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Networking & Wireless

How Do We Make School Network Infrastructure Affordable?

As districts adopt 1-to-1 or BYOD, they need to adapt new ways of financing and maintaining their networks.

This is the second article in a three-part series on network infrastructure. You can read part 1 of the series here.

"How do we pay for it?"

This is often the first question that trailblazing districts implementing 1-to-1 programs hear from those hoping to follow in their footsteps. It's typically followed by "What devices should we buy?"

According to districts that have already implemented mobile learning, these are the wrong questions. They come from an outmoded framework that doesn't reflect just how dramatically and thoroughly everything changes once a district makes the decision to pursue a digital transformation. Instead of questions about costs and devices, districts should be asking themselves, "Why do we think implementing 1-to-1 is important?" or "What will teaching and learning with technology look like here?"

When a district begins with these core questions, the answers to other questions will naturally ensue. Leaders will be free to choose devices based on the learning tasks for which students will be using them, then holistically restructure budgets as new ways of working completely change the tasks and priorities of the IT and instructional organizations within the district. Many of the jobs that belonged to IT will go away as it shifts to a service organization, eliminating old job descriptions while creating new ones. Curricula and instructional approaches will change, and money will shift toward devices and digital tools rather than textbooks. Many districts are using these wholesale changes in the day-to-day work of the district to implement 1-to-1 without budget increases.

The Impact of 1-to-1 on Networks
Infrastructure investments, though they entail much higher upfront capital costs, can be addressed using a similar, system-wide, holistic approach. When a district embraces 1-to-1, and particularly BYOD, the demands on the network go non-linear. Leading districts find that they experience exponential growth in their need for network capacity. This growth varies from district to district and depends on how technology is actually used and implemented, but it is common to see 60 percent growth in demand on network capacity each year — meaning that demand on the education network doubles every 18 months.

Users' expectations of network reliability also increase dramatically as districts move to 1-to-1 computing strategies. Where it used to be merely inconvenient for the network to go down (when it was used primarily for operational needs such as maintaining student records), once teachers and students begin to depend on the network for their daily work, it becomes mission-critical. District leaders report that their administrators, teachers and students expect essentially zero downtime, yet CoSN's E-Rate and Infrastructure Survey indicates that more than one-third of districts reported more than three days of downtime annually. Shockingly, 5 percent of school districts reported that their education networks are down 30 or more days a year, more than one day of instructional time each week.

Districts also need substantially increased ability to support more devices. When many school networks were established, they were intended to support at most one device per adult. Once districts move to 1-to-1, the number of devices may increase by more than 20 times. Where BYOD is allowed or encouraged, some districts are seeing three or more devices per student. This means that the new networks need to support almost two orders of magnitude more devices than their old networks did.

Nearly all districts will have to accommodate 10 to 100 times the number of devices when moving from computer labs to 1-to-1, with their unique circumstances driving where they fall on the spectrum. This change has important implications for addressing scalability of network appliances and security models.

Increasing Demand Means Increasing Cost and Complexity
Dramatically increasing requirements creates a critical dilemma for districts in planning and budgeting for infrastructure purchases, installation and maintenance in a number of ways.

• Network capacity is expensive. According to the CoSN survey, one-third of districts are paying more than $50 per month per Mbps (although a fortunate 27 percent of districts pay less than 10 percent of that cost.) If a school is trying to achieve the Federal Communications Commission's long-term recommendations of 1 Mbps per student, this means that a district of 10,000 students may have a hefty monthly bill of $500,000. Even at the 2014 targets of 0.1 Mbps per student, the cost could be $50,000 per month.

• Network appliances are expensive. If districts expect to see a doubling of capacity demand every 18 months, the 1 gigabit appliances they currently use for for filtering, switching and security will likely become obsolete. If so, they will need to update to 10 gigabit versions of the same appliances well before their give-year technology plan expires and new bonds or other replacement funds become available.

• Networks may be unreliable. Many networks evolved under the assumption that most computer access would be to servers located in the school or at the district headquarters. These networks have the traditional hub-and-spoke architecture, with a single line going from each school to the district, and the district then connecting to the commodity Internet. In this model, each connection is a single point of failure where an outage will affect a whole school, or even the whole district, until it is repaired.

• Network design is complex. Designing highly reliable, high-capacity networks calls for professional expertise that many districts can't afford to maintain in-house.

• Network maintenance is complex. Managing networks for performance, reliability and capacity requires specialized expertise that, once again, may be difficult for many districts to afford or even find in small or rural communities.

Fortunately, many districts can address these challenges by mitigating market factors and mitigating approaches.

Funding and Logistical Solutions
First, the cost of network hardware and network capacity are on downward sloping curves. It is possible for districts to plan carefully for the capacity growth that drives hardware infrastructure investments, making judgments about how long they can afford to wait to upgrade appliances and balancing their needs against how costs decrease over time. As for network capacity, many districts find that though their costs stay constant, the amount of capacity they are able to provide over time increases to keep pace with demand.

Second, E-rate modernization has made it easier for districts to fund infrastructure to close the WiFi gap. E-rate has added $1.5 billion funding per year for school broadband connectivity, with $2 billion available this year. E-rate now also supports long-term planning for infrastructure by making it possible for districts to receive funding over a five-year period rather than spending the full amount within one fiscal year.

Third, states and large districts are finding that they can dramatically reduce costs through the purchasing power they wield when they aggregate demand across districts or schools. This aggregation is effective not only for purchasing hardware and capacity, but also for getting the technical human resources required for professional network architecture development, network design and implementation and network management and maintenance. To make this approach easier, the FCC is encouraging consortia and bulk purchasing by removing constraints that previously prevented districts who were seeking E-rate funding from participating with other public sector entities such as rural healthcare providers, universities, counties and municipalities.

At the state level, the intrinsic scale of multiple school districts makes it possible to negotiate for the best pricing on hardware and bandwidth. The same is true for large districts serving tens of thousands of students. Equally important, these large organizations are able to support high-quality network engineers to design and maintain their networks. For smaller and rural districts that are not fortunate enough to have access to state-supported services, other aggregation strategies become critical.

Aside from purchasing consortia, districts can cooperate to get network architecture and design support. This work is critical during times of build-out and investment, but there are significant logistical and practical challenges to realizing those benefits.

As an alternative, many districts are finding that it is more cost-effective to contract for their networks as a service, using third parties that provide network architecture and infrastructure build-out as well as day-to-day network management and active maintenance and scaling. In the cases where operational expenditures are easier to budget and plan for than capital expenditures, the whole network, including devices, may be obtained as a service or lease. These districts generally enjoy automatic device refreshes as well as upgraded bandwidth and appliances when needed.

Finally, districts are beginning to take advantage of market aggregation by building a carrier-neutral data center where colocation, telecommunications, Internet and cloud services are available at much higher levels of service and much reduced cost.

By taking advantage of the collective power of consortia, collaboration with other districts, market aggregation and/or third party services, even small districts gain the power to ask — and cost-effectively answer — the right questions.

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Wednesday, 19 July, 1865

Bill came in just before day and informed me his Uncle Hill is very ill. Ju sitting up with him. Had the 2nd congestion chill. Request I go up after an early breakfast to see him. I have the highest respect for him. Believe him to be a Christian. He is better this evening, hope he will not have another chill. – – Hardie and Bake went to Oak Spring to assist in decorating the house for their “Picnic”.1Oak Spring, near the Pamunkey south of Chericoke is the home of Dr. William P. Braxton, wife Virginia, and a son and two daughters. They met with a good many young persons there and spent the day pleasantly. I am sorry Bake and Pigeo, as well as Zac, have a desire to go, as it will be a dancing party and I think Christians should not participate in such pleasures, but possess more self-denial and decision of character. I do not approve of it, though under some circumstances I have tolerated it. My heart aches when I see so much indifference manifested to the things of God and eternity.

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American Resistance To Empire

Eight Torkham Border Policemen Killed in Taliban Attack

At least eight border policemen were killed in a Taliban attack on a police check post in Torkham on Monday night, a source told TOLOnews.

The attack took place at about 8pm local time after insurgents stormed the Khaibar check post in Torkham and shot dead eight border police, according to the source.

The Taliban seized all the equipment at the check post. However, reinforcements were able to re-take control of the check post after a few hours, the source said.

Security officials have not yet commented on the attack.

American Spy Plane Carrying French DGSE (their “cia”) Crashes At Malta Airport

[Five killed in a spy-plane leased to American “private contractor” company, CAE (formerly Canadian Aviation Electronics).  All reports state that all five of the dead were French occupants of the Swearingen SA227-AT Expediter, Aircraft N577MX, taking-off from Malta, but only three are described as DGSE, France’s CIA.]

Frenchmen killed in Luqa crash were members of DGSE – France’s equivalent of the CIA – reports

malta independent

The three ‘defence officials’ who perished in this morning’s plane crash along with two civilian contractors were members of the DGSE – France’s equivalent of the CIA and MI5.

The DGSE, which stands for General Directorate for External Security, is France’s external intelligence agency and falls under the French Ministry of Defence.

The Maltese government this afternoon said in a statement that the five Frenchmen who died in the fiery crash were “customs officials.” But the French government later gave a conflicting report and said three were “defence officials” and the other two were civilian contractors, which means paramilitary personnel employed by a private security company.

The French customs agency later denied that any of its officials were involved in the crash.

