Michael Herman's Blog (2003-2016)

Mars Watch August

Never again in your (or my) lifetime will the Red Planet be so spectacular. This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars, an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287.

Due to the way Jupiter’s gravity tugs on Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth in the last 5,000 years, but it may be as long as 60,000 years. The encounter will culminate on August 27th, when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles and will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest 75-power magnification Mars will look as large as the full moon to he naked eye.

Mars will be easy to spot. At the beginning of August Mars will rise in the east at 10 p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m. By the end of August, when the two planets are closest, Mars will rise at nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30 a.m. That’s pretty convenient when it comes to seeing something that no human has seen in recorded history.

So, mark your calendar at the beginning of August to see Mars grow progressively brighter and brighter throughout the month. No one alive today will ever see this again.

Louise Dimiceli-Mitran, via email.

The 3:15am Experiment

The 3:15 experiment is a collective writing project where participants write at 3:15am (in their own time zones) every day for the month of August. Originally conceived at Naropa, it’s intended to be an exercise on “states of consciousness and the writing process…to discover what connections would be made while writing separately, but together… writing, recording what was happening during ‘3:15 AM mind.'” The next 3:15 is coming up, and they’re looking for more participants. via GapersBlock

Openings in Israel

This report in this week from OpenSpaceTech colleague Avner Haramati, in Jerusalem…

Nine months ago we opened a space in a Regional Council that includes 25 villages and Kibutzim (corporate villages). They decided to build a five years strategic plan for the region together with the inhabitants. Eleven teams worked on the issues that stemmed from the Open Space. Last friday, ten teams that included inhabitants (130 of them) and civil servants presented their final suggestions in an open event/market to the public and guests and were acknowledged as the official guidelines of the strategic plan. The teams decided that they want to continue. The issue of the eleventh team was “clear as mud” and was publicly declared by the Head of the Council as the next focal point.

The event and all the process was declared by the Inhabitants and the Academic and Govenmental guests as the first manifestation of real participatory democracy that they have experienced and they were thrilled. One of the inhabitants shared her understanding of the process: ” We were excited by the four principles but I would like to add to the fourth: It ends when it ends but then it starts again.” Or as Tova said, ” After nine months the baby was born but now all the work of raising him up starts.” It seems that they are getting addicted to this, and our role along the way is just slightly to remind them of the tune (in their words).

Designing Peace

This newest NewDimensions interview should be a good one. It will be available for free listening until August 11th or so.

In his 20

Save the Dates – Midwest Open Space – November 17th & 18th, 2003

Enhancing the Wholeness of Organizations:
How Open Space Keeps Everyone Working Together
…in Spite of Everything!!!

Asset-Based Community Development

My Notes from the ABCD training workshop, are posted in the GlobalChicagoNotebook.

According to ABCD gurus John McKnight and Henry Moore, Community Building differs subtly from how we usually organize ourselves for production, consumption, service and problem-solving. It focuses on Gifts, Dreams, Skills, Passions of Individuals and the Relationships and Associations that we form to share and develop these essential human attributes.

Like OpenSpaceTech, it invites Caring, Responsibility, and Direct, Effective Action. The practice is one of Identifying Assets and the Connecting them in ways that generate more and more Learning and Contribution.

So, what is your most significant gift? …not a learned skill, but a real gift that you were born with. And how have you been using and sharing it lately?

BlogsAndWiki Classroom

Last week I was thinking about teaching English using Wiki and Blogs. Yesterday, AbbeNormal led me to MC Morgan’s experimental BlogsAndWiki course at Bemidji State University in Minnesota. A veritable treasure trove of technical and teaching resources. Pack a lunch when you go, you’ll want to stay a while.

While I was there, Renee Loud’s posting in the course’s BlogsAndWiki DayBook, about her experience at the Northwoods Writers Conference, reminds me how much environment matters… as our inner wordsmith drones on and on, using whatever material is at hand… all the more reason to watch where we step when we go out walking…

This morning, I’m walking over to the Green City Market (fresh, whole, sustainable, organic… yum!) in Lincoln Park… to get some food that’s Alive.

Dark Matter 1 – Open Space 0

Well, apparently there was something more to DarkMatter than I first noticed! Apparently, it’s a bit more powerful than OpenSpace or Technology.

I posted last Friday’s DarkMatter entry to the OSLIST worldwide OpenSpaceTech email listserve, a dependable sort of list of 350 participants now in its 8th or 9th year, and then the whole list totally disappeared. While some messages have been posted and archived since the Dark posting, no messages have been able to get out for distribution. DarkMatter seems to have taken over. My post was the very last post to be distributed, and now there is nothing but

Dark Matter Technology

BBC reporting… Astronomers have made a ‘mass map’ of one of the most massive structures in the Universe, showing how much more there is to it than glowing stars and gas. The object is a distant cluster of galaxies that contains ‘dark matter,’ the unknown component that comprises most of the mass of the Universe. The map shows it is distributed in much the same way as are the visible stars.

Hubble photos show dark matter on the left
in blue and just stars on the right, undistorted.

HOW Do I Want?

Following on from yesterday’s posting, I notice that as precarious as “I want…” can feel, “thank you” is always rock solid. No risk, no gap, no weakness, no attack. So maybe “thank you” is where new life begins. Life comes from life, what’s next comes from the best of what already is. Even and especially when it seems we have none of what we want, we must find what is working and invite it to grow.

Today I am thankful for calls from strangers and the opportunity to update our stories, as we retell the past and fish around for what’s next. For now.

What do I WANT?

Some conversations and spaces I’m in lately seem rooted in “no” and “don’t.” I notice that each new thing we say we don’t want closes us in a little bit. I see that if there is no wanting mixed in, if there is not also some “yes” and “let’s try” and “i would like…” and “please do…,” then we make ourselves smaller and smaller, sometimes more focused and powerful, but often sadly, painfully, maddeningly compressed and contracted, trying to not do things and not have the things we do not want.

