Persian Odyssey: Part XIII - Persepolis...

Map - Shiraz to Esfahan, Iran

… the climax and crowning glory of my journey through ancient Persia and modern Iran.

Shiraz - tomb of Hafez
Wikipedia image

Although I had one or two students from Shiraz in my class I had made no arrangement to visit them in the course of my journey. Time was running short as well and I was due back in Esfahan to start the next leg of my contract. I was scheduled to be an in-flight tutor with the students who had graduated from the classroom part of their training program. More on that later. At any rate, I more or less bypassed Shiraz, which is known in Iran as the “city of poets”, two of whom, Hafiz 14^th Century and Saadi 12^th and 13^th Centuries, have monuments (tombs) there.

panoramic view of Persepolis looking west - Wikipedia image

first impression - double stair to the site

Gate of Nations

Persepolis turned out to be largely for my eyes only. There was hardly anybody there on the sunny morning I pulled up to the massive double staircase that leads up to the archeological site. I spent the entire day wandering around the site including the nearby sites of Naqsh e Rostam [tomb of Darius and other Achaemenid kings}and Pasargad [palace and tomb of Cyrus the Great], taking photographs until the breathtaking sunset at Persepolis ended a memorable day. I will simply post pictures, some of them my own, some taken from the web to fill in the gaps in what I either lost or failed to record at the time, and let Persepolis speak for itself across a span of some 2500 years. 

Tachar Palace, Wikipedia image

Persian Soldiers, Wikipedia image

lion biting bull, Wikipedia image

Nagsh e Rostam - tomb of Darius the Great

plan of the archeological site
Wikipedia image

Apadana audience hall - Persepolis

Darius and attendants

Pasargad

Soldiers, Wikipedia image

sunset - Tacher palace 

Apadana Palace, Persepolis - sunset

To be continued....

A teaching moment

One of the greatest rewards of being a teacher is when you break through and establish a personal contact with a student. Each becomes a person to the other, not just a label—I teacher, you student—a la Tarzan.  No, I am me and you are you. But that doesn't come as easy as you might think, unless you are in the game yourself.

I recently retired from full time teaching at 70 (well beyond the normal retirement age), but still felt I wanted to keep my hand in the game part time. So, I arranged to work at my friend and colleague's language school a few evenings a week teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) to elementary school kids. I started there soon after we returned from Prague.

One of my classes was a little unruly and seemed to be led by one certain boy—Ko-kun. His name is Ko, the “kun” is added to boys names—it is the child's equivalent of “san” for adults. For example, I am Joe-san. He was obviously the most outgoing and brightest student in the small class of four. Unfortunately he lacked self control. After a particularly exasperating day I decided to apply some behavior modification techniques I had used as a special needs teacher. (I had worked with emotionally disturbed children in a school in Massachusetts in the early 90s.) Of course, this kid isn't ED, just lacks self control. Boys will be boys, especially active ones confined to a classroom.

This week I announced and explained our new “Class Rules”. Rules are all well and good, but you need consequences for when they are inevitably broken. I had developed a 3 strikes = OUT! policy in my previous school, so I reinstated it here. It is useful because it gives the teacher a consistent disciplinary tool and it gives the kid a choice. Japanese kids know and love baseball and all understand that 3 strikes means you're out. I made two posters: one listing the class rules and consequences, the other a graphic illustration of a player making three strikes. 

The first strike out gains five minutes time out. The second, 10 minutes. The third loses the kid his break if before break time, or homework if after break. During the lesson my target kid, Ko-kun showed very good self control when shown the limits.  I breathed a huge sigh of relief, while quietly self congratulating myself. 

Naturally I praised the whole class for good behavior and staying on task, but singled out Ko-kun for extra praise. He was clearly tickled pink and started drawing happy faces on the whiteboard. I said: “I'm happy, too; I'm going to draw a happy face, too.” Ko-kun then drew happy faces for all the other kids and wrote their names under them, including mine, but misspelled it. “Hmm,” I said, “if you're going to write my name, spell it right.”--and corrected it. I then asked him to erase the board. He told me that he couldn't reach the top so I told him I would take care of that.

