It Came To Pass
Posted: June 19, 2026 Filed under: Chronicles of a First Time Parent | Tags: jacob-needleman, jay-local-14 2 Comments
Whereas it is written, “In the beginning was the word” so our homeschool began with words. For our Language Arts class, I was fortunate to hire the Magister, a scholar of Greek and Latin, who has taught all ages Latin and English, and, to adults, the crafts of grammar, logic and rhetoric – the essence of writing. He agreed to teach my son.
The Magister began, in September, introducing the three elements of language: words, phrases and clauses. “We combine these three elements, along with a few marks of punctuation, to build sentences and express our thoughts, no matter how simple or complex.” My son learned the difference between subject and predicate, between verb and noun; fragments as different from sentences simple, complex, or compound. Structure and method applied, the Magister lead my son through the maze of meaning, made clear.
My son was challenged to use a dictionary – not online, but the plain, old fashioned, heavy tactile book taken off the shelf – both to define words and to find synonyms of words. My son was taxed to handwrite his answers, using pencil on paper, like generations who have gone down this path, before him.
Deeper into the maze, he learned that words express ideas using syntax, grammar, and the eight parts of speech. Nouns are common or proper, and never the two shall meet. Verbs have objects, but so too prepositions, and the same word can be a preposition or an adverb; preposition denotes relationship, while an adverb answers to “where, when, how, how much, why.”
Many verbs take an object, but some do not, thus are intransitive. There are verbs of existence, like the verb to be, which takes no object, thus being is subject only, no separation, meaning that all life is one. The study of words leads to questions of being.
And so, deeper still into the maze of meaning, my son was lead by the Magister. The Greek alphabet was memorized, because its non-Roman characters afford the young mind a sense that symbols are arbitrary yet infinitely powerful tools for expression; mark making is meaning making.
My son was challenged to memorize poetry, and he also learned to read the Koine Greek Gospel of John, chapter 1, verse 1, a text essential to the corpus of Occidental culture. Some argue that culture is being replaced; my son, then, shall know well both its core belief and the larger truth that all people are created equal. Ever deeper the magister went, and my son followed, showing up always prepared for class, tete-a-tete, no hiding in the back of the classroom. Homeschool is a one-on-one intellectual chess match. Seeds have been planted.
Now in the 10th month, we bring all this together, Language Arts and Humanities, in a final summative essay on the topic “What is a Person?” This topic arose around 1 May – May Day, the International Workers’ Day – when I drove north to Jay, Maine, the site of a vicious labor strike where International Paper Corporation – a fictive person – laid low and cut down without regret the real persons residing in Jay. If “what is a person?” is abstract, paper mills on the Androscoggin River Valley are specific, tangible and real. Knowledge can be general and abstract, but specific particularity makes it concrete. Jay, Maine has been our exhibit A.
My son learned the concept of an outline, structure that gives form to thought, and so we began. Each week’s Friday “art farm” post has been my son’s Monday weekly reading. The Magister assigned an essay by the philosopher Jacob Needleman, a commencement address given to high school students, “The One Great Question.” From the library I checked out the book Pain on Their Faces: Testimonies on the Paper Mill Strike, Jay, Maine, 1987-1988 published 1998 by the Jay-Livermore Falls Working Class History Project. My son read his primary source materials.
As a carpenter, of the trades and not a professional, I used an analogy to help my son understand our process: imagine we are at the lumber yard, going through a stack of 2x4s to find those few straight and true, and reject the curved, twisted or split: many are culled, few are chosen. The 2x4s are the noun phrases which define the heading, subheading, and smaller ideas, together, all of which frame the logical argument.
The outlines having been crafted, my analogy changed to a mason laying bricks. The noun phrases, fragments, were now substantives, like bricks held by the mortar of grammar and punctuation. The outline gave clarity in forethought, allowing the writing to proceed clearly. In fact, a mason worked next door laying stone, building a wall as my son built his argument.
Here then, is my son’s final summative essay, a work not possible in September but 10-months into this holy experiment, his written word has been accomplished. We have climbed a mountain, scaled a wall, and at the top, his view is both honest and expansive.
What is a Person?
Throughout my life, I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about the question, “What is a person?” And although it might seem like a simple answer, it’s far (and I mean like FAR) from simple. To start to understand this question, we need to break it down. A good way to do that is by making an outline. We can start with the topic of “what is a person?” Then make two more groups from the topic which are called the “real persons,” and the “fictive person.”
A “real person” is pretty much exactly what it sounds like; a living and breathing thing. Plato described them as “featherless bipeds,” Aristotle said a “thought bearing political animal,” and the Buddhists went with a suffering self – the burden bearer – experiencing birth, death and rebirth.
A “fictive person,” is (in legal terms) a non-human entity – like a corporation – with legal rights, duties, and responsibilities, legally distinct from the humans who manage or own them. The word “Corporation” is derived from the Latin corpus which translates to the word body.
In 1987, in the small town of Jay, Maine, the International Paper Company (a.k.a IP) ran into a problem, but little did they know, it would shape labor history forever. IP was doing quite well, their profits having risen 33%, and their net sales up 42% to $7.8 billion. Because that clearly wasn’t enough, IP started cutting wages, high monthly health insurance payments, stopping double-time pay on Sundays, and cutting all holidays (which includes Christmas). So, Jay Local 14 (the union they were all in) went on strike. They would form picket lines, a long row of strikers standing outside of the main entrance road and gates to the mill, holding picket signs.
This is a perfect example of the fictive person against the real person. Unfortunately, after a 16 month long strike, IP broke Local 14. The strikers were permanently replaced with scabs (scabs were workers that chose to go back to work instead of continuing the strike with their coworkers). In 2006 the mill was sold. Its waste remains, contaminating the Androscoggin River, known today as “Cancer Valley.” From Rumford downstream, incidences of cancer and illness are well above average, both from the chemicals discharged into the river and the mountains trapping pollutants in the air.
Here is a short story from the book, Pain on Their Faces: Testimonies on the Paper Mill Strike Jay, Maine, 1987-1988, by the Jay-Livermore Falls Working Class History Project, where Janice Brackett, a wife of one of the mill employees, shares her perspective on IP during the strike.
“It was horrible. I had to work two jobs to help keep things going. I hope I don’t see another strike like it. I worked every week at the food bank. We handled a lot of food for the people. At the beginning of the strike, I was on the picket line as often as I could be, no matter what the weather was, but we were there for a good reason. I went on bus trips and caravans near and far and we fought hard. I attended every weekly meeting. I was hard on the picket lines to see those scabs going in and taking our husbands’ jobs. This was all due to IP being greedy.”
Jacob Needleman taught high school philosophy, and his “The One Great Question” was a high school Commencement speech given in 2004, that asked:
“Who am I? …What is man? What is a human being? …What am I? Am I what I am told by my environment? Am I my ethnic identity? Am I my national identity? Am I my sexual identity? Am I my physical characteristics? Am I the opinions which have come into my mind from hearing people speak, from television, from newspapers, from my peers? …This is a great question of the heart…”
He concluded, “In the history of the world, in all the cultures of the world, the search to come in touch with the voice of the great self within, which is sometimes reflected in what we call conscience – the search for that contact requires the support of companions, friends, community.”
“How?” is different from “what?” How should we act? How should we live? How can we connect with “companions, friends, community”? My Mom came across a quote written by Lao Tzu: “Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”
The question “What is a person?” is a surprisingly hard question to answer. The non-philosophical answer (which would have been my answer a few weeks ago) might be something like “skin and bones” (real creative…), but it’s so much more complex. I hope this answered the question at least a bit.
____________________________
School has finished. The solstice is near. Summer is here.
Probably
Posted: June 11, 2026 Filed under: Child Centered Activities, Chronicles of a First Time Parent 3 Comments
It is probable that teaching my son probability by playing Poker is considered morally degenerate, to some.
