The photo shows my neighbour Shane at the top his game, and the top of a tree, skillfully falling a 50 meter Douglas-fir. So today is another Friday, which is the day I set aside to do some reading and reflecting, and follow my interests down various rabbit holes. And today the rabbit hole is the crisis of “productivity“ in Canada. The term productivity crops up a lot when policy makers, and those with an interest in how economic policy affects corporate activity begin talking about their worries and fears. Productivity is simply an economic measurement that divides the gross …
One of our TSS Rovers Women’s team players, Sofia Farremo, signing an autograph for a young fan while standing in our supporters section at a TSS Rovers game this summer. Supporter culture at our club is HSL. About 20 years ago, I first met Dr. Mark R. Jones. It was either at The Practice of Peace gathering or one of the Evolutionary Salons called at the Whidbey Institute on Whidbey Island, Washington. At any rate, Mark was an interesting presence. He sat in silence for most of the time near the room entrance as a kind of gatekeeper, watching the …
In Those Years In those years, people will say, we lost track of the meaning of we, of you we found ourselves reduced to I and the whole thing became silly, ironic, terrible: we were trying to live a personal life and yes, that was the only life we could bear witness to But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged into our personal weather They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove along the shore, through the rags of fog where we stood, saying I — Adrienne Rich, 1992, hat tip to Jim My …
Im just coming back from a meeting this weekend on Vancouver Island where Kelly Poirier and I were working with some specialized health care workers who were meeting with Indigenous families around creating a care model for their children. We had three families with us including six children, two of which were babies, a five month old and a seven month old. It has been a long time since I facilitated meetings with babies taking an active role in the proceedings. The children were included in this meeting as participants and they had as much to offer both the content …
Part four of a seven part series on the Seven little helpers for dialogue and action Part 1: Presence Part 2: Have a good question Part 3: Use a talking piece 4. Harvest Back in 2008, SIlias Lucius, Monica Nissen and I gathered at Phil Cass’s house in Columbus, Ohio and talked about the Art of Harvesting. Monica developed this practice because she found herself often as the “secretary” in participatory processes, typing up notes, clustering ideas, graphically recording landscapes, and generally making sense of the conversation. This was great for her, but she realized that the group was deprived …