COA Déjà Vu

With Bonus Feature: A Human Ecological Problem Solving Reader

(footnotes refer to reader problem solving questions at the end of the piece).

I’ve spent a lot of time in Mongolia and have always been fascinated by how Mongolian kids take to horseback riding — they can ride before they can walk.  A similar phenomenon occurs in Downeast Maine, but in this part of the world knobby tires substitute for hooves. Four-wheelers are ubiquitous in these parts and kids are accomplished riders very early in life.

The greater environmental community looks down on four-wheelers and, frankly, on those that ride them.(1) I love four-wheelers and look down on those that judge a man or woman’s character based on their choice of recreation or transport.  I grew up riding three-wheelers — the less-stable, unruly no-longer-legal four-wheeler cousin — but have made the transition to four-wheelers with only minor complaints.

This is the story of my love affair with a particular Yamaha 4wheeler (note appropriate orthography) named Big Bear.

***

There are many wild stretches of Maine.  One that I like an awful lot is that big block of woods stretching SW to NE between the Penobscot River and the Bay of Fundy, and between Highway 1 and Highway 9, otherwise known as the Airline Road.  It’s full of secondary growth and a perplexing thoroughfare of ponds, lakes, rivers and streams.(2)

I’ve got a buddy, we’ll call him Ted to protect his anonymity though I doubt he cares much about remaining anonymous.  Ted grew up on MDI, fishes for lobster, is Dad to one of my daughter’s best new school buddies, and is someone I now consider a close buddy myself.  We watch our kids swim together, our wives have really hit it off, and I don’t fault him too much for his obsessive admiration of the New England Patriots.  He’s also a Sox fan, but I know better than to mock him for that.

To avoid awkward silence or violence around our polarly opposite professional sports interests, Ted and I typically talk fishing.  Our discussions a week ago led to an invitation to Ted’s hunting camp on Molasses Pond for some ice fishing and that’s where our story begins.

Molasses Pond can be found on the USGS quadrant of the same name, is 1,252 acres, 47 feet deep and used to be one of the region’s best sport fisheries, chock full of land locked salmon and trout.  Someone in the mid-1990s thought it would be a great idea to introduce bass into Molasses Pond.  The bass have thrived at the expense of the salmon and trout and there’s now a bounty on that idiot’s head.  We will find him.(3)

Though folks curse the bass and their evil salmonid-killing ways, we delight in catching them under the ice and feeding them to bald eagles in something of a “you are not welcome here” ceremony.  In the course of so doing, I’m convinced Molasses Pond anglers have single-handedly brought back the bald eagle and, concomitantly, have driven bird biologists close to the brink as those raptors dine on off-island ducks and assorted sea birds.(4)

I’ll come right out and say it: I’m envious of Ted’s camp.  It’s perfect.  It’s heated by an enormous ancient wood stove in the kitchen and a bigger one in the main room. There’s a loft.  There are animal skulls and pelts. There’s a toilet that you have to flush by filling the tank with pond water.  There are large piles of cut and stacked wood.  There’s a dock and a boat house and in that boat house, adorned with a stolen “HUNTERS WELCOME” Budweiser banner, there is a Yamaha 500cc 4runner appropriately named Big Bear.

Now, although Ted owns Big Bear in the legal sense, Ted’s eight-year-old son Francis owns her in a metaphysical sense.  And he can ride.  When I couldn’t get Big Bear into neutral I didn’t call for Ted’s help.  Francis is a great kid and I live vicariously through him as he blissfully spends hours running Big Bear out onto Molasses Pond and up around the camp, onto the pond, around the camp, onto the pond, etc.  As a kid in New Jersey, I never had the space or freedom to develop this kid’s riding chops.

But I tend to make up for a lack of skill with plenty of enthusiasm.  So when Francis’ mom called him in for dinner, I saw the hole open and enthusiastically took Big Bear for a ride.  With that little fart mowing down on hot dogs and hamburgers I kicked Big Bear into gear and took off.  Francis would likely have tackled me if his Mom hadn’t wielded that “stay seated or suffer dire consequences” glance.

Ted had given me some general sense of the landscape and surrounding trails, but the geographic illiteracy added a lot to the general thrill of riding.  I made my way onto a marked snowmobile path and found ecstasy in the hum of the engine, the fading light on white birch, and the cold, scathing wind on my face.

