The professor that I had this time last year for an outdoor/adventure experiential education class has just recently gotten tenure with the university.  Since Joe is working for him and will soon be a grad student under him (and took the same class with me), he told me that there was going to be a little party for him tonight.

My Hero break:  Ardol O'Hanlon is brilliant.

I talked to a number of people who are in Kieth's program.  They were all very cool.  I suppose it has something to do with the fact that they are all into experiential and outdoor education.  But it got me thinking again about how much I would love to incorporate some kind of outdoor component into my teaching.  It would be wonderful to design a curriculum around our perceptions and connections to the environment around us.  There are so many connections to the environment and the way we live.  It just begs to be explored.

Who knows.  Maybe some day I will enter a program like the one Keith runs.  I could develop the curriculum and run a residential charter school based upon our relationship with the environment.  Science, math, reading, history, psychology, economics, art... it's all there. 

Now I'm tired and ready to crawl into bed.

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Ireland pictures coming soon.  This weekend for sure.
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Simple pleasure - grilled cheese.  Yum!
Peace

So I'm curious. What do you think it will ultimately take for the U.S. (and perhaps industrialized nations in general) to change course?

Background. After going to the anti-war rally yesterday afternoon, Sarah and I watched Who Killed the Electric Car?  Basically, the movie was about automakers developing plug-in electric cars for the mass market.  The cars were developed, leased by many people in California, and then the automakers let the leases expire and destroyed them all much to the chagrin of everyone who drove them.  The movie placed the blame for the demise of the plug-in electric cars on...
the oil industry (buying and killing the best battery technology)
auto companies (who would be forced to admit that all of their cars aren't good, if their new electric cars are so good)
the government (for being beholden to big business)
consumers (who are apathetic and will usually eat what is fed to them)
and
the hydrogen fuel cell (which is glamorous, but has plenty of issues, and though would be clean is ultimately [according to the movie] a less viable and efficient form of energy to power cars)
There may have been one or two other culprits they named, but I don't remember off hand, and these are most of them.

This lead to a discussion between Sarah and I that started with the question, "Why would a company kill a project that all signs showed would be very successful (not to mention the fact that it would be a huge step forward in combating global warming)?"



While I want to see the revolution come, I think the powers that be would be able to crush nearly anything that threatens the status quo.  I believe there will be worldwide (or at least continental-scale) calamity before any real changes come about, and at that point it may be too late.

So, what do you think it will take for us to change course?

There has been talk for days about this HUGE winter storm heading our way. "It'll be the most snow we've ever gotten in one storm in February in Minnesota..." "Twelve to eighteen inches..." "Make sure your cars have emergency survival kits..." "Stay off the roads unless it is absolutely necessary..."

While I was skeptical about the accumulation they have been talked, I was pretty excited nonetheless. Even so, I have been thinking that we'd be lucky to get six inches out of a storm they've been hyping up like this. Last night on the news they were saying we'd have four inches of snow by this morning. And they were right, if by four inches they meant a dusting. This morning they're saying the storm is taking a more southerly track and that we could now expect four to eight inches. Surprise surprise. My prediction. We'll be lucky to have four inches - still not enough to cross country ski on.

Grrrr. Pisses me off. Ok, so I'm not actually pissed off, but I'm disappointed. I want winters like we had when I was young where getting six inches of snow wasn't such a big deal and where we had serious snow cover, not this wussy crap we've been having these last ten years or so where it is brown for much of the winter. I live in Minnesota, not Indiana. Bah!