If you are anywhere near Victoria BC on August 24th, head down to Beacon Hill Park for a free salmon barbeque to celebrate the relationship between the T’Souke, Beecher Bay and Songhees First Nations and the neighbouring municipalities. The food is hot off the grill from 11:30 to 2:00 at the Cameron Bandshell.
Having worked this past year with the City of Victoria and the local First Nations there, I can say that this event will be a great time, with good food and interesting people making a real effort at strengthening relationships.
A beautiful photograph of a beautiful sculpture made of paper, by artist Peter Callesen.
I love this because it is about flow and it required the same for its production. And it’s quite something to see where that little canoe is going!
PS. This is my 1000th post here at Parking Lot, give or take a few. Thanks for reading along!
In a meeting yesterday we were discussing the fact that the human species is approaching a cliff, a massive precipice, and that we have so far been completely unable to figure out how to turn back from the edge.
I suggested that maybe it’s too late for that and we only have time to teach each other how to fly.
I’m here in Peterborough, Ontario, where my partner Caitlin and I met and where we lived 15 years ago. Today I drove past a place I lived in up in Lakefield, north of the city, where I took a room at the tender age of just-gone-eighteen. After 20 years, the house is still there and the town remarkably familiar.
We are travelling here and to Ottawa and Toronto to visit places we have lived so that our kids (now aged 9 and 5) can get a sense of some of the life their parents had before they were born. It’s remarkable to visit a place – even after 15 or 20 years – and be completely unable to see it as it is. Instead I see a storyscape in front of me with many places so full of meaning and cloaked in personal history that it is impossible to see them as my children are seeing them, as if for the first time. Good practice, this seeing.
It has been an interesting trip today, and will get more interesting tomorrow as we visit Trent University, with narratives running in my head as my kids squirm in the heat in the back seat of the car not seeing the point in any of this when they could be swimming in the river instead!
Anyway, this is the reason for light posting, and the light spell will continue for another week or so.
Oh and by the way, free wireless at the Holiday Inn on George Street in Peterborough. Gotta love that.
[tags]Peterborough [/tags]
Off to Chicago to celebrate the life partnership of friends Michael Herman and Jill Perkins. I’m looking forward to a weekend of fun and merriment and celebration of these two people. I have had the pride and pleasure to work with Michael for five years now on some amazing projects in Open Space, including an important summit in Alaska in 2002, to co-editing of the Open Space Technology Users NON-Guide, the Giving Conference in 2004 and practice workshops all over the place.
I met Jill at the Gioving Conference in 2004 and have rarely laughed so hard with someone. She is an amazing woman, a retired particle physicist (.pdf) and currently an organizational development consultant and coach.
And, as an added bonus, I get to stay with Ted Ernst in Chicago, who is another gem on this earth.
So light blogging ahead as we celebrate a terrific union.