But now I have just been called back to Canada from my time in Peru because my dad returned to the hospital and passed away.  I was able to make it home in time and was able to play some music for him in the hospital.  It’s what I really wanted to do.  With his passing I feel finally free to explore some of the difficult feelings I have about him.  My relationship has been conflicted and for that reason, largely absent for the last 15 years, but at his funeral I was able to give a eulogy I am happy to share here.

As @cogdog – one of the great sharers – told me, it’s just “slowly letting people around you know what you’re going through”.  And in my time searching for other difficult eulogies to write, I thought, perhaps my sharing will help another girl in another library somewhere in that great wide world recognize that she can also remember the good things while giving space to acknowledge the bad.  This is one of the most important things for me to remember.  It’s ok to feel angry and frustrated by the actions of others.  This is what teaches us how to draw healthy boundaries that protect us.  Some of those walls are between ourselves and those closest to us.  Many times those are the most important ones to draw!

So on February 27th, I stood and sang one of my favourite songs – one that has been deeply connected to my year – In My Time of Dying, by the Be Good Tanyas, and I read this eulogy for myself and the people who really understood.

I am standing here as Brian’s daughter to pay tribute to the life that passed.  This is a difficult eulogy for me – not because it is for my dad, but because I have really only known him when I was a child, as I have been largely absent from his life for the last 15 years.  There are many of you here who have entered his life more recently, and I hope that my memories of him ring true to the Brian you knew as well.

Of course, every parent hopes to pass some wisdom to their children, and dad, I’m sure, was no different.  As I sat and considered what to say today, I focused on the lessons I have learned from him.  I am a student after all – a lifer, I’m afraid.  So what did dad teach me in his time here?

The first lesson is one of the earlier ones I remember.  Respect for the natural environment and for our animal brothers and sisters.  I recall one of the regular trips out to Laurier Lake.  Derrick and I and some of the other kids had gone down to the pier to do some fishing in the afternoon.  I’m sure I was only 6 or 7 years old at the time, but I knew how to cast and how to jiggle the line to keep the fish convinced that they were chasing after a tasty treat.  Well, I caught one, and reeled in a mid-sized fish!  While I was old enough to fish on my own, I was not yet old enough to remove the fish from the hook – a dangerous and difficult job.  One of the other kids ran up to get dad to come and take the fish off the hook for us.  In the meantime, we discovered that when you had the full weight of a fish on your line, you could cast the line much farther than with the tiny weights!  When dad came down, we were casting and recasting the caught fish into the lake, teasing it with a continued struggle for its life.  He was furious.  It wasn’t right to treat the fish this way – we had to respect the fish and treat it properly because it was a living thing.  Even though I was young, and my memory is terrible, I remember that day.  Later on, in reflecting on the parts of his life I did share, I saw that love of nature and respect for the natural world in the ways he farmed and took care of the animals on the farm.  Don’t get me wrong – we were always the top of the food chain – but there was no place for the unnecessary suffering of animals on the farm.  Even if that meant one animal would have to die to curb the suffering of the rest of the herd.

Dad had lessons to teach me about people as well.  Dad had space for people from all walks of life, and while he would tell jokes like the rest of them, everyone was welcome at his table.  I remember regularly visiting and staying at various Hutterite colonies around the Western provinces, and heard his stories as being accepted as a white member of the first nations groups.  In particular, I remember visiting him in Valleyview and meeting Little John and Donald, two first nations brothers who lived in a schoolbus in the bush.  Whether we were picking them up hitchhiking on the highway, going out to check their traps with them, or having a special meal at the house, these guys were invited into life as anyone else was.  Dad simply wasn’t the judging type.  It took all kinds of people to make the world go around, and he shared his life and ours with everyone.  I think this is one of the reasons I find it so easy to walk into about any culture on the planet and fit myself into the normal rhythms of life – even though I often stick out like a q-tip in a box of pencils.

