Another Thought

'Understand Freedom' is the opposite of 'F U.'

Sudbury Valley School

The cutting edge school for independent children [ages 4 - 18].

Links: Homepage, and 'About Us.'

Links to related articles - Wikipedia:
Democratic school.
Free school.
Sudbury school.

Silence.

"A gentle, loving, inner peace and silence is here and now in this moment. It has always been this way. It is always here. It is right here within you and all around you, a stillness, an apparent void, a seeming nothingness out of which everything arises, exists, and eventually returns".

"This site is arising, growing and evolving; someday it will not be. This is the way everything is in reality- all forms, all matter, all energy, all thought arises, grows and then seems to disappear".

(http://www.puresilence.org/)

"Education" Riddle

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.” - A. Einstein
What is education?

Greatness

"Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's "Theory of Relativity" to serve. You don't have to know the Second Theory of Thermal Dynamics in Physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love, and you can be that servant." - Martin Luther King, Jr., from sermon "The Drum Major Instinct".

Dark Energy and Dark Matter

(this post is continuing as just the title, "Dark Energy and Dark Matter" and its comments)

Friends Links (1 - so far)

Here, friends can post something about themselves in the comment section - perhaps, a link to their own blog or website, or links to MySpace and Facebook. Whatever - anything.

nilubilu, offers this link: YouTube - Counting Crows - Colorblind

Cute Takes the Library

I encountered eager eyes recently at the library. This was followed by smiling, and flirtatious body language, from a girl standing otherwise idly near the catalogue computers. She struck me as silly; I smiled, and she came right over and asked me what I was doing. I was using a catalogue computer. She wasted no time in asking if I thought she was cute. I affirmed it, and she took this as an invitation to share my computer and consider my search results. She remained exceedingly friendly while making suggestions and recommending titles, but I thought her recommendations seemed, a bit haphazard, and I declined them. When I headed to the shelves for my book she kept right behind me. She seemed innocent of the library's "climate of privacy," and although I began to feel awkward by her attention and giggling and carrying on, her "cuteness" maintained its appeal.


In order to prevent her from taking a table with me I kept walking, and I lead her to the magazine section. She picked out a swimwear catalogue and asked me if I liked girls. I replied, "The World is our family - and I like all people." She declared me "weird." I started moving again and she quickly followed up with compensatory compliments.


She did carry a book with her, and finally she started a gentle song and dance - lifting her feet and tapping the book on her knees. She started singing, "La-coo-ka-ra-cha, la-coo-ka-ra-cha," and she asked me to join her! I was curious about her age, so she held up her hands and told me, "I'm this many," and displayed six digits.

Thinking and Feeling

Dear Readers,
What is communion? And why do we, "commune" with friends?
On a different topic: I read a newspaper article titled, New York's Nurseries Try a Transplant. It was about a few cool, new nurseries that recently moved to Brooklyn. Last year when I was in San Francisco I found a lovely neighborhood nursery in the Richmond district. It was like visiting a living museum. Today I thought, If I lived in Brooklyn, I would go to a nursery! Here's a link to the newspaper article: New York's Nurseries Try a Transplant

'Pilgrimage' - Jazz Album of the Year?

Album: 'Pilgrimage,' by Michael Brecker
Review by Steve Greenlee, Boston Globe Staff May 23, 2007

. . . No, there is no self-pity here. "Pilgrimage" is sheer exuberance. One gets the feeling Brecker had a lot on his chest, things he wanted to say with this final statement made in the last months of his life. The man knew he was dying. He knew this session would be his final recording. He made it count. He let it all out. He blows us away. Read the whole review - click me!

Native American Life (1753)

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(excerpt from book: The American Pageant, c. 1998)

Benjamin Franklin in a 1753 letter to Peter Collinson commented on the attractiveness of Indian life to Europeans: "When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return. [But] when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners by the Indians, and lived awhile among them, though ransomed by their friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good opportunity of escaping again into the woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them."



photo from http://www.cymbria.ca/reeds.jpg

Education In Antiquity

From book: "Education In Antiquity"

"The historian [H.I. Marrou] seeks to correct an error in perspective: as they appear in our own classical culture the Greeks were primarily poets, philosophers and mathematicians; and when we pay homage to their artistic genius we mean their architecture and sculpture. . . . Our scholars and teachers pay less attention to their music than to their ceramics! And yet they looked upon themselves first and foremost as musicians.

"Greek culture and education were artistic rather than scientific, and Greek art was musical before it became literary and plastic. It was 'the lyre and sprightly dancing and singing' that summed up civilized life for Theognis. As Plato says bluntly: 'Anyone who cannot take his place in a choir (i.e. as both singer and dancer) is not truly educated.'"

A HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN ANTIQUITY, book by H.I. Marrou, Translated by George Lamb - Ch. 4, The "Old" Athenian Education [475 B.C.].
References:
Theognis - I, 791.
Plato - Leg., II, 654ab.

Relevant Quote

"Having a blog is a good way to keep a journal, and to share all the interesting things you find." - Geneva Jones

Verse from Ramayana (verse no. ?)

Listen, my friend, there is another kind of chariot, which brings certain victory. Its wheels are made of strength of mind and patience. Truth and dignity are its firm flagstaff and its flag. Strength and discretion are its two horses. Forgiveness and benevolence are its two reins. Faith in God is its wise charioteer. Absolute contentment is its dagger. Charity is its axe. Knowledge is its bow. Steadfastness is the quiver and self-discipline its arrows. Respect for the learned is its impregnable armor. Listen patiently, O friend, the brave man who has this chariot shall be victorious over the greatest invincible enemy - which is life in this world.