Tai Chi Y2D67: on the grass

This morning I was teaching an hour-long workshop, and I was hugely sleep-deprived. I’d had coffee too late in the day, so that I could work on a poster for today’s session…. But then I was up until 3:30am, tossing & turning.

So, when I awoke officially, I didn’t dare go back to sleep. I might have missed my workshop. I drove down early (so I wouldn’t get lost) and did my tai chi at the workshop site.

I’ve been badly affected the last few days by the pollen counts. I never get seasonal allergies — or at least, not until now. Argh. The last few days I’ve been a snot machine. And it’s not been pleasant. Nothing has really worked to keep my breathing passages open.

Today though was finally better. Things eased up a bit as I did tai chi in the garden at the workshop site. And now that I’ve had a nap and some food, post-workshop, I think that maybe my allergenic reaction is finally slowing down. Thank goodness.

Civil War and Primary Sources and Google Maps

Last year, the historian-parent of one of my students assembled thirty portfolios of documents on thirty Civil War soldiers from Connecticut — photocopies of letters and diaries and newspaper articles, links to Google ebooks, links to PDFs and websites, addresses and phone numbers for archives and historical societies in Connecticut which had the original papers, and so on.  Quite the undertaking, and I’m incredibly grateful to her for the work she did.

Now this project is in its second year.  The kids this year have the materials assembled by this historian-parent, and they have the materials assembled by last year’s seventh graders.  And they’re already making discoveries quite different from the kids who worked through this material last year.

Working with one kid yesterday, and with the help of Google Maps, we located where one such Connecticut soldier was when he wrote his last letter to his wife before marching out toward an unknown destination.  By tracing the information in his letter, we were able to identify the location of his campsite (within about a mile) the previous night.  Using Wikipedia, we were able to find his commanding general, and using various historical atlases we were able to trace the route of his march.

The march that brought him to Antietam battlefield.

Based on the assigned positions of his commanding officers, we were able to get a rough idea of where he was standing during the morning of the battle, and where he was firing from.  We were able to guess from his letter after the battle, roughly where he was wounded.

And we were able to ascertain where his friends carried him, to lay him down among a pile of other wounded men.  Where, after being ignored for a day or two, he picked himself up from, and walked eight miles toward the nearest hospital.

Which we were able to roughly locate, using Google Maps and the man’s own letters, and the letters of his friends.

And where he died.

Officially not one of the wounded of Antietam, but nonetheless killed by it. A man who marched twenty-odd miles to be wounded in the neck by a passing bullet, and then marched another ten miles, many of them alone and leaking copious amounts of blood, to die in a hospital bed from lack of medical care and sepsis.

And from this I had a vision of what American education could be.  Not an endless round of tests and preparation for tests, but a chance for the discovery and the digitization of the historical lives of thousands or millions of people — pioneers and homesteaders and explorers and scientists and immigrants and all sorts of writers and painters and workers from all sorts of walks of life, where they were and what they were doing while great and terrible events unfolded around them.  And it’s extraordinary that I could go to Maryland and Virginia, and walk the roads that this man walked, or see those roads in satellite photographs, and actually live out the short, extraordinary military life of one man in the Civil War — Enlisted August 7, 1862, Died September 25, 1862 — and see where and how he lived and fought and died — in the space of an hour’s class.

Do we not live in extraordinary times?

The Full Neo-Orphic Hymns

I’ve gathered together all seven of these Neo-Orphic Hymns that I’ve written, to the seven planets as they’re understood in the Hermetic philosophy.  And they’re now available on a single page for your reference and readability.  If you do make use of them, please let me know!

Poem: Quatrains on Geomancy

Like the Digital Ambler, I’m pretty interested in Geomancy. Geomancy is one of the divination systems of uncertain origin, although Ron Eglash and others believe it originated in west Africa, possibly among the kingdom of Mali, Ghana and the like.  It eventually became part of medieval European lore by translation through Dar al-Islam and Caliphate-era Spain.  Thanks to Alphonso the Wise and other medieval royal patrons, it entered the Western magical vocabulary, and was in use frequently from Spain to Slovenia up through the mid-1500s, when its use began to decline. There was a brief revival in the mid and late 1800s, but now it seems to be making a genuine comeback.

Which means that it’s the perfect time to launch a poem about the sixteen signs of Geomancy, this Double-Quatrains on Geomancy.  Each of the unrhymed stanzas deals with one of the sixteen signs of Geomancy, and serves as a way of encapsulating the lore and information about each sign.  Enjoy.

