Gasp III Dear Laura

Gasp III Dear Laura

Laura eventually invited me back to the
Educational Committee and I was happy
to return Her recollection of the Great
Shrimp Debates reminds me that Converse
Action Across the Curriculum is possible
if only the right subject- matter, content,
topic emerges to provoke our engagement.
.
We all share a love of EDUCATION not to
be collapsed, conflated or confused with our
love for physics or chem., biology, social work,
gender studies or the psychology of creativity.

(That’d be like comparing Nature and nurture,
or Pro Life and pro choice. Incommensurate
levels of logical type.) .

Imagine:

33 million dollars to fix teacher education.

Would fixing EDUCATION
precede fixing Teacher Ed?
Put lipstick on a pit bull:
it’s still Sarah Palin.

David Bradshaw once explained to me that
“genius” is not just in the “message” one
intends (the guided missivex of thinkers,
writers, artists, strategic planners), but in the
ability or luck to reshape containers, the
receptivity for the message: environ-mental
conditions that let a message to be received,
taken as granted: gift. Gracias. .

Otherwise: throw rice at a rhino,
cast your perils before Niels Boar.

Buckminster Fuller invented workable
geodesic solutions to problems in
transportation and housing but they
didn’t cog with the context-in-place
bouncing parabolically like peas off
a pig. .

I bet five dollars (of the 33 million) that
changes in education or teacher education
depend on some re-shaped re-shaping
environ mentality of the culture & context
inside which I swim soaking wet always
making plans for getting dry, clean and
somber.

Mission Impossible.
Knowing it’s impossible is prerequisite
to possibility.

How wonderful that we have met with
a paradox. Now we have some hope of
making progress. (Neils Bohr)
.
***
Because & Affect

Each time he met a new acquaintance, each time
he visited the corner store, each time he strolled
around the block, it was as if for the first time.

The man, Henry Molaison — known during his
lifetime only as H.M., to protect his privacy —
lost the ability to form new memories after a
brain operation in 1953, and over the next half
century he became the most studied patient in
brain science.

Dissection Begins on Famous Brain

My uncle Bill, specialist in lobotomies, was the
neurosurgeon who screwed-up Henry’s memory,
trying to fix his seizures back in the 50’s Ooops.

But what a larger-systemic
contribution emerged.

And if it hadn’t of been for a thief in the night,
plugging my grandfather in the armpit back in
the turn of the century: Henry never would
have become the famous brain that he actually
is even dead. Especially dead....A long story,
but edifying—highlighting what Professor
Kahl calls

Necessary but Insufficient
Causation .

The man who-could-not-remember
has left scientists a gift that will
provide insights for generations to
come: his brain, now being dissected
and digitally mapped in exquisite
detail.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/health/research/03brain.html?emc=eta1

Emergent phenomena. The unpredictable
consequences rising up out of my best laid
plans gone oft agley.

xxxooo, Sam