Winter solstice: Transubstantiation in a public school classroom

From last year

The sun stands still for an instant just a few hours from now, and will start its trip back north. We are all children of the light.

I ate a basil leaf in class today, grown from a flower fertilized by bee that stole a sip of nectar back in August. A child in class separated the seed from the dried flower head in October, and planted it.

The past two months the basil germinated, grew a pair of leaves, then another, then yet another, weaving together the carbon dioxide molecules floating around the room, pieces of this child's breakfast or that child's heart.

Transubstantiation, the miraculous changing of the Host into the flesh of God, has all the fancy accoutrements one would expect for theses kinds of things, but after all the noise, the Host still tastes like, well, a wafer.

Through several Sundays of Masses, the tiny basil seed grew, taking in the carbon dioxide of the breath of my lambs in class, an odorless gas, and weaved it with broken water molecules, creating the stuff of life, a basil plant, and today we took Communion.

No one believes this, of course, because it is simply too much to belief--but it's true and requires not a lick of faith.

The plants in our room are, literally, from the breath of those who live here--and at least a few of the carbon dioxide molecules captured were released when someone's brain in class tried to grasp the concept of photosynthesis.

And it was good.

And you're allowed to gnaw on basil....

Jesus, PARRC, and the Roman coin

I grew up Oirish Catholic, no surprise there, then sort of became Methodist, because my kids were, but if push comes to shove, I'd sit my fanny in waiting worship at the local Quaker meeting house and watch the shadows slowly across the wooden pew in front of me as I think, rethink, then settle into somewhere that matters.

By ahc, via Wikipedia

The reason science matters to many of us is because the world is interesting and has interesting patterns, and science helps us to see the natural world.

The reason science matters to many others, though, is because science bestows power upon those who use it to manipulate the natural world. A lot of power.

The thrust to teach science in public schools comes from the need of the powerful to become more powerful. Our Education Caesar Arne Duncan believes science has a "vital role...stimulating innovation and economic growth." I doubt  science would otherwise matter to him.

***

Jesus had a thing for truth. He also had a handle on how power works.

When asked about what to do about paying taxes to the Roman authorities--he took a Roman coin, pointed out the picture of Caesar on it, and simply said ""Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's."

Change Caesar to Arne, change God to "natural world," and you have the compromise many of us in the trenches are now living. Arne Duncan, Eli Broad, Bill Gates and all their monied sheep dictate we follow the the Core Curriculum. Our compliance will be measured by how our students do on tests developed by their monied sheep.

That our schools are funded mostly by local townsfolk seems not to matter to Arne, and truth be told, we need the few extra dollars we got when New Jersey's governor kissed the emperor's ring.

Still, power is a funny thing--much of its strength lies in imagined fears.

I know my kids; Arne does not. Neither does Governor Christie, nor his buddy Chris Cerf. So I will continue to teach science, as science, at whatever level my kids are at, because they deserve to know natural world that belongs as much to them as it does to emperors.

The kids will take PARRC, and I will use the results to help hone my craft. I will not internalize the numbers, because the numbers have little value beyond helping me grasp what my lambs know, and any decent teacher already knows that.

If and when the PARRC includes a check box that asks which of my students have been hungry, have been thirtsy, have been cold, have been fearful in the week preceding the test, I will take it more seriously.

If and when the PARRC icludes a check box that asks which of my students has been sick recently, or has a parent incarcerated, I will take it more seriously.

If and when the PARRC compares and controls for the average cortisol levels of kids (a marker for chronic stress), I will take it more seriously.

Until then, I will imagine the face of Arne on every government test booklet and answer sheet I hand out, and pray that my hypocritical attempt to rationalize a bad situation does not harm my kids.

I'm getting too old to keep lying to myself.

4:30 P.M.

All news worth knowing is local, unless you make a special effort to change something outside your village. Most of us don't.

We can blame the raucous behavior of kids, of shoppers, of drivers, and of whatever labeled group you love to hate these days on the coming holidays, on commercialism, on too much candy with too little discipline, on the holiday party booze.

