For a while in the mid nineties, CBC ran a satire called “The Great Eastern” which billed itself as “Newfoundland’s Cultural Magazine,” aired by arrangement with the fictitious Broadcasting Corporation of Newfoundland. While looking for something else, I stumbled over their website, featuring a bunch of episodes:
“The Great Eastern–Newfoundland’s Cultural Magazine, started as an hour-long summer replacement on CBC Radio in 1994 and since 1996 was a half-hour program on the regular Saturday morning schedule. Despite critical acclaim and a dedicated fan base, the CBC effectively cancelled the show after the 1998-99 season, further alienating the thousands of listeners out there looking for something intelligent, well-written, and above-all funny on the radio dial.”
This was one of the best shows ever to air on the CBC in the mid nineties. Absolutely brilliant writing, and very subtle humour. Very much in the British tradition (see People Like Us, for example). Rumours are that the GE crew will be back in some guise in the summer, but not as The Great Eastern.
Another installment of linkage for your perusal:
- A Guide to Formal Consensus decisionmaking
- Peter Denning on Building a Culture of Innovation via EMERGIC.org
- Entomology: Invasion of the brood. “The 17-year cicadas are about to emerge in force” Watch out!
- Full text of DESCHOOLING SOCIETY by Ivan Illich
- Creating a Culture of Gift (.pdf) via Wealth Bondage
- Krishnamurti Information Network – Krishnamurti Biography via Whiskey River
- Anne Cameron on the bears of Tahsis and the morons that hunt them for fun, with a great discussion in the comments.
- Movement As Network(.pdf) via GiftHub
- You Can Choose To Be Happy, an online book by Tom Stevens with a nice chapter on self-observation. Via Curt Rosengren
- AWARENESS: The instrument and aim of experiential resarch which looks at how to ask questions that heighten our awareness
Just got a phone call from my friend Mike Mearns, who is the Executive Director of the Aboriginal Financial Officers Association of BC, an organization that supports First Nations financial and management capacity through training and workshops. They are looking for an Executive Assistant, but don’t let the job title fool you. The main duties are developing training materials and organizing workshops for First Nations administrators working “at the coal face” as it were:
“The Aboriginal Financial Officers Association of B.C. (AFOA-BC) requires an Executive Assistant to provide support to the General Manager and Board of Directors. Our association is established to represent the interests of its membership in areas of First Nations financial management and administration. Duties of this position will include office administration, education and training event coordination, membership communication and coordination.
As a large percentage of job duties include support in adult financial/administration training and education we require you to have a degree or diploma in business administration or education. As well, we require 3-5 years experience in providing assistance to a manager and board of directors in areas of training conference/seminar management and adult learning. Suitable candidates must have excellent computers abilities including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher and Access. Accounting knowledge and skills will also be an asset in providing support to the association. Knowledge of and previous work experience with a First Nations organization is preferred.”
There may be those of you out there who have an interest in facilitation. adult learning, management and administration training and First Nations issues that might want to consider this one. The competition is closing very soon, and they are still looking to fill out their candidate field.
Contact Mike through the AFOA website and let him know I sent you.
I was facilitating a very difficult process last week with a complex group. Over three days, my plan for the work changed constantly, responding to the internal and external pressures that were flowing all around us. At the end of the second day, I felt slain, as if anything I tried to do had the opposite of its intended effect. It was a tough day for all of us.
On the third day, during which some remarkable transformations came forward from the group, one group member told me a story in a break. He was a commercial fisherman, who has fished salmon his whole life out in the Georgia Strait and around the mouth of the Fraser River. He described a time once when he cast his net and it got taken by the current and hung up around the jetty at the mouth of the Fraser. Thinking he was going to lose his net (or worse, capsize his boat), he carefully began to bring it in and was relieved to find that the net was not only intact, but it was also full of ling cod.
He was thankful for his good fortune, and has always had half a mind to try and do it again, but worried that he would lose his net. In short, it’s not the kind of good luck that can be easily repeated without major risks.
It took me close to a week to fully understand the reason for this story (sometimes Elders teach so subtly, THEY aren’t even aware they are doing so! And sometimes, the students are so preoccupied that we’re plain THICK…not sure which was the case here!)). So sometimes we make mistakes and once we realize them, a little attention and care can save our basic tools, and perhaps, even gather in a completely unexpected catch. It’s all about being open to the situation you are in RIGHT NOW, and not getting cocky when you pull out of it with a hold full of cod. For it is not always US that controls these things…sometimnes it is just the flow of the currents and the group mind of the ling cod.
In case you’ve always wondered where all those performers at Cirque de Soleil come from, check out Cirkids. Located in Vancouver, I have known about this group for quite awhile, due in no small part to the fact that they have a whole day of training for homeschooled kids every Wednesday.
Today our family went to see their annual show, this year based around a theme of mermaids, pirates, and love lost and found. The show is a full on professional circus performance in the spirit of Cirque de Soleil or Cirque Eos, except done with kids, some of them pre-teens. It is heartstopping watching young teenagers dangle from a trapeze 30 feet above the floor, or tumbling end over end in an elaborate undoing of an aerial tissu.
But what was amazing was the absolute purity of spirit and discipline inherent in these kids. They are strong, confident, fearless young men and women, and powerful reminders to all of us about what we can all be.