From: Maria Pineda
<jenny_pineda@hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2006 18:03:45 +0000
To: <nakasonr@evergreen.edu>
Subject: Thanks!!
Raul,
I just finished my first week of classes at NYU. I feel like
because of my
time at Evergreen I am better prepared at NYU. We are studying
teaching
methods and theory currently, and I have been reading Dewey, Garner,
Freire,
and many other authors. Many of the students in my class cannot
even begin
to comprehend such a teaching style, and I feel very fortunate for my
experiences at Evergreen. We got into a huge discussion about
grades
yesterday. No one could believe that I did not receive grades
from
Evergreen. I want to thank you and all the recognition program
for opening
my eyes to how important critical thinking and questioning is.
Otherwise I
would be like the rest of the students in my class, and headed towards
traditional methods of teaching.
I was reading about a forum in Lima this August. If I remember
right it is
at San Marcos and it is called Pensar XXXXX. I am sorry I cannot
remember..
I will try to find more information about it, because it is
about the
importance of individual thinking and self-motivation.
I am getting involved with Secular Humanism, or more specific the
Center of
Inquiry. They debated against organized religion and that humans
are
basically good and have good intentions. I am still learning
about it, and
again this seems like something you may be interested in.
I hope all is well for you and your family. Please tell everyone
hi for
me!!
Love,
Maria
Hannah Busbee-Spring 2006
How do I define Reconciliation?
I define reconciliation as a return to wholeness. I believe that
by examine the different aspects of my life, such as career goals, my
current and past academic work, my health, my parenting style and
finding a way to integrate all the different parts of my self and my
roles will enable me to find a center; a core that I can return to that
will nourish myself and in turn nourish my family, co-workers, fellow
students and will have a positive effect on my community. ( I plan on
becoming an art therapist) I think from a mind body perspective.
What do I plan to do?
I plan to see if the following practices will assist me in being fully
present in my mind and body.
Activities:
I will become a vegetarian for the duration of the contract and I will
give up any artificial stimulants, coffee, cigarettes, television,
negative thought processes, and caffeine. I will practice yoga
daily. I will eat mostly organic foods and will eliminate all processed
and pre-packaged foods. I will keep a food journal. I will interview an
experienced Yoga teacher and will document the interview. I will
explore different forms of meditation to determine what fits best into
my lifestyle. I will introduce my three year old daughter to simple
meditation practices of silence and peace. I will invite her to join me
in my yoga practice. Part of my activities is to establish lifelong
parenting skills and to teach my daughter mindful living. She will
assist me in the preparation of the organic vegetarian dishes I
create. I will keep a weekly journal on my daughter's activities.
I will do extensive research into yogic practices and how they are used
to heal the body on all levels. I will use this information to
develop a personal daily practice. I will keep a journal of my
daily yoga and meditation practices. I will research the religion of
Hinduism, past, present, and it's influence on the world and most
specifically the west. I will complete my program by attending
the two day retreat in Seattle with the Indian guru Ammachi. I will
meet weekly with a partner to discuss and process my progress.
How do I plan to do it?
A large part of my processing will be through journaling, and through
writing and keeping extensive notes on what I am eating and cooking, my
meditations, my healing practices my emotions and my observations. I
will put together a collection of vegetarian recipes, I will prepare
them and serve them to my family for the duration of this contract.
Most of my communication will be through email. Please feel free to
write me any time as I would love to hear what everyone else is doing.
Here are the books I will be reading this quarter.
As a part of my final presentation, I'll provide an annotated
bibliography.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Hinduism ( It is a great book
despite the name)
Living Yoga
Yoga Mind and Body
Meditations from the Mat
Shakti Mantras
The Yoga of sound
Darsan
The Deeper Dimensions of Yoga
Will use for reference:
Anatomy of Hatha Yoga
Light on Yoga
The Vedas
What do I plan to learn?
This is my last quarter; I plan on reconciling all my past education
with my current future plans of becoming an art therapist. I plan on
learning how to live a whole and mindful lifestyle and imparting this
knowledge to my daughter. I plan on learning to to take care of my body
and my daughter's body in a way that promotes health and healing.
