Wednesday, December 19, 2012

On Baldness

I think I started going bald in High School. I didn't want to admit it then, and my hair had always been light and thin, but by the time I was a junior in college, I couldn't wear it over my ears anymore; an obliging female friend cropped it close. By last year, at age twenty-six, I was bic-ing my head as a reasonable solution, and wearing hats to keep my pate warm and un-sunburnt.

Now, it's not really so bad to be bald. One saves money on haircuts and hair products. Once the mild embarrassment always attendent on admitting the fact is overcome, then baldness is simply, well, a matter of fact. Many men wear it very well, with a sort of intellectual, statesman-like aura. It suggests a certain type of manliness, and unselfconsciousness when handled with aplomb rather than vague shame.

The irksome thing about being bald is the sheer monotony of it. There are essentially two ways of wearing baldness (discounting, of course, the tonsured pony-tail of the comic book connoisseur and geriatric Hell's Angel): the ring about the ears, or the full cue-ball. That's pretty much it. Sure, hats and glasses can dress up a look, but you're pretty much stuck with those two.  And that is why I most envy those full heads of hair.

You might remember the old pen drawings in barbershops, the ones which show the essential types of hair cuts? Well those are all off limits. And bald isn't a choice. So never will I get to suavely comb my hair into a sweeping Draper part, never will I have a chance at a real barber haircut, never will anyone run their fingers through my luxurious hair.

Oh well. At least I save money, and Patrick Stewart and Michael Jordan are with me.

Monday, April 2, 2012

Farm Sitting

This week I am farm sitting for a local CSA family as they deal with a family crisis.  Their newborn daughter (born at home) had to be rushed the hospital due to breathing problems, and then to Seattle where she remains hooked up to a huge machine. It is hard to even think about how difficult that must be for them, so of course I am eager to help any way I can.

It is heartening to see how people pitch in when its really needed.  The neighbors here in Eagle have been great, and all sorts of folks have been helping the Hasselblads deal with this. On the farm, I have been trying to keep the option of running the CSA this year available.

So far that has meant building greenhouse vents, coordinating compost delivery, planting 500+ tomatoes, and tending dogs and goats. I must admit I enjoy the oddly strict freedom of farming: there are so many things to do, but no one telling me what those things are.  I see the appeal. All the work I do feels rewarding, even as I know the pay off is months away, and still subject to failure. There is just something about working with soil, with living plants, and with animals that depend on me. It is responsibility at its most potent--no reprimands to deal with, only the steely and inflexible consequences of work performed well or poorly. These consequences ground everyday ethics in the world; it gives a whole new meaning to right living.  It is easy to imagine how damaging sloth and greed, lust and wrath could be to a society that was built on hand labor planting and bringing in crops. It is clear to see how beautiful and essential human love is. It is easy to imagine how tightly knit farming communities could be when adversity is always just around the corner, and good times depend on good neighbors.  In this way, as Wendell Berry points out, such community is like marriage. We agree to be in it for the long haul--thick and thin. We think it's worth it to love each other because we need each other. Not abstractly--really.

It is good to see this sort of community still exists. The steam of media which inundates our lives and tries so hard to define our reality, or the consumer economy which wants us to assuage isolation with purchases can't really provide space for this sort of community. Churches can, community groups and nonprofits can.  Farms can. We're all in this together--and even though it might be easy to forget in the fat times, it is important to never lose sight of that.

If you are interested in knowing more about Eowyn Hasselblad or EvenStar Farm, please click on the links.

Monday, February 6, 2012

"The State of Nature"

In an article for the philosophy blog of the NYTimes, "The Stone," Steven Nadler writes insightfully about the 17th century philosopher Spinoza's unprecedented commitment to freedom of expression.  He notes that Spinoza's conviction arises from the basic fact that beliefs and thoughts cannot be regulated.  As the German volksong puts it: Die Gedanken Sind Frei, wer kann sie erraten. Thoughts are free, who can guess them.  The song goes on to say that no one can know then, and no soldier can shoot them with powder or lead.  We think what we like, no one can take away that freedom.  Spinoza's (and Nadler's) argument runs that with such individual agency taken for granted, any attempt by government to keep people from expressing these free thoughts will only cause resentment and tyranny.  Here is the final paragraph of the blog:

