Salem Conference on Educational Alternatives

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I've not read any of Albert's work, but everything that Gatto has written on the factory schools model that is groaning towards extinction is very much worth reading. Both will appear here in Salem at the soon-to-be-"Formerly-named-Tea-Party-Bookshop" (whose new name has not yet been announced).

Mark Twain's famous line "I never let schooling interfere with my education" is so often quoted that its sting is somewhat reduced, but it deserves to be considered especially carefully now that the end of cheap energy has arrived, kicking off the resulting Age of Contraction. Large, bureaucratic institutions that have long-since outlived their sense of mission and that persist only because they have been cemented into law and habit are soon going to discover that being cemented in place is a penalty rather than a feature in an age where nimble responses to rapidly changing circumstances are going to be the norm for successful people and, therefore, the institutions that hope to serve them.

Term limits for politicians make no sense, but term limits for schools are starting to intrigue -- what if, instead of holding the schools static or semi-static as the kids move through them, we center everything on each cohort of kids and keep revising the schools as necessary to suit their needs? Education "reform" in this country is a gigantic game of "What we're doing isn't working too well for a lot of kids -- how can we do more of the same and yet get different results?"

Workshops with John Taylor Gatto and David Albert
9:00 am-5:00 pm 05/15 - GENERAL
These two men present four workshops:

• "An Introduction to Open-Sourced Education,"
  
• "Guerilla Curriculum: How to Get an Education in Spite of School,"
  
• "Learning About Learning: Conversations with My Violin," and
  
• "The Curriculum of Beauty."

$25-$50 sliding - Covers all workshops and lunch micheledarr@rocketmail.com, 503.569.7223

Located at: Tea Party Bookshop, 420 Ferry St SE, Salem, 503-990-6471

Author David Albert Speaks on Alternative Education

David Albert is one of the keynote speakers at the upcoming Salem Conference on Education Alternatives. As part of the conference, he, along with author and alternative education activist John Taylor Gatto, hold a workshop and book signing at Tea Party Bookshop on May 15.

The author of many books regarding education and family, his collection includes "And the Skylark Sings with Me: Adventures in Homeschooling and Community-Based Education" and "Have Fun. Learn Stuff. Grow.: Homeschooling and the Curriculum of Love." He is also a well known speaker on those subjects.

According to Albert, his passion for alternative school came despite his own successes within a traditional public education.

“It took me my entire youth and young adulthood to figure out that no amount of information could ever fill the spiritual hole created from having learned to be unfree, which I believe is the real curriculum of public education," he said. "I am still undoing the damage.”

Albert’s views on education are passionate and revolutionary.

“No civilization in the history of the world before ours subjected virtually all young people ages 5-18, and who had not previously been convicted of any crime other than being young, to compulsory imprisonment indoors during daylight hours in cellblocks populated by individuals of the same chronological age, deprived them of basic human rights (even the right to go to the bathroom!), and imposed autocratic rule in the workhouse, and bureaucratic control beyond it in determining what activities and routines they would be compelled to undertake.”

Albert and Gatto will each give lectures on alternative education topics. Albert’s two presentations focus on understanding children and their needs (“Who is Your Child”) and directing abundance and freedom to the process of education (“The Curriculum of Abundance.”)

The workshops, part of the larger conference, are held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Cost is on a sliding scale, $25-$50, and covers all workshops and lunch. The authors are available for book signing after the conference, between 5 and 6 p.m. Tickets are available at the door or at educationalalternatives.eventbrite.com

Friends make Salem Saturday Market even better

Image by jazzylolo {Lauren Kennedy Photography} via Flickr

Hello from Friends of Salem Saturday Market!

We've got a lot of great projects going on, and I wanted to let you know about them:

1) COLLECTING UTENSILS: Later this summer, Salem Saturday Market will become a designated "Zero Waste Zone." Our food vendors will only be using items that are compostable or recyclable. As part of that effort, we will be replacing disposable forks, knives, and spoons with regular reusable ones. There's a lot of food consumed at the market, so we need a lot of utensils! Do you have an old set of flatware stored in the attic? Mismatched pieces that you don't use? Too many spoons? Did you see a great deal on utensils at a secondhand store? Donate them to the Market! Friends of Salem Saturday Market will have a utensil collection basket at our booth, so please stop by and drop off forks, knives, & spoons to help eliminate waste at the Market!