BOY more strong than good,  beardless sword-swinger
acting before thinking: heading for trouble.
Fire-headed ram: martial, heady, rash,
blood-spattered white-head, questing here and there.

LOSS — escaping wealth, purse emptying fast;
transience and loss, all things pass away…
Earthy-throated bull, loving yet losing.
yellowing white-neck: all beyond your grasp.

WHITE chalice upright, mind’s peaceful wisdom,
favors intellect, rarely works alone.
Twins of strong shoulders, stable quicksilver,
pure white spotted red, mystical madness

PEOPLE mill in crowds: multitude muddles
without goal or plan: stable inertia.
Crab full of sweet milk: watery full moon:
unfocused sea-green — no real direction.

GREAT FORTUNE coming: fair river valley!
inner strength achieved; stabilized glory.
Great-hearted Lion noble in Sunlight:
green, yellow and gold…press onward: succeed!

CROSSROADS diverging: multiplied choices,
ranges of options, many paths open.
Virginal belly — Mercury’s swiftness
honest purple earth: temperance restored.

GIRL of bright beauty: desire’s mirror,
fickle happiness, impermanent joy.
kidneys on the scales, breath born of Venus —
white and bright greenness: impermanent joy.

RED and hot-tempered, shot-glass upside-down
passion, pleasure, sex: drunk on life and love.
big-cocked scorpion: wild-running Mars
red, for town-painting — hard-partying star!

GAIN, the full wallet: fat purse of bounty,
successful prudence, profitable care.
Hips of the archer, Jove upon firey throne;
red, yellow and green, material gain.

PRISON, cold jail cell: lonely enclosure.
binding, restriction, impairment, delay:
the kneeling sea-goat beached on Saturn’s lead;
fixed russet and dun: focused work alone.

SORROW, in the pit: illness or failure,
grudging permanence — woe, pain and trouble.
hobbled water-man breathing Saturn’s myrrh:
dirty, tawny, dark, grounded in mourning.

JOY, singing, laughing, raw vitality,
creative genius, health and inner light,
koi swimming ’round feet — Jove swimming in pond,
glittering emerald — health, success and smiles.

DRAGON’S TAIL — endings, completed efforts,
concluded cycles, and finished labors.
Left-handed archer, Moon in south station
robed in dark crimson, endings wreathed in flame.

DRAGON’S HEAD — blessings, beginnings, grand starts,
benefic outset, change for the better.
Virgin on her throne, Moon in north station.
pure white with citrine: well-made beginnings.

SMALL FORTUNE — lucky, happy accidents
man on mountain-top, luck comes from outside.
Fast-leaping Lion, breezes of summer,
yellow fickleness, unstable success.

ROAD — Journey begins, change can’t help coming,
travel and motion, nothing stays the same.
Crab swims in Ocean, Moon has full stomach.
White flecked with azure, Pilgrim walks alone.

This piece bears more in common with the Rune Poem than most of the poetry I’ve ever written.  It’s a mnemonic device more than it is a poem, although the sound of the lines being read aloud is kind of cool.  And I suppose that it could be turned into a mini-book of sorts.  I may have to work on that.  A note on the text: in English, it’s customary for the Geomantic signs to be given their Latin names, e.g. Puer, Amissio, Albus, Populus, Fortuna Major, Conjunctio, Puella, Rubeus, Aquisitio, Carcer, Tristitia, Laetitia, Cauda Draconis, Caput Draconis, Fortuna Minor, and Via.  I belong to the Druidical Order of the Golden Dawn, and we learn the Welsh names of the signs: Mab, Colled, Gwyn, Pobl, Bendith Fath, Cyswllt, Merch, _____, Gyr, Carchar, _____, ______ , Bendith Fach, and Ffordd.  I was tempted to work those names in.  But something John Michael Greer said recently in a private list made me realize how much of this lore is hidden behind the

Travel, Interrupted. With Friends.

I’m working on the Ninth Mansion of the Moon image, called Al-Tarf after beta Cancri.  It’s… ahem… an image of some delicacy, because it’s a man covering his eyes and wanting his genitals.  I suppose I could draw or photograph a Ken doll.  But a different image both suggested and presented itself, so I’m working on that. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s going to appear here.  Lines have to be drawn somewhere.

Plus, it’s an image for “causing discord among men” and causing trouble in travel and limiting harvests.  So I’ve interrupted myself several times in the drawing of it, to consider whether it’s a good idea to finish it. And now, I’m stuck in Atlanta at the airport.

The modern American teacher, typically a modernist and a materialist and a rationalist (no matter what church they belong to or what god or gods they believe in), is likely to regard this as unlucky coincidence.   I mean, here I am stuck in an airport, and it’s no big deal — travel at the holidays, this time of year, is likely to be complicated.  It’s winter — weather incidents are likely to get in the way.