In the meantime several major French news establishments are reporting that the men belonged to the DGSE. These include Le Monde, Le Parisien and Le Figaro.

Western special forces and intelligence agencies have been working against ISIS in Libya for several months. Such operations usually come with a high level of deniability and are rarely officially acknowledged. Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Abela this afternoon denied that foreign military personnel were based out of Malta.

(List) 60 Killed In Terrorist Attack On Police Academy In Quetta

Militants attacked a Police Training Centre in Quetta, Pakistan late on Monday night. The overnight attack has left 60 cadets besides three militants dead, and 118 people injured, making it one of the deadliest strikes in the country this year, reported PTI.

The attack on the Balochistan Police College, 20 km from the province capital, began at around 11.10 pm last night, triggering an operation by Pakistani security forces who rescued hundreds of cadets from the academy.

Attackers reportedly entered the hostels of the training center from the front gate and opened fire, possibly also taking some police personnel hostage and injuring 118 cadets.

“44 shaheed 118 inj #QuettaAttack (sic),” Sarfaraz Bugti, home minister of Balochistan province tweeted Bugti had earlier told reporters that the attack had been carried out by three terrorists, cycling back on an earlier estimate by Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) of “five to six terrorists”.

While two of the militants had blown themselves up, one was killed in an exchange of fire with security forces, he said. He had put the casualties of policemen at 20. “Security forces including the Frontier Corps and Pakistan Army light brigade have cleared 95 per cent of the college area,” he had said, adding that there were around 700 police cadets and recruits in the college hostel when the attack took place.

The three terrorists were believed to be from the Al-Alimi faction of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militant group affiliated with the Pakistani Taliban, Frontier Corps IG, Major General Sher Afghan said. He told reporters that the militants were communicating with handlers in Afghanistan and taking instructions from them.

Security forces had “cleared the college in four hours”, he said.

Policeman who was guarding the only entry point of the college was among those gunned down. Bugti said the injured people, mostly police cadets and security personnel, had been shifted to the Civil hospital, Bolan Medical College hospital and Military hospital in Quetta. “The condition of some is critical,” he said. He said there was a Frontier Corps official and captain among the injured.

Meanwhile, 200 of the 600 cadets, present in the centre’s hostel, have been rescued. Five or six terrorists attacked the training centre’s hostel in Sariab Road at around 11.30 pm, according to reports by the Dawn. The Police Training College is located at sarib Road in Quetta, Pakistan.

Chief of the paramilitary Frontier Corps Major General Sher Afgan told reporters that the attackers appeared to be in contact with handlers in Afghanistan. He said the attacker belonged to the banned Lashker-e-Jhangvi group, an Islamic militant group affiliated with al-Qaeda. He said that many of the trainees were killed when the gunmen detonated explosive vests.

The Chairman of Tehreek-e-Insaf and former captain Pakistan’s cricket team Imran Khan, condemned the attack and called it “cowardly”.

An emergency has been declared in all government hospitals of the provincial capital, with the injured shifted to Civil Hospital Quetta and the Bolan Medical Complex.

A statement by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said that the Pakistan Army and Frontier Constabulary troops arrived at the site along with extra contingents of security forces. A cordon was established and there was an exchange of gunfire. Explosions were heard inside the center.

An emergency has been declared in all government hospitals of the provincial capital, with the injured shifted to Civil Hospital Quetta and the Bolan Medical Complex. Militants have conducted attacks against security forces and national installations in Balochistan, which has been plagued by an insurgency and growing sectarian killings for more than a decade.

The attack came a day after separatist gunmen for the Baloch Liberation Army on a motorcycle shot dead two coast guards and a civilian in coastal town of Jiwani near the Gwadar port in the same province.

In August, a suicide bombing at the Civil hospital in Quetta killed 73 people, most of them lawyers. A splinter group of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan as well as the IS claimed responsibility for carrying out the attack.

Quetta Police Training College Attack: Complete list of martyred personnel |

Quetta Police Training College Attack: Complete list of martyred personnel

news tribe

QUETTA: Quetta Police Training College, located at Sariab road in Provincial capital of Balochistan targeted on Monday night by terrorists, law enforcement agencies cleared the area after hours long operation.

Below is the list of Martyred security personnel:

1. Capt Rooh Ullah
1. 7923 Asif Murad (turbat)
2. 7928 Zubair Ahmed  (turbat)
3. 7948 Asif Hussain (turbat)
4. Muhammad Noor (panjgur)
5. 7952 Shah Khalid (Loralai)
6. 7951 M. Yousaf (Pashin)
7. 7888 Janib Ali (panjgur)
8. Murad (turbat)
9. Sartaj (turbat)
10. 7935 Mehmood (turbat)
11. Amir (Qilla Abdullah)
12. 7969 Waseem Jawad (turbat)
13. 7952 Liaqat Ali
14. 7974 Amin
15. 7966 M. Abbas (Qilla abdulah)
16. 7962 Shahbaz (Quetta)
17. 7964 Gulzar (turbat)
18. 7961 Abdul Hakim (turbat)
19. 7970 M. Yousaf (turbat)
20. 7971 Shakeel (gwdr)
21. 7926 Abdul Qadir (pasni)
22. 7965 M. Tayab (qillah Abdullah)
23. 7941 Salar Ahmed (dera bugti)
24. Abdul Wahid 7940 (Panjgr)
25. Dilawar 7956 (Qta)
26. Shuaib 7929 (Turbat)
27. Haider Ali 7968 (dera bugti)
28. Majid Ali 7937 (panjgur)
29. Shahid Hussain 7930 (turbat)
30. Sharad ud din 7953 (Qillah Abdullah)
31. Tariq 7939 (turbat)
32. Majid Ali 7979 (turbat)
33. Naveed Ahmed 7960 (panjgur)
34. Shahid Hussain 7957 (panjgur)
35.  AMIN Ullah 7972 (panjgur)
36. Mrhboob 7950 (panjgur)
37. Ismail 7931 (turbat)
38. Zahir Ahmed 7983 (panjgur)
39. Muhammad Hayat 7986 (harnai)
40. Ab Jabbar 7987 (Sibi)
41. Naseeb Ullah 7980 (Qilla Abdullah)
42. 7983 Muhammad Nasim (qilla abdullah)
43. 7958 Liaqat Ali (panjgur)
44. 7944 Chakar Ali (turbat)
45. 7967 Imdad (Qilla Abdullah)
46. Shuaib7929 Turbat
47. 7940 Ferdoos (turbat)
48. 7943 Ijaz (Khuzdar)
49. 7945 Ashfaq Ahmed (panjgur)
50. 7967 Sartaj Gani 7967 (turbat)
51. 7955 Abrar Ahmed (loralai)
52. Asif Hayat7990 Turbat
53. Mohib Ullah7963 (Mustung).
7 x unidentified dead bodies.

Source link

Terrorists Storm Quetta Police Academy, Heavy Casualties, Hostages

quetta-police-acadThe Quetta police training centre has been attacked Credit: Twitter

29 security personnel martyred, three terrorists killed in attack on police training centre in Quetta

QUETTA: At least 29 security personnel have been martyred after terrorist stormed the Police Training College located on Sariab road here on Monday.

Talking to the media Home Minister Sarfraz Bugti while confirming the death toll feared that it may climb up in next few hours.

He said that the affected compound have been cleared by security forces who fought valiantly against the terrorists.

Bugti said that 700 police recruits were present at the time of the attack.

At least 106 people including police recruits and several Frontier Corps (FC) personnel have also been injured in the terrorist attack.

According to sources, three terrorists have been killed and 250 police recruits freed after the attack.

Unknown assailants stormed the hostel of the police training centre and opened fire on recruits. There were reports of sporadic gunfire by the assailants.

According to Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), five to six terrorists had stormed the police training centre.

Those injured in the attack have been brought to the Civil Hospital Quetta and CMH, hospital sources said. They included recruits, who attempted to flee the centre as terrorists waged the attack. Eight of the wounded were said to be in critical condition.

Earlier, Chief Minister Balochistan Sanaullah Zehri said terrorists had attacked the training centre located in the suburbs of Quetta. He said there were prior intelligence reports of an attack and security was put on high alert.”I am myself monitoring the situation. Our forces have entered into the centre and soon these terrorists will be eliminated,” Zehri said.

Due to high security across the provincial capital, these terrorists opted for the police college in a suburban area, he added.

A recruit who witnessed the entire situation said nearly four militants barged into the training centre around 9:30 PM and opened indiscriminate fire. “Then, they entered into the barracks,” he said.

A loud explosion also occurred in the vicinity that echoed to far-flung areas, our correspondent said, resulting in panic for a brief period. Sources said the attackers also lobbed three crackers which resulted in a fire breaking out inside the centre.

Heavy contingents of police and Frontier Corps reached the spot and surrounded the vicinity. Pakistan Army, FC troops, as well as police commandos, have entered into the hostel, where the operation continues.

Meanwhile, an emergency has been imposed in the hospitals across the provincial capital.

—This is a developing story and will be updated as further details are available.

