In my line o' work, I have 12 seats to fill three times a week in a computer lab at the local public library. When I started out five years ago, I filled them five to eight times a week, teaching how to use Windows 2000, and the basic how-tos about Microsoft Office programs. Now, into the sixth year, there are evident signs that I've done a good job: five people will sign up and two will come. And sometimes one of them won't have signed up for the class.
Of course it's possible that I've just become old, doddering and tiresome. Some days I really am tired, and it's hard to work up the enthusiasm of youth. But on a normal day, teaching is still what I like to do, because over the years, I think I have evolved from the sage on the stage to the guide on the side.
There's a wonderful social side to all this, too. Some of my "students" have attended over 100 classes (in a few cases almost 200). They haven't mastered the computer, but they love to forgather and "learn something new every day".
Personally, I think they learn the most from each other. Some classes begin with one of them talking about something that they've just recently learned, or something that has happened to them, or someone they know. One gentle former teacher hands out vitamin C candies to anyone who wants them. And if one of them has a bout of hospitalization, they all want to know the details. This is not an ordinary class. Where else could you have someone talking about rehabilitating a goldfish that got speared by a great blue heron in a garden pond and can't swim because of a punctured swim bladder, and then everyone looks up Ardea herodias and becomes an instant expert on the subject?
I've been told that the attendance issue would be resolved if the library charged, say, $10 a class, refundable if you show up. No doubt it would be. Nobody would come. Many of the people who attend can't afford that money, because they're out of work, and the reason they're enrolled with me is that they hope to learn enough about spreadsheets to compete on the job market with the hundreds of twenty-somethings who have grown up with computers. Some have worked for thirty years of loyal office drudgery only to be downsized, laid off and not qualified for the kind of computer work that involves knowing Office and other programs. Windows is a mystery to them.
One older woman attended about eight classes before she sold her computer. But her daughter wouldn't let her off so easily. The lady showed up again a year later for another few sessions because her daughter got wind of the situation and gave her a computer for Christmas.
Most of my seniors would agree that you can't learn from a relative. My wife has learned not to ask me too many questions for exactly that reason: I'm the soul of patience with the library crowd, but I become short-fused when I have to come home and work through similar stuff with my nearest and dearest. I'm not sure why that is, but it's typical.
When I ask my students if they have anyone who can help them with their home computer, they'll say, "Oh, yes, my son/daughter installed the whole thing for me, but then, you know, they said 'You just press this and click that and move this over here and you'll be fine'. And you know, I STILL don't know how to get on the Internet or do email."
Some of the job seekers actually end up taking whatever I'm able to give them initially, and going off to a community college to do more detailed work. But for most of the rest of us, I suspect that the computer eventually begins to gather dust like an old doily, and when they pass on, the offspring dispose of the computer rather than being burdened by it.
Well, in the Cincinnati area at least, there is the Cincinnati Computer Consortium, and they recycle the old stuff so that eventually nobody will have to teach seniors how to use a computer. And, apart from the loss of social contact and interaction, that might be a good thing. When you're over 65, it's not necessarily fun to learn all this new technology, but it does open up possibilities for your declining years that may just keep you interested, and therefore alive. And that is a good thing.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Sunday, September 23, 2007
I started out as a child
We all started out as children. There is much to be said for the childlike attitude of wonder and discovery, which support investigation and learning and creativity. Some of us, however, don't apparently get much beyond that stage. The downside is the personality trait of someone who has the other childlike characteristics, such as showing off, and demanding immediate gratification, and possessiveness and controlling.
Much of our adult life, I think, is spent in learning how to deal with people who have experienced lopsided development, overcompensating for some perceived weakness by exaggerating the opposite trait. Most often this results in an obsessive need to control.
All of us have a need to control whatever we can in order to reduce the pain or irritation elements of daily living. But some of us put control before understanding. At his trial for heresy, Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." Controllers suffer either from an excess of self-examination (leading to recrimination and guilt) or from an excess of denial. "We have seen the enemy and it is us", said Pogo.
