Thursday, June 4, 2009

Why NPR is the Future of Mainstream Media

This from Mashable.com - good analysis of why cable tv and newspapers are losing audience while NPR continues to climb steadily. I know I subscribe to no less than 5
NPR podcasts. They are making their content available, for free and focusing on the local. Very important!!

Click here for full Mashable story:

Sunday, May 10, 2009

My New Neighbors - The New Community Project

I will be moving deeper into the Shenandoah Valley when I return to the U.S. in July. I am excited about the community and connections that await there.

Here is a Harrisonburg radio show about The New Community project - an international faith-based organization that focuses on care for creation and social justice. Pal Adam Campbell is working with the project - and talks about sustainability, connection, local food, and so many other important issues. This makes sense.

Graduation :)

No need for words...

Home - "I look at you... and I'm home."

-Dory to Marlin, Finding Nemo

A springtime walk around Blandy Experimental Farm in Boyce, VA.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

The Mourning Dove and Brenda Waugh's Nurturing Theory of Conflict


Emerging from her conflict of theory class - Brenda Waugh's final paper outlines the theory of nurturing conflict which blows me away.  I've been saying I am not a peacebuilder - that there is too much peace.  We are conflict-born and conflict driven humans.  Brenda is getting at ways of articulating, validating, nurturing that as a concept.  She looks to the example of the mourning doves outside of her front door.  The male incubates the eggs from morning until afternoon, when the female takes a shift. They will nurture the eggs until the little doves are born and then fly away:

"Conflict is not bad any more than a head of lettuce picked from the garden or a new born puppy soiling the new carpet is "bad".  Conflict becomes bad when neglected, ignored, or manipulated for harm by the powerful.  If nurtured conflict allows for the philosophical collaboration which can birth self-transformation.  The nurturing which becomes heavy handed and prescriptive fails.  It may direct the course.  Just as the eggs are going to hatch in good time, or that the baby doves will leave the nest when they are ready, our conflicts need their own time, and need to be nourished, not controlled.  Never managed. "

More Brenda Wow, more!!!  

 


Monday, April 20, 2009

Connection - A Web of Relationships

"The moral imagination requires the capacity to imagine ourselves in a web of relationships that includes our enemies"

"The structure of the web combines interdependent connections with localized independence.  Strength is built by creating coordination at the hub without centralization."

"This whole endeavor of making a web requires a deep commitment to innovation and flexibility"

-John Paul Lederach, The Moral Imagination


Saturday, April 18, 2009

Connection - Howard Zehr Posts on Regarding/Relationship

Wow. Talk about a web of relationships! After I posted my last blog - I visited Howard Zehr's Restorative Justice blog and he's talking about regarding and relationships around photography!! Wild!!

Here is an excerpt:

Roswell Angier, in his book Train Your Gaze, observes that what makes a portrait come alive and feel authentic is the photographer’s “thoughtful regard” – the “felt activity of someone looking.” But the regard goes both ways. It is a consensual process: “the contract between subject and photographer hangs palpably in the air that separates them.” A conscious, mutual regard is reflected in the photograph.

The mutual regard underlying such a portrait involves a relationship of trust and vulnerability, if only briefly. Power relationships are also involved. As Angier notes, the photo records this exchange.

This exchange of trust and vulnerability in turn implies an obligation on the part of the photographer. That is why it is so important for photographers to also experience the lens side of the camera: to be reminded of the gift with which we are entrusted when making a portrait and the responsibilities that accompany this trust.


Take a look at Howard Zehr's full post on diological photography: