Men who are half men, women who are more than all women, hermaphrodites who are part vampire, cats who are three quarters toaster and a sexually ambiguous spermwhale...

Looking for the most enlightening collation of thoughts this side of Dianetics? bare/not manifesto is here to show us all the way…word…

Caged Bird Sings

‘Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.’ George Bernard Shaw

‘Madness is freedom’s most faithful companion’ Jacques Lacan

‘All oppression creates a state of war.’ Simone de Beauvoir

We live in a world fraught with contradiction – bikinis and burqas, the moneyed and the minimum wage, left-wing or right-wing, faith and nihilism and the hetero-normative and the ‘other’ – are just some of the ongoing struggles which both restrict and affirm our personal freedom. Our media perpetuates this no man’s land of perceived autarchy, where stories such as the Fritzl cases or the anniversary of the Berlin wall’s disintegration reaffirm the ability of individuals to fight for freedom despite overwhelming and terrifying conditioning, while the repercussions of official prisons such as Guantanamo Bay, the Iraq war and the ‘war on terror’ (in itself a linguistic minefield) continue to remind us how blithely our freedoms can be disrupted and taken away.   

Are we made to feel that the kind of safety, which undermines liberty in the name of security and protection, is acceptable and desirable? Concerns about claustrophobia, stereotypes, security constrictions, moral and physical obligations, cultural and religious beliefs, and political ideas are a few of the encounters which make up our daily worlds, bombarding us in advertising; threaded through the plots of literature, movies and songs; and worked into our political ideologies.  These are big themes to tackle for first-time curators but then why not go naked and bare all? 

What we feel as an act of freedom can be lived as an act of violence by someone else.  We adjust our sense of personal freedom to fit into our community, which defines and legitimises our freedom, but requires a different set of rules from the individual to function freely. Images, as powerful, empathetic and wholly personal signifiers are a strong way to convey these dichotomies and awaken society to their place in the world, especially the ways in which society has accommodated the idea of the female and the way in which race is represented.  It is with this in mind that we have selected a group of artists to tackle the cultural, political, sexual and racial themes of restriction. However, how many of those ties are really inevitable, how many of them are self-imposed by our collective or personal conscience?  Many of us want to escape the obligations deriving from them to explore a ‘free’ life, but total freedom is a Utopian ideal, defined by philosopher and anthropologist Roland Barthes as a world where there are ‘no conformities or stereotypes, no clichés or myths or anything which is either given or dictated; a world where it is possible to eschew all conflict because everyone and everything is allowed to be different’ – a beautiful and improbable dream; however freedom is a terrifying thing – some people cope with it by restricting themselves in order to make their world more manageable.

For the exhibition, we chose a space in which it would be possible to recreate a claustrophobic sensation.  The space we have selected is the Crypt at St Pancras Church. The church is somewhere people have sought refuge but its institutions such as the monastery and nunnery have also been places of living entombment where the inhabitants are enclosed in their cells and live by a unilateral religious doctrine. Barthes posed that if we are subject to the whims of language as a collectively recognised placement of signs and signifiers, then our ability to redefine words and images, to create our own language, allows us to assert and potentially attain our personal freedom.  In this context, the word ‘church’ can be defined then as both a sanctuary and a prison.  And the crypt?  Is it possible to redefine this space – physically going down onto another level, the act of going into a dark space much like entering the subconscious and playing with the notion of revealing and concealing darkness and light.  Come and see.

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I often don’t know how to handle strong emotions. Realizing that I’m hurt, angry, or overwhelmed, I remain stationary, wishing for a guide-book. In self-defense, my body resigns to sleep and never fully processes the issue. When I awoke this morning, the anger still haunted me and I knew that for me to function, it needed an outlet.

Buying my rare pack of cigarettes, I was carded, as often occurs when I’m fresh-faced, and I walked smoking to Lafayette Cemetary. This specific block of uptown New Orleans is my favorite in the city, and I wandered through it, resigning to the crunch of dry magnolia leaves beneath me. Of all NOLA cemetaries, this one is most private and soothes me not with its morbidity, but with its sense of hushed, paused time. The names carved into the stone flow through me like mantras: read, repeated, and immediately forgotten. I glance at dates, noting generations of families at rest within a single cement box, and occasional incantations (“Daddy,” “Lonesome is the home without a mother,” “Aged 20 years, 5 months, 8 days.”) There is a placard with my name on it (legal first name), which I’m never seen on a grave because it is so unusual. The fourteen-month-old infant it belonged to likely died of Yellow Fever, according to dates. There are entire crypts of children who perished from the malady, including an enormous one marked “Society for destitute orphan boys.” Rumor tells me this cemetary was the first desegregated graveyard in the city, containing rich and poor, Christian and Jewish, black and white, and even a small platoon of Confederate soldiers. The graves of veterans are marked with the war they fought in, and whether they died peacefully of old age or they were mowed down on the beaches of Normandy, they lie together in this single city block.

Because families own the crypts, some are active, and I came upon a very old woman weeping at a grave. The dead are strangers to me, gone long before my birth, but to somebody, they meant something. I leave with the sense of peace that yoga classes instill in me: an awareness of my place in time, my breath, my mortality, and that no matter whether we die as newborns, in France of Nazi bullets, or surrounded by generations who carry our genes, we return to the soil together, quiet beneath the Autumn leaves.

It is only after this that I’m ready to begin my day.

Bruce Schultz - an oldie taken in Lafayette, LA

Sí, intrépido lector. El sueño de la razón produce monstruos, y laciudadenllamas trae hoy una prueba fehaciente de ello. De la mano de Azucena, que acaba de descubrir las bondades de photoshop. Y es que a los tres segundos de verla recortando la cabeza de Herman Monster, supe que había creado yo mismo un monstruo. Ha sido como enseñarle a Bin Laden el uso del amosal.

]]> http://hdencrypt.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/game-set-and-match-to-hawthorne-davies/ Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:32:40 +0000 hdencrypt http://hdencrypt.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/game-set-and-match-to-hawthorne-davies/

After some fairly acrimonious comments by many who, not surprisingly, decided to remain anonymous, we are back and confident as ever about our encryption product Crypteto using Hawthorne Davies’ encryption algorithm, Touareg. 

We have been working on increasing the ‘crypt’ speed even more and will soon be in a position to provide you with the opportunity of testing it for yourselves. We are also working on a way of validating our claim that the key is as strong as we say it is.

Whether our critics like it or not, more and more companies and organisations are expressing interest in having a product that has been quoted by a leading guru as it being utterly futile in attempting to key crash the Touareg encryption algorithm. Surely this is the point of any encryption product – make it so strong that even the most sophisticated and clever hacker with an unlimited amount of computer power will decide that it is a total waste of time even trying – game, set and match to Hawthorne Davies!

So we will be announcing further advances in speed very soon and look forward to some constructive communication with those individuals and organisations who are genuinely interested to know what we have developed and what is in the pipeline in the coming months.

The Michael Jackson Funeral costs go over 1 million- this is a ridiculous amount of money for a funeral.

This was not a lower cost funeral and the $25,000 plus Batesville Golden Casket did not bring the cost of the Michael Jackson Funeral Down.

It is very clear that you do not have to spend 1 million dollars for a funeral.

MJ’s Parents Katherine and Joe Jackson are in a dispute over the Michael Jackson Will. The numbers of the funeral expenses were released in legal deal between Catherine Jackson and the estate. It all has to deal with the family dispute over the will.

Some of the Funeral Expenses:

S35,000 Burial outfit
The private  funeral and burial  that happened Sept. 3, 2009 at Glendale, Calif.’s Forest Lawn Cemetery, came to $855,730 This included  expenses for other burial places in the mausoleum.
$1,975 for Family garmets.
$2,000 for Ushers garmets
$3,682 For photograph framing,
$959 for embroidery
$11,176 for program invitations.
$30,000 For  a cars and security
$15,000 for a funeral designer
$21, 455  for a “funeral repast”at a resturant Be sure to catch this on A&E ” Jackson Dynasty” coming soon.

$5,000 amonth for a temporary vault for several months

$25,000 plus for that Batesville Golden Casket.

