The Magic Powers of Water

The Magic Powers of Water

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

The final test for beginning swimmers at Opechee Park was to jump off the raft into deep water and then to swim over to me as I treaded water about 10 feet away.  All went well until the last child, a five-year-old boy, jumped in and just disappeared.  In a panic, I dove to the bottom and started feeling around in the murkiness.  No luck.  After a moment I glimpsed a shimmering shadow suspended halfway between me and the surface.  There he was!  Still under water when I reached him, this beginner seemed to be calmly looking all around.  

Back on the raft, I blurted, “Are you OK?  Why didn’t you swim to me?”  Never will I forget what he said: “Oh I was just looking at everything.  It was really beautiful!” 

This long-ago event reminds me how the neurological imprint of certain emotions can last a lifetime.  I am not sure my brain chemicals ever returned to normal, but this child’s simple observation left a profoundly positive mark on my psyche.  It is all about water.

Step back and consider a much bigger picture.   From millions of miles away, the world looks like a big blue marble.  It has been said that instead of being called “earth”, our planet really should be named “ocean” because the surface is at least 70 percent water.  On a more personal level, our bodies are about 60 percent water, and our brains are about 20 percent more than that, so I guess we are fairly close to becoming watermelons!  All that liquid is a tonic that courses through every aspect of our lives.

I grew up around beautiful lakes and streams, and spent every summer on the ocean.  After years of sometimes stressful city living, we purchased a rural New York home that features a big pond we just love to look at.   Fortuitously, we are never far from showers, a swimming pool, a hot tub, Lake Erie and many trout streams.  I am inspired by what I can do with this ubiquitous substance – drink, wash, hear, smell, play, walk, swim, fish, write about and photograph it. 

Marine biologist and best-selling author Wallace Nichols has summarized much of the research cited here.  He tells us what novelists, poets, painters, sailors, and, nowadays cognitive neurologists, have understood all along.  We adore water, not just because we must swallow it to live, not just because the sound of it helps us sleep, but because it makes us feel good.  Nichols calls this the Blue Mind – the title of his recent book.  

Why do you suppose about 80 percent of the world’s population lives within 60 miles of coastlines of some kind?  Why do at least 500 million people depend on water for their livelihood, while well over half the world’s economy involves water?  By no coincidence, most communities find some way to connect themselves to water, often a river, but maybe just fountains.  Waterfront property is disproportionately expensive because it is in such high demand.  Eons ago humans evolved their way into existence by emerging from water.  When we explore other planets, before all else we look for water.

Neuroscientists confirm that certain parts of the brain resonate to the emotional and physical magic of water.   Whether found in lakes, streams, or the ocean, usually it has a calming effect.  As a result, we tend to become happier, peaceful, more focused, less anxious and more reflective than in virtually any other setting.  The presence of water even surpasses the calming effect of rural greenery.

Admittedly, fear of water from a negative experience can override its many benefits.  One shark attack can cause widespread panic.  It is scary that 95 percent of the ocean bottoms remain unexplored.   At least half of our population never learns to swim, so understandably they shy away from dipping into most bodies of water.  Ruinous floods are unavoidable, and drought confronts us as well.  Climatically, water or the lack thereof can spawn fear, chaos, and death.  

Fortunately, water is my friend.  As a youngster, I spent hours fishing with my dad on the lakes of New Hampshire.  Later on, as a teenager, I lifeguarded and taught swimming, including beginners.  To this day I enjoy swimming laps.  Every part of the body benefits from this exercise, yet it also works on the mind and mood.  The sight, smell, hearing, and touch of immersion in a pool make floating or paddling around almost meditative.

 All those years ago, a little beginner at Opechee Park instinctively knew this.  When he told me what he saw, I never forgot.    

Stories Are Sticky Notes On Life's Bulletin Board

Stories are Sticky Notes on Life’s Bulletin Board

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

The best stories weave together the past with imagination and emotion.   They tell us a lot about who we are.   Often repeated in family histories or at gatherings, titillating tales make us want to learn what comes next.  Somehow, they create a more personal connection than either a single anecdote or a string of facts.   All the better if they embed a curious mystery or two, or even so-called skeletons in the closet.    

