Category Archives: Uncategorized
Sharing Wangarai Maathai’s beautiful video: “I will be a Hummingbird”
Nobel winner Wangarai Maathai died on Sunday, 25 September. She leaves a bountiful legacy. This week, I am thinking of the paths she chose, the adversity she faced, the courage she lived, the dedicated Hummingbird she was. She inspires me to nurtu… Continue reading
Here’s some advice to the Lib Dems on diversity……
I got up this morning and on the news I was hearing that the Lib Dems want to diversify, meaning they don’t want to be – as I call it – so Vanilla or as the radio commentator was saying, ‘White, male and pale.” It seems that they are taking action… Continue reading
The ramblings of two Mid-Westerners in London….(another random connection)
In my last post, I documented a random encounter at Chicago O’Hare airport. This time, I’m thinking about an encounter I had when I landed in London Heathrow on Saturday morning. I got to the Heathrow Express ticket machines and saw a young woman … Continue reading
Thank you for sharing….
I am in the line for security at the airport. It is a longer line than usual, but thankfully I arrived early enough to not care. Behind me stands a daughter and a mother. At one point, daughter says loudly: “I was so calm this morning. Now I’m tot… Continue reading
Chicago brief: A two hour meeting which proved very instructive…
On Monday, I attended a meeting of lawyers, doctors, community workers, government officials, people from umbrella organizations for service/support providers. This group meets monthly to discuss and agree shared lobbying priorities in relation to… Continue reading
Feral elite, feral underclass – surely we have more constructive ways of communicating?
Here I am in the suburbs of Chicago. Today I was at the local bank with my father. We were talking with someone he knows well there (he’s been going to the same bank for over forty years!). His contact is a White man in his early sixties who calls… Continue reading
Moral Courage, Divisions Between People, and Self-Awareness
Since 22 August, which kicked off the DC part of my US travels, I’ve been having a lot of comparative discussions about the UK and the US. They began with a brown bag talk I gave at The Praxis Project and carried on into coffees with researchers a… Continue reading
Empathy: how empathic are we – you and me – really?
The other week, I wrote about empathy. I was eager to define it, because I realised that we have many misconceptions about what it means to be empathic. Last week, I suggested empathic dialogue is a critical component of post-riots recovery proces… Continue reading
(In)visibility
I’ve got a lot of reflections moving around in my head about the riots and looting, about community relations, about empathy, about stops and searches, about restorative justice, about moral reasoning and ethical values. I’ll bring them out onto t… Continue reading
London Riots – let us seize the opportunity…
Here I am in the leafy Chicago suburb of Glenview. Here I am, while London’s streets have literally been burning. London is where I live. East London – Bethnal Green, to be exact. I’ve lived in the East End for fifteen years, a marked contrast to … Continue reading
See & Connect 