This is not a blog
“(Annual returns of +10%, -5%, +22% and -3% will always result in a four year return of +23.7% no matter what order they came in.) … starting out risky and ending safe has exactly the same expected result as starting safe and ending risky.
… then why would it make sense as generic advice to those saving for retirement? Well, of course, it doesn’t.”
http://badmoneyadvice.com/2009/01/great-life-cycle-of-risk-aversion.html
The Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Hedrick Smith, author of “Who Stole the American Dream?”, detailed the decline of the middle class over the past 50 years as well as the political and economic decisions…
The school report according to my fired-up oldest after bursting in the door: “Tons of running! — newcomb, soccer, ultimate…”
What? No pickle or “capture”? Not today I guess. 
And we rode our bikes to and from today.
(I’ll report back on a rainy day when it is all inside play for comparison.)
And really, I have no idea what his day was really like. Except that he loves going to school. That’s what is important. The rest I trust will take care of itself.
And BTW, the reason it works I think:
1. People are naturally curious and have a innate desire to figure out the world and their place in it and what they want to do — day-to-day, next week, and when they “grow up”.
2. Schools don’t raise kids, families do.
3. His time at school is HIS time. No judgement.
idea 1) Add a single zone minisplit that directly feeds 3 rooms with only 1-zone via tiny duct runs. Mitsubishi and Fujitsu both have these. I think the indoor unit might fit in the ceiling of a closet and losing 8 inches might be acceptable? The idea being that we could then turn off the “central heat” completely on cold nights and during the day. $2000?
idea 2) Much cheaper — thicker down comforters, sweaters, fleece, hat, my 100W electric panel under-desk (vs 1500W space heaters) with blanket for a sort of “homemade Kotatsu”. The problem is that fingers still get cold and it’s more flexible and more comfortable to not bundle.
idea 3) Some combo of the above.
idea 4) pellet stove or wood stove. Problem being that it would be mainly heating the big common space so getting heat to the office/bedrooms would be tricky.
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**Main goals are: 1) save $ and 2) KISS (Keep it simple, stupid) and 3) reduce carbon
Friedman’s editorial in the NYT
I agree with many commenters that Thomas Friedman is oversimplifying and conflating at least 2 issues:
- hyperconnected world (internet)
- globalization
- corporate takeover
- personal responsibilities
- personal opportunities
Yes, individuals are very empowered. But the flip-side: so are businesses. So it’s not quite as easy as “If you are self-motivated…” Good luck or bad luck? “The limitation of the personal view” Jerry Mander calls it.
There are lots of very self-motivated, hard-working, smart people who are having trouble getting by.
Check out the highlighted comments. An example:
In a previous response to one of Mr. Friedman’s articles, I suggested that he was getting a bit rusty and ought to take time off and meditate in a Buddhist monastery. But after reading this article, I think the New York Times should oblige him to take early retirement – without a golden parachute.
In Friedman’s universe, there are two types of people: innovators, who are the only people who create anything worthwhile and deserve their hugely inflated salaries, and everyone else, the drudges, who are disposable. His vision of the future bears a resemblance to the colonial regimes of the 18th and 19th centuries, in which a tiny elite of “civilized, enlightened” Europeans exploited millions of “backward, superstitious natives” and claimed it was all being done in the name of progress. Far from being new, Friedman’s “401(k) World” is a very old story that is unfortunately likely to be replayed for future generations – unless we do something to stop it.
The ironic thing is that Friedman, who is telling everyone to “reinvent themselves,” always writes the same thing, over and over again. Which doesn’t make it more palatable.
Perhaps he should be replaced as op-ed columnist by the Dalai Lama?
I’m not kidding.
On Children
Kahlil Gibran
“And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, “Speak to us of Children.”