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Archive for the ‘indicators’ Category

Comparing REDD mechanism design options with an open source economic model Jonah Busch, Bernardo Strassburg, Andrea Cattaneo, Ruben Lubowski, Frederick Boltz, Ralph Ashton, Aaron Bruner, Richard Rice (review manuscript)

osirisThe Open Source Impacts of REDD Incentives Spreadsheet (OSIRIS) is a free, transparent, accessible and open source decision support tool designed by the Collaborative Modeling Initiative on REDD Economics to support UNFCCC negotiations on REDD. OSIRIS enables a click-of-a-button comparison of global, regional, and country-by-country emissions reduction, deforestation, and revenue impacts of alternative approaches to providing positive economic incentives for REDD.

This manuscript-in-review contains a full description of the OSIRIS model and research comparing a broad range of REDD reference level design options. This research finds that:

• REDD can be an effective and efficient source of emissions reductions;

• Extending REDD incentives to countries with historically low deforestation rates through higher-than-historical reference levels can prevent leakage to those countries, making the REDD mechanism more effective overall. This research is a product of the Collaborative Modeling Initiative on REDD Economics, a collaboration between Conservation International, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Woods Hole Research Center, the Terrestrial Carbon Group, and the University of East Anglia.

Download the review manuscript [pdf]…

Read Full Post »

Financing Flows and Needs to Implement the Non-Legally Binding Instrument On All Types of Forests: A study prepared for the Advisory Group on Finance of the Collaborative Partnership on Forests with the support of the Program on Forests (PROFOR) of the World Bank, October 2008

UN Forum on Forests

Written by Markku Simula, this background paper was prepared for the Advisory Group on Finance of the Collaborative Partnership on Forests, in advance of the meeting of the Ad Hoc Expert Group on Finance of the UN Forum on Forests (UNFF), which will be held from 10-14 November 2008, in Vienna, Austria. The paper maps the needs and available sources and mechanisms for funding, taking into account recent developments, including in the climate change regime.

According to the paper, avoiding deforestation would be among the lowest cost mitigation options to avoid increasing CO2 emissions and possibly also increasing carbon sinks. At the same time, other benefits like biodiversity conservation, poverty reduction and climate change adaptation could also be
enhanced. Through carbon revenue, prospects for the economic viability of SFM in developing
countries are expected to substantially improve as at least part of the ecosystem services that
forests provide could be remunerated.

“REDD compensation as a win-win instrument is being increasingly supported by practically all stakeholders for a variety of reasons. For tropical country governments REDD can represent an opening of a new source of financing for national priorities; for donor countries it can be a low cost option for carbon offsets; for environmental NGOs REDD can generate additional resources for biodiversity conservation; for the rural poor badly needed income and financial support to community development as well as a means to improve their forest tenure rights; for the private sector REDD can be an additional source of funding to make SFM financially viable; for political elites yet another opportunity of income; for multilateral development banks REDD can open up new ways of doing business in the context of maintenance of global public goods; and for intergovernmental organizations it offers a new area of intervention in technical assistance and a new funding source.” — Markku Simula, extract from Financing Flows and Needs to Implement the Non-Legally Binding Instrument On All Types of Forests

The report notes that meeting such a broad range of varied interests in REDD schemes will be difficult and several issues need clarification: (i) uncertainty about co-benefits, (ii) risk for violating the rights of indigenous and other local populations, (iii) possible impact on land prices, (iv) equity in distribution of REDD payments, (v) governance arrangements of REDD schemes, (vi) slowness of necessary national-level policy and legal reform processes, (vii) stakeholder participation, (viii) limited access to REDD financing by only forest-rich countries, (ix) possible exclusion of countries which have already addressed deforestation, (x) possible exclusion of drylands and other low carbon intensity forest lands, (xi) definitions and methodologies for treatment of land degradation and restoration of deforested areas, (xii) measures to address underlying causes for deforestation and forest degradation, (xiii) lack of proper understanding on the role of timber harvesting in carbon stock management, (xiv) the level of REDD application (national, sub-national or project), (xv) use of a market mechanism or a fund mechanism, (xvi) possible flooding of the carbon offset markets with REDD credits, (xvii) transaction costs, etc.

Download the Financing Flows and Needs to Implement the Non-Legally Binding Instrument On All Types of Forests paper [pdf]…

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Life as Commerce: the impact of market-based conservation on Indigenous Peoples, local communities and women
Global Forest Coalition, CENSAT Agua Viva, COECOCEIBA,
EQUATIONS, Alter Vida, the Timberwatch Coalition, October 2008.

Life as commerce report“Life as Commerce” features case studies from India, Costa Rica, South Africa, Paraguay and Colombia about the impact of market-based conservation mechanisms like ecotourism, forest certification, biodiversity offsets and carbon trade on Indigenous Peoples, local communities and women. These impacts are particularly important in light of the proposal by some countries to include forest conservation into the global carbon market.

“The report provides a number of fascinating real-life stories on how these mechanisms work out at the community-level. It forms an important addition to the increasing number of studies that focus on the potential benefits of these mechanisms for local communities and the rules and standards that are needed to generate these benefits. As the case studies describe, such rules and standards seldom exist, and even where they exist, they are not well-implemented as market mechanisms make it attractive for powerful actors to circumvent them. The costs of these mechanisms, also in terms of undermining community governance, seem to outweigh the benefits in real-life situations.” — Simone Lovera, Managing Coordinator, Global Forest Coalition

Market-based mechanisms are often seen as solutions to the lack of funding for public conservation, but they are false solutions. The current economic crisis has also shown the unreliability of global markets as a potential funding source for conservation.

Download the Life As Commerce report [pdf]…

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Monday, June 13, 2011

Needing Dark to See the Light

"The books that the world call immoral are the books that show the world its own shame."

- Oscar Wilde

There’s been much hullabaloo over the Wall Street Journal article "Darkness Too Visible" by Meghan Cox Gurdon about YA being too dark.

Eloquent authors have addressed this subject passionately:

Beth Revis

Laurie Halse Anderson

And especially

Sherman Alexie’s article, "Why the Best Books are Written in Blood"

My son read Alexie’s YA book The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian in 5th-grade when he was 11 years old. I knew it had brutal content: poverty, sexual and physical abuse. But I also knew that it had moved a few of his classmates, who recommended it to him. He said, “it was sad, but it had funny parts too”; he in turn recommended it to his friends. And he told me his then 7-year-old younger sister wasn’t ready to read it yet.

I trusted my son’s judgment, just like I trusted his 5th-grade teacher for providing the book. While my son read the story, he shared it with me, and we had several mature discussions.

I agree with Alexie:

“Does Ms. Gurdon honestly believe that a sexually explicit YA novel might somehow traumatize a teen mother? Does she believe that a YA novel about murder and rape will somehow shock a teenager whose life has been damaged by murder and rape? Does she believe a dystopian novel will frighten a kid who already lives in hell?”

On Friday, I told a class of 7th-graders (ages 12 and 13) about the World Street Journal article, especially the part about the woman who supposedly couldn’t even find a wholesome YA cover, so she walked out of the bookstore without purchasing anything. (Hadn’t she ever heard the adage, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”?)

They were affronted. They don’t like to be talked down to. They don’t like being told what to read and what not to read. They don’t like adults thinking there are subjects they don’t know about. And they don’t like information that could warn them or help them get through something difficult being withheld for their own good.

They made excellent points.

I think Alexie has a good response for them:

“And now I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don’t write to protect them. It’s far too late for that. I write to give them weapons–in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed.”

Last fall, these 7th-graders read Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson in their ELA class. They were incredulous that it’s been banned. They laughed at the ludicrousness that Harry Potter has been banned. They admitted that nobody bothers monitoring their access to the Internet, movies, or TV that has inappropriate content. They acknowledged that they see horrid things on the news, where it’s not explained. They told me books help them understand their world, so why would anyone want to take them away? They wanted to know why anyone would want to stop them from reading?

They asked excellent questions.

Care to answer Meghan Cox Gurdon?

Alexie can:

“…they are simply trying to protect their privileged notions of what literature is and should be. They are trying to protect privileged children. Or the seemingly privileged.”

My son may be lucky enough to not ever have to face the darker reality YA uncovers, but neither should he be ignorant about it. I’ve always provided my children with books to help them prepare for difficulties, whether it be visiting the dentist or enduring the first day of kindergarten. As they get older, the preparation may be less wholesome but no less vital. Sometimes we need darkness to see the light.

"There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all." - Oscar Wilde

  1. DIARY is on of one of my favorite books. It's such a perfect novel in its unperfectness.

    Great post on the WSJ fallout, Theresa.

  2. Why do people think children and teenagers should only read books about unicorns and rainbows? It's a tough world out there, and to help children better understand it (and avoid the bad) they must be taught the difference between right and wrong. Its unfortunate that parents are sheltering their children from wonderful books containing pertinent information about life's horrors when education is the key to avoidance.
    Excellent post!

  3. This is one of the best posts I've read on the WSJ article. THere is no way someone could walk into a bookstore and NOT find something suitable to read. How cool that you shared this with your students!

  4. Though I think there will always be parents keeping books from their children, the good that came from the WSJ article seems to be the conversations and dialogues that it's inspired. Talk is good, opening minds and thoughts to all sorts of opinions and viewpoints.

  5. Great post Theresa. Sounds like you had a great discussion with your class. We talk a lot about kids without talking to them. Interesting to hear one seventh grade class's take.

  6. I loved reading the kids' perspectives! Sometimes I wonder if as adults we jump to defend dark literature without pausing to reflect on what the kids who are reading them feel about it all. I'm a fan of books that deal with tough subjects; even as a young reader those were the books I was most drawn to, so I will always defend those, but I love hearing that kids find value in them too.

