About Me

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California born by a Cuban mother, and having lived in Japan since 2004, with many former years in the California Bay Area and six in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. I have friends and family throughout the world, and the web of trails it grows. I live the dream of traveling to many distant lands, creating music and dancing to it, meeting interesting people, discovering treasures in the most unlikely of places, and finally returning to the continent of my birth.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

"Mimsy Were the Borogoves"

In anticipation of the American Society of Cybernetics' conference, I read the story by which this post is titled. I have made it available to you if you wish to read it, here. The short story, written in 1943, is revealing of a future we live now, and I believe it holds insight into a possible one ahead. It was written by Catherine Lucille Moore and Henry Kuttner under the pseudonym Lewis Padgett, and was judged among the best science-fiction short stories written before 1965 by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Engrossed by the story, and coming up for air to put it in a form that I can now annotate it, I am reminded of how precious my subscription to Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine was as a child. I must have been 8 or 9, and I looked forward to the collection of stories. So many of the visions of that era have become reality, and are on their way. Reminiscent of these precious memories, I plan on submitting a workshop to the conference that will give us another way of seeing the future by combining it with my doctoral research thesis. The documentary film Tomorrow (2015) gave many alternatives that people all over Earth are attempting, but the stories are still fragmented. In the movie, one man, exasperated, states that we need new stories; we have been so good at making stories of our own demise, but we need vast collections of stories of a future filled with light. As we move forward, we must create positive visions of a future we love and a cherished world. What kinds of connections can we imagine and bring forth into being? In the spirit of Robert E. L. Masters and Jean Houston in their book Mind Games, may we recreate our reality and make a better one for the future.

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Hagoromo

I dreamed that I was building a wooden house about one block from the ocean in a place kind of like the Romantic Zone of Puerto Vallarta with Noe and Hugo. As usual, there were a lot of problems with the house. When we had finally finished, I realized that only half of a tree that had been there was still there. It was a beautiful tree covered in great, ornate flowers like gladiolas or framboyanes, that were blue and white. A flock of huge crane-like a birds came upon the tree to feed. One of the cranes took a flower and wrapped part of it with her beak, separating the pieces so that it twirled around her beak, keeping only the central part. It was such a graceful movement and she took off with just that piece with two long streamers. Immediately, I asked for the cranes for an interview. They circled, and the one who had taken the flower transformed in one movement as she touched down on the ground. She intently came to me as a lovely woman, in flowing white robes and long dark hair, and we spoke. She said that the tree had been big and full when she was a little girl, but now it was hard to find this kind of tree and it was a rare treat. She was worried that the trees were disappearing. I started crying, and I woke up crying.

How tragic that we've taken their food sources and other sources of joy. When we love food so much, and it's such a big part of our cultures.As human beings with empathy and understanding, in our humanity it should be clear that the other living things around us also take their deepest joys from the same things we do; from favorite foods, from finding a mate, from having children, from bathing, from drinking, from sleeping in a safe place, from being able to move freely without fear of being attacked, just the simple joys of life that anyone would desire.

If we are truly human, great creatures able to understand such emotions as empathy and philosophy, we must find a way to create space around us for the creatures who also belong in our world. However difficult, we should stop cutting down trees in our cities and gardens to allow them to grow into their full half-moon canopies, and when planting trees, we should be certain to plant many varieties of food for local creatures, a smorgasbord for our avian and insect friends of delicacies like our restaurants of different cultural cuisines. The canary in the coalmine is finding it hard to breath.

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Synchronous Online Learning... and Teaching