   Besides their content, stories need an adept delivery.   Often a cherished holiday tradition, the best stories are told aloud with dramatic pauses.  The skill can be learned, but I submit it is something of an inborn personality trait.   If you are blessed to have a relative with this talent, you may forget what they say, but you will never forget how they made you feel.     

 Saving skeletons and skillful oral deliveries for another day, I am happy to share a mind picture of two characters whose story lines have entertained me for decades:  my maternal grandfather Albert G. Suttill and my paternal grandfather Henry Bowen.       

  Albert Suttill left behind just one memento, an ivory slide rule engraved with his name and the date January 7, 1914.    Known as “Bertie English,” and always in frail health, he died at 52 around 1950.   His treatises on mechanical engineering can be found in the annals of Cambridge University.  He designed the historic seal on Hood milk trucks, as well as one of the earliest stateside hook and ladder fire engines.

  A nervous disposition discouraged Albert from driving vehicles.  Yet he often rode an Indian motorcycle with my infant mom in a sidecar.  His temperament was overlooked by those who insisted he drive the hook-and-ladder prototype of his fire engine in a town parade.  When he crashed it through a department store window on main street, the parade sponsors probably regretted their decision.

There is more.   His early unpatented designs for the Austin mini were apparently stolen by his partner, never to be recovered.  Given such talents, the U.S. government had to protect him from being kidnapped by spies from a German submarine lurking off the coast of New Jersey during the first World War.  Mysteriously, while Albert Suttill possessed valuable technical knowledge, the actual operation of machinery intimidated him.   So why did he end up as a boiler company engineer in Massachusetts?

According to my mother, when he was a young boarding school student, Bertie English was bullied and knocked to the ground on a soccer field.  When he looked up, a tall American student pulled him up and scared off his attackers.  At this moment, he vowed  to move to America.

My paternal grandfather Henry Bowen lived a uniquely different life on the Maine coastal island of Chebeague.   His father Hugh co-owned a so-called “stone sloop”, and at 23 years old Henry was the cook.    These ships transported granite from coastal quarries to locations that included the Washington Monument.  Mainly Hugh and Henry repaired lighthouses and spindles or markers.   I have seen photos showing Henry’s name embedded in the concrete footings of coastal lights.

 A story from 1885 surrounds one spindle that was much larger than most found along the coast.  It was due to be set on a treacherous ledge, seldom exposed by the tides, about two miles north of Monhegan Island.    First, the Bowens had to purchase a steam drill to core out a hole in the rock where they could set the spindle.   A mistakenly closed safety value nearly blew up their vessel.  Then using a boom derrick, the Jenny Lind crew had to lower a four-ton piece of iron in place quickly, from an awkward distance, without tipping their sloop over.    Although they managed to do so, no doubt Henry thanked God more than once in the little church they eventually built on Chebeague. 

Stories are certainly a  captivating way of describing whole lives or episodes with their many conflicts and harmonies.  Whether in workshops or in life generally, I have found that stories send memorable messages.   Long after we have gone, the sticky notes we leave on our personal bulletin boards will define our legacy. 

The Lasting Legacy of Our Railroads

The Lasting Legacy of Our Railroads

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

Something about trains makes them utterly fascinating.  They are an iconic feature of our country’s history, serving since the mid 19^th century as a sturdy, economical, and appealing way to move us and our possessions across the countrywide.   

Today’s tourists adore them for their capacity to dramatize the past and the picturesque.  Intercity rail routes efficiently transport us to and from work.  140,000 miles of rails link 600 common carrier freight lines and generate $274 billion in American economic output annually.  Even after they disappear, the trains leave behind architectural gems that become everything from pharmacies to community centers.  And ever-growing miles of discontinued routes give us rails-to-trails.  But for many of us, above all else, trains produce nostalgic memories.      

 Growing up in the 1950s I remember some of the last steam trains huffing and clanking into our imposing granite station at the apex of town.  Later in the same decade, my Christmas present was an electric train that looked just like what I had seen.  My pals and I would argue about which kind of track worked better (American Flyer versus Lionel), and our dads shared our hobby enthusiastically.    

