I hope your semester went well, very well. I hope each felt success - even through hardship and failure there is success in overcoming obstacles and solving problems.
I feel sad that Peter is not returning next semester and will not be at our summer residency. However, I can only feel joy for the insight he has offered me and I can be grateful for the time shared.
I ask if you are willing to consider the questions posed by Peter in our last packet letter and through discussion in our first meeting (without an advisor or with a replacement) share our thoughts. I am interested in your answers to Pete's questions.
I would dearly love to see representations of the work you did over the last semester. I will be ready to share photos documenting my practicum if you're interested.
Looking forward,
Liz
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
How do I support the soldier and not the war?
How do I support the soldier and not the war? This was my question for my practicum. In italics is an excerpt from my practicum proposal:
The benefit of this project to collaborators is that it may serve to find common ground in opposing opinions regarding the current war; it may garner respect for the deceased soldiers’ effort and sacrifice; it may offer comfort through acknowledging grief and an opportunity to release regret; it will be a public visual aide demonstrating what the number 4000 (4962) looks like.
I have a 15 year long existing relationship with the FPUU community as friend and member of the congregation... Intellectually I may differ from some in my opinion regarding the current war. My intent to be neither for nor against the war, but to focus on the soldier is intended to relieve any tension that might become a barrier to recognizing the soldier.
People came forward to help with creating strips and writing names; some wrote a few, some wrote hundreds, I’m pretty sure one wrote thousands. I received help building the frame, contacting the Canton Citizen, and taking photographs.
I held a public event on Friday to write names, read names and tie rags onto the flag. Rev. Bill, opened with a prayer; congregation members, high school youth and family read, wrote and tied; and my husband made brownies to share. It was a special event.
I gave a homily in church Sunday, and folks shared their thoughts during fellowship hour. People thanked me "for sharing" the project, presenting the soldiers as individuals and making them “tangible”. I met friends, neighbors, strangers and new friends who shared the flag with questions and comments on Monday as Canton celebrated Memorial Day.
Unexpectedly, the events inspired another to create a document with photos of my Rag-Flag designed to email the message to others “especially veterans so that they can realize that there are people who do not support the war, however they do support our veterans and our armed services.”
I am grateful.
Peace,
Liz
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Vermont Legislature Legalizes Gay Marriage
Yesterday was a great day in Vermont: http://burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20090408/NEWS03/90408001.
What I thought you all might find interesting was that Mark Schulman, Goddard President, along with other state business leaders, signed a letter to lawmakers earlier in the week expressing "that allowing same-sex couples to marry in Vermont will create a better business climate in the state." [http://www.timesargus.com/article/20090407/NEWS01/904070338]
Optimistic sign of the times. When Vermont passed the civil union law back in the 90's, it really divided the state. "Take Back Vermont" signs were everywhere, and newspapers were filled with letters to the editor. This time around there was a lot less acrimony. Still loud voices on both sides, but the debate was civilized.
Hope everyone is well.
What I thought you all might find interesting was that Mark Schulman, Goddard President, along with other state business leaders, signed a letter to lawmakers earlier in the week expressing "that allowing same-sex couples to marry in Vermont will create a better business climate in the state." [http://www.timesargus.com/article/20090407/NEWS01/904070338]
Optimistic sign of the times. When Vermont passed the civil union law back in the 90's, it really divided the state. "Take Back Vermont" signs were everywhere, and newspapers were filled with letters to the editor. This time around there was a lot less acrimony. Still loud voices on both sides, but the debate was civilized.
Hope everyone is well.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
hate is not a Canton value
Incase you were wondering about the WBC protestors vs. the Canton High School Drama Club presentation of “The Laramie Project” (a play about the murder of Matthew Shepard) the students have chosen to wear this t-shirt in response to the planned protest. The words are inspired by a line in the play.
So, a happy surprise addition to my packet work; I learned the steps required to get words silk screened onto a t-shirt. The cotton T's will sell for $5.00 each. The theater kids are hoping to see a lot of white shirts on Mar 20th to show what they value.
Go Canton Bulldogs!
