Be[ing] Present

​At the start of this year (2018), I returned to a simple line that's been a useful guide during challenging moments of life:

Be present. Lead to prosper and prevent unnecessary suffering with joy, truth, and love.

I resolved to be present [...and the other things which I’ll get to here later]

Showing up is among the simplest and more challenging things to do when you're constantly working to amend, rebuild, and advance faith in yourself.

To me, that would also mean if I felt a certain way, I would choose to sit with it, don't necessarily let the emotion run me, but try to explore what it signals, how it can fuel an expression, and what can be learned from attempting to acknowledge and embrace it.

And resolution has been more about self-persuasion aligned with commitment than words like motivation and inspiration.

Another thing I was able to deepen my appreciation for is a special sense of community that comes from people who

in Detroit, where the communities are majority black (approx. 85%, and then another 3-4% other non-caucasian ethinicities), it

Since we're in the midst of Kwanzaa with today's principal being Kuumba--creativity--it's a resolution to "always do as much as we can, in a way that we can in order to leave our community more beautiful and benefcial than we inherited it."

create as much as we can in a way that

and it's more challenging to live with as a commitment than most

so there were other parts of the statemennt:

Lead and prosper to prevent unnecessary suffering.

There are so many people I am grateful for in ways that can't be expressed on an online post

but some of the finest moments of this year didn't come from professional advancement, it's from the camaraderie that comes from celebrating basic needs in challenging places, or the deep family-like familiarity and understanding of being able to share experiences wwith with people who’ve supported you even when they’re going through the same challenges or worse.
2017: “camping” in my own car, rejoicing  when the portajohn me and a friend used was cleaned

2018:
Visiting a former house and realizing that people who I didn’t think I spoke with very often were glad to see me back

A friend shares a grape soda with me as I eat a peanut butter sandwich

Later, it’s cooking up a mix of macaroni and cheese with spaghetti, baked beans, and a hot mexican ranch dressing and how happy we were to find it all working well as a meal .

Or when a friend figures out how to use a rotisserie oven and giant flags as curtains to keep his room warm without centralized heating.

Being able to appreciate fresh food from the gardens of friends just as I've run out.

The Chumbawamba Case Study

In the 90s, a British band called Chumbawamba suddenly became a hit in the U.S. (and probably worldwide, too) with a song called "Tubthumping", in which the energetic chorus "I get knocked down, but I get up again, and you'll never ever keep me down." becomes the soundtrack to the lives of youth as countless shows and radio stations play it on repeat.

Yet when you listen to the rest of their album, pointed and political statements fill the songs with themes that would be relevant to a lot of politically active people even today. I still recall hearing a recorded sample from one of the tracks with someone asking in testy tones: "what about free speech!?" and some bizzare training audio for washing out the brains of a cow, likely a suggestive nod to brainwashing in media.

Which brings me to wonder: of all the people who bought their album, how many actually listened to the rest of the album and its content?

So I looked up the band not too long ago and found they disbanded around 2014 to focus on -- guess what? -- their activism.





Most people in the U.S. are inclined to write the band off as a one-hit wonder, and the commercial stations and media spheres that surrounded its sudden popularity certainly made it so--but it seems like it answers a question I and many others tend to ponder:
At what point can the reach of your platform, storytelling, or media outweigh the need for impact?

If we consider Chumbawamba's commercial radio and record store (at that point, cassettes and CDs where the primary medium) success, their story might point us to an answer:
Some people were certainly switched on by the band when they realized how "music could be a political tool" (as one youtube user comments), but the novelty effect of becoming an overplayed hit on the radiowaves sometimes overshadows the genuine message and story of the group by the time it reaches certain audiences.

Jose, Maria, y Jesus

"A word on perspective: for this image, I chose very, very wide vanishing points. The result is what I occasionally call “middle-class white people perspective.” Rather than feeling immersed in the scene, the viewer is looking at it as if from across the street or from the warmth and safety of his or her passing car. I have a small hope that this Christmas image will come to mind when we see other “down and out” people huddling outside of gas stations, reminding us that our Savior’s parents (and indeed, Jesus himself) were at one time similarly troubled."

-Everett Patterson, illustrator of Jose y Maria

Worth considering again: would Jose and mother Maria find a place to stay for baby Jesus (pronounced here as Hey-Zeus for those who prefer to "speak American" only) this past Christmas Eve/Day?

Or would the town offer thoughts and prayers (and maybe send profits) to build a wall to keep them out so shop owners and employees can go home for the night without troubling themselves with someone else's problems?

Some people insist on celebrating Christmas while pushing to turn away refugees who seek a safe place to find a home for their children who are getting separated from them when they arrive at the border--despite the fact that coming to the U.S. border is a necessary step for seeking political asylum.

While there's relatively little most of us can do when a nation's population suffers from war, understanding the causes and developing ways for aiding the displaced with dignified hospitality is among the most visceral ways to take responsibility as someone who's part of the bigger world that more of us would like to create. A place where people do the right thing and can take confidence in finding shelter, knowing there are places that care for their children, a place where they safely find work and contribute to a society that once carried a reputation for bringing together cultures from around the world.

Domestically, a liquor store clerk or owner isn't in business to tell people where to find a place to stay, and probably isn't interested in letting a tired couple from out of town stay in the store for the night even if it's open 24/7. But one's job isn't the same as one's responsibility to others in the world. Profit isn't the same as prosperity, and true wealth can be found in our collective health.

We now have the benefit of lots of perspective to learn from: from retrospective allegory to lived and learned history -- all on our side in a way that at least gives us an opportunity to make better choices when national policy works against us.

As a son of South Vietnamese refugees from the Vietnam War, we would be wise to heed refugee stories and understand how delicate calling a nation the place of one's home can be. Knowing and witnessing refugees firsthand from Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, many of the unfolding stories in current and recent events echo the experiences I hear in my parents circles too.