2) USED BOOK EXCHANGE: Do you have books? Do you want different ones? Stop by the Market on May 15 for FSSM's Book Exchange! Bring one of your books, and swap it for a different one! Better yet, bring a bunch of your books and take home an armful of others. The event will run from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. If you've got a load of books that you would like to donate to this event ahead of time, please contact us: info@friendsofsalemsaturdaymarket.org or (503) 877-FSSM. (P.S.: Mark your calendars for Sept. 25, when we'll host a second Book Exchange!)

3) FSSM IS HIRING! We are hiring a temporary, part-time Program Coordinator for our Zero Waste Project. We need your help to organize, prepare and execute the Zero Waste Project. You would work an average of 10 hours per week, and the position will run through November. Interested in learning more? Contact us, and we will send you the position description: info@friendsofsalemsaturdaymarket.org or (503) 877-FSSM

4) NEIGHBORHOOD HARVEST: Our newest project is Neighborhood Harvest, a movement to collect extra fruit, nuts, and vegetables from residential yards. We'll be hosting harvest parties, and donating half of the harvest to Marion Polk Food Share, and the pickers will take the rest home for their own families. Watch the website for harvest parties in your neighborhood! If you've got a tree you want harvested, you can register it online, too. And we can always use volunteers for this project! Read all about it at www.salemharvest.org.

5) IT'S MEMBERSHIP SEASON: Now's the time to join or renew a membership with Friends of Salem Saturday Market! We're very excited for our second season, and we can't do it without your support! Memberships start at just $10 per year. Stop by our booth on any Saturday, or you can fill out a form here: www.friendsofsalemsaturdaymarket.org/Home/about/membership

6) UPCOMING TOURS: One benefit of FSSM membership is exclusive behind-the-scenes tours at local farms and shops! On May 16, we'll be visiting Fairview Farms, where they raise goats and make delicious cheese. In June, we'll be visiting Cascade Buffalo Co. Never met a buffalo? Now's your chance! We'll be leading a variety of tours all summer long.
Stop by our booth any Saturday to chat about these projects and more!

Stephanie Matlock Allen
President, Friends of Salem Saturday Market
www.friendsofsalemsaturdaymarket.org

Wow -- Peak Oil on CNBC in lengthy exposition

Note the techno-optimism at the end from the interviewer, trying to promote the idea of substitutes for oil. Financial folks realize that, without increasing supplies of cheap energy, growth is over -- and that means all the financial fun and games are over ... not when all trading stops, but as soon as growth stops (which happens much sooner).

Prepare for Industry Backlash Hysteria in 3 . . 2 . .

But we didn't EAT THEM then. Image by Chemical Heritage Foundation via Flickr

Wow. The Feds might commit some truthtelling. Monsanto and Dow aren't going to be happy.

UPDATE: Sad, but no surprise that industry is having its favorite sock-puppet organization mouth the attacks on the report. The American Cancer Society is the epitome of the co-opted group that learns to lick and never to bite the generous corporations that feed its ravenous budgetary maw. ACS is the tip of the spear in the ongoing campaign to blame cancer on the victims, never on the polluters.

Post-Peak-Oil Elder Housing Piloted in Another Salem

America's future involves a lot more multi-generational housing and caring for each other, and a lot less of having families dispersed all over the continent flying back and forth for holidays. A lot of states are likely to follow Virginia's lead here, particularly states like Oregon where our population is poorer than average and older than average.

Va. launching portable housing for aging relatives

SALEM, VA. The Rev. Kenneth Dupin, who leads a small Methodist church here, has a vision: As America grows older, its aging adults could avoid a jarring move to the nursing home by living in small, specially equipped, temporary shelters close to relatives.

So he invented the MEDcottage, a portable high-tech dwelling that could be trucked to a family's back yard and used to shelter a loved one in need of special care.

Skeptics, however, have a different name for Dupin's product: the granny pod.