“You see things vacationing on a motorcycle (or 4wheeler) in a way that is completely different from any other.  In a car you’re always in a compartment … and everything you see is just more TV.  You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.

On a cycle the frame is gone.  You’re completely in contact with it all.  You’re in the scene and not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.”

– Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, p. 4.(5)

Don’t get me wrong, I also love that absolute solitude you can get by walking, running, skiing, mountain biking, sailing, kayaking, or otherwise just being in the woods, but there’s an amazing mind meld that occurs when you mix in the movement of pistons, the grip of hard rubber and the growl of internal combustion.

I moved off the snowmobile trail and onto neighboring Scammon Pond.  At about 1,100 acres Scammon Pond is smaller than neighboring Molasses Pond and is surrounded by a wildlife management area.  There are no camps on shore and it feels worlds away.  Stumps pepper the icy surface.  It’s colder here.  And darker.  Crows catch my attention to the south and I make my way in their direction because I love crows more than any other bird.

As the east and west shore of the lake begin to pinch in I see a huge glacial erratic and I’m drawn to it.  Moving closer I see a long swath of dark ice just west of that boulder and fifty feet from the color change I discover that the dark ice is actually open water.(6) Before I can react I feel Big Bear plunge and feel the nauseating embrace of almost frozen water.  Across this second or two, time slows to a near stop.

***

I’ve run that event over and over in my mind, poking and prodding it with ‘what ifs’ and ‘why’: what if I hit my head, what if I had one of my girls on the back; why didn’t I react more quickly, why did I go out on a pond I didn’t know? I suppose our lives are full of decision points like that, but not all of them have such devastating potential consequences.(7) I’m hoping that writing will help turn that broken record off.

***

This story might be more interesting if I went under the ice completely and managed some heroics to extricate myself from beneath the ice.  But I was out of that water as quickly as I was in it.  When Big Bear dove, she pitched me to the other side of the open water and I bet my last touch on her foot peg was what gave me the needed leverage to go from being arm-pit deep in ice water to eye-ball deep in shit laying on the ice worrying about what to do next.

I turned, watched her bob for a second, and started to run.  Well, run isn’t quite right.  My boots weighed close to ten pounds a piece and my body went pretty stiff.  Something closer to a Big Foot shuffle might describe it better.  I’m guessing it was about three miles from the water back to camp and, again, this act in the play could have been full of much more adventure and hi-jinx: lost in the woods, night shelter lean-to construction, wolves, etc.  But the run back was only mind numbing.  As I shuffled along the pond shore, the snowmobile trail and eventually the driveway to camp, all I could think about was how in the hell am I going to tell Ted — and, worse, Francis — about Big Bear.

Of course they were worried about me and not Big Bear, though I slept with one eye open that night half expecting Francis to seek some kind of devious revenge.   After some color returned to my skin, the conversation quickly turned to extraction.  And, in my mind, here’s where our story gets really interesting.

We woke up the warden down in Gouldsboro.  I have to think he hates getting these kinds of calls at these strange hours.  Maine has lost several folks going through thin ice or open water this year.  Pulling a frozen corpse out of a muddy pond must rank right down there as the worst part of any natural resource management position with the state.  But once he was assured that no one was killed or hurt in the accident his attention also turned to Big Bear. “You’ve got 30 days to get her out of there else the DEP gets involved with a law suit.”

Not that I would ever think about slashing the tires, removing the tags and hoping that Big Bear would find a deep watery grave and never resurface, but we weren’t too enthused by the prospects of getting her out of the drink.  Ted’s buddies from the backside of the Island, however, were very much enthused by the idea of trying and by daybreak they were en route from Bass Harbor outfitted with come-alongs, another 4wheeler (that I was not allowed to go near or even look at), alarmingly long lengths of chain, chain saws, python-thick rope, a brainstorm of ideas that would make any McKinsey consultant’s head spin, and an impressive cache of Bud Light (in bottles).(8)

Now here you have a college president, a college president from away, a college president from New Jersey of all places, and a New Jersey native college president who just drove a 4wheeler right into open water.  I don’t have to tell you the razzing that went on when the crew arrived.  It was an ego beat-down I well deserved, but I can honestly say the gang of four (Ted and his three buddies) razzed me just enough to let me know how bad this could have been, but never enough to make me feel stupid (that might come later I suppose).  The added case of Bud Light I brought to the extraction event also may have helped smooth things out some.