By the time I reached high school, diesels with plenty of amenities dominated the tracks west of Chicago.  A travel highlight for me was a cross-country “vista dome” trip with classmates to Montana in 1962.  As we saw virgin country under starry skies, while traveling in silver-sided comfort that featured dining tables and Pullman compartments, I was definitely impressed.

Many years would pass before I took another train ride, but in the meantime, I taught American history in public schools.  Thereby I came to appreciate the instrumental role of railroads as an engine of industry during the Progressive Era.  My students and I discovered the pivotal role of rails during the Civil War, and afterward in helping unify the country.   

Train stories carry an unsurpassable mystique.  Countless novels and films have built plots around train robberies, break-neck chases, and monumental disasters usually staged on wooden bridges.  Every time we start to forget “Murder on the Orient Express”, a remake appears!   One historian aptly described the American railroad’s imagery as comparable to the churches of Europe in the Middle Ages.

At the same time, trains explain many innovations we now take for granted.  Just to illustrate, consider the railroad’s unifying effect on how we tell time.  In post-Civil War days, historian Seymour Morris tells us, cities and towns across the country relied on the clocks of church steeples. There were 300 different times across the country, thus creating scheduling chaos for train travelers.   Railroad authorities tried to solve the problem with a daunting 600-page compendium of schedules.  Fortunately, an 1883 General Time Convention rescued the railroads by adopting the time zones we use today.   

Two personal impressions of trains leave me awe-struck.  First, work used require me to travel by rail regularly from Albany to New York City.  The expansive beauty of the Hudson River always kept me glued to the windows, followed by the shock of a bustling beehive known as Penn Station.

My second impression comes from a hugely entertaining chronicle titled “Last Train to Paradise”.   Written by Les Standiford in 2002, the book describes how a wealthy oil executive named Henry Flegler stubbornly funded a railway from Miami to Key West, despite crippling hurricanes, across well over 100 miles of scrub brush islands, mangrove swamps, coral kays and keys, and open ocean. Flegler put Florida on the recreational map in the early 20^th century, but by 1935 the Florida East Coast Railway had gone bankrupt.  A modern highway covers much of the railway’s old route.  I look forward this spring to learning firsthand about the remains and myths created by this “railroad across the ocean”.   

Hundreds of miles northward, we have our own historically celebrated railroad where I live near Arcade, New York.  The Arcade and Attica line, fully launched in the early 1900s, boasts a diesel and the last operative steam locomotive in New York state.  It carries passengers, cargo, and stages an array of appealing special events throughout the year.

 My personal reminder of railroad life comes from the wail of a distant whistle as a daily commercial freight train wends it way north around 4 a.m.  Although it may seem frustrating to wait as miles of boxcars rattle past a crossing, these leviathans remind me of their legacy as a driver of our American destiny.

Choosing Truth

By Jeffrey Bowen

There were no warning labels

On the life I chose to make,

But I knew I’d never find the truth

Unless I made mistakes.

And truth is something better

Than unreasoned certainty.

I believe the truth remains that way

No matter what you think you see.

Science doesn’t always prove a theory,

But at least it goes beyond some claims.

I’d rather learn what’s really real

Than find some fool who I can blame.

So my life will always stay with reasons.

It’s a choice I had to make.

At night I sleep much better

Knowing knowledge isn’t fake.

I am searching for a better world,

With room for joy and wonder,

But meaning lies in simple truth,

Without it we soon blunder

Into making bad decisions

And selling false realities.

I’d sooner hear the honest truth,

That’ssave who I chose to be.

We have to have the will to doubt

Amid the consequences.

After all we’re human,

And sometimes lose our senses.

But always rise above mistakes.

Learn more than what we’ve lost.

Truth belongs with certainty,

It’s always worth the cost.

Should Empathy Become A High School Graduation Requirement?

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­What if we required every high school student to demonstrate empathy in order to graduate?  I can already hear an avalanche of reservations triggered by educators who would object to one more mandate on their instruction, and by parents who might wonder just what empathy is and how to assess its presence in their children.

