Hey everyone,
There is a crazy-cool PBS program called "Dogs Decoded" that is available on Netflix under the "Watch it Now" feature. The show tries to explain why dogs are so different than other animals and the bond between humans and dogs. If you're a dog lover, watch it simply for all of the adorable puppies!
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/dogs-decoded.html
Friday, November 19, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
Mason Jars
I love walking at night. I feel like almost every walk that I blog about is at night, but there's just something that I suppose I'm drawn to, something that is much deeper to understand, something that I myself don't even understand. Tonight's walk was brief, however, it got me thinking about so many things, I don't even know where to start. Lately, the ground feels different under my feet, it's becoming harder and doesn't cradle my step the way it used to. The night sky looks fuzzy, clouded by droplets of percipitation that sparkle and dance in the artifical street lights shining down on the empty street. The night air feels dense and heavy, the coldness burning my lungs like fire. I exhale and my breath is white, something that always has fascinated me since I was a little kid. The night is quiet and everyone is hiding somewhere, and I am left standing in the middle of an empty road, my teeth chattering, my bones shaking inside a sack of pale and delicate flesh. I must have stood in the middle of the road for what seemed like forever, staring at the sky, wondering who I am in the vast emptiness of the world. I was alerted by the headlights of an oncoming car and shook my head to bring myself back to reality. I walked away and checked the time, surprised that no more than three minutes had past. I had completely lost myself in those few moments that felt like an eternity, thinking about who we are, where we're going, what's going to become of us when we reach this end that we all seem so diligently working to acheive.
The question of eternity and what is to become of us has been a question that has had me hooked like a fish since I was old enough to understand that one day, inevitable, we will die. I have read many interpretations of life after death, watched lots of movies, listened to many people, but no matter what, I am never satisfied with the answer. I think it is safe to say that the idea of death is an idea that scares me like no other, resulting in the fact that no answer can ever be given as to why this occurs, it's just something that we must accept. I think our inability to understand the passage of time is what presents a big flaw in my understanding of life and death. I feel like our "invention" of time is our way of making sense of change, of the things that we don't understand. We know that we come into this world, we live and grow, some of us have children and get married, and hope to live long, successful lives and in the end, we return to the ground where we came from. We all have a past, a present and all hope to have a future. In reality, all we really have is the moment that we are living in. We have no proof of the past or the future; they are merely just ideas. We can't see them, touch them, grasp them. Dillard's interpretation has struck me like no other. She not only refrains from making sense of time, but claims that we are infact terrified of the passage of time saying, "It is the fixed that horrifies us, the fixed that assails us with the tremendous force of it's mindlessness. The fixed is a Mason jar, and we can't beat it open" (pg. 69). Our only one and "fixed" moment in time is the one that we have right now, and that scares us, therefore, we have created time as a distraction and a way to make sense of what we call life. We are appraching the ultimate fixed moment, which is death. Dillard explains life by saying, "It is motion without direction, force without power, the aimless procession of caterpillars round a rim of a vase, and I hate it because at any moment I myself might step to that charmed and glistening thread" (pg. 69). For some, death, or the "charmed and glistening thread" seems intriguing, and for others, it's the scariest and most unexplainable thing that perhaps we are ever faced with. What if we really are just science projects stuck in Mason Jars, experiments being watched and awed at, just test subjects suspended in one long, drawn out moment that seems like a dream? Isn't that horrifying? I think Dillard would say so.
