Author Archives: lev

Graduate study: environment, economics, institutions?

I like the cover… This last week Negin and I have been talking about graduate study in a more structured way. I know that I have a set of beliefs about human nature and human capacity, as well as a set of epistemological beliefs that inform how I want to approach learning and the generation [...]

Canabalt: side-scrolling zen platformer

This has nothing to do with the Baha’i Fast, but while procrastinating on my linear algebra homework, Canabalt appeared in my browser. I don’t know how to describe this thing. It’s a side-scrolling platform game – basically 2-dimensional, with a bit of parallax flare in the backgrounds. It’s black and white, pixelated, and achieves the [...]

Sewing, backstitch, YouTube music videos

Brand new bag (© 2010 by Lev Rickards) So over the weekend, Negin taught me how to sew! I’m pretty sure Mom taught me when I was little, but I don’t really remember. I’m now fairly comfortable threading a needle, putting a knot in the thread so it doesn’t pull out of the fabric, and [...]

Love letter to Lowell

Allium Flora blank book/journal (CC / BY-NC 2.0 by Smallest Forest) Yesterday we broke the fast with our cousin and her husband, and then proceeded to babysit for their 11-month-old so they could go on a date! While the baby slept, Negin taught me how to sew – we made a small bag for a [...]

Baha’i junior youth service project

Lowell Mass-19.jpg (CC / BY-NC-ND 2.0 by Anne Ruthmann) It is so beautiful outside today! Continuing our commitment to post every day throughout the Baha’i Fast, here is the promised report about the junior youth group’s service project. Based on a visit to one of the homes of the junior youth, we had agreed to [...]

An insight into the Baha’i Fast, and “Dad of Doubles”

9th floor Harold Washington Library (CC / BY-NC-ND 2.0 by clarkmaxwell) Yesterday, we had a small insight about the Baha’i Fast. As sundown approached, I noticed that I was really looking forward to the sun going down so I could eat! And in that moment, it occurred to me that what I should really be [...]

Mental tests

summer stroll (CC / BY 2.0 by Muffet) Tonight was the first midterm for Linear Algebra, a class I am ostensibly taking to prepare myself for graduate study. The last question on the exam was especially challenging for me. It felt as though I had the pieces I needed, but didn’t know how to fit [...]

Learning, capacity building

Showing photographs … learning photography (CC / BY-NC-SA 2.0 Nexus 6) Last night we talked a lot about building capacity, and the necessity of being in a humble posture of learning. (This all in preparation for Northeast Massachusetts’ upcoming cluster reflection meeting!) We talked about the value of questions, and the interplay between anecdotes and [...]

Concepts vs. information; hashtags; photobooks

“This is, O my God, the first of the days on which Thou hast bidden Thy loved ones to observe the Fast. I ask of Thee by Thy Self and by him who hath fasted out of love for Thee and for Thy good-pleasure – and not out of self and desire, nor out of [...]

Agile Agriculture

This month’s Atlantic Magazine has an in-depth piece on Walmart’s “Heritage Agriculture” program: Farmland, My kids, Taiwan (CC / BY-NC-ND Harry in Taiwan) The program, which Walmart calls Heritage Agriculture, will encourage farms within a day’s drive of one of its warehouses to grow crops that now take days to arrive in trucks from states [...]