Witnessing firsthand how gaps in payments from government shut downs or employer shortcomings can lead to missed payments, foreclosures, and evictions, the line between homelessness and someone who suddenly seeks help from people with different privileges becomes just as delicate and thin.

Having lived amid domestic abuse during the holidays, we also would benefit from knowing why people would choose to stay out of the house rather than come home to their family -- it's often the same reason a family would try to leave their neighborhood or country when gang violence gets so bad and look for help from others who seem to be doing okay. It's the same reason families will try to flee or--if they can afford it--fight when corruption and war sets upon their homeland and country.

People tend to shy away from issues like homelessness because the causes for the problem normally carry a bundle of nuanced root causes that are bigger than what one person or organization can carry and solve. It calls us to create and steward a cohesive community that's more committed to care than the stigmas that are associated with the problems.

It takes empathetic moral and ethical imagination to consider what the right thing to do and follow through. It takes courage for people who are insecure about trying to address more than what they're accustomed to dealing with to find assurance in learning how to navigate the consequences of their action or inaction.

But I imagine that when we don't learn from those consequences as individuals, as a community--or if we're really fortunate as a culture, there's a good chance others will meet an unnecessary suffering that one decision could have spared.

Or maybe we can just ask "what is the courageous choice?" before doing our best with whatever answer we may find along with our responsibility to the consequences that arise.

I'm not providing all the answers here, for most of us, this week is an opportunity to celebrate and reflect with loving moments away from our usual work pattern and that's important too. Heck, maybe it'll take a few people who actually read this the whole week to get through all this text I've written.

Yet the meaningful work and opportunities for change will continue exist beyond Christmas day just like any other incident that's notable enough to stir up "thoughts and prayers" for some group of people and merit sustained action.

But if the business you work for doesn't account for ways to care for the community it operates in beyond a bottom line and its usual budgeted priorities, it may be time to envision what the difference between profit and prosperity means and take steps to demonstrate it.

Meanwhile, there are many people and causes worthy of effort in Detroit and certainly around the world. You can help Dior Gabrielle and others with Operation Care Kit Detroit--which will continue to operate long after the holiday season closes and into the most critical winter months for survival that a homeless person will often face without sufficient aid.

You can read more about the picture used in this post and what went into the illustrator's story behind creating it here:

http://www.everettpatterson.com/?p=1835

Imagine how often people request to hear Free Bird, Stairway to Heaven, or Dueling Banjos and I think you'll get a sense for how popular this traditional tune gets and why it's so popular. I still struggle with learning parts of it (albeit on completely the wrong instrument using a gift card or ID for health insurance and viola haha).

One of the best "conversations" for Tsugaru Jonkara Bushi (I have little to no idea what the proper grammar for including this song in a sentence would be, feel free to help me out with figuring it)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcqO0zkyQRo

Really well done harmony, normally it's just dudes (mostly men) doing their solos and flexing their technique.

This was really different.

As a side note, there's something about the way shamisen gets taught and practiced that really lends itself to emphasizing clarity in fundamental technique. The loud snaps heard each time the bach (plectrum aka ice scraper-looking guitar pick relative) requires a fair bit of precision to get a consistent hit while still making a clear sound with the string(s). When the women playing start doing some nuanced alternations between their melodies and the lower strings without disrupting the middle string, you can tell a lot of practice goes into being able to do that and I'm not quite sure if it's inherent to the way shamisen players tend to train, or whether it's just a project of dillegent practice ethic for songs altogether. I suspect there's a little bit of both, and it's not just limited to this pair of performers either. Watch other shamisen players and you'll note they all tend to have good clear sound.

Now of course, we may be looking at a biased sample--for one I'm searching shamisen as an english-only search term from the U.S., and someone from Japan who cares about the quality of their musical discipline and performance probably wouldn't be promoting or labeling their videos in a way that makes it 

3 Years In: Groovin' Like a Garden with the Groove Thang

When farmers plant new crops, it's often wise to rely on other crops or food sources rather than hope to reap from the first harvest. Why? Because the first few seasons often amount to learning, conditioning, and stewarding the soil's community of micro and macrobiota--you're prepping for the magic to happen, you're not going to see it finished until much later.

[By the way, some vocabulary for non-ecologists:
microbiota = all the microorganisms like fungi and
macrobiota = the larger than microscopic organisms like worms, etc. that help plants access nutrients, "communicate", and rotate/circulate soil nutrients and humus in the topsoil.]

And swinging around to reflections about music and creative processes from the lens of a gardener or a farmer (but mostly as a gardener), I'm starting to appreciate the development of one of my recurring groove-tunes as a creative demonstration of the above metaphor.

Years ago (about 3 to be specific) on a soggy winter/spring evening, I jammed out an idea for a tune I called the "Balkan Groove Thang" at about 1:15am while I was working through a fever (and no, not the kind of fever that's conducive for disco). It was fun to play even when my energy was down, and hearkened to the possibility of bridging one's heritage with more "modern" aesthetics while still representing a little bit of both, plus I figured out I could add a Mongolian exclamation ("Tuh!") in substitution for the traditional James-Brown-esque "Ungh!" and "Ow!" shouts:

Without a doubt, this tune was inspired by the existence and performances of an Ann Arbor "Balkan Funk" band called (at the time East, later Ornamatik, and later still Rhyta Musik -- which I think is the band's current name). In fact, the melody's rhythm is based on the second part of the Gankino Hora, a Bulgarian tune.

.   .   .

A few years later, likely toward the winter of 2017 though I unfortunately forget when at this moment as I type, I started to practice and improvise with a blend of the musical modes.

