I was facilitating a very difficult process last week with a complex group. Over three days, my plan for the work changed constantly, responding to the internal and external pressures that were flowing all around us. At the end of the second day, I felt slain, as if anything I tried to do had the opposite of its intended effect. It was a tough day for all of us. On the third day, during which some remarkable transformations came forward from the group, one group member told me a story in a break. He was a commercial fisherman, who has …
In case you’ve always wondered where all those performers at Cirque de Soleil come from, check out Cirkids. Located in Vancouver, I have known about this group for quite awhile, due in no small part to the fact that they have a whole day of training for homeschooled kids every Wednesday. Today our family went to see their annual show, this year based around a theme of mermaids, pirates, and love lost and found. The show is a full on professional circus performance in the spirit of Cirque de Soleil or Cirque Eos, except done with kids, some of them …
Silence by Valentin Bazarov John Cage’s piece 4’33” – the infamous four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence – is commonly thought of as a joke. Even serious music criticism has a hard time treating it as little more than a novelty: “At the first performance in 1952 it was played (if that’s the right word) by a pianist who indicated the movements by raising and lowering the piano lid; and it made an arresting point about the nature of silence – as something other than an absence of sound and a way to make the human ear aware …
Dave Pollard got the idea a few weeks ago to run a “Great Canadian Song Contest” and I agreed to be one of the judges. The results are in and posted at his blog, and although this is just about as unscientific a poll as you could imagine, the final list would still be a wonderful introduction to non-Canadians to ourselves and our land. Canadian Railroad Trilogy tied with A Case of You for fist place, by the way.
Lately here in British Columbia, we have been in some major labour strife between the government and the public sector unions, most recently the hospital employees union. (HEU) A couple of weeks ago there was a strike that escalated and then ended with legislation that was perceived as illegal by some union workers who stayed out on strike, gaining support from other unions and nearly precipitating a general strike in the province. I was talking last night with a friend of mine, an emergency room nurse who is, by all accounts, left leaning, but who doesn’t like strikes in general …