Until recently, when LinkedIn asked me to contribute to an article about it, I hadn't heard of the term synchronous online learning. But it's much more descriptive than just saying online learning, which holds many different types of learning (some considerably more challenging than this type) for the student. I'm finishing the yearly course, "Landscape and Environmental Science in English," for my alma mater in Japan. I teach this course to the entire junior class at my university department. They are lovely students, and I look forward to teaching this class every year. The first year I taught, it was primarily in person. I've seen the difference between teaching the course in person and remotely in both asynchronous and synchronous online learning platforms. Here, I will give my perspectives on why synchronous online learning can improve your academic experience as a student. Although optimally, I would like to teach face-to-face, it's not feasible in my current situation. That being said, teaching synchronous online learning has a balance of advantages and disadvantages. Although I want to see them in person, feel the room out, walk around, and have the natural situation of being in the classroom with my students, that's the only negative that I can see for synchronous online learning. I don't feel as though I'm unable to engage my students. Because I was trained at Sonoma State University's Linguistics Department in Teaching English as a Second Language and subsequently taught for 10 years as a native language teacher in Japan, I learned many tactics for engaging students that perhaps other university lecturers might not know about. Questioning the students, providing them with a range of mental and physical actions that they can take inside and outside the lecture time, the use of realia, and finally providing boundaries by letting them know the importance of classroom participation through substantial grading and verbal warnings tend to be pretty motivating for many students. Also, the scheduled time allows them to be prepared with their preparatory materials for the lesson, and they know they must be there or their grade will go down, further motivating them. I use my phone to provide extra points to students who participate, and breakout rooms allow the students to engage with each other in real time. We also have classroom discussions on different topics; the 1.5 hours don't feel long enough. I know that for some lecturers, keeping the camera on is not required; it is in each of my 35-student classes. This allows engagement with others and shows them that other students are in the class, giving it a more natural classroom feel. My classes are interdisciplinary, and I teach the students as much about real life as possible, providing real-life reasons why they need to have critical thinking skills or know English, so much so that they have repeatedly told me they would not have been exposed to these otherwise. I'm also very encouraging to them, and I let them know that whoever they are, they are valued, and their perspectives and their thoughts are essential for the future. This kind of respect and love towards one's students, no matter their age or the subject, allows them to feel like they can move forward and empowers them as students and as people who will soon be acting as adults. It also improves rapport in the classroom and with the teacher. None of these things require the teacher to be in the same room with the students. However, it does require the teacher to be able to interact with the students in real-time. Another advantage of synchronous online learning is that the students and teacher can be almost anywhere that is relatively quiet with an internet connection and still attend the class. Many of my students join me from their homes or cafes. They can stay after class or message me if they need to talk to me. Overall, I have seen that these classes are convenient for the students. They can answer quizzes, have conversations, and do the work from almost anywhere. They have a set schedule, so they don't have to worry about making their own schedule, and all they need is their computer or phone. They know the requirements, which makes them feel like they can succeed as long as they try. They can converse with classmates and interact with the class without being there. As time passes, I continually refine my methods for the synchronous online classes. It's got its challenges because technology is constantly changing. Still, because of the convenience and connection it provides to people in diverse geographical locations, it has been a boon in my life, and as far as I can tell from my students, it has been the same for them.

Sunday, February 18, 2024

The Lonesome Warbler - short story

by Sofia Penabaz, 2024-02-18


He absent-mindedly looked into the mirror, arching his head back and tracing the jawline for stubble. "Arg, I missed a spot." He picked up the razor and ran it across his skin. Ouch. A drop of blood appeared. He put the razor under the water, feeling its warmth on his fingers and washed away the blood, then continued to rinsing his chin and neck. He continued the ritual, then left the bathroom, and started changing. He was going to wear a nice crisp shirt, with jeans and his favorite tennis. Not that it would matter, since there weren't any women anymore. He reached for his Dunhill and sprayed some on. This scent filled the area like an invisible cloud, calm and reassuring. He suddenly felt depressed. What a waste of time. He was going to go out and look for someone who didn't exist. But the whole ritual, going out to, everything, it was something he just couldn't not do. He had to try to find someone, even though there was no one there. Because if he didn't, he knew he'd go nuts. He walked out of the house and towards the bar.

Humans had done it to themselves, it wasn't the aliens fault. It had started with the genetic modifications for health reasons. In the earlier days of science when people didn't know as much as they did, now. He heaved a sigh, trudging on. Then, with the advent of Androids, people didn't need children because they used money and it was much more difficult to have children when you were partnered with an Android. The early genetic modifications haven't been a problem until the disease came, changing human DNA so that fertility levels went close to zero. And then within a period of 10 years, had been the third wave of COVID-88, wherein most of the global population had died.

50 years before, there had been an influx of alien life on Earth. The aliens, called Lilliputians, after the creatures in the literary classic Gulliver's Travels, were highly developed and intelligent creatures. They were sensitive and kind, and were looking for a place to live. After some hesitation, the great world governments had decided that the Lilliputians were not a threat, and allowed them to stay. The Lilliputians tried to integrate with human society. That being said, they didn't have much interest in human health so when the humans got sick, the Lilliputians didn't really put much effort into trying to find a medical solution. Why should they? The humans were advanced, intelligent, and knowledgeable enough in their own health care to do this kind of thing for themselves... and they had also dug their own grave.

He ran his hand through his sandy brown hair. He would have been attractive to many women. He was in good shape and he was a nice person. But there just weren't any women left.

He opened the board bar door and walked in. While he'd passed a few on the street, there hadn't been such droves of them. The place was packed with Lilliputians sitting at the bar and at the tables, and dancing. They didn't look like humans at all, with her hard-shelled exoskeletons and five eyes. 