For non-music readers, modes are basically knowing what part of a word you'd want to emphasize when speaking with a different accent or in a different language. In the music world, the scales are the "accent" of a dialect or language--the bunch of pitches that make the notes you hear which often distinguish various kinds of folk tunes; while rhythm and the emphasis we hear on the words (in speech, elocution and cadence; in music they call these accents--very convoluted reuse of words but that's what it is) is a lot like learning the grammar found in a language

So we already combined notes you often hear with the blues and funk to couple with the Balkan style, and found adding a few notes onto the blues scale suddenly turns it into a traditional Japanese scale called Miyako-Bushi -- which has notes common enough that similar scales can be found in other cultures too, but it's very distinct in a lot of famous traditional Japanese folk tunes like Sakura Sakura (often on the Koto string instrument or Shakuhachi flute), Tsugaru Jonkara Bushi (often on shamisen), etc. -- which brings us a fairly nice melting pot of traditions into one Groovy Thang.

In this particular session late in August of 2018 I had just found another way to play with the clash between tri-tones (the notes that make the groove sound a bit more funky, rhythmic bow-chops aside) while taking a break at work in the Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation's immense back room/robotics area (imagine a warehouse with skylights, and fantastic graffiti from local Southwest Detroit youth on the walls in the middle of a community center--it has wonderful acoustics and it's an interesting space to play in).

Trying to make my way to a friend's harp concert in Ann Arbor, I ran out and didn't find the place until it was well done, but was able to enjoy the acoustics of this sort of arcade or alley (architects, feel free to take me to task on misnaming whatever this corridor might be called).

As I had recently returned from helping out family, I was still very well fed and fairly fit which made for good creative conditions, and the instrument I played on had an interesting alternative tuning which seemed to make the body of the violin resonate better too.

So all that backstory to share that 3 years later, we have this little jam that luckily didn't get deleted when my hard drive crashed.

Speaking for the trees

Re: http://www.michiganradio.org/post/environmentalists-bristle-tree-removal-bill-passed-state-senate

Doesn't this bill violate the Legislature's responsibility as defined in the State Constitution on natural resources?
By barring municipalities from enacting local tree ordinances, the legislature is depriving the state and public of their capacity to provide appropriate and adequate protections to health, safety and general welfare from pollution, impairment and destruction.

§ 52 Natural resources; conservation, pollution, impairment, destruction.
Sec. 52.

The conservation and development of the natural resources of the state are hereby declared to be of paramount public concern in the interest of the health, safety and general welfare of the people.


-->The legislature shall provide for the protection of the air, water and other natural resources of the state from pollution, impairment and destruction. <-- br="">
http://legislature.mi.gov/doc.aspx?mcl-Constitution


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Spider Milk? \oOOo/

Hooray for the Salticidae (jumping spider family)! \oOOo/ <-excited a="" dancing="" for="" if="" jumping="" male="" mate="" normally="" re="" span="" spider="" they="">

but smh that people will probably speculate about milking spiders for personal gainz.

Complex PTSD and navigating through it

This article succinctly sums up the arc of my own stumblings in healing in ways that I didn't realize would happen among relatively mainstream sources. Around 2015 was the first time I ever heard of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD), and even then it was through a friend who was going through her symptoms from experience that were far worse than what I had. I'm really glad to see more people working through it now, and also people critical about the way that psychology in practice traditionally approaches anxiety, trauma, and depression tends to be inadequate if not completely uninformed.

https://themighty.com/2018/06/anxiety-from-complex-trauma/

Everything from

Literal good grief
The conundrum of compassion
Emotional Numbness

Even with all the reframing and attitude to look beyond some of the ingredients, it's helpful to recognize the patterns to what you're dealing with.

https://themighty.com/2017/08/life-impacting-symptoms-of-complex-post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/

Emotion state sketches
Here's a trio of sketches that captured some of the things I felt near or when I was working through them:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t5mlf87Wzqy2EWpq2qp1RwrkA5AJawzXFmCr-0c69OQ/edit?usp=sharing

I was trying to compile whatever guides I came up with a while ago in a way that would make it easy for you to proceed through but struggled to allocate the brain space (or computing capacity) so this is the next best thing--you might need to just run with whatever embedded links are in one of these posts (I think it's the first one) to see how I mapped/linked various things I was working through circa 2014/15 and what I did for intervening with them:

https://lighttelecommunication.blogspot.com/2015/02/an-emotional-list.html

https://lighttelecommunication.blogspot.com/2015/01/coping-with-various-degrees-of-agency.html?m=1

Emotional numbness can feel like a blessing and a curse--it took a long time for me to "be okay" with the feeling. Though it's helped me keep the clearest mind when it was time to pull a friend out of a fight, I sometimes questioned whether I'd be able to be emotionally perceptive when it matters.

​There's a video floating around the internet about a Ukrainian physics professor who started recording his lectures and demonstrations for students who were sick. Interviewed about how he felt knowing that his lectures are now famous worldwide with physics students and aspiring physicists, and how he tries to answer all of their questions. His reply:
"To be understood is to be happy. This makes me happy to know that there are people who want to learn about physics and understand what I'm trying to teach with enthusiasm."
Having shared a meal with dear friends in the North End, I realize this is simultaneously one of those ways and special moments that let you see what's life like to break out--or perhaps more appropriately, grow out, of that numbness.​​


Be well or at least know you're on the path to better.

Expertise vs Curiosities in Experience

​Expertise, experience, and the depth it can bring to a situation are necessary for putting evrnts into proportion. Yet not at the expense of curiosity and not to the degree that it should altogether silence the validity of other people's experience.

21:21

Nov 27th?

Designing to Demystify Development Doings

Last year, I advised the 2018 Detroit City of Design Strategic Action Plan's creation as part of a group of other UNESCO/Detroit Design-connected peers (if you want the fancy technical term, we're referenced as the Peer Advisory Board on p. 147) -- though I'd be remiss to say a lot of the comments and advisory I contributed went unheeded by the consulting firm tasked to do the report.

