Category Archives: Art

A Writer’s Passion

Art, education, Psychology, social commentary

Flickers Caring for Their Young

Access to food and clean water is necessary for the survival of all living species. We need to be diligent about preserving nature’s gifts to humanity. 

A Writer’s Passion

While president of OMSI, I collaborated with Dr. Marion Diamond, my counterpart at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley. Before assuming its directorship, she was one of the founders of modern neuroscience and the first to demonstrate that the brain improves with experience and enrichment. Though known for her studies of Einstein’s brain, her rat studies showed that an enriched environment (toys and companions) beneficially changed the brain’s anatomy. In contrast, an impoverished environment lowered the capacity to learn. By showing the plasticity of the brain, she shattered past beliefs of the brain as static and unchangeable, degenerating as we age.

Dr. Diamond advised me to stay active after retirement by changing my daily activities, interests, exercise routine, and readings. Doing so, she said, would develop new synapses to keep me vibrant and engaged throughout my senior years. To grow and continue learning throughout my life would keep me relevant and give life purpose.

So…when I retired at seventy-three, I followed her advice. Instead of remaining a consultant to the corporate world, I divested myself of boards, committees, and fundraising activities, choosing to spend my time with individual endeavors instead. Community activities took on a counseling aspect with singular individuals rather than leading groups. I spent hours engrossed in my art. But of all the undertakings, writing is the one I focused on most. I had always been an idea person, but when I put my thoughts on paper, I relied on others to make my thoughts well composed. My retirement goal was to learn how to write. I joined a writers’ group, so what I put down is critiqued before distribution.  The best way to become a writer is to write every day without fail. Sending out a weekly blog keeps me on course, but most of my effort goes towards my books.

Lives of Museum Junkies and Over The Peanut Fences were non-fiction, partly biographical endeavors. The first explored my early involvement with science museums and hands-on learning, how I learned to manage large institutions, and the people who helped the profession grow. The second accounts for the days spent mothering a previously unsheltered youth and getting to know the staff and volunteers of organizations that help young adults heal.

As I watched the environment suffer due to global warming and pollution, I decided it was time to write a novel, a thriller to capture the public’s imagination and to encourage governments to improve their care of life-affirming resources.”

Capturing attention with the written word requires dedication, a nuanced knowledge of the English language, and an understanding of people’s emotions. My first attempt at an environmental novel was focused on petcoke, a little-known petroleum by-product that resembles coal. When I wrote the last chapter, I realized it could have been better, but I needed to figure out what was wrong. I found a teacher who had me flush out character descriptions in the middle of the night when my mind wasn’t sharp. I was advised not to begin my story before I understood how each looked, walked, talked, was raised, and felt. I had to live in the head of each individual and worry about their families and friends.

After three years of research and writing, I completed The Water Factor, a thriller about the corporate takeover of water. It should be in bookstores and online by late spring. Though set in the future, everything I write about has already occurred.  Access to clean drinking water is in peril and will affect everyone’s life in the future. I was shocked to learn that the World Water Forum of 1998 and 2000 led to water being declared a commodity and not a right. This opened the way for it to be traded on Wall Street and privatized by corporations that charge 2000 times more by bottling it than letting it flow through a tap. Backing from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund followed, giving a handful of international corporations license to take over the management of public water services aggressively, leading to higher water and sanitation rates.

The United Nations recognizes access to water and sanitation as a human right fundamental to everyone’s health, dignity, and prosperity. Unfortunately, well over billions of people today live without water being safely managed. The plot moves from rural Oregon to Ethiopia to a Native American reservation, showing what can happen when corporate interests take over access to clean water.

My purpose in writing The Water Factor is to bring this issue to the forefront so communities can do something about it. The first of the  Rightfully Mine series, the novel shows the depths of manipulation and deceit people will engage in for money. It’s a page-turner to stimulate your brain, though I hope it will do more. The book is a call to action for citizens to monitor how their water and sewage systems are managed. Northwest Natural, an investor-owned gas company in Oregon, has begun purchasing small water companies in Oregon, Idaho, and Washington. The company is positioning itself to buy municipal water systems as it expands. It is time to ask if we want our water to be privatized.

Communities need to take heed of water issues. Lives depend on it. Who is selling, and who is purchasing local water rights? How will this affect your family in the future? I hope you get actively involved. Your effort is bound to stimulate new brain synapses and be a meaningful endeavor. 