Funeral Industry|Funeral Blog by Your Funeral Guy

Michael Jackson Golden Casket(Staples center Memorial Service) pic from flickr under under the creative commons license from

DianthusMoon’s photostream

Source of Jackson Funeral Stats www.okmagazine.com

 MSNBC

No new neighbor for Marilyn Monroe. At least not yet.

There were no bids during the second auction of the marble mausoleum crypt above Monroe.

A previous $4.6 million bid for the space fell through in August.

The crypt above Monroe’s is owned by Elsie Poncher. Her husband’s interred there but she’ll move him and sell off the crypt to bring in some cash.

The auctioneer says several people were preapproved to bid on the crypt, but no one did during the 10-day auction.

He says the Poncher family is now “weighing their options.”

(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)

Ever felt sorry for those poor little avatars in Second Life who are denied the wonderful jazz music that we humans can go out and hear in clubs and concert halls in most countries on earth? Feel sorry no longer.

Partisans, those intrepid men who have played most venues in this land, are going where they, and few of their fellows, have ever gone before. Their gig at London’s Crypt on Friday and starts at 8pm (or at 12noon in Second Life) is being relayed live to the small supermen and superwomen some among us would prefer to be.

There is more about it here. I would give you the link to Second Life but that would be just too weird and freaky.

Another Designers Marketplace is fast approaching guys. This time being the biggest yet with over 40 stalls selling a diverse collection of high quality, bespoke and contemporary art, ceramics, fashion, textiles, accessories, photography, graphics, illustrations and interior products. So thats a a room full of arty folks and most likely (hopefully) early christmas cakes and all that malarky, sounds good to me.

Details of the event are provided above or you can visit their facebook page for further details.

I have a few new reviews of papers on cryptography in my updated page. For those interested in the security of NMAC and HMAC or affiliation hiding key exchanges, I recommend reading the reviews. They include links to relevant papers.

Happy All Souls Day and Happy belated Halloween.

Halloween is my very favorite holiday of the year and this year my friends and I visited the legendary and  historic   Sleepy Hollow Cemetery  in Sleepy Hollow, NY. This is where Washington Irving penned the thrilling story of  The Headless Horseman and is also his resting place as well as the Headless Horsman’s. Yesterday was a very “dark and stormy day” but the rain did hold back until the evening making it a soggy night for Trick-or-Treaters.

I must confess that when I got home and uploaded the images I was very upset to see that most of them were not exactly “tack” sharp; to be honest they were quite blurred.  Why? Because I was trying to shoot in very low light without a tripod and in my excitement to be in this wonderful historic place I was not paying attention to my shutter speed vs. my focal length ratio and after emailing a good friend and professional photographer he confirmed that this was indeed the problem.

Ok, I messed up big time on this one but it is a lesson learned. Luckily I did not completely flip out like I usually do and delete the whole “shootin” batch. I closed down the computer and set the camera battery to recharge, made myself some popcorn and watched Night of the Living Dead to calm myself down. Nothing like a good ole B grade black and white scary movie to do that.

This morning refreshed and feeling a little more friendly towards my photos. I began reviewing the images again and wondering how to salvage them. One thing I quickly realized was that although the color and composition were great one tomb stone looks just like another and that I was getting bored. So, reflecting on the movie I watched last night I decided to convert the cemetery shots to black and white and then add filters like diffused glow, radial blurs, spot lights, and canvas textures and some I converted to infrared to give them a more somber, haunted, walking-in-a-dream look and to add some diversity and excitement to the overall composition. It also hides the “mistakes” too!  It worked and they look great. Thank God for Photoshop! They will make great prints. I posted a few shots below or click here for the full gallery.

We also visited the Philipsburg Manor  and low and behold the sun came out for about an hour and I was able to take some great fall foliage shots and yes these were tack sharp. I added them to an existing gallery entitled Autumnal Fun.

Orphaned Janet Bewleigh had become an heiress overnight – the unexpected reward for an act of kindness – and now the once locked doors of her beloved Knight’s Keep were open to her.