But then again, consider the society in which he comes of age: total lottery sales exceed $110 Billion per year, sports betting exceeds $166 Billion, while $391 Billion per year in total is spent on games of chance, a roll of the dice. How then to explain that his great grandfather, in 1918, was unable to borrow money to buy a car because auto loans were considered immoral, debt was viewed as a character flaw, cars were for pleasure not a necessity? Probability is a lesson in history and math.
The word “probability” comes from the Latin root probare which means “to test or prove,” while the word itself is derived from the adjective probabilis meaning “plausible, provable, that may be assumed to be believed.” The Roman orator Cicero built an argument upon that word, rejecting the idea that humans could attain absolute, perfect knowledge, he argued that probabilities were far more practical, politically feasible, a means to move the crowd in your favor. In 15th century Middle English the word was linked to legal credibility until it became a mathematical term around 1718.
I teach the mathematical application here at our homeschool. I am of an age that math properly should be taught using a sharpened pencil on lined paper, not online interactive like a game. I purchased a textbook from a local store. It has served us well, except, more than a few times the solutions were wrong. But even that is a teaching moment. “To test, to prove” teaches my son to question actively, not receive passively, the answers of authority. Textbooks, algorithms, and AI are not settled truth. My son needs to learn to roll up his sleeves, match and raise, have skin in the game.
My son did well on the probability chapter, but the textbook referenced playing cards several times; a noteworthy assumption. My son was unable to answer because he had never played cards. He did not know what was being asked. I was dumbstruck! I ran back to that bookstore to buy poker chips and playing cards.
I easily use equations in my carpentry, but teaching the volume or surface area of a dodecahedron, or a quadratic equation challenged me to relearn long-forgotten theorems. Ours is not the blind leading the blind, but more like the French proverb, “”Au royaume des aveugles, les borgnes sont rois” (“In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed men are kings.”)
“Papa,” my son’s Grandfather, on the other hand, is the rare bird who flies high in the world of pure mathematical truth. A PhD in Physical Chemistry/Theoretical Physics, in his first published paper, in 1977, he announced “a very fundamental conceptual error present in the traditional formulation of the entropic force between the ends of a single Gaussian macromolecule.” In other words, the classical theory of the academy was wrong.
His pioneering “Entropic approach to Brownian movement” was published in 1980 in the American Journal of Physics, and is considered the grandfather of modern Brownian entropic force modeling. In Brownian motion a particle’s movement is entirely random, but, connecting pure geometry and probability to thermodynamics, he showed that by measuring the probability distribution of a particle’s movement, there is a measurable intrinsic entropic force.
In his 2001 paper “Entropic Elasticity of Weakly Perturbed Polymers” Papa reasoned:
The probability of occurrence of an end-to-end separation r (r =|r|) for such a chain is described by r2P(r), where P(r) is the normalized field-free end-to-end distribution function, b3π−3/2exp(-b2r2) for r << Na.
From r2P(r) one may determine the standard deviation or dispersion (σ o) in r and compare it with the average value of r for a freely orienting chain not subject to an external force. σ ο 2 = <r2>o – (<r>o)2 = .23/b2. The absence of an external force is denoted by the subscript o. The result is:
σ o/<r>o = .42
Hard pressed to grasp that, my probability teaching centers on the mathematical truth:
________n!________
C ( n, k ) = k! ( n – k )!
Where n = 52 cards in the deck, k = the number of cards in the hand, and ! = the factorial function, which for 5 card stud is (5x4x3x2x1). My son’s probability of drawing any one specific hand is 1 out of 2,598,960. Steep odds, and so we began. I taught him to shuffle, to deal the cards, and the value of chips. “Applied theory” is my approach both to life as to probability; math lives at the intersection of intuition and calculation.
In poker, as in life, the odds of getting nothing are high, almost 50-50, but more precisely 0.9953015 : 1. One pair is an everyday occurrence, 1.36477 : 1, while a flush – the basic kind, neither a straight nor a royal – comes in at 507.8019 : 1, until at the apex, the summa elite, the royal flush has steep odds against, at 649,739 : 1. The unspoken lesson is that rare events can happen, so you should hold out hope.
Our poker playing plan was devilishly clever. My son is of the “anxious generation” also known as “the loneliest generation.” According to the National Social Anxiety Center, 60% of his peers report significant mental health challenges, including social anxiety, which can be paralyzing. Factors driving this spike include pandemic disruptions, consuming social media use, and diminished face-to-face interactions. Our homeschooling did not arise in a vacuum.
My son would prefer not to leave his gaming corner, let alone to leave the house, and so what better pedagogical tool than playing a game where bluffing is strategic, a “poker” face reveals nothing, while watching for “tells” is key. We play the game face-to-face, cards held high like a Maginot wall, each of us huddled behind our defense. In this bounded rule-governed space, interactions are intentional. If anxiety feels inevitable, probability suggests “we can think about this, we can figure the odds, you must play the hand you are dealt.”
We have alternated between the math text book and our game of chance. He does well with the pencil and paper – often doing the calculations in his head – but he beats me at betting more often than not. Poker between two players is less fun than with more, and he yearned to widen the circle.
That is a math lesson all its own. The odds of any one specific hand remain 1 out of 2,598,960 no matter the number of players, but the relative value of a premium hand increases. In our heads-up matches, one pair often wins. But with more players, a single pair will rarely win the pot. That means, mathematically, in a larger group you should bet more aggressively with a strong hand. Bluffing, on the other hand, is less effective with a larger group. With more people playing, the probability is high that someone else holds the premium hand, and anyone player can call your bluff, which means the odds of everyone else folding is highly improbable.
My son asked his sister and his Mother, the Goddess, repeatedly to join us, but somehow that never worked out; between work and school they are quite busy. So we invited my son’s former classmate, a close friend from before the pandemic, to come over to our house. He agreed. My son was ready with his chips and cards.
His classmate, of keen eagle eye and sharp mind, taught us to play black jack. Black jack, the most widely played casino banking game in the world, is significantly less social than 5-card stud. Blackjack unfolds between one player and the dealer, its focus only the math to reach 21. Quiet pervades, conversation is limited.
My goal inviting the “eagle eye” to our house was not math but socialization. My agenda not so hidden, nor did I intend it to be, I wanted my son to engage in play. What unfolded was exquisite and rare, more precisely a probability of 1 in 229,000 (.00044%), or maybe it was 1 in 401,138, or then again 1 in 1,153,500. My son and I are still calculating the odds.
My son dealt the cards, and we played several rounds, chatting away amicably. The pots increased in size, the chips moved back and forth. We played 5-card stud with three draws and betting rounds per hand. On the last hand, the Eagle Eye began to bet aggressively. I matched and raised. My son held back. Laying down his cards, all black, all spades, Queen, Jack, 10, 9 and a 4, the Eagle Eye smiled and quietly, confidently said, “Flush.” He was one card away from the Royal Flush.
I had an Ace up my sleeve: all black, all clubs, Ace, Jack, 7, 4, 3. Not royal, rather commoner, but Ace high beats Queen. Incredulously we gazed at the cards.
Quietly my son is coming to realize that anxiety is not an absolute, but probably, with love, devotion and surrender, he can find his way out of the gauntlet of his generation.
_____________________________________
Human, Flourishing
Posted: June 5, 2026 Filed under: Chronicles of a First Time Parent, What is an Art Farm 1 Comment
What to the Romans was named Terra, to the Greeks Gaia, astronomically is classified as Sol III – the third planet from the Sun being an ocean world that harbors life with liquid surface water. Given a mass of (5.97217±0.00028)×1024 kg rotating at a breakneck speed of 1,037 miles per hour at its equator, here at 43° 38′ 29″ N / 70° 14′ 27″ W a real person coming of age learns about the materiality of life.
With the Mother Tree, he studies soil, more precisely “applied biogeochemistry,” starting with applied chemistry through field work and kitchen-based experiments. For the past eleven weeks he has examined soil, taken samples from multiple sites. He is learning that specificity is an essential attribute of knowledge.
