Terry Elliott’s Newsletter 30 June 2017
Arctic Lightning V. Grit, McConnell V. Storybook Cookies
‘Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you—
Ye are many—they are few.’
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Daily Commentary
Sometimes I am struck by the degree of problematicity in these items. How problematic is Mitch McConnell compared to arctic lightning on the rise? Storybook cookies to grit? We’re defined by the problems we choose to consider, the worlds we observe. I say lightning over shitheads and cookies over grit.
Daily Readings
Savaging Mitch McConnell–Huzzah!
Beautiful! When This 7-Year-Old Boy Could No Longer Afford Treatment For His Brain Tumor, Mitch McConnell Dressed Up As Batman And Wheeled Him Out Of The Hospital
ClickHole – Jun 29, 10:32 AM
“Life has been extremely difficult for 7-year-old Aaron Burkhart ever since he was diagnosed with a brain tumor five months ago. To make matters worse, Aaron’s family lacked health insurance and was soon unable to pay the medical bills for his…”
Comment: Savage irony blooms like a dead rose. I will say this. I live in Kentucky and have worked against this personification of the banality of evil. Some day.
Scaffolding Grit
edutopia.org – Heather Wolpert-Gawron – Jun 29, 12:00 PM
“Often when I look at how to help students, I think back on my own journey as a student. When challenged to teach students to trust that the effort of persistence is worth it, I think back on when I myself figured it out. And do you know what I came…”
Comment: As if…sounds like a sandblasting
medium. Personal persistence, this has the classic stink of blame the victim and faux meritocratics. And privilege, did I mention that.
10 of the Most Versatile Digital Age Skills We Can Teach Our Learners
globaldigitalcitizen.org – GDC Team – Jun 29, 7:00 AM
“In the past, we’ve talked about the critical 21st-century skills students need and why. But what about other digital age skills? There are so many other useful and practical abilities to have that can help our learners build success and enable…”
Comment: You decide: is this clickbaitish post worth a read especially when the #1 skill is ‘Personal Branding’. There are some good suggestions, but you could scrape all the links off and explore them without all the word cruft here.
Fires rise in Arctic as ‘lightning follows the warming’
eenews.net – Jun 12, 7:22 AM
“Climate change is driving up the number of forest fires ignited by lightning, and it’s pushing them farther north, to the edges of the Arctic tundra, researchers say. Lightning-caused fires have risen 2 to 5 percent a year for the last four…”
Comment: Sweet jesus, the power of the climate feedback loops. ‘The feedback loop could worsen significantly in the future if tree cover spreads northward.Lightning strikes near trees,so increased cover could bring more lightning, &more fuel for fire.’
Handmade Storybook Cookies Made From Natural Dyes
spoon-tamago.com – Rachel Mimms – Jun 20, 7:58 AM
“Anyone who questions baking as an art form should look no further than the cookies made by Okashi no Kobito. Professional cookie artist Nobuyo Toyono began this enterprise creating edible masterpieces out of Osaka after graduating from…”
Comment: Cookies as an edible story medium. Dang, dude. These are a testimony to the imaginative
genius that we can all tap. All of us.
In a Dark Time by Theodore Roethke
poetryfoundation.org
Comment: I think this poem is my American version of Yeats’ “The Second Coming”.