A Public-Sphere Awareness Site
Dear Habermas
Well, At Least We've Started
University of Wisconsin, Parkside (UWP)
California State University, Dominguez Hills(CSUDH)
Created: July 10, 2011
Latest update: July 13, 2011
E-Mail to Jeanne in L.A.
E-Mail to Susan at UWP.
News of the Week
This is my very first attempt at What's New? And I kind of got carried away with stories. Now, just sit over there and wait, quietly, and I'll do the same. We'll come to know one another, and I promise I won't call that "illocutionary discourse," after Maria Pia Lara. I'll stick to plain English.
So I won't ask anyone to check out such references as this, unless you really want to know that much: Deconstruction and Speech Act Theory: A Defence of the Distinction between Normal and Parasitic Speech Acts by Kevin Halion, Latest update: September 1989. This page last modified: 07/12/2011 12:46:15. How's that for plain English? This one I'll have to figure out. But I'll work at it and try to understand it, and then put it into a story in plain English we can all talk about. Just remember that it's my "understanding" that you're depending on when you take my word for it. Always judge for yourself, and I'll do my best to give you other voices, other perspectives. Sometimes you get Susan's understanding, too. But she tends to leave the philosophy to me.
I've never had a mixed audience before, of young and adult and older adults, and latent scholars who sometimes want to know everything there is to know in some of my stories, and sometimes are just looking to have fun and play in the neighborhood with the other kids of all ages and scholarly persuasions. Playing with concepts and ideas is just as important as learning them. love and peace, jeanne
Now, this is embarrassing. I'm supposed to know better. It was just a tiny summer scarflike necklace with a bright summer flower to close it. It was so pretty in this lovely soft white organic cotton I had from Knitpicks. They introduced it just last summer, so I didn't even think to worry that they might not have it anymore.
We called it Susan's Sometime Scarf because I keep experimenting to find patterns that will be fun for our Public-Sphere Awareness Projects that we can give away free. Nothing is free today. When I was in college there was no big deal. The knit stores helped us find patterns and yarn, and they helped us all the way through. No one charged us. They just helped us with our yarn. And as college students we didn't knit with designer spangled yarns. Today, everybody charges huge sums for classes.
Vogue Knitting just sent me a brochure inviting me to attend a three-day Conference and sales event. The Gala dinner would cost $150, I think it was. You could take some classes. And you could shop! A package (to shop and take 3 classes a day, as I recall, and the hundred and fifty dollar dinner I guess,) was over $600, but Vogue assured me it was worth almost a thousand. Jumping Jehosaphat! I thought we were in the midst of a major financial crisis. Susan and I want you to learn to do all the things we got to do as young folks. But not at such prices. We'll teach you and help you find family, neighbors, friends who will share their skills with you. I've been working for two years to come up with patterns that we can give you free.
What if you go out and take classes like that and find out that you don't like to knit, or crochet, or paint, or whatever. Oh, well, my husband would say. Go to the craft store. Have you gone shopping in a craft store lately and priced the supplies for scrap-booking? Holy Toledo and Jumping Jehosaphat! I love some of Martha Stewart's recipes and ideas. But not at those prices. Maybe you can't draw. But somewhere you've got a neighbor who can. Did we fail completely as teachers to teach you to help each other out? to share your skills? to care about each other? Especially now that families are spread all over the place, and we can no longer fly whenver we wish, if we ever could.
Susan's Sometime Scarf is one of those free patterns. That's why we called it Sometime - I was working on it - and she'd get it sometime, but we never for sure when - just sometime. It took me a while to figure out how to do it. But now I can show you. And you can go to Michael's or JoAnne's or any other craft store and pick up some inexpensive yarn to play with. And before long we'll have a knitting group, or you can start one of your own with our help, or with your own creativity.
If you'll do things that others can help you with, and share with you, then you can try lots of things until you find what you like. These days, for the whole middle class, that's a good thing. Try. Learn. Find what you like. What you enjoy enough to learn to do it very well. Then you can take classes, and buy expensive materials, and charge lots of money for your classes. Sharing what you can with your neighbors and friends will strengthen your community and all the relationships in it. That's better for all of us.
