Crossroads Dispatches

This is a world liberated from adult judgments and expectations, and campers flourish in it

I've been carrying around a brochure for Steve & Kate's summer camps for a few weeks now in my purse. I'm not in their target audience, yet it spoke to me loud and clear:

"At Steve & Kate's, campers step into a world packed with possibilities: for experiencing new sensations, for expressing themselves, for exploring their unique passions and potential. The results are unexpected, and they're unexpectedly rich.

One camper dives deep into digital filmmaking. Another discovers a passion for dance. Or chess. A camper becomes engrossed in making the ultimate spaghetti sauce. Or developing Leo Messi-like touch on the soccer pitch. These discoveries are all the more exhilarating because campers make them for themselves.

This is a world liberated from adult judgments and expectations, and campers flourish in it."

Even more enchanting: "Our camp conforms to kids, not the other way around."

“Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do,” wrote Thomas Pynchon in his essay on sloth. Archimedes’ “Eureka” in the bath, Newton’s apple, Jekyll & Hyde and the benzene ring: history is full of stories of inspirations that come in idle moments and dreams. It almost makes you wonder whether loafers, goldbricks and no-accounts aren’t responsible for more of the world’s great ideas, inventions and masterpieces than the hardworking.

“The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.” This may sound like the pronouncement of some bong-smoking anarchist, but it was actually Arthur C. Clarke, who found time between scuba diving and pinball games to write “Childhood’s End” and think up communications satellites. - "The Busy Trap," by Tim Kreider, New York Times, June 30, 2012

I would love to start a 'camp' (ideally, both virtual and physical), although I've been wavering on the precise spelling out of this all-ages camp (more accurately ages 13 to 185) geared to the child-like wonder and inspiration in each of us.

One of the most touching details in Vermeer's oeuvre is that of the two children absorbed in their play in the Little Street. Although they occupy a small portion of the painting, the magical atmosphere that pervades the work would be deprived of much of its intimate warmth without their presence. As is befitting of Vermeer's enigmatic nature, neither the children's faces nor their play is revealed. - an overview of The Little Street by Vemeer

And I need to reveal my own voice before I go forth to harmonize with others. (I'd already recovered my voice circa 2006, in one sense, I just wasn't belting it out in public. In other nomenclature, it's often termed hiding your light under a bushel.) Lately I have shielded myself from writing, sharing, interacting, speaking publically because I don't conform, and agreement seems like an unquestionable virtue in this culture. But it's not among my virtues.

My highest ideal is to interact with a diversity of people with mutual respect, without any of us needing to convert anyone else away from who they are or judge another's choices. I don't claim this an ideal for the entire world, as that feels imposing. It's my own desire within my play-sphere of humans and other beings.

To that end, I started to jot physical camp ideas here (there's a real-live-tangible-awesome-face-to-face space available for lease in Santa Clara/San Jose right now).

And, I started to write out things I'm afraid to tell other people in a long list in order to get over myself and emancipate my voice. Here's a few things that relate to multiplicity and voice in that list. (The rest of list won't be blogged, rather posted as a FAQ or within the About page):

I wish for multiplicity. Don't be like me, please! No mimicry, no conformity. To that end, I have been quite inspired lately by learning more of my ancestral heritage, and researching the Golden Age of Al-Andalus in medieval Spain. It was quite possible a very vibrant and fertile time period of multiplicity where many types of people of different worldviews crossed paths and co-existed. Ancient Greek texts were translated to Hebrew and Arabic and Latin, and delicately doted over in universities and libraries. Poetry and singing flourished alongside with pomegranate fruit and olive oil trade. Not my highest ideal, but nonetheless a shining example during what is commonly referred to as The Dark Ages.

I don't know. My standard answer when people ask me about the future, especially "my" future. It tends to infuriate people. At that point, I might make up an answer but it's only to soothe them, not because I actually know. 

I have friends and acquaintances from all nationalities. Some are transients (no I.D. like Christopher McCandless in Into the Wild), Republicans, anarchists, Libertarians, theists, atheists, academics, circus performers, nomads, homebodies, vegans, hunters, crafters, bicycle riders, SUV drivers, saunterers, pilgrims, hitchhikers, train-hoppers, children, elders, shamans, Catholic priests, real estate brokers, dancers, hat-makers, scientists, tantrikas, athletes, artists, monks, hostel owners, strip-tease dancers, drug dealers, homeschoolers, educators, poets, startup CEOs, millionaire venture capitalists, homeless veterans, policemen. I usually don't mention this because not all these people would necessarily want to meet the so-called 'other', but that doesn't preclude me from finding value in them for myself. Apologies if my giving credence to another offends you or this indicates that I am now not worthy of belonging to a tribe. I don't understand all this Other'ing and category labels as exclusionary devices, yet I understand that it happens.

ART CREDITS: The Obliteration Room, envisioned by Yayoi Kusama was a participartory installation at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. It is aptly summarized by, "This is what happens when you give thousands of stickers to thousands of kids."

First photo and fourth photo by GoMA photographer Mark Sherwood; photos two and three of The Obliteration Room is from This is Colossal blog; last photo of The Obliteration Room by Daniela Sunde-Brown.

There are good ideas, and then there are good ideas that make it easier to have other good ideas - Steven Johnson

"There are good ideas, and then there are good ideas that make it easier to have other good ideas." - Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation

I believe that sentence summarizes the book Where Good Ideas Come From, and also where I'm pouring my energy into. I can make out a Renaissance (or Golden Age) on the horizon, and I believe it'll thrive most lushly in generative ecosystems.

The word (and sensation of) symbiosis keeps cropping up.

"What makes the reef so inventive is not the struggle between the organisms but the way they have learned to collaborate--the coral and the zooxanthellae and the parrotfish borrowing and reinventing each other's work. This is the ultimate explanation of Darwin's Paradox: the reef has unlocked so many doors of the adjacent possible because of the way it shares." - Where Good Ideas Come From

One of the interrelated things I'm going to be doing is getting out and about to meet and work and share with people face to face.

Sort of the 'stranger comes to town' narrative. May include mobile cross-fertilization Salons, field trips, smell walks, walkshops, cowalking (rather than coworking indoors in one spot), and other experiential explorations.

First stop is New Orleans if you'd like to join me any time in second half of March. Possibilities in Las Vegas, Vermont (not sure where yet), Miami, Indianapolis, Moab,  Portland(I'll be there for Open Engagement Conference on art and social practice in May), soon or any city you suggest.

