Biking to "work," etc.

Despite not knowing how to ride a bike beyond trial and error (learning how to 'unweight' from the handlebars to turn, etc.), I am on a personal change project to bike (or walk) wherever possible instead of driving.

I've biked "to work" at the Coralville Public Library and most recently to return a DVD to the IC Public Library.  I'm tempted to try biking to a doctor's appointment as well.  It's a shame (for my kombucha and vegan carrot cake habit) that the New Pioneer Co-op is on my way to "work" at the library....

I think this is partly an environmental experiment and largely an exercise in trying to face my own fears.

Next up (later this week or early next week): Biking to my 'plot' at the Coralville Community Garden and starting my first foray into growing fruits and vegetables.  I'll be sure to take pictures.

I'm also heading back to the Menominee Vipassana Association as a server for 3 days next week.  Will be good to reconnect to practice and interesting to see what it feels like to 'give back' as well.

Julien Dubuque International Film Festival Documentaries (minus one...)

Took advantage of 'free day' at the Julien Dubuque International Film Festival to screen four documentaries: "The Breach," "Food Chains," "Racing Extinction," and "Realm of the Oceans."  Unfortunately, missed the grand prize winner for documentary, "Angel Azul."  The latter is now on my 'must see' list for ocean degradation and recovery.

"The Breach" was an excellent film about the pernicious impact of logging, aquaculture, overfishing, and dams on salmon stocks.  Unfortunately the filmmaker is backing a wild salmon manufacturer and sending an overly simplistic (in my opinion) message to just 'eat wild.'  No matter how sustainable the salmon becomes in Alaska, it is not capable of 'sustaining' in a 'sustainable' manner, the unmitigated demand of the U.S. (let alone abroad).

"Food Chains" was a lovely work about tomato pickers in Florida demanding more in wages (one more penny per pound of tomatoes picked!), but fell short in terms of focus.  Organizers note that the extra penny doubles worker wages, which translates into an additional 44 cents per year per customer for tomato consumption at the grocery store.  They demand the extra penny from the grocers directly, noting that the massive grocery conglomerates (of which there are only 4), but not the farmers, can afford the pay.  Unfortunately, this reads as giving the workers a raise and then expecting them (plus the rest of the general public) to pay for it.  My belief is that this argument is what impedes progress in wages, including raising the minimum wage, by failing to place the burden on CEOs and the rest of the top 1% at the expense of the consumer.

• The above makes me wonder if the first assignment of the new year should be to identify "how much you need" for future happiness in all realms of life (done by interviews, research, etc.)?

"Racing Extinction" was the interesting new documentary by the maker of "The Cove" (and a native Dubuquer) whose next project will focus on the issues related to livestock production and the imperative to go vegan.  [He plans to focus on this by profiling high endurance vegan athletes.]  During the Q&A, however, I was a bit disappointed by his reluctance to address the e-waste associated with modern gadgets, but did not find it altogether surprising given his backing from both Paul Allen and Elan Musk!

Remember: Experiences are (sometimes) worth more than readings!

• I also want to remember to brainstorm more (per several books from previous posts) assignments that are experiential.  I know first-hand from my 10 day retreat that experiences are worth more than any readings.  I have to find ways (permission slips, timing around work schedules, use of class time for activities, etc.) to make several assignments in each class experiential for students.

• I was rereading the Bell Environmental Sociology (4th Edition) text again and reminded that I want to use the text on pages 151-153 regarding Calvinism and Weber in all classes.  Specifically, I want students to reflect deeply, read slowly, and look up unknown vocabulary with respect to passages pertaining to the myth of the meritocracy.  Bell does an excellent job of explaining Weber's analysis of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and the rise of capitalism.  He notes that the inculcation of Calvinist doctrine supported the notion that having material items reflected hard work.  The more material items one had, the more one must have worked for them.  Conversely, the fewer material items, the more slothful one must be.  Very little evidence in contemporary society supports this with respect to income and wealth inequality, but the ideology remains pervasive and powerful.

More personal change project reports

Since I need to be putting my money where my mouth is, I continue on the following 'personal change' projects designed to reduce my impact on the Earth (in particular, emissions related to transit of me or food and unnecessary energy consumption/rare Earth mineral use/'unrecyclable' reduction):

• Bike commuting (even though I barely know how to ride)
• Official letter stating I can start working my community garden plot on Monday in Coralville (even though I do not know how to grow food)
• No cable or internet at home (hence bike commuting to Coralville Public Library as much as possible and soon...always?)
• Continued buy nothing with the exception of Goodwill for clothes (read: professional development in contemplative education=weight gain)
• Vegan and local food choices (working on eliminating all processed food and kombucha...but it's been tricky)

The logic behind these changes has already been blogged, but I wanted to remind myself of these and also create a record of progress so that I am able to speak about the process and the challenges with students starting this Fall.