  7. Well said. I've read countless posts on this article. I'm sure she got the exposure she was searching for.

  8. Hear! Hear! Like I said in my comments about this matter:

    Dear Adults - trust your Children - they are not silly! Take care

  9. @ Jonathan, from what my son told me, I know a bit about the book, but I haven't read it yet. Thanks!

    @ Emily, I'm not a big fan of sheltering when it comes to books. I know how much time and care a writer and editor takes on these books. If individual parents want to censor certain books that's their choice, but I don't want them deciding for the rest of us.

    @ Alleged Author, thank you. Many of the covers in fantasy tend to be darker, but when I look around a bookstore, there are so many covers just like there are so many types of books. Beginning an article like that let you know how biased the rest would be.

    @ Joanne, the dialogue is good. And parents might want to take a closer look at what their kids are reading. They also should take a closer look at what their kids are watching and listening to. Books should be the least of their worries.

    @ Kristine, my class was so passionate about the books they loved that were targeted, I wish I could've quoted them. But I was a teacher first, blogger second. So I jotted notes after the discussion as soon as I could.

    @ Valerie, I think the most controversial books made me think the most about my choices when I was a teenager. I know Forever by Judy Blume had the opposite effect for me than what banners feared at the time.

    @ Miranda, she sure did receive exposure! I hadn't planned to write a post 1) because I couldn't do it better than Alexie, and 2) because I didn't want to promote her. But when I heard from the students, I wanted their voices to travel beyond the classroom.

    @ Old Kitty, short and sweet. Trust the children.

  10. I saw this book in Barnes & Noble yesterday and really wanted it. On another note, I think that the WSJ article actually just made YA novels that much stronger and the YA community band together. I also now want to read every novel she criticized.

  11. Is it "World Street Journal" or "Wall Street Journal"? I could have sworn it was the latter unless you are poking fun at it by deliberately changing the first name around.

    In any event, the Wall Street Journal was purchased by Rupert Murdoch several years ago and has since become just another pundit for right wing values as identified by the likes of Mike Huckabee and others that see the world the way that he does. Think Fox News and you'd be closer to how they report news as opposed to say...NPR. I'm thinking of Jon Stewart and how he challenged Bill O'Reilly in saying, "Fox News is nothing but a selective outrage machine." This attack on YA is just that...a selective outrage machine.

  12. Thanks for the links to Beth and Laurie's comments - I hadn't seen them. I posted a link to another article on my blog which I thought a very articulate rebuttal.

    I am surprised by how many people don't see the incredible breadth of YA literature. Yes, there are the darker novels. They certainly have their place and are invaluable. But for those who don't want to read darker titles, they are NOT the only YA lit out there. There are plenty of others!

  13. I've been reading a lot of posts about the WSJ article--but I think you put it the most clearly.

  14. Theresa, what a great post, allowing the kids to voice their thoughts creates a balanced argument.

    Books, I agree are the least of our worries when it comes to influences on our kids.

  15. Love what you said here and the quotes too. Alexie has always been one of my favorites.

  16. The response from the YA community to the WSJ thing has been huge and amazing.

    Seriously, the more that people try to tell us that young adult literature is wrong or bad, the more we rise up to contradict them. They never seem to learn. :)

  17. Books are an amazing tool for kids. The learn so much from them. For me, as a teen, books were an escape to a better place...even if the book was not about rainbows and fields of flowers. They gave me strength. They gave me insight. They let me see what life could potentially be like. They gave me a direction. They taught me how to cope...

  18. I love that last quote. That is so perfect! Tabitha Olson had a really good post on this subject too today!

  19. I think writing YA must be one of the most difficult tasks in our business. Romantic entanglements and crime fiction is SO much easier. Kudos to all the YA novelists out there. Keep up the good work.

  20. Duh. That should be ARE so much easier. It's been a busy Monday :)

  21. As a teacher, I have occasionally encountered parents who want to limit the literature their children encounter. One mother wanted to take me in front of the school board for giving her daughter a book by Sharon Creech. I sometimes wonder what kind of relationship she has with her daughter now, 12 years later ...

  22. Lots to think about, that's for sure! Thanks for the links!

  23. Wonderful post and I also think one of the best on this hotly debated topic. Let the kids decide - we are nuts if we think we CAN even attempt to censor them - they won't have it and it would be impossible. Besides - they are smart cookies and can figure it out. My mother snuck me D.H. Lawrence books that my father (in a very weird for him move) forbade them! ha.

  24. It seems like some people think if we don't let kids read a book about something, then that thing isn't going to happen. Like we can protect them from life by not letting them read about it. I'm very grateful for the YA authors who tackle the hard issues.

  25. I went with my daughters and their teachers choices but I was always there for discussion. We have a lot of memories about books that are no longer considered appropriate for youth.

  26. @ Magan, I almost put up another Oscar Wilde quote about making something more popular by saying it's immoral. Something like that. I think we answer people who write articles like that by supporting those authors.

    @ Michael, no, I just lost my mind. Thanks for picking that up. World, what was I thinking?

    I love your phrase at the end, it is a selective outrage machine.

    Even if there are parents who think YA has gotten too dark, then those parents can monitor what their children read. I know what my children are reading. But I don't want other people taking away my child's right to read books I approve of.

    @ Susanna, I'll have to check out your link.

    It's funny because I don't read a lot of the dark YA. But I don't have a problem with it being there. And I never have problems finding the lighter YA books either.

    @ The Golden Eagle, thank you. I have to thank children for helping me articulate what was wrong with the assertions in the article.

    @ Brigid, I had no intention on writing on this subject until I discussed it with the students. They were so passionate and articulate, I wish I had direct quotes.

    @ Bossy Betty, thanks. I have even more respect for Alexie after reading his article.

    @ Meagan, you're right. The article shows that we pay attention and use our voices and connections to voice our opinions.

  27. I shout my emphatic "YES!" from the rooftops, Theresa. This is how my high school students respond, too. If there is one thing teens in today's world HATE, it is having their decisions made for them without their input--and that includes reading material. :-)

  28. I agree with you, Theresa. When I pick a book now that I'm an adult, I always wonder "Why didn't I find this when I was younger?" I've read a lot of books that I often wished I had read when I was a child. You are so right. Books are messages that children need to prepare them to face the darkness, to face reality and truth about the world they live in. What a wonderful post!

    I will check Sherman Alexie's book out :) Thanks for sharing.

  29. I agree with all the points your kids made. My daughter and her friends do not like being talked down to, which is what this article says we should do. Hopefully they won't experience all this dark stuff but they need to be aware of it. And they don't want to read books without it.

  30. So true! I loved that you talked to your students about this. They're the ones being affected by book censorship--it's only fair that they get their opinions heard.

  31. Interesting discussion, Theresa, specially since you personally get the viewpoints of that age group
    That Oscar Wilde quote pretty much says it all. :)

  32. @ Sharon, you're so right. Books have helped me through so many hard times. We can never know which book is going to have significance for someone.

    @ Laura, thanks for letting me know. I looked up her blog.

    @ Carol, you're right. I consider so much when I write YA, and I haven't tackled the most difficult subject matter.

    @ Dianne, it must have been so stressful when the mom tried to bring you before the school board. I'd wonder what the relationship between the mom and daughter would be too.

    @ Karen, you're welcome. I don't think the content in YA is for everyone. But I do think each parent can make the choice with their children.

    @ Jan, the best way to make a book popular is to ban it. How interesting your dad banned something, and your mom let you read it.

    @ Susan, you put it so well. I can't say it any better. I'm grateful for authors who tackle the difficult issues too.

    @ GigglesandGuns, I always know what my kids are reading and discuss it with them too. I'm curious what books they read that are no longer appropriate.

    @ Shannon, yes, how different would the WSJ article have been if she had talked to teens too.

    @ Len, I agree. YA was tiny when I was young. Now that there's so much to choose from, they can reach more people who need them.

  33. I have heard a lot about this article and there has been a great debate. I'm not sure what my feelings are exactly but I know that I'm only responsible for what my son reads until he's an adult but I should help him learn to make good choices.

  34. I've avoided blogging about the article because I do think there are a ton of negative, dark voices out there that I never would have read as a teen and don't read now. But I'm a small voice in many - a "dark" book could also be one I love (for example, Speak). A book that uses swear words every other line so people get the point that teens swear? Not for me.

    My son is 10 and reads way above grade level. Yes, I want to know what he's reading and why. I LOVED Sherman Alexie's book, but my son isn't interested in it (he reads mostly fantasy). boo. AND THE FACT THAT IT'S ON THE BANNED BOOK LIST IS LUDICROUS!! (sorry for shouting).

    Also, (you know, since I'm not blogging about it, hehe) - there are tons of fantastic covers out there. And fantastic books. You have to actually take the time to look for ones that fit your needs.

  35. Sherman Alexie is one of those excellent authors who can get away with writing "questionable" material because his writing is so good. It's also because his material isn't just about the fact that it includes stuff that makes some people uncomfortable. It's also because he's trying to enlighten and inspire people by making them think about things that can't just be glossed over, and more often than not he succeeds.
    I totally agree with you that kids don't like being told what to do. Kids and teenagers are often more likely to read banned books just because they are banned, and they often end up learning a lot more than if they hadn't read those books.

