Cornwall - in Penzance

Pubs are for sharing a pint or two with your mates. No BBC, CNN, ESPN.  Many with no food as historically is done. Just a few hours to talk, laugh, share lives, news, fun. 

I met Eddie tonight in a Cornwall pub of locals. He has a Jack Russel named Boson he reports to me. The dog sits in one of the pub chairs checking out everyone as they walk by or sit. 

Eddie sat with me and talked about the Celtic differences in people compared to those Londoners. He shared the intimate, loving, personal stories of the dozen or so in this Cornwall pub. Elizabeth lost her husband last November and this is first night out with her daughter. She shared a smile with me. Everyone is looking for sunlight and love.  Eddie told me about the local tin mines located with tall rock towers for ventilation. Tin from Asia destroyed tin mining here. Long lines to the sky represents the part of life maintained by the towered cathedrals of fresh air and oxygen. 

Bernard Leach pottery workshop is here and nearby, Bernard was a local and now a new generation of Leach family ceramists and world interns create museum-hopeful pieces. And a great ceramic China clay continues to extend miraculous veins of non stoppable clay from an ice age - a ground granite and a  show of white in open hills in area is the targeted dig for more Leach clay.  It continues to be mined and is used for china pottery.

I made up my mind I do not need to look any further for an easy authentic life.  I have entered a video of the locals in this pub tonight -  spontaneously singing folk songs, reading poetry - doesn't get any more real than this!! I feel I should give up chasing anything beyond what is real in front of me, finally tonight. I will give up and leave life's unending chases as all races lead and end up here - Cornwall.

No. Not With The Guns

Many times each day, I receive inquisitive comments triggered by my American accent.  'Luvin the yank accent,' 'You from the states?', (Increase your voice tone low at beginning to high at end of sentence), 'I hear an accent, which part of the states you from?' And the most interesting interactions follow. 

When I ask if they have been to the states, about half report to me, yes. Usually it's New York, Florida, California and/or Washington D.C. We continue talking about great parts of their visits and they enjoy hearing comments I report about their country.

But yesterday, I was drawing in Canterbury Cathedral with some Brit friends close to my age. We engage in the predictable questions and responses as I mention above. However, more recently, both in Paris and in Canterbury I see people at the same places more than one time. We recognize one another and become a bit more friendly. And so it is now more than predictable, proper responses, a bit more personable. So, I ask, have you been to the states?  "Oh no, not with the guns!" Or, "Oh, no. Not anymore with the guns." I heard this few times in Paris. But I hear these words a lot in UK and Canterbury.

I teach with a Brit professor, in his early 60's, Prof Watts. He has been part of the British Navy for many, many years. Retired, he is a well respected, Ph.D. in history and knows everything on WWII. Dr. Watts and I teach together 'Divided By A Common Language:  A Comparative Study of Contemporary Britian and USA.  We cover government, economy, social class, education and will discuss health care in today's class. In fact, the USA is significantly worse ( - actually THE worst) in comparison to UK, and European nations in meeting equity, access, equality, costs, mortality, infant mortality, life expectancy, healthiest lives and more.  See http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2014/jun/mirror-mirror

Dr. Watts promises to speak more to the class about USA and guns. In fact, when asked if he would ever live in the USA, he sputs and coughs before saying, "USA is a beacon for free speech, capitalism and much more. However, the USA has gone beyond the point of return with its guns." He promises the class to finish the course about guns in USA with a last lecture and why he will never live in USA.

Now, this idea got the 15 Missouri, USA students defensive, who clearly state they hold gun carrying FOID cards. One of the 'merican Missouri students, Sam, asks Prof Watts, "Have you, Prof Watts, ever held a gun?"  Prof Watts sputters and responds, "Of course! Being in the Royal Navy, at sea, I have seen and been in every ocean for thirty years, of course!" 

Sam follows up with, "Then you know how great the feeling is to hold a gun and shoot a gun." 

Prof Watts responds. "Young Man. Apparently, YOU have never had sex!"

Lecture hall responds with a hard, long, hard laugh.

Teaching at Canterbury, Winter Term, 2015

Each class has a team who together teach, lecture, tutor, and double mark students' work. Directories are syllabi, tutors are faculty, and the issue of exploitation of adjuncts is shared yet Canterbury adjuncts each have universal healthcare, second best in world with fully healthcare equality.  On average, two papers each class are expected for completion of the course, and a paper is turned in two ways:  paper turned in online within Blackboard and paper turned in hard copy. The hard copy requires a 'cleared from plagerism' receipt, turned in with paper. The student at Canterbury is the agent of her learning. It is the students' duty to learn. That's it! No scores for attendance. No scores for participation.  No tests. No quizzes. Just teaching. Just learning. The administration is not in the faculty's academies. The faculty have full respect and ownership to the classes. It is a Harry Potter experience in seeing and feeling CCCU tutors, professors teaching and walking on the grounds of ancient ancestral domain to Christianity of 437 AD.

In comparison to the Illinois community college middle class student, CCCU too, projects a middle class set of values, demographics, accents and of students. Both sets of students get out of bed, chase after girls, boys and many more, confront how to make the world better than ancient royal and political histories of destructions, put cell phones first and make rules as they go.  Both sets of students want to be a better set of citizens than those who studied before them in these places.  But, students don't understand how to keep and understand the college dreams of today to their distant predictable, content hearts of lonely workers in minds of forty-somethings.  How to keep the passion and love from rolling away from a set of spirited, dreaming students to a perennial established set of ways to preserve and mainten status quo. Yet, just in this matter of time, I stand in CCCU classrooms where students roll and try to catch this time of a lesson on killings of black men and black boys by cops in America, from the USA professor. 

This is the time to teach what is of courage, of wasted and current and corrupt answers to past problems and to teach histories that are not their fault, with their hearts of conviction on the line of tomorrows, of yet to be. A visiting professor of sociology focusing on US racism and race relations at Canterbury, reports what is 'f*cked up at this time'. The problems that were made in the USA on killings of black men and of black children by cops makes the UK student tremble. A hush and a cry of 'so sorry' whispers from the back of the classroom as they witness the youtube killing of twelve year old Tamir Rice. 'Whose fault is this?', ask the unaware CCCU students blind to the USA three hundred fifty years of harsh, complicated race relations in the country they believe to be one of the most democratic and richest in the world with a wealth of blue skies, land, largest lakes and mountains. But after discussion, the belief is expressed more for the victims and families taken by US cops' bullets, an incomprehensible violence not understood on the streets of Canterbury, county of Kent, in London, the UK, European Union, Europe. 

Discussions swell of what will break and stop the USA cop violence on black children.  Who does it start with to disappear, they ask. Who will be the WWII, royal, lion-leader to stop the killings in America with courage and with conviction? Each begin to see the sun can go down in a society where heads are not held high but instead corrupt and lost values divide people into groups of empty senseless killings, keeping many awake. The truth needs to be carried out, the students argue. The truth will be laid out and all this will disappear or America will bury itself, is the take away from the students.  I listen to the reasoning of the CCCU student as we carry on.

If hunger exists without feeding, there is a lesson here for America - to love people equally.  All Americans are victims to the same issue. Always look out for one another, the UK Canterbury student advises, for a better set of outcomes and a country.  

America needs to get this right, they plea - with Courage and with Conviction.