I think every place offers its own magic and signature. My initial inclination (fleshing out) is to incite experiments and explorations that spur spontaneity and inspiration that play out within any city space (including solo); then, add modules that are culture and city-specific. All guided by this observation of Marcel Proust: "The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."

While I was tossing this idea about, I read that Cuban-American poet Virgil Suarez takes his students and takes them to visit a place where they are a "fish out of water."

". . . the objective is to travel to a place, not too far, that will make an emotional impact on you, the writer [any Author of Anything].

I think some of the best work I've produced comes from having explored such never-been-there territory. I feel this way about going to hospitals, attorneys' offices, mechanics, and certainly a morgue or cemetery." - Virgil Suarez, Now Write

Bonus:

"A while ago,  I rode through the desert with a man who had books on alchemy. But I wasn't able to learn anything from them."

"There is only one way to learn," the alchemist answered. "It's through action. Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey. You need to learn only one thing more."

The boy wanted to know what that was, but the alchemist was searching the horizon, looking for the falcon.

"Why are you called the alchemist?"

"Because that's what I am."

"And what went wrong when other alchemists tried to make gold and were unable to do so?"

"They were looking only for gold," his companion answered. "They were seeking the treasure of their Personal Legend, without wanting actually to live out the Personal Legend." - The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho

fluid celebration - blog action day 2010 - water installation

This is my contribution for Blog Action Day. This year's theme is water. I recall a ferry ride across the Mississippi in the setting sun in April 2008. My intuition was going haywire giving me something about a "water installation." As I landed in New Orleans, I noted a department store mall storefront on Canal Street with the words charity : water. I wrote it down since the serendipity was too vivid to ignore. I'd never heard of charity:water before.

I kept getting hits of intuition and inspiration involving a water installation, ("but I'm a writer!" I protest to the universe). I continued to brush these inspirations away.

After the Gulf oil spill April 2010, I understood the urgency and regretted that I didn't follow through. So that's partly the inspiration for the following.

"Water is the driving force of all nature." - Leonardo da Vinci

Setting: Sometime in the "future."

Women dressed in diaphonous cloud gingerly twirl with jars balanced on the tiptop of their crowns. In single file, they tiptoe to a well. One filly breaks into a trot and the rest scatter bouncing and bounding in a frolic to the spring. Behind them the scene is draped in waterfalls. On their return with filled jars weighing up to forty pounds, they circumnavigate the circuitous stream feeding the spring in a slow dance that exudes both sublime saunter and rapturous giggle.

The live installation celebrates the purification of water worldwide and the emancipation of women from retreiving water from miles away and storing emotions.

One grey-eyed dancer takes a large clay jar and pours water tenderly into a thin-necked copper pitcher, another woman with flowing black hair pours a jar into a wide porcelain pitcher. Each chooses her own vessel.

Spritely as a naiad, the porcelain pitchered empress brings the pitcher to a young man sitting in the circle.

He looks into the pitcher as if a mirror, and reflected and refracted in all the pools they see passing emotions skipping across the sloshing oval like a stone across a lake--a flash of fiery anger, an image of an old grudge, the anguish of an ancient trauma...a flood, perhaps---and the stone stops, the ripples fade, the water stills and pitcher is passed to the next in the circle. He stands up and joins the dance.

The celebration is performed on a regular basis. No two the same. We can't tell you when the next one is exactly as time itself is fluid--we'll be expecting you. 

Leonardo Fingerpainted, and Bon Voyage to Burma

A friend of mine, 0, is a Burmese artist, residing in the San Francisco Bay Area. Although he prefers abstract trumpet blasts of colors and swirls of dancing texture to realism, in order to raise money for his village back home, he'll often dedicate many canvases to meticulous reproductions of the da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

He leaves for Burma next week (his visa confirmed), so I’m helping him directly because I know him to be a person who lives The Gift.

In a blog post months ago, I mentioned that I had a small cluster of friends that helped each other out. If anyone sells a painting, while yet another's scrounging for scraps to eat, they'll share the money, and/or cook you a home-cooked simmering soup and Burmese noodles supper. "Artists gotta help other artists," 0, my Burmese friend, would instill in me.

Normally, 0 self-funds his visits to Burma (loaded with medicines, water purifiers, energy drinks and foods, books and educational materials) with his art work sales, but this time he'd only just returned from a 5-week trip in April with $5 in his pocket. Then Cyclone Nargis hit.

If you'd like to help, I'm taking donations.

What Twitter friends are doing: Pissyrabbit is donating 100% of all art sales (Warholesque stuffed animals) at www.basilandantimony.etsy.com through May 21st to the cause. Charlotte created a Facebook group. Pistachio is collecting information on how social media can help Burma. Michelle is shows you how you can buy calling cards for Burmese refugees in Austin, TX to call home. Evrideva donated his $85 in barista tips last night (his tip jar told his customers that it was for 0). TRUE suggested a long-term Etsy store for Oliver and other artists to sell creations on behalf of Burma relief at Art4Burma.etsy.com (not ready yet).

Or, best yet if you are in the Bay Area, missrogue is hosting 0 this Saturday.... come wish 0 a good send-off to Burma.

San Francisco, May 17th, 6-8 p.m. Bon Voyage to Burma. My Burmese artist and humanitarian will be the guest at a fun-raiser (do-it-yourself fingerpainted gift cards) and art show at Citizen Space, thanks to Tara Hunt. Address: 425 2nd Street, #300, San Francisco, CA. 0 does some really glorious fingerpaint (yup, handmade!) cards - watch, and/or do your own.

Scrumptious Burmese food will be served. Donations requested, (never mandatory) $7-10. Simply come by to show your support of an individual headed to help Burmese cyclone survivors next week.

Bonus:

Finger Painting: "Throughout history a small number of artists have rejected both palette knives and brushes. A few used their fingers to spread the paint. Artists turned to such primal means for various reasons, including display of skill, experimental playfulness, or nose-thumbing at convention."

...The young Leonardo's use of his fingers can be linked to the properties of the newly available medium of oil painting. ... It should not surprise us that he played with the tackiness of the new oil medium, palpating the paint as he sought new effects." - Seeing Through Paintings, Andrea Kirsch and Rustin S Levenson

Art credits Elephant Family, by 0 ('m declining mentioning his name at this time as he frequents the country, and I don't wish to jeopardize those visa-dependent visits. Graffiti With Homemade Fingerpaints, by Pilgrim Parent

p.s. In next few days, I'll share how you can help through active prayer, or intention alone.