The question of eternity and what is to become of us has been a question that has had me hooked like a fish since I was old enough to understand that one day, inevitable, we will die. I have read many interpretations of life after death, watched lots of movies, listened to many people, but no matter what, I am never satisfied with the answer. I think it is safe to say that the idea of death is an idea that scares me like no other, resulting in the fact that no answer can ever be given as to why this occurs, it's just something that we must accept. I think our inability to understand the passage of time is what presents a big flaw in my understanding of life and death. I feel like our "invention" of time is our way of making sense of change, of the things that we don't understand. We know that we come into this world, we live and grow, some of us have children and get married, and hope to live long, successful lives and in the end, we return to the ground where we came from. We all have a past, a present and all hope to have a future. In reality, all we really have is the moment that we are living in. We have no proof of the past or the future; they are merely just ideas. We can't see them, touch them, grasp them. Dillard's interpretation has struck me like no other. She not only refrains from making sense of time, but claims that we are infact terrified of the passage of time saying, "It is the fixed that horrifies us, the fixed that assails us with the tremendous force of it's mindlessness. The fixed is a Mason jar, and we can't beat it open" (pg. 69). Our only one and "fixed" moment in time is the one that we have right now, and that scares us, therefore, we have created time as a distraction and a way to make sense of what we call life. We are appraching the ultimate fixed moment, which is death. Dillard explains life by saying, "It is motion without direction, force without power, the aimless procession of caterpillars round a rim of a vase, and I hate it because at any moment I myself might step to that charmed and glistening thread" (pg. 69). For some, death, or the "charmed and glistening thread" seems intriguing, and for others, it's the scariest and most unexplainable thing that perhaps we are ever faced with. What if we really are just science projects stuck in Mason Jars, experiments being watched and awed at, just test subjects suspended in one long, drawn out moment that seems like a dream? Isn't that horrifying? I think Dillard would say so.
Seeing a Balance in Life
This week, while on a short nature walk, I started to think, in relation to Annie Dillard, on how I really “see” nature and even the world around me. I was walking on my road, in Gorham, which is pretty much surrounded by farms and animals. I saw some cows, sheep, and pigs on the nearby farm and started to wonder how I really see these living things. The majority of the time people do not look at animals as having their own lives, their own world to live but rather they are living in our world and they serve a purpose such as food, clothing, help with work, and even income. I felt sad when I started looking at these animals thinking that the way in which I have always looked at these animals, I have never really “seen” them. Dillard expresses seeing in two ways, one in which people see the world around them, the colors and shapes, the revelation of looking at things for what we perceive them to be. But there is another “king of seeing that involves a letting go. When I see this way I sway transfixed and emptied. The difference between the two ways of seeing is the difference between walking with and without a camera.” (Dillard pg. 33) We find a separation between our world and the world in front of us, based upon how we “see” things.
But I wonder if this has something to do with an interesting idea that I believe Dillard promotes. She discusses at several points the idea of the horror, the grotesque in the world that we can see, and when we “see” this horror we can’t see the beauty, and vice versa. Dillard says that “cruelty is a mystery and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power and light, the canary that sings on the skull.” And se further states that “there seems to be such a thing as beauty, a grace wholly gratuitous”. (Dillard 9) The idea of good and bad existing means there is a balance. Dillard speaks of mystery many times, and in relation to horror and beauty, maybe these two things are connected through mystery. This mystery is the result of our inability to really “see” the world or nature around, leaving us with a lack of understanding. Maybe our view of the world around us, of nature, and of me seeing the animals is like this balance of horror and beauty. We see only good or bad at any given time, with the alternate not being in sight for that moment.
I once saw a snapping turtle on the side of the road to my house, although I didn’t know it was a snapping turtle at the time, and I had never seen a turtle in “real life before (as in up close, although this term is conveniently ironic). I got out of the car and walked alongside the turtle and went to touch it, only before my husband warned me that it could hurt me. My train of thought, at the time, was one not concerning the turtle but the beauty of a turtle being conveniently placed here, at that moment for me to see and touch. I never thought about the possibility of the turtle’s life, the horror of getting my finger snapped off simply because I was too eager and selfish in interrupting the life of the turtle. I wonder if we can truly “see” things in the world, in nature, what this will do to our understanding of beauty and horror in so much as maintaining a balance.
