2014

• 2014-12-17

  Of cookbooks and story books

  Would you like me to tell you how to cook pasta? No? Pretend you do for a minute so I can make a point. It’s about stories, I promise. First, choose a pot with a good thick bottom. If the pot’s bottom is thin, the water will not boil evenly, and the pasta will clump. Read more

• 2014-11-12

  Including the unincluding

  Here is a question I’ve been mulling over for the past few months. How can you include people who don’t believe in inclusion? Put in other words: I’m not making up this problem. Here’s a quote from a recent New Yorker article about Hong Kong: Last year, when the Party faced mounting complaints over deadly Read more

• 2014-10-28

  What I learned at the NCDD 2014 Conference

  So I’m back from my first real conference in ten years, and I learned a lot. This is the conference I mentioned a few blog posts back, of the National (US) Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation. The first thing I learned was: I’m ten years older than I was ten years ago. Conferences have always Read more

• 2014-10-04

  Introducing the Participatory Narrative Inquiry Institute

  Well, folks, I’ve gone and got myself mixed up in another crazy scheme to save the world. The PNI Institute is a new membership organization for people who are enthusiastic about growing and improving participatory narrative inquiry. It has been created as a collaborative effort by Aiden Choles, Ron Donaldson, Harold van Garderen, and myself. Read more

• 2014-09-23

  From the archives

  I have some top secret projects going on right now, but I have nothing ready to show you just yet (mwahahaha). However, the other day I was poking around in some old files (can’t remember why), and I thought, gee, I wonder if some of my blog readers might like to see this old musty Read more

• 2014-08-17

  Dialogue, deliberation, and stories

  Now that the (first) book is finally done, I’ve been starting to pick up my head and look around me at what the rest of the world has been up to. One of my book-finishing cheerleaders (thank goodness for these people) brought my attention to the US-based National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation, and to Read more

• 2014-08-09

  Stories in search of characters

  I thought that in returning to blogging more regularly I’d write one of my old-style blog posts, the kind where I take a handful of thought pebbles out of my pocket and line them up on a table for us to look at together. (I tend to find them in the places where things foam Read more

• 2014-07-16

  I’m not here right now

  In my last post I promised I’d post monthly, and here it is nearly two months later. I’ve been thinking for weeks about what I should write here, and I keep coming up empty. Today I realized that the best thing I can do is simply explain why I have nothing to tell you. I’m Read more

• 2014-06-01

  Go ahead (WWS is for sale)

  This is a photograph of one of my favorite coffee mugs. In case you can’t see it on the photo, the mug says: When it is time to be still, then stop; When it is time to act, go ahead. I am showing you this particular coffee mug because I’ve been staring at it for Read more

• 2014-02-28

  Proof

  A proof, that is. A proof copy of the book. I’m still working on a million little details, and there is indeed a devil in them; he and I are on a first-name basis at this point. But I am getting very close to the end of this journey (for the first book, anyway). I Read more