A Driving Adventure in Cascadia

This Google Earth screenshot is of the high desert rolling hills eastern side of Wy’East (Mt. Hood), seen upper left as a white spot.

My route was from Terrebonne (lower center) north to The Dalles, by way of Smith Rock, Lone Pine Road, OR 26 W, Madras, Maupin, and Dufur, along OR 97 N then OR 197 N.

From The Dalles, the dog and I turned left and took US 84 W directly home to Harrison Street, Portland.

The small town of Dufur, with its own main road set off from OR 197, is an eddy of peace amidst the majestic swirl of steep hills, nevertheless farmed in many cases, with the tracks of farm equipment visible amidst the tall grasses.

I left Sydney in the Nissan while having delicious fresh-made cranberry bread slices, in a bakery with high capacity bread making going on. I sat at a large indoor wooden table looking through a view window across the street at the Dufur Market, with its own tables and hot food menu, amidst well-stocked grocery shelves.

The drive itself is a destination and a joy as long as you don’t mind a double yellow line amidst twisting climbs and drops, along with lengthy straight hauls on wide open plains. 

Season matters: I saw lots of signage about snow and chain up areas, which didn’t pertain in late October.

I enjoyed plenty of lonely open road with scarcely another vehicle visible, little need for passing, and with long intervals of natural silence at highway pull offs, where we’d stretch and take these pictures. The descent into Maupin, before Dufur coming north (or south I’m sure) is spectacular.

Sydney, just turned 14, was my back seat companion, mostly snoozing in old dog style. We started in Terrebonne that morning, making a stop at Smith Rock.

Multnomah Falls along the Oregon bank of the Columbia Gorge, is favorite stop for tourists, including day hikers and cyclers, but also short stopover people like me this time, eager for a great view amidst light refreshments, a souvenir merch gift.

We were coming west from The Dalles on US 84 W. I’ve since learned that during the height of the visiting season there might be some need to schedule in advance for valved access to available parking (?).

The above Google Earth picture shows the parking island design, with US 84 E and W parting widely to accommodate it. I can well imagine all the slots filling.

We had no problem slipping in and out. My camera battery was dead and my cellphone has a bum lens cover, so instead. I took the classic shot with my iPad from the parking island. Then we shoved on, with Portland less than an hour away.

Practicing Democracy

Although I'm in a rural area, internet coverage is provided, by wire (not satellites), so I'm in what amounts to my home office, in terms of devices. I even have the same Samsung monitor, which fits in the trunk of maxi taxi (changed her oil), not exactly a bizmo, but certainly at home on the freeway.

The weather: stormy rainy. My dwelling machine has been wobbling in the wind. But with breaks and sudden sunlight. Oregon is like that. Bhutan too: you get the whole range of weathers in like a 24 hour period. High variability in other words.

I tend to use the word "clique" a lot, you may have noticed. I find it a refreshing alternative to "cabal" and/or "conspiracy". Also, in listening to Quakers (Friends) I hear complaints about their cliquishness, but then I'd imagine that's a common pattern in any temple, meeting or church. Synagogue, mosque or whatever. The oldsters seem to all know each other whereas the newcomers may feel left out, even exploited at the end of the day.

Speaking of Quakers: their patterns are influential on my thinking more generally when I think of those experimental prototype communities, such as we'd briefly stage over the New Year days (Dec 28 - Jan 2 mas o meno) in a remote yet well-appointed retreat space, owned by Church of the Brethren. Quakers, Brethren, Mennonites have a lot in common and seem to exchange memes a lot.

By "their patterns" I'm referring to the Faith & Practice of unprogrammed friends, pastorless, who rotate through job descriptions / positions, as recruited by nominating committee, and overseen by oversight committee. However that's just a snapshot in time and using already dated terminology by some  reckonings. These were unpaid positions, volunteer, but also personal growth opportunities as it takes what they call "people skills" to operate a shared business.

"Wait", you might be thinking "why do you say business, I thought we were talking about a church?". One of the quaint things about Quakers is their religion is couched in the phraseology of the industrial revolutionists of Merry England, meaning their form of worship is cloaked in a vocabulary of running a business. Meeting for Business, run by clerk and minuted by the recording clerk, but not according to Robert's Rules, is what replaces the "board room" and/or "shareholders meeting" in a lot of ways.

I go into all this in my critique of USA-style democracy, to which much lip service is given, but which is not the practice of your everyday pleeb, who goes to work in some rat race hierarchical oligarchy most likely, be that civilian or military. Opportunities to practice democracy might come on weekends, through one's bridge club or pet walking shared event, a naked bike ride in Portland maybe, or golf on the links. I'm not forgetting the corner bar (or maybe it's mid-block, or in the sticks...).

