Lately I’ve been using this saying a lot:
The scary part about the lunatics taking over the asylum is that they tend to lock themselves back in their cells.
How many times have we seen that, eh? People get control of something, find “liberation” only to lock themselves back into the very cells from which they freed themselves. It happens in organizations, families, communities, and even in the relatively geological timescales of countries that begin in revolution against despotism only to end up back there again as much as, say, 200 odd years later.
Just flying between facilitation gigs. Vancouver Island one day, Ottawa the next with just a breath to catch at home. While I’m here I caught some changes to Michael Herman’s project at the Giving Market. He has created sCNN – The small Change News Network:
“The small Change News Network is for connecting all kinds of small gifts and donations, news of small successes, plans for small improvements, and Little Individual doers in ways that can make a big difference. sCNN invites Active Citizens to share their personal passion, unique gifts, spare time, financial resources, community connections, life skills and experiences — to make small change happen and big change possible.”
Go visit there and help him build it.
I received an email from Galen Scorer today through his sister Tiffany, a friend of mine. Galen is putting together a project in Toronto that the blogosphere should know about:
Hello my name is Galen Scorer and starting in October I will be launching a work in the DeLeon White Gallery in Toronto Canada as a part of the McLuhan Festival. I am looking for people from around the world to participate in this work. What I am requiring are people who have access to a web cam to donate some camera/network time for the first three weeks of October. The project description is as follows:
An indeterminate number of cameras point towards the sky. The collective presence of all these images are joined together into an additive composite. While it isn’t possible to distinguish individual characteristics from each location the composite becomes a hybrid of all sky� the impossible sky.
If you want to help him build the impossible sky – what an invitation! – learn more at
the project website. Or email him at impossiblesky@galen.ca.
I always say this when he finds a quote that resonates with me.
Good old whiskey river:
Read carefully, then don’t read; work hard, then forget about it; know your tradition, then liberate yourself from it; learn language, then free yourself from it. Finally, know at least one form of magic.
– Gary Snyder
– Gary Snyder
WR has been on a bit of a “quotes about writing” tear at the moment. It’s worth perusing his recent entries if that sort of thing interests you.