Humanize the Earth!

easily amazed

This has really been an amazing week. I’ll write more about the whole experience later. For now, just wanted to let you know that I saw Ashley of easily amazed today. It was really great to introduce here to Ethan, Lewis, Brandon and Lion. We walked around the Arboretum in Seattle a bit and then went for Thai food. Lots of connections in the Northwest that seem likely to endure. Great stuff.

You Throw Like A Girl

via Brutal Women: 15-year-old girl throws three touchdowns

When the Bishop Montgomery High School quarterback went down with a fractured leg, his replacement stepped in and completed four of five passes for three touchdowns.

There’s nothing too unusual about that, except that the replacement quarterback was a girl.

Miranda McOsker, 15, is one of 253 girls out of 100,000 high school students in California who are playing football this year, according to the California Interscholastic Foundation. She joined the private Catholic school’s football program last spring.

I love when our expectations are challenged. Stereotypes might feel true in aggregate yet they don’t tell the whole story. Ever.

WikiVanning Portland -> Oakland

I arrived in Portland last night for WikiVanning to WikiSym in San Diego starting on Sunday. I’m now in Oakland after a very full day. Too tired to try to synthesize other than to say that the connections are amazing on so many levels. Here are the notes.

Edited to paste in an email I just sent to the OSList (open space technology practitioners):

I’ve never had a day quite like yesterday.

I live in Chicago, flew to Portland, OR Thursday night and yesterday, spent from about 8am until 11pm in open space with 3 other people without the normal “breaks” for meals and such. Clearly a lot of times meal times at a conference are continuations of the sessions and topics from the conversation. This felt different. Let me back up. We’re on our way to WikiSym, a conference (non-open space) in San Diego that starts Sunday. We wanted more face to face time in open space so we decided to do this drive.

So leaving Portland, we got out some mailing labels and put our topics on the dashboard of the van! We drove to Eugene, about 2 hours away, and stopped for brunch at the Walnut Street Cooperative, a house where 9 people live. The brunch was hosted by two people and several others also joined in (those here are the right people!) and there were some really amazing conversatons and beginning friendships and collaborations there. After brunch we wanted a photo of all present so someone went to get another housemate to take it. When he found out who the travelers were and what we were doing, he asked if we had 5 minutes to hear about his stuff. We agreed and he blew us away for another 20 minutes and Peggy Holman’s name came up as one of his collaborators. Connections!

Then back in the van, just stops for bathroom and fuel (we had provisions with us in the van so didn’t need to stop again to eat) and we worked through topic after topic from the dashboard. I’ll have to get a photo of the dash uploaded, but in the meantime, here are our notes: http://wiki.wikisym.org/space/WikiVanning

What a day!

peace,
ted

–
Humanize the Earth! http://tedernst.com

WikiVanning has begun!

I’m in Portland, OR tonight, at Brandon’s place. It’s really late and I’m having trouble sleeping, too wired up from the journey and seeing Brandon again and meeting Lion for the first time. We leave here early in the morning to meet Mark and the car rental place to have additional drivers added and then get started driving to Oakland. We’ll spend the night there at John’s place and continue on Saturday to San Diego for WikiSym. On the drive we’ll be opening some space to talk about the things that matter most to each of us. Right now I really need to open some space for sleep to occur. :-)

response to Tree’s Always in Open Space

I can’t get the comments to work so I’ll just respond wtih a new post (crossposted on the Open Space Sangha blog and on my personal blog, Humanize the Earth). Tree wrote in
always in open space about only wanting to collaborate with people that constantly aspire to bring forth open space in their daily lives. I’m finding this as well, though didn’t have a way to name what was going on until I read that post.

In my housing co-op, I want those most interested in gardening to do the gardening, and not worry about consulting with those that don’t care so much. Same with creating an organizing scheme for the basement. Hopefully everyone will participate in keeping things organized, but not everyone needs to create the scheme.

I’m strugging in another area, helping a friend with her project. She seems to want to put a lot of structure in place and I’m having a hard time even understanding the purpose, let alone the structure. Maybe I can find more ways to open space in the process. Thanks!

Maj Gabel: 404 - Page not found

I’ve written before about my 2nd cousin who’s blogging from Iraq. Well, his superiors put a stop to that. His last post isn’t available anymore on his site, but here’s a copy:

Command Influence It appears that certain staff p…

By Jeff Gabel

Command Influence

It appears that certain staff personnel in the Army think that the enemy we are fighting over here can use my blog site to gain insightful information on my unit and use it to our disadvantage. These people seem to think the insurgents don’t watch CNN, Fox, or read Yahoo news and instead are looking to get intelligence on us by finding and reading my blog site. Nevertheless, word has leaked about my blog and spread to the wrong sorts. So in the interests of operational security and career protection, I am canceling this blog. I apologize to those who read my accounts and use it to gain otherwise unreported facts about this war. Your comments and words of encouragement were most uplifting. It is sad that in this war where information is the key to victory, that I am being silenced. If the Army wants to shut out the truth and leave it up to the main press to give you your information, I fear that we will lose this war. It is no secret that the mainstream press has informally sided with the enemy and would like nothing more than to see us lose this war, just to fulfill a political agenda and discredit the President. There is so much more to this war than just reporting every US death and terrorist activity. I would love to see equal press paid to our victories, probably too numerous to list.
The legal experts tell me that I can write personal letters and what happens after that is not my fault. I will continue to write to Paige and tell her all of the unclassified things that are happening here. I encourage anyone who reads this blog and wants continued information to email her and request updates. I think she will be happy to keep all of our family and friends updated. Mahalo.

San Antonio in November

I’ll be at Open Space On Open Space In US 2005 in San Antonio November 12-14th. If you’re interested in opening more space in your life, your job, your community, your partnership, etc, then this conference is for you. Let me know if you have any questions about it, or just get yourself registered and I’ll see you there!