My new favorite book: Blessed Unrest

Paul Hawken is a new intellectual hero of mine. Full disclosure: My intellectual heros are often not the people who have ideas that are ground breaking, but are those that interpret for me the collective ideas of others--fully cited, of course--in a way that strikes me awe filled.

How does Paul Hawken qualify? Look to page 175.

He first cites a molecular biologist's top 16 list for qualities of living objects and makes the intellectual leap that this socially-conscious and -relevant "environmental movement" he biographies in this book relies on concepts that can enlighten us to our Gaia sensibilities deep within. Hawken likens non-profits and community organizations to cells, building into organ-like "aggregates" (p. 175), and into the movement, the final, yet ever evolving, organism. Information is the central currency and communication the economy. "Yeah, yeah ... social theory as a philosophical spin on biological theory--nothing new, just reframing, but an interesting thought," I mused.

Then, on page 178, a golden nugget. Wendell Berry's theory of "solving for pattern" makes him another hero of mine, but still just behind Hawken (since without Hawken, I might have not heard of the nugget). Hawken paraphrases this "pattern" as "a solution that addresses multiple problems instead of one." It doesn't mean that solutions are only worthy if they are magic bullets, but emphasizes the global nature of action within an integrated system. As an urban environmental leader, I need to keep integrated contexts in mind ... and to have the "story" that illustrates and illuminates these connections to other people (i.e. funders, members, foundations, really any audience).

Another one on page 179! Hawken, you are on a roll! with "Nature recycles everything; nothing is wasted, nothing is thrown away because there is no 'away'." This is the principle behind the Ravenwood Collective, a cooperative living and sustainability education "experiment" where our new advisor, Lily Fessenden, lives and teaches in Maine. Not only does this point further emphasize the need for critical evaluation of our own (personal) ecologies, but it emphasizes my (and Lappé's) former point that communities are the key to it all.

The silver bullet, if there was one, has a semi-permeable membrane of community-building filled with a cytoplasm of scientific information and organelles filled with good deeds, constructive criticism, and education. This is what sustainability looks, smells, and tastes like.

Leadership then is active participation in bullet creation and support. Thank you, Hawken: well done and better said.

"Musings on the Pitfalls of Perfect" by Thekla Richter

This is a re-post from a blog I follow. Why, oh why, did this not exist when I was in college? ... or even grad school (pt. 1)?

Musing on the Pitfalls of Perfect

Posted: 13 Apr 2010 03:34 PM PDT

"Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in."
-Leonard Cohen

Photo by Laszlo Ilyes

It's so easy to get caught up in the land of perfect, the land of "should." There are some things that you work on that are worth holding up to very high standards indeed, but for most things in day-to-day life, good enough will actually be just fine. Here are some reasons why plenty of the stuff you do doesn't need to be perfect:

• Getting started sooner will get it done faster, and often better, than planning it out perfectly before you begin.


• Be wary of comparing yourself to others and imagining that they are perfect. They have struggles and doubts and flaws too, underneath.


• Sometimes, quantity does matter over quality-- if getting it perfect means taking ten times longer over every task, you're operating at 10% efficiency. What would it feel like to be 10 times more productive? Or maybe just eight times more productive and haveway more fun?


• Sometimes finishing it in some form matters more than finishing perfectly.


• That voice in your head demanding perfection might not be yours, but someone from your past-- listen closely to that voice, and think about where it comes from.


• Most work will not be looked at by others nearly as closely as you are looking at it now. (The trick is identifying where your highest standards will truly matter, and saving that degree of effort and time for those projects only.)


• Failure or criticism are always possible regardless of whether you do it "perfectly" or not... being perfect cannot protect you.


• Worrying too much about being perfect makes it more difficult to be creative and innovative.


• Fiercely identifying the bare minimum that needs to get done allows you to decide where it's worth putting in extra effort, and where it's not really worth the time and energy.


• You are not your work.


• Delaying a decision to figure out how to make the perfect choice is in fact making achoice by default-- and rarely the best choice in my opinion.


• You don't need to be perfect to be worthy of love, praise or any other good thing you desire. You are already intrinsically worthy.

Do you have any other thoughts to share about perfectionism?

Note: this post is brought to you imperfectly late, well after the morning deadline I usually aim for. And you know what? That's actually okay.

Relational Practice

I came across a term I don't like: "relational practice." This appears to go beyond the golden rule of treating others as you yourself prefer to be treated. It suggests that within grassroots organizations, workers should focus heavily on modeling the relationships and types of societies they aspire to politically. The key problem, which is thankfully addressed by the authors, is that this can get in the way of "THE WORK" of the organization.

To relate this to a discussion we have been having about Frances Moore Lappé's book Getting a Grip, there we have agreed that positive thinking is harder to maintain, but all the more inspiring, than negative thinking a la her downward spiral of fear. Positive thinking is supported externally; negative thinking are supported by self-doubt and enhanced by institutionally preservationist behaviors. What better way than have a small community (like a grassroots organization) work on supporting their own members and their communities' positive outlook? Simple solution? Not really.

I fear (budumbum ching) that these small communities have the tendency to attract people who are filling an emotional or social void in their life through their interactions with the group and group members. They support the work of the organization, but are the first to collapse into habits of clique-forming, bullying, micromanaging, and gossiping. They feel good vibes when the goings good and fall into depths of despair when solutions appear far off or, god forbid, they feel taken for granted. They feel exceptionally close to their co-workers because those pesky norms of corporate or educational institutions appear not to be enforced. With informality, comes noise. When I say noise, I mean those interactions that stand in the way of progress, that require attention "to work out" in deference to time spent accomplishing something for a client, constituent, or other collaborator. By focusing so heavily on relational practice, the goals of the organization--if small enough--can become diverted by the emotional needs of its members.

I am sure that is not the point of relational practice. Unintended consequences are still consequences.

Chetkovich, C., & Kunreuther, F. (2007). From the ground up: Grassroots organizations
making social change. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Amazing Things I Have Learned in the Middle of The Night

One: "knitting" blogs come in all shapes and sizes. My new favorite one, I Live on a Farm, has a special pattern under "charity knitting" for a shopping bag in the exact dimensions of a traditional plastic shopping bag. For what charity? Mother Earth. Shh. You might get one for Christmas.

Two: my brother's friends are cooler than I expected. One in particular, Thelka, is pregnant with girl number one in Seattle. She is married to a former Microsoft man who, when my husband and I first met him, handed us a card with a gmail.com email address on it. It figures he doesn't work for Microsoft now ... who could last there as a vegan?

Anyway, I never knew what Thelka did for work until a few nights ago when I was browsing the internet at the wrong hour to be awake. She, too, is a blogger. She writes about personal empowerment, goal-setting, and time management. Her insights are particularly useful ... check her out.

On Writing

Stephen King's book On Writing remains unread on my shelf. Many people have told me to read it. After my latest read (that I am in the midst of), I can honestly say that the next time someone asks me what book they should read about writing, I will say:

"You know, I think its a toss up. First, you should read Strunk and White's Elements of Style and then you should read Linda Lear's Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature."

I am enraptured by this biography of Carson, completely. Carson--as a writer--took copious notes about herself, her surroundings, and those closest to her. Lear weaves together letters, journal entries, articles, and book content from Carson and others to give a full portrait of a writer, turned book-learned scientist with a flare for choosing too complicated hands-on research projects, turned government-employed technical writer, turned nature writer extraordinaire. The Sea Around Us has just been published ... and I can't wait to see how she gets on to writing her other works and how she finds herself a witness at a congressional hearing.

This work of Carson's in particular has special meaning for me. My mother read The Sea Around us when she was young, studied Marine Botany in college, and decided to sign up in the midst of her degree for a new sail training and oceanography program that included a voyage to Jamaica. The captain for the leg home to the states was Dr. George Nichols. Ann Ratcliff, years later, became my mom.

What fascinates me most about this book, besides its clear role in the creation of me, is that Carson wrote it because she deeply wanted it to exist. Our environmental work should always carry with it that commitment: I see this void; I want to fill it; I need to solicit all the help I can muster to make it happen. Carson's help came in the form of researchers, primary literature and reports, her family, her friendships, and, finally, the land, coast, and ocean that peaked her child-like curiosity.

