I’m not sure, but Matthew Baldwin’s experience of a rare medical condition might just be the funniest thing I have read for a while.
And then I read the comments:
“Dang me! Sorry you were in pain. Btw, I’ve had a kidney stone and been through childbirth (twice). It’s true. You do NOT want the kidney stone.”
What a Christmas he had. Here’s hoping 2004 is considerably meeker.
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mysterium points me to an e.e. cummings poem, which makes a compelling way to start a new year:
all nearness pauses, while a star can grow
all nearness pauses, while a star can grow
all distance breathes a final dream of bells;
perfectly outlined against afterglow
are all amazing the and peaceful hills
(not where not here but neither’s blue most both)
and history immeasurably is
wealthier by a single sweet day’s death:
as not imagined secrecies comprise
goldenly huge whole the upfloating moon.
Time’s a strange fellow;
more he gives than takes
(and he takes all) nor any marvel finds
quite disappearance but some keener makes
losing, gaining
–love! if a world ends
more than all worlds begin to (see?) begin
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It’s year end, and I’d like to publicly thank the many clients who I have had the privilege of working with this year. It has been a great year full of learning, collaboration and interesting work, and it is largely due to people from these organizations:
- Urban Multipurpose Aboriginal Youth Centres Committee of Winnipeg
- Odawa Native Friendship Centre, Ottawa
- British Columbia Treaty Commission
- CitiesPLUS
- Natural Resources Canada
- City of Vancouver Storyscapes Project
- BC Assembly of First Nations
- Union of BC municipalities, Aboriginal Affairs Office
- Health Canada, First Nations and Inuit Health Branch
- First Nations Employment Society, Vancouver
- University of British Columbia, Faculty of Commerce
- In-SHUCK-ch Nation Treaty Group
- Katzie First Nation
- South Central Committee on Family Violence, Winkler, Manitoba
- Aboriginal Community Career and Employment Services Society, Vancouver
- BC Aboriginal Network on Disability
- Sliammon Treaty Society
- Naut’sa mawt Tribal Council
- university of British Columbia, Native Indian Teacher Education Program
- Fraser Region Aboriginal Planning Committee
- Vancouver Island Aboriginal Transition Team
- Council for the Advancement of Native Development Officers
- University of British Columbia, First Nations House of Learning
- University of British Columbia, Faculty of Medicine
- Saulteau First Nation
- dbappleton
- Karyo Communications
- Vancouver Coastal Aboriginal Interim Authority
- Cariboo Tribal Council
- Michael Herman Associates
I’d also like to thank my colleagues Chris Robertson and Michael Herman who have co-conspired with me on a number of really interesting projects this year. I am looking forward to the new year which may bring travel to New Zealand among other places. Thanks for joining me on the journey so far.
And Happy New Year.
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More about moving dreams to action. This is from skydiver Cheryl Stearns who is set to make a jump from the edge of space to see what is would be like to bail out of the space shuttle at 100,000 feet. Here she describes how she got started in skydiving:
“I used to have this recurring dream, which started when I was 8 years old. I would remember it vividly when I woke up. In the dream, I would step out onto the window sill of my house, and it would be pitch black outside, no moon nor stars nor lights of any kind. Then I would jump off the window sill and it seemed like I was floating on a big cushion of air. I never saw myself in the dream, I just had the feeling of floating or flying. I had that dream about once a month until I was 15, but by the time I was 16 it was coming about once a week.
It bothered me so much that I told my mother I had to do a parachute jump to find out if the sensation in the dream was real. All I wanted to do was the free-fall bit, but I found out you had to do the static-line stuff first. On my first jump the parachute was open almost as soon as I left the plane so there was no free fall to experience. It took another 15 or so jumps before I could see and feel everything, because there is such a sensory overload when you first start jumping. After that, I never had the dream again. It was directly responsible for getting me interested in skydiving.
I’m interested in how her dreams were full of sensory perception that led her to have to actually perform the actions of free falling for her to find out if they were right or not. This is a beautiful example of self-fulfillment coming through vision.
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Why local matters:
When a train car overturned in Minot, North Dakota last year, a large quantity of ammonia spilled out, sending up a cloud of poison gas. Local officials quickly tried to contact the town’s seven radio stations to send out the alarm — only to find that there was no one actually working in six of them. They were simply relaying a satellite feed from Clear Channel headquarters in Texas — there was plenty of country music and golden oldies and Top 40 and right-wing chat, but no one to warn about the toxic cloud drifting overhead. It’s true that you can hear anything from anywhere at any time but oddly, it’s gotten a lot harder to hear much about your immediate vicinity
From “Small World: Why one town stays unplugged” by Bill McKibben in this month’s Harpers Magazine.
The story actually became a cause celebre with groups fighting the USA’s Federal Communications Commission over the FCC’s attempt to give large companies more control of the airwaves. More on the story here and here.