A few poems

When you’re in the right mood, it’s fun to write poems quickly.

A poem about gratitude…

“You’re well taken care of,”
The woman said to me
When I called about the tuition
That my family will pay.

“I am,” I said, as I shuffled
Notes that I’d forgotten
Over the weekend when my mind
Was where it wanted to be.

“I am,” I thought, as
I ate eggs with hot sauce
And read the paper
During my lunch at home.

I knew it when
I went outside and felt the sun
On my face and saw it
Dance on the water in the pool.

I knew it when
I laid to bed and an arm
Draped over me, like the wings
In the Hopkins poem I love.

A poem about brokenness and trust…

i’m a little bit shaken, a little bit stirred, a little bit broken, a little bit burned;

but,

a little bit i’ve learned is to trust the little bits i yearn.

To-you vs. by-you

This paragraph from Frank Forencich at Exuberant Animal caught my attention. Frank is speaking at the Ancestral Health Symposium, an event I am helping coordinate this August. Frank makes the fantastic connection between personal mythology, nutrition and education, an intersection I reflect on often.

When we look at teaching from this to you-by you perspective, we discover that education itself is fundamentally a by you enterprise. All genuine and meaningful learning is self-authored; we are ultimately responsible for teaching ourselves. Teachers can model, explain, tell stories and provide context, but in the end, education is up to the student. When we think of education as something done to you, we put it in the same category as surgery, root canals, antibiotics and chiropractic. It is not. Education has more in common with exercise, food choice, meditation and lifestyle change. Our most effective teachers do not perform procedures on or to students. They inspire and lead by example, just like trainers and coaches. The more we embrace the by you perspective, the more empowered we become in health, fitness and education. It’s all one enterprise.

Moved

Being moved is a central metaphor for personal transformation. People are emotionally moved by beautiful artwork, inspiring speeches or tiny glimpses of grace that glimmer, briefly. This refers, of course, to some mysterious sense of awe and wonder that shakes within us, stirring up dusts of curiosity and tempered reverence that settle silently on our souls.

During these fleeting moments our souls move, and thus, we are moved.

People can also move physically to create physical transformation — we lift weights, practice yoga and train for marathons, hoping to transform our bodies, paving the way, perhaps, for internal conversions that reach further than outward masks. People also move, uprooting themselves from one place, transporting their possessions to a new place where a complex environment will work on them like clay spinning on a stand.

Oddly, being moved is also a central metaphor for metaphor itself — a sort of meta-metaphor that breathes life into the conceptual devices and symbols that move us from one place to another, allowing us to bridge impassable gaps of the mind and heart.

Movement, then, is a metaphor, and a prescriptive action, for closing the gaps in our lives where sadness, despair and confusion settle like sand in a barren desert.

Luckily, we can direct this process through our own movement and by exposing ourselves to situations that can move us.

Move!

Meeting Michael Meade

Michael Meade is a modern day mythologist, a Y2K10 version of Joseph Campbell, perhaps.

I am new to Meade’s work but am struck by many of his phrases: creative mentoring, the world behind the world, and mosaic voices. Each captures an internal conceptual strain for something beyond basic cultural motifs. Mentorship is valuable, but creative, dynamic mentorship is sure to reach further; the world we live in is merely the outermost layer of an eternal world that propels us forward; we are not one, but many voices, and beyond that, a complex arrangement of mosaic voices. Beautiful ideas.

Here, Michael explains the general concept of The World Behind the World:

Lots of trinkets here:

1) Each of us is connected to the eternal world by a small, personalized, metaphorical thread. How do we engage this — how do we tap into this narrow path that zips us to the divine? Each of our answers is different — that’s the hero’s journey, the inward quest to identify the eternal waters of bliss.

2) Ends are not ends, but instances that leave remnants to sprout new beginnings. Re-birth, resurrection and redemption are vibrant metaphors of western, Christian thought that have the power to propel personal transformation.