What difference will it make?
I believe that healing myself through mindful living I will be
able to mirror back to my daughter, my family and my community
wholeness.
From:
<johnny@cadillacamericas.com>
Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 21:14:59 -0700
To: "Nakasone,Raul" <NakasonR@evergreen.edu>
Subject: RE: greetings from johnny C.
Hello Raul :)
It is quite an exciting time. I finally sourced the incredibly rare and
elusive 68"+ driveshaft for the cadillac. Maybe you'll understand my
excitement when I explain why that matters. . .The Cadillac is a very
long car, and few other cars ever made had such a long shaft. This
shaft reaches from the tail end of the transmission near the front of
the car to the rear pumpkin where the two rear drive wheels meet. When
I put the new diesel motor in the car, I put a new transmission along
with it. That means the drive shaft from the Cadillac wouldn't mount up
to the new transmission, this was O.k. by me though, because the drive
shaft from the Cadillac had some very strange looking joints of a
percarious and aged design. My buddy Jerry, has been making drivelines
for the last 30 years, took one look at those joints and told me I
wouldn't make it 5000 miles before I had trouble. He wanted to replace
them with a much more simple and updated "U joint" design, but in order
for that to happen I needed a long driveshaft to use as fabrication
stock. I found it lying underneath a old mercedes in an untrafficed
section of junkyard. Now the whole contraption is down at Jerry's place
getting cut and balanced. But before that could happen, I spent another
full day underneath the cadillac finding the measurements he would need
to make me just the right shaft. Driveline angle, Yoke clearence,
length at full extention, length at minimal extention, length at
estimated right hight. These are important numbers to get right--- if
the shaft is too short it might fall out on a rocky road and
"polevault" the car skyward, if the shaft is too long it might press
against the transmission so strongly that the shaft actually grenades
through the transmission.
The next thing on my list after driveline was cooling. Cooling isnt
something I had actually put alot of thought into (you just hook up the
radiator and go, right?) until it was pointed out to me by people more
knowledgable than myself that I had placed an enormous V8 diesel motor
inside a smaller Cadillac Engine bay, and I had no room for the stock
Diesel truck radiator. Add this to the fact I will be driving long
distances in the full range of climates and cooling becomes quite
a challange indeed.
According to my estimates, my stock Cadillac radiator, which fits in my
engine bay, has only has about 60% of the cooling the diesel motor
wants. But there is more to cooling than just coolent; the transmission
and the motor oil also need their own methods of cooling. You can do
this via external coolers (which look something like mini-radiators) or
by built in coolers on the "tanks" of your main radiator.
Add to all these the fact my stock 6.2 Diesel mechanical fan wont fit
on my motor any longer. There just simply isn't any room between the
motor and the radiator for it to live. The practical solution is an
electric fan setup, but that becomes it's own research project. How
much CFM (cubic foot of air per minute) do you need? Will the fan(s)
mount on the front (push) or rear (pull) of the radiator, and what are
the pros and cons of each. Do you need a fan controller to tell the fan
when the motor needs it, or are you thoughtful enough to mount it on a
toggle switch on your dash? One fan or two? Directional blades?
I finished and then tested the electrical circuitry last night! Nothing
caught on fire or otherwise suggested that I had misrun anything. This
means, theoretically, I've managed to splice the diesel motor wiring
into the Cadillac wiring successfully. However, there won't be any sure
bets until the motor has actually fired to life, and that cannot happen
with good conscience until the driveshaft has been installed and the
transmission filled with tranny fluid, the motor with motor oil, and
the radiator with coolent. Dry-running a motor without proper fluids
can be really rough on it, and I surely dont need to add anymore stress
to such a delicate mechanical machine than I already plan to.
I was reviewing my contract recently, and it spoke about conducting
"interviews and survays directed at how these communities were formed"
in the communities I visit. Since it seems unlikely I will have a
chance to drive the Cadillac into any communities before this quarter
ends, I've been seeking them out locally. I forgot what a hotbed of
intentional thought I live in - I have three good leads.
