The Bitch

I have not written for a long time now, but not because I am not interested, I think about how to educate in a sustainable manner all the time, but because I have been thinking. Oh no! say those who know me. Oh no! What I have been thinking about is: becoming what others may term a bitch. We cannot coddle our students any more if we really want them to succeed in their lives, and when I say success it is not all money, though they need to be self-sufficient, but in ways that have become out of fashion - to care, to seek the best on a personal level.

When did being humane go out of fashion? I have my guesses, but that doesn't matter. What does matter is that this has happened. We have lost touch with what makes us tick, with our caring. Working to awaken that which makes it worthwhile to live. Take for example getting a job and what it has turned into. It has become an impersonal procedure where people in human resources (so now humans are no more than another commodity - a resource that we exploit just like the Earth's resources)take your resume, assign you a number and then match you (or not) to a matrix that has nothing to do with WHO YOU ARE!!! Impersonal.

Getting a job should not be about what is on a piece of paper, but about reading the landscape, the human landscape AND that piece of paper we call a resume or CV. It is acting on all levels to the best of our abilities. It is also about thinking and then acting. We don't teach about thinking any more, but about how to follow rules and regulations that are there because we have lost our common sense of ethics, our interior voices that tell us what is right and wrong. We see others getting something for nothing, and feel we deserve ours too. That it is wrong on all levels gets lost in the mix. We try at amend the egregious actions of the immoral by making rules and regulations that do not apply to them (they will use them or the loopholes to further the deceit). We have established so much bureaucracy and have so little honesty and trust that those who are honest, those who act with integrity, are lost in the maze (here I am talking about me and many others who I have met who give all with little or no recognition, but instead people asking even more from them).

And so I am becoming a bitch to my students. Well, that might be what they call me, I already hear that I ask too much from them, but that has only just begun. IF THEY WANT TO COMPETE IN WHAT HAS BECOME A VERY SLIPPERY AND HIGH TENSION JOB MARKET THEY MUST GIVE THEIR BEST!!! And if they are to give their best they must learn how to do that now. Coddling our students by giving them grades to make them feel good is not doing them any favors.

So last semester I began to follow the Henry Kissinger way of instilling the best work of your life. Whether he did this or not, I have no idea, but I hope he did. We need this story now more than ever. We need to have students push so hard that when they get a job they think!!! They innovate, they are curious about getting something done in a more efficient (and humanizing) manner. They need to be able to fail, get up and go at it again with the knowledge they learned from the failure. THIS IS WHAT SCHOOL IS FOR! Here is the Kissinger story:

Dr. Henry Kissinger was the U.S. Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon. He was involved in all the high-level decisions regarding the Vietnam War. Well, after Nixon resigned the Presidency in disgrace, Kissinger taught some Political Science courses at a highly-respected Washington university.

In one of those courses, he assigned a major term paper. On the due date, one woman turned in her term paper, and then made an appointment to discuss it with her professor a week later, as was the custom at that university. At the appointed time, she went to Dr. Kissinger's office and knocked. He opened the door, but, instead of asking her in, he stood in the doorway, holding her term paper.

"Is this the best you can do?", he asked the astonished student.

She apologized profusely, explaining that a number of her other assignments had taken much of her time, and that, in fact, she had not done her best job on the term paper.

Dr. Kissinger offered her the opportunity to redo the assignment, and she gratefully accepted it. She worked on it for several days more and then resubmitted it, making another appointment to meet with her professor the following week.

Once again, her monotone mentor greeted her at his office door, holding her redone assignment in his hand.

"Are you sure this is the best you can do?"

And once again, the student explained that, though she had spent an entire week reworking her term paper, there were a couple of references that she hadn't read, a couple of avenues she hadn't explored, and a couple of theories she hadn't expounded on as much as she could have.

Again, he offered her the opportunity to redo the assignment, and again she gratefully accepted it. Again, she worked on it for several more days and then resubmitted it, making a third appointment to meet with her professor the following week.