3. Western, biblical philosophy misapplied to ancient mythological thinking regarding calendrical predictions of ‘the end.’ We should be careful not to project cultural and personal mythologies without considering other ways of thinking.

I look forward to delving further into Michael Meade’s work.

This movie looks intriguing; Michael is interviewed:

Creative Editing

We can’t foresee all of  life’s developments, so we must be able to alter our narratives to accommodate subtle and severe changes, like tweaking a thesis when writing leads you to unexpected places.

I have had to edit recently — so far so good.

Last week, I began working for my family’s business, Geremia Pools.  Functioning in Sacramento since 1922 and building pools since the 1950s, I have jumped into a vat of ancestral knowledge that I need to catch up on — I don’t know much about pools, unfortunately.

One piece I do understand is Geremia’s latest innovation — GeoSmart Technology — a hybrid geothermal heating and cooling system that uses a swimming pool to efficiently transfer heat to and from a home.  The development of GeoSmart is evidence of a business re-writing its narrative, innovating to combat a flailing economy.  Geremia Pools is editing creatively — so far so good.

I wrote this piece as a GeoSmart primer, just in case you’re interested in a slice of green tech:

Geremia Pools Launches Innovative GeoSmart Technology

Geothermal is quickly becoming a top-tier buzz word for the green energy movement, taking its place alongside solar, wind and hydroelectric energy.

Geremia Pools, a family-owned business in Sacramento since 1922 and northern California’s leading pool-builder, is taking advantage of the region’s swelling interest in green energy. Geremia is pioneering GeoSmart Technology, a hybrid adaptation of traditional geothermal heat systems that drastically reduces energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions and increases the benefits of swimming pool ownership.

“According to the EPA, geothermal is the most energy efficient way to heat or cool your home” says Mike Geremia, President of Geremia Pools.

By installing an environmentally friendly GeoSmart system, home-owners can lower utility costs by up to 70% per month.  Installation also provides peace of mind for those who want to help the environment while still enjoying the comforts of modern life — a GeoSmart installation equates to removing two cars off the road or planting an acre of trees.

Hardly a new technology, first-century Romans used geothermal energy for a rudimentary air circulation process viewed as a pre-cursor the modern HVAC climate control systems.  What goes around, comes around — the Geremia family, with roots in northern Italy, is re-couping some ancestral wisdom with GeoSmart, swinging the pendulum away from expensive, high-polluting HVACs toward an affordable, clean, and natural geothermal energy source.

Climate control systems transfer heat either into or out of the home; traditional HVAC systems strain to transfer heat to and from the air, while geothermal systems efficiently transfer heat to and from the ground, which provides a stable heat sink, relatively independent of geographic or weather variables. A liquid solution facilitates the geothermal transfer, circulating through the ground, delivering heat to a heat-pump, which disperses heat through a home at a controlled level. The system also works in reverse, carrying heat from the home to deposit in the ground — a geothermal loop is highly energy efficient and completely replaces a traditional HVAC system, providing more reliable, consistent, and comfortable climate control.

Cost and access to a body of water are two major obstacles for traditional geothermal systems. Some systems utilize natural lakes and ponds, but drilling is often required to find a water source – this process is very expensive, minimizing the cost-benefit of the installation. These construction costs impose barriers and limit the growth of geothermal systems.

Geremia’s GeoSmart skirts these barriers with its hybrid-geothermal system — an innovative technology that uses swimming pool water as the liquid that facilitates the heat transfer.  This removes expensive drilling costs and enhances overall utility by using energy from the pool and energy stored underground to provide a free energy source to heat and cool a home. Efficiency is further increased by utilizing a heat pump from Water Furnace, maker of the industry’s most efficient, energy saving, and environmentally conscious heat pumps.

Installing a geothermal system with a swimming pool costs almost 60% less than stand-alone installation. When combined with the 30% federal tax credit from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, GeoSmart makes geothermal a realistic option for home owners.

