Port McNeil, BC
THis was an insane idea, but that is the nature of my travel schedule these days. It’s late – almost 2 in the morning – and I’m awake because I’m still a little buzzed from having driven this trip tonight. It’s bad enough to drive have the length of Vancouver Island, but crazier still to do it with a six hour flu and starting the whole trip at sundown.
For whatever reason this afternoon I developed a pounding headache in the middle of a little Open Space meeting I was facilitating for our learning community on Bowen Island. I got a little healing from my friend Roq and popped an advil before lining up for the 5:00pm ferry from Bowen to the mainland. On the ferry ride over, I could barely gape in awe at the colours of the sky because my stomach joined in the fun. It was most comfortable for me to stand leaning against the wall with my belly, in a state of half sleep.
Once I reached the other side, I turned around and lined up for the ferry to Vancouver Island, grabbed a shot of espresso from Blenz in Horseshoe Bay (meh) and then borded the 7pm boat to Nanaimo. On that trip whatever it was that was bundled up inside seemed to just dissipate, and I was clear and calm and quite concentrated actually. I did a little work on the ferry, resigned myself to a super of apples and oranges and had a cup of tea.
When we arrived in Nanaimo, I put Carmina Burana in the CD player, crancked it and headed up island. I was completely in flow and stayed alert for the whole 3.5 hours it took me to rocket through the mountains to Port McNeil. There was hardly anyone on the road at all – I passed probably less than 12 cars between Campbell River and Port, and I was lucky enough to see an elk meandering along the side of the road. Lucky too that he was on the OTHER side of the road. Halfway through the trip I switched disks and cranked my friend Moritz Behm’s CD called “Beauty” which is one of my all time favourite road CDs. It never leaves the road trip case.
I pulled in to the Black Bear Resort (it’s a motel on the edge of town, but comfy enough and the young woman at the counter stayed up past her 11:00 closing just for me, so yay to them for great service) at 12:30 feeling clear and refreshed, as if I had been meditating for the past 7 hours, and indeed I had. So under good conditions, even at night with patches of fog but a three quarters moon illuminating the snowy clearcuts, it’s 1:30 to Campbell River from Nanaimo and 1:50 to Port McNeil from there. And that’s good time, within the legal speed limit…mostly.
Later this morning, I’ll be up early to catch a ferry to Alert Bay, where more adventures await. Amazed though tonight at how solid everything is. Maybe that guy Roq was working more than just a little headache healing…
[tags] Vancouver Island, Port McNeil[/tags]
Harvest is alive. A new voice to me, that of Stuart Scott, talks about the limitations of the metaphor and what harvesting could really be: read Bringing In the Sheaves.
Interesting report from a group I hadn’t heard of before, the Centre for Innovative and Entrepreneurial Leadership. THey have just released a publication called “Coping with Growth and Change: The state of leadership in rural BC.” I have an interest in this given that I teach and facilitate collaborative leadership and I live ina rural community in BC.
The report’s authors write:
“Many people see leadership development assisting with issues like change, economic diversification, youth attraction, innovation and collaboration, key ingredients to 21st Century success for rural communities.”
Many communities reported that youth are moving away and young families are not moving in. “Young people between the ages of 25 and 34 are the ones who typically start families and businesses, critical issues for communities,” says report co-author Mike Stolte, President-Elect of the Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation (CRRF).
“The theme of youth leadership came up time and time again,” stated report co-author Stacy Barter, of CIEL. “Communities say they don’t know how to engage younger people. The established leaders are getting older and many of them are feeling burned out.”
One of the things that is exhausting community leaders, according to the study, is the increasing challenge of creating dialogue and communication between groups. “Many communities told us they want to work together, but they just don’t know how,” said Barter. “They want to learn how to practice collaborative leadership.”
The report shows that many communities are caught in a bind. “If special care is not taken to conserve the qualities fostering our community’s distinctive character, critical dimensions of its image and identity may be lost.” “These issues are dividing communities,” said Barter.
“The kind of leadership training they are asking for, collaborative leadership, involves the skills of leading a community through these differences. Without a new kind of leadership, they are telling us, the differences will continue to divide people, and the rate of growth will continue to overwhelm them.”
It seems there is an appetite everywhere for this kind of leadership. Yesterday talking with a friend involved in the biodeisal energy he was speculating that the shift in leadership models to something ore dialogic and less top down is a generational one. He was remarking that it seemed as if the current generation of 35-55 year olds were assuming th emantle of leadership and were altering by flattening structures that concentrate power. Of course my friend Jon Husband has been predicting this for a long time. He calls the idea wirearchy, informed as it is by the ways in which networked structures change power systems and leadership lenses. This report is encouraging to me, as it says that more and more people in governance systems (who tend to cling to the status quo) are finally loosening the kinds of leadership styles that characterize local government, and they are looking for some other way to deal with the stresses of the work they have to do.
[tags]local government, british columbia, rural communities, wirearchy[/tags]
Victoria BC
Wrapping up my week’s worth of work here in Victoria. Three good meals have been had in the past few days:
- Yesterday we ordered in lunch as we were really humming on the work. One of the staff went took orders for The Noodle Box. They only have 12 or so items on their menu, and eight different ways of spicing it. Go for the Spicy Peanut Noodle Box spiced medium plus. Yummy.
- Two days ago lunch at the down to earth Cafe Mulatta in James Bay, where the jerk chicken comes with a nice concoction of rice, beans and coconut.
- And dinner tonight with my friend Patricia Galaczy at my favourite Victoria restaurant, reBar. It isn’t the best food in town but it’s healthy, largely local and organic and the place has a nice vibe. They treat food like it should be treated – as nourishment and sustenance. They have a phenomenal juice bar, with a special juice everyday (strawberry kiwi fennel, tonight) and the specials are always good. Tonight I stuck with the tried and true Monk’s Curry bowl, which is basically a veggie stir fry on a bed of noodles with a great coconut curry sauce.
Tonight is absolutely still. I made a podcast of the quiet on the harbour tonight but I have some problem with my USB cable for my voice recorder so it ill have to wait.
[tags]victoria, rebar, cafe mullata, the noodle box[/tags]
Stumbled over a collection of stories and accounts of dialogue being used in a variety of mediation and conflict resolution settings. The author of this site refers to four different types of dialogue:
- Positional or adversarial dialogue
- Human relations dialogue
- Activist dialogue
- Problem solving dialogue
The site is hosted by the Online Training Program on Intractable Conflict, which is no longer in existence, but the archive of which makes for some interesting reading
[tags]conflict, mediation[/tags]
Photo by .ash