The rainy weather here has me thinking about the fall, and we have a few course offerings coming up in the next few months, including two in-person Art of Hosting trainings and a couple of online offerings on working with stories to make change, and facilitating large-group meeting methods.
The Art of Hosting continues to be my core work in terms of training and capacity building. From October 16-19, I will return to Ontario to join Jennifer Williams, Cedric Jamet and Troy Maracle for our third annual Reimagining Education Art of Hosting. There are still a few space left for this gathering, which takes place at the Queen’s Biological Station near Elgin, Ontario, in the heart of autumn colours season. It’s a rustic location on a lake with a smaller group of fewer than 40 folks, many of whom are involved in public and Indigenous education systems. These folks are joined by others who are working in other sectors and that richness means that it isn’t just an education conference and that people working elsewhere will meet lots of folks who are skilled at creating learning environments.
Twice a year in Vancouver, Caitlin Frost, Kelly Foxcroft-Poirier, Kris Archie and I host an Art of Hosting open to any and all. From November 12-14, A group of around 40 people from all over the world gather in Heritage Hall in Vancouver for a three-day intensive. This is always an incredibly diverse group of people and the connections and ideas and encounters that happen are amazing. Still spots open for this one and we will repeat it in April as well.
Two shorter online offerings are open for registration as well. Along with my friend Donna Brown who does on-the-ground community organizing in Baltimore, we will be participating in a series of courses offered by the School of System Change. Donna and I will appear as provocateurs for a session on Uncovering Stories to Understand Systems on October 8. Registration is open for this session and the whole program now.
And finally, later in the winter, I will be returning again for my annual offering through Simon Fraser University’s Certificate Program in Dialogue and Civic Engagement. On February 13, I will be teaching my one-day Introduction to Powerful Conversations. Focused on World Cafe and Open Space Technology, this course also contextualizes those approaches with a little complexity theory, and an introduction to chaordic design. You can sign up for the session without being fully enrolled in the certificate program.
You can stay up to date on these offerings through our Harvest Moon Consultants newsletter, on my courses page, or by subscribing to my blog at the link below, using RSS, or on LinkedIn or Mastodon.
Silvery light this morning at play on the east wall of Átl’ka7tsem this morning
A Pineapple Express swooped in yesterday and doused our area with more than 66mm of rain, setting a new record for the rainiest August 16th in history. That’s basically a month’s worth of August rain in 24 hours. Coming home down tha Sunshine Coast and across Howe Sound the air was foggy and grey with high winds on the exposed parts of the inlet. Our ferry back to Bowen was stopped for two humpbacks who swam by. They out in an appearance along the shore at a small music festival we have going to is weekend – Music By The Sea.
My friends Ted and Dyan Spear have been hosting this gathering for a few years now. Very small and mostly local and intimate held on their property beneath tents and tarps this year!
I was able to unpack and head over there for the last set of the concert (a lovely set from Kip Johnson, including some very nice originals and The Witch of the Westmereland by Archie Fisher, a favourite of mine). The concert was followed by a contra dance called by my friend Becky Liddle and then we got stuck in for a couple of hours of jigs and reels. It’s been a long time since I played Irish music in a good free flowing session and playing with Neil and Keona Hammond is always good for the soul.
Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi’s short story “The Archive” published at The Hinternet is a moving piece about the way subtleties of meaning slowly drift away:
I slipped solastalgia into an acid-free envelope and filed it under “Algorithmic Casualties”, between beefbrain and paracosm. I logged its last known public appearance: a blog post from seven years ago, archived only in fragments, the photographs long replaced by blank gray squares. The author, anonymous, had written about watching their childhood valley transform into a mining pit. Without the word, their grief became harder to name. And without a name, grief becomes harder to notice at all.
Tom Atlee reports on a citizen-led assembly in Norway which discussed the future of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund.
Crossing Jervis Inlet on my way to the Tla’Amin lands.
The weekly summary of notes, links and thoughts that passed through my world.
- August 4, 2025: tests and seasons: things change in the world of sport, planetary science and community.
- August 5, 2025: surviving enshittification: becasue when people are making good things and then wrecking them, we need to know if we can make it through.
- August 6, 2025: magic and the rain returns: internet-famous magicians, and the return of my pluviophilia.
- August 8: you are not as old as you seem to be: age is relative and also it isn’t.
Also I wrote some longer pieces this week including a review of some friends’ play, an invitation to improve your out of office messages, and some thoughts on how building resource megaprojects is not the same thing as strengthening a country and looking after people.
I’ve always thought that my internal age was 23, which puts me younger in my own mind than both of my children are now. Which is a very odd sensation now. At any rate, I haven’t seen such a good set of thoughts on aging as these 27 Notes on Growing Older(er) from Ian Leslie. The sensation of time stopping inside while it continues on elsewhere is almost impossible to capture. Leslie does it.
Lately, becasue I notice these things, I’ve seen different articles about the inner core of the Earth and its interaction with the surface of our planet. This article in Quanta today summarizes the research and the findings from the smart people working on all of this.
Last night we watch Bob Trevino Likes It, a touching film (and a bit of a tear jerker, I’m not afraid to admit) about a woman who is becoming estranged from her father and finds another man with the same name and befriends him. It’s worth watching, and through the film I found myself going down the rabbit hole of facts about co-star John Leguizamo, who I know nothing about. He starred in the 1990s drag film To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar where he looked substantial young than 30 or 24 years old. He has a fascinating bio, as an actor, playwright and activist, and to my eye seems to be one of the really good ones in the world.
One advantage to being actually 57 is that I got to see The Shuffle Demons in their heyday in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Toronto. I’m glad to know that there are still folks out there having maximum fun with energetic jazz traditions in an ensemble context. Go into your weekend grooving along with Dirty Catfish Brass Band.
Anyone who knows the Salish Sea in the summertime will recognize this image of still, flat water at slack tide reflecting every imaginable colour at sunset.
This week we were travelling by sailboat through the Hul’q’umi’num speaking territories of the Gulf Islands in the Salish Sea. The posts this week reflect both my usual monkey-mind reading habit and some travel notes from the trip.
- July 27, 2025: systems and cycles: economics and other system
- July 28, 2025: quiet, prayers, and landscapes of war and peace: some theology, a book to read and blessed quiet
- July 29, 2025: place noting and place making: noticing place, making notes and making trade.
- July 30, 2025: connected through tsunamis, contentment, austerity and football: we weather a tsunami advisory, and I think about the good life, suffering and how football advocates.
- July 31,2025: a miscellany of things about time and pay warm water begs us to stay at anchor, and so I read about time and getting paid.
- August 1, 2025: leaving Hul’q’umi’num territories and good questions to ask: a really cute seal to wake up to, humpbacks in the Strait and some questions worth asking.
We’re on the ferry home from Departure Bay to Horseshoe Bay and then from Horseshoe Bay back to our own home island, where a weekend of fun is about to unfold featuring the annual Firefighters’ Dock Dance, and a remounting of the classic Bowen Island play The View, in which every possible island archetype is skewered by the ingenious satire of David Cameron and Jackie Minns. It’s a long weekend in British Columbia and the beginning of Lughnasa, the Celtic season of harvest and generosity.
I hope you enjoy reading these posts.