For thousands of years, the island I live on has been called Nexwlélexwm. It has always been an important part of the Squamish Nation territory, and as it juts out out the moth of Howe Sound into the Strait of Georgia, it represents the edge of the world for Squamish people, beyond which are the relatives and strangers of the rest of the Nations of the Salish Sea and beyond. The southern shore of our island is called Ni7cháych Nexwlélexwm which means “the outer edge of Nexwlélexwm” and refers to that place where the dry cliffs and rocky points meet …
I think I’m definitely feeling like my work is online for the foreseeable future. While I do have some face-to-face sessions lined up for the fall and winter, most of what I am going to continue to do is host meetings and learning online. Even though I have been doing that since probably 2004 or so when I first started using Skype I continue to learn about how to make online environments more interesting and, most importantly, more accessible. From time to time I put out a call to help me learn about people’s needs and experiences. Back in June …
Finished a lovely week with my brother and niece visiting from Ontario. We’ve been in a wicked heat wave here, with temperatures in the mid to high thirties and the humidity increasing every day. It’s still not Ontario muggy and the sea is lovely for swimming in, but in a place where air conditioning is less common and extreme heat is usually unplanned for, it’s been a lugubrious week for sure. The smog from the city and some small traces of wildfire smoke filter the light so there is some ironic beauty in it all.
My friend Marcus Jenal published his latest weekly newsletter in which he muses over a few questions related to complexity, strategy and taking a stance. He doesn’t have a comments section enabled on his blog (hint! hint!) so I’m going to respond a bit to what he wrote here and we can have a conversation in this space. Too often, I fall into the trap of questioning every new insight I have and asking myself if that insight goes deep enough. Every insight is still biased through my cultural coding, my upbringing, my context, etc. Yet by the very nature …
From Ramon… … i search for a form of reconciliation ecology … inventing, establishing and maintaining a new habitat designed for a diversity of living, working and playing … a place which possesses anima meaning breath, spirit and soul … at first, in the leaving, i imagined a radical break … on arrival have learned to accept a certain amount of conservation of the past needs preservation … perhaps even restoration … the challenge is to generate a creative coexistence between the old and new territories … to comprehend the mysteries of place a cultivation of morals & purpose are …