Thoughts On Thrivability
The Need for Practice Grounds
[This is an excerpt of a chapter in The Age of Thrivability: Vital Perspectives and Practices for a Better World] How do we actively embrace our organizations and communities as living systems and work to cultivate thriving within them? How do we move forward into the...
Singing in the Dusk
Last week, I facilitated a virtual summit on the need and opportunity for profound change in how our society cares for its elderly. And as so often happens in my work, there were lessons for all of us, as we look for wiser, more compassionate ways to care for each...
The 1960s and Today: What’s Different Now and What’s Needed Next
It’s frustrating and disappointing - to put it in absurdly mild terms - that we’re still having to protest the same problems we did in the 1960s. That decade brought so much power to the table, with the Civil Rights movement, the Stonewall riots, the Women’s...
The Past, Present and Future of Freedom
Last week I kicked off a month-long series of discussions with members of New Hampshire Businesses for Social Responsibility. Our topic is “Live Free and Thrive,” a twist on the state’s strident “live free or die” motto and an exploration of the meaning of freedom in...
Architects as Activists: A Love Letter to Those Who Shape Our World
I have this strange occupational hazard in which I fall in love a little with whatever group I am serving, even if the encounter is brief - even, I’m discovering, if the interaction is separated by monitors and keyboards within the constraints of social distancing....
Learning to Fly
Suddenly, everything is up in the air. The ground has fallen out from beneath us. That vertigo we feel is real. Like the coyote in those old Road Runner cartoons, we’re suspended just beyond the edge of the cliff, waiting with equal parts denial and dread. Between...
The Opposite of Regeneration and The Need for Healing
[Be advised: this article makes reference to sexual violence.] Many years ago, when I started talking publicly about thrivability and regeneration (words I use interchangeably), people struggled to understand what I was talking about and what it could mean for them....
A Climate of Curiosity
[This article originally appeared in the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario November/December 2019 print newsletter, in advance of EFAO's annual conference at which I spoke. The theme of the conference was "A Climate of Curiosity."] What will it take to grow...
Travel to Tomorrow: An Emerging Vision for the Tourism Industry
“Could tourism possibly create more value with fewer visitors, giving them the space to discover the things we want to share, the things that make us unique?” This is the provocative question offered by Peter de Wilde, the director of regional tourism authority Visit...
