Living Well in the City--Part 1
Someone who lives in the city asked me how to live well there. This was a followup to several earlier blog posts on the benefits of interacting with nature.
Thinking about an appropriate answer, as usual, has taken me down several bunny trails that have provided some insight. One of them recalls content from John Taylor Gatto's book, The Underground History of American Education. Reading that book was formative for me. I read it after I began teaching at the high school level. I especially learned something from Gatto's perspective on education among the Amish. He praised learning by doing, notably in the context of apprenticing and mentoring. A corollary was his disappointment with conventional education, in which much that transpired seemed irrelevant and ineffective. I finished that book feeling some disgust with how thoroughly our Christian schools have adopted the second-best educational approaches of the schools around us instead of doing what we already know best how to do from our ethnic and cultural heritage. We need to be "More Like Us" as the author asserted who wrote a book by that title. (He was writing it about Americans who seemed overly focused on learning from and adopting the business practices of the Japanese.) I realized that we're not very good "Amishmen" when it comes to teaching our children.
On this bunny trail, I'm thoughtful about drilling deep into the traditions of our people to regain whatever is valuable that has been lost. The expectation that children will contribute to the family's welfare is one such value. This will not wait until the "important" work of school is done. Rather, school will fit around the important work of gaining skill and competence from carrying significant responsibility. And no, I don't mean only maintaining the house and yard. I mean responsibility related to nurture, ministry and enterprise. This is part of living well in the city as well as anywhere else.
Nurturing of living things can happen on any scale. Hiromi remembers fondly the cricket he kept in a tiny cage as a child. He fed it bits of cucumber. In a 10-gallon fish tank with a screen top our boys kept mice and toads and salamanders and a tiny turtle and tadpoles and crayfish and caterpillars--all at different times. Learning how to care for each one opened up a natural world that might have stayed foreign territory otherwise. Each of these animals later was released back into the wild, and none of them cost us anything to acquire. We housed them temporarily as we came across them.
These projects accomplished two things: learning about nature and learning about nurture. Even the smallest city dwelling can accommodate one of the Pets in a Jar--the title of one booklet that was very helpful. The other was a little booklet on creating indoor habitats for tiny animals. I can't find a link to that book because I can't remember the exact title. I bought it at a science museum--in Columbus, OH perhaps.
For a number of years we've kept a parakeet--the cheapest cage bird in the trade, and fish in a 20-gallon aquarium. We've also had gerbils and a crab. In my schoolroom we once kept a small snake. In some places, chipmunks, lizards, and tarantulas would be possibilities. Any of the above could be kept in a city dwelling--possibly on a porch.
A cottontail lived in our dining room for several months and we kept a pet raccoon at one time--inside until he didn't need a bottle anymore. (I'm not sure if this is legal now.) Domestic rabbits could possibly be kept on a city porch, but I don't recommend a raccoon. Ferrets and chinchillas have been kept by people I know. These might be a stretch for a city dweller. I don't know enough about their care to know how it would work, but they are larger animals and would presumably need more cage cleaning, etc.
Children (boys, at least) usually find animals tremendously fascinating. Rotating pets in and out of the house has the benefit of keeping the wonder alive.
For the city dweller, here's a summary of what I recommend for nurturing animals:
1. Buy Pets in a Jar.
2. Acquire either a gallon jar or a 10-gallon aquarium or something similar and figure out what you will use for a lid.
3. Think about where you can get soil or water so that you will know what to do when you come across your first "pet" in the wild.
4. If you have an idea for what you might find, do some study and preparation so that you'll be ready to provide an appropriate habitat and food when you have an animal in hand.
5. Carry a small jar or cage with you when you get out and about--walking, biking, etc.--for transporting creatures home.
6. Find something, keep it comfortable and well-fed while it's in your care, and then release it. It's usually best to release it close to where you found it, or at least in a suitable outdoor habitat.
I'll write later about the nurture of plants and some of the other ways in which I believe it to be possible to live well in the city.
