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 30 Jun 2005 @ 17:28
Coming home to the kibbutz from Be'er Sheva today, June 30th, my friend and I were stopped by the Army and asked to show ID that we were, indeed, residents of the kibbutzim this side of the Gaza Strip.
It's begun. Roadblocks and Special ID cards. It's started. In the kibbutz fields, soldiers were spotted with jeeps. They were patrolling on foot. On the roads were young people, religious young people, wearing orange arm bands to indicate they're anti-disengagement. As they were trying to hitch, my friend muttered: "You must be kidding"...
It's going to be at least 45 days of restricted movement. Certain roads are blocked to general traffic and to get home, we'll have to prove we truly live there.
A long summer. I'll comment here, no doubt.
A last look at the green wheat fields as they appeared a few months ago. Today, after the harvest, we're down to summertime flat.
Look at the green
think towards the future
this particular chaos will subside
and nature will recycle
Our dining room
In and out
stomachs and laughter More >
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 28 Jun 2005 @ 02:24
By Yuval Azoulay, Haaretz Correspondent
For five months, four eighth-grade students at Ginsburg HaOren junior high in Yavneh worked on the development of a very different type of computer game.
The quartet came up with a game designed to enhance the attention, concentration and memory capabilities of children with autism.
It was a project that required much thought, talks with members of Bar-Ilan University's Gonda Brain Research Center and research into the disabilities of children with autism.
The game, Zikhronon, was presented a few weeks ago at a competition in which students from around the country are called on to design games, instruments or devices that can make life easier for individuals with disabilities. Zikhronon took first place in the Quality Product category.
Dr. Roni Geva from the Gonda Brain Research Center helped with the game's development. Geva said turning the game into a commercial product was still a way off, but that it was certainly interesting and required a series of reviews.
Tami Ben-Shabbat, the director of Eshkol Payis in Yavneh, who was also involved in the development of the game for the competition, said it was devised following research into its need in the market.
"I approached the Israel Center for Aids for the Disabled, and they told me that no such game existed," she said. "We work in this regard in keeping with the real needs in the field. After we make a decision on the matter, we approach experts and request academic assistance."
The technical development of the game was entrusted to a classmate of the four students, Elnatan Vazana, 14, who is considered among the group to have extensive knowledge in the field of computers, despite his age.
The group has already presented the game at the Ankor kindergarten in Yavneh, which cares for eight children with autism. Kindergarten teacher Anat Kreitzer was impressed. "I don't believe it can work miracles, but it can certainly serve as an additional tool for treating autistic children," she said.
Link from Ha'aretz, Tuesday June 28th, 2005[link]
Note: Everyday now there are updates about technological innovations coming out of Israel, but this is the first time I've seen 8th graders supported by Industry to create something. How these particular students found sponsors is a story I haven't yet uncovered, but it's happened, and hopefully it will happen again.
There's a lot of brain power going on here. I see it in my kibbutz-based high school. Children come to learn and as a part of their regular timetable, instead of studying woodshop or crafts, they assist the Computer techie in routine maintenance. There's a lot of brain power. Let it grow.
--judih More >
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 25 Jun 2005 @ 06:19
written after reading a poet (but it could have been any user of language)that once-again feeling with the same old vocabulary used in the same old comments - dried up abuse of language- causing this reader to knee-jerk respond
alzheimer's turpitude
i read you
and i forget
how it was 3 lifetimes ago
spitting banality
echoing diatribe
metaphors lining the hallway
like christmas lights stolen from grinch
around and around
same old cyclical
never knew you to be so dull
you toss your stupidity
your aim worse than your brain
smatterings from the inbetween
no meaning, no force
rigor mortis of the cerebrum
autopsy certain
yet your spittle flows
your words deny reason
muh muh mutterings
forgotten in the dirt
judih
june 25
image: [link]'nightmare hallway' More >
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 4 Jun 2005 @ 02:41
Just read this article in today's Ha'aretz [link]. Fascinating account of a meeting between 3 Israelis of the Bayit Chadash (New House)movement of Jewish spirituality and H.H. the Dalai Lama. Fascinating, I'm posting it here for those interested in a very interesting conversation, and for my own safekeeping. Read and please comment. -(judih)
Why am I not a Buddhist?
By Gil Kopatch
Both Moses and Buddha grew up without a mother's love and apparently longed for it all their lives. Buddha was orphaned at an early age; the infant Moses got a one-way ticket for a Nile cruise. Both of them grew up in palaces as pampered princes. Both of them ventured out of the royal hothouse and were astounded to encounter the suffering of their fellows. Both of them turned to meditation for many years - Buddha under a tree, Moses in the wilderness of Midian.
So much for the similarities between these two spiritual giants. But what are the differences? And if there are no differences, why am I not a Buddhist?
article More >
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 27 May 2005 @ 04:58
This week I've been told that I love and understand my students. This is good. This is unusual. This is me. Yet, I've been told that one class of special ed kids needs less love and understanding and more of an Iron fist. They need stricter limits, tougher treatment. They'll need to get on with their schooling in the rougher lane.
It's true - I see their pain! I'm an empath. This is how I am all the time. It doesn't turn off when I enter a classroom. What does happen is that I'm continually learning limits: how to respect privacy, how to feel students' dilemnas but how to respond in a way that helps them deal with it and get on with things.
Too often ADHD [link] is used as an excuse. "Didn't take my pill" "Can't focus" "Can't learn today", etc.
Yes, it's a real condition, but yes, the world doesn't wait for anyone. Life moves constantly. Dealing with a current neurological state is part of living. Dealing, not avoiding.
Yes, I've taken no medication, but there are other ways to oxygenate my brain! I can meditate, jog, exercise with a quick chi cong movement. I can listen to music. I can draw. I can sing.
I don't need an excuse for not doing, for I can do.
Too much love in a coddling manner is not a good thing. But loving to feed the positive in a student is vital.
When a teacher scares a student, speaks only of how bad things are, have been, will be, what kind of learning will take place? Fear has its place in study (look at a Buddhist monastery where the master will strike anyone losing concentration). Yet, what does fear accomplish? Fear closes off the possibility for new connections, creativity. Fear doses the brain with chemicals. Short-lived attention does not make for long-termed love of self.
This week, I've learned that I, myself, need to integrate my understanding. A lifetime of psychic input and investigation of tools to make my efforts more efficient is fully ready to be used. I am ready to open the drawers, pull out the techniques and the knowledge. I am ready to unzip the self-made boundaries and introduce one brain cell to another. I am ready to activate my potential by releasing fear.
Short-termed proficiency can be expanded to integrated consciousness.
The more I learn, the less I want to talk, yet I must talk. I'm still part of this societal matrix. What is ritalin but a drug created by society to drag a bystander into the main hall of life?
Perhaps I'll use this drug on occasion to see what it's like to 'fit in'. Perhaps I won't use it. Fitting in has little appeal.
How to live a parallel life without getting caught.
This week's ruminations;half-formed thoughts and dangling sensations making this diary entry kinesthetic. There'll be more. More >
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Image at the top of the page,angry cocoon, watercolour,1999 by judih |
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