I'm tempted to add, "Now, there's a good human." Of course, Alfie Kohn would be horrified - that sounds like something you might say to a dog. Well, yes, and I do see his point. But looking around at the lack of "good human" behavior in government and politics today, Susan and I decided it wasn't such a bad idea to add lots more compliments into our discourse than most of us give today. Sure, as one faculty member at CSUDH said, "never mind the compliments, just give me money." Yeah, but is that all there is to human life? Money and more and more and more of it? No, thanks. Not for me. Money is a limited resource that has to be distributed wisely if we want a functional and contented society. But it's not all there is. I'll take all the "good dogs" anyone offers me. I like to know that I've made you happy, and for you to know that you've made me happy.
Two of my colleagues, Allan Ryave and Noelie Rodriguez, and somebody from another school, actually wrote and presented a professional paper on the reasons we offer for why we tend not to give compliments to one another, even when we could. Good that they confirmed we've forgotten how to do that, give compliments, that is. Maybe we only use compliments (Good dog!s) for dog training these days. But Susan and I like them, for us and for you. Try it. The National Public Broadcasting Service (NPS) once called them "sneaky strokes" on All Things Considered. Not a bad name for them. Be a little sneaky. Compliment someone today. We'll all be happier for it. Then pay them fairly. That's a whole different concept. Of course, in the interest of presenting all perspectives, I should remind you that Congress just considered refusing to fund NPS, that same National Public Broadcasting System.
References:
- The Moors of Spain and the Writing They Brought to Europe with Them
- Jumping Jehosaphat I thought this was a pretty good explanation. jeanne
- Holy Toledo I always thought it was Toledo, Ohio. Glad I looked it up. Not so happy about the "liberation" by kicking the Moors out of Spain. For one thing, they had taught others how to write. Rashi was able to write much of Jewish learning down before pogroms killed the most learned. Because he had lived in France, and could only travel to Germany when crops were in and he could get away, the Moors of Spain had taught him to write and take notes while he was in Germany studying Torah in the 12th Century. And that is why we have Rashi's preservation of the learning in the Torah today.
In Reply to: Re: Holy Toledo posted by Barney on July 20, 2000: : Does anyone know where the phrase "Holy Toledo" came from?
: Don't know if it's relevant but Toledo steel was used in medieval swords - renowned for it's quality - which may have been used in wars against the Infidels.
"holy Toledo! - This exclamation of surprise refers to Toledo, Spain, which became one of the great centers of Christian culture after its liberation from the Moors in 1085. Its thirteenth-century Gothic cathedral, one of the largest in Europe, is the seat of the Cardinal Archbishop of Spain." "Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins" by William and Mary Morris (HarperCollins, New York, 1977, 1988).
Do notice this last piece is being shared with you by people on a discussion list of some kind in the United Kingdom. And they wrote it back in July of 2000. The Internet really is wonderful, as long as you remember that it's unsupervised, and you have to be careful to look for collaborating evidence.
What I found, when I went to look up evidence in support of what I told you about Rashi, was that no one seemed to be nearly as focussed as I was on the importance of the writing the Moors had brought to Spain and taught to others, like Rashi. My source: I studied Rashi in 12th Century Hebrew at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, many years ago. For the grandchild of seven Irish Priests and the niece of one Carmelite Nun, that was quite a feat. Everyone else in the class was a conservative Rabbinical student. Now, I'll go back and hunt for my story, and you'll nag me if you care to know that, too. But not today. At least now you'll know how to search for evidence. And that's all that really matters.
love and peace, jeanne
Jeanne is spending so much time with her cats . . .
Why, she's turning into one.
Just like Mrs. Snew.
Go ahead. Take a minute. Go see what happened to Mrs. Snew .There's no excuse for this being up today, except that I wanted to play with it, and Hal the computer, was willing to let me play with Paint.