GeoSmart can be retrofit to existing pools or built alongside new pools and can reduce utility costs by up to 70%. GeoSmart also features quiet, reliable operation of a safe, clean and natural technology. GeoSmart installation is optimal when building, re-plastering or remodeling a swimming pool or when replacing a traditional HVAC system.

Geremia Pools is a  trusted builder in the Sacramento community and is comitted to offering home-owners high quality, energy efficient products that improve quality of life and the planet.

Myth, Metaphor and Personal Mythology

Mythology is important.

I was convinced of this when I read The Power of Myth, a conversation between PBS televesion host, Bill Moyers, and comparitive mythologist, Joseph Campbell. Despite the vast success of the 6-hour PBS special turned book, mythology finds itself on the back shelf of current cultural literacy, dusty and misunderstood.

Connotations of mythology vary; most associate it with Greek mythology, which persists on the reading list of  most elementary school systems. Stories of Zues, Hercules and Achilles are fascinating, but when taken as the only sample, turn mythology into fantasy, a falsity. Missing is the notion that this set of stories, characters, and metaphors represent just one time period and one perspective. Others associate mythology with religion, which is closer, but reminds me of an elementary geometry lesson: all religions are mythologies, but not all mythologies are religions, at least in the traditional sense. Joseph Campbell puts it best, “Mythology is other people’s religion.” We tend to view our own religion as fact, but when we reflect on someone else’s religion, we appreciate it for its spiritual intricacies — we see it as a mythology.

Mythology is not fantasy and it is not religion. What is it?

Campbell: A myth is a metaphor.

Uh oh! What is a metaphor? A metaphor is a ‘device’ used to create an analogy between two items. Metaphor, sadly, sits on the same dusty shelf as mythology. Both rely on non-linear, abstract thinking, a feature not built into the main frame of modern culture, where x=x…always.  In the metaphorical, mythological world, x=y…always. Leaving on a journey from x to wind up at x is not a journey at all. Leaving from x to wind up at y requires a device, a vessel, to transport you. That vessel is a metaphor.

Metaphors exist in many formats — similes, narratives, allegories, parables — and different metaphors coalesce for each individual to construct a personalized framework for understanding the world and navigating from x to y.

For instance, if someone is interested in living a more invigorated, passionate life, he may integrate the following metaphor into his mythology:

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

– Jack London

This metaphor helps transform a person (x) into a meteor (y), and the literary construct serves as the vessel. It is much more effective to envision oneself as a glowing meteor than stating, ‘I want to become more passionate.’ Metaphors free our minds from the mundane and set our inner-selves free.

A personal mythology, then, is simply a collection of metaphors that any individual uses to cultivate an inner life and ‘carry’ himself from one place to another.

Most simply, a personal mythology is a framework that helps an individual navigate through the world. The goal, of course, is create a personal mythological framework that helps us navigate the world gracefully and passionately.

Artistry, Ancestry & Layered Human Development

My wife is a talented artist.

Her artwork is displayed here.

She recently had the pleasure of showing two pieces in an art show sponsored by Windermere: Dunnigan Realtors, a real estate company in Sacramento.

Since I am not a painter, I am fascinated by the artistic process of accumulating paint to create an image.  I took a few pictures while Megan was creating the piece on the left, a depiction of the house of German poet, Annette von Droste-Hulshoff.

I’ve learned from Megan that an important aspect of painting is layering; when there is a base of color on the canvas, it makes the final image more rich.  For instance, a small swatch of red, painted during the initial sitting, may wind up in the final piece where you may not logically envision red.  Yet it works, and it makes the painting better.

Layering also creates depth and intricacy that simply makes the painting more interesting.  The final canvas is not uniform and smooth; from up close the paint is at once fluid and jagged.

This is a process we’d like to emulate at Ancestry — a layered human development process that cultivates depth and intricacy.

When working with students, we do not know what book, poem, experiment, lecture, or conversation will be the swatch of red that peeks through in the final product.  So we must be careful when priming the base; we must incorporate ideas and lessons that serve long-term goals of developing kind, passionate, curious, and productive individuals.

Artistry, in its many fashions, will be an important component of Ancestry.

