I’m giving Current a spin. It is an RSS feed reader that is built differently. It treats RSS feeds as readable treats rather than emails to be answered and processed. It deliberately seeks to remove the stressful and addictive interfaces that drive social media and productivity software, and it offers a clean interface for the words written by my friends and those I admire and follow. This might be the best way to get into reading blogs again for those of you that don’t do it yet.
Small town libraries save the world. I live in a small town. I spend more time at the library than perhaps any other single place in this town. I use it as an office, a place to rest, a place to meet people, to learn about things, to learn how to swing dance or listen to my friends and neighbours sharing stories. So enjoy Nick Fuller Googins’ essay on small town libraries:
Another library book introduced me to Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, a maverick scientist-artist who travels the world, collects mutated insects downwind of nuclear reactors, then documents the deformities by painting slides. How fascinating! How bizarre! What could be the subject of a book itself ended up as a side-plot in my novel, set in San Luis Obispo (downwind of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant), and ready to derail Josie’s ant dissertation and academic career.
Would I have stumbled across these odd tidbits online, or through AI prompts? Possibly. Doing generative research online, however, is like dipping a glass into the Pacific in hopes of finding an “interesting” cup of water. How do you know when you have one? How does Google or Grok sift and deliver results, compared with a living, breathing human at Belfast’s Public Library? They can’t.
One reason that small-town library research works so well is because of its natural parameters. Rather than an ocean of information to click through, you get a small stack of books. A small stack of books is manageable. It’s focusing. In our era of seemingly limitless data, I for one thrive on these boundaries. By constraining my initial research like this, oddly enough, I was expanding my results.
Just today I stopped into my own small town library to set up a meeting with one of the staff members and another friend, and I walked out of there with “A Psalm for The Wild Built” which my friend Marysia described as “HopePunk” (a genre I was thrilled to know existed!) and I was sold, especially after three of the staff there recommended it and Becky Chambers’ work in general. This author is new to me, but a sweet novel under 200 pages recommended by great people ticks all the boxes for me.
I’m sceptical about any politician that says they will lower grocery prices by instituting tax cuts or providing rebates to consumers who will just spend that money on inflated grocery prices. Solutions need to be structural. Public grocery stores might be part of that solution, however.
I had no idea about US energy markets and the role that meteorology plays in them. Today Mark Ingalls lifts the lid on all of that a bit.
Chief Laurie Carr expresses an eloquent calling to account for Prime Minster Carney, using his Davos speech to hold him to a high standard of integrity at home.
Prime Minister, this is precisely what Canada demands of First Nations, participation without power, consultation without influence, reconciliation without restitution. We are asked to stand politely at the edge of the room while decisions are made and then told we were included.
You called for “naming reality.”
So let us name it. Canada speaks the language of values abroad while practicing expediency at home. It champions a rules-based order internationally while treating First Nations rights domestically as obstacles to be managed, delayed or overridden.
For many of us, as important as Carney’s speech was, and as truthful as it was, it was also clearly at odds with how his government has pursued their domestic policy over the past year. The excuse of “we need to move fast because the world is facing a crisis” cannot be a rationale for us to move unjustly. Both can be true if both speed and justice are principles that limit and drive your action.
Loneliness at work, at home, in community. It’s pervasive. Some research is reporting on interventions.
Research points to several evidence-based approaches that can reduce loneliness when implemented thoughtfully. First, providing social support is one of the most reliable ways to reduce loneliness, particularly for people already at higher risk. Peer mentoring, group-based support and structured opportunities for connection are especially effective because they create safe environments where relationships can develop.
Building social skills also helps. Loneliness is not always about a lack of opportunity; it can also reflect difficulty initiating or sustaining social connections. Interventions that strengthen interpersonal skills, such as communication and relationship-building, can reduce loneliness by helping people feel more confident and about social interactions at work.
Volunteering reduces isolation. Volunteering has emerged as a particularly promising strategy for reducing loneliness. Engaging in meaningful, pro-social activities outside one’s core role can strengthen social bonds and increase feelings of connection, making it a valuable component of broader organizational strategies.
Give someone a call today.
Phil Rosenthal, being interviewed by Tom Power.
Phil Rosenthal, interviewed last year by Tom Power on Q at CBC talking about what it was like when he stepped into running Everybody Loves Raymond. It’s great interview, but I love the section that begins at 21 minutes. It was his first job as a show runner, and he learned from other bosses he had worked for. He was scared, and he was a rookie. But he established a clear vision and then took care of the connective tissue between his staff. He adopted a persona that was “nice” rather than dictatorial. He wanted people to love coming to work. He focused on the food that people ate, and hired a chef to delight the staff and give them something to connect over. Adopting the principles of “the army travels on its stomach” he knew that food would bring the cast and crew together in a way that abstract hand waving at values could not. The result was that the show created a feeling of family.
