Archive for new day
Literally When in Rome
I love Eschaton, the blog written by Duncan Black (aka “Atrios”). This is a post on driving and audience analysis.
This post, “Helicopter Drop,” on the European financial crisis, is more typical, though: “It really doesn’t have to be this way. Instead of giving more free money to the banksters and pretty pleasing them to lend it out to somebody else, you can just give people free money directly. Drop it from helicopters. Mail everybody a check. Add a zero on the end of everyone’s bank balance. Whatever. If you want there to be more money in the economy, give people more money. It really is that simple, or should be.”
Olympia
This morning I’m on my way down to the States to sign a lease on a summer sublet right in downtown Olympia, Washington, and could not be more excited. I haven’t actually seen the place yet; a friend picked it out, and smart-phoned some photos to me. This is going to be a wonderful, adventurous summer. What to move in with, besides my laptop and books, and some clothes and my bike? Most everything I need is already there. I very much like the feel of this university and government town, and the people I’ve met seem very winsome indeed.
I have some projects planned (as usual): preparing an upper-level marketing class on digital media, rewriting two other courses I’ve been teaching for a while, and reanimating a couple of business and writing initiatives. My main goal, though, is to visit friends there, and to spread some happy Canadian vibes while soaking up theirs.
Heritage Vancouver’s Photostream …
… is fantastic. Above is an image of Chinatown in the late fifties (would be my guess). Note all that great neon! (Postcard photographer: Rolly Ford.)
Summer!
Tomorrow is the last big day of my semester: I have three meetings with esteemed colleagues out on Kwantlen‘s Surrey campus … and then I have some time “off.” This will be a happily new experience for me. (Well, *paid* time off, that is.)
Katie
Katie Licata
“Katie lived her life with a fierce commitment to joy. Her M.O. was to find amusement and humor in any given moment, and I feel so lucky to have shared some of those famous moments whenever our paths blessedly converged. Above all, Katie gave of herself generously. A loving, giving and loyal friend, she will be remembered happily and with gratitude by all who knew her.” — Richard Chon
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“Be My Junkie Shadow”
Photo Stills of Kat Kosiancic and Denise Greyeyes, courtesy of photographer Chris Young
Kat Kosiancic’s 2002 documentary, “Be My Junkie Shadow,” is a loving but stark portrait of women who have lived and worked in the downtown eastside neighborhood of Vancouver. Some of the women who participated, including Denise Greyeyes, shown above [with the glasses], have passed away since the film was made. You can see this wonderful work at the 4th annual “Frames of Mind Mental Health Film Festival,” this Saturday, May 12, at the Pacific Cinematheque Theatre, 1131 Howe St, Vancouver.
You can read online versions of Kat’s documentary interviews here, in the archives of my great old ezine Ellavon.com.
Jenny Basil Recognized as a “Best Professor” by Princeton Review
Brooklyn College Associate Professor Jenny Basil
From the Brooklyn College News Release:
Jennifer Basil, associate professor of biology at Brooklyn College [and a sister of mine], is among the 300 best professors in the country, according to the newest book from The Princeton Review. The Best 300 Professors, which was released on April 3, presents the inspiring and challenging educators who make the most impact on students’ lives. The 300 were chosen from an initial list of 42,000 professors out of the 1.8 million postsecondary teachers instructing students at colleges and universities across the country. “I was very, very surprised when I saw that,” said Basil via telephone from Israel, where she is researching animals’ brains. “It came out of the blue. I thought that it was a joke!”
Basil, who has been teaching at Brooklyn College for 12 years, finds as much inspiration from her students as they do from her. “Students at Brooklyn College are hungry for knowledge, they work hard, they are humble, and they appreciate what you give them,” she said. “Standing in front of a class for one and a half hours can be exhausting, but I still leave the class full of energy that I get from my students.”
Among the classes that Basil teaches are zoology, animal behavior and the evolution of intelligent behavior. All of them incorporate at least four different approaches to the subject, because Basil believes that students learn through various techniques. “Some students just listen and remember everything. Others learn by doing,” Basil said, adding that story-telling is an important component of every lecture. “After all, for much of our history we did not have the written word.”
Basil’s lectures are full of interactive activities. One of them asks students to pretend that they are a particular animal that has to return home by using just one sense, such as the sense of smell or touch.
One of the most typical forms of examination in college classrooms — the multiple-choice test — is something that Basil simply can’t do. “As a student, I was terrible in multiple-choice tests,” she said. “I don’t like to give these tests. I don’t write them well.” Instead, Basil develops open-ended tests. She also asks students to do a series of critical-thinking activities, such as evaluating an article from the Science section of The New York Times. Basil asks students to compare the article to the original, scientific material used by the writer.
“Students catch amazing things that I don’t even see. It makes them critical thinkers,” Basil said, adding that she often gets e-mails from her former students who admit that this exercise changed their lives and that they read the Science section every day. She loves these e-mails, but reading the Times is not the best piece of advice she gives her students.
“The most important thing is to do something in life that you are passionate about,” she said. “Find what you love and do it. That’s what I did.”
