When we are hard on ourselves, or hard on others, isn’t it interesting how it is those small moments that define character? Most of the time we are fine, everything is alright, things are calm. Even in war, soldiers spend most of their time in tedious inactivity punctuated by bursts of frightening violence. Cities are not in a constant state of crime. Governments work perfectly fine most of the time. It is the small aberrations that we notice and these then colour everything. When you become aware of how much fear you don’t have, how …
The Friday “From the Feed” returns for 2009. Great finds by other people: John Dumbrille blogs Clay Shirkey talking about egov and citizen engagement. George Nemeth retweeted Valdis Krebs‘ link to a list of great ambient recordings from 2008. The Tyee publishes a great series of 10 new ideas for the new year The Edge posts its annual question edition: “What will change everything?” Jordon Cooper and Stowe Boyd on the best windows desktop and web apps of the year. I love posts like these. If you have others, add them in the comments.
Another year is drawing to a close and I’m feeling very tired and very excited about what the year has been like. Taking a cue from Viv, here is my end of year post. In general 2008 was a year of teaching and travel. For the first half of the year I was on the road for 120 days, visiting places throughout British Columbia as well as Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Nova Scotia and southwards to Washington, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Florida, New York, Michigan and Georgia. Most of the teaching I did was with my mates in the Art of …
Van Jones – my inspiration for 2009 Photo by luxomedia I’ve blogged about Van Jones before, but last night I listened to a podcast of a talk he gave at a Social Change Forum at Hollyhock on Cortes Island earlier this year. With a powerful mix of humour and truth telling, he describes the confluence of social justice and environmental justice and calls for a new politics that transcends dualities, us vs, them thinking and win/lose outcomes. He also make a powerful point about how our absolute reliance on deliverables, outcomes and achievables makes us liars, as we …
Play, movement, beauty, and grace – this is why I love juggling. It uses a hard constraint (the predictable inevitability of gravity) as a resource to create beauty. Thanks to Thomas for the link, who is my own master at this aesthetic.