My question to you - do you have any questions you'd like answered? I
am still mulling over which questions will pull people from their
shells. I am quite a traditionalist with my who, what, when, where and
why's.
hoping you are well :)
From: Adam Schoenfeld [mailto:adam@schoenfeld.com]
Sent: Tue 5/23/2006 1:53 PM
To: Reconciliation
Subject: [reconciliation] What an amazing year!
Hi Guys! Well this has truly been an amazing year for me. It has been by
far my most productive and emnlightening year at Evergreen. I am so
grateful for the oppurtunities this class has offered me. This is my
final year here at Evergreen and as I speak with friends who went to
other more traditional schools I just grow happier and happier with my
Evergreen education. Some of you may remember that last year I spent
time in Thailand and had a truly inspiirational and life changing trip
which unfortunately came to an early end due to the tsunami that struck
SE Asia. So this year, I returned to SE Asia to continue where I left
off. International culuture and business has always been of great
interest to me and Asia is a great place to study both. For my final
project this year I have begun work on a webiste which will detail my
journey through Asia. I will keep you guys posted as my work progresses
and I thank you all again for all of the support I have been given.
--Adam
P.S If anybody needs tips on places to stay or things to do in Thailand
please do not hesitate to contact me.
From: Peter Ewen [mailto:mr.peterewen@gmail.com]
Sent: Mon 5/8/2006 10:53 PM
To: Nakasone, Raul
Subject: Tasmania Report 1
*Report 1*
*Making Connections / First Impressions*
**
**
* **I. Arrival - The 'Pickled Frog' and Thesis*
I am here in Hobart, Tasmania at a hostel called the
Pickled Frog. It
has only been a week since we arrived, but already I have had quiet the
adventure. We spent some times with activists in the Weld and
Styx Vallies,
as well as visited a few parks to marvel at the wildlife.
However, I the
greatest focus of my trip so far has been put into investigating their
music
culture. I have traveled to a few venues, talked to people about
local
music, and made my own observations regarding the marketing and spread
of
music in Tasmania. The people here have all been exceedingly
generous,
which has made my inquiries a real pleasure.
For this first week, one theme seems to run
through all my
observations. This dynamic is one that I expected to encounter
here, and it
has been interesting to hear others voice this feeling. That
feeling is
that, on first site, Tasmania's musical culture seems similar to most
westernized music cultures, but Tasmanians are keenly aware of their
isolation from the mass media.
*II. Advertising - '3 for 50' and 'Ipodogogy'*
**
* *While Tasmanian musicians might find it difficult to
spread their music
off of the island, the outside world is everywhere in Tasmania.
Perhaps one
of the first things I noticed when in Sydney and, indeed, Hobart were
the
huge signs saying, "3 CDs for $50!". The advertisers and not
subtle one
bit. Every square meter of most every CD shop carries these
signs, in
tropical blue and yellow lettering. This price, in US currency,
works out
to be approximately $11 a CD. Most of the music in these shops in
not
local. You may find some bands from the mainland, but the music is
primarily major-label and imported from outside of Australia.
My first day in Tasmania I threw open the local
paper - called *The
Mercury *- and I was astonished to see that the government is seeking
to supply IPODs to all their students, to use as teaching tools.
The
students would be able to download their assignments from sources, as
well
as reading material and class documents. This would certainly cut
down on
paper, which seems to be in short supply in most public schools.
They
called this system 'Ipodogogy'.
There are quiet a few venues for musicians here in
Hobart, though once
someone leaves the city, the venues quickly decrease. Most
of these places
are bars and cafes. I have only located on place solely intended
for music
performances, and that would be the Derwent Entertainment Center.
This
location hosts semi-big names. It is not a place for youngsters
to get
gigs.
*III. Performances - Street
Musicians and Anita George*
After accumulating a list of places where I
could see local musicians
perform, I set out to take fieldnotes on the setting and to take notes
on
the music. Before I begin to speak about what the cafe scene is
like, I'd
like to take a moment to talk about street performers, a couple from
Sydney
and one from Hobart, because, while street performers are few, they
perform
their unique music with skill.