But I wonder if this has something to do with an interesting idea that I believe Dillard promotes. She discusses at several points the idea of the horror, the grotesque in the world that we can see, and when we “see” this horror we can’t see the beauty, and vice versa. Dillard says that “cruelty is a mystery and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power and light, the canary that sings on the skull.” And se further states that “there seems to be such a thing as beauty, a grace wholly gratuitous”. (Dillard 9) The idea of good and bad existing means there is a balance. Dillard speaks of mystery many times, and in relation to horror and beauty, maybe these two things are connected through mystery. This mystery is the result of our inability to really “see” the world or nature around, leaving us with a lack of understanding. Maybe our view of the world around us, of nature, and of me seeing the animals is like this balance of horror and beauty. We see only good or bad at any given time, with the alternate not being in sight for that moment.
I once saw a snapping turtle on the side of the road to my house, although I didn’t know it was a snapping turtle at the time, and I had never seen a turtle in “real life before (as in up close, although this term is conveniently ironic). I got out of the car and walked alongside the turtle and went to touch it, only before my husband warned me that it could hurt me. My train of thought, at the time, was one not concerning the turtle but the beauty of a turtle being conveniently placed here, at that moment for me to see and touch. I never thought about the possibility of the turtle’s life, the horror of getting my finger snapped off simply because I was too eager and selfish in interrupting the life of the turtle. I wonder if we can truly “see” things in the world, in nature, what this will do to our understanding of beauty and horror in so much as maintaining a balance.
Perspectives
"Terror and beauty insoluble are a ribband of blue woven into the fringes of garments of things both great and small" (27).
I haven't always been the biggest Dillard fan, but over the years I've come to realize that it's been more of a clash of stylistic preferences than ideas. While this reading in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek starts off much the same way as Teaching a Stone to Talk, I tried to unpack the big ideas that Dillard is trying to convey instead of focusing on her scattered observations.
The above quote is what grabbed my attention, and while reading I closed my eyes and imagined taking part in my own experiment. Seems that, without my consent, Dillard's plain yet detailed recounting of her pond-water project had made me envision every little detail as if I were sitting at my own kitchen table, peering into a bowl of murky water, staring at the thin film of unsuspecting amoebas for hours. Then Dillard suggests putting the amoebas into an aquarium and imagines them contemplating their known universe as a rectangular tank, and mentions, "But it could be that we are not seeing something. Galileo thought comets were an optical illusion" in what seems like a completely disjointed thought. But it's not! We could be nothing more than amoebas, seeing for ourselves what we think we know for a fact, when in reality all our assurances don't amount to much. Reading this passage and thinking about all of us humans sitting on this floating rock out in space (which might very well be the celestial equivalent of a two-feet by five aquarium) I was suddenly aware that what I had once viewed as Dillard's scatterbrained retellings and lonely observations had just taken me out of the little comfort zone of my perceived consciousness. Damn, I thought. She got me, all right.
So what to do with this gained insight? Keep it close? Meditate on it every day, constantly putting myself in an amoeba's perspective again? When I walk around town and feel my cheeks going numb under the constant push of a frozen November breeze, that's not what I'm thinking about. The thing is, none of us will ever know for sure the reality of anything we think we understand. My current beliefs dictate that, first and foremost, we have nothing to do but experience the world we've been born into. So when I walk I listen to distant cars and trees and spend some time trying to "see" the way Dillard wants to see things, but I keep my infinite tininess and the path of my limited existence in time in the back of my mind, because I want to appreciate what's in front of me. Dillard quotes Donald E. Carr remarking on single-celled organisms which aren't hard-wired for brains:
"This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is" (21).
Sure, this fact is mournful on some levels, but can you think about what our human existence would be like if we did experience the universe as it really is? How boring! I feel like this is the idea that Dillard is trying to wrestle with. We have been blessed with the gift of an infinite number of mysteries, an infinite number of scenarios with which we can keep ourselves occupied, trying to make sense of it all. We should appreciate that, and go to any length to convey that awareness to others. If we don't, we all might as well just be amoebas in a china bowl.
I haven't always been the biggest Dillard fan, but over the years I've come to realize that it's been more of a clash of stylistic preferences than ideas. While this reading in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek starts off much the same way as Teaching a Stone to Talk, I tried to unpack the big ideas that Dillard is trying to convey instead of focusing on her scattered observations.