Nonetheless, here I am under a full moon, on the day that the Moon is in the Ninth Mansion of Al-Tarf, and the number of people who are showing up at the gate to fly back “home” who I know is growing and growing.  There’s a whole family that lives just up the hill from my lady, and a guy I know from a festival in eastern New York called SpiritFire.  I have this feeling that others I know will be showing up shortly to take this same “last flight from Atlanta” to get back to New England. Astonishing.

And part of me wonders if part of it is that Barbiel, the angel of the ninth mansion, wants his/her image finished and opened to the world?  Is that why we’re all here?  It’s a lot of odd coincidences piling up on top of one another.  Folks from my magical life all appear at the same gate at the same airport?

Of course a typical American teacher — from a rationalist, materialist, modernist viewpoint — would insist that this is ridiculous.  Angels are not particularly supposed to be in American public schools at the very least, and how would drawing a picture of Barbiel’s image and reciting a prayer or declaration on his behalf get me home any sooner? Would publishing his image make it easier or harder for me to get home?  Would it have any effect at all?  Again, the rationalist, materialist, modernist teacher in me would say, no, of course not.  

Am I always those things, though?  No, not really. Not so much.  I’m mindful that we know more than we realize, and that we affect more than we realize.  There’s more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.  And so it’s an easy matter to resolve.   If Barbiel wants his image revealed to the world, he’s going to have to wait — holdign me up is not going to get me to give out a tool for causing discord among men or causing infirmity.

But let me release a different kind of tool to the world, a poem.  Let me unlock my word hoard, and remind Barbiel that we mortals are not utterly powerless to the machinations of the spirit realms.

Hail, al-Tarf’s Barbiel, honest and sure,
who of twenty-eight mansions rules the ninth.
Give me strength, infirmity to endure,
and help me through a long journey day’s length.
You halt winnowers on the threshing floor,
and hinder travelers at the portal,
and strand the ships on sandbars far from shore,
while warning the youthful that they’re mortal.
“Prince of unpleasant truths” thy epithet,
while Heaven’s Cancer defines thy mansion:
Leave us untouched, and now kindly forget
to gift us with trials of your invention.
Distance me from men of malignant will,
and go on thy way without doing ill.

They’ve just announced the gate for my flight, and we’ll see whether Barbiel lets me go home.  But let me ask this of myself and my readers, O materialist, rationalist, modernists that we are… IF I do get home, is it because Barbiel helped me?  Or that my poem hindered him? Or that he’s punishing me for my audacity?  Or that his power is waning now that his time is ending and the next mansion is beginning?

OR… is it just that the weather cleared up and the airline got their act together, and so on?

These matters are not cut and dried.  They are not settled, though we believe them so.  When we take on an alternate mindset, like “magic is real and there are spirits that work in the world,” we start encountering murky but consequential evidence that this is on.  When we take on a materialist mindset, and adopt the idea that this physical body of meat and minerals is all that there is, we encounter murky but consequential evidence that this is so. When we perform experiments to determine if there are spirit-beings, like writing these poems, and determine their results— we encounter evidence that they exist and that they can be persuaded or guided or governed.  When we deny their existence, we likewise encounter evidence that they are not real, and that travel delays and weather challenges are just part of the ordinary circumstances and difficulties of travel.  Welcome to the world. Life is hard.  Oh well, get used to it.

As Yann Martel pointed out in The Life of Pi, though, the world benefits from a degree of magical thinking from us.  We reënchant the world, in some sense, by believing in it and making it so.  My life is enriched and beautified by writing poetry in praise of an angel that most people in this airport would be hard-pressed to believe exists — “an angel who acts to hinder travelers and cause infirmities?  Isn’t that a bit much for a God who is absolutely just?”

And yet, in writing this poem, haven’t I enriched your life?  Haven’t I done what I could to bring my companions and colleagues and fellow travelers closer to home?  Haven’t I done my best to enchant the world so that they arrive at their intended destination?  Let us hope so.

Barbiel, may you prosper our way by forgetting about us for now.

Designing for A Colleague: John Alden

Andrew Carle over at TieandJeans remembered this exercise I’d done a while back, where I asked a group of students in my 7th grade history classes to assemble a group of artifacts that approximated the death-inventory taken as part of the settlement of the estate of John Alden of Plymouth, MA — one of the last surviving Mayflower passengers.

