Author: Michael

Election results (by state, as reported in mass media) look an awful lot like Pre-Civil War Free and Slave states. Then this shows results by county, which doesn’t look nearly so divided. Too bad we don’t have the slave question reported by county…

Not ever as simple as it looks, eh? (I’m practicing my Canadian just in case!)

An interesting offer from Penny Scott in Vancouver…

Kind of takes the edge off John Mauldin’s open letter to Karl Rove, noted in my last posting. [grin] More interesting to me for the remapping more than the renaming, as I was blogging similar thoughts last February… but I didn’t have this map, at that time…

Tax map via Red Harvest. Full size and fine print.

Opening disclaimer, I voted (as I usually do) and I didn’t like it. Next confession, I’m a bit of a markets and economics junkie, not hardcore, but more than a little interested and fascinated by the movements of people, goods and numbers. I’m much more interested in progress and productivity than politics. I read John Mauldin every week. His latest newsletter is an Open Letter to Karl Rove.

It’s a remarkable view of what could be coming down the pipe now… and touches on income tax and social security reform, putting responsibility for business cycles back into the laps of businesses, the Bush recession, the falling dollar, tort reform and the cost of healthcare. He’s a former insider in the Texas Republican Party, but this letter has something to bother everyone… and therein lies my hope that we might yet all come together in a more prosperous and responsible world.

Missing from this are notes on things like environment, but arguably some of these major issues that have been so long ignored (the economic ones) are likely (only temporarily, I hope) to squish the environmental and social type issues into the background in the next, likely deeper recession. The important thing seems that we come through it more together and better prepared to do those other next things next.

The one item I’m most suspicious of here is swapping the income tax for sales tax. Horribly regressive, but I’m willing to consider and would be glad to see how this change might (dare I say) trickle down in the same way that tort reform eventually aims at making healthcare cheaper and employment easier. In the meantime, I think I could cheer for a future like this.

This from Harrison Owen, of OpenSpaceTech fame, via the OSLIST international email listserve…

…seems to be suggesting that “muddling through” may be our last option. I rather think it is the only option, and always has been. And becoming good “muddlers” should be our first priority. For those of you unacquainted with British-speak “Muddling through” is what happens when all plans fail and still a positive result emerges. It seems to be mysterious, particularly when one assumes that careful planning and detailed execution is the only way to move forward.

I am by no means suggesting that planning and good execution is irrelevant, but I think it is incredibly important to fully understand the nature and limitations of both planning and execution. There are those who see planning as an exercise in creating the future — and therefore execution becomes the implementation of that desired future. Implicit in that understanding is the assumption that we could actually comprehend/understand the myriad forces and variables in our world and therefore come up with an accurate plan leading naturally to effective execution. Nice idea, but fatally flawed.

I think the good news of the moment is that the limitations of our capacities are becoming painfully obvious. We do not, will not, nor have we ever had sufficient grasp of the complex and fast moving elements in our world/country/company/organization (what I have called “raplexity”) to enable the creation of effective plans which lead naturally to elegant execution. This is a real blow to the old ego (individually and collectively) but, I believe, an essential first step towards dealing with our lives, to say nothing of our sanity. When reality and our perception of reality are wildly out of phase, that is indeed crazy making, and may in fact be the definition of insanity itself. We call that a “break with reality.”

Plans (at best) are rough approximations of the territory that lies ahead. They are man-made maps, and like all such things — good as far as they go, but never mistaken for the territory they depict. To think otherwise is to invite disaster — as is painfully exemplified by the current…

This seems a good fit, popping up just between yesterday’s election and my flight to London next week. Living beyond the plan.

…weeks of the year are when the leaves turn colors. I’ve been marvelling a bit here at the fall colors — and trees in general — after four weeks of the green, rice-covered, relatively tree-less walls of the Kathmandu Valley.

I really like this picture my sister sent of her house in Urbana, all the better that they’ve just finished too many years of renovation work. Congrats and thanks, teee!

Some more things seen here in Boudha…

• We go to the store, a fancy new 3-story supermarket where you can buy packaged food from around the world, luggage, shaving cream, produce, fresh breads, housewears… the works. Our bill comes to 159 rupees, which is just more than $2. We pay with Rs200. The cashier makes change, Rs40… and then reaches behind her to the candy counter, pulls out a pack of gum and opens it. She hands us the Rs40 and one stick of gum. The rest of the gum she empties into the one Rs portion of the cash drawer. Later, we buy some CDs. In that little shop the shopping bags we are given to hold the disks are small sewn fabric bags with little drawstrings. Go figure.
• On the way back to the monastery, we pass an small vacant lot where two guys and 5 large snakes are putting on a show. One guy herding the snakes into the center of the space, away from a big circle of onlookers, mostly locals. The other guy (you got it!) is playing little tunes on the pipey thing you see in cartoons and he’s doing his best to herd Rs into a bag of donations.
• I’m still amazed to walk down to the stupa in the morning and find doughnuts frying, whole huge sides of beef being cut up with cleavers that have been sharped to half their original size, women sweeping dirt streets out in from of their shops with small handbrooms made from dried rice plants (i think), and then walk into this shop and sit down at a brand new computer. Rs30 per hour.

