Some of my thinking lately has reminded me of this article that I wrote in the late 1980s about rediscovering the power and need to be emotionally alive. This article was part of a column that I wrote called “The Editor’s Wild Hair” for a little print newsletter that I inflicted upon friends and family called, “Air, Dirt & Ink.” [Sigh], the good ol’ days.

Journal Classic: Following the Logic of Feelings

Heart, why are you pounding like a hammer?
Heart, why are you beating like a drum?
Heart, why do you make such a commotion
when I’m waiting for my baby to come?
Oh heart, don’t do it if it’s not the real thing
Heart, I get so easily deceived
Heart, there is no other I can turn to
if not you, heart, then who can I believe?”
“Heart” by Nick Lowe

I vividly remember when it first happened. It was in the seventh grade when I walked up to Mary Hinck and said, “Hi,” and she said rather unfeelingly, “Oh, it’s you.” It’s like I didn’t even really know that it was there until it came crashing to the ground in front of God and everyone. Jesus, I thought, if this is what love feels like, I don’t want any part of it.

I didn’t mean that, of course, and have spent the intervening 17 years demonstrating it to no one in particular. But something very definitely changed after that first brush with emotional death.

photobooth iowans by 3Neus/flickr

So it only seems right that at one point in my life I hung around with a religious group that held to the philosophy that “feelings” could not be trusted. “Feelings, they come and go, but objective truth, now there’s the ticket.” Of course the objective truth that was being referred to here was the Bible, the Scoffield Reference Bible in the King James Version to be more specific. And Love, well that had something to do with some Greek word and God and Jesus dying and . . . (all of which of course made no sense whatsoever to my teenage mind, but who was I to scoff at the insights of my elders?).

I don’t know why I always seem to use this column to take pot‑shots at Evangelical Christianity (no doubt an unconscious attempt to pay them back for the emotional trauma and near fatal brain damage I experienced while getting my Bachelor of Arts degree in Biblical Studies). In fact, before this starts sounding too much like “Sex and the Single Brain Cell,” I have to question the wisdom of attempting an article that would argue following the logic of emotions. I mean, either you understand it or you don’t.

I guess it’s just one of those things that pisses me off. While I was playing my little religious game, going to seminary and all, reading Kierkegaard’s Either/Or, thinking about Pluralism and other “important issues,” my own wife was suffering from emotional deprivation. Perhaps this isn’t unusual for couples where one of the partners is working full‑time while carrying 12 units of graduate school course work. It’s called, “I love you, but I don’t have any time for you”—a rather mixed message.

Quite inevitably she announced to me one day at lunch, rather unceremoniously, “You know, if you were just my boyfriend or if we were just living together, I’d leave you.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to look up from the book that I was reading. I knew it wouldn’t be a pretty picture. This was not at all what I was expecting.

So off to counseling we went. A well-meaning Christian friend told me about the horrendous percentage of couples who go to counseling and end up divorced. I think she was trying to caution me against the practice. Of course she failed to mention that no one goes to counseling because things are going great. Someone in the relationship has just about had it (a la, “if you were just my boyfriend . . .”) and it’s either this or the door. No doubt the percentage would be even greater had they not at least tried counseling. Still, it didn’t sound very promising.

Once a week we’d arrive at the counselor’s office. She’d outline the gripes of the week and I’d patiently listen, mentally preparing my counter‑arguments. Then the counselor would turn to me and say, “So Joe, how do you feel about what she has said?”

“Well . . . .” Feel? Did he say “feel”? Most of the time I’d say something about the supposed logic behind my actions and nothing about my feelings. This went on for months. Then one day it dawned on me. It happened while she was complaining about her needing to use the new  Nissan sedan, which had an air‑conditioner, ’cause she had to wear nice clothes to work while me and my Levi’s could put up with the un‑air‑conditioned Toyota pickup. When it came time for my little meaningless counter‑argument I let it out. “You know,” I said rather matter of factly, “if she was convinced of my love for her or that she was number one in my life, than none of this other shit would even matter.” Opps. Did I say that? They both stared at me like one does when a toddler unexpectedly makes an adult‑like observation.

“So Joe, how do you feel about her then?” It took another five months before I could clearly say how I felt. In view of the fact that I write a column called “Sex and the Single Brain Cell,” it should be obvious that we were to become another statistic.

“Oh heart, there must be no mistake
Beware, special care, from the start
Oh heart, though I’m glad for the first bit of love to have
Be certain now, else you’re gonna break
Oh heart, motor of emotion you’ve never been like this before
Heart, at first I thought you were joking,
but I know deep down in you that you’re sure.”
“Heart” by Nick Lowe

I realize that the above narrative is a rather odd way to set up an argument in favor of following the logic of feelings. Those who consider the concept to be little more than a dangerous dose of pop psychology will no doubt feel justified. But, like I wrote before, unless you understand the concept you’ll have little appreciation for my argument (which is really no argument at all).

The reason for my sensitivity about this subject is no doubt the result of my own struggle with the concept of “feeling,” starting with the amazingly disarming question: “what the fuck do I want out of life?” Laid out like a raw nerve, the question began to unravel the reasons why, two years ago, I would have recoiled at the idea of following feeling’s leading.

Simply put, an anemic sense of self worth prevented me from thinking that I was an adequate judge for determining the meaning or direction of my own life. “What the fuck do I want out of life?” It’s just a simple question. But there was a silent yet pervasive lack of self‑trust, which perhaps extended personally and culturally to a time when authority figures were depended upon for making the decisions of life. And feelings were the luxuries of irresponsible youth and melancholic old age.

“She said, ‘you know, if you were just my boyfriend or if we were just living together, I’d leave you.’ I wasn’t sure I wanted to look up from the book that I was reading.”