  36. Excellent points! I don't know that I could add any more to the discussion except to say well said.

  37. Sherman Alexie is one of my fave authors and DIARY, one of my fave books.

    I think the bright spot in all of this is that people are discussing YA. People don't have to agree on everything but at least people are discussing. I tend to ignore the posts/comments where people simply attack the other side. I thought Alexie's response was very measured and well stated.

  38. I have Alexie's book in my to-be-read pile.

    I loved that you talked to young people about this issue. I know how they hate being talked down to, and that it's important that they have a choice on what to read.

  39. Spot ON, girlfriend! Excellent post-- I loved hearing the student's reaction (Affronted, huh? Awesome)!

  40. Those kids are fantastic! Thanks for posting their reactions. It's priceless. :)

    I loved Alexie's response to Gurdon's article. He highlights everything that Gurdon simply doesn't understand. I do hope she attempts to learn...but I'm not holding my breath. :)

  41. Your response is very thoughtful and interesting, Theresa. I'm old fashioned, I guess, and feel children should remain as innocent as possible as long as possible. It is almost an impossible task these days as media exposes them very early to the vices of the world. Unless we shelter them from TV, music, radio, computers, etc they must face adult issues very early in life. I would hope that there would still be some YA literature that allows them the joy of reading as an escape from all of that instead of compounding it.

  42. @ Natalie, I just heard today that in Texas, a cheerleader is being sued for 30k because she won't cheer her accused rapist who's on the team. He pleaded in the case to a lesser offense. It made me think of books like Speak.

    @ Meredith, they are the ones who are being affected. The WSJ author not getting their feedback for the article speaks volumes.

    @ Jennifer, I like that Alexie mentioned teens too. The books are for them so we should talk to them about the issue. I talked to my children about it as well.

    @ Clarissa, I think that's a good way to look at it. I also monitor what my kids read, what they watch, and what they do on-line without being too intrusive. But I don't want anyone else telling them what's good for them. That's my job.

    @ Erica, there are teen books out there I don't love, but they may have their place too. I don't like books peppered with too many swear words. Maybe one teen who hates to read will like a book that curses because it sounds like the reader. Some of the dark subject-matter is too much for me to stomach (I don't even like zombie books). But the subjects in the books brought up in the article, I have no problem having my son read.

    @ Neurotic Workaholic, I'm sure banned books sell way more copies than they would otherwise. Night by Elie Wiesel is required reading in many high schools. Life can be darker than we thought possible when we were kids. We shouldn't hide it from people just years away from adulthood.

    @ Carolina, thank you.

    @ Liz, I agree with you. Alexie had a good measured response. And I like the open debate too. It shouldn't be ugly.

    @ Medeia, I've noticed that students respond well to any adult who treats them like people with valid thoughts and opinions. I wish some people advocating on their behalf asked them first.

    @ Christina, they impressed me with their opinions and vocabulary. You should've heard them when we discussed the Japanese earthquake or debated microloans. They've blown me away a few times.

    @ Pat, I wish kids could remain innocent longer too. Why is Limited Too selling thongs to young kids? Why are parents letting kindergartners listen to lyrics about sex? Why are people playing truth or dare on Formspring when they're in elementary school? Reading is the least of it.

    And there are plenty of wonderful books out there that aren't about sex, incest, cutting, rape, and suicide. The difference between music and media vs. books is that one glorifies some of the nastier stuff while the other helps teens deal with these realities.

  43. Hello! great post. Well thought out.

  44. The message is the most important part and sometimes getting there can be a bit rocky. If parents are concerned maybe it's a good idea for them to read what their kids are reading so they can discuss it together.

    Tossing It Out

  45. Great points. I think there is a place for that side of YA fiction. Anything gratuitous for shock sake alone cheapens it and desensitizes our youth. I do think it's important for parents to know what their kids are reading so they can at least discuss possible issues that the books might raise.

  46. Very well said, Theresa. Society is far from being all rainbows and chocolate, unfortunately. I don't understand how people have no problem letting kids actively engage in hacking people to death in video games, yet don't want them to read risque books.

  47. This is a touchy subject better left to the parent to decide what is right or not right for their children to read. I have my opinion, and I respect the opinions of others on this matter.

  48. I think a lot of adults like to feel that trauma is their domain. It's too easy to forget that young people experience just as much 'stuff' as adults - some of them more. It's wrong headed to patronise them with tales of how they wouldn't understand. Most of us were as intelligent as teenagers as we are now, and some more so.

  49. Really good post! I love that you debate things like this with the kids themselves. I believe many adults forget to include youngsters in their discussions.

    These kids are at the sharp end - they understand depth far more than are given credit for.

  50. Sorry I'm late but WOW what a good post. Not being a parent, I have always thought for a child to make a judgment they can stand behind they must first have ALL the facts. Not just the ones we think they need.

    Again great post Theresa!
    Jules @ Trying To Get Over The Rainbow

  51. I think this is one of the best worded, and well-said responses to that article.

    Also - that book is WAY high on my TBR pile.

  52. Glad I stopped by today. I love your response to the article and citing your students responses eloquently illustrates the point. Well done! =)

  53. @ Michelle, thank you.

    @ Arlee, I agree. Parents should be reading what their kids are reading or have some idea of the content. I told my kids I didn't want them reading Twilight because Bella isn't a good female model and the child-werewolf attraction at the end was inappropriate to me.

    @ Lynda, yes, there's so much sensationalism bombarding kids and teens. We should be reading and discussing with our children.

    @ Talli, that's why I'm a good parent - I allow both hacking and reading.

    @ Stephen, yes, parents should decide what's appropriate for their children to read, watch, and listen to.

    @ Tony, when I think what I'd been exposed to when I was a child: mental illness and alcoholism, I would've loved books on those subjects then. Right now, I'm read A Blue So Dark by Holly Schindler. Where was this book when I was a teen?

    @ Margo, my children and students continuously surprise me with their knowledge. They also have a lot of innocence. It's a balance to give them knowledge and not remove their innocence. I think YA authors try to strike that balance. And for the books that are extreme, the back cover is usually pretty clear what the book is about. If the teens know they don't want to tackle that subject, they won't open the book.

    @ Jules, exactly! Couldn't have said it better myself. We never know what is the piece of vital info, do we?

    @ Jolene, thank you. This book is on my TBR pile too.

    @ Shannon, thank you. I appreciate it.

  54. Yes!

    I love Alexie's response - powerful enough to give me chills.

    Kids and teens are so much more capable and intelligent as readers than so many people realize. They are much more worldly than was at there age - much more exposed to the darker sides of life. And for those poor kids who suffer in their personal hells, books can often provide them with hope - and that hope can translate into reality.

  55. The article was really disturbing to me. I was so glad so many people came forward to express, better than I could, the other side of the argument.

  56. Hi Theresa .. this is so interesting - not having kids .. we just don't know - but if we let them choose, they usually choose wisely .. if they're not interested - then the kids simply aren't interested and won't read, or look or buy ..

    Excellent post stirring some good content - Hilary

  57. @ Jemi, while I think kids are exposed to more, I think they're luck there are so many books to help them cope. My family was great at pretending things weren't problems, and not looking for solutions. I would've loved to have had access to some of the titles I come across now.

    I love the way you call books hope and how the hope can translate into reality.

    @ Lydia, I'm glad so many came forward to argue against the WSJ article too. And I'm sure your contribution would've been worthy!

    @ Hilary, I agree. Children know what they're able to and need to read. They aren't going to bother investing hours in a book that isn't going to resonate with them.

  58. Great post Theresa. I don't think kids should be "protected" - reading about all sorts of experiences helps broaden your ideas so much. And if you read a book that helps you understand an experience or come to terms with it, so much the better no?

  59. @ Deniz, thank you. Yes, books are a great way to understand and come to terms with an experience.

  60. Great response to the article. I love that you brought up the article to your students.

    What struck me in the original article is how flustered the mom in the example was from just looking at the books and reading back cover descriptions. I wish it had been noted what her criteria was for "dark." And just because a book is about abuse, more times than not it's about how the character deals with abuse, not just abuse for no reason. I get if parents aren't into vampires or witches, that's fine, but the article hashed on issue-driven books, too, and I can't believe teh article author was baffled by reactions of censorship.

    I wish more people who jump on the book banning train would get how books can teach us. With Mtv's "Jersey Shore," all visual with no teaching. We see drunkeness, illiteracy, violence and it's supposed to be *funny*. Not to say the same parents who have issues with "dark" books are OK with Jersey Shore, but half of cable TV is flooded with reality shows about people with no values. Why cry outrage over books that show consequences and depth of emotion?


text:
James Arthur Ray, Redux

So in case you haven’t heard, James Arthur Ray was convicted in the deaths of three participants in a sweat lodge he held back in 2009. The short version is that Ray strongly urged people, who were suffering more than is usual in this physically strenuous ritual in an improperly constructed structure, to stay in spite of vomiting and other symptoms of dehydration and heat exhaustion/stroke. Three people died as a result of overheating and smoke. Ray, who was running the ceremony (such as it was) was convicted on charges of negligent homicide.

