It’s a snow day here on Nexwlelexwm/Bowen Island. After a couple of weeks of clear warms weather, winter seems to have finally gotten around to giving us a little blast of snow and cold. we’re looking at a week or so of colder than normal temperatures on the back of these squally snow events we’ve been having for the past twelve hours. After shovelling and salting the driveway, wrapping my water pump in a blanket and checking the heat tape on the pipes, I settled in to watch soccer and catch up on local news. It’s been 24 hours of …
Interesting links that crossed my path this month. You can find these in real time at my Mastodon site, which is also mirrored on Bluesky. Happy New Year to all.
Confirmed yet again that the way to build community, and indeed strengthen participatory and democratic societies is to do work together. Peter Levine, who I feel like everyone should read, has a nice little blog post today that serves as a bit of a gateway to his own research and thoughts on this topic. Here’s his basic thesis: People are more likely to trust institutions if they are involved in diverse, participatory groups, because such participation gives them a feeling of agency, teaches them that compromise is necessary (it’s not a sign that leaders are corrupt), and encourages them to …
If you email me in the next couple of weeks you will get this reply: Hi there. You have caught me in a really busy travel time. It might take me awhile to get back to you, but I’ll do my best to do so within a coupleof days. Please forgive me if it takes longer! In the meantime, here’s my homemade no-knead bread recipe if you wantto give it a try. 5 cups of white flour1 cup of whole wheat flour1 Tbs of instant yeast2 Tbs salt3 cups of water. Mix everything together in a large bowl until all …
This is a speculative post, with a bit of a hypothesis. Where I live in British Columbia there is a provincial election campaign on. It is happening in the midst of a kind of permanent federal campaign that, although not officially begun, has been manufactured by the Conservative Party of Canada as they try to topple the Liberal Party minority government. Political branding is all the rage at the moment, and I’ve been reflecting on an interesting pattern: parties on the right are largely unstable alliances that unite under a common banner for a while and then engage in cycles …