True North pgs. Inc - Project Community

This is the What's New column released with the One Continuous Mess issue, V5N2, of our Compass newsletter.

This continues to be the busiest year in the history of True North pgs! After nearly non-stop traveling work assignments, we took most of the month of August to settle into new digs and celebrate two birthdays and one genuinely significant event (see below).

We were at the Los Alamos National Labs setting up for a workshop on the morning of September 11, 2001. We heard the news from the counterman at a small restaurant where we'd retreated to confer about the agenda over breakfast burritos. We tried to continue anyway, but the news flooded into the room and left us stranded and confused. The Labs closed their doors shortly after we acknowledged that we would have to wait until the next morning to start that particular experience. A most memorable and moving workshop resulted.

The end of that week left us stranded with the airlines grounded. We drove back to our new home (see below) through the Colorado Rockies, slowing for a day of reflection and recovery at the Nordic Inn in Mt Crested Butte, the place where Amy and I met four years to the day before our visit. We were graced with the opportunity to share in this delightful community's acknowledgement of this great tragedy. See that story here.

President Bush has asked us to return to business as usual, but not all of our clients are at this writing finished with their grieving. We slowed down from our frantic pace on the drive back to this valley they liked so well they named it twice. We have no intention of returning to business as usual. Amy had worked in her previous careers with several of the people working for companies in the Towers. We have learned that we are significantly closer than six degrees of separation from this catastrophe. Our work continues more deliberately and with increased awareness that this is serious business we engage in here.

Three songs have been looping in my head since that dreadful morning. >From Don Henley's The End of the Innocence CD (1989 Geffen 9 24217-2)- The title track, New York Minute, and The Heart of the Matter.

Heart of the Matter (chorus) "I've been trying to get down to the Heart of the Matter
Because the flesh will get weak and the ashes will scatter
So I'm thinking' about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if, even if you don't love me."

by Mike Campbell, Don Henley, and J. D. Souther

© 1989 Cass County Music/Wild Goose Music/Ice Age Music/ ASCAP

We've Moved!

As of June 17th, 2001, True North pgs' operating location moved from that wonderful little apartment overlooking the Dunthorpe section of the Willamette River, where the sea planes pulling over the cliff tops were a continuing pleasant distraction. We moved 250 miles up the Columbia River Valley and into a large Victorian house with dozens of rose bushes in the yard. We feel as if great good luck chased us here. In recognition of the old Yiddish phrase that recognized great good luck as being like "falling into a vat of schmaltz," and acknowledging my surname, I've coined this new place the "Villa Vatta Schmaltz."

Our new mailing address is:

P. O. Box 1532, Walla Walla, WA 99362

The address of the "Villa" (as we've grown to call this place) is:

5 South Blue Street, Walla Walla, WA 99362.

We're retained our same cell phone numbers, but changed the office number, although the old number finds us should anyone call there.

Cell (David) 503 805-9135

Cell (Amy) 503 539-7397

New Office Phone 509 527-9773

We thought we might experience a significant withdrawal from moving away from a large metropolitan area. No such withdrawal. I have the strongest personal recommendation for our new Airport wireless network hub. I can surf the 'net from the backyard gazebo and spool documents to the printer from anywhere I can sit with my laptop on my lap top. Our community seems as close- maybe even closer. The most significant difference? A quick trip to the grocery and the post office in Portland was an hour trip, minimum. Here, it's about fifteen minutes if I dawdle.

Interesting Futures

eXpose Gathering

Amy and I are still planning the eXpose gathering we announced in the prior issue of Compass (V5N1-the Reasonable Expectations issue). Several items from the unfolding discussions:
It will be called a gathering, not a conference. (Too much negative baggage associated with the word "conference.")

It will be held at the old Multomah County Poor Farm, now called Edgefield Manor.

Attendance will be by invitation only. We will be inviting those in our community.

eXpect to see your invitation in your mailbox soon.

Significant Event

Amy and I will be married on May 25 of 2002. We started as strangers, moved to friends, succeeded as business partners, and now plan on stretching the metaphor to see its real tensile strength.

The Future of Mastering Projects Workshop Convergence

In August, three of our colleagues converged at the Villa to discuss the next generation of our Mastering Projects Workshop. The dialogue discovered several remarkable threads that we have already begun incorporating into our subsequent workshop deliveries. Expect some more information detailing these changes in coming months.

EuroPSL

Amy, Martine Devos, Susie Brame, and I met in Portland in May to outline the work necessary to conduct a Problem Solving Leadership session in Europe. We're targeting June 2002 in Ghent, Belgium. Please call for more information. We'll have formal descriptions up soon on the ProjectCommunity website.

The Gift of Fire by Richard Mitchell ISBN-1888173947

This was the first book that found me in David Crosby's wonderful Earthlight Books after moving here. Mitchell, who calls himself the Underground Grammarian, is a college professor with a passion for the well written word. He also has strong feelings about the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of our educational system. Here's a brief excerpt:

"Here is the truth that most teachers will not tell you, even if the know it. Good training is a continual friend and a solace; it helps you now, and assures you of help in the future. Good education is a continual pain in the neck, and assures you always of more of the same. ... Training is a good dog, a constant companion and an utterly loyal and devoted friend, and everyone should have one. Education is a nagging counsellor. And, I am convinced, everyone does have one. It happens, however, that some nagging counsellors have grown strong by a certain kind of nourishment. Others are weak and puny, even infantile, having never been nourished at all."

Mitchell writes brilliantly about the dilemmas facing every student and every teacher. He recounts in the title piece how Prometheus returns to Earth to see what humankind has done with his remarkable Gift of Fire. Mitchell shows him a Mensa test, which asks, "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice all took the Mensa test. Bob scored higher than Alice, who scored ten points lower than Ted. Ted's score added to Carol's score and then divided by the difference between Bob's score and Alice's score was either twenty points more or twelve points less than the average of all four scores. Which of the four made it into Mensa? Prometheus shuffles off unimpressed with our progress.

Crossing the Unknown Sea by David Whyte ISBN-1573221783

Another delightful piece of writing by the author of The Heart Aroused. This one's subtitled Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity. It is Whyte's own story of finding his proper place in his work. He describes his early disappointments at finding few opportunities in his chosen career. As the story unfolds, I find myself revisiting the pilgrimage I have been on. You might reexperience your's, too.

He speaks of the overriding importance of faith and courage in work. And of how difficult it can be to muster any of it. And how absolutely critical it is to muster bunches of it. And where you might go to find it when it's lost. Quoting Blake (this book has an extensive set of requotable quotes), Whyte recalls: "If the Sun and the Moon should doubt, They'd immediately go out." If you need to be reinfected with the fire and passion you remember that work was supposed to have in it, try reading this book.

Follow this link to see an interview with Whyte about this book when it was still a work in process:
http://www.ethoschannel.com/personalgrowth/d-whyte/2_d-whyte.html

Dialogue and the art of thinking together by William Isaccs

(with introduction by Peter Senge ISBN-0385479999. Issacs unwraps the masteries of dialogic communication. He maps the evolution of understanding and human connection as experienced by gatherings who decide to attend to each other's words and symbols. I found this book to be very accessible and reassuring. The stories of labor and management listening- as in really listening- to each other offer hope to all who are stuck in a relationship that's not presently working. The models developed here are rooted in David Bohm's original work. I've been applying the techniques from this book in my consulting and training practice.

His company's website is here: http://www.thinkingtogether.com

More next time,

David