I AM MORE THAN – Leadership out of Montgomery

  I want you to know about this! Thanks to the vision of my friend Michelle Browder, and her collaborators – the youth of Montgomery, Alabama – there will be a powerful commemoration of Bloody Sunday – The civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery March 6, 1965.  Michelle and her colleagues are pulling out the stops.  They’ve created an organization – I AM MORE THAN – and they are working steadily toward a… 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

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

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

<500 words to honor our Elder, Nelson Mandela

This week I had the distinctly privileged new millennium opportunity to sit in a microbrewery with a web design specialist.  “Websites are, at best, for linking good minds in support of human community and the planet we humans share.”  I knew I liked her.  Somewhere in the mix I asked about blog length (you who follow EX:Change know mine can be lloonngg).  She said, “Max 500 words.”  I was impressed.  I’m giving… Read More

Presidential Politics and the #6 Bus

The podcast series continues – in fact, the entire world continues – even here in the days just preceding and just following the 2012 U.S. Presidential election.  This past Friday, Alex Ward, the producer of the podcast series, uploaded Chapter 3 – Voices from the Southwest.  The radio recounting of my miles on the post-inauguration highways of early 2009 continues.  The most important feature of these podcasts for me is the chance… Read More

On the Radio TODAY — Listen in!

So, I got another call from Ben Merens, the host of AT ISSUE on Wisconsin Public Radio.  He was inviting me to be his guest again.  I said yes and it’s today — Friday, July 6.  We’ll be on the air for call-in at 3:00 Central Time (WI-time), 4:00 for all you east coasters, and 1:00 here on the Pacific side. LISTEN!  Call and chat. This is the url for the stream:… Read More

Turn Around — Another Take on 99%

Last night I got to have a long phone conversation with my friend Barbara Gutkin.  Barbara and Terry have known me more than half my life.  They also happen to be two of the Americans in 100 Voices – Americans Talk about Change. Barbara and Terry are experimenting with retirement.  Barbara retired for a while, then decided to go back to work a few days a week because she missed being active… Read More

10,589 Miles Later

Here are some things I have come to know: The land of the United States remains vast and more beautiful than any imagining.  The people of the United States remain more capable of wisdom, kindness and cooperation than our media and leadership lead us to believe. GPS systems can get you almost anywhere – sometimes by incessant nagging, sometime with astonishing grace. I hear there may be an annoyingly breathy replacement coming… Read More

Gearing up for the Last Leg – 100 VOICES 2012 Road Trip

I’ve been on a rest stop 9000 miles down the road since March 3.  Whitewater, Wisconsin – a rural community between Milwaukee and Madison where the Sweet Spot Coffee Shoppe greets the morning; farms, families, schools, businesses (conventional and cyber) and a university fill the day; and the newly opened Black Sheep Restaurant brings culinary art to the evening.    In the two turns of winter to spring that I’ve spent here (last… Read More