Just below the surface was an ancient belief that if I were left to my own devices, judging things on the basis of what I “want,” I’d no doubt do damage to myself and evil to my brothers and sisters. This was somewhat based on a twisted application of King David’s repentant song and Solomon’s words of advice:

“But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people. All who see me, mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads.” (Psalm 22:6,7) “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5,6)

Not long after the news of my marital separation broke, my well-meaning father strongly suggested that if I turned this dilemma over to Jesus than all of the fuzziness would clear up and I’d make the right decision. Perhaps. But equally possible was the proposition that I got into this situation because over the course of the last 14 years I’d “turned over” such situations to the Lord, in my own feeble way, and failed to read the writing on my own heart. Ha. How was God going to talk to me anyway except through my own heart?

A child no doubt lacks the common sense and self‑discipline to negotiate the troubled waters of life without parental instruction and example but I have, for a long time, ceased being a child. And when I turned to the judgment bench of feelings I didn’t find a power hungry madman bent on my own destruction or the lording over of the lives of my loved ones. Quite surprisingly I found a mirror image of myself, perhaps a little more insightful, perhaps a little more excitable, somewhat like a profile of ones self that until this very moment one has failed to even notice.

I took feeling’s leading and made some difficult decisions. Perhaps out an inability to read feeling’s messages or like myself, out of a lack of trust, many fake their way from sun‑up to the evening news thinking that this vague sense of dissatisfaction is all part of life. Life’s a bitch and then you die. Right?

Someone once told me that there was more to it than that. Risking the possible dissolution of our marriage, she courageously challenged me to confess what I already knew about my feelings. Among other things, this difficult experience has shown me that feelings, whether acknowledged or ignored, have a way of making themselves known.

Sources:
Following the Logic of Feelings (“The Editor’s Wild Hair” column)  by Joe Bustillos. Air, Dirt & Ink (ADI), Vol 1, Issue 4, January‑February 1988)

image: photobooth iowans by 3Neus. http://www.flickr.com/photos/motherscratcher/2267589346/ retrieved on 2/3/2010

cover image: La Estrella esperaba, pero nadie llego by Mercedes.. Life as I picture. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mercedesdayanara/366501299/ retrieved on 2/3/2010

        

One of my students commented in his blog that he’d just had a relaxing weekend, noting that he’d actually had time to do some yard work with his wife and how much better the experience was versus the typical weekend of continuous running around. Interesting. As I continue my own house-hunting adventure I wonder how this change from life-long renter to first-time buyer will change my own disposition towards a “relaxing weekend doing yard work.” In a Pepperdine assignment on mentoring for my Masters degree I’ve already gone on record writing that I’ve already done my time doing yard work as a child and adolescent. Maybe that’ll change. maybe not. Here’s the Pepperdine essay:

Mentoring Analysis – The Benefit of Learning By Example

dad workin' on the MV house circa 1977

I thought that it was understood that once we’d successfully escaped our father’s unsatisfiable tutelage that we’d never ever again spend another day toiling under the sun, pruning trees, or doing anything beyond the minimum necessary to keep the lawn from over-growing and swallowing up the patio furniture. But there he was proudly displaying his garden and the huge ears of corn he was expecting in a few weeks. Damn. I guess new homeownership does that to a person.

Okay, so not everyone takes the vows of teenage-boys seriously (brother!), and it wasn’t exactly the “Grapes of Wrath.” But it was negative enough to leave the above “not-so-fond” memory. Let’s just say, when I began to read Shea and recalled the nurturing/supportive characteristics we all agreed a mentor should have, my father silently slipped off the list . . . at first.

Based on Gordan Shea’s list of twenty characteristics about “What Mentors Do” (p.14) my father exhibited eight of the twenty characteristics (usually having to do with doing the job right, and his quotable quote was, “Can’t you guys do anything right?!,” so I wasn’t sure whether I should count that one). Of the twenty-two characteristics (see below) that we cooked up in Colorado his numbers dropped to just two. Actually, this whole business of going back and mining my memory for mentoring moments and/or relationships was getting pretty depressing for me. As I worked my way through my list there was an obvious pattern of learning from a distance so as not to get too close to whichever leader (and suffer from his/her potential wrath). It’s pretty clear where that pattern came from.

It was many years later in the middle of one of my child-development classes, when we were discussing the Characteristics of Play, that it suddenly dawned on me that my father’s endless weekends of yardwork was his form of leisure. It was his form of play. Of course, none of this had made sense to my brother and I as kids because this was anything but fun to us. But to my father the “work” meant a great deal to him and having us there to “share” it with him also meant a great deal (even though we were anything but receptive to any message at the time). And even odder still was that he worked in landscaping and spent his whole week doing pretty much the same things for a living. The only difference, on the surface, between his work-a-day world and what he did on the weekends he was working on his yard with his boys. But at the time we never saw it.

In one of last term’s readings Frank Smith made it clear that learning happens whether we want it to or not, more from the people we’re around than from the words of teachers.

“We learn from the people around us with whom we identify. We can’t help learning from them, and we learn without knowing that we are learning.” Frank Smith. The Book of Learning and Forgetting, 1998, p.3

So when I look at the person I’ve become and look at the long hours that I put in and the high expectation that I have for myself and the work that I do, I now know where those values came from. Those were values that were important to him, values that saw him through the early years of his own life when he didn’t have a father to lead him. And just as he never looked at the difficulties of his own up-bring for an apology for not having had a “perfect childhood,” I don’t expect or want an apology from him for the often vitriolic relationship that we had as father and son. I understand that he was just being a man, a man true to his core values and those values didn’t always translate well to squirrely seven- and ten-year-old boys.

cloudy sunset over Mission Viejo CA circa 1977

Sources:
"Crisp : Mentoring , Third Edition : How to Develop Successful Mentor Behaviors – Crisp 50-Minute Book." by Gordon F. Shea

"The Book of Learning and Forgetting" by Frank Smith

All images by Joe Bustillos

        

So I sent off my Request for Re-admittance email to Pepperdine yesterday afternoon and then went online to fill out the registration application and ran headlong into the essay part of the application. Ack. I’d completely forgotten about the essay and wasn’t so sure if I just wanted to re-use the one that I’d originally sent when I signed up four years ago. At first I couldn’t find the essay I’d written and when I did and read it I felt the gap between myself and the guy I was four years ago who knew nothing of the crushing pressures I had put myself through during the year and a half I had been in the program and slight death I experienced when I resolved to walk away from that dream. I took it as a good sign, though, that when I let the feelings wash across me I felt all the more determined to see this through.

