I was sitting in my friend’s living room wearing sandals while she had bundled herself in a sweater, coat, and blanket. We were watching a South African gospel concert on DVD. After the customary greetings, I asked her, more informally, “How are you?”

“Actually, I am on leave. Sick leave. They found TB.”   Read more...

Many years ago, my life reached something of a drastic crossroads. My then husband and I had a son who died the day he was born, and we had some life-changing choices to make. The paths that we’d thought were going to be ours, it turned out, weren’t to be ours at all. We decided, in those inexpensive gasoline days, to take a drive. We found the vista of the open sea at the beach near our home relaxing and insightful. Our little red Subaru seemed to know it; she took us right there.   Read more...

My community tourism work takes me through many areas in rural Uganda. I get opportunity to meet and interact with the ordinary people. The majority perceive their villages and homesteads as poor and backward and themselves as without opportunity. The unfortunate trend is for able people moving to towns and cities in search of economic opportunities, leaving behind mostly women and the elderly.

Due to lack of knowledge and exposure, they do not see the potential hidden within their surrounding environment, indigenous knowledge and cultures. All is not lost, though amongst the community there are some who have not given up and are not waiting for government or donors to improve their circumstances. In a bid to survive, they have become innovative.   Read more...

I’m seeing it everywhere on the planet. All sorts of people are catching a bigger vision in all sorts of arenas. The most personal one I’ve had recently was about health insurance.

A friend left her job for better opportunities. Because her last post was in academia, her insurance lasts till the beginning of this school year. She’s spent a lot of this summer getting all her various physical details checked, measured and serviced before her insurance runs out.   Read more...

In my introductory bibliography I wrote about how I was looking forward to what my unknown future had in store for me. I also mentioned T’ai Chi, artwork, and Japanese. But even though this current essay is a bit personal, I feel it is an important addition to what I initially submitted. It gives a more complete picture of who I am. And hopefully, what I am experiencing and learning will be of benefit to others in similar situations.   Read more...

For several years, I presented training programs in problem solving at various corporations. I taught the classical four step problem solving process that has long served the industrial revolution: 1) identify the problem, 2) search for root causes, 3) explore and evaluate possible solutions, and 4) put an action plan in place. My classes always went well and people appreciated learning the process.

Then came an experience that eventually brought me to a whole new mind set on problem solving. I had been doing some manuscript reviews for Berrett-Koehler Publishing, and one of the manuscripts was about Appreciative Inquiry, a change process that approaches problems from a positive perspective rather than from a negative one. At first I felt that AI was ignoring the long history and success of the classic model for problem solving, but slowly I came to see the incredible value in AI.   Read more...

Nowhere I’ve been is more paradoxical than South Africa. Yes, it’s a country of wealth and poverty, a country of freedom and oppression, a country of exuberance and despair. But these extremes exist universally—they characterize nations and local communities and even, you might say, the individual experience. But to me, the contrasts are especially glaring here.

For example, compare these two descriptions of a wedding.   Read more...

This morning's news headlines brought word of a new video of Osama bin Laden that has been posted on the internet. I didn't seek it out nor did I watch it. I didn't need to. The press had done it for me.

What I did instead was conjure up an image of dear Osama--not exactly hard to do--and I prayed with him. He's the general of an armed militia and he and his men need prayer.   Read more...

In Japan, the phenomenon of total self-isolation has become so common that it now has a name: hikikomori. The international media report of an ‘epidemic’ and estimate the number of sufferers - typically men in their twenties - at 1.2 million. That’s 1 per cent of the population! Hikikomori refuse to leave their room, completely disconnect themselves from their environment and usually flee into the digital world, where they are masters of the universe. It seems that in the twenty-first century information overload has become physical reality for some.

Hikikomori could also be described as an extreme variant of what is known in the West as a ‘quarter-life crisis’, where individuals refuse to commit themselves to a specific goal amidst all the possibilities that a globalized world has to offer. We smoke pot and play videogames, Hikikomori play videogames. Quite often, they do so professionally, looking after our avatars while we -Westerners- reluctantly go to work. Japanese possess an honest and enviable attitude to work. They either do the work or they don’t. They either connect with each other by committing themselves to a common goal or they don’t.   Read more...

I've just sent out an email recommending Ode to all of the members of an international group known as Positive Change Corps (www.positivechangecorps.com). Most of the members are organizational development consultants who have additionally made a commitment to bringing Appreciative Inquiry to schools.

As as retired educator and consultant, my mission is to write, blog, and post resources to help people transform our schools into democratic organizations that work for everyone. I'm doing something similar to what Charlie Leadbeater is doing. I'm writing a book on line -- CRISIS IN SCHOOL MANAGEMENT: MAKING OUR SCHOOLS WORK FOR EVERYONE (www.squidoo.com/makingourschoolswork) -- where people can critique, contribute, and freely copy. Would welcome reactions/review from you folks at Ode.   Read more...