Spent an hour in conversation with a friend in the US last night discussing the role of dialogue in connecting communities together. My friend has extensive experience working with immigrant, refugee communities and in working with inner city agencies. He’s been personally affected by Trump’s travel edict as his family members are directly targetted by the current travel ban. He’s a man I respect very much. We were talking about ways to connect and understand the “other side.” After our conversation I stumbled over this podcast on the “deep story” of what is motivating Trump supporters, and probably both Brexit …
Metro Vancouver Parks, the entity responsible for a major regional park on my home island has posted a warning about the conditions on Killarney Lake. Or perhaps it’s a commentary on global affairs.
This morning, I’m reading this article. It’s a review of two books charting the changes in fishing practices in the north eastern Pacific over the last century. I’ve been witness to some of these changes, directly involved as I’ve watch abundant fish stocks in British Columbia become concentrated in the hands of a few corporate owners, with most of the economic activity associated with those fish moving off shore. Fishing communities in British Columbia are a mere shadow of their former selves, our coastal waterways (and wild salmon migration routes) are dotted with farms that grow invasive Atlantic salmon using …
A couple of years ago – back when I had long hair – I was doing some work in Estonia, where I was part of a team of people that were leading a week long workshop learning about leadership, complexity, dialogue and belonging. I was interviewed under a tree one afternoon about some of the concepts and the deeper implications of what we teach in the Art of Hosting workshops, which itself is, at its simplest, a set of practices to help facilitate participatory meetings better. I talked a bit about what the Art of Hosting means, the need …
From time to time, I’ve made notes about my working set up, noticing that things change a lot over the years. Inspired by my friend Peter Rukavina, but with substantially less detail, here is my current set up. Infrastructure My office is located in a dormer on the upper floor which faces south and is surrounded on three sides by windows. to the west I can see the Queen Charlotte Channel, the waterway that separates Bowen Island from West Vancouver. To the west is the forested slopes of Mount Collins, and in front below me are my neighbours in the …