Look closely at your skin. Hairs.
Look at the front of your chest. Nipples.
Feel the back of your hand with the other. Warmth.

We are mammals.
We depend on the sun for life.
The sun has disappeared earlier and earlier every day for months now.

Sun sets at 4:39 in North Cape May today.

Yesterday it set at 4:29 P.M in these parts.
Today it sets at 4:30.

Natalis solis invicti.
A pretty good a reason for the season.

Yes, I know the days are still getting shorter...but the later sunsets now is cause for joy.

Price of hypocrisy is life

The sun will set a few seconds later today than it did yesterday, at least in these parts.
The days are still getting shorter, of course, and will for a couple more weeks, but the sunset is now tracking back to its June glory, when it sets over 3 hours later than it does today.

North Cape May, winter sun

A gentle snow is falling.

Last night we ate clams from the flats, harvested in August, and Brussels sprouts from the backyard, planted last spring.

In the past day I stood at the edge of the Atlantic, watching the wind whip the waves into a frenzy. I saw stars at midnight, Jupiter framing Castor and Pollux. I saw a junco parrying in a cedar tree on a sand dune bordering the edge of ocean.

 ***

I also got into a spitting contest with Randi Weingarten on Twitter (because I believe money has influence), fretted away an hour pondering how to fix my doomed SGO (because I still dither over data), and made my ESPN Pick'Ems (I got the Bills upsetting the Bucs). None of these would matter if I were mortal.


The price of hypocrisy is life itself.

Good thing the sun's starting to straighten itself out again,,,,

NGSS: The catechism of electrons

It's December again.
Last year's post revisited.

Ferry jetty two days ago....

Our culture depends on the myth that everyone can be everywhere, and that your everywhere is the same as mine.

Still, even with our phones and iPods and televisions, everyone of us lives in a tiny, real  piece of the universe, knowable only to us individually, knowable only by the electrons around us.

***

All electrons that affect us are local--they have to be. They don't travel well, most don't travel particularly far, and our only hope of recognizing something "outside" is if our electrons get dinged, one way or another.

All sensations, all thoughts, all consciousness is ridiculously local.
How do we sense anything?
Electrons get pushed, electrons get pulled.
Most of us remain blisffully unaware of this, and it is killing us.

***

Electrons in a wire move slowly. Very slowly. If you mark a particular electron and follow it, it will bounce and jiggle and vibrate, but its average velocity flowing through your power cable will be less than a snail's pace. Literally.

The hectic "real" world that scurries us through life does not exist.  It is our creation, and it is hubris to call it real.

***

A robin's egg, in my garden.
It reflects light with wavelengths of ~500 nanometers.

The ancients said we're living souls, made of dust, made alive by Yahweh's breath.
The moderns say we're organic material, made of atoms, essentially empty space defined by electrons jostling against each other, balls of energy.

Neither story is fully comprehensible, nor complete. Both stories matter. They may even be the same story.

Who has time for stories anymore?
We need facts and truths and certainty and standards, or so those who believe in a global economy tell us. It is easy to believe in the stories of others when you have lost your own.

The Next Generation Science Standards came out last January. The full name of the document is Next Generation Science Standards for Today’s Students and Tomorrow’s Workforce.

Look at its references to electrons, and it's clear that "tomorrow's workforce" has different priorities than tomorrow's physicists or storytellers or musicians or citizens.

The concept of electron has been stripped to words devoid of stories. No mention of J.J. Thomson and his cathode ray tube, no sense of an electron's place in the herenow, not even a pretense of mystery.

"Tomorrow's workforce" (which used to be called children) is fed today's catechism.

Electrons have a story to tell--Princeton University know this! From Ali Yazdani's work.

 
We need our myths to stay grounded.
We need our myths to remain true.

The ghosts on the edge of the dark sea may be connected to something, but it's not the real world.
We owe it to our children to show them what they will miss if they let other humans far far away control what they ought to "see."