While traveling to Tasmania, we had a six hour
lay-over in Sydney. We
decided to take the chance to walk around the city and take in what we
could. While we were out, we encountered the '3 for $50' deal most
everywhere. I was especially pleased to catch site of the Black
Wattle
birds, which are unique to Australia.
We decided to head towards the Sydney
Opera House. It was there that
we spied two street performing groups whose styles were both very
distinct.
They played in close proximity to one another, but they did not seem to
bother one another. If you walked between the groups, however,
you could
hear both of them playing simultaneously, creating an eerie affect.
The first group was a trio of
Aboriginies, all wearing what looked
like white mud caked over parts of their bodies. They had three
different
Didjeridus set up on a rug. One of the aborigines (they switched
off) would
perform using one of the three Didjeridus. His performance was
accompanied
by a synthesized drum beat, which I assumed was coming from a stereo (I
could not locate it... I suspect they hid it in the bush). A
second
Aborigine struck clap sticks, which he stuck on the downbeat of every
measure and beat three. I found this to be strange, because the
synthesized
drum track had a heavy back beat (with an emphasis on beats 2 and
4). The
third aborigine would watch over the CDs that they had available, and
occasionally chat with tourists.
Not far away was an
older man who looked to be from the East. He
played an instrument which is unknown to me. It looked to be a
type of gord
that was curved like a sickle. From either point of this sickle,
a string
was pulled tight. He would rub a bow along the string, and sing
in a quiet,
mewling fashion. At the top of the string, he would place his
index
finger. By applying pressure and releasing it, the man could
manipulate the
pitch in subtle ways. Strewn out in front of him were pages of
text,
written in an eastern language which I could not discern. Because
of his
close proximity to the Didjeridu performers (who were much louder), the
man
was oftentimes performing in the same key.
Hobart itself,
being the populous center of Tasmania, surprisingly
seems to lack a street-performing group of people. I have only
encountered
one street performer thus far. He was an older gentlemen, who did
not seem
impoverished in any way. On Elizabeth street, which is the main
drag of
Hobart, he took a seat amidst the shops and played his clarinet.
The sound
of it - the technique he used - was more similar to a saxophone
player. He
rolled through his scale, melodically dancing about a key, with no real
structure.
In
this first week, I have only begun to observe actual gigs in
Tasmania. I made it a point to check out a performance at a
popular venue
in town: The Republic Bar & Cafe. The Pickled Frog posts
local events on
their bulletin board. It was here I heard about Anita
George. I went to
the bar at about 8:30. It was a clean, moody atmosphere, which
reminded me
of an Irish pub. The people were primarily older than me, looking
to be in
their late twenties. They drank mostly wine, with enormous
deserts. I was
shocked to see fat pieces of chocolate cake smothered in sauce being
set in
front of you average bar flies.
The
first performer was a male, who had traveled from
Melbourne. He wore a striped shirt, with long black hair and a
soul patch
on his bottom lip. He looked to be in his twenties. His
songs were all
quiet similar. He played with similar chord progressions and
similar
strumming patterns. His voice was buried in the mix, which sat
just under
people's conversations. Little attention was paid to him, but he
seemed
content with simply playing his tunes.
Following him came Anita George. She was flanked by a cello
player, who was buried below the mix. The opening act guitarist
joined her
on the lap guitar and occasionally added backing vocals. Anita
George moved
like many guitar players/singers I have seen. She would step back
from the
mic and dance when she wasn't singing. Her chord progressions were
standard, and most of her songs were about her ex-boyfriend (as she
sheepishly confessed to the audience). They put candles to either
side of
the stage for atmosphere and used red stage lights to convey a certain
mood. The band performed two sets, but it was clear that most
people were
there to drink and socialize, not listen. Personally, I did not
find the
music intriguing, but it was interesting to see the patrons in the bar
converse over drinks. People-watching became my favorite activity
that
evening.