May we all find something that makes us--at our core--so excited to be alive.

My life as a community organizer

Realistically, there is no formal training required to become a community organizer. I have found myself in this role at the Friends of the Middlesex Fells Reservation. How did this happen?

In 2009, I helped to start a community lecture series on topics of natural and cultural history. I wanted to learn more about the Fells myself and I figured that if we invited people out to free lectures, they'd come. After all, I wanted to go. I polled the public online and over half (about 60+ people) said they would be interested in coming to such events. After that, it took one meeting between myself, our volunteer hike leaders, and my organization's executives to decide that lectures would be cool ... now, eight events later over 150 people have attended these programs.

I believe this to be a thinly-veiled example of Lappé's living democracy. Participating in free education is rightly outside of election and market forces. Although the events take place in government buildings (DCR-managed state property), they are set-up, broken-down, and performed by individuals who are dedicating their unpaid work time to the cause of free environmental programming, as are those leading our hikes. I have to admit that having facilitated an event series where 10-40 people reliably show up, no matter the topic, is a personally powerful experience. I didn't make it happen; we made it happen. We lived, and continue to live, the democratic process and made possible these experiences of socializing over science and environmental history. I learned, more deeply, that education is a key to fostering deep environmental consideration. Community organizing is my new job; unpaid, but incredibly real.

Community-building as a Process of End Products

I have this theory, which, lucky for me, is a focus of Frances Moore Lappé's book Getting a Grip. Our theory is that the solution is community-building. The solution to what? Everything.

"Our planet's survival therefore depends on whether we can make the break--whether we can affirm or not, as I've stressed, the goodness of human nature but the richness in human nature. Nature, as it turns out, has equipped us with just what we need to make this great turning: our hard-wired needs and capacities for community bonding, for meaning and efficacy beyond day-to-day survival, for fairness." (p. 132)

The more I feel a connection to my community, the better a citizen I become, the more aware I am of other people; of physical, of intellectual, and of mental spaces; of concrete ecological processes. Participating in making connections with others and facilitating others becoming connection-makers themselves, as I do at the Friends of the Fells or I have in my role as a teacher, is incredibly rewarding. I like doing good works. It makes me feel alive, complete.

Theory, theory, theory, practice ... oh, I have to implement now? I have come to realize that there are three types of people in the world: (a) implementers, (b) idea people (often managers), and those who have made the bridge between a and b. I would like to think that I fall into the last category, but that I haven't found the language to bridge both societies yet. I would like to be the "manager" that implements. The person who behaves as if there is a hierarchy, but speaks to team members as if there is no hierarchy. This requires a great deal of skillful communication, including getting people on board with ideas and decisive action items. Where do I get this language? Where do organizations get this language?

Lappé has something to say to me, and to us.

"To avoid the unintended backfiring of 'helpful' acts, we can dig to root causes, always asking: How am I interrupting a negative cycle that creates suffering or reinforcing a positive one that contributes to new, life-serving rules and norms?

To answer this question, for me it's helpful to distinguish between 'issues' and 'entry points.'

'Issues overwhelm. They hit us as distinct problems, piles and piles of them. We hear about child slavery, violence against women, hunger, of HIV/AIDS, deepening inequality, pollution and global heating, depression, failing schools ....

I feel buried, smothered under a mountain of problems. I want to cry uncle.

'Entry points' are very different.

Entry points we can detect because we're weaving a theory of causation ... They are deliberate actions that strengthen the flow of causation, putting in motion the Spiral of Empowerment ..." (p. 136-137)

Lappé is not suggesting we make action alone. She suggests we use groups and human connection to empower ourselves and others to make lasting change in the world by tackling our concerns head on. Entry points are theoretical planning strategies around which to organize honest, collective action. The planning is an end product, the relationships that result are end products, movement towards change is an end product, as is the change itself. Success can be measured on any one of those end products, even if we hope for all of them.

Again, Lappé teaches me to honor the process because this is the best way to prepare for future community work.

