Details: Written by: Kamran Mofid; Published: 06 April 2020; Hits: 2342

"We become teachers for reasons of the heart.

But many of us lose heart as time goes by.

How can we take heart, alone and together,

So we can give heart to our students and our world,

Which is what good teachers do?”-

THE HEART OF A TEACHER: Identity and Integrity in Teaching

Enough is Enough. Enough of the Folly of Neoliberal/Values-free Education and its Mumbo-Jumbo

My Plea to You: Let the poets and philosophers of love be your sources of inspiration in all you do and in all you teach.

William Blake quote: To see a world in a grain of sand And a...

Photo credit:pinterest

Poetry is the Education that Nourishes the Heart and Nurtures the Soul

World in Chaos and Despair: The Healing Power of Poetry

Time to reflect…Time for soul searching

How to Make the World a Better Place

Every move you make, every breath you take leaves its mark on our world

'Heaven is my father and earth is my mother,

and I, a small child, find myself placed intimately between them.

What fills the universe I regard as my body;

what directs the universe I regard as my nature.

All people are my brothers and sisters; all things are my companions.’- Zhang Zai (1020–1077)

"You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of our grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin.

"Teach your children what we have taught our children -- that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.

"This we know. The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected.

"Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself ..."-- Chief Seattle

Tarn Reflection, Mt Taranaki/Egmont, Egmont National Park, NZ.-Dave Young, Creative Commons

Out of the coronavirus crisis, a new kinder and better world must be born

The Wisdom of Mother Nature belongs to all Life.

Let be guided and inspired by Her and Save the Web of Life

'Be like the sun for grace and mercy.

Be like the night to cover others’ faults.

Be like running water for generosity.

Be like death for rage and anger.

Be like the Earth for modesty.

Appear as you are.

Be as you appear.'- Rumi

Dear Colleagues,

Firstly, I am writing to you with the sincere hope that you, your loved ones are all keeping well and staying safe. I thank all those friends and colleagues who have responded to my previous communications, telling me that they are weathering ok and also wishing me and my family well.

We are a GCGI Family and as such it will make me very happy to hear from all of you. Please consider sending me an email, letting us know you are fine.

Secondly, as today (7 April) is the 250th birthday of William Wordsworth, I want to share a personal and heartfelt message with you.

In all my academic life, spanning over four decades, I have been dismayed, frustrated and overwhelmed with pain to notice that our education model has not embraced the beauty and the wisdom of our mother nature and our sacred earth, corporating them into the teaching curriculum.

This, to my mind, has seriously deprived the students, our future leaders, or indeed, our current leaders, to get a wholesome, values-led education, and thus, has prevented them, to vision and implement policies to heal our world, to better our lives.

Given the tragedy of our current Coronavirus crisis, the time is now to rethink this matter. To enable us to do just that, I have put some ideas together in the link below:

The Sweetness of Being Human: ‘We have all of us one human heart.’

You will feel me with joy, if you join me, and include nature in your teachings, and furthermore, by sharing the link below with your colleagues and students.

The time is now to be a campaigner for the common good, by embracing and protecting nature, and by recalling the wise words of the poet of nature, William Wordsworth: 'Let Nature to be Your Teacher'

Thanking you,

Stay well,

Kamran

GCGI is our journey of hope and the sweet fruit of a labour of love. It is free to access, and it is ad-free too. We spend hundreds of hours, volunteering our labour and time, spreading the word about what is good and what matters most. If you think that's a worthy mission, as we do—one with powerful leverage to make the world a better place—then, please consider offering your moral and spiritual support by joining our circle of friends, spreading the word about the GCGI and forwarding the website to all those who may be interested.

Details: Written by: Kamran Mofid; Published: 05 April 2020; Hits: 2540

Out of the coronavirus crisis, a new kinder and better world must be born

Crisis, courage, care, love and the healing power of mother nature

As I write this, many countries, all over the world, are in lockdown due to COVID-19.