Well before John Stuart Mill, Spinoza had the acuity to recognize that the unfettered freedom of expression is in the state’s own best interest. In this post-9/11 world, there is a temptation to believe that “homeland security” is better secured by the suppression of certain liberties than their free exercise. This includes a tendency by justices to interpret existing laws in restrictive ways and efforts by lawmakers to create new limitations, as well as a willingness among the populace, “for the sake of peace and security,” to acquiesce in this. We seem ready not only to engage in a higher degree of self-censorship, but also to accept a loosening of legal protections against prior restraint (whether in print publications or the dissemination of information via the Internet), unwarranted surveillance, unreasonable search and seizure, and other intrusive measures. Spinoza, long ago, recognized the danger in such thinking, both for individuals and for the polity at large. He saw that there was no need to make a trade-off between political and social well-being and the freedom of expression; on the contrary, the former depends on the latter.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/spinozas-vision-of-freedom-and-ours/?hp

Interesting to me was a tiny phrase earlier in the piece, "state of nature".  This came from a moment in the blog when Nadler was analyzing Spinoza's idea of restricted freedom of expression: sedition can still be banned when free speech steps over the bounds of civility and into the realm of inciting violence.  Nadler claims this is because of the "social contract" that all citizens have tacitly entered:  

 As individuals emerged from a state of nature to become citizens through the social contract, “it was only the right to act as he thought fit that each man surrendered, and not his right to reason and judge.” 

This all seems well and good, but that little phrase "state of nature" seems worthy of investigation.  What is the "state of nature"?  It seems here to indicate some savage, purely self interested sovereignty of cavemen.  But that picture is surely invented, for all social groups even of animals today operate within bounds of affection, selflessness, and mutual responsibility (they probably don't call it that).  Grounding the narrative of such a right in some imagined time period when all people were free and independent seems suspect.

So my response to this right is part classically conservative: what about the deep traditional mores of public discourse? Ought they not be maintained, with a countenancing of certain speech as allowable but deplorable? (Example: Holocaust deniers.  We let them have their say, but don't give them credence).  On the other hand I certainly believe that the minority voices, especially those condemning of the instruments of power, ought to be carefully protected, whether Rush Limbaugh or the Occupy Protestors.  We can disagree with their messages, but must support their right to say it:

Libertas philosophandi, the freedom of philosophizing, must be upheld for the sake of a healthy, secure and peaceful commonwealth and material and intellectual progress.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

21st Century Education

Full disclosure: I am old fashioned by disposition.  I rankle at the thought that "new" is always a selling point.

So, reading an article in the Sunday New York Times*: What You Really Need To Know, I went into curmudgeon mode.

The premise of the article is all too familiar.  We are living in a new age, we need a new education.  Information is more prolific and available than ever, collaboration is more important, we know more about how the brain works, data is king and so on.  The failing point of this sort of Information Age exceptionalism is that fails to recognize several enduring truths.

The first, so often overlooked in the world of smart phones and data mining, is that information is not knowledge.  Lawrence Summers, author of the article and former president of Harvard, conflates these two terms his first bullet point of his hopes for education: "Education will be more about how to process information and less about imparting it. This is a consequence of both the proliferation of knowledge--and about how much of it any student can truly absorb--and changes in technology" [emphasis added].  The trouble is, while information may easily be said to increase, knowledge is a more amorphous thing.  Knowledge, after all, is that which is known.  And for anything to be known, there must be a human involved; a know-er.  That is to say that while one may understand how to search for a book in a library, one does not know all the information which is contained within that library's shelves.  One may be able to access millions of books via Google, but one does not know what they say, or contain, or mean.

Summers's wish seems to be that students will be taught how to use a search engine effectively, how to sift through the sea of data to find the pertinent factoid. Perhaps they even made to do so several times--writing a few topical term papers to regurgitate information on assigned topics.  Then they will be pronounced to have the ability to "process" information, like so much pig flesh becoming bologna.  The trouble is, no one will know anything more than how to find information.  Which information to find, which information pertains to the question at hand, which questions ought to be at hand for any given situation, and the knowledge of principles, are skills that are conspicuously missing.  A person may be able to look up texts on bridge design, but we don't wish them to build our bridges unless they know the principles of engineering.

Next Summers goes on to criticize the tendency of students to be asked to achieve on their own.  Collaboration, he states, ought to be the focus of education.  Of course, groupthink has achieved many wonderful things; among them IBM computers, the hydrogen bomb, and thousands of ads and political campaigns (a telling linkage of the various uses of 'campaign').  Unfortunately, he forgets the fact that all learning is a collaboration.  It is taking part in the great conversation of ideas through history.  The best classes are collaborations between students and instructor, between texts and discussion.  This is one of the most beautiful aspects of human creativity.  And he also overlooks the fact that even in collaborative undertakings, individual achievement is the backbone of any success.  Newton, Herschel, Goethe, or even current darling genius Steve Jobs were all individually driven.  No matter how collaborative society may be, it is still incumbent on the individual to make extended, solitary intellectual effort.  To work hard on what they believe in.  Then they will inevitably share, and their ideas will be extended by others.  But all students should be thrilled to hear that it is in the crucible of the individual mind that all ideas are put to the test.  This is one of the most empowering aspects to be found in the history of ideas or education.  Any individual can change history with ideas: Luther, Kant, Newton,  Einstein.  It would be a pity to quash the responsibility of the individual student because it is easier to track students' likes on facebook than ask them for sustained, lonesome thought on important subjects.