Let us put the mechanics aside for a moment, and consider the meaning and context of such a seemingly outlandish idea.  First and foremost, what is empathy and why do we need it? 

In current psychology, the term works in three related senses:  first, knowing another person’s feelings; second, feeling what that person feels; and third, responding to someone else’s concerns by word or deed.   Simply put, this means stepping into another’s shoes, both cognitively and emotionally, and really understanding or relating to what they are going through.    

Empathy can appear almost instinctively at a basic emotional level when you read another person’s facial expression and cannot help but mimic it.  On a higher level, it requires social awareness and understanding.  For example, a doctor who is treating a dad’s case of cancer should listen responsively and receptively not just to dad, but to all of the family members who are affected.  After compassionately digesting those collective concerns, the empathetic doctor should reach beyond a clinical explanation and really treat the whole family.  In fact, research has shown that such doctors generate better medical results with their patients.    

Another way of looking at empathy involves considering the effects of its absence. Daniel Goldman, an expert on social and emotional intelligence, calls these effects the “dark triad”.   They include believing that others exist to adore you (narcissism), that selfish ends justify the means, and that emotional pain and remorse in relation to others is meaningless. 

The preceding makes a strong case for empathy as a life skill.  But what difference does it make for our schools and their inhabitants?

 According to growing research evidence, not to mention common sense, a big difference!  Students with high levels of empathy reportedly display more classroom engagement, better communication skills, and more prosocial behaviors than their peers.  Extensive comparative studies document an 11-13 percentile point advantage in test scores for students who participate in focused social-emotional learning programs.  The most recent studies show international consistency of findings and both immediate and enduring effects.   

Consensus is growing around the idea that empathy is best activated when teachers not only demonstrate it themselves, but also build it into their daily instructional practices.  The competencies teachers should nurture include:  effectively reading emotions; recognizing and validating the feelings of others; finding positive ethical compasses; compassionately embracing cultural and historical perspectives; controlling one’s emotions; practicing kindness; collaborating to reduce conflicts and solve shared problems; and community service projects.   

Challenging teachers to inspire student competencies like these is not unrealistic because it already prevails in most classrooms, but may not yet be formalized in the curriculum.

Our state’s newly mandated mental health education requirements promote “attitudes and behavior that enhance health, well-being, and human dignity.”  The implications of social-emotional learning accompany our State Education Department’s extensive written guidance for strengthening the mind-body connection physically and emotionally.

 Extracurricular activities and school community events may foster wonderful opportunities to build empathetic relationships.  The values and practices of parents can set the primary stage for positive mental health in school and community   Principals and district leaders can make the term a watch word and heighten cultural awareness in a multitude of organizational ways.  What is even more, as our students look toward the future, they will find employers prize employees who exercise relevant social and emotional habits.     

The difficulties of measurement work against empathy becoming a graduation requirement anytime soon.  However, widespread attention to positive mental health as a curb to bullying and substance abuse suggest our journey toward empathy is well underway.

A good way for parents to help children think about empathy is to ask them before bed to tell you about a time that very day when they saw a teacher, classmate, or some other individual perform a remarkable act of kindness or empathy.  Try this out on yourself and you might sleep better.

1/16/2019

Lessons I Learned from Teaching U.S. History

 Lessons I Learned from Teaching U.S. History

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

 I learned some unforgettable lessons from my first year of teaching U.S. history to high school juniors and seniors in 1969.   Nearly all of my students were white and economically advantaged in Bethesda-Chevy Chase, Maryland.   My curriculum was framed by a thousand-page tome entitled “The American Pageant”.   A department mentor supplied a course outline, some time-worn mimeographed worksheets, and a cranky overhead projector.  Mostly I was left on my own to journey through the textbook’s exhaustive chronology of political, economic, and military developments.     

Naturally I wanted to help my 125 students remember enough to pass the course and graduate.  Yet I also rationalized that I could use history as a tool for critical thinking and big ideas about American character.  

