Webs, nets, connections

The terms "web" and "net" have both been commandeered by the internet. The idea of a grid or web or matrix to represent the connections involved in learning and memory is a good one, though—of many "dots" connected in all directions.

The photo here is of the two-dimensional web—very flat—of a garden spider, outside my house this week. Black widow spiders make a web that's three-dimensional, but has no pattern. We have those in our yard, too.

The webs on which our own mental models of the universe are based are more complex—with past and future, emotion and theory, alternative stories and secondary theories. We have sounds and songs, scents and tastes to remember, and can sort things by temperature or texture, in our minds and imaginations.

Rejoice in the random!

SandraDodd.com/random
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Doing Nothing, and finding balance

Halfway between the past we can't change and the future we can only imagine, we find ourselves in the present. Not just the present year, but the present day; not just the present day, but the present moment.

From Balancing in the Middle Ground:

[Some families] had stopped doing school, and then stopped making their kids do anything, and now their kids were doing NOTHING.

Aside from the idea of the rich potential of their "nothing," the parents had gone from making their kids do everything, to "making them do nothing." And interestingly, it did make them "do nothing," at first. Or at least the parents couldn't see the new things they were doing.

Rather than moving from one edge of a dichotomy to the other, the goal is to move to a whole new previously unknown middle place.

Holly Dodd, and the false sea onion

The path behind

"Looking back, we can often see the path pretty clearly. But we can't look ahead and know what the path is going to be."

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/flitting
photo by Wolfgang Marquardt
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Seems like...

This photo was the background image on the first cellphone I ever had. Holly took the picture, when she was fifteen. I didn't recognize what it was when I first saw it, though it was taken in our back yard.

It looks like a dramatic view over the parapets of a castle. It was Holly's view of a sunset through the gap where one cinderblock was missing from the top row of our back wall. What could seem to be pennons and pikes in the background are power poles and streetlights and such across the vacant lot. The sky is a feature of New Mexico's high, dry climate.

If we look for beauty, everyday things might be seen as art.

SandraDodd.com/art
photo by Holly Dodd

Breathe in a happy memory

Breathe in a happy memory.

Breathe out gratitude.

Breathe in hope.

Breathe out love.

The words are new today, but this will match: SandraDodd.com/breathing
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Sharing time

When we "give someone our time," what is it we give? Sometimes attention, or service. Maybe assistance, or advice.

Instead of thinking that I "give" my child my time, it helps to think of us sharing a moment, together.
SandraDodd.com/being/with
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Doozy Dodd

This is what unschooling, though, has done for Holly. She is not a student. She is Holly. She is not a fourth grader. She is Holly Dodd. She has been since birth, and she will be until or unless she decides to go by another name, but that will be her decision. The world is hers in a way that the world has never been mine, not even now as an adult. Sometimes I see myself as a messy amalgamation of experiences, certificates, test scores and labels, just come lately into the real world.

I see my children living full, real lives today, right now. I don't see them as students in preparation for life, who after a number of years and lessons might be considered "completed" or "graduated." It was a long way to come, and I never even had to move. I just had to look at what I considered to be real.



That was written in early 2002,
when Holly was ten years old.
At twenty-one years old, she goes by Doozy.

SandraDodd.com/fullofyourself
photo ("Holly Dodge") by Sandra Dodd
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