Carnival of the Capitalists - Sept 25, 2006

Welcome! This makes my third time hosting the Carnival of the Capitalists over the last three years.

It doesn't get easier to sort and order the influx in the inbox of business-economics-finance-leadership-marketing-etc submissions even for a seasoned host. Each year, each week brings us more authors, yet more posts.

If you're reading, though, who can complain? That means more business insight and acumen for you to peruse.

Truth be told, CoTC hosts can't complain either. Carnival hosting has many hidden advantages. (Shhhhh....we can't tell.) One fairly open secret about blogging is the quality of connections made. For instance, on this CoTC run - and the day is still young - I've already got an invitation from a fellow tea-lover to visit their cafe in Gothenburg, Sweden (The Blue Chip Cafe): "We have a special blend with three black teas (Darjeeling, Ceylon, Lapsang), vanilla, blue flower and rum." Yum. It's personal email like that that makes it all worthwhile.

So take a sip of your favorite morning brew whether you're in Sweden, Sri Lanka (they call it bed tea there in the a.m.), or Saskatchewan and enjoy yourself as you unfurl the virtual pages of this week's edition of Carnival of the Capitalists.

Oh, and don't forget: respire la vie. - Evelyn, Crossroads Dispatches

p.s. The photo of the bull and bear is from the Frankfurt Stock Market.

FINANCE

Michael Dawson of The Time and Money Group's Blog shares straightforward bond advice: "As interest rates go up, bond prices go down.  As interest rates go down, bond prices go up." Read the whole post to digest Michael's simple-to-understand, A Simple Relationship to Put Money in Your Pocket. He adds in the current position of "the Warren Buffett of the bond world" to apply this education immediately.

David Porter is asked by a reader and answers What do Mortgage Underwriters do? posted at Pacesetter Mortgage Blog. David concisely covers the ins and outs of mortgage loan approval adding a personal story to bring the mortgage loan approval process to life. The hook: "We just sold our personal residence a month ago.  We were given a letter that stated that the buyers of our home were 'approved'."

Value investor (ala Warren Buffet) George over at Fat Pitch Financials generously shares a mini-tutorial on how to properly calculate the annualized return on investment for your various projects in How to Calculate Your Return on Investment. (And I didn't even know about Google Spreadsheets until I read George's post.)

Free Money Finance presents How High Mutual Fund Fees Can Cost You Millions (Another Reason You Should Love Index Funds). Crunching some numbers on Vanguard funds with sales loads and fees, FMF underscores their continued love affair with index investing.

Bill Lopasio uses airplane flight metaphors, such as windshear (also known as microbursts), to illustrate how and why he thinks the current housing market is headed for a crash in his post, Market Microbursts at LWilliamLosapio.com: "The FED’s manipulation of interest and credit creates “windshear” in the economy. Home-buyers and property speculators can be thought of as pilots trying to land in windshear."

Peter Kua presents How to make $1,000,000 in the stock market automatically at RadicalHop.com. Yeah, that's a clickable title alright. Peter presents his own personal experience of trying out the recommendations in the book of the same title. Shoot, it seems automatically means automated rather than overnight: "Of course, if you’re expecting to make a million bucks in a couple of months, then you’re out of luck."

Joe Kristan of Roth & Company Tax Updates blog in No Appraisal, No Charitable Deduction showcases Bruce and Marina Ney who claimed deductions in 2001 of just over $210,306 for the donation of two parcels of appreciated long-term capital gain property to a charity, the Delaware Agricultural Lands Preservation Foundation. Publicly traded securities are simpler, says Joe, as he shows what can happen when the paperwork for appraisals of donated land and/or art aren't handled properly.

Nina Smith of Queercents asked a prominent Bay Area pastry chef and food blogger to get personal about the economics of food, working in restaurants and how money plays a role in both her own life and restaurant life. CoTC often focuses on macroeconomics and macrofinance, but this interview, Ten Money Questions for Shuna Fish Lydon, sheds light on our intimate one to one relationships with money.

Bob Vineyard of InsureBlog says, "Often sold, incorrectly, as a subsitute for real health insurance, medical discount plans are coming under increased scrutiny" by state governments. Get the straight scoop from Bob on the details in Discount Plan Crack Down.

Bryan C. Fleming presents Day #29 of his Million Dollar Savings Club series How to Get Through a Cash Pinch by offering advice on saving in order "to protect you from yourself... You suddenly find you pushed your checking account a little too far and you have no money until your next paycheck. If you don’t think this happens a lot, look at how many pay-day-advance services have appeared in recent years."

HeJustLaughs shares his own personal stock choice in Why reinsurance companies like MRH are the place to be (yep, despite Katrina, he says) at his HJL Money Blog adding, "I'm currently up about 17% on this one since June 13th."

Scott at Scott on Money helps put things in perspective in Your Week Was Not as Bad As...  In his CoTC submission, Scott shares that it's the "worst week I've heard of in the markets" but, hey, at least we're not the trader who lost $5 billion.

Dan Melman of Searchlight Crusade comprehensively breaks down the property market and loan types into common home ('stick built'), condominiums, and then drills down to look at housing loans as one veers away from the "stick built' house starting with the modular dwelling and so on. Check out Manufactured, Modular, and Site-Built Homes: How Lending Practices Drive the Sales Market for a consideration of differing housing properties and how ease of loans affects said sale prices.

ECONOMY

David Tufte of VoluntaryXchange quotes one of his old professors in saying that "we shouldn't knock the fact that "we don't make anything in America" anymore, because A Service Economy is a Rich Economy." And he has the charts from the IMF’s World Economic Outlook to solidify the case that deindustrialization may very well be a very good thing (income is first related to increasing industrialization, and then to declining industrialization; thus the US is ahead of the pack).

McKee Stewart shares his analysis of the California state "global warming" lawsuit (with similarities to the state tobacco lawsuits) against GM, Ford, Chrysler, Honda, Nissan, and Toyota and its implications to the economy and individuals. McKee predicts "depending on the prospects for success, expect other politically ambitious State AGs to try to muscle in for a piece of the action" in his post, What’s the UAW Think About This? at The Boring Made Dull.