My final reason for dismay is his insistance that technology is a savior.  Sure, some aspects of technology are great for opening access to scholarship, various ideas, allowing a democratization of dialogue.  But as a teacher in the classroom, I can say that at times tech is a more a distraction than a help.  The leg work which goes into maintaining most class websites, troubleshooting glitches, entering data &c. would be better spent planning lessons, reading texts, or conferencing with students.  Most students want more content, and less flash.  When they have to learn a new system of updating blogs every semester, they are less liable to really put thought into their reading.  Technology might be useful certainly, but its invocation as a panacea has gone far enough, in the classroom and need not go further.  It is more important that we ask "why" than "how much".  One of the great aspects of reading great literature, philosophy, or history is its timelessness--not its reveling in the usefulness of print or the efficacy of letters.  Ideas are the technology that is most likely to outlast obsolescence.



*which I get physically, on newsprint, delivered consistently to my neighbor's driveway, despite attempts to inform the delivery person of my actual location.

Friday, January 20, 2012

What is Nature?

This was just a little freewrite from my class "The Idea of Nature in the Long 18th Century".


What is nature?

Nature is everything that exists beyond (or prior to) human control.  By human control, I mean conscious thought—our designs, to borrow an outdated use of that word.  If this is the definition of nature, then another way to put it is the essentially nonhuman aspects of the world.
            It is important to have a word and concept for this odd thing.  Otherwise how can we share our itching suspicion that the crystalline make-up of minerals and our own intractable tendency to eat, sleep, and get distracted share some basic traits?  They are both beyond our control, they existed before we did, and they are unlike the Roman Empire or binary code.  They are not of human design, but rather from the material world: beyond human dasein.
            To borrow another Heideggerian idea, nature is first and foremost that which is present-at-hand.  It is the material stuff of the world, before meaning.  However, amazingly, it also has an order and a meaning inherent to it.  It is present-at-hand in that various (mostly living) aspects of nature exist in a dymanic web of functions, causal relationships, and symbiotic webs.  This is what we have come to recognize as ecosystems, and ecology.  The “system” of the nonhuman world.
            Of course, though, humans are embedded in this world.  We are made up of stuff that isn’t us, and we everything we design is designed from things that at root, weren’t designed.  And yet there is some sort of morality inherent in nature.  There are things which can go “against” nature—both human nature and the “green” nature of ecosystems.  The more I learn about this aspect of nature, the more I come to see culture (collectively taken as everything that is of human design) as struggling to cope with its place in larger nature.  This struggle is bound up in our type of existence, which has to take a stand on our own being.  Nature—by definition—does not have to do this.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

A Republic of Letters

During the period now called the Enlightenment, from the late 17th through the 18th and 19th Century, there was a "Republic of Letters".  The various "philosphes" of Europe and the eventually the New World shared their ideas, their theories, and their lives by mail.  Their correspondence was prodigious--my volume of the letters between the German thinkers Goethe and Schiller is over 500 pages long.  They shared everything from poems to garden seeds--the thirst for knowledge was omnivorous.  They respected one another's cultural differences, indeed reveled in them--practicing foreign idioms on each other.  They also had their rivalries, each trying to outdo the other in advancing knowledge.  Yet it is hard not to think of their time as somehow more innocent than ours, their motives for intellectual work more clear.  They wished to expand knowledge for its own sake--to improve the life of all, not necessarily for their own profit (indeed their own societies often forbade profiting by their experiments).

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In our day such idealism is scoffed at or derided as the mark of privilege.  Certainly those were privileged men, but they recognized their privilege and tried to espy all the further into the working of the universe because of it.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Pear Trees and Pub Quiz

In hopes of inspiring now-term and long term community,  I have been working on a few projects lately.  One has to do with pomes, and drupes, or seed fruit and stone fruit as they are more commonly known.  Pomes are apples and pears, while drupes are plums and cherries.  It just so happens that there is a beautiful bBarlett pear tree in the back yard of the apartment I live in.  In fact, the tree sits right in the middle of the chicken pen.  Last spring, it bloomed beautifully--probably because it is on the north side of the building, so it doesn't bloom too early and get frosted.  We had a bumper crop of pears ripening all summer long.  Finally, in September, the squirrels proceded to eat every last pear.  I have since learned that pears should be picked and stored for a few weeks to ripen, and I might have been able to save the crop from the squirrels.