But there was an aura of evil at the stately manor house which weighed on her like an invisible shroud. She wondered about Lord Ashford, her enigmatic, strangely attractive host, and about the sad, dead girl whose ghost still hovered over the Keep.

And then Janet read the ancient family motto, and knew that the final act was yet to be played…….

Written by Rona Randall and first published in Great Britain 1967. Published by Sphere Books 1973.

Set in Victorian England and narrated in the first person this is the story of one young lady’s quest to seek sanctuary by returning to the home of her recently deceased parents,  only to find madness and murderous intentions awaiting  her.

Our heroine, Janet Bewleigh, enjoyed a poor but happy childhood, helping out in her parents vicarage in Covent Garden, giving out soup and bread to the poor. Then a sudden skating accident leaves her tragically orphaned and she is left to carry on the work of her parents alone. One of her charges, the down and out Uncle Silas, dies in yet another mysterious accident soon after, and Janet becomes an unexpected heiress to a large fortune. Not only that, but he really was her uncle and she soon finds herself visiting the large Elizabethan mansion where her mother had grown up – Knights Keep.

As you’d guess from the cover art things don’t start off so well for our Janet, with sinister ladies in waiting, a marriage to a sex obsessed sadist and a poisoned pet puppy to deal with for starters – but after a few interesting adventures and plot twists it all works out for the best. I really enjoyed this book, it’s full of atmosphere and attention to detail with some genuinely creepy bits -  I particularly liked the relationship between Lord Ashford and his rather enigmatic stepmother, the weird and wonderful femme fatale Miranda.

I’ve not read any other books by Rona Randall, though blurb on the inside cover informs us she is established as one of the best writers of Gothic Romance. Furthermore, Knight’s Keep was nominated for a major award of the Romantic Novelists Association. At the time of print the author was living in Sussex and it’s great to read something so good by a local author – I’ll definitely be looking out for more of her stuff. Four out of five stars.

Necrolixer : a patrol zombie who guards “the dead.”

This one is actually a couple of years old. I posted it in a forum and everyone seemed to like it enough that I think it deserves to be resurrected. 

Donald Conrad

Acrostical Halloween

  H is for the house at the end of Maple Street which has long stood vacant. And even if it were for sale, no one but a distant outsider would buy it. The locals all have seen the occasional lighted window and avoid talking about the noises that emanate from it without warning or provocation. The screams are said to come from the original family who disappeared on the eve of the harvest moon, supposedly sacrificed in some sort of blood rite. All the known rooms and false walls were searched, but the family members were never found. Neither was the boy who, years later, entered the house on a dare while his friends stood and watched from the safety of the street. His screams were added to the rest.

  A is for the abomination that lurks along the service road leading to the power station at the edge of town. It has been variously described as pale or ghostly, hairless, hunched but quick, and sometimes as a ‘skin shrouded skeleton’ ever since Charlie Paisley coined the phrase. Whatever it is has scared numerous drivers off the road; but none has ever gotten out of their vehicles, electing instead to get back on the straight and narrow and move along. Lucky for them because this thing has yet to acquire a taste for human flesh and nobody wants to be that kind of instigator. Terry Gillenhall was brought in once with his dogs, but they never found anything because according to Terry, “My dogs need a scent to start off with”.

  L is for the labyrinth that little Johnny walks into when he leaves his bedroom for a late night pee. The whole thing has the familiar appearance of the hallway he has grown up with, but he has taken too many rights and lefts to remember how to get back. So he plods along in hopes that he may find his way eventually. He did take a wiz in one corner, but now he can’t even find that. And the troubling sounds he hears on the other side of every wall keep him in a constant state of fear. Mechanized sounds of poorly meshed gears and clanking metal and rattling chains were once barely audible, but have grown to an intensity that threatens to devour him.

  L is for the lycanthrope of Bray Road. This werewolf has been described as ranging from six to seven-and-a-half feet tall, with piercing yellow eyes, inch-long dark brown hair, and a short snout that can produce a menacing smile full of sharp teeth. He seems to make appearances during years ending in a seven as far back as written history will allow, scaring the bejeesus out of witnesses. It is said that the scent of road-kill precedes any sighting. So if you run into that ominous aroma while traversing the byways out near Bray Road, you should probably make like a prom dress, and take off.

