Author: Michael

Some people think salsa is a condiment. I tend to think of it as a fifth food group. This might be my greatest sacrifice in spending these last several months in London. There are about four, okay maybe five, Mexican restaurants in the whole city.

Jill works with a woman who’s married to a Mexican guy. We thought they should know where the burritos are, right? Well, yes… they do. And yes, we have no burritos, no salsa, no chips in this town… unless you count nacho cheese Doritos. Not the same!

Jill’s parents just came to visit, so we tried one of the four Mexican joints we’ve heard of. They come from Texas, so we figured we’d either have some good food or a genuine cross-cultural experience. We knew we were in trouble when they brought bottles of ketchup and malt vinegar with the nachos.

weekly updates from himalayan climbing, oceans,
poles, and elsewhere. happy birthday mark!

The Nepali king and military have placed tight restrictions on what can be printed and broadcast there, following the “royal coup” of February 1st. I assume the main media websites are similarly banned from reporting on what is really happening there. Friends and colleagues I’m working with there send conflicting reports by email and it’s hard to tell if they feel safe to speak freely.

Now it seems that at least one blog is filling the information gap. United We Blog …for a Peaceful and Democratic Nepal showed up in Google News this week. It’s the straightest scoop I’ve seen from there. At least it’s the most detailed. This is powerful media in dangerous times.

Meanwhile, my friends who are organizing the Nepal Appreciative Inquiry National Network continue to work in the direction of our second national conference, using OpenSpaceTech, later this year. I facilitated last year’s conference and am waiting on meetings this month about this year.

Walked around London yesterday with Helen Payne, an old family friend. Along the way we stopped into Southwark Cathedral, which is the oldest gothic building in the city. Rebuilt in 1212 AD after a fire destroyed much of it. They’ve been using this plot of land for worship since 606 AD! Boggling for a north american mind, coming from a place where 1700’s is old.

Today am starting to wrap some mindspace around SmallChangeNews, wrestling with questions of showing vs. telling, local focus vs. global offering, personal action vs. community action, and wiki vs. blog. Boggle again, but finding a space of mutuality, where we can have and do all of these things.

Elsewhere, Spring seems to be back on again outside, so a few errands out in the sunshine. Fourteen cooking days left for me in the kitchen at Jamyang, but who’s counting? We cook lunch for 100 four days in a row this week, about twice normal maximum capacity. Will order something like $1500 of food tomorrow and then try to find places to store it all. Boggle.

Then home to Chicago to help facilitate the MeshAction finale of MeshForum, all about Networks and Networking. Check it out and join us if you can! No boggle here. Should be a very interesting place to be. And good to be back on home turf, even if briefly.

…see Jamyang Kitchen Manual and Open Space Practices for new progress in both.

Added a few recipes to the Manual I’m developing for the Kitchen, and came to some new clarity yesterday on these OpenSpacePractices. The first practice, Opening, turns out to be essentially about resting, as in letting down one’s guard, welcoming, embracing. The letting down is important, as it is the sensation of the practice. Working these others in the direction of sensation led me to consider invitation as naming… or maybe now I think, Clearing. Then, holding is really more the sensation of Cradling. It’s not holding firm, but simply providing a snug-enough platform from which new things can squirm and look into what they need to, what they choose. And then, the last practice may yet turn out to be Defending, though this has some negative connotations, so following the thread further leads to more a sensation of Generating. In Defending we take a position, generate a boundary, an energy that protects, a front. This seems to fit.

And then it’s important to notice that each practice is essentially the not doing of the one that comes before. Opening as not Defending or Generating, letting the guard down. Inviting and Clearing is a focusing that stops Opening and being Willing to accept any and everything, and begins the process of choosing and directing. That directing stops, resolves, in simply being there, Cradling, Holding, Hosting… unless something invades the space, or until an event comes to a close when a practitioner must either Defend against the invader, defend participants right to make their own choices, generate options for movement (like simply walking out of the room as an alternative to getting hooked in by the invader’s organizing and controlling), or at the end, generating a report. Finally, after taking the position, making the report, defending the space, the next step is to let down, rest, Open again…

I really like Chris Corrigan’s idea of a keynote facilitator. I could be one of those, or might just like to be a keynote consultant or manager, inviting and focusing attention on what’s most important in the everyday work. This is pretty close to how I like to work anyway, kicking things off over and over, setting the stage, and then disappearing in the sea of the work, with everyone else, and working with what’s important to them.

Thanks to Dave Pollard for his posting about the recent work on Open Space Practices kicked off by Chris Corrigan with Dave Stevenson. I’ve been slowly refining the descriptions of the practices and a two-day workshop design.

Hoping to get out to Seattle WA and Bowen Island BC in August or September to run the workshop with Chris and Dave. Will present a thimble-full of this in early April for a company here in London. Hoping there might yet be another opportunity for the full two-day workshop to run here in the UK before I leave in July.

John Mauldin’s weekly letter summarizes well the coming retirement crunch for the baby boomers. In short, perhaps 70% of all boomers will not have the money they think they need to retire on. Looks like a big wake-up call in the making, with implications for the entire global economy. His weekly letter finishes with a list from a book by Michael Masterson called “Automatic Wealth – the Six Steps to Financial Independence.”

It would be simple to say that from now on when I get a question about how one can become wealthy I will refer them to “Automatic Wealth.” But the book is more about than some formula for getting wealthy. It is to some degree a book about the philosophy of wealth and money, as well as the role it plays in our life.

The Eight Habits of Wealthy People

Michael recognizes that money is not the most important thing in life. As he notes, he knows a lot of rich people who are miserable. However, not having money is even more stressful. Money is simply a tool. And some people seem to have the knack for accumulating it. Masterson gives us eight habits of wealthy people.

A. Wealthy people work hard.
B. Wealthy people are good at what they do.
C. Wealthy people have multiple streams of income.
D. Wealthy people live in (relatively) inexpensive homes.
E. Wealthy people are moderate in spending.
F. Wealthy people are extraordinary at saving.
G. Wealthy people pay themselves first.
H. Wealthy people count their money.

Seems a pretty good list. Makes me wonder how it might be applied to being wealthy in ways other than financial. I’m especially intrigued with the implications of G, paying oneself first. How does that translate to other things? How does it relate or not relate to generosity. Can one be generous first and still become wealthy? Or does the giving necessarily happen after the money gathering? Worth noting, I think, that most of these, as habits, are more concerned with how we manage the flows of money, rather than how we manage the stocks. It’s these habits of flow that might be generalized to other kinds of flows in our lives. Seeing these as about flows rather than stocks leaves space for generosity, a flow of giving, as well. Though I’m still surprised that giving and generosity aren’t named more explicitly.

Fresh mowed grass here this morn. Won’t find that in Chicago, in March.

Got out running twice this week in shorts and a t-shirt in glorious London sun. You know what that means: the end of indoor kite-flying season!

These taken the night of my birthday a couple weeks ago. Don’t try this at home. [grin]

It’s the equinox today, I think, or close enough. Wake the neighbors, phone the kids… and go balance and egg on it’s end. Not one of those bumpy ones, either. Today is one of two days in the year that you can balance even smooth and pointy ones on their ends. We’ve had one standing up straight all morning on the kitchen counter, wondering how long before the planet tips enough to knock it over.