Our backyard, for example, for centuries was the dumping ground for the real persons who have lived in this “Big House-Little House-Back House-Barn,” the classic New England farmhouse from the 1800s. Long before municipal waste collection, the people would toss their detritus “out back.” Their attention was focused on their vegetable fields growing in front of the house, so the back yard was left untended, a waste heap. We endlessly dig up broken glass, as well as a perfectly intact coffee mug, empty bottles of elixir, and other assorted sundry items.
My son has been digging holes out back, to study the soil, which is not “dirt” but something wonderfully complex, biotically rich, far more specific and particular. Of the Hollis Fine Sandy Loam variety, the soil here is classified by the Natural Resources Conservation Service as prime farmland. This 200-year old farmhouse was not built with heavy equipment pushing fill, and then landscaped with commercial sod grown on some industrial farm a few states away; original to this site, our soil is a biological archive of hundreds or thousands of years.
As guided by the Mother Tree, my son has used transects to mark a section of the back yard and drawn a map. He dug holes 6” deep and, having taken soil samples from five sites, studied their percolation rates, to understand compaction and composition. This hole is not like that hole; this hole percolates 1” per 3 minutes while that hole percolates 1/16” per 3 minutes. “Why is that?” we asked.
He made a quadrat – a standardized sampling frame, a window into place – then threw it randomly within the marked off section, to isolate specific areas, to systematically count, identify and measure the abundance, or lack, of plants and bio-mass. “What is that?” we asked.
On the space-time continuum, my son, a real person, during this academic year has been constructing a mental framework – structure and method, applied – to learn about place, one specific place, this yard, where he is becoming an adult real person. The Mother Tree has helped him to “think well,” not by locked logic but creatively.
Cynefin is a word among the Welsh people, with no direct translation into English. Literally it can mean “habitat” or “familiar place” but at a deeper level it describes an integral sense of belonging, the deeply intertwined factors of being, heritage, stories and traditions shared within family and community. In my teaching, emotional connection lies at the core of cynefin. This treasure trove among real persons, AI’s Ziggurat of the cloud lacks, entirely. The young real person growing here, on the Hollis Fine Sandy Loam of this art farm, accrues daily, slowly, a specific knowledge, grounded in emotional intelligence, that will become his identity.
Our quest to define “what is a person?” expanded this week to include “what is place?” which lead us to have a chat with his Cousin, the Professor of Law. I had expected to discuss the legal fiction of corpus fictum but the Cousin took the conversation in an entirely different, magnificent, direction.
Me: So, let’s begin with the definitions of a person: do you remember Plato’s?
My son: Uhhh…the chicken…with no feathers?
Me: correct. And Aristotle…?
My son: (silence)
Me: The animal…the political animal?
My son: Right.
Me: We also had the Sanskrit and the buddhist…with materiality shared among all of the definitions. Materiality seems basic to personhood. Our bodies.
Cousin: But is that a distinction of kind or form? I have a colleague here who studies bio-ethics, which is ethics at the edge of humanity. For example, genetically engineered monkeys replacing their genes with human genes to give birth to humans. Or pigs used to grow human organs.
My son: What do they feed it?
Cousin: Great question. Would a monkey with human ovaries and a womb need human food? To define humans as material is not precise. A person with a mechanical heart – a pacemaker – is still a person. This is a logical puzzle. A pig with a human organ is not human, but a human with a mechanical heart is still a human. So the distinction is not only material but form defines a human. Form = ends. Do you know the Greek word telos? It means what is something pointed towards? What is its ultimate aim? So, what is the end purpose in Aristotle’s definition?
My son: (pause, leans back in his chair) As simple as politics?
Cousin: Politics, yes, but what does he mean? (Pause) A “polity” = a political society.
Me: I should say, the words are derived from the Greek “polis” which means “city.” Metropolis is a city area. Metropolitan Transit is the bus line serving the city. The political animals live in cities, some organization, which is political.
Cousin: Aristotle’s definition of a political society is “a free people coming together to debate how ought we to order our lives together?” So what makes us distinctively human? What is the key word there?
My son: “Free” ?
Cousin: What about “free” makes us different from other animals?
My son: Well…humans are more developed, we have more opportunities.
Cousin: Is there a difference between human and animal? Is the difference of degree or kind? A categorical difference? Think back to “free”. Is there a kind of opportunity that we have that is different from animals?
My son: Humans have…I think about this some times, “why are humans the most developed? Why don’t guinea pigs drive cars?” We have more opportunities because we are more developed. We have choices.
Cousin: “Choosing”…that is huge.
My son: (leans back in his chair) Our dog has choices in…maybe this is too broad…she can decide to eat or not, she can go in the yard BUT we can choose other foods but she cannot. Maisie gets only one kind of food. She cannot communicate – she can bark but not talk. So it is harder for her to communicate. We make decisions for her. An animal in the wild has more choices. Domesticated animals…we make more choices for them. We make the major decisions.
Cousin: So you tie freedom with communication. Aristotle used the word “debate” in his definition. Let’s push further. What is the one word that we confront here, that is the key in his definition: “a free people coming together to debate how ought we to order our lives together?”
My son: (pause)
Me: We know we are talking about people… we have discussed “free” the adjective. And “debate” the verb. The key term is not going to be the pronouns “we” or “our” so…
My son: It is not going to be “together” because animals live in a pack. (Pause). “Ought?”
Cousin: What do we mean by “ought?”
My son: You “should”
Cousin: What kind of judgment is that? If I say “you ought to give a dollar” or “you ought not hit someone” ?
My son: You are proposing an idea?
Cousin: The “ought” has a meaning that begins with the letter M…
My son: Is “ought”…(pause)…a “mandate”?
Cousin: A dog could have a mandate. It needs to eat. What kind of a judgment…what is the basis for saying that?
My son: (pause)
Cousin: The word is “moral”
My son: Ohhhh!!!
Cousin: It is distinct to humans about morality. A dog might make a mess but that is not immoral. Humans as moral is the through line. Morality gives weight to the decisions that we make. It is ordering our lives together – so do packs of animals but the human form of animal is different due to the moral element. We are not only biological but a human flourishing. We are moral agents. How does that sound to you?
My son: (pause) I think I understand the topic better.
Cousin: Do animals have morality?
My son: I think animals – well, I don’t know how they process thoughts – but in the wild animals do not think of a moral question. They need to survive. I have heard that dog squeaky toys = the sound of an animal suffering. Dogs like that sound. But humans…do all humans have a moral capacity? Yes, but some are more aware than others. Not all vegans but many see that as a moral issue. Some vegans eat that way for health, but some as morally wrong. Others have no concern. All humans have some amount of morality, but it is stronger for some people.
Me: Do you remember last year we discussed Plato and the virtues: the good, the true and the beautiful; the ultimate divine reality. We are touching on that here. I have been thinking about compassion and here we talk about morality. How are those different? Morality can imply a guilt and remorse.
Cousin: Once we have the idea of morality as a defining characteristic then “what do we mean by morality?” There are three basic types:
- Utilitarianism: our goal is to maximize pleasure for the greatest number of persons
- Ontological reality: we live by a set of rules (as an architecture of the mind, we perceive the unknowable by imposing innate rules and categories)
- Virtue ethics: our purpose is to cultivate virtues (not by rules or consequences but by character, itself). Compassion is a virtue.
Me: So utilitarianism would be “homo economicus” – real persons as narrowly selfish agents driven entirely to maximize utility and personal gain.
Cousin: Correct. Ontological would be Immanuel Kant. He established rules for how we think. For the “Virtue Ethics” Aquinas said there are 7 cardinal virtues.
Me: “Cardinal” here means “primary”
My son: Like the cardinal directions…
Me: …north, east, south and west. Correct.
Cousin: Aquinas said there are three theological virtues: faith, hope and charity plus Aristotle’s four virtues: fortitude, temperance, prudence, justice. Justice means that everyone should get their due. Fortitude means courage. Temperance means self-restraint. What is compassion? A blend of charity and justice. Compassion is a virtue ethic, a morally flourishing person cultivating virtues. Any virtue like compassion is a secondary…the cardinal virtues are like the palette used to blend the other virtues.