In our drumming group from time to time, we have new people joining. Some of them are modest hangbackers, who are fascinated by what they hear, and gently try to emulate it until they become more confident. The opposite are the people who come in, think they understand the language of the piece, and end up beating the crap out of it to their own perception of the rhythm. The worst case is the dundun (bass drum) player who thinks he understands the rhythm, but soon loses it and ends up beating the drum at his own pace, or putting in accents where the song begs for silence.
Perhaps one of the most revealing aspects of learning how to perform in an African drum circle is the fact that over time, you begin to realize, if you have any sensitivity to the culture at all, that music is not performance. It is innately spiritual, and it is all about communicating within a group. It is about cooperation and perception, about reigning in your normal need for control in order to appreciate the contribution of others: it is about melding into a whole in order to create a greater. A drum circle is a symphony, or else it's a cacophony.
Some days you just get a little tired of people who don't get it. But then you have to remember that maybe that was how you started too.
Much of our adult life, I think, is spent in learning how to deal with people who have experienced lopsided development, overcompensating for some perceived weakness by exaggerating the opposite trait. Most often this results in an obsessive need to control.
All of us have a need to control whatever we can in order to reduce the pain or irritation elements of daily living. But some of us put control before understanding. At his trial for heresy, Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." Controllers suffer either from an excess of self-examination (leading to recrimination and guilt) or from an excess of denial. "We have seen the enemy and it is us", said Pogo.
In our drumming group from time to time, we have new people joining. Some of them are modest hangbackers, who are fascinated by what they hear, and gently try to emulate it until they become more confident. The opposite are the people who come in, think they understand the language of the piece, and end up beating the crap out of it to their own perception of the rhythm. The worst case is the dundun (bass drum) player who thinks he understands the rhythm, but soon loses it and ends up beating the drum at his own pace, or putting in accents where the song begs for silence.
Perhaps one of the most revealing aspects of learning how to perform in an African drum circle is the fact that over time, you begin to realize, if you have any sensitivity to the culture at all, that music is not performance. It is innately spiritual, and it is all about communicating within a group. It is about cooperation and perception, about reigning in your normal need for control in order to appreciate the contribution of others: it is about melding into a whole in order to create a greater. A drum circle is a symphony, or else it's a cacophony.
Some days you just get a little tired of people who don't get it. But then you have to remember that maybe that was how you started too.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Anything but humdrum
We went up to Oxford to take up a position at the mouth of the Drum Barn driveway, early, early in the morning. It was the morning of the State-to-State Half Marathon, and by popular demand OGADE (or at least those of it who were awake) was to play as the runners and walkers progressed toward Indiana and back.
And play we did. It soon became clear that we could only occasionally match the actual footfalls of the runners, for some were serious marathoners who looked straight ahead, concentrating on their own internal rhythms and shutting out all other distractions, while others moved to a different beat.
The ones who won our hearts were the many who, upon coming within range of our drumming, smiled and grinned and waved and high-fived and yelled "Thank you" and "You're the best" and a few actually shifted their pace to match our relentless thumping. And then there were the ones who were serious enough about their running that you had to look carefully as they passed, but you could see the grin or the tiny uplifted hand motion, or the V-sign with the fingers.
These were throat-lumping moments. Momentarily we beat the drums a little harder, or threw in a little extra syncopation: you couldn't keep from doing it: energy became synergy and the runners and the drummers connected ever so briefly in a meeting of spirits. Then, as the runner or the group passed, we kept our own rhythmic marathon going, for we felt that if we stopped we would somehow break the bond of rhythm, even for those who were no longer within the sound of our drums, gourds, balafon and shakeres.
Special mention must go to Pete, our intrepid leader, whose skill at tuning and playing an array of empty coffee cans is near kin to the finest Caribbean steel drum craftsmanship.
And play we did. It soon became clear that we could only occasionally match the actual footfalls of the runners, for some were serious marathoners who looked straight ahead, concentrating on their own internal rhythms and shutting out all other distractions, while others moved to a different beat.