You guessed it -- for the third time, the sullen sophisticate greeted her at his office door, holding her term paper in his hand.

"Are you absolutely sure this is the best you can do?"

This time, she explained to him that she had lived and breathed her term paper for the past month; that she had lost sleep over it, missed meals while she worked on it, and she was confident that there wasn't a reference, a theory, or an avenue that she hadn't explored, described, and analyzed. She concluded by telling him that she couldn't possibly do a better job on it if she had a year to work on it.

Dr. Kissinger's response was brief.

"Very well. Now I will read it."


The bitch is born. What use am I if I let the students off? Their boss will not, he/she will lay them off. Such is the beginning to sustainable education.

The Census

Well, I guess any geographer worth their salt was pretty excited yesterday to see the first of the 2010 Census numbers. As as expected, Michigan lost population. It was the only state to lose population. Thank you GM and cronies. It will also lose a congressional seat making it that much harder to renew its engines and energy.

(Sorry about the map. I don't know how to make it fit in this box. Suggestions?)

The Mango and the Snow: A Tale of Moderation

It is really cold here now, and we finally have snow. I think we haven't been out of the teens for several days now, pretty cold for December, but at least now it is wrapped in the peaceful white blanket of winter. Better than cold and just brown ground, which we had a few days ago.

I purchased a couple of hard mangoes several days ago. Each day I have been checking them to see if they are ready to eat. Today one was ready. It is not a local mango. They do not grow them here in Michigan, even in hoop houses! I guess it is a good thing that I was born after technology had gone far enough to bring mangoes to my Ypsilanti door, and any other citrusy fruit that saves us from scurvy!!! in the middle of winter.

I say this because I am, of course, known for my support of local food. And I do support the movement. I just made the first winter veggie roast the other day. It is so satisfying to have the heft of the root vegetables in a balsamic glaze when the weather is frigid. I even added some sweetness with maple syrup this time. All the veggies were local, either from the Ypsi Food Co-op or the AA farmer's market. I even make an effort to buy it from the farmer who IS growing it in hoop houses in Riga, Michigan.

But citrus, or mangoes are not on his or any other farmer's list.

So am I being bad?

I suppose to some die hards I am. That is okay. No one is perfect, and few if any are totally sustainable. I am okay with that. Here is the reason why.

Back in the day when i lived in LA I remember that everyone had their own "correct" and "healthy" diet, and few were tolerant of any one elses definition of healthy.

"What? you are serving meat?" I don't think anyone I knew when I left was still eating meat. when the average American eats nearly 200 pounds of meat annually, the vegetarian stance can be pretty radical to the rest of America.
"OMG how can you have dairy items that have rennet?"
"Tell me please that you aren't serving fruits mixed with your vegetables?"
"What no Soy milk for my coffee?"

It was getting so that I was afraid to cook anything. I was going to offend someone. Give me a break! (but of course they didn't). So I decided that this high than thou attitude had to end. I was going to serve what I was going to serve. nothing wrong with some moderation.(Can't we all get along?) If you don't like it, then don't come. Fortunately I had help.

My dissertation topic was hog CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations). Hard to be writing on that when you were a vegetarian. And the Oklahoma farmers where i was doing my research were very aware when I came to call. A woman from LA? Working on CAFOs? They (rightly) feared I was a member of PETA, and would slice through their world with a cleaver that is very specific to their milieu. But I was coming from that place I mentioned earlier in this missive. I believe in moderation in all things. i had to see the world through their eyes. their world was just a little bit different than the soy milk world of LA. And it was a good thing had had that attitude because the farmers were no fools.

The first thing they would do when we started to know one another is invite me to lunch. while I appreciated sharing the meal, what they really wanted to know was: DID I EAT MEAT?

I was newly recovered from a bout of vegetarianism. One had a hard time not being vegetarian as some point in their life while living in LA, but i was never hard core. Even in the depths of one of my bouts, if I found myself near some BBQ ribs, I was in trouble. Moderation.