* * * *
As our year draws to a close, we plan a summative project that will include art-making; the “cardinal virtues like the palette” is perfect. The act of making is particular, manifest and specific; the artist must choose, which mirrors precisely the action of moral agency.
Our definition of a person expands to become “a thought bearing biped mammal, not only biological but a human flourishing as moral agent, with consciousness of purpose, meaning, intuition and connection.” We go deeper into our understanding of persons and place, the specificity of being, further from the delusion of Ziggurats in the AI cloud.
Karma
Posted: May 1, 2026 Filed under: Chronicles of a First Time Parent, consciousness 2 Comments
Spring Break 2026 was, for me, no vacation but a grueling gauntlet, repairing wrongs, like a cat on a hot tin roof. The Quaker school where I work has its ongoing lawsuit, and the roofer – whom I shall call the Industrialist – had offered to provide an in-kind repair, at no cost. The quid pro quo was a release from all future claims. The lawyers worked hard on that language of release, and once done the work was allowed to proceed.
We agreed to make the repair when the school was on break, no children around. I hired carpenters to handle the non-roof repairs, plus a structural engineer to opine on the condition of the framing lumber, and a Forensics Expert to advise overall. My role is to oversee everything, and give final approval; redundancy was built into the plan.
The school was built to passivhaus standards – the highest voluntary standard of energy efficiency – and was the first passivhaus commercial building in the State of Maine, and the third passivhaus school in the nation. Built in 2015, the school was a model of hope for the future, but now the roof leaks; “The Audacity of Hope” once was a bestseller but today the “Art of the Deal” reigns, and when it rains water pours into the building.
The roof is covered in metal, beneath which is 6” of foam insulation. The roof should be dry, but 80% moisture content has saturated the foam insulation. Passivhaus construction is air tight, so once water gets in, it has no means to dry out; in other words, the building slowly rots from within, which will lead to black mold.
For the spring break, the Goddess and our daughter had gone to New Orleans, leaving my son and me at home, alone. On Monday morning, while my son slept, I was at work early when the Industrialist and his crew showed up.
Our agreement was to open four panels of the metal roofing – about 6 feet wide – and replace all wet insulation. But that section was so thoroughly saturated that when the foam was removed the wood sheathing was slick with water. It glistened in the sunlight. In stunned silence, we stood.
The Industrialist curtly told his crew to remove the entire roof. On the ground below, the carpenters waited at their trucks, nothing to do until their turn to remove the wet sheathing and see what lay beneath. And there was I, leading the charge, alone on behalf of the school. Neither a Quaker nor an employee, I am a part-time independent contractor and could have quit long ago. This task so far exceeds the basic maintenance I was hired to do, but when work and life are viewed not as transactional but relational, I chose to stay the course. Such is my karma.
I speak of karma not in the yoga-centric sense where present actions cause future results but from the Sanskrit root “kr” which means a movement (r) within space (k). “Kr” ‘does’ ‘works’ and is ‘action’ itself. Thus, karma ‘makes.’ Karma ‘creates.’ I came into the job as a carpenter, which is one who moves, while making, creating the built space.
This root definition of karma was entirely new to me, shared by my soul brother, after he saw photos from the work. His “Kr” lead me back to the Bhagavad Gita, which, over 5,000 years old, is an epic work of moral science, ethical duty and balance. Ghandi said, “Gita is not only my Bible or my Koran, it is mother…my ETERNAL MOTHER.”
Gita verse 3.19 states, तस्मादसक्तः सततं कार्यं कर्म समाचर।असक्तो ह्याचरन्कर्म परमाप्नोति पूरुषः।। १९ ।। which translates as, “Therefore, without being attached to fruits of activities, one should act as a matter of duty, for working without attachment, one attains the Supreme.”
That private school has been a source of tremendous experience, powerful relationships. Early in my tenure I arranged a donation of Peter the Polar Bear to the Pre-K class. I had helped build Peter, one of seven sea monsters from a Public Art exhibit. When the exhibit ended, the maker sought new homes for the sea monsters. The Quaker school welcomed Peter, gathered in circle for an assembly, after which the Pre-K cherubs lead Peter out of the Meeting Room, down the hall to his new forever home. I lead that march.
Another time I sat in circle among the 7-8 grade students with an elder, who, in 1965 for the Committee for Non-Violent Action, helped coordinate the Selma to Montgomery Marches. The elder gave voice, in the first person, to Martin Luther King’s presence and the enduring role of civility and non-violent civil disobedience.
And later, when those 7-8 grade students studied the Holocaust, I sat in circle again to share the story of my son’s Great-Grandfather and Great-Great-Grandmother, Jewish in Austria 1939; he, the Great-Grandfather, was persecuted but escaped on the last flight out, while she, the Great-Great-Grandmother, was exterminated. The official letter from the Ministry of Social Welfare, Repatriation Department – Tracing Section states she was deported “to Terezin (Theresienstadt) on June 20th, 1942, and from there to: Auschwitz (Poland) on December 15th, 1943.” The number of her transport was Dr – 1490, the official correspondence signed “For the Minister” with a counter signature vouching “For the Correctness.” Age 74 at the time of her transport, below the signatures, the certificate states, “Notice: Persons more than 50 years of age did not return.”
Dark is the cauldron of hate; our duty is to bear the light, without attachment. Having borne witness, my relation with the school grew profoundly deep, and so I stayed to fight on their behalf, to do battle over a roof and its design, even on Spring Break, when everyone else was on vacation.
The work last week was grueling. By Friday it was clear to a man, that all of us wanted to be anywhere else but there. One of the carpenters looked me in the eye and said, “The next time you need to remove plywood, don’t call me.” Forearmed, I replied swiftly, “You know I was thinking I never want to see you again!” Laughter broke the tension. We got back to work.
Ours is a testosterone-driven age of dominance, where the transactional drives pursuit of rational self-interest. The relational is different, a compassionate path which is the core both of the Homeschool Academy and my karma, which is how I teach my son.
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Meanwhile, Gaia pushes up and starts go down, into the ground. We weed the beds. The growing season begins.
The Path Not Taken
Posted: April 24, 2026 Filed under: Chronicles of a First Time Parent, consciousness | Tags: John Dewey 2 Comments
The local school that my son does not attend is $8.4 Million in debt, needs to cut 70 positions (including 30 teachers), plans to close and possibly to sell one of the Elementary schools, all just to hold the property tax increase to 6%. Two years ago, the School Department opened a new state-of-the-art $70 Million Middle School.
Going from state-of-the-art to layoffs in two years is a frightening whiplash, and you might wonder if the local public school is a nurturing work or learning environment these days. No longer in that school system, my son’s path not taken, it is edifying to compare our curriculum to the public school system; what are the “pros” and what are the “cons?”
One hallmark of the public school system is the “No Child Left Behind” Act, signed into law in 2001 by the Second Patrician of Kennebunkport, Maine. “We’re gonna spend more money, more resources, but they’ll be directed at methods that work,” he growled, “Not feel-good methods. Not sound-good methods. But methods that actually work.” Throwing money at the problem proved a futile waste.
The No Child Act was reviled and despised by teachers and parents for its emphasis upon standardized tests. “Teaching to the test” brought draconian penalties for schools that fell behind. The focus on math and reading left less time for science, history, music and the arts. Recess was cut back. To avoid sanctions, some states lowered their definition of “proficiency.” The Act drove the expansion of charter schools, further draining money from public schools, especially those carrying a debt load for buildings and infrastructure.
“The skinny kid with a funny name” President changed the law in 2015 – the Every Student Succeeds Act – that reduced testing time and gave the States more control over accountability. But regardless of the metric, math and reading levels continue to drop; as of 2024 “The Nation’s Report Card” shows only 22% of high school seniors demonstrate “proficiency” in math and 35% in reading. The system seems flailing.
