LOOKING FOR HAPPINESS IN INDIA AND BHUTAN

My teacher partner and I received a $10,000 grant that is taking us to India and Bhutan in order to develop a curriculum about happiness for our students. The grant is through a wonderful organization called Fund for Teachers, who fund teacher travel so they can create relevant, hands-on curriculum. We really want to know if cultures that are less materialistic and more spiritual are happier than us Americans. We will be visiting schools, talking with government officials, and interviewing people we meet along the way. I will also be documenting the trip with my camera. 

WHO REALLY HAS BETTER INSTINCTS?

Yesterday was a momentous occasion for our daughter Iris: she met Santa for the first time. She reacted to this stranger dressed in a red suit with her signature calm and curiosity. She investigated his beard, and calmly allowed me to awkwardly document the experience. About 40 years ago I had a very different reaction to this tradition as shown in the second photo. I astutely recognized hints of a flavored vodka on this Santa's breath. Concerned, I communicated my discomfort with the only method that proved effective in attracting my parent's attention: I cried. It was really a brilliant move, and quickly there after I was moved out of harms way. My daughter seems much more trusting of strangers dressed in unusual costumes. We'll see how she reacts to clowns!

DICK CHENEY AND KERMIT ROOSEVELT ARE TERRORISTS

A quick google image search for the word "terrorist" pulls up every stereotype of Arab men with guns and beards that you can think of. Alarmingly, those are also the only images that show up. As a history teacher, I know that many American leaders have far more innocent blood on their hands than members of ISIS or even Osama bin Laden, but when most Americans think of a terrorist, the stereotypical images that google highlights pop into their mind. The news and Hollywood push these stereotypes hard. Arabs and Muslims have become our new enemy number one, replacing Russians, Nazis, and the Japanese. I've never considered the role our search engines play in perpetuating stereotypes, but this weekend I was made aware of it by a professor from Highline College named Oussama Alkhalili. He spoke in depth about the current fears of the Muslim community in the wake of  our Presidential elections. Below is a quick breakdown of the two men highlighted in this post. In drawing attention to them, I hope to begin to populate search engines with more balanced results.

Dick Cheney was the Vice President of the United States under George W. Bush. He was the most vocal in that administration in linking Iraq to 9/11 and advocating for a US invasion of that country. He pushed the intelligence community to find any link between Iraq and 9/11 they could. The evidence was weak, but Cheney led the administration in the push toward war. We invaded Iraq in 2003. To date, there have been over 150,000 civilian casualties. All the evidence that Cheney and his administration presented as they advocated for the invasion has proven to be false. The terrorist organization ISIS was formed in response to this unjust war. ISIS did not exist in any organized form before we invaded Iraq. Halliburton, the company that Cheney served as the CEO of for many years and was still receiving payment from as Vice President, was awarded millions of dollars in contracts in the reconstruction of Iraq after the invasion.

Kermit Roosevelt Jr. is the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt. He worked as a CIA operative for much of his career. In 1953 he led "Operation AJAX" in Iran. This operation was designed to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minster of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh was a well liked politician who angered Great Britain when he nationalized Iran's oil. The US got involved out of a misguided fear that Mosaddegh would lead the country toward communism and alignment with the Russians. Roosevelt worked in Iran spreading propaganda against Mosaddegh. By some reports, the CIA controlled 4/5 of the news organizations in Iran. Roosevelt and key members of the US leadership wanted to overthrow Mosaddegh and replace him with someone more controllable and friendly to US interests. The coup worked, and Mosaddegh was arrested and removed from power. Several hundreds died in the riots that the CIA orchestrated. Iran's fragile democracy was gradually replaced by an authoritarian monarch, led by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who ruled from 1941 until his overthrow by the people of Iran in 1979. By most accounts, the Shah led his people deep into economic despair while securing billions of dollars in personal wealth. All of this was made possible by Kermit Roosevelt.  

A FEW MORE OF IRIS

MEET IRIS JOSEPHINE SCANNELL

Little Iris came a little sooner than expected. She was born on January 24, 2016. Her due date was February 11th. The little stinker broke Julie's water a few hours after her baby shower. She was born at 3:49 pm at The Birthing Inn in Tacoma. She weighed in at 7 lbs. 1 oz. and measured 19 3/4 inches. There was a slight look of disappointment in her eyes when she realized that her bedroom was actually the family room, but I promised to get her her own room as soon as she can count to ten.  

INFORMATION DELUGE MORE EFFECTIVE THAN OLD-FASHIONED CENSORSHIP

There are two ways to control inciting ideas: deny people access to them or bury them in a sea of useless information. Today in America, we have access to just about everything, yet 99 percent of this information is distracting, irrelevant, or simply wrong. Meanwhile the Chinese have limited access to social media, blogs, and accurate historical information about their country. Most people view this as the most insidious form of censorship, but to me there is a huge upside to this old-fashioned style of censorship. The problem with keeping information from people is that eventually--as history has always shown--people will find it, and the act of censoring or hiding it actually acknowledges the informations' power and worth. In a world where many people struggle to establish value for themselves, this act of censorship actually does the heavy cognitive lifting for those who may not be able to do so on their own.

In America we have a new approach to censorship. We make everything available: every useless, distracting, divisive, unfounded, ridiculous, baseless piece of information is only a click away. Mixed together in this useless sea of ones and zeros are the rare fish, the knowledge that could wake people up to the unsettling truths that are beginning to stack up all around us: That elites are amassing huge stockpiles of our resources, that the penal system is enslaving significant sections of our population, that the media serves to polarize all who indulge in it in the most effective divide and conquer campaign since the colonization of Africa, that corporations are raping and pillaging our planet, that people are being shot on the streets of our cities because we don't understand the subtle yet complex racism that is hard-wired into each of us, and finally, that the American Dream--one of the most powerful myths ever created--is only possible at the expense of others. People throughout the world suffer every day for our dream. And now the American Dream is a global ambition; our wasteful selfish lifestyles have become models for others, and our planet can't sustain it.

None of the truths I've mentioned are censored from the American people. Like all the nonsense, they are a click away. It is a cruel irony that with wisdom comes calm. The ignorant scream at the top of their lungs and draw all the attention. We live in a world with an unprecedented amount of distraction that works like a magicians slight of hand taking our eyes away from the crucial realities. 

ART THAT MOVED ME

This piece of art resides in the San Juan Island Sculpture Park, a 20 acre free park where 150 artists display their work outdoors. I liked many of the pieces I saw there, but the one pictured above really stood out. It is called Winged Victory and it was made by Sante Fe artist Anne Russell. For more examples of her work click here. The piece really made me think about the consequences of victory. It could be yours for $3,000.00.