As I was leaving Ko-kun comes up to me and says: “Joe, I'm giving you some of my snack,” and hands me something junk foodie and cheesie. “Hey, thanks, this is very cheesie, isn't it!” says I.

No pun intended.

一緒 - ISSHO - “togetherness”

school athletic field

main school buildings

Japan is something of a hive society. The concept of individuality is more or less alien to the traditional Japanese spirit; the concept of social harmony is the driving force. To that end, children are conditioned to work together and cooperate to a degree unprecedented and incomprehensible to the western notion of individuality. There is a saying in Japan that tells what will happen if an individual stands out--"the nail that sticks up gets hammered down". As a westerner teaching in a Japanese elementary school for almost 20 years I have always had mixed feelings about this emphasis on discouraging the individual to stand out from the crowd and be a star.

1st Graders entering the field
for a little dance performance

relay race

An enormously important element of the educational system for encouraging group behavior is the annual semi-sacred “sports festival”-- 運動会 - UNDOKAI in Japanese. This is not an occasion for spontaneous fun and physical exertion as a field day in an American school might be. Not on your life! A whole month of the school term is devoted to practice and rehearsal of the events to be included in the days activities. Everything must be perfectly coordinated and timed! TIME is de rigeur. Rehearsals are timed with a stopwatch to ensure that everything runs like clockwork.

picnic tarpaulins

synchronized dance with pom-poms

Then, the big day comes with banners flying and tents erected. It is day for family togetherness. Picnic tarpaulins are laid out amid the school buildings and surrounding the athletic field. Parents have their digital cameras and video cameras at the ready. Then the “opening ceremony” with students passing in review as in a military parade, flags raised, anthem sung, speeches by invited dignitaries from the local government made and, then, and only then, do the various sporting events take place to lively musical accompaniment from classical--William Tell Overture--to martial music and everything in between.

me with former students --
now 5th Graders

As an alumnus teacher, I was invited to attend this years UNDOKAI as an honored guest. I went yesterday, brought my camera and took a few pictures to give you a glimpse of what the “sports festival” in Japan, or at my old school anyway, looks like.

doting moms--covered from head to
toe for protections from the
dreaded sun--not for fear of skin
cancer, but to keep skin white

not as easy as it looks--two kids have to
coordinate to keep the ball in the wheelbarrow

variation of a sack race with double wide short pants

a little overweight huffing and puffing

alley oop -- togetherness, they start 'em young

more doting moms and a dad

pre schooler prospective enrollees--
encouraged and helped by parents to participate
in a mini-event

school courtyard with coffee and
drink concession by PTA

human pyramid--the ultimate in cooperation and mutual trust--
the brave fellow on top is, of course, the smallest boy in the class

Last Dance

Love to Love You Baby

MacArthur Park

Last Dance - 2009

The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen.

For those of us who danced our asses of in the disco days of the 1970s, Donna Summer will probably live in our hearts and feet forever. And probably most every other part of the body as well. Here, as my final tribute to the wonderful voice that kept my motor running in those distant days, are three songs that, for me, show three faces of Donna—she's now got 'em dancing among the stars I have no doubt.

Junkies

The Information Diet - Carl A. Johnson

If you Google “junkie” you come up with the usual Wikipedia headliner (or very near the top) followed closely by a listing of various kinds of junkies: sports junkies, romance junkies...urban dictionary junkies (?) but not, oddly enough, Google junkies. I, admittedly, am a Googler and Wikipedia devotee, but selectively so—of course. I am a discriminating junkie. 

