Night Sky Study Continued...

Night Sky Study

5.24.15 First Quarter Moon, Illumination 34% (M.A. Reilly, May 2015)

5.26.15, First Quarter, 56% Illuminated (M.A. Reilly, May 2015)

An Inherent Vice: A Very Short Story

Barefoot Days (M.A. Reilly, 2011)

Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat...

 - Walt Whitman

I. A Short Story

I had forgotten.

Watching Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice, I remembered. It was the filthy soles of Doc Sportello's feet that brought it back. My teenage years were spent barefoot. That was decades before bacterial soap would become a household norm, before grime and earth would frighten us, before worry became as commonplace as breath. Then late springs were more often about toughening the soles for a summer mired in gravel and tar.

Throwing off shoes and socks was akin to letting loose that wild animal that hid within our too-soft bodies. How could we know more than what we knew at that moment even if 8,000 miles away young boys we grew up with were dying?

A whole country was dying and all those summers we hitchhiked barefoot.
Went to concerts barefoot.
Walked in and around puddles barefoot.
Ignored the signs & shopped quickly at the A&P, darting between closing doors as the manager in his too-soft brown hush puppies rushed to catch us.
We nudged debris caught in the grooves of old rubber floor mats with our toes, arranging it as if it might reveal something we had lost.
We flicked lit cigarette butts away from our feet, watching how thin arcs of light illuminated darkness, briefly.
We walked across city streets, on dirt roads and through cold night sand--barefoot.

We were so beautifully careless.

And when late August turned cool, some found Birkenstocks tossed under beds or borrowed someone's Dr. Scholls or a pair of thick white socks--but more times than not we just pulled the frayed hems of worn bell bottoms beneath our heels. At dusk some lit punks, some passed joints, and lying back we felt the sweet coolness of grass beneath our feet.

Keeping Watch (M.A. Reilly, Plymouth, England, 2012)

 "Nothing is more misleading than a clear and distinct idea" (Louis de Broglie, p. 128).

II. What's Forgotten

I had forgotten.

Watching Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice, I remembered how way might not reveal way.  You see, it wasn't just the filthy soles of Doc Sportello's feet that wound me up as I watched scene after scene unfold all the while trying in earnest to recall the narrative until that too became too taxing, too misdirecting and I stopped wondering, What's the story, here?  and remained simply present.

And later, the very the phrase, inherent vice, kept nudging at something I thought might be important to know, something I might want to tell you.  And so I looked it up and learned:

An inherent vice is "the tendency of material to deteriorate due to the essential instability of the components or interaction among components" (from here). 

The made thing does not lasts. Even, memories, though sweet, are their own inherent vice. Something crucial right now is slipping, turning on itself like a scared animal cornered.

Somedays we move along and the way is forgotten. We move between order and disorder, barefoot or not.

The Moon and New York

Waxing Moon above Central Park (M.A. Reilly, 5.22.15)

THE MOON AND NEW YORK

      by Mario Rivero

We met every day
in the same place
we shared poems, cigarettes
and sometimes an adventure novel.
We threw small stones
from the bridge where the workers
from the glass factory took their lunch.
I told her that the earth was round
my aunt a witch and the moon a piece of copper.
That one day I would go to New York,
the city where outlandish things happen all the time
where vagabond cats
sleep under the automobiles
where there are a million beggars
a million lights
a million diamonds . . .
New York where it takes ants
centuries to climb the Empire State building
and where the blacks stroll around Harlem
wearing gaudy clothes
selling shoe polish in summer
I would go from restaurant to restaurant
until I found a small sign:
“Boy wanted to wash dishes.
No college degree required.”
Sometimes I would eat a sandwich
I would pick apples in California
I would think about her riding on the el
and I would buy her a dress like a neon light . . .
she was about to kiss me
when the factory whistle blew.

Tonight the moon dreams in a deeper languidness...

Tonight there is a waxing crescent moon (at 7%).  Venus and Jupiter are observable.  A very dark night with clusters of stars. This entry is part of a night sky journal I am keeping for one moon cycle. You can read more about the project here.

Here's what I observed and imagined...

