Today seems to be one of those days when people send me links to blogs that make me simultaneously happy and weepy.
Two of them are: Daily Poetics (thank you Cheryl) and Before I die I want to... (thanks Eddie and Bri). I am also addicted to thxthxthx which makes me smile nearly every morning.
I'm not sure if it's the blogs or the cold and flu tablets, but I'm feeling calm and warm right now.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
One Hundred Languages
The Reggio Emilia Approach is inspiring me in my work today. It strengthens my belief that the arts is not a subject area, but a means by which children can create and communicate meaning across all learning areas. It also reminds me why we need to encourage all kinds of spiritual exploration with young people. The hundred languages poem says this much better than I could ever hope to:
The Hundred Languages
No way. The hundred is there.
The child
is made of one hundred.
The child has
a hundred languages
a hundred hands
a hundred thoughts
a hundred ways of thinking
of playing, of speaking.
A hundred always a hundred
ways of listening
of marveling, of loving
a hundred joys
for singing and understanding
a hundred worlds
to discover
a hundred worlds
to invent
a hundred worlds
to dream.
The child has
a hundred languages
(and a hundred hundred hundred more)
but they steal ninety-nine.
The school and the culture
separate the head from the body.
They tell the child:
to think without hands
to do without head
to listen and not to speak
to understand without joy
to love and to marvel
only at Easter and at Christmas.
They tell the child:
to discover the world already there
and of the hundred
they steal ninety-nine.
They tell the child:
that work and play
reality and fantasy
science and imagination
sky and earth
reason and dream
are things
that do not belong together.
And thus they tell the child
that the hundred is not there.
The child says:
No way. The hundred is there.
-Loris Malaguzzi (translated by Lella Gandini)
Founder of the Reggio Emilia Approach
The Hundred Languages
No way. The hundred is there.
The child
is made of one hundred.
The child has
a hundred languages
a hundred hands
a hundred thoughts
a hundred ways of thinking
of playing, of speaking.
A hundred always a hundred
ways of listening
of marveling, of loving
a hundred joys
for singing and understanding
a hundred worlds
to discover
a hundred worlds
to invent
a hundred worlds
to dream.
The child has
a hundred languages
(and a hundred hundred hundred more)
but they steal ninety-nine.
The school and the culture
separate the head from the body.
They tell the child:
to think without hands
to do without head
to listen and not to speak
to understand without joy
to love and to marvel
only at Easter and at Christmas.
They tell the child:
to discover the world already there
and of the hundred
they steal ninety-nine.
They tell the child:
that work and play
reality and fantasy
science and imagination
sky and earth
reason and dream
are things
that do not belong together.
And thus they tell the child
that the hundred is not there.
The child says:
No way. The hundred is there.
-Loris Malaguzzi (translated by Lella Gandini)
Founder of the Reggio Emilia Approach
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Advance Australia
Last night I went to see an art exhibition curated by a friend of mine called "The Australia Project". Many artists were invited to respond to questions about the Australian identity and I was overwhelmed by the diversity of the artwork. People from across Australia are now invited to answer the question, "what makes you Australian?" and send in their postcards. You can download your postcards or order some here:
Some of these postcards were hung up around the gallery last night. One 12 year old student had answered:
"What makes me Australian is cultural diversity...My mum's parents moved to Australia in the early 60s, to have a better future and quality of life than they would've in Southern Greece....My dad moved here (from France) in 1970 when he was 22. My friend came up with the term "Freek" (half French, half Greek) for me, and I'm Australian too, so for fun I'm a Freekalian. So watching Japanese TV, and American Movies, while eating Indian takeaway is why I'm proud to be 100% Aussie."
another 11 year old student wrote:
"To live in Australia means a lot to me because it is a kind of country that doesn't kick out people from other countries and cultures. I am thankful for that because my family comes from a different country and I have a different culture."
