Dear Students, We think of you always, and hope that you are well, safe, and healthy. It continues to be a difficult time for all of us, as it is for you, and we look forward to joining you again for (in Earl’s words from a recent letter) our party – that is, our CEP reunion as a class. We are so glad to send you our fifth newsletter, with the theme of “Movement and Migration.” The theme was collaboratively determined and we happily recalled the very first CEP reading group on the same topic, led by Pamela, Jelena, and Andy. This month, our group supported Luca and Ben’s planning of a Lantern course, which we will submit for DOC consideration in the coming weeks. John W., thank you for all your ideas with regard to how to use that system – we will be thinking over those suggestions. Madison, Sarah, Denise, Leila, Luca, Ben, and Melinda all worked on this edition of the newsletter. As always, we invite your responses to the contents, including your ideas for future themes! Please send them in with the included stamped envelopes. We have continued the following features: Artist Spotlight (thank you Luca), Student Spotlight (this month’s spotlight is on David B., thank you Denise), the Caption Contest (thank you Luca), and Sacred Space with Sensei Morris. We also continue Community Conversation (thank you for your responses to the last newsletter’s set of prompts!), columns from Ben, Sarah, Leila, and Melinda, and other writings from team members. Questions you asked about in the last two batches of letters: 1) Re-entry and 2) More Than Our Blues. As for re-entry, members of our team (including but not limited to Pam, Abbey, Sam, and Nelson) are putting together a re-entry guide that focuses on practical matters. We are ready to provide you with mentorship and feedback to continue work on your educations, and also connect you with resources for every day issues and relevant policies and laws. As for More Than Our Blues, Melinda is working hard to get the books back to the Amazon warehouse. In a frustrating piece of bureaucracy that you would appreciate, they initially sent out four books per order because of how the books were packaged (even though buyers were only paying for one). They said that they could not change this because they were shrinkwrapped together. Melinda had them sent back to us, at which point we discovered they were no longer shrink-wrapped! The Kindle edition, priced lower, remains available, and the paperback should be available again as soon as it hits the warehouse. As we mentioned last time, we decided that our February conference will be held entirely online. We included our Call for Papers (CFP) in this newsletter for each of you to review – there is still time to make substantial changes and to think about how you might want to contribute. We welcome your feedback. Please enjoy the material and know that you are always on our minds. All best wishes,
The CEP Team, far and wide
When asked how it feels for him to put on one of his suits, Cave responded, saying:
Artist SpotLight
Nick Cave Nick Cave is a contemporary Black American artist working primarily in fibers/textile, performance art, and sculpture. He was born in Missouri and lives in Chicago, where he heads up the prestigious fashion program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Cave has a background in dance, having studied with Alvin Ailey, which strongly influences his approach to movement in his performances and sculptures. His most well-known body of work is Soundsuits, which consist of sculptural costumes worn by the artist, performers, and dancers. Made with materials that reflect light, make sound, and move, the Soundsuits come alive through the movement of the wearer. Because the Soundsuits envelop the performer’s body, they also function as a way to hide the identity of the wearer, creating the opportunity for performers to move through space without the burden of their gender, race, or other easily identifiable demographic labels. Cave draws from the movement found in modern dance, but also from its fashion history, including ballroom culture and drag ball culture.
Nick Cave in his Chicago studio
Oh, it’s — it’s fabulous. It’s hard. Because you have to understand that the moment you are shielded, your identity is no longer relevant. And so what does that mean? How do you step into the unknown? How do you deal with the limitations of weight, of movement? How do you accept what is about to happen? And what are you imagining is going to happen? What does that feel like? You put it on — you don’t even move. What is the weight of it? Because it’s really liberating if you know how to surrender. And you must surrender because it’s so dominating. It’s all of these conditions — it’s a process. It’s all about projection. How do you project? … It’s all internal. And if you do not know your core and … your internal being, it’s very, very hard. But when you think about it, just to be everyday — it takes everything — just to be … your authentic self, don’t you think?
A selection of Soundsuits, made from materials like buttons, baskets, human hair, and pipe cleaners.