Leadership Learning Plan

Yesterday, I had another discussion about the economy with the headmaster of Waring. He is a mentor of mine and good friend of my mother's. I attended Waring from 1993-1997. My mom remained as the note-taker for the Executive Committee, as it was called then, years after I graduated college.

Peter explained the hiring status of independent schools--due to the economy--and told me he would let his fellow North Shore school heads know that I was looking. I thanked him and went home to search aisne.org for more job listings.

I search this site regularly, each time with a new set of eyes trying to find an appropriate job listing. What disturbs me most is that the number of years of previous experience required has jumped from 1 to 3, specifically at the high school level, in the past months. As Peter said, "Its a buyers market" so they can ask for whatever they want. Since I am trying to sell myself, I am out of luck without any years experience as a lead teacher of high school.

When I searched the site yesterday, I was thinking about tonight's meeting with Melanie about my leadership learning plan. How am I possibly going to get the experience I need to get a job and get a job in the next 5 years? Ugh. Stimulus package, where are you? Lightbulb!! Some independent schools offer formal mentorship programs, including one very well known school: Phillips Academy.

So far away? Not really. I live on i93, perhaps this is the reason. It is so far away for the mother of a one-year old and four-year old in a M.A. program. It is not for the graduate of said M.A. program with a two-year old and a five-year old (kindergarten!!). I e-mailed the administrator of the program this morning and she was quite positive and suggested if I were interested in 2011-12 that I apply in the fall and that they would know what they needed by November 2010.

Message from yesterday and the leadership learning plan: slow down. Hmm. Aren't we supposed to be being proactive? An interesting lesson. Sometimes being proactive is about slowing down.

Identity or Job?

When I graduated from college, I wore a green ribbon pinned to my gown with a small gold safety pin. It signified a promise my fellow "Marine Science Club" members and I had made to consider the environment before taking any job. What it meant to me at the time was that I should not be involved directly in environmental degradation or military defense work. In reality, I was looking more for an identity than a job, having just quit my Borders gig after getting into graduate school. Being in my early twenties, I believed that I was destined for a professorship, running a research lab, and teaching college students about Biology. A job. In fact, I identified as a Biologist. My job was as a graduate student, teacher of college lab sections, and mentor to 1-3 undergrads per semester in the laboratory. When I graduated from grad school I was six-months into a postdoctoral research position, my first "real" Biology job.

Or was it?

A post-doctoral position has the same student-adviser relationship plus benefits and masquerades as a job. Really it is an underpaid stint of research in which one is expected to publish and job hunt, for only a slightly less temporary employment. After years of being mentally invested in my "job", because it really was my identity, I was tired of not being taken seriously.

So I left and am now in the process of redefining my work-life balance. I want to be a high school science teacher at a private school, a place where I can be involved in curriculum development and scientific literacy training.

So here is the question. Am I going to be sad when next fall comes around and I still don't have a job? By the way, only teachers with multiple years experience at the high school level are being hired right now. I have a great deal invested in my volunteer work - community science curriculum development for the Fells Reservation (Medford, MA) - but can that be enough? Am I going to feel unemployed? Can I figure out a way for the volunteering I do to take the place of employment until I find my teaching job?

One barrier to this is that people that work in volunteer situations often don't have the same level of professionalism (personal boundaries) that employees in larger organizations have. Solutions? Demand it. More on that next post.

My mindful practice.

I resolve to stop doing things, "just because," but only right after I post a picture of this yummy-looking strawberry.

Over the weekend, I participated in my first in-person leadership course. Notably, I didn't talk as much as I normally do in class. Actually, I talked much less than I normally do ... and it felt good. I didn't dominate the conversation; I didn't try to steer the conversation in another direction; I actively listened and participated when moved to do so. Unfortunately, my movement towards less oral participation went too far the other way and I ended up confusing my classmates who, having met me in August 2009, were surprised at my relative silence and concerned for my well-being. This, of course, was not intended.

I need to find a better balance between throwing myself in full-force to professional conversations and being a wall-flower. However, I think I have made at least a few steps in the right direction towards not speaking out of turn or feeling the need to create more turns than others.

I should be knitting. Right now.

I brought knitting to my high school. When I visit now, twelve years or so after graduating, girls are still knitting in all-school meeting ... having no idea where/how/who brought them "knitting elective".