He asked for a drink in broken Lilliputian. "Sure thing," said the bartender amicably, and started mixing it. It. He looked around. The Lilliputians had appropriated music from over 100 years ago, some music from the 1980s was really popular. There were several people dancing. A few couples in the corners were making out with their thin tentacles and glinting arms. 

It wasn't just the humans who had been wiped out on earth. The humans themselves had caused a myriad of environmental problems and destroyed entire forests in their greed for resources. He thought about all of the last males calling out to a mate who didn't exist anymore, and felt a pang of guilt and sorrow for himself and for the world that had been before. If only they had treasured the world more, it would still be in their hands and he might have a wife and maybe a couple of kids.

_________________________________________

Next time you cut down a wild tree or prune it back severely, take down the wild grasses or replace the wild things with your own flowers, think about how many living things may have depended on that. Before doing anything, please observe any interactions with it for a couple of minutes; appreciate it. You may find that there are many creatures that depend on it. At the very least, please try to find out more about the native animals in your area and support them with your landscape. Kindness would suggest creating homes and provide water, since we have taken it. And, prudence advises that you also make a landscape that you can consume yourself, with rainwater retention and wild edible plants from the area, so that if there's another COVID-19, or something happens, you and your family don't end up without food. There are many lonesome Warblers in 2024. Try to be empathetic.

Sunday, December 3, 2023

Prisons as Money-makers & Other Questions

I didn't know that most US prisons are owned by corporations and many are on the stock market. When I heard that (ironically enough on this Mexican podcast), it immediately brought up a few concerns that, sure enough, were addressed in this article. One, when your bottom line is money, you're going to cut out as much as possible to keep your bottom line low, and when that means people who are depending on you, it's not going to end up being humane. The other one that was nebulous to me, but clearly stated in the article, is that the purpose of prisons is mostly to rehabilitate. But if a prison is a business depending on the people inside it, then less people means less money. If prisons were actually functioning the way they should be, there would be less and less prisoners, but because prisons are businesses making money from the government for each head housed there, they're not going to try to do that. Both of these issues point to a huge problem in the US justice system. To me, it brings up the fact that there are good reasons for having publicly owned entities in order to maintain fairness and quality. An advanced society needs to fund its infrastructure in such a way that the infrastructure creates a safety net for society so that's society can move forward in a fluid way. It's one reason I liked living in Japan so much. Although Japan has it's fair share of issues, there were many social infrastructure aspects of it that I felt are necessary in the US. The power of local government, so that bureaucratic systems are not federal as much as they are, creates an intimacy between the people and the government so that when you need something from the government you can just go to your local government office and get it. It's extremely frustrating to go to California and have to go all over the state in order to get certain paperwork done. 
In Japan teachers are given pay that they deserve, even if their hours are horrendous. The latter is a mark against Japan, but the former is a mark against the U.S. 
Who wants to teach when teaching doesn't pay enough? The education system is a fundamental necessity for society to move forward. Children should be treated with the same respect as adults, and they are valuable. Teachers provide a service that is essential to healthy growth in society, but if they are not paid properly, good teachers will end up taking jobs that will pay better, jobs that probably don't involve the next generation. In the realm of government services, I was amazed to go to the tax office and get in line with about 20 other people in order to be called to two windows an hour later and be told that they would only be open for another hour. That's insane to me. Isn't the government supposed to provide services to the people so that they don't waste their time standing in line? It can only be blamed on the misallocation of funds by the federal government, but I think this ridiculous situation is driven by the polarization within the populace. Libraries, roads, government offices, and other important parts of infrastructure are not quite as good in the US as they are in Japan. Despite the fact that the US has the most money of any country on Earth, it's amazing to me that the system doesn't function as well, and that they would go so far as to try to save money by doing things like what's happening with the prisons, that borderline on the immoral, when they have so much money to begin with. To me, it's a clear lack of critical thinking leading to breakdowns in the system. As I've taught my students, the intellectual standards must be applied to the elements of reasoning in order to lead to the intellectual traits (I posted a picture of this below). We must apply logic, clarity, accuracy and all of the other intellectual standards to the elements of reasoning, which are our questions, assumptions, conclusions, logic, and the others. Then, we can obtain a better understanding that is more clear, logical, fair and humble, etc., and will result in a better world because we have honed our intellectual traits.
(This is the Critical Thinking model I give my college students. There are a few others, but they are all similar.)

