As Marie Antoinette once famously said, "Let them bear guns" although, to be fair, there was quite a loud howling gale of wind at the time she said it and so history has mistakenly recorded her words as "let them eat cake" which is what those at the back of the crowd swear that they heard. A slightly more true story is that after the recent tragic shooting in Las Vegas and some conversations about [...]
Mumford and Fish These are three of my best friends: Dunc, Majay and Rob. And missing from that pic is Reegs who is also one of my longest life buddies. And of course my wife, the beautiful Val [aka tbV, which so many of you keep thinking stands for The Lovely Val because of, um, the B, obviously] who made this photo [taken at my 40th after these clowns performed a satirical rendition [...]
i am loving this book tbV pickedup for me at The Warehouse by John Perkins. So much of it resonates with where my heart is for South Africa and, although he is using Americaland examples, so many of the truths still completely apply. WILL I HOLD THEIR DREAM The well-known Martin Luther King Jnr "I have a dream" speech was the dream of the black person in Americaland. But to be honest, it could only [...]
i just read a really helpful piece by Brene Brown titled, 'Own our History. Change the story' which is focused on Americaland which has what feels like a completely different story, when it comes to present race issues, in many ways, but also some remarkably similar overlaps. Owning our stories is standing in our truth. It’s transformative in our personal and professional lives AND it’s also critical in our community lives. But we don’t think about history [...]
Just before tbV and i left Americaland last year August, i started reading 'The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the age of Colorblindness' by Michelle Alexander, a tough but brilliant read focusing on the system of mass incarceration of black people in Americaland. Then we had to leave and i had to give the book back having only read two or three chapters. But now we're back in Americaland and i saw it lying [...]
As you all know by now, Pearls Before Swine is my favourite comic strip and if you ever have some time to enrich, you can take a look at a whole bunch of the cartoons i have shared over here. And usually he is just random or clever or biting cynically silly fun, but every now and then he draws a strip which makes you stop and go, "Wo!" and maybe even think for a [...]
You know, the whole, 'Before you criticise someone, walk a mile in their shoes' thing? Following on from the post and conversation relating to inequality at the moment still being a race thing in South Africa, what might be a helpful activity is to take a look at how you understand the other person's argument. Are you able to jump into the comments and comment from the point of view of the person on the [...]
today i happened to stumble upon this blog post titled, 'Simple is the way' announcing that we had been invited to move to Americaland to work with The Simple Way non-profit and live in Philly. it's not a particularly great blog post - more of an announcement for friends and family and just sharing the excitement at the time, but what was interesting, and what was again skimming through, was reading the comments [56 of them, [...]
in that i've been a little hoarse... my wife tbV [aka the beautiful Val] and myself have been living in Americaland and working with two different non-profits [The Simple Way and Common Change] for over three years now and are in the process of heading home. to Africa [the continent]... and more specifically to South Africa. and what i've been telling people of late to sum up the feeling is that i am really looking [...]
so today we fly back to americaland and i leave a changed man. but maybe not in the way you would expect... i don't feel like i have grown so much as i have regressed, but in a good way though. as in 'returned to former state' - or returning at least. in some Christian senses i guess we have been living the dream - 19 months at the Simple Way [you know, the mecca [...]
