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Current Issue: Volume 32, Issue No. 5, Week of February 24, 2008
Previous Issue: Volume 32, Issue No. 4, Week of February 17, 2008

 

Wearable Art

A freeform pendant, rough outline of a butterfly; freeform chain to which pendant is attached.

Butterflies, Free

 

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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: February 21, 2008
Latest Update: February 22, 2008
E-Mail Icon jeannecurran@habermas.org
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Yahoo Discussion Group: Building Communities

Topic of the Week:

Preparing a Project for Community Action

This is one of the projects we have chosen for an initial attempt to invite folks into a workshop in which they can participate at a variety of skills levels. The project pictured requires some fairly advanced crochet stitches, and comfort with free form style. That means working without specifically following any rules. For a workshop I would like to hold at a local gallery, I would provide only a few packets for this project choice, unless specifically asked for more, because I wouldn't expect many attendees to have the requisite skills at crochet.

But I would be sure to have some, because it's important to always push the envelope. Learning new material exercises the sections of the brain that engages in learning. Such exercise helps ward off dementia as one grows older and succumbs to toxins in our environment (or whatever else is causing dementia.) Perhaps I'd even bring a few packets for the Mezzuza. Probably no one will take them at a first workshop, but perhaps over time some brave souls will choose to go on with their skills. Such creativity is both good for them and good for the dialog in which we engage.

Same as last week. Please switch for now to Preparing for a Community Action Workshop Project. And "What would Habermas say about . . . ", which adds the theoretical background and has at least one suggestion for criminal justice discussion. And Where Grounded Theory Comes From, which adds the kind of emerging methodology and theory we use in choosing projects. jeanne

References:

  • Abstract of Habermas, lifelong learning and citizenship education. By Ruth Deakin Crick and Clarence W. Joldersma, Studies in Philosophy and Education, Volume 26, Number 2 / March 2007. Referenced from a link on the Habermas Yahoo Group.

    The abstract indicates that Professors Crick and Anderson are approaching theoretically the same goals (or at least similar) to the ones we are approaching in our community activity in sharing and encouraging illocutionary discourse based on issues that matter to the community, locally, nationally, globally. More when I have a few moments to read the article. jeanne

  • Files relating to Creative Project No. 1 - Give the backgound and theoretical explanations for doing group projects as a means of providing lifetime learning on issues that matter to our local communities, whether they be school communities or neighbor communities or just plain friends and family. Includes instructions for wearable art bracelets to appeal to many different age groups, gender groups, etc.

  • Instructions for a Wearable Art with Message Project
    Instructions for a bracelet with a message. The project could yield a bracelet, an object included in an exploding card box, a framed art piece, a trivet, whatever. One example is done in advanced crochet. One example requires no more than the simplest of crochet, a chain and a single crochet. Suggestions are given for ways to transfer the project to absolutely no use of crochet or knitting. Instructions are included in the discussion for moving the focus from male to female and across age groups.

  • Instructions on Free Form

    More detailed instructions on how to do freeform and what freeform means for those who knit or crochet, and for those who don't. Special instructions for when and how to break rules in free form.

  • Start of jeanne's Report on Creative Project No. 1

    I write this stuff straight into the computer. But the file was going to get too longunder topic of the week, and Susan and I plan to use this material for community groups. So I started over with the Creative Project No. 1 file. I think most of what was in the weekly topic was included. But you might want to check to be sure. jeanne

  • Offline Persistence of Memory-Related Cerebral Activity during Active Wakefulness Philippe Peigneux, Pierre Orban, Evelyne Balteau, Christian Degueldre, André Luxen, Steven Laureys, and Pierre Maquet, Cyclotron Research Center, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium. Abstract free at Public Library of Science, Biol v.4(4); Apr 2006. Consulted February 15, 2008.

    Announcements:

    • Take part in Conversation Week 2008. Go to the website and vote now on the 10 most imp[ortant questions are about which we need to have conversation. jeanne

    • Join Our Discussion Group

      YAHOO DISCUSSION GROUP: Building Communities
      This link, directly under the Dear Habermas Logo, takes you directly to the message board which you can read without joining the group.

      THERE SHOULD BE A "Join this group" MESSAGE ON TOP OF THE RIGHT HAND COLUMN OF THE MESSAGE PAGE. Look for it. That's how you join. jeanne

      This link, found with the other e-mail links under the date of the file, Yahoo Discussion Group: Building Communities, will link you to the e-mail address of the group. You have to join the group to post messages.

      One of Susan's students tried to join Write-Free. That's another of our groups, on writing our stories. Good practice. But no one has come to join it recently, so I was about to delete it, but didn't know how. If you'd like help with writing your projects up, I'd be delighted to start it up again. Let us know. jeanne

    • Updating Online Sources for Spring.

      Revision of Online Sources.

    Issues

    • Why does creativity matter?

      Because teaching for mediocrity or exploitation denigrates the human intelligence. Sure you can be trained. But do you want to be? Do you want to "just do the ordinary," and never question, never change, never improve, never excel? Even white-footed mice don't want to do that.

      Years ago when I was studying for my doctorate, I came across an article, written by psychologists who were convinced that the use of laboratory subjects caused us to misunderstand some of our research. They believed that mice raised for generations in psych labs just might be qualitatively different from real mice out in the fields.

      So they went out in the fields and caught some white-footed mice for their experiments. They built a cage into which they put lots of food sources and play devices to approximate as well as they could the real world in which they had found their mice. They built a kind of cave with a little door that either the researcher or the mice themselves could open and close. They put in a wheel the mice could play on, but with a switch that either the mice or the researcher could turn on or off. They put in lights, that, yep, you guessed it, that either the reseracher or the mice could turn on or off.

      They discovered that when they came along and turned the lights off, the mice turned them right back on. If they closed the door of the cave, the mice opened it. If they turned on the wheel, when a mouse was in it, but resting quietly, the mouse turned it right back off.

      I was so impressed by this study I've never forgotten it not int forty years that have elapsed, though I haven't ever managed to find the original article again. Carol Telesky once did, and gave me the reference, but, lo, I'm the messy one, and I lost it again. But not the story. That, I've never forgotten. It reminds me that all living creatures are somehow unique, and most of us don't like being fooled around with. We'll control our own context, thank you.

    Visual Sociology

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