The above quote is what grabbed my attention, and while reading I closed my eyes and imagined taking part in my own experiment. Seems that, without my consent, Dillard's plain yet detailed recounting of her pond-water project had made me envision every little detail as if I were sitting at my own kitchen table, peering into a bowl of murky water, staring at the thin film of unsuspecting amoebas for hours. Then Dillard suggests putting the amoebas into an aquarium and imagines them contemplating their known universe as a rectangular tank, and mentions, "But it could be that we are not seeing something. Galileo thought comets were an optical illusion" in what seems like a completely disjointed thought. But it's not! We could be nothing more than amoebas, seeing for ourselves what we think we know for a fact, when in reality all our assurances don't amount to much. Reading this passage and thinking about all of us humans sitting on this floating rock out in space (which might very well be the celestial equivalent of a two-feet by five aquarium) I was suddenly aware that what I had once viewed as Dillard's scatterbrained retellings and lonely observations had just taken me out of the little comfort zone of my perceived consciousness. Damn, I thought. She got me, all right.
So what to do with this gained insight? Keep it close? Meditate on it every day, constantly putting myself in an amoeba's perspective again? When I walk around town and feel my cheeks going numb under the constant push of a frozen November breeze, that's not what I'm thinking about. The thing is, none of us will ever know for sure the reality of anything we think we understand. My current beliefs dictate that, first and foremost, we have nothing to do but experience the world we've been born into. So when I walk I listen to distant cars and trees and spend some time trying to "see" the way Dillard wants to see things, but I keep my infinite tininess and the path of my limited existence in time in the back of my mind, because I want to appreciate what's in front of me. Dillard quotes Donald E. Carr remarking on single-celled organisms which aren't hard-wired for brains:
"This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is" (21).
Sure, this fact is mournful on some levels, but can you think about what our human existence would be like if we did experience the universe as it really is? How boring! I feel like this is the idea that Dillard is trying to wrestle with. We have been blessed with the gift of an infinite number of mysteries, an infinite number of scenarios with which we can keep ourselves occupied, trying to make sense of it all. We should appreciate that, and go to any length to convey that awareness to others. If we don't, we all might as well just be amoebas in a china bowl.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Insight With a Side of Milk.
I grew up in a small town. Richmond, Vermont is located in Eastern Vermont about half an hour from Burlington. The town was, is, and hopefully always will be a farm town. I grew up on Conant's Riverside Farm. As a child, when I accompanied my family down to the farm, I had 1,000 acres of land to run around on. 600 of those were reserved for crops and were filled with corn during the spring and summer, and pumpkins in the fall, along with three different cuts of hays and grains throughout the growing season. Watching Food Inc. baffles me every time. Because of the farm I grew up on, I was made aware of responsible farming practices. Watching interviews of people who have been sucked into the corporate side of farming makes me incredibly sad. Not only does this materialistic viewpoint hurt our nation's people and animals, it also hurts the environment.
Believe it or not, there is a reason "Riverside" is part of the name of this business. The farm is nestled between the foothills of the Green Mountains and the Winooski River. The Winooski River flows over 90 miles from Montpelier to Burlington, where it empties into Lake Champlain. The land through which it flows is greatly agricultural, especially because it makes for easy irrigation of crops. The only downside to the proximity of the river to the farmland is that runoff becomes a big issue. Responsible farming practices have been put into place by many farms along the river, including Conant's, in order to create a healthier environment. We have worked to put into place vegetative buffers not only along the riverbank, but also along natural springs that run into the river themselves. There is also great care taken to stop runoff from all barns and feed storage areas. Now we work with a Comprehensive Management Plan that was put into place in order to protect all aspects of the environment on the farm. The plan includes soil, water, and nutrient management for the farm.