In particular:
1) the need to address the legacy of economic suppression, divestment, or even outright oppression that made and let institutionalized racism continue in the city
i.e. from removing skilled trades and the arts from k-12 in recent years and dismantling the public school system's efficacy, or a highly segregated population that results from a mix of insurance and housing policy that resulted from remnants of the early 1900s when supremacist/terrorist groups groups like the KKK openly influenced and controlled business districts and cities.
2) the need to shift toward skill-based "gig economy" resilience rather than building more job pipelines
3) the role of cultural competency and "industry translation" for delivering genuine inclusion and better informed public decision making that lets people take advantage of the projected surge in industry and Detroit's shiny new "UNESCO City of Design" status.
One of the best ways to do that is to connect the every day practical things that normally seem out of reach to the average Detroiter with better communication, and not all of it should rely solely on written word (and yes, I realize criticizing the bias in communicating with text with an equally lengthy article-sized written narrative isn't optimal but we're starting here with a different audience in mind).

Which brings us to the Development industry. The more we learn about the development industry, the more I find it's traditionally about making debts profitable (at least for the big players, but really, when was the last time you ever heard about a small-player in the development industry, if you ever hear about the development industry at all?).

So with an article from early 2018 about Dan Gilbert's desire to use tax breaks and funds that normally would go to things like schools and corrections (go read it and then come back to finish this), it's an opportunity to demystify a bit of this further--here the question becomes whose debt and to what end does it become a profitable investment--for the public and/or Dan Gilbert's works.

In this case, by capturing the tax revenue via brownfield redevelopment incentives (for those without an environmental science or economic/city planning background: brownfields are land that's been contaminated with something like industrial waste, fuel spills, etc. that would make it unsuitable for normal living/farming etc.; but still useful for developing buildings on top of or "fixing" aka remediating the soil so that it's healthy again).

That normally would go toward basics like education. For others (like Ben Mallah of Koncrete's "Life for Sale" show), it's often by flipping large properties--sometimes accelerated by using bank-loaned money to achieve aggressive profit margins (i.e. 2:1 ratio of profit to investment) -- so they're constantly burning to find another bigger property to pay back the investing bank(s) before they get into hot water with their lender(s).

Yet even when we teach people to read in the U.S., we begin with picture books -- yet here we are attempting to learn and teach with the limits an ambitious and dedicated journalist is limited to working with by deciphering troves of text.

So here's a design challenge: I'm certain there's a way to turn the following chunk of text excerpted below into a diagram, infographic, or something that more people would be able to quickly understand:

So how does all this work when you get down in the weeds? One incentive Gilbert is using is called a "brownfield." It allows developers like him to collect property tax revenue to pay for remediation costs after they redevelop contaminated or seriously blighted properties.

In a hypothetical scenario that illustrates how brownfields work, Gilbert's Hudson site property is valued at $100 in 2018. Let' say later this year, the city and state approve a brownfield incentive for it. Next, Gilbert builds on the land, so it's worth $150 in 2019. The city and state continue to collect tax revenue off the original $100, but Gilbert collects tax revenue off the $50 increase.

Gilbert then captures tax revenue off the property tax increases for the next 20 years. So if the property is worth $1,000 in 18 years, Gilbert collects tax revenue off of $900, and the city and state still only collect it off of $100.

The property tax money that the government collects goes to several "jurisdictions," including schools, libraries, parks, jails, cities' general funds, and more. According to the MEDC, Gilbert will be collecting tax money intended for jurisdictions that fund education at the county and state level. So when the property tax revenue collected from that $900 goes to Gilbert, it doesn't go to schools.

In that way, Gilbert's use of the brownfield impacts schools.

But there's another layer. The projects are in Detroit's Downtown Development Authority district. The DDA currently receives the tax money that Gilbert will use — not the schools. Thus, Gilbert can claim that schools aren't impacted because the money is diverted from the DDA to his company. However, the DDA takes the money from the schools, so education taxes are ultimately what funds Gilbert's projects.

-Excerpted from:
https://metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2018/01/11/yes-dan-gilbert-wants-to-use-school-money-to-fund-his-new-downtown-projects

You could especially visualize this as an elegant sankey diagram of sorts -- see this for a black and white example in petroleum energy and this with colors in energy; better yet check out Canada's energy systems and imagine how it might be done to demonstrate tax and business investment.

For a crude attempt, here's my take on what I just read:

In a hypothetical scenario that illustrates how brownfields work, Gilbert's Hudson site property is valued at $100 in 2018. Let' say later this year, the city and state approve a brownfield incentive for it. Next, Gilbert builds on the land, so it's worth $150 in 2019. The city and state continue to collect tax revenue off the original $100, but Gilbert collects tax revenue off the $50 increase.

2018 Value (note: let each + = $10 )

$100 ++++++++++

2019 Value: Gilbert Builds on the Land ( note: let each ~ = $10 in 2016 )
$150 ++++++++++~~~~~

Gilbert then captures tax revenue off the property tax increases for the next 20 years. So if the property is worth $1,000 in 18 years, Gilbert collects tax revenue off of $900, and the city and state still only collect it off of $100.

$900 (note: each ++++++++++ = $100, and if I understand the lines above correctly, that money still comes from you, the tax payer)

Gilbert's $900 (which he and his companies will make some kind of argument that says the jobs created and the business they attract, especially for remediating contaminated soil to build upon, will make it worth while for Detroiters and maybe the state--if you're extremely lucky, maybe you can figure out a way to become a shareholder or take equity in the project to influence what happens, the odds however are extremely slim for the average person)

++++++++++
++++++++++
++++++++++
++++++++++
++++++++++
++++++++++
++++++++++
++++++++++
++++++++++

Meanwhile, Detroit's $100 (which, from the ashes of taxpayer dollars, we'll hope good things will rise for the tax paying residents again--in other words, this is the hypothetical portion that the public has the highest likelihood of maintaining accountability and influence over for ensuring the revenue goes toward actual priorities in the interest of the city's residents) remains the same, possibly unadjusted for inflation too:

++++++++++


Total Hypothetical Property Value coming from the Detroit Tax Base: $1000

++++++++++
++++++++++
++++++++++
++++++++++
++++++++++
++++++++++
++++++++++
++++++++++
++++++++++
++++++++++

There's still a much better way to depict this which I've not taken time to illustrate with my ascii art rendition above. How could we show the money flowing from the tax base? I'd reference the petroleum diagram in terms of what the fund actually supports and how it gets prioritized for this particular development scenario. And then add the colors etc. to make it more visually appealing.

