Clare Consultation, LLCCalm Vigilance
There’s something to be said for scanning the environment – for reading the room – for casing the joint. I’ve just spent four days in the Northern Rockies with my husband. Attending literary events, sitting in restaurants and coffee shops, walking spring green trails, and hiking to a high mountain lake – one laid down tens of thousands of years ago by an already slow-moving glacier. On the hike, we carried bear… Read More
Having it Happen
I was 19 when I met my fairy good mother. Thirty four years later, in February of 2009, Mayme and I had our last conversation. She is the … voice in 100 VOICES – AMERICANS TALK ABOUT CHANGE. I found Mayme through her daughter Margie. She was in a nursing home and spending her days increasingly occupied with Alzheimer’s. In spite of her condition, Mayme remembered me immediately and, well above the… Read More
Portland Boil Alert – Noticing what Works
I just got a phone call from a woman I don’t know. It was my second time to hear her voice. The first time was yesterday afternoon when she called everyone in Portland, Oregon to tell us we needed to boil our drinking water. E Coli had been found in the drinking supply. We needed to be careful and via ‘reverse 911’ the officials of our city were letting us know. So,… Read More
Zero Tolerance 2.0
I recently heard a story from a student finishing her sophomore year at a small liberal arts college in the Midwest. A story set in a quiet college neighborhood, its characters all part of the college’s community. Here’s how it went – A group of friends were hanging out in a dorm room. All were men, all members of the football team and all, incidentally, considered strong students by respected faculty members. … Read More
Why Read a Blog on Leadership and Change?
You may know this blog has a history. It started January 21, 2009 – the day after Barack Obama was inaugurated for his first term as President of the United States. It was a time when the ragged red underlining of word processing programs – the marks used to flag misspellings – showed up without fail beneath the two words, Barack and Obama. The blog first followed my road trip around the… Read More
Listening as Leadership
In our polarized society, we need a starting place for rediscovering each other. I believe that we all share the essential things: love of family, courage in adversity, sustaining faith, hope for the future. Living stories [are] told from the inside out. Windows into the hearts and minds of people. David Hughes Duke I just got off the phone with a man in Georgia. He contacted me because we both have this… Read More
Launching Clare Consultation: Right into the Big Middle of Change
Maybe it’s being 14 years into a brand new millennium. Maybe it’s living on this side of 2012, the year so long identified by the Mayan People for its pivot point – for signifying radical shifts in human awareness, in behavior and community. Maybe it’s what I’ve heard a few very wise ones refer to as the quickening. Whatever the case, here we are. Like it or not, aware or not,… Read More
February 1 – Re-imagining Underway
February. The love month. The month my skin has historically hit its most green (being of “olive” complexion – or so I’ve been told). The shrimpy month perhaps made so out of some vague attempt compensate the rutheless grind mid-winter in the northern hemisphere can present whether rainy in Portland, sub-zero in eastern Montana or, this year, astonishingly dry in California and wildly cold where my Mama lives in Georgia. It was February, 2009… Read More
On the Cusp of 2014 – Change and What Endures
Soon the calendar will shift for another roll through dates, through seasons and all the moments we have no way of knowing from here. Each of us lives in our own contagion of this following that. The unavoidable change that is living itself can sometimes feel unnerving — or at least the anticipation of it, the impossibility I already mentioned of knowing completely any change before it happens. I’ve been writing this… Read More
Neuroplasticity and Gratitude
I was never much of a fan of talk about the biological bases of behavior. Already in the mid 80’s, there were innovative graduate programs popping up to explore brain-based treatments more nuanced than conventional treatments like ECT, Labotomy and psychotropic medication. Nonetheless, I remained decidedly a proponent of the nurture side of things. This bias came in large part from working with kids in schools and seeing the folly, and really… Read More