Comments for (the new) bgblogging

Comment on Memories of My Ancestors, Thoughts of the Land by joannajones416

joannajones416 — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 20:36:28 +0000

I come late to this conversation, not an early adapter. Even so, I want to comment, having given a lot of thought to questions of place and land, of staying or going, of individual vs. community responsibility. My dad managed in minor league baseball, so we’d drop into random communities for a couple of summer months, then slide back out. Thinking back, it was like being a kid anthropologist doing serial field work sampling.

Now and for nearly 30 years, I have played against type, living and working in southern, coastal Louisiana. This is a very rooted place, except for the contradictory forces that are quickly eroding the land away, so staying or going will eventually, in many places, not be a choice. And there remains the question of community and where people will go and how they will sustain their sense of who they are afterward. I just found a quote from Walter Benjamin, talking about the end of WW I, but which seems so appropriate to what is happening here and across the country and worldwide in this time of social and economic turmoil and change that seems to have thrown us all back to first principles. “A generation…now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothing remained unchanged but the clouds, in a field of force of destructive torrents and explosions, was the tiny, fragile human body.” My ardent hope is that we can work at a human scale to move into more positive territory.

Comment on NITLE Workshop by Lessons Learned, Part One: Listening – Community Expressions, LLC

Lessons Learned, Part One: Listening – Community Expressions, LLC — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 18:11:06 +0000

[...] figured out, had community figured out, at least in relation to learning. I blogged about it and taught workshops on the critical opening weeks of a semester to the life of the classroom community. I went on and on about Pierre Levy and [...]

Comment on In case you’re wondering… by Back to the Roots: some background | beespace.net

Back to the Roots: some background | beespace.net — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 21:17:55 +0000

[...] two years later, I see that Barbara successfully integrated her diverse interests: I’ve discovered how to weave together the various strands of my interests and abilities as I [...]

Comment on About bg by Back to the Roots: some background | beespace.net

Back to the Roots: some background | beespace.net — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 18:26:08 +0000

[...] Ganley’s (the bg from bgblogging) invitation to take part in the Guest Series: Food Stories: Memory, Culture, Perspective of her [...]

Comment on About bg by Dr.K.Prabhakar

Dr.K.Prabhakar — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 02:39:52 +0000

Dear Barbara,
Thanks for your blog and thoughts. I think the slow schooling in India has given rise to McDonald approach and traditional learning was lost. How do you think the old way of slow learning that was prevalent to be re nurtured?

Comment on The Depths of Fall: Planting Garlic, Meeting Old Students & Slow Blogging by Exploring the World in a Vermont Kitchen and Garden | Open View Gardens

Exploring the World in a Vermont Kitchen and Garden | Open View Gardens — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 16:00:07 +0000

[...] People who know me as college writing professor specializing in social and creative media or as consultant helping rural towns around issues of civic engagement and participatory democracy through storytelling might be wondering if this is the same Barbara Ganley. Indeed it is, I am. Open View Gardens, LLC is a direct outcome of those endeavors–of my desire to pursue a creative life, to do good work for the world, and to explore the relationships between the deeply local and the wildly global, the slow and the fast, the traditional and the new. [...]

Comment on Tacit and Tangible: Two Sides of the Creative Teacher by Exploring the World in a Vermont Kitchen and Garden | Open View Gardens

Exploring the World in a Vermont Kitchen and Garden | Open View Gardens — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:59:56 +0000

[...] who know me as college writing professor specializing in social and creative media or as consultant helping rural towns around issues of civic engagement and participatory democracy [...]

Comment on Learning from Heaney, Wilson and Tharp by Week 12 – Reflections — EDDL511

Week 12 – Reflections — EDDL511 — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:19:01 +0000

[...] thinking about new ways to use assessment. Here is a link to one of her reflections on assessment “Learning from Heaney, Wilson and Tharp” [...]

Comment on So This Is What It’s Like… Sort Of… by Bryan Alexander

Bryan Alexander — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 03:03:30 +0000

Shoot. I really really really wish I had had time for this!

Comment on Learning from Writers, Learning from Readers: Hearts and Minds in Balance by bgblogging

bgblogging — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:17:28 +0000

Well, Nancy, I think it would depend on the writing. A great writer makes me overcome my own likes and dislikes for the moment I am in the thrall of the story. I remember reading Larry Brown’s Big Bad Love, for instance, a collection of stories about characters in real life I would, most likely, find repellent. I loved them. They opened my heart. Single cell phytoplankton? The great science writers can make them absolutely thrilling.

I like your boundary crossings–leaving the safe zone of academia (well, not so safe but known and understood) has me learning to be a boundary crosser. It’s challenging and exhilarating to say the least!