Dear Colleagues,
“For all the talk about ‘pushing the envelope’
and ‘thinking outside the box,’ one occasionally
hears from business leaders, political candidates,
and college commencement speakers, it is
remarkable and sad how little in the way of
profound, insightful and socially challenging
discourse is actually to be found. In a democracy
these discussions should take place constantly
around dining room tables and in our schools,
churches, town meetings and public gathering
places.”
“The disconcerting truth is that the conversation
is being conducted at such a shallow level, the real
systemic crises confronting our country are being
ignored.”
>From Frank Kalinowski’s CHANGE: Nation
needs a “Get-Real” Conversation, Ashville C/T
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Frank’s talking about how we don’t talk about Population/
Climate/Economy and I’m piggy-backing, neglecting his
specific topics to turn-up my own burning interest in TALK:
Get-Real Conversation: notions like “pushing the envelope”
and “thinking outside the box”—which, whatever the importance
of the token topics are super-ordinate: “prior” to subject-object
matter of concerns & courses.
HOW we think and talk about these issues we think
crucial is as worthy of attention as the issues themselves.
More worthy in “school mode” than in “church” and “state.”
No one will get votes talking about how we’re going to talk
about The Issues—and so the envelope never gets pushed,
let alone out of the box.
(Whatever the issue, my heresy is this: I believe the issues
we rant and rave over—except mine, of course—are NEVER
the Get Real Issue. Need we argue?)
Discussion taking place constantly around dining room tables--
& in schools, churches, town meetings and public gathering
places. YES. And it’s possible right be-here-now, as I’ve
been insisting: see: these words-on-a-screen: broken for view.
President Pfeiffer’s and our Freshman Student: E-virtual
Dinning room table talk. We can get Good at IT & it will
spin-off & spill-over like liquid intellectual -affective fire
lighting up our small campus & attracting outstanding
students to beat a path to our doors, wanting to get in
on IT —wanting to play & be played, or what’s a college
for?
SCHOLA: Leisure Time..
Thinking Out of the Box? Talk. No matter what Hillary
and the rest say: TALK IS GOOD. The more the better.
In School Mode, at least. Primordial I don’t have a problem
with “shallow-level” discourse. How else put IT (whatever)
in play. So much academic discourse feels dressed-up in
Sunday Suits & Scratchy Pants—commencement talk,
trustease talk, Ex Officio talk.
Can’t really get down & dirty: what it takes to consider
“systemic.”
Do I overstate? Or under? Where’s the edge of the
envelope (so to speak)? Any one can improve my terms
and images, make it Chronicle Worthy. That’s the beauty
of the technology now. Here we are: kum by ya!
xxxooo, Sam
“For all the talk about ‘pushing the envelope’
and ‘thinking outside the box,’ one occasionally
hears from business leaders, political candidates,
and college commencement speakers, it is
remarkable and sad how little in the way of
profound, insightful and socially challenging
discourse is actually to be found. In a democracy
these discussions should take place constantly
around dining room tables and in our schools,
churches, town meetings and public gathering
places.”
“The disconcerting truth is that the conversation
is being conducted at such a shallow level, the real
systemic crises confronting our country are being
ignored.”
>From Frank Kalinowski’s CHANGE: Nation
needs a “Get-Real” Conversation, Ashville C/T
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Frank’s talking about how we don’t talk about Population/
Climate/Economy and I’m piggy-backing, neglecting his
specific topics to turn-up my own burning interest in TALK:
Get-Real Conversation: notions like “pushing the envelope”
and “thinking outside the box”—which, whatever the importance
of the token topics are super-ordinate: “prior” to subject-object
matter of concerns & courses.
HOW we think and talk about these issues we think
crucial is as worthy of attention as the issues themselves.
More worthy in “school mode” than in “church” and “state.”
No one will get votes talking about how we’re going to talk
about The Issues—and so the envelope never gets pushed,
let alone out of the box.
(Whatever the issue, my heresy is this: I believe the issues
we rant and rave over—except mine, of course—are NEVER
the Get Real Issue. Need we argue?)
Discussion taking place constantly around dining room tables--
& in schools, churches, town meetings and public gathering
places. YES. And it’s possible right be-here-now, as I’ve
been insisting: see: these words-on-a-screen: broken for view.
President Pfeiffer’s and our Freshman Student: E-virtual
Dinning room table talk. We can get Good at IT & it will
spin-off & spill-over like liquid intellectual -affective fire
lighting up our small campus & attracting outstanding
students to beat a path to our doors, wanting to get in
on IT —wanting to play & be played, or what’s a college
for?
SCHOLA: Leisure Time..
Thinking Out of the Box? Talk. No matter what Hillary
and the rest say: TALK IS GOOD. The more the better.
In School Mode, at least. Primordial
with “shallow-level” discourse. How else put IT (whatever)
in play. So much academic discourse feels dressed-up in
Sunday Suits & Scratchy Pants—commencement talk,
trustease talk, Ex Officio talk.
Can’t really get down & dirty: what it takes to consider
“systemic.”
Do I overstate? Or under? Where’s the edge of the
envelope (so to speak)? Any one can improve my terms
and images, make it Chronicle Worthy. That’s the beauty
of the technology now. Here we are: kum by ya!
xxxooo, Sam
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