  O is for October, the month that ends with Halloween; lest you forget. O could also be for the opaline gaze reflecting back out from the bushes at Isabella Mudge’s house. Isabella would never deny accusations of liking young boys. You see, she likes them in a stew pot for hours and hours with lots of potatoes and carrots, and a cabbage or two if she can get them. Isabella acquires her quarry by shape shifting into a cat with fur such a deep black that light seems unable to escape it. What attracts the young boys are the iridescent, prismatic, opaline orbs that are Isabella’s eyes. They are eyes that command attention; eyes full of seduction.

  W is for the Wyvern that has taken up residence in the bluffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in the Nameloc Heights section of town. This wyvern; which looks like parts of a dragon, an eagle and a bat, has been flying low over the water in search for food. But it has had greater success over land, eating smaller fare such as squirrel, rabbit, and turkey. It hasn’t yet grown enough to take out a deer. Young Brandon Rickenhauer is down on the beach, calling for his best friend, Ringo. Ringo is a mixed breed; half Golden Retriever and half Pit Bull. This is a dog that really sinks its teeth into being loveable and loyal. Brandon will never see Ringo again, for Ringo is no longer of this world. Brandon and the wyvern will have a chance meeting, but not for several years yet. Right now, the wyvern is cleaning the last traces of Ringo from its talons.

  E is for the eight-ball sitting on Jeffery Archer’s desk, at the offices of Liberty American Insurance. Mr. Archer has just opened this branch as a promotion within the company and the eight-ball was a gag gift from a friend. It is one of those fortune telling eight-balls and lately it has been making suggestions instead of telling fortunes. Most of the suggestions center on his loving family and various household items, like the electric carving knife they received as a gift from Uncle Rudy just last Christmas. Jeffery’s name will be splattered across the front pages of all the major tabloids for several weeks because of the heinous way in which he tries to hide the brutal murders. Cuisinart and Kitchenaid will spend hundreds of thousands on damage control.

  E is for the effigy sitting on the front steps of the Johnson house. Sarah and David had made the scarecrow by stuffing some old clothes from a box in the basement with leaves and straw. The clothes belonged to their recently deceased ‘Granpa’ who had been twice accused of child molestation among other charges. Granpa always said, “They never convicted me of nuthin.” There is something enchanting about the way young Sarah has drawn a face on the paper bag head that will soon allow this effigy of Granpa to snatch little Nancy Wilcox from the front step before she has a chance to ring the doorbell. Granpa and Nancy will never be seen again, despite the rally cry and three day search.

  N is for the necropolis on Lewiston Street with markers dating back to the eighteenth century. Located near the center of Arden’s Hill is a crypt bearing the name of Erdeuelu. The crypt door is locked, but we know that it can be locked from both sides. And we can see that the threshold is worn from two centuries of use. Jonny Rubino and Peter Smith do not understand what all that wear in the stone work at the entrance could mean when they pick the lock to gain entry. Jonny wants a skull as a keepsake and Peter has heard rumors of things like pocket watches being buried with the dead. Duke Erdeuelu will not be traveling far to quench his craving for blood. He will, in fact, be dining in. He’ll have to remove the drained bodies to another location in order to keep suspicion averted from his crypt. Nothing settles a meal quite like a good walk.

History has a funny way of being affected by the smallest facts, accurate or not.  A few years ago I had the unique opportunity to investigate a nationally significant historic site located right here in Pennsylvania. It was the home to a Colonial-era figure who led a western pioneer movement, but who started life as the son of a British gentleman whose family had settled in eastern PA. The site has been interpreted by the State of Pennsylvania since the 1930s as the birthplace and home of this figure, and the staff has done an excellent job conveying the history and facts about the figure and his environs.

