In Those Years In those years, people will say, we lost track of the meaning of we, of you we found ourselves reduced to I and the whole thing became silly, ironic, terrible: we were trying to live a personal life and yes, that was the only life we could bear witness to But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged into our personal weather They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove along the shore, through the rags of fog where we stood, saying I — Adrienne Rich, 1992, hat tip to Jim My …
This is a picture of me, puzzling something out. I’m about a third of the way through a 20-week Participatory Narrative Inquiry practicum with Cynthia Kurtz. We’ve been spending a lot of time talking about story, and story collection, because that is a really important aspect of generating the magic. As Cynthia said today “magic is amazing but all the folktales will tell you that it is always supposed to be hard.” Today she shared an old blog post on the work being “too hard” and it’s worth quoting in depth: Story work is hard. It is not clean or clear or …
Coming home from Victoria this morning on the ferry through teh southern Gulf Islands to Tsawassen. This is a lovely ferry ride, and since the first time I rode this route back in 1994 when I did this as a regular once a month trip to Victoria, I have loved the way the ferries wind ther way around the islands of the archepelago, and thread through Active Pass out into the Strait of Georgia. Active pass is a narrow, deep passage between Mayne and Galiano Islands, and depending on the tides, it can relatively calm and flat or churning and …
Some links to interesting things that came my way in the last few weeks. Most of these have been already posted on my Mastodon timeline.
Since 1947, and annually since 1960, the tribes of the west coast of Canada and southeast Alaska have sent basketball teams to Prince Rupert, BC, for the annual All-Native Basketball Tournament. It is a major cultural gathering of Coastal Nations and a celebration of community, culture, resilience and sport. All morning I’ve been watching the opening ceremonies broadcast on YouTube by CFNR. Have a watch. Guaranteed to make you smile. So much joy. And if you want to watch the games, CFNR is live streaming all the matches.