James Hamilton of Econbrowser concurs quite a bit with The Boring Made Dull (above) in Environmental Totalitarianism on the California lawsuit against automakers and compares the state's with Russia's politics. James discusses Russia's oil production on Sakhalin Island citing that while "environment concerns about the project are real" essentially the environmental permit annulment appears to be a tactic to "help [semi-nationalized] Gazprom acquire a stake in the venture."

Barry L. Ritholtz of The Big Picture takes a good (and witty) shot at the recent New York Times article on wealth, Life is Better; It Isn't Better. Which Is It? Here's a taste of What is Wealth, Part II: "All temporal arguments are two-sided. The lowest economic strata -- with their indoor plumbing and their color TVs -- are "wealthier" today than long dead royalty of long ago... Sure, we may have Snowblowers, but we don't go to Mars for vacations, or have nano-tech cholesterol bots keep our arteries clean... Hey, we don't even have robotic servants to operate those snowblowers!Why, we are practically impoverished compred with people born merely 100 years from now."

Martin Lindeskog of EGO cheers on talk of The Privatization of Companies in Sweden sourcing an article that forecasts "mortgage provider SBAB, real estate firm Vasakronan, and drinks manufacturer Vin & Spirit (which makes Absolut Vodka) as first in line."

Wenchypoo at Frugal Wisdom from Wenchypoo's Warehouse uses economist F.A. Hayek’s 1945 book as the launchpad for her contemporary essay on liberal utopia, Interstate 5: The Road to Serfdom (L-O-N-G), citing it as a "well-written tome: a post-war warning to the nation about government-centralized planning and wholesale surrender of individual rights and freedoms to it."

BUSINESS - GENERAL

Tom Hanna takes a recent New York Times article to task in Whose fault is an inefficient government program? Wal-Mart's, of course posted at Tom Rants. Whereas NYT berates WalMart, Tom sees WalMart as providing reasonable prescription drug prices for the uninsured such as "290+ generic prescription drugs at a cost of $4/month, including literally lifesaving drugs like the insulin resistance drug metformin."

Kevin Hillstrom of MineThatData crunches the profit numbers and considers the positive implications in Starbucks: Is a Five-Cent Increase Necessary? Kevin points out Starbucks announced product price increase is top of mind for many, including morning fix consumers: "Based on the reaction of the blogosphere (216 unique posts about Starbucks in the past twelve hours according to Google Blog Search), many folks find the decision to increase the price of drinks by five cents to be conversation-worthy."

Greg Manter at the Retail Store Blog had an epiphany at a recent excursion for kitchen cabinets at Lowes: "These stores are self-serve all the way ... and shouldn't be afraid to admit it." The crux of Self-Serve Retail: the trouble with Lowes and Home Depot is about how these retail establishments set up expectations of solution consultants that they can't possibly staff and offers what can be done to better serve customers.

David Chamberlain of Exquisite Safaris discusses business-driven approaches to global problems in Clinton Global Initiative: Inspiring Change, Delivering Results citing for instance Richard Branson of Virgin: "The only way global warming's going to be whipped is if we can come up with alternative energies that are profitable," Branson said. "It's got to be sustainable. You can't just give the money away."

David Maister of Passion, People and Principles prepares for a speech to European business school faculty in Improving Mutual Understanding Between Business Schools and Business. He blogs his thoughts for feedback on biz school-to-biz interaction. Here's number 7 out of 9 ideas he tosses out for consideration: "Focus more on designing educational experiences (not content) that help students develop skills through guided practice (how to function in teams, etc.)"

A. Samuel thinks albeit the plethora of new low-cost airlines opening up routes that "the days of low-cost short-haul flights may indeed be in for a spot of turbulence" and makes a case for why at Talkback Msn Money Low Cost Airlines Part 2 posted at Property Investing. (See cartoon: If you've been travelling much lately, you'll appreciate the chuckle this Monday morning.)

Brian Gongol of Gongol.com offers clear step-by-step instructions in Using Gmail Filters to Control Spam. Brian uses Gmail himself for business mail, "but sometimes good email gets caught in the spam filters." His tutorial will help you sort within Gmail's spam folders so you can sift through and find the few false positives in less time.

David Foster of Photon Courier celebrates an important birth (that is, if you use computers) in his post. The baby? "The disk/computer combination was about the size of two refrigerators, and weighed around a ton." Check out: A WHOLE LOT OF SPINNING:
50 YEARS OF THE MAGNETIC DISK.

LEADERSHIP / MANAGEMENT

Leon Gettler of SOX First puts the people question squarely in front in his post, Marriages and Mergers. Citing Cisco as a role model for successful mergers, Leon deftly delves into the marriage analogy: "Company mergers are like marriages where the parties have to take the time to get to know the potential spouse and decide on money, children, religion, whose furniture survives and which gets turfed out."

David St Lawrence nudges us toward expanding in the first of a series, Moving out of your "comfort" zone over at Making Ripples: post corporate adventures. Says David: "A "comfort zone" is a pattern of behavior that gives you a sense of security... That certainly sounds like a great idea until you consider the following: Growth of any kind involves overcoming the fear of events, ideas, and people who cause you distress."

David Daniels of Business & Technology Reinvention writes in Who Do You Listen To?: "One of the reasons I left a well known technology company years ago was that the organization had shifted from being a focused group of smart people, without barriers, working across all levels through the hierarchy accomplishing amazing things..." David questions the wisdom of execs listening only to peers in a provocative post.

Wayne Hurlbert of BlogBusinessWorld sings a similar tune as Daniels above in his post Building A Creative Company: Embrace New Ideas: "Letting go of control of idea generation often takes a giant leap of faith... Seek out ideas from all employees, regardless of level. Creativity isn't an exclusive property of the executive suite, and doesn't require degrees and credentials."

K T Cat of The Scratching Post presents an employer-employee history lesson in the post, Passchendaele in the Office. Citing anecdotes from the 1917 battle where 310,000 British soldiers were wounded or killed: "A huge part of the problem was one endemic to World War One. The staff officers planning the attacks never visited the front. They had no idea what trench warfare was really like."

Carmine Coyote of Slow Leadership succinctly states the summary in the post title Leisure is the Meaning of Work. Want more of a taste? How's this appetizer: "The restlessness of today’s work-for-working’s-sake culture has more to do with an inability to relax into the leisure we need to be fully human than any innate desire to get more money and possessions."

