BLOOM Part 1

First, let me say that I've enjoyed reading your first set of responses to the "Let Your Mind Dance" and paper towel posts! In most cases, I could hear your speaking voices as I read through your comments which brought smiles to my face! Unfortunately, for whatever reason, it doesn't seem to be allowing me to comment/respond to my own blog. I'll look into this and see if its a setting I can change, because it would be nice to be able to "join the conversation" directly.

For today, I'd like you to reflect a bit on the first 30 minute section of the video Bloom which you watched yesterday on youtube. (You may have recognized the voice of the narrator as actor Chris Cooper. Google him - I think most of you would recognize him!) There was a lot of information in that film! That became doubly apparent to me as I was writing the questions for the worksheet while viewing it again - I wrote an average of 1 question for each minute of the film (I can practically hear you groaning your agreement of that!)

Before you move on to the next assignment in the classroom queue, I'd like you to think back to Bloom and write your overall impression of this film - what stood out for you? What was new information? What did you already know about (but perhaps learned more about?) Did anything seem shocking? Over-exaggerated? Too politically extreme? Or perhaps - somewhat irrelevant given the unusual circumstances we now find ourselves in?

In other words - push yourselves a bit to jot down some thoughts/ideas before you respond. Look back on what you wrote in your responses yesterday. Reply to this post with a good, solid paragraph (or two...or three...) rather than the simple sentence saying that you either liked it or didn't like it.

In other words, let your minds dance around the issue for awhile before you respond. I look forward to reading your thoughts!

Let Your Mind Dance

TA faculty have been spending much of our meeting time this past week familiarizing ourselves - and making the transition to - remote learning. It's been challenging for all of us - faculty, staff, and of course you the students.  As I've thought about the learning proficiency on Reflection, I've found my own self reflecting on the phrase "let your mind dance", some words that came to mind while doing some mindfulness meditation earlier this year. This morning, as I was doing my usual moment of zen ;) I came across an article about President Obama's Secretary Of Energy, Steven Chu that starts with a great example of this:

"In the winter of 1984, a young scientist named Steven Chu was working as the new head of the quantum electronics division at AT&T's Bell Labs in Holmdel, New Jersey. For months, he'd been struggling to find ways to trap atoms with light so that he could hold them in place and study them better. It was an idea he'd picked up from an older colleague, Arthur Ashkin, who had wrangled with the problem all through the 1970s before finally being told to shut the project down--which he did, until Chu came along. ("I was this new, young person who he could corrupt," Chu later joked.) Now Chu, too, had hit an impasse until, one night, a fierce snowstorm swirled through New Jersey. Everyone at Bell had left early except for Chu, who lived nearby and decided to stay a bit longer. As he watched the snow drift outside, he realized they'd been approaching the problem incorrectly: He first needed to cool the atoms, so that they were moving only as fast as ants, rather than fighter jets; only then could he predict their movements and trap them with lasers. It was a key insight, and Chu's subsequent work on cooling atoms eventually earned him a share of the Nobel Prize in physics. While it may sound inevitable in retrospect, big breakthroughs like that don't come along too often."

This anecdote captures perfectly the idea of letting your mind dance. Sometimes we face problems, assignments, situations, or remote learning not knowing how to start. Whether its a paper or a painting, what is the first word or brushstroke to put on the paper or canvass. This anecdote emphasizes the importance of non-active thinking. Letting the mind wander. Looking out the window. Giving yourself the opportunity to relax enough to allow your mind to forge some natural connection between what you already know and what it is you are trying to grasp - that elusive idea that lies just beyond your reach. 

I emphasized the final sentence in the New Republic piece, because it too raises an important aspect of letting your mind dance. Very often the outcome - that big breakthrough - seems inevitable when it becomes explicit. I'm sure that every Chem 1 student would know that atomic motion slows down as temperature decreases. But it took a moment of wonder (yes, and a pretty smart guy) to experience the epiphany that this simple fact could be applied in an entirely new way in order to achieve an elusive research goal.

Let your mind dance on this thought for the semester: Current studies indicate that the Silverback Gorilla will be extinct in 30-50 years. At the same time a minute, non-living string of atoms, the COVID virus, is creating havoc around the world. In the novel Ishmael, the title character is one of the few surviving gorillas held in lab captivity who takes on a human as his student. (He communicates telepathically. It's a novel!) The book concludes with Ishmael sharing this fine thought:  “With the Gorilla gone, will there be hope for man”? Reflect on this statement. Dance around some of the information you gleaned from reading The Sixth Extinction Chap 5 and 6 and share your thoughts.