Was I ever naïve!   I was trying to inspire interest in a textbook crammed with the publisher’s mind-numbing interpretations.   Besides boring my classes with a slew of forgettable historical facts, I was doing little to make our past relate to the present.  

 In 1969 we were passionately, sometimes violently launching the beginnings of the civil rights movement.  I had watched the skylines of Baltimore and D.C. burning the year before, as the national guard patrolled our streets.  There was growing discontent over the Vietnam war, and protests were getting louder and lifestyles were turning psychedelic.   My students and I remained comfortably oblivious to events of the day.  It actually surprised me when just one of my most rebellious students skipped school to listen to the daily reading of the war dead on the steps of the Capitol.  I persisted in disassociating the day’s issues from my teaching though ironically, by Valentine’s Day, I had received my draft notice and would spend the following year in Vietnam.

Another fallibility was my tendency to lecture and harness myself to the textbook as a main resource.  I was only trying to stay one factual step ahead of my most assertive students, but I was defaulting to advice I once heard from a workshop presenter: “I am here to teach, you are here to listen.  Raise your hand if you finish before I do!”  

Finally, our textbook, which still sits on my bookshelf, comes back to haunt me.   The American Pageant has been reprinted 13 times, but it continues to prove its original author’s observation: “Old myths never die – they just become embedded in textbooks.” 

Pageant is just one of 18 current texts examined by historian James Loewen whose best seller, “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” makes it abundantly clear that we are still trapped by Eurocentric misconceptions that “precolonial” native Americans had little to contribute to our culture, lacked technology (including guns), and had no idea what was really meant by property ownership.   Multicultural diversity and mutual accommodation were quite real 300 years ago, but the textbook I used as a resource never let this interfere with the story that white society was superior in every way and sanctioned by God.  

If I were teaching our history today, given adequate primary sources, I would start by coaching students to understand that acculturation works in many reciprocal directions.  I would ask them to enliven their learning by investigating their own ancestry as well as the embedded roots of today’s hot issues.  I would urge my students to ask why questions, the kind that demand the use of primary sources and live interviews.  

As for our native population, these days I would ask my students to consider what is meant by “America First” when we have 326 Indian reservations in our country, each one considered a sovereign nation.  Indeed, I have learned that history is a moving target.  We interact with it constantly, and thereby it changes. Ignoring our past may not mean that we repeat its mistakes, but its echoes send important messages. 

  Fortunately, as my first year of teaching flew by, I began to discover how to make U.S. history an empathetic experience.  An English teacher colleague and I were given time to co-teach a short course on World War I.  By mating historical events with fictional novels, we tried to immerse our students in the emotional grips of war and its devastating consequences.  We sought to help students feel how others felt, and to encourage and integrate different perspectives.   At other times, I staged debates and encouraged my students to present reasoned arguments, so they could advance and defend both sides of issues.  I started to rely on cooperative and differentiated approaches, hoping to individualize lessons and to avoid the one-way street of endless lecturing.

As I gained ground in teaching, I grew to appreciate the challenge of making history topically relevant and fair minded.  It is tempting to grab pieces out of context, but it takes enlightened teaching to help our children see it clearly and without premature and poorly informed judgments.

 Our collective civic future is at risk.  We have let our own history become a stomping ground for publishers rather than fertile territory for critical thinking, for exercising communication skills, for self-discovery and compassion.   There are multiple dots between America’s past and present.   When we connect those dots, we must look between the lines to see and feel the whole landscape with its many different routes to truth.     

Once in a Lifetime Came Jim Vetro

Once in a Lifetime Came Jim Vetro

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

When James Vetro interviewed me for a position as his assistant, he quickly discovered I knew almost nothing about state aid to our public schools.  In 1975, this amounted to over three billion dollars’ worth of ignorance.  I knew that Jim’s position as director of research for the New York State School Boards Association (NYSSBA) was closely identified with his expertise in school finance.  I was finishing a doctorate in school administration at the state university at Albany, but only one course in all my studies had involved school business administration, much less state aid, so I figured my chances of employment were slim.  Thankfully I was quite wrong!