Especially after watching Food Inc and seeing how farms begin to disregard the health of their animals after they begin working with corporations such as the Tyson company. For the Conant family, the animals have always been placed number one. We have over 600 animals on the farm at any given time. About 70 more young cows are boarded at a smaller Conant owned farm about a mile up the road. About 20 more cows our owned by the Conants but are housed at the University of Vermont Agriculture Barn for research. These cows are key in learning about how to keep our animals and our food and drinks healthy. The cows at UVM are fistulated. That means they have holes that go through their abdomen into their stomach. The term stomach is used loosely, as cows have four compartments in their stomach. Each chamber has a different role in the digestion process. In order for cows to be healthy and produce milk as normal and in order for beef to grow normally in order to make good meat, they should eat grains and chew their cud. They chew this cud because their bodies have to work extra hard to break it down and extract all of the nutrients. The problem here is that many American farmers have turned to using corn to feed their cattle. When we examine corn feed as it passes through a cow, we realize that much of the food is going to pure fat storage. The lipids are being extracted and the substance is being discarded. There is no energy storage, and the cows are largely being jipped by those that are trying to save money.
The Conants have been selling their milk to the Cabot Co-op for many years. Cabot, for those that don't know, is owned and run by Dairy Farmers. They encourage farms to stay manageable and make sure that they are using ethical and healthy practices for not only their animals but also for the environment. If only all farmers would understand that the impact they have on the earth is as great, if not greater, than the number of people that need their food.
Believe it or not, there is a reason "Riverside" is part of the name of this business. The farm is nestled between the foothills of the Green Mountains and the Winooski River. The Winooski River flows over 90 miles from Montpelier to Burlington, where it empties into Lake Champlain. The land through which it flows is greatly agricultural, especially because it makes for easy irrigation of crops. The only downside to the proximity of the river to the farmland is that runoff becomes a big issue. Responsible farming practices have been put into place by many farms along the river, including Conant's, in order to create a healthier environment. We have worked to put into place vegetative buffers not only along the riverbank, but also along natural springs that run into the river themselves. There is also great care taken to stop runoff from all barns and feed storage areas. Now we work with a Comprehensive Management Plan that was put into place in order to protect all aspects of the environment on the farm. The plan includes soil, water, and nutrient management for the farm.
Especially after watching Food Inc and seeing how farms begin to disregard the health of their animals after they begin working with corporations such as the Tyson company. For the Conant family, the animals have always been placed number one. We have over 600 animals on the farm at any given time. About 70 more young cows are boarded at a smaller Conant owned farm about a mile up the road. About 20 more cows our owned by the Conants but are housed at the University of Vermont Agriculture Barn for research. These cows are key in learning about how to keep our animals and our food and drinks healthy. The cows at UVM are fistulated. That means they have holes that go through their abdomen into their stomach. The term stomach is used loosely, as cows have four compartments in their stomach. Each chamber has a different role in the digestion process. In order for cows to be healthy and produce milk as normal and in order for beef to grow normally in order to make good meat, they should eat grains and chew their cud. They chew this cud because their bodies have to work extra hard to break it down and extract all of the nutrients. The problem here is that many American farmers have turned to using corn to feed their cattle. When we examine corn feed as it passes through a cow, we realize that much of the food is going to pure fat storage. The lipids are being extracted and the substance is being discarded. There is no energy storage, and the cows are largely being jipped by those that are trying to save money.
The Conants have been selling their milk to the Cabot Co-op for many years. Cabot, for those that don't know, is owned and run by Dairy Farmers. They encourage farms to stay manageable and make sure that they are using ethical and healthy practices for not only their animals but also for the environment. If only all farmers would understand that the impact they have on the earth is as great, if not greater, than the number of people that need their food.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Dillard on Babbling and Seeing
"Annie Dillard. Annie Dillard. Annie Dillard..." Most of my walk consisted of this. Just repeating her name over and over again trying to get some idea about where to start this blog and trying to control the chatter going on endlessly in my head. That constant stream of thought that usually looks a lot like, "Ok, so I'll do this for 15 minutes or so and then when I get home I'll spend ten minutes writing the blog then I will do the 10-12 page paper that is due Tuesday since I will have no time tomorrow because I am working all day. Then I need to do a load of laundry and get some supper. Crap, I almost forgot about that, what am I going to eat?" Right about then I realized that thinking about food was A) Not thinking about Dillard and B) Making my belly rumble. And that was when it hit me. Dillard has a wonderful quote on page 34, "All I can do s try to gag the commentator, to hush the noise of useless interior babble that keeps me from seeing just as surely as a newspaper dangled before my eyes." She is so right! It happens to me a lot when I go on the walks for this class. I head out, determined to be filled with wonder and awe at something, to be inspired in some new way about the text and instead all I do is babble along, in my head, about what I usually babble about, school, work, housework, friends, family, life. What is it about our own tiny lives that has us so enthralled? What keeps us from seeing the things around us, those "unwrapped gifts and free surprises" that Dillard talks about? Why are we so self centered? It reminded me a lot of Leopold when he said that the non-hunter sees nothing.