We'll re-convene on Monday with a more formal assignment starting our unit on water quality. But for now I'd like to give you this assignment for the weekend: It's going to be a sunny, though somewhat cool, weekend. Go outside. Observe the world around you. Perhaps, take a hike (as I'm planning on doing for Saturday) and most importantly, let your mind dance. Think about the beauty around us, the role you have in our TA community, all the support within that community that is available to you, and the fact that we are all in this together. And yes - write a response to the post that documents your thoughts to all these issues including the large central question posed by Ishmael: How to find hope for mankind in these challenging times. Keep it positive and hopeful. I took the picture that accompanies this post on Thursday in front of Mrs. Gerhardt's room. The campus was pretty quiet, and yes there was that frosty snow on the ground, but those crocuses (croci?) brought a big smile to my face. Let your mind dance.

Be well - take care - and keep smiling!

SAY NO TO PAPER TOWELS! (One Thing You Can Do: Help Preserve Forests by Jillian Mock NY Times 1/8/2020)

When we make a mess in the kitchen, many of us reach for paper towels without sparing a thought for where those crisp white sheets originated.

If you’re in North America, some of the fiber in your paper towels (and other tissue products like toilet paper) probably started off as a tree in the boreal forest of northern Canada, one of the last big, intact forests in the world. Boreal forests stretch across Canada, Alaska, Siberia and Northern Europe, and, together, they form a giant reservoir that stores carbon dioxide. That’s important, because that carbon would otherwise be released into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming. Collectively, boreal forests lock away about 703 gigatons of carbon in woody fibers and soil. Tropical forests, by comparison, store about 375 gigatons of carbon. 

These are tough times for forests, though. Because of climate change, they’re highly susceptible to wildfires, like the ones in Australia, and pest infestations. So, anything we can do to keep them intact is good. 

Trevor Hesselink, director of policy and research at the Wildlands League, a Canadian conservation organization, said it’s important to weigh the value of paper products against the value of intact forests. “If you are thinking through a carbon lens, those single-use products are very short-lived,” he said. 

Canada is generally seen as being good at forest management. In logged areas of the boreal forest, trees are replanted and allowed to regenerate, and the country boasts a very low official deforestation rate of just 0.02 percent (though that has been disputed by some environmental groups). 

The bad news is, even if actual deforestation is low, planting a young tree to replace a mature one is not the one-for-one carbon scenario many people imagine, Mr. Hesselink said.

For a long time, scientists believed older trees stopped absorbing carbon as they aged. But recently, researchers have that found older trees continue absorbing carbon dioxide for decades or even centuries longer than originally thought, said William Moomaw, a physical chemist and lead author on five Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports.

Leaving existing forests to grow will be more effective at mitigating climate change over the next 80 years than reforestation or planting new forests, Dr. Moomaw and his colleagues have said. A tree planted this year won’t make much of a difference in terms of carbon sequestration over the next decade, a period many scientists say is critical for climate action. “They just don’t absorb enough carbon dioxide,” Dr. Moomaw said. “They aren’t big enough.” 

Furthermore, boreal forests support a diverse array of plant and animal species. They’re also central to life for hundreds of indigenous groups.

There is some debate over the degree to which pulp and paper products, like the disposable towels in your kitchen, drive logging activity in the boreal forest. 

Tony Lemprière, senior manager of climate change policy in the Canadian Forest Service, pointed out that industry can use waste from timber production to make paper products. But the Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that 44 percent of the pulp produced in Ontario comes from whole trees rather than byproduct.

Regardless, it’s easy to reduce the amount of single-use paper products you buy. 

Reusable cloth towels are a great alternative, said Shelley Vinyard, who heads the boreal forest program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. For those moments when you really do need a paper towel, she recommends one made of recycled content. The council’s consumer guide has recommendations for paper towels, toilet paper and facial tissues.

We really need to be thinking about forests in a different way at this “critical junction,” Mr. Hesselink said. Instead of soaking up spilled milk, those trees can help us tackle a much larger mess.