References:

United Nations website. Human Rights to Water and Sanitation. Retrieved from https://www.unwater.org/water-facts/human-rights-water-and-sanitation#:

Burtka, A. & Montgomery, W. (2018) A water right—Is water a human right or a commodity? ERB Institute University of Michigan. Retrieved from https://erb.umich.edu/2018/05/30/a-right-to-water-is-water-a-human-right-or-a-commodity

Green, E. (2018)NW Natural is buying water utilities. Should Oregonians be concerned about privatized water? Street Roots. Retrieved from https://www.streetroots.org/news/2018/08/10/nw-natural-buying-water-utilities.

Art is always for sale. Flickers Caring for Young is a 22” x 25” framed acrylic on canvas painting. It is available for $425 and shipped free in the continental U.S.A. For information or to answer questions, contact marilynne@eichingerfineart.com

I look forward to reading your comments below.

Wading through Complexity

Art, For Parents, Psychology, Uncategorized
The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry
The riverfront museum I spearheaded opened thirty years ago.
 Impression 5, in Michigan, celebrated its fiftieth year.  It is hard to believe.

Wading Through Complex Thoughts

Analyzing your way through complex situations is not easy. On a rainy day in 1972, I was in Lansing, Michigan with four rowdy children and challenged with keeping them from tearing the house apart. So, I started a science museum in my basement. At the time there were only twelve science centers in the United States. Exhibits were push-button displays that mixed chemicals and asked yes and no questions. Fanciful walk-through hearts on Oregon, descent in into the depths of a coal mine in Chicago, fighter jets, and locomotives in Philadelphia covered the floors. What they lacked were interactive activities that called on visitors to experiment and think. A white paper was written pointing fingers at how the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry was a pawn of corporate America.

Public education was also under attack for the way children were held hostage for hours each week. Being pinned to their seats and made to memorize historical facts and formulas was not the way to inspire minds to greatness.John Holt, Howard Gardner, Piaget, and A.S. Neil were among those promoting child-centered ways, age-appropriate ways of teaching.

The table-top exhibits built in the basement of my home with my son recognized that children were not little adults but instead were youngsters with unique ways of learning. Science, engineering, and psychology professors at Michigan State University contributed exhibits and guided me through the learning process. The scientific method became my platform for conceiving interactive displays. 

Scientists approach problems through a seven-step process: make an observation, ask a question, from a hypothesis or testable explanation, make a prediction based on the hypothesis, test the prediction, and use the results to make new hypotheses or predictions. It is the way research progresses.

This way of thinking made sense to me and today is embedded in my psyche as a way to tackle life’s problems and idiosyncrasies. When ASTC, the Association of Science and Technology Centers started, science centers exploded throughout the world. I suddenly had company and reached out to seven small museums, including OMSI and the Pacific Science Center to secure a National Science Foundation grant to study visitor interaction with displays that required them to solve problems. We built exhibits that traveled to each other’s sites. Our staffs met to study hands-on education philosophies and to critique how  we tackled interactive construction techniques. 

We, and the other science centers introduced visitors to computers, technological innovations, and discoveries in genetics, and bio-engineering. What we learned by experimenting with hands-on learning techniques, was incorporated into the teacher education and outreach programs. Our museums became a model for the free school movement. They were places where visitors moved freely through displays, learning in their own way, at their own pace.  

You might ask, why I am saying something about this now. I am still involved with the education of young children and am more concerned than ever. The reliance on the computer for teaching has gone ballistic. Children no longer see that moss prefers to grow on North-facing surfaces. They don’t know how to use a hammer and nails to build a birdhouse. They don’t know how to change the oil in their car or sew a seam that burst on a dress. They don’t have the patience to build a balloon-powered card using cardboard and bottle caps to see how far it will go. They are too hyper to start a grow box and watch the way seeds turn into plants. They would rather play computer games than construct a solar oven to cook marshmallows while exploring thermal energy, reflection, and convection. 

All of our activities were designed to help young experimenters question and think. They require patience, dexterity, and a willingness to try and at times fail.  These are basic needs that adults as well as children need as they conduct their lives. 

When I moved to Oregon to run a science museum with greater resources, I was more determined than ever to show visitors how the scientific method is useful when tackling everyday problems. We built a new waterfront museum where people could satisfy their curiosity by conducting experiments on the floor of our exhibit halls. When designing Busy Town for young children, for example, we included a component for parents that focused them on observing their children so they could question their preconceived ideas about the way they learned.

