As you read this, I will have visited with seven of nine regions. I'm hoping we can schedule a webinar for interested folks from the Southeast whose meeting was cut short by Hurricane Matthew. We continue to hold all those struck by Matthew's wrath in our thoughts and prayers.

 

I recently invited ACPE President Carlos Bell, Organizational Design Chair David Carl, and Consultant Donna Dunn to sit down for an interview about this work. Check out the video on Youtube.

 

As I've traveled, several folks have wanted an update on the question of our association's name. On October 18, a group of supervisors who were invited by President Bell will come to Atlanta to meet with a firm that will walk us through a process that will not only invite member participation in determining our name but will also look at the whole of our "brand," i.e. our look, logo, color palate, style guide, communications tools, and ultimately our marketing plan. Thanks to  Amy Greene, Dagmar Grefe, Mark Hart, Amani Legagneur, Jo Clare Wilson, Dennis Kenney, Peter Keese, Deborah Whisnand, Chris Brown, John Roch, and Jasmine Okafor for their willingness to serve in this stage of the process. We'll keep you posted about the different stages of this work.

Where did I leave off yesterday?

I stood at midnight with the mouse

caught in a cornflake box and rustling slightly.

What to do next? I stepped outside

into the backdoor tangle of thorns and roses.

I did not know my neighbors.

They'd be puzzled to see a cereal box

in their backyard. Good luck,

little mouse, I said, as the box sailed high over the fence.

 

Our next mouse crept

into an empty cider tub for the sweet dreg.

I stood the bottle up, a sad, sweet jail.

Almost at once she gave birth to a litter of six.

I carried the bottle of mice to Lincoln Park

and left the job on its side, for easy exit,

under a sheltering bush. They were all

Beatrix Potter mice, dainty and lovable;

not the gross travesties of Disney.

 

                                                I was lonely

with my husband away all day at work.

But after a wild party Kentucky Derby Day,

we too began to breed in Rapley Caves, under our thicket of pipes

but not in cereal box or cider bottle.

In the first cyclone to hit the eastern mid-Atlantic coast,

we moved to New Haven in such a  deluge

that canoes passed us on the Boston Post Road, and driving into New Haven, all the elms blew down behind us. I survived a surfeit of tainted oysters

and gave birth to our first child.

He will be 55 next week.

 

Why am I telling you all this?

As most of you know, Carrie Newcomer will join Parker Palmer to kick off our 2017 national conference in Minneapolis. Here's a sample of her work that I think is also a message to those who find themselves lost in these times: Carrie Newcomer video.