Soundsuits in action during a performance by Alvin Ailey dancers at New York City’s Grand Central station
BLIND CONTOUR Blind contour drawing is meant to help artists practice their observation skills, and for those who approach the technique with patience, it can even be a calming exercise. “It’s kind of like a meditation,” explained Erin Pollock, a fellow at the New York Academy of Art. “The pen goes down on the page and your eye goes to a specific point in space and they move in sync.” For Pollock, blind contour drawing is an opportunity to be more present, and slow down the process of looking. “I kind of think about [the tip of the pencil] like an ant, crawling around the contour of someone’s shoulder, then falling down to the table, and then up the side of salt shaker,” she said. “There’s just something about moving that slowly, and that focused, that makes you empty your brain of everything else.”
TO CREATE A BLIND CONTOUR DRAWING
●- Give yourself a set amount of time to draw. 10 or 15 minutes can feel like an eternity for this exercise, but slowing down is a key component of contour drawing. ●- Find a point in space to begin and set the tip of your pen or pencil down onto your page. ●- Once the tip of your utensil and your line of vision are anchored together, begin following the contours of the subject you’re observing. ●- What “contour” means will change––it could be the outline of a body, the edge of a harsh shadow, or the crease in a shirt. ●- As you draw, feel free to shift from one subject to the next. For example, if you’re drawing a friend, don’t be afraid to slip from the collar of their shirt to the window pane behind them—but don’t lift your pencil (or pen). ●- Most importantly, make sure your eye, hand, and mind are working in unison. ●- Resist the urge to look at the page: It will not be worth breaking the unique line of communication that blind contour drawing creates. Adapted from Eli Hill’s 2019 article “Blind Contour Drawing Can Help You Become a Better Artist” on artsy.net
Sarah’s SaLutations I debated taking this month’s column in a different direction to avoid pigeonholing myself and to remind you all that I do, in fact, have non-honey bee related interests… but I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to connect our theme of “Movement and Migration” to beekeeping. Migratory beekeeping refers to the practice of transporting colonies of honey bees to different locations throughout the year to facilitate pollination of the crops there during their distinct bloom times. Several times a year, migratory beekeepers – always large-scale keepers who each often maintain several thousand individual hives – load up their colonies on semi-trucks to move them across the country. The largest single event in the migratory beekeeping calendar is the almond bloom in California, which takes place during the last two weeks of February. Every single almond is the product of insect pollination (a furry insect visits one flower, collects pollen grains from the flower on their legs, and deposits them in a second flower to achieve fertilization and produce the nut), and the California almond industry is 100% dependent on honey bee pollination. The numbers that describe this event are truly mind-boggling – how can we even fathom what 80 billion individual honey bees looks like? That is how many bugs populate these orchards every spring, after 85% of all commercial hives in the country are moved to California to pollinate 80% of the entire world’s almonds. It is estimated that these insects visit 2.5 trillion flowers during the almond bloom, and that the increased crop yield due to honey bee pollination is valued at more than $17 billion a year. This is a process on which our entire modern food system depends; not just almonds, but also cranberries, canola,
apples, avocados, blueberries, and Florida citrus…but have you ever heard of it? As Hannah Nordhaus says in her book The Beekeeper’s Lament, “Pause to think about it: bee guys pull off a remarkable feat – one that, like pollination itself, is so invisible as to be almost mundane, and so complicated as to be almost inconceivable” (p. 104). After the almond bloom in California (also, it’s worth mentioning that when given the choice to pollinate literally anything else, bees will not pollinate almonds due to the bitter nature of the nectar), these same colonies are loaded up again and trucked to Washington for the apple and cherry blooms, then to North and South Dakota for most of the summer to pollinate alfalfa and clover. Some head to Michigan for blueberries or Massachusetts for cranberries, and then most are finally hauled south in the fall to overwinter in places like Florida, Texas, or Georgia. The attached map from the National Honey Board shows the movement. In many ways, the necessity of migratory beekeeping is both a product and a symptom of our conventional, industrialized food system. The European
honey bee is not even native to the United States (nor are many of these crop plants…), but there are, or were, countless thousands of indigenous pollinators that did this job just fine before we got here. It is not “natural” for an almond orchard to be 100% dependent on honey bee pollination, especially when those honey bees must be trucked in from Florida. However, monocultural systems, only growing one crop at a massive scale, are prized in U.S. agriculture for their consistency and productivity, yet are antithetical to biodiversity. There are no pollinators in almond orchards because there are no nectar-producing plants, aka weeds, to feed them during the other 50 weeks of the year. Additionally, when billions of bees from all over the country meet in California’s almond orchards, diseases and pests are passed among colonies that would never interact otherwise. I’d love to hear your thoughts on migratory beekeeping. Feel free to include a response to this information if you write us a letter this month. What other environmental, social, or economic issues might come from migratory beekeeping? What alternatives do you propose to this system? Are there other areas of our society or food system that mirror the patterns described here? For another visual illustrating how bugs move of their own volition, check out the other map I’ve included about the monarch butterfly migration! Until next month, bee well.
