The view from my home island, Bowen Island, looking across the Queen Charlotte Channel to Cypress Bowl, where the freestyle skiing events will be held during the Olympics. It’s 10 degrees and raining, and that cloud deck shows no sign of lifting. Yes there is very little snow. It’s February in Vancouver. It’s always like this. In fact I should have had my snow tires off the car two weeks ago. Daffodils are coming up and spring is just around the corner.
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Jack Ricchiuto publishes a new little paper on The Practice & Power of Authentic Community Engagement : When a community is authentically engaged in conversations that matter, the conversation engages their assets in the realization of their dreams. In authentic engagement, the community becomes author of its own future. The opposite of authentic engagement is lip service to engagement. It is an invitation to conversation that simply engages the community’s voices of victimhood and entitlement. Lip service engagement loudly proclaims commitments to change, but has no power to bring it about and is ironically the shortest distance to sustaining the …
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One of the cool cultural Olympiad things happening around here for the 2010 Winter Games is an interactive light exhibit which makes patterns in the sky with 20 spotlights along False Creek. We can see these from our house on Bowen Island. They are part of an interactive art installation called Vectoral Elevations. Very cool, and you can play too! Make your own pattern online and submit it. There’s a good chance we’ll see it as we have been completely entranced by these lights the last few nights.
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Sunday afternoon a small group of my neighbours here on Bowen Island gathered to inaugurate an improv group. All I had was a bunch of exercises culled from the web, some eager players and a space. And that was all we needed. After a few warm ups, we got into some evxercises and then played a few scenes. At least half of the group of eight were experienced actors, several of whom were comfortable with the openness of the structure and others who struggled a little. It was cool to see us hit some real high points (especially during on …
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The view from the Rockefeller Foundation meeting room, looking south towards the Empire State Building. Today I worked in this location with friends Willie Toliver and Kelly McGowan supporting the work of a group of executive leaders in the New York City municapl administration. I was struck by how, despite the responsibility and magnitude of influence these people have, that they are nonetheless human beings – vulnerable, falliable and authentic as the rest of us. Here is the poem that was created from the checkout. We are just poor weak human beings, Resisting the call Because we cease and desist …