Maybe it was because he came into contact with so many types of people that dad found himself a jack of all trades.  He experimented with his career, trying on different hats and taking in the breadth of what there was to offer.  From his early days of selling vacuum cleaners, to driving gravel truck, to farming in Daysland, to running the infamous Bald Eagle Inn, to farming just about any animal he could find up in Valleyview, to driving taxi to working construction, to owning a store and running a rototiller business, to his later days of equipment operating and buying and selling property, Dad certainly tested his hand at a wide variety of work.  I’m sure he took pride in his ability to do the work he needed in order to make life happen.  I’m certainly happy that I approach even menial tasks as an opportunity to shine – a trait I see in my brother and sister as well.

The last lesson dad taught me, was one of the most difficult, but one of the most important I think I will learn: we cannot outrun our demons.  Now… When I started my masters program, I had an experience with my first professor that almost spelled the end of my program.  We locked horns and my stubbornness nearly led me to quit.  I recognized that I would need to exercise a bit of humility if I were going to reap the benefits of having a learning relationship with my professor.  A trip to India introduced me to a custom whereby young people are affixed with bangles that are meant to distract the demons that are known to visit us – especially in our teenage years when we are least rational.  I adopted the custom, attaching 12 bangles to my wrist – bracelets that do not come off (to the dismay of the security people in the airport), They only come off when they fall off or are broken. They remind me that I am a student, and in order to become a great teacher, I must first learn the humility of a student so I will later understand the power my students will give me. When I lose a bangle, I know I am one step closer to beating the demons of my own pride.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I have not been a part of dad’s life for a number of years.  I have made my own life and have often wondered how I would react at this moment.  In writing this, many places have opened within me, revealing long hidden spaces where both anger and joy lived.  And in that mess of emotions, I have found a lot of pride.  In moving past that pride, I have found a way back to the dad who taught me to take joy in the natural world.  I remember trips down the river and hunting excursions, camping trips and all the wonderful animals on the farm.  He taught me to take an interest in all kinds of people, the community in Valleyview that recognized us as the farm family of the year, the touring musicians at the Bald Eagle Inn, the people from all sorts of backgrounds who remember dad as a warm and generous person.  And I am able to celebrate the ability to embrace whatever kind of work life throws your way.  I am warned in his passing at the vice of pride – a deadly sin that keeps us from knowing the world – that keeps us afraid of knowing the world in an authentic way.  While I do not propose that I am beyond this life-long and difficult lesson, I will lay down one of my demons today and move forward with these valuable lessons from the teacher who was my dad.

So, at the end of this relationship I decided to commit digital suicide – (at least Facebook suicide!) – as I began to evaluate how I interact in the digital world and why.

I came to realize that my asynchronous consumption of the lives of my friends and family through FB was actually preventing me from being close to them and drawing the emotional energy I needed in this time of extreme turmoil.  By knowing what they were doing, seeing pictures, and seeing their “likes” and brief comments on my postings, I was duped into believing that I was connected.  In fact, this post by Jeff Utecht helped me frame this language of consumption vrs. connection – and I think the level of engagement as well as the degree of synchronicity are key in moving toward the connection end of the scale.

Facebook gives you many levels of engagement – the short post of twitter, the lasting groups of photos, the video, the email message, and the chat all in one.  You can look over and “see” folks hanging out on FB alongside you, check on their most recent adventures, either from their own posts or others, and feel as though you’re living in the digital space right alongside them, but unless you are taking the time to send those individual messages, or making the time to meet up in other synchronous ways (Skype, or gasp telephone!) you’re not really sharing your energy with them – or at least I wasn’t.  I realized that I was stalking instead of talking to my family.  I was allowing them to glean the goings-on of my life from my wall posts, and I was feeling lonely even though I spent so much digital time with their avatars.

Somehow I don’t see my other platforms this way.  I wonder if it’s because when I write here in my blog, I’m putting much more time and consideration into a post – reading and looking back – revising and exploring my own verbose expression (to the chagrin of my readers, I’m sure!).   And here, I’m writing a lot for myself and am pleasantly surprised when someone takes an interest.  I’ve never fooled myself into thinking that this is the space to get that energy of connection.  On twitter, I am connected to my digital people – folks I would not know how to reach otherwise – and I am largely speaking directly with others around topics of common interest.  Keeping conversations ordered means that I will continue a discussion under a #hashtag that I may allow to slip down the FB stream into digital oblivion.