Slender Moon (M.A. Reilly, 5.20.15)

Media: chalk pastels, gouache, on watercolor paper & then digital manipulation.

Picturing the Night Sky for One Moon Cycle

New Moon (M.A. Reilly, 5.18.15 - Gelatos, chalk pastels, white gesso, black and white photograph)

I have long been fascinated with the night sky--especially the moon.  For the last few years I have made hundreds of photographic images and traditional media works.  In a project I am currently beginning with teachers and students I made a slideshow--a visual slice of life-- using some of those images (see below).

Blueblack Night (M.A Reilly, 5.18.15)

For the next month (28 days), I'll be making images of the night sky--based on what I observe and
wished I might have observed.  I hold little allegiance to reality. I plan to use a range of media and to introduce children and teachers to that media as they study the skies.  I hope that they might explore some of the following traditional drawing and paint media, as well as digital media as they create a series of drawings, paintings, photographs, and mixed media collages that represent what they saw and imagined as they studied the sky during the next 28 days.  They'll create these works alongside some writing.

Drawing and Paint Media

1. Watercolor cakes
2. Reeves gouache paint set
3. Faber-Castel Gelatos
4. Chalk pastels
5. Gel medium
6. White gesso
7. White glue
8. Crayola Color Switcher Markers
9. Metallic markers
10. crayons
11. Sakura white gel pens
12. Sakura color gel pens
13. Inktense Color Drawing Pencils
14. 2H, HB, B and @b drawing pencils
15. Charcoal White pencils
16. Micron-01 black ink pens
17. Erasers
18. artist tape

Digital and Photographic Media

1. Polaroid camera/film
2. Digital photography

Substrates/Paper/Fabric

1. Black drawing paper
2. Watercolor cardstock
3. Artist Tiles - Black
4. Artist Tiles  white
5. 70 pound white drawing paper
6. cardboard
7. found papers
8. origami paper
9. rice paper
10. fabric scraps
11. newspaper
12. magazines
13. photocopies

Making Knowledge through Interactive Read Alouds in Kindergarten: New E-Book

from iTunes

I have revised and added the full set of read aloud units for kindergarten.  This e-book, Making Knowledge through Interactive Read Alouds in Kindergarten is now available for download through iTunes. 

It is book #10.

The book contains 8 units of study: 

1. Concept Books
2. Neighborhoods
3. Giving Thanks
4. Traditional Stories and Grain
5. All About Trees
6. Water
7. Reading and Libraries
8. Contemporary Stories

 There is also an introduction now that lists the unit, text, learning strategy and reading/writing focus so that you can see the learning strategies that are used across the text and what they target (comprehension, vocabulary, writing in response to text)

There was great care taken in the selection of texts.  As such, the books represent a range of topics and people. 

These are the books by Unit.

Unit 1: Concept Books

from Unit 1

1. Bruchac, Joseph. (2004). Many Nations: An Alphabet of Native America. Illustrated by Robert F. Goetzl.  New York: Scholastic. (580L)
2. Burns, Marilyn. (2008). The Greedy Triangle. Illustrated by Gordon Silveria. New York: Scholastic.  (580L)
3. Cotten, Cynthia. (2002). At the Edge of the Woods: A Counting Book. Illustrated by Reg Cartwright. New York: Henry Holt. (No Lexile)
4. Demarest, Chris L. (2003). Firefighters A to Z. New York: Aladdin. (310L)
5. Falwell, Cathryn. (2013). Rainbow Stew. New York: Lee and Low Books. (740L)
6. Houblon, Marie. (2009). A World of Colors: Seeing Colors in a New Way. Washington D.C.: National Geographic. (No Lexile)
7. Jenkins, Steve. (2004). Actual Size. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. (1080L)
8. Thong, Roseanne.(2000). Round is a Mooncake: A Book of Shapes. Illustrated by Grace Lin. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books. (No Lexile)