So when I moved to Michigan to teach at EMU, I came as a moderate in my food concerns. I am even now pretty radical for Michigan, (the other day I was trying to find some barley to make a barley soup and the grocery clerks at the market didn't even know what barley was. "Is is a fruit?" It turned out this big box market had NO barley. What is this world coming to? I should have purchased it at the coop) but I am sure that unless LA has changed radically itself (I don't think so) I am a moderate.

Good. I should be moderate in some ways. It is not a bad thing. And it allows me to eat mangoes in the snow.

Sometimes it is okay to be a moderate.

The Sins of Omission (not doing something you should have done)

Dr. Russell Ackoff died last year at 90. He was a wise man who understood the problems as they are currently addressed (analytical) and brought a synthetic mindset to the table.

In my continued studying of sustainability and how we get there, I am getting much deeper into systems thinking. I will be attending some workshops on same over the next month. Systems thinking is a team effort. I do not have a lot of community for this effort, so I am going out there to find it and then bring it home. I do have a small still loosely connected community of faculty and students who are beginning to think sustainably, but not enough to push me into my uncomfortable zones. that is why i am going to these workshops. they are where I am weakest and I need to gain confidence and experience in those areas.

Ackoff begins the above interview with 5 types of content in the brain. Each level is built on the preceding level.

Data, information, knowledge, understanding, wisdom.

I buy into that and hope someday to attain the heights of that hierarchy, but for now, I want to ask, where are we in our general education today? We are BIG on data. We call ourselves the information age. Undoubtedly there are many with a lot of knowledge, but I think the drop off begins at understanding.

One of my repeatable quotes (Einstein, Ben Franklin?) is: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

I see our society as insane for these reasons. I see the education system as insane. We have to take a chance FAIL to find the right way.

The path to success is paved with failure.

We have a broken system in so many ways and yet as Ackoff says: we aren't rewarded for our failures, we are penalized. The way to success today is through NOT taking chances.

The sins of omission. Don't address the problem but sweep it under the rug. Do nothing- not do something you should have done (like a population policy?).

I find what he had to say in this interview very wise. He got to the top of the hierarchy. He took chances to do it (he was kicked out of several schools along the say), but his understanding of the problems and his willingness to address them, made him wise.

I look forward to taking the chances in the coming months. I hope to succeed, but expect to fail along the way.

A Time for Thanks and for Thinking

Sometimes the world we live in hits you on the head. Today I have been hit twice with living and understanding the environmental and economic choices we make, and it is only early afternoon.

This morning I made a trip to the market and decided to buy some of the Clementine oranges that are just arriving this season. There were two varieties, both the same price. Which should I buy? I was reading the labels when a lady approached me and asked what was the difference between the two.

"What is the difference between the two?" she asked.
"Well, one is from California and the other from Spain."

She immediately understood and picked up the box from California, as did I.
"Thank you," she gratefully said to me as we continued shopping.

I returned home and began work on the computer. The doorbell rang. As soon as I opened the door I knew I was in for it. Bible under her arm and lovely Midwestern grandmother type smiled and said what a nice home. She began her spiel. It began with "What is the world coming to?"as she opened her booklet of converting me.

She had interrupted my writing on exactly that subject.
"A agree it is a subject we are all concerned about."
"Look," she said, pointing to photos in her booklet of saving grace,"where are we going?"
"I know. I am an educator and these subjects are important in my classes."
After a short conversation about where and what I teach and that I was not really interested in what she was selling (saving me) she asked,"Can I ask you one more question?"
I nodded my head and smiled.
"Do you believe in evolution?"

We parted on good terms, but I couldn't help but think how no matter who we are, or what we believe we are all searching for answers in today's uncertain times.

Slowly but slowly

The world is changing, slowly but slowly. I certainly would like to see more of the new type of progress (sustainable) but it isn't happening nearly fast enough at my school. Sigh. Last week my own department put the kibosh on giving a proposed Environmental Science program any sustainable content. To me, all that is doing is taking the old geology program that wasn't making it, turning the same classes into the Earth Science program (also not making it), and now environmental science. All the same classes taught the same way. If you keep on doing the same thing over and over and expect different results........ but what do I know? Obviously nothing. There is still a LOT of fear and silo mentality around here.

