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Elizabeth RosalesIt seems very fair to compare. I have thought the same thing about my religion growing up and trying to find the root of all religion. People need reasons for continuing in religious practices, and sometimes the search for that brings them back to roots they didn't remember or perhaps even knew existed.
Elizabeth RosalesBeautiful poem! Thank you for sharing that site and poem.
Elizabeth RosalesYes! Great point!
Elizabeth RosalesThank you for sharing the article!
Elizabeth RosalesSo true! Tea and Coffee rituals seem so meditative! A great way to transition between sleep and work.
Elizabeth RosalesI have been to Xi'an, in 1988. I did not know that Kyoto was designed after it. Where did you read that?
Elizabeth RosalesI found the Hakka dwellings really fascinating, as well! What a great idea for protection. But I wondered why apartments would go up and down floors, rather than remaining on one floor.
Elizabeth RosalesI highly recommend visiting the Forbidden City. I understand it much more now, after this course!
Elizabeth RosalesIs SimCity what you use with your students? What ages do you think it is user-friendly for?
Elizabeth RosalesThanks for sharing! I will watch that.
Elizabeth RosalesYou share the most interesting photographs! It certainly gives us a different perspective of the world when we get out there and walk around. Thank you for sharing.
Elizabeth RosalesThat is an incredible transformation!
Elizabeth RosalesPudong...I remember when I saw the current version of Pudong in a movie. I asked where it was, and the answer was Shanghai. I was shocked. I had stayed in Shanghai and traveled on a boat up the river, and the shiny, glittering, neon city I saw in that movie was nothing like what I remembered. It was hard to internalize that the place of my memories no longer existed. I am glad to see that some of it was preserved on the opposite bank of the Yangtze. But then, those buildings were once new, too, and I am sure that many mourned the loss of the beautiful land on which they were built.
So, how do we maintain the balance between buildings and open space? How do we preserve irreplaceable natural areas? This is one of the problems California is facing, in terms of water. We used to have many streams and rivers that came down out of the snow pack, and the valleys were fertile, but with some years drier than others. Then people started diverting those waters into pipes and lakes, and that changed the landscape. My understanding is that our former governor put into law that within about 20 years, it will be illegal to drill a well, so that the water table will not be depleted and the land sink down, in a very small nutshell.
Urban planning seems to be an undertaking of vast, nearly impossible, proportions. I don't know how you do it!
Elizabeth RosalesI believe that shifting our paradigms is an indication of maturity and growth. I like your idea of shifting the 'colonialism' paradigm from one of blame to one of positivity. It reminds me of my favorite quote that "the last of the human freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances." Since all of the people who colonized are long gone, we can either choose to continue to be angry about what they did, or be grateful for the good things that came out of it. What is done cannot be undone, so we may as well look for the good and also never forget the lessons. I, for one, find things that I love everywhere I go, and I want to incorporate them into my life. The more I travel, the more I see, and the more people I talk to and learn from. If we keep an open mind, we can take the seeds of wisdom from one place and deposit them in another. Like what you said about Christians and Hindus living next to each other and enriching each other's lives.
Superb point, also, about using the materials native to the area, even if the ideas aren't. We do the same thing in reverse. We bring home ideas from places we have visited and admired, and incorporate them as best we can with what we've got. One of the things I brought home with me from India was a new love of color. The clothing and the buildings and the markets and the rugs, everything, was so colorful. It made me happy and I now have a much more colorful home and wardrobe.
Elizabeth RosalesI have never studied Feng-shui, and I would never have thought of it as geomancy, but I see the connection.It is important to take into account how the paths of energy flow through an area you want to live in. If you decide to build a house in tornado alley, you run the risk of losing everything to the tremendously destructive energy that comes in the form of a tornado. I have seen the effects of a house couched in the protection of a mountain. A tornado repeatedly bounced off of the top of the mountain behind my father's house and took off the top of the tree next to their house and landed out in the unprotected flat area of a cornfield, leaving a circular mark. Coincidentally, they also have a meandering river out in front of their house. I never gave a thought to these things until I read this article. Water that meanders through a riverbed has a different structure than water that runs straight down a pipe. This is a scientifically proven fact that supports the same idea that Qi can be good or bad, based on the same idea of either meandering or flowing in a straight line. In fact, I use a water structurer because of what I have learned about the difference in the molecular structure of natural water as compared to 'piped' water. That is a whole other amazing, but relevant, subject.
I can think of some pretty fun, messy activities that students would love in testing out some engineering principles around this idea of house placement.