2008 Version – Ed Tech Observations & My Goals Related to This Program:

Technology is expensive. Some would say too expensive. At a time when school districts are scrambling for funds to pay for books, cutting back on student services, and fighting to avoid any cutbacks that would touch on union contracts, one might be hard pressed to justify spending money on shiny new boxes. To me, the fact that we’re faced with this apparent either/or question indicates that this problem is much more than just an unfortunate fiscal shortfall. There are issues here that speak to the very purpose of our educational system.

At the very least the urgency of this ongoing “butter versus guns” question speaks to the cultural/social disconnects that one can find in the decision making process where these decisions are being made. For example, to the business world investing in a computer is just that, an investment to enable a worker to better communicate, to better facilitate getting the job done, and at the very least a business expense to write-off at the end of the year. It’s just part of doing business. In the elementary classroom, however, over twenty-years after Wozniak’s revolution, computers are still a dusty novelty sitting in a corner like a revered but untouched trophy meant to communicate our commitment to “technology and our children.” The computer is still something you do after you’ve finished your regular classroom assignments. And in this environment of “NCLB” there’s scan little time to do the curriculum, much less after-assignments “fun” activities.

Technorati Tags: pepperdine, teaching, work, writing

2008 Version, Continued:

So, on one end of the scale the average classroom teacher is already overwhelmed by the countless demands that need to be attended to every day. Making the shiny new box (or perhaps, not so shiny box) a real part of her working day easily become just another unwelcome chore. I believe that it is a part of “school culture” that wants to maintain a kind of stasis in the classroom that is incompatible with “change” mentality that is part of working with technology. The power against change in the classroom seems to be such that recent college graduates who have been using email to communicate with professors and posting assignments to newsgroups for years, do not bother to wonder why their district has no email service or one that their principal uses or why they have to walk across campus every day to check for paper notes in their little box. The culture is much more 1908 than 2008.

To the student sitting in the seat, however, the world is a very different place. It’s not unusual for eleven-year olds to pester their parents for a cell phone so that they can SMS with their friends (though they tell mom and dad it’s strictly for emergencies). They grew up with Furbies, computer mice, drag and drop, cut and paste, the Internet and MP3s. To them the culture within the classroom is out-of-date and irrelevant. The fact that few of my colleagues would imagine that an iPod might make a great content delivery device and would rather just ban any hand-held device from the classroom speaks to this cultural gap. Students may not have the means to articulate it, but the question is there: “how can what you’re trying to teach me have any validity when you act as if everything I know in my world doesn’t even exist?”

Add to this the concerns and agendas of a whole host of important and influential groups. At the top of the list are parents who very much want the best for their children and may or may not understand technology themselves and assume that schools know what to do about all this technology stuff. Then there are the hardware and software vendors trying to make a living who send catalog after catalog, and never seem to grasp the Byzantine educational accounting practices that squeeze a district’s “buying season” to the working days between late October and March 1st (with time off for Winter break). And on top of this whole confluence are the real decision-makers: concerned citizens who sit on school boards, in administrative office and governmental positions whose most recent full-time classroom experience generally pre-dates the introduction of the electric typewriter and are often just as up-to-date on technology itself.

The world outside of our classrooms is changing in profound ways whether the educational world is willing to partake or not. While we squabble about whose responsibility it is to take care of the busted printers and whether the Mac or the PC is a better classroom computer, the world outside is considering (largely because of technology) whether we really even need fixed-school sites or physical classrooms. Yes, technology is too expensive. But ignoring it may, in the long run, prove to be even more expensive.

As a school-site technology coordinator and/or technology go-to-guy for the past 13-years with three different schools in two different districts I’ve had first hand experience with the frustrations and difficulties of moving a technology plan from idea to implementation. It seems to be a continual struggle between having adequate time, adequate resources and the right people to work with. Most complaints one hears about are the ones related to time. The ones that seem to get the most Press are the ones with dollar signs. But I’ve found that the first two complaints are much more manageable if the last one, having the right people, is taken care of. It’s the team, the educators, administrator, and community participants who make the biggest difference. While technology changes and will continue to change everything in education, the most important component will not be any of the devices used but the people who use them and how well we learn to work together. My objective with this degree program is to continue to grow my capacities as a communicator, as an organizational leader, as a group facilitator, and as a team member. jbb

2004 version: The differences between this and the 2008 version are slight, a bit of editing to pull back on some statements, but overall I was surprised at how many things held up after four years. In technology four years is several generations…

Technology is expensive. Some would say too expensive. At a time when elementary school districts are scrambling for funds to pay for books, cutting back on student services, and fighting to avoid any cutbacks that would touch on union contracts, one might be hard pressed to justify spending money on shiny new boxes. To me, the fact that we’re faced with this apparent either/or question indicates that this problem is much more than just an unfortunate fiscal shortfall. There are issues here that speak to the very purpose of our educational system.