In other words, why do we expect Americans to be any good at democracy when they get so little practice using it to run big business. Am I saying the American Quakers are any different?  Not really.  Their meetings (not called churches) are tiny nonprofits in the grand scheme of things, not at the center of any sprawling industrial base like in the science fiction novel The Iron Bridge, or in Quakernomics.

My brand of Quakers put a lot of emphasis on transparency, which partially accounts for my experiment: I abdicated my membership in favor of attender status, as newcomers also have (gaining membership is a process), but then upped my level of participation including by undertaking such "insider" roles as clearing others for membership.  

"Wait, you're saying a non-member might be part of, or even in charge of, a non-member's clearness process?" In principle, yes, although at the time I was simply nominated within Oversight to form a clearness committee per usual; I was not clerk of Oversight itself. My point though, was membership includes the willingness to publicly identify as a Friend, to be out there as a booster and advocate for the Religious Society (of Friends), with the understanding some Monthly Meeting has said member's membership on record. Members will be vouched for, in other words. But from this special status it needn't follow that members have secrets from nonmembers, process-wise. It's not like members are the most entitled.

Consider a case wherein a surrounding state or city is somewhat hostile towards and/or suspicious of Quakerism and it's a liability to claim membership in said Society, except maybe in exceptional cases. This was more how the religion got started, as an underground, as a network of religious people unwilling to accept the authority of a state religion and its mandates and edicts. Those stepping forward and claiming to be leaders in this movement risked jail time. Those days are long gone, but gives a sense of where the institution of membership arose, among those most willing to stick their necks out, as it were.

However, when it comes to recruiting practitioners to the Faith & Practice, it's better that they check it out top to bottom, serve on all committees, take part in all the processes a meeting requires, with the optional process of becoming a member being one of being "convinced" (that's the jargon) as in persuaded, that this organization has nothing up its sleeve, and how would you know that if you hadn't had the opportunity to witness its inner workings at the core level?  Quakerism is open source in the sense of transparent but also in the sense that branching and forking is always feasible (not that every mutation pans out).

Tron Ares (movie review)

Dreaming of a Civil War

:: sleepers and dreamers ::

Looking Back Two Months Later

Naturally my cohort, peers and faculty, took note of this concept further propagating, since two months ago at this time, around August 18th (15th to be exact), where the meetup happened in Alaska, an event with mnemonic value.

Chris Norland here (Portland his hometown) is skeptical that any such project could be anything other than a boondoggle. 

I'd already been sharing with the WILPF ladies (and a few men; like I'm a member, following in my mom's footsteps) regarding the GENI legacy, and coming from my World Game aware background.  

I'm continuing to fill in the picture for them, along those lines. The School of Tomorrow has long included all this in its ongoing, seasonally sectioned curriculum.

Today I'll be adding to my No Kings album, more in the role of photographer (with extra battery) than sign carrier (a sign would bog me down). I'll be curating others' signage though, per my usual practice, with an emphasis on "frogtifa" related paraphernalia.

We could always do with another No Kings Day, on into the future, a national day of remembrance that we're not planning to fall victim to lawless adhocracy and/or arbitrary rule by royal edict. Democracy is our game here, however badly played.

Express Your Patriotism

Fall Term 2025

Tips for Roving Teachers

by StruPPi Δ Pohl

If you're in a bizmo fleet charged with spreading our open free culture, complete with open source lore, you might want so tips regarding those slide decks I always talk about.

In my next school, my plan is to move through the Quadrays deck fairly quickly, explaining its significance to game development in terms of the squares to hexagons to rhombic dodecahedral space-filling. Consider 2D tank games. Some use a checkerboard, more like lat-long. Some encompass the planet in a hexapent much, more like Uber does. 

The 3D analog of a hexagon is the dual of the four-hexagons cuboctahedron, Kepler's favorite space-filler (per Arthur Koestler I think it was).

Then, with relevance to gaming established, I'll switch of to the Dimension deck and go straight to the slide about the three namespaces: 4D ala Einstein; 4D ala Hilbert; 4D ala Fuller. 

Quadrays help as gestalt switch between all three (picture a triangle), providing continuity with what we already know about XYZ (which is a lot). In other words, whereas the machinery of computer gaming was our showcase application (I'll have some version of QuadCraft at the ready), in philosophy of mathematics, it's more about transitioning among namespaces (picture changing TV channels with a remote).