Homeschooling once seemed out of the question, but when COVID struck during my son’s 1st grade, we were forced to homeschool. He returned to the public school for years 3 and 4, but then abruptly began Middle School in the 5th grade. Nationwide, COVID brought increased rates of inattention, anxiety, depression, and behavioral changes such as opposition and aggression. For my son, the classroom situation became unbearable by the 6th grade and so – at his request – we launched this holy experiment.
Our great unknown is “compared to what?” Am I preparing my son to succeed in life? And “What is success? What is our standard of proficiency?” Here at an art farm we value emotional intelligence more than sheer mental horsepower. Too many are the stories of brilliant minds – MENSA even – who struggle with mental health issues, left unaddressed. The IV league is not for us. I value honesty more than politeness; I prefer to live close to the ground. I believe, in fact, the purpose of life is healing, not the acquisition of assets, honors, or accolades. I may be in the minority, but not silent.
We are required to submit an annual assessment, which is handled by Our Aristotle, a State of Maine Certified Teacher, who works in the public school system, while pursuing a double Masters in Education and Social Work. A remarkably perceptive young man, he was the student teacher for my son’s 5th grade class. They have worked together in a classroom, as well as via the internet. His insights are invaluable. He speaks clearly with my son. One of his gifts is that he is ADHD.
His students are of the “Anxious Generation” and the data are chilling: 20% of US adults ages 18 – 25 report high levels of anxiety; for the period 2010 through 2022 Emergency Room visits for nonfatal self-harm among teens ages 10 – 14 spiked 311% for girls and 171% for boys, while suicide rates for the same age group increased 117.4% for girls and 66.5% for boys. The system is failing, horrifically.
Our Aristotle, who works on the front lines of the Public School System, explained to me, “Relationships are key. The system gets in the way of relationships because it is focused on output, on tests, on metrics. That does not mean you cannot get a good education in the System, but anxiety makes it harder to learn in the System; to thrive there you need to ignore the influence of the negative teachers. Individual teachers do care about education but the system values output.”
The relational approach is based upon the attachment theory of how infants and children form relationships. Developed in the 1960s, the idea is that infants need a strong and secure relationship with at least one caregiver to provide the security and protection for normal emotional development. Absent a secure nurturing environment, children develop as Anxious-Preoccupied, Dismissive-Avoidant or Fearful-Avoidant. Our Aristotle explains, “Attachment is the blueprint for how you relate to others. It can change over time but change is hard fought. Public school becomes a matter of survival if there is a strong attachment to the parents.” The antithesis of the Tiger Mom; attachment bolsters the sense of self to provide deep rooted courage and self-reliance to push back against social norms, opening to the vulnerability of a different path.
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics), our Aristotle argues, is about output, training for high income jobs producing more output in pursuit of the ever expanding Gross Domestic Product. The Second Patriarch of Kennebunkport admitted as much, shortly after the trauma of September 11, telling the country, “Fly and enjoy America’s great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.”
“The goal of education,” Our Aristotle continues, “is for kids to transcend us, not to focus on output. They need to learn what good and bad is; the purpose of education is to create a society in which ‘we the people’ can think critically to fight back against oppression. Public education is for all, not for the royals.”
The key to this goal is reading and writing. STEM topics are helpful, but, to Our Aristotle, are meaningless without a solid grounding in words, an understanding of language and how the mind frames thoughts, in order to comprehend what is virtue. The ability to think critically is, he says, the key to the fulfilling life.
John Dewey, a foundational American philosopher known as the “father of progressive education,” advocated against the rigid rote memorization of the Gilded Age in favor of child-centered experiential learning. He viewed schools as vital democratic communities preparing children to live well and gain skills to contribute to the greater good.
In My Pedagogic Creed, written in 1897, Dewey notes that “to prepare [students] for the future life means to give him (sic) command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities….education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction.” Our Aristotle explains, “School should be about helping people to become critical thinkers who can create their own knowledge of the world. Because we are all inherently good, if we are able to direct our own learning, we’ll naturally come to see the world through a pro-social way. I think that kids go down the “wrong” path because they feel totally disengaged with their learning, and they feel disengaged from their learning because school is mainly about compliance.”
In The Child and the Curriculum, published in 1902, Dewey advocated for the child’s relationship to the subject matter because the relational allows the student to link the information to prior experiences, deepening the connection with new knowledge. Dewey opposed a curriculum focused on data and facts with the student as passive recipient, where “the child is simply the immature being who is to be matured; he is the superficial being who is to be deepened.”
Our Aristotle challenges the authoritative model where educators are the experts, “An educator should be a coach for the students’ own journey in teaching themselves… connecting current learning to previous learning makes it relevant rather than [some] nebulous piece of information that they need to learn because we said so…. many times in school I was forced to learn something in order to perform well on an exam, but I didn’t retain any of it because it seemed like “school” stuff…[the goal is] to meaningfully engage in my world which, in adulthood, becomes bridged with the broader social world.”
Ever deeper we go, our meditation on the purpose and process of education.
https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/research/the-evidence
The Page, part 2
Posted: April 17, 2026 Filed under: Chronicles of a First Time Parent 1 Comment
Bitter is our national divide and debate over rights; like sharp toothed dogs we gnaw on our prey, the Amendments 1st, 2nd, and 14th to name the more frequently challenged three among the twenty seven. Discussion of civic responsibility, meanwhile, seems held in an empty auditorium where few if any attend; that yoke not willingly assumed in this age when might makes right and dominance has become a defining trait.
On the day, however, my Daughter was Page on the floor of the State of Maine Senate, debate was vigorous between rights and responsibility. The topic was LD 1822, the Maine Online Data Privacy Act, which fundamentally addressed the 4th Amendment, defining “reasonable expectations of privacy.” The choice was between the responsibility of individual privacy versus the rights of business using digital data to target market to consumers, and minors, in Maine.
LD 1822 has been the most heavily lobbied bill this year. The Chamber of Commerce aggressively challenged it, which mirrored a trend nationally. More than $1.1 Billion has been spent since the 2024 election by Big Tech, including Meta, Amazon, and Google parent Alphabet, as reported by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.
There is no single comprehensive federal policy for digital privacy. A few disparate regulations – for health care (HIPPA), finance (GLBA) and Children’s Online Privacy (COPPA) – have been made law, but those were written almost 30-years ago. The US Government Accountability Office reports, “The collection or use of personal information by the federal government is governed primarily by two laws…But there is no overarching federal privacy law that governs the collection and sale of personal information among private-sector companies. There is also no federal statute that gives consumers the right to learn what information is held about them for marketing purposes and who holds it.” Upon the states falls the responsibility to protect consumers.
Our day on the Senate floor saw LD 1822’s final vote take place. The law was written to exceed the requirements of other states, by imposing stricter data minimization (to collect less) and stronger limitations on data sharing (to share less). The “accept all cookies” question gives companies unrestricted permission to track, store, and sell user data for targeted advertising. Debate was vigorous.
Anne Carney, a strong proponent, and the Senator who invited my Daughter to serve as Page, opened up the debate. She commented the bill has been 6-years in development, the financial impact fell substantially to large corporations, much less to family owned businesses, and that Massachusetts is considering a similar law.
An Honorable Senator stood to counter, “Massachusetts is never smart to follow. A bad idea gets bad results.” He acknowledged he neither understood nor used “the Facebook thing,” but, as the owner of a vegetable stand in the Penobscot region, assured the floor that his Son-in-Law had said the law would be bad for their family business.
Carney regained the floor: “The law protects children from predators. Who benefits?” rhetorically, she asked, “not the small Maine businesses. The data brokers are unrestrained.” She quoted a Reuters special report from November 2025, “Meta internally projected…10% of its overall annual revenue – or $16 billion – from advertising for scams and banned goods…fraudulent e-commerce and investment schemes, illegal online casinos, and the sale of banned medical products.” She concluded, “This is an abject failure of the Feds.”