Protective of zoning laws, some local officials warn that Dupin's dwellings -- which have been authorized by Virginia's state government -- will spring up in subdivisions all over the state, creating not-in-my-back-yard tensions with neighbors and perhaps being misused.

Look at how people despise PODS, those ubiquitous big white storage boxes, critics say. Imagine, they add, if you had people living inside.

"Is it a good idea to throw people into a storage container and put them in your back yard?" said Fairfax County Supervisor Jeff C. McKay (D-Lee). "This is the granny pod. What's next? The college dropout pod?"

Such temporary shelters might work in rural and sparsely developed parts of the state, McKay said, but the impact could be enormous in crowded urban and suburban areas.

"This basically sets up an opportunity to do something legally which, prior to this, had been illegal -- which is to set up a second residence on a single-family property. It turns our zoning ordinance upside down," McKay said.

The idea, Dupin said, came to him after years of leading humanitarian missions to developing countries, and it was encouraged by a growing sense of his own mortality. But he also said it just might make a lot of money, especially since the nation's elderly population is set to double in just 10 years as more and more baby boomers hit retirement age. Surveys by AARP and others also show that large majorities prefer to live in their own homes or with loved ones rather than in retirement communities. . . .

It was just such a story that got Dupin thinking about the MEDcottage. As senior minister at what was then Aldersgate Wesleyan Church in Falls Church, Dupin visited a shut-in named Katie. Her husband had served in the Eisenhower administration, and she liked to show off photographs of them dancing at a White House ball.

On one visit, Dupin found Katie in tears. Her adult children had arranged for her to go into a nursing home. Workmen were busy fixing up her home for sale. When he later visited her at the nursing home, she was miserable.

"When I got there, she was absolutely devastated, and she asked me if I could take her home. That stuck in my head -- the patheticness of it," Dupin said. And it stayed with him as he toured the world studying international business development or conducting humanitarian trips to Haiti and Guatemala.

So Dupin, who studied for the ministry at Southern Wesleyan University, hit on the idea of the remote-care pod.

The MEDcottage would be equipped with the latest technology to monitor vital signs, filter the air for contaminants and communicate with the outside world via high-tech video. Sensors could alert caregivers to an occupant's fall, and a computer could remind the occupant to take medications. Technology could also provide entertainment, offering a selection of music, reading material and movies.

The dwelling would take up about as much room as a large shed and, like an RV, could connect to a single-family house's electrical and water supplies. It could be leased for about $2,000 a month, a cost Dupin hopes will be borne by health insurers.

To build it, Dupin has assembled an unusual team: an eighth-grade Spanish teacher, two college professors, a health-care administrator, a medical school instructor, an architect, a physician and the president of a company that makes modular housing.

The new company, N2Care, has won $100,000 in public grants, although the Blacksburg-based venture is still searching for private investors and has no full-time employees. In any case, N2Care appears to be on its way.

Idea gets boost

Without even building a prototype or hiring lobbyists, Dupin and his team managed to persuade the Virginia General Assembly to pass legislation almost unanimously this year that supersedes local zoning laws in the state and allows families to install such a dwelling on their property with a doctor's order. The first of two prototypes is expected to be rolled out in June. Dupin said the first will be named "Katie," in honor of the woman he met long ago in Northern Virginia.

The enterprise has received backing from the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center, a collaborative effort between the university and 140 companies to develop commercial technologies. The university is helping with high-tech applications, such as computer technology to create a "virtual companion" -- named Sydney, after Dupin's granddaughter -- who would appear on a screen and remind the occupant to take medications.

"Personally, I believe it really potentially could have a huge impact on revolutionizing health care," said Janis P. Terpenny, a Virginia engineering professor who is working with Dupin.

The Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission, whose mission is to create jobs using national tobacco settlement money, gave its blessing to the venture Feb. 16 with a $50,000 dollar-for-dollar grant. The money is to be matched by Charlotte County, where the manufacturing is to be done, with the expectation that the company will build enough models to create jobs in a place where unemployment reached 10.4 percent in February.

