Topics in Composition

Venus de Milo     G ood afternoon, class.  Hope you are well.  Today I will return the summary pieces on Michael Pollan's "Six Rules for Eating Wisely," and other papers, and we will review some of t he key points.  It is time you plan for the research paper and get the work underway.  We will discuss it more today in class. I did not plan to post the image of a half-naked statue, but it was on my desktop and as an emblem of culture, I could really do no better, though this Venus is but one.  Yet she is one of the most famous of Greek antiquities, named for the goddess of beauty and love.  The Greeks contributed to Western culture some of our most enduring ideals, that of democracy, for example, and that of the wondrous strength, grace, and beauty (ideally) of the human form.  The Olympian figures of classical Greece continue to inspire people and to inform the way many imagine ideal human form.  I am reminded that so much of what ...

Marc Chagall  (1887-1985) G ood afternoon, class.  Hope you are doing good and being well!  Today I will be looking for essay work (2 and 3) in response to the health topics and links posted thus far.  I will have a "homework" in class practice on some related material to practice directly the business of addressing through summary and quotation source material.  Last week we did not get to the group meditation with Tara Brach, but we may today. I hope to give time to think and write about the direction you want to take with the short research paper (#4).  Thus far we've looked some at how the cultivation of certain habits, including mindful awareness and gratitude and awe and community, can help to lessen the stress of ruminative and compulsive negative thinking. As a class we can brainstorm health issues, review topics at the AspenIdeas pages, and Youtube presentations.  In the coming weeks I'll post more material on how art and design serve...

         Waterfalls and Mountains in Iceland   W hat happens when we contemplate a landscape?  Perhaps, the closer we draw, and the longer our gaze, the more we find ourselves spreading out and upward, sideways and down ways, pouring forth as waters do, stretching and floating like clouds as we sense what it is to be cloud like, or rising up with the strength and stillness mountains embody.  Nature is our home, a "witnessing presence"(line 10) as Denise Levertov writes in the poem "Witness," and we a witnessing presence to nature whenever we remove the  "veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue," (line 5) that may keep us from seeing, and being seen.  There is company in nature, good company, the best in so many ways, and nature has the power to soothe and sometimes heal our  worldly concerns;  indeed all that we have is nature, beginning with our own biology. Without bodily integrity, physical health (from which the mind/br...

Eva, my neighbor (too briefly!) T he spontaneous joy of a child's laughter is one of life's great gifts, though perhaps I should be more expansive and say that of all spontaneous and joyous laughter.  In any case, an incidence of such makes a central appearance in a New York Times bestseller by Ann Voskamp called One Thousand Gifts:  A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are (2010), which I'll share with you today in class. Good Afternoon, Class.  Hope all is well. Today we will finish the Stanford class lecture on the biological and psychological elements of Depression that we started last week and discuss the papers you wrote on Keys to Wellbeing, including the subjects of awe, humility, and community, and review some of the topics as the AspenIdeas 2018event.  One piece I located at psychology today addresses the power of awe as a counter to the highly mechanistic aspects of culture today:   https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/awakening...

              A Palomino in Wyoming G ood afternoon.  Hope you are doing well today! I will return the first essays and we will pick up from where we left off last week, speaking of matters of  health and of how we can nurture wellbeing in ourselves and others.  I want to give you some time to look over your writing and finish your homework response (if you have not).  I also will review a few composition details, namely the importance of contextualizing your remarks, using imagery to convey experience, and providing readers with references such as source authors, site names, article titles, and so on, where appropriate or called for in work that borrows from that of others. I am curious to hear and read your thoughts/compositions on the various Keys to Wellbeing  listed at the greatergood Berkeley site: gratitude, empathy, awe, community, diversity, altruism, et al. Here I'll...