Above: National Honey Board, 2018 Left: Monarch Migration Spring and Fall Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
‘TRUE POEMS FLEE—’: A REFUGEE POETICS OR POETRY AS PERMANENTLY TEMPORARY BY JILL MAGI To see the Summer Sky Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie – True Poems flee— —Emily Dickinson
Unsettling, un-reading, unwriting: Dickinson’s poem makes an argument for “true” poetry’s temporariness. This is poetry that plays a game of keep-away from literature. It is poetry that is tribal, directing a shrug toward those who would try to over-determine its life force through interpretation. I think that poetry’s gift is that it is more than literature—it exceeds boundaries and points toward the pre-lingual, the impossible book, the post-utterance. Fleeting, all. Some poems are particularly resistant to decoding and they might not even look poetic. It is in those traditions and alt-canons that I take refuge.
Citation Information Excerpt from the essay “‘True Poems flee—’: A Refugee Poetics or Poetry as Permanently Temporary” Website Name: Poetry Foundation Date Published: April 12th, 2019 URL: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/ harriet/2019/04/true-poems-flee-a-refugeepoetics-or-poetry-as-permanently-temporary
Student SpotLight Life’s Disappointments BY David B. Life is but a series of bountiful disappointments, Which start at an early age. As a child we are told Santa and the Easter Bunny are not real, Yet for years they were dear friends. As a teenager we struggle with self-discovery and emotions, Often to learn we are a freak. As a young adult we suffer through school and work, Often not being able to find work in our field of study. As an older adult we realize Life was full of regret, Often not satisfied with whom we have become. It is at this time we realize life’s disappointments. However, life need not remain this way; Disappointments need not remain. When we discover life’s bountiful pleasures, We learn we are not a freak. Become whom you’re meant to be; Disappointments will soon disappear, Upon which happiness will remain! Some say happiness is not for everyone; Some are meant to be depressed. I believe that may be me, However, I want to give happiness a try. Life needs not be a disappointment; Could it be an adventure?
