Issue #51 - The Spaces in Between
Being Brave
Welcome to The Spaces in Between, a weekly newsletter on culture, language, and technology written by Stephan Caspar. If you’re new here, then welcome, feel free to subscribe.
Hello,
We now have President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris. We all stopped what we were doing to watch the inauguration, which was mercifully calm and movingly delivered. The weather was bitterly cold in Washington but the event was characterized by warmth and humility, which has been sadly lacking for four years.
It has been cold here too, but occasionally the sun has come out.
Among friends and people we know here, it has been a positive week. The hope is that there will be a return to discourse that is decent, that the tone might be more measured and less cruel, that people may start to think about others before themselves. This is a deeply divided country, but it does genuinely feel as if there might be a more hopeful path ahead.
Biden’s speech appealed for unity amid the challenges of the day. The ceremony was restrained and thoughtful. The star of the show was National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman who delivered a beautiful poem that captured the hopes of so many, so perfectly.
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be itAmanda Gorman - The Hill We Climb
I was familiar with Amanda Gorman’s name in the newsletters of 836 Valencia, where she serves as a board member and mentor. This organization, founded in San Francisco by Nínive Clements Calegari and author Dave Eggers, supports reading and writing for young people, now has chapters all across America. Some of the writing centers that have been founded are dressed up with storefronts, often as a condition of local building regulations, but brilliantly these have been created as Pirate Supply Store, Super Hero Supply Store, Robot Repair Shop, and Space Travel Supply Company (run by The Greater Seattle Bureau of Fearless Ideas).
It was notable too that Amanda Gorman has used her poetry to overcome a speech impediment, (something she shares with the new President), and rehearsed with songs from the musical Hamilton to help her pronounce particularly troublesome letters, and hence the tweets from Lin-Manuel Miranda.
At last, a new dawn in America, for hope and change. We have lived under one administration during our time here, and although the people around us have shown kindness, compassion, and friendship, darkness has never been far away. I know that it may be dramatic to talk in terms of light and dark, but really it is a pervading sense, an atmosphere of positivity and negativity that you encounter all the time, at work, in the streets, with other people.
Stephan
Teaching & Learning
So much about what I should be doing, it feels like I’m not doing. As another difficult week comes to an end, I haven’t been able to shake this sense of impending chaos that teaching in large remote online classes will bring. I am delivering two courses, a large jointly-taught, supposed “hybrid” class and a smaller remote-only class that I’m much more comfortable with. In non-pandemic times I would have welcomed the challenge of a bigger class and grander project - but in all honestly, I’m dreading it.
I just don’t feel that I have balance in my life at the moment or the time to dedicate to writing and designing learning that is needed. I mentioned to a colleague this week that I hadn’t realized how so much of the process I’ve built around me for teaching is actually designed to get through the pandemic (asynchronous, use of chat boards, digital outcomes). I’ll have to let go of some of this in the natural compromise of collaboration and I’m a bit scared to tell you the truth. Working alone has become a way to get through this, it isn’t healthy or sustainable in the long term, and I like to work with others, it’s just that this isn’t a good time.
The kindness and consideration of my colleagues will get me through I’m sure, it will be okay. What I do need to do, is schedule my days and plan my tasks so that my contribution is equal and managed, and with that, I hope I will feel a little more prepared.
On a more fun note, I spent some time looking back through the history of Virtual Reality, for an upcoming session. Many of the images that I’ve found using Google Arts and Culture, which lists archives and collections from hundreds of museums and galleries throughout the world. I stumbled across images of Hugo Gernsback, a science fiction writer, and gadgeteer. Although he patented many strange devices and contraptions, including early headsets, this Isolator brings your search to a pause. It is bizarre and I can’t for a moment figure out why it didn’t catch on?
I might drop in a few more inventions over the next couple of weeks. I love the singular vision that inventors had in the past, an inventor’s mind which is somehow different from a designer’s. It is the same distinction for me between the role of learning engineer and learning designer, with one starting with the problem and the other starting with the user. I think this conversation is probably worthy of its own week.
Life Lessons
As I mentioned above, I’m still living in a discombobulated sphere, and living through the pandemic means that it’s almost impossible to separate work and home. Are we working from home or living at work? It’s a question that has become a cliche, but mostly because it is difficult to resolve.
I’m still considering the suggestion of returning to work for a few days each week, perhaps an afternoon here or there to try and get that separation. There’s risk involved of course, but my office is in a (currently) quiet building with two doors that would separate me, and can only open with a security card.
Separation at home is difficult, there are times, such as late nights writing this newsletter (which isn’t work) when it seems possible. Otherwise, I’m not sure.
I had a lovely evening printing these glasses and I want to add a few extra colors (x-ray specs and hypnotizing spirals). I cut up some TetraPaks, almond milk packs and used a drypoint tool to score the drawings, then printed with soya-based inks, passing paper and plate through a pasta-press. There’s a short video here if you want to see more.
Lost and Found
A little list for you this week, of things that I spotted or came across.
Laura McInerney writing in the Guardian talks about some of the hurdles for parents, during lockdown that I can absolutely empathize with. It was also the subject of my friend @documentally’s audio post this week.
Essential reading "Parents deserve so much more when it comes to the ways video games are discussed in our popular media." in Anne Helen Peterson’s newsletter. I’ve often wondered why there’s so much scaremongering and hysteria when it comes to talking about games when so much of what we know about play and participation is positive and formative.
Thinking about everyone back home and enjoyed another poem this week by Molly Case who I had the pleasure of meeting and listening to a few years ago at the Everyday Ethics Conference at the Royal College of Nursing.
Finally, many people have shared the news that our state health administrator will become Biden’s new assistant public health secretary. Dr. Levine is the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. She has been looking after us in PA and our pride is tempered by wishing we could hang on to her for a bit longer. Nevertheless, she will be running things centrally and we’ll still feel the benefit.
It was a good week for science in the US, nice to see Dr. Fauci is back.
Thank you
This hasn’t been a particularly educational focussed issue, so next week I promise I’ll make up for that. I have been wanting to talk about some of the student outcomes from my course and to look ahead at some workshops and talks that I’m involved in.
I do hope as things settle down a bit (here’s really hoping) that we can return to some of the themes that initially concerned this newsletter. I might have lost a few people over the past few weeks, so apologies if that’s you (although how you’re reading this I don’t know).
Last week I let #50 slip by without noting it was a milestone. Strictly speaking, this wasn’t for this newsletter but numbering was continued from The Modern Languages Digest which was delivered to many more inboxes than this one. However, it feels much more like a community now, and while I notice that you’re not keen on dropping comments into the box below, you do like to send me emails and they are much appreciated and always welcome.
I keep meaning to say too, that I spellcheck this email thoroughly yet there are always a few typos. They usually reveal themselves the second I tap send, so if you wait a few minutes, you’ll see the corrected version online here.
Thank you for staying right up to the end. Your reward is seeing how The Flaming Lips are still playing concerts during the pandemic. Don’t ask me how everyone breathes or copes! Not sure this is an entirely viable solution, but it’s certainly a Flaming Lips solution!