The Penobscot farmer, armed with opinions but no facts, regained the floor to argue this law was “a 1st Amendment issue, the language is vague, this is an additional cost to Maine business that will empower out-of-state businesses.” Another Senator gained the floor to read from the very long list of major corporations in the State – LL Bean, included – who strongly opposed the bill. He implored a no vote. Opposition was vocal and strong.
Rick Bennett, the only Independent on the Floor, stood to speak, seeking a compromise, “The bill contains an exemption for not-for-profits, which are a huge employer. The ACLU supports this bill, and they advocate in politics, meaning the bill is imposed on others but not upon themselves.” Bennett called for a vote on a “Movement to Recede to Prepare an Amendment.” Carney stood to challenge, “This is 6-years work! No amendment will help now.” Bennett replied, “The Senator had proposed the not-for-profit amendment, why not another now?” Vote on the Movement to Recede failed 14 in favor and 19 opposed.
A meeting was held in private with the President of the Senate, and when Bennett returned, he called a vote to “Table Until Later.” Vote to Table failed 14 in favor and 19 opposed.
Still another meeting with the President, after which a vote for “Indefinite Postponement” was called but that vote also failed 14 in favor and 19 opposed.
On the day my Daughter was an Honorary Page, civic responsibility rather than corporate rights was affirmed as LD 1822 passed the Maine Senate. That evening Senator Carney wrote to me, “I have been involved in this data privacy work in the Judiciary Committee for the past six years, and this iteration is a great bill that is well-equipped to comprehensively protect users online — particularly minors.”
A poet once wrote, “Laws are like sausages. It is best not to see them being made.” Indeed, that is what we experienced on our day and the following 9 days.
The House of Representatives two days later rejected the Senate version because of its exemption for political groups: 70 in favor and 78 opposed.
Four days later, the Senate again voted to approve the bill, 18 in favor and 14 opposed, thus sending the Bill back to the lower chamber.
Three days later, on 9 April, a motion in the House to Recede and Concur with the Senate failed by a vote of 70 in favor and 79 opposed.
Businesses en masse lobbied to oppose the law, arguing undue hardship by limiting their advertising to targeted consumers based on search history, location and other personal data. Most states have passed an industry-favored version, allowing companies to collect data as long as consumers agree to it. But Maine has nothing in place. Corporate interest is unrestricted.
Rep. Rachel Henderson, who originally had proposed a less strict version lamented, “The sad reality is that…when the bill dies tonight, we still walk out of here without a privacy policy.”
Might makes right, until we choose change.
Building Models to a T
Posted: March 13, 2026 Filed under: Chronicles of a First Time Parent 4 Comments
The son of a carpenter, he had an 8th grade education. Then he took night school classes for business and stenography, until at age 17, began work as stenographer for the Pocachontas Fuel Company in Cincinnati, Ohio. He described his boss as “the dean among smokeless coal producers and the local distributors never took decisive action without first consulting him.”
With the Dean’s approval, he moved to the Queen City Coal Company as stenographer and part-time salesman, riding the electric rail lines to make his sales calls. On his first day, he boarded the 6:00 am train and, at the Mers Coal Yard, sold a carload of New River Mine coal on his very first call.
In 1914, at age 19, he paid $675 to buy his first car, a Ford Model T. Ohio had license plates then but no drivers licenses until 1918. His sales territory expanded to southern Indiana towns along the Baltimore & Ohio railroad, and as far east as Columbus, Ohio. Roads were occasionally paved with bricks, but the vast majority of intercity roads were made of gravel, crushed stone or dirt. With a cruising speed of 20 miles per hour, sales calls were an all day odyssey beyond the reach of any telephones.
In June 1914, Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated and the “War to end all wars” began. Our 19-year old hero drove 140 miles – which took more than 7 hours – to Camp Sherman to enlist in the US Army. While at Camp Sherman, Edwin Forbes Glenn, Chief of Staff of the Department of the East, asked, “Can anyone write shorthand?” Our hero, named John, rose his hand and was put to work. Upon completing the task, General Glenn dictated a letter to Newton D. Baker, Secretary of the War in Washington DC whereby he appointed John as his personal secretary with the title of “Army Field Clerk.”
Edwin Forbes Glenn was soon promoted to rank of Brigadier General, and subsequently a two-star Major General as commander of the 83rd Infantry Division. John was stationed in Le Mans, France and became Chief Clerk for the American Military Training Center with duties of entertainment and shipment of troops to the Western front line. During the War, the 83rd Infantry Division supplied over 195,000 officers and enlisted men as replacements in France without seeing action as a complete formation.
John is my son’s Great Grandfather, and this week’s homeschool history topic is coal, automobiles and Detroit. LEGO released, last week, a 1,060 piece kit for a Ford Model T measuring 7.5” high by 11” long by 5” wide, with a fold back fabric roof, split windshield, spoked rim wheels with white rubber tires. The rear trunk opens, the driver’s cab has working steering, the hood panels open to reveal the engine, while the front crank spins the fan. My son pined for that model, which he easily earned laying the tiles. This history lesson became part of the deal.
World War 1 ended with the Armistice of 11 November 1918. John returned from the war and was offered a job with the Atlas Coal Company, his territory Ohio and Indiana. The company’s “Red Comet” coal was mined in Harlan, Kentucky, a center of labor strife between coal mine owners and union workers, especially during the Harlan County War of the 1930s. Harlan County would become the poorest county in the USA.
491 miles north, in Detroit, Henry Ford – also with only an 8th grade education – had been busy during the “War to End All Wars.” The River Rouge Complex was built in 1917 and became the world’s largest vertically integrated factory. During the war it produced 42 Eagle-class antisubmarine patrol boats, more than 38,000 Model T cars, ambulances, and one-ton trucks, 7,000 Fordson tractors, two types of armored tanks, and 4,000 Liberty airplane engines for the Allies.
Henry Ford did not need John’s coal – Henry sourced his own – but John knew that Detroit would need vast amounts of Kentucky coal to boil the water to create the steam, to spin the turbine to activate the generator, to create electromagnetism to drive the industrial machine. John would become known as “The King of Coal” in the Ohio River Valley region. By the late 1940s he was buying the entire output of mines, shipping trainloads of coal north to fire the turbines of Detroit Edison. When held “as goes GM, so goes the US economy,” the King of Coal of the Ohio River Valley was among legions of salesmen shipping upwards of 3.2 Million metric tons per year to Detroit.
Both the King of Coal and Henry Ford had only an 8th grade education. That is pretty much where my son is now. Henry Ford famously “learned by doing” which increasingly seems the direction of our homeschooling. When my son learned small engine repair, the Professor taught electromagnetism. Welding as chemistry has been one facet of our teaching, while even Language Arts teaches that grammar is a construction of thought, a process of assembling words, phrases, sentences to map form to meaning. While “hands on” is a key here, this week’s lesson taught that history has sharp edges.
Cadiz, Ohio, in far eastern Harrison County, is the Appalachian town where Clark Gable was born. For our lesson about coal, Harrison County was a top producing county in Ohio, driven heavily by massive strip mining operations, with total production reaching 55 million tons per year by 1970. Cravat Coal was founded in Cadiz in 1951 by a Yugoslavian immigrant, whom John helped launch, co-signing a $100,000 note to underwrite the business. Over the years John sold their coal, and the company passed to his sons, pistol-packing union-busting coal operators.
John was old school, born in 1895, and always did business on a handshake. But the Puskarich boys used contracts, aggressive tactics, and were less than forthright. By the 1970s they were moving to push John out, and they tricked him to sign away his rights.
My now-deceased Cousin told the story, “I called grandpa in either 1975/76 and asked if I could go with him [to Cadiz]. He said he didn’t think it was such a good idea (probably because he was in the process of being let go, as I understand, they didn’t want to pay him anymore).… We stayed at a little motel. “Big” Mike Puskarich, the President, was larger than life…De Niro in Casino…8 of us sat down for dinner and he ordered “steaks for the table”…let’s just say he wasn’t Opa’s cup of tea…actually more like Rodney Dangerfield…the bill came and Mike pulled out a hundred or two and said “keep the change.” Next morning we went to the coalfields. After lunch Gramps hired the receptionist to check in on me while I watched TV. I remember Gramps coming home rather despondent. We were supposed to stay another day, but late that afternoon we checked out and returned to Cincinnati in his Grand Prix.”