We were a team on a mission and there was never a pessimistic moment – that girl was coming out of that icy inferno no mater what.  Verde, the biggest guy in the bunch, also happened to be the least fearful on the ice edge.  A polar bear clawing for seal, he managed to hook the rear axel with a chain.  Ted and his brother Ned got to working on the leverage point — big timbers set at an angle in the ice to provide the necessary upward pull, rather than straight horizontal which would have just dragged her against the ice edge.  The contraption looked like a cult cross and we prayed to it.  KC, who seemed like the ring leader, strung the line and manned the rescue 4wheeler.

With far less drama than I had imagined, Big Bear was pulled up onto the ice.(8)  Water flowed from every orifice as she stood their shivering in the fading light — a reminder that though we may have rescued her from her aqueous grave, the chances of her running again were slim. We shook our heads, saddened a bit by that thought, and then broke into the case of Bud Light.  Our gear gathered, our libations consumed, we pulled Big Bear to camp hooting and hollering the whole way home.

***

Epilogue

I just got off the phone with Ted.  Big Bear was brought right from Scammon Pond to the best ATV guy in Downeast Maine.  I was really hoping for some good news — not just because it wouldn’t cost me as much, but because I’d started to develop that same relationship to her that Ted and certainly Francis had.  But it doesn’t look good.  Her innards would have to be stripped and rebuilt.  The consensus: let the shop class have at her.  Big Bear served Ted for 13 years and Francis for his seven; she would leave this world a working corpse, shedding light on the mysteries of internal combustion.  God bless her.

Lesson learned: In all seriousness – never be so stupid as to take a 4wheeler on ice you don’t know.

***

For the many book clubs that might gather to discuss the human ecological implications within this story, I provide some guiding questions as end notes.

1 What are the economic and ecological implications of 4wheeler use in Downeast Maine? What are some of the cultural origins of the bias toward or against 4wheeler use?

² Why do you suppose that Hwy 9 is called the “Airline” Road?  What are the unique geological conditions that have given this region its shape and context?  How have human communities been influenced by that geological context?

³ Are bass an invasive species, a successful species or both?  How would you design a plan to eradicate bass in order to re-establish the salmonids?  How might you prevent bass from being re-introduced if you were successful?  What are the biological and economic implications of the bass/salmonid dichotomy?  What does it mean to hold a vendetta against someone?

⁴ How might you go about measuring the impact the bass fishery has had on the recovery of bald eagles in Maine?  Can you imagine a scenario where there might be other win-win situations involving invasive species eradication and endangered species recovery?

⁵ In the text Robert Pirsig also says “The Buddha resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower.”  Do you agree?

⁶ Why do you think I found open water where I did?

⁷ How do you evaluate risk in your daily life?

⁸ Think about altruism, gift giving and reciprocal altruism.  How are peoples’ lives tied together by favors and gifts?  Is gift giving more or less common in urban or rural environments?

⁹ Imagine you have to design a sign warning people of thin ice and the dangers of vehicular traffic on thinning ice and imagine you have to incorporate a message about “changing climatic conditions” on that sign?  What images or messages do you use to ensure the sign is useful as a warning rather than as target practice for a shotgun?

It was a scene right out of a pre-prime time PBS nature doc: a tropical forest floor somewhere off in Papua New Guinea or the sixth grade playground in Parsippany, NJ.  Two leks, two species; Young males desperately seeking the attention of females.

Her name was Pam and she belonged to an elite class of Littleton Elementary School girls.  As a new kid — worse still, as a new kid from the recently closed Mt. Tabor elementary on the wrong side of the tracks — I must have been somewhat exotic.  Having scrapped with Tim Aldrich a few days earlier I may have been categorized as a loose and dangerous cannon.  Jersey girls wearing Jordache definitely like bad boys.

I made my approach.  She was surrounded by her elite friends.  I can still see her curls.  I can still feel my heart beating, pounding and the sensation of time warping and the gurgle of words tripping over my tongue and teeth.

