SNICKER

Dear Colleagues & Starving Liberal Artists
 
I’m trying to make good use  of  the notion
                     SNICKER
a term a colleague coined years ago
acknowledging  that  certain seemingly
“idealistic” ideas   when mentioned  in
professional academic  environments
(inclined to empiricism and instrumental
application)  will  generate  resistance
often  signified by a snicker, a raised
eyebrow,  tongue in  cheek perhaps,
rolling eyes—all of which represent a
borderline transgression between two
or more incommensurate realms &
source of  emergence and emergency
crucial to innovation—the news that
comes out of  noise. . .
 
Snicker etc lets you know you are in the
interstices. Crossroads between amateur
and pro, say—or maybe individual idiocy
and the common sense. Outlaw territory.
In-Betweener-Land. Trespassers W.
 
Years ago, driving north from Durham to
Hartford in a 61 Buick Le Sabre loaded with
 xmas  gifts, two children and goodwife,
cruising up 95 thru Virginia around 6 a.m.,
a  sudden red wink not unlike a snicker
appeared on the dashboard signaling  some
thing amiss in the total system,  problems
of  generation, generator, alternator, voltage
regulation perhaps: wink winks but  never
specifies. .   .
 
Monkey wrenching my
North-to-Connecticut
cybernetic thesis-driven
cover-the-ground  agenda.  
Winking a sign of significance. 
 
Be aware. Be wary. Beware
 
Frontiers yet unknown,  collision  trajectory
among matrices, frames of reference, agenda,
belief & bias systems:  snicker tells me so.
 
Wink. Rolling of eyeballs.  Whole System
signaling: Oyez! Oyez! Obey! Obey!  Love it:
Factor-it-in--  the  messengers & monsters.
The  stalwart pioneers and amateur standings.
Assess.  Evaluate. Put into play.

xxxooo, Sam  (Summer Forum Seminar
24/7  Volunteer Faculty L Development
Local Food & Gardening Without Tuxedos)

DOUBT

DOUBTING THOMAS

"Doubt" is diminutive of "Double" and
a schizo frantic duality characterizes my
real-time experience. I am both internal
and external—master and slave. independent
and dependent and the realms are not the same.
I am “idio-pathic” (unique, personal, original)
and socio-pathic (part of groups, collectives,
larger wholes. I am an Ego-centric center of
the universe. I am merely a part—dust in
the wind. Etc. How can language do justice
to these incommensurate realms which I AM?

Nature Hates Calculators

Fiddling in the subway
Fiddling on the street corner:
Fiddling on the back porch.
Fiddling in the alley..
Fiddling on the roof top.
Fiddling in the class room
while Rome always burns.

Ragtime Annie.
Soldier’s Joy.
Whiskey Before Breakfast.
Over the Waterfall.

Throw it away. Throw it away.
Plenty more where that comes from.

 The play’s  the thing
 
“All good conversation,
manners, and actions, come
from a spontaneity which
forgets usages, and makes
the moment great. Nature
hates calculators;  her methods
are salutatory and impulsive.”
                 (Emerson, I think)

Noise is the Mother of News: Happy Mother's Day

  

NOISE is the MOTHER of NEWS. Happy Mother's Day.
Imagine your self with your own Teleological Natural
Selection Bias: a kind of filter that will pull out what you
need/want from all the random “noise” that comes to you.
You are ADD with regard to the NORMS and CONVENTIONS,
say—because you are SCANNING for what feeds your own
personal aims, needs, plans

To scan the random for information is called Stochastic
Process. The Stoa is an archer. The image is like shooting
arrows into the dark, and listening for a THUNK that
indicates a connection. You can improve my images,
I’m sure. Think of how you cultivate and harvest the
NEW for yourself—your personal “natural selection” process.

Top of Form

(Got to Love The Generalization. Specifics: not so much.
I am convinced that GENERAL TRUTH is more true
than my specific individual experience, and so I will
rely on statistics and probabilities to urge me to check
my colon and breasts and lungs for cancer, wear seat
belts and helmets, go to college rather than avoid the
bother…. the predictable-ness seduces me. Who wants
to live in an unpredictable world? Give me Generalization.
The Devils in the Details.)

Gardening Without Tuxedos

Gardening Without Tuxedos.

Imagine an environment where

Ignorance and Stunned Stupidity

were considered Just Right for Study.

 

 Are you confused and muddled,

really? Screwed-up royally and

not just faking it? Come-on-a my

house: my house come-on.

 

Room in the Inn.

Versus

Clean-As-Whistles

 

You do the math.

Embarassmental Studies and Leadership Programs

Emergent Phenomena & Values

At its essence, dialogue involves  a collective shift

of attention  from  politeness to conflict, from conflict

 to inquiry, and from inquiry to generative flow.

G. Otto Scharmer, Theory U.: Leading from the Future

as it Emerges.  Scharmer is describing  dialectic:or call it
liberal art:  converse-action.   Practicing dialectic got Plato’s
Philosopher out of the mytho- logical cave.

                           EMBARRASSMENT:

             

 

We are clapped into jail by our consciousness,  says

Emerson: embarrassed by our common sense,  traditions,

disciplines,  habitats, habits, bubbles, boxes, conventions,

culture, closets and  caves: embarrassment  of riches, each

carrying it’s own liability & attention deficiency. eclipsed

by their  assets and purposive measurable immediately

practical self-validating objectives.

And so, bell hooks with insight  acknowledges  how my

identification with the ways I participatein the  perpetuation

of such symptoms as white supremacy, racist domination;  

how I  perpetuate any of our species-spin individual &

collective  homeland  security  preservation addictions,

directional  navigational algorithms,  patriarchal, matriarchal

cultural, regional & local  habits, habitats, & conventions:my

disciplines & traditions—realizing  how  necessarily caught

I am: jailed inside these webs of belief and ideology: liberal,

conservative, libertarian  makes no never mind all of  them

to-die-for bias &  whoever’s free of embarrassment cast the

first  stone,   lay the first stumbling block: this  kind of knowing

is  prerequisite for what  might could  expand our potential

for  intervention and transformation .

Godot in the Hands of Angry Spinners

Godot  in the Hands of Angry

Spinners.

As it were, in manners of speaking.

Smarties abound & it’s hard to get

Dumb in edge-wise: the Ignorance

that Growth  requires who has so

often  to be abusing Knowledge.

Faith!  Face Book’s an oily spill of

likes & links, lol’s & loony tunes,

pics & picayune: potlatch enough

to fill a gulf & then sum. Galore.

Let it stand for twitter, my space

& You-tube to see how rich we

are in  mind overflowing mindfully

&  plenty more where that comes

from if we don’t hold on but throw

it away: to hold is to  choke the baby

in the crib,  kill goose & golden eggs,

More the merrier, waste not want..