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 poking a sharp needle in and out of said fabric. We had decided to make a small bag, and Negin helped me pick out a piece of fabric from her scraps pile. (It turned out to be the sleeve of one of her old shirts.)

Backstitch (© 2010 by Lev Rickards)

Near as we can tell, Negin taught me a backstitch. If Wikipedia is to be believed, this stitch can be used for pretty intricate needlepoint. But we just wanted to have a simple, strong stitch that would hold two ends of the fabric together. Of course, now that I’ve started this stuff, I want to learn all sorts of different stitches. Plus I want to darn some of my socks that are getting worn in the heel. More to come!

YouTube Videos!

One other note. I’ve been listening to WUMB during our morning commute, and one day I heard this song called “You Stay Here.” Apparently it was written by Richard Shindell, he of Cry Cry Cry. The song is beautiful, if menacing. I may have heard the Richard Shindell version, but I remember it sounding more minimal. Could have been the cover by Gabriel Yacoub off of “The Simple Things We Said.” Another winner heard on that station was Marcia Ball’s cover of the Randy Newman song “Louisiana 1927,” off her album “Let Me Play With Your Poodle.” “There was six feet of water on the streets of Evangeline.” And finally, not heard on WUMB, but stumbled upon while googling for all these other things: Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?, released last summer as part of the 500 Days of Summer process.

Good night! Happy Baha’i Fast for those of you fasting. I broke the fast tonight with two glasses of water and a Girl Scout Thin Mint cookie. (Don’t worry Mom, I followed it up with something more substantial: Mark Bittman’s polenta with italian sausage.)

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 prayer book out of a sleeve from one of her old dress shirts. I’ll try to post photos tomorrow.
• We had some nice comments from Anne over at Lowell Handmade, whose photograph appeared in yesterday’s post. I love the name “Lowell Handmade” – it’s a play on the inscription found on the city of Lowell’s seal: “Art is the Handmaid of Human Good.”
• This concept of human good is incredibly valuable, and it often fades into the background thanks to the rattle and hum of the dominant conceptual framework – a worldview that makes the (usually invisible) assumption that humans are inherently self-interested and lack the attention or desire to work for the “human good.” The notion that art is somehow related to human good is especially exciting.
• In the Kitab-i-Aqdas, Baha’u'llah states: “We have made it lawful for you to listen to music and singing. … We, verily, have made music as a ladder for your souls, a means whereby they may be lifted up unto the realm on high.” Any creative act – singing, sewing a small bag (thanks, Negin!), or painting a masterpiece – is a pure and goodly deed, contributing to the betterment of the world.
• In the junior youth empowerment program that we blogged about yesterday, older youth facilitators are referred to as “animators.” While saying the long fasting prayer, a new strategy for working with up-and-coming youth animators emerged. We could go to visit other active animators in their homes to help raise the capacity of potential animators. I’ll post back next week with anything we’ve learned from those efforts. (In the meantime, expect another post tomorrow for the Baha’i Fast.)

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 offer service with some of the elderly folks at the Community Family day center. It was a wonderful experience. We had prepared the previous week by making cards with the quotation “…let your heart burn with loving-kindness for all who may cross your path.” On the back of each card, the junior youth wrote questions about friendship, such as “What does friendship mean to you,” or “How have you experienced friendship in your life?” These questions tied in nicely with conversations we had been having within the junior youth group.

The staff and the elders at Community Family were happy to have us, and were very kind. We ended up having a productive conversation about friendship, and then the junior youth played some games with the elders.

After the activities, we walked home together and reflected about our experiences. One of the junior youth remarked that he wasn’t sure what the elders at the center really needed, and we talked about his understanding that service should be about the needs of other people – not about your own desires. We agreed that the best way to better understand the needs of the elders at the center would be to continue to get to know them by visiting and spending time with them.

Next week we will find out whether the junior youth want to continue this kind of service project, or focus on something else. But I have no doubt that they’ve demonstrated their capacity to act, reflect, and consult about making a difference in their community.

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 looking forward to with that level of anticipation was the sun coming up. After all, it was sunrise that marked the beginning of some 11 hours worth of renunciation, undertaken “out of love for Thee and for Thy good-pleasure.” That was the thing I ought to be looking forward to. If all I was looking forward to was getting to break the fast, then somehow it seemed to be more about me and my ability to eat food than about fasting for love of God.

