From my friend Jerry Nagel, a quote from guitar maker Phil Patrillo: We send our kids to school. I call it the “brain laundry.” They teach them everything you don’t want them to know. It’s done in the name of education and fairness and righteousness, and the things of common sense and how things are done, are never explored. You get a piece of paper with your name on it, if you follow the instructions. I got a Doctorate not because I wanted the piece of paper; I got the Doctorate because my professor said to me, “You know more …
Please consider joining us on Bowen Island, BC, Canada for an Art of Hosting learning retreat, October 3-6, 2010. On the hosting team will be Teresa Posakony, Caitlin Frost and Tenneson Woolf, me. Pass along to your networks or to anyone you know interested in this opportunity. As well as working with and learning about participatory process, living systems, and chaordic design, in this Art of Hosting retreat we will be working extensively with harvesting, with change models currently being developed by the Berkana Institute, with Byron Katie’s inquiry work, with improv theatre exercises and probably some Warrior of the …
Harrison Owen periodically restates his invitation to the world to not only join in Open Space but to go as far as you can in Open Space and see where it takes you. I feel like my work of late has been about this in many ways, and Harrison’s recent post to the OSLIST came at just the right time for me. Here is what he says: A long time ago a good friend, Ralph Copleman, was to be found in the middle of a large circle of peers dressed in a flowing cape and repeating the words, “Everything is …
From the Ontario trip, three new musicians: I saw Michael Ketemer playing a beaten up old Larrivee at the Peterborough Farmer’s Market on Saturday. He bore a little resemblance to Neil Young, with long stringy hair under a ball cap, but he is a much different kind of guitarist. Lovely virtuoso finger picking Celtic guy. He played a few very unusual set dances and some jigs and reels for me and we talked a little. I asked him which of his albums he was most proud of and he handed me “Yellow Stockings” which I bought. You can listen to …
Humid air full of cicada song, crickets and the slow drawl of tires on gravel roads. Ontario summer rural. # Pink thunder heads full of lightning rising out of the twilight. Ringed by storms on an evening swim in the clear waters of Georgian Bay. # Humidity broken, crisp clear Beaver Valley summer air. Now is the time the local apples take in their sweetness. # COME ON YOU SPURS!!! that is all… #coys # The hush of wind in the poplars and a mourning dove. Sometimes Victorian Ontario awakens to the present. # Off to Peterborough today for more …