At the very least the urgency of this new “butter or guns” question speaks to the cultural/social disconnects that one can find in the decision making process where these decisions are being made. For example, to the business world investing in a computer is just that, an investment to enable a worker to better communicate, to better facilitate getting the job done, and at the very least a business expense to write-off at the end of the year. It’s just part of doing business. In the elementary classroom, however, over twenty-years after Wozniac’s revolution, computers are still a dusty novelty sitting in a corner like a revered but untouched trophy meant to communicate our commitment to “technology and our children.” The computer is still something you do after you’ve finished your regular classroom assignments. In that environment investing in more technology doesn’t make any sense. “We’re not using the stuff we have,” is the often-frustrated response. There’s a disconnect. They don’t get the role that technology can play in getting the job of education accomplished.

So, on one end of the scale the average classroom teacher is already overwhelmed by the countless demands that need to be attended to every day. Making the shiny new box (or perhaps, not so shiny box) a real part of her working day is just another unwelcome chore. They may vaguely know that they’re missing out on something because they don’t have access to the Internet in the classroom and, if their district has e-mail, they have to bug the also-harried school secretary to get it. But to them, there really isn’t a core connection between what they do as educators and all of this technology stuff.

To the student sitting in the seat, however, the world is a very different place. It isn’t unusual for eleven-year olds to pester their parents for a cell phone so that they can SMS with their friends (though they tell mom and dad it’s strictly for emergencies). To them a PDA has nothing to do with kissing (for the most part… ick). They grew up with Furbies, two-button mice, drag and drop, cut and paste, and MP3s. To them the culture within the classroom is largely out-of-date and irrelevant. They may not have the means to articulate it, but the question is there: “what is the point of all of this?”

Add to this the concerns and agendas of a whole host of important and influential groups. At the top of the list are parents who very much want the best for their children and may not understand why one classroom has three new PCs while their kid can only ogle from a distance his classroom’s “Altar to a Deteriorating Apple ][e," that the kid is convinced was uncovered in some Inca ruin. Then there are hardware and software vendors trying to make a living who send catalog after catalog, and never seem to grasp the Byzantine educational accounting practices that squeeze a district's "buying season" to the working days between late October and March 1st (with time off for Winter break). On top of this whole confluence are the real decision-makers: concerned citizens who sit on school boards, in administrative office and governmental positions whose most recent full-time classroom experience generally pre-dates the Inca Apple ][e and are often just as up-to-date on technology itself.

There are short-term measures that can address the concerns I've raised, better training and increased communication between all parties to begin with. But given the typical education mindset, I have to conclude that technology is just too expensive. It is too expensive to implement with amateur/part time technophiles who are infatuated with "shiny new boxes," but haven't quite thought out specifically how we're supposed to use these things. It is too expensive to trust to mid-level bean counters who only see the number of boxes they can purchase per dollar, but forget that TCO has to include successful implementation by the end-user, the teacher, and not that it just works. And technology is just too expensive to trust to administrators and planners who have never spent a day in a classroom in the past ten-years, if ever.

The world outside of our classrooms is changing in profound ways whether the educational world is willing to partake or not. While we squabble about whose responsibility it is to take care of the busted printers and whether the Mac or the PC is a better classroom computer, the world outside is considering (largely because of technology) whether we really even need fixed-school sites or physical classrooms. Yes, technology is too expensive. But ignoring it may, in the long run, prove to be even more expensive.

As a school-site technology coordinator for the past eight years with two different schools in two different districts I've had first hand experience with the frustrations and difficulties of moving a technology plan from idea to implementation. It seems to be a continual struggle between having adequate time, adequate resources and the right people to work with. Most complaints one hears about are the ones related to time. The ones that seem to get the most Press are the ones with dollar signs. But I've found that the first two complaints are much more manageable if the last one, having the right people, is taken care of. It's the team, the educators, administrator, and community participants who make the biggest difference. While technology changes and will continue to change everything in education, the most important component will not be any of the devices used but the people who use them and how well we learn to work together. My objective with this degree program is to continue to grow my capacities as a communicator, as an organizational leader, as a group facilitator, and as a team member.

Music: Takin’ It to the Streets from the album “Greatest Hits” by The Doobie Brothers

        

As I’ve previously twittered, I contacted Pepperdine last week to get the 411 on finishing my doctorate in Ed Tech. Awesome Student Services Director, Besenia, sent me the info. Step one: I needed to write a brief explanation behind my leave of absence and why I was looking to be readmitted. So last night I sat down with my little OLPC (the MacBook Pro was busy backing up and uploading the new blog software) and revisited where I was at about two years ago when I stepped away for my doctorate program. I shouldn’t have been too surprised at how quickly the emotions rolled back to me as I tried to recall the details of those times. The question then became what parts of the story to include and what parts to keep out.

Music: King Of The World from the album “Citizen Steely Dan: 1972-1980 (Disc 2) [Box Set]” by Steely Dan

Technorati Tags: blogs, pepperdine, work, writing

Having tormented my close friends with my relationship travails going back to the time just before finishing my master’s program at Pepperdine, in 2002, I knew well enough to leave all of that out of the memo. So, restricting myself to what was going on in my professional life, I was still left to wonder how much detail to include. As with the unnecessary personal stuff, including too much detail might look like a case of excuse making or whining. So, I went for covering the chain of events, trying to keep to the relevant facts and letting the facts tell the story. jbb

1. Why Did I Take My Leave:

Thank you for taking the time to consider my re-application to the Ed-Tech doctorate program. I took my leave from the program in the beginning of the Spring 2006 term during my second year with Cadre X. In the beginning of that school year I had taken a job teaching technology at DeMille Middle School here in Long Beach. Besides teaching four computer classes I had agreed to help out with some staffing problems by teaching a pre-Algebra class. As is traditional in many institutions, being the least senior staff member, I was given a group of 35 eighth graders who were demonsteribly not interested in learning pre-Algebra. By December I found that I was taking more sick days than I had in the previous ten years of teaching and that the eighth graders were “winning.” Needless to say I was finding it difficult to devote the necessary time and energy to my studies with Cadre X because of this Black Hole of a class. So, I decided, rather than fail at both my teaching and my work with CadreX, I would take a leave from Pepperdine.