I have yet to meet a child more fascinated by a phone than a frog. Really.

Rescuing daphnia at midnight

Science, as far as it is useful, is counter-intuitive.

Our intuition is based on survival--we don't see things as they are, we see them the way that most likely allows our survival. Intuition is powerful, it's real, but it does not have a cozy relationship with reality.

The natural world gives no credence for our humanness, no more than it gives a squirrel for its squirreliness. We live, we sometimes reproduce, we die.

***

Last night, just past midnight, woken up by the howling northwest breeze that announced winter's arrival, I remembered that I had left a tub of pond water out back. (Every year I drag in about 8 gallons of pond water, ostensibly to save elodea for next spring, but more because dancing daphnoa help get me through late winter.)

I pulled on a sweatshirt, didn't bother with shoes, and dragged my bucket full of elodea and daphnia and countless other organisms, down into the basement. I could pretend that imagining the slow freezing of thousands of creatures that bring me joy each time I peek at a drop of water under my microscope had nothing to do with it.

The race of sharply outlined clouds against the unexpectedly bright half moon hanging up in the east. There are times I become, briefly, comfortably feral.

The pond is freezing over now, and winter is settling in. I got kids to teach, but before I teach them how they relate to the world, I need to teach them that they are of this world. Of this clay. Of this light. Of this whatever it is that started nearly 14 billion years ago.

We're losing our sense of what matters.

Fireball

We were in Asbury Park Friday night, and drove past the Silver Ball Museum.
Reason enough to re-post....

A long, long time ago, before most of you were even born (ca. 1976), pinball machines were still electromechanical, tied to the Newtonian universe. Real bells clanged, real thwack sounds when a game was won. Adolescent reflexes allowed mastering a game well enough to dominate a machine (and sell the accumulated games for more than the quarter it cost to play).

We played at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, on the Jersey shore. We fell in love with each other, ourselves, and the ocean. Play the silver ball, sell a few games, wander waist deep into the creamy night waves, kissing whoever wandered in with you.

Now and again, you entered the zone. Thwack, thwack, thwack! The game counter grew, the crowd swelled, and you were oblivious, except for the occasional glance at the woman you loved, and would eventually marry. (No matter what I do now--succor the afflicted, sit on the Supreme Court, take a bullet for humanity--I cannot glean the same gaze from the love of my life.)

We knew we were at some kind of cusp. In 1972, Prozac, the compact disc, and Pong were developed, harbingers of the digital revolution. Amidst this rising ugliness, Ted Zale (designer) and Dave Christensen (artist) created Fireball, the masterpiece of the electromechanical pinball. Bally praised its "lightning storm of scoring action," while Playboy hailed it as "the perfect pin."

 As the Human Torch threw bolts of lightning from the backglass, Odin and Wotan captured balls, allowing for multiball play. The bumpers kicked hard enough to keep play on the razor edge of control when in the zone. These features alone made this pin worth the two bits for 5 balls.


This was the 70's; we lost a war, our Federal government lost credibility, and we feared a nuclear winter. Oil was in short supply. We needed more than a good pin. Ted Zale knew this.

If you played well, a magical transformation took place. The lower flippers ("zipper flippers") came together, closing the gaping mouth at the bottom of the machine. A left side kicker grooved on, kicking back any errant ball slipping through the left gutter. For a moment you believed you had complete control.

Just as your shoulders started to relax, when you allowed yourself the myth that you were the master of Fireball, the whole center of the board started to spin rapidly; chaos reigned in the middle of your silver universe. You could just hold on and enjoy the ride as the ball clacked off the bumpers, got caught in the swirling center, and was hurled back at the bumpers. Like Job, you stood in awe of the chaos could not understand, much less control.

In a moment, the machine stopped playing with your helplessness. The wheel stopped spinning, the zipper flippers parted open, your ball was again at your mercy. Still, you knew better. Life could not be contained within the glass box.

No matter how glorious the box.....