John Alden died in 1687 at the age of 89, one of the last surviving Mayflower passengers. The inventory of his estate was taken on 31 October 1687 by Jonathan Alden, and totalled £49 17s. 6d., all movables. On 13 June 1688 the heirs of John Alden Sr. of Duxbury signed a release in favor of Jonathan Alden, stating that they had received their portion of the estate; those signing were Alexander Standish (in the right of his wife Sarah deceased), John Bass (in  the right of his wife Ruth deceased), Mary Alden, Thomas Delano, John Alden, Joseph Alden, David  Alden, Priscilla Alden and William Pabodie [PPR 1:10, 16; MD 3:10].

Plymouth County Probate Records, Volume 1, pages 10 and 16.
INVENTORY £ s d   (Taken October 31, 1687

•  Neate Cattell sheep Swine & one horse  13
• one Table one forme one Carpit one Cubert & coubert Cloth
• 2 Chaires  5 . .
• bedsteds Chests & boxes  15
• Andirons pot hookes and hangers . . . 8 6
• pots Tongs one quort kettle . .  10
• by brass ware .  . I: 11.
• by 1 ads 1s 6d & saws  7s . . . 8 . 6
• by Augurs and Chisells . . .  5 . .
• by wedges 5s to Coupers tooles  l£ 2s . 17 . .
• one Carpenters Joynters . . .  1 .6
• Cart boults Cleavie Exseta . .  13 . .
• driping pan & gridirons . . .  5 . .
• by puter ware 1 pound 12s by old Iron  3s . 1 15 . .
• by 2 old guns . .  11
• by Table linen & other linen .  . 1 . 12 .
• To beding .. . 5 : 12
• One Spitt Is 6d & baggs  2s .. . 3 . 6
• one mortising axe . . .  1 . .
• marking Iron a Case of trenchers with other things . . . .  7 .
• hamen and winch exse . . .  2 . 6
• by one goume and a bitt of linnin Cloth . . . 7 . .
• by one horse bridle and Saddle liberary and Cash and weareing Clothes  18 .9
• by other old lumber .  5

Included in the final statements of settlement, was this charming statement by  John Alden’s son Jonathan:

Before Nathaniel Thomas Esqr Judge of the Inferior Court of Common
Pleas the 8th day of November 1687 Leiut Jonathan Alden made oath that
this is a true Inventory of the Estate of his father Mr John “Alden deceased
soe farr as he knoweth & when he knoweth more he will discover the same”.

A video resulted from that work, which can be seen here.  And in Math class, having worked out that John Alden had passed three acres to his son legally before he died, we also measured out three acres on our school’s grounds.

We certainly didn’t go as far with this exercise as we could have, but additional steps could be the writing of placards and placement of them around the museum exhibit, that could talk about the role of linen (“linnin” in the inventory above) in Colonial America, or the value and manufacture of pewter (“puter”), or what a mortising axe was used for.  The role of the exercise, of course, would be to decide on placement of objects for maximum visibility, and to practice telling a story with real objects in place.  It also has the power of presenting students with a clear understanding of the relative poverty of early American material culture compared with today.   It’s also a way to explore the role of the curator and the museum staff, along with archaeologists and historians, in interpreting and explaining the past to a modern audience.

Nor does the exercise have to be done with John Alden’s inventory. Any inventory, from locally prominent people or from any important time, can be used in the design of this exercise.

Fifth Astrolabe Verso

Fifth Astrolabe Verso
Originally uploaded by anselm23

Via Flickr:
Here are two photos of my fifth astrolabe. And here’s what I’ve learned about building astrolabes. If you don’t start with the simplest one, you’ll never have the patience to build this most complex one.

The simplest one is the quadrant. It’s four parts: a straw, a string, a cardboard, and a weight. It can be built in 15 minutes and employed in 25, if you wait a little while for the glue to dry.  This took more than an hour, and I didn’t realize until the end that I’d built it of the wrong materials.  If I’d discovered that in the first fifteen minutes — I still would have done it all the way to the end, but it might have taken less time.

This one, I built out of foamcore. Wrong material, first of all. It cuts wrong and it’s unreliable. Heavy cardstock or light cardboard would have been better. The rete is a sheet of acetate; but again, a thin sheet of cardstock with some holes cut in it would have been a better choice. The rule and the alidade — again, heavier cardstock would have been fine. Easier to get a precise point.

On the other hand, this model is weightier than the others, befitting its more complex design. I can calculate the unequal hours of the day, also called the Chaldean hours or the Planetary Hours. I can calculate the position of the Sun if I know the date, or the position of major stars to tell the time at night, or the Mansions of the Moon, or the height of a tower or flagpole or tree.

