"In shadowy, silent distance grew the iceberg too": universities, technology, work and life
The home to be lived in generation after generation, the violin passed down … we cultivate the disciplines of care and attention in small, pivotal ways that have large, far-reaching effects on ourselves and others. Out of what is hidden we make the visible and then call it work; work that makes sense of the hours we are privileged to live. David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity Storytelling is for an other just as…
Continue Reading1. I’m still in Palo Alto, and I’m none the wiser about the street sign program that asks locals to look up and think about the meaning of their city.* I’ve now found eight different examples, and they’ve started to take on an anxious tone. The whole place feels like it’s worrying about something. Would you say that things in your city are better or worse than they used to be? Do you ever find yourself longing for “the good…
Continue ReadingI sewed once a day, keeping a record of when I worked and marking the breaks between each session. While it is evident where one session ends and another begins, I took care to tie the thread or hair from the stitches of one day to the stitches of the next, so that the line is continuous. The result is an image of my commitment and the time that has passed. Maria T D Inocencio, ‘In and out of time’…
Continue ReadingSo why are most universities monolithic, conservative, bureaucratic and resistant to change? F. M. Cornford’s splendid little monograph Microcosmographia Academica (1908) examines the “enemy of inertia” and finds that “there is only one argument for doing something; the rest are arguments for doing nothing”. While change is theoretically deemed to be a “good thing” by “change managers” – commonly known as vice-chancellors and deputy vice-chancellors – those managers often encounter resistance from ordinary academics. Steve Olivier, ‘How to manage rapid change‘ Ordinary…
Continue ReadingThe purpose of Stonehenge is lost to us. There will always be debate about its meaning. Stonehenge Visitor Centre, Wiltshire I grew up in England, although I wasn’t born here. Here. I’m not in Australia, I’m visiting the country that isn’t quite home, with my Australian teenage daughter who isn’t quite at home here either, while we both try to make sense of the weave of family (her) and familiar landscapes (me) that make England part of who we are. Or…
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