That's already plenty for one talk. This will be a rehearsal for a second talk at the same school, a familiar pattern, and then maybe a third and so on. As a roving teacher for Coding with Kids, I'd use different formats, as their the goal was hands on and skills building. I performed that role having already worked with Saturday Academy as a middle to high school teacher, sharing Python and Martian Math.

Although an experienced coder, with some years of classroom teaching, this demographic was new to me. At CUE, my focus was andragogy more than pedagogy. With experience, I improved, and would continue to improve if working with kids again. However my next stop is a college.

Back to the decks, I'd emphasize that Quadrays post date the publication of the two Synergetics volumes by Macmillan (see Cosmic Fishing) and arose posthumously vs-a-vs Dr. Fuller's 1900s corpus. Also stress that the principals involved, creatives we look to, may not be aware of Synergetics at all, or, if they are, may regard it was some suspicion. 

Our work is augmented by many skeptics, as we further clarify what we're clear on. Our goals are in many cases orthogonal to that of making Synergetics a popular reading. There's no forcing such a thing. However there is playing a role where there's demand.

So yes, of course, there's a lot to weave in outside my decks. 

I'm focusing on my decks because I'm their provider and producer and want to offer advice to those in the field making use of same. 

My intent is not to narrow the focus to just my relatively tiny inventory of goodies, but to give a sense of where said goodies might fit in to a bigger picture (i.e. yours).

Home Home on the Range

I had itchy fingers today, or was it the mouse that was itchy? Philosophy R Us. Either way, I was poised at my workstation to order a new stove, an electric freestanding range. But then (a) I realized my ancient Magic Chef, avocado, is a lot wider than 30 inches and (b) the burner I’d convinced myself would not turn off, became cool to the touch. My hypothesis had been invalidated.

My stove seems to be 36 inches wide, in an even wider space. OK, now I’m seeing some 36ers are out there and they’re not cheap (not inexpensive, and one would hope of high quality), not the ones I just browsed. “Cheap” is one of those overdetermined words in English. One can be cheap to a fault.

I don’t think I’m cheap in keeping my vintage kitchen as it was, so long as it remains functional enough to meet my average needs. The chrome (I should say stainless steel) countertop (on both sides) sets the tone, whereas the pastel vinyl wall panels cast the spell of a 1950s diner. In the driveway: a car with fins (just kidding, but she is shinier since the wash).

The folks who occupied this abode before we did had different tastes, but I’ll say this: they made some high quality purchases. I’m still using the original furnace, garbage disposal and stove. The fridge, washer and dryer have long since been replaced. I’m happy to get by on such hand me downs. These are goodies we paid for when buying the place in the mid 1990s.

Back in my Jersey City days, I was brainstorming what I called The Housing Project, mirroring the Hunger Project. Essentially AirBnb and/or timeshare but different. More like club housing, if you know what that is (I don’t, but I’m thinking it up here). You join this club with places to stay all over, and you book access to these places. Maybe you need to be invited by the club I don’t know.

These days, I’m more into helping colleges and universities build out the group home idea, such as I enjoyed at 2D (2 Dickinson Street, Princeton) and later in Jersey City (we perpetuated the model). If only my Jersey City home had been faculty housing for St. Peter’s College faculty, I might still be there, ya never know. Or maybe I’d be with NJIT, or both.  Housing would be owned by universities and students and faculty and admin would get their spaces.  

When I say admin I don’t mean to distinguish from janitorial, as I regard these as two sides of the same coin. What admin does includes physical property management, not just making sure people get fed and sheltered.

By the way, I’m not claiming I was ever on St. Peter’s College faculty and would have stayed if provided with campus housing. I was taking grad school level courses there when I was offered the position at St. Dominic Academy. Both institutions were along Kennedy Boulevard. I was new in town, knew I wanted to try high school teaching, and here was how it worked out. I’ve told this story in more detail elsewhere and it wasn’t idyllic (the need for a new teacher at high school in the first place was tragic).

These days I’d probably look at Earlham or, closer, Reed, for admin, making Blue House a hub in several programs, including Food Not Bombs coordination (just like old times). Students and faculty would come and go in various scenarios. The kitchen could stay vintage. Superfluous remodeling should take a back seat to the deep changes we’ll be making at the curriculum level.

If the stove had some kind of circuit fault keeping a burner on no matter what (I had that happen to a taillight on my car), my friend and neighbor Patrick is the kind of guy who could probably diagnose and fix the wiring fault. Les too but he’s far away. However this appliance has been on the chopping block so to speak for over a decade, with my mom always offering to get us a new one.  But why?  It works great. I just replaced one of the heating elements, and got three burners working out of four. The stove cooks pizza.

Fall Term Album (2025)