The Greening of the American Mind

Dear Colleagues,

Greening of the American Mind

Some of my favorite educational
etymologic:

Student: from IE steu: stunned
(study) stupid, as if struck by
a stick.

School: L. schola: leisure time
(for disputation)

Sabbatical: from Hebrew shabbath:
“to rest”—a practice by which a field
is left fallow every 7^th year, plowed &
tilled but unseeded during a growing
season; marked by absence of getting
knocked-up so that one might could call
sabbatical a fallow-ship, or schola-ship
which is to say: time of leisure-time for
the purpose of regenerating vital to
sustainability & local food.
@@@

Dear Powers That BE (es, esse: essence)

SABBATICALIZE the Sustainability
Committee, please. Let them consider
the sustain ability our sustainabilities
are in.

Wouldn’t it be stunning I bet to play
“school” for a year—lie fallow &
loose the dogs of chaos cultivating
leisure time for leisure time’s sake
and chronicle some higher education?

School & Schooled: Stun & Be Stunned



sabbatical request forms

@@@

Me Tosis


If I myself weren’t ME:

My Self & I would ignore ME
like anything, like cancer
like bridges falling down
like wild fire in Colorado
like dead babies under a sink
like heat waves in NYC,
like cyclones in Brookline,
like floods in India,
like old people pummeled
in parking lots, kamikaze
suicide bombing among
our starlets, & teacher-
baiting caught on tape…

Pay ME no never minding:

I would tell my Self.
How could I buy my
efficient attention to
purchase what counts
& doesn’t other wise?

So much NOISE:
so little News.

Ambient hysteria.

I would surely ignore me
if I weren’t me & had the
option: me & my racket
mouth sounding furry
signifiers walking a
crowded mall, school
room, hall way re dumb
dance re dux same old sam
old & I have to know how
to ignore to be properly
ignore-ant: prerequisite
for liberal art.

Attention Efficiency:

So much depends
on wheel barrows
of attention
deficiencies
hauling
away
distraction
so as to siphon
significance from
the whelm within.

I jiggle my legs to concentrate &
conjure-out babies from bath water
so to speak: always in manners of
speaking & for the sake of argument.



The man riding the R&L Paving
Company machine is shirtless,
doubtless without sun block.

I replaced a broken belt on my
riding mower this summer &
know what it’s like to get
something done.

The presence of the poet pope
[Pontiff Urban VIII] brought to
the Holy See an intellectualism
and an interest in scientific
investigation not shared by his
immediate predecessors…which
encouraged Galileo to proceed
with a long-planned popular
dissertation [ re] the two rival
theories of cosmology:

the Sun-Centered and
the Earth-Centered,
or, in his words, the
“two chief systems of the world.”



earth centered sun centered

Previously & for 7 cautious years, he had turned to
less perilous pursuits, “such as harnessing his Jovian
satellites in the service of navigation, to help sailors
discover their longitude at sea. He studied poetry &
wrote literary criticism.

Sabbatical over, caution thrown to the winds: yet Galileo
“remained a good catholic who believed in the power of
prayer & endeavored always to conform his duty as a
scientist with the destiny of his soul.”

(Dava Sobel, Galileo’s Daughter
reformatted as usual to fit my screed.)

xxxooo, Sam