymmetrical eyes, string bright tufts of hair and appliqué teeth on these monster faces my thoughts keep turning to a woman I’ve recently begun corresponding with, a woman whose selfless actions call out the best in others.

Her name is Sasha Crow. Back in the autumn of 2005 she read an article about an Iraqi ambulance driver who had been killed during a U.S. bombing raid while trying to rescue the injured. Survivors included his young widow with six small children. Sasha had a moment of connection reading the names of those children. She managed to contact the journalist to see what she might do to help the family. Finally the answer came back. The widow needed a quarter acre of land, two cows and some sheep. Sasha hadn’t expected this request, but mustered up a fundraiser among her Seattle friends to provide the struggling Iraqi family with some assurance of security.

After that Sasha was more crucially aware of the needs of Iraqi refugees, the largest Christian diaspora of our time. The slogan “Not In Our Name” suddenly took on many real faces. And Sasha’s life changed.

Now with activist Mary Madsen and other dedicated volunteers, Sasha runs a shoestring charity based in Jordan which provides direct relief to Iraqi refugees. Innocent civilians, described dispassionately as “collateral damage” in wartime, have inspired her to call the non-profit organization Collateral Repair Project (CRP).

Here I sit in my comfortable house night after night leaning close to a gooseneck lamp as I stitch soft toys. My dogs sleep on the rug nearby. I listen, as long as the Internet connection is good, to podcasts on science or philosophy or spirituality. When my kids come in the room I solicit their ideas for the next sock monster’s face. I hear wind picking up enough to give a delightful feeling of contrast: cold outside, warm inside. I know that my heart won’t let me keep any money I might make by selling these monsters.

Sasha and I have been corresponding in particular about a project she’s struggling to get off the ground. Iraqi refugees in Jordan are not permitted, by law, to work. Before being displaced by war they were teachers, engineers, business owners—-never expecting to lose everything. Now they try to live on small assistance checks while waiting to see what the future might bring. Sasha realized with horror that many of the babies in these families are sickly and malnourished. Their mothers have been separated from close extended family ties, traumatized by war, and too often are unable to breastfeed. Without this vital source of nourishment Sasha knows the infants suffer from the lack of nutrients at this formative stage.  When there’s no money for milk let alone formula, what little milk there is gets watered down. Or worse, families must resort to feeding their babies sugar water. Sasha has tried promoting projects to advance the cause of breastfeeding through peer-to-peer relationships, like Le Leche League, but there’s insufficient funding. Right now she’s simply trying to provide formula and milk to babies in need. But no one, not one major relief agency, will partner with CRP’s Milk Fund because it’s a global goal to advance breastfeeding (a cause she supports, but logic dictates that formula is also needed in this situation). Even older children are not getting the nutrients they need. Hence, the project has to be funded directly.

All proceeds earned by these sock monsters will go to CRP. This first batch will be sold at Elements Gallery, run by artists Steve and Debra Bures. Then, if I’m weary of monster making I’ll come up with something else. Maybe an online art challenge with all works sold to benefit CRP. Or a big mid-Eastern feast this winter, all proceeds going to CRP. Any other ideas? I’d love to hear them.

Wind may be howling outside, but here the monsters are soft and made with love.  In a small way they’re taking on the misery created by larger monsters.

How to Get Involved With CRP

Take a look at CRP Projects

 

How to Make Sock Monsters

Select a baby or toddler-sized sock.

Remove an inch or so strip from the open end of the sock. Snip open a small space at the toe.  If you choose, make a small slit at the heel where you can sew in a tongue or tasty morsel the monster might want to chew on.

Then turn the sock inside-out. Sew the ends and sides of the ears closed in a continuous seam. Try making one shorter than the other.

Trim the seam.

Stuff the sock tightly with polyfill or old pillow contents or dryer lint or whatever you’ve got. Start with the ears and work your way down.  Leave the bottom end open for now, as you may want to stitch through this opening as you add features.

Now it’s time to add personality. Remember if you’re making a sock monster for a baby, the safest features are those drawn or embroidered on.

Try some scary felt teeth.

A tongue made from left over bits of sock (yes, monster surgery).

Layered eyes of notions like snaps and binding.

A silly sideways felted mouth and giant button eyes.

Perhaps a bright patch of embroidery floss hair.

