Comments on: On the Cusp: Learning to Pay Attention to the Extraordinary in the Ordinary http://bgblogging.com/2007/02/25/on-the-cusp-learning-to-pay-attention-to-the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary/ Exploring the Far Reaches of Teaching & Learning Fri, 25 Nov 2011 20:36:28 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: kris http://bgblogging.com/2007/02/25/on-the-cusp-learning-to-pay-attention-to-the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary/#comment-271 Wed, 16 May 2007 04:31:12 +0000 http://bgblogging.wordpress.com/2007/02/25/on-the-cusp-learning-to-pay-attention-to-the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary/#comment-271 Thank you Barbara for this beautiful gift of thought, story, and visuals. After a day of being glued to my laptop, I am going to shut the damn thing and go outside just to breathe.

]]> By: Barbara http://bgblogging.com/2007/02/25/on-the-cusp-learning-to-pay-attention-to-the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary/#comment-270 Sat, 10 Mar 2007 08:01:00 +0000 http://bgblogging.wordpress.com/2007/02/25/on-the-cusp-learning-to-pay-attention-to-the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary/#comment-270 Thanks, John for the feedback. As I prepare my next talk, I keep reminding myself to look up from the computer and out the window at the snow, the birds, the important things of the here and now.

Megan, thanks so much for the site link! I have been playing around with some web-based image sharing/editing sites and will certainly try out voicethread. Sounds like an EL170 tool to me ;-)

Toril, good to hear from you, especially knowing how busy you’ve been wrapping up your coursework. It is a small world indeed that you sitting in Norway have a daughter traveling the same roads as I am in New England. And I know that many 21-year-olds experience but do not necessarily reflect on the beauty of a branch, a leaf, a bird. (Of course Megan, who is in her twenties, is one who does notice the tiniest details…but my 21-year-old daughter who is in NYC surely does not ;-) ) It reminds me of the first chapter of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I’m now re-reading thanks to Gardner’s comment above. You should read it if you haven’t. Lovely stuff.

]]> By: Toril http://bgblogging.com/2007/02/25/on-the-cusp-learning-to-pay-attention-to-the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary/#comment-269 Fri, 09 Mar 2007 12:16:51 +0000 http://bgblogging.wordpress.com/2007/02/25/on-the-cusp-learning-to-pay-attention-to-the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary/#comment-269 Barbara, my thoughts are with you, and I can only imagine how difficult this time is for you. Your dad has lived a long life, and as wonderful that is for him and for all of his family, it sure doesn’t make it any easier when they are dying. You’re doing the right thing though – spending as much time with him as possible :)

I also love all your pictures, and as far away as they are taken they still bring a lot of memories and thoughts. It’s funny what age does to you, and how we see and think differently. My daughter, who turned 21 yesterday (March 8) spent Christmas in New Hampshire, and has probably driven along the same roads as you do. She, however, was busy taking pictures of the Empire State building and other New York sites, and the only nature pictures that were sent my way were her horseback riding adventures on a beach in New Hampshire. She is young, and her mind is everywhere else but in the beauty of nature. I know I’ve been like her once, even if both of my kids call me a hopeless tree hugger. I can’t help it, nature gives me something that nothing or nobody else can supply, whether I’m climbing a mountain or sailing the ocean. It’s a marvellous feeling!!!

I love lynx and wolves, and I’m so pleased that the Canadian Lynx is back to Vermont!! I hope for Vermont that they decide to stay, and that the hunters don’t kill them!

]]> By: Megan http://bgblogging.com/2007/02/25/on-the-cusp-learning-to-pay-attention-to-the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary/#comment-268 Thu, 08 Mar 2007 02:02:32 +0000 http://bgblogging.wordpress.com/2007/02/25/on-the-cusp-learning-to-pay-attention-to-the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary/#comment-268 Barbara. Speaking of photos, have you checked out voicethread? Jonathan, my boyfriend, has a close friend who helped get the site on its feet. With all your work on podcasting and digital storytelling, I think you’d be interested in taking a look if you haven’t already. It’s somewhat similar to Flickr but with so much more dimension. I think it has great potential, and they recently made it possible to link voicethread (like Flickr) to blogs. Anyway, I’m all over it.

http://voicethread.com/

]]> By: John Paul Loucky http://bgblogging.com/2007/02/25/on-the-cusp-learning-to-pay-attention-to-the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary/#comment-267 Mon, 05 Mar 2007 21:53:59 +0000 http://bgblogging.wordpress.com/2007/02/25/on-the-cusp-learning-to-pay-attention-to-the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary/#comment-267 Solitude. Serenity. Meditation as inner medication. Indeed visualizing with your words and helpful pics these passing scenes of our fleeting life do help to put the temporal vs eternal into better bas-relief perspective. After reading your lovely blog, i say w the Psalmist, Selah! =Pause & think about that for a while! Indeed “the earth is the Lord’s & the fulness thereof…& all they that dwell therein.” JPL

]]> By: Barbara http://bgblogging.com/2007/02/25/on-the-cusp-learning-to-pay-attention-to-the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary/#comment-266 Fri, 02 Mar 2007 09:27:56 +0000 http://bgblogging.wordpress.com/2007/02/25/on-the-cusp-learning-to-pay-attention-to-the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary/#comment-266 More wonderful comments! I wasn’t sure readers of bgblogging, thinking they’d get some kind of this-is-why-social-software-makes-sense-for-teaching-and-learning post would want to read a long personal piece. I’m so glad to have this time to explore more expressive blogging and see where that will take me next fall in my teaching.

