Run, don’t walk, to the CBC Radio webiste for Ideas where you will discover that this year’s Massey Lectures are by Thomas King on the “The Truth About Stories, a Native Narrative.” for you to savour. The lectures run all this week on Ideas, which can be heard on the web. Possibly they will show up in the archive for a spell too, but I doubt it. However, as they do every year, House of Anansi has published the book and I picked it up today and read four of the five lectures. They are stunning. Get engaged with this …
At the Practice of Peace conference last week, there was a lot of laughing going on. There was an offering on laughing as practice, and Alexander Kjerulf offered a session that, from my vantage point through a window, looked like a battle between two sides of hysterical fighters, trying to out-joy each other. And now comes news from Flemming Funch that an Ethiopian man named Gima Belachew has broken his own laughing record. The story is quite a read, including this great quote: We are living full of stress… Natural disasters, economical, political, social problems… My aim is to minimise …
I want to draw your attention to a community Open Space unfolding today and tomorrow in Oftringen, Germany and posted online in real-ish time. I’m back from the Practice of Peace conference on Whidbey Island which featured Harrison Owen and friends and colleagues opening space for peace around the world. Have a read of the proceedings at the conference website. And lastly I have spent the last two days in Open Space at a forum for Emerging Aboriginal Leaders. The procee4dings from that conference will be posted at the openspaceworld.net wiki site in the next few days. Phew.
I’m on the road for a few days. In the meantime, dig a few poems from Sherman Alexie, whose home state I am visiting: Defending Walt Whitman Basketball is like this for young Indian boys, all arms and legs and serious stomach muscles. Every body is brown! These are the twentieth-century warriors who will never kill, although a few sat quietly in the deserts of Kuwait, waiting for orders to do something, to do something. God, there is nothing as beautiful as a jumpshot on a reservation summer basketball court where the ball is moist with sweat, and makes a …
There is something otherwordly about the National Rifle Association sponsoring Postal Matches. Upon first seeing the link at the NRA website (don’t ask…) I thought it had something to do with post-office shootings. Guess not.