This drawing is new, in that the story hasn't been told on site before, and jeanne really does seem to be turning into a cat. But we'll send you off with just a few hints to read the story elsewhere. The sweet pumpkin and white cat to jeanne's right is Sugar Puss, smartest cat I've ever met in terms of relational learning. He was a rescue cat from Molly's Mutts and Meows. Very jumpy, much difficulty believing that his world was safe and secure now. Jeanne and Arnold (jeanne's husband) learned quickly never to say "no" to him. He cowered if he thought he had done anything wrong. Until I brought home the little black cat (to my left, just above the word CAT).
He was an urban wild cat. His mother was one of many who roamed his neighborhood. They lived behind a wonderful elderly lady's house. She had seven or eight house cats, perched all about, as she sat enjoying her television. But this little fellow lived on a screened back porch where his mother and others like her came and went freely and kept the rat population under control. The nice lady saw that the litter of 3 kittens and their mother were warm and fed; she was saving the kittens for her son who had moved to Oregon.
One of her church friends, Marilyn, knew that I had been searching for a kitten to play with Sugar Puss, who was making do with imaginary friends. Yes, he really does have imaginary friends. He's a very special cat. Marilyn convinced the lady to let me have one of the kittens for Sugar Puss. The night I brought him home he howled the whole night long. he was the first of the three to be taken from his mother and the litter. Sugar Puss, the timid one, disappeared, as I cuddled the tiny little guy.
Within a couple of days, Sugar Puss returned to our bedroom, and watched the little one. He didn't go near. He just sat and watched. Very much like St.Exupery's Little Prince demanded. One must approach the Other slowly, watching and listening so that he can imagine what the Other is feeling and likely to answer, if one isn't careful enough to be gentle. The little wild cat stayed in our bedroom, not wishing to venture out into our big old house. And Sugar Puss kept him company. Soon he began to bathe the baby; and the baby cuddled with him happily. The baby didn't come downstairs for a couple of weeks.
Sugar Puss watched over him tirelessly and led him out into our patio for the first time. We named the baby Sugar Plum, but we know he'll always be "baby." Today, the two male cats are as close as if they had been in the same litter. They have climbing castles, a room they consider their own, and are known to everyone in the neighborhood. There is something very special about rescue animals; something very special about seeing them content and knowing they are "forever cats."
The rest of the story of this picture isn't up yet. I've only got one day at a time to write. But it's coming. There are two other really big guys in the picture. They're mine, too; the jaguars. Just like the unicorns that Leo Buscaglia loved so. Just like those imaginary friends of Sugar Puss. But those are tales I must tell you another day.
Till then, love and peace, jeanne
References:
- Saint Exupery's Little Prince
I liked this brief introduction to Le Petit Prince. In case you haven't read it yet, it might motivate you to do so. I hope. jeanne- Artificial Intelligence Is Growing in its Potential to Help Us Learn More and Faster
Evaluating Inquiry Learning Through Recognition-Based Tasks Artificial learning and teaching science.
I need to look this up. jeanne 07.10.2011 Tom Murray, Kenneth Rath† , Beverly Woolf, David Marshall,
Merle Bruno††, Toby Dragon, Kevin Kohler, Matthew Mattingly
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA
† Peterfreund Associates, Amherst, MA
†† Hampshire College, Amherst, MA
contact: tmurray@cs.umass.edu
Abstract. The Rashi inquiry learning environment for human biol
- Evaluating Inquiry Learning Through Recognition-Based Tasks Artificial learning and teaching science.
i need to go back and read this, but not enough time today. jeanne 07.10.2011 Tom Murray, Kenneth Rath† , Beverly Woolf, David Marshall,
Merle Bruno††, Toby Dragon, Kevin Kohler, Matthew Mattingly
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA
† Peterfreund Associates, Amherst, MA
†† Hampshire College, Amherst, MA
contact: tmurray@cs.umass.edu
Abstract. The Rashi inquiry learning environment for human biol
* * * * *
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