Less than one week left here. Plenty of practice and shopping and eating still to go.

more pictures…

Reporting here from Boudhanath, Kathmandu, with some random observations…

• little kids playing frisbee here in the street, using a 6″ square of cardboard for a frisbee
• whole chickens sitting out on tables in front of meat shops, heads and feet still attached, proprietors shooing flies from the tables
• a teenager passes by wearing a black t-shirt with a farrah fawcett blond on the front, with a gold nosering inserted through the fabric
• reading jonathan schell’s the unconquerable world and sitting around talking with maggie camfield about her travels in india and tibet, and the future of india, china, usa, tibet, nepal
• we stop in a tibetan carpet store i visited last year, the owner is napping but jumps up when we enter… and says, “hello, michael!” as we’d just talked yesterday
• the smell of garbage and incense, the play of little kids in tiny school uniforms and big backpacks, beautiful eyes and smiles, old lamas limping along dragging malas and chanting mantra under their breath
• a chorus, nay veritable cacophony of dogs erupts at one a.m.

This is some of what it’s like here. Some other observations posted in LondonCalling and also my NepalConferenceJournal is posted in the wiki.

That conference was conducted as a blend of Appreciative Inquiry and Open Space Technology. The results are summarized and translated from the official declaration that was reported in national and local media and delivered to important government officials here.

• Initiating support to concerned stakeholders for conflict transformation and peace building, to protect and to muliply the past achievements and present life energies of Nepal, as identified in the Discovery phase of the conference.
• Protecting and multiplying the district-level Imagine Initiatives in all 75 districts of Nepal, as a movement for peaceful development.
• Developing an organizational structure for Imagine Initiatives and regional and national networks that supports egalitarian and autonomous functioning, on the ground and on the internet.
• Adopting Appreciative Inquiry and Open Space Technology as theoretical guides and grounding principles of all AI Networks and Imagine Initiatives in Nepal.
• Organizing regional AI network summits in all five development regions and a Second National Summit of Imagine Initiatives of Nepal, in Palpa, West Nepal, in the Fall of 2005.
• Inviting, respecting and appreciating the contribution made by each citizen, private organization, and government institution as our primary vehicle for peace and peacemaking, community and development.

We also set up a suite of weblogs there, so that now they have a leading edge sort of web presence that we’ve linked in to the sCNN as well. It’s all good.

I’m traveling and working in Nepal with Jonathan Schell’s The Unconquerable World. Early on he says,

What were the causes of this democratic revolution? Almost anything you cared to mention, according to it’s most profound expositor, Tocqueville. “The various occurrences of national existence have everywhere turned to the advantage of democracy,” he wrote; “all men have aided it by their exertions: those who have intentionally labored in its cause and those who have served it unwittingly

I often say that with so much of my work living online now, in blogs, wiki webs, and the like, I can work from anywhere. It’s a nice theory, mildly reassuring as I leave home for weeks or months at a time. And something, like fire sprinklers, that I never really want to test.

This morning, however, I arrived Bangkok en route to Kathmandu, checked mail and needed to make some changes to the site. Having navigated a bunch of Microsoft apps here (delicate stuff for a Mac guy), yielded a few passwords to this trusty (I hope!) PC, and hacked up a very little bit of code… it seems that all is well again in my online world… even after accidently blowing up the wrong page the first time. Phew. Enough field surgery for now! I really should be sleeping.

I leave tomorrow morning for Kathmandu Nepal, where the first order of business will be to facilitate a four-day conference for reimagining the future of that country. We’ll have about a hundred community leaders coming in from every district of the country. Given the difficulties with travel these days in the midst of the conflict there, I expect that these will be exceptionally passionate folks. My connection to them is the Imagine Nepal program, a replication of Bliss Browne’s Imagine Chicago.

The design is interesting. The practical question is how can they do more Appreciative Inquiry in Nepal, but the desing is four consecutive one-day Open Space events. Four Appreciative Inquiry subthemes: Discovering, Dreaming, Designing and Delivering the best possible future for Nepal. On the last day, we’ll do a bit of an OpenSpaceTech training and spend a good chunk of the day considering how OST can support and inform the Delivery of the Designs made on Day 3.

In case you haven’t heard, things have been pretty rough in Nepal lately. Sure hope we can do some good in the midst of it all, and don’t know what else we could do other than Open some more Space for Appreciative Inquiry.

Developing…

The GivingMarket has just morphed into the Small Change News Network! See the blog for the latest development news, or the wiki for deeper history and working space.

Something a little strange about blogging oneself, but now I’ve gone and done it. Once the new Network gets up and running, I’ll figure out all over again what this here GlobalChicago weblog is all about.

For now, the action is all over there in the Network wiki and blog. Please join us!