Education and Contemplation video (thank you, Dennis!)

One of my dearest friends, Dennis, shared this video on education and mindfulness/contemplation, entitled "Educating the Heart and Mind Creativity" and featuring the Dalai Lama among others.

The video could be an excellent resource for faculty at Kirkwood upon my return.  Clips could be featured in presentations and the entirety could be shown/discussed among a KCELT group.

I think portions of the video might also be of interest to students to 'soften the blow' of a different form of education (i.e., less linear, hierarchical).  Panelists explain the importance of creativity, compassion, and reflection in (early childhood) education.  [I will share this video link with Melanie N. in case it is of interest!] Without too much complexity, they also begin to explain the trouble with identifying strongly with the "I" or solid thoughts, though this is a difficult thing to explain (rather than experience).

Lakeside Laboratory as a resource for future students

I accidentally came across an article for the Lakeside Laboratory as a resource for future Kirkwood students.  Any Iowa college or university student can take the week(s) long immersion courses in ecology through the center.

I may also take a class through the laboratory in future!

Abundance Ecovillage- Fairfield, Iowa

Melanie and I visited Abundance Ecovillage on Saturday (April 11).  Stacey was kind enough to give us a tour of one of the homes (solar array visible) and explain several of the features of the sustainable community:

Homes are designed (as are the Sustainable Village structures at Kirkwood) with thick insulation and passive solar:

Homes do not have air conditioning.  Many have radiant in-floor heating and also have "earth tubes."  The earth tubes are tubes dug deep in the ground in the area around the home's foundation.  In summer, a fan draws fresh, outside air into the tubes, which remove heat and humidity providing cooler air for the home.  In winter, fans draw the air through the warmer earth providing a warmer source of air to refresh and help reduce the amount of heat the furnace needs to provide to heat the home.

Additionally, the entire community is meant to be off-grid by utilizing solar, wind (they have a wind turbine), and propane reserves.  Stacey shared, however, that the car batteries used to store the solar energy are becoming a bit cumbersome, so the community is currently on a buy-back program for back-up energy with a local energy cooperative.

As is popular in Hawaii, solar hot water heaters provide hot water in the home:

Water use is also meant to be completely self-sustaining even in periods of drought.  The community uses septic systems to treat solid waste, but gray water is treated through a natural set of wetlands:

Ponds in the community as well as catchment systems provide the rest of the water needed for human consumption, permaculture, and recreation:

Speaking of permaculture, residents have small lots on which to grow food, but the community also maintains a greenhouse (with CSA shares) as well as asian pear and mulberry trees:

I hope to share insights from Stacey's tour with Kirkwood faculty at the Sustainability Village as well as Social Science faculty, other staff, and students in each of my classes upon my return.

Clueless

...is what I am often.

Somehow I managed to completely forget about the earlier applications of mindfulness to teaching that I learned about 'when back when in the Fall of 2014' through the University of Iowa exploratory group for mindfulness in education.

• Specifically, I was reminded by a contact from that group that I can have a variety of mindfulness/awareness based activities that can be related to findings from the text.  For instance, when discussing normative changes related to social media, students can simply be 'aware' of patterns and usage and how this impacts their lives/makes them feel.  Those findings can be reflected on and linked back to the text.  Likewise, these inquiries can extend to things like food choices (and linked to readings on bureaucracy or the environment), health insurance status, educational opportunities, political practices, etc., and the text.

Biking and camping

Per my 'individual change' projects I would like students to complete, I am engaging in my own efforts to eat/drink locally (and giving up expensive, shipped kombucha), bike (rather than drive) as much as possible, and...go camping.  A bit by way of background as to why this is significant:

I didn't learn to bike until I was almost 35 years old.  To join those who are increasingly commuting via bike rather than car is then pretty significant (according to Census data, bike to work commuting has increased from 488,000 people in 2000 to 882,198 people in 2013).