Unit 2: Neighborhoods

Page from Unit 2

1. Croza, Laurel. (2010). I Know Here. Illustrated by Matt James. Toronto, ON: Groundwood Books. (760L)
2. Cumpiano, Ina. (2009). Quinito's Neighborhood/El Vecindario de Quinito. Illustrated by Jose Ramirez. New York: Lee and Low Books. (490L)
3. Fine, Edith Hope and  Angela Halpin. (2010). Water, Weed and Wait. Illustrated by “Colleen M. Madden. San Francisco, CA: Tricycle Press. (No Lexile).
4. Kalman, Bobbie. (2000). What is a Community? From A to Z.  New York: Crabtree Publishing. (680L)
5. Shewchuk Pat. (2013). In Lucia’s Neighborhood. Illustrated by Marek Colek. Tonawanda, NY: Kids Can Press. (360L)
6. Watson, Renée. (2010). A Place Where Hurricanes Happen. Illustrated by Shadra Strickland. New York: Random House. (No Lexile)

 

Unit 3: Giving Thanks

from Unit 3

1. Delacre, Lulu. (2013). How Far Do You Love Me? New York: Lee and Low Books. (800L)
2. Glaser, Linda. (2010). Emma’s Poem. Illustrated by Claire A. Nivola. Orlando, FL: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. (790L)
3. Mora, Pat. (2009). Gracias / Thanks. Illustrated by John Parra. Nee York: Lee and Low Books. (1040L)
4. Swamp, Chief Jake (Mohawk). (2005). Giving Thanks: A Native American Good Morning Message.  Illustrated by Erwin Printup, Jr. (Cayuga/Tuscarora). New York: Lee and Low Books. (660L)
5. Swamp, Chief Jake (Mohawk). (2005). Gracias Te Damos: Una Ofrenda De Los Nativos Americanos Al Amanecer De Cada Dia. Illustrated by Erwin Printup, Jr. (Cayuga/Tuscarora). New York: Lee and Low Books. (660L)

Unit 4: Traditional Stories and Grains

from Unit 4

1. 1. Galdone, Paul . (1985 ). The Little Red Hen. New York: Sandpiper. (550L)
2. Gershator, David and Phillis Gershator. (1998). Bread is for Eating. Illustrated by Emma Shaw-Smith. New York: Henry Holt. (450L)
3. Hairston, Meredith. (2011). Little Red Hen. Illustrated by Jes Golden. Digital Story/Video. Retrieved 12.31.12 from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPrhPiOiNEY 
4. Paulsen, Gary. (1998). The Tortilla Factory. Illustrated by Ruth W. Paulsen.  New York: Sandpiper. (550L)
5. Sturges, Philemon. (2002). The Little Red Hen Makes Pizza. Illustrated by Amy Walrod. New York: Puffin. (320L)

Unit 5: All About Trees 

from Unit 5

1. Depalma, Mary Newell. (2005). A Grand Old Tree. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books. (460L)
2. Gerber, Carole. (2009). Winter Trees. Illustrated by Leslie Evans.  Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge. (760L)
3. Miller, Debbie S. (2002). Are Trees Alive? Illustrated by Stacey Schuett. New York: Walker & Company. (640L)
4. Muldrow, Diane. (2010). We Planted a Tree. Illustrated by Bob Staake. New York: Random House. (620L)
5. Pallotta, Jerry (2010). Who Will Plant a Tree? Illustrated by Tom Leonard. Ann Arbor, MI: Sleeping Bear Press. (No Lexile)
6. Winter, Jeanette. (2008). Wangari's Trees of Peace. Orlando, FL: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (730L)

Unit 6: Water 

from Unit 6

1. Asch, Frank. (2000). Water. Orlando, FL: Harcourt. (140L)
2. Cobb, Vicki. ( 2002). I Get Wet.  Illustrated by Julia Gorton. New York: HarperCollins. (No Lexile).
3. Lyon, George Ella. (2011). All the Water in the World. Illustrated by Katherine Tillotson. New York: Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books. (520L)
4. Sweet, Melissa. (2008). When Rain Falls. Illustrated by  Constance Bergum. Atlanta, GA: Peachtree Publishers. (No Lexile).

