Program Description

Reinhabitation argues that if you live in a place and take advantage of the opportunities and facilities it offers, you are responsible for contributing to that place and its quality of life. In Fall quarter we examined the role of perception and of culture in the construction and experience of sense of place, even while contributing to Olympia by our work at Grass Lake Refuge. In Winter quarter we prepared for Spring by examining the role of the senses and of collaboration in regard to sense of place. Our research, readings, and other activities addressed the following general theme:

Accordingly, in Winter we undertook serious, sustained collaborative research (interviewing community members, researching in local libraries and on the web) to understand the needs of our place and community, how well those needs are fulfilled, and some of the complexities involved in fulfilling them. Having gained that understanding, we could see more clearly where needs are not adequately met and, therefore, choose more deliberately where we could best contribute our individual and collective energies so as to make a difference in Spring.

This quarter you have the opportunity to broaden your community service contributions by choosing the service organization with which you wish to work.

At the same time, having come to a deeper appreciation of the sensual and material dimensions of our lives, having learned more about what it means to be humans who, in order to simply live, necessarily collaborate to transform nature into resources for our own sustenance, we are now in a position to examine proposed solutions to problems we face in our communities--Olympia, Washington State, the Pacific Northwest, the United States, North America, the Northern Hemisphere, the world, the solar system, the Milky Way, the Universe.

This work will broaden and deepen the ways in which we investigate our fundamental questions: What does it mean to have a sense of place? To live with responsibility to the place where you live? To live creatively in a community? To contribute to the well-being and quality of life of others, human and non-human, while allowing them to contribute to your life's quality?

If the program works as intentioned, we will experience ourselves making a difference in a world which is becoming different for us, and in which we treat each other differently.

All the work this quarter will provide a forum for addressing the thematic program goals in a variety of contexts: the environment, the community, the self and the program texts on field natural history, economics and case studies of activism.

In addition to these thematic goals, another fundamental goal of the assignments is to produce a tangible set of work from your observations and interactions, which taken together will reveal the development of your awareness, thinking and skills. In some ways you could make the analogy that as with a movie where it is the collection and particular sequence, not the individual and static frames, that convey the story and plot; similarly with your work, repeated records of your observations will tell a much more elaborate story than any individual record can. By keeping track of and reflecting on a series of observations, you may reveal a story that might otherwise remain obscure, not only of your emerging selves as thinkers and learners, but also of the characteristics and dynamics of the places, people and ideas that you want to learn about.

The assignments are intended to support your work in further developing your

• stamina and appetite for practice and a craft orientation as ways to develop skills;
• observation skills;
• writing, drawing, and reflection skills as tools for (i) describing and encountering patterns in your observations; (ii) bumping into assumptions that may cloud your observations, influence your actions and decisions, (iii) further developing your skills in reflective analysis;
• investigative skills through collaborative inquiry and library research.

All of these skills will support in you in learning about the communities you are part of and depend on, however long or temporary. In the words of Common Fire, these may also be practices that make your connections to a larger community visible.

So what are the assignments that will culminate the year's work?

Spring Book List