I don’t recall the exact verbiage (probably, “Will you go out with me?”) but I’ll never forget the rejection and the ripple of giggles coursing through her friends.  Ouch.

Fast forward two years.  I’m in a leather chair sitting across from a priest.  Somehow my relationship woes with Pam didn’t send me into a complete tailspin.  I’ve made good grades and have passed tests and have garnered the respect and admiration of teachers (if not elite-level elementary school girls).  But Delbarton High School wants more than good grades and admiration.  Delbarton is a Catholic High School — I may say (channeling Professor Willard) an elite Catholic High School — in the wealthiest enclave of Northern New Jersey.  Two — count ‘em — two of my cousins matriculated.  I’m legacy material.

The squeak of leather echoed from the headmaster’s spacious office waking sleeping and dead priests.  Monsignor McCalley’s weasel eyes saw right through me.  There were no giggles, but there may as well have been. Rejected.

Advance one more time … eight years.  I’m a COA student preparing to graduate in a few months.  I had, if I may say so myself, “kicked ass” over the past four years (you can take the kid out of Jersey, but not the Jersey out of the kid).  Yes, Chris Petersen gave me a B+ in statistics – I’m still contesting that.  My recommendations were, I assume, pretty sharp.  My experiences and essays were wild and meaningful enough to grab people’s attention.

My LSATs were low, but look at the whole picture for Christ’ sake!  Ken Cline and I were at the Nantahala Outdoor Center, preparing for the inaugural Whitewater, Whitepaper class – my senior project and capstone experience. The letters came in.  Vermont Law – no. Lewis and Clark – nope. Colorado University – negative.  Three rejections.  Three forceful blows to the gut, head and ego.

I thought about those sets of rejection all last night and, though I’m exhausted now, I feel much better having written them down.  Writing exorcises.  But I’d like those experiences to have utility.  It’s the time of year when all kinds of decisions seem to be made; decisions that you no longer have any control over — graduate school applications, Watson Fellowships, possible jobs, etc.

It can be painful to look back at rejection, but it’s also kind of fun to think through the “what ifs.”

Pam?  Her loss for sure.  I mean, I would have been a great catch!  But I can’t help but think that success on that day would have brought me into an elite class, at least in terms of popularity.  I don’t think that the popularity would have done right by me.

Delbarton? According to my Dad, who likely gave the headmaster a good tongue-lashing after my rejection, I was not admitted to Delbarton because it was clear from my interview that I had no interest in going there.  I don’t ever remember saying “I don’t want to go to Delbarton, I’d rather stay at my public school with all of my friends and less-than-elite girlfriends.”  But I bet I shouted it in body language.

Law Schools? I blame those rejections on my very middle of the road LSATs.  But if I was simply dying to study law I bet you I could have found a school to take me.  Maybe those LSAT scores told a story of brain mechanics just not cut out for success in law school?

Choices are sometimes made for you by others (Pam).  Sometimes you make covert choices (Delbarton). And still other times an option gets whittled down to  choice that steers you in a completely different path.  That was certainly the case with Law School, because along with the wad of rejection letters came a letter with much better news from none other than Thomas Watson Junior. The Watson Fellowship brought me to South America, which brought me to graduate school at Tulane, which brought me to my wife and, still later, kids, which brought me … to where I am today, writing to you while getting lost in the path of sea gulls as they drop mussels along the shores of Frenchman Bay.

So, I hope this doesn’t come across as me trying to be old and wise.  But maybe it will bring some levity to the rejection you will all face at some point.

OK, that’s it for now, I’m off to friend Pam on Facebook.

I knew this time would come.  Eventually, I thought to myself while walking, there would be a drug or alcohol “issue” that I’d be forced to deal with.  But so soon?  I’d only been president for half a year and, let’s face it, we weren’t going to make Playboy’s list of top ten party schools.  I never expected beer to get in the way of human ecology.

But the call came. 8.15pm on a Sunday before Martin Luther King Day — a strange and, frankly, dorky time to have a party.  The Associate Dean of students had fielded the call from a neighbor who complained not of loud music or unsightly vomiting in the street but of the pungent, overbearing smell of fermenting malt.  As I quickened my pace down Ledgelawn, my nose hairs beginning to freeze from the biting cold of this eventful night, I tried to piece the forthcoming scenario together but couldn’t.