Katie, you are in Germany by now (or off on your ore-school travels through the continent) tracing new paths instead of old. I look forward to following you on your blog! Indeed, I thought of you as I sat on the plane yesterday heading to Denver, how you must know the contours of the country. I tried to take pictures out the window the way Remy does, but couldn’t quite capture the expanse.

Robert, I love how you describe what so often happens: “The familiar can tranquilize us. With travel, we often end up in the same place.” I have started back into Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance on Gardner’s prompting, and find very much the same sentiments in the opening chapter as you express here. His redwing blackbirds are your beavers. I hope you and your kids find your beavers–we are so lucky in Vermont to have them everywhere.

Megan, I remember you writing so beautifully about your grandparents, and I know you honor the extraordinary in those seemingly ordinary moments–your brother massaging your grandmother’s feet. These are the very kinds of moments I want my students to write about next fall, and I will point them to your blogging for lessons in how to have the courage to write so “close to the bone.”

Barbara

]]> By: Megan http://bgblogging.com/2007/02/25/on-the-cusp-learning-to-pay-attention-to-the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary/#comment-265 Thu, 01 Mar 2007 22:40:51 +0000 http://bgblogging.wordpress.com/2007/02/25/on-the-cusp-learning-to-pay-attention-to-the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary/#comment-265 Barbara,

I am so touched. To grant ourselves the permission to be silent, to simply observe without feeling the need for immediate analysis, to just . . . sit with people–we move so fast.

I am so happy you are making these trips. I love going home nowadays; my maternal grandmother and paternal grandfather are living with us. Their presence changes the whole pace of my family. We laugh more; we talk more; we even dance more. We have dinners together. My eighteen-year-old brother massages my grandmother’s feet.

What beautiful pictures of this physical and reflective journey. Thank you.

]]> By: Robert http://bgblogging.com/2007/02/25/on-the-cusp-learning-to-pay-attention-to-the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary/#comment-264 Thu, 01 Mar 2007 13:49:24 +0000 http://bgblogging.wordpress.com/2007/02/25/on-the-cusp-learning-to-pay-attention-to-the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary/#comment-264 Thanks, Barbara. My parents are both in their eighties and will not live forever. My mother opted for Do Not Resuscitate about 6 months ago. I brace myself and catch myself trying to prepare for their deaths. I am also more aware that I am performing my own dance towards death. Often, I muddle through – do I remember to enjoy the now of living? Am I in a tunnel and racing dutifully to the end? Our children will continue to live after us – we hope. Do I have enough time for my children?

With busy busy, we are reactive doing things that we just have to do often using autopilot. To a degree, we are not responsible because we are not in control with our self-prescribed time filling routine. The repetition can yield relief and protection but at the cost of numbing our senses. The familiar can tranquilize us. With travel, we often end up in the same place.

Life becomes the path that we have followed many times and one that we no longer see or appreciate. It is easy to forget that life teaches itself to us and not the other way around.

My son (11) and daughter (9) keep telling me that they want to see a real live beaver (like the one in the Bronx!). It is not enough that I tell them about my experiences with beavers growing up in a rural place. We traveled to a distant wilderness area but the advertised beavers were gone. Park officials moved them to a remote area as they tended to cut down all the trees and make dams that flooded out all the prepared trails. Beavers will be beavers! Is now the right time for my kids to see a beaver? Okay, we will.

]]> By: Alan http://bgblogging.com/2007/02/25/on-the-cusp-learning-to-pay-attention-to-the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary/#comment-263 Tue, 27 Feb 2007 19:57:09 +0000 http://bgblogging.wordpress.com/2007/02/25/on-the-cusp-learning-to-pay-attention-to-the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary/#comment-263 Thank you Barbara for this beautiful gift of thought, story, and visuals. After a day of being glued to my laptop, I am going to shut the damn thing and go outside just to breathe.

]]> By: Katie http://bgblogging.com/2007/02/25/on-the-cusp-learning-to-pay-attention-to-the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary/#comment-262 Tue, 27 Feb 2007 10:40:24 +0000 http://bgblogging.wordpress.com/2007/02/25/on-the-cusp-learning-to-pay-attention-to-the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary/#comment-262 Hi Barbara. I wish I had time to respond to this properly, but I wanted to say hello and remark on what a lovely reflection you’ve shared. Your notes on the sort of “trail learning” were particularly striking for me — what a wonderful sort of class. I left Seattle on Saturday. It’s a trip I’ve made quite a bit in the last three years, and it seems fairly routine at this point. I get up early, drive the long drive to the airport with my mother, and then — miraculously — I’m somewhere very different in a matter of hours.

What was odd this time around was how deeply sad the trip made me. I wonder if the repetition of trips like this doesn’t intentionally tease out our emotions. With a trip so similiar, so routine, the unusual bit each time is who I am at the moment of traveling, who I am and where my relationships with my family and this place are.

You’ve sparked thoughts for me about traveling and noticing that will certainly be with me for the next few weeks — at exactly the right time, I might add! I take off for Germany tonight, in fact. I very much enjoyed reading your post; I hope you’re well, and that your trips to New Hampshire continue to be safe and thought-provoking. Your family and your father’s health are in my thoughts.

]]>