[Xmca-l] Re: A Quick Lightning Dive - like a Kingfisher

[Tom Richardson]

Thank you Vandy@GST
A delightfully serious read; a breath of mind-clearing oxygen, although it
isn't clear to me why. Maybe it's just because it is grounded and graspable.
Technical languages have an essential role, but make xmca postings, no
matter how genuinely mind-opening and conceptually developmental, a
leetle(sic) hard-going at times.
Thanks
(Pity neither Hillary nor Donald  is anything other than dangerous to
global survival, IMO)
Tom Richardson
Middlesbrough UK


On 7 November 2016 at 02:35, valerie A. Wilkinson <vwilk@inf.shizuoka.ac.jp>
wrote:

> Good morning, XMCAers, Vandy@GST here, promoting "requisite variety" as
> the
> true path.
>
> I've spent some hours pondering all that has happened since Mike dropped
> his
> "bombshell": Time for a generational change."
>
>
>
> Mike himself put gender and chaining on the table at that time.
>
> Larry, in taking up the themes and honoring Mike for his "middle" role
>
> led to Phillip putting gender and chaining firmly together as patriarchal
> and hierarchical, even if unwitting and well intentioned.
>
>
>
> The discussion has gone in many directions and I am late for work.  The US
> election is "tomorrow" and what I wanted to say in an article before the
> decision, in a haiku-like spontaneous effusion of wisdom, learning,
> philosophy, and engaged learning across a lifetime was "bogged down" by APA
> rules.  In Japan, science writers have to use APA format.  I am a humanist
> operating in the field of Informatics and even after 20 years on board
> here,
> I do not feel I have a place at the table.
>
>
>
> So what I want to say now, as everything hangs in the balance:
>
> My Indonesian and Vietnamese graduate students are women who have already
> graduated from the university and are getting married and having babies at
> the same time that they are students in Informatics.  My Chinese and
> Nepalese women students graduated from universities in their home
> countries,
> but their cultural and language level is almost incalculably higher than my
> Indonesian and Vietnamese students. My female student from Tunisia is from
> yet another world. My class of "Professional Presentations in English" is a
> one credit class and I am not their individual advisor.  All of them owe
> obedience to their own advisor, which I do not have the standing to compete
> with.
>
>
>
> It is my job to be a model of a woman of learning to help them discover
> their calling and talent while working in their lab with their own
> professor.  My own students are at an English level for which writing
> correct English is a challenge and at a cultural level (poverty and
> farmers)
> which makes them like very talented Middle School students.  We have to
> have
> fun, make paper chains, popcorn balls, posters.  We have to enjoy our time
> and keep our space clean.  Strangely, five years of rehabilitation prepared
> me well for this.  Sadly, rank has no meaning if the rest of the gang does
> not recognize it .
>
> I voted.  Now I'm in the "hold my breath" phase of waiting for this thing
> to
> pass so we can get on with our lives.
>
>