Humanize the Earth!

Happy Holidays

I liked this post from Peter: Happy Holidays

great weekend with family and friends

I’ll post photos later, but wanted to write a bit about my great weekend. I took the Amtrak Thursday night from Chicago to Dearborn, MI. It was about a half hour late and my parents picked me up.

Friday I spent the morning and much of the afternoon with my brother, sister-in-law, nephew and niece. Skylar seemed to have grown a lot in the two weeks since I’d seen her last. They say she’d put on another third of her body weight. She’s awfully busy eating and sleeping and growing!

Friday later in the afternoon I spent with Laurie and her husband, brother, sister-in-law, nephew and niece. After dinner Laurie and I met my parents for church. My mom got a chance to tell the story again about how when I was 2 and a half I carried the baby Jesus down the aisle to put in the nativity set. My dad got to tell the story about me around the same age asking about the people lighting the candles and carrying in the bible. He told me that when I got older I could become an acolyte. I reportedly told him, “No, I’m going to be an architect.” Turns out I’ve done a lot more acolyting than architecting.

Saturday my mom, dad and I went to my dad’s brother’s house (my uncle, aunt and two cousins and my aunt’s mother) for brunch. It was fun to see them. They were off to Florida right after we finished eating.

Saturday afternoon my mom, dad and I went over to my brother and sister-in-law’s house and spent a few hours with my nephew and niece again and had a wonderful meal. Max warmed up to me quite a bit by the end and was asking me to push him in his new riding digger, “Un-cle Ted push it.” Very cute. He was also very sweet with his little sister. He’s a very loving little guy!

Today my mom and dad and I went to visit my grandmother (mom’s mom). We’d seen her two weeks ago for the family xmas but she’s gone downhill since then and can’t walk at all anymore. She has dementia and can’t remember anything from one minute to the next, but she doesn’t seem to be in any real discomfort. She noticed the snow outside 3 times while we were there. Afterwards we went over to my mom’s brother’s house to see him (my uncle) and my aunt. I hadn’t seen their new house. They’re really preparing for my grandma’s death.

Over the weekend I also got a chance to talk with my mom and dad about how they met and then what happened from then through my birth and then their wedding later in the summer, then the adopting process that took about a year. I read all of the recommendation letters from my dad’s friends and colleagues recommending him as an adoptive father. Technically my mom had to give up her parental rights as part of the adoption (and then basically immediately gain them back as an adoptive parent) which made her nervous but all turned out fine. At that time, if was rare for an unmarried woman to have a baby and there wasn’t a procedure in place to have my biological father either give up rights or to have been declared to have abandoned me (as would be true in a similar situation today).

category: family personal

new project blog for my African project

The introduction to the new Humanists at Budaburam Liberian Refugee Camp, Ghana blog reads:

There are more than 1000 volunteers working for personal & social change through the Humanist Movement at the Budaburam Liberian Refugee Camp outside of Accra, Ghana, including a Campaign for Non-violence and Fight Against Malaria, among other projects. Initially, information will be posted from Chicago, but soon those in the camp will be posting here directly.

Since I have lots of information to post over there, and since I’ve already put some of the drafts here, and since I tend to wait for the time when I’ll have time to do it “right” and that means it never gets done, I’ve decided to use the new blog as a workspace, posting drafts as I can, and then going back and tidying things up later on. I welcome your comments as the work gets going and hopefully starts to make a bit of sense.

categories: Ghana Africa Humanist Movement blogging

5. The Principle of Denying Opposites report

Last night Debbie, John and I talked about The Principle of Denying Opposites as promised last week:

“It does not matter in which faction events have placed you. What matters is for you to comprehend that you have not chosen any faction.”

Work issues and advocacy strategies dominated our conversation, though I also shared an experience this week with the concept of “missionary.” I’ve been referred to an organization that supports missionaries as a way to fund my Africa work. At first I was very hesitant because of my preconceptions about what missionaries are. I’ve contacted the organization and will speak with them after the first of the year.

No meeting next week as I’ll be on the Amtrak to Detroit to spend the weekend with family.

Categories: Principles of Valid Action Humanist Movement

my neck hurts

Not sure if it’s technically my neck, perhaps my upper back? It’s sort of between the shoulder blades and on it’s way up to the neck. I think it’s due to data entry.

For the last week or so I’ve been entering new members of the humanist movement into our database (we do a census every 6 months so have a deadline coming up this weekend. I still have more to do, but I broke 1000 members in the Budaburam Liberian Refugee Camp in Ghana tonight. Regula has more than 4000 in Zambia and Congo.

I still have more to write and document about my trip to the camp last month, but that’s going to have to wait another week or so.

categories: Ghana Africa Humanist Movement

A new vision of giving

I’ll write more about this, I’m sure, but it simply deserves a look. It’s stunning. From Phil Cubeta: Gifthub: A View from the Dumpster

10. The Principle of Solidarity report

Tonight Pablo, Gerry, John and I talked about the Principle of Solidarity as promised last week:

“When you treat others as you would have them treat you, you liberate yourself.”

