Burlington, Vermont I grew up in Ontario and this my favourite time of year in Eastern North America for many reasons. But chief among those reasons is what happens to forests out here in the fall. It is hard to describe to anyone who has never seen them, a maple forest in the fall, where the colours are bright yellow, orange and red. Pitched against a blue sky, the scene is iconic, beautiful and stirs up a nostalgia in me for home. Flying from Choicago to Burlington today, we crossed over the maple woodlots of the farming …
I’m on the road again, travelling to Burlington Vermont to Open Space at the CommunityMatters07 conference. This is a great conference, working with really interesting people focused on innovative and artistic practices for community planning. It seems that I’m doing a fair amount of work these days with artists and with those who see themselves as practictioners of an art, whether it is my colleagues in the Art of Hosting, the community artists from the Art of Engagement or these community planners. I have a sense that there is an emerging consciousness around work: that people increasingly see …
Jack Martin Leith is writing again, prolifically and brilliantly on the subject of facilitation, conferences, meeting, organization and work in general. I may be late to the party, noticng his new blog, but I’m glad to see him back on the web sharing as generously as ever.
I have been absorbed lately in a series of photographs about China form an online exhibit called “Humanizing China.” The exhibit is divided into three subject areas: Survival, Relationships and Desires. I have all three loaded into permanenty open tabs in my browser and I spend a few minutes at a time reflecting on these photos. It is like a little mindfulness meditation and a good practice of seeing to just be with these images and reflect on the multitude of untold stories that lie beneath these moments captured with light.
Our federal government announced in it’s throne speech yesterday that it was intending to extend Canada’s mission in Afghanistan to 2011. I have written before about my thoughts on the war there, and our role in it. Now, I’m adding my voice to a number of other bloggers who are demanding that we end our role in this conflict. Here are my reasons why: We are in a combat mission in Afghanistan. In other words we are a fighting force participating in a war. This is not a peacekeeping mission. It bears remembering that we went to Afghanistan, and we …