Anne Dalke's blog

http://www.udel.edu/ihrc/conference/earthperfect/

...the cartoon Alison Bechdel drew on the blackboard in the English House lecture hall,
during her Q&A session last Thursday:

among HSBurke -- “Showing each other our cracks and admitting that we don’t have it all together is, in my opinion, something our group needed. Thank you for your honesty--

Michaela --I'm grateful that… you all don't "have it all together" in the way I feared--that everyone else had some intstruction manual for getting through life that I just never picked up on--

and Sara --I think most students at Bryn Mawr feel that everyone else around them is doing better then them… I realized last semester that everyone else felt exactly as I did- behind… like everyone else was flourishing but them. I began to wonder, in this environment that is supposed to be so empowering, why so many students felt so helpless and inadequate…maybe …we are constantly measuring ourselves up to impossible standards; grades that we have imagined for the people that seem to be flourishing --->

A number of possible venues for activism have been emerging from our conversations (giving feedback to the Mural Arts Program, and/or offering an alternative form of art-making in some of the neighborhoods we visited on our tour? working with YASP on a door-to-door campaign? advocating for the future of Perry House? what other activism is likely to emerge during the next 6 weeks, as we spend time inside The Cannery?).

We would like you to 1) structure your final work in this 360°around one of these actions and also 2) find some way to present those projects to the larger bi-co community (or beyond it). A number of these will need advance work (especially if we are to co-ordinate w/ others outside the bi-co), so we'd like to begin brainstorming together the directions in which we might go, both individually and collectively.

By 5 p.m.on  Sun, Oct. 21 (the day we return from break): please post AS A COMMENT TO THIS POST a short description of the sort of activism which interests you, and any ideas you have about what particular form this action might take.

We will then begin having shared conversations about when and how to move forward ….

have begun to send me the LOVELIEST poems about nature.
I figured: why not share?
Here are two of the most recent:

I removed a number of readings I had initially thought (ha ha) that we could get in this week; although I took them off the syllabus "proper," I include links to them here, in case anyone's interested in exploring further the idea of "silence in music":

Jonathan Foer. Seven Attempted Escapes from Silence (libretto).

Karim Haddad. First Attempted Escape From Silence: Tunnels.

More on the human microbiome = "your own personal ecosystem": "You’re barely human. For every one of your own cells in your body, there are many microbial ones. They not only outnumber you, but they affect your health and your mind....the Human Microbiome Project – has just unveiled the most thorough picture yet of the microscopic majority that colonises us."

At the Alison Bechdel gala hosted for frosh on Thursday night, the last question she was asked was about her bravery in coming out @ Oberlin several decades ago: She replied, "I wasn't brave. I was in a very protected place. It was like being here."

I meant to ask you to leave w/ me what you wrote--and read--in class today;
I would like to post this as another collectively written "poem," if you are willing.
If you are, please add your answers to the questions--
"What do I need to flourish here?"
"What might we need to flourish here?"--
as comments to this post, and I'll collate them all.
Thank you all, again--
A.