JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

Yan at Glutter has been writing about democracy in Hong Kong and the 15th anniversary of the Tianamen Square demonstrations:

Maybe that’s what it means to live under a totalitarian regime. You feel DEFLATED. It’s so bothersome that those thought are better not to be had. To ignore things that doesn’t concern you directly in the most personal and intimate ways. Don’t bother with politics, don’t bother with ideas. Just go, make money, make a living, buy things, forget and not remember that those who have power over you don’t want you to think.

Tomorrow is June 3rd, the next day is June 4th. Maybe another few hundred thousand people will gather in Victoria Park, and we will hold a candle light vigil for all the people who died and went to jail over the 1989 democratic movement, because no one else in China can, and maybe we can make us heard just a little bit more than usual, maybe then I will feel energetic again. Maybe then I will be willing to continue to think because I know so many other people also want to too.

I remember June 1989 and I’m grateful for Yan’s posts and perspective: thanks.

I felt guilty last night for my lack of discipline. I went to bed late, later than my limits allow. But if I had stayed up another hour, I might have justified my indulgence by the experience I missed: it’s not every day we get to see a meteor:

A meteor about the size of a computer monitor lit up the Northwest sky early this morning, setting off sharp booms that stunned witnesses.

“There was some question as to whether it was a piece of space junk burning up, but it was not,” said Geoff Chester, a spokesman for the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. “People always want to know, was it something we put up there coming down again? As far as I’ve been able to figure out, it was simply a rock falling out of the sky, as they are wont to do on occasion.”

Chester said it was a type of meteor called a bolide, one which appears bright like a fireball in the sky.

Nothing unusual was detected on National Weather Service radar, and authorities also ruled out aircraft problems or military flight tests.

Toby Smith, a University of Washington astronomy lecturer who specializes in meteorites, said the skybursts were reported over a wide area around 2:40 a.m.

Witnesses along a 60-mile swath of the Puget Sound region from the Tacoma area to Whidbey Island and as far as 260 miles to the east said the sky lit up brilliantly, and many reported booms as if from one or more explosions.
[Seattle Times]

Somehow I slept through the meteor, missing the bright lights and the earthquake-like boom. Thanks to my homeschool yahoogroup for giving me the news.

Update: I checked Seablogs to see who did see the meteor:
litlnemo described Flash and Boom in the Middle of the Night and Josh thought it felt like an Earthquake.

Video shots and information about meteors at KomoTV site.

My children are teaching me about choice. Choice isn’t a concept I grew up having and living. Life to me felt forced. Deprived. Dead-end. I had to do A. I must become B. When I decided not to be C, I precipitated a disaster.

But when my 21-month-old toddler wakes up every morning, the first thing she wants to do when I take her out of the crib is select her socks. I hold her up to the shelf where I keep her clothes, and she picks out a pair. She doesn’t want me to do it for her. She wants to choose. As a little child, already she wants to feel that freedom. It is inherent.

After some experiences and intense introspection in the past year, I’ve started to see life as choices rather than cages. I’ve realized how important it is to see that there are always at least two options. I believe in consequences. Not all choices have equal results. Cause and effect function in the universe. And not all options are good or appropriate. For example, I have to direct Elisabeth to choose socks, not the swimsuit or hat that happen to be stored on the same shelf. Especially as a parent, I believe that sometimes choices should be restricted.

I believe in morality and in living by principles and beliefs. However, I think that if I choose to define myself by some set of rules, if I eliminate choices because it doesn’t fit with my religion, or with the image I want others to perceive of me, then I am simply becoming cardboard, a statue, rigid, less than alive. Living life by a simple list of “do”s and “don’ts” leads to confinement and conformity.

What I’m discussing is more serious than a child selecting socks, yes, I know. I’m not condoning evil, going against religion or defying authority. But what’s changing my life and spirit, what is helping me find hope and peace, is learning to consider the choices, all the options in a situation. To look at all the consequences. To realize why I might want to choose one path over another. And then to take that choice with passion and zeal – as well as reason and intelligence – knowing that it is what I want, rather than something I passively accepted because I felt forced into being a definition or living by a label. Not that I would change many of the decisions I’ve made. I’d probably still pick the same paths. Maybe it’s mere mental exercise or simply psychological perception. But I’ve found incredible freedom looking at life in this new way, seeing my series of choices.