Daniel Boone takes a break from conquering the west

There was one small problem with how they had decided to interpret the site to the public, however; the evidence tying it to the historical figure was based not upon any compelling physical evidence; it was based upon the memories of a 90 year-old woman, recounting the two summers she had spent playing around the farm–when she was 8 years old. What was presented to the public as fact was based upon little more that highly tenuous and suspect evidence that the building in question was really the home of this important American pioneer, and countless millions of dollars over 70+ years had been spent with this in mind.

Upon further investigation, which included dendrochronology (the investigation of tree rings, found in the building’s timbers); paint analysis; mortars analysis, masonry analysis and written documentation, it was discovered–to the dismay of the site administrator and the State of Pennsylvania–that the building was constructed nearly 30 years after our hero had moved westward. Only a small section of chimney support and foundation in the basement could have possibly dated to the key period.

I designed a series of interpretive signs that reflected the changes to the popular interpretation of the site, paid for by the state. These were promptly stowed away; they were not quite ready to rewrite history.

In Chapter 7 of How People Learn, the authors discuss how effective teaching methodologies in history are supported by deeper investigations of subject matter, rather than just memorizing lists of facts. This is reflected also in Chapter 2 in a discussion about experts and novices. Teachers who are the most effective in relaying information in a meaningful way attempt to engage students in lessons that go beyond hammering students with information; rather they focus on thinking critically about the information and working at forming relationships that raise questions and promote further investigation. In the case of our historic site, expertise led to investigation, which led to further questions, and eventually arrived at a new set of answers.

A most appropriate read for my R.I.P. IV  Challenge and a great one for my and Fall Into Reading 2009 challenge.

Author :  Elizabeth Kostova

Date of First Publication :  June, 2005 (Hardcover)

Publisher of 1st Edition :  Little, Brown and Company

This Edition’s Publication Date :  January 2006 (Paperback)

This Edition’s Publisher : Back Bay Books

ISBN:  0-316-05788-6

No. of pages : 820  (Paperback)

The Story :

A young American girl stumbles upon an unusual book in her father’s library.  Its pages are empty except for a woodcut of a menacing dragon with the title, Drakulya, on it.  Along with it is a stash of old letters written by a her father’s favorite professor, Bartholomew Rossi, who mysteriously disappeared at the time when her father was still his student.

Her discovery reveals her family’s dark and dangerous quest for the continued existence of Vlad Tepes, the Impaler, otherwise known as Dracula.  Slowly , drawn by her father’s accounts, she joins her family’s adventure of pursuing the undead through old letters and ancient texts, from libraries , aged monasteries and closed countries of Eastern Europe.

The Review :

You’ve got to be “in love at first read” with Elizabeth Kostova’s lush, vivid, elegant prose.  Her attention to detail is a constant that keeps the ambience of the book flowing, cloaking the reader with gothic creepiness that blends surprisingly well with romantic elements,  all throughout its eight hundred and so pages.  (By romantic elements I mean the sumptuous descriptions which enamor a reader to places, culture, people, etc. )  To read Kostova’s work is  to experience a story so intimately — you “see” the colorful pageantry of Byzantine culture, “taste”  delectable Turkish food, “smell” the smell of the undead, “feel” the anguish of the tortured.

If she fails to capture your interest in her first one or two hundred pages, chances are you simply cannot love this.  It’s one of those books that will either mesmerize you with its sensual vividness and alluring writing or because of these very qualities, tire you with its ponderous pace and lengthy minutiae.

For me, however, it is exactly Kostova’s way with language and her meticulous manner that are the charms of this novel.  It makes me wish I could absorb Kostova’s prose into my very pores in the hopes I would be able to write as eloquently and as gorgeously as she can.  Aside from being able to string words  so marvelously, she can switch the narrative perspective between a number of characters so effortlessly that the reader is hardly left wondering who is telling the story at certain points.

As a gothic novel, The Historian is superb.  It’s got all those dark elements, creepy atmosphere, but tempered so that it just falls short of being a horror novel.  The story moves like a slow crescendo,  building up bit by bit to a startling peak that gently tapers out toward the end. With all that, the reader is treated also to a well-researched history of Dracula, which makes reading all the more interesting.

