Letting Go

=============================
It's like this: There's this bird, and you catch it in your hands
You feel its softness, warmth, its heart rapidly beating.
But if you keep holding it, it's no longer a bird,
So you open your hands, catch it and let it go, again and again.

 -- Wendy Lewis

=============================
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendos,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

 --Wallace Stevens

=============================
The birds have vanished into the sky,
And now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and I,
Until only the mountain remains.

 -- Li Po

=============================
The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

 --Wallace Stevens

=============================
Break open a cherry tree,
And there are no flowers,
But the spring breeze brings forth myriad blossoms.

 --Ikkyu Sojun

Udacity.com: free, quality education for anyone, anywhere

Check it out: www.udacity.com.  Another worthy contender is coursera.org.

Udacity courses are hard: they're equivalent to what you'd get at the finest private universities, but they're designed to help you learn the material without hazing or boring you.

One of our friends recently took a course and earned this certificate:

Cute, huh? The "highest distinction" endorsement means he scored 100% on the final exam.  Congratulations, Pete!

The Lecture Method of Education Considered Harmful

... or at least a waste of time.

Evidence shows that alternatives are better pedagogy than students taking notes while listening to lectures.

Following are raw links to discussion of problems with the lecture method of teaching and alternatives to it:
http://entropysite.oxy.edu/morrison.html
http://entropysite.oxy.edu/gutenberg_method.html
http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/09/dont-lecture-me-rethinking-how-college-students-learn/
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows-college/lectures/problem-with-lecturing.html
http://arts.monash.edu.au/philosophy/peer-instruction/
http://web.mit.edu/rsi/www/2005/misc/minipaper/papers/Hake.pdf 
http://hakesedstuff.blogspot.com/ # Richard R. Hake
http://www.blogger.com/profile/10753878005211770282
http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2010/10/a-college-teacher-who-doesnt-lecture/
http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/01/students-learn-at-their-own-pace-in-the-future-school-day/
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows-college/lectures/resources.html
The power of peer affirmation is key to sourceforge and open source success.
 "Those closest to the problem are generally best equiped to deal with the problem."  (This assumes they already have the tools and concepts...)
Peer affirmation also applies to teachers and students:
http://www.angelamaiers.com/2012/03/beyondthetextbook-please-join-the-conversation.html/