{"id":718,"date":"2009-04-02T06:32:31","date_gmt":"2009-04-02T12:32:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/?p=718"},"modified":"2009-04-02T06:32:31","modified_gmt":"2009-04-02T12:32:31","slug":"wrestling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wrestling\/","title":{"rendered":"Wrestling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just back from a quick and intense trip to Boston, where I was on a panel with Jon Udell<\/a> and Sarah Stein<\/a> for a preconference workshop at UCEA 2009<\/a>. I always enjoy my time with the UCEA folks. They’re open and inquisitive. They’re also entrepreneurial, a space that most university continuing education folks live in by necessity (and turn that into a virtue).<\/p>\n

Jon spoke on computational thinking (with the specific example of calendar curation<\/a>), I spoke on disruption (from millicomputing<\/a> to the mother-of-all-funk-chords<\/a>), and Sarah spoke on teaching and technology with a particular focus on the NCSU Virtual Computing Lab<\/a>. It was a pleasure and an honor to share the podium with Jon and Sarah. Both entered my life in 2005 and both have been wonderful colleagues and friends since that time. I see them all too rarely. It was hard to say goodbye. (I’m never any good at that, anyway.)<\/p>\n

On my way back down I-35 from the Dallas\/Fort Worth airport, my mind full of the conversations and shared struggles I’d experienced at the conference, I listened to an emerging technology podcast featuring Tim O’Reilly<\/a>. I was surprised and stirred by the passion in Tim’s voice, and by the complex joys and cautions he urged upon us. Then, about three minutes before the end of the podcast, I was startled to hear a poem.<\/p>\n

The poem, and Tim’s presentation of it, resonated with me very strongly, as it obviously did with the audience at his conference. I thought of my colleagues at UCEA, and my colleagues on the panel, and my colleagues in the Twittersphere who responded so generously and insightfully to the tweets we generated during the panel.<\/p>\n

I hope it resonates with you as well.<\/p>\n\n

The Man Watching<\/p>\n

by Rainer Maria Rilke<\/p>\n

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
\nso many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
\nthat a storm is coming,
\nand I hear the far-off fields say things
\nI can’t bear without a friend,
\nI can’t love without a sister<\/p>\n

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
\nacross the woods and across time,
\nand the world looks as if it had no age:
\nthe landscape like a line in the psalm book,
\nis seriousness and weight and eternity.<\/p>\n

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
\nWhat fights us is so great!
\nIf only we would let ourselves be dominated
\nas things do by some immense storm,
\nwe would become strong too, and not need names.<\/p>\n

When we win it’s with small things,
\nand the triumph itself makes us small.
\nWhat is extraordinary and eternal
\ndoes not want to be bent by us.
\nI mean the Angel who appeared
\nto the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
\nwhen the wrestler’s sinews
\ngrew long like metal strings,
\nhe felt them under his fingers
\nlike chords of deep music.<\/p>\n

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
\n(who often simply declined the fight)
\nwent away proud and strengthened
\nand great from that harsh hand,
\nthat kneaded him as if to change his shape.
\nWinning does not tempt that man.
\nThis is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
\nby constantly greater beings.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just back from a quick and intense trip to Boston, where I was on a panel with Jon Udell and Sarah Stein for a preconference workshop at UCEA 2009. I always enjoy my time with the UCEA folks. They’re open … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4bHwM-bA","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}