In A Nutshell :

A horror novel, The Historian is not.  It may raise a few hairs, make your spine tingle, give you little shivers but it stops short of being truly terrifying.  It wasn’t written to be really such.  Yes, a chiller; but one laden with a lot more history and mystery than visceral terror.

This is a thick, page-laden novel .  But length becomes no object when you have totally immersed yourself in it.

Those who take to the novel quite early are more likely to appreciate this gem.  On the whole, it is worth the time.  To echo  a fellow blogger, KyusiReader, The Historian is indeed a very, very satisfying read.

My Mark :  Excellent

]]> http://thepropaneactivist.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/a-howard-hawks-production/ Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:35:19 +0000 D. Scott http://thepropaneactivist.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/a-howard-hawks-production/

I have a suspicion that almost anything humankind embarks upon is touched with a bit of sadness, because there is a built-in sliver of frustration that the dream never quite matches the reality.

On the surface, Chapter 6 The Design of Learning Environments, seems like a terrific set of parameters by which to construct vibrant and supportive learning situations. Particularly interesting is the portion dealing with Learner-Centered Environments (p. 133), and what the author refers to as teaching practices that are based upon “cultural knowledge”, that is placing the student in a context where learning occurs as a reflection of their personal cultural experience–language, social norms, or just everyday experiences.

F-Troop: A Family Portrait

My cultural background is as the oldest in a fairly non-descript middle-class white family, and I do mean white in the literal sense; as a child I was regularly singled out for having the best “tan” which, incidentally, lasts all year long. A well-articulated example of this took place during a summer family trip to Williamsburg, VA, where my Dad somehow decided it would be a good idea to take one of those nostalgic photographs where we were all dressed as Old West pioneers. To make a long story slightly shorter, my Dad insisted I wear an “authentic” Indian outfit, complete with feather headdress, leather loincloth, bone breast plate, and optional war paint. We took the picture in front of the ubiquitous Conestoga wagon, where I was told by the photographer to look “angry.” Ironically, it remains to this day as our only family photo. In school it was not much different. I was consistently typecast as a Native American or sometimes an Asian in some elementary school production number or another; this along with some mild teasing from other students about being some sort of ambiguous minority, which I always brushed off. My perception was that it was rarely mean-spirited, but nonetheless probably further reinforced my position as an outsider.

Although I was not always aware of it, my perceptions of the challenges of others in positions of weakness have always, in varying degrees, been influenced by my experiences as a child. For many years I was downright cynical about the struggles of others (“others” meaning minorities or those of lesser means), and often rather unsympathetic, especially in the realm of education. That is, until recently. I consulted to a developer who owned historic buildings in a desperately poor black and Hispanic neighborhood in Baltimore, and was exposed to such deplorable conditions, such an acute lack of self-worth and, frankly, hope that I really began to examine where I came from, and how even something so insignificant as being cast as an Indian in a school play, a marginalized person just because I had dark skin, could have such a long lasting effect. It was self-loathing and lack of self-esteem disguised as self-determination.

In Chapter 6, the author points to the need for “teachers who are aware that learners construct their own meanings, beginning with the beliefs, understandings and cultural practices they bring to the classroom” (p. 136). While it is difficult to gauge attitudes of teachers towards minority students, as George Farkas points out in his 2003 journal article “Racial Disparities and Discrimination in Education: What do We Know, How do We Know It, and What do We Need to Know?”,

…African American and Hispanic students, particularly males, generally show lower skills and lesser maturity than middle class and white students, [and] they are more likely to be placed in lower groups…and since these placements as based on teacher’s informal judgments or student skills and behavior, there is certainly every opportunity for teacher prejudice and discrimination to affect outcomes (p. 1131).

Does this mean that a Learner-Centered environment is inherently discriminatory, or that its use promotes such practices? Of course not, but those teachers who are not well-prepared to function within the Learner-Centered environment or who have a shortsighted understanding of the intention of the system certainly leave themselves open to unfairly categorize students. Although likely utilized by the teachers, administrators, and ultimately students with the best of intentions, the possibility of misuse exists.

References

Farkas, G. (2003). Racial disparities and discrimination in education:  What do we know, how do we know it, and what do we need to know? Teachers College Record, 105, 6, 1119-1146.