Or ring glasses.

Then sew the toe opening (monster rear) closed. You may choose to seam the sides together for a simple bottom, which looks like toes on this head-standing sock monster.

Or insert a bit of sock fabric and sew the opening shut, making a somewhat more stable monster  (standing-wise, not necessarily emotionally).

I’ve been experimenting with feet, hands and wings on my next monsters.  Sock monsters are much more forgiving than actual monsters, thank goodness.

 

You’re Gonna Fall, So Laugh

/ Laura Grace Weldon / 4 Comments

statue falling

I’m a terribly flawed human being.

I don’t steal. I’m not greedy. But falling strikes me funny. Friends tell me their falling stories to see me snort with the sort of uncontrollable laughter that continues to erupt well after the conversation has moved on. They also send me video clips of strangers tripping and stumbling. Surely that’s not to feed into an unhealthy preoccupation, but only because they care about my happiness.

I don’t enjoy the falls of children, the elderly or anything looks remotely painful. But ordinary falls, those that tend to be accompanied by awkwardness and shock, show me the vulnerability that unites us as a species. You may be a glamorous celebrity, a rich girl on your wedding day, a confident dare devil, a casual visitor to a muddy llama farm, whatever. But when you fall, this is what we share. A moment of instability. A look of disbelief spreading across your face that expresses, “I’m a bi-pedal Homo sapiens well acquainted with upright posture and this can’t be happening.” Gravity continues to exert its influence as your feet and arms flail in an effort to push time backward. This sequence from stable to unstable is my favorite part, actually. The body slamming I could do without. I’ve had a few serious falls myself; two in my twenties required an ambulance ride with the World’s Best People, paramedics. I’ve learned it’s better to find the humor in our own falls, even when they hurt our dignity and our limbs.

Falling is on my mind after a phone call from a loved one. He tripped recently and can’t seem to stop going over the incident. To him it’s embarrassing, an ugly reminder of his own incompetence. That no one else saw him doesn’t even matter.

Here’s what does matter. What we tell ourselves has tremendous power over the way we store and retrieve memory. Each time we call up a memory we color the details with our current emotions. If you fell down on your way into a job interview, then later while depressed you cite that incident as evidence of your own worthlessness, that memory will be more closely associated with a negative state. If, on the other hand, you relate that incident as a wonderfully funny story to a group of friends who howl with laughter, that fall will be associated with more positive emotions. I probably laugh about awkward falls because I am a person entirely lacking in gracefulness. My own history of dropping over at inopportune moments is only tolerable because I recall it as funny.

So tomorrow I’ll call my loved one back. I plan to tell him one of my many falling down stories. Perhaps the one about what did and did not happen between myself and a boy who looked like Jesus, back in North Olmsted Junior High. Maybe he’ll feel some empathy for my plight, hear my laughter and know that laughing about falling is just another way of seeing that we fragile beings are in this together.

Here’s the story, in case you need a laugh.

Falling for a Guy

Back in hip hugger days, guys and girls flirted slowly. At least in junior high (a term that came before “middle school.”)  Romance started with glances. After a few days or even weeks of glances came long soulful looks. Then the first “hi.”

Our school was hugely overcrowded with grades 7 through 9, so packed that administrators had traffic lines complete with no passing zones painted on the hallway floors. I was in 8th grade. I wore hip huggers and tiny little tops I bought with my babysitting money at the forbidden head shop on Lorain Road. I listened to WMMS, the cool station that played entire albums. I wasn’t interested 8th grade boys. No, I liked a boy whose long wavy brown hair made him look like Jesus, and whose name, Joe Gagliardo, sounded warm and exotic. Being a grade ahead of me made him out of my reach. But, miracle of miracles, he started the “eye thing” and before long he was looking at me and smiling. I knew he’d be saying “hi” soon. I could barely sleep at night.

My friends advised playing hard to get. I bought a pair of the newest fashion, cuffed high-waisted jeans. With these on I could get away wearing a midriff top, a little skin showing as I walked down the hall between classes. Joe’s locker was up ahead and there he stood with a group of his friends. Suddenly those 9th grade boys looked huge and scary, but I mustered up my confidence. Joe was looking my way. He smiled. Then he said, “Hi Laura.” He knew my name!