Contrast these hopeful messages with Pauline Hanson's comments yesterday, saying she would not sell her house to Muslims because they are "not compatible with our culture". Click here to put in $100 to collectively buy Pauline's house for a group of Muslim refugees. Let's embrace diversity and be the Australia that the school children believe we are.
Some of these postcards were hung up around the gallery last night. One 12 year old student had answered:
"What makes me Australian is cultural diversity...My mum's parents moved to Australia in the early 60s, to have a better future and quality of life than they would've in Southern Greece....My dad moved here (from France) in 1970 when he was 22. My friend came up with the term "Freek" (half French, half Greek) for me, and I'm Australian too, so for fun I'm a Freekalian. So watching Japanese TV, and American Movies, while eating Indian takeaway is why I'm proud to be 100% Aussie."
another 11 year old student wrote:
"To live in Australia means a lot to me because it is a kind of country that doesn't kick out people from other countries and cultures. I am thankful for that because my family comes from a different country and I have a different culture."
Contrast these hopeful messages with Pauline Hanson's comments yesterday, saying she would not sell her house to Muslims because they are "not compatible with our culture". Click here to put in $100 to collectively buy Pauline's house for a group of Muslim refugees. Let's embrace diversity and be the Australia that the school children believe we are.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
my husband is a cartographer
I think I might be the only person in the world who gets into bed next to someone reading an atlas. I find novels relaxing, or perhaps a spot of poetry before goodnights, but not Tadhgh. Nope. He is- well- he's a cartographer. When I first met Tadhgh I had no idea what that was. "OOOHHhhhhh....." I eventually realised: "you make MAPS...how cool!"
"Well, not really", is his standard reply. Tadhgh also thought working with maps would be "cool" back when he started studying Geomatics. Surely map making involved adventure, risk taking and sailing through dangerous, unchartered waters. But it wasn't long before ideas of wild seas and impenatrable terrain were replaced by a clicking mouse, a quiet office and too many hours in front of the computer screen. Tadhgh loves maps: the possibilities and the information, but the realities of map creation aren't quite like they would have been in the 18th century.
Maps intrigue many of us (I mean, I don't take them to bed with me, but they are pretty amazing.) So much information fits on such a little page...and WE ARE STANDING ON THE BIG VERSION! Woah. It answers so many questions about the space we inhabit, while also opening up conversations about that very space. Maps have a part to play in a variety of spheres, from the political, the geographical, the historical, the metaphorical...
Years ago I was driving with friends to a rehearsal in an outer suburb of Adelaide, over an hour from where I lived at the time. We pulled up at some traffic lights and looked over to the next car to see my brother and one of his friends sitting in the car next to us. Never surprised to learn about the antics of my brother and his friends, we heard that they were heading to- "end of map"- the last page of the Adelaide street directory in the northern direction. What would they find there? What happened after "the end"? These guys are truly the Burke and Wills of our age. Turns out that when they got to the northern edge of the UBD and stopped the car, there was a mobile phone lying on the ground. Weird. But good for my mum because she used that phone for a couple of years. I love that these guys went on this adventure. It illustrates to me that we are all exploring the prescribed boundaries of our world, blending the metaphor and the physical in our own delightfully strange ways. (I think they did south and east 'end of maps' at later times too)
Cheryl Lawrie wrote a blog post a while ago that explores some of these ideas in a style that goes more for the poetic and less for the absurd. She writes of the space beyond the map;
as it turns out
every map has an artificial edge
prescribed by those
who define its scope
who draw the thick black line,
however arbitrarily,
around the edges of the world.
Beautifully said.
Thanks Tadhgh, for increasing my appreciation of mapping life. I look forward to learning more...
"Well, not really", is his standard reply. Tadhgh also thought working with maps would be "cool" back when he started studying Geomatics. Surely map making involved adventure, risk taking and sailing through dangerous, unchartered waters. But it wasn't long before ideas of wild seas and impenatrable terrain were replaced by a clicking mouse, a quiet office and too many hours in front of the computer screen. Tadhgh loves maps: the possibilities and the information, but the realities of map creation aren't quite like they would have been in the 18th century.
