Tag: What the arts offer

Understand the underground

 

A few words of Ben Okri’s Mental Fight stand out as I explore what it means to be best citizen I can be:

It is all in the air - poem, Okri

Cities are about connecting people and the ways we think, make and do together. This is how cities are formed, how they energize us, by giving us opportunities to follow our passions. In turn we energize the cities.

The quality of how we relate to self,  each other and our cities themselves in this city-making endeavour is essential. Everywhere, at all times, we need to listen to – notice – all the things forming, in the air and underground. This is a citizenship practice, of stopping to notice what and how we each show up to dance, and our relationship with the dancers and the changing dance floor itself.

The underground is the implicit, internal inner workings of the city that are hard to discern. Not the traditional, physical “underground” we think of as the network of pipes that serve the city, but the connections and conduits within, among and between us citizens in our social habitat.

If we want our cities to be different for us, then we must be different. For our cities to be different, we need to explore the underground within us, within citizens. Our underpinnings need to be tended to. We have to connect our souls before our work together, the very work that creates cities, will be different and result in different cities.

This is, ultimately both a personal and collective ‘mental fight’ to see, and understand, the underground.

What do you do to understand the underground in your self and your city?

 

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This post is part of Chapter 9 – Enduring Civic Practice. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:

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Beware “I haven’t been asked” trap

 

He’s our poet – but you might not know it: Parliament’s official wordsmith bemoans lack of meaningful work. That’s the headline that stood out for me this morning in today’s Edmonton Journal. The issue: Canada’s parliamentary poet laureate, Fred Wah, “has been asked to write just one poem during his two-year term.”

Reporter Randy Boswell tells us that “Canada’s national poet has warned that the taxpayer-funded position risks becoming ‘homogenized and diluted’ and expressed frustration that during his two-year term in Ottawa he’s been asked to produce just one work – a ‘mediocre’ poem about the Queen’s diamond jubilee…”

Here’s what Wah said to Boswell: “I wish that my government had asked me to write poetry about immigration policy, about Idle No More, about Canada’s complicity in the Middle East, the Enbridge pipeline… I haven’t been asked to do any of those things.” I read sadness and disappointment in Wah’s words. He would love to offer more, but he hasn’t been asked.

He’s fallen into the “I haven’t been asked” trap.

When we wait to be asked, we disengage ourselves from the work we really want to be doing. By waiting to be asked, Wah is not feeding his own writing – and his soul – by exploring his passions and desires. By lingering in this trap, he might be missing that he has been asked. The official “ask” of Wah, according to section 75.1 of the Parliament Act of Canada, is to write poetry:

The poet laureate may:

  1. write poetry, especially for use in Parliament on occasions of state;
  2. sponsor poetry readings;
  3. give advice to the Parliamentary Librarian regarding the collection of the Library and acquisitions to enrich its cultural holdings; and
  4. perform such other related duties as are requested by either Speaker or the Parliamentary Librarian.

That first point is significant: the poet laureate may write poetry. He is not required to write only for occasions of state, or only at the request of either Speaker, or on specific subjects. Simply: the poet laureate may write. According to the Parliament of Canada website, his position enjoys great freedom: “The poet laureate is free to determine his or her specific activities within these parameters.” In his official position, he has the freedom to write, yet it is not  choosing to write.

Choose what you want to do.

If you wait to be asked, you might not ever do it. You might not ever feel that you have been your true self. You might not ever offer all you have to offer the world around you. Meaningful work is what we make for ourselves, not what others make for us.

Wah’s trap is familiar to me. I have found myself waiting to be asked on many occasions. Sometimes for years. None of us are immune to this and I do not hold any disregard for Wah. We all make these traps for ourselves; it is the human condition. What they really are is a threshold to cross – and the struggle to make the decision to cross it.

Jump in.

Thresholds are a natural part of our individual and collective learning journeys. They help us reach the places we wish to go. The struggles we experience at such thresholds are powering us up to be better citizens – and create better cities.