As for camping, I want contemplative education to confront the notion that we are separate from our natural environment (rather than a part of it!).  I believe that issue is applicable to all classes.  However, just like I needed a spiritual experience to see the infusion of spirit in curricula, I need a natural experience to infuse nature in curricula.  So...as much as I fear spiders and bodily functions without 'modern' comforts, I must plan a camping trip (Mel says she has a tent and sleeping pad, which should get us/me started).

The Yoda of all assignment lists?

So much reform in curricula for the fall in order to infuse spirit, sense of purpose/self, and experience in education.

• I'll be trying the 'sit beside' instead of 'stand over' model.
• We'll invoke a variety of personal/group change, experiential (e.g., explorations in nature, service learning agency profiles), non-profit agency research, historical (tax rates per "Inequality for All")and cross-cultural comparison research (e.g., Denmark homelessness, health insurance, education, and taxation), interview, current event, example/application, lectio divina reflection pieces etc., in dynamic engagement with the text.  Where engagement with the text contradicts research or experience, the approach will be one of questioning rather than assuming that I have the right answers.
• Assignments will ask students to work toward figuring out how they want to relate to the world now (e.g., what they do/buy) and in the future (e.g., their contribution in the work world that supports their spirit).  Again, I cannot decide this for them.  I can only use theory and the text to help them learn what questions to ask in their lives.  Clearly, I do not have all of the answers myself and need not be conceived of as the source of all learning!
• Class assignments must retain hope.  As stated in Nature and the Human Soul (henceforth NHS) by Lewis Carroll (pg. 456) from "Alice in Wonderland" "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."  Likewise, Einstein (same pg.) "No problem can be solved fromt he same level of consciousness that created it."  On pg. 313 of NHS, Vaclav Havel also states: "Either we have hope within us or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul.  Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not hte same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.  The more unpropitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is."  As noted on pg. 25 of CTL (see next paragraph), while 'great and all,' "critical thinking, when it becomes an ethic, can turn into a metaphysics of nihilism or a psychology of pessimism...like a carefully employed butcher knife hacks the whole animal to pieces.  Contemplative teaching teaches on the other side of critical thinking...where affirmation is again possible."  After all, "contemplation of our subjects teaches that freedom is always a freedom to love, and that love must always spring from an inner freedom." (pg. 27).

Per the issue Contemplative Teaching and Learning (henceforth CTL with citations from pg. numbers though an edited volume) from the journal New Directions for Community Colleges, future assignments will focus heavily on the above as well as much slower, more deliberate, and in-depth reflection on readings. Reflection, contemplation, and spiritual integration (not in the religious, but in the life purpose sense) benefits teacher, administrator, and student (pg. 19,92-93).  Future work can further explore (along with KCELT, admissions, and counseling services) how contemplative practices might improve campus climate.  [Quotes in section immediately below all from CTL.]

• Rather than quantity, we will focus on quality and depth of reading with frequent reflection assignments that apply or analyze (see second bullet above).  Passages of text will be "reflection" pieces per lectio divina (pgs. 14, 34, 44).  The authors of all entries suggest contemplative learning is most apt for the fragmented lives of community college students.  Reflection assignments will likely start on the first day of class.
• All of the quoted passages in this blog (and the others noted here from NHS and CTL) can be the source of lectio divina reflections.  Likewise, the textbook and other texts (e.g., the fabulous quote near the beginning of Occupy Spirituality re: the enduring myth of the meritocracy) should be the source of material for lectio divina.
• Assignments will ask how what we are studying impacts what is going on with students' lives in the present and how it is connected to history and other people in a bit picture way (pg. 22).  One instructor (pg. 24) asks students to consider: "Although this course fulfills a requirement, I can make it my own by_____________________?"
• Noting Berry's (pg. 37) observation that "community cannot survive under the rule of competition" (as is the case for present economic systems [this could be a reflection quote for any class as well!]), the classroom is a sangha and needs spiritual healing.  I plan to use metta (loving kindness meditation) to help support/heal individuals and our classroom community (pg. 36).  We will direct happiness and peace to ourselves and to all beings faced with the difficult subject matter we will address.
• We will try to remember solutions are not dualistic though society presents them this way and will instead focus on questioning and pondering the multiplicity of solutions available beyond the limiting, dualistic options.  We will remember that "listening is loving" (according to "Hector...and the Search for Happiness").
• We will study (again, possibly as early as the first week of class) the limits of all dualistic or fixed labels in society.  The problems of socially constructed 'divide and conquer' identities will be a recurring theme.
• The syllabus and assignments will leave many things independent and unstructured to reflect our fluidity (pg. 84-85).  We will have specific discussions about the anxiety this might generate and talk about how to address this.  Likewise, we will talk about any anxiety concerning the 'sit beside' rather than 'stand over' model of education and challenges to assumptions about a 'sole source of learning.'

