Homage to World

Go Ask Alice,
When she is ten feet tall
And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you are going to fall.

Tell them a hookah-smoking, caterpillar
Has given you a call
Call Alice
when she is small.

She came into my focus, late: when I was 29 years old.

I really didn’t see her clearly when I was young.  She was Pollyanna to me.  The Energizer Bunny personified.  My Gaia.

From the beginning, she would read to me what I was interested in. I learned to read by listening to her.  Not fairy tales, not silly stories, but from the natural world: she read from Time Life: The World We Live In.

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Time Life Book: The World We Live In

She had been there all along, the all encompassing foundation: at the start, there in the beginning, my World, my life.

She encouraged my passion of Science, to be the best I could be. She loved learning, I did too.

world_we_live_in_bindI quickly surpassed her in understanding the natural world, although she was always better with the people world.  She was my first Teacher: she is my mother: all four feet, eight inches.

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Alice Keirsey, Teacher Idealist

She supported my father in his education, when he got back from World War II. She went back to work, when he took a pay cut to be a university professor. She was a elementary school teacher for over 40 years.  Everybody loves her, her fellow teachers, her students, their parents, her children and her grandchild.  She was my father’s best Advocate.  And she was my Advocate too, for I am her son: the scientist.

Even more than the other Idealists, Teachers have a natural talent for leading students or trainees toward learning, or as Idealists like to think of it, they are capable of calling forth each learner’s potentials. Teachers are able – effortlessly, it seems, and almost endlessly-to dream up fascinating learning activities for their students to engage in. In some Teachers, this ability to fire the imagination can amount to a kind of genius which other types find hard to emulate. But perhaps their greatest strength lies in their belief in their students. Teachers look for the best in their students, and communicate clearly that each one has untold potential, and this confidence can inspire their students to grow and develop more than they ever thought possible. [Please Understand Me II]

How and why does the world work?  That was my question from the beginning.

And your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice
I think she’ll know

She started me on my intellectual journey.

Birth, Growth, Equilibrium, Decay, Death.  That’s the way the world works, at the eight levels of major complexity.

Yes, Life Itself.  It’s complex, with many Dynamic Relations and Varying Contexts.

When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen’s off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head
Feed your head

— Jefferson Airplane

Now that she is not here all the time.  She is fading from this world, the focus blurring and memory descending.  Time to take care of her, no questions, no answers, just be her foundation.  I can’t explain my science to her which theoretically sound but of no practical use, as her World becomes smaller and smaller.  Just appreciate her for being there in beginning as the foundation, and I hope to be there supporting as a foundation, however flawed, to the end.

Other Teacher Idealists include: Maya AngelouChiune SugiharaZiauddin Yousafzai, Ralph NaderMikhail GorbachevStephen CoveyJane Fonda

Homage to Catalonia

Go Ask Alice

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