So, what do I get from a friend in my email inbox recently but a link to a new kid on the block selling another self help book—this one for information junkies. It's called the The Information Diet, A Case for Conscious Consumption by Carl A. Johnson. An admitted food junkie, the portly but-you-should-have-seen-me-before Mr. Johnson compares overeating with the indiscriminate consumption of information (munching on sound bites perhaps?). 

If you're an information junkie you might want to get the book to learn how to wean yourself off of noshing on data junk. It isn't my intention to criticize the contents of the book since I haven't read it. Remember, I am a self-declared discriminating info consumer. I only consume what I choose selectively, which, according to Mr. Johnson's sales pitch cum lecture [link above], is what information dieting is all about. If I can do it, you can do it, too. 

 

The friend who sent me the link, I later learned, was thinking of Mr. Johnson's thinking as an extension of the theories of Marshall McLuhan in Understanding Media. Mr. McLuhan, you may remember (if you are old enough), predicted the advent of the Internet some 30 years in advance of his time. Prescient man that he clearly was, I, thinking of Mr. Johnson's book, wondered if Mr. McLuhan foresaw the way that modern marketing would manipulate media in an almost logical extension of his theories.

"The medium is the message" tells us that noticing change in our societal or cultural ground conditions indicates the presence of a new message, that is, the effects of a new medium. 

 

And if we discover that the new medium brings along effects that might be detrimental to our society or culture, we have the opportunity to influence the development and evolution of the new innovation before the effects becomes pervasive. **

Unfortunately, as the need for Mr. Johnson's book would indicate, the “effects of a new 

medium” have already become pervasive. We're all junkies now.

** What is the Meaning of The Medium is the Message?

by Mark Federman
Chief Strategist
McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology

http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthemessage.htm

 

Persian Odyssey: Part XII – a little light historical context

Open desert and oil fields and not much to do but think. How did I come to be here on a semi crippled bike with a civil war postponed and waiting to resume (for me at least) when I returned to Esfahan? Why is the US government, today, hellbent (verbally at least) on kicking Iran's butt? The eternal post-9/11 question: “Why don't they love us?”

Khomeini left (white beard);
Castro right (right)

What do oil and bananas have in common? Big business and big profit—British Petroleum, Exxon Mobile, United Fruit. The flag follows the money. There seems to be a connection with the US's preoccupation with Cuba and its obsession with Iran. It's more than likely a matter of face and pride as well as profits. Both countries, in the persons of Fidel Castro and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, humiliated the US and drove it out of their countries. And, in between, there was the added insult of the Vietnam War.

We can trace the linear progression of the US involvement with Iran from before the Iranian Revolution to its obsession with Iran's supposed nuclear weapons development program. I believe this latter is simply setting up a straw man, as with Iraq's supposed WMD, as an excuse to manipulate for regime change in Iran to a more pliant government that will let the US have its way as it did when I was working in Esfahan under the Shah in 1978. We could see a repeat performance of the Iraq debacle, but on a much larger and messier scale if the MICC hawks (military-industrial-congressional complex) have their way.

Mossadegh under house arrest

Briefly, then, Mohammad Mossadegh was the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953. While he was Prime Minister he instituted several social reforms like unemployment compensation, health benefits, etc. He is, however, most famous (or notorious, depending on your point of view) for nationalizing the Iranian oil industry from the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later known as British Petroleum (BP of recent Gulf of Mexico oil-spill memory). It's not hard to guess what happened next. Mossadegh was ousted in a coup d'etat engineered by Britain's MI5 with the participation of the US's CIA on August 19, 1953. He was arrested, tried and imprisoned for three years and died under house arrest in 1967.