Sunday, November 19, 2023

My (limited) Understanding of Indigenous People

Things have gotten much worse over the years. I used to wonder why we didn't have a global police force to defend global treasures, like the Rainforest in Borneo and the Amazon Rainforest. But increased deforestation also destroys indigenous peoples. Deforestation happens when local bullies decide to take on and help wealthy (often international) corporations in order to line their pockets. Attacks on indigenous people happen in this and many other ways, too. I remember asking the local Huichol people here in Puerto Vallarta about their situation (in 2010), and them telling me that their culture was under constant threat and their sacred spaces were often destroyed by other Mexicans. I asked them why, and they didn't know, but I would suspect that it is out of fear of the unknown and intolerance for different viewpoints because they aren't educated. Over the past 10 years, I've heard countless stories about the indigenous people of the Amazon, being literally attacked, so that they will give up the land to the mining, logging, and consequent soybean/beef operations. Reading this article, it seems like there is some difficulty in defining what entails indigenous people now. It seems almost as though we need more specific terms. Are they colonialized people? At what point do indigenous people become one with the people of a new nation, or is that impossible? So do they still maintain the same nomenclature once living in cities and having no attachment to the land anymore? And then, as a participant in the conference hosted by the Society of Ethnobiology, I was able to learn about the indigenous people worldwide who have managed to maintain their rural, off-grid lifestyle, are not given enough priority by the organizations designed to protect forests, even though it was very clear from the numerous research studies done that this is what is necessary in order to save both the forests and the people. The stewardship of our global forest treasures, with the capacity to absorb carbon and keep the world cool are also complex ecosystems understood and appreciated most fully by the people who live within them. Their genocide (and forcing them to integrate into society is also cultural genocide), leads to the loss of over 25,000 years of knowledge tied to the local land. To me, reading this article, it seems like there is some discrepancy on the definition of indigenous people for purposes of environmental defense. But this was the only article I could really find on the subject of international policing to protect indigenous people. One thing is absolutely clear to me. They all need our help, but the ones in the forest need it the most right now because they are being wiped out, and it seems like no one is really aware of it. It's time to call the police...? What police? (Finally, I want to apologize to any indigenous people reading my post for any accidental insults. I am not politically correct in many ways, I'm sure, but this post comes from concern for our world. I hope that you will be understanding and educate me gently about any things I might not know, being an outsider. I lived in Japan for many years, and the whole conversation is virtually unheard of there, so I am starting from scratch having moved back to the West. Also, I don't mean anything against indigenous people integrated into society, but I think that people without physical buildings around them and without vehicles are in more acute danger than ones who have their current livelihoods in integration, despite how horrible it must have been beginning 200 years ago and with all the discrimination that has accompanied being indigenous in many colonial nations. I know that they continue to be attacked and discriminated against; I have heard about the large numbers of missing women of The First Nations people, for example. But I think this is a different discussion...? That one is more about integration, and this one is more about allowing separation from modern society. I feel like we absolutely need to protect the people who cannot defend themselves at all, and keep working towards helping and learning from those who have lost so much already so that we can create a better world.) https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/the-anti-indigenous-handbook-a-global-project-shows-most-common-attacks-on-indigenous-peoples/?fbclid=IwAR2DeAOLwYQAQ8MGK904SIf7lyK0A79uqKjTsJefVnjAHHjvldDm4CmmeqY

Monday, March 23, 2015

Want to know how to fix something? Learn Japanese...

Hahaha. So I was looking for a way to fix this coffee maker that I found in the recycle bin which is labeled 'garbage' at my university. When people move out, they just dump their whole apartment in. Needless to say, you can find some pretty nice things in the "garbage". So recently, there was this Nescafe Alegria (Nescafe Barista in Japan), and since my husband wanted a coffee maker, we decided to bring it on home. I found some videos in Japanese on how to clean it. There were really no good ones available in English. And I cleaned it. And put coffee in .... and turned it on and ...! Warm water came out. :( So I started searching for repair info on the thing. I mean, there are so many tech forums and such, I figured there must be, but NOOOooo. No English explanations on how to fix it. Or Spanish. Then I looked in Japanese. I found a bunch of pages on how to fix the thing. Here is a good one. Scroll down and down... and down! to see how detailed the explanation (with lots and lots of pictures) is! It reminds me of yesterday when I put together my computer, and there were tons of good videos on how to put the CPU on, or how to install the motherboard! Why are all the good repair or tech explanations in English only about computers (Or cars)? Anyway, I put it through Google Translate, but the English is really hard to understand. Better off trying to read it in Japanese maybe...

This is not the first time that I have seen this phenomenon with normal everyday items. I guess Japanese people really want to help other people while showing off their cool otaku style?