As an addendum to this narrative, when I took some time off in March of that Spring, the principal was called in to assist a frustrated substitute and after spending a couple of days with that class he decided that the students had been missasigned. He sent fifteen students to merge with another pre-Algebra class and redesignated the remaining twenty as a basic math class and remained the rest of the school year to co-teach the class with me. It was no victory but I felt better about the hours I had spent trying to work with that class.

2. Why I am ready to return.

I believe that I am ready return to the program because I faced the difficulty of my work environment and not only survived but in the following two years expanded my teaching-duties to include classes in journalism, yearbook and basic word processing. I am ready to return because I need to finish what I left at Pepperdine two-years ago. I am ready to return because I am about to take my career to the next level teaching media in education for/with Holly Ludgate at Full Sail University. I will be in the perfect position to match my studies with my work.

3. EdTech progress over the past two years.

As previously mentioned I’ve spent the past two years expanding my curriculum to include teaching journalism and yearbook. When I took over yearbook I moved the program to a completely digital process using only digital cameras, and managing the work-flow with iPhoto, Photoshop, PageMaker, InDesign and my in-class Macintosh network. I added journalism this past year and chose to forgo the expense and limitations of paper and instead put up a website using Joomla as my CMS to put my students’ work online. I’ve also taken the opportunity over the past two Januarys to attend Apple’s MacExpo in San Francisco networking with fellow educators, tech journalists and tech-enthusiasts.

4. Explain the “C” in LX’s 771B class

I believe that my “C” performance in my 771B class was a result of the stress of my prior work environment and not being able to give my work at Pepperdine the time and level of concentration that I normally would have given. I have no doubt that my low performance in that class not only doesn’t reflect what I am capable of doing but what I am ready to perform.

Related Twitters:

• 9 more weeks, need 2 do my pepperdine app online, turn in a request 2 readmit letter. oh yeah, & teach my normal load. Projector still dead #

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More stuff stumbled upon during my prep to move my junk to Florida. As before this was another one called a Quick Draw Visualization Exercise. The instructions and story was written the day after the first one posted, over 12-years-ago, on March 6th, 1996… It should have been written closer to Halloween:

INSTRUCTIONS: Please do not show the photograph or the title of this piece to the students until the end of the exercise. Read the following story with as much dramatic license as you are comfortable with (the idea is to put an image with emotional impact in their minds). After the reading they need to spend 15 minutes (max.) producing their picture of what they thought they’d heard. Emphasis that this is not about their artistic expertise but to help them develop their ability to get the ideas in the their heads on paper (visualization)—an important step to good writing!

The face in the photograph made me think of a nightmare I had when I was seven or eight-years old. I used to love basketball. Just like you guys, every day before school, every recess, every lunch I’d be bouncing the big orange ball. I loved it so much that my dad put a hoop and backboard up above our garage (he was also probably just tired of hearing my brother and I hit the garage door when we would pretend to have a net). And at night, the Lakers were on the radio and I’d listen to Chick Hearn talk a thousand words a minute about some incredible play they’d be making. In a word, I had basketball on the brain.

Then one night I went to sleep and dreamed that I was at a Laker game. I was still too young to know any of the players but there I was standing courtside watching this one player making lay-ups. The whole arena seemed to be empty except for me and this player making lay-ups and some coaches walking along the sidelines. The whole place was dark except for where this guy kept circling. I was standing just outside the light. Then he started to do slam dunks. I don’t remember how many he did. I just remember that he was jumping higher and higher; higher than I had ever seen anyone jump. Then it happened.

He jumped up to slam one and he jumped so high that when he started to come down he hit the rim with the center of his back. I heard this horrible crack and looked away. I knew he’d broken his back. When I turned back around he lay on the floor in a heap, his legs and hips didn’t seem to be connected to his upper body anymore.

The coaches came running over to see what had happened. With one coach on either side of him they picked him up off the ground. Each coach had to grab the basketball player with one hand on a shoulder and the other hand at his hips, literally holding his body together. I knew that if the coaches let go of him that he’d fall to the floor like a pile of sticks. Then he started bouncing the basketball again and the coaches walked around with him in little circles. His legs barely worked and he almost didn’t seem to realize that he’d been split in two.

This went on for several horrible minutes. I couldn’t stand to watch, but I couldn’t look away. His body bent and broken with two coaches holding him together he just kept bouncing the ball and walking in little circles. I wanted to run. But where? And then he suddenly turned and stared me dead in the eyes and I saw his craziness, that he had become some kind of deformed monster. Then I suddenly woke up. jbb

(Click the link to see the original photograph that inspired the story)

Technorati Tags: kids, teaching, work, writing

        

I went to work during my break to begin going through my stuff, tossing some of it and putting some of it in boxes, in preparation for my move to Florida. As is pretty normal for this process I had to keep myself from spending too much time reading through everything. As i was tossing papers left and right I found a folder with a couple writing exercises that I used to use with my 6th graders meant to help them with their writing. This one was called a Quick Draw Visualization Exercise and based on my notes it looks like I must have given this to a substitute to do with my students. The instructions and following story was written by moi over 12-years-ago, on March 5th, 1996:

INSTRUCTIONS: Please do not show the photograph or the title of this piece to the students until the end of the exercise. Read the following story with as much dramatic license as you are comfortable with (the idea is to put an image with emotional impact in their minds). After the reading they need to spend 15 minutes (max.) producing their picture of what they thought they’d heard. Emphasis that this is not about their artistic expertise but to help them develop their ability to get the ideas in the their heads on paper (visualization)—an important step to good writing!