While I feel terrible for those who died and those who loved them, and those who suffered and still suffer as a result of this monumental mishandling of people’s vulnerability, I’m not going to speak on that. Instead, I want to revisit my commentary from shortly after the initial tragedy. Amid other things, I spoke of the primary issue of competency:

I think the issue that stands out to me the most is that of competency. In counseling, competency means having at least an adequate, if not superior, set of knowledge and skills about a given topic to be able to effectively help a client with a minimum of risk to their psychological health. One thing I’m learning in my classes on practical skills is that no matter who you are, you will always screw up. Therapists are human, and as much as one would like to be the most awesome, helpful, effective therapist ever, there will always be those clients who just don’t work out–and the ones that you really regret because you know you could have acted differently in hindsight.

Competency is an ethical issue designed to make sure that the chances of causing harm are minimized. For example, I’m on the adult track in my program. My classes are tailored toward working with adults, and my internship will be the same. Before I could ostensibly work with children, I would have to take steps to increase my competency through education and reading, at the very least. The same thing goes if I end up having a client referred to me who is of a special population whose unique situation I don’t have experience or knowledge of.

Running a proper sweat requires competency on a couple of levels. I’m not going to get into the debate as to whether indigenous spiritual ceremonies associated with sweats are inherently spiritually better than New Age or otherwise not indigenous ones, and whether these people died because the spirits were displeased. On a physical level, though, there is a definite need for competency–how to safely construct the lodge, how to prepare the correct sort of stone, how to monitor participants for health concerns, and so forth. Psychologically, too, there needs to be competency with any sort of rite of passage or other ritual that has the potential to shake a person out of their usual headspace. I have heard entirely too many horror stories in the neopagan community of ritual leaders who led people through a particularly moving ritual–and then didn’t stick around to pick up the pieces when a participant ended up with some trauma being dredged up by the experience.

What seems to have happened here is a lack of competency on a physical, and potentially psychological, level. Did Ray know about the risks of running a sweat with that many people and that sort of construction, and how to know when something was going wrong? Did he make it clear to people that, no matter how moving an experience they were having, if they felt ill they needed to get out, and they wouldn’t have failed for admitting their limits? Did he receive any sort of training that might have included how to address these and other concerns?

And I still maintain that this is the cause of the deaths and suffering in that incident. During the trial, it came out that Ray was woefully incompetent and lacking training in a number of practices he used. This includes a lack of training in how to properly construct the physical lodge, and how to respond to a participant who is in physical distress. Additional testimony suggests that he even willfully ignored these factors, which affected his decision not to act.

I also continue to maintain that this does not prove that being non-Native, or that charging any sum of money, no matter how exorbitant, made people die. You can have a dozen white people charging $50,000 a head enter into a sweat lodge, and if they are properly trained in the construction and use of the lodge and ceremony and implement it to the greatest degree possible, then there is no greater chance of them killing anyone in there than any native person who has also received the same training and displays the same level of implementation. If Ray had happened to be Native in descent–and, hell, even if he had received the proper training but still chose to act unethically and dangerously–his being Native wouldn’t have done a single thing to protect anyone. Nor did the exact amount of money he received make him kill people. His attitude toward how to get the money was more to blame than that. You can point to any number of people who allowed the receiving of money to tarnish their judgment, but that doesn’t mean that there is direct causation between forking over cash and walking into a deathtrap, and the risk doesn’t automatically get higher with rising numbers.

Why am I saying all this? Because I am tired of seeing people who are right to be angry, infuriated, livid about what happened to a bunch of innocent people, turn their rage at a specific incident (or incidents, as this is not the first sweat lodge injury or death) into broad criticisms of A) non-Native people having anything to do with sweat lodges, B) anyone receiving money for Native or other spiritual/cultural practices, and/or C) the very existence of neoshamanism/non-indigenous nature religions/etc. Not only is it an inaccurate conflation of a number of factors that are not all causally related (and remember, correlation does NOT equal causation), but it is also ignoring the fact that there are plenty of non-indigenous practitioners of various related practices who, whether they receive money or not, are competent in whatever it is they do. You may not agree with the values associated with what they’re doing, but if they’re enacting things competently on physical and psychological levels, then you can’t accurately say they’re more likely to fuck things up, and trying to beat people with the red herrings (in this case) of racial background and filthy lucre is just going to distract from the actual problem at hand: this guy didn’t know what he was doing, and didn’t care to know what he was doing, to all appearances.

Let’s instead focus on increasing and maintaining competency. Not “What does this person believe?”, but “What is this person doing, and is it safe?” What reduces competency? Is it the proliferation of inaccurate information on how to enact certain rites when the correct information is often restricted in access? Is it people having unhealthy relationships with the money that represents resources for everyday survival? Is it mental disorders such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder? Is it cultural appropriation? Is it any/all of these and more? What can we do about these things that doesn’t just involve repeating “Don’t Pay to Pray!” and “You’re Doing It Wrong!”? How do we answer both the concerns of marginalized indigenous peoples in the Americas and elsewhere, and those of non-indigenous people who do find New Age and neoshamanic practices spiritually, psychologically, and personally fulfilling? This, I feel, is a lot more productive start to dialogue than the assumption that James Arthur Ray is the rule, not the exception.

Pagan Values Blogging Month: Judgment vs. Compassion

Note: I actually wrote the bulk of this weeks ago, but life has gotten incredibly crazy as of late thanks to school, my internship site, and a whole host of other things. Still, I wanted to get at least one post published for this theme. Enjoy!

Compassion: to feel with. In terms of human interactions, compassion is to allow yourself to not only feel for other people (sympathy) but to feel with other people (empathy). It is becoming an active participant in another person’s suffering. Or, if you want to take this beyond anthropocentrism, it is active participation in another being’s suffering. (It can also be applied to emotions other than those associated with suffering.)

Compassion, comparatively speaking, doesn’t get a lot of time in pagan discussion because it’s a “nice” emotion. Sometimes I feel that many neopagans are so afraid of being perceived as fluffy, frou-frou New Agers, prone to talking about “love and light”, that we create a front of cynicism and worldliness. We separate ourselves from those other people by seeming more serious, and denigrate the sensitivity that may be expressed by others. We think that because we aren’t just talking about The Secret and wrapping the entire planet in soft pink energy that we somehow have a more mature, developed way of approaching the world we live in. True, sometimes complex emotions are unnecessarily compressed down into 140-character sound bites on Twitter, and I could write a ton about how “the law of attraction” is stuffed full to overflowing with primarily white, middle-class privilege.

But what too often I see as being touted as an improvement over this sort of “fluffiness” is people extolling snark as a legitimate response to anything they disagree with and a way to bolster their in-group membership by rallying others in a dogpile over the target of their disdain. I see the people who spend the most time telling others just how wrong they are being lifted up as paragons of their traditions, while those trying to help people do things “right”, whatever that might be, are often struggling just to be heard. I see some pagans who are in a veritable emotional arms race to latch onto ever more aggressive and “not fluffy” deities, spirits, practices, etc., often insulting the practices of anyone less competitively hardcore as being less real or true.

All these things center on moralistic judgment as a value. It’s just one of the many violent forms of communication that so many of us have been socialized with and which we are told is the correct, tough, powerful way to communicate, no matter the expense levied to ourselves and others. I first became acquainted with the concept of a violent form of communication when I took a course on nonviolent communication (based on the works of Marshall Rosenberg) during my graduate counseling psych program. Rosenberg defines moralistic judgment, one of his “life-alienating communications”, as a judgment that:

…that imply wrongness or badness on the part of people who don’t act in harmony with our values. Such judgments are reflected in language: “The problem with you is that you’re too selfish.” “She’s lazy.” “They’re prejudiced.” “It’s inappropriate.” Blame, insults, put-downs, labels, criticism, comparisons, and diagnoses are all forms of judgment. (Rosenberg, 2003, p. 15)

A clarification: Moralistic judgment is contrasted with value judgment, which is used to judge which values are right for us, as opposed to applying our values to other people in a moralistic judgment. We can say what we value without determining whether someone’s agreement or disagreement with our values makes them good or bad people, right or wrong. When I refer to judgment in the rest of this post, to include as contrasted with compassion as a value, I will be specifically talking about moralistic judgment, not value judgment.

Many pagans value those who make moralistic judgments on others, whether it’s judging someone as less competent, less appropriate, or just “doing it wrong”. We may not want to admit this as a collective value, but it’s there nonetheless.

The thing about judgment in this vein is that it is often exceptionally self-centered. The person making the judgment is focusing on their feelings on the matter and expressing those feelings in aggressive, negative, hurtful manners, without ever taking the feelings of the other person(s) into account. Yet at the same time, it’s also a way for the person to relieve themselves of having to examine those feelings, because they’re focusing their response on someone else instead of looking at what prompted the whole mess in the first place. So a lot of the time this can be summed up with the thought process “Here is something that makes me feel in a way I dislike. I’m going to respond to my feelings by attacking what I perceive to be the cause, which is external to me”. While, for example, someone interpreting the goddess Morrigan as a loving mother isn’t nearly as dangerous to my health as someone pulling a knife on me, you would think that the insult was just as grave given the viciousness of the personal attacks I’ve seen that have come up as a response to “You’re doing spirituality wrong!” discussions. And never have I seen anyone doing the “correcting” take a look at why they feel so insulted about the idea of a cuddly carrion crow that they must make ad hominem attacks in addition to their history lessons.

Is it any wonder, then, that we adopt cynicism to protect ourselves?

