Year: 2011

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George W Bush ei osannut lukea
Hitler ei voinut syödä
Kennedy piti seksikäs naisia ​​liikaa
Mutta hän osasi lukea ja syödä niin paljon kuin tiedämme
Yleensä on hyvä valita ihmisiä, jotka maistelemaan molemmat sanat ja ruoka

George W Bush couldn't read
Hitler couldn't eat
Kennedy liked sexy women too much
But he could read and eat as far as we know
In general it is good to elect people who savor both words and food

Dream

 

Täältä tulee isäni
kotiin tuonpuoleisessa
"Kysy lisää kysymyksiä", hän sanoo, lisää sitten:
"Kosmos on puhdas uteliaisuus."

 

 

Here comes my father

Home from the dead

"Ask more questions," he says, then adds:

"The cosmos is pure curiosity."

Epistemology for Old Academics

One day you are old. Accordingly your scholarship is stuck. The needle of your idea catches in the groove of history. (Young people won’t remember long playing records but imagine a compact disc that repeats itself, some Fleetwood Mac thing they’re playing at K-Mart to keep the shoppers motivated.)

You’re more than stuck, you’re pinched, flayed by books, ensourced, flat–what’s worse, you’re a little “wiggy” as they say in the vernacular. You want to be an administrator.

Alone in your study the books look squat and reproachful.

“Although strength should fail, the effort will deserve praise. In great enterprises the attempt is enough.”

“Damned Propertius!”

Picture him there, raising books over his head, trying to remain strong.

Drink sad preparations: choline with atropine. Buy yourself an abstract chair and read upside down.

“Sublimity is the echo of a great mind.”

Ah, the Longinus recliner!

Some Thoughts for my Friends in Finland and My Poet Pals in America

Olen kyllästynyt minun hallitus. Haluan rauhaa. Sanoin tämän, kun olin nuori ja olen edelleen sanovan näin. Kunnes ihmiset Amerikassa ymmärrä rauhasta he eivät nautivaurautta. Ja se ei voi tapahtua ennen kuin amerikkalaiset hyväksymään taloudensorrettujen. 
Kuten Paulo Freire sanoo: "On välttämätöntä, että heikkous voimaton muuttuuvoimana, joka ilmoittaa oikeudenmukaisuutta. Jotta näin tapahtuisi, koko irtisanomisestaon fatalismia on tarpeen. 
Olemme transformative olentoja eikä olentoja majoitusta."

I am tired of my government. I want peace. I said this when I was young and I am still saying it. Until people in America understand the dividends of peace they will not enjoy prosperity. And that can't happen until Americans adopt an economy of the oppressed. As Paulo Freire says: "It is necessary that the weakness of the powerless is transformed into a force capable of announcing justice. For this to happen, a total denouncement of fatalism is necessary. We are transformative beings and not beings for accommodation." 

Labor Day Acumen In

I'm trying to keep from crying, been jobless with a disability, remember vividly what food stamps and section 8 housing were like. Many of my creative writing and academic friends have luckily not been quite "there, there" which is to say I'm generalizing but I hear so much chatter about fellowships and Fulbrights and teaching gigs and book tours but very little visceral and collective tears for the long time unemployed.

I reckon this is the kind of Facebook message that wins no friends. But I'm very sad about the growing population of poor people in this nation. Gandhi said it: "Poverty is the worst form of violence."  I also like the observation by Mother Teresa: "Is is poverty to decide that a child must die so you may live as you wish."

Let's remember our fellow citizens this long weekend.

 

S.K. 

 

How Education Works in Human Terms

There's a terrific article this month by LynNell Hancock at The Smithsonian Magazine about Finland's eduactional system. What works? Interacting with kids, all kids; and yes, not obsessing about tests. I joked with a friend: "Yes, and think about how "Green Friendly" this is: by not obsessing about tests they save a lot of paper!"

Jokes aside, education that's human centered and seeks to value individual students reflects Paolo Freire's critical distinction between imagination and conformity as outcomes. Freire: 

"Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world."

The practice of freedom is participatory as both the Finns and Freire have shown. 

 

S.K.