Sasha Lasa — we called her Slash-ya for her cuts-like-a-knife approach to handling difficult students and difficult student situations — Slash-ya was the Associate Dean of students and would normally take charge in this kind of scenario, but two things sped through her head when she got this call: One, throw Collins in and let him get his hands dirty on something like this – knock him off his pedestal a bit; Two, Collins — he’s Irish, isn’t he? He knows the ins-and-outs of beer.  He’s a subject-matter expert and will handle the situation.  Hence, now I’m walking toward the dump on a freezing cold January night, missing Ricky Gervais’ monologue at the Golden Globe awards.  How did I get roped into this? Continue reading →

I was always a kid that really liked going back to school after a vacation (dork), but my two girls weren’t so excited by the idea or process yesterday.  After a long day of transport from Atlanta to Bar Harbor through Portland and a late night to bed, Tuesday morning at 7:30am was something of a train wreck.

Nothing hits ‘reset’ quite as forcefully as a meteor shower expedition.

Fortunately, the 2012 Quadrantid Meteor Shower made a spectacular showing for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, with 100 shooting stars/meteors per second flashing through the sky.

So, at 2:45am this morning I ran out and did a check of the weather.  Brutal cold, 5 degrees F with a pretty blustery wind, but not a cloud in the sky.  Stage 2: let the car  heat up while piling the hatch full of sleeping pads, sleeping mats, blankets, etc. Stage 3: transporting semi-awake children and mildly-concerned wife (eg, ‘has he lost his mind?’) into the car. Stage 4: drive down the street to Kebo golf course and bring sleeping materials to the middle of the 7th fairway. Stage 5: carry Molly out to the 7th fairway (most difficult task of night) while Karen and Maggie traipse out there. Stage 6: meteors galore.

So, we lasted five minutes max, but we all saw meteors.  And, although Molly and I had a hard time going to sleep after we got back in bed by 3:20, we all woke up sprinkled with the dust of a remarkable adventure.  And the girls headed off to school maybe a bit zonked but with a great story and with some kind of drive to learn about the night sky.

Take aways: a) process can be as enjoyable as the outcome (Deep Purple, “It’s not the kill, it’s the thrill of the chase); b) adventurous learning is as powerful as we say it is.

Wow, those ten weeks certainly do zip by in a hurry.  I hope you all had a great term.  It was my first term back after a 20 year hiatus and will always have special meaning for me.  So much happened for me personally and for the school as an institution, I thought it might be useful (or a least entertaining) to go through a highlight reel for the term.  These are in no particular chronological or “impact” order… just as they come to me.  Pictures will come at the end because I find aligning them in WordPress painful.

* PV ON THE POTTERY SHED.  I loved the work of the PV course, loved sitting in on one session and watching the magic of the COA course unfold.  And now we have 12 units on the shed, all done by students who worked the project through under Robert’s guidance (using a Dave Feldmanism) from soup to nuts (just kidding.  Dave wouldn’t say that). Moving ahead?: more PV and more real carbon, energy and otherwise footprint reduction strategies done on campus, in the community — by students.

* THE BAR ISLAND SWIM.  Wow, that was colder than I remembered.  Thanks very much to my swim buddy Lisa McCusker for making sure I didn’t sink. Moving ahead?: more students on the waters of Frenchman Bay.

* POP!TECHS AIDAN DWYER ON CAMPUS.  Aidan was great at Pop!Tech in Camden.  I’m glad he accepted the invite to come up here and talk with our community and Pemetic Elementary School.  Moving ahead?: More outstanding guest speakers during the school year; more thought on the aesthetics of PV design.

* TODD’S APPLE CLASS, JUDGING. I’m fired-up by the idea of learning local history through apples.  Being an apple-pie tasting judge on the last day of class wasn’t bad either.  Moving ahead?: More history through food; more pies.

* GETTING TO KNOW THE TOM COX PROPERTY. Hale Morrell guided me through the property — she’s doing an outstanding senior project out there.  Moving ahead?: working with the COA community to ensure a relative sense of “pristine” on the property, yet getting more students, faculty and staff out there to use the property as a Land Lab.