Pablo shared experiences at work where his boss (much younger than Pablo, and less experienced) asks Pablo to do something in a way that Pablo knows isn’t the best way. Sometimes he’s able to simply do as he’s asked, but other times he causes problems for himself but simply doing it the way he knows is better. Tonight he shared that if he were the boss, he’d want his employee to find a way to share with him about the better way to do things.

We then talked for a while about isolation. At work, I have some people that I don’t often speak with. I somehow use as an excuse the fact that they discuss mundane matters among themselves rather than treating them the way I want to be treated, which is initiating conversation about something meaningful. John and Gerry both had similar (at least tangentially) experiences to share.

I then showed my photos from my recent Ghana trip and answered a bunch of questions about what it’s like over there and what people are doing. I really need to create a summary of my previous blog posts with the gaps filled in, but I’m having trouble sitting down to do what I see as a really big job. Maybe if you asked questions in the comments here that would help me organize what I want to say in a new post. I’ll answer in the comments and then summarize in a new post.

We decided that at next week’s meeting we’d work on the Principle of Acceptance: “If day and night, summer and winter are fine with you, you have surpassed the contradictions.” Please join us if you’re in town.

If you’re not in town, there’s a conference call on Monday where we’ll discuss The Principle of Denying Opposites: “It does not matter in which faction events have placed you. What matters is for you to comprehend that you have not chosen any faction.” Please just let me know if you’re planning on attending.

Categories: Principles of Valid Action Humanist Movement

decision-making models follow-up

Monday night I wrote about the new Hub Housing Cooperative and our decision-making model deliberation. Two people responded to that post:

By email (excerpt):

Our management of concensus always allowed each person time to discuss their views on a matter. It was stressed that if a person or persons disagreed with something they must have the opportunity to express their views. Nevertheless my experience was that even if a person stood firm in disagreement they never invoked the right to stop the action.

In a comment (excerpt):

I’ve found in my experience that there will be times in the life of any group of more than two people when absolute agreement among all the members is just not possible. I think you need to have a process built in by which members can agree to disagree and still be able to come to a group decision.

Tonight we met again. We handled other issues first and then the remaining bylaws that were not in dispute. We had time remaining so decided to give Article V another try. After a few back and forth comments, especially asking the one hold-out what concerns remained (an example was: we’re all bike fanatics and we want to buy some expensive piece of equipment but we have one new member that’s not a cyclist and that person doesn’t want to spend the money so they block us from doing what we want), we asked for proposed solutions to this person’s concerns.

This person suggested and we adopted adding a sunset provision to the paragraph about the consensus model so that on April 30, 2006, this paragraph expires and we are forced to adopt a decision-making model fresh before our corporate renewal papers are due at the end of May. Everyone is happy and we have bylaws! Amazing!

categories: co-op housing

trackback, comments and invisible blogs

I’ve known Payton for a few years now, but until today, have never visited his west north blog. His emails have a signature that says “Payton Chung opines for himself + www.westnorth.com” but even though I find him facinating in person, it never occured to me to figure out what that signature meant until today.

The first thing I noticed is that I couldn’t let him know I’d visited because he doesn’t have comments enabled. He does have trackback so I hunted around for a post to cite. Here’s one about a “Green Hummer” that notes in passing, “[btw, just checked the site traffic reports and West North has passed 100,000 page requests since the launch in December. I have no idea who all these people are, but thanks for reading!]” Well, Payton, I’m one of them. Still trying to figure out how this blogging world works. I’ll send a trackback ping now. :-)

categories: blogging internet

decision-making models

For the better part of a year I’ve been involved in a process to build a housing cooperative. We’re to the point where we’ve been approved for a mortgage and have a closing not-quite scheduled for the 17th of December, but out bylaws haven’t been officially adopted yet in full. We’ve adopted Articles I-IV, but tonight got hung up on Article V which details the decision-making process.

In April we adopted a decision to use consensus (votes to approve, approve with reservations or abstain allow an action to go forward while any vote to object blocks the action) whenever possible but to fall back to majority voting when consensus fails. We’ve never had to fall back on majority voting and have more or less been acting as though that fall-back wasn’t there. In fact, Article V that we looked at tonight doesn’t have that fall-back at all. It allows for mediation if consensus fails and ultimately for arbitration if the mediation fails.

We were 7-1 to adopt the article as written (we didn’t vote, but it was clear where people stand). One person see consensus as wonderful when we’re all getting along and believes even with a majority vote model we’ll mostly act by consensus. He doesn’t see consensus as a realistic way to solve conflicts when something really gets stuck, however.

It’s a paradox in a way because if his proposal was in effect, we would simply vote for the consensus proposal and he would lose. If the consensus proposal was in full effect (it is, I suppose), then he has the power to block a decision. Which he did. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe the rest of the group was not willing to force the issue. If we did force the issue, he’s in the position where he can approve with reservations or he can scuttle the entire co-op.

Very interesting. Anyone have any relevant experience to share here? We’re meeting again Wednesday night to give it another go.

categories: co-op housing