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What is the freedom we desire?
Bird Droppings January 25, 2025What is the freedom we desire? “Brute force, no matter how strongly applied, can never subdue the basic human desire for freedom and dignity. It is not enough, as communist systems have assumed, merely to provide people with food, shelter, and clothing. Human nature needs to breathe the precious air of…
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Seeing and hearing an owl and thinking about happiness
Bird Droppings January 24, 2025 Seeing and hearing an owl and thinking about happiness “If you observe a really happy man, you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that…
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For some, creating and writing in a digital world is difficult.
Bird Droppings January 22, 2025For some, creating and writing in a digital world is difficult. “Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.” Aldus Huxley In 1965, I was introduced to this author in a tenth-grade English Class. The book Brave New World was…
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Learning is a journey strewn with boulders
Bird Droppings January 21, 2025 Learning is a journey strewn with boulders “In a word, learning is decontextualized. We break ideas down into tiny pieces that bear no relation to the whole. We give students a brick of information, followed by another brick, followed by another brick, until they have graduated, at which point we…
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Reconciliation of trust
Bird Droppings January 20, 2025Reconciliation of trust I came upstairs to look at my photos this morning and to write a morning Birddroppings. I thought back a couple of years to get sidetracked talking with my wife; she was headed to a funeral in Dublin, Georgia, for her aunt, who had just passed away. Her…
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Life and its alternatives become more of an issue as each year goes by
Bird Droppings January 19, 2025Life and its alternatives become more of an issue as each year goes by Morning has been a special time for me each day, a new beginning. Several aspects make it special. The first one is heading out to chase sunrise and listening to Carlos Nakai’s flute music. It is a…
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Symbolic Totem Pole
Bird Droppings January 17, 2025 Symbolic Totem Pole Growing up in my family, my father had made numerous totem poles in our backyards over the years. Each was painted images of creatures. Eagles, bears, and wolves adorned the totem poles. The last one was torn down or fell only a few years ago. In Cub…
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Selecting your pallet
Bird Droppings January 15, 2025Selecting your pallet I wrote the basics of this article nearly twenty years ago and was thinking of an artist friend trying to define her art and searching for her meaning in life. My friend often reflects her political views and emotions through her art. As I sat here this morning…
The daily meanderings of a teacher 