Years ago I wrote a little book called the Tao of Holding Space which was an interpretation of the Tao te Ching as applied to Open Space Technology and the facilitation of other participatory practices. Annick Corriveau is an Open Space Facilitator and she interviewed me a couple of months ago about my nearly 30 year history with Open Space Technology and the origins of this little book. She has a series of interviews with OST practitioners that are well worth checking out. You can download the book for free from the Internet Archive in English or in Chinese or …
One of the birds that lives on our island and can be heard almost year round is the red-breasted nuthatch. These little birds call out with a soft “meep-meep-meep’ and spend most of their time upside down on trees trucks and seed cones. Around here they are common all year round. Except this year. I haven’t heard a nuthatch for months. On the back of a record wet autumn and winter with some record cold spells and a persistent Lan Niña effect keeping the ocean cool, I wonder what is going on. Red-breasted nuthatches are ubiquitous in our forest and …
Back when I began this blog I called it “Parking Lot” which is a term in the facilitation world used for the list of things that we need to talk about at some point but just can’t get to right now. Now that I’m returning to the blog world I thought I would make a regular list of the things that have been accumulating in my own parking lot. So each time that list reaches ten, I’ll share them here. Here’s the first bunch. My buddy Tenneson Woolf shares a stab at Slice of LIfe writing, which is intriguing. A …
My favourite places to walk are along coastal paths, preferably along cliff tops or wild shorelines. On my home island we have very few places where one can take an extended stroll along such a place as most of the shoreline is privatized and even though in Casnada all shore up to the high water mark is public right of way, much of the Nex?wlélex?wm/Bowen Island coast line is steep and rocky and access to the intertidal zone is restricted. But there is a glorious walk along the shoreline at Cape Roger Curtis and it is my favourite place on …
For Mother’s Day, have a read of Crawford Killian’s new piece in The Tyee about fungi and forests as he charts his learning about mushrooms, trees, and fungal networks through disbelief to reverent awe. Our common mother is so much more than we can ever understand. Read: Why fungi are more sophisticated than we can imagine thetyee.ca/Culture/2022/05/06/What-Do-You-Say-To-Thinking-Forest/