Unit 7. Libraries and Reading 

from Unit 7

1. Gonzalez, Lucia. (2008). The Storyteller’s Candle: La velita de los cuentos. Illustrated by Lulu Delacre, San Francisco, CA: Children’s Book Press. (730 L)
2. Hest, Amy. (2007). Mr. George Baker. Illustrated by John J. Muth. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Books. (520L)
3. Mora, Pat. (2000). Tomas and the Library Lady. Illustrated by Raul Colon. New York: Dragonfly Books. (440L)
4. Ruurs, Margaret. (2005). My Librarian is a Camel: How Books are Brought Around the World. Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills Press. (980L)
5. Winter, Jeanette. (2005/2012).  The Librarian of Basra (Digital Version). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Retrieved 12.31,12 from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5xp-KOVbmw 

Unit 8: Contemporary Stories

from Unit 8

1. Harjo, Joy (Muskogee-Creek). (2000). The Good Luck Cat. Illustrated by Paul Lee. Orlando, FL: Harcourt. (540L)
2. Falwell, Cathryn. (2005). David’s Drawings. New York: Lee & Low. (150L)
3. Herrera, Juan Felipe.(2004). Featherless/ Desplumado. Illustrated by Ernesto Cuevas, Jr. New York: Lee & Low. (No Lexile)
4. Krishnaswami , Uma. (2006).  Bringing Asha Home. Illustrated by Jamel Akib. New York: Lee and Low Books. (560L)
5. Smith, Cynthia Leitich (Muscogee [Creek] Nation). (2000). Jingle Dancer. Illustrated by  Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu. New York: HarperCollins. (710L)
6. Sockabasin, Allen (Passamaquoddy). (2005 ). Thanks to the Animals. Illustrated by Rebekah Raye. Gardiner, ME: Tilbury House Publishers. (700L)
7. Tafolla, Carmen. (2009). What Can You Do With a Paleta? / ¿Qué puedes hacer con una paleta? Illustrated by Magaly Morales. Berkeley, CA: Tricycle Press. (No Lexile)
8. Tafolla, Carmen. (2012). What Can You Do With a Paleta? / ¿Qué puedes hacer con una paleta? (Digital Version) Illustrated by Magaly Morales. Berkeley, CA: Tricycle Press. Retrieved 5.1.15.

There's Little School (Re)Form without Language Invention: A #Rhizo15 Post

Learner as Knowmad (Reilly, 2012)

I. Learner as Knowmad

We're driving in the car when Rob tells me our son is composing a first-person shooter (FPS) video game based on the science of parallel dimensions. I'm told that he intends to limit the weapons in order to level the playing field. Each player will have the same physical weapon, kitted out in the same fashion.

Why is he doing this? I ask.
He wants to study the sociology of FPS when the playing field has been leveled, Rob explains. 

And as we drive, I begin to wonder what emerges in such play? How does the practice of shifting into and out of parallel dimensions influence strategy? What happens to the nature and definition of team when dimensionality is in play? What happens to the understanding of individual when dimensionality is not just an interesting physics problem but a potential that can be realized? How is it that my 16-year-old who has never formally studied physics knows how to make such a thing? Where has he wandered so that he might compose such understandings of multiple universes? How does he understand such worlds?

I'm thinking about this in light of the #Rhizo15 discussion of late about the nature of content and the role of teacher, and the idea of community. I'm wondering about the play between content that gets produced and content that gets consumed and if such play doesn't help us to understand the co-specifiying nature of meaning making and becoming. I'm wondering how our understanding of teaching and learning is disrupted when we think about our children who are connected to a infinite world of influence, friendships, arrangements--where just asking is as natural as breathing and so they ask often and in doing so learn actively. To live in their world is to experience random juxtapositions where content and form are linked, where community is better understood as affinity groups that form and clear as needed.

Teacher as Time Traveler (M.A. Reilly, 2012)

II.  Teacher as Time Traveler

In our children's world, the instability of our titling becomes clearer--shows us more acutely the limitations of thinking roles, such as teacher or student, held steady. For is my son not the teacher in one instance and the learner too?  Is he not the player and the teammate too? Is he not the boy who abandons what he starts and finishes what he makes? Is it not true that a teacher he may need is one he's never met and one he's tutored and one he'll need for just a moment and himself? Is he not also the producer and consumer in so threaded a tangle that to know one is to be the other? Is he not contrary?