MARKETING / SALES

Anita Campbell presents Apply for Small Business Awards, But Have A Great Story at her Small Business Trends blog. Being a judge for various small business awards, Anita notes that most award entry's "format begs for a great story as part of the application package." She offers her top six tips for how to tell your business story in a way that will get you to the finalist round, including: "Tell it like a story. Write it like a scene in a play, rather than some dry-as-dust financial analysis."

Starling David Hunter looks at the buzz surrounding Cocaine, a new teen-targeted energy drink. "Redux officials [the manufacturer] must be riding high right about now. But like all highs, this one won't last. The novelty surrounding Cocaine will wear off about as quickly as its buzz does - and without the sugar crash." Why the thumbs down? Read She Don't Lie, She Don't Lie, She Don't Lie at The Business of America is Business.

Jack Yoest was once privileged to introduce Steve Forbes at a fundraising event with 950 of his closest friends. Jack writes, "I was tempted to honor him with the most flattering, and shortest intro by saying, "Here's Steve Forbes, who needs no introduction..." Well, that may work for Steve Forbes and Steve Jobs, but what about the rest of us? Luckily Jack doesn't leave us hanging with that post intro, he freely offers his Six Steps to Your Perfect Introduction From the Podium over at Jack Yoest.

Andrew Trinh of Trizoko Biz Journal shares a pricing strategy tip and research from Northwestern’s Kellogg and MIT’s Sloan in How to Price What You Sell. You'll get a whiff of the breezy post if you start by taking Andrew's "Test Your Bizo-coolio-ness in 3 Seconds". The Game: Name the pricing point that sells more — $81, $83, $85, $87, $89. (Now, you gotta go read the post for answers.)

Jim Logan asks some provocative questions - and raises some good points about credibility and gaming the system - such as: "Do you trust reviewers whose every review concludes something is great?  Or do you value a less than favorable review?" in his post, Are The Recommendations You Receive Sincere? After pondering his thoughts, I think you'll agree: "All this makes me think I ought to have a policy of sorts for reviewing books, courses, programs, and the like."

In Recipe for Presentation Disaster, Pawel Brodzinski of Software Project Management shares his how-don'ts. Or, how to screw up your next presentation, including: "Slides are the king. No matter what you’d say – the slides matter. Good slides will cover poor speaking... just read the slides and everything will be OK." (It'd be funnier if we hadn't made these mistakes ourselves, and learned the hard way.)

Evelyn Rodriguez (that's me) of Crossroads Dispatches shares some inspiration from a recent shopping research excursion in Manhattan in Respire La Vie. Sometimes writers, bloggers - and marketers - can try too hard, explain too much. Perfumery Le Labo eschews "explaining art" and rather successfully relies on the sensory experience of their boutique and a definitive focus on product freshness and quality to sell and to spread the word.

World Water Day Poem

messages in (m)(w)ater
terra mater
earth: planet drops of pooled ambrosia
cadillac deserts of desire

she, the clay jar against crown
well-meeting
water-gathering
he, the tum-pli-nes against forehead
forest-meeting
wood-gathering

day
in
burn
day
out
quench

school-time: children of maíz fields
reading husks
day
in
writing mica-soil
(layers slide like pages in a book)
day
out

where
mammacita, la agua?

actions ripple
day
in
day
o) only
u) us
t) together

Inspired by: Yvonne at Lip-sticking, my friend David who told me about a new 1/2 cent per gallon water filtering technology, desert living, Colorado River and Guatemalan journeys, and Google. (Plus yeah I noticed Starbucks doing the good cause thing in their retail stores.)
photo WaterPartners International

Juxtaposing Miracles: East vs West, Old vs New, Faith vs Secular

Varanasi has been on my travel list for a long, long time. It's the holiest city in India. I resonate with the the mystic teachings of Hinduism, particularly the Upanishads. Benares, it's old name, is where Yogananda met his guru.

Plus it's right next to Sarnath, one of the four pilgrimage sites the Buddha suggested. In that region, when Buddha spoke his discourse explaining anata, or (the much misconstrued) no-self, several of his disciples awakened through his living presence of anata.

So I was saddened to read about the violent blast that killed and hurt dozens of devotees in Varanasi temples today.

At a used bookshop in Phuket town in early January, I picked up a paperback called: Sacred Spaces: Exploring Traditions of Shared Faith in India, by Yoginder Sikand. The author visited pilgrimage sites of saints revered by both Hindus and Muslims alike. He spoke of the long legacy of Sufism and Islam in India that has been historically buried. The book starts off a bit scholarly and dry, but slowly flowers into a powerful eye-opening book.

The chapter on Kashmir was particularly sublime and heart-rending. I realized reading this book that I was not yet ready to visit the cacophony of India. And simultaneously that I am destined to*.

When I left Sri Lanka, I instinctly knew Indonesia and India were next. Purportedly because they too are 2004 tsunami-countries.

The Economist's "The great Indian hope trick" cover story last week: "India has more Muslims (150m or so) than any other country other than Indonesia, yet, as Mr Bush likes to point out, no known members of al-Queda." (Newsweek's March 6th cover story is - there's several - on India too.)

Even Sri Lankan television pros once they realized I wouldn't be offended bemoaned all the "Hollywood propaganda". (I wouldn't have been offended if he took the opposite tack either.)

Between cricket matches, I watched TV commercials telling a beautiful people that a magical made-in-USA cream promises to make them "Fair and Handsome." (This is the actual trade name of the product.)

One doesn't have to understand a speck of Sinhala. Good ads are visual and visceral. I don't remember this ad specifically, but it was comparison-based. Perhaps? Before: Dark-skinned, frown, alone. After: Light-skinned, beaming, women flock. Thereafter I noticed whitening lotions for men and women everywhere: drugstores, magazines, etc. The subtler message: Be like them. I had to smile thinking of my self-tanning cream tucked away in my cabinet at home. I broke into a bigger smile a week later when the Columbo-bound bus zipped past a billboard with a ripped Sri Lankan pronouncing boldly "Bronze is Beautiful." Touche!

As we sat drinking orange gin mixed with Sprite, and arrack mixed with Coke facing the shrimpers plying the river behind the azure pool, a nightclub manager asks me, "Are you Christian, Buddhist, or a free thinker?" I say neither of those fit but he senses I'm comfortable with the direction of the discussion. If I had to do it all over again I would answer I am a mystic, one who lives (tries anyway): Be still and know.