One
thing of particular weight that I'd like to mention: during
her set, Anita George referred to Tasmania as a small place (she was
speaking specifically of Hobart). Her words conveyed the idea:
Tasmania is
a small place with very little opportunity for young artists seeking
exposure.
*IV. The
Melbourne Connection - Holly's List and Guy Mallaby*
While staying
with environmental activists in the Weld and Styx
Vallys, I asked the Tasmanians: What do you think the scene is
like here in
Tasmania? Their instant response: What scene? So I
asked them: If a
musician in Tasmania wishes to make a carreer out of their music, how
would
they do it? Their answer: Most go to Melbourne.
Beau, a
man who traveled around with us for three days, explained
to me the dynamics of Australian Hotspots: "Most musicians go to
Melbourne. But, because there are so many musicians there trying
to make
it, there is little exposure." Beau then went on to
explain: "Anyone who
wants to make it should go north, to Darwin. That's where things
are taking
off."
Another
activist, Holly, literally took my note pad from me and
began scrawling a list of names and information: magazine and
journals,
locations in Melbourne to catch shows, radio stations. All in
all, she
wrote four pages of information. Sadly, just after writing out
the outline
for this first report on the bus, I misplaced my folder, thus losing
all my
information on Melbourne.
Now for a
personal story: Beau told me about a friend of his, who
was from Tasmania, Guy Mallaby. Guy had been into Jazz and
excelled at the
genre. He was multi-instrumental, although his focus was the
guitar.
Seeking to make a career for himself, Guy traveled to Melbourne, where
the
scene is much more vibrant. Unfortunately, while in Melbourne,
Guy Mallaby
was stabbed three times. His murderer was crazed. Lacking
insentive to
kill Guy, an aboriginal man took a long bowie knife and plunged it into
his
belly repetively. He died from a loss of blood. Beau has
since promised to
send me some of Guy's music.
* V. Subject
Matter - Psytrance and Environmental Preservation*
**
* *Aside from
Anita George's boyfriends, there is some genuinely
deep subject matter as well as some more abstract, subjectless
music. While
staying with Beau and other environmentalists, I caught sight of some
CDs
that they offered. They were compilations, featuring some thirty
to fourty
artists. All the musicians were local, and all were concerned
with the
preservation of Tasmania's pristine rainforests. I managed to
spend some
time in there rainforests with many blockaders and I came to understand
the
danger and passion involved in their actions. The songs from this
album, as
well as a CD of Aussie Hip Hop that Beau showed me, express a deep,
cultural
concern for the decimation of their lands in the face of 'progress' and
industry.
They also enjoyed a
genre of music I had never heard of before
called Psytrance. In a broad sense, this music would be
considered to be
Techno (a style of music most often synthesized and dependent of a
steady
quarter note bass drum line). Psytrance, however, depends less on
some sort
of melody and more on ethereal noise, which is correlated (in the minds
of
the people who introduced me to this music) to drug use and
'out-of-body'
experiences.
*VI. Conclusions
- Isolation and Passion*
To me, this
initial week was characterized by the idea of
isolation in Tasmania, and their removal from the rest of the
world. It is
certainly a quaint area, where music is apparent but not
explosive. It
seems like a small wave in the sea of culture in Tasmania.
However, the
people here are certainly passionate, as I experience in the Weld and
Styx
vallys (visit www.huon.org for more information) and musically talented
as
well. While this may not be a spot to gain success, it is a
constructive
atmosphere nonetheless.
So there you have it:
a brief summation of what I have observed of
Tasmania and its music. There is much yet to observe and much yet
to hear.
With future reports I will include a thesis, concert revues, and
thoughts on
marketing (much like I did this time).
Peter is one of Raul's ILC student this Spring.
hi raul, my presenation this year will be
called "Repurposing Trash: Creating useful things out of seemingly
useless junk". It will be a presentation about various tech projects
I've been working on using recycled materials, and creating or aiding
other community projects with these materials. If possible, I'd like to
present my project on Monday, June 6th. Please let me know if this
would be okay.
Thanks!