Maps intrigue many of us (I mean, I don't take them to bed with me, but they are pretty amazing.) So much information fits on such a little page...and WE ARE STANDING ON THE BIG VERSION! Woah. It answers so many questions about the space we inhabit, while also opening up conversations about that very space. Maps have a part to play in a variety of spheres, from the political, the geographical, the historical, the metaphorical...
Years ago I was driving with friends to a rehearsal in an outer suburb of Adelaide, over an hour from where I lived at the time. We pulled up at some traffic lights and looked over to the next car to see my brother and one of his friends sitting in the car next to us. Never surprised to learn about the antics of my brother and his friends, we heard that they were heading to- "end of map"- the last page of the Adelaide street directory in the northern direction. What would they find there? What happened after "the end"? These guys are truly the Burke and Wills of our age. Turns out that when they got to the northern edge of the UBD and stopped the car, there was a mobile phone lying on the ground. Weird. But good for my mum because she used that phone for a couple of years. I love that these guys went on this adventure. It illustrates to me that we are all exploring the prescribed boundaries of our world, blending the metaphor and the physical in our own delightfully strange ways. (I think they did south and east 'end of maps' at later times too)
Cheryl Lawrie wrote a blog post a while ago that explores some of these ideas in a style that goes more for the poetic and less for the absurd. She writes of the space beyond the map;
as it turns out
every map has an artificial edge
prescribed by those
who define its scope
who draw the thick black line,
however arbitrarily,
around the edges of the world.
Beautifully said.
Thanks Tadhgh, for increasing my appreciation of mapping life. I look forward to learning more...
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
garden eating
On the tram tonight I was reading an article in Dumbo Feather (a “mook” published four times a year about inspiring people- and lovely to the touch). The article is about a Sydney-based chef, Holly Davis, who encourages us to consider the origins of our food and how our ancestors might have eaten. I was thinking about going to the shops when I got home, but was reminded to step into Tadhgh's magnificent garden and harvest this:
Our first tomato! How lucky am I? and stuffed zuchinni flowers and garden salad: delicious...and the corn is on its way...
Our first tomato! How lucky am I? and stuffed zuchinni flowers and garden salad: delicious...and the corn is on its way...
Friday, January 29, 2010
taking risks
Alicia sent me this quote last week. Jess and I are thinking about using it as the basis for the interfaith film festival we have started organising together with students from schools in Victoria and Tasmania:
"Filmmaking is a matter of asking questions and holding yourself tenderly open, ready to come across new questions at any moment… It is not about moving from confusion to clarity - for the actor, director or the viewer. Getting lost is the goal - being forced to break old habits and understandings, giving up your old forms of complacency. The way to wisdom is through not knowing".
-John Cassavetes
"Filmmaking is a matter of asking questions and holding yourself tenderly open, ready to come across new questions at any moment… It is not about moving from confusion to clarity - for the actor, director or the viewer. Getting lost is the goal - being forced to break old habits and understandings, giving up your old forms of complacency. The way to wisdom is through not knowing".
-John Cassavetes
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
friends
Many things confuse me in life, but my need for friendship has always been a given. And I'm incredibly lucky to have extraordinary people continually bounce into my life. Until recently, I have been terrified about the impending move away from my community of friends in Melbourne. But in the past few days I have started to get excited about moving to Kyneton (it's only one month away!). The "leaving Brunswick grief" is easing a bit and I have the "happy butterflies in pit of tummy" setting in. Today I am looking forward to:
1. having the space to host large dinners around our new table
2. time to sip tea in the sun on our new front porch with friends
Friends. They rock my world. Sometimes they even make me a musical documentary. Hilarious bliss.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)