Any answer is superfluous. He asks me if his practice of revering saints rather than focusing on the Christ alone is wrong-minded which launches us into a very moving conversation about how he is transported to another realm as soon as he crosses the threshold of St. Thomas or St. Anthony for the noon weekday mass.

"Hmmm, I don't know. Sounds like the Holy Spirit. I'd trust that feeling." Later:

His friend,a wealthy hotel owner featured in full color on the backcover of a lodging booklet the nation's tourism authority hands out, shares that his daughter is in Canada studying for a public relations degree.

"First she used to write me letters that started, 'Dear Father, God Bless You.' They were beautiful letters that ended with 'I love you."

He paused. I take another sip of the coconut liquor. Others jump in and out of the pool.

Now she starts the letter off without salutation, he says. "She ends with 'Take care.' "

"Take care," he repeats. A Sri Lankan teledrama (soap opera) is filming here past midnight. Normally it'd be hidden night, but in the glow of the set lights I see his milky eyes match mine. 

"She's crossed over to the other side."

I know and he knows that I know he doesn't mean Hell.

The lull of the West to abandon all that sentimental old-fashioned goop. Alluding that's just where it starts. Pulled by peer forces akin to gravity. Who knows where the free fall ends.

When I learnt that Islam means surrender in the Sri Lankan Lonely Planet guide everything dropped into place for me.

Why are so many Islamic fundamentalists willing to fight and die in the name of their religion? How does a life of austerity and faithfulness win out over instant gratification and self-indulgence? This is one of the great mysteries that we in the West just cannot comprehend. After half a century of increasing devotion to secular materialism, many of us have forgotten how powerful a force deep spirituality and faith can be. In the Winter 2005 issue of New Perspectives Quarterly, editor Nathan Gardels shed some light on the question:

After 9/11, the Bush Administration launched an international public relations campaign premised on the notion that "if the Muslim world only understood our good intentions, all would be OK." But the propaganda of postmodern America - our globalized mass cultural presence - had been out there a long time already and was understood by the Muslim world. The problem was not that angry Muslims didn't understand America, but that they did. - "Spiritual Pollution," AdBusters, Mar/April 2006

I went to the Mercy Church in a strip mall lined with NGO offices one Sunday in January. I was aching to go to something akin to a church although rationally I told myself that was a brilliant idea as I ought to investigate these rumors and allegations of aid for conversions among the Christian faith-based aid groups near Khao Lak, Thailand.

What struck a chord was the underlying message the evangelical minister gave which is basic to both Christianity and Islam (and dare I say all faiths): There is only one will.

This is something I grapple with on a moment-to-moment basis. I gave myself over to the romantically terrifying notion of living in perpetual discovery and adventure while in Asia.

Asia seems fitting for that lifestyle though.

Coming back to USA, I feel sillier. Backwards. Out of sync.

The real thing: I shrink from the immensity, beauty and power of this vastness. I think we all do.

We might then look for scapegoats: Yeah, they're the reason we confine ourselves to a scared dot in the infinite canvas. (That's scared not sacred.)

I see myself doing it. Thus I could relate to Akbar Ahmed's statement in Postmodernism and Islam: "The more traditional [or further from the mainstream] a religious culture in our age of media, the greater the pressures upon it to yield."

It doesn't matter so much that the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated is on the shelves this month or I find myself less than electrified by pop-American conversations.

The 'demon' Ahmed writes about isn't out there.

I secretly want to yield to the pressures. Please - please GQ, Versace, Kate Spade, anyone - come rescue me from this enveloping infinity.

When I've been still, I note the struggle is inside. In Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, Chogyam Trungpa writes: "We begin to realize that there is a sane, awake quality within us. In fact this quality manifests itself only in the absence of struggle... Struggle is ego. Once you give up the struggle, then there is no one left to conquer struggle; it just disappears." Clean the lint on the projector, and the projected clears.

(How-to on dismantling your projections is outside scope of this blog, but I highly recommend the non-spiritual book: Loving What Is, by Bryon Katie.)

This I realize is culminating in (dare I utter it) a book that's writhing to come out whether or not I cooperate.

If it doesn't come bursting out of you

in spite of everything,

don't do it.

- from So You Want to Be a Writer? by Charles Bukowski

In a nutshell I imagine it's told through my personal lens traipsing through Eastern countries using the micro- in the service of illustrating a macro- story. Story though, not journalism. Juxtapose the inner and outer struggle of globalization - between secular and faith, traditional and new, control and surrender, east and west - in human terms.

(In mid- and long-term tsunami recovery and rehabilitation there's a recurring undercurrent of cultural friction when foreign donors and foundation directors drive what gets priority, what is valued, and what is funded from best practices in 'development' to psychiatry and counseling. But that's another post.)

A Jesuit priest who once taught near Poona, India really hits home:

"What miracles has your Master worked?" he said to a disciple.

"Well, there are miracles and miracles. In your land it is regarded as a miracle if God does someone's will. In our country it is regarded as a miracle if someone does the will of God." - One Minute Wisdom, by Anthony de Mello

*Very long time readers might remember scribbled an outline in the middle of the night on December 24, 2004 into my journal. That was the last entry I wrote. Although my other possessions did not reappear, the journal did weeks later. That sense of destiny first wrote itself in that outline - I knew the book would conclude in India.

tags globalization islam citizen journalism sri lanka india faith tsunami asia

Photos: Each night one could hear Indian chanting carry across the water from the devale right by the giant Buddha (pictured) standing guard by the bridge. One day on the way to my riverside hotel in Moratuwa, I stopped to take a photo of the Buddha and these Sri Lanka women praying outside the Hindu devale. (Yes, Hindu shrines inside Buddhist temples.) On the west coast near Columbo, (this photo is in Karuna, near Negombo) there is a Catholic majority harking from Portugese colonial times. These saints encapsulated in glass boxes greet many neighborhoods.

Passport to Understanding: Seeing Through Muwa's Eyes

 

Muwa, top right, took these photos. I noticed she was more interested in being on the other side of the camera: The creator.

At the last session at NewCommForum with Robert and Shel, a woman in the audience comments: "I thought I was up on this [blogging]. I'm starting to see this underlying sense of empowerment. That people want to have a voice. Customers are empowered."

