Anne Dalke's blog

Dear 360'ers--
Barb, Jody and I would like to invite you to have dinner with us, to celebrate the conclusion of our
shared work together this semester (not to mention plotting some on-going connections and elaborations….?).

We're proposing that we do this @ 5 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 17, @ my place in center city.

We're going to order in, so please tell us what you'd like to (or cannot/will not) eat.

Getting yourself there would involve taking the R5 to Market East, then walking south
four blocks to 903 Clinton, 2R (it's just above 9th Street, between Pine and Spruce).

Let us know if you'd like to--and can!--make it?
 
Hopefully, and happily,
Anne (for us 3)

In the final projects you are co-creating for our 360 on Women in Walled Communities, we are expecting multi-pronged, cross-disciplinary endeavors that involve both collaborative and individual components, including
    • a public demonstration, 1-3 pm, Mon, Dec. 17, of a tangible project that you have created together,
    • which builds on the particular skills, knowledge and experience of all students in the group, and
    • draws in some way on the Education, English and Criminal Justice knowledge you have acquired over the course of the semester.

In the final e-portfolio of your work, due on Serendip by 12:30, Fri, Dec. 21, we will expect critical reflection about the ways in which your final product brought together the different angles of vision (individual and disciplinary) listed above:

    • how did each of the three courses/disciplines inform your final project?
    • how did completing the project push your thinking in each of these disciplines?

Feeling the burden of finding a place, close by, for our final collective ramble, I forsook the Friendship Bench once again, in order to explore Ashbridge Park. I think this is our place!
Re-storation.
Re-stori-ation.
Re-story-ing.

What (I think!) emerged in today's discussion was a shared desire for a final field trip that (in graham's words)  "lets our discussion become mobile." We seem to be moving towards a walk along Mill Creek. Below find what Lynne Elkins, of the BMC Geology Department, said when I asked her for guidance on how to do this "ramble."

In reponse to her questions: what is our purpose here? Shall we go to Ashbridge Park, to Mill Creek (in the acreage below Harriton House), or to Dove Lake? Rambling and talking together about a text? What is an "ecological" mode for making such a decision? How to be "ecologically conscious" in doing so?

....we do local trips very often, sometimes nearly every week for particular classes. I use Mill Creek for at least one class every semester. I agree that walking along it isn't feasible--in some places the banks are too overgrown, and in others it's probably private property or the stream enters underground drainages. You could walk farther by going through the water with waders, but in places storms have deposited enough debris that it might be impassible. I've never used it as far as Dove Lake, though.

My recommendations/ideas will really depend on the purpose of using a field site for this class. What kinds of observations are your class hoping to make? Will you take any measurements or do any analysis? Environmental studies/ecology is a bit too broad to be sure what would be best.

One of the students in my other class did some research on Erdman, and discovered that Louis Kahn, the architect who designed it, said, “A dormitory should not express a nostalgia for home, it is not a permanent place, but an interim place.” Can an interim place be a niche?

We made a number of decisions in class today (see updated syllabus for details).

We agreed that we will take a final class-wide "ramble":
we are eco-imagining a collective event to end the semester,
which will compliment the individual Thoreauvian stroll with which you each began
(lovely thought; thanks, rachelr!)

We also agreed to go do this @ 1 p.m. on Sunday, December 2nd --
and to accomodate that time by cancelling class on Monday, Dec. 3rd.

Next to be decided is where we will go, how we will get there, and what we will do once we arrive.

Current options for where to go include the
* Tinicum Wildlife Refuge (a visitor center, observation platform, and
10 miles of trails in southwest Philly, near I-95 and the airport);
* Forbidden Drive (a 5 1/2 mile trail in the Wissahickon Valley Park in the northwest part of Philly); and
* Mill Creek (which we can access from the edge of the Bryn Mawr
campus, and would try to walk along, as far as Dove Lake).

Options for how to get to the first include taking the R5, then the R1--or renting a college van;
for the second, renting the van; and for the third, walking.