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Leonora Zoninsein guides me through what smell is by attuning me to 9 different wild olfactory materials as a foundation for composing personal and historical narratives. The faculty meeting was held at P.P.O.W. Gallery during “Airhead” (June 28 - August 9, 2024) and as a part of Miss Othmar School for Teachers.

The listener is not addressed and cannot smell.

-Teaching is odor 

-Teaching is connecting one sense to another 

-Teaching is having one sense and not the other: I smell it but cannot see it

-Teaching is simile 

-Teaching is creating reactions to an unknown and affirming them by anchoring them to a place and a moment. 

-Teaching is creating a geography (not a geology)

Leonora Zoninsein is a geographer and perfume artist. In her academic research and creative work, she has been asking, what is smell? She considers it a political, historical and place specific thing that is constantly made and remade.

Miss Othmar is the name of that teacher of Charlie Brown that’s heard and never seen. Her voice carries no words and transmits no facts. Her professing is an undulating song. Nevertheless C.B. and his classmates seem to follow along.

Miss Othmar is teaching over radio. "Miss Othmar's Meetings with Teachers" is a series that collects the voices of different teachers and facilitators from a variety of fields and their approaches to leading the listener through exercises over radio.

Timmy Simonds is an artist interested in the ways we perceive education and our expectations of the teacher cross culturally. He broadcasts regularly with Montez Press Radio and Wave Farm's WGXC 90.7-FM.