writing

A Human Moment for AI: Short Blog Post

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Monday, November 24, 2025

Monday Morning Musings

After awakening to listening to a congressman talk about upcoming legislation debate on whether Congress should intercede with a bill imposing a block on respective states regulating the AI sector on CNBC’s Squawkbox this morning, I decided to finally open my eyes and drag myself out of bed and take black labrador retriever Serena for a jog through the heavy humid air in our neighborhood. 

Left the iPhone behind, just me and my dog–needed to feel the air, hear the busy sounds around and overhead–need to move this weary physical frame that can barely process the speed of information on a daily basis. The drive to feel human.

The Palm Beach International airplane traffic has picked up, private and commercial jets fly overhead in their departures and arrivals every few minutes especially in the morning hours.

The houses in our neighborhood have slowly been morphing from the old Florida 1970s ranch-style one-story homes into tall and often two-story mega-mansion type homes on these 1-2 acres of land plots that are almost unheard of east of the Florida Turnpike and Interstate 95.  Horseshoe Acres is a mix of the old and the new, a brackish water so to speak.

As Serena and I fall into a comfortable rhythm, I can sense my mind relaxing and beginning to sift through the Artificial Intelligence debates that abound–taking into account that AI software and algorithms have been set in motion long before the public square began to whip into a fury about it. 

I also ponder and acknowledge the sad but real fact that there are great segments of our society that pay no mind to any of these public policy struggles when it comes to the exponential speed of the advancement of AI technology, i.e latest versions of ChatGPT versus Gemini and so forth…then my right knee starts twinging in pain and I make the reluctant turn back to the house to continue packing the car for our Thanksgiving trip.

We are all still learning what it is to be human and here we’ve taken our free will and creativity to make something like us and better so in terms of data processing and calculations.  

Is the teacher truly glad when the pupil becomes “smarter” than he?

The question of ROI, or more critically, the risk of harm versus benefit is something we must keep in mind as we unveil our latest and greatest AI tool.  

What should we do if an AI system shows in training models that it has the capacity to advise a human to do a detrimental thing like create a bioweapon capable of mass casualties?  What if a human child emotionally connects to an AI model server and not its actual parent? The “what-ifs” can hit a critical mass with something like this lightning fast technology.  

And yet, there’s no stuffing it back into the proverbial Pandora’s box. How do legislators and public servants proceed? What does the regular human do in light of these advancements that he/she can choose to engage in or not?

Suddenly I understand the reservation of those people in our past who were wary of the invention of the wheel, electrifying one’s home, sending emails and now: to use or not use AI (at least when you’re aware of it) is truly the question of the day and already many people are defaulting to one setting or the other.

I have purposely avoided using AI platforms if I can help it- I don’t engage with “chatbots” and when calling a bank/billing service it’s become a game to me to find the human on the phone.  Even that they’re trying to mimic on the phone with new AI models–tricky business customer service is these days.

Am I better for avoiding integrating AI in my every day if I can help it? No, absolutely not, it’s just a free will choice such as I don’t use social media every day to find my news, etc.

Will I be left behind by the human race? I don’t feel anxious that I will, just perhaps that I will help be a mediator between our version of the “old” and the “new”.

What I am sure about is that as I’ve taught my children and other students in my online academy: we humans are still in “school”, we are still learning what is to temper ourselves and at the same time expand, conquer old habits and create new ways to help calm our common fear of finality—we crave Eternity.

Ramona V. Saridakis Bean

Trump calls on Congress to rein in state AI regulations

Walt Whitman’s Inspiration for Science Education Today

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January 4, 2024

A Simple Science Lesson: Painted by Poetry

In my home classroom this morning I introduced Walt Whitman’s poem “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”:

When I heard the learn’d astronomer;

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns

            Before;

When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to

            Add, divide, and measure them;

When I , sitting, heard the astronomer, where he

            Lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;

Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to 

            Time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45479/when-i-heard-the-learnd-astronomer

After I read it aloud, I asked my students what their reflections were and the consensus was that there was fatigue, sadness and a feeling of being overwhelmed.  I asked them if they feel bored, does a change of scenery help? In the case of this poem, was science more interesting to be experienced outside rather than just reducing it to a program of numbers and theses on paper? There was no wrong answer, I simply shared this poem and asked my children what they each perceived from it. 

Outdoors as a Rule

We had a good discussion about it and led to me sharing that I had always approached our “snack/break time” with the mindset that they were to get outside and experience nature through their physical senses. Over the years I’ve consistently made it a rule that they cannot play with balls, toys and other items when they go outside for the 15-30 minute outside break from our homeschool inside. While they can learn all the theories, equations and use technology as a means to learning about the sciences, I’ve been firm that they must spend a structured amount of time in nature to interact and have no agenda other than to experience or observe the outdoors in as raw a form as possible.