Alternative, Holistic Learning Frameworks

Ron Miller’s writing on holistic education resonates with me.

Miller writes from a grounded, ecological perspective that accounts for the human ecological niche in addition to the standard (and important) ecological element of environmental sustainability.  He extends the definition of ‘the environment’ to include the complex social and emotional context of a modern technological world — a context that makes it very difficult for human beings to stay attentive to their inner-selves.

It is important, especially in the West, where the individual is viewed (mythologically) as the center of the universe, for individuals to access learning frameworks that help them understand the world.  The learning framework of a stable family often proves most effective, but much of daily life exists outside the home, among peers and social constructs that enact varying mythologies with diverse agendas.  So, it follows that if we seek to develop people who are productive, caring, creative, self aware and ‘fully alive’, we need learning frameworks that allow individuals to self-experiment to become more self-realized.

The dominant learning framework provided in the United States is mass, compulsory public education, a system that develops technocratic outer-beings that understand facts and the workings of stagnant social systems, not inner-beings that understand personal my-thologies, metaphors, and the vast, subtle workings of human archetypes that guide human behavior.

There are educational alternatives, thankfully, and Ron Miller describes them well in various essays available on his Web site, Paths of Learning.  The options range from radical unschoolers (home-school) to the eco-spiritual Waldorf and Montessori models.  All fall loosely into the category of holistic, integrated education, which Miller describes:

There is concern for the interior life, for the feelings, aspirations, ideas and questions that each student brings to the learning process. Education is no longer viewed as the transmission of information; instead it is a journey inward as well as outward into the world. Fourth, holistic education expresses an ecological consciousness; it recognizes that everything in the world exists in context, in relationship to inclusive communities. This involves a deep respect for the integrity of the biosphere, if not a sense of reverence for nature. It is a worldview that embraces diversity, both natural and cultural. Holistic education shuns ideology, categorization, and fixed answers, and instead appreciates the flowing interrelatedness of all life.

That paragraph teems with words and phrases that mirror the developing learning framework of Ancestry, a ‘self-organizing human development platform that respects human beings’ innate capacity to learn and grow via mimicry.’  That’s our working text, anyways, that evolves with each utterance and accounts for a faint trace of the human development mythology it speaks for. Ancestry is an aspiration.  It draws on the transcendence of Emerson, the practicality of democratic free-schoolers, the physiological wisdom of ancestral health practitioners, the holism of the Jesuits, and the self-narrating, mythological power of the individual.

Ancestry: An Educational Mythology is Born

Every idea starts with a story.

Create enough stories and they puddle up; they become something tangible that you can’t avoid.  Share the stories through localized, real-time oral tradition, and a mythology is born.

My friends and I have been observing stories about students, parents, families, schools, teachers, learning, and health through our varied work in youth development.  The stories range, of course, but too many emerge with traces of negativity, frustration, apathy, and confusion.  A disconnect is apparent: parents and children struggle to communicate meaningfully; teachers struggle to reach each student in a useful way; students struggle to interact with material in a way that makes sense in the context of their daily lives.

There are gaps.

Ancestry is our idea for how to close the gaps.  One project of Ancestry is the Ancestral Health Symposium, an event that will attempt to synthesize the Ancestral/Primal/Paleo/Evolutionary health community.  I use the ancestral health mythology to fill the gaps of my physiological life, and it works quite well.

In my work with students, I use an ancestral, mentor-based educational style to fill the gaps of modern education.  It also works well.

Ancestry (the school), will become our attempt operationalize this approach.  It has been self-generating in the background:

See the initial ‘purpose language’ below, and an opening narrative, penned by epistemocrat.

Ancestral Education is a student-centric educational approach that seeks broad human development through meaningful relationships with dynamic mentors.

Ancestral Education is a re-emerging educational approach that capitalizes on human beings’ innate, ancestral capacity to learn and grow via mimicry.