Exultation took over, limiting what little coordination I possessed. I hurried so that I could pass by while tossing a brief, hard-to-get-girl hello. At the moment I was closest to Joe, my right foot stepped directly into the left cuff of my new jeans. There it stayed trapped. My mouth hung open in shock. I looked straight into the eyes of the boy I was trying to impress as I teetered forward. My knees buckled. I dropped down in a fall that seemed to take centuries. My head landed directly into Joe’s open locker, my butt hung out facing Joe and his friends.

Although I willed myself invisible or better yet, dead, nothing happened aside from some kind of static that replaced my ability to hear. I backed up like a crab, hurriedly stood and skittered away without looking at any one. I never ever exchanged another glance with Joe. It was easy in that crowded school to avoid him after that. But I used that story to amuse my girlfriends, although most of them couldn’t believe I would laugh about it. A few months later I met the taller, smarter and even older boy who later became the man I married.

Still, thinking of the girl who tried so hard to be cute yet hurled herself headfirst into a locker can make me smirk. Especially when I think of the expressions that must have been on the faces of those guys watching a girl playing hard to get.

photo of statue shared by benleto,  Creative Commons

Open-Eyed Optimism

/ Laura Grace Weldon / 3 Comments

hillside

Our dinner table topics tend to be obscure and in-depth because my kids delve deeply into their own interests. Detailed conversations about plant classification, advanced computer cooling methods, arachnid behavior and diesel fine-tuning require little from me except that I keep my eyes open.

But elections are coming up and we also tend to talk a lot about politics. These are conversations I can get into. These are also conversations where I need to temper myself. I know it’s important to stay open to everyone’s perspective around the table so I can hear what they have to say. This is difficult when I have strong opinions built on years of activism.

It’s easy to utter pat answers and give what may seem like trite explanations. It’s more valuable to build bridges of understanding than to be “right.” So I try, often unsuccessfully, to keep myself from snorting in derision about moneyed interests and short-sighted politicians. I want my family to continue to care deeply about things.

I also have to temper myself because politics are one of the few areas where my natural optimism wears thin. Still, it’s terrifically important to me that my family remain optimistic. According to The Optimistic Child: A Proven Program to Safeguard Children Against Depression and BuildLifelong Resilience by Martin E.P. Seligman, there are major differences between pessimists and optimists. People who are cynical believe negative conditions will last a long time. They give up easily and tend to blame themselves when things go wrong. In contrast, optimistic people look at negative conditions as a challenge and look for ways to prevent the next misfortune.  In fact optimists find life more fulfilling and rewarding. That’s an outlook worth cultivating.

Seligman recently spoke about infusing meaning and optimism into education. In one study, high school students not only read the classics but focused on the strengths of main characters. They also turned good intentions into actions benefiting others. The result?  Greater love of learning and increased social skills.

Looking for what’s valuable, what works, what brings joy is something we can do in all aspects of our lives.

Every day our children observe the direct kindness we demonstrate. They also witness the generosity of spirit we express as we talk about others, discuss issues and yes, listen. Our words and actions show them how to approach to the world.

For the Children

The rising hills, the slopes,

of statistics

lie before us.

the steep climb

of everything, going up,

up, as we all

go down.

In the next century

or the one beyond that,

they say,

are valleys, pastures,

we can meet there in peace

if we make it.

To climb these coming crests

one word to you, to

you and your children:

stay together

learn the flowers

go light.

Gary Snyder

from Turtle Island (A New Directions Book)

Calling Out the Buccaneer-Scholars

/ Laura Grace Weldon / 2 Comments

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The word buccaneer is woefully underused. It’s vibrant, bringing to mind all sorts of lively images. Apparently, buccaneers in history were, aside from the pillaging, remarkably progressive. According to The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates by Peter T. Leeson, pirates made use of constitutional democracy 50 years before the United States did so. They also regulated behaviors such as smoking and drinking, compensated their injured workers, and assured greater racial and class equality than could be found as law-abiding mariners.

Some believe that modern-day pirates are also, beyond the violence of hostage-taking and ransom demands, acting on a desperate need for greater global justice.

I’ve been ruminating every which way about buccaneer living ever since reading James Marcus Bach’s book, Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar: How Self-Education and the Pursuit of Passion Can Lead to a Lifetime of Success.