Maybe Leopold was right, maybe we just aren't trained to see things in that way. But Dillard actively tries to. And the best she can come to is this; "Instead you must allow the muddy river to flow unheeded in the dim channels of consciousness; you raise your sights; you look along it, mildly, acknowledging its presence without interest and gazing beyond it into the realm of the real where subjects and objects act and rest purely, without utterance" (35). Perhaps she would agree with Leopold, only hunters really see.
On the other hand, Dillard is very interested in religion. Something Leopold spends very little time on in his book of essays. In fact, opens her book with a wondering about the bloody paw prints her old tomcat would leave on her chest every morning. She writes, "The sign on my body could have been an emblem or a stain, the keys to the kingdom or the mark of Cain" (3). She is more enthralled by the almost mystical quality of nature than Leopold is. There is a sense of awe that I think is missing in Leopold's hunters. They understand animals in a much more primal way, they are able to get inside of an animals head. They have to in order to hunt them. But I think when you do that, while you are able to see, hear, smell, and sense more. The breath taking, inspiring, mind blowing moments of nature don't seem as extraordinary any more.
Maybe Leopold was right, maybe we just aren't trained to see things in that way. But Dillard actively tries to. And the best she can come to is this; "Instead you must allow the muddy river to flow unheeded in the dim channels of consciousness; you raise your sights; you look along it, mildly, acknowledging its presence without interest and gazing beyond it into the realm of the real where subjects and objects act and rest purely, without utterance" (35). Perhaps she would agree with Leopold, only hunters really see.
On the other hand, Dillard is very interested in religion. Something Leopold spends very little time on in his book of essays. In fact, opens her book with a wondering about the bloody paw prints her old tomcat would leave on her chest every morning. She writes, "The sign on my body could have been an emblem or a stain, the keys to the kingdom or the mark of Cain" (3). She is more enthralled by the almost mystical quality of nature than Leopold is. There is a sense of awe that I think is missing in Leopold's hunters. They understand animals in a much more primal way, they are able to get inside of an animals head. They have to in order to hunt them. But I think when you do that, while you are able to see, hear, smell, and sense more. The breath taking, inspiring, mind blowing moments of nature don't seem as extraordinary any more.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Community, Environment, and Mean Girls
I want to begin this post with an apology. I was not at my pedagogical best yesterday for our class. When I dropped my three-year-old daughter of at daycare, I overheard a little girl say to her, "We don't like you, Avery," and then, turning to her friend, "right, Sarah?" "Right," Sarah replied. "We don't like you." All the air was suddenly sucked out of my lungs. I didn't want to intervene -- kids are supposed to settle these things for themselves, or so the parenting experts say -- so I just stood there. Avery shook it right off, found something else to play with, and settled in. I gave her an extra hug and kiss, blinking back tears, quietly told the teacher what I had observed, and walked quickly to my car, and collapsed.
What's going on here? I remember exclusive behavior. I remember "I don't like you," and "you can't play with us," and of course, later, cool and uncool, invited and not-invited...but I don't remember it in preschool. I thought about how hard my husband and I work to teach Avery the "right" way to behave, the "right" things to say and do, and realized with a flash that she may be learning something very different from her school community. Whose fault is that? The possibilities raced through my mind. Is it the little girl's fault? Her parents' fault? The teacher's fault? My fault for leaving her there, for having a career which means she's in full-time daycare? I spent the day embracing each of these possibilities in turn, getting angry in a way I think only a parent can, utterly unable to focus on anything else.