I had no idea how long we’d been drifting down this river. I had dropped my compass and map into the water days ago. It was hard for me to trust the river guide, but I didn’t have any choice. I was tired and the days of endless rain made me want to curl up under one of the smelly canvas tarps to sleep the rest of this trip away. I was on the edge of getting mad because I hated hiding from the rain under this stupid tarp. I had gone into areas of this Asian country that I had been told to stay away from and now I was hiding from the rain and some very mean looking soldiers with big guns who were not particularly fond of nosy Americans with cameras. My mom told me that coming here was a bad idea. Thanks mom.

The river guide started chattering about something and he was very insistent about it. Part of me kept saying, “Just keep your head down and it’ll all go away.” But the guy wouldn’t shut up. If his blabbing didn’t attract attention then me sticking my head out to see what was happening wouldn’t mess things up either. I took a deep breath, anticipating the worst. Then I hesitated. I got my cameras ready. I figured if I was going to get my head shot off I’d at least try to get a good picture out of it. I took another deep breath and then threw back the tarp.

For a moment I was blinded by the sun. When I’d crawled into my hiding place the world outside had been filled with grays, and rain drenched drab greens. But now the sky was a bright shimmering blue with one or two pure white clouds scooting away from the sun’s brilliance. And on the water, the thing that the guide had been yammering about… rising out of the water on a beautiful white wooden platform stood a proud colorful Asian temple with a tall tower pointing up to the sky like a long thin finger. I just stood there for a moment with my mouth open, forgetting about the cameras hanging around my neck and whether there might be any solders hiding in the bush. It was all so different from what I had expected. And then without thinking I brought the camera lens to my face and started shooting.

The white platform had a railing all around it that looked finely carved and freshly painted. There were also stairs that led to the waters edge. The temple itself didn’t have any walls but just finely carved wooden beams holding up the red and orange and green roofs. It wasn’t just one roof like an American home and but in all four directions of the building there were three little roofs one above and scooted back from the other until they all met at the tower or spire that stuck out of the center of the temple. There were little pointy carved objects that stuck out of the crest or peak of all of the roofs. From this distance they looked like little carved unicorns. I could count ten of them on the edges of the roofs. The tower on the top of the center roof was as tall as the roof was above the platform. When I looked really closely I could see someone or someone’s statue standing in the center of the temple. I couldn’t see clearly who it was. Just then I heard the grunts of soldiers on the shore and dove back under my tarp. Then I spent the next endless hours crouched in the darkness praying that I’d get home to develop these pictures. jbb

(Click the link to see the original photograph that inspired the story)

Technorati Tags: kids, teaching, work, writing

        

K, I can troubleshoot the hell out of an lab-full of aging CRT iMacs with 35 energetic 12-year and 13-year olds pounding these relics from the late 90s into submission. But some things get past me. I mean, over Christmas break when I finally got around to seeing if I could get some of my old PC games to run on my MacMini, which is connected to my old school CRT standard def TV, it dawned on me: games meant for a PC monitor look like crap on a standard def TV. My DVD collection and video podcasts look great on the 10-year-old 36-incher. But even the first gen Age of Empires was completely illegible on my TV. Damn. And Duh!

But because I use the TV mostly for DVDs and don’t even watch broadcast TV on it (’cause I cut the cable over a year ago), I have a hard time justifying buying something fancier. I don’t know, it seems silly. But then again, I am the guy who just spent a shit-load on an external back-up system (le drobo) and three 500GB hard drives when it became clear that the drives I was hoping to use from my G4 tower were … um, of the wrong vintage. Damn.

I don’t know why I keep feeling the pull to get into computer games. I’ve never really been a gamer. But part of me feels like interactive computer environments are going to be a serious part of education. I mean, they already are a part of any kid who spends any time on them; girls on chat and myspace and boys on some MMORPG or pr0n. Ack. On a marginally related note: Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, the genius behind the “Zero Punctuation” game reviews, rocks:

Music: (I Know) I’m Losing You from the album “Earth Tones: The Essential Rare Earth” by Rare Earth

Technorati Tags: computergames, kids, videogames

Even relatively crappy games, kids eat it up. They’re captivated by games on the Internet running Flash, that, in some cases, were little better than “select an adventure” kind of games where the player would pick one of three options and the game would act on the choice (basically a cut-scene) until the player was given the next set of three choices, Of course it didn’t hurt that this one particular game, Ray, was utterly irreverent, violent, and used South Park-esque characters. But it doesn’t even have to be something with any kind of narrative. The latest game they seem to be addicted to is a simple “snake” game where they guide a fast moving line of pixels on the screen, trying to “eat” an “x,” which when accomplished adds to the length of the “snake,” but they have to avoid eating their own tail. It’s like two-color graphics and a Homer Simpson “Doh!” when the player fails, and they love it.

It doesn’t surprise me that many adults fret over the content and completely miss why these kids are so attracted to these games. Unlike anything else they experience at school and probably at home, they are not expected to sit down and shut up, but are required to do some task that results in some reward if successful or relatively harmless taunting if they fail. Very much unlike my generations’ addiction to passively staring at a TV screen while our brains melt out of our ears, these kids plunge themselves into worlds where they have to figure out the objective, learn the tasks required and accomplish the mission. Funny thing is that these are all skills needed in the “Real World” but at the moment they are not a part of that “Real World” and so they become frustrated and increasingly disenfranchised with it. I wish that there was a way to make my content even more game-like in they’re having to work through problems and get back immediate feedback that propels the learning forward. JBB

        

I’ve written about this before. I’m not sure if it’s a blessing or a curse. I decided to tackle the pile of papers I’d shoved into my bookshelf and put them into a hanging folder organizer. Of course the papers where print-outs of my online journal from 2003 to 2006, and I couldn’t file the papers without reading through a few. So I was left with the question of why I hung on to the non-relationship with You-know-who for so long?