Wah has many things to offer the world in his writing. He offers a lot in speaking up about waiting to be asked. My ask of Wah is this – write about whatever moves you. Write to make the world a better place. Boldly grow your Highest Self to grow a better world.

Follow your passion to change your city

And Parliament too, it seems.

If you weren’t waiting to be asked, what would YOU do?

 

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This post is part of Chapter 8 – The City Making Exchange. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:

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I set myself to learn by your going

 

“I set myself to learn by your going,” are the words of David Whyte in a poem dedicated to the memory of John O’Donohue, “The Wave.”  These words invigorate me, in that they describe my travels in Ireland last month, in some of John O’Donohue’s favourite places.

A few years ago, as I worked writing a myriad of things of interest to me, I struggled to make sense of what I was assembling until I read  read John O’Donohue’s blessing, “For the Time of Necessary Decision.” I saw at last the shape my writing was wanting to take. I could see the arc for Nest City. The relief I felt at being able to see my own writing left me with a great affinity for O’Donohue and his work. Even though we have never met I wonder at how his work has supported mine, and how the work that preceded his, supports mine as well.

5800 years ago a neolithic (New Stone Age) civilization lived on The Burren, on Ireland’s west coast. This early subsistence farming civilization has left its mark in the Poulnabrone Dolmen, a portal tomb. As the interpretive panels state on the site, “they are enduring reminders of sacred spaces.” I can feel the pull of people before me, in a land I have never lived in, yet a land that is a part of me in my relationship with humanity and our common journey.

Even when we can’t begin to imagine it, our work shapes our world. The work of farmers to house their dead still stands 5800 years later, when their impermanent homes are long gone. They left their awe in the world with O’Donohue, who in turn has left his awe in the world with us, the likes of David Whyte and I and innumerable others.

It seems in place and with others, we set ourselves to learning, and we do this with our great learning partners who travel with us, before us, and ever mindful of those who will travel after us. Many of these travellers we will never meet, even those in our lifetime, but that does not mean we do not travel and learn together. We most certainly do.

I set myself to learn by John O’Donohue’s going, and David Whyte too. Thanks to them both for sharing their love and their work. It shapes our world, how we see it, and most personally, it also shapes me.

 

Whose “going” do you follow in your learning?

 

For the Time of Necessary Decision

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Further Reading

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This post is part of Chapter 8 – The City Making Exchange. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:

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Risking exchange

 

Last week, as I was playing the role of MC at a gathering of 170 city officials and the development/building community I found myself with a decision: read the poem I just wrote or sit on it.

We had just spent the afternoon talking about all the initiatives where people who usually bang each other’s heads have started to work together. It’s certainly a work in progress. Relationships have started where there were none. Understanding of each others’ priorities, and the worlds in which each other works has begun. And a sense of the different roles that city hall and the business community play – and the legitimacy of those roles – is also emerging.

As I enjoyed 7 fellow Edmontonians and their Pecha Kucha presentations, some of their words jumped out at me and I found myself organizing them, making meaning of what they were collectively offering us, the audience. As MC, I had one final duty: thank them and pass the microphone over to the last speaker who would thank all participants. I squirmed in anticipation: would I read and share the poem, or leave it in my notebook.

A four letter word kept popping up all day: RISK. I chose to risk it.

Here is what I heard Todd Babiak, Michael Walters, Tai Viola, Ray Watkins, Nancy Domijan, Simon O’Byrne and Tegan Martin Drysdale say (their words, my assembly into a poem):

Building Edmonton Together Poem

I offered myself and what I see. That’s what we do to make our cities as good as they can be.

Where are you stretching beyond your comfort zone to pursue what you love to do?

 

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This post is part of Chapter 8 – The City Making Exchange. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:

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Tiger mother

 

Transform the northern

tiger of opportunity

on the other side

of challenges

is the energy of

entrepreneurial spirit

a passion for

love, hope optimism.

 

Our choices change

the world

prosperity into the future

my future

our future

our future.

 

Alberta’s hardy crops

of work and integrity

a prevailing climate of

talent attached to meaning

intentionally building

compost value

of perishable communities.