Many of the explanations – legends, myths, stories – that describe how the world became the way it is involve at least one person or creature making a deliberate choice. A decision happened. When I look at Adam and Eve in the Garden, what I see are two creatures who were given a choice. The choice had consequences. Severe ones. But from the beginning – as my baby shows me every morning – humans were made to be creatures of choice.

A friend of mine recommended the homeschooling book Teaching the Trivium by Harvey and Laurie Bluedorn. I think what she appreciated the most was the authors’ emphasis on later learning – an idea that originated with Raymond and Dorothy Moore whom I read last year.

The Bluedorns believe in Classical Education based on the Trivium of Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric. As they describe the three…Grammar is Knowledge, “the input”, “the foundation”, information and facts. Logic is Understanding, “the processing”, “the structure”, “comprehending the relationship between facts”. Rhetoric is Wisdom, “the output”, “the practical use”, creating expressions from ” what we know and understand”.

These parents believe in teaching children Greek, Latin and Hebrew, and studying many of the classics of ancient history. I didn’t know the philosophy of classical education and I read their book looking for what I could learn and add to my teaching. I agree that languages are helpful and I wish I could teach my children a few during their early years – although I’d probably choose as my primary ones Cantonese, Mandarin and Spanish, if I could, along with Latin (those seem more useful and relevant for our family heritage). I also agreed with the authors’ opinion on government and schools, although I had not seen it as strongly as they did.

But as I read, I realized many places where I found fault with their arguments. This quote was one of the first that flashed red lights to me.

Children may be programmed with lazy logic to “say no to drugs” for many reasons – physical and psychological health, etc. But because their motivation for not taking drugs is not based upon clear reasoning from moral absolutes, they are actually being prepared to “say yes to drugs” under the right mixture of circumstances. By training a child to “say no to drugs” for wrong and inadequate reasons we are actually laying a faulty and weak foundation. page 96

If the authors believe that increased and intensified intellectual development will change the choices children make, I believe they are wrong. Certainly I approve of grammar, logic and rhetoric. I think that people should build the principles of their lives and actions based on facts. Being able to defend one’s choices based on moral absolutes using vigorous intellectual debate is necessary, virtuous and honorable. Flimsy logic, such as just say no will fail when put in the fire.

However, I suspect that any college campus will prove the principle in this paragraph false. Go to a university, especially in the fall, during the first week of the year, and observe how first year students behave, given their new freedoms. Many of these students – particularly at a selective school – would be able to argue and debate the reasons why they should not engage in such behaviors. They have received intellectual training. But there is something missing. Something more. Something inside these students that entices them into previously prohibited activities, convinces them to break their own beliefs or push against their own principles while the mind protests – or gets put on vacation.

I was one of these students. And sometimes – many times?! – I still pursue what I know I shouldn’t do, despite multiple reasons and logic to the contrary.

danah boyd in a recent post provided another example

And i saw a movie! I saw Super Size Me. I have to admit that i ended up craving McDs afterwards which made me feel *super* guilty. This is why i want brand allergies. I understand intellectually how badly i treat my body, but i really am a sucker for the blazing colors, fake smells and immediate feedback of cravings appeased. Ah yes, my weaknesses…

We all have weaknesses. We are more than minds. I want my children to be intellectually sound and sharp. Yet I also know that education must be much more than mental.

updated to correct grammar

I like waking up on Wednesday mornings. Tuesday nights we, along with our neighbors, as weekly ritual, scurry in our driveways and position our trash for collection. We carry the blue recycle bins filled with glass, paper and cans to the sidewalk and pull the cans on their wheels from the garage to the curb.

Wednesday morning I wake with the sound of the trucks stopping at our home. The recycle one arrives first. Sometime around six I’ll hear the sound of glass dumped into the truck. Loud. Like a cartoon or movie sound effect outside my bedroom window.

I like waking early to an unusual alarm, rather than the normal beep that I often oversleep. I like waking in the morning to the sound of recycling. Hearing the bottles and jars bounce against each other in their journey. Starting a new day to the sound of things being made new.