Work culture/ making a working context for ourselves
As I read Pete's preface letter, I thought about how different this program is from one at a residential school. I imagine we all had our reasons for choosing Goddard (and hoping Goddard chose us.) Mine was twofold; first, the description of the program really spoke to me. When I read it, I kept smiling, nodding my head, noticing kinship, feeling a strong pull and a connectedness generated by none of the other programs I researched. Another reason was pragmatic; I really like the work I do now and didn't want to leave it to go to school in a live- there full-time mode. I think the way I work now is helping me create a structure for going forward in the broad context of personal practice. I don't feel that my life is playing out in separate compartments, but rather more like different scenes on a revolving stage, scenes ultimately all connected in the one play.
For me, this personal practice is much like what Mary Catherine Bateson wrote about in Composing a Life. I feel like we are in fact creating our lives, the real composition, of which art-making is a specific expression, but always against the backdrop of our being. One of my favorite thinkers from earlier in my life is Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and a quote of his that has stayed with me for years is this: "The task before us now if we would not perish, is to build the earth." Building the earth means being the architects of our own lives, as well as paying attention to our connections with our planet and with all the creatures who inhabit it. What we learn, what we create, and most especially who we are I think is ultimately so we can be part of healing and of making whole.
So, thanks, Pete, for opening that door, and getting me thinking about why Goddard and how I can make the gifts of this time manifest and enduring in my life.
Good thought to you all; I do miss you.
Susan
Friday, February 27, 2009
Gablik, Meritocracy & Multiculturalism, Where do I stand?
Is anyone else feeling the encroachment of the multiculturals upon their Ivory Tower as well? At core to Gablik’s introduction and to the pedagogical approach at Goddard is the importance of discourse and dialog. Gablik sees the way to invite or create community, facilitate and or diffuse conflict is through discourse, an open forum, and a sharing of ideas, where in ideally all points get heard, and none are excluded. However, what Gablik does to clearly promote the ideas and points of view that are sympathetic to her path is to include members in dialog, as a collective voice. In contrast to the views in her introduction, Gablik portrays Hilton Kramer as a lone voice, the voice of the ivory tower, the voice of conservative, white, privileged, colonialist, western civilization.
I am wondering if anyone is hearing the scathing tone of rhetorical exchange on both sides of the cultural conflict? Being sympathetic with the ideals of meritocracy, though not blind to the myth of it, I wanted to look further into this point in Gablik’s introduction where the conflict seemed to get heated. I looked up Meritocracy, Hilton Kramer and his art and cultural critic journal, The New Criterion. I am sensing extreme hostility here on both sides, TNC article elitist in its cynicism, and Gablik comes across to me as dismissive toward traditional western approaches to art.
So I just wanted to share a little bit of the conflict I found, looking further into this.
I looked up Meritocracy to get some idea about its definition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy
I also found this guy’s blog about the myth of Meritocracy quite interesting
http://ericstoller.com/blog/2007/07/01/the-meritocracy-myth/
Hilton Kramer & The New Criterion: I had to look up the blog out of curiosity and read an article or two to see what TNC is all about….I found this recent article over some comments Sean Penn made at the Academy Awards….I found the tone of the language and humor to be quite elitist and snooty, very scathing and cynical.
The New Criterion Blog
http://newcriterion.com/blogs.cfm
Feb 23, 2009 04:57 PM
Hollywood Commies
by James Bowman
Well, they don’t call them "progressives" for nothing, do they?. If you stayed up late enough last night, you must have heard Sean Penn at the Academy Awards ceremony putting his fine feelings on display as he accepted the award for Best Actor for his genuinely fine portrayal of the title character in Milk. He couldn’t resist telling his audience of many millions — which is also many millions more than have ever seen or will ever see Milk: "For those who saw the signs of hatred as our cars drove in tonight, I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren’s eyes if they continue that way of support. We’ve got to have equal rights for everyone."