The current global pandemic crisis and more are the manifestation of the tragedy of separating ourselves from mother nature.

Covid-19 has come to tell us that we are not the kings of the world: It has exposed the great weakness within the human triumph

The age of disconnection is over: We now need a different story, a different narrative. Carpe Diem!

Our Planet Matters:Our Lives Matters

Photo: TFF The Transnational

‘We have been living in a bubble, a bubble of false comfort and denial. In the rich nations, we have begun to believe we have transcended the material world. The wealth we’ve accumulated – often at the expense of others – has shielded us from reality. Living behind screens, passing between capsules – our houses, cars, offices and shopping malls – we persuaded ourselves that contingency had retreated, that we had reached the point all civilisations seek: insulation from natural hazards.

We're all social distancing these days, and it's unclear when exactly that will end. But Billy Barr has been doing this for almost 50 years. He's the only full-time resident of Gothic, Colorado, USA

Billy Barr, pictured, is the only year-round resident in the former silver mining town of Gothic, Colorado. He moved there in the fall of 1973 after he graduated from Rutgers University.-Photo: Daily Mail

Gothic Ghost Town

Gothic was supported by the Silver mines in the area and a post office between 1879 and 1896. At one time, there were 200 buildings. The area of Gothic and surrounding areas had a combined population of 1000. President Grant visited Gothic in 1880, and Horace Tabor backed financially the Elk Mountain Bonanza newspaper. After 1914, Gothic became a ghost town, except for Billy Barr, it’s only full-time resident, since 1973.-Photo:OutThereColorado

‘Tips From Someone With Nearly 50 Years Of Social Distancing Experience.’*

"I'm the mayor and chief of police," he said. "I hold elections every year, but I don't tell anybody when they are, so it works out really well."

He lives in an abandoned silver mine at nearly 10,000 feet in altitude in the Rocky Mountains. "The snow's going sideways, it's swirling," Billy Barr said of the local weather.

Barr has tips on social distancing, but he's the first to say they may well be entirely useless.

"When I first got here, it was a relief for me to be on my own, but that's not necessarily what a healthy person does — isolate themself," he said. "I mean, I'm good at it and I do it because I like it, but what works for me, it works for me. It quite conceivably wouldn't work for anybody else."

While Barr has been called a hermit, he doesn't consider himself one. He occasionally interacts with skiers who pass through, he talks to his sister on the phone, and he works for the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory nearby, which gets flooded with scientists in the summer.

When Billy first moved to Gothic, he lived in an 8x10ft mining shack, pictured above. He lived there for eight years until he built himself an actual house in 1980, pictured below. His house is powered by solar panels and even has a greenhouse and a movie room.

Photos: Daily Mail

But the man has been living alone in a cabin in the mountains for many years, and in the winter months, he can go many days without seeing a soul. So staying home during the COVID-19 outbreak?

"Yeah, I mean this is no change for me," he said. "I come into winter with almost all my food already in."

So, without further ado, here are five recommendations for the Billy Barr method of social distancing.

Billy on one of his daily hikes.-Photo: Daily Mail

How to survive isolation and social distancing: Lessons from Billy

Keep track of something.

Each day, Barr tracks the weather for a number of groups including the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. He started measuring snow levels in the 1970s, mostly because he was bored.

"Everything depends on the weather," said Barr, who has skied through that "sideways" and "swirling" snow to talk on the phone from the laboratory. "It controlled what I did and so I would write it all down."

He would also write down when he saw an animal.

"With the birds, especially the ones that arrive in the spring, it was exciting," he said. "It was like, 'Oh my goodness, it's sunrise and I can hear robins.' "

Turns out, monitoring things that were important to his daily life had real value. As The Atlantic has written and the documentary The Snow Guardian has shown, his records have informed dozens of studies on climate change.