Then, last night, I went back to Ceremony, and to the idea of the web of community. After talking to old man Ku'oosh, Tayo becomes "certain of something he had feared all along, something in the old stories. It only took one person to tear away the delicate strands of the web, spilling the rays of the sun into the sand, and the fragile world would be injured."
Later in the evening I spoke to a friend who is a child psychologist. "It's happening more and more," she said of the kind of behavior I'd witnessed, "and with younger and younger kids. Mostly girls." What I had seen, I realized, was evidence of a tear in the web. A community problem. And to address it I'd have to start thinking about bigger issues than "whose fault?"
I can't help thinking that Silko's right -- that the Western (and, as Cassandra's presentation so effectively illustrated, Christian) tradition of morality, in which we're taught to be moral individuals, to mind our individual souls, to do the "right thing" out of a sort of Kantian or biblical sense of duty, is part of the problem. What we somehow need to absorb is that our actions -- all of them -- affect the web of community that is our very life-support system. As Silko's novel so beautifully illustrates, the dangers of thinking we're disconnected, that our actions affect only ourselves, is the source of not only ecological but also ethical disaster.
I don't know what to do about girls being mean at younger and younger ages, any more than I know what to do about the factory farm system, or poverty, or global warming. But I do know, now, that I live in a community, that its problems are my problems, and its health, my health. So tonight, we'll go though the closets and find some old coats to bring to the school's coat-drive, and Avery and I will bring a loaf of homemade bread to my neighbor with the broken ankle, and we'll pick up a couple of strands in our tiny little corner, and start mending.
What's going on here? I remember exclusive behavior. I remember "I don't like you," and "you can't play with us," and of course, later, cool and uncool, invited and not-invited...but I don't remember it in preschool. I thought about how hard my husband and I work to teach Avery the "right" way to behave, the "right" things to say and do, and realized with a flash that she may be learning something very different from her school community. Whose fault is that? The possibilities raced through my mind. Is it the little girl's fault? Her parents' fault? The teacher's fault? My fault for leaving her there, for having a career which means she's in full-time daycare? I spent the day embracing each of these possibilities in turn, getting angry in a way I think only a parent can, utterly unable to focus on anything else.
Then, last night, I went back to Ceremony, and to the idea of the web of community. After talking to old man Ku'oosh, Tayo becomes "certain of something he had feared all along, something in the old stories. It only took one person to tear away the delicate strands of the web, spilling the rays of the sun into the sand, and the fragile world would be injured."
Later in the evening I spoke to a friend who is a child psychologist. "It's happening more and more," she said of the kind of behavior I'd witnessed, "and with younger and younger kids. Mostly girls." What I had seen, I realized, was evidence of a tear in the web. A community problem. And to address it I'd have to start thinking about bigger issues than "whose fault?"
I can't help thinking that Silko's right -- that the Western (and, as Cassandra's presentation so effectively illustrated, Christian) tradition of morality, in which we're taught to be moral individuals, to mind our individual souls, to do the "right thing" out of a sort of Kantian or biblical sense of duty, is part of the problem. What we somehow need to absorb is that our actions -- all of them -- affect the web of community that is our very life-support system. As Silko's novel so beautifully illustrates, the dangers of thinking we're disconnected, that our actions affect only ourselves, is the source of not only ecological but also ethical disaster.
I don't know what to do about girls being mean at younger and younger ages, any more than I know what to do about the factory farm system, or poverty, or global warming. But I do know, now, that I live in a community, that its problems are my problems, and its health, my health. So tonight, we'll go though the closets and find some old coats to bring to the school's coat-drive, and Avery and I will bring a loaf of homemade bread to my neighbor with the broken ankle, and we'll pick up a couple of strands in our tiny little corner, and start mending.
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