This reminds me anew of the importance of wanting, of yessing, of moving out in the directions of those things that make us bigger, more whole, more alive. Flourishing. I notice that it feels dangerous, exposed, to say what is most wanted… Surely it’s impossible to have what we want. To ask seems to expose a weakness. But somehow, “I want…” seems lately to be opening and easing these conversations I’m in. Seems cleaner. Seems the greater danger, really, is that if I ask I may indeed receive — and that would change everything.

Am thinking just now that “I want…” must be about the most honest thing we can ever say, most powerful, most inviting, even if most precarious. Ah, yes, and then there is the joy of pulsation, yes and no. Oh my.

See Marshall Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication for more on noticing and naming wants and needs.

Many Hands

This past Saturday, I had the good fortune to be present at a real, live barnraising at Angelic Organics and the CSA Learning Center. About a dozen people had worked all week making a barn (literally) by hand — hand drilling, hand chiselling, hand cutting — from 134 large timbers, fashioning tenons and mortises (tabs and slots), and then assembling four massive walls. On Saturday, another 50 or so of us showed up to lift those walls into place and add the various connecting pieces and floors.

The most remarkable part of the whole experience was being part of 50-60 people, all holding what we could of the massive weight of each of those big-timber walls. We could struggle or we could slack off a bit and rest, but somehow the walls just floated on our 100+ hands… and then slowly tipped skyward into place. We had a beautiful sunny day, some fantastic food, and a bunch of folks who came out just to watch. It was a gorgeous, glorious day. Beyond words, really.

They say that you can count on one hand the number of barns built each year in this high-craft, high-community way. I’d like to think that OpenSpaceTech is inviting a similar spirit and ease into other kinds of work. The connection between BarnRaising and OpenSpaceTech was strengthened for me when I was leaving: “Some great people here today, Tom. Sure would like to see what happens if they all got into a big circle,” I said to Learning Center Director Tom Spaulding. “Let’s do an Open Space!” he called back from the second floor, as he pounded the last floor boards into place and the moon came up full over the fields.

Inspiring Youth

ChrisCorrigan has been doing some really great work in OpenSpaceTech with young people in Vancouver, BC. Some powerful stuff posted in the TrainingPracticeWorkshopProceedings. The following comes from a youth-led working session on MakingBCaModelforN8VEmpowerment (N8V=Native). I found this bit particularly heartening…

Current people in leadership positions need to be ‘held up’ by us commoners. I want to make U a better leader in whatever way I can. We can no longer afford to act as though our elected chiefs and hereditary chiefs possess all the answers and hold a magic wand to make things better. Community development takes a community. I understand that we need a strategy do this and it may take many years to achieve. I can do it. I’m young. Just teach me and others how to do this. I don’t want to reinvent the wheel. Tell me your 20 year plan, and I’ll implement it. I’ll hold you up.

Would love to connect young leaders in Vancouver and Chicago — and Chicago youth and Chicago leadership — in some combination of OpenSpaceTech meetings and online working space!

Inspiration

Bliss Browne of ImagineChicago fame sent along the following last week…

This summer something wonderful is happening in Chicago: an exhibit on living women in Chicago who are social justice pioneers. Two dozen women have created an exhibit which showcases action and thought on behalf of social justice and the personal and spiritual connections that have animated it. The installations are wonderful. A magnificent 25 minute film accompanies the exhibits and features the honorees and the young women who interviewed them to gather stories for the exhibit.

Opening Space in Oz

This just in from Brendan McKeague in Perth, Western Australia…

…the ongoing story of our local OS practice Group here in Perth, Western Australia, called Keeping the Space Open (KTSO) …began after Michael Herman’s visit in October last year, when he led the first OS facilitator training in Western Australia. One of the Action Plans emerging from the OS session in the training program was to create an ongoing practice group so that new trainees could have a safe space in which to confirm their skills and learn more about OS.

[We just hosted our second follow-up event and] …once again, to our surprise, forty people registered and more showed up on the night – ended up with about 45. One of the trainees was ‘the coordinator’, another the sponsor’ and another ‘the facilitator’. Another great evening of conversation, camaraderie and conviviality….and the space remains open… two further OS facilitator co-learning workshops here this year and at least one further KTSO session.

hmmm…

after a few days with the keyboard out of reach i come back wondering… who would i be without a computer… not because i am on the verge of tossing it out… indeed, i spent an hour exploring the new apple store today… but because i find it helpful to imagine beyond the edges… and then i wonder what organization is becoming… and what might happen if i stopped responding to email in favor of going out and talking with everyone who emailed… and asking them what their organization, community and world are becoming… and how we might together nudge them in the direction of… one.

Kaboom!

 
fireworks tonight!

Expanding Strategy

Beyond strategic planning, and in most cases despite strategic planning, much of our most potent action is guided by invitation and story. Of course, when strategic planning expands to include these, it is powerful indeed, but that’s not yet the norm. Here is something that seems to likely to expand our species understanding of the power of invitation, story and human-scale (market)places…

Urban Tapestries is building an experimental location-based wireless platform to allow users to access and author location-specific content (text, audio, pictures and movies)… Urban Tapestries allows users to annotate their own virtual city, enabling a community

Ready, Set, Click!

more about 26 things…

Who’s The Boss?

I’ve quieted down my life quite a bit in the last years, reading fewer books, listening to less music, putting the TV in the closet, and generally cleaning up the clutter. So after a simple dinner last night, I took a walk through my Old Town neighborhood here and found myself at an old familiar place: Barbara’s Bookstore.