For millions of years, without defined, standardized knowledge, humans learned what (and when) they needed in order to survive. They learned by mimicking successful elders (role-models) who passed down useful tricks of the survival trade. The curriculum was defined by what worked, not what ‘should have been’ taught.

(m=1) + (n=1) = (s=1)

The history of science, the history of knowledge, teaches us that epistemic humility is of ultimate importance: We must recognize that we know far less about the world than we think we know. Thus, at some point, since no one knows everything, each of us must self-experiment to figure out what works and what doesn’t work in our own specific cases. It’s an n=1 clinical trial, the statistics of individuals, and this local, small-scale tinkering approach is the modus operandi that rises to the surface as the best way to confront and make decisions in the face of opacity. In this spirit, self-experimentation operates under a thinkering model: Generate m=1 my-thologies and then test these conjectures by conducting n=1 tinkering efforts, just to see what happens, falsifying negative results along the way, re-editing your personal narrative in the process.

We will continue to edit/tinker with the following essential principles:

• self experimentation
• personal mythology
• personal finance
• academic core

Cheers!

The Mis-thology of Modern Education

Modern educational mythology is flawed.

John Taylor Gatto, former New York Teacher of the Year and, ironically, harsh critic of compulsory, mass schooling, writes:

I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of the national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act.

…and how to be curious, creative, charismatic, how to love, empathize, and have convictions, how to articulate experiences and generate meaning, how to question without expectation, how to relax, dream, and be(come) calm and confident.

I own a tutoring company and work with students as an academic mentor. I am reminded daily of the apathy that lingers in the lives of many young people. I often ask high school students, “What is the role of a high-schooler in our world?”  They think, then laugh…’I don’t know, do homework.’

Sadly, they are right. The guidebook we’ve given students says, ‘do your homework, get good grades, maybe play a sport or get involved in the arts, take the SAT, then go to college.’  Not a very creative prescription for human development. It forgets, ‘ask questions, strive for understanding, take your time, study subjects you like, cultivate a passion, admire people and become admirable, read as much as you can, write, sing, paint, dance (if you like to), become an expert about yourself, nourish your body with proper nutrition, reflect on your experiences, develop vibrant relationships, and care about others.’

Modern education lacks aspiration.

Joseph Campbell writes that two things have the power to bring people together: fear and aspiration. Compulsory, mass schooling uses fear to bring people together every single day from kindergarten through high school (and college, depending on where you go and how you spend your time).

Personal development is the most variable of processes: fluid, tricky, curious, mysterious, etc.  We should embrace the complex beauty of this process and make education much more human: dynamic, flexible, intimate, creative, and personal.  I attempt to do this with every student I work with and find that they greatly appreciate my approach.  One example is the written exchanges I have with them.

Since many students have difficulty expressing themselves (they’ve never been taught, or have rarely been allowed to), I often engage students in a written dialogue.  I’ll scratch a question on whatever paper is closest, then hand it over, asking the student to respond.  They hesitate, wondering what I want them to say, but I confirm that they can write anything.  We go back and forth, until something valuable bubbles up; we never know what this will be, of course.  Recently, I did this with a student who struggles in middle school; his life is unstable and he’s yet to buy-in to the dominant educational mythology described above. Thus, he is punished with bad grades, detentions, and behavioral notices.  He might not pass 7th grade.  But,  I assure you he is very smart, capable, funny, and caring.

We had the following exchange:

Me: How do you want the school year to end?

I want the school year to end with me not failing 7th grade and leaving the school.

Me: What do you think of school?

I think school is stupid. There’s no point.

Me: Finish this phrase 10 times, “I hate school because…”

- it sucks

- its boring

- its gay

- my teachers suck

- its pointless

- its not fun

- it sucks dick

- its sexist

- its annoying

- it starts too early.

How about that for getting inside the mind of a modern American student??  Sure, I led him to those answers, there’s no question about that. But I did because he was dying to say those things; he just didn’t know how.

This is one student, but his answers illuminate the gaps our educational mis-thology creates.

My aspiration is that we fill them, gap by gap, student by student.