I want to go three ways with this blog. On third being observational politics, one third the motering life and one third education. I have neglected education, so I will do a few stories. I find this interesting as I was never formally trained as an educator. However, I have trained many people and attended five colleges. I will admit that I did not do well in school, and part of that was my own fault.

For example there was a course that was about building housing developments. I think it was some sort of civil engineering course, but I am not really sure. The premise was to find a nice field near a town, build a road that would maximize half acre house lots, then build a series of identical houses. This process would be the most efficient and effective way to provide homes for people to buy.

At a previous college I attended a course about building housing. That course was titled “The Handbuilt Homes of Woodstock NY”. Every week in that course we would visit a different house In Woodstock NY. The homes were all different. They varied from a geodesic dome made of old LP records to a massive three story home that resembled an art gallery. No homes were remotely similar, however they all had character.

I understood the logic each course presented. I will call neither right or wrong, however I would do something that would get me into trouble. In the housing development course I suggested that the housing should be built in the hills. My reasoning was our ancestors worked to clear the fields and we should use the fields for agriculture, not housing. Now this violated the premise of the efficient building of homes for people. For I had suggested that we add complexity. For whatever reason I held firm in my view.

I was sincere in my view, many civilizations build nice communities on hillside. There are pretty hillside places in Santorini, Nepal, Peru, and even San Francisco. I understood the logic of a development, however life should be aspirational. We should be able to look out the window and see the world. We should utilize what we have to benefit society. For me it was personal.

To my surprise my belief precipitated a field trip. Unlike my previous homebuilding class, this class just stayed in the classroom where we drew pictures of housing developments. One day the instructor announced he had signed out a van and he was going to drive the class to a housing development. To my surprise the development was on a bit of a hillside. The instructor then pulled into the driveway of a newly completed house and instructed us to get out of the van and go behind the house. He then pointed to a big one inch crack in the foundation and said “This is why you don’t build houses in the hills”. I mumbled something about we should learn how to build better foundations. The instructor had won, I then kept my mouth shut and said no more.