If I disappear for a while, it’s because I have become completelyy immersed in this website, Research on Place and Space. Astounding, is perhaps the best word to use to describe it. “This set of resources draws together work from a variety of disciplines on the concept(s) of place and space. The term ‘place’ does not necessarily have the same implications or meanings in the different disciplines. Furthermore, other terms are sometimes used in place of place, such as home, dwelling, milieu, territory, and of course, space. None of these, though, are necessarily equivalent to the notion of place. The …
Run, don’t walk, to the CBC Radio webiste for Ideas where you will discover that this year’s Massey Lectures are by Thomas King on the “The Truth About Stories, a Native Narrative.” for you to savour. The lectures run all this week on Ideas, which can be heard on the web. Possibly they will show up in the archive for a spell too, but I doubt it. However, as they do every year, House of Anansi has published the book and I picked it up today and read four of the five lectures. They are stunning. Get engaged with this …
At the Practice of Peace conference last week, there was a lot of laughing going on. There was an offering on laughing as practice, and Alexander Kjerulf offered a session that, from my vantage point through a window, looked like a battle between two sides of hysterical fighters, trying to out-joy each other. And now comes news from Flemming Funch that an Ethiopian man named Gima Belachew has broken his own laughing record. The story is quite a read, including this great quote: We are living full of stress… Natural disasters, economical, political, social problems… My aim is to minimise …
I want to draw your attention to a community Open Space unfolding today and tomorrow in Oftringen, Germany and posted online in real-ish time. I’m back from the Practice of Peace conference on Whidbey Island which featured Harrison Owen and friends and colleagues opening space for peace around the world. Have a read of the proceedings at the conference website. And lastly I have spent the last two days in Open Space at a forum for Emerging Aboriginal Leaders. The procee4dings from that conference will be posted at the openspaceworld.net wiki site in the next few days. Phew.
I’m on the road for a few days. In the meantime, dig a few poems from Sherman Alexie, whose home state I am visiting: Defending Walt Whitman Basketball is like this for young Indian boys, all arms and legs and serious stomach muscles. Every body is brown! These are the twentieth-century warriors who will never kill, although a few sat quietly in the deserts of Kuwait, waiting for orders to do something, to do something. God, there is nothing as beautiful as a jumpshot on a reservation summer basketball court where the ball is moist with sweat, and makes a …