Bach is now an internationally recognized expert in software testing. He’s a self-taught man who thrives except when caged by conventional expectations. School and other strictures made him an angry youth. He got into so many fights that his mother and stepfather sent him off to a motel room, where he lived on his own for two years. There he learned to program his computer and skipped as many high school classes as he could before dropping out at age 16. He describes his education this way:

“I watched a huge amount of television and read a lot of science fiction and fantasy novels. I started lots of things I never finished. I purchased books I didn’t read. I daydreamed. I brooded. I wasted time in lots of ways. I also loved arguing, and learned a lot about logic from arguing. I honed my skills in early online bulletin board services, before the invention of the web. This aimlessness would become important later on, when I was introduced to general systems thinking, which is all about the underlying patterns that connect apparently different things.”

Bach’s own son tired of schooling after sixth grade, so now Oliver is an unschooling teen, which means in their family, “…we treat Oliver as a sovereign and trustworthy individual in all aspects of life, not just education.”

This philosophy dovetails perfectly into Bach’s concern with finding unifying patterns and consistencies in a society oriented to separations and justifying distinctions. As he says, “When I deal with my son I can’t tell him to turn off his moral judgment while I use threats to scare him into learning what I wish him to learn. He’s learning about morality and ethics continuously as he experiences the world around him.”

This buccaneer is also a man of wisdom. A passage from his blog deals with his stepfather’s long-ago attempt to comfort him. Bach writes,

When you speak to your child, and you feel that he is not listening, maybe he isn’t. When you speak to him and you suspect he’s silently ridiculing you, maybe he is. When the gift of your advice or sympathy fails in every way to touch him, and you believe yourself a failure, maybe you are. For now.

Bide your time.

Just imagine the man he will be, someday. His now subtle and caring mind clambering back through his life, looking for support in the events that shaped him– just imagine how he’ll come upon your words. The gift you tried to give. Faded on the outside, yet vital still inside, it will open like a blossom. Even thirty years later.

Thanks Jon.

When you speak to your children today, you are also speaking to every day of their future selves. Parenting is outside of time. Take care and take heart in that.

Bach gives us a great deal to think about. I’m ruminating about ways we tend to suppress the natural buccaneer spirit.  I’ll be trying to more fully enjoy the vibrant, difficult, ornery and completely unique people in my life who have blessedly held on to the buccaneering approach.

Two wise people in my life who are buccaneers as well as scholars.

Two wise people in my life who are buccaneers as well as scholars.

Edible Knowledge

/ Laura Grace Weldon / Leave a comment

cherrytomatoes Living on a farm we can’t help but be connected to the food on our table. We’re by no means perfect when it comes to eating locally. We’ll never come close unless chocolate and coffee start sprouting up in Ohio.

While more of us are paying attention to adopting better habits for our own health and planetary health, it’s easy to overlook the vital and wondrous learning that is directly related to food. For my family, those lessons often have to do with shared experiences.

~Many years we head out to pick apples together on a bright fall day. After an indulgent week of eating and baking with as many apples as possible, we devote a day to applesauce. We cook the remaining bushels of fruit down, cranking Grandma’s Victorio strainer that pushes with sauce out one side and pulp out the other (pulp eagerly eaten by the chickens), then can jars of applesauce to eat all winter long.

~We have encouraged each child to choose his or her own “crop” to plant and tend in the vegetable garden. Harvesting and sharing the bounty of one’s own fresh green beans teaches the satisfaction of work right along with lessons in botany and soil health.

~We try recipes from around the world, not only while learning about other cultures, but also because we freely trade garden bounty with friends, and have to do something with unfamiliar herbs, roots and fruits.

~We visit nearby farms. Observation and conversations with those who live on the land have been instructive, teaching us practices we want to emulate and those we hope to avoid.

~We eat meals together every day. Cooking frugally by choice as well as necessity has brought us myriad conversations about health, trends, politics and defining worth for ourselves. Of course our meals also precipitate family humor related to home ground grains that result in breads darker than wet cardboard and yes, we’ve had one or two loaded spatula chases around the kitchen. Oh wait, that didn’t involve the kids, just me thinking it might be funny to fling frosting at my husband.

~Unintentionally we learn by making plenty of mistakes. Ordering 25 pounds of organic buckwheat from the food co-op before knowing if anyone would eat it, raising our first flock of turkeys on faith more than fact, repeatedly attempting to make cheddar cheese although we can’t maintain the temperature needed to age it, well, this list could go on.