The C-Free List
Kat Kosiancic in Costa Rica
My friend Kat’s wonderful website, The C-Free List, “consists of things that I have found helpful on my quest for well being after I was diagnosed with breast cancer over two years ago … things that I feel help the body, mind, and spirit to recover and maintain good health and balance through life. It includes recommendations for services, books, documentaries, diets, super foods, vitamins and supplements, alternative therapies and also touches on yoga, meditation, gratitude, forgiveness, love, kindness and more.” The site explores alternative & complementary therapies, books, music mantras & meditation, and natural highs, and much else, with Kat’s deep insight and intelligence.
Kat in Vancouver
Beauties on Bikes
One of my life’s greatest pleasures has been hearing about, and then seeing, the photographic projects of my friend Lincoln Clarkes as he’s working on them, before any of the work has been published. Late last year, during a visit to Vancouver in his high-up hotel room on Robson Street, he showed me his Toronto Cyclists photographs. I found them mesmerizing. Like much of Lincoln’s work, the charm of the individual portraits is intensified by their placement in such a grand series. (The same was true with the astonishing, heart-rending “Heroines” series, which changed the way our entire nation looked at our downtown eastside neighbors, hurting in our midst.)
Lincoln finally published part of his Cyclists series, 100 photographs, today, May Day.
Outlook TV
My friends at Outlook TV have updated their website. It’s worth a visit: You can watch current and archived episodes of the “Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans Two Spirit Queer Questioning Intersex Magazine Show.” (Submit your story ideas for future episodes here.)
Summer
For the first time since I was, oh, 14, I am having a summer vacation. From when I started at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in 2003, I have taught year-round — to keep out of trouble, is what I usually tell people. This year I decided to make the change, and will be making a number of trips and visits to friends old and new. I’ll also be doing a lot of writing as well as working on some publishing projects (as usual!) with cherished colleagues. At the very least you will see more of me here or connected to here. I submit final grades a week from tomorrow … and then it is a new day.
Sarah Jackson
My friend and recent Kwantlen Polytechnic University journalism graduate Sarah Jackson (who designed basil.CA) is always on the move. Here’s a story about her recent work written by Dr. Gira Bhatt, Principal Investigator / Project Director for Acting Together: Community-University Research Alliance (CURA) and Kwantlen Psychology faculty member. (I was “Knowledge Dissemination” advisor to the Acting Together research project back in 2008-11.)
“Live for the Moment” exhibition
“Young men were asked to take pictures as part of a UBC study funded by Canadian Institutes of Health Research about losing a male friend to accidental death. Part research, part art show, this exhibition is a selection of these photos. Accompanied by quotes from participants’ interviews, the images collectively challenge notions of men’s invulnerability to grief and reveals the different ways men find meaning in tragic loss.” Presented by the UBC School of Nursing and the Department of Education.
The opening is tomorrow night, April 27, starting at 7:30PM at The Fall Gallery, 644 Seymour Street, Vancouver, BC.
The researchers have an excellent twitter feed.
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April 27: The exhibition was beautifully done, and very moving, and illuminating. There were several dozen images on the walls (usually photos of some meaningful place or of an item belonging to a male friend who had died, in almost all cases, due to youthful recklessness — snowboarding off an embankment, getting stabbed at a nightclub, overdosing, DUIs, getting hit by a car while skateboarding — with quotes 2 – 3 sentences long beneath them, from a male friend of the young man who had died) that possessed talismanic radiance for the grievers and which seemed, too, to bless the exhibition space with a kind of buoyant calm and even contentment. It’s a profoundly courteous (and I think *so* useful) creation of social science research that my former colleague from the Gangs Project, Jennifer Matthews, who works at UBC, turned into a really cool show. The opening was packed — the show had received some good publicity — Jennifer was interviewed by the CBC, and the Vancouver Sun ran a little feature on it today.
Walking home down Granville Street afterwards, as Friday night was getting underway, was a jarring but appropriate coda to the experience — you could see groups of guys already buzzed, marching 3 or 5 abreast, belching and bumping along the sidewalks outside of the clubs …
FYI: Here’s a link to Jennifer Matthews’ remarkable “Whistler Guys Study” website, which presents some of her earlier research, on young men doing extreme things in their lives.
Lincoln Clarkes documentary
Lincoln Clarkes, Vancouver photographer, yesterday late afternoon, April 6, 2012
Kwantlen’s new president
I see that Kwantlen Polytechnic University‘s incoming president, Dr. Alan Davis, has ties to my Alma Mater, the State University of New York at Buffalo, having recently served as President of SUNY’s Empire State College. Welcome to Kwantlen, Dr. Davis. I look forward to working with you.
Dr. Davis will be replacing Interim President and Vice Chancellor John McKendry, who ably took the reigns of leadership at our university last year. Hats off to Dr. McKendry for a job very well done.
A Sense of Scale
“I can be glad in my death that, selfless,/ the beauty of the world goes on; and then more:/ even worldless, that beauty still.”
Until the other day, it had been almost thirty years since I read the poetry of William Bronk, whose work was recommended to me by Gilbert Sorrentino, my teacher and friend way back when I was in grad school at Stanford. I find it wonderful as ever. No one I know writes more gorgeously succinct, unsparing poems about proportion and time. (The above lines come from a 1978 chapbook by Bronk, “That Beauty Still,” that I picked up recently at a splendid place in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood, Wessel and Lieberman Booksellers.)
Long Ride Home
“How hard would it have been to say some kinder words instead?” — I so love that line by Patty Griffin –> no personal pronouns, it brings the world into one bowl, that we own together …
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