A family is not always the best generative image for an organization. Families are complicated, and full of tricky dynamics. But when they work well, they anchor loyalty to one another and create sustaining love and friendship. When people talk about their workplace as “my family” it’s usually because they experience the best of what a family can be. A chosen family. Rosenthal gets that and he gets what it takes to put his optimistic worldview into practice. He says “Food is the great connector and laughter is the cement.” To paraphrase Harrison Owen, who was a devoted observer of high performing teams. trust the people and notice when they are laughing because that is a sign that it’s working.
In the past few years I have seen so many workplaces and organizations that could benefit from this simple wisdom, this gentle approach. It is often the small things that make the difference, that build the connective tissue that keeps a team going through the inevitable ups and downs of organizational life. you have to work on the love part, because people don’t always like each other, or don’t always like the behaviours and actions. If that isn’t attended to, groups of people can reach a social impasse and sometimes the only move left is to leave or come apart. That entails tremendous cost to individuals and to the organization. It is sometimes the only fix, but it won’t always leave you stronger. And even if it does, the work is to repair, to take a new approach and build trust and friendship and commitment to one another back into the work. It’s a long and slow process, because once trust is diminished, it is requires deep commitment to change to re-establish it.
We’re in a world where trust seems very low and self-awareness, responsibility, and a willingness to grow together is at a premium. These are what Harold Jarche calls “permanent skills” and they need training and practice on the regular. They don’t go away and there is no place or time when they are not helpful.
My neighbour Alejandro Frid is an ecologist and works extensively with Coastal First Nations in British Columbia. I love his work as a scientist and as an author and I love the way he shares wheat he is doing such as in this story on Kitaspo/Xai’xais fisheries management. Last night he spoke at Speak the Spark, a n every-two-months storytelling even here on Bowen Island where local folks share stories around a theme. It’s a bit like The Moth. Last night the theme was Faux Pas’s and Unexpected Turns and we heard stories about giving up wealth for happiness, photographing New York on the morning of 9/11. accidentaly dressing up as a clown for a school carnival, making an innocent comment to a friend on a train that was taken the wrong way, and we heard Alejandro’s story about how a handwritten request for computer help led to a decades long collaboration with his dearest research partner.
Cory Doctorow is travelling around discussing the history of, and the antidote to, enshittification. Here a transcript of a recent talk which is a kind of call to arms for our participation in the current and ongoing trade wars by creating and selling tools that liberate the users of technology of all kinds, lower fees and prices, and secure some degree of tech sovereignty for Canada and others.
A short story from Thea Lim about a private investigator, his technique and his subject and how it is that we all fade into the totality of a city. The story takes place near where I grew up in Toronto so the setting is vivid to me. Anyone Could Be Anyone is published in The Walrus.
Life in the vast lane. Doc Searles reflects on how the internet has changed over the past 25 years for those of us who create and share our own stuff here.
Anything that, as Mark McKergow puts it “offloads cognitive strain” is valuable especially when a person needs to bring all of their cognitive abilities to the task at hand. Not surprisingly then, you find that the situations where there is likely to be chaos or catastrophic failure, tools like checklists are everywhere: in operating rooms, flight decks, factories, fire halls, kitchens. Mark shares some solid thoughts on these humble tools.
A little section of the Litany of Becoming by m. jade kaiser and pointed out to me by Tenneson this morning.
To say, for the first time,
“This is who I am.
This is the truth of my body.
This is what I know about myself.
This is my name and this is where my path is leading me.”
And to have it heard. Have it received. Have it affirmed.
And then,
to say it again,
and again,
as we change
and as the world changes,
and to have each proclamation greeted with an open-armed embrace
New books to read from The Tyee.
Plus ça change, plus les mêmes choses. The Seven O’ Clock News from August 6, 1966 alongside Silent Night. We are in a collective noche oscura del alma.
Rick Rubin asks us to pay attention: “Creative is something you are, not only something you do. It’s a way of moving through the world, every minute, every day. The artist is always on call.” inspiration happens at fine granularity. The new comes from outside of what we know, at the very edges of our awareness. Novelty, by definition, strikes us with surprise. The ordinary is the fodder for the extraordinary. How could it not be?
Want a practical example? I spent a delightful 90 minutes on Friday with Cynthia Kurtz and Ashley Cooper and some lovely folks who are using Participatory Narrative Inquiry in different ways in the work. And it reaffirmed to me how the work of PNI is so much about generating these oblique insights, these moments of clarity and novelty. Ron Donaldson continues to delight and inspire and share such valuable stuff in his year end reflective posts, and today’s is about insight. I’m so chuffed to have helped inspire these beautiful offerings.