Against all of my better judgment I had agreed to go up to New York City

The View from Carmen's Office, NYC Alma Rad 2013

And the whole thing started as harmlessly enough with a troll. You know those trolls, the ones that used to be under bridges eating the odd billy goat. Now trolls wait around every corner of the internet waiting to pounce-assured that they are clever, smug in themselves for being such a smart little troll.   I do like trolls generally, I am guilty of meme squee, and sometimes cheering a troll on. Mostly because no person should take anything so seriously that you can't laugh a little at it. Unless it goes against my personal credo of "Do no harm." I'll have your back. You will find that on the internet that there are many authors who are sometimes either too crazy, nasty, or suborn to see any humor in anything; that you could leave it to a good troll to zest up a thread.  

But in my case there was this one troll in particular who was perched on my sisters Facebook wall spewing all that negative stuff that just makes you feel bad about life. A mean person, so happy to share in every way how you are wrong and they are right, and aching to be knocked down off their high horse.  An irritant you just want to fleck off of the skin of humanity; a human mosquito. 

Fernández Anaya helps Mutai toward the line 2013 / CALLEJA 

My sister had innocently shared the story of Basque athlete Iván Fernández Anaya who on the 2nd December in a long cross-country race  noticed as it was nearly concluded that near to the end of the race a Kenyan runner Abel Mutai –the certain winner of the race-had mistakenly pulled up and began to stop running about 10 meters short the finish line, thinking in error that he had already crossed the line. Anaya quickly caught up with him, but instead of exploiting Mutai’s mistake to speed past and claim an unlikely victory, he stayed behind and guided the Kenyan to the line and let him cross first. My sister, in all her infinite sweetness, posted the story because as she said, "...it  just reminded me of Lightning McQueen pushing the King across the finish line - because it was the right thing to do." from Disney/Pixar's 'Cars'. AND it is, AND it was! True, noble and kind all rolled into one.

Cars 2006 Disney/Pixar

The troll took this time to pounce on my sister saying that the victory is tainted because of Anya's actions, that it is un-sportsman to take an attitude that one should help out an opponent, how could people even consider glorifying such an egregious behavior in competition, and so on with other remarks that further illustrated that they had missed the point of the article completely. And I was flushed with anger that someone was picking on my sister so I stood up to the anonymous troll, picking on my cool sister. I surprised myself with what I said too.

"Do sports even mater in the grand scheme of things? ...gestures of kindness and compassion do; small ones and big ones. Especially when actions like that resonate with an individual. So much so that competition and self fulfillment become irrelevant, and encouragement, self-less-ness and community takes its place. ...An athlete somewhere was moved to do something for another competitor because he felt it was the right thing to do. And so what if it cost him a better time or placement, he did what he thought was right. Lincoln once said "My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure." I think Anaya, has found contentment in what others call a failure."


Felt good to do it too. And I tried my best to defend her ideals honorably on the battlefield of the inter-webs. The troll was banished, and harmony was restored unto Facebook. Soon after my sister called me up to shoot the breezes, and suddenly asked me to join her in New York City for the night. 

I immediately said yes, just to take on an adventure. Than rationalized the whole trip for 2 reasons: one since I hadn't had a chance to see her really over Christmas or New Years. Second it was a relativity simple cover to get me up there to get some quality sketch work done for some art projects I would like to get under way. Plus the added bonuses; I could meet up with people from college that were up there, go to museums, and do all kinds of fun things. I had forgot almost completely that I hated New York city.

The Train-view of Sunrise over Bridesburg, Pennsylvania 2013  / FISHER

I hate New York City. I've been left there on school trips, been grifted of my money, patience, & time, been swindled by their swine, and have more than once been convinced that I was going to die at the hands of a giant purple dinosaur there. Against all of my better judgement I had agreed to go up to New York City--a city that I despise, just as much as it is indifferent towards me. But I had to go into the Lion's Den for some reason, I felt like my contempt towards the city made me have to. So I scrambled to ready myself for the next mornings train.

Changing What We Think About Education : The Necessity of Creativity

I found this TED video while I was still a student at the University if the Arts. The speaker in this video is Sir Ken Robinson and he speaks to audiences throughout the world on the creative challenges facing business and education in the new global economies. He is a funny and poignant speaker and he speaks to the core need of creativity in education.

Then as I still do everyday, I wonder about how people interact with art and how they incorporate creativity into their daily lives. 

I think also that often people forget a lot about what they learned in school; not the subjects or facts necessarily, or lessons and homework specifically. The majority of the time those fundamental tiny tidbits of information about maths, science, history, grammar and so on tend sink in just do the sheer repetition of daily lessons. I am referring to the act of people forgetting what their environment of education has taught to them.

I believe very strongly that the role of educators is to develop a students natural talents so that the student can flourish, as it very well should be. But our society globally does not do this in education due to in part standardizing curriculum and testing. Of course immediately most people could site the very few exceptions of magnet schools, alternative practiced education, home or cyber education--but I can not honestly not incorporate these into my statement, because these are not services that are available to every child.

Education is something that people hold very close to themselves on a personal level. We are all the products of someones classroom. Were we taught there to seek out a path to happiness through our innate given talents, or were we taught to repeat passive knowledge? Speaking generally of children, if they don't know something they will try it out; to see how something works or to make something that is new to them. Children aren't afraid early on in their life of making mistakes, and we currently have in place an education system where mistakes are the absolute worst things that a person can make.

Mistakes are not creative, but experiencing mistakes are the best way to create creative solutions; this is they way you create originality. Children at a young age usually after preschool or kindergarten are made to sit and absorb knowledge.  Sir Ken states that "children are educated from the waist up...until you get to their heads" there education says focused until they leave school. He raises an excellent point that in all education systems there is a hierarchy of subjects: maths, sciences, humanities and so on and that arts are down at the bottom of the list. And even then there is a hierarchy to the arts--art and music are at the top of the list and that drama and dance are at the bottom. Why? Wouldn't have that been amazing to have learned dance as intensively as you had to learn algebra? 

I would like us not to forget how we were taught in school; either you feel your scholastic experiences being positive or negative. Keep them with you. Always learn, always cultivate new experiences, and never beat yourself up when failures occur. Failures occur so that you can succeed at a later time.