The rest as they say is history. Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was restored to the Peacock Throne and the new Prime Minister, Fazlollah Zahedi's government formed a consortium with foreign oil companies giving “the U.S. and Great Britain the lion's share of Iran's oil wealth.” With the Cold War in the background, the US regained business and military influence in the Shah's Iran. Iran's oil resources were exploited and strong ties between the US and Iranian military forces were forged. Anyone opposed to this arrangement would simply disappear into the dungeons of SAVAK (the Shah's secret police) or go into exile and plot the demise of the Shah.

the Shah (l.) meeting with Alfred Atherton, William Sullivan, Cyrus Vance, President Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski, 1978

Military hardware was sold and training programs were set up and, voila!, here I was training soldiers as part of the military sales package. My English language training company out of Chicago was sub-contracted to Bell Helicopter International, which was, as I mentioned earlier, training Iranian helicopter pilots in Esfahan. Until the excrement began to hit the fan around mid-1978, soon to culminate in the downfall of the Shah and the American Embassy hostage crisis in Tehran which the US has never forgotten or forgiven the Islamic Republic of Iran for, and which brings me back on the road to Shiraz and a short pit stop before going on to Persepolis.

[All photos in this post courtesy of Wikipedia, which is also responsible for filling in the gaps in my historical memory.]

To be continued...

Out of the mouths of babes

As I may (or may not) have mentioned, I'm beginning a second “career”—or third or fourth or fifth, depending on how you define it. I parted company with my previous employer this year well beyond the normal retirement age of 65. But, after three months of vagabonding around Europe and returning home I started feeling restless without my previous 9 to 5 life style. I enjoy the leisure of not having to get up at the crack of dawn, but, as I knew I would, I began to feel the need to do something productive--on a part time basis. So, now I am starting some new (for me) classes in ESL (English as a Second Language) for young learners (elementary school age) and tutoring a couple of teenagers as well in the late afternoon and early evening three days a week--as of this post.

Anyhow, I was looking for some appropriate reading material that would be interesting (and short) enough to motivate one of my groups. I ran across an Internet site that had some very, very short stories that turned out to have been serially written by 10-year-olds by adding their own ideas to the ongoing story. I had an “aha” moment and decided to piece some of the kids' efforts together and fill in the gaps myself to make a funny and gory enough story to capture the imagination of children who secretly love such stories--if the kids who made their contributions are any example. The story is about Little Red Riding Hood, more or less.

Can you figure out which parts are the kids' and which are mine?

The Little Girl who Hated the Color Red

One day Little Red Riding Hood had the sniffles and the sneezes. 


Little Red Riding has a secret. She loves her grandmother more than her mum, and she wanted to go to granny's house. 


The problem was Little Red Riding Hood hated red and her grandmother's house was red. But she loved her grandmother so she went inside anyway.

Little Red Riding Hood was happy to see her grandmother, but the problem was it wasn't her grandmother, it was the big bad wolf. 

Now, Little Red Riding Hood didn't know it was the BIG BAD WOLF so she said, "Hello grandma, what BIG BLOODSHOT RED EYES you have and what a BIG RED TONGUE you have". But, the problem was the BIG BAD WOLF didn't say anything, he was too busy eating Little Red Riding Hood.

Little Red Riding Hood hated the color red and the inside of the big bad wolf's stomach was red. Lucky for her she had a cold, so she sniffled and huffed and puffed and sneezed and blew herself out of the wolf. Then she went to hide in the bathroom because the wolf was still in her grandmother's house.

Lucky for Little Red Hiding Hood she had her cell phone in her pocket. She called her Dad who was a policeman and he came over and shot the big bad wolf.


The big bad wolf blew up and splattered blood and grandma all over Little Red Riding Hood and her Dad. Unfortunately granny was as dead as the big bad wolf, but Little Red Riding Hood and her Dad were OK. Little Red Riding Hood really hated red now and said: “I want a Green Riding Hood from now on.”

Actually, Little Red Riding Hood was having a dream. When she woke up, she was still at home. Just to be sure, she took out her cell phone and called Grandma. “Hellooo. Oh, hello sweetheart. I'm hungry. Why don't you come over for lunch?” It sounded like granny had a rough voice. Maybe she had a cold, too.