Love and Mercy, Treating Mental Illness, and Psychiatric Research

Last night spouse Rick and I went sent to see Love and Mercy--a Bryan Wilson biopic: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/love_and_mercy/. Parts are hard to watch because of the level of verbal abuse he experienced. But the power of the story is to watch a musical genius function and survive w/ a serious mental illness. We saw him perform after this period and thought he was downed out--when you see the clip of him at the end of the film in his current life, you realize his is the face of someone who has survived a terrific battle. 

Today, a news piece on the NY Times pops out at me by a clinical psych prof who talks about the lack of funding for psychiatric research to forward the treatment of PSTD and better comparison between old and new effective medications and procedures ("Psychiatry's Identity Crisis" NYT Sunday Review, p. 5: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/opinion/psychiatrys-identity-crisis.html?_r=0)

Rick and I were talking about the the old labels and the realization of complexities of disorders that are not easily defined by the labels. This is the second post in NYT in recent weeks--the last was about the treatment of traumatic brain injuries and some of those inconclusive results when combined with PSTD.

The Best of Free-Range, Experiential, and Cross-Cultural Learning

Some of the best learning comes with food.  Which is what drives my sharing and explorations. Treated to amazing family banquets in northeast China when our son married an amazing woman from there, we ate tasty dishes of pealed peanuts which had been boiled in five spice mix. Back in the states, our friends with Southern heritage treated us to boiled peanuts which they pronounced “bowled peanuts.” So I am learning to cook them for our Chinese relatives when they come to visit. And how would I best describe this effort? Establishing  the spirit of community through food is so positive. Of value is our opportunity to recognize common points  of culture or practice as we invite them to what are considered to be new experiences.

In my own learning, my dear friends showed me where to order the peanuts at nuts.com. They gave me directions on how order, soak, and boil the peanuts in a crock pot. Our daughter-in-law shared how seasoning Chinese Five Spice is part of the preparation she knows.

Bob Nilsson's Survey of Educator Satisfaction with OER

Saw Bob Nilsson's infographic in Twitter this am about a survey with educators and their satisfaction with OER. Thanks to him for making this item embeddable:

Survey: 94% of Open Educational Resources Users Are Happy With the Quality from Extreme Networks

I would like to know more about the survey group as I prepare a group of posts about my own excursions into OER as a faculty member, and instructional designer, and artist. How many was the survey sent to, and how many responded? Were the educators from k-12, higher ed or both? Looking forward to learning more.

More Learning: This Time about Making Art

Critique June 11, 2015 I am taking online courses in painting and drawing and realize I need to practice basics, even while I am making art. I am starting to think I paint impulsively, though some or the early works are ones I feel satisfied about, though they were technically uninformed. In contrast, I have the feeling that if I had more of the fundamentals, I’d be much more able. For example, after struggling to resolve issues in a current painting, I just cut the canvas from the frame and kept the part of the painting that works (my opinion here). My Sistah Meema and I talk about what can happen when we loosen up in our work. From that vantage point, I see some early works I really like, and was engaged with, how I trusted the experience to guide me through techniques that produced work I like. These ruminations bring me back to this quote: “Before enlightenment you carry the water and chop the wood. After enlightenment you carry the water and chop the wood.”

I was so excited to look at this painting today to recognize what I'd been learning about color value from a book and online course videos for a course I'd purchased:

Dorothy Morang was an artist, curator and salonniere in 20th century Santa Fe: http://thematthewsgallery.com/Artwork-Detail.cfm?ArtistsID=326&NewID=4666#art #painting #womeninhistory

Posted by Matthews Gallery on Wednesday, May 13, 2015

InVolen--Intergenerational Game Making for the Environment

I came across mention of this project in a listserv posting from the ARIS game people while looking for crowdsourcing examples. It is really an example of a number of things: crowdsourcing, maker spaces and serious games: http://www.slideshare.net/progettoacariss/1215-ugolini-involen.

                                          12.15 ugolini involen from progettoacariss

A Women's History Salute to Colorado Adult Educator Lucy Stromquist

I met Lucy Stromquist, somewhere in the early 21^st century, when she was one of the long-time trainers for CASAS literacy certification. I was in awe of this woman who so exhibited the traits of Master Teacher. A few years later, faced with developing online courses to meet the needs of Adult Educator Certifications in Colorado, I was struggling with how to group the needed competencies into courses and related instructional activities and assessments.

 I called Lucy and asked if I could pay her a visit. Beyond the opportunity to tap her extraordinary expertise, I was secretly hoping she would agree to co-develop the courses. We agreed to meet at the St. Vrain Literacy Center on a holiday weekend in Loveland Colorado. The snow part of winter had set in, so I had dressed accordingly with a winter-weight coat and snow boots, and luckily so. The center’s heat had been turned off for the weekend. Lucy and I seemed to have similar histories—I had been raised in the north and she was a hearty rural professional. So when we both showed up at the cold building, we were dressed to meet. She put on coffee and brought out a tin of cookies. Fully dressed in our outerwear, we waded through our histories and the competencies. Those discussions made clear two points: We were sisters in the trenches and traditions of adult education, and I was able to see how the competencies should be sequenced.

Most fascinating, was hearing about Lucy’s rise to leadership. Prior to Pearl Harbor, she’d applied for medical school. To my astonishment and sense of irony, one of the questions asked of her during her interview was whether she had a serious boyfriend. When she replied yes, the counter was, “How can you expect him to wait so long for this part of your education?”

Lucy followed this part of the account with, “And then Pearl Harbor happened.” So her beau went off to war, and she was invited to be one of the women trained to operate airplane production factories in Kansas.  The women were in classes or working 6 days per week, and received training that areonautical engineers might have, or at least to the production level.

So Lucy served and developed, and when the war was over, married her beau and had her family. And then was invited to finish her 4 year and grad degrees.  And

Followed by establishing the Ft. Vrain literacy center and serving on CASAS, a competency-based national literacy initiative.

At the end of the day, in her 82^nd year, she declined to be my co-developer. But she agreed to review the courses. And affirmed that she wished she had had these courses when she began her career as an adult educator.

I executed many searches to develop this tribute to her. I could find so little.

Leecy Wise, and others, if you can add or correct my account, will you?