Jim Vetro’s priority was someone he could get along with, someone with a decent personality, as he told me a few years later.  Apparently, mine fit.  I guess he figured he would always be around to field the multitude of complex finance questions that came daily from superintendents and board members, while I would learn to fill in the gaps.   

Within a couple of weeks, I discovered that Jim had meetings and other duties that often called him away.  When state aid negotiations demanded technical expertise, quite regularly the media called or arrived for an interview.  Further, I discovered that superintendents phoned frequently because their annual proposed or actual school aid entitlement was falling short.  Why the hell, they wanted to know, were they being shortchanged?  When this happened, they were usually scrutinizing pages of computer runs, finding unpredictable formula-driven variations.  Of course, I had no idea what to tell them.  And when the news media got to me because Jim was elsewhere, I was terrified that I would make a dump ass of myself.  However, Jim had a solution of sorts.

He introduced me to a couple of well-seasoned colleagues in the state education department who were patiently willing to rescue me with simplified details about operating aid’s dependence on weighted pupil counts, full or market valuation of property, and all kinds of separate categorical aids for everything from transportation to excess cost for children with disabilities.  I worried that the old finance guys would soon retire, but in the meantime, I called them with frantic abandon, and then proceeded to make seemingly calm calls back to superintendents.  I fooled them unless they asked me yet another question.  Still, I was relieved to find that most superintendents had no more technical knowledge of formulas than I did.

Within a few months, I became conversant with the basics of school finance.  My responsibilities expanded with Jim Vetro’s good-humored, consistently genial mentoring.  School board members and superintendents really adored him simply because he was genuinely likeable and deeply knowledgeable about his field.  I benefitted from being around him.  In retrospect, I realize that Jim really changed my professional and personal life in so many unusual ways. 

Jim Vetro thrived on habits.  One was singular dedication to staying in shape.  Thus he took time on many days of the week to walk to the nearby Albany downtown YMCA where he enjoyed an abundant group of workout friends.  I joined his athletic fraternity enthusiastically, thereby connecting with a host of state agency pros who added to my sense of belonging. 

One of Jim’s fortes was school budgeting workshops, conducted around the state during the winter months.  He recruited superintendents, NYSED managers, and school business officials to present at these, and I believe they felt it was an honor.   My job was to sweat bullets while dealing with banquet managers who all too often forgot to arrange for a meeting room, or a speaker system, or a group lunch.

I also importuned the speakers to give me their written remarks, and tried to keep them on schedule.  As I look back on it, however, winter weather on the N.Y. Thruway was our biggest challenge.  Thankfully Jim seldom hesitated to drive his monster Cadillac through lake effect snowstorms to get us to and from our workshops.

Jim represented the Association as a founding member of the Educational Conference Board (ECB) which included representatives from the teacher unions, superintendents, school business officials, and principals.  The ECB always advocated more state aid, levelled up so no organization would experience equalization at the expense of another.  Through this organization, I became acquainted with Jim’s counterparts in these organizations.  The networking helped me gain confidence and valuable contacts, especially because my duties included sitting with the ECB members routinely at meetings of the Board of Regents. 

Over the years my two children were born.  My wife and I had no relatives nearby to step in when emergencies arose, so we were immensely grateful that Jim unfailingly supported me with no questions ever asked.  He and his wife Peg were always tuned in to our needs; conversely everyone stood ready to help the Vetros when they encountered tragedies.   

Jim’s physical appearance accentuated his big moustache and a curly head of brindled hair, combined with a deeply tanned complexion.  Reinforced by his genial, though sometimes stubborn personality, his bearing earned Jim the moniker of “Italian stallion”.   This was often previewed by a chronically strong cologne that announced his presence beforehand. 

Colleagues, board members, and superintendents all found Jim Vetro an open, honest, and truly likeable man with a disarming sense of humor.  I thrived on his dynamic personality and interpersonal ease.  He always seemed to be in my corner, to willingly protect me from the slings and arrows of state association work.   When someone like James Vetro comes along, with assets that combine both professionalism and personal charms, it may well happen only once, and we must count ourselves just plain lucky. 

2/6/19