play

For this project, I took one of what Gertrude Stein calls her “plays,” and considered what would happen if I were to try to stage and direct it. After reading through it, I attempted to break it down into characters, lines, and to imagine a setting in which it would logically take place.

But first, let’s look at “Captain Walter Arnold” just the way Gertrude Stein wrote it, without any additional directions from me.

Captain Walter Arnold

By Gertrude Stein

Do you mean to please me.

I do.

Do you have any doubt of the value of food and water.

I have not.

Can you recollect any example of easy repetition.

"Culture as Disability," a 1995 essay by Ray McDermott and Hervé Varenne has been on my mind for more than a decade.  In it, McDermott and Varenne argue compellingly (for me at least) that human cultures have interrelated bright and dark sides.  By promulgating stories about what individuals in a given culture should aspire to, cultures provide individuals with a sense of motivation and achievement,  The same stories, however, also "disable" other individuals, by setting standards of achievement which they, for one reason or another, can't adequately satisfy.
 

Interesting conversation last week in the Neurobiology and Behavior course about .... class conversation (see A loopy classroom?), one that intersected in interesting ways with, among other things, a conversation in the Neural and Behavioral Sciences senior seminar (Some relevant thoughts from last week), and one on evolving systems (Bridging for commonality of expansion).

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For years, I've been exploring ways of being a "less wrong" teacher.  And that means, among other things, noticing new problems that come along with creating new ways of being.