 

Humans on the land

humans under the land

spanning strong and flexible

energy believing

success is attracting, incenting

opportunity when we listen.

 

Earth is our mother

we are her mother

listen to us breathing.

 

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Harvested at Transform Alberta Summit, November 8, 2012

 

 

Uneasy journey of cities with dinosaurs

 

Cities are not all that straightforward.  They are hard to figure out and make sense of.  They are tricky and messy.  They can make us quite uneasy, yet they are clearly where most of us choose to live.  Living in cities is a choice.  It is a journey we have chosen, even though it makes us uneasy from time to time.  It is an uneasy journey

The next series of posts focus on the left circle of the Nest Works, shown above.  We will take a look at the things that make us itchy and uneasy and discern some practical principles and practices that will support us in our city life.  These principles and practices will support us in our efforts to create cities that serve citizens well.  Perhaps most importantly, we can learn how to be citizens that serve cities well.

To begin, I revisit a 2009 post called The runaway train, the dinosaur and the house of cards, that emerged from reading Ronald Wright’s A Short History of Progress.  Here are two passages to note from Wright:

The myth of progress has sometimes served us well – those of us seated at the best tables, anyway – and may continue to do so.  But I shall argue … that it has also become dangerous.  Progress has an internal logic that can lead beyond reason to catastrophe.  A seductive trail of successes may end up in a trap (p. 5).
 
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Civilization is an experiment, a very recent way of life in the human career, and it has a habit of walking into what I am calling progress traps.  A small village on good land beside a river is a good idea; but when the village grows into a city and paves over the good land, it becomes a bad idea.  While prevention might have been easy, a cure may be impossible; a city isn’t easily moved.  This human inability to foresee – or to watch out for – long-range consequence may be inherent to our kind, shaped by the millions of years when we lived from hand to mouth by hunting and gathering.  It may also be little more than a mix of inertia, greed and foolishness encour-(p 108)aged by the shape of the social pyramid.  The concentration of power at the top of large-scale societies gives the elite a vested interest in the status quo; they continue to prosper in the darkening times long after the environment and general populace begin to suffer.Yet despite the wreckage of past civilizations littering the earth, the overall experiment of civilization has continued to spread and grow.  The numbers (insofar as they can be estimated) break down as follows: a world population of about 200 million at Rome’s height, in the second century A.D.; about 400 million by 1500, when Europe reached the Americas; one billion people by 1825, at the start of the Coal Age; 2 billion by 1925, when the Oil Age gets underway; and 6 billion by the year 2000.  Even more startling than the growth is the acceleration. Adding 200 million people after Rome took thirteen centuries.  Adding the last 200 million took only three years (p. 108-109).

Wright highlights Joseph Tainter‘s nicknames for three kinds of trouble that lead to the collapse of a civilization:  the Runaway Train, the Dinosaur, and the House of Cards.  An illustration of these phenomena are in Dickens’ Little Dorrit, a wonderful story of city life.  You’ll see direct connection to today’s world.

Dickens illustrates the Runaway Train in Merdle’s Bank, where debt pays debt, and that debt pays more debt.   Merdle alone, as the conductor of the train, sees the inevitable crash.  He despises the Dinosaurs that seek his favour to “invest” with him, yet takes them on as passengers.  The Dinosaurs continue to believe in his wisdom and prowess.  ‘Society’ has complete faith in Society, hence Merdle.  For Society, the financial returns will continue.  This is what is owed to position, prestige and privilege.  Status is taken for granted.  There is nothing that can go wrong.  But it does.

The House of Cards is found in the degradation and literal collapse of the Clenham household, and the rise and fall (and rise and fall again) of the Dorrit family.  The Merdles themselves who have enjoyed privilege find it gone.  The newfound wealth of the Dorrit family is gone.   “I might go back to dancing,” says Fanny Dorrit.  Her brother, Tip: “But what about me?”  All in which they found meaning is gone.