In June of 1980 John wrote to Big Mike and his brothers: “Your $600,000.00 profit on this order alone was five (5) times my total salary for the 10 years I was Vice President, Sales. Your greed in taking $9,000.00 from my salary in 1977 and 1978 and rewarding me with a pension of $4.00 per day was incredible, ungrateful and dishonest. May I remind you it was I who co-signed your $100,000.00 note starting you on the road from rags to riches, and my dedicated services to a net worth of $7,000,000.00 as of December 31, 1976. Shame on you!”
John had been cut out. Five days after sending the letter, he suffered a stroke, from which he never recovered.
This week’s history lesson has many aspects, but at its most basic teaches how complex history can be. Henry Ford was an iconic industrialist, as well as committed to racist and anti-semitic views, including supporting the Ku Klux Klan.
The surface mining in Harrison County, and throughout Appalachia, has caused profound degradation, with barren un-reclaimed land and severe air and water contamination leading to higher risks of lung, respiratory, digestive, and kidney cancers due to exposure to toxins. Harrison County has higher mortality rates compared to both the Ohio state average and the United States national average.
The coal industry was dominant in the Ohio River Valley and Appalachian region from the late 19th century through the 1980s, which is exactly John’s life. At its peak, in 1923, 863,000 were employed in the mines, so more than four generations found steady employment, but at great cost. It is no surprise that an enterprising 8th grade drop out could leverage shorthand into a significant career selling coal. But to his great grandson, of the Zoomer generation, that way of life seems incredibly outdated and dangerous.
Cravat Coal, in fact, has gone out of business. John’s searing experience there brings to mind the proverb “gentle as a dove and wise as a serpent.” Both are needed.
Perhaps the ultimate lesson is that life is not a black and white story, but grey; not simple like the old western cowboy movies, where the good guy, in the white hat, rides into town and wins. Coal powered a war time industrial machine that battled and defeated fascism. America was dominant. That legacy now fades, and the Zoomers come of age in an increasingly complex, deeply interconnected, possibly anti-democratic future.
Red Cabbage Ph
Posted: March 6, 2026 Filed under: Child Centered Activities, Chronicles of a First Time Parent, What is an Art Farm | Tags: Social ecologies 1 Comment
Nettlesting is a Mother Tree, whom I met, almost 30-years ago, in the Fulton Market District on Chicago’s near west-side. When that city was the “Hog Butcher to the World” that neighborhood was home to its meatpacking warehouses, but circa 1998, gentrification spread, and we each occasioned to be there for a Childrens’ art exhibit. She walked up, we started talking.
In 2000, our paths crossed again, in Chicago’s Financial District canyons, on LaSalle Street, outside the once venerable Harris Bank, which now has been merged into the global behemoth BMO. I was preparing to depart for the Philippines – a land of smoke and mirrors – on my oxymoronic quest for “Humanitarian Finance” while she was preparing to WWOOF (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms) in the full sunlight of Southern Australia.
Being a Mother Tree, she is a steward of Gaia who thrives at the vanguard of soil and soul. Like a zen koan, she is not an artist, but one might say she is an eARTheart-ist.
In 2004, she planted six kernels of “Golden Bantam” organic heirloom 1902 sweet corn in a shopping cart and then proceeded to push it around Chicago’s dense urban core. People were confronted by food growing, rather than food as a commodity purchased in a store. “Know your food, know your farmer” came alive on street corners. [Search You Tube for “Field Trip. A cart full of Corn Hit’s the Road.”]
In 2006, Sandor Katz, the NY Times best selling author, profiled her guerrilla gardening in his book “The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved.” By 2012 she was named as one of Utne Reader’s “Twelve Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World.” That now ancient history was prologue, however, to the work she has gone on to pursue.
In 2020 she travelled in the Ecuadorian Amazon basin and worked with Indigenous peoples as well as local growers, developing classes on soil and remediation. The BBC reported this, quoting her, “The ultimate goal is to create an ecosystem of native plants and crops that can be farmed sustainably while also cleaning up the oil. I’m trying to have people re-engage with certain subtle complexities of nature…”. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200316-cleaning-up-the-oil-spills-of-the-amazon-rainforest.
Her “Soil Keepers” program grew out of this effort, and has now been taught to more than 250 students around the United States, as well as in Qatar, Finland, Poland, and Ecuador. https://socialecologies.net/
Over the years we have kept in touch and she recently came east to soak in the rocky coast of Maine. Our oceanic expanse served as counterbalance to the Great Lakes’ prairie. She and my son M got along quite comfortably and an idea was hatched.
Science is not my strong suit. In high school Chemistry, the concept of a mole as “a unit of measurement to quantify the amount of a substance, representing exactly 6.022 × 10²³ elementary entities (atoms, molecules, ions, or particles)” was bewildering. I dropped out post haste to study ceramics. I never looked back.
Necessity, though, is the mother of homeschool innovation. Between M’s needs and my lack of science training, when the Mother Tree offered to teach him soil science I accepted post haste; what I call soil science is, more precisely, applied biogeochemistry, starting with applied chemistry through field work and kitchen-based experiments. It is amazing what red cabbage can teach about Ph.
This week we rolled up our sleeves. Following the Soil Keeper’s lesson plan, we finely chopped 5.4 pounds of red cabbage and then boiled it in one gallon of neutral Ph water. M selected 20 household items, then put 15ml of each into a small jar with 50ml of the deep purple cabbage water. The materials included lime and lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, pickle juice and hot sauce; clean snow, dirty snow, calcium chloride salt, and a salt/sand blend; wood ash and sawdust, an organic 4-3-3 fertilizer, mortar and grout (from the tiling); bleach, baking soda and table salt.
With the certainty that is science, before our very eyes the cabbage water changed color depending upon the acidity or alkalinity of the materials. The acids turned pink, while the alkaline moved to green or even yellow.
By day three, we made notes about the experiment; more precisely, my son wrote out sentences. As we began, he commented, “I remember Science class in 5th or 6th grade always taking notes. I find it hard to take notes.”
He began with simple sentences, but as his excitement grew, they became compound and complex: “Lime was the most acidic. The most alkaline was bleach. The “Midnight Black” grout went from black to light green, and slowly became a darker green in the layers; the grout mix fell to the bottom because it was heavier. The 4-3-3 mix was next to the mortar….”
We talked and drilled deeper. While tiling, the Professor had mentioned that Lime was an ingredient in mortar. M researched and discovered (a) mortar contains lime from dolomitic limestone, (b) lime comes from rocks that contain 80% or more of calcium or magnesium carbonate, (c) Espoma Bio-Tone 4-3-3 contains calcium (at 5%) and magnesium (at 1%), and (d) he concluded, “Therefore, it makes sense that 4-3-3 mix and mortar are next to each other on my Ph scale because they both contain the main ingredients in lime.”
Excitedly, he reasoned, “What lime is doing to the soil is technically the same thing as calcium supplements do to humans.” He paused, then said, “Wait, it is not the same thing…” and so he corrected his sentence to [emphasis added], “What lime is doing to the soil is related to what calcium supplements do to humans. Calcium, to humans, supplements human bones. Calcium, in soil, supplements the cell walls.”
He then asked, “what is dirt made of?” Soil, he learned, contains minerals 45%, air 25%, water 25% and organic matter is 5%, while its texture is the ratio of sand, silt and clay particles.
He exclaimed, “I have never been so invested in a science lesson! This is fun…this is genuinely fun!!!”
About the circle of life, he discovered, “nutrient transfer: plants take up essential elements from the soil and convert them to organic matter consumed by humans.” Did someone say, “know your food, know your farmer” ?
