{"id":3496,"date":"2019-05-16T19:29:55","date_gmt":"2019-05-16T23:29:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/?p=3496"},"modified":"2019-05-17T08:01:05","modified_gmt":"2019-05-17T12:01:05","slug":"department-of-co-incidence-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/?p=3496","title":{"rendered":"department of co-incidence"},"content":{"rendered":"

During a visit to Vashon Island, a series of unplanned conjunctions took me to the Vashon Bookshop for a half hour of browsing before our reservation at the marvelous May Kitchen and Bar. This book<\/a> leapt into my arms:<\/p>\n


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\nStephen De Staebler was my 9th grade history teacher (1957-58), and offered a high-energy version of World History to a class of 15 or so engaged and eager students. He also taught a class in stained glass for 5 of us, with lead and solder and glass cutters, the real deal. He was only at the school for a year, but was unforgettable for his contagious enthusiasm. He went on to become a well-known sculptor and teacher at San Francisco State, and died in 2011. His website (stephendestaebler.com<\/a>) represents his work quite well. I was something between delighted and gobsmacked to discover a gallery of masks<\/a> that presage my recent work with lithic personalities<\/a>. At the very least, we draw upon the same mysterious vein of mimetic imagery (“a term used in literary criticism and philosophy that carries a wide range of meanings which include imitatio, imitation, nonsensuous similarity, receptivity, representation, mimicry, the act of expression, the act of resembling, and the presentation of the self” in its Wikipedia rendering). There’s also this quote to consider:<\/p>\n

Much of art is play in the serious sense,
like magic, trying to restructure reality
so that we can live with the suffering.

\n-Stephen De Staebler, 1984
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\nI’m not quite sure what to do with “the suffering” but I’m pleased to consider what he might mean. It’s the sort of responsibility one has toward one’s well-remembered teachers. Alas, there are only a couple of 9th grade classmates left who remember Steve De Staebler, and I wish I’d been able to convey my thanks to him for what he taught and what he Taught.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During a visit to Vashon Island, a series of unplanned conjunctions took me to the Vashon Bookshop for a half hour of browsing before our reservation at the marvelous May Kitchen and Bar. This book leapt into my arms: Stephen De Staebler was my 9th grade history teacher (1957-58), and offered a high-energy version of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,15,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-photography","category-remembered"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3496"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3499,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3496\/revisions\/3499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}