Day 197, Sept. 29, 2020
The Zen of Stacking
Today's soundtrack: Jaco Pastorius - Trilogue, Berlin 1976
Today I was in a meeting, a caucus of BIPOC faculty and staff from across the state. It was obvious, but eye opening, how rare any of us get to experience this in higher education. To be sure there are as wide a range of voices and opinions in a group of BIPOC faculty and staff as there are in any group of faculty and staff, but to not be in the minority and need to consciously and unconsciously navigate what is said and unsaid from that perspective, was refreshing and freeing, even if this was just a preliminary first meeting.
One of the facilitators talked about how her daughter was just starting to navigate the politics of identity and the anger and frustration that comes with that, even at a young tender age. For many of us, that has been a life-long process, something that started precognition and continued through all the stages of development, through the construction of identity, gender, sexual orientation, and so it is no wonder that it is so exhausting and demoralizing when someone who does not have the self awareness to question their own postionality, calls into question the postionality of others... or unabatedly calls upon the positionally of others. I think several people in my breakout group expressed their collective exhaustion of the work we do for our colleges, our communities, our colleagues.
We also talked a bit about how we recharge, where we find strength. Several people talked about meditative practices, mindfulness, hikes, I revealed I ate all the ice cream (much to my wife's chagrin).
This weekend was the beginning of stacking wood season. I'm trying a new technique this year. Instead of my increasingly rotten bed of motley pallets, I bought angle irons that you can insert 2x4s in, and taking advantage of my wife's new hand-me-down Subaru, we went and loaded it up with 2x4s from the local home improvement store and I spent an afternoon doing some simple cutting and screwing together of our new log racks. It is telling, I suppose, that I have managed all this time, all these years, without a more stable system of log stacking. Of course, I haven't gone so far as to construct a shed... maybe that is next year, but the 2x4s certainly seem like a big step up in form and structure.
But you lose something too. There's always a trade off, isn't there? There's less in the way of meditation when you do not have to imagine how the abstract shapes of split logs will fit together and maintain structure. It is like one of those games where you add one more kebab stick to the pile and try not to allow it to collapse... only with more structure. The reverse of a Jenga game. This has been a fall ritual of my life for the last fifteen or so years. It is one of those things that is approached with as much measured determination as it is approached with avoidance and procrastination. But, I think maybe stacking wood in a pandemic has the potential to be a grounding action.
Somewhere over the summer, I lost the ability to take the dog for walks down to the river on my lunch break. It has been weeks since I've had the chance to go down to the river with Franklin. Instead, we walk once around the house, collect the mail, give the chickens a few sprigs of late season clover, then head back inside so I can quickly heat up a can of soup, a package of ramen, or today. a box of shells and cheese. Maybe wood stacking will give me some of that physical activity again, the pause as one walks through the yard to make a dent, to do something where the progress is visible, to take pleasure in the physical action of existing outside of the virtual world. Maybe, that is one way to savor the wood stacking, to only do so much and no more, each time. I did that tonight, for a short bit in between rain showers, I slipped out after finally catching up with my emails, and started stacking.
I was out there just long enough to begin constructing a theory of stacking. It is not like I set out to start writing the Zen of Wood Stacking, it is just what one does as you handle the various shapes and lengths of log. I praised the oddly rectangular shapes, savored the perfectly split triangles, and plotted with the flat sides of sections. I appreciated the density and heft of particularly satisfying proportions. I became steadily more selective picking logs out of the two cords deposited in a great pile in the yard. I suppose in the end there will be a great pile of distended, punky, and distorted log lumps that I'll have to figure out what to do with. Perhaps I can construct some kind of storage area out of the remnants of pallets.
I suppose, if someone asks me how I sustain myself, at least for the next week or two, it will be through the stacking of wood. The slow stack of intentionality, not the old routine of procrastination followed by a frenzied day-long push. Instead, it is the slow shaping of heads from stone, the way one fills a fountain with pennies.
I hope you all find your own personal woodpile.
Leo
From Our Friends:
From Inside Higher Ed:
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From the Bank of I.D.E.A.S.:
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From the Greater Holyoke Chamber of Commerce:
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| New Groups Aim To Get More Latinx Stories To Young Readers Children don't often get to read stories by or about Latinos. The American book publishing industry remains overwhelmingly white, according to the Cooperative Children's Book Center, which found only five percent of books published for young... Read more www.npr.org |
Today's Online Teaching Tips:
From Campus Technology:
Class for Zoom Adds Classroom Experience to Popular Meeting Platform
A startup founded by ed tech veterans has announced a program intended to make Zoom more effective in replicating the classroom experience for instructors and students. Class for Zoom is currently seeking people to beta test the software.
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From Magna Publications:
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From The Online Learning Consortium:
OLC Blog: Students used to carry laptops to classes. Now laptops carry classes to students.
According to Dr. Richard Pulido, this ongoing COVID-19 shift has raised a flurry of questions about teaching and learning as well as some pressing concerns from students. Beyond the specific technical issues, students have questions about the quality of online programs and the perceptions of online learning. They are also asking whether the systems they are being asked to use are reliable and safe.
In this blog, Dr. Pulido encourages us as educators to do our best to answer students accurately and quickly.
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