Being on the right side The body and its movement are often – sometimes it feels like always – sidelined in philosophy. From ancient philosophers such as Plato who thought we should control our bodies with our minds like a rider on a horse, to Enlightenment philosophers such as Kant who thought that our bodies were permanent temptations away from rational thinking, philosophy is littered with thinkers who prioritize mind over body. The body is treated as a problem. Indeed, as feminist philosopher Alison Jaggar points out, “problematic” people, too, are reduced to their bodies and denied rationality. Women are identified with their bodies and told they are not as rational as men. People of color are identified with their physicality and sexuality and told they are not as rational as whites. This issue crosses many intersecting identities and links together racism, sexism, and ableism. Some of the worst prejudices in society are amplified in philosophy when the mind is taken to be more important, and more key to living well, than the body itself. It’s as if philosophers believe that having a body makes one less than human, or that the mind can be separated from the body completely. This idea is pervasive despite the fact that it’s precisely our bodies that make us human – vulnerable, ever-changing, and engaged in a world of sense and sensation. Philosophy can’t seem to shake this problem. Why can’t philosophy move on? What is it that’s so tempting about denigrating the body? What fascinates us about the idea that ethics, the law, and our best ideas come from our rationality alone, and not movement, feelings, or bodily connections? And why do we think that rationality has
nothing to do with our bodies at all? I can’t answer these questions, but I think about them all the time. This is especially because of my investment in thinking about what it’s like to be human through and with disability. If no bodies are good, then we can’t accept bodily difference. We need to unwork the knot of this prejudice and anger at human embodiment in order to do better and live better as human beings. In keeping with this newsletter’s theme of movement and migration, I offer the example of the performance art group Sins Invalid, which first emerged in the San Francisco Bay area and now holds performances nationally. This group focuses on activism and expression through movement, highlighting marginalized people and reworking our assumptions about what the human body looks like and what it can do. I
include selections from the mission statement and vision statement of this group, along with two photographs taken at Sins Invalid performances. I hope this example provides a way to meditate on the idea of the importance of the body, its movements, and bodily difference. What has this to do with ethics? Only everything, or so I believe – and at least much, much more than Plato or Kant would ever have dreamed. Relevant questions to meditate on include: how does our body itself matter in our life, and whose body is considered beautiful (and why)? What movements are thought beautiful, and how can we expand our understanding of the ways the body moves? These questions are about our moral community, and who counts. There can’t be anything more central to ethics and what it’s like to be human.
Neve Mazique and Antoine Hunter copyright Richard Downing, 2016 BIRTHING, DYING, BECOMING CRIP WISDOM PERFORMANCE, ODC THEATER
Sins InvaLid (www.sinsinvaLid.org)
MISSION
“Sins Invalid is a disability justice based performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and LGBTQ / gender-variant artists as communities who have been historically marginalized. Led by disabled people of color, Sins Invalid’s performance work explores the themes of sexuality, embodiment and the disabled body, developing provocative work where paradigms of “normal” and “sexy” are challenged, offering instead a vision of beauty and
sexuality inclusive of all bodies and communities. We define disability broadly to include people with physical impairments, people who belong to a sensory minority, people with emotional disabilities, people with cognitive challenges, and those with chronic/severe illness. We understand the experience of disability to occur within any and all walks of life, with deeply felt connections to all communities impacted by the medicalization of their bodies, including trans,
gender variant and intersex people, and others whose bodies do not conform to our culture(s)’ notions of “normal” or “functional.””
VISION
“Sins Invalid is committed to social and economic justice for all people with disabilities – in lockdowns, in shelters, on the streets, visibly disabled, invisibly disabled, sensory minority, environmentally injured, psychiatric survivors – moving beyond individual legal rights to collective human rights.”
Denice Yezbick At this time of year in Michigan there is a familiar and comforting sound heard at random times throughout the day. It is the sound of honking Canadian geese as they fly in formation overhead, always southward, resting only when something inside them confirms they have arrived at their destination.
LeiLa Roach Greetings Students! This month’s theme brought to mind the ways in which we can transform or migrate our difficult emotions to find more peace within ourselves. Tara Brach has a beautiful and easy-to-remember tool called RAIN. I hope you find this useful.
RAIN A Practice of Radical Compassion
R ecognize what is going on; A llow the experience to be there, just as it is;
I nvestigate with interest and care; N urture with self-compassion.
You can take your time and explore
RAIN as a stand-alone meditation
or move through the steps whenever challenging feelings arise. Copyright © 2020 by Tara Brach, Ph.D.
