I had never come across the work of Mary Parker Follett before until this week, and I have had some Firefox tabs open with her work in them including The New State written in 1918 when it must have felt like the state itself had become a murderous and inhumane human construction, in which the role of groups in democratic process must have seemed in need of some deep reflection. Follet lays out her thesis in the very first paragraph of the work: Politics must have a technique based on the understanding of the laws of association, that is, based …
Nanaimo, BC If you arrive in Departure Bay on the 6:30 am ferry from Horseshoe Bay, and the fog is so thick that you can hardly see from ship to shore, and you walk along the waterfront, past the marinas and chandelries and seedy nautical-themed alehouses and you take a moment to admire the gleam of a freshly burnished screw on a small tug in dry dock and you say “good morning” to everyone you pass because it’s still early enough that we’re all neighbours, and you stop to admire a surfacing eider duck and you spend a few minutes …
For my friends Toke and Silas and their learning mates in Kufunda who train in the arts of peaceful warriorship in the dojo there, using swords and inquiry to acheive clarity and peace.: One day Soshi was walking on the bank of a river with a friend. “How delightfully the fishes are enjoying themselves in the water,” exclaimed Soshi. Hi friend spoke to him thus: “You are not a fish, how do you know that the fishes are enjoying themselves?” “You are not myself,” returned Soshi. “How do you know that I do not know that the fishes are enjoying …
It’s really impossible to overstate the worry I heard in people’s voices today. In our meeting an Elder named Billy Bird spoke briefly before lunch and reminded the group just what had been lost – the salmon runs, the crab and prawns, the seaweed beds, the clam gardens. The Namgis people and their relatives on Gilford Island, Kingcombe Inlet and Oweekeno are ocean people. Their life is on the ocean and without access to the ocean the fear is that they are no longer a people at all. For thousands of years these people have lived in …
Alert Bay, BC Not a bad place to blog from eh? This is the kitchen counter I am sitting at in a wonderful house in Alert Bay overlooking the bay itself and looking up the channel towards Port McNeil. I am staying at a place called “Above the Bay,” owned by a lovely couple, Dave and Maureen who also have a spot right down on the water called “On the Beach.” This is going to turn into a shameless plug for their place, because the sun just set behind the Vancouver Island mountains and the beauty is astonishing and its …