Is it not also possible that the role of teacher is too causal for this world and has limited reach? My son's world is one of connections and learners are teachers who time travel. They are knowmadic, for nothing holds steady, here. This is a world of becoming. There are no traces to follow, just maps that get made.

Thinking about this makes me wonder where inside the classrooms we are composing today does such fluid learning and becoming get privileged?  We must keep close to the heart the understanding that being is not equivalent to becoming. It never has.

Community as Rhizome (Reilly, 2012)

III. Community as Rhizome

Motion slows the passage of time and the titles we used to fix time--hold it steady are less orientable and far less accurate in the worlds our children are composing. There causality has limited play at best. Community is not defined by who joins, but rather by who plays. And play is not limited to participation based on what we can see or what we think we know.

Rather than classrooms inside buildings separated from the towns and cities where they reside--think assemblages formed by plateaus that are interconnected and breakable at every point of contact. We might think such communities are fragile.  They are not.  Rather they are non-orientable and to many of us, feel foreign.  Deleuze and Guattari (1987) explain, ‘Each plateau can be read starting anywhere and can be related to any other plateau’ (p. 22).  Learners in such affinity groups move horizontally and by lines of flight that cut stratification, clear over-coded space.

Think middle, not edges.


IV. Less (Re)Form, More Invention

School (re)form requires language invention.  How we name is how the world appears. That which we have no language for does not exist. Language invention will allow us to stop replicating models of learning that are causal. "I teach. You learn," does not serve us, or our children, very well.

And so, when we continue to understand teacher and student as separate roles located in distinct silos, our naming fails us. When we equate content with something set and proffered to all, our naming fails us. When we orient learning time to starts and stops signaled by the proverbial bell ringing, our naming fails us. When we understand physical classrooms and school buildings as community definers, our naming fails us. When we equate success with answering  predetermined and mass produced questions correctly and quickly our naming fails us.

In the learning spaces we most need, learning is already happening. No one is waiting for us to show up, unless we have forced them. There, learners are becoming not through some sequential development toward a stated standard--some state of being, but rather through a dynamic flow with self and others.

Here's the shift we most need to grasp: There's nothing to prove.  Becoming "produces nothing other than itself" (p.238). That's it. 

A Meditation in Five Parts

I've Been to Sea Before (M.A. Reilly, 2010)

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.                                           from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

I.

What is named is most always a fiction.


II.

Rhizomatic tendencies do not come easy even if participation in #Rhizo15 makes the rhizome more commonplace, less happenstance.  I don't recognize myself as becoming for I am too rooted.  A narrative.

Time marches along and I stick to its edges.


III.

Much in the way I live works against rhizomatic tendencies for rhizomes are about horizontal movement and little less. Such mindlessness makes me nervous, triggers an urge to rely on what has been given. Don't tell, but most days I want to know the road is well marked, well walked before trodding. For I am dutiful. A modern girl-version of Prufrock who measures life in coffee spoons--full of beginnings and endings and each time I've glanced away from those seductive middles, I've been rewarded.

Yes, rewarded.  I'm a slave to production.


IV

I've come to understand how ruptures, those sweet lines of flight, are more about trusting what cannot be known than over-relying on what has been coded. And I want to trust. I do. But I live mostly by code. I wish I might be different and of course, sometimes I am--like that day in Dún Laoghaire at the Forty-Foot promontory when the afternoon sun cast shadows shifting three mere mortals to angels and I saw it all as it emerged.

I clicked the camera's shutter to clear space and see.


V.

Some nights I dream myself quiet and wake with the sea at my throat.

Rhizomatic Tendencies and the West

Late Day Light (M.A. Reilly, The Badlands, SD. 2010)

There's a feeling I get when I look to the west,

And my spirit is crying for leaving. 

                               - Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, 1971

I.

In 1893 when Frederick Jackson Turner said that the frontier had closed, he couldn't have been more wrong.