Yet when we justify our cynicism and our snark and our aggression toward others, we are perpetuating the very cycles of violent communication that have contributed to us walling ourselves away from the world. In fact, I feel it is a tragedy how much we are allowing ourselves to miss out on when we approach the world through so many layers of defense. How much more intimacy and genuine emotion and honesty could we experience in ourselves and others if those defenses were no longer there? What if “feeling with” was the default, where we all mutually respected the vulnerability of everyone involved?

There are payoffs for compassion for yourself and for others. When you allow yourself to be open to both your actual feelings as well as those of the other person(s), you’re able to get a much more complete picture of what’s going on, and you can make a more informed decision as to how to respond (instead of instantly reacting defensively). This makes it more likely that everyone gets their needs met, because instead of communicating with more and more defenses, everyone is able to clearly state what it is they need, and is more likely to understand what’s preventing those needs from being met.

Compassion teaches better connection and general communication skills. There are pagans who claim to be nature-based, and yet it’s a surface-level connection based mostly on imagery and abstract concepts, without really feeling with other living beings, human and otherwise. Or they’ll talk about connecting with a tree in a meditation, but then they seem completely incapable of understanding why someone whose supposedly improper practices they just insulted is so unhappy about that judgment (when they really, truly deserved it for doing it wrong, right?). There are few more powerful ways to really connect with any other being than through compassion—to really open yourself up to what that other being is experiencing in that moment, not just through imagination and assumption, but through direct interaction. While you don’t have to divorce yourself from what you feel when, say, you’re in an argument, the quality of connection you can have together is much better when you’re able to really listen to what all parties are saying instead of only focusing on trying to get what you want. And that practice can help to strengthen not only that relationship, but improve all your relationships across the board, whether with another person, a deity, etc. And communication works much better when people are listening completely, not just harvesting choice phrases that they can then use to defend their own points without considering others’ thoughts in total.

And compassion takes bravery. Anyone can snap and snarl at someone else, and keep putting those walls up higher and higher, and feel safe and protected against the world (even if there’s no actual safety to be had). But it takes a lot of guts to face the risk of vulnerability that compassion requires. Sometimes that may end up being a situation where you’re the one feeling the sadness and hurt of someone targeted by a group of snarkers, and putting yourself at risk of drawing their fire by defending their target. Other times it’s more intimate and personal, really and deeply listening to a significant other you’re arguing with at the risk of “being proven wrong” by deciding their point is valid and thereby possibly sacrificing whatever you thought you were originally fighting for. To be compassionate takes a lot more work and courage than to simply continue being negative and defensive as a matter of course, and that effort builds character and emotional skills in a way judgment never could dream of accomplishing.

In the United States, the gender dichotomy is highly pronounced. While there have been some inroads in gender diversification, the overwhelming pattern is still that men are supposed to be masculine (stoic, not emotionally expressive, strong) and women are supposed to be feminine (emotionally expressive, weak, passive). Compassion is generally relegated to the latter artificial category, a sort of emotional ghettofication. Yet it doesn’t have to be this way.

Terrence Real, in his book How Can I Get Through To You (which was an assigned text for my Masters-level couples counseling course), related a trip he made to Tanzania. He asked some of the local Masai what makes a great morani, or warrior. One very old man in the community answered thusly:

I refuse to tell you what makes a good morani…But I will tell you what makes a great morani. When the moment calls for fierceness a good morani is very ferocious. And when the moment calls for kindness, a good morani is utterly tender. Now, what makes a great morani is knowing which moment is which! (Real, 2002, p. 76)

So much for the (largely male-and-masculinity-dominated) pagan warrior ethic that focuses mainly on being strong and protective. While there are certainly times and places for ferocity and aggression, like so many other people in the United States, American pagans in particular tend more toward judgment than compassion. The continuation of witch wars and snark communities, the divisiveness of “Well, we don’t do things like THEY do because WE’RE better”—these all have judgment at their cores.

I feel strongly that compassion is a worthy value for pagans to consider adopting more frequently. It takes work–I still slip up a good deal myself despite my words here–but it’s a good goal to work toward, I feel. If we want to reduce the prevalence of moralistic judgment and other violent forms of communication in our community, then compassion is a particularly effective medicine. When we feel what another is feeling, we cannot attack them without attacking ourselves (and if we have so little compassion for ourselves that we feel this self-sabotage isn’t a problem, so much more the reason to examine why this is). Through compassion we are disarming ourselves, but we are opening ourselves up to the possibility of finally breaking through a vicious cycle, and spending our energy on more constructive efforts than simply building more and higher defenses against others.

Real, T. (2002). How Can I Get Through To You? Closing the Intimacy Gap Between Men and Women. New York: Scribner. [admittedly very heterocentric, but a good book nonetheless]

Rosenberg, M. Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. Encinitas, CA: Puddledancer Press. [a bit outdated compared to Rosenberg’s more recent emphases, but still a worthy read]


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Posts tagged “Low Sonic Drift

Review – Low Sonic Drift – Shadows of the Titan

Low Sonic Drift’s Shadows of the Titan isn’t a brand new album, it is a few years old but it offers a refreshing sound that is so similar but yet so different. Shadows of the Titan is a heavy mix of stoner metal and doom with some progressive metal parts to it.

After my first listen I wasn’t convinced this was a great album so I decided to listen again and again. It really grows on you after a few listens. It grew on me to the point that I think I have another album that I can turn to when I can’t figure out what I want to listen to. The music is thick. It’s heavy and it’s one of those albums where you’ll find yourself headbanging without realizing it. It’s doomy but really only because of how heavy it is. The progressive parts with the guitar sound great and at times make me think of early prog metal of the 80’s. (more…)


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Tag Archives: Fashion

Fashion, Beauty, Lifestyle – DC Expo

This past weekend, my friends and I attended the Fashion, Beauty, Lifestyle, expo in Washington DC, hosted by DC50. It was a fun event, which showcased products by Stella & Dot, Bebe, Salon Virage (along with many others), and even included a meet and greet with Nigel Barker. Unfortunately, we missed out on the meet and greet, but we did get the chance to browse through designers, watch a “What Not to Wear” type  of event on stage with stylist Monica Bartlett, and watch the fashion show (my favorite event there).

LOOK at those heels!

My favorite dress at the event.

Fashion Show

Monica Bartlett, Stylist tips.

One question that an audience member asked stylist Monica Bartlett was, “Is it okay to wear white after Labor Day?” Her answer was that yes, white is in style after Labor Day, but there are 3 rules.

1) Don’t wear white from head to toe.

2) Mix it up (for ex: wear a white top with dark pants).

3) Try to keep white above the waist.

Of course, there were exceptions to these rules such as, if someone lives on the West Coast where the weather is significantly warmer.

Hope you all enjoyed your weekend!

Trend Alert

August is always an exciting time for the fashion world, as preparations are busily being made for fashion week and fall and winter 2011/2012 color trends are being decided. Surprisingly, color trends for the upcoming colder months (my favorite kind of weather) are anything but typical. Darker colors are out and brighter colors are in.

Colors for Women’s Wear:

Purple, Orange, Red, Maroon, Caramel, Camel, Gold, Teal

Colors for Men’s Wear:

Blue, Camel, Orange, Yellow, Teal, Chocolate

The key to the upcoming seasons is not one specific color, but instead a mixture of different hues – mix and match!

Here’s a dress I found online, that mixes two different colors very well. I couldn’t stop looking at it! I am trying to refrain from buying it…even though the price is amazing.

Spiegel, Colorblock Jersey Dress, $34

David Beckham Underwear Line at H&M

David Beckham is teaming up with H&M and launching an underwear and t-shirt line. The DAVID BECKHAM Bodywear line will launch February 2012. As the face of Emperio Armani underwear, Beckham realized there is a great market for men’s bodywear. With Beckham modeling Armani underwear, the fashion line turned over practically double in profits (I wonder why 😉 ). So many great collaborations to look forward to – Missoni + Target, and now Beckham + H&M!

David Beckham for Emperio Armani

Source: refinery29.com

Mademoiselle Chi Chi – Clothing Made From Milk!

28-year old German scientist and fashion designer Anke Domaske is a genius (at least in my eyes). She creates organic, ecologically friendly clothing, out of…milk! Who would have ever thought that clothing can be made out of milk, and her designs are absolutely beautiful, with simple lines, and a classy feel. I would wear every one of her pieces.

What I so admire about Domaske is her ability to balance science and fashion. She attended university for science, but never gave up her interest in fashion, and eventually combined her two interests, creating Mademoiselle Chi Chi, a clothing line made from milk.

If you are interested in learning more about Anke Domaske and Mademoiselle Chi Chi, here is a link to a video at her latest fashion shoot.

Mademoiselle Chi Chi Red Dress

Source: Gizmodo.com

Alexander McQueen at the Met

After reading all the hype about the Alexander McQueen exhibit at the Met in NYC, I was finally able to go last week! I found the exhibit to be interesting yet…strange, and actually a bit creepy. I know that McQueen has always been known for his controversial and shocking designs, but after seeing a number of them placed side by side at the Met, I was more or so…what’s the word…frightened? I felt like the exhibit really highlighted McQueen’s inner disturbances, which perhaps was part of his popularity. I have realized that while I call myself a “fashionista” I don’t necessarily like the “show” that goes along with fashion. This may be why I love LOFT so much, because the clothing is simple yet chic and available for every-day wear. It is much more practical.