As the world grapples with environmental change, economic challenges, and pandemics, we need clear minds, and a citizenry willing to dig into issues and think problems through. Analyzing these issues can be great fun if we put our heads to it. It calls for more feet on the ground stomping through communities and parks—putting more hands on binoculars, hammers, saws, needles, and thread as a complement to eyes on the computer screen. It requires reading, discussing, arguing, and coming to conclusions you are willing to test. The scientific method provides a way to proceed. Practice solving little problems so the large ones will fall into place.

For a behind-the-scene look at science centers and how they influenced education read Lives of Museum Junkies.

Art is always for sale. Check out my new cart-enabled website eichingerfineart.com to purchase the painting of OMSI or any other that tickles your fancy. 

Please share your thoughts below. What do you do when you escape the computer and remember that the physical world is filled with beauty?

Steve Johnson – Hopscotching Through the Age of Bots

Art, Blog, education, For Parents, social commentary
The Estate (NFS) 
While I created homes on my easel, Steve Johnson built structures on his computer. Our hobbies evolved and we began selling our creations.

Steve Johnson – Hopscotching Through the Age of Bots

He discovered his passion, not once, not twice, but many times over the course of his 62  years. What fascinates me is how Steve Johnson, former NBA All-Star, grabbed on to his dreams and turned enthusiasm into paying ventures.  

Being the third of six children in a family headed by a disabled vet on disability and a school bus driving Mom was not easy. Poverty led them to a cinderblock  apartment house in Watts, California, with bars on the windows and the sound of gunshots outside the front door. Fortunately, they moved to San Bernardino one year before the Watts riots. 

Mom was a Seventh Day Adventist who insisted the children attend private Adventist schools and attend prayer meetings several evenings a week. Dad buried himself in their garage practicing for hours in his music studio though, according to Steve, he never managed to play one song all the way through.  He insisted the children play an instrument and though Steve could play several horned instruments by ear, unlike his brother, he never took to it. He had other things on his mind, especially after discovering his first passion.

At the age of fourteen, his father took him to watch his cousin in a practice basketball game in L.A.  At the end of the session he was introduced to the man who later become his coach. That evening his cousin joined the family for dinner. The boys went to a playground afterwards to shoot baskets. His cousin showed him a few moves and advised him to learn the hook shot, advice that made him unstoppable on the court. By the end of that eventful day, Steve knew what his future would be. 

Academically he was an underachiever. School didn’t interest him so he struggled. But, he was a thinker and a planner capable of developing goals in his early teens. They were;

  1. Get to a public school
  2. Get noticed in high school and receive a scholarship to college
  3. Become an All American
  4. Be a first round NBA draft pick
  5. Become an All Star.

His first goal was the most difficult to achieve. Since Adventists didn’t play team sports, he had to battle his parents over leaving school for an out of district public education. He ran away several times hoping to establish residency but failed repeatedly. He wasn’t successful until the summer before his senior year when the high school coach introduced him to a man who let him stay in a condemned house he owned.  Steve used a coat hanger to enter. To eat, he pilfered food and other items he could sell for cash. He avoided prostitutes and the gambling room at the back of his house, and convinced the board of education to let him transfer in despite a ruling that kept seniors from doing so.

That fall, without ever having played on a team, the coach took a risk and let the 6’10” athlete join. Half way through the season, the starting center was hurt. Steve played in his place, made 25 points, and earned a permanent spot in the game. During the rest of the season he stacked up enough points for six colleges were interested in giving him a scholarship. He chose Oregon State University and played basketball for four years under Naismith Hall of Fame coach, Ralph Miller. There, as a record breaking athlete, he became All-American and PAC-10 Player of the Year in 1981, eventually being inducted into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame.

Playing for the Blazers

Upon graduation, Steve was the seventh pick in the first draft of the NBA. Over the course of his career he played for Kansas City Kings, The Chicago Bulls, San Antonio Spurs, Seattle Supersonics and The Portland Trail Blazers. Ten years later Steve was ready to retire after living with the pain caused by years of wear and tear on his feet.

In retirement he undertook several entrepreneurial ventures, that flourished and sputtered in the recession of 2008. He remained self-confident and driven and stayed focused on the idea of being successful-this time, as a businessman. His present undertaking fascinates me for it shows what a person can do who is willing to take a calculated risk and embrace change. His passion started with a computer came he played for fun. He became as absorbed in this new hobby as he did playing basketball.

