Links for the Week — Saturday/Sunday November 1-2, 2008

New Yorker cartoon by Mick Stevens

This Is the Part Where You’re Supposed to Save Me: In Life is a Verb, Patti Digh relates the story of her surprising conversation with her airplane seatmate, named Yaron. She was asked to read this story during a book tour visit to Madison WI, and broke into tears partway through, asking her host, improv guru Jodi Cohen, to “save her”. Jodi wrote to Patti later about the incident, and part of her reply was:

What I really want to say is, There are these moments when we are revealed. There are these moments where our face powder and our deodorant and our hip red glasses and our clean counters and our eating salad one bite at a time all go flying out the window. What I really want to say is that when people break, it happens by surprise… There are moments when love beams like a laser from my heart into another human being’s heart and it stops me in my tracks. There really isn’t a way to love too much. There is no quota for loving people and being loved back. There is always room for more, like jello… We reveal ourselves in so many ways. When we are least prepared. When we are not looking. When we least expect it…

[Perhaps I am imagining it, but I sense there are more of these moments occurring these days. Is there something inside us realizing that the life we have been living, this illusion of success and wealth and invincibility, is a lie, that’s cracking, and exposing nobody-but-ourselves?] … And then, in addition to writing the remarkable passage above, Jodi attached to her letter to Patti the poem at the end of this post, below.

A Practice in Belonging in This World: I’ve resubscribed to the digital edition of Orion Magazine because they’re really on a roll these days. In the latest edition, Erik Reece, in Notes from a Very Small Island, rows, contemplates the writings of Heraclitus and Nietzsche, and asks “How do we accomplish being in this world, and How do you become who you are?”

Just One Line Fitting Into Another: Also in Orion, Brian Doyle’s The Greatest Nature Essay Ever is a lovely bit of sleight-of-hand writing that also teaches you some important things about the art of writing:

The next three paragraphs then walk inexorably toward a line of explosive Conclusions on the horizon like inky alps. Probably the sentences get shorter, more staccato. Terser. Blunter. Shards of sentences. But there’s no opinion or commentary, just one line fitting into another, each one making plain inarguable sense, a goat or even a senator could easily understand the sentences and their implications, and there’s no shouting, no persuasion, no eloquent pirouetting, no pronouncements and accusations, no sermons or homilies, just calm clean clear statements one after another, fitting together like people holding hands.

How Our Economy Is Killing the Earth: A special edition of The New Scientist explains why the excesses of the industrial growth economy are utterly unsustainable, and why politicians are afraid to admit it, and (subscription only) envisions what a steady-state Natural Economy might look like, twenty years from now. Thanks to Andrew Campbell for the link.

Wow: My friend Pohangina Pete has a Photoblog.

The Role of Co-operatives in the Natural Economy: The University of Saskatchewan has started a program to explain and encourage the co-operative (non-hierarchical, well-being-not-profit-oriented, community-based) form of enterprise. Some very useful links here. More on this subject in upcoming posts. Now if only we could get the majority of people to establish their new enterprises as co-operatives instead of as corporations.

What’s Next on the Economic Collapse Front: Well, I’ve already reported on the dangers of the unregulated $60T credit default swaps market. Almost as dangerous is what is looming for those holding investments in credit card receivables, once consumers start defaulting on those reckless debts in vast numbers — these debts carry 20-30% interest rates for a reason, which is that the cards should never have been offered in the first place. And what will happen when pension plans, which have suffered 30%+ drops in their value, need such massive infusions of cash from their operating companies to cover the deficit that they use up all the capital the companies planned to use for maintenance, operations, and dividends? If anyone tells you the economic problems have now “bottomed out”, hold on to your wallet tightly and move away from them.

Talk to Me Like I’m 5: A simple explanation from investment counselor Ilyce Glink of what to do with your money now, kinda what I’ve been saying, about paying off your debts and investing in learning and buying less stuff.

Like, Socialism: Hendrik Hertzberg in The New Yorker describes how public discourse has become so degraded and dumbed down that some people can perceive the equitable sharing of wealth as ideological extremism.

Bush Attempts to Further Deregulate US Business: This is unbelievable: Bush is trying to ram through new ‘guidelines’ that make it much harder for regulators to rein in corporatist monopolies and oligopolies.

The Perfect Site for a Bioweapons Research Facility: Where do you put a lab that contains strains of the world’s most dangerous diseases, like Ebola and Marburg? Why, Galveston Island, in a hurricane zone of course.

Learn About Learning: There’s an excellent line-up for the free upcoming (Nov. 17-19) Corporate Learning Trends online conference. Hear from and chat with Jay Cross, Robin Good, George Siemens, David Weinberger, Nancy White, Harold Jarche, me and others about work literacy and social networks. I’m on tap Nov. 18 11:30 PT (14:30 ET) talking about (more like telling stories about) Working Smarter.

Just for Fun: With the economy collapsing all around us, what is a poor citizen to do for a little entertainment to escape from his/her life of wage slaveryand struggle? Well, She-Bop of course! Thanks to my flonking friends (you know who you are) for the link..

Thought for the Week: Courtesy of Jodi Cohen, as noted above:

seal on rock by jerry picasaweb
Photo: Seal on rock by Jerry

Pride

Even rocks crack, I tell you,
and not because of age.
For years they lie on their backs
in the heat and the cold,
so many years,
it almost seems peaceful.
They donít move, so the cracks stay hidden.
A kind of pride.
Years pass over them, waiting.
Whoever is going to shatter them
hasnít come yet.
And so the moss flourishes, the seaweed swirls,
the seaweed pushes through and rolls back,
and it seems they are motionless.
Till a little seal comes to rub against the rocks,
comes and goes away.
And suddenly the stone is split.
I told you, when people break, it happens by surprise.