Thanks for that, Sean. I’m sure the Academy appreciated it. And so, by the way, was he was sure the Academy appreciated it, as undoubtedly they did. You could tell because he had addressed his fellow thesps, who had just honored him and his film, as "You commie, homo-loving sons of guns." That’s not the sort of thing you say unless you can be pretty sure that nobody is going to have to draw a diagram for the benefit of the dimmer Academy members or media hangers-on of the irony intended by it. Clearly, Mr Penn’s purpose was a jokey reminder to the beautiful people of one of the articles of faith in the American entertainment industry, namely that there never were any genuine "commies" — that is, old-fashioned slang for communists — in America but only a lot of wicked Republicans and conservatives who once, a long time ago, engaged in a "witch hunt" to try to find them and succeeded only in ruining the careers of some moderate liberals like themselves.
And yet there was also what I can only suppose was an unintentional irony in his rather feeble joke. For one of the salient beliefs of the commies, if there had ever been any, would have been that history has a predictable, indeed inevitable, course, and that this course was scientifically certain to terminate in the final victory of the revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat and, ultimately, the socialist utopia where once there was nothing but rotten bourgeois society. Mr Penn’s appeal to the inevitability of the fact that his audience’s grandchildren’s progressivism will exactly correspond to his own was, in this sense at least, precisely a commie idea, albeit one that would have come as a considerable surprise to Marx, Lenin or Mao. Maybe, in today’s Hollywood, "commie" is as much a compliment to the correct opinions of one’s fellow progressives as "homo-loving" — or, indeed, sons-of-guns, who received their imprimatur from the late Joey Bishop.
More likely, Hollywood’s best and brightest now take progressive opinions on the subject of gay marriage — among others things — as much for granted as their own prerogative as leaders of fashion. Put the two things together and you have an effortless assumption of historical inevitability that owes less to Karl Marx than to the fawning treatment they routinely receive from the media. The dialectic is them! Bill Maher made the same assumption in introducing the award for Best Documentary with a shameless if ungrammatical plug for his own doc, Religulous, when he said: "Now as a producer and a star of my own documentary this year, the one about religion that didn’t get nominated. I know, it’s a touchy subject. But someday, we all have to confront the notion that our silly gods cost the world too greatly. But there I go, ruining the ending." Yeah, Das Kapital was full of spoilers too.
As I say, this kind of stuff is most likely simple ideological self-confidence, born of the cozy sense that everybody around you, more or less, shares your opinions about all the things that matter. You could see the same assumption in the words that someone gave poor Daniel Craig to read when he introduced the award for production design. In alluding to the nomination for Revolutionary Road, he praised that film’s designers for creating an image of "suburbia [in the 1950s] which looked like anything but the prison it was." That there might have been present a few ex-prisoners who didn’t see it that way at all was, clearly, a thought that never crossed his mind.
As it happened, on the same day they gave out the Academy Awards, a remarkable piece appeared in The New York Times titled "A Reconciliation on Gay Marriage" by David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch. The former is president of the Institute for American Values and author of The Future of Marriage; the latter is a guest scholar at the Brookings institution and author of Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights and Good for America. The two men’s views on gay marriage itself are still directly opposed to each other, but they find that they can agree on civil unions so long as these come with "robust religious-conscience exceptions, which provide that religious organizations need not recognize same-sex unions against their will."
It is an admirable idea to seek consensus and compromise on a highly divisive issue such as this, and I would support this one myself. But it still smacks to me just a little of the kind of moralization implicit in President Obama’s call to reduce the "politicization" of abortion. Less politics and more morality hardly seems like the way to greater civility to me. Though in principle it is a good thing to seek a break with the past and the hardened positions on both sides, those positions are the result of the Penn-like tactic of characterizing those on the other side not just as wrong or mistaken but as reactionary in the commie sense — that is, as barriers to inevitable progress who must be removed. If you’re one of the barriers, you may be excused for finding that a somewhat chilling prospect. You have been identified as being, in practice if not in name, evil — that is beyond the bounds of decency and not to be recognized as legitimate in your views by anyone who is decent. I do hope that Mr Rauch doesn’t end up being labeled as the gay equivalent of an Uncle Tom, but so long as the gays have champions like Mr Penn, I fear he may.
Here’s a clip from the Academy Award’s
2009 Oscar Sean Penn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XblfZSVV59c
Gus Van Sant’s, Milk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unu-9vM9VZw
If you’ve read through this post, I wonder if you are picking up some intense hostilities? What do you think of Meritocracy, a myth? Is affirmative action and multiculturalism corroding our traditional ideals and value structures, subjugating a system of reward based upon merit, rather rewarding people based upon their race, gender, religion, sexuality, etc.? Or has affirmative action simply served to remove barriers that allow people of multi culture to succeed based on their merit as well? After all, we of a free and progressive democratic nation all have equal opportunities now, right?
Personally, I am wondering how to navigate this Article and issue. I sincerely feel in no patronizing tone, Gablik’s introduction and interview with Ellen Dissanayaki is stimulating, expanding my own ideas and possibilities concerning art (which is her stated goal). Though her paper also serves to reinforce and identify what I am and what I am not. I am an artist, very interested in a classical education, in studying western traditions of art and spirituality, primarily pre-industrialized Europe, though I identify strongly with the romantic notion of the individual as artist and visionary. I am also white working class America, having lived a significant time in Maine, sheltered from any real multiculturalism. I am asking if anyone else is wondering how to engage with this material, how to respond to Gablik’s agenda. What are your thoughts?
I am wondering if anyone is hearing the scathing tone of rhetorical exchange on both sides of the cultural conflict? Being sympathetic with the ideals of meritocracy, though not blind to the myth of it, I wanted to look further into this point in Gablik’s introduction where the conflict seemed to get heated. I looked up Meritocracy, Hilton Kramer and his art and cultural critic journal, The New Criterion. I am sensing extreme hostility here on both sides, TNC article elitist in its cynicism, and Gablik comes across to me as dismissive toward traditional western approaches to art.
So I just wanted to share a little bit of the conflict I found, looking further into this.
I looked up Meritocracy to get some idea about its definition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy
I also found this guy’s blog about the myth of Meritocracy quite interesting
http://ericstoller.com/blog/2007/07/01/the-meritocracy-myth/
Hilton Kramer & The New Criterion: I had to look up the blog out of curiosity and read an article or two to see what TNC is all about….I found this recent article over some comments Sean Penn made at the Academy Awards….I found the tone of the language and humor to be quite elitist and snooty, very scathing and cynical.
The New Criterion Blog
http://newcriterion.com/blogs.cfm
Feb 23, 2009 04:57 PM
Hollywood Commies
by James Bowman
Well, they don’t call them "progressives" for nothing, do they?. If you stayed up late enough last night, you must have heard Sean Penn at the Academy Awards ceremony putting his fine feelings on display as he accepted the award for Best Actor for his genuinely fine portrayal of the title character in Milk. He couldn’t resist telling his audience of many millions — which is also many millions more than have ever seen or will ever see Milk: "For those who saw the signs of hatred as our cars drove in tonight, I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren’s eyes if they continue that way of support. We’ve got to have equal rights for everyone."
Thanks for that, Sean. I’m sure the Academy appreciated it. And so, by the way, was he was sure the Academy appreciated it, as undoubtedly they did. You could tell because he had addressed his fellow thesps, who had just honored him and his film, as "You commie, homo-loving sons of guns." That’s not the sort of thing you say unless you can be pretty sure that nobody is going to have to draw a diagram for the benefit of the dimmer Academy members or media hangers-on of the irony intended by it. Clearly, Mr Penn’s purpose was a jokey reminder to the beautiful people of one of the articles of faith in the American entertainment industry, namely that there never were any genuine "commies" — that is, old-fashioned slang for communists — in America but only a lot of wicked Republicans and conservatives who once, a long time ago, engaged in a "witch hunt" to try to find them and succeeded only in ruining the careers of some moderate liberals like themselves.
And yet there was also what I can only suppose was an unintentional irony in his rather feeble joke. For one of the salient beliefs of the commies, if there had ever been any, would have been that history has a predictable, indeed inevitable, course, and that this course was scientifically certain to terminate in the final victory of the revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat and, ultimately, the socialist utopia where once there was nothing but rotten bourgeois society. Mr Penn’s appeal to the inevitability of the fact that his audience’s grandchildren’s progressivism will exactly correspond to his own was, in this sense at least, precisely a commie idea, albeit one that would have come as a considerable surprise to Marx, Lenin or Mao. Maybe, in today’s Hollywood, "commie" is as much a compliment to the correct opinions of one’s fellow progressives as "homo-loving" — or, indeed, sons-of-guns, who received their imprimatur from the late Joey Bishop.