Teacher Teaching What She Learned

I came across Whitman’s poem during my reading of “ A New Natural Philosophy” by Ravi Scott Jain, Robbie Andreasen and Chris Hall.  The book examines how educators and administrators can approach “recovering a natural science and a Christian pedagogy. 

Their research and reflection helps reveal that in human history there has been recurring habit of the “poetic notions of reality” which will occur prior to scientific arguments/experiments/hypotheses. An example of their research work reveals “a theory of the multiverse and one of evolution date back to the ideas of the ancient Greeks, as does heliocenterism. The pre-Socratic thinker Anaximander suggested that men evolved from fish and also claimed an infinite number of universes were continually coming into existence and passing away. Natural scientists may talk about the multiverse, but they do well to recognize that they are participating in the very ancient discourse of natural philosophy: the love of wisdom regarding the natural world.” (13)

While “A New Natural Philosophical” is coming from a Christ-centered viewpoint, I believe that merely subscribing to an open, creative viewpoint can help the study of both science and growing technology by simply reflecting on artists like Walt Whitman. 

Consider the online article by Maria Popova entitled “When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer: What Walt Whitman’s Timeless Reckoning with the Limits of Science:

“No literary artist has wrested grander themes out of the reality of the natural world, nor channeled those themes more beautifully, than Whitman, for whom astronomy was a particularly beguiling lens on humanity’s intimacy with nature. He lived through a golden age of American astronomy, when the first university observatories were being erected, when comet discoveries and eclipse observations regularly made the front pages of the nation’s newspapers. After astronomers at the U.S. Naval Observatory discovered the first moon of Mars, and soon the second, Whitman exulted in his notebook: “Mars walks the heavens lord-paramount now; all through this month I go out after supper and watch for him; sometimes getting up at midnight to take another look at his unparallel’d lustre.”’

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer: Walt Whitman’s Timeless Reckoning with the Limits of Science

Why Share This? Technology and Science are Constant Companions of our Children

At the writing of this, I’m a mother to an 8, 12 and 15 year old respectively, I can attest that my biggest priority over the years is to help encourage them that in the realm of the sciences there is so much to be questioned and learned.  

I’ve often reminded them that even those who are scientists don’t know everything about their discipline or area of study.  That’s something to be celebrated and to hopefully help inspire those students who may find particular areas of study to be interesting so that they can add their own contribution.

In the technology arena, along with my husband’s support we’ve kept them from over-indulging in things like touchscreens and easy internet searches in lieu of learning how to read, interact with others and cultivate their inner creativity so as to integrate better in a rapidly changing world as humans weave their existence with increasing tools of their own making like ChatGPT.

To be continued…after all, we’re all in “school” together on this Earth.

R.V.S.B.

Photo Holiday Greeting Cards: Why Do We Still Send Them? Why Don’t I?

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January 1, 2024

The Christmas Present

It’s a beautiful Monday morning here in south Florida, first day of the new year and already I feel behind at the sight of my writing desk.  The reason? Both unanswered and embarrassingly, in some cases, unopened holiday cards and letters that have been sent to our household in the past several weeks.

They began to slowly appear the week after Thanksgiving. That should have been my sign to organize myself and make sure to upload some family photos at my local photo goods shop or even try the online services like Snapfish. 

Instead, I bought a couple of boxes of Christmas cards as an afterthought one day, pledging mentally that I would just answer each card greeting with a handwritten response as it came to our home as a personal touch. The weeks sped on into December, no responses sent.

There was a lull in mail activity in the second week of December followed by an onslaught of postcards and decorative envelopes. The week of Christmas itself had a sloshing sort of mail arrival volume on a daily basis making me dizzy at the thought of how many folks seemed to have it together for the holidays and yet I hadn’t been able to really write down one word cohesively in a Christmas or holiday greeting card.

Perhaps this is the part in the story that I should have made my way to our CVS Pharmacy store and sat myself down at the photo kiosk to put together a simple greeting card and prepare to seal and stamp countless cards the very next day before we left town for a family Christmas getaway.  

Again, I deviated from a logical and less stressful course and instead bought a few boxes of “Happy New Year” cards—my caustic mind thought that these overachieving acquaintances and friends were just going to have to accept a belated personal response wishing them well for 2024.

For those reading who know me personally, please forgive me that you may actually receive one of these aforementioned “Happy New Year” cards this very week prior to the feast of Epiphany.  Further, please truly forgive me if you never do.  