* GETTING BETTER AT PUTTING NAMES TO FACES. For me, this summer involved a lot of name recognition — and the Fall? X3!!  I would guess I could name about 100 students.  I recognize maybe another 100.  I apologize for the number of times I’ve asked “what’s your name?” – and to many individuals, multiple times. Moving ahead?: OK, I’m going to start a photo database on my iPad and get to 200 names — first and last.  Thanks for your patience.

* RE-EXPLORING ACADIA. COA had a very solid showing at the Take Pride in Acadia Day.  I was sick as a dog that day and didn’t work much at all, but I HAVE committed myself to knowing and walking/running all the trails/carriage roads on the Island.  The best walk may have been from Conners Nubble to North Bubble.  Moving ahead?: More COA folk in the park, working, studying, doing research and otherwise enjoying one of the most beautiful places on the planet.

* SEEING THE ‘A-HA’ MOMENTS ON STUDENTS FACES COMING BACK FROM THEIR OUTER ISLANDS WORK. Great Duck and The Rock — two amazing pieces of our campus which generate amazing, life-changing experiences for students.  That says it all. Moving ahead? More of the same and some new pieces of infrastructure where needed.

* NAILING MY FIRST LAND-LOCKED SALMON.  This was on Long Pond with Bill Newlin and Lucybell Sellers.  Pure mo-jo gathering.  Moving ahead?: more fishing.

* EATING AT TAB AND SEA URCHINS. Wow, I forgot how good the food here was!  I have to say that my favorite meal was Week 10s hot turkey sandwiches.  Yes, I’ve gotten back to my “winter fighting weight.” Moving ahead?: eat more and less at the same time, and always do so on campus.

* SPEAKING OF FOOD…FARMS. God, I love farms.  Farmers=the ultimate tinkerers.  I’ve felt a lot of progress where our farms are concerned: Moving forward?: more students doing more work and more research and more experimentation on our farms.

* FIRST FUNDRAISING TRIP OFF CAMPUS: Lynn and I had a fantastic, however hectic, fundraising trip in Washington, DC. Moving forward?: more fundraising.

* MORE FUNDRAISING: Actually, my first off campus trip was with Trustee Sarah McDaniel!  We were in Boston raising alumni funds for the Borden Chair. Moving forward?: more fundraising.

* INDEPENDENT STUDY: I managed to supervise Josh Cutler’s independent study on long-distance running.  I believe I managed five running trips where Josh (who trained with Eritrean runners, just so you know) dragged me around various routes on MDI.  Moving forward:? Definitely more running (see the ‘more eating’ above).

* KIDS ON CAMPUS: I always imagined my girls Maggie and Molly would spend time exploring campus and causing a little bit of harmless trouble in the process.  They did, but we’re too quiet.  Moving forward?: More Maggie and Molly.

* INAUGURATION: It just felt right.  Thanks everyone.  Moving forward?: Hopefully, no additional inaugurations for a good long time.

* DRU’S CLASS: Dru Colbert taught Curiosity and Wonder and I was able to sit in and help.  The productions from that class and from Steve Ressel’s Bio-Through-the Lens are in the Dorr Museum and are FANTASTIC. There’s nothing like sitting in on COA classes to really grock what we’re all about. Moving forward: Require key staff to spend a certain amount of time/term in class.

*TEDxAshokaU: Jay Friedlander was robbed. His video was hands down the best – no question.  Goliath (a school with 90,000 students) may have snuck by David (COA — 300 or so students) … but just barely.  Moving forward?: improve our social media outreach.

* OUR BOARD: We’re one lucky institution and wow do we have a group of smart, creative and energetic Trustees who love this place.  Moving forward?: Get to know each and everyone of them better than I do now.

* WATSON FELLOWSHIP: It was an amazing experience reliving my own Watson Fellowship application process by participating on the COA Watson Committee. We’ve got three fantastic candidates in the hopper, now all we can do is wait. Good luck Matthew, Marina and Alice! Moving forward?: more of the same.

*VISIT OF CHARLES HAMBLETON: Charles came to the college for a screening of his film The Cove.  He was welcomed with such open arms and is clearly cut from COA cloth! Moving forward? Partnerships around Bar Harbor’s Criterion?

