Just a few items of interest:

David Edwards, Artscience: Creativity in the Post-Google Generation.

For my students:

Michael Moschen puts on a quietly mesmerizing show of juggling.

I was talking with some students last night, in the VCC Counselling practicum class, about ethics as the foundation of human society. I described to them the famous scene from Jacob Bronowski's Ascent of Man documentary series, in which Bronowski speaks about knowledge, certainty, and the ethical condition. Bronowski was the most important public figure in my own creative, intellectual and professional development. His example -- his spirit of inquiry -- exerted a profound influence on the direction of my education and career. Here is the scene:

It’s right here:

Check it out. (And let me know what you think.)

I’ve been working with a group of instructors and administrators at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (this group includes Sibeal Foyle from the Fine Arts department, Genni Gunn and Sheila Hancock from the Creative Writing department, Don Hlus from the Music department, and Humanities Dean Linda Schwartz) to develop an undergraduate stream in Interdisciplinary Expressive Arts.The first course in this new stream begins in Fall 2008. If you are interested in finding out more about the program, visit (and join, if you want) the development group. These courses represent a significant milestone in education for students in British Columbia: never before have interdisciplinary expressive arts courses been offered at the undergraduate level in BC.

What are Interdisciplinary Expressive Arts?

Interdisciplinary Expressive Arts refers to a specific set of educational activities, goals and strategies. Based on innovative pedagogy and integrative approaches to learning, interdisciplinary studies involve the synthesis and synergy of various disciplines toward a cohesive, unified educational experience. Interdisciplinarity is much more than enrollment in courses from more than a single discipline. Authentic interdisciplinarity emphasizes the linkages between disciplines by focusing on contrasting and complementary aspects of diverse educational domains.

I spent most of today at The Orchard on Bowen Island. I met with the clients as well as the staff. Much of the day was spent talking about the relationship between childhood development and addictions, and the relationship between nervous system imprinting and recovery. It was, therefore, a day of ideas, personal process, and engagement.

The Problem:

Addiction is a positive urge thwarted by negative circumstances. Almost all habitual substance users are searching for a means of dealing with psychological stress that is usually associated with childhood and adolescent development.

The addict is drawn to a culture which promises to complete the unfinished impulses of childhood and adolescence. The cultures of technology are sufficiently broad as to offer the psychological rewards of all the cultures of substance use combined.

The word mentor is Greek in origin. It refers to a character in The Odyssey, a friend of Odysseus who offers counsel to his son during the father’s long absence upon the sea. But the sage Mentor is actually Athena in disguise, the goddess of war and wisdom who guides and sustains Odysseus through his journey. A mentor, therefore, is a wisdom guide.

The mentors of literature are always wanderers. They have traveled, they understand the ways of the road, they have traversed their own circuitous paths in the desert. They have experience, hardscrabble wisdom, clarity, a history of grappling and reaching and searching. Of having faced up to it — whatever it is.