Holloween Pumpkin #2 by Zero79 (on Flickr)

Renee Ashley's mother--Mrs Ashley--the Queen (Too)

White Rocking Horse by sf2London (on Flickr)

Question ?

Q: A “White Rocking Horse” Like The White Rocking Horse Above Is Seen In the Last Scene of What James Bond Thriller?

PLUS….

WARHORSE 2

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip

Queen Elizabeth II

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip stop the show as they arrive late at the London Premier of the “WarHorse”….(Queen Elizabeth II by THE REX….)

Plus….

New “MM” Photos Discovered….

Marilyn Monroe by Ed Clark

And…Some New CRYPT–OLOGY?

The price for spending eternity above Marilyn Monroe is $4.5 million….That is how much the “crypt” directly above the actress went for in an online auction that was held August 14 on Ebay. The ebay.com listing said the space at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery above Monroe is being vacated, making room for someone else. The ‘listing’ also offers the detail that the current occupant is “looking face down on” Monroe….Note: Bidding for the auction started at $500,000….

Plus….

ABOUT RENEE ASHEY’S MOTHER (MRS ASHLEY)

1. Renee Ashley Baker’s mother (Mrs. Ashley) is pictured above.
2. Renee Ashley Baker’s mother (Mrs. Ashley) is with Royalty.
3. Renee Ashley Baker’s mother (Mrs. Ashley) is a Queen Too.
4. Renee Ashley Baker’s mother (Mrs. Ashley) partied in The Hamptons (New York).
5. Renee Ashley Baker’s mother (Mrs. Ashley) brunched every Sunday at the Brown Palace Hotel (in Denver).
6. Renee Ashey Baker’s mother (Mrs. Ashley) always hated California.
7. Renee Ashley Baker’s mother–Mrs. Ashley– married my father (Mr. Ashley) who was a “Mason”.
8. Renee Ashley Baker’s mother (Mrs Ashley) had steak on the stove when I came home from school.
9. Renee Ashley Baker’s mother (Mrs. Ashley) always wore her silk dresses, pearls and high heels when I came home from school (she llooked like June Cleaver).
10. Renee Ashley Baker’s mother (Mrs. Ashley) had a $250,000 Estate and she left Renee Ashley/Renee Ashley Baker $50,000 from her $250,000 Estate.
11. Renee Ashley Baker’s mother (Mrs. Ashley) hated the name Gale/Gail….
Note: Renee Ashley Baker will sign a contract with Ford Modeling Agency for representation to 21 Companies as a ‘Spokes Model’ –and for $21 million dollars to be paid to Renee Ashey Baker. (Renee Ashley Baker “hates” California and Renee Ashley Baker will be moving to Germany….)

NOTE 2: THE “21″ COMPANIES (THAT BELONG TO RENEE ASHLEY BAKER AND TO RENEE ASHLEY BAKER’S MOTHER–MRS ASHLEY. THESE 21 COMPANIES ARE “NOT” GALE’S/ NOT GAIL’S AND GALE/GAIL IS “NOT” GOING TO GET ANYTHING FROM THESE 21 COMPANIES…):
1. Faberge (Russia)
2 Mikimoto (Japan)
3. Grosvenor Furs of Canada (Represented by Albert Furs)
4. Shonbek Chandeliers (Germany)
5. Rolex (Switzerland)
6. Bang & Olufson (Denmark)
7. Burberry (England)
8. Jimmy Choo (England)
9. Chane/Chanel Cosmeticsl/Renee Perfume by Chanel (France) 10.Hermes/St. Louis Cristal (France)
11. Moet Champagne/Louis Vuitton (France)
12. Hagen Daz (USA/Jewish)
13. Neiman marcus (USA/Jewish)
14. Creme de La Mer (USA/Jewish)
15. Yahoo not Google (and eventually a seat on the Board of Directors of Yahoo)
16. AT&T/BlackJack Phone (USA)
17. MSN/Microsoft (USA)
18. General Motors (USA)
19. IBM (USA)
20. Swarovski (For The Royal Family of Austria)
21.

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