I have a stack of books I am working my way through this summer, and they are all written by friends.  I think this is pretty remarkable actually.  From the top down, here is what’s on my reading table:

• Finding the Sweet Spot by Dave Pollard.  This one just arrived this evening, although I read a proof that Dave sent along.  It’s typical of his writing, and will be a familiar tome for regular readers of his blog, How To Save The World.  The book outlines a path for creating a life of sustainable work and enterprise using his well developed model of natural entrepreneurship.  It’s a brilliant, accessible and portable guide to saving your own ass and the world along with it.  
• The Return of King Arthur by Diana Durham.  Diana was with us at the Art of Hosting stewards gathering in Carleton Nova Scotia this summer, working with her partner Jon to make a film about some of the work we are doing.  Diana’s book is a deep exploration of the powerful myths and archetypes of self-knowledge and transformation.  She goes far into the western European tradition and to show the essential pathways on the journey to mastery.  It’s an incredible book.
• Howe Sounds, an anthology of Bowen Island writing.  My home island is known in Canada for being a haven for writers and this anthology, published way back in 1994 showcased a number of them including Nick Bantock, Robert Bringhurst, Victor Chan and Jim Kearny.  A few current friends are anthologized here too including Brad Ovenell-Carter (wriiing about bread, about which he an I are passionate) and Julie Ovenell-Carter who is known as a travel writer and who contributed a poem writtne for her young daughter.
• Almost Green by my friend and neighbour James Glave.  James has written a book that is both deadly serious and achingly funny about the middle class grasping towards sustainability.  The book charts his journey to build the most ecologically sustainable sturcture possible – what turns out to be an eco-shed studio space.  Along the way he talks about the economics of sustainability and why the middle classes in North America are destined to remain almost green.  The book is honest and changes very few name to protect the guilty.  When it was released in July, Islanders kept popping into the bookstore just to see if they were in it.  If you want a taste of James phenomenal writing, download his ebook on deer hunting, Buck The System.  
• Teaching an Anthill to Fetch by Stephen Joyce.  Stephen sent me this book a while ago and then I ended up meeting him at an Art of Hosting we did in Cochrane, Alberta in June.  The book is a how to guide to developing collaborative intellegence in the workplace and goes through anumber of tools that meaders, team members and managers can easily adopt to begin their learning about leveraging collaborative intellegence.  It’s accessible and it also points in many directions and invites readers to go deeper.  A very practical introduction to the field.
• Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide by Harrison Owen.  This is the third edition of Harrison’s guide and it’s updated with several new pieces about action planning, and wupporting the client.  The community has had a bigger hand in this version than in previous versions and Harrison has gathered the wisdom that makes sense and recast it in his amicable style.  This is really a classice in the field of facilitation methodology.  It’s dead simple to use and is really all you need to set up and run an Open Space meeting.
• Hippie Chick Reunion by Kathryn Barber.  Yet another Art of Hosting companion, I met Kathryn in Florida in May and this book lay at the bottom of my suitcase for a couple of months before Kathryn prodded me to read it.  On the surface it is a story about a group of women reuniting in 2001 to celebrate the protagonist’s 50th birthday.  They were a wild bunch back in the day, and their memories are vividly relived.  Under the surface though Kathryn has written a parable for social evolution, and the book is highly indebted to Ken Wilber’s integral models and Don Becks Spiral Dynamics as it weaves the worldviews of the characters together in a dynamic tale.

I awoke this morning and read two scary articles courtesy of the terror of my RSS feeder.   First, Dave Pollard counted down the order in which his domino theory of outright planetary collapse may unfold.   Then, I read Andrew Simms article on why we only have 100 months left before reaching the tipping point for runaway climate change.

Neither of these scenarios are unfamiliar me, but something about waking up this morning and reading them straight off got my attention.   I started thinking about what to do and started reflecting on some of the things that I am already doing.

There are levels on which we work and live as a human being.   From the personal to the cosmic, we live nested in spheres of influence and connections that sustain us.   So here is my thumbnail take on what we can do at different levels.   While I aspire to these, and practice many of them, I’m not perfect, which is why the first one makes sense.

Personal

• Practice meditation or personal inquiry so that you have the wits to handle massive change that lies beyond your control.   If you are the kind of person that completely loses it whenever the power goes off you have work to do.   Meditation and inquiry also generates compassion for yourself and others, which is a key capacity.
• Erase your debt, get out of the credit economy.
• Wean yourself as much as possible off of products and services that you don’t need and that contribute to waste, carbon emissions and debt.
• Choose wisely how you spend your money.   Invest in local food and food producers and in local businesses to strengthen the economy around you.
• Grow your own food, and learn how to take care of your body, your home and your things.
• Do not be a passive consumer of anything, including ideas and entertainment.
• Do what you can.   ASk for help.   Work with others.
• Think about your work and what you are being trained for.   Euan put me on to an old George Monbiot piece on this.