In the era of COVID-19, he suggests tracking what you can — or can't — find at the grocery store. Or, better yet, participating in some citizen science, like a project called CoCoRaHS that tracks rainfall across the country.

"I would definitely recommend people doing that," he said. "You get a little rain gauge, put it outside and you're part of a network where there's thousands of other people doing the same thing as you, the same time of the day as you're doing it. It's very interesting."

Keep a routine.

Barr starts early. He wakes up around 3:30 a.m. or 4 a.m., and stays in bed until about 5 a.m.

"Up until a week or two ago, I would listen to the news every morning so that I could start every day either totally depressed or furious. That's always a good way to start the day," he said.

"Now with the whole COVID and with politics and stuff," he said he just can't anymore. So, he listens to old-time radio instead.

Then it's time to clear the snow off his solar panels and file weather reports to a bunch of different agencies. The rest of the day involves work and chores interspersed with skiing.

"I kind of follow a set time schedule," said Barr. "Sometimes I forget what day it is, but I know what time it is."

Most importantly, he said, is leaving a reward for the end of the day. He'll read, knit something, watch a movie and then watch a game of cricket.

"It's pretty much the same day after day. Most of it I enjoy," he said.

Notably absent from his daily routine: keeping a personal journal. He said he used to, for about a decade or so, but then he went back and read it. "And it was so boring. It's like, 'OK enough already. Let me go watch some paint dry.' "

Celebrate the stuff that matters, rather than the stuff you're supposed to celebrate.

Barr has mostly ditched holidays and birthdays, but he does celebrate Jan. 17, when sunrise goes back to what it was on the solstice.

"To me, that's a big deal because I get up so early in the morning that the lighter it gets, earlier, makes my day a lot easier," he said.

He also celebrates when he gets back from skiing 8 miles each way into the town of Crested Butte for supplies.

"Town can be kind of stressful," he said. "So I save my favorite movies and I save my favorite meals and I save things to do so when I ski back from town and I'm home, it's like, 'Woohoo!' Big party time."

Embrace the grumpiness.

Sometimes, Barr said, it's kind of satisfying to be grumpy about something.

"I do get sick and tired of snow, but I like kidding about it. I live in an area where people live for snow, but I'm not that carried away with it, so I like being grumpy about it," Barr said. "You get older and you start saying 'OK, I'm not going to necessarily be pleasant when I don't feel pleasant.' "

These days, Barr is feeling especially unpleasant.

"Ironically, I have been in contact with one person in the last nine days. That was eight days ago," he said.

And then the guy got sick.

"I don't know what he has, but for the last week, I've been sitting around wondering If I'm going to get it," Barr said. (Another week has passed since this interview.)

Which brings us to his final tip...

Use movies as a mood adjuster.

"If I'm really stressed I might watch an animated movie, something cute and funny that takes my mind off it. If I'm depressed, I can reverse that," he said.

"My tastes are reasonably fluff-oriented," he said. Movies like Pandemic or The Shining? Hard pass. "The Princess Bride is my pretty much favorite movie. I like Hugh Grant stuff, like Love Actually, Notting Hill."

He also recommends Bollywood movies like Om Shanti Om, Bride and Prejudice and English Vinglish.

"They're colorful. They're pretty, there's good music and stuff," he said. "I have a list of favorites that I'll only watch under certain circumstances. I save them for that."

Here are the 357 movies at the top of his list.

About 20 years ago, Barr added a movie room into his cabin. It has a projector, carpeted walls, and three chairs.

"I have a nice chair for me and I have two other chairs with the idea that I'd invite people up," he said. "And I never do."

*This story told to Rae Ellen Bichell was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUER in Salt Lake City, KUNR in Nevada, the O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West in Montana, and KRCC and KUNC in Colorado. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

See the original article here

Continue and explore a bit more on similar themes

Crisis or no crisis: These are some of my recommendations for a better life and a better world. Carpe Diem!

Time to reflect…

Every move you make, every breath you take leaves its mark on our world