* LOOKING FORWARD TO NEXT YEAR: I’ve really enjoyed being focused on helping Sarah Baker and her admissions team bring the best possible students into the COA fold next Fall.  The highlight? – Fall Fly-In dinner in Jay McNally’s barn — only at COA. Moving forward?: Visiting high schools and coming up with more creative tools for getting the right students here.

* TAI-CHI WITH JV: OK, so I only attended one Tai Chi session with John Visvader on one lonely Thursday afternoon.  But a spark was lit. Moving forward?: More lighting sparks … seeing if I can audit Ernie’s 2-D Design class in winter.

OK, so the photos aren’t complete and fall out of order … but you get the idea.

Have a great break.  See you in a few weeks!  DC

Readers–

Please have a look at this site and “like” the video posted by COA faculty member Jay Friedlander.  It’s a REALLY sharp little piece describing what we do and why we do it.

VOTE THROUGH A “LIKE” and help get the word out about COA through TEDxAshokaU:

“Designed as an independently organized TED event on the evening of February 10, 2012, with an anticipated sell-out crowd of 500 individuals and hundreds more participating online through a simulcast, the TEDxAshokaU event will feature leaders speaking on the topic of “Disruptive Innovation in Higher Education”.

Thanks!  And thanks to Jay for leading this charge.

DC

It didn’t feel too much like Fall today, with a powerful Nor’Easter providing a nice blanket of snow to most of MDI, but yesterday was classic FALL and it was great to enjoy it at Beech Hill’s end-of-the-season event.

There were apples and apple bobbing.  Apparently, the classic bobbing in a big steel bucket has fallen out of favor because of hygiene issues and cold.  I did start to fall back toward the “well, back in the DAY, we stuck our heads in buckets of water and we LIKED it,” but I have to admit that the apple on the tree method was fun.

There was apple tossing, that is, tossing apples to land in hula-hoops which degenerated into smashing apples against trees.  I could feel Todd L-S cringing with every “splat” — sorry Todd.

There was crushing apples in a press.  It’s amazing how kids take to that.  I like it too.  I remember Scott Grierson bringing his apple press to the College in 88-89 and we spent the entire day crushing a pickup truck full of apples.  Awesome.

And of course there was face and hand painting.  Maggie was pulled into the fold and Kayla did a good looking Harry Potter on me.  I think I was the only “adult” with face paint.  It’s always funny once one forgets that one has face paint and begins a conversation with a new friend … curious stares.

And finally, there’s the pigs.  The Beech Hill team has put our four porcine friends in a new field.  They’re looking pretty good to me — still like to eat my feet and definitely love freshly crushed and squeeze apple meat.  And the whole event comes full cycle … apples, smashing apples, face painting, pigs, pigs eating smashed apples…

Apples and Scissors

Molly Bobbing

Tag-team Bobbing

Maggie hand painting

Heinous Potter

She's coming after my feet

You must build a toaster. From scratch.

Wondering if that got your attention.

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to attend the Pop!tech meeting last week – blogged about it quite a bit.

One of the best if not THE best talks in my humble opinion was by Thomas Thwaites who spoke of his experience making a toaster from scratch.  It was such a great talk that I did hunt down his book which I have finished (it’s a great, quick read and I’ll gift it to Dru C now).

The talk and the book got me thinking — what a great thing for a human ecologist to know?

Don’t you think? I mean, not a toaster necessarily, but some small appliance or other household accoutrement with unclear origins.

NOTE: This idea has not been discussed with anyone besides my wife who, incidentally, thinks it’s kind of peculiar.  Thoughts?

DC

Mind Map of Faculty Retreat, Day 1

I’ve never been to a faculty retreat until we had ours out at SERC across the harbor.  I felt lucky to have been invited, learned a lot about new ideas and new faculty projects/ideas, and enjoyed our evening wave and star gazing tremendously.  It’s people– students, faculty, staff, trustees, and alumni–that make this place great and the interactions among those groups that make our brand of education unique and highly effective.

I put this little sketch together during day one — the boxes represent the seating arrangement (sorry Dru, I spelled your name “Drew”) and the sketches and text in the center are the ideas and phrases that really jumped out at me.  I don’t think there’s much utility in the sketch, but I liked the look of the final product so I thought I’d share it.