Enter Arthur Clennam, in debtors’ prison as a result of inability to pay his creditors after having lost his fortune on Merdle’s Runaway Train. His despair is not from having lost his fortune, but from having let others down.  His happiness in the end is as it always was – enjoying, and in relationship with, people regardless of their status and position in Society.  Through Arthur Clennam and Amy Dorrit and the cast of characters that support them on their journey, we see that relationships are what endure in the world.   If you count only on riches and material goods, then you can’t have much to count on.  The House will eventually crumble.

In today’s world, Merdle’s Runaway Train is the fall of Wall Street.  Dinosaurs refused to see – or let others see – that the economic train was heading fast down a path of disaster.  The harm for many is substantial.  The House of Cards is revealed.  What we have can disappear in an instant.

In the news these last few weeks is the story of E. coli and 1500 meat products recalled across Canada and 30 states in the US.  The highest ranked comment on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s website declares this event a result of allowing corporations to self-regulate, similar to the US allowing Wall Street to self regulate. This looks like a Runaway Train.

It appears, if we stop and think about it, that our very existence is a House of Cards.  Our privilege in the West is a House of Cards, and perhaps a Runaway Train. Whether it is the economic conditions of our time, or the environmental and health stresses at this time, let us be wary of the Dinosaur.  It is what keeps us from noticing the Runaway Train and the House of Cards.

Then what is the opposite of Dinosaur?  Awake, conscious, in tune with the world.  In relationship with the world.  In relationship with others in the world to seek understanding and solutions.  A sense of happiness.  In Little Dorrit, the happy folk have relationships that cross (yet keep) many boundaries – jailed and jailor, poor and rich, female and male, servant and master, harassed and harrassor, young and old, unloved and loved. Perhaps this is the antidote to the Dinosaur. A way of being that gets the best out of people for the challenges ahead.

It can’t really be named, this anti-Dinosaur, but it seems this is what will cultivate our needed collective ingenuity, for it is the Dinosaur that allows time to gather its moments secretly.

 

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This post forms part of Chapter 4 – An Uneasy Journey, of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities.

Nest City is organized into three parts, each with a collection of chapters.  Click here for an overview of the three parts of Nest City.  Click here for an overview of Part 2 – Organizing for Emergence, chapters 4-7.

 

 

 

The city as antagonist

In our city life, is the city the antagonist or citizens?

It’s hard to say.  Consider this passage from Lynn Coady’s The Antagonist (p. 234-5):

I am starting to view my past in a different way these days.  Strange to say under the circumstances, but I think now that I used to see my past as a book – a story with a beginning, middle, and end, all of which I knew by heart, and therefore had no reason to even crack the spine.  But now I am starting to see it as something more like a frontier – a landscape I have spent my life cultivating, fortifying against the random elements.  But the landscape is alive, is what I am realizing – is a thing unto itself – and if you’re brave enough to ever leave your house you start to see this.  In fact, the landscape consists of multiple things, multiple wills that shift and change and occasionally assert themselves in force. None of this, you eventually understand, belongs to you – not a rock or flower a broken branch – no matter how you work it, no matter how much scrub you clear.  The ground could decide to open up above your head.
 
The world is independent.  It moves, and moves on, with or without you.
 
Everything, that is, except that which you make die.  What you’ve killed is yours, forever – a trophy picked off from the landscape and hung up on your wall.
 
So you can greet one another each day.
 

The city, and city life, could be viewed as a story with a beginning, middle and an end.  It could be a story with all three of these elements know (or thought to be known) or it could be a story that has started and we just don’t know the end yet.  Just as the protagonist in The Antagonist, though, I too am starting to see city life as a frontier.  City life both cultivates random elements and fortifies against random elements.  City life is alive.

City live generates new conditions and problems to which we have to adjust.  It causes us random elements.  As the generation of new habitat causes us to adjust and innovate, this is the very skill we need to fortify against random elements.  And as we do this work, endlessly because the story doesn’t have an ending that we can grasp, if there is one.

