Mandala: under construction

Mandala: under construction
Originally uploaded by anselm23.

I saw a beautiful mandala by kkkataish, and I figured I’d have to try.

I asked how she did it but then realized that I sort-of knew: compass, and straight edge. What I hadn’t expected is how much patience it took. This one isn’t finished yet, but it represents several hours of work already.

The weakest part in many ways is the center. I originally intended a 6way symmetry, but various things kept leading me astray.

One of the things that did surprise me was the need for more than 6 basic divisions. In the final design there are 6 spokes radiating out all the way from the center, but I should have started with 24 or more slices at the center to start: that way I’d have more symmetries and elements to play with.

It turns out that making mandalas requires a great deal of patience, concentration, attention to detail, and careful pen-work. None of this is particularly easy for me to do, but I do find that doing the work focuses my attention and interest admirably. It must be why making mandalas has been a meditative work for centuries.

A link, a funny story, and a nervous news item

Hudson Home Healthcare is a scummy company, apparently.

Last Wednesday, I hung out with my new friends Dave and Josh in Avon, CT. We talked about binary math, magic, philosophy, drawing, and a bunch of other stuff. Good times. In the course of the evening, I got recommendations for five books, all of which sounded great. More on them as I learn more, and actually get the books.

Anyway, this past weekend I went into two different Barnes & Noble bookstores, a Borders, and our local friendly neighborhood bookstore (LFNBS). I wound up being able to flummox the infodesk specialists at all three big-box stores with all five titles. One was the store’s assistant manager (at Borders), and he was absolutely horrified — anguished, I tell you — at the thought that a customer had come into the store that has everything, and was walking away empty-handed even though he desperately wanted to buy the books on this list.

The woman at the FLNBS, on the other hand, found them quickly, ordered them, and I’ll have them next week or so. Awesomeness.

So… if you feel like you want to flummox the big-box book stores, make a point of asking for these books:

• Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books
• The Origins of the Modern Mind
• What Video Games are teaching us about literacy and learning
• The Mustard Seed Manual of Chinese Painting
• and now I can’t find the fifth title. Oh, well.

No, I don’t know what most of them are about, either.

In other news

In other news, Russia is considering shutting down its pipelines west to protest EU and NATO military activity in the Black Sea, and diplomatic protests about the mess in Georgia and South Ossettia. And a hurricane is likely going to pass right through most of the offshore US oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Keep your gas tank full through the weekend, OK?

Update, MANY YEARS LATER: It’s funny that the most important thing in this entry is the fact that I had lunch with Dave and Josh in Avon, CT. That was way more important than anything else that happened at this time.

Red Tent Temple

Red Tent Temple
Originally uploaded by anselm23.

Here’s ‘s new Red Tent Temple, as I had it (incorrectly) set up yesterday. Since then I’ve made some modifications, and narrowed the set-up space by re-staking the corners and sides to be much closer to the tent itself. It’s not that hard for one person to set up alone, and I think it looks pretty good. Their first night in the temple (I think) is tomorrow.

Update: Saturday morning
I hope they have a good time. It rained a little last night, and it’ll be interesting to see how the tent holds up to the first wet. Although I do hope it clears enough and warms up enough that I can help them take it down tomorrow (Sunday). They’re worried about the grass underneath.

Given that the tent is canvas, and canvas has a propensity to rot, I think that the reality is that it will have to come down after each Red Tent, and go up beforehand, depending on how frequently they want to use it.

Visiting Worcester, MA

There’s a pretty good chance that I’ll be in Worcester, MA this afternoon from about 2:00-2:30 until about 5:00-6:00. Anyone interested in hanging out, writing poetry, conversing, sparking ideas, sketching, browsing book or comic book stores, etc. during that time?

Off to get caffeinated. Going to try to set up ‘s tent afterward.

Lodgework: Checking in…

I’ve not written about lodgework for a week or so now, and the steady flood of comments that appeared on earlier entries has sort of slowed to a trickle.

So I’m posting this to ask, who’s still interested? Who is still into the idea, and who would like to commit to making it work?

As I said earlier, I think that we need a minimum of 7 or 9, and a maximum of 15 or so for the original working group. For our first few meetings, all we need is an opening and closing ritual, so that we begin the process of learning to work with gesture, with toning, with scripts, visualization, etc. But ultimately, we’re going to need to design initiations (three in my original plan, five in ‘s vision… whatever we do, we do need an overarching theme or mythic story to hang the whole framework on…

Who is still interested and willing to be involved? Who’s discussed it with others outside of LiveJournal, and has discovered wider levels of interest?

Beautiful Sketch

republicanhousespair082608m
Originally uploaded by gabi campanario.

My contact on Flickr, gabi campanario, does these elaborately beautiful drawings of buildings and streetscapes and people-on-the-bus that I really admire. I especially like how he combines the visual picture or sketch with small notes to himself and his viewers that show relationships and awarenesses that can’t be quite communicated through the visual process. This piece really speaks to me though. I like how the houses are arranged to sit on a slanted street, but are really sort of slanted, themselves. It’s pretty nifty.

I wish I could draw like this. Today I’m going to my 3rd space to see if I can practice some of my newly-awakened drawing skills.

