Notices by Kate (katebowles@mastodon.social), page 15

It's Valentine's Day and 32 degrees. Men in shorts are hurrying into the florist and coming out with single roses wilting in plastic tubes.

The long stemmed red rose in our garden that flowers twice a year chose this one day. We are still laughing at its perfect timing.

#smallstories

https://mastodon.social/media/XraSrU1uxuO_1uT9NVA

@dogtrax To me, she's the inspiring one. She's on a complex journey, with few resources. And I don't think she'll be with us long. She has an energy to keep moving. I'm just aware that our systems gift a whole lot of social support to some, and randomly remove it from others. It's a terrifying lottery.

As an educator I have to ask hard questions of the system I'm part of too. What are we doing to challenge this lottery?

We have someone living with us unexpectedly. She's 17 and without family support and with PTSD.

Her courage in accepting the care of strangers is phenomenal. She arrived with everything in two bags. We walk quietly around her because loud noises startle her.

I realised in saying yes how much I appreciate Mastodon for supporting principles of community when family falls through. Not everyone gets lucky. But we can all lend each other time and concern.

#smallstories

@vector Ah! Just saw this.

When my daughter was 3 months old she fell off the change table and hit her head on the wheel of a trolley. Huge bump came up almost instantly, with the mark of the wheel in the middle of it. I have never driven so fast.

Now she's an artist, a writer, and observes life from her supermarket checkout with grace and wit. And I still remember every minute of that drive.

So good to read your news.

#smallstories

@snoothy @vector

Is everything ok now?

@lauraritchie This week I moved the oldest to her new uni dorm in another city. It's an apartment for 5, and the other 4 aren't there, so I left her rattling around in there by herself. It was all a bit Bates Motel. As I drove home down the freeway I sang all the road trip songs from her childhood.

Life stages, loss, change.

#smallstories

Youngest one has gone to school camp. There's a list of prohibited items, including confectionery. Needless to say at the bus stop they're all packing enough to open a sweet shop. They're like bees so laden with pollen they can hardly fly.

Her sisters pass on the secrets of generations for smuggling candy. "Pack it with your tampons," they say. "Then no one checks."

That weird age: all kid, all grown.

This evening we all miss her. We keep opening the door to her room.

#smallstories

@fgraver @Tdorey @dogtrax @lauraritchie

Today I really felt overwhelmed at work. All the knots frayed. Came home and fell into the ocean too exhausted to do more than float. Opened my eyes under water and watched grainy blurry images of sand.

Then suddenly I found myself swimming with a pod of little girls who were screaming with delight at the waves.

Let's not forget ourselves.

smallest of #smallstories

@steelemaley Some of the folk you follow aren't active users, but don't be disheartened.

I really recommend edusers @lauraritchie @Tdorey and @fgraver.

@steelemaley Welcome, welcome. I've found it to be genuinely a place of dialogue. It's a crowded bar at times, and you can lose your thread. But stick with it. The secret to a good experience is who you follow, not who follows you.

That moment when you get back in the car and loved music is playing on the radio.

@RussSharek

I've very rarely achieving standing for anything consistently (lapsed vegetarian etc) but I have spent my whole life not on Facebook. It was a fairly conscious decision and then just became a way of being.

I never cease to be grateful really.

@nev @mattcropp that's really useful, thanks!

What I'm thinking about in connection to this is the curriculum, where we're shifting from "how to get a job" to "how to start a start up". We're educating for precarity, not solidarity or social sustainability.

I'd love to know about examples of "how to start a coop" in mainstream curriculum. Do you know of anything like this?

(I do know about coop unis in the uk but I'm thinking about public higher ed.)

@mattcropp

Thinking about social institutions that do and don't support coops, universities are missing.

At the moment we are obsessively developing entrepreneurship as a curriculum focus, and chanting "start ups, start ups, start ups", despite all that we know about what's broken in this model.

What if universities gave equal attention to how and why to form coops? What if that was a thing students learned?

@dadegroot Waking up to everyone's photos. It's like post-event FOMO. RAHMO: Resigned At Having Missing Out.