>Dear Hugh >You may have guessed there was more intended in my last post - I hit send >instead of save - at any rate most of what I meant to say seems to have come >across. Thanks for your thoughts. I have strong opinions on the way the high >country is being, and should be managed, (mismanaged). I've spent a lot of >time up there since I was a kid and my family has close connections with >people that lived and worked there way back before it was turned into an >incendiary device (national park). Educated people would not agree with me >but they dont know the land over a long period and most of them have motives >that relate more to politics than anything else. >Cheers >Lloyd Charles
Dear Lloyd, It is normal, or usual, for educated people to have vastly erroneous ideas about practical matters with which they have little experience. Yet, they THINK they know so much. I guess I can say this as a person of extensive education who has no degrees whatever and has learned a great deal of what I know from actual experience. And yet I too fall into the common trap from time to time, thinking I know something when I'm way off the beam. Truth is, though, that had I pursued degree programs to get the kind of education I have, I would have had to spend so much time in classrooms and labs that I wouldn't have had much time for such experiences as building highway bridges, cooking on oil rigs, driving trucks, playing chess in the ghetto, working in a fish market, publishing newspapers or any of the other rich life experiences I've had that bring it all home and make it real. It seems like in school you only learn about things, while in life in general you have the opportunity to really learn things. As the anthroposophical joke goes, the end of the world was done and all of humanity was walking on the road of destiny to its celestial goal.. Lo, they came to a fork in the road. On the one hand the sign said HEAVEN, and on the other it said LECTURE ABOUT HEAVEN. The better part of humanity took off up the road to heaven, while the anthroposophists firmed their resolve and went up the other road to hear about heaven. Right now Im faced with a conumdrum. At Albury folks were presented with a procedure in its full-blown oiperation using both card instruments and dial instruments. They saw the treatments get set up and turned on and maybe they saw when they were turned off. It was like getting a bunch of lawn maintenance workers from the city and taking them through a milking parlor, maybe a double four herringbone with recessed floor. The feeders are automatic so they never even see them. The compressors are going, the cows are washed and milkers attached and the milk flows down the pipeline to the bulk tank. The observer gets some idea of how it all works, but you turn it over to them to do the next milking and they are utterly lost. They don't know to wash up the pipeline while they are getting the cows in the lot. They don't know how to switch over the pipes from the washer to the bulk tank and to put the filter sock on the insert in the pipeline. They don't know the first things about teat management, how to strip, what's going on with the feeding, when a cow is in heat, how to tell a cow's identity from glancing at her bag, the whole schmear. What each would need so you could turn your back on them and let them do the job is a couple day's coaching. That's the shape those who attended Aulbury and the other workshops are presently in. They saw the operation, but now they need a couple of days real hands on with coaching to be able to go home and do this work. And there's several stages where they need coaching. Probably the dowsing is the most critical as almost anyone can turn a dial and select a card or remedy. The dowsing, of course, will take time to build up confidence and accuracy. But a lot of them need to get some real hands-on practice with a coach first. That's the need--to give some real hands-on coaching, practical stuff where everyone brings an instrument and we pair off and practice. I'll see what I can do about coming up with a set of exercises. Lorraine Cahill, who works with me here at UAI, would be good at this. It doesn't matter too much what kind of instrument, we can work with it. Well, I must go for now. Had to interrupt my day to make a farmer up in Illinois a weed reagent. I carbonized his giant ragweed seed in a cast iron skillet and made a card from it. I've taken a strip of plastic and cut a slit in it where I can make the marks. I place it at the center of the card form, pinned to a board with a push pin and rotate and dowse for the sector marks. Giant ragweed came up with 6 sector marks. Then I made his reagent on a vial of placebo tablets with a little 8o proof organic vodka with the prue machine. Now I'm sending it out. I seldom make reagents like this. I leave it up to Lorraine, but she is attending a class in Pennsylvania this week and this farmer couldn't wait. See ya! Best, Hugh Visit our website at: www.unionag.org
