Elliot Washor's TGIF 06.20.2025

“Are You With Me Now” – A.J. Ryder

Your life is in your hands

Given the times we are living in the double entendre here is duly noted. When I had a talk with BPL Board Member Dr. Marsha-Gail Davis this week, we touched on a few items about well-being. First, was BPLiving updates and what she can do now and in the near future to support our work with youth driving the changes in lifestyle medicine and well-being and then we discussed the things we have happening at Big Bang that weave into Marsha-Gail’s larger role. They are:

o   The release of Andrew Coburn’s book – A Walk in the Park – A Path to Wellness

o   An introduction to BPLiving Fellows to our broader community

o   The BPLiving Certification

“Question Everything!” Einstein

Another large issue on both of our minds was the influence of influencers who blatantly sell both ideas and products without much research or anything for that matter to back up their claims. This has become normal behavior on social media. How different is this than a snake oil salesman? Not very. Just the times are different. In both medicine and education, albeit patients or students, they come to us about the social media feeds they receive telling how they found a cure for diabetes, strokes, cancer, anxiety and every other thing under the sun. Instead of doing any sort of questioning or research on what they are being t(s)old they take the research presented by influencers at face value. Danger! Danger! This seems to be happening at warp speed. Today so many influencers are posing as experts and most are promoting ideas without doing the proper investigations.  Biased influencers feed on others with the same potentially biased opinions. If this acceptance and conning is the coin of the realm of social media and potentially AI, include me out. But…through exhibitions and daily advisory meetings, BPL design builds a culture of healthy skepticism that allows students a forum for questioning and the time to study what they are interested in so they don’t buy into things just because someone says so. Dr. Marsha-Gail sees this mostly at the adult patient end where her questioning is mostly intervention but working with youth, we are more on the prevention side of things, include me in.

Remember to Rock the Boat – Authentic Intelligence

 Toni Tipton-Martin was presented with the lifetime achievement award.Credit...Jeff Schear/Getty Images

Almost every week I run out of running room in my TGIF. There’s things I want to reference about what I did or heard for the week that just don’t make it. Jeff Palladino referenced Rocking the Boat in his TGIF with a story and photos where two Fannie Lou Hamer students were just awarded the Pete & Toshi Seeger Award. Fannie Lou Hamer students are on the famous Clearwater that Peter and Yoshi sailed to support the clean-up of the Hudson River. For years both Fannie Lou and BPL have been connected to Rocking the Boat in all sorts of ways. Francisco Cabrera, one of our first Harbor Freight Fellows (HFF) was a student at Fannie Lou and did his HFF internship at Rocking the Boat. And when you rock the boat, your dead reckoning kicks in and you are connected with your senses, your knowledge and the planet working in sync. That’s real problem-solving and questioning and ways of knowing.

“If it’s good it’s good. If it isn’t, it isn’t.”

When it comes to assessment, there’s a lot to ponder here. Like it, not like is one way

lots of things are assessed and measured in the real-world where the stakes are pegged more to real-world standards. Of course there’s way more to it but it is fun to play with the concept and to continue playing, once again, this year’s James Beard Awards reflect changing standards toward evaluating chefs and restaurants as employers, community members and professional leaders. The range of awards expanded to “impact” awards “equitable, sustainable and economically viable” food systems. How come we can’t change standards in education?

Our international call focused on the next 30 years of work. How do we see our international work growing? IBPLC, Indigenous practices informing ours, B-Unbound, ImBlaze, BPliving and more and more schools are all part of the mix. We have loads of opportunities given how we grew and keep on growing together. The exchange of practices and the relationships people have developed are amazing. Before you know it, another group will be visiting Kenya and further down the road a trip to Barbados Our work just keeps building on one another’s practices.

This weekend our first and second class of The Met will have a reunion. Dennis and I will be there. Charlie is showing up as well. It’s been 30 years and we are still Rockin’ the Boat. At BPL and The Met, I hope we never lose the ability to zigzag when everyone else is heading straight.

Hope everyone had a great Juneteenth Celebration! Simone thanks for that poetry read at the Guggenheim Museum, in honor of Juneteenth and Rashid Johnson's exhibit: A Poem for Deep Thinkers. Wonderful and powerful!

Plenty, plenty, bye, bye