Menu

106464721157464812

September 27, 2003 By Uncategorized

My buddy John Dumbrille hits on a nice, succinct argument for human scale on the web:

“As humans and communities are organically linked – their evolution and decay is interdependent – it seems web communities mirror this very well, better than, say, super-sites that pump out syndicated content; and they are, consequently, more satisfying. I think it’s a mistake to see & market sites as independent destinations, just as it’s a mistake to define a human being without the context of his/her relationships.”

Sweet.

106464563978011511

September 26, 2003 By Uncategorized

Blogger let me down lately. Not able to FTP for a while…no clue why. We seem to be back in the saddle.

There are a bunch of new blogs adorning the blogroll these days. In fact the blogroll is an eclectic mess, and the more I look at it, the more I love it. I have it set to list the blogs randomly every time the browser loads my page, so there’s always a new treat at the top of the list.

At any rate, here are a couple of the newer additions:

Sure these blogs all seem to be about organization, and it’s true that the blogroll has been padded with these guys since I closed Open Space (if such a paradox is possible) but fear not, there is still poetry, art and music to be had here. In fact it all seems to fit together so much nicer for me these days; that this blog can be about ideas as they hatch and wobble about in my brain. Call it a more honest relfection of the soul behind the blog.

106438065761542108

September 23, 2003 By Uncategorized

Today I finally received my HaidaBucks T-shirt in smart black with the logo and name prominant. And on Friday I ran into Cliff Fregin at the Vancouver airport, a friend and one of the original owners of Haida Bucks. He tells me all’s well that ends well, that Starbucks backed down and Haida Bucks has withstood the legal onslaught. They issued a press release in August stating:

Lately, the coffee in Masset, a small town on the remote island of Haida Gwaii, tastes especially sweet. That’s because HaidaBucks, a small indigenous-owned coffee house and restaurant located there, is savouring its victory over Starbucks and its claims of trademark infringement.

Read the whole thing here and then go order a T-shirt for yourself.

Congrats to Cliff and his partners. Still no word from Starbuck Customer Relations on why they told a couple of big fibs. I guess we’ll just have to let it go…and grab our coffees elsewhere.

106420601308613158

September 21, 2003 By Uncategorized

Sidney, BC


The Dymaxion Map of Buckminster Fuller
From The Buckminster Fuller Institute

John Cage interviewed many years ago on public television, about his friend Buckminster Fuller:

I think the ideas of both Buckminster Fuller and of Marshall McLuhan about the world as a single place are essential to the possibility of our solving problems now. And will always be at the basis of a good life, if we have one, on this earth. In other words, seeing the earth not as a plurality of sovereignties, as Bucky said, but as a single place. For me, it became clear when I went to Oahu in Hawaii…

When I went to Hawaii, I noticed that between Honolulu on the southern side of Oahu, and the sections of Hawaii on the north side of Oahu, there was a tunnel, and at the top of the tunnel there were crenellations as on a medieval castle. And I asked what they were for. And I was told that formerly the people to the north or to the south used those crenellations to protect themselves while shooting poisoned arrows at the people on the other side. Now they share the same utilities, and that they were ever at war with one another is laughable. This then, I, brought me to thinking of Bucky’s map of the of the world which shows that the whole earth is a single island and that were we to do as they now do in Hawaii, share the utilities with all the other people on the planet, anything like war would be out of the question. It seems already, with our recent news, that war is becoming increasingly questionable. But still we don’t have the, the sharing of utilities. And I think we have many corners of the earth that the powerful nations give little thought to.

. . .

[A]ny future that we have will be based on his ideas and those of Marshall McLuhan, because they’re ideas which see the life of all of us on earth as being one life to the problems attacking which must be solved. One of the things that interests me at the moment about Bucky was his concern not with politics but with economics. He said that the best newspaper to read in New York was not the Times, but the Wall Street Journal. And if we connect that with the fact that the only people who are really acting in a global way are the industries, whose advances are retailed to us in the Wall Street Journal, we see what he was talking about. What we would like is that kind of energy without the greed that is associated with it. And I think that, that absence of greed and the presence of complete generosity is what Bucky had.

For a great list of John Cage resources visit John Cage Online. For more on Bucky Fuller’s ideas, visit The Fuller Map.

106391161534387675

September 18, 2003 By Uncategorized

Whitehorse, Yukon Territory

Here for the annual conference of the Council for the Advancement of Native Development Officers (CANDO) where I am facilitating two Open Space sessions. Today’s is about new direction in economic development and tomorrow we will look at caring for our communities and the role of economic development in healing First Nations communities. The proceedings from both of these conversation will be online somewhere (probably mirrored at
OpenSpaceWorld.Net where the conversation can continue.

At any rate, it’s one of those conference where one runs into old friends and colleagues from around the country, including folks I was with in the Native Management and Economic Development Program at Trent University in the early 1990s. We all graduated just before everyone got email addresses so it’s only now that some of us are catching up and sharing news of the triumphs and tragedies that have unfolded over the past 15 years.

But I wasn’t going to write about that stuff, at least not today. Today I wanted to capture the impressions I was left after attending an Open Space Technology meeting facilitated by Bill Cleveland for the EARTH project. I’m sure there will be an online presence for the notes at some point, but this is my record of a session I convened, and my impressions of what I learned.

The theme of the gathering was something like “how can we use our art and activism to empower the voices of youth to build a just and sustainable world.”

I proposed a session that was titled: “Invitation, self-organization and the art of community building: what can we learn from artistic practice about engaging with community.”

It was a far ranging discussion that began with me outlining the practice of Irish music as a social and community building activity and went from there. There was much to learn about the way in which various art practices (including theatre, painting, dance and music) lend themselves to the process of engaging in community building activities.

Artistic practices were outlined in the session and illustrated with stories, but learnings now come to me in bullet points, so here goes:


  • “The ability to make metaphors is what makes us both artists and humans.” David Diamond from Headlines Theater uttered this gem starting us off on a conversation about meaning-making

  • Art-making is inquiry. It requires a critical interpretation of the world. It develops the capacity to both connect with the natural world and understand and reflect on one’s internal responses to that world.

  • Two women in the group who had worked with abused women described a process where they did not raise painful issues in process but instead invited the women to make art together. Pain got dealt with as participants grew to trust each other and responded to each other’s art. This was a private process between the women, negotiated in the safety of a space which they created together. The overall benefit of this process was that women described feeling empowered by the fact that they had unlocked their own creativity.

A fascinating discussion all round.

Anyway, back to work up here. It snowed two inches last night. Summer North of 60 is always fun!