What's the point? I don't mean to be funny.

What is the purpose of knitting? Machine-knitting is in my everyday life. Much of my clothing is knit, not woven. Why would anyone take the time to knit something from scratch, by hand? These days you can easily buy a synthetic--or wool--equivalent for cheaper than the crafting materials. The answer is simply PROCESS.

The act of creating cloth from sequential knots and loops in the exact color you want, is nothing short of miraculously therapeutic. Each row--or half-row--is a journey and is full of teachable moments. Collectively, those moments may make a hat, a scarf, a dainty child's jacket in green, a chunky aran for next winter, a pair of pants your child might refuse to wear; but, in reality they are bringing bytes of zen to your head through every nerve ending in your hands. Knitting reminds me that I need to be proactive about my learning process and all the relationships I have. Conflict is frightening, but, if dealt with calmly--much like a dropped stitch--it can bring bountiful rewards, well beyond simply avoiding having to frog the whole project (i.e. pull out and start over: for those of you who aren't knitting lingo savvy).

As I said, I should be knitting. Right now.

thoughts on "the transformative power of practice": pt. 1

All of our ages were once counted in months. Looking back on a photograph of myself at 20+ months, or my children before their first birthdays, I am reminded that in some ways, we are the same people, and, in others, everything has (or will have) changed.

Ng'ethe Maina and Staci Haines explain, in their article entitled 'The Transformative Power of Practice', that our present behaviors are based in part on the gut reactions of ourselves and others during our upbringing and younger life. These default practices are inherited, according to Maina and Haines.

A short list of my de-faults:

1. fidgeting in meetings;

2. not having sufficient eye-contact;

3. taking excessive responsibility to placate a person who is annoyed, rather than engaging in conflict (i.e. "I'm sorry" n=infinity);

4. feeling dumb;

5. letting my insecurities interrupt my ability to be orally eloquent;

6. not giving people enough credit for their ability to act responsibly (translation = letting people get away with negative behavior OR not giving them the psychic space to figure out a mutually positive relationship with me);

7. working harder--emotionally--at professional relationships than need be and not hard enough on personal relationships; and

8. not giving myself enough credit for successes and too much credit for failures.

Despite all this negativity, Maina and Haines are incredibly inspiring. They state, "... because our default practices have often been shaped out of difficult experiences when we had limited means of dealing with and processing them, these practices often don't align with out present-day values, politics, and/or what we care most about ... The good news is that we can learn to observe our default practices, instead of reacting immediately. We can learn other ways to take care of what they were taking care of - other ways to deal with conflict, power, our own and others emotions and need for safety." Their definition of intentional practices as "as those we choose to do in order to transform the way we show up in the world" makes me overwhelmingly confident (and admittedly scared of failure) that I can gain the confidence I need to not only appear like I "have my sh*t together" but feel like it too. At the core of it, I need to be more centered if I am to make it as a "self"/"community"-made environmental leader.

Amazing! Looking at three pictures of happy babes (Bronwyn, Charlie, and myself), I would never guess that one could be so confused. Ha! that is because only one has turned 30.

The naming of a blog

I added another unwelcome skill to my hat on 01.30.10, the ability to speak at a memorial service without blubbering. Days later, I named this blog.

I was searching first for a name that wasn't taken: aren't we all? I am sure everyone of you--or at least most--have had the unfortunate experience of trying to come up with a simple e-mail user name (your own) only to find that you are the second or perhaps fifth person to request the name. "How could there be another me?", you thought before trying to come up with a quirky, creative, your-friends-will-chuckle-at-and-your-colleagues-will-respect username to describe and differentiate yourself from the masses, all in 4-10 characters. Here is my story of a journey to this blog's name, 'contemplative imagination.'

First, I usually come up with titles after I have decided on content. Create a blog about leadership: Am I a leader? If I am studying to become a leader, maybe I am really just reorienting my thinking around my recently reoriented professional goals? What does being a leader mean at home? In my community? As a volunteer? A teacher? In truth, my subtitle came first, 'thoughts on leading from the sidelines.' I am a good listener, or at least I try to be when I am not moved to talk more than my share. I am the woman on the side of the cocktail party, talking deeply with one or two people, having my solitary glass of wine. I'd rather work closely with a limited number of people--or within a limited administrative structure--I have a "too many cooks" philosophy. I am shy and would rather not be the center of attention. Hence the subtitle.

