>     **
>
>     "You don't want to focus, for a number of reasons *How many
>     reasons, and which?*
>
**The art of terrorism is that we do not know who, when or where to be
afraid of what.

John McCain in his book on Courage encourages that if someone is afraid
of flying they should just go and get on the damned plane.

The "big change" since 9/11 is an altering of our national sense of fear.
A religious a few years ago expressed to me that the essense of evil,
and of sin, is fear.
At first it did not make a whole lot of sense to me, but then I got
thinking about it.
What limits, and inhibits and destroys our lives is our relationship to
our fear of living.
There is a great deal of freedom in not being afraid. It is up to us if
we are going to be afraid or not.
What disturbs me about the current US political climate is that it so
often seems to be a response motivated from fear.
Dangers exist, the capacity for fear exists, and the politics feed into
a penchant to always lean towards inventing a negative story.

On a related note, yesterday I participated in a conversation with an
educator in a rural school district in NY State.
The education policy in NY currently is fairly rigorous that HS students
pass their regents exams in order to graduate.
This places a difficult burden on children who have a more predominant
tactile wiring to their system... they would excel as carpenters but
fail as math prodigies.
The No Child Left Behind rigor of the current administration has an
opposite effect in the Many Children Thrown Away.
It occured to me, in a sort of flash of contemplation, that the
motivating essence of the No Child Left Behind policies is to reinforce
the technical dominance of the Empire.
What goes on in schools seems to me to have very little to do with
preparing citizens to lead a balanced and rewarding life.
I've been sensing that educators who care about all of the children in
their stewardship are having a problem with the pressure to push a
specific perspective of required skills, and that if the child is not
able to meet the levels that the pressure is then to abandon the child.
I think there is a serious moral lapse here on the part of the current
administration.
We are not always talking about "at risk" children in this instance.

A young fellow working with me now I think is pretty bright,
particularly adept at math, and I was a bit perplexed why he would want
to spend any time following me around.
Last week he told me that though he is taking college courses the
situation is that the teacher kept bothering him that he was falling
asleep in class.
After he aced three tests in a row the teacher backed off, and he went
back to sleep. He did not feel that he was getting any value out of the
educational experience.
So now he follows me around and he says he is learning something. I feel
that I need to find him something better to do with himself.

I like it when I ask the kids to do something, or to figure it out. I'm
usually standing there waiting to see what will happen next.
They will say to me, "But I've never done this before!" I reply of
sorts, "Why should that stop you?" They seem to react as if I am joking.

So we went in to do this small job where I had sold as well that we
would not only figure out the solution but educate the facility guy in
the building.
Turns out the facility guy was not too terribly interested in getting
another task added to his list, but he is nice to us regardless.
Told us he hoped the problem would not recur until after he was on
pension. We informed him of the end process, and left him with a repair
tool kit.
So all day I fussed and fumed and farted around with the task, it sort
of worked, it sort of did not work, we had the wrong materials that
turned out to be the right materials.
We had an end goal and part of the process was to figure out just how it
could be done. It involved plaster. I don't really know diddly about
plaster.

I've watched David Flaherty, Rory Brennan and David Hayes but not for
any extended period as I tend to jump in and jump out of their
demonstrations.
I cannot focus long enough on a learning experience to sit still.
I spend more time listening to them over a beer than I do paying
attention to their techniques.
So I can admit my ignorance of plaster is profound. But I know that it
can be done.

I kept asking my helper if he was bored. I would be bored. He was not. A
few times I asked him what he thought we should do next.
I suppose he thought it was a test, but the truth was I was perplexed.
We talked about the character of the workability of the materials.
Eventually I saw that I was going backwards more than I was going
forwards and we quit for the day.
I could see that it was a state of mind needed to focus on finishing up
the details.

On the way home at the end of the day I said, "You saw what we were
doing, right?"
He had. I then explained to him that I had never in my life ever done
anything like what we had just done.
Then I asked him if he felt up to finishing it off the next day on his own.

He went in with a helper and later I got a call, "This does not seem to
be working."
All I could say was, "Well, I can't show you technique over the phone.
But I can tell you that it can be done. Keep in mind what we have to end
up with."
At the end of the day the call was that the facility guy was happy, that
the client had pointed out one flaw that they fixed right then, and that
the work was somewhere between OK and perfect.

Sometimes all we really need is the confidence that it can be done.
We can live without fear overtaking us if we want to.

][<

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