But the biggest boost came from the state government. Unable to pay for lobbyists, Dupin and others worked the state Capitol themselves, using templates found online to draft the bill's language. They promised no campaign contributions. Anyway, they said, they could not afford to contribute to political causes. The Virginia Public Access Project, a nonprofit group that tracks campaign giving and expenditures, affirmed the assertion that no donations were made.

House Majority Leader H. Morgan Griffith (R-Salem), who sponsored HB 1307, clearing the way for the dwellings, said he thinks the legislation will prove to be one of the most significant measures enacted this year. "The only thing I regret is that I don't have money to invest in the company," Griffith said.

The law defines the MEDcottages as "temporary family healthcare structures" that can be placed only on the properties of single-family homes and occupied only by a relative who is physically or mentally impaired, as certified by a physician. The structures must be less than 300 square feet and conform to local regulations governing sheds or garages. They must be removed within 30 days after the occupant dies, moves or no longer needs to receive care in the dwelling.

Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R), who signed the bill April 14, will travel to Salem for a ceremonial signing. The law takes effect July 1.

May 8 = National Train Day

Press Release

House Approves National Train Day Resolution

Partisan vote by House Republicans failed to defeat resolution

May 5, 2010

 

By Contact Mary Kerr (202)225-6260

WASHINGTON – House Democrats overcame Republican opposition to pass a resolution commemorating the 141st anniversary of the first transcontinental railroad's inception and supporting the goals and ideals of National Train Day. H. Res. 1301, which recognizes the important contributions that trains make to the national transportation system, was approved by a vote of 296 to 119.

Amtrak has designated May 8 as National Train Day and will hold family-friendly celebrations in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

"'The Party of No' tried -- but failed -- to defeat this non-controversial resolution, which honors the vital role that trains play in the nation's transportation system," said Rep. James L. Oberstar (Minn.), Chairman of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. "This resolution is neither Democratic nor Republican – it is an American resolution. I am pleased that House Republican leaders' attempt to abuse the legislative process for partisan purposes did not succeed today."

It appears Republicans opposed H. Res. 1301 because the preamble mentions the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The preamble cites facts regarding high-speed rail and Amtrak investments in the Recovery Act, such as the funding levels that were appropriated.

"Rail in America is experiencing a renaissance we haven't seen in 50 years. All forms of passenger rail, including Amtrak are seeing increased ridership numbers. In fact, in 2009 Amtrak welcomed aboard over 27.1 million passengers, the second largest annual total in Amtrak history. An average of more than 74,000 passengers rides on more than 300 Amtrak trains per day," said Rep. Corrine Brown (Fla.), Chairwoman of the Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee and original sponsor of H.Res. 1301. "For me, as the Chair of the Rail subcommittee, the eventual goal is to have high-speed, intercity passenger, and commuter rail lines connecting nationwide to serve as an enhancement to our current systems of transportation. Moreover, if a nationwide high-speed and intercity passenger rail system is realized, it will not only serve as a tremendous benefit to our nation's transportation needs, but will also be a superb asset towards getting people back to work by creating quality jobs in our economy's manufacturing sector."

"The Bush administration twice submitted bankruptcy budgets for Amtrak, but today we are shaping a new future for Amtrak. President Obama made a commitment by investing $8 billion in passenger rail, and that is just a down payment. We have seen improvements to rail infrastructure with funding allocated under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and the T&I Committee will continue to hold oversight hearings to ensure that those stimulus dollars are invested wisely," said Oberstar. "National Train Day recognizes 141 years of passenger rail service in the United States and commemorates the day that the first transcontinental railroad was created. We have seen a revival of interest in the United States in intercity passenger rail across the land, and through much-needed investment, new high-speed rail corridors will become a reality. The European Union has shown a visionary commitment to passenger rail, and so must we."

Floor Statement of Chairman James L. Oberstar

Floor Statement of Corrine Brown, Subcommittee Chair, Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials

###

Spring elections take a toll

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One of the problems with Salem's weird May council election schedule is that it means that city elections are essentially invisible, with very few people are paying any attention at all, except for the real activists who are trying to push one candidate or another.

That general apathy means that nobody asks the candidates any questions that they haven't thought about or answered a hundred times. They get never get change-up questions like "What are the implications of Salem's changing population profile and what policies does it suggest will be required?"