Second, I think projects and relationships work better if they are thought out well. I spend a great deal of time talking through ideas and day-dreaming and talking to myself in the car, the shower, at the grocery store, changing diapers. Contemplation is key in my daily life. I don't meditate. I don't go to church, but I do listen to the Unitarian Universalist broadcast from downtown Boston any Sunday that I am available to do so. Philosophy is comforting to me. Despite being a trained scientist, I even have a degree with the word in the title. Philosophy is central to science, even though many people think of it as a numbers, data, and statement game. I believe philosophy helps make the jump from numbers to reality and reminds people of their humanity in the face of their chosen profession. It certainly helps me focus on human connections. Contemplative became my blog's perfect descriptor.

Third, Margaret's memorial service kept coming back into my mind. She was my teacher for over 2 years during a trip my family took that required home-schooling. For years afterwards, she taught me writing/art/life skills as my mother recovered from my father's death in 1989. Ironically, Margaret's--and my father's--memorial service were held in the same Unitarian Church in Gloucester, MA. From my remembrance of her, below, came imagination.

"On imagination

The mice use banana leaves to float down the water trailing off Mt. Vaea, Samoa. They are unaware of us, climbing up to see Robert Louis Stevenson’s grave, or how difficult it is to hike in jelly shoes or sandals when you have just spent weeks barefoot on the deck and in the aft salon of a schooner. The mice are on their way down; we are on our way up.

Margaret and I, we have imagination.

It is important to record our observations; after all, no one else has been here in years, maybe ever. I offer to be the scribe and Margaret will make sure our shelter, should we be marooned here on this deserted island – again in the South Pacific – that we won’t get rained on. Of course our shipmates will want to hear all about the coconut crabs, the cowry shells, and rare plants we see. I better draw some, just in case my notes prove incomplete.

Margaret and I, we are on leg 531 of our adventure across the world.

Back on Rambler, Margaret and I are sitting in the main salon knitting a sleeping bag for Growsly. King Growsly is getting a bit cold and will need of something to use on his next camping trip with his queen. The aft salon of Rambler is a perfect place for us to learn math, French, writing, and all about maps with MW, not to mention a great camping ground for bears, a lion named George, and a Figment who works as their guide and porter.

Our imagination can topple personal mountains; its ability to make friends – old, new, partially invisible – is trumped by one quality only, a strange quality. It serves as a homing beacon, a magnet of sorts, for finding the best icecream shops, no matter how unfamiliar you are with your port of call. How else can you explain us finding homemade waffle cone sundaes, with real cream, in Auckland, New Zealand, in a street kiosk!

I believe we are here today in celebratory remembrance of imagination."

A Start ...

This is a picture of agarose, DNA, and ethidium bromide, a carcinogen. It is taken on an ultraviolet light box, an innocuous piece of equipment that can give you a sunburn if used incorrectly. Most of the DNA products are the size I am looking for, although they should be cleaned, perhaps diluted, and I'm going to toss out samples 5-8 because I think they are contaminated.

Molecular Biology, I do not miss you.

This picture is also a representation of leading from the sidelines. As a biology graduate student, and then postdoc researcher, I felt responsible for myself, undergraduates, and other graduate students. I am not sure I envisioned myself as having leadership skills, but I did want to make sure that my co-workers were able to understand our boss - whom I had worked for years longer - and not get discouraged by his erratic behavior. I found myself listening carefully to their interactions with him and 'translating'.

I would talk through with them their meeting, or concern, and help them come up with a reasonable plan that, hopefully, did not have them working another weekend or feeling bad that they couldn't. We'd come up with strategies for their writing, something else that, if not done 'properly', would cause grief beyond measure in the form of micro-editing far past reason. I discovered the hard way that too much micro-editing can cause the loss of critical content ... especially in methods sections.

Did I take on this role out of seniority? Maybe. Perhaps not.