Family

• If you have children in your family, don’t send them to school.   Investigate alternatives that will raise them up as learners, able to adopt to change rather than fixed in old knowledge and old paradigms.   Help your children participate in your community and help your community understand that the place for children and youth is ANYWHERE, not locked away for seven hours a day in schools.
• Families are an economy of scale bigger than one.   It makes sense to work together in learning about your home and community, growing food and looking after one another.
• Use the family relationships as a practice ground for working with relationships.   Apply what you learn there to working with others.

Community

• Work with others to meet common needs.   For example, start up a community shared agriculture program to enhance food security.
• Learn how to work together well. Learn good processes, and be conscious about how you are with others.
• Offer what you can and ask for what you need.
• Participate in local affairs and in what people in your community are doing to sustain positive futures for yourselves.
• Make meetings count. Especially if you have to travel, then make sure that what you are doing is spending your time, carbon emissions and money wisely.   There might come a time when meeting to set good relationships and exchange good ideas is a thing of the past.

Scales beyond

• Andrew Simms has a god line in his 100 months piece: “the government must lead.”   If climate change is the issue, governments must lead in setting the kinds of targets, incentives and influence that the market needs to make alternative possible.   It cannot be up to us alone to tend our victory gardens and turn off our lights.   Governments at all levels must take responsibility for how the influence or don’t influence the environment that makes it possible to change.   In Canada, our government is not doing anything meaningful to mitigate climate change.   So either I could run for office, or vote for someone who will.   In the meantime, I can continue to practice personally in defiance of the mainstream economic model that is killing us.
• Writing about and practicing these kinds of strategies does have the effect of tipping the collective consciousness.   When it comes to radical changes, individuals lead, and governments follow, sometimes very far behind.   Global corporations are the last to change most of the time.   Local governments and local business change first.   Support those shifts.

Above all, don’t lose heart.   If you lose heart you become a significant part of the problem.   If you withdraw, you become a burden on the system, and worse if you refuse to change, you continue to give a tacit mandate for the status quo to continue, if only to meet your needs.   If anything, these doomsday scenarios are useful for throwing into relief the kinds of daily choices that we make.   Above all, act with consciousness in what you are doing.   Consider the consequences and actions and let people know about strategies that work.

That’s what I’m learning these days.

In a post on reviewing academic articles, I was really struck by the way academics deal with surprises.

Yes, I regularly check (some) references. If the author of a (history) paper I am refereeing makes a surprising claim – e.g., something that if true I might reasonably be expected to have encountered before, not just something I know FA about – I almost instinctively check to see what his/her source is, and if it’s something I have readily to hand, may actually go to the text to see if it supports what the author concluded.

Usually it does, and I’ve learned something new.

From surprise to curiosity to learning.   Straight forward enough, but how many of us dismiss surprises outright, or believe them straight away?

The Next Starbucks is an article in Architect Magazine that has several architects envision the coffee shp of the future.

There are some interesting designs here, but my favourite has to be the last one, in which the designers think first about the social nature of the coffee shop and come up with some old patterns for community use:

Merging the concept of the flexible, shared workspace with that of communal dining creates a new “third place,” a community kitchen. Anchored by a 60-foot-long wooden harvest table, a kit of parts serving different functions can be freely arranged wherever the user sees fit. The configuration of the pieces as well as the length of the table can be customized, depending on the conditions of the store. Diverse spaces are created along the table’s length; some are highly interactive while others, such as the side tables, provide more privacy.

This versatile modular system can also adapt to special functions that may happen inside the store. Its components easily detach and roll around in order to accommodate poetry readings or other large gatherings.

Friends at OSonOS and other places have been interested in the nature of a new kind of coffee shop in which conversation can be a primary function. With so little shared public space in North American cities and towns these days, it seems more and more important to pay attention to these third places.

As an aside, my local coffee shop here on Bowen Island is called The Snug. It is an important community hub, especially in the winter time when locals gather there in the mornings and afternoons and get straight on what’s going on. The previous owners were so trusting of the community that they even turned over the keys to myself and friends so we could have weekly Irish music sessions there. Those sessions continue under the new owners as well.

Robert Paterson in an article about the future of public radio and the use of technology:

In my 2 years of work with stations it is now clear to me that technology is not the barrier to the New Media Reality that we have to reach. There are a number of barriers – none of which are mentioned in the release.

A very high barrier is cultural – a 2.0 world cannot be trained for – it has to be lived. There has to be enough people on staff who are digital natives. It is people that will make the difference not technology.

Excellent.   We can only move into the worlds of connection and collaboration by doing and not training.   It requires a new way of learning, that is native to some of us, but entirely foreign to others.