All change please
Someone who still reads this once commented that I don’t put much personal news up here. So here goes with a whole bunch of news:
- This week Nic and I will complete our NLP Practitioner Certification, which we have been doing since last year. I’m excited about this: I love the idea of having a qualification that isn’t to do with IT. Now what will make me even more happy is to be doing work that isn’t to do with IT.
My wish has already come true, this week Nic and I are preparing a one day course on emotional intelligence, based on what we have learned from NLP and NVC. It’s great fun working with Nic! Should be delivering this some time in early Feb, you can guarantee I’ll post here when that happens.- Speaking of qualifications outside IT, the last day of the NLP Practitioner course is also the first day of my next course, the Certificate in Education, down in Devon at Schumacher College. I’m excited about this too. The college is an opportunity to tick off several things on my list of goals: living in an intentional community, learning about Permaculture, developing my leadership skills. I have mentioned the course here before but not said how long it takes. It has five modules, each one week long. So I’m not going to be living in Devon this year, just visiting for a week now-and-then.
- I’m hoping to do more work on education for change, development and sustainability. And to support all this I have registered the domain name Axiologic.co.uk as a trading name for my company. Nothing there so far, hence no link (I wonder how many of you have already cut and paste that URL into another tab in your browsers) but I will be putting up a presence there some point in the future.
- And this is all in good time as at the end of last week the project I was working on was stopped rather sooner than I had expected. So I’m once again seeking interesting employment.
- As I said above, I won’t be living in Devon this year: Nic and I are moving to Cambridge in mid-March.
I trust that’s enough news to be going on with.
anon emous Says:
***************
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:29 pmAlan Says:
Mark,
Just reporting in from Tala… everything’s ok with Sara and I. VSO had us quarantined at the Methodist Guesthouse for a few weeks (remember that place!) but we’re back now.
You mentioned permaculture… I studied sustainable agriculture in university a few years ago, and wrote a few papers about permaculture. One important breakthrough I learned was: not all pesticides are bad. I used to be a typical “no GMO, no pesticides” hippie, but now I know that some pesticides are naturally occurring and biodegrade just fine. Not all GMO is bad either… just the likes of Monsanto’s BT corn and suicide seeds (which are detrimental to the third world who depend on seed saving!).
Keep in touch!
-Alan
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:18 pmhttp://sarainkenya.org
christine Says:
Hi Mark. Great to hear about your upcoming educational/professional/spiritual journey! I am green with envy about your opprotunity to spend some time at Schumacher College.
Not much news here. Enjoying tastes of spring, working, training for a half marathon, doing pilates, continuing to build our little family of sorts. Am trying to get Reece exicted about the idea of spending some time in an intentional community but thus far my cat-ish man will have none of it! Also watching the downturn in the American economy - trying not to spit nails hearing about Bush’s $150Billion bail out plan to keep people consuming!
Have been relishing in the stories of a new found favorite author Anne Lamott. If you’ve not read her before, I recommend especially Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith. I think you might enjoy her as an old friend.
Take care, Christine
P.S. just a comment to Alan. First, hope you are enjoying the gifts of Tala! Second, the likes of Monsanto’s BT corn and suicide sees are detrimental to the ENTIRE world - not just South countries. Twenty-five years ago, here in Canada, we had a public seed system - a result of the sharing and exchange of seeds between farmers, formal seed breeders, and public, that is, government and university-run seed breeding programs. Today, private interests have radically transformed the Canadian seed system, and our government is dangerously close to handing over what remains of the public aspect of this system to a handful of large, transnational corporations. We Canadians have much to learn from South country activists (like Dr. Vandana Shiva who wrote Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge) on this issue.
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:57 amMark Says:
I’m happy to see this old place is still visited sometimes, and encouraged by your comments.
Not sure what that first one is all about. ******** to you too!
Alan, I thank you for reminding me about the seed debate. Shortly after I arrived in Kenya, I wrote this entry that I have just dug out and re-read together with the comments it got. Interesting how many similarities I see between your journey of discovery in Tala and my own. Love to you and Sara; welcome back home.
Christine, your comments are always an uplift, I think you and I inspire one another to some extent; be that so I’m happy about it.
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:33 amJame Says:
Hey Mark! I’ll be in London for GNSH in a few weeks. Hopefully I’ll get to see you while I’m there!
Jame
January 24th, 2008 at 4:35 pm