WiLd Geese by Mary OLiver You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
Sacred Space Losing Your Luggage By Sensei Morris I was having lunch one day many years ago with a coworker who had been a longtime member of a 12-Step community. He mentioned a mutual acquaintance who was moving to another job. He used the term “pulling a geographical.” I had never heard that term before. He said that in his recovery group, that referred to an attempt to escape from your problems. “Rather than facing the difficult issues in your life, you try to get away from them. But it doesn’t work. You just move your junk from one place to another.” The stuff that weighs us down is mostly of our own making. Our circumstances may
not be ideal and bad things will happen, but the degree to which we are unhappy is mainly a matter of hanging on to mental objects and activities that create emotional stress. So for pulling a geographical to actually result in a fresh start, you’d have to lose your luggage. You’d have to somehow arrive at your new destination without all the mental baggage that had created the problems you were trying to transcend. You don’t have to physically move in order to lose that luggage. You can just set it down and then not pick it back up again. Of course, like all spiritual progress, that’s not instantaneous—you have to practice it. But the better you get at letting things go, the more time you’ll spend freed from that emotional weight.
Try this for a while, and see if it helps you “lose your luggage:” 1. Choose something you do every day that doesn’t take a lot of mental effort. Brushing your teeth is a good one. Or you could choose making your bunk, folding your laundry, or anything like that. 2. As you prepare to do that activity, see what you’re carrying that you’re better off without. Are you nurturing a resentment? Harboring a grudge? Ruminating on a worry? 3. Mentally set that down. Leave it behind as you begin brushing your teeth, or whatever you have chosen. Be fully present in that activity. How does the toothbrush feel in your hand? How do the bristles feel against your gums? How do you move your arm, engage your shoulder, etc.? Just do that one thing for that period of time. 4. As you move away from that activity, resist the urge to pick up your “baggage.” See if you can leave it behind.
Rookies & Vets: When to Make Moves with an NBA Coach By Ben PhiLLis Southwestern Middle School PE teacher & new CEP member
NBA coaching jobs are fickle business. Phil Jackson was not renewed with the Bulls. Pat Riley stepped down from the Lakers. Sometimes an elite veteran coach needs to move on. Getting new blood can be invigorating for a team—but when is a rookie head coach the right call? The Houston Rockets and the Brooklyn Nets are leading headlines right now for letting Mike D’Antoni go and bringing in Steve Nash. D’Antoni is an established veteran coach with an effective offensive system. Nash is an unproven coach who “skipped the line” due to a sparkling NBA career. Will the Rockets be better off without D’Antoni? Will Nash be able to handle superstars like Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant?
If we take some lessons from recent history, only one of these is a risky move. Parting ways with Mike D’Antoni likely won’t set Houston back, while Nash is probably going to struggle to move the needle for Brooklyn. Dumping a veteran coach if you have a talented roster isn’t too dangerous in today’s NBA. David Blatt was controversially fired in 2016, and Ty Lue helped Cleveland win the championship that same year. Dwayne Casey was ousted in 2018, and Nick Nurse hoisted Toronto’s first championship in 2019. Nash’s hiring, on the other hand, is most similar to Jason Kidd’s selection to lead the Brooklyn Nets in 2013. Neither Nash nor Kidd had any experience as an assistant coach or head coach at the time of their hiring. Both teams were laden with big names. It did not work out for the Nets in 2013, and it probably won’t in 2021, either.
The Nets won five fewer games under Kidd than they did the previous year, despite swinging an offseason trade for Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to go with holdovers Joe Johnson, Deron Williams, and Brook Lopez. They certainly underachieved in the regular season. That Nets team also had serious title aspirations, but they fell far short in the postseason, only winning one playoff series. This upcoming year’s Nets have similar aspirations—signing former MVP Kevin Durant and electric point guard Kyrie Irving last season means that the goal is to win now. Can Steve Nash get them there? Probably not. The coaching carousel never stops moving.
