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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan - Transcend Art and Peace
Created: October 26, 2003
Latest Update: October 26, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

The Aesthetic Process of Sharing

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, October 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

On October 25, 2003 Silvia Castro, CSUDH, wrote:

Jeanne, I wonder if you ever receive my e-mails? This is the third e-mail I am sending to you.

I know, I know. I'm sorry. Earthlink didn't mean to, but sent them all off to Mars I think. I'm getting them now, and our tech is following through on it. Thank you for your persistence, and your faith that technology sometimes comes throughl. jeanne

I do not recall the exact words that I used on my previous e-mails, but the first one had to do with the monologic non-answerability situation that one of my classmates was facing at the very beginning of the semester. She was not allowed to take her last Spanish class she needed to graduate. I was really concerned and suggested that she should gather all her documents showing that she has taken all the other classes and that she has passed all. If that did not work she could sue the school.

Good suggestion, Silvia. Records are important, even journal records where you write down your perception of what is happening and what is being said. But Dean Hart was helpful to Nita, and now she is doing well in the course, contrary to their stated expectations. Thank you for the sharing of your own experiential learning, and I apologize that the lost e-mail prevented my getting it up for our sharing. Alan Knox was encouraging Nita to do the same things.

As a practicing lawyer, I strongly recommend finding negotiated solutions. Even though it is relatively easy to sue someone, it is emotionally devastating, takes a long time and lots of money, and it prolongs the pain of discord. Both you and Alan were right to recommend that as a last resort, but I am very grateful that the problem could be negotiated out to a happy ending. jeanne

The second e-mail was about sharing with the community, what we learned in class the first week of September. In this e-mail I wrote to you about my experience sharing technological advances with my 88-year old grandmother. With my crazy and busy schedule, I have neglected her. We live nearby but we do not see each other that often. That week I spent one Saturday afternoon showing her how now we do not need to travel to campus for a class, that we can log on into a computer and take a class online. She was amazed and she also shared with me that in her times it was very difficult to even get a notebook to take notes and that not many children attended school.

Silvia, I am so pleased that you took that time to share with your grandmother. We think that older people do not care, are only concerned with themselves. But that's not so. They lose the points of entry to our world, and then don't know how to show their interest. That's an answerability problem. When we offer them the time and chance to be heard, what happens is that we underestimate the amount of effort and contact it takes to carry on the aesthetic processes of interrelating in today's language. The older people are still trying to communicate out of the fractal experiences of their youth and adulthood, but those are not the fractal experiences that make up the fast paced memory slots of today. What you did in sharing some of the technology was to offer your grandmother a chance to recognize some of the language that relates to your fast-paced world. (Theoretical reference: Steve Riskin) jeanne

Silvia Castro

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