And all this with the cruddy “first draft” of the model I made using the printouts from astrolabeproject.com. (This astrolabe, by the way, is absolutely BEAUTIFUL.  The lines and traceries are elegant, the directions on how to use it are clear, and the modeling is exquisite.  It’s just… difficult… to get it to come out right on foamcore.  Better luck for me next time, right?

Fifth Astrolabe — recto

That said, there are some improvements I would like to make. I’d love to see the Mater verso and rectoproduced as an .stl file for a ShopBot to rout out. I’d love to see a rete produced the same way, that could “nest” inside the mater, and thin but rigid alidades and rules. Cardstock and cardboard may be ok in the next draft, but I’m really thinking metal or wood next time around.

My friend Daniel S. says it is critical to build your prototypes all the way to the end. Doing so has taught me a lot about materials and about cutting precision lines. I have a much better sense of how I’ll build these next time: thick cardboard mater; lighter cardboard rete, cardstock rule and alidade; sharp knife and scissors, smaller hand drill, steel ruler.

If and when I ever guide students through this process, build all five astrolabes… And build a compass and a model caravel, too. Come to think of it.

The Five Platonic Solids

The Five Platonic Solids

Originally uploaded by anselm23

Via Flickr:
So here they are. They’re built. In Ancient Greek elemental theory, the cube represented Earth; the tetrahedron represented Fire. The dodecagon was Universe. The icosahedron was Water. The octahedron was Air.

Mathematically, a cube has six sides (the Doctor says "seven — including the INSide"). The tetrahedron has 4 (five, says Doctor Who). The dodecagon has 12 (13!). The icosahedron has 20 (21! Why must I keep saying this??), and the octahedron has eight ("nine! Nine sides muhahahahahaha… Oh, wait… Wrong tv personality.")

Hot geometry in planar solids.

At the Eli Whitney Museum

I spent part of today at the Eli Whitney Museum, in Hamden Connecticut, just across the street from Hamden Hall School and down the road a ways.  What an amazing place.

In the video, do you hear all the sawing, drilling, bells and whistles? That’s the sound of kids building a fleet of ships.  If you’re a maker, and you’re ever in Connecticut, you really have to go see this place.  I tried to avoid video-taping the kids (one of them appears briefly through the plexiglass), but this place is doing extraordinary stuff.

How extraordinary?  Let me put it this way: There were fewer miracles in the workshop of Jesus of Nazareth than in this place.  And hanging in the middle of this crazy workshop space, surrounded by kids drilling and hammering and glueing, and learning to work with LEDs and batteries and wiring diagrams, and building a marble-rolling Rube Goldberg machine, with erector sets and a 1950s-era Nuclear Engineering Playscape (Jesus! turns out my dad had one of those!) nearby… is the rifle that may have started the American Industrial Revolution, the Eli Whitney Contract Rifle, a musket designed to be put together with duplicate parts.

It blows your mind.

And then, on the opposite wall, is the Cotton Gin. Designed by the same man.

The first two great tools of American power — and in some ways the originators of the two great American shames —  produced in a factory, designed and patented by the same man!… half-an-hour’s drive from my home.  Truly, I live in a place of fireflies, as Gordon likes to call ‘em.

You really should consider visiting the Great River Valley of Connecticut someday.

Color scales

Color scales

Originally uploaded by anselm23

I’m went down to New Haven to visit the Eli Whitney Museum for the first time today. My God. There were not so many miracles accomplished in the carpentry shop of Jesus of Nazareth as in the carpentry shop there.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking about color. The Eli Whitney is near a place where I can buy acrylic paint in these small tubes, so I double-checked my current paint supply against the Golden Dawn color scales this morning, with an eye to filling in the absent bits with a few tubes that would fill in the missing places in my schema. I wanted to do some more work on the Kavad today.

I got my paint, but I’m not sure I’ll get a chance to work on the kavad. The Eli Whitney Museum was amazing, and it’s probably worth a visit all its own if you’re a maker and happen to be in Connecticut.

Via Flickr:
The Golden Dawn (English magical society, not Greek fascist party) developed a system of color magic that I’ve been eager to incorporate into the kavad. It’s one thing to be able to produce the color mentally. It’s quite another to produce them from tubes of paint and have the painted colors match the intended reality. Not easy.

There are four Golden Dawn color scales. Each scale is named after a court card in the Tarot: king, queen, prince and princess. There are ten basic shades or hues in each scale, and an additional twenty-two colors in each scale. So … thirty-two colors in each scale, times four. A lot of overlaps, yes… but in essence, 128 hues to work with, each with its own rules and correspondences.