Closed for whom?  
Closed in what manner?  

Turner's speech would fuel the imagination of others who were to come as endings are a logic we understand, we want to embrace. Endings are a kind of Get Out Of Jail, Free card.  30 years after Turner, Nick Carraway towards the end of Gatsby would tells us, "I see now that this has always been a story of the West after all" (p.179).  The West is an idealized world, untouched by the greed and despair Nick finds present in New York--greed and despair that touches Nick as well.  35 years after Gatsby, the Catholic senator from Massachusetts would ask us "to be pioneers towards that New Frontier", namely--space.

There are always new frontiers, borne ceaselessly out of the past or forward into some desired future we can just, almost grasp. We want to be the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. And so we seek not what is beneath our heels for that requires us to wade in the middle of things and the middle is undefined as it is always emerging. No, we are far more comfortable out of sync with the now.

Nick and Jack epitomized how the present we actually occupy is so less sexy, so less talked about, so less believed than the reconstructed past and the imagined future. External power rests in such constructions. We live lives where the logic of starts and stops is our chief organizing force. And these forces are more often thought to be truths.

II.

We only need to reread Turner's assertion that the frontier line was "the meeting point between savagery and civilization" to understand how temporary such endings are and how (in)formed our beliefs are by the new frontiers we forge and the beliefs we carry with us. The world is made over to suit ourselves--have we enough power and ego to want to do so.

For even now as I pen this the universe, in which those frontiers clearly sit, is enlarging and if we believe current physicist will continue to do so, infinitely as our galaxy and planet are pulled apart. The universe too, has no beginning. Time, as Einstein suggested, is a fiction. Yes, we may mark time with the Big Bang, but that is more conceit, less truth. Time, like everything about us, is constructed.

Reinventing may well feel as essential as breathing.

Content Rests In Your Hands

Trying to Get Home (M.A. Reilly, 2011)

I.  The Clambake

Every Labor Day weekend during a three-day neighborhood clam bake,  Patty, Jeannie and I would perform a singing and dancing show for those in attendance.  The neighborhood parents and all of the kids came to the clam bake, as did most of my Da's and Mom's sisters and our Aunt Alice from Jamaica Heights. The party was held at the Schroeder's, our next store neighbor.  Just a small spit of lawn rested between us and them. Every bed in our house was claimed by Thursday night and my brothers and I slept in sleeping bags on the side porch those long weekends or at other people's homes. Patty, Jeannie and I performed shows for about 5 years, usually on Saturday night after it got nearly dark and the fireflies were out. It was here in the close of what constituted summer that I learned how content was a made thing.

II. Diana

The year we were The Supremes, Mary who was Jeannie and Pat's older sister showed us how to roll our overly long hair around beer cans so our hair would be straight and have volume. Another year, Mary showed us how to iron each other's hair. We dutifully flipped our hair on to an ironing board and one of us covered the hair with a bath towel, while the other moved the heated iron back and forth on the towel. We usually slept at one of our homes during the weekend party and that year on the night before we were The Supremes we did so with our hair wrapped around beer cans. There was no sacrifice too dear.

Two weeks before the clambake, we would get busy and determine what songs to sing, what hats and other costumes to wear, and generally we scoped out how the performance would go. Everything was made by hand, gathered by what was around. One year we made microphones out of juice cans that we covered with foil. Another year we wore matching mini dresses made from pilfered white pillow cases and twine. We were bricoleurs well before we knew the term.

Stop! In the name of love...


The week before, we mostly argued about who got to be Diana and who had to play back up. There was little democracy to these discussions. Jeannie, being the oldest, mostly got her way. Pat and I were destined to play backup. We practiced in the unfinished basement of my home so that we could keep the performance theme a big secret.  We did paint signs advertising the show, usually on large pieces of cardboard--the left over remnants of neighborhood appliance deliveries.  We nailed these to trees throughout the neighborhood. It felt as if we had endless time to make the show as our obligations were simple chores we usually finished by early morning. Other then nightly calls for dinner, most of the day was ours.

Ooh, Baby love...