I find myself engaged in these other spaces in a way I was not on FB.  I feel these other spaces are a better indication of who I actually am, where FB was increasingly becoming a production of a life for others to consume.  So, I’ve left the blue box and returned to these other spaces – and have been instantly rewarded!  Time to spend listening to my #ds106radio friends, time to write direct emails to people, time to create music and participate in asynchronous jams.  This is the thing I keep remembering – there is only one clock, and the more time I spend on a manufactured life made for FB consumption, the less time I have to share life in the analogue and digital spaces that give me energy.

Will I return to FB?  Likely… at least to have my musical profile up there… but I won’t add my analogue friends there.  They can find me in my other varied spaces – and hopefully I’ll get some more emails!

This time last year I was into the digital world up to my neck.  I had been living in Montreal with wifi in my room, participating in the infamous and highly inspiring #eci831, breaking into the #ds106 crew by stalking them on DTLT today and writing and reflecting deeply on the digital project.

Then it hit me.  The gaze of a lovely man across a crowded street… and I was hit dead in the face with extreme PRESENCE.  Add to that a long bout without internet in my house and a month-long trip to the shop for my macbook and BOOM!  8 months gone and the whole digital landscape changed.  Ok, so Twitter is still around, but Coursera? Udemy?  Maybe these were around, but back to that explosion word… BOOM!

So here I am, still wrestling with the extreme presence that happens in the analogue world when some chance meeting changes the fabric of your existence, and wrestling myself back into the digital world – and not just Facebook (which has somehow taken a larger and larger chunk of my digital time.  So much that I’ve requested an intervention from my roommate who will change my password sometime today!).

This is the digital world…. and I need to be here.  I have situated my research here.  I have built my masters degree in here.  I have people in here who are interested in the work I’m doing.  But I’m torn by the draw to the analogue.  By the presence of people in the flesh.  By the draw of smiles on the street as I play my ukulele.  Our digital lives always leech time from the analogue… and vice versa.  They are at odds these two – like the wolves of the old Cherokee legend:

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

Now, I’m not suggesting that either of these – the digital or the analogue – is evil… but there certainly seems to be a war going on in my own experience of my multiple lives.  The digital calls me with the voice of a professional.  It asks me to plug into my computer and spend time interacting in a virtual space.  I begin to care about the person I create in there – the thought of deleting my digital self is as easy as deciding to destroy my ego!  The analogue asks me what I’m really creating in there – in all those 0′s and 1′s and asks what it contributes to the relationships I’m creating here and now.  A question that came up repeatedly in the series I did called The Social Artist that brought out concerns about doing Liberal Arts education in a digital space.

Of course this is all further complicated by my nomadic lifestyle and the fact that I rely on the digital world to keep my multiple lives on multiple continents prepared for my return.  But perhaps this is the big question I’m really asking… where are my roots?  And is it possible to root yourself in the digital realm… really right now, that’s the best I’ve got.

When I began the project, I had little experience in either conducting interviews or editing videos, and I quickly realized the huge time investment required.  I have since read in professional video editing, each minute of video requires roughly one hour of editing.  For me, a beginner, it took me twice that time!  In addition, the motivation to complete such a project long after my course was finished required that I draw on my own self-directed learning skills.

Moving forward, I’m excited to see the developments in the OLI since I participated in the course review a year ago.  Subsequent cohorts have added to the list of Liberal Arts values  and have begun to contribute to the teaching ideas page.  The digital community at UMW is growing, and I look forward to conducting my final research project for my MAIS program – a case study of the OLI.  I have submitted a Fulbright scholarship application to support me in this project, and hope that my research will feed into Teagle Foundation research being conducted into digital education by the COPLAC group.

The world of digital education is expanding rapidly with large universities participating in the MOOC movement, but Liberal Arts has a particular contribution to make in this digital environment.  It centers on community and connections and will push us to ask the big questions in the digital realm: Who am I? What does it mean to be human?  What does it mean to interact and contribute to my community?