Yeah, and engagement is more fun than passivity.

Best decision I ever made was to take a simple point-and-shoot digital camera that I could hand over to locals. I gave it to the most curious 'kid' in a crowd. It made me a lot of friends along the two-month journey to Thailand and Sri Lanka when language was a seeming barrier.

Muwa's first day shots were formal, posed. The subjects were stiff. I think they're all accustomed to posing for photographs for foreigners - the strangers that swooped in after the tsunami and gave international exposure to the plight of the indigenous Thai sea gypsy community. 

Wherever you go the world over, "cheese" smiles are contrived.

Yet something started to change.

Muwa began experimenting the second day I came over. In the cafe as the volunteers and I got bored with posing, she started to capture shots whether or not we stayed still. I didn't even notice she was still snapping photos of us.

Then she started to use the television set's reflective screen to create special effects: in one haunting photo (above, click to full res) our real-life cafe scene seamlessly blends in with a Bollywood-inspired virtual world.

Later she discovers that it's okay to turn the camera 90 degrees. And then she asks for my permission to take the camera into Tung Wa village proper.

Into areas I wouldn't necessarily have access to.

Villagers on siestas, joyously naked youngsters asleep and astride bikes, artful still-lifes illustrating her and her friend's fascination with motorbike and bicycle, pregnant moms giggling, kids shampooing their younger siblings...

As Muwa eased behind the lenses, and because she was already part of the community and culture even the posed shots took on a natural grace.

I only wish I'd thought of handing my camera to the three black-cloaked women sitting astride on a bench along the old fort wall in Galle, Sri Lanka watching the sun dip down into the waves.

Behind them a meadow fell away among cacti and palms and thirteen snowy egrets. Alas, the Muslim world is the one subculture I didn't get to deeply hang out in on my two-month journey.

In Thai, the word jai or chai means heart-mind (fused for Thais and Buddhists) and kao jai means deep understanding. There are times you enter the jai of another culture through the eyes of an insider - their selection, their framing, their angle, their interpretation, their poetry, their music, their essence. Thank you Muwa.

Bonus: The producers of Voices of Iraq distributed over 150 DIGITAL VIDEO CAMERAS across the entire country to enable everyday people - mothers, children, teachers, sheiks and even insurgents - to document their lives and their hopes amidst the upheaval of a nation being born.

In CHAIN CAMERA, director Kirby Dick relinquishes the video camera to let the students of this multicultural East Hollywood high school tell their own stories. Taking a new approach to the documentary genre, Dick decided to hand out video cameras in August of 1999 to ten teenagers in order for them to document their own lives for a week, at which point the cameras were passed on to ten more students, and so on.

p.s. These are only a fraction of the shots. You can see how this applies to what keynoter Rebecca Blood termed at NewCommForum "The Age of Participatory Culture", or the ProAm revolution; ethnography and 'deep hanging out'; artisan journalism; consumer-generated media; and learning about the world period.

tags social media consumer generated content citizen journalism blogging ethnography storytelling tsunami NewCommForum

 

Burnt Sienna Memories of Aid

I think it really - I mean I don't know how it took so long - really hit me that my experience as a fellow tsunami survivor was not so relevant to the situation any longer.

The discontinuity in our lives was a connecting bond, but the trajectories are far too different. I didn't need rice sacks and dahl and clean water delivered to the community shelter where I was housed with sixty families for months.

It might have happened in Hambantota, Sri Lanka that I realized quite another life experience bonded me more to survivors of natural disasters.

The west and south coast is fairly urban and one sees Army tent shelters alongside luxury gated resorts, but from Matara on, the scene changes to lush green rice paddies, stark white egrets and cocoa-dusted water buffalo. My contact lensed eyes felt refreshed after weeks of city dirt. I sunk into my seat and enjoyed a bus ride to Hambantota. (It was the bus ride from Hambantota I remarked on yesterday; that was altogether a different experience.)

Maybe the fact that 35% of the people are employed in agriculture comes alive here. This is the heartland.

There was a funeral that day. A fisherman in the neighborhood ran out of oxygen while part of a dive training program.

Death isn't foreign here. So many of the men died at market - too close to the sea - that Boxing Day, that it's mostly women in attendance today.

The monthly 'psycho-spiritual healing programme' at the temple school was running about a half-hour behind as mourners trickled in.

While the counselors and lecturer prepared, I entertained myself by glancing at posters - reminders for the teacher - such as: "A child is not a vessel to be filled - but a lamp to be lit."

As they settle, I count 28 although the numbers are in flux as kids arrive and elders depart throughout. One woman peels back her red blouse to nurse her baby as she listens attentively. Two hours glide by. Some other day I'll tell you more about those hours.

The program erases from my mind. At the end of the day, I'm introduced to a woman. Her hair is long and tucked back like most Sri Lankan woman and she wears what resembles a house-dress. She could have just walked out her bathroom. My mother snaps into focus with her signature house-dress and slippers. She is listless and numb too.

She stands there shifting slowly while the counselor speaks to me in English. The three girls are maybe eleven. Maybe twelve. They wear matching polyester blouse, skirt, black ponytails. When I was a child I would have sketched in the barefoot triplets with scrawls of burnt sienna Crayolas.

Crayola Inc adds a romantic dash to burnt sienna: The Japanese do not have a specific word named brown. Rather they use more descriptive names such as “tea-color," "fox-color," and "fallen-leaf.”

In Sri Lankan brown would be husked-coconut-color, bed-tea-color, water-buffalo-color, cinnamon-bark-color.

The three girls eyes aren't cloudy like their mother's. They mostly follow your gaze rather than look at the temple floor.

Christy was 14, Yvette was nine. I was just shy a few weeks before high school prom night when Papi died.

I'm close to that age when Mom was buying a casket for her husband at 42.

Mom's English was mangled but we understood her just fine. Her last job was teaching before she fled Cuba as a political refugee. She had a two-year teaching certificate. She didn't drive although we lived in suburban labyrinth of Miami.

And.

There was no life insurance.

Now this life experience is much more relevant to the people I meet post-tsunami.

How to pay for my college education paled in comparison to how are we paying the mortgage and eating dinner and keeping the lights on. I feel blessed that no one was surveying us forlornly as the three of us stood to the left of our mother. But maybe it's too easy to be invisible at times like this.