On another front, outside of dear old Ypsilanti, the world is moving in what I consider the right direction. For example in Tuesday's NYT Science section I saw this encouraging sidebar on mimicking nature (!) from Charles M Vest, the President Emeritus of MIT:

Engineering

“We’re going to see in surprisingly short order that biological inspiration and biological processes will become central to engineering real systems. It’s going to lead to a new era in engineering.”

In the 20th century, engineers and biologists dwelt in different universes. The biologists picked apart cells and tissues to see how they worked, while the engineers designed bridges, buildings and factories based on what they understood about physics and chemistry.

In recent years, however, engineers have begun paying very close attention to life. Evolution has fine-tuned living things for billions of years, giving them many of the properties — efficiency, strength, flexibility — that engineers love. Now biologically inspired engineering is taking hold in many engineering departments. In some cases, engineers are trying to mimic nature. In other cases, they are actually incorporating living things into their designs.

Researchers at Delft University in the Netherlands, for example, are developing bacteria-laced concrete. When cracks form, the bacteria wake from dormancy and secrete limestone, in effect healing the concrete. Next year, Dr. Vest expects, more of these lifelike designs will come to light, and they will keep coming for many years.

Dr. Vest is also president emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/09/science/20111109_next_feature.html?ref=science

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id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" />André A. Fenton">

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Neuroscience

“I expect we will see the physical organization of a memory within the brain.”

André A. Fenton

For decades neuroscientists searched through the brain, in pursuit of physical markers of memories. They found evidence that memories form through the contact of neurons. They grow new branches to communicate with other neurons, and old branches become stronger or weaker. In just the past few years, Dr. Fenton and other researchers have discovered that one molecule present in those branches, known as PKMzeta, maintains memories. Block PKMzeta, and the memory vanishes.

This discovery opens up an exciting prospect. Scientists could train animals to perform some simple task and then compare the brains of the animals that learned with those of the ones that didn’t. There should be a unique sprinkling of PKMzeta molecules in the animals that formed the new memory. Scientists could then map all the neurons and their branches that were required for the animals to remember what they learned. For the first time in history, scientists would be able to see a memory.

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Stuart Isett for The New York Times

Biotechnology

“It seems pretty likely within this year someone will show how to go from an adult peripheral blood draw to pluripotent stem cells. It means anyone who wants to try to make stem cells will be able to give it a whirl.”

Rob Carlson

The cells in an embryo can give rise to any kind of tissue in the adult body. But once they commit to being muscle cells, neurons or some other type of cell, there’s usually no going back. A huge amount of research has gone into finding a way to induce adult cells to turn back into so-called pluripotent stem cells. Someday it might be possible to use them to grow back damaged organs from a person’s own cells.

In September, Derrick J. Rossi and his colleagues at Harvard Medical School created artificial versions of RNA molecules, the templates that cells use to build proteins. They bathed human cells in a cocktail of five kinds of RNA molecules. The cells took in the RNA and made proteins that reprogrammed them into pluripotent stem cells.

Rossi’s method has a drawback as well, however: he and his colleagues used a type of cell called a fibroblast. To gather these cells, they have to do an invasive biopsy and then culture the cells to get enough fibroblasts for their experiment.

This July, Dr. George Q. Daley of Harvard Medical School and his colleagues had success using a different route: they drew blood from healthy human donors and genetically reprogrammed the cells to become pluripotent stem cells. Next year, Dr. Carlson predicts, scientists will combine these methods: they will draw a little blood, place it in a cocktail of RNA and — voilá! — stem cells. This advance would make producing stem cells cheap, fast and relatively easy. In fact, it may even be possible for dedicated amateurs to set up stem cell labs in their own garage.