Community Education Project Florida Prisons in Uncertain Times: A Virtual Conference On February 19 and 20, 2021, the Community Education Project (CEP) will host its first virtual conference at Stetson University. The intent of the conference is to bring together multiple stakeholders focused on incarceration and its impacts on communities in Florida for fresh insights andconversation. Further, this conference provides a space for dialogue among diverse groups in support of higher education in prison (HEP) in Florida. The theme of “uncertain times� includes but is not limited to the impact of COVID-19 on incarcerated persons and prisons in Florida. Since CEP is a higher education in prison program, we are especially interested in the changing faces of prison education and the multiple and diverse coalitions and collaborations that support education in prisons. Yet, we explicitly invite activist groups and organizations engaged in work on incarceration beyond or outside of education to take part in this conference. Our specific goals include: 1) To generate crucial conversations among Florida lawmakers and policymakers, HEP programs, justiceimpacted individuals, and other community organizations across the state. This conversation should help identify ways to support each other’s work on issues related to incarceration and to expand access to quality higher education for currently and formerly incarcerated people across Florida. 2) To educate attendees on emerging matters in Florida prisons during uncertain times by engaging in dialogue with currently and formerly incarcerated persons, including students in HEP programs and other relevant stakeholders.
3) To build a sense of community among organizations working on issues related to incarceration and among statewide HEP programs by providing networking opportunities and spaces to share ideas. Building a strong movement to strengthen HEP across the state requires the collaboration of many stakeholders. Again, we specifically invite organizations and activists engaging in work on incarceration to join this conversation. We also specifically invite currently and formerly incarcerated students, current HEP instructors and administrators, state legislators and policymakers, college and university administrators, community members,and individuals from institutions of higher education interested in bringing HEP programs to their respective institutions to attend this conference. Indeed, if your work focuses on issues directly related to incarceration and post- incarceration, and you have an interest in this conference, please feel welcome to submit to this conference and to circulate this CFP further. To submit, fill out this Google form and include your proposal. We welcome proposals on the following topics: · “School to prison” pipeline “Prison to school” pipeline Education and reentry Work from formerly incarcerated persons, including creative work Work from currently incarcerated students, including creative work Florida First Step Act Legislative priorities in the state of Florida Abolition COVID-19 Unique partnerships and ecosystems for education in prison setting The future of education in Florida prisons Varied models for offering education in prison Technology in prison classrooms High impact practices in prison classrooms
Caption This! Each week, The New Yorker prints a cartoon in need of a caption and solicits reader caption submissions. Here is a blank cartoon for you to caption. We’ve also included last month’s winning caption is below. Send us your caption idea, and we will print the caption contest winner in a future issue.
Community Coversations
Responses
We want this newsletter to belong to you, the CEP students. So, we are setting aside this space for community conversation. Mail in your answers to the prompts if you can, and we will print them here as we receive them, with your first name.
Ben: “I want to suggest that we have a foreign language class: French, Italian, Spanish, etc. Also a class on Economics and Business.”
Prompt 1: Would you like to complete Josh Rust’s Moby Dick class? If so, let us know by mail, and use the course packet sent in by Andy to complete your work by November 1st. He is asking for two short papers to complete the course.
Prompt 2: Spooky story challenge for the October issue! Can you write and submit a two-sentence spooky story?
Prompt 3: What is your vote for the name of the newsletter?
What kinds of classes would you like to have in Spring 2021?
Michael: “I’d hoped for an introductory-level computer programming class. The last one was too fast-paced for me…Also, more writing, literature based classes. I’d begun to dream again, of writing my thoughts, hopes, and stories.” Marcus: “Foreign language: Chinese/German/French/Rus.; Interpersonal Communications; Psychology; Fine Arts; Intro to Film; Biology; Astronomy/ Atmospheric Science; Physics; Intro to Architecture; Intro to Business; Economics; College Algebra; Intro to Business Statistics; Logic; Sociology; Food and Culture.” We have been meditating on how to reconnect as a teaching and learning community upon the return of the CEP team. Do you have any thoughts on that?
This one’s for Bambi Dr. Cramer. - Marcus
Ben: “The structure and design of the C.E.P program has always been one that is conducive to the growth and development of its students and staff members. I suggest we continue on the course already established once its pandemic eases up.” Michael: “Lantern. It will be worth the headaches I hope!” Marcus: “Have a More Than Our Blues release party, and discuss what we want to do for the next book and future of C.E.P.” And more… David: “As for future content for our newsletter. In the future, perhaps allow us to share what our time with CEP has meant to each of us?”