But enough background.  My current project is going to involve pruning the neglected pear tree (though someone clearly cared for it once, long ago) and asking permission of the neighbor to prune his gigantic juniper so there won't be squirrel access.  I hope the chickens, who don't really let the squirrels around, will keep them off the tree for the most part.  We might actually get to eat some pears this year!  Furthermore, I am going to try to use the prunings to propagate the tree.  That part is an extra longshot though, so we'll see if it works.  I also have a plum tree that I transplanted from my grandparents garden, which grew from a stone.  I am curious to see if it makes it though the winter in it's pot on the screened front porch.

On another non garden front, I started a pub quiz.  That is the now term project.  Last night was the first ever Papa Joe's pub quiz, featuring questions such as: What is the name for all tree fruit with seeds rather than stones? (now you know!); what are the sports of the modern pentathlon?; what is the first name of "Butch" Otter, &c.  It was a hoot, and there were at least 30 people there, enough for six teams of five-six.  I think everyone had a good time, though I might have to throw a few more gimmies in the mix; the top score was 11 of 30.

It was really good to have a pub quiz like the one I used to go to in Europe. Working with friends to solve problems and answer trivia does a lot to build community.  You get to see the styles of argument, who is pushy and who retreats, who has what surprising fact tucked away in their brain from their unique life experience.  I look forward to more of these.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

My Teaching Philosophy


Statement of Teaching Philosophy

My philosophy as a teacher and scholar is rooted in the values of the liberal arts.  I have a deep-seated belief in the power and value of ideas.  This leads me to estimate the value of education as going far beyond the oft-quoted statistics showing more per capita income to college graduates.  Rather, my belief is that the value of education lies in its ability to improve the lives of individuals, and in so doing to improve society. This places a huge and exhilarating responsibility on teachers: to shed light on the hidden power of ideas, empower students to make use of those powerful ideas, and help them see the inherent value of careful thought.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

San Francisco, 1857

As part of my graduate school, I am currently working on a research project with a professor of mine, searching out stories of male partners during the California Gold Rush.  To find these stories I have been reading through issues of two magazines published in San Francisco in the 1850s.  One is called The Pioneer, the other Hutchings' California Magazine.  Both are digitized and can be read for free online.

Reading these magazines, which were circulated throughout California at the time, is as close to time travel as I have ever come.  The pages are filled with general interest pieces on mining, industry, and transportation; tales of adventure and sentimental romances; and odd editorial declamations on poetry or social customs in San Francisco.  I, just like the original readers, am caught up in curiosity.  I can't wait  to read about the workings of a quartz mining stamp mill or the processes of quicksilver refining. It is all new, all fascinating.  To hear the stirring and bold designs of mid-19th century America makes me want to light out for the territories myself. Yet, for me, the inevitable chagrin of historical hindsight also lurks in these pages.  The story of Gen. Sutter, as told by himself, is especially poignant.

Monday, January 9, 2012

The Body Politic

In an attempt to rigorously test and chronicle my own thinking, I have decided to take up this blog once more.  The topics covered previously may crop up again, but the posts will likely take a new tack and become more engaged with my lived intellectual endeavors and concerns.

The title of my blog still fits.  I still believe the bicycle to showcase the most noble traits of human ingenuity and potential.  Bicycles are elegant machines: lightweight, ingenious, and adaptable.  They produce no waste,  the skills to use and fix them are easy to learn, they multiply human mobility tenfold, and they help individuals achieve freedom of mobility.  Bicycles let us be free, they are cheap, they last, and they are egalitarian. Bicycles embody the best of "progress".

The other object in the title, the lariat, then, embodies "tradition".  Still the best way for a cowboy to catch a calf, bull, or even horse, the lariat is simply a stiff rope.  It is the learned manual skill of the worker that makes his tool so effective.  The individual must perform within his inherited culture, must understand how to navigate the physical world, must do well.  The lariat requires the craftsmanship and care of the user--it requires respect for one's place in the larger order, and individual achievement.

The tension between these two values, progress and tradition, is at the core of my path through life.  On this blog, I hope to explore a wide range of topics, issues, and philosophies which I encounter as I try to make my unique way through life.