Made the HBJ with my school

So… My school got a nice write-up in the Hartford Business Journal, with an article about the design thinking program there.  Is the news about the kind of program we’re running, getting out to the public?  Yes.  Is it being noticed? Apparently, though it never hurts to draw a little additional attention to it.  Is it serving the goal of getting our program noticed, and getting more students and parents and families in the door?  Remains to be seen.

All the same, I’d be lying if I didn’t get a little excited about this.

The Independent Day School of Middlefield is the state’s first institution to adopt a new problem solving initiative called design thinking.

Design thinking is a method of problem solving that promotes leadership, creativity, and teamwork. Students, educators, and employees have found the process of researching, brainstorming, visualizing, and creating to be beneficial when working toward accomplishing a goal. Nearly all problems can be solved, but they require recognition that the solution often involves a degree of positive thinking.

“Failures and challenges are things to be overcome instead of expected boundaries,” said Andrew Watt, director of the school’s design lab. “The core of design thinking involves this philosophy.”

Taiji Day 149: Tricep, or Flab?

There’s a mirror over the old fireplace in my office.  Setting a fire in that fireplace would probably ruin my day, because I don’t think the chimney actually works. I’d smoke myself out of house and home, or worse.  But the mirror over the mantle is nice — I can look at myself while I’m pondering the big questions of the day (“button-down? Or polo shirt?  Tie? No tie?”).

There’s one exercise during Eight Pieces of Silk, which I did after the form and five golden coins, where the arms are circling from left to right, and then the hands are rising and sinking from the head, and then the arms circle from right to left.  It’s very repetitive, and there are more than a few snap-crackle-pops as the rice-krispies exit my joints and keep my early morning routine a little noisy (though they’re loud enough to me, it’s unlikely that anyone else hears them…. when your joints crack or snap or pop, do the people around you notice?)

This morning I was looking in the mirror, doing this exercise, when a thought popped into my head… wait, am I looking at flab? Or am I looking at my tricep? And my brain actually sort-of responded through the early morning fog, “what, you mean, that thing hanging from the underside of your arm? That’s flab. It’s always been flab, it’ll always be flab… hang on a minute, what’s this?”

And the flab twitched.  So I tensed my triceps. And the flab sort-of tightened up into a tricep.  In both arms.  So there was this very nice, hard, solid, curving bicep on top, and an equally-nice looking triceps underneath my arms.  My arms. Attached to that face, that was me, in the mirror.

I relaxed my arms.  The flab came back.  I tensed my arms. The triceps returned.

Page from a Memory notebook

Page from a notebook

Originally uploaded by anselm23

Zentangle… is a style of artwork based on repetitive patterns and designs. By combining it with both traditional and non-traditional calligraphy, things like this Mandala emerge.

Talking with a friend tonight, we discussed the ways in which image can be combined usefully with text in order to “key in” our memories with specific places in a book. I decided to put this theory to the test in a book to consist of texts and images that I would like to remember. Here are the four “Resh” texts, or greetings to the Sun at the gates of the day — dawn, noon, dusk, and midnight — surrounding a sun mandala that also depicts Earth, Air, Fire and Water. I think it’s beautiful and elegant… my girlfriend thinks it’s beautiful, but slightly OCD.

Via Flickr:
I learned two things from this — I need more practice drawing flames, and I love making mandala shapes. I haven’t decided whether to color it or not, yet.