It’s complicated times in the Western world (he says with some irony). If you are wondering what is happening to the economy and why, it’s very difficult to discover unless you are right in it. And this is why I love the blogosphere.
My friend Rob Paterson has not only lived in the high levels of the world of high finance, but has alos been through a stock market crash before, in 1987. As such the story he is telling on his blog is deep and informed, and it’s also accessible. This is because Rob cares about storytelling, and he has spent a number of years now working with public radio and television in the United States helping stations in their effort to create news that is useful. Nowhere has this been more important than now, when the meltdown in the mortgage and now the financing sectors of the American economy has devastated families and communities.
In times like this, it’s important to know where you are. Rob’s writing at the moment is a big piece of theeconomic news I’m getting because it is reasoned, inquisitive and asks the right questions. That doesn’t mean he is preaching good news, but the alarms he are ringing are useful for me, pointing at what I can do personally to set myself well to ride this storm out.
Thanks Rob!
(In Canada, there is a sweet irony to me turning to Rob for this…The Globe and Mail‘s business section is called “Report on Business” and is often contracted to ROB. I like my Rob better.)
This morning, driving up to the clubhouse at the Seven Hills Golf and Country Club near Port McNeill, there was a mother black bear and her cub roaming around the parking lot. They took off before I could get a photo.
The journey continues…I’m in Vancouver tonight enroute on a red eye to Toronto and then Ottawa.
Nice find from Kevin Harris who blogged the Republican’s digs at Barack Obama’s community organizing experience:
George Pataki: ‘He was a community organizer. What in God’s name is a community organizer? I don’t even know if that’s a job.’
Then former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani delivered his own snickering hit job. ‘He worked as a community organizer. What? Maybe this is the first problem on the resumé,’ mocked Giuliani.
A few minutes later, in her acceptance speech for the GOP vice presidential nomination, Sarah Palin declared, ‘I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.’
One of the responses from the Obama camp was:
‘Let’s clarify something for them right now. Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies.’
Exactly…that is exactly what community organizing is. Republicans do it too.
It’s beyond me why so many Republican politicians find it so hard to be actually funny. Every time I hear “jokes” like this, I just want to draw a little square in the air in front of me whilst rolling my eyes. It’s as if years of country club roasts had conditioned them to slightly off-colour jokes being met with nervous titters.
Recently Karen Sella posted a request to the OSLIST among other places for books that are about being human Today she posted the list.
Here is your new life reading program!
Playing and Reality, D. W. Winnicott
Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment, D,W. Winnicott
Sexual Personae: A History of the feminine from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, Camille Paglia
The World of Pooh, A.A. Milne
The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Graham
The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abrams
The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo, The Inner Journey Home: Soul’s Realization of the Unity of Reality, A.H. Almaas, Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World through Mindfulness, Jon Kabat Zin, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, Evan Thompson, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Steven Pinker, The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran, and The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams…to name just a few.
Finally, for those of you who enquired, some (and there are so very many) favorite books about being human that I recommend are:
Living Beyond the End of the World, Margaret Swedish
The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein
Ornament of the World, Maria Rosa Menocal
Cultural Creatives, Paul Ray
The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida
Breaking Ranks, Ronit Chacham
Better, Atul Gawand
The Hidden Connections, Fritjof Capra
Sketching User Experience, Bill Buxton
The Miners of Windber: the Struggles for New Miners for Unionization, Mildred Beik
Burning All Illusions, David Edwards, 1995 (Also published under the Title “Dare to be Human”)
Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Richard Bach
Illusions, Richard Bach
One, Richard Bach
Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World, Kathleen Dean Moore
The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby
Coming to Life, Polly Berrien Berends
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard
All Sickness is Homesickness, Dianne Connelly
Imagining Argentina, Thornton
Prophetic Imagination, Brueggeman
Crucial Conversations
The Way of the Peaceful Warrior (series), Dan Millman
Books, tapes, online et al: anything by Esther and Jerry Hicks
The Alchemist, Paulo Coehlo
Creed for the Third Millennium, Colleen McCullough
Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
”Everything I have read by Parker Palmer and Frederick Buechner, nonfiction and fiction alike”
How We Became Human, Joy Harjo
Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restoring Hope to the Future, Margaret Wheatley
The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell
Bring Me the Rhinoceros, John Tarrant
The Secret, Rhonda Byrne
A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle
Loving What Is, Byron Katie
The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck
Ishmael, Daniel Quinn
The Alchemist, Paolo Coelho
Women Who Run with Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle
Turning to One Another, Meg Wheatley
Grace and Grit, Ken Wilber and Treya Killam Wilber
poetry of Neruda and Rumi
Coming Back to Life, Joanna Macy
On Being Human, Ashley Montague
Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl
I Am That, Nisargadatta Maharaj
Metta: The Practice of Loving Kindness, Nagabodhi
Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu
Life is a Verb, Patti Digh
Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore
The Chalice and the Blade, Riane Eisler
The Occult Significance of Forgiveness, Sergei Prokofiev.
Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay, Michael Chabon
Man on the Threshold, Bernard Lievegoed (and anything else this guy ever wrote)
Nineteen Eighty Four, George Orwell
Freedom in Exile: The Autobiography of the Dalai Lama of Tibet, His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Winnie-the-Pooh, A. A. Milne
Le Petit Prince, Saint-Exupery (The Little Prince in English)
Bible
Spiral Dynamics, Don Beck & Chris Cowan
Courage to Be, Paul Tillich
Winning Through Enlightenment : Mastery of Life, Volume I, Ron Smothermon
New and Selected Poems, Mary Oliver
Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
I and Thou, Martin Buber
Ishmael, Daniel Quinn
Thou Shalt Not Be Aware, Alice Miller (also, The Drama of the Gifted Child)
If This Is a Man, Primo Levi (in United State published as Survival in Auschwitz)
The History of Childhood, Lloyd deMause
The Emotional Life of Nations, Lloyd deMause
In a Different Voice, Carol Gilligan
Island, Aldous Huxley
Beloved, Toni Morrison
Tree of Knowledge, Huberto Maturana
Eternal Echoes, John O’ Donohue
Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art, Suzanne Langer
Harold and the Purple Crayon, Crockett Johnson
The Fourfold Way, Angeles Arrien
Harmful Advice [Vrednye Sovety], Grigorii Oster (Oster is described as a children’s writer read by primarily by adults. His contrarian rhymes and poetry caused a huge uproar when he came out in print during Perestroika. Sadly, last time I checked he was not available in English”he also has a line of “Harmful Textbooks”)
So it seems that we are having a federal election here in Canada.
I’m a little interested in democracy and as I\ve had two phone calls today, I thought I might as well keep some notes here about my experience with the local candidates.
Today John Weston’s comapaign called me. Weston is running for the Conservatives here in West Vancouver – Sunshine Coast – Sea to Sky Country. So I’ll admit upfront that I’m prejudiced here – I haven’t ever voted Conservative, and that isn’t likely to change in this election. I did however find the experience of communicating with Mr. Weston’s campaign a little funny.
I got called around 4pm to ask if I\d support Weston in this election. I usually at least ask some questions – and in the last election I had a long conversation with the Conservative candidate on my pet federal issue – Aboriginal rights and titie. This time I felt like just cutting the crap and I told the caller I wouldn’t be supporting Weston at all.
I figured that was the end of it, but it wasn’t. An hour later I got a call back from a call centre asking if I supported Weston. Intrigued. I took the bait and asked the caller why I should support John Weston. She didn’t really know. SHe pointed me to his website, which I have also done and said I should look there for more information. Then I asked her why she liked Weston. She said that she couldn’t really answer that question, that she just worked at a call centre and that was that.
So the guy who wants my vote can’t even find people who support him to call me? He has to hire a call centre with people who don’t seem to care one way or another to do his ground work for him? This is a little strange and a little sad. One of the things I enjoy about election campaigns is the rabid support that campaign staff and volunteers exude for their cadidate. It makes for fun sport and often really great conversation. In this case, the whol thing defleated before my eyes. Will John Weston’s campaign call centre continue to call me over and over with dispassionate invitations to visit his website, or am I going to get to talk to someone about the Conservatives change in policy following the residential schools apology?
To be continued I guess.