More likely, Hollywood’s best and brightest now take progressive opinions on the subject of gay marriage — among others things — as much for granted as their own prerogative as leaders of fashion. Put the two things together and you have an effortless assumption of historical inevitability that owes less to Karl Marx than to the fawning treatment they routinely receive from the media. The dialectic is them! Bill Maher made the same assumption in introducing the award for Best Documentary with a shameless if ungrammatical plug for his own doc, Religulous, when he said: "Now as a producer and a star of my own documentary this year, the one about religion that didn’t get nominated. I know, it’s a touchy subject. But someday, we all have to confront the notion that our silly gods cost the world too greatly. But there I go, ruining the ending." Yeah, Das Kapital was full of spoilers too.
As I say, this kind of stuff is most likely simple ideological self-confidence, born of the cozy sense that everybody around you, more or less, shares your opinions about all the things that matter. You could see the same assumption in the words that someone gave poor Daniel Craig to read when he introduced the award for production design. In alluding to the nomination for Revolutionary Road, he praised that film’s designers for creating an image of "suburbia [in the 1950s] which looked like anything but the prison it was." That there might have been present a few ex-prisoners who didn’t see it that way at all was, clearly, a thought that never crossed his mind.
As it happened, on the same day they gave out the Academy Awards, a remarkable piece appeared in The New York Times titled "A Reconciliation on Gay Marriage" by David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch. The former is president of the Institute for American Values and author of The Future of Marriage; the latter is a guest scholar at the Brookings institution and author of Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights and Good for America. The two men’s views on gay marriage itself are still directly opposed to each other, but they find that they can agree on civil unions so long as these come with "robust religious-conscience exceptions, which provide that religious organizations need not recognize same-sex unions against their will."
It is an admirable idea to seek consensus and compromise on a highly divisive issue such as this, and I would support this one myself. But it still smacks to me just a little of the kind of moralization implicit in President Obama’s call to reduce the "politicization" of abortion. Less politics and more morality hardly seems like the way to greater civility to me. Though in principle it is a good thing to seek a break with the past and the hardened positions on both sides, those positions are the result of the Penn-like tactic of characterizing those on the other side not just as wrong or mistaken but as reactionary in the commie sense — that is, as barriers to inevitable progress who must be removed. If you’re one of the barriers, you may be excused for finding that a somewhat chilling prospect. You have been identified as being, in practice if not in name, evil — that is beyond the bounds of decency and not to be recognized as legitimate in your views by anyone who is decent. I do hope that Mr Rauch doesn’t end up being labeled as the gay equivalent of an Uncle Tom, but so long as the gays have champions like Mr Penn, I fear he may.
Here’s a clip from the Academy Award’s
2009 Oscar Sean Penn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XblfZSVV59c
Gus Van Sant’s, Milk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unu-9vM9VZw
If you’ve read through this post, I wonder if you are picking up some intense hostilities? What do you think of Meritocracy, a myth? Is affirmative action and multiculturalism corroding our traditional ideals and value structures, subjugating a system of reward based upon merit, rather rewarding people based upon their race, gender, religion, sexuality, etc.? Or has affirmative action simply served to remove barriers that allow people of multi culture to succeed based on their merit as well? After all, we of a free and progressive democratic nation all have equal opportunities now, right?
Personally, I am wondering how to navigate this Article and issue. I sincerely feel in no patronizing tone, Gablik’s introduction and interview with Ellen Dissanayaki is stimulating, expanding my own ideas and possibilities concerning art (which is her stated goal). Though her paper also serves to reinforce and identify what I am and what I am not. I am an artist, very interested in a classical education, in studying western traditions of art and spirituality, primarily pre-industrialized Europe, though I identify strongly with the romantic notion of the individual as artist and visionary. I am also white working class America, having lived a significant time in Maine, sheltered from any real multiculturalism. I am asking if anyone else is wondering how to engage with this material, how to respond to Gablik’s agenda. What are your thoughts?
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