Yet where do we go to make this kind of development and data literacy happen? Design advocates would say "Designers! Ask the designers!" and inevitably you'll find there's a high-end design firm lurking somewhere in a trendy downtown office hungry for a commission or contract from someone with a decent pocket book.

As the public waits, where can we go? Perhaps someone might wish a non-profit for supporting design might exist to provide these services. In Detroit, the Go-To clearinghouse might be Design Core Detroit (formerly DC3), which is the Org I referenced at the start of this post. But they're a clearinghouse who tends to pursue big-picture funding and reputation with a limited team, it's easy to suspect a measly infographic isn't really in the scope of their perceived responsibility. In function, they're a Chamber of Commerce who laid claim on Detroit's "creative + design industry" and replicated all the traditional organizational functions a typical Chamber of Commerce does to keep its membership and influence in a city.

Say what you will about the New York Times, but spend enough time looking at their work and you'll find outstanding work when it comes to conveying some of the data they use to examine stories -- take for example this piece that points to school segregation and success by comparing money, race, and student success.

For the City of Detroit (and the world at large), one thing that would distinguish its industry might be the way it communicates important data -- the kind that's visceral to our day to day lives like traffic accident statistics, crime, disinvestment/investment/development, accessibility, education, home and utility affordability, glocal civic engagement (as in, how local decisions and elections intertwine with global issues) etc. in a way that accelerates public literacy and competence around the issues.

While data for literacy rates in Detroit might be a contested topic, the reality that most people tend to do better with pictures

On the other end of the spectrum, we might appeal to the Designer's Guild for Justice or maybe some kind of diasporic remnant of the Occupy Movement's Design and Research collectives.

For now however, I'll leave this question "who's going to do the design work?" to all of you...

Detroit native Aurora guides a group through the stories in this Detroit youth-made mural during an anniversary observance of Vincent Chin's murder and in solidarity with the Detroit Asian American community on the final remains of Detroit's Chinatown. Shortly after telling her story, she expressed her frustration and surprise that she discovered the city of Detroit was bidding on a rail transit development proposal through a late night broadcast on BBC World News before hearing anything from the City.

REFERENCES

Life for Sale: Focuses more on large multi-unit buildings (Apartments, Senior Citizen Homes, Shopping Plazas), but gives you a taste of how developers would focus on large tracts of land. I don't necessarily agree with or enjoy his sense of humor, you'll still learn a lot about the scale of investment in the industry from watching the early episodes in the series.

This episode turned on the "Aha." for demystifying how real estate development works and looks like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gC8dUcoKFE

The trick is to continue buying and selling else he'd have to pay tax--I don't understand all the details yet but I get the impression there are a lot more millionaires out there who are just as caught up in a similar game:
https://youtu.be/TGEPle4uFPU

Awaiting the close of a deal between a bank loan, etc.:
https://youtu.be/3YoAbBRCa34

Buying/Flipping a Senior Citizen Complex:
https://youtu.be/GjCBJtibA7k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zfq5-Sj4GU


Detroit's #1 Billionaire, Dan Gilbert technically does want to use money that funds schools for his development projects; also thinks people miss the nuances to why big developments deserve tax breaks.
https://metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2018/01/11/yes-dan-gilbert-wants-to-use-school-money-to-fund-his-new-downtown-projects

NOTE to people about tax breaks:
For environmental science students who took Dr. Riebesell's land use planning and management course, development incentives -- especially brownfield redevelopment, etc. -- these are typically emphasized as a good thing. A brownfield is normally a contaminated (i.e. risky, somewhat toxic or at least polluted enough that you can't just set up and do typical building on) site that people stay away from--real estate developers are more likely to sprawl out their developments and encroach upon pristine land (i.e. cut down a forest, drain a wetland, or push out a historic neighborhood as the likely alternatives).
However, I question whether certain habits become relevant once an individual or entity reaches a different scale. A billionaire like Dan Gilbert might be able to defend his actions by pointing to the basics for how a profitable business needs to run. Yet he no longer operates a basic business or like a normal business person starting at ground zero from scratch--he literally influences governments and entire media cycles with his mere presence. He has the capacity to look at prioritizing his funding and investments in ways that consider the constraints and needs of the environment he chooses to operate in beyond a traditional charitable-foundation model. So unless he's operating on archaic development business practices, cleaning up a brownfield development project likely can be done without taking all of the incentives that the media suggests he's requesting.



Sankey Diagrams:
Petroleum Energy -- Black and White, corresponds to a common source
https://goo.gl/images/vDLyJY

Energy -- Note for Colors
https://goo.gl/images/wknBV2

Canada's Energy System -- Probably the best of the three diagram examples I provide yet
https://goo.gl/images/u11J6t


NY Times Interactive Data: Money, Race, and Success -- see how your school district compares to others:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/29/upshot/money-race-and-success-how-your-school-district-compares.html

On Thanksgiving events: Chau, Carey, Communists, Capitalists and Culture

NOTE: Written in the spirit of light fragments--don't expect complete sentences and thoughts but consider the ingredients referenced and connect the dots for yourself.

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but bends toward justice"

"What shaped the behavior of the man... systems, etc."

"we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderer." -Dr. King after four girls were murdered in an Alabama church

If you pay close attention to the name of the missionary, it's Chau--this is an Asiatic name.

Three levels
A Christian might view this as a loss of life and to the institution, maybe a moment of martyrdom

A pro-indigenous progressive
might see it as

"the arc of the universe" bending toward justice

how right the indigenous people defended their island, made it clear, and prevented a possible epidemic when the invader returned despite their initial act of dissuasion.