The oddest part about this present holiday writing behavior of mine is that if you do know me, I’m verbose during the rest of the year in the snail mail department.  I keep track of my letters and care packages on a weekly basis and I average at least 8 – 10 items each week throughout the year—excluding the deployment of postcards to family and friends when I travel on road trips or work my summers in Wyoming.

The Christmas Past

Let me dial back a bit to explain for proper context and some revelation for why I’m sarcastic and a little bitter about this ritual of photo card and letter swapping for the holidays. 

It used to be I always sent out a photo card of sorts and printed letter (sometimes hand-written for certain chosen recipients). In 2000 I got married and kept subscribing to this holiday correspondence for nearly two decades.

Sometime before the COVID-19 pandemic date marker of 2020, life for our household had become hectic with the understandable challenges of raising three children, living in a multi-generational home, and sustaining recent death in home hospice care of a beloved elderly family member, Grandma Marjorie Bean, who had lived with us and weathered years of dementia prior to her departure.  Additionally, I went back to school with the start of my MBA degree at University of Florida.

Basically, something had to give out with the mounting responsibilities here at home and so the stress and mess of getting a holiday card/letter greeting out to family, friends and co-workers took the proverbial “kick to the curb”.

The other factor I believe is indifference and a sense of redundancy that has overcome me in recent years.  

At least for those family members and friends who were on my social media outlets—in my personal case, primarily Facebook—I had noticed that most everyone was sharing photos and updates on their family lives throughout the year. In our case, we do not post our children’s photos online if we can help it as our choice until they are at age of consent for themselves.

Still, by the time the holiday season came around post-Thanksgiving, I felt we’d already been kept posted on the lives of others and so didn’t feel the urgency to know how people were doing or to go through the trouble of updating everyone.   

My holiday mail correspondence became one of a short list of must-send-outs with personal handwritten greetings and then responding to anyone else’s mail that came in with another personalized response.  Care packages continued as in years prior but now I didn’t toss in a mass copied photo card, I would print out individual photos and stick them into cards to those who hadn’t seen us all year.

Fast-forward to now and 2023 brought us another passing of a family member in our home during late September.  The patriarch of our family, Dr. William J. Bean, had a slow decline in health with months of hospice care at the house before passing at the age of 97.  

By the time the end of the year had come, my ability to write had become nearly obsolete by my standards because of pure fatigue. Hardly any cards left this house for the holiday season, even some care packages to family and friends lacked them. 

The Christmas Future

So why do people still send them? Why don’t I? 

These two questions have been cycling in my mind for weeks now and came to a chaotic and heartbreaking crescendo last week.

A few days after Christmas day I was informed of tragic news while working in the house with family members cleaning and decluttering in preparation for the upcoming new year.  

It was the type of news that shatters the normal clattering of life on a random weekday afternoon and pierces your spirit in the ethereal gut at the realization that someone you know left this Earthen plane much too soon.

After reviewing and putting my phone away, I stumbled over to sit at my writing desk to digest the news.  My mind whirled to clearly remember the last time I spoke with her a few weeks ago and had the vague recollection that I had received something from her in the mail. My hands fumbled through the paper stack mess on my desk to find her Christmas card. I found it within seconds and just looked at it as if it were for the first time.

Simple greetings were in the text with a cursive font appropriate for the season and a collage of beautiful photos of their family.  Pure bliss in all their eyes, photos picked just for this occasion to share with family and friends their joy in life and although so busy with all the things that a growing family has going on—her photo card was a way of saying something like, “hey, we’re super busy with wonderful things as you can see, but we care about you and hope you have a beautiful holiday season-xoxo”.

My eyes welled up to the blurriest degree as I pinned up her card on the wall next to my writing desk where I keep a running list of prayer petitions.  Her loved ones were now left with countless photos like these in her sudden absence. May her memory be eternal.+

In the days since, I’ve been going around my home and rummaging through my vehicle to locate every last holiday card and letter.  At the same time, I’ve been mentally drafting what I should or could write in a short amount of time to make up for another lost holiday correspondence effort this past season.

More effectively, regardless of who I’m able to reach in the next couple of weeks, I’m making a resolution to attempt in 2024 the Christmas et al list to share with those who still enjoy sharing their lives with us in this way. Just about 11 months to go at this rate for planning purposes right?

I guess I had become a “scrooge” of sorts in this realm of recent traditions, but after some revelations in the past few years including last week’s news, I admit that there is a net positive to engaging with others this way—especially when life’s circumstances or distances far apart keep us from seeing loved ones as often as we’d like while we’re here.

Blessed New Year to us all.

R.V.S.B.