• Building on the work of Palmer and Fox, we will explore education as a means to find your life's path in a way that is spiritually rewarding as well as remunerative.  We will ask "what am I meant for" and "how can I be for myself and also for others" (pg. 103, CTL).  Since our subject is sociology which relates to all aspects of life in community including vocation, we will be exploring our subject matter as also an issue of vocatio that will fulfill students as they age rather than leaving them at age 40 wondering about their life's purpose (see pg. 238, 255-7, and 316-7 of NHS).  This level of reflection is one of the predicating tenets of Nature and the Human Soul (NHS) [quotes below are from NHS).

NHS (as well as CTL on pg. 107) also advocates strongly for the return to nature (and an 'ecocentric' orientation) as a balance to the 'culture-centric' model in modern society (pg. 4-5).  [To this end, I will camp!  Just like with the spirit, if you want to return to nature, you have to have an experience in nature.  D'uh.]  We can use lectio divina on various passages from NHS including those that argue we suffer from our alienation from the natural world (these also sound a bit like Marx and can be used with free association on capitalism, communism, and socialism) (pg. 6-7).  According to NHS, a truly actualized society is not necessarily a "developed" society (use pg. 7, 46-47, 210 (and globalization here), 448-9, 452-4 for in-class reflections on this) but rather one that learns to balance culture with the realities of our interbeing/dependence with the natural.

• A course inspired by NHS will be "soulcentric" in the sense that it is "designed to assist all members in discovering and living from their deepest and most fulfilling potentials in this way contributing their most life-nourishing gifts to their community and environment."  More broadly, then, "a society that is soulcentric is necessarily ecocentric" since the individual's place is always "granted and revealed by nature.  In so doing, the society roots itself in the natural world.  the greater Earth community is accurately understood as the locus of every person's first membership...[with] interconnectedness with everything else."  Thus, "to say that a culture is ecocentric is to say that its customs, traditions, and practices are rooted in an awareness of radical interdependence with all beings." (pg. 45).  This is in contrast with the typical, egocentric models on which we can also reflect (pg. 224-5).  We can use the passages on pg. 124 and 126-7 to explore the social construction of such things as ADHD within the 'nature-deficit' model proposed.  We can wonder how a mind orientation (rather than nature) might be harming our (and our children's) ability to care about life (pg. 126-7).  We can reflect on the importance of identifying with place and with how this allows us to be our fully integrated selves rather than just consumers convinced of our fundamental separation from "nature" (pg. 144-145, 155-7, AND 261 [re: consumption of material resources] passages for lectio divina).
• Relatedly, we can try the exercises on pg. 158-160 in all classes to see how we might reestablish a connection to our environment rather than remaining separate and isolated from it.
• We can try the exercises on pg. 195 and 196 also to try to learn more about our connection in terms of the plants, animals, and food sources around us.
• Additionally, we might investigate pg. 205 to see what we think of the divisions of 'masculine' and 'feminine.'  [Eh hem.]
• Contemplation via reflection (lectio divina) and meditation (metta, mindfulness as a means to awareness and a "pause" in the action before reacting) also helps us to practice questioning, curiosity, beginner's mind, and innocence (child's mind) in our pursuits.  We will be better apt to be equanimous rather than reactive as a result of our awareness of sensation, thought, and interconnection (pg. 106).
• For quote on syllabus?:  "Not all those who wander are lost" (J.R.R. Tolkien).  Related to this (pg. 285), NHS advocates for experiencing (pg. 402-3) above all else and abandoning the preoccupation with self (or the "I, me, mine") in favor of seeing the interdependence of all.  We need to provide experiential, service learning, and volunteer activities for students with mentorship.  Students need 'employable skills,' but also the lived experiences that will allow them to take their place in an integrated, soul/eco-centric (rather than ego-) society (pg. 212).  Through ecocentric and soulcentric ways of being, we will arrive at service work that creates new and hopeful social institutions (pg. 292).  As a result of our experiences, we will act out our truth as part of nature (pg. 326).
• For those who think we have lost our minds focusing on our fundamental interdependence, we can remember Einstein's words (pg. 402) that "We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest- a kind of optical delusion of consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."