As the son of Vietnamese refugees,
I notice another thing: the missionary's last name is Chau.
Chau is an asiatic name, and his face--Vietnamese too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chau

Vietnamese descendents experienced a few things
1) If you have any connection to South Vietnam, I suspect there's a decent chance you might be related to a people called the Champa -- a muslim vietnamese population that was persecuted into genocide by the (?Tran dynasty?).

2) Vietnam was also colonized by the French, and Japanese, and some might argue the Russia + the U.S. as well
when we later examine the Vietnam War between its North/South with the various backing governments.

For any "colonized" nation, there's a category for something I call
colonial [perhaps to a country like England, Spain, China, or Japan]
and/or
institutional [i.e. if a church is the first to set significant colonial influence -- just as the Catholic Church did on many an occassion]

Applying the stockholm syndrome concept in psychology at a collective scale, :

when the population under former colonization becomes ardent supporters of the former institution they were once subjected to.

For examples in Asia, the French language and anything related are often held in high esteem by Vietnamese people. Under Chinese Communism, several religious practices were eradicated during their most recent cultural revolution within the past century. Or Japanese mannerisms get adopted as a value in South Korean diction.

So we must question: why did he feel so compelled to go to the Sentinel Islands?
Indoctrination is part of it--a relgious faith

But as someone who grew up in Michigan having lived, worked, in proximity to shootings, or staying in squats, or chose homelessness over conventional housing arrangements

there's a part of me that understands what it's like to be drawn to the possibility of finding acceptance in others


other places


other people


other challenges


other discomforts


other dangers






and Jim Carey.

"Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world."

The greatest dare just might be to do as Carey says:
"Risk being seen in your fullest glory."


Chau probably had a great heart for compassion and all the values that make the various Christian faiths compelling on face.

Yet organized religion frequently preys upon the vulnerabilities that come with basic needs -- especially when the ways of life, survival, and culture are systemically eradicated.

Christianity is no stranger to this: deuteronomy 12 gives explicit directions for what policy circles classify as cultural genocide: you've seen me write about this elsewhere before.

We may place issue on the conquistadors, but the ministers in the settlements have as much a role. Look to the boarding schools and how native peoples were often beaten and demeaned for speaking their original languages, eating their traditional foods, and partaking in their customary celebrations or ceremonies.

"we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderer." -Dr. King

And when the people who stand up in defense of their needs to the settlers:

Who becomes top priority for eradication?

Leaders -- of course the Generals, the ardent Warriors, and political leaders, but also the griots, historians, poets, musicians, scholars, doctors, architects, engineers, etc. anyone of significant influence

and if there's public concern, it's done by stigmatizing anyone whose work is easy enough to appear divorced from creating any tangible and practical value.

In the way Red communist doctrine interpreted "revolution(s)", one of the first tasks at hand is to eradicate the intelligentsia--the kind of people I listed above.

That's not too far off from what Christianity does too.

Among hard-line capitalist advocates, you'll hear justifications in a similar form-- the near-sightedness for quarterly and annual profit often blinds them from the recognizing the deeper, interconnected values that come with culture.

The culpable behaviors are transcendent across too many ideologies, but we must not let the systems that send people to their deaths escape our gaze for critical amendment and learning.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=V80-gPkpH6M

Qhipu! (Or Khipu - does a K or Q really matter?...)

This article reads like a thriller, the title begs us to question who "we" really are though:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23931972-600-we-thought-the-incas-couldnt-write-these-knots-change-everything/

​​Imagine a friend hands you a bundle of knotted thread and you smile without breaking eye contact as you "read" what it says without looking. This is what the Incan knot system, qhipu, likely let people do--you could "read the threads" by looking, and probably "read" simpler threads by feel too.

It's also why it's silly to judge others and assume "written language" and "thinking in words" is the only form of tangible or abstract path for communication or the only way to think. A good chunk of the time, people often make hasty calls choosing convenience over learning the nuances -- only to live in the irony of their own arrogance when time makes its final call.

"English is the first form of programming most of us learn."-Onyx Ashanti

Language is the first form of programming that people learn, and it often reveals a lot about how people tend to think, how they organize, and what governance tends to look like too. We can only infer, but from the article it sounds like the government and economy functioned very similarly to the way the qhipu is made and organized: federalized with a control economy, much like how one core thread serves to anchor lots of other pieces in place.

When you look at how English (and likely other Western, especially Romance, languages) is written and constructed, much of it points toward consolidation and objectification--about 70% of the language exists as nouns --"people, places, or things" -- relationships are frequently couched in transactional terms, and how we refer to non-people also lends it to "thingness".
i.e. "Who owns that dog?" remains reflexive vs. "Who leads that dog?"
We're still in an age that, for most U.S. Americans, comfortably refers to other living things from a frame of ownership -- just a few percentage points away in DNA from chattel slavery.

In an excerpt from the book, Braiding Sweetgrass, the author notes that Potawatomi (an Aanishinaabemowen language -- so related to Ojibwe and shares some common roots with Algonquinaak* [the name for the Algonquin language?] ) is comprised of about 75% verbs. Lots of the things we consider as things in their noun-form are described in states of being. The rock is being, a river is being, etc.
So imagine referring to a trail or road as a noun and verb at the same time--"I MichiganAvenued [to] work today." would mean you drove on Michigan Avenue, which might imply all of its potholes, construction, and traffic patterns that are typical of the avenue for where you live. The place and thing has its own dynamicism while maintaining a degree of specificity to it that doesn't need to become an abstract geographic fact to memorize disconnected from the rest of its social and physical context. One beauty of a language with this orientation offers is that it suddenly puts almost everything we engage into context as a relationship--things suddenly have a degree of action, dynamicism, and maybe even agency to them.

Verbs are the grammatical abstraction of a relationship -- it's an action which implies cause, consequence, and something or one as a party to initiate or orient around the action. Relationships invite the opportunity for more nuanced ethical consideration -- we're literally called to reckon how an action to a relationship might affect an entity that's likely connected to its own set of behaviors and relationships.