The ones who won our hearts were the many who, upon coming within range of our drumming, smiled and grinned and waved and high-fived and yelled "Thank you" and "You're the best" and a few actually shifted their pace to match our relentless thumping. And then there were the ones who were serious enough about their running that you had to look carefully as they passed, but you could see the grin or the tiny uplifted hand motion, or the V-sign with the fingers.
These were throat-lumping moments. Momentarily we beat the drums a little harder, or threw in a little extra syncopation: you couldn't keep from doing it: energy became synergy and the runners and the drummers connected ever so briefly in a meeting of spirits. Then, as the runner or the group passed, we kept our own rhythmic marathon going, for we felt that if we stopped we would somehow break the bond of rhythm, even for those who were no longer within the sound of our drums, gourds, balafon and shakeres.
Special mention must go to Pete, our intrepid leader, whose skill at tuning and playing an array of empty coffee cans is near kin to the finest Caribbean steel drum craftsmanship.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Pool closing weekend
It is a sad affair. The 16-foot plastic pool with the inflatable collar must be taken down at the end of the season. And the season ends once the nighttime temperatures hit values that are low enough to prevent daytime temperatures from building up to a comfortable level (even with a solar cover). And so, even though the current temperature is 92 F, and the pool is around 86, the comfort level of 89 degrees is no longer sustainable.
Thus, out comes the portable electric pump with the garden hose. This year the weather has been so dry that the water runs off faster, without being absorbed as in years past. But even as we write, a pop-up thunderstorm is muttering its tentative growls. The cats in the window seats are on the alert, which is to say that when a rumbling is heard, their ears twitch, but so far only one eye is open amongst them.
The garden hose will take probably 16 to 18 hours to drain some 2500 gallons; water that has seen considerable action, both human and chemical. Yes, we know that there are test kits and such that allow proper maintenance of pH levels, but in an informal way, the bleaching of a bathing suits and floating toys or the greenish strands of algae have served equally well as harbingers of lack of balance.
On the down side, the pool was a great entertainment center for the younglings. And when they weren't there, it was a fine place to float around and savor a Blue or a Blue Light (none of that wishy-washy American stuff for me).
As in other seasons, this was actually the second pool of the season. In the past, we had cat claw damage on the inflatable collar which rendered the pool unusable, so we went to a metal frame version. This one developed a serious hole in the bottom, probably from the efforts of a mole who came up in the wrong place. The result was a second pool of the inflatable type, because no metal frame ones were locally available by the time the damage became unrecoverable.
I suppose that if you were to amortize the cost of the pool, supplies, electricity and water you'd end up having to charge the swimmers about $3 each for every swim. But it's been a long, droughty summer, and when you're floating there, toes up with a Blue in your hand, you don't think mercenarily. Life is too good, and so short.
Thus, out comes the portable electric pump with the garden hose. This year the weather has been so dry that the water runs off faster, without being absorbed as in years past. But even as we write, a pop-up thunderstorm is muttering its tentative growls. The cats in the window seats are on the alert, which is to say that when a rumbling is heard, their ears twitch, but so far only one eye is open amongst them.
The garden hose will take probably 16 to 18 hours to drain some 2500 gallons; water that has seen considerable action, both human and chemical. Yes, we know that there are test kits and such that allow proper maintenance of pH levels, but in an informal way, the bleaching of a bathing suits and floating toys or the greenish strands of algae have served equally well as harbingers of lack of balance.
On the down side, the pool was a great entertainment center for the younglings. And when they weren't there, it was a fine place to float around and savor a Blue or a Blue Light (none of that wishy-washy American stuff for me).
As in other seasons, this was actually the second pool of the season. In the past, we had cat claw damage on the inflatable collar which rendered the pool unusable, so we went to a metal frame version. This one developed a serious hole in the bottom, probably from the efforts of a mole who came up in the wrong place. The result was a second pool of the inflatable type, because no metal frame ones were locally available by the time the damage became unrecoverable.
I suppose that if you were to amortize the cost of the pool, supplies, electricity and water you'd end up having to charge the swimmers about $3 each for every swim. But it's been a long, droughty summer, and when you're floating there, toes up with a Blue in your hand, you don't think mercenarily. Life is too good, and so short.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)