In looking back, I'm pretty sure few actually watched our shows as the party was well under way and our parents and aunts and older cousins were most often too deep in their cups to notice much. But nothing derailed the show and there was applause peppered at appropriate times and surely we felt like stars performing below the Schroeder's deck with all the lights lit, singing into orange juice cans, and dancing sort of in sync in our pillow case dresses.

Back in My Arms Again...


III. Authoring

Nothing has held me in as good a stead as what I learned about making and authoring when I was a kid. Those summer shows showed me that content was not something given, or looked up to regurgitate. No, content was mostly what got made among others.

This is how I think about curriculum and content today.  I understand curriculum as complicated conversation (Pinar, 1971) and content is what gets made prior to, during, and after those conversations.

I've written a lot about this in other posts. Here are a few:

A Simple Curriculum Framework To Hold Us in Good Stead (11.19.14)
Disassemble, Reassemble: Some Notes About Curriculum and Improvisation (6.19.14)
Six Thoughts about Curriculum (3.19.11)
Curriculum as Complicated Conversation (3.31.11)

"The One With the Foul Ball, Waving for TV"

Ordinary Angels (M.A. Reilly,  Dún Laoghaire, 2008)

I.

Roughly 4 ½ years before great uncle Paddy, then a 16 year old boy, quit Ireland and shipped off to Manhattan, 16,000 British troops landed at the ports of Dún Laoghaire and Dublin--brought there to suppress the 1916 Easter Rising--an Irish attempt at independence.  From 1821 to 1920,  Dún Laoghaire port was named Kingstown port. The original name, Dunleary named after the 5th century king,  Lóegaire mac Néill, was dropped in the1820s when King George IV paid a visit.

Counting is what colonizers do best.

Nearly 40 years after Paddy left Ireland, I came to the States to live. I was born 50 kilometers north of Dún Laoghaire. Then I was called, Olivia Muldoon.  A few decades later I'd visit  Dún Laoghaire in late September with Rob and Devon. It was there I would make the image that tops this post. 

It was late day at the Forty-Foot promontory where the locals swim. We'd been told it had been an unusual September--warm and sunny, unlike the cool and wet summer that preceded it. As such, many were swimming that early fall day and the temperature rose to nearly 21 degrees Celsius. Warm by Irish standards, indeed. I was fascinated by the trio and how the shadows behind them looked almost like wings.  The image would later be published in B & W magazine.

Dev spent that day playing at the promontory splashing in the water and looking for treasure among the rocks when the tide was mostly out. Rob wrote notes in the small notebook he carried--always pen to paper, recorded sounds, and chatted people up. I watched and made images. We all visited the Martello Tower--the very place where Ulysses opens and later we found a small restaurant off of Harbour Road and talked long into the night and ate well.

II.

I understand Ireland largely as a place of narrative. Story leads to story. Ambiguity is embraced. This was how I was raised. And so on another holiday we criss-crossed the island without much of an agenda and when we needed to be at a particular place, we most often found ourselves lost.  More times than not regardless of who we asked, we were told, You're on good road. Just up beyont.  And oddly, all were correct, for eventually we found where we wanted to go and in truth the roads were all good.

Unlike the Irish whose stories and language wind like their roads depositing the subject often at the end of the sentence, we here in the States favour counting and the most direct route. We teach this to our young with increasing precision. With nearly 30 years of high stakes testing and now the Common Core giving shape to schooling, we have lessened the space for stories at school and now require our children to fit their narrative selves into dull, five-paragraph frames. We then call these changes, rigor.

Don't dawdle, we tell them.
Don't waste time, we chide.
Be precise, we warn.

These admonitions give us purpose. Set us right. But mostly, they work to conceal ambiguity by replacing it with an imposed value.  Numbers mark us. When you count, you count.

Douglas Goetsch in his poem, Counting, helped us to see the irony of the act. He wrote:

...That’s all any child wants: to count.
That’s all I wanted to be, the millionth
customer, the billionth burger sold, the one
with the foul ball, waving for TV.

The spaces between what we name by numbers are most often temporary placeholders we use to mark and unmark our possible selves.