The Circle Project

Drop the Façade (part one)

When read metaphorically, stories can be an ancestral road map to help us know the way off the Vicious Circle or, in this case, how to stay on it:

It is not uncommon to begin this story in the middle: Parcival was lost. He was trying to find his way home. He had just officially become a knight! In truth, he was actually more a fool, more a trickster than knight, but it was a knight that he wanted to become and so it was a knight that he became! He had trained with a master teacher after an auspicious beginning. And now that he’d achieved his diploma, he was trying to find his way home. He wanted to show his mother that he had become something great!

In support of Woo-Woo

 “Before we can realize who we are, we must become conscious of the fact that the person we think we are, here and now, is at best an imposter and a stranger.” – Thomas Merton

There are many people I wish I could meet, have lunch with and ask a few questions. Leonardo DaVinci is high on my list. So is Joseph Campbell. Picasso and Einstein, too. But at the top of my list is a less well-known genius named Keith Johnstone, author of a book entitled IMPRO. The first chapter, “Notes on Myself,” is a primer on how to be alive:

“One day, when I was eighteen, I was reading a book and began to weep. I was astounded. I had no idea that literature could affect me in such a way. If I’d wept over a poem in class the teacher would have been appalled. I realized that my school had been teaching me not to respond. (IMPRO, pg 17)

See and be seen

In the days following hurricane Katrina, Dr. Sue Eskridge did what all good teachers do; she used world events to engage her students in something real, transforming her class in Children’s Literature at the Benerd School of Education at the University of the Pacific into the Katrina Book Project. She charged her students with the task of writing, illustrating and producing books for children from the hurricane zone to help them cope with the loss of families, homes, pets, and the life they once knew. In addition, the class invited other organizations, authors, illustrators, and actors from all over the country to contribute to the project. The books and recordings will be bundled with food and medical supplies and delivered to the children over the next several months.