Today I had coffee and a chat with Jo Randerson, one of Wellington’s many worthy writers-about-town. I had heard her speaking on Radio Active about Jared Diamond‘s book Collapse, and using the miracles of Google and Gmail, I made contact and we ended up in Fidels to talk things over. It was very cool, there was information to be traded about actions being taken re: climate change, which ties into the Small Group Action thing and the Masters study. It’s good to know I’m part of something worthwhile and that I have valuable things to say. This study is going to be great fun.
It reminded me of another coffee and chat the previous week, with friend-Jasmine, who introduced me to Changemakers NZ. Changemakers is another outfit harnessing the good bits of group dynamics to support change. The premise is, you get together with 10 others to do 10 actions in the next year, using 5% of your time and 5% of your income. It’s a fascinating take on some of the same ideas I’ve been exploring – definitely worth a look if you’re interested in this sort of thing.
And that reminded me of the pledgebank pledge to write letters supporting repeal of the sedition laws. Today, Cabinet decided to go ahead with this. It’s a great success for justice, for sanity, and for everyone’s favourite anti-sedition blog No Right Turn.
And that, finally, reminds me of a great post over on the Alligator’s blog. He reproduces in full an email from his Dad, who is in El Salvador doing some volunteer work that he seems to be making up as he goes along. Talks about the history of the community, their current living situation, and the concrete action he is taking to help the community out.
The nights are a bit cooler and everyone hangs out on the por ch in their hamacas. The kids play stick ball or whatever else in the streets. There isn’t much in the way of activities so people do a lot of talking. They chatter away about anything and everything. Everyone knows everything about all the folks in town. I don’t understand all of it as my Spanish is still not up to stuff. But I think you get an idea of the scene. People are asleep by 9 or 10 at night.
It’s lovely and inspiring stuff, and I recommend you pop over and check it out.
(Aside: I really need to get category archives set up on this site so I can link to all the categories I’m using. Tried to figure it out, spent 30 minutes faffing about in Movable Type, still have not achieved success. Any fixes from the computer-clever amongst my readership?)
I still haven’t finished reading your emailed text. However, I have made a whole bunch of minor tweaks and comments in the body of it, with track changes.
You want I should send it as is, not send it because it’s been so long, wait and send when it’s done, or catch up for coffee at my place and discuss?
Wait and send when done, I think. No urgency. Although we are long overdue for a coffee and I still haven’t met Ada, so I must scrape out some time to come visiting… I’ve just written “arrange coffee with Maire” in my diary for when I get back from my short hop to Oz.