Tag: learning

Part of the teaching experience unfortunately consists of the grading experiences.  I have a veritable shitload of it to do.  And I will spend most of the day pursuing that craft.

During the past week, as I struggled through a schedule of 8 overly spaced out classes which required my presence at school 12 hours a day for 4 days, with gaps filled with two programs I presented on transsexualism, a lecture on the Birth of Science and a faculty meeting, at the end of each day I took a little bit of time for some meditative time, working on a series of graphics.

They are shared inside.  Clicking on one of them will open a larger version.

Feel free to add anything in the way of music, words or graphics.

There are Sundays when I don’t have much in the way of words.  At least not much in the way of my words.

This is apparently one of them.

I mean, I had a story just before I fell asleep last night and it migrated into a dream, I’m pretty sure, but as these things happen, when I woke up, it was gone.  I have a little suspicion of what it was about, but if I try to force it, I know I will be displeased with the result, that it wouldn’t end up being what it wanted to be.

So I’m going to leave that up to my subconscious to play and do with what it will.  Maybe the story will reappear and maybe it won’t.

Meanwhile, I’m supposed to be learning some lines from Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues.  We have rehearsals Monday and Tuesday nights and it’s show time on Wednesday and Thursday.

Specifically, my part comes from They beat the girl out of my boy…or so they tried.

But I’ve spent most of the day with my art program instead.

This is a followup to my diary on Post Office Murals in the New Deal.  

Lewis Hine was a great photographer, and also an intrepid social activist.  Amongst his most famous works are pictures of child laborers in the early part of the 20th century, for the National Child Labor Committee.  The black and white slides with this music are mostly all by Hine.

Cross-posted from Daily Kos

Back on January 8, Debbie and I took a trip to the New York Botanical Garden.  I brought along my new camera and took a lot of photos.

Previous sub-collections are available here:

Haupt Conservatory included some of the plant exhibits, including the desert succulents.

statuary displayed photos of three public art installations.

public spaces was the first part of the Holiday Train Show exhibition.

Today’s collection is part two of three of the latter.  Still to come will be (roughly) wealth, skyscrapers, and entertainment.

Clicking upon the photos should open larger versions in a new tab.

Earlier this month Debbie and I trekked to the Bronx on a very cold day, to the New York Botanical Garden, in order to see the Holiday Train Show.

I’ve got to say up front that we went because Debbie is a train fan and has a small collection of models.  We were extremely disappointed in the train portion of the train show.  But the buildings were magnificent!

Mostly, if not all organic, the historical models of New York’s architectural past were well worth the visit.

Up today are some of the public spaces.  Coming in the future will be the private dwellings, commercial enterprises, bridges, trains, and churches included in the exhibit of more than 140 models.

Clicking on the graphics will often reward you with a larger view.  

Last time I displayed some photos from the Haupt Conservatory at the New York Botanical Garden, which Debbie and I visited on January 8 in order to see the Holiday Train Show.

The Train Show photos will be shown in the future, but that will take awhile since I have 79 of them to pour through…and then there are the ones Debbie took with her camera.

But that’s not all we did while we were there.  There was an exhibit called Kiku:  The Art of the Japanese Chrysanthemum at the LuEsther T. Mertz Library which I wanted to see very much, to add to the knowledge of the Edo Period I gained in my visit to LACMA last summer.

They didn’t allow photos in the museum, so I made do with photos of some public art out in front of the library.

This diary starts with the IBM slogan, as viewers were exposed to it in the telecasts of the NFL playoffs this weekend, and speculates on what it would really take to “build a smarter planet.”  Thus I will embark upon a critique of the notion that being “smarter” is the same as being more informed, or cleverer, and suggest a version of “building a smarter planet” that has some planetary wisdom built into it.

(Crossposted at Big Orange)

Debbie and I took a field trip on Thursday to the New York Botanical Garden to see the Holiday Train Show.  Photos of that show will come later.

Our first order of business after arrival at the Haupt Conservatory which housed the show was to locate the restroom.  While ding so we had the opportunity to tour several of the other exhibits.  In today’s edition are photos from the desert plants exhibit, with a few from the tropical rain forest and aquatic plants exhibits.

Most of the photos are thumbnails.  Clicking on them will reveal larger versions.

Once upon a time, in a land far away, I participated in a writer’s workshop at a Women’s Project Retreat.  A large part of my reason for being there was the attempt to become an accepted member of the Arkansas women’s community.  Many of the attendees wished I were not there.

We were given the first phrase of the beginning of a story and asked to finish that beginning.  You are invited to do the same.

The first story:  

The second story:  

The following are my efforts, the first one in prose, while the second one became a poem.

And there is a story that goes with them, a story which has never actually appeared in anything but a comment before.  I’m appending it to the end to make it easier to find in the future.

I was in ninth grade at Lake Oswego Junior High for the first half of 1963 and a sophomore at Lake Oswego High at the end of it.  

And music ranged from the Beatles at the beginning of the year…to the Beatles at the end of the year.  The meaningful music was in between.

I pulled the news from 1963 out of wiki, every fifth story, chosen in order to hit my birthday.  I’ve added some content and some memories and followed a few threads forward.

I found it an interesting study.  I hope you do, too.

I was in eighth grade for the first half of 1962 and a freshman, but still at Lake Oswego Junior High at the end of it.  I had my first girlfriend, Bonnie, who became too much of an obsession in my life for quite a few years.  I played a football game in the middle of Typhoon Frieda on October 12.

And music ranged from Nat King Cole to the Beatles.

My back is killing me today, so in lieu of actual writing, I pulled the news from 1962 out of wiki:  every fifth story.  In some cases, I added some comments.

I found it an interesting study.  Maybe you will, too.

There have always been problems with trying to share my experience as a transwoman.  I can only speak my experience.  And I can only speak my experience from the point of view of now.  I mean, I have taken great care to preserve my writings in the 90s as they were written, because they portray how I felt then, but often I have difficulty even remembering the frame of mind I was in when I wrote them.

I am not a transman.  I cannot speak for any of them, though I can feel a sense of kinship.  And I can try to speak in favor of the rights we should have in common.  Our common experience, however, may be too ephemeral to grasp.

I am not pre-operative.  That was left far in the past.  And I forget.  I’m sure some of that forgetting has been intentional.  There are pains I would prefer were left behind.

I’m also not black.

But how can anyone understand the whole without understanding some of the parts?

We have a new blog on our Blog Roll.  I stumbled across Monica Roberts’ TransGriot when I was looking to increase diversity in my essay for Friday.

One of the discussions I stumbled on was about that fact that black transwomen are almost universally assumed to be prostitutes, in life and especially in death.  I was looking for that today when I decided to take a look at something else.

Perspective can stand to be expanded.  Besides, I’m tired and can handle a discussion much easier than a lengthy psychological analysis.