The reality is that all our candidates and politicians are crippled because they have grown up in an era where the expectation was continuous growth -- growth in population, growth in budgets (by at least the amount of inflation), growth in services, growth in paved area .... in a different era, in other words.

The growth expectation has now been overtaken by events, to say the least. In real dollars, budgets are going to shrink, even as service costs increase. Worse, instead of retiring early to find their bliss, as many expected, Baby Boomers are desperately clinging to jobs much longer than expected, often to cling to benefits. This means that young and not-so-young people are having problems getting launched into careers and can't reach adult milestones readily. Not only did the early Boomers enjoy a following breeze throughout their economic earning years, but they are not leaving the stage at anything like the pace needed to reduce un- and underemployment for the generations following them, who are becoming trapped in limbos not solely their own making. And this is all even before we really are forced to come to grips with peak oil, which is going to be most apparent as wild price swings for energy (and energy dependent commodities, which is to say "nearly everything else") masking an overall steadily rising trend in costs, causing an equally steady declining trend in our economic well-being.

To top it off, as the story below suggests, the one slice of population that's really booming is the very old: people who need a lot of care and resources. In demographic terms, it's like having another baby boom, only these babies all get to vote, and they tend to vote for their own interests, period. They don't much care how much seed corn is left when they're through, judging by their demands for tax breaks, fantastic amounts of heroic and costly care at the end of life (subsidized by the feds), and senior discounts at every establishment in town.

It would be nice if some of the candidates had wrestled with these issues a bit rather than just trading in the tired game of "how do we attract jobs." It would be VERY nice if someone in City Hall looked ahead further than the next budget year and gave some thought to how to organize people and money to create jobs so that people here can meet the needs here, rather than trying to chase after distant companies all the time.

More Wander Off in Fog of Age

. . . But last year for the first time, another type of search crossed into first place here in Virginia, marking a profound demographic shift that public safety officials say will increasingly define the future as the nation ages: wandering, confused dementia patients like Freda Machett.

Ms. Machett, 60, suffers from a form of dementia that attacks the brain like Alzheimer's disease and imposes on many of its victims a restless urge to head out the door. Their journeys, shrouded in a fog of confusion and fragmented memory, are often dangerous and not infrequently fatal. About 6 in 10 dementia victims will wander at least once, health care statistics show, and the numbers are growing worldwide, fueled primarily by Alzheimer's disease, which has no cure and affects about half of all people over 85.

"It started with five words — 'I want to go home' — even though this is her home," said Ms. Machett's husband, John, a retired engineer who now cares for his wife full time near Richmond. She has gone off dozens of times in the four years since receiving her diagnosis, three times requiring a police search. "It's a cruel disease," he said.

Rising numbers of searches are driving a need to retrain emergency workers, police officers and volunteers around the country who say they throw out just about every generally accepted idea when hunting for people who are, in many ways, lost from the inside out.

. . . Many states do not collect or fully categorize local data on search-and-rescue cases, so it is impossible to gauge the full impact of dementia wandering on law enforcement. But in Oregon, for example, the number of searches for lost male Alzheimer's patients nearly doubled just last year, to 26 from 14 in 2008, and has more than tripled since 2006, according to emergency management officials.

WORD: On corporations and the crisis of legitimacy

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A most important, very worthwhile article posted at Salem-News.Com. An excerpt:

Limited Liability Investing

Consider the capitalist economic system. The concept of the corporation provides its modern foundation. The corporation is built around the idea of limited liability for investors, the notion that if you buy part or all of a company, you yourself are not liable for its debts or the harm that it might do; your risk is limited to your investment. In other words, you may own all or part of a company, but you are not responsible for what it does beyond your investment. Whereas supply and demand exist in all times and places, the notion of limited liability investing is unique to modern capitalism and reshapes the dynamic of supply and demand.

It is also a political invention and not an economic one. The decision to create corporations that limit liability flows from political decisions implemented through the legal subsystem of politics. The corporation dominates even in China; though the rules of liability and the definition of control vary, the principle that the state and politics define the structure of corporate risk remains constant.

