The Whitney

What else do you do with your sister on a random Tuesday in New York when you're waiting for Beyonce? Go look at modern art in the Lower East Side of course.

Check this guy out. He's a giant candle!

Life is like a candle...fleeting-ness of life...ephemeralality...and other stuff like that...

Rewards of Teaching

Teaching is hard, especially when you're teaching 86 seniors the last term of their senior year. They stare at you, get on their phones during class, try to get out of doing their work, and other seniory things that I can't really get mad about because I did them all myself when I was a senior.

However, one of greatest rewards of teaching is seeing your students present exemplar work or having a student say "Thank you, I learned so much from your class". On my last day of class this Thursday I got to experience both of these rewards.

For our final project for Multicultural Literacy, I gave the students a choice between writing a 10-page paper or writing their own Multicultural Children's book.  I got a lot of really cool books and some well-written papers (along with some half-assed papers as well), but this book below really takes the cake. It's the story of my student's father, a Japsnese-American who was afraid to eat his lunch on the Boy Scout trips he went on when he was younger because it was different from the other lunches. 

The cover. Notice these individually cut out, collage-style illustrations

Notice the detail on the rolled brown paper bag lunches

We all have these thoughts sometimes.

I love how she captured the emotion in these faces.

This isn't the whole book, but I just wanted to share a few pages of this adorable and moving story about being different. I'd like to think that my stellar teaching had a small hand in its creation.

This week in news

I got in the school paper of my old high school:

My Multicultural Literacy students made some awesome posters in class:

Baby boy Viktor turns 7:

Carrie finds ancient photo strip...when was this??

I take Andy Warhol style selfies of myself when bored:

Art Game

I believe it is true what they say...whoever they is...that art imitates life.

Or is it life that imitates art?

Most likely it is both. Particularly in the case of these portraits that were drawn last weekend by a bunch of yoga teachers with margaritas. 

We decided to play a game and the game was this:

1) Get a piece of paper and a writing utensil.

2) Set a timer for 30 seconds

3) Sit across from a buddy and make eye contact with them 

4) Draw the buddy while continuously making eye contact, no looking up or down or anywhere except into their eyes.

Maybe it's just because we are yoga teachers and we are gifted at truly being able to "see" others, but I think these portraits are spot on. We somehow found a way to capture certain things about the person in a very Picasso-esk way. These renderings felt deep and insightful to me. Who knew a game could so meaningfully capture and depict people in such a carefree way?

I highly recommend trying this at your next gathering. You may not transcend the universe, but you will at least get a good laugh and maybe learn something about yourself in the process.

My portrait

A collection of portraits or Truth with crayon and 8.5x11 white paper

Music that Changed Me

I can remember the exact moment, the time and place, that I first experienced this music.
I have film like sense memory of the setting in which this music first affetced me in some way for some reason large or small. When I close my eyes it is like I am there. And forever, when I hear this music, I will go to that place and feel that feeling. Pretty amazing.