Thinking about an appropriate answer, as usual, has taken me down several bunny trails that have provided some insight. One of them recalls content from John Taylor Gatto's book, The Underground History of American Education. Reading that book was formative for me. I read it after I began teaching at the high school level. I especially learned something from Gatto's perspective on education among the Amish. He praised learning by doing, notably in the context of apprenticing and mentoring. A corollary was his disappointment with conventional education, in which much that transpired seemed irrelevant and ineffective. I finished that book feeling some disgust with how thoroughly our Christian schools have adopted the second-best educational approaches of the schools around us instead of doing what we already know best how to do from our ethnic and cultural heritage. We need to be "More Like Us" as the author asserted who wrote a book by that title. (He was writing it about Americans who seemed overly focused on learning from and adopting the business practices of the Japanese.) I realized that we're not very good "Amishmen" when it comes to teaching our children.
On this bunny trail, I'm thoughtful about drilling deep into the traditions of our people to regain whatever is valuable that has been lost. The expectation that children will contribute to the family's welfare is one such value. This will not wait until the "important" work of school is done. Rather, school will fit around the important work of gaining skill and competence from carrying significant responsibility. And no, I don't mean only maintaining the house and yard. I mean responsibility related to nurture, ministry and enterprise. This is part of living well in the city as well as anywhere else.
Nurturing of living things can happen on any scale. Hiromi remembers fondly the cricket he kept in a tiny cage as a child. He fed it bits of cucumber. In a 10-gallon fish tank with a screen top our boys kept mice and toads and salamanders and a tiny turtle and tadpoles and crayfish and caterpillars--all at different times. Learning how to care for each one opened up a natural world that might have stayed foreign territory otherwise. Each of these animals later was released back into the wild, and none of them cost us anything to acquire. We housed them temporarily as we came across them.
These projects accomplished two things: learning about nature and learning about nurture. Even the smallest city dwelling can accommodate one of the Pets in a Jar--the title of one booklet that was very helpful. The other was a little booklet on creating indoor habitats for tiny animals. I can't find a link to that book because I can't remember the exact title. I bought it at a science museum--in Columbus, OH perhaps.
For a number of years we've kept a parakeet--the cheapest cage bird in the trade, and fish in a 20-gallon aquarium. We've also had gerbils and a crab. In my schoolroom we once kept a small snake. In some places, chipmunks, lizards, and tarantulas would be possibilities. Any of the above could be kept in a city dwelling--possibly on a porch.
A cottontail lived in our dining room for several months and we kept a pet raccoon at one time--inside until he didn't need a bottle anymore. (I'm not sure if this is legal now.) Domestic rabbits could possibly be kept on a city porch, but I don't recommend a raccoon. Ferrets and chinchillas have been kept by people I know. These might be a stretch for a city dweller. I don't know enough about their care to know how it would work, but they are larger animals and would presumably need more cage cleaning, etc.
Children (boys, at least) usually find animals tremendously fascinating. Rotating pets in and out of the house has the benefit of keeping the wonder alive.
For the city dweller, here's a summary of what I recommend for nurturing animals:
1. Buy Pets in a Jar.
2. Acquire either a gallon jar or a 10-gallon aquarium or something similar and figure out what you will use for a lid.
3. Think about where you can get soil or water so that you will know what to do when you come across your first "pet" in the wild.
4. If you have an idea for what you might find, do some study and preparation so that you'll be ready to provide an appropriate habitat and food when you have an animal in hand.
5. Carry a small jar or cage with you when you get out and about--walking, biking, etc.--for transporting creatures home.
6. Find something, keep it comfortable and well-fed while it's in your care, and then release it. It's usually best to release it close to where you found it, or at least in a suitable outdoor habitat.
I'll write later about the nurture of plants and some of the other ways in which I believe it to be possible to live well in the city.
posted by Mrs. I (Miriam Iwashige) at
7:29 PM
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