[email protected]

In a message dated 9/22/03 8:31:16 AM, holly@... writes:

<< My first impression is one of the list's atmosphere being
somewhat judgemental--at least when one particular button is pushed. >>

People who read without judgement aren't thinking or learning.

The particular button is "this will make it harder for people to be good
unschoolers," and your post didn't push that button for me.

<<welcoming the first real rain to fall in over 2 months--too late to save
our pastures--and wishing she could change the apparent physical reality
of the world to not include drought <g>>>

May daughter's name is Holly too. She has a fascination for a little town
here called Madrid, pronounced "wrong," with emphasis on the MAD. It was a big
coal mining town founded in the 1880's, which was a ghost town when WWII
came, and was repopulated by hippie artists in the 1970's. We drove up there
yesterday to have lunch and for her to show her friend some nice grafitti under a
bridge that used to be a car bridge over an arroyo, but now is just a
footbridge. The book that was under there in May was still there. We looked at the
wood joinery on the handrail, and talked about wood construction with simpler
tools and methods.

But as to drought, that area is high and dry, no regularly running water at
all, and without mining, nobody would have lived there. Without deep wells for
drinking water and other modern adaptations it would be uninhabitable. We
saw dead evergreens on the way. These are not giant trees, but they're old
trees. Piñon and juniper, squat stuff that doesn't get more than maybe ten or
fifteen feet high, even the big ones. Round evergreens that look like crumbs
from a distance, like the hills were sprinkled with some kind of cake-shop
decorations. In some places a fourth of them were dead, and that creates quite a
fire danger.

The town itself was made of wooden shacks (there are a few little stone
houses from 1915 or so, and the newer construction is county code) and some of
those mining shacks still stand in their state of deterioration. The ground is
coal dust in most places. There are little paper signs around town that say
"Your cigarette could burn our town: watch your butts" or something very like
that.

We didn't talk about any of that much. I know Holly didn't miss any of it.

We thought the restaurant/tavern would be kind of empty, but there was a
biker group in town, and also a family reunion. It was really crowded, but there
was a band.

Nice day.

Welcome to the list, Holly who has a name like my daughter's!

Sandra

Holly Shaltz

Sandra writes:

<<People who read without judgment aren't thinking or learning.>>

I used the word "judgmental", which I judge <g> to be quite different
from using "judgment".

I use "judgmental" to mean being highly critical in a very negative
sense.

I would say using "judgment" means weighing what has been communicated
against one's own experience and deciding for oneself what is worthy and
what not, what's positive and what's negative.

I use judgment based on my personal experience every time I read a post,
take a phone call, write a letter, drive a car, assess a yarn I've spun,
decide what veggies to grow next year. The emotional tone of using
judgment is, for me, positive--the goal is to learn from any mistakes so
my judgment is better each time. When others are present, using good
judgment fosters open dialog--or, occasionally, I withdraw from the
dialog because my judgment tells me it will not be a positive
experience.

If I were judgmental about the above examples, I might decide the poster
had rocks for brains, or that I'm a bad spinner, or that I'll never
learn how to grow enough vegetables for us to be self-sufficient. The
tone and experience are both negative and unpleasant, and has a strong
tendency to kill any open exchange of ideas. I grew up with a mother
like this, so I know what I'm talking about :)

In my observation of my own and others' tendencies toward being
judgmental, the purpose generally seems to be a need to prove oneself to
be 'better' than the other. As when I figured out why I kept being
critical (only to myself, but it was still a negative thing) about
another Holly's hair. She never seemed to trim it or comb it--and I'm
not talking going to the beauty shop weekly :) I finally realized it
was the only thing I could feel superior to her about. Exploring why I
needed to feel superior led me to greater understanding of the impacts
of growing up with a severely judgmental mother, and has in turn led to
much less need to privately find ways to be superior to others.

IOW, I used my judgment to understand why I was judgmental.

Holly