“And he said:
“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
“You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
“You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
(THE FOLLOWING IS TAKEN FROM Sudbury Valley School’s Underlying Ideas page)
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Nothing compares to play as an instrument of learning, least of all courses given by a teacher. Although much has been written, in general educational literature as well as in Sudbury Valley publications, on the virtual uselessness of “taking classes” as a mechanism for learning, seldom has the matter been put more succinctly or eloquently than by Kahlil Gibran, in a passage rarely quoted:
“The astronomer may sing to you of his understanding of space, but he cannot give you his understanding. The musician may sing to you of the rhythm which is in all space, but he cannot give you the ear which arrests the rhythm, nor the voice that echoes it. And he who is versed in the science of numbers can tell of the regions of weight and measure, but he cannot conduct you thither. For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man. And even as each one of you stands alone in God’s knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his knowledge of God and in his understanding of the earth.**4
Gibran presents us with the following image of the role an outsider can play in helping a person become an effective learner:
“No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge. The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness. If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind5. [italics added]
There is a remarkable commentary on Gibran’s book, consisting of a transcript of a series of talks given by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to his followers in India in 1987. Rajneesh has some penetrating observations on the passages just quoted6, of which the following is a sampling:
“Kahlil Gibran is not aware of the difference between the two words, the teacher and the master; otherwise he would have said that if you are only professionally a teacher — that means you are a medium of transferring knowledge from one generation to another generation — you don’t have anything of your own to share and to give. But if your truth is awakened in you, and your house is full of light and your being is full of fragrance, you have become a master; you are no longer just a teacher. When you are sharing your own truth, you are a master.
“But that distinction, between the teacher and the master, is Eastern. The West is unaware. The West thinks the teacher and the master are synonymous: they are not. In fact, the more you are full of borrowed teachings, the less is the possibility of your ever becoming a master. That’s why it is very rare to find a knowledgeable man who has depth, whose very gestures speak, whose very silence is a message, whose very presence reaches, just like an arrow, into your being. . .
“Knowledge is that which comes from outside and settles in you, and prevents your wisdom; it becomes a wall, China Wall, around your own wisdom. Wisdom is that which comes from your innermost core. In knowledge you are not sharing anything of your own being.
“Wisdom is the child that has grown in your very being. Knowledge is the adopted child. It has grown in somebody’s womb, but nobody knows who the father is, who the mother is . . . The master does not give you the wisdom — cannot give — but he creates the right milieu of trust in which your wisdom starts flowering, becomes awake. You will be grateful to him — perhaps in the beginning you will think he has given it to you. He has not given anything; he has simply given you confidence. He has taken away many things from you — your fear . . . he creates the atmosphere in which wisdom starts growing on its own accord. **5 [italics added]
“The master simply creates trust in you, “Don’t be afraid,” because you will be going alone. The deeper you will go, the more alone you will find yourself, and more afraid — not one but thousands of fears: Am I going in the right direction? — there are no signposts, there are no milestones, no map can be provided — or am I going in the wrong direction? And who knows whether this road leads anywhere or is just a dead-end street? And the fear: Will I be able to go back if I find that the road is wrong. Will I be able to find my own footsteps to help me to go back?
“The inner world is almost like the sky — birds fly, but they don’t leave footprints. When you go inwards you don’t make any footprints; it is impossible to find the way that you have traveled if you want to come back. You will need tremendous courage, great trust . . .
The above excerpt is an extraordinary depiction of the kind of environment Sudbury Valley provides for its students, and of the challenges and fears they face daily. There is yet another passionate passage which is a graphic depiction of the difference between industrial-age schooling, and the schooling of the new era we have now entered, in which the uniqueness of each individual has an unprecedented opportunity to be expressed within the greater social setting:
“Aloneness is one of the most mysterious experiences. But you are all afraid of being alone, you have become accustomed to being a sheep. I want my people to be all shepherds. That is the real transformation. You are, in fact, shepherd, but society has forced the idea on you that you are just sheep, so you behave like sheep.
“And when parents say that, priests say that, teachers say that, all the scriptures say that … you become surrounded with such pressure. You have just arrived on the earth, you don’t know who you are, and everybody is telling you that you are a sheep; naturally, you live as a sheep your whole life. This is wastage, wastage of millions of people — their joy, their integrity, their individuality. This is real murder. There cannot be any crime which is bigger than this.
“I say unto you: you are born a shepherd. Remember it, and behave like a shepherd. Your old habit, your old conditioning, will again and again interfere. There are a few advantages in being a sheep … the coziness of millions of sheep surrounding you — you are never alone — snuggling with each other. Have you seen sheep when they walk? — with no fear; they know real brotherhood and sisterhood. There is some safety, security, but there is no life. This is not a good bargain — losing life for safety and security. For whom is the safety and security needed? . . . Your real being is that of a lion; it is that of a shepherd.
“Seek aloneness. **6
The above passages express in a different, more emotional, and more poetic idiom many of the key ideas Sudbury Valley has stood for from its inception.
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4. Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (Heinemann: London, 1967), p. 67 (section entitled “Speak to us of Teaching”).
5. Ibid.
6. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, The Messiah: commentaries by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh on Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet”, 2 vols. (Cologne: Rebel Publishing House, 1987), excerpts from Vol. 2, pp. 119-134.