There are more examples which you can read from the Braiding Sweetgrass book or hear at a discussion from Dylan Atminer who introduced it to many Detroiters this year, but for now let's return to news about the quipu and the research connected to it.

What's also exciting about this research that helps us relearn the literacy and thinking behind the quipu is that the techniques for decrypting it likely translate well into physical gestures too--know how to communicate using common syllables, words, or general concepts and you can assign them to physical movements. That's something my friend Onyx is playing with as he develops his own sono-cybernetic system.

From http://ciencias.pe/sites/default/files/styles/slide_principal/public/field/image/quipu-wari.jpg?itok=vPsFV8mw

NOTE: this post was edited part way on Nov. 30th when I realized I forgot to finish a sentence that actually connected to an entire section about other languages hehe .
References:

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
https://milkweed.org/book/braiding-sweetgrass

Dr. Dylan AT Miner, a Metis native artist and scholar
http://www.wiisaakodewinini.com/

Debt: The First 5000 years by David Graeber
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years
[I've yet to read it though suspect it's very relevant given how transactional everything is--"owe a life", "forgive us", "I'm indebted to your kindness", etc.:]

Conversations and observations (plus probably some essays on his blog which I haven't yet read) with Onyx Ashanti

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23931972-600-we-thought-the-incas-couldnt-write-these-knots-change-everything/

Performance/Practice Notes: Sept 2018 Structure and Agency improvisation session

An early stylistic exploration--while Bruce Lee might fear the person who practices 1 kick 10,000 times, this session is the equivalent of hearing a violinist/violist practice 10,000 kinds of kicks about 2 to 34 times so there's a lot of work to do in refining any of the vectors we might choose to pursue before something radically developed on a stylistic or compositional level emerges.

Early in the video you'll hear: 

-an unnecessarily aggressive take on part of a Japanese children's song (Oedo Nihonbashi -- at least the part I could remember) where I tried to replicate my memory of a raw and jarring koto melody by maintaining ponticello technique on the instrument. [After finding the original reference recording -- in the Favorite/Nostalgic Melodies of Japan album, the perceived jarring sound came from being unfamiliar with some non-western tunings] 

-influences from traditional shakuhachi flute stylizations [as heard in Minoru Minuoka's Japanese Koto Funk] Ponticello technique on violin, viola, or any bowed string instrument that you can play with ponticello lends itself well to imitating the smoky wind style heard in shakuhachi playing if done with subtlety -- I was somewhat successful in maintaining character and can do a lot to develop a more compelling sound with it further 

-As a side note, I'm experimenting with ways to normalize or make the scratchy sound that comes with ponticello on a stringed instrument interesting and "beautiful" in its own right, the shakuhachi emulation is probably the closest thing I've found beyond using it for textural purposes or as an aggressive distortion in sound 

-Flexing in and out of traditional intonation with microtonal fluctuations to explore beat patterns that sometimes emerge from playing sympathetic strings that are slighly out of tune together 

-One surprise: the "beat effect" that comes when playing two notes that are very close to each other in intonation don't carry to the microphone well compared to what you can feel on the instrument as the player. I'd be interested to hear how the same effect gets picked up in professional recordings where I did that same effect on multiple occasions with Synergistic Mythologies at the DSO Cube for the 2018 Strange Beautiful Music Festival in September 

-Discovering the strings are already out of tune to each other without any help ; ) 

-Finding ways to "play with the environment" -- a swelling overtone in the parking structure amplifies when playing just mildly sharp of the D natural that's unique to that particular part of the structure 

-A brief quote of an ascending motif from an Alfredo Piatti Cello Caprice -- with a daring microtonal twist that makes it sound a little less good than I thought it would!

-Improvisation in Balkan and Roma-esque modes with some non-western intonation 

-A quick quote from a motif in a pan flute melody (called “pan flute melody” when translated out of French) from the group called Djelem -Later you'll hear simple 1 degree templamatic derivations of traditional Balkan tune(s) like the Gankino Hora--likely played in the wrong meter--and another one I've yet to learn the name of titled on youtube as "Bud Vibe" via kungfudru's youtube account [ the drummer playing in a group that would eventually become the Balkan funk band Ornamatik/RytaMusik's] -An attempt to play in non 4/4 time signatures (probably a 7/8) -- and sometimes straying back into 4/4 after forgetting the attempt or getting rhythmically lost altogether with the counting and grooving 

-A new jam pattern(!!) 

-An appreciative audience member shouting from several stories below 

FIN (due to space constraints and a crashed hard drive) Also, accelerometer in the phone somehow didn't read the horizontal orientation and now I'm not sure how to rotate the video short of getting more sophisticated video editing software. Might reupload in the future when we can take care of that. 

#Viola #improvisation #Original #NeotraditionalMusic #WorldMusic #HashtagExperiment

Sun rises soon, rest.

Last Autumn, I wrote a haiku late at night:

Shattered, we lose sight.
Chasing the restless answer.
Sun rises soon, rest.

Coming round from a sort of episode between current events with U.S. immigration policy, I've been thinking about the effects of complex PTSD and the patterns that appear during an episode after the major traumatic incidents -- by the way, to anyone reading who might be sensitive to heavy topics like this, what I'm writing might not be for you to read.

How many people, including many friends and colleagues, appear to function in society, show up to work, and either get ostracized, shunned, or simply choose to cope in isolation so that they don't appear in public because they could be a danger to other people?

It feels like there's a part of life that's getting cheated in trade for some semblance of safety. Yet courage often happens at the threshold of comfort and necessity, and living life fully to overcome that existential shearing point normally means eventually choosing to move forward consistently enough that you don't let your perceptions of life collapse on itself. So we decide to push, we show up for other people and execute as high performers when we can see it really counts as long as we can focus on looking forward outside of ourselves. But when it comes to connecting with who we are and directing care inward, it's often a failing point. Someone who works with impeccable precision and attention to detail when intervening with crisis shuts down for days or, if they're isolated, weeks and months under normal circumstances.