Dr. Carlson is also the author of “Biology is Technology: The Promise, Peril, and New Business of Engineering Life."

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Strogatz">

Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times

Mathematics

“We’re going to see scientific results that are correct, that are predictive, but are without explanation. We may be able to do science without insight, and we may have to learn to live without it. Science will still progress, but computers will tell us things that are true, and we won’t understand them.”

Steven Strogatz

Computers have been taking over more and more of the things humans used to do, including getting driving directions and operating subway trains. They’ve even started making serious inroads into the heart of science. Rather than just churning out simulations or pretty pie charts, computers can do what scientists have traditionally done: find mathematical equations that explain complicated data. Eureqa, for example, is an “automated scientist” created by a Cornell engineer, Hod Lipson, and his students. In 2009, they reported that simply by observing a pendulum, Eureqa can rediscover some of Newton’s laws of physics.

In 2011, automated scientists are poised to make major contributions to science. Dr. Lipson and his students are looking for hidden patterns in the networks of proteins that break down food in cells, for example, and they’ve set up a Web site where people can download Eureqa free of charge and discover laws of nature for themselves.

Automated scientists may speed up the pace of discovery, but in the process they may change the nature of science itself. For centuries, scientists have solved problems with flashes of insight. But while the equations that automated scientists offer are very good at making predictions, they are often inscrutable to human scientists. We may have to program computers to explain their discoveries to us. Otherwise they will become more like oracles than scientists, handing down mysterious utterances to us mere mortals.

Dr. Strogatz is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University.

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Yeah, I would love to be surrounded by such inspiration and energy. Oh well. Back to the drawing board. I have some educating work to do here.

Moving along with the Sustainable mindset

While the system shown on the left was not drawn by me, it is very reminiscent of a drawing, now lost unfortunately, of the first lecture I ever gave. Ask Rod McKenzie at USC. He will remember (and he saved me on that first outing in front of a class. Thank you again Rod!) I have always thought in the circular pattern, but didn't have a term to describe how I thought. Only slowly, after many years of study, did I finally come to the conclusion that the way I thought naturally was as a systems thinker. Knowing that now, makes a lot of the difficult past easier for me to understand. I just never got the Band Aid way that I saw the world applying "answers" to their problems. but since working on my book I have had to work out the many problems that were mine, and those that were part of the paradigm I was never able to accept. Maybe my mother will finally begin to understand why I was such a difficult adolescent (and adult).

Sustainability and so much of what I have written about in this blog over the years has been about bringing us along to do things tangibly sustainable. Grow good food, drive smart cars or ride your bike!, conserve energy, but in my classes things have been changing. I wasn't even aware of it until a couple of years ago when I realized that everything I saw now was through the eyes of the sustainable mindset. All my classes were geared to looking at the world with humans as part of nature (not apart as my students have now realized) and that everything is connected. certainly my students, if nothing else, get a strong dose of the interconnectivity of it all. But if that is all they learn (and I think there is much more) it is the best thing they will EVER learn.

This all brings me back to why I ended up as a geographer (even though I was explicitly told I was not one, but a philosopher - which I am guilty of, but as a geographer). I was drawn to geography because in it I saw the ability to bridge the disciplines. Art, humanities, science are all a part of what makes geography my chosen world. And a regional geographer at that, something that is certainly not popular amongst the current stream of geography, but so be it. I am just an old-fashioned geographer, with a twist. As Nevin Fenneman said long ago (1919)

...the one thing that is first, last, and always geography and nothing else, is the study of areas in their compositeness or complexity, that is regional geography.

To me the perfect life is one where I gain the knowledge, experience, and background within all the regions (or bioregions, but that is another subject) we can know. By doing that we begin to know place and that tender feeling of "sense of place." We see the complex patina formed when humans work within the ecosystems and the physical world. When that happens it gets exciting and one can begin to see the fractal relations of one region to another, they patches that don't fit, but do, and the world does become as one.

All right, calm down now Chris. That's enough to get you feeding on that high that cannot be named.