So here is the link to the complete Social Artist Series.  Thanks to all who participated and followed along!

The University of Mary-Washington’s Online Learning Initiative has kept conversation at the center of course development.  From initial meetings to course review, individuals have returned to a set of Liberal Arts values to guide choices in technology and pedagogy.

In the educational world, it’s tempting to submit this interaction to a top-down structure that reinforces power relations found throughout society, but one of my favourite pedagogues, Paulo Freire, argues (with the help of Erich Fromm) that this type of interaction is a drive toward “necrophily”.

“The necrophilous person is driven by the desire to transform the organic into the inorganic, to approach life mechanically, as if all living persons were things… He loves control, and in the act of controlling he kills life” (Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 77).

It is not enough to simply have interaction among the players in an educational enterprise.  We must encourage authenticity, presence, and a drive toward a dialogical method of teaching that will encourage a love of life through a profound curiosity and desire to interact with ourselves, one another, and our world.

For example… I was actually worried, feeling guilty, making excuses for myself as to why I could not/should not take a break from the world for a few days.  If I were in less difficult circumstances, perhaps I would have put away the idea of disappearing, telling myself that my responsibilities were so important I could not dream of laying them down.  As it was, it was part choice, but mostly necessity.  What have I learned there?

“If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.” Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

And a case in point – my 207 emails that came in over the course of 10 days.

Work-related emails – 9
Emails from friends – 3
Tweets and Facebook messages for/mentioning me – 7
Listserve emails I don’t read anyway – 22
Blogs I subscribe to – 58 (34 of which were from Foundmonton)
Other random Facebook notifications – 65
Couchsurfing – 1
Good Information – 4
Junk – 38

Needless to say I spent a bit of time unsubscribing myself and changing my notification settings when I got back.  It has done wonders for my inflated sense of purpose.

When I checked-out, I posted on my blog, in case anyone was looking for me (mom??? are you out there???), but as far as I can tell, only two people who know me actually knew I was gone.  And, in a strange irony, the post garnered me a couple new followers of my blog.  Welcome folks!  But really, digital life, and life in general, just flowed by.  My absence was no more missed than a pebble in a riverbed.  Humbled.  Check.

And the process of just being with myself.  Writing, reading, meditating, thinking, forgetting has been worth the condensed deletion of my junk mail… wait….. was there a price to this?

“We let ourselves feel the ache for wholeness and THIS inspires us to our practice.  Yoga practice is a response to the call of Spirit. “

-falling open blog

You surrender. 

And you find your spirit as reward.

There are many arguments in my mind telling me why I can’t afford to take myself out of the distance communication of the web and phones and into the present moment.  I feel like somehow as my distance self is so tentatively constructed, nothing but memories and bits of paper flying through the air, I must also argue that my present self is equally tentative.  It is easy to misplace this self and get caught in routine or lost in ego. 

And so I came to post directions to my spiritual retreat of one… my home.  If you don’t know where I live, I’m sorry but I’m out of communication.  For those who know my home, please, don’t stop by.  I am trying to know myself.

I’ll return with the full moon.

The process of engaging the world with a set of questions and theoretical tools in the hopes of coming to some kind of understanding of how this crazy train fits itself together is the joy of the human project.  It’s the motivation behind learning – we want life to be easier, more rewarding, more enriching, more fair, and if we can determine why it is not this way, perhaps we can unlock the mystery that would lead us to our own utopia.  If we are sensitive enough, we move from examining the ticking mess of the outside world to scrutinizing our own reactions and interactions with our existence.

This process of reflection is not always a given.  There are many ways we have learned to refrain from asking questions of those things that are ‘working’ – if it’s not broke, don’t fix it – but there are cultural norms, systems of power, political agendas, and personal relationships that are not actually ‘functioning’ though they seem to be ‘working’ when analyzed with the untrained eye.  It is only through exercising our critical reflection skills that we may have a chance to understand our own KEY role in life and the greater world.  Suddenly our actions have meaning, our thoughts and ideas have influence, and we begin to consciously create the world we want to live in, rather than blindly reproducing the world we have been taught.