Full Disclsoure

This is my first foray into blogging. In turns I'm fascinated and repealed by the whole enterprise. But . . . I'm game to give it a try!

No doubt I"ll get better at the mechanics; I promise that I'll stop fiddling with the format; and I'm hopeful that I'll figure out a way to use labels that will be instructive.

Labels--how many? which ones? Already I'm awash in them so maybe fewer is better. Start a list:

• St. Olaf
• Freedom, cause it is the theme of the semester
  
• American Dream, cause we'll be thinking about this for four semesters
  
• agency, because Jim Cullen identifies this as important (Here's what he writes: "Agency, in turn, lies at the very core of the American Dream, the bedrock promise upon which all else depends." p. 10)  The American Dream: An Idea that Shaped a Nation (Oxford, 2004).
  
• landscape
• Our five facts: Plymouth Plantation (become Anne Hutchinson), Pocahontas, D of I, Monticello (become several looks at place), F. Douglass. And we've added Four Freedoms and Franklin
  
• authors and people
  

Perceptions, Places, Pumpkins, Prairies

This morning I've been reading the materials on place. This is a topic I'm very interested in. (Last January my interim course explored the notion of sacred place in Greece and Turkey.) And I'm thinking about how to write the assignment about St. Olaf as a place. These materials sparked lots of ideas: general ones and others specific to our class.

In Stilgoe's "Jack-O-Lanterns to Surveyors," the discussion of termini brought to memory the markers in the Athens agora that declare its edges and reminded me of the new gate at the bottom of the hill. It declares St. Olaf's location while prohibiting entry unless there is an emergency. Shall we have a pumpkin carving this October to recall this old way of marking boundaries?

From the same source: "The evolution of mathematical surveying paralleled, and perhaps encouraged, the changing landscape perception of the common folk." p. 54 Yes, I agreed, recalling the book, Measuring America, and the impact of a grid pattern on former prairie lands when those were divided into sections and farms as American examples. Also--a radio story I heard that reported that women are more attentive to landmarks to orient themselves in space and men to more abstract factors. (Can that be true?)

In regard to our class, and at the beginning of our work together, I also noted that this may also be true about learning. The evolution and adoption of new technologies encourages and parallels changing perceptions of community, of freedom, of learning. This is worth paying attention to. A small example: either copying out a quotation in longhand or typing it into this blog forces me to read every word and to encounter the sentences with my hands in ways that running a highlighter over the text does not. Or: what of the difference between reading a book, a photocopy, or on-line? Does the tactile experience matter? (And I admit to missing the possibility of looking at the card to see who else held a book and read it. See Billy Collins' Marginalia.) Another: 'conversing' digitally removes much of the sensory experience of doing so in a room together. I don't hear the sound of voices. There is no overlap of one interrupting another. Little possibility of laughter. No colors from clothing. Does the electronic mode of communication dis-embody knowledge? Does it diminish our community? So . . . . the BIG question . . . . how does the technology of conversation and study influence the character of our learning and community?

And, of course, it is always salutary to be reminded of Jonathan Z. Smith's aphorism: "The map is not the territory." This despite how valuable it is to have a map!

How we learn: what this project is for

The motivation for these blogs is to "enhance learning." We, that is Matt and I, the teachers, hope that by adapting the old practice of a commonplace book to the new technology of the blog we, that is all of us in the class, will learn. We hope that the habit of gathering up pieces of our reading and our lives and reflecting upon them will encourage us to think deeply, to make connections, to gain insight.

I also hope that the discipline of the commonplace blog will help each of us be patient with process of learning. Belden Lane, in a part of his book we are not reading, observes something like this: There are things we can not learn unless we are confused or frightened. Fear I'm not fond of and I try to keep it out of the classroom, but confusion is often an important phase of the journey.

These entries will, I hope, provide markers along the way: compass readings or landmarks. And they will allow us to return, reconsider, make new meaning where there was once confusion. Another image: Per Hansa and his family heading for Dakota, a bit lost, but adapting the trick of steering by a rope from the ocean to the prairie during the day and taking readings from the stars at night. (Photo is of St. Olaf's own restored prairie. See more at http://www.stolaf.edu/academics/naturallands/media/prairie/prairie3.jpg)

Having conversations with way is merely a variation of a principle of the American Conversations program at St. Olaf. Through the four semesters we study defining conversations about a that have taken place in our collective past, we converse with authors, artists, and other Americans, and we converse with each other.