Just as the protagonist above, our city life consists of multiple things, multiple lives, multiple forces that ‘shift and change and occasionally assert themselves in force.’  As much as the city belongs to us and is created by us, it is not created by me.  No matter how hard I work as an individual, ‘no matter how much scrub [i] clear,’ I do not have control over it.  We create it and we can shape it.  It may or may not work for me.  Whether I am alive or dead, the city will move on with or without me.

What is clear to me, is that while I am in relationship with my city (from within or from afar), I do have control over what I keep from having a full life in cities. While this may appear to be a negative thing, it is crucial. I can choose, with every interaction I have with others, to allow the full potential for cities and citizens to emerge.  I can help my city and citizens be fully alive, if they so choose.

Each of us have this decision –  make things die or create the conditions for things to thrive.

When the city challenges us, it feels like the antagonist.  This a crucial role, creating the challenges and tensions we need to grow.  When we choose to make things die, we are the antagonist, for we keep citizens and the city from reaching their full potential.

I recognize that I can be the kind of antagonist that provides constructive tension.  (Citizens create the very conditions that we have to respond to as a city!)  I also recognize that I can be a destructive antagonist.  When destructive, I aim to be conscious and see the trophy’s on my wall.  I aim to see them and get to know them so that I may learn to serve myself, my fellow citizens and my city well.

I embrace the city and its challenges as a constructive antagonist in my (our) life (lives).  The city creates the life conditions we and I need to grow and evolve.  City life puts us on the frontier.

 

 

 
 

Props to the pork chop clan

For the last 8 summers, my brother and I, our spouses and our kids hike into the backcountry behind Mount Robson on the Berg Lake Trail.  We make a point of travelling as light as possible.  It is a 23 km hike one way, with an 800 metre elevation gain, travelling through 3 biogeoclimatic zones.  It is hard work.  (For anyone keen on satellite imagery of the terrain, here is a link to a google map of the trail.)

 

On one of our first voyages on this trail, we came across a family that hiked “old school”.  They had old packs with the frames on the outside.  They carried in a cast iron fry pan, potatoes, cans of mushroom soup and pork chops that were 2 inches thick.  We were in awe of the stupidity of carrying so much weight up that tough hill.  A fry pan?  Huge pork chops?  A can of mushroom soup?  Real potatoes?  It is a story that has been firmly entrenched in our family lore.  The pork chop clan’s packs weighed 80 pounds.  The heaviest pack in our family: 40 pounds.

At the start of the trail this year we spotted the pork chop patriarch.  Moving slow with a heavy pack, resting at the top of the first hill we confirmed it was him.  We were thrilled!  We have been revelling in our own glory for being such smart hikers, carrying as little as possible (while also eating very well, I must add).  We were chuffed to see him moving slow under all that weight he was still carrying…

Until we saw their food this year.

Chicken breasts with a fresh vegetable sauce on pasta.  The preparation involved three stir fry pans (they are cooking for 7 hungry adults.)  Steaks and 5 pounds of carrots and at least 2 pounds of onions.  Followed by two banana cream pies with whipped cream.

And they were staying two more nights to enjoy more delicious meals.

While we may choose to travel light, we have to notice that these crazy (in our minds) folks have it right.  They work hard and they eat hard.  They love being in the mountains and they are not afraid of hard work.  They enjoy their food and they clearly enjoy being with each other on their mountain adventure.  A family hike with family meals.

Like my family, they do this trip over and over.  The pork chop patriarch’s kids have travelled from the south of British Columbia and Saskatchewan to meet him here (he’s from northern British Columbia) and spend this time together.  When we met them before, his daughter’s fiance was with them and we imagined that this was some kind of test to see if the fellow would fit in.  This year, the daughter’s husband was with them, and a son’s ‘almost-fiance’.

The kids in our group come because their parents’ expect them to because they range from 9-14 years old.  We can only hope our kids continue to join in our family adventures over time.

My nephew summed it up this afternoon as we neared the end of today’s 21 km hike, tired and wet in the pouring rain.  We have been suffering for years of sour grapes.  Just like Aesop’s fox.  It is easy to despise what you cannot get.