Having only just begun, he pondered why pickle juice and sawdust were beside each other on his Ph scale. His research lead to this conclusion: “The reason pickle juice and sawdust were next to each other was because pine and spruce are softwoods, and more acidic than hardwoods. We got the sawdust from the table saw, and have been cutting pine and spruce for the tiling work. That makes sense.”
“Just two more questions?” he pleaded. He chased down that softwoods are more acidic than hardwoods due to acidic resins, while oak is a hardwood that can be more acidic. Pickle juice is highly acidic, typically 2.5 to 3.9. In contrast, sawdust from pine, spruce, fir is neutral to slightly acidic; pine = 4.1 to 5.3, spruce = 4.7 to 5.8, fir = 5.2 to 5.9. “So, pine is more acidic while fir is more neutral,” he concluded.
“What if we try this again in the summer? We can test the soil when the plants are growing!”
And so our Red Cabbage Ph experiment came to an end. His bristling excitement a testimony to what happens when a student sits beside a Mother Tree, pondering soil and soul.
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NB: The astute reader may have noticed that here at an Art Farm we use no proper nouns. That is intentional, to underscore the mythopoetic, more than the rational. For example, whatever Ultimate Truth may be, it has more than 1,000 names, which is to say proper nouns, none of which capture the grandeur or sublimity of that whole, many of which lead only to wars.
Humans give names to bring order and cognitive structure to a complex world; naming divides subject from object, while “being” remains intransitive, a verb which takes no object. “Divide and conquer” is a tool of would-be authoritarians and Emperors which leads us to fight to the bottom. In these challenging times, then, let us be together, undivided, to rise to new heights and an expansion of consciousness. And to that end, my pronoun is “We.”
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Number Rules the Universe
Posted: February 13, 2026 Filed under: Child Centered Activities, Chronicles of a First Time Parent 1 Comment
“Geometry is knowledge of the eternally existent,” said the Greek sage. So fundamental is this truth that every middle school includes geometry in its curricula.
Coming of age, children, enter into the exquisite beauty of geometric truth. Regardless of language spoken, color of your skin, which church, temple or forest you worship in, the eternal truths – πr2 (area of a circle) or 2πr (circumference of a circle) or πr(r+l) = πr[r+√(h2+r2)] (total surface of a cone), et cetera – pertain. Greek letters are used to label these eternal truths.
At our Art Farm Homeschool Academy we study surface area in the conventional way, using worksheets and word problems. But, on hands and knees, we examine the floor closely, teaching math as tactile, not just conceptual. Last week we discussed electric currents and Ohms. This week we turn to tiling, which is a form of applied geometry and chemistry, using hand tools to spread mortar and setting tiles to create one continuous surface.
We began with Pythagorus. To establish the layout, we needed to determine the exact right angle to the exterior wall, so the warhorse a2 + b2 = c2 was used. After marking the right angle, the center line was snapped and the layout became clear. We used tiles 12” x 24” (2 square feet each) and my son quickly calculated the bathroom surface area was 136 square feet.
Tiling is about surface, not volume; each tile must be flush at all four corners. My son learned how to spread mortar, which again is about geometry. A notched trowel is the tool, and depending on the size of the notch – 1/8” or 1/4” or 1/2” – the amount of mortar spread will vary greatly. More importantly, the angle of the trowel impacts the thickness of the mortar, which is to say the volume. The Professor used a sawtooth trowel and he taught that the proper angle was just below 45 degrees.
To spread mortar is “to butter the tile.” We “double buttered,” applying mortar both to the floor, as well as to the back of the tile, in order to create a stronger bond. The tile is then set in place and gently pushed back and forth, to eliminate any gaps from the sawtooth troweled mortar, and to set the tile firmly and evenly in place.
Tiling a bathroom floor is immensely disruptive. We had to pull the toilet and bathtub, there was no laundry for more than a week, showers were intermittent. When an object fell down the drain line we had to vacuum it out. For anyone with obsessive tendencies, the process is like chasing, or being chased by, the dragon. It was a long hard week.
On the final day we set the grout, but the instructions wildly under stated the area covered by one bag. Mid-way through we had to mix a second bag – which meant cleaning the tools and the bucket, getting fresh water, mixing more – but the working time was a factor for the grout already set. If the grout cures before it is all set then you have a major problem. We were racing the clock. What we thought would be smooth teamwork became a gauntlet. Like a farm boy, my son hustled, taking orders in real time.
The marathon was grueling. Our teamwork was successful, the timing worked out, the end result wonderful, the washer and dryer in place and operating again. The radiant heat is working, programmed to 74 degrees at 5:30am, cooler to 62 during the day, and then reheat for the evening, back to 60 for the night hours. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, our blessings abound!
Through this gauntlet of fire my son is learning what the Greek sage said, so long ago, “Number rules the universe.”
Ohm, not om
Posted: February 6, 2026 Filed under: Child Centered Activities, Chronicles of a First Time Parent, Portfolio - David's work 3 Comments
The Professor makes house calls.
His full title is the “Pema Professor,” to honor Pema Chödrön, the American-born Tibetan Buddhist. The Professor came to our house and held class in the bathroom, not about Om – the sacred syllable – but about Ohms, the measurement of electrical resistance in circuits or conductors.
We are doing the finish work, finally, in the bathroom we added onto our house back in 2017. For nine years that room has had the basic plumbing but no heat, and a subfloor painted grey. Immense is our blessing to be able to do this finish work now, when masked jackels rampage our community, when our brown skinned neighbors stay indoors afraid to leave their house, more than 200 people having been arrested and absconded during “Operation Catch of the Day,” while so many homeless still live on street corners begging for coins; that we are able to afford such luxury now is a privilege not lost upon us. But still, our addition needs to be finished.
We are laying electric radiant heat on the bathroom floor, and then tiling. The Cadillac approach. The process begins by laying a waterproof uncoupling membrane which prevents tiles from cracking if the wooden subfloor moves. Into the membrane’s grid, we snapped in place 84 square feet of heating cable. That wire connects to a 15 amp Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter circuit breaker. Before laying tile, we needed to test both the Ohm resistance in the cable and its ground fault continuity, to ensure the integrity of the cable and circuit.
An Ohm is the measure of resistance, an object’s opposition to a flow of electric current. That resistance to flow creates friction, which friction creates heat, which is what we desire in the floor of the bathroom. We need to test this before laying tile.
Ohm’s formula is R = V/I, where V is voltage – the push driving the flow of electric charge – and I is current – the electric charge that flows past a specific point in a complete electric circuit. The formula for resistance was discovered by George Ohm, a high school teacher in Cologne, Germany, who published his theory and formula in 1827. The academics rejected his idea, but in 1841 Ohm was recognized and received the Royal Society’s Copley Medal. The unit of electrical resistance, the Ohm, is named in his honor.
In Language Arts my son has been learning the Greek alphabet. By happy coincidence, the Greek letter omega (Ω) is the symbol for ohms, chosen because its sound is similar to Ohm’s last name. Everything seems concordant here at the art farm.
To install the radiant floor heating cable, we made multiple tests of “conductor resistance” to ensure the circuit was functional. We used the Professor’s megohmmeter to take an ohms reading between the two power leads. At the factory the cable tested 14.8 ohms, but our test before installation was 14.1, after cable installation was 14.2, and after tile installation was 13.4. The manufacturer allows a 10% variance, so we remain within that range. Our test was positive and we proceed.
Of note, if the tester uses his fingers to press the megohmmeter leads against the copper lines, then the resistance reading shows the resistance through his body; he has become a part of the circuit. As a homeschool experiential, my son tested the resistance that way and got a reading of 4.3 ohms. The Professor did same and had a 4.7 ohm reading. The lower the ohms the easier electricity flows through a circuit. The circuit breaker was off so he was not at risk. Salt and magnesium in my son’s body can account for the difference because they are conductive electrolytes which increase the flow of electricity. My son does take a magnesium supplement so there is a line of reasoning here.
And so life goes here at an art farm. Ohms not om, our homeschool tutorial was one step the toward tiling the new bathroom. Updates to follow, as this journey continues.
an Art Farm 