Not a strong reader, Steve relies on YouTube Videos to teach him what he wants to know. He sees himself as a self-taught natural problem solver who knows how to mine and analyze social media for data. He is a planner and a goal setter who doesn’t give up.

The Sims is a computer game that allows players to explore a digital world where they buy property, design and build houses, and furnish them to their taste. When the game became internet connected, players could communicate and share information but The Sims had drawbacks. Steve’s son introduced him to Second Life, a more sophisticated game offering better tools and a marketplace for players to sell their designs. One day, with the help of his Avatar, Steve took a world tour and discovered a man building virtual boats. Rather than pay $40 to purchase the design, Steve started building his own yacht. When the president of Christensen Yachts discovered similarities to their boats, Steve was given permission to use their name. His virtual yachts sold for $175.

Millions of dollars are spent and made on  simulation games. Some players move on to well paying jobs in the real world. Virtual players become racers, drone and robot operators, marketers and fashion designers. Many tech companies are attracted to entry-level job candidates who cite playing or developing video games as a hobby. According to Ashley Deese of the Smithsonian Institution’s science education center in D.C., “They (gamers) tend to be problem solvers, organized, and adaptable.”  Law student Aylmer Wang, said gaming taught him “leadership, entrepreneurialism, dedication and organization.” Gamers are motivated and determined says Christopher McKenna, head of a student recruiting for the law firm Bennett Jones LLP.

During the 2008 recession Steve realized that when the economy returned, yachting would not be the same. New customers with money would come from high tech, yet they were unaware of yachting. Rather than purchase boats, Steve imagined them more willing to charter them. The going rate to charter a 100 to 160 foot yacht is between $100,000 and 300,000 a week, plus expenses. There was money to be made and he wondered how to turn his hobby into a lucrative business in the real world.

Under the name of Monaco Yachts, Steve created virtual experiences for potential customers by placing them on yachts and take them to places they might visit on a chartered boat. Final contracts are often signed at yachting conventions taking place around the world. His web site, yachtinglifestyle365 is basically a marketing brochure–a very successful one that writes about the yachting lifestyle.

Steve’s story is an example of why our current system of education needs to be improved to help students survive in the age of bots. Workers of the future will need to be flexible, team oriented, determined and confident of their ability to learn on their own. They will skills that enable them to adapt to change and hopscotch across occupations.

A goal of the education system should be to help students find their passion. To do so, vocational options, exercise, crafts, the arts, and computer games need to be blended with academics to insure graduates develop meaningful leisure time activities. High school students should leave with enough self-esteem to enable them to shift confidently as the economy changes. Letting students pursue activities they passionately embrace, teaches them what is involved in setting goals, acquiring skills, and achieving a modicum of success.

Resources:

Needleman S. (2019) When a Passion for Videogames Helps Lad a Job. Wall Street Journal. retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-a-passion-for-videogames-helps-land-that-job-11551888001

Molloy,D.(2019) How playing video games could get you a better job. BBC News. retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49317440

#PersonalSpace

Art, social commentary, ,

       

Personal Space

Several years ago, one of my girl friends fell in love with a Pakistani man. While on a trip to meet his family she became ill and was confined to bed for a week. A relative was assigned to sleep in her room, usually under her bed until she recovered.  When healthy, the family insisted she be accompanied by a woman when out walking. My friend said that she had a wonderful visit and enjoyed meeting her boyfriend’s family but found it difficult to have her personal space continuously invaded. 

The amount of open-space we need, differs from person to person and culture to culture. We form bubbles around ourselves that make us feel nervous when punctured. People who grow up in heavily populated cities in Pakistan are much more tolerant of being touched and having people stand close beside them, than those raised in wide-open spaces. 

U.S. studies that measure closeness show that good friends and family want 1.5 feet to 3 between them. Casual acquaintances and co-workers prefer 3 to 10 feet and strangers want more than 4 feet between them. These boundaries vary depending on whether it is a professional relationship, a male to male or female to female encounter or a romantic vs. platonic one. Europeans tolerate people being wrist-length distance apart rather while we are an arms-length culture.

When taking a seat in a crowded auditorium we commonly leave an extra seat between ourselves and our neighbor. In a crowded theater, however, sitting next to someone is expected, so there we experience little discomfort. Personal space is carved out on highways as well. I find nothing worse than being followed too closely by a tailgater. 