One of the best things that happened to us wasn't a donation or a handout. Papi was no longer around to boom: "No, you can't have a job. Get good grades. Go to college." A man with a junior high education quickly surmises that you can't scrape by in the U.S.A. without an education.

"Can you type?" my aunt Nina asked in her chirpy Brazilian accent.

Fluff Pieces and the American "Entertainment" Press

While I was on Phi Phi island, a British tourist living in Hong Kong tells me he sees the American press as "entertainment." He doesn't read it for any insight. That's a pity...

That it's true. Thank god then there are NGOs including UN-Habitat that have noted the human rights issues related to the tsunami.

I hadn't written anything hard hitting yet because I'm looking for the appropriate venue (I'm not sure this blog is it) and I needed distance and perspective to remain fair and balanced. (BTW, I'm available for podcast interviews, etc. now that I'm home. Plus thinking of guest contributing to more appropriate and wider venues like Global Voices, WorldChanging - any other media suggestions?)

Within the first hour of my arrival in Bangkok in mid-December, the evening is winding down at Noreiga's Bar which is the meeting place I've arranged with Graeme, whom did work with UN-Habitat post-tsunami.

Stefan just happens to be there that evening when I arrrive from umpteen hours in the air from San Jose via Tokyo. He's just met Graeme himself - he came for the music and drinks. I briefly introduce myself as a writer and survivor.

"So you're here to write about the tsunami."

"Yeah."

"The land grab, heh?"

"What land grab?"

We don't get far in our conversation before Stefan grows weary: "Ughh, can we talk about something else." Fair enough - it's not exactly light bar conversation anyhow. And it's way past two in the morning.

Turns out Stefan worked non-stop for days after the tsunami getting German tourists safely back home through his job at a major tour operator. I sense that never ever talking about the tsunami again would suit him fine.

It didn't take me long to find out land grab Stefan was talking about.

When I left Phi Phi island on January 1st, folks whose homes, bungalow resorts, restaurants, and shops were completely destroyed (repairs were allowed) still hadn't obtained permission to rebuild as the government "considers" the new zoning plan.

After the entire evacuation of the island in the days after the tsunami, many islanders have been yet to return and still live in camps in Krabi (on the mainland).

The common refrain up and down the coast especially among business owners: "The government is colluding with wealthy investors about turning it all into a millionaire's paradise."

That's just the tip of iceberg.

Prime real estate is at stake. Much of the Thailand was the King's dominion. Over generations, families lived on the land and passed it on, but didn't own it. Private property titles are a newer phenomenon - and like anything else in Asia they can be bought for a price.

As a human rights worker told me, "Those families have been 'in the way' [of developers obtaining title] for a long time. Once the tsunami came, their problems conveniently were wiped away. The developers even cite karma as the reason they deserve the land."

When there's not a building left standing and the occupants have fled for a night or two in the hills, new titles for new owners suddenly appear overnight.

Slow recovery? Considering the government's friction, the physical infrastructure recovery in Phi Phi and Khao Lak had far exceeded my expectations.

I'm no investigative journalist, but I heard too much from varied sources to dismiss. Even basic media literacy teaches us to peer closer and know what's at stake and who's invested where and what their interests are.

Anyone that spends time on the ground like this six-month volunteer notes the same: "The goverment corruption is rampant with officials and developers conspiring to move people off their land."

There is a lot of money at stake on the postcard-perfect Andaman coast, you hardly have to read between the lines. You just have to talk to people outside of government authorities and chambers of commerce.

Besides NGO reports, thank god for international press like The Economist.

Lest you think that could only happen in Asia, The Economist in the January 21, 2006 issue reported that the government may apply imminent domain in New Orleans.

"[R]esidents in the harder hit areas, such as the Lower Ninth Ward (which was also hammered by Hurricane Betsy in 1965), would have until May 20th to show that they would return in sufficient numbers to keep their neighborhoods alive. If they fail to do so, homeowners could be "bought out" in some way and the areas in question could revert to swampland or be turned into parks...

[But] in general, plans to shrink the city's size could mean the end of a lot of poor black neighborhoods." - "The Big not-quite-so-Easy", The Economist, January 21-26, 2006

"Here people at least call a spade a spade," says one Asian-American volunteer in Khao Lak, "In the U.S., they'll surreptiously take a section of New Orleans and find a way to give it to Disney for a new park." He says that's exactly the rumor he hears in African-American neighborhoods back home: Disney is eyeing distressed property in New Orleans.

I've seen too many tsunami recovery and anniversary fluff pieces with loads of inaccuracies from American newspapers notably from those whom sent a reporter overseas for a few days. My suggestions to local newspapers as your profits keep sinking:

• Do a better job at covering your own locale and region and syndicate that to other papers. That's your core competency.
• With foreign correspondents you're more likely to get insight, rather than entertainment, pieces like this popular land rights story. If you can't afford to hire foreign correspondents like the two wonderful Reuters correspondents I met in Phi Phi, Ed and Bazuki, whom live in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur respectively, consider syndicating citizen journalists already on the ground and already residing in the field that already have first-hand insider knowledge of the culture, politics, religions, values, history and current events.
• Editorially guide citizen journalists that aren't familiar with foreign audience's interests on what is of interest to an outsider reader who isn't enmeshed in the same way. What they may dismiss because it's common knowledge locally might be newsworthy and compelling to a foreign audience.
• Oh, and don't expect all your citizen journalists to work solely for glory either. Consider incentives, payment, for instance, at least cover expenses. Think creatively if you are strapped for cash.

p.s. I'll be using new funds (it's tapped out now) coming in to the artisan journalism microfund to give Mon, a woman that I quickly trained to blog and lives in Khao Lak, Thailand a small stipend. I'd love to have her supply me with ground information for a while. For instance, Mon personally knows Ratree, the woman who is in the infamous land dispute in Laem Pom. (Ratree's story was originally published in Bangkok Post last April. And has been covered internationally. The BBC's early presence in Laem Pom is to be applauded; it helped kept the guns and mafia at bay and kindled the international interest which resulted in the Chicago Tribune's recent follow-up.) There's plenty more stories though. BTW, Mon is thinking about having her own public blog too (she likes to live simply in nature and in the background, so it's a bit of a sell).

p.p.s. I spent five weeks in Phi Phi, Phuket and Khao Lak through January 26, 2006.

tags social media journalism citizen journalism journalism blogging media literacy human rights tsunami katrina