She got so mad at me last year when I felt like giving up, saying “who gives up in the ninth inning?” And maybe my continual complaining hardened her resolve to do the divorce thing and not allow herself to be have any “relationship entanglements.” I don’t know. How did I miss the obvious emotional disconnect? I kept giving her credit even when she warned me to not count on her for anything (her exact words!). I just kept leaning in her direction, ignoring the fact that I knew she wasn’t ready to have anything with anyone and especially with me. So after anticipating for years a life with her, I’m having to re-imagine a life that doesn’t include waking up next to her and hearing about the latest crazy idea from her youngest or paintball adventures from her eldest son.

It’s hard saying good-bye to an image of my life with her that I’ve been anticipating and waiting for for over five years. But that’s what I have to do. Given the last few difficult turns hee life has taken, she may want me there but not as… not as her acknowledged lover or boyfriend. Just someone to lend support and then go away (someone important but not… a “significant” other, regardless of what she may have said about wanting kids with me or begging me to never leave, I was never meant to be part of the real picture of her life; I was never meant to be a part of the whole package). A friend, a needed friend, but never anything more. So I need to redirect the course of my life, which for five-years I’ve been steering to be about a life with her, and go in a completely unanticipated and unknown direction. Irony is that I always prided myself in being comfortable with the open ended question and living a life fully conscious and emotionally self-aware. I guess I’m getting what I wanted. jbb

Sent from my iPhone

        

I met with one of my pastors earlier this week to talk about what things can be done to improve the church website (I recommended doing something like Geeklog). Blah, blah, blah. Then he asked me, ” So Joe, what’s your story?” Let’s see, how many friends have I chased away with horrendously long renditions of my life story? Fortunately for both of us, he and I had to be somewhere else so that limited the breadth and “agony” of this re-telling of “what Joe’s been doing for the past five years.”

One good thing that came out of this conversation was that it reminded me of something I wrote on a web-page just as I was coming into this experience of Love that would so completely change my life. And even though the relationship seems to have run its course and I’m currently not with the person who was at the center of this very long whirlwind, the things that I was beginning to learn and wrote about still hold true. My struggle for the past few month has been to remember and hold on to all of the good things that I’ve learned despite how things have turned out. Some days are harder than others…


I almost think that I’ve come full-circle now. Almost fifteen years ago I wrote an article about following the “Logic of Feelings.” At the time the argument was that it was important to not dispel “feeling’s message” just because it lacked something in the way of being “objective truth,” and that it’s okay to determine the course of ones own life with the assistance of said feelings. It was hardly a mission statement but it was a good place to start.

Using Steven Covey’s “Beginning from the Ending “ model, I’ve created my own extended obituary:

When I’m gone I’d like my friends and family to remember my love for seeing the humor in everything (rule 6, or was that 69). While this humor had its roots in an insecure boy’s avoidance/defensive mechanism, it found it’s full voice in an older man’s understanding that the difficulties and tragedies that would rob us of our smiles merely hide the much greater reality, full of wonderment and limitless possibilities. And sometimes the only answers for life’s irritating queries is just to laugh at it all.

When I’m gone I hope that my friends and family see that a good measure of this humor came from my love of language. I can only imagine that my elementary school teachers would never believe that this stubborn nine-year-old, who hated reading and refused to look at anything more “literary” than LIFE Magazine and National Geographic during library time, would have been proud, in his later years, to call himself a life-long learner. In the space of about seven-years the reluctant third-grader became a knowledge-thirsty high school sophomore willing to plow through Elizabethan English and the King James Bible to satisfy his thirsty soul. In fact this language-laden quest would lead that sophomore through a “literary” Bachelor’s Degree in Biblical Studies and then a second Bachelor’s in Journalism.

Then there’s the music. When I’m gone I hope that my friends and family remember the important role that playing and writing music had for me. Actually learning to play guitar as a teenager and stumbling into songwriting (because nothing out there seemed to reflect the way I felt) forced me to learn how to articulate feelings and communicate within a very specific and narrow bandwidth (my budding musicianship). Performing said music, first with my first writing partner and then later solo, taught me a lot about communicating by listening first for the audiences’ response. I also learned to not let the number of faces intimidate me, but rather to find a few faces to focus on and let them unconsciously speak for their neighbors.

Then there are those faces in the crowd . . . What are the words and music and humor without those special people, friends and family, who connect with ones small voice crying in the wilderness. All of it, the accomplishments, the accolades, the insights, and the learning are completely worthless and meaningless without the knowing smile, the supportive hand squeeze, and the simultaneous glance. When I am gone I hope that you embrace the memory of our times together and how my life would have been so vacant and empty with you in it.

Most important to me are the small faces in the crowd. Maybe it comes from being part of a moderately large family, maybe it comes from never having grown up myself, maybe it comes from understanding that all of creation exists behind those little eyes, in their hearts and hands, that there is nothing more important than doing my part in their life’s journey. When I am gone, they and their children and their children’s children will be a testament as to whether I did the job that I loved so much.

Then there is the benefit of having lived at this time in history, in this place, with these opportunities and, of course, with all of these great toys. “For whom much is given, much us expected.” While I’ve used that quote to motivate myself to gear myself toward the service of others, I also use it to recognize the wealth of technology and access to it that has/had been dumped in my lap. When I am gone I hope that my friends, family and colleagues remember that I was always captured by the wonderment of our species’ creativity at having made these things. In my enjoyment, however, I hope they remember that I never let the toys or their shininess become more important than the little hands that would use them or the hands that created them (including my own).

Thus when I am gone I hope that my friends and family remember the smile in my eyes and my willingness to turn something on its head so that we could all have good laugh over it. I hope that they remember that my life was about building into the future by helping my students and associates integrate the complexities of our technological existences with our human endeavors for companionship, meaning and community. I hope that they revel in my love of writing and for communicating and how fascinating I found each of them and our whole species. I hope that they remember how I loved my role as observer, as teacher, as brother, and as lover. I hope the vista of these memories amazes them in its simple beauty and stays with them because of its deep complexities.
JBB

“Everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” Luke 12:48 (NIV)

Taking care of my gifts:
Health
I’m no use to anyone else including myself if I don’t take care to maintain my physical health with proper diet, proper exercise and proper rest. Of course the cool part is that the better I do at this the greater energy I have for the other stuff.