10 Things We Should Teach Every Kid About Food, recently posted on Every Kitchen Table, offers a handy list of important food-related categories to explore with our children.  The ideas are important and too often overlooked, such as the precepts of the industrial food system and the insidious effect of food advertising.

Here are some related resources:

Improve School Lunches With Locally Grown Food This article offers information plus strategies to bring positive change to your school district, whether you have children in school or not.

Don’t Buy It A non-profit site with learning games to help kids evaluate and analyze media messages.

I Buy Different A website sponsored by New Dream and World Wildlife Fund with tools to help tweens and teens be, live, and buy differently to make a difference.

Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots: Gardening Together with Children

I Love Dirt!: 52 Activities to Help You and Your Kids Discover the Wonders of Nature

What are some ways that learning, growing and eating work best in your family?100_5960

Learning from Wisdom of Elder Farmers

/ Laura Grace Weldon / 1 Comment

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The sight of Ron’s farm is like a quiet blessing. I wait for my first glimpse of it over the rise of a hill each time I take the dogs for a walk down our street. The house and several outbuildings are in shambles, but that’s because Ron puts his energy into keeping his small dairy farm going.

His herd of around fifty Ayrshire, Holstein, Guernsey and Brown Swiss graze on pasture so lush that the grasses sway in the wind. Many of the old fence posts surrounding the fields are wire-wrapped osage orange and hickory trunks, since farmers a few generations ago knew these durable woods would serve while alive and long after.

Ron puts his cows out on pasture each spring by a calculation that remains a mystery to me, something to do with phases of the moon. He adheres to other timeworn methods that aren’t fancy enough to be termed eco-friendly or green. For example, Ron drives his old car back to the hayfield before it’s time to cut. He walks through the field handpicking weeds that aren’t good for his cows. He doesn’t confine his cows year round, dose them with production-boosting hormones or follow any other agricultural trends.

Ron’s back is bent; his face is weathered and creased into a permanent smile. Already he looks like his father, Herb, who died a few years ago, probably already in his nineties. We asked Herb’s advice back when we first started farming. Herb told us he’d walked over to see our cows a few times, meaning he’d hiked through fields and woods to reassure himself that all was well.

How many of us can still benefit from the benevolent instinct of a neighboring farmer? How many are lucky enough to learn from examples of those who are deeply rooted, as Lisa Hamilton’s wonderful new book Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness is aptly named?

Dairy farms all over the country are selling cows, selling land and going out of business. The price they are being paid is about the same as it was in the 1970’s, although feed and fuel is much higher.  Government aid under consideration for small farms is steered to prompt farmers into selling cows, meaning even more milk will come from huge confinement agricultural operations. Losing small farms also means that the wisdom of farmers like Ron will be left behind at an ever faster pace. This includes specific wisdom about the land and wider wisdom about ways to live.

True connection to the land is so easily crushed beneath the weight of society’s pressing demand for immediate gratification and quick profits. But then, much is lost. As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, “This palpable world, which we are used to treating with the boredom and disrespect with which we habitually regard places with no sacred association, is a holy place.”

Perhaps most obviously, common sense is lost. Small farms are actually more efficient. The Institute for Food and Development Policy amassed available data from every country to compare productivity of smaller farms versus larger farms (total output of agricultural products per unit area — per acre or hectare.)  Their research showed that smaller farms are anywhere from 200 to 1,000 percent more productive.

Ron’s son-in-law and grandson help on the farm, but his family talks to him about getting out of the business. They know he’s losing money. Ron says that he watched his father go through hard times and he learned that the way you stay farming is to hang on. So he’s hanging on.

Ron’s rootedness to his farm and his land is part of who he is, like the farmer Gene Logsdon describes in a recent blog post “…he is a last member of an ancient tribe—the genuine traditional farmers who committed themselves lovingly to a piece of land and husbanded it from generation to generation, carrying in their memories a lifetime of their own experiences and that of their fathers and grandfathers on that land.”

So today I will walk in his direction, grateful for Ron’s farm. I’ll pay attention to the sight of cows resting in tall grass and the sound of a slack board on the house creaking in the breeze, hoping perhaps each thing we look upon with love somehow is more likely to endure.