That’s as deep as I’m going to get this morning. Junior youth group is heading out to undertake a service project this afternoon, and then we’re off to a home visit. Will post back with any reflections. In the meantime, enjoy a new blog from Chicago musician Bahhaj: Dad of Doubles: a father on the exquisite agony of raising twins. My most recent memory of Bahhaj is going to see a Michael Chabon reading on the top floor of Chicago’s Harold Washington Library with him and Carolyn. Somehow his style on Dad of Doubles, and his examination of fatherhood, reminds me of Chabon.

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 them together to yield a solution. I banged my head against it for quite a long time, ultimately leaving a note explaining my reasoning, and heading out into Harvard Square to retrieve the car, and pick up Negin at her lab.

One topic that came up during the cluster agency meeting last night was ego, and the way that we leap to defensiveness and criticism when our ego-cultivated identity is put at risk. I’ve been noticing this a lot in the last 24 hours, and it feels good to notice it, and try to re-focus my attention in that moment.

“The ego wants to be right, so it has to create a situation where there is a wrong. With that dichotomy, then the ego places itself in the right and in this way can constantly strengthen itself. We create an identity that is built up on these experiences – but this identity is based on illusion. …These are the mental tests blowing over the friends.” (From the consultation last night)

I guess the mental stress that accompanied confronting a challenging math problem is one example of this. I conceive of myself as someone who is intelligent – as someone who possesses knowledge, and when the problem wouldn’t fit together, then that illusory identity was placed at risk.

Outside of the exam, in the car driving to meet Negin and head home to Lowell, the pieces started to move and fall into place in my head. I remembered that we can create a transformation matrix with respect to any basis by combining the coordinate vectors of the transformed basis vectors. And so we try to develop our capacity for mathematical reasoning without buying into notions of knowledge as commodity or unchanging foundation.

And, so you don’t go home empty-handed: here’s a link to a great blog that Raina passed on to us: Advancing the Spirit of Economics.

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 questions as an overarching approach to building capacity.

As a side benefit, participants in the reflection meeting may not realize that they can ask questions. If we’re all constantly in a posture of nodding sagaciously and saying, “Yes, yes — I understand,” then we rob ourselves of an opportunity to learn. Mired in ego and the illusory self-image of “one who knows,” we propagate the idea that knowledge is a commodity to be collected and possessed. Better by far to write down a question as you listen to the story, to see yourself as a learner — as being in that humble posture of learning rather than in an all-knowing posture of ego.

“To optimize the use of these capacities, the individual draws upon…the transformative forces that operate upon his soul as he strives to behave in accordance with the divine laws and principles.” (From the 1996 Ridvan message, published in The Four Year Plan: Messages of the Universal House of Justice.)

Day 3 of the Baha’i Fast begins!

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 like Florida and California. In many cases the crops once flourished in the places where Walmart is encouraging their revival, but vanished because of Big Agriculture competition.”

Read the whole thing at “The Great Grocery Smackdown.” It’s a good read, but I’m more fascinated by an academic-meets-business movement referred to in the piece, called “Agile Agriculture.” Most of the online information is available through the Applied Sustainability Center at the University of Arkansas. Among other goals, the endeavor hopes to provide “increased profitability [to producers] from new marketing opportunities,” “meet consumer desire for local and regional products,” and “reduce transportation costs and GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions.”

Walmart says it wants to revive local economies and communities that lost out when agriculture became centralized in large states. (The heirloom varieties beloved by foodies lost out at the same time, but so far they’re not a focus of Walmart’s program.) This would be something like bringing the once-flourishing silk and wool trades back to my hometown of Rockville, Connecticut. It’s not something you expect from Walmart, which is better known for destroying local economies than for rebuilding them.

Agile Agriculture is apparently a national partnership made up of, among others, Drake, the University of New Hampshire, and the American Farmland Trust. What’s the point? “To get more locally grown produce into grocery stores and restaurants, the partnership is centralizing and streamlining distribution for farms with limited growing seasons, limited production, and limited transportation resources.” So is this all a good thing? What do you think?

The Arabs have a saying:
When a stranger comes to your door
feed him for 3 days without ever asking his name,
where he has come from and where he is going.
Because by then he will be able to answer,
But of course, by then, you won’t care.

Let’s get back to that, then–
What is it that you want? Rice? Pine nuts?
Here take this red brocade pillow
while my child feeds water to your horse.
No, I was not busy when you came.
I wasn’t even pretending to be busy.
That is the armor people of the last century
put on to appear as if they had a purpose.
I will not be claimed.
Here, your plate is waiting.
Let me snip fresh mint into your tea.