Spider ballooning blows my mind.
100 years ago on Christmas Eve, Winnie the Pooh appeared for the first time in print. I was named for the boy in the story.
Watching Algeria v Sudan in the Africa Cup of Nations on Christmas Eve. One of the things that makes the tournament so interesting to me is learning about the teams and players and what they give to be able to play. In the case of Sudan, their national team is largely made up of players from the two big clubs of Al Hilal and Al Merreikh who have played their past two seasons in exile, joining the domestic leagues in Mauritania and Rwanda. Algeria was never going to lose the opener, and indeed they beat 10 men Sudan 3-0. But watching Sudan play their hearts out and especially their keeper Elneel, who stood on his head in the match, you see what it means for them to play and give hope and distraction to the people of Sudan.
Farewell to the bandicoots, farewell to the shrew. Farewell to the Slender-billed curlew. These are just some of the species officially declared extinct this year.
The Ontario government wants elected local officials to secretly waive archeological studies for development proposals. This year I visited Pompeii. Imagined if the local officials had just allowed a canal to be built through the ruins? Indigenous history interacted differently by people in Canada who believe that only European history and archeology is valid. There is a word for this blatant disregard of one person’s history over another’s simply because you don’t believe their story matters as much.
Share:
Rogue black holes, hacking LinkedIn and playing the birth lottery.
Share:
On contemplations ability to deliver awe. Richard Rohr:
We’re usually blocked against being awestruck, just as we are blocked against great love and great suffering. Early-stage contemplation is largely about identifying and releasing ourselves from these blockages by recognizing the unconscious reservoir of expectations, assumptions, and beliefs in which we are already immersed. If we don’t see what’s in our reservoir, we will process all new encounters and experiences in the same old-patterned way—and nothing new will ever happen. A new idea held by the old self is never really a new idea, whereas even an old idea held by a new self will soon become fresh and refreshing.
Back in 1985 kd lang came to Vancouver for a series of gigs and she showed up on Jack Webster’s phone in show charming the irascible commentator while being precocious and confident and solid within her own skin. And what follows is the most amazing half hour of banter and genius and fun ranging from reincarnation to old Scottish songs to feminist takes on go go dancing.
Share:
Khelsilem reflects on his most valuable lesson from his first term of a Masters of Public Administration, and he hones in on insights from the Competing Values Framework relating to how good leadership holds tensions :
At the individual level, CVF is quietly demanding. It suggests that many leaders are not under-skilled, but over-specialized. Under pressure, they default to familiar patterns—control, inspiration, competition, or care. Leadership development, through this lens, is about expanding range: being able to support without avoiding accountability, to drive results without burning people out, to innovate without destabilizing the system.
Frameworks that help people hold tensions are useful in complexity. There are many, and here’s a collection of them from Diane Finegood who taught the Semester in Dialogue at Simon Fraser University. They can all be useful depending on context, needs, and intentions.
Share:
I spent a beautiful Friday morning with colleagues and peers who were gathered through the Simon Fraser University Dialogue Community of Inquiry. One of the open space sessions I was in was about making space for dreaming and imagination, and coincidently, Interaction Institute has a blog post up this past week on dismantling fear with imagination, which is a short report on a recent gathering convened to talk about this topic.
People want transformative solutions, but decades of disinvestment, backlash, and political messaging have convinced many that big changes are unrealistic. When people don’t believe change is possible, they disengage or lower their expectations. The Hope Gap isn’t just a barrier to action, but a crisis in political imagination.
My friend Pauline Le Bel confronts the fear of dying in her new book of poems called “Becoming the Harvest.” If you live in Toronto, you might see one of her poems on the TTC. If you don;t you can hear her read it in this YouTube short, where she also talks about writing about death and becoming an ancestor.
Last night we had a real Pineapple Express. Winds gusting up to 90km/h flickered the power and brought down some smaller branches. We had about 80 mm of rain in the last 24 hours , but we are expecting another 100 or so today. Squamish has had 280mm of rain this week (150 yesterday alone), and the flooding continues in the Fraser Valley. Freezing levels are high, so whatever snow we have had, everything above 2500 meters has melted and flowed into the valleys.