What I was impressed with, was the way McQueen created pieces out of different textures and materials. For example, a beautiful dress out of real feathers or real flowers.

Here are a few photos of some of the designs included in the exhibit…taken before the security guard yelled at me “No photos allowed!” 😉

Feather head-wear.

Red feather dress.

Sea shell dress.

Black jacket and dress.

Asian influenced dress.

Funny Style Quote of the Day

I came across this Oscar Wilde quote today and it really made me laugh. Somebody doesn’t like fashion “trends!”

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”

-Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Hello Friends! I have just been accepted as a Philadelphia Fashion Budget Examiner, on examiner.com. I am so excited about this new opportunity and wanted to share it with all of you. Here’s a link to my Examiner page. If anyone has an interest in writing for the Examiner, do feel free to ask me questions. Hope you are all enjoying the summer and staying cool in this heat. You know it’s hot when my little pup doesn’t even bury himself under the covers at night (that is among his favorite things to do).

Russ Trying To Keep Cool


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Sunday, 29 December 2013

December 16th - Third Sunday of Advent

The Third Sunday of Advent is of semi-double rite. The liturgical colour is violet but today at Mass the ministers wear dalmatic and tunicle rather than planetis plicatis and the organ may be played.

At Vespers yesterday afternoon the antiphons and psalms of Saturday (Pss. 143, 144, 145, 146 & 147) were sung. The chapter, Fratres: Gaudete in Domino semper was of the Sunday. The Office hymn was Conditor alme siderum. The Suffrages were omitted being in Advent. At Compline the Dominical preces were sung.

At Mattins the invitatory is Prope est jam Dominus and the hymn is Verbum supernum. In the first nocturn the antiphons Veniet ecce Rex etc are sung with Pss. 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 & 14. The lessons in the first nocturn are taken from the prophet Isaiah. The first lesson is longer than that found in modern editions and continues until the penultimate sentence of the modern second lesson: justitiam discent habitatores orbis. The second lesson begins Misereamur impio... and continues all through the text of the modern third lesson and beyond: Indulsisti genti Dominie ... murmuris doctrina tua eis. The third lesson is absent from the modern editions and begins Sicut quae concepit... and continues until ... non operiet ultra interfectos suos. (vv. 17 -21). In the second nocturn the antiphons Gaude et laetare etc are sung with Pss. 15, 16 and 17. The lessons are taken from a sermon of St. Leo. These are substantially longer than in the modern editions of the Breviary. The sixth lesson text is completely absent from the modern editions. In the third nocturn the antiphons Gabriel Angelus etc are sung with Pss. 18, 19 and 20. The homily is from St. Gregory's writing on St. John's Gospel. These are the same as those found in the modern editions. A ninth responsory, Docebit nos Dominus, is sung and the Te Deum omitted in the Office of Advent.

At Lauds the antiphons Ecce veniet etc are sung with psalms 92, 99, 62-66, Benedicite and 148-149-150. The hymn is Vox clara ecce intonat. As noted above for Vespers the Suffrages are omitted in Advent.

At Prime the first antiphon from Lauds, Ecce veniet, is sung with the usual Dominical psalms 53, 117, 118(i), 118(ii) and Quicumque. In the short responsory the versicle Qui venturus es in mundum replaces Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris. The Dominical preces are sung. At the other Hours the other antiphons of Lauds are sung in the usual order.

Mass is sung after Terce. The ministers wear violet dalmatic and tunicle rather than folded chasubles. The Gloria in not sung, the second collect is of the Blessed Virgin in Advent, Deus, qui de beate, the third collect Ecclesiae. The Creed is sung, the preface is the Common Preface. As the Gloria was not sung, the dismissal is Benedicamus Domino sung by the deacon facing the altar.

Vespers are of the Sunday. The antiphons Ecce veniet etc are sung with psalms 109, 110, 111, 112 & 113. The Office hymn is Conditor alme siderum. After the collect of the Sunday the Suffrages are omitted. After Benedicamus Domino and its response, Vespers of the Dead are sung. At Compline the Dominical preces are omitted.

Art: Jerome Nadal

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Sunday, 11 January 2015

Taking schools policy out of political control means bureaucracy not better education

We hear it all the time.

A former permanent secretary at the Department for Education, Sir David says there should be no more major changes to the curriculum, qualifications or structural changes to schools during the course of the next Parliament.

He wants an independent body to set long-term policy, separated from the shifting demands of party politics.

This could create a qualifications system that would support a changing economy, he says, arguing that this would include replacing A-levels with a broader, baccalaureate-style exam system.

OK it's schools on this occasion but it could be health, policing, criminal justice or even the economy. In every case the argument for removing politics from the management or administration of a given public service is made by someone who will gain from such a decision. It is the former bureaucrat running a teacher training operation, the former police inspector, a body made up of health professionals and experts, and the assorted grandees of the City along with their house magazine, the Financial Times.

And because we hate politicians (with some justification on occasion) it's easy to nod and agree with the sages, with the experts who tell us that taking the politics out will remove all the bad stuff and will mean that they can create a wonderful system that will do the job just fine.

Except they won't. Trust me on this folks, they won't. It is disingenuous for Sir David Bell, who used to run the Department for Education, to suggest that bureaucrats like him have a fantastic, ready-to-roll system of education just waiting for the politicians to get out of the way. What Sir David wants - and I understand that Labour's excuse for an education spokesman likes this idea - is for an independent body run by him and his mates to replace the current system where we the public have a tiny bit of a say in how the system is run.

Indeed the independent schools body - doubtless called something like Education England - will have a board crammed with Sir David's pals (all pulling down a handy little stipend to top up their pensions) and a Chief Executive on £250,000 a year who will set policy for the long-term. There will be expensive offices in London, a lobbying team and a pleasing round of international trips, conferences and dinners for all those involved. Unfortunately it won't make the slightest iota of difference to schools and, worse, will mean that any semblance of democratic accountability for one of our critical public services is lost. Replaced by know-all folk most of whom are, as is Sir David Bell, responsible for the current mess in the first place.

So long as education is funded through direct taxation we have no real option but for the direction of policy to be in the hands of those people we choose to set policy. We call these people politicians. And politicians sound off about education, about bad schools, lousy teachers and bad management because the people who elect us care quite alot about what happens in schools. So when a school in our patch does well we shout about it and when a school does badly we worry.

If you remove politics from education policy (except do note that you don't actually do this), the result isn't a dramatic change or improvement but stasis.  In reality the moans from Sir David are more about a personal (self-interested) dislike for policy rather than any real conviction that a mystical, politics-free independent body would be any better. Believe me, we in Bradford know about taking politics out of education - it doesn't work.

1 comment:

Jonathan Bagley said...

Very interesting. Illuminating and depressing.


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The Weaving Inn

Home to the knitting world's anti-Finisher. Kind of like the anti-Christ, but with a smaller following.

Saturday, December 30, 2006

Goat Couture

Modeling the very latest in goat fashion, allow me to present that star of the catwalk ...

Wearing a luxurious satin quilted jacket with faux fur collar, Leland is all set for a day grazing on dead tree branches. Notice how the black and white of this smart outfit coordinate perfectly with Leland's natural coloring.

The innovative style of this ensemble has the audience on their feet!

Clearly, another fashion success for the esteemed "designer to the goats", Yves Saint Poulet.

  • At 5:52 PM, Blogger Valerie said…

    Wow. Was that his Christmas present?

    Lucky goat. (Kind of like a lucky duck, but different.)

    Of course if he'd had a Leland sweater you wouldn't even be able to see it.

  • At 5:59 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    It's like Project Runway!!! Only better 'cuz the designer kept the Everyday Goat in mind rather than just creating for those waif-thin model goats...

  • At 3:27 PM, Anonymous Dave Daniels said…

    OH.NO.YOU.DIDN'T. Goat Clothes? They'll be all the rage in France, you know.
    Ok, that makes 6 weird things...
    Happy New Year!

  • At 11:56 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Nice work!!! Your animals are the most stylish I've ever seen!

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The Weaving Inn

Home to the knitting world's anti-Finisher. Kind of like the anti-Christ, but with a smaller following.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire

Making Christmas stuff in September is certainly a bizarre experience. Especially when one lives in California where it is currently 86 degrees.

Yeah, yeah, another F.O.. I'm not crazy about this one but it'll do. Each time I make one of these monstrosities I learn something new. Like ... one should do the Fair Isle ALL the way down the leg or it "flares" a bit. And if your instinct tell you, "Hey, you're starting the toe too early", you should probably listen to it.

I do like the blue and the white together although do you think it looks more like a Hanukkhah stocking? I don't think they have such things though. Perhaps I could start a new trend in Judaism - sort of breathe new life into an old religion. Or perhaps I should just stick to the knitting.

  • At 6:25 PM, Blogger trek said…

    I think it's kinda cute.

  • At 6:49 PM, Blogger Sheepish Annie said…

    Nuthin' wrong with having a blue Christmas. I like blue! Nice work, there.

  • At 8:57 PM, Blogger Valerie said…

    I'm Jewish and admit to feeling cheated that I never got a Christmas stocking fulla goodies. So yah, why not?

  • At 3:40 AM, Blogger Julie said…

    I like the blue & white. Great work.

  • At 1:47 AM, Blogger catsmum said…

    I like the effect of the blue and white - very White Christmassy :]

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