Improv again last night here on Bowen Island. It is such a rich learning space for me in many ways. Last night, one of our group kept bringing scenes back to the Olympics, and especially the luge. At times it was funny but it became tiresome in other cases, and in an extended game of freeze tag, when he stepped in, everyone knew where the scene was going. My learning from that is what it looks like when we come to a situation prepared, with a pre-conceived idea of what will work, being attached to an offering, but insensitive to …
The view from the Rockefeller Foundation meeting room, looking south towards the Empire State Building. Today I worked in this location with friends Willie Toliver and Kelly McGowan supporting the work of a group of executive leaders in the New York City municapl administration. I was struck by how, despite the responsibility and magnitude of influence these people have, that they are nonetheless human beings – vulnerable, falliable and authentic as the rest of us. Here is the poem that was created from the checkout. We are just poor weak human beings, Resisting the call Because we cease and desist …
I’m back in Johannesburg after three days on the veld west of the city running an Art of Participatory Leadership workshop with my friend from REOS Social Innovation. The weather here has been crazy – constant rain showers and thunderstorms for the whole time we were away, and there is flooding locally here. Driving back into the city we went fender deep through many intersections; major thoroughfares were rendered into fords, water coloured with deep red soil flowing everywhere. Usually its easy for me to write about these kinds of workshops, but I have to say that South Africa is …
Canada is about to be roundly shamed at the Copenhagen summit, and it can’t happen swiftly enough or with enough emphasis for me. Our government is showing itself to be a dinosaur when it comes to tackling climate change. Here is Stephen Harper touting a total myth: “Without the wealth that comes from growth, the environmental threats, the developmental challenges and the peace and security issues facing the world will be exponentially more difficult to deal with,” Harper said in an address to South Korea’s National Assembly. via Harper Says Global Recovery Must Precede Environment (Update1) – Bloomberg.com. The …
My friend Robert Oetjen was a key member of our hosting team at Altmoisa. He brings a lovely capacity to the work, being the head of an environmental learning centre in southern Estonia, he understands the deep connection between human and world, and is a practitioner of the most ancient arts of human kind: tracking and fire building. He is a man who is a beautiful learner from his environment. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, USA, he moved here in the early 1990s as a Peace Corps worker, teaching English in the days in which Estonia was hungry to claim …