It is easy to jeer and belittle what you don’t have the strength to work for.

As my husband put it, ‘Props to the pork chop clan’.

 

Illustration - Felix Lorioux

 

Props – slang for “compliments”, or “accolades”

 

A festival that nourishes the city

Source - Heritage Festival

As I ran through Hawrelak Park yesterday, they were getting ready for this year’s Servus Heritage Festival here in Edmonton.  It occurred to me that the city is building a little city inside the city.  This little city is getting ready to do something very important in city life – it will tell us stories about ourselves.

1976 Poster (Source - Edmonton Journal)

Edmonton’s first Heritage Day took place in 1976 with the idea of getting people more familiar with the culture of others.  The Edmonton Journal reports today that the festival began modestly with 14 pavilions and 18,000 attendees.   It is now a three day festival with over 80 ethnic groups represented this year.  By 2006 the Festival’s attendance logged in at over 300,000.

Power infrastructure - electrical grid and gas

This temporary little city has the physical hallmarks of any city.  It has infrastructure: tents, electricity, gas, structures, a source of water and a means to dispose of our waste.

It also has a group of 6000 citizen volunteers that ensure that the event can take place.  These people make sure this little city gets built and they make sure that when citizens arrive there is an event to enjoy.

The business community sponsors this event and provides significant support.  The Festival also relies on the support of partnerships with government and community organizations.

The whole city takes part in creating and enjoying this event: citizens volunteer or simply show up and enjoy the event; there are people who build the little city and take it down afterwards; there are people who make sure it goes well, make sure things are safe and well-organized; there are various non-governmental organizations who make sure it is an event to remember.

The Heritage Festival gives us a chance to see what we might miss in our city lives.  It gives us a chance to see and hear and taste and feel the very culture of our city.

While we enjoy food and culture from around the world in Hawrelak Park this weekend, we also enjoy the food and culture that nourishes our city.  Physically and spiritually.  We have created an annual opportunity for people to dive into their own culture and strengthen their shared identity.  We are making a city on the Canadian prairies that is creating a whole new culture of cultures that allows various identities to thrive.

6000 volunteers create the conditions for us to be ourselves.   6000 volunteers create the conditions for us to see ourselves.

I love Edmonton.

 

For more pictures, please explore the Servus Heritage Festival gallery.

For information on this year’s Festival, please explore the Servus Heritage Festival site.

 

Phew – it’s hard work being part of our cities’ feedback system

Just over two weeks ago I wrote about my decision to slowly release my book, Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, as a blog.  Part of that decision was to post a piece of the book Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday each week, starting Tuesday May 1, 2012.  I have done it for two weeks.  Phew.

Even though I have material written, it has taken a lot of time and focus to turn what I have into a blog post that is remotely cogent and meaningful. It has been useful to condense my thinking.  Most helpful is the insight not to name the post until I am just about done – at that point I seem to find the point of the post.

As I keep doing this, I am mindful that I need to craft accurate invitations to readers.  I aim to pay particular attention to:

  1. A compelling title.  It might be all a readers sees in an RSS feed.  It will also be part of an attractive collection of posts as they become more numerous.  The title itself can be insightful.
  2. A compelling first sentence.  This appears on LinkedIn and facebook, for example.  It must draw readers in.
  3. A compelling personal update.  The title can be used, or slightly modified, for a Twitter/LinkedIn/facebook update.  The words themselves are what will compel a follower to retweet or forward my update and link.
  4. A post that provides links to others’ work.  As I explore, it is important for me to notice, for myself and others, the work on which I am building.  This models how economic life works.
  5. Writing what is wanting to emerge from me. I trust that each of us has a passion that is worth following.
  6. Being part of our cities’ feedback system.  As a writer, my work is, in part, to reflect on cities and how we organize ourselves.  I share what I see.
I have to confess I am looking forward to a break from blogging for a couple days.  But I know I will be itching to post again on Monday.  The pressure is welcome.