Flood Stage: Scene Report

Only A and Py showed up for Monday night’s Flood Stage. We read from a bunch of chapbooks: Tony Brown, Lea Deschenes, Christos Pirello, Bill MacMillan, Christina Dalbeck, George McKibbens, Jane Cassady, Eric Darby, Roger Bonair-Agard, Gary Hoare, Sarah Sapienza, and Jay Walker. It was a pretty good turnout in absentia for what must be admitted is not a very successful poetry reading.

Visual Thinking: Learning Cycles

Visual Thinking: Learning Cycles
Originally uploaded by anselm23.

Two of the things I learned at the Learning & The Brain Conference at Avon Old Farms this year was the importance of learning cycles, and the value of face-to-face time. The brain takes in 4,000,000,000 bits of information per second through the sensorium of hearing, touch, taste, smell, sight, and kinetics.

The RAS processes this information (compresses it or filters it, we don’t know) down to 2,0000 bps, and then the Amygdala analyzes it for stress or danger. If there’s no stress or danger, the brain turns on its own reflective mode, and learning can occur, as the brain releases dopamine and seretonin, and a host of other neuro-chemicals to activate first working memory, and then long-term memory.

However, that cycle is short; you only have about 6-8 minutes of time before the neurotransmitters get re-absorbed and the mind begins to become bored. The only way to stimulate it is with a new burst of novelty that is neither stressful nor dangerous (to keep the Amygdala placated and happy).

Hence, the need to use Visual (V), Auditory (A) and Kinesthetic (K) methodologies to create novel, happy experiences so that the brain remains in a relaxed, happy, multisensory mode for a 40-minute period — the average length of a class at my school. Furthermore, there must be a priming — through homework, through classroom modification, through exposure to art, and through exposure to vocabulary — beginning a month to six weeks before the material is taught in the classroom.

Once in the classroom, this chart comes into play, quite literally. The priming feeds the cloud of energy that could/should occur in the classroom. Novelty initiates the first lesson, which encourages the students to learn by playing with, and then reviewing, a new concept every six-to-eight minutes. In a 40-minute class, this should happen 5-6 times. Furthermore, by combining this path of learning in the classroom with Ned Hallowell’s FIVE STEPS of learning, any student (EVERY student) can in fact connect-play-practice-’master’-and-be-recognized in a 40-minute period. If I as the teacher am aware that the first 8-minute period is devoted to trying to get everyone to connect to the classroom’s Daily Main Idea, then everyone should get connected. The second 8-minute period is about playing with a new concept or skill. The third is about practicing that new skill; the fourth is about working that skill to become much better at it. The last 8-minute period is about reviewing the day as a whole, and recognizing each student for what they have accomplished that day.

Then there follows a period of reflection or fermentation, where the student isn’t in your class, but is interacting with and connecting to other ideas. The ideas bubble into long-term memory, and then have a chance to re-emerge during that night’s homework. With luck, the ideas explored in class and in homework then are explored in dream that night — when we do a substantial part of the processing of information and data. Further, the homework ideally contains some element that primes the learning for a lesson in the next week, and the next month.

It’s an ideal to work for, and I’m looking forward to trying it.

Flood Stage: Tonight

Tonight, at Victoria Station Cafe in Putnam, CT, the fifth month of FLOOD STAGE: a Poetry Reading, comes to a close. Signup list opens at 7pm, and we’ll read poetry at each other from 7:30pm to 9:00pm. Format is very, very casual.

We’ll be continuing this reading at least through December, but please feel free to come on down!

Learning & Brain: Visual Thinking

Dave Gray: Visual Thinking

quiz: Demonstration that visual thinking leads to discovery

samples of DaVinci, Galileo, Newton, Edison, Ford, Einstein, Picasso, Feynman, Hawking. Their work led to new discoveries. The drawing always came from.

Exercise: Draw the process of making toast

“Belief systems that people use to perceive, contextualize, simplify, and make sense of otherwise complex problems” — Wikipedia, MENTAL MODELS

Nodes and links. Nodes are concepts in drawings. Links are the explicit or implicit connections between the elements/nodes. Most don’t use more than 10-12 nodes, 4-6 is more common.

…. image after image after image….

I don’t even know what to write any more.

Art as essential: average temperature when we started making images was -10°C the heart of the ice age. All writing, reading elements – alphabets or syllabarys – are much much younger.

Pictures. Then Tallies. Then Tokens. Then Envelopes to capture tallies. Tablets. Paper. Printing Press. Cartesian Coordinates. William Playfair. Polar Area Chart. John Venn (diagrams Gantt chart for managing workers. Flow chart by Frank B. Gilbrith, bricklayer. Isotype – inventor of Clip Art (it had an inventor??)

CHildren and cutting-edge scientists are re-wiring their brains in ways we don’t understand. We don’t have schooling models for grading power-point or YouTube videos. Visual Thinking Strategies – 12% grains in reading, 16% gains in math. Doctors who use Visual Thinking Strategies increase accurate diagnoses by 38%. Carl G. Liungman, Symbols: Encyclopedia of Western Signs and Ideograms

(Idea: Lulu.com publishes books like Dave Gray’s… they could publish mine.)

Learning & Brain: Keynote A – RAD Strategies

Greenleaf; housekeeping (bookstore closing 20 min after session, thanks to AOF)

YouTube Video: Men’s Brains / Women’s Brains (not based on brain science!)

Increase student engagement, Motivation, & Memory using RAD Strategies

Dr. Judy Willis, MD, Ed.M. Neurologist, Middle School teacher