Week 4 - Further On Up the Road

Not that I doubted our inevitable progress, but things seem to be coming together. Rough shapes are emerging from the void. A collective direction is forming. A level of clarity is descending. A break boundary seems to be approaching. Said simply, we seem to be getting our shit together.

Casey presented her idea about community gardens. What a great idea. It gives the kids something to do, something to learn, a chance to appreciate nature and a sense of pride in themselves and the community they are enhancing (beautifying). Love it. I personally have no desire to implement a garden. I will contribute to the project (writing, researching, whatever), but the garden thing itself is far from an area of expertise or interest. I somehow manage to kill cactus. Those things can survive extremely harsh conditions, but apparently not in my hands. For a year, I had a tumbleweed as my only plant. That's not me diving into the tumbleweed, but I'm not kidding.

I need to clarify something I said in class. I suggested that we conduct our ethnographies to come up with best practices to be able to take to Mt. Zion. These best practices are really an implementation manual. Think about it. If a group of people commit to researching community gardens, for example, they would do their ethnography and conduct their interviews with people who have built and maintained successful gardens. "What were your biggest challenges?", "How did you overcome them?", and "What impact has it had on your community?" would be tremendous questions to ask. Why not go into a fight armed to the teeth? Don't mean to use hostile analogies, but it would be foolish to take on something we know nothing about. Why not get as much information, knowledge and learned wisdom on the subject as possible? Especially if you have 5 people working the same topic, think about the breadth and depth of the information you'd have access to. There would be a clustering of information that would allow for a meta-analysis - an analysis of the analysis, a compiling of the data, an understanding about what makes these things tick - or not. If 5 different people said the hardest thing was convincing the children to assume ownership and feel a sense of responsibility for the garden, I'd want to know that going in. And because I bought them a cup of coffee for their time, I'm going to ask how they addressed the issue.

This idea can apply to any of the paths we choose to follow.

Our next step should be preparing for our ethnography. I need to talk to Trey about this knighting stuff, but we need to organize this. This could be the needs assessment discussed today. This not only includes what Pat needs, but what the Mount Zion community needs as well as what we (as students, writers and teacher) need. Ultimately, these needs should match up and we'll all be better for it at the end of this journey.

As far as community gardens, music programs, art programs, after school programs, tutoring, et al, we need to have a Spock mind-meld first.

Regardless what you think of Vulcans, this mind-meld needs to occur for everyone involved. I really think we need to know what Pat, as the spokesperson for the community we are trying to help, needs/wants first. If she needs money more than flowers, we need to be aware of that.

We also need to be aware of what's already exists out there.

We need to research the city of Saint Pete's programs. One program to research is T.A.S.C.O. T.A.S.C.O. stands for Teen Arts, Sports & Cultural Opportunities. Instead of creating a brand new program, we might be able to bring the program to them ready made. I'll know more by next week, but here's the site: http://www.stpete.org/recreation/teens.asp

I used to work as a tutor at Wildwood Community Center in South St. Pete. The tutoring and homework help that I provided was part of an after-school arts program. There were numerous teachers teaching classes in everything from pottery to photography. Free for the kids, but the teachers were off a grant. I may do my ethnography there, as I probably know the people still running it. I want a better focus before knocking on their door though.

Here is an article from the St. Pete Times concerning Wildwood:

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/07/07/Features/The_face_of_tax_cuts.shtml

This has nothing to do with anything other than it's fun. Look at what nuggets you can find online. Here's yet another argument for open sourcing.

Really, this is a must watch. It's Elvis in 1970 covering a Muddy Waters tune. He's full on with the jumpsuit and rhinestones, but he's still skinny. When people think of jumpsuit Elvis, they jump to the last days. Of course he looked like crap! You would too if you were hitting the pills as hard as this guy. (Those aren't lustful gyrations, the guy's a speed freak!)

The air guitar solo is truly one of the best I've seen. If it's not the best, it should make everyone's short list. And it's the 70s. You gotta love the collar coming up to the mutton chops. Priceless.

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