In a more natural organization of the marketplace, the owners are entirely responsible for the debts and liabilities of the entity they own. That, of course, would create excessive risk, suppressing economic activity. So the political system over time has reallocated risk away from the owners of companies to the companies’ creditors and customers by allowing corporations to become bankrupt without pulling in the owners.

The precise distribution of risk within an economic system is a political matter expressed through the law; it differs from nation to nation and over time. But contrary to the idea that there is a tension between the political and economic systems, the modern economic system is unthinkable except for the eccentric but indispensible political-legal contrivance of the limited liability corporation. In the precise and complex allocation of risk and immunity, we find the origins of the modern market. Among other reasons, this is why classical economists never spoke of “economics” but always of “political economy.”

The state both invents the principle of the corporation and defines the conditions in which the corporation is able to arise. The state defines the structure of risk and liabilities and assures that the laws are enforced. Emerging out of this complexity — and justifying it — is a moral regime. Protection from liability comes with a burden: Poor decisions will be penalized by losses, while wise decisions are rewarded by greater wealth. Because of this, society as a whole will benefit. The entire scheme is designed to increase, in Adam Smith’s words, “The Wealth of Nations” by limiting liability, increasing the willingness to take risk and imposing penalties for poor judgment and rewards for wise judgment. But the measure of the system is not whether individuals benefit, but whether in benefiting they enhance the wealth of the nation.

The greatest systemic risk, therefore, is not an economic concept but a political one. Systemic risk emerges when it appears that the political and legal protections given to economic actors, and particularly to members of the economic elite, have been used to subvert the intent of the system. In other words, the crisis occurs when it appears that the economic elite used the law’s allocation of risk to enrich themselves in ways that undermined the wealth of the nation. Put another way, the crisis occurs when it appears that the financial elite used the politico-legal structure to enrich themselves through systematically imprudent behavior while those engaged in prudent behavior were harmed, with the political elite apparently taking no action to protect the victims.

In the modern public corporation, shareholders — the corporation’s owners — rarely control management. A board of directors technically oversees management on behalf of the shareholders. In the crisis of 2008, we saw behavior that devastated shareholder value while appearing to enrich the management — the corporation’s employees.

In this case, the protections given to shareholders of corporations were turned against them when they were forced to pay for the imprudence of their employees — the managers, whose interests did not align with those of the shareholders.

The managers in many cases profited personally through their compensation system for actions inimical to shareholder interests. We now have a political, not an economic, crisis for two reasons. First, the crisis qualitatively has moved beyond the boundaries of a cyclical event.

Second, the crisis is rooted in the political-legal definitions of the distribution of corporate risk and the legally defined relations between management and shareholder. In leaving the shareholder liable for actions by management, but without giving shareholders controls to limit managerial risk taking, the problem lies not with the market but with the political system that invented and presides over the limited liability corporation. . . .

More local talent wins recognition--NEN members create award-winning film

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Showing:

Thursday, June 3, CHEMEKETEN, 370-1/2 State Street
(above Cooke Stationery), 7:30-8:00 p.m.,

FISH LAKE & HACKELMAN CREEK PICTURE NIGHT

NEN members Laurelyn Schellin and Susan Watkins are having a special Salem showing of their award-winning Chemeketan Fish Lake & Hackelman Creek naturalist 30-minute film that received first place in "THE BEST OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST FILM FESTIVAL 2010" for Best Educational Film.

The film won against entries from Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Alaska and British Columbia after being entered in the competition by Salem's Capital Community Television Channel 22 (CCTV), which aired the film eight times.

Fifteen Salem canoeists and kayakers participated in the film which was narrated by NEN member, and Chemeketan paddle chair and trip leader, Laurelyn Schellin. NEN member Susan Watkins was the photographer.

Join us for a paddle trip, to classical music, around a beautiful mountain lake near the headwaters of the McKenzie River. Laurelyn and Susan will attend an Awards Reception in Olympia WA on May 15.

A most important story: Grading hurts learning

Cover via Amazon

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/05/03/grading

For an extended treatment of this issue, see Alfie Kohn's "Punished by Rewards."

I give it an A+ ;^)