There's a haunting word sitting firmly in my memory from part of the *internet version* Hopi Prophecy about people who are born with "sampacu -- no light in their eyes" -- I think about how the children of substance abuse, kids who grew up or the effects of young children separated from their parents as a result of the way our nation's current immigration policy is interpreted and enforced. People who self-medicate with cannabis, alcohol, or other substances also come to mind--where the goal is to slow oneself down enough that they numb the anxiety or edges of life's pains.

You probably have a stereotype or image in your head from seeing movies or reading articles that portray the condition in its extremes--flashbacks, someone reacting violently without reading the situation well, etc.--but what happens when someone is functionally working through an episode while working in the midst of other people that I think is underrepresented.

It shows up in subtle ways, maybe illogical spurts and fits in disproportionate response to another person's current or past actions which one thought they left buried long ago only to realize they've incubated the same alertness to similar kinds of pain.

For the individual experiencing those symptoms, it can feel like stepping into an intense stance is compelling and necessary. In some ways, it very well may be--at least if they're able to examine and understand how the dynamics of their present episode echoes unhealed moments in their past. The truth, with proper context, is always good. Yet when it burns brightest, it's often challenging for most people to engage it in its rawest state--there's too much to fit in a brief conversation, meeting, or decision. So the proper context will ultimately become one of your own making, and I like to believe that it sometimes comes after the fact that you may or may not have burned people during your efforts to illuminate the roots of your reality while simultaneously igniting the debris that hampered your capacity to genuinely engage others who may be near with clarity and truth from your being.

The best answer I've seen to this is to recognize the moment, learn what you can before you choose to dive in all the way, rest in reason remembering that another opportunity to move in rooted passion will arise soon with each new day.

Sun rises soon, rest.

* * *
"Rest in reason, move in passion." --a line from the poet Khalil Jibran

"Many of people in this will be empty in Spirit they will have Sampacu. No life force in their eyes."

Side note: Sampacu shares a very similar context and definition to sanpacu in Japanese -- I'm wondering if it's a typo or a common term.

Circling Coyote

One of the few times that I can promise this cat video is worth watching at work.

So for one, just enjoy the clip--even for the sake of good genuine play I even feel good seeing it happen. It's like seeing a fairly matched round of sparring with good sportsmanship on both sides unfold, and I love how the coyote plays at disadvantage to entice the cat. And lest we forget, this is still Year of the Dog -- and it's fair to assume that coyotes are part of the Canidae family, so we'll celebrate them here too.

On play, an overview:
In play, the process matters more than the outcome. Play, whether among people and/or other animals, gives us an opportunity to refine and hone skills necessary for survival. Whether hunting, stalking, evasion, or in conflict -- most evolutionary biologists tend to agree that it provides an opportunity to hone those behaviors in non-threatening settings.

On this video of a cat and coyote, a note about their play styles:
One of the things you'll note (and many other viewers noted) is that the coyote circles the cat--almost constantly--and often aims for the back legs (even if it's a playful headbutt) or just your legs (if you're bipedal).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAoWWM-ERpc

Circling is probably among the most challenging and confusing forms of an engagement to work with, at least for us untrained and unskilled humans. We're used to confronting and engagements that take place forward and back, maybe side to side or an angle in between, but we're not adept at engaging with a rotating diagonal movement that's literally designed to nip at the rear of our flanks.

If anything, it's a tactic, not a strategy. From what I gather between lots of comments and watching a few videos (so by no means am I an expert, just thoughtful observer, and possible speculator), the the "longer-term goal" (probably strategy) is to tire out and draw the coyote's prey out to the rest of the pack to take more effective action on securing their meal -- or get the prey right away while they're not expecting it.

Coyotes are known for circling and tiring out their prey.
In the wild cats are ambushing predators.

To see what it's like as a human trying to handle a coyote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqVE9qfg7yI

As a random tangent: While the martial art aikido is often maligned for its complexity and the way it's taught (often non-intuitive motions that don't work in certain environments, as a reactive discipline it has no ways to spar therefore few ways to really test its fundamentals among fellow practitioners, etc.), one of the things it's known for looking good at are its circular motions. And in many martial arts, moving in ways that render the opponent's line of momentum harmless by shifting slightly out of the way is often the best choice. Used offensively, the same principle likely applies, but it feels challenging to to describe and grasp without doing a lot of kinesthetic arts like martial arts or dance for a bit longer. From a very practical standpoint, circular motions can also be useful as a way to recollect energy exerted after a strike--after indirectly punching through an opponent (so not a straight jab), knowing how to rebound and follow-through with the punch can spare you a lot of wasted energy. All of this stuff looks interesting and, to me at least, tends to appear a little more nuanced than what makes sense at first glance.

Maybe I'm seeing things under the influence of comment sections, you can see for yourself. Or better yet, try it out if you have a cat (dogs seem to navigate circular motions with greater ease and efficiency than cats though--unless laser pointers are present, then it's anyone's game) when it tries to play or snuggle up against you.

Alan Emery

Coach, Consultant, Buzzwords and Being Genuine

This post is actually so that I can host an image online that will be used elsewhere (for this event and its subsequent series of workshops for applying vision, mission, systems/habits techniques and strategy into your life).

That said, it's certainly been an interesting experience working with someone whose immediate focus comes from very personal contexts in coaching, and writing from an international personal development point of view. I also think it's neat that our portrait photos are a kind of counterpoint/complement to one another: Bere's is black and white/grayscale, mine's in color. We're both looking more or less to the right.

Today my biggest learning point comes from trying to reconcile a traditional "focus on making and selling" approach to doing an event with the "bring everyone to the table and build together" orientation I've focused on as of the past 5-7 years. Bere has a very good tendency for keeping immediate focus on "first things first", and while I'm mindful of the same, we balance each other out pretty well.

Also, Happy New Year! (Gregorian and Lunar alike!), more to come.

Maybe we'll see you there?
workyoulovecoach.com/live-event