World travelers often have a difficult time adjusting to crowds where you are close to hundreds of other people. Cairo residents, for instance don’t have a sense of personal space. People brush up against each other without thinking, drive around obstacles created by randomly parked cars, and jump on buses if they don’t have the fare. With little privacy, apartment buildings employ guards, bawabs, who pay attention to the comings and goings of residents and tell potential bridegrooms if their fiancés entertain men. 

The Washington Post shared a study of personal space conducted with 9,000 people in 42 countries. In Brazil, metro-riders commonly engage with each other, chatting freely with strangers rather than isolating themselves with their cell phones. Brazilians are more touchy-feely than we are and they pay more respect to the elderly and mothers with children. Friendly behavior is commonly practiced among strangers even though the country is riddled with crime.

The study went on to say that people in South Americas require less personal space than those living in Asia. In Romainia, strangers stay their distance but friends are kept close while in Saudi Arabia, people stand farther away from friends than Argentinians do with strangers. Hungarians prefer love ones and strangers to remain at arms length.

Though differences vary by country, there are also commonalities. Women prefer more space from strangers than men. Residents in warm areas tend to move closer together than in cold climates, and old people stand farther away from neighbors than younger ones.  In all countries in the world, infants don’t mind being kissed and held close by adults. Children don’t start forming personal bubbles until the age of 3 or 4 when the amygdala begins to sense fear and become active when there’s a threat to safety.

Thoughts of personal space make me wonder about other species, birds in particular. How do they fly so close and are able to move in formation?  Beaks and feet are used to sense touch, noses point direction, and formations call on a sense of space that use properties of physics to its advantage. Geese in a V-Patterns create “air paths” with less resistance to cover long distances efficiently. The upwash created by the lead bird helps support the weight of those that follow.  Maintaining formation, requires communication through sight, sound, response to external stimuli, and changing wind patterns. Birds, such as the Ibis, position their wing tips carefully and sync their flapping which saves energy during a flight.

Thousands of Starlings fly in murmuration, a whirling, ever changing pattern that is an amazing dance to observe. It is as though they are connected, yet they twist and turn and change at a moment’s notice. One starling is connected so closely to the next, that they appear to know when to turn spontaneously. It is now known that they react in milliseconds to their seven closest neighbors. 

Human beings also react to neighbors when in moving in formation. We allow the bubble around our personal space to be invaded and feel comfortable coordinating our movements with others. Dancers in a corps de ballet, the blue angels, and synchronized swimmers move harmoniously in close proximity to each other.  As we seek to better understand ourselves, it is good to explore the boundaries that define our personal space.

Will you trip over your neighbor while dancing
Do you feel comfortable in a large crowd?
Starlings fly in close proximity, swooping and twirly as they flee from a Perigrine Falcon

References:

Mayne,D.(2019)Etiquette Rules of Defining Personal Space, The Spruce. https://www.thespruce.com/etiquette-rules-of-defining-personal-space-1216625

Fadel,L.(2013) How different Cultures Handle Personal Space. NPR. retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/05/05/181126380/how-different-cultures-handle-personal-space

Erickson, A. (2017)What ‘personal space” looks like around the world.  The Wahington Post. retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/04/24/how-close-is-too-close-depends-on-where-you-live/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.88b00df38297

Ganzalez,K. (2019) Personal space in Psychlogy: Definition, cultural differences and issues. Chapter 10  Study.comretrieved from https://study.com/academy/lesson/personal-space-in-psychology-definition-cultural-differences-issues.html

( 2019) What is a Murmuration? Wonderopolis. Science. retrieved from  https://www.wonderopolis.org/wonder/what-is-a-murmuration

Waldron, P. (2014) Why birds fly in a Vi-formation . Science.https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?hspart=pty&hsimp=yhs-pty_news&param2=db063b7c-ab9e-498c-afda-6ade9148185f&param3=news_~US~appfocus1&param4=s-lp0-dsf_news–bb8~Chrome~how+do+birds+fly+in+formation~6F29AA9B0D0401B5AFD2AC8D43A603F0&param1=20190526&p=how+do+birds+fly+in+formation&type=cn_appfocus1_cr

Art is always for sale. Personal Space is 20” by 16” , thick canvas, acrylic painting $299. contact me at marilynne@eichingerfineart.com.