Heart/Head
I’m no use to anyone else including myself if I don’t invest in my own emotional and mental health through frequent reflection and meditation on my core values and beliefs and interaction with my significant other, my family, my primary friends and associates.

Well-tuned instruments
I cannot share or help others if I haven’t first spent the time and energy needed to maintain and develop my talents. I need to spend time every day writing and reflecting. I need to spend time every day listening and being a participant in the lives of those closest to me. I need to spent time every day playing my guitar to continue to develop and maintain the voice that I first discovered almost thirty-years ago. I need to spend time every week investigating and reading to maintain my technology troubleshooting/problem solving skills. I need to spend time every couple of months creating web or video projects. I need to spend time every couple of months meeting and working with people with similar communication drives or interests. I need to spend time (quarterly?) publishing or presenting my projects and materials to my associates and supporters.

Giving Back:
Home/Not Home
I know that some of my contemporaries make great efforts to keep their personal and professional as separate as possible and take great pride in that. But, because I tend to work across so many different skill sets on so many different projects, I prefer to let my personal life and profession life overlap as much as is possible or reasonable. This is not to say that I’d let my students suffer because of difficulties at home (the mom/dad-to-kid-to-dog-to-cat chain reaction), but wherever possible the lessons or insights of my or their home experiences needs to be a part of our learning community. My “role” as an educator is actually a skill (or collection of skills) and lives along side my other skills (often confused as roles) to afford me the means to live in the different areas of my life. But I am the same person and I know that I benefit and my students or associates benefit the more I pull together all of my resources to support them in their learning and endeavors.

Living in the Moment
Whether I’m answering a printer question on the phone or a seven-year-old wants to tell me what movie he saw with his older brother over the weekend, I need to be there for that person in that moment. Because I believe that all of creation exists behind those little eyes, in their hearts and hands, and one cannot tell how the gift of ones attention can effect the lives of these little ones, there is, therefore, nothing more important than doing my part in their life’s journey. Now, because there are frequently forty little ones vying for my attention I cannot be in the moment for that one person to the exclusion of all the others. So there are certain balance limitations at work here.

This also means that I need to be there for those little and big ones whom I’m related to, just as with those who call me “Mr. Bustillos.” And those whom I’m related to would be well-served to understand that there should be no conflict in my being there for them or for my students because one does not diminish the other. In this case, the more I give, the more I have to give.

Balancing the “Then,” the “Now,” and the “Later”
Like the sub-floors and pillars driven deep into the earth below great building, I know that what we wish to build into the future is frequently determined and shaped based on what we have built in the past. This goes for organizations as well as individuals. New administrators would do well to fully understand where their staff and organization has been before making changes, rather than to imagine to sweep away the past through executive order and then wonder why no one is following through with his/her edicts. At the same time, because of our capacity to create and change, we cannot afford to allow ourselves to be limited to the dictates of the past, especially if we did not have a full, active role in creating those dictates.

Now it’s certainly true that there is nothing that one can do about the past and that the future is, in fact, unknown. But we cannot allow ourselves to suffer from the tyranny of the “Now.” Because most of our lives are full, well passed overflowing, we need to be aware not to let the endless stream of “just one more thing” completely fill and commandeer the sum total of our lives. This means that today’s actions and demands (the “Now”) needs to be properly balanced with time for reflection (the “Then”) and time for planning (the “Later”). What this means in terms of a mission statement is that I need to provide for myself and those whom I’m leading adequate time to plan and then adequate time to reflect after project completions. JBB

        

I spent some more time perusing the JBB Journal archives and found this gem from the last year of my marriage, just a few months before the shit hit the fan…

Loneliness

1:46 A.M. Much on my mind.

I feel lonely. An odd feeling. Or perhaps a feeling that I haven’t paid much attention to in the past. My wife sleeps in the next room and I am lonely. I remember Sting once saying that he felt lonely, that there was no bridging the gap–even when he made love to his wife (ex-wife). This sense of isolation is my humanness, my refusing to let go of something, of breaking down the barrier, of opening myself up to my other, my wife or perhaps my God. Is this the point where I wandered off the path, the Way? Refusing to let go.

Something in my nature refuses to let go of my miserable bit of happiness—my security blanket, though I’ve been promised riches beyond my wildest dreams. I’ve been let down before. I’ve been misunderstood and hurt and neglected and unloved. The worst thing is to be unloved. Even in my Christianity I was not whole within myself. Something I yet lacked. But I proved unwilling to sell all. What was there that I needed to sell? I owned nothing, but I was not free. I sought nothing and nothing was my reward. “Greater is He who lives in you than he who lives in the world.” I knew very little of this greatness. “God help me,” I prayed. But God knew that I prayed with one eye opened and only one hand folded; as feable as the sound of one hand clapping.

So my wife sleeps in the next room and I masterbate in this one. Little wonder I am an isolated infant who only knows a single painful tune. The infant sings this tune when he is wet. He sings this tune when he is hungry. He sings this tune when consciousness is fleeing from him and he doesn’t understand why. We are all infants singing one tune and our mother is not in the room to soothe us. She has gone away and left older brothers and sisters to watch us. Watch us they do, but we are not satisfied. Neither are they, they have forgotten what it is they are here for; And we never knew. We just went on crying. Crying. I am alone. And even though I long to crawl in bed with my wife and feel her near me, her warm body, her acknowledging embrace, I fear the silence that will separate us and the darkness that bids our eyes to sleep. I am alone. God help me. JBB (February 11, 1986)