no feeding please

Give this to the new volunteer teachers.

LBF is a Foundation. It is not a school.

It is an English Development Center.

It offers H'mong students the opportunity to improve their English communication skills.

The majority of schools in Asia are exam-based. Teachers lecture on grammar and vocabulary. Students learn by rote. Their objective is to pass exams. Teachers push them through.

Teacher talking time is 80-20 or more. Students are dumbed down and passive. It’s all listening. They RETAIN very little.

They are never asked, “What do you think?”

They are told what to think.

Independent learning is a foreign language.

My approach has developed a healthy, easy going, stress free relaxed, student centered environment. It is communication-based, not grammar based. Teamwork. Learn by doing.

Get out of their way. Help where and when needed. Practice support, kindness and love, not feeding.

Ask students about The Spoon.

Thank you for your attention.

Paco de Lucia

Paco de Lucia, the Master of Flamenco guitar has passed.

66. Playing on the beach with his children.

Born into a humble family on December 21, 1947, de Lucia grew into a musical giant who blended jazz, pop and classical influences with the folk tradition of flamenco.

He said his father, a singer of gypsy origin, introduced him to music and encouraged him to practice for hours.

"The gypsies are better since they listen to music from birth. If I had not been born in my father's house I would be nobody. I don't believe in spontaneous genius," the guitarist once said.

From the age of 12 de Lucia was out playing and earning at flamenco "tablaos" -- the intimate bars that are home to the authentic form of the tragic gypsy lament and dancing.

Read more

nahuales

“My family, while emotionally cold, distant and abusive yet well-intentioned, kind and loving were dysfunctional, trying to understand my vagabond spirit nature. They had no choice in the matter and by now they’re used to receiving strange word-strings full of mysterious symbolism and tragic truths from diverse twilight zones. I transmit between crystals and gringsing decorated with universal binary codes.”

“Really now?” said Mary.

“Yes, I gave my folks a world map for their anniversary. They loved it, inviting friends, neighbors and strangers over for trivia games using postmarks, stamps, decals, flotsam, thread, needles, bark, cactus fiber, beads, charts of tributaries, topographical maps, animal skins, hieroglyphics, and Tibetan prayer wheels with Sanskrit characters.

“They caressed burned broken shards of Turkish pottery, Chinese bamboo brushes dripping blood, torn out pages from esoteric Runes, Paleolithic fertility symbols, vitreous unusual writing, and one of my favorites, a Quetzalcoatl image full of written narration based on the oral performances of Central American myths."

“Fascinating,” said Deirdre.

“Yes, I gave them Olmec nahuales shamans containing animal powers dating back to 1200 B.C. speaking their wisdom. They blended the spirituality and intellect of man with the ferocity and strength of the Jaguar to create their nahuales. Their soul required an animal medium to travel from the earth to the heavens and into the underworld.

“Additional cultural reminders were beautiful blank black mirrors. Some displayed faces others contained scripts written backwards with stories of people, geographies, forbidden objects, and a box called Pandora." 

A Century is Nothing

downstream

Here's the pitch.

She stayed until 9:45 and left for work at an upscale spa wearing aromatic Grecian urns. He gave her 10 bones. Feed me.

Familiarity breeds contempt.

Get out of my life, said Telepathy. You are subservient and I am stupid to put up with this shit. He creased her indifference into a cumulus cloud. It rained goodbye and good luck.

She sat on the bed with her back to him. Sniffle sniffle.

Her fake tears formed rivers named Regret and Hopelessness and Indifference.

Fish behind twelve Laotian dams financed with Chinese capital to provide electricity to Thailand fed 60 million Asians downstream in deltas.

healing

It is to be broken. It is to be
torn open. It is not to be
reached and come to rest in
ever. I turn against you,
I break from you, I turn to you.
We hurt, and are hurt,
and have each other for healing.
It is healing. It is never whole.

 - Wendell Berry  Read more…