Recommended Link: Replanting Dan Jordan’s Educational Legacy at Stanford

From L-R: John Eilts, Nancy Jordan, Don Streets. Photo credit: Deanne LaRue

I’ve fallen behind a bit in my reading of emails from the sites I follow. One of the articles I missed from the Bahá’í Teachings site was this by David Langness, posted on the 15th of last month. Given that I have known Nancy Jordan since we served together on the same Bahá’í Institution for a while some time back, and given that Dan Jordan’s thinking has influenced my own significantly, I can do no less than make up for lost time by posting this. It was heart-warming to read that his archive has found the perfect home. Below is a short extract: for the full post see link.

Do not allow your minds to dwell on the present, but with eyes of faith look into the future, for in truth the Spirit of God is working in your midst.

Abdu’l-Baha, Paris Talks, p. 169.

In February of 2016 a group of Baha’is presented the archives that contain the life’s work of educator, psychologist and philosopher Daniel C. Jordan, the creator of the Anisa Educational Model, to the Stanford University Libraries.

Delivered personally by Dr. Jordan’s widow Nancy Jordan and his educational collaborator Donald Streets, the archives and materials contain more than a thousand documents, tapes, files and films spanning Jordan’s remarkable career in education, philosophy, human development, music and psychology. The archives include Jordan’s early work on the holistic, Baha’i-inspired Anisa Educational Project; his personal correspondence with major historical figures like the psychologist and writer Carl Jung; and his doctoral work at the University of Chicago in human development, social anthropology and psychology, for which he wrote and directed a ballet accompanied by musical score and scenario.

“I couldn’t be more pleased,” Nancy Jordan, Dan’s widow, said, “now that Dan’s important work has found a permanent home here at Stanford.”

Dr. Daniel C. Jordan—at the age of 18 the first American ever to win a Rhodes Scholarship for music—was tragically murdered in New York in October of 1982, just after he turned 50 and had been named the Dean of the School of Education at National University in San Diego. The crime remains unsolved.

Now, though, Dan Jordan’s scientific, philosophic and educational legacy will continue in perpetuity at Stanford, which already has a long history of Baha’i activity.

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Family Poems (5/16): Mary

After recently posting Unfinished Business in response to Sue Vincent’s book addiction post, and finally managing to finish Reading in the Park after only five decades, it struck me that it might be useful to post the family related poems, not in chronological order of composition, which is how they have appeared so far, but in a sequence that better reflects their chronological sequence in autobiographical time. I started on Monday with the first one after Unfinished Business, as that was posted so recently. The rest are following at the rate of a poem a day. It is worth noting that Dying Matters Awareness Week runs from 9-14  May this year and this sequence of poems will appropriately overlap.

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