I’ve been tagged by Jeremy Hiebert, Johnnie Moore and Dan Oesterrich to play this game, so that’s a compelling invitation…
Here are five things that you probably don’t know about me:
1. From the ages of 10-13 I lived in the UK. My father was transferred there to set up some computer systems for the Canada Life Assurance Company from 1978-81. I lived in three houses in three years all in southeast Hertfordshire. We lived in Broxbourne, Hertford and Widford. While there I attended Flamstead End primary school, Morgan’s Walk primary and Richard Hale School (also the alma mater of Rupert Grint from Harry Potter fame), Many of you knew that, but here are some facts about my life there that you might not have known:
- I played cricket and specialized in playing short leg and silly point, largely at the behest of a vindictive coach who was appalled at my batting ability. I also developed not a bad leg break (bowling style, not injury!), so to say I was a specialist was putting in mildly.
- I was bullied fairly extensively at Richard Hale and had two very lonely years there.
- I spent a few weeks living with a family in rural France when I was 12. They spoke no English and had two cats. It was there that I discovered my allergy to cats which used to be asthma heavy. Trying to get a prescription for Ventolin in Moissac in 1980 as a Canadian citizen visting France with friends of the family made for a long and interesting day. I did get to watch the Olympics though (they were blacked out in the UK in 1980).
2. When I was a teenager I had my heart set on becoming an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada. I was mentored heavily by three amazing ministers: Hanns Skoutajan, John Lawson and Will Walker and encouraged by many others. Ultimately, I chose not to work in the United Church, but my work is very much about the call to serve others in community and organization. In that respect, when people ask me how long I have been doing this work, I sometimes reply, in all seriousness, “since I was 17.” Oh yeah, and our church was called “St. James-Bond United Church.” Seriously.
3. Although not athletic in the traditional sense of playing on organized teams much, I come from a family of notable atheletes. My paternal grandfather, Jack Corrigan, played football for the University of Toronto Varsity Blues in the 1920s and my maternal grandfather, Maurice Murphy played lacrosse for the Mimico Mountaineers in the 1930s. He won a Mann Cup with that team in 1932, and his brother Joe Murphy went on to fame as a lacrosse player and later a referee. Joe was inducted into the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1975. My sister, Suzanne, was a minor sports celebrity for a while. In the late 1980s and early 1990s she set standards by becoming the first girl to play Junior C hockey in Ontario as a goalie with the Hanover Knights of the Ontario Junior Hockey League. She was also the first girl to play boys high school hockey, when she suited up in goal for the Lawrence Park Panthers. She was part of a small number of young women in the 1980s that played hockey with young men in the light of the Justine Blainey case at the Ontario Court of Appeal in 1986. Justine was a linemate of my sister’s at Leaside in Toronto for a few years.
4. I have had a few unusual jobs over the years, but the strangest, or at least the one that seems most interesting to folks, was the cemetary worker. Mostly I cut grass at Mount Pleasant cemetary in Toronto, working for an alcoholic supervisor during the summer of 1986. My supervisor was prone to making strange staffing decision with the summer students, so he put me on a shift one day helping to fill graves. That involved helping the crew pack the earth down after the coffin had been buried and the funeral was over. Several practical jokes ensued, including one where I was asked to get down in the grave to retreive a rake after which a shovel full of dirt came down on my head prompting a highly visceral fear of being buried alive. One rainy day I also did an afternoon helping inside the crematorium. That was just plain creepy. The crematorium supervisor had a little jar of metal bits in his desk. One doesn’t ask.
5. This Saturday, god willing and the creeks don’t rise, and provided I can perform 100 push ups, 11 patterns and 10 different breaking techniques at the end of a three hour physical test of sparring, kicking, punching and blocking techniques, I will take my 1st Dan black belt in Kukkiwon style taekwondo. Wish me luck.
And tag to Christy, Ashley, Dustin, Michael and Jack!
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I have made all of these notes at my flickr site. When you visit these links, view them in order and be sure to read the notes and annotations on the photo page. Most of the photos are pictures of my journal, where I was recording my thoughts as we went along. Click on the photos to view the notes.
Conversation 1
We began with our first conversation about harvesting, by seeing harvest as a cycle:
Conversation 2
In the second conversation, I started explaining to Monica the difference between folksonomy and taxonomy and how the two might work together to create meaning. This was based on a conversation I had with George:
From there, Monica and I wondered about the simple hobbit tools of harvesting including the most basic kind of cycling and iteration:
That prompted a powerful learning about what happens when we see harvest in an evolutionary context, when well designed feedback loops create great depth and meaning and transcendance:
Conversation 3
Seeking to understand more about the patterns we were seeing, we co-convened a session on harvesting during the Open Space and we collaborated on the recording. Monica focused on deep questions and I focused on further articulating the cyclical nature of deep harvest:
I have walked away from these conversation with a deep and lively question: What if the Art of Hosting was actually the Art of Harvesting?
Why is this important? I think it matters that harvest, good harvest, moves organizations and communities forward, links leadership and action to conversation and makes the best use of the wisdom that is gathered from meetings. If you have ever wondered about meetings that seem not to go anywhere, this inquiry into harvesting, sensemaking and iterative action holds the key to avoiding those kinds of situations. It’s not enough just to have good process and a good facilitator – the results of the work must also be alive in the organization. That’s where we are going with this.
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Okay, so for more than 50 years we’ve known that Santa has been tracked by NORAD on Christmas Eve, but this year it seems like he might be having a bit of trouble getting off what’s left of the polar ice cap.
But seriously… the news from the north is not good.
[tags]arctic, global warmng, climate change, santa[/tags]
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Please consider joining myself, Toke Moeller, Sera Thompson, Tim Merry, Vanessa Reid and Stephani McCallum and Richard Delaney from the Canadian Institute for Public Engagement as we host an Art of Hosting training in the Gatineau Hills just north of Ottawa, Ont. We will be there March 5-8 exploring design, facilitation and harvesting from conversations that matter.
You can find the full invitation at the Art Of Hosting website.
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Eighteen years after the event, I still choose to remember the women killed at the Ecole Polytechnic in Montreal. Many of these women were my age, they were my contemporaries, they were students when I was a student and their murders touched many of us very deeply. So, as I have done every year, i invite you to join me in remembering these fourteen women and all women who have been murdered by men.
- Geneviève Bergeron (b. 1968), civil engineering student.
- Hélène Colgan (b. 1966), mechanical engineering student.
- Nathalie Croteau (b. 1966), mechanical engineering student.
- Barbara Daigneault (b. 1967) mechanical engineering student.
- Anne-Marie Edward (b. 1968), chemical engineering student.
- Maud Haviernick (b. 1960), materials engineering student.
- Maryse Laganière (b. 1964), budget clerk in the École Polytechnique’s finance department.
- Maryse Leclair (b. 1966), materials engineering student.
- Anne-Marie Lemay (b. 1967), mechanical engineering student.
- Sonia Pelletier (b. 1961), mechanical engineering student.
- Michèle Richard (b. 1968), materials engineering student.
- Annie St-Arneault (b. 1966), mechanical engineering student.
- Annie Turcotte (b. 1969), materials engineering student.
- Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (b. 1958), nursing student.