Kendo students clash “green” Samurai swords to honour Japan

What discipline do you choose to practice that wakes you up to self-awareness? This evening I teetered on a narrow wooden bench hugging a cold cement wall in the basement of the Duckworth Centre at the University of Winnipeg to watch students practice the art of the Japanese Samurai swordsman at my first Kendo Tournament. [...]

Protect Japan Victims of Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Radiation

My friends are scraping their pennies together to support Japanese victims of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor meltdowns. As jet streams and web streams bring nuclear fallout and news of lives lost from the Japanese triple threat east to North America, donations to the Canadian Red Cross flood in. Hundreds of Japanese and non-Japanese [...]

Instinct to survive

We are survivors. We wear winter in Winnipeg like a badge of honour. The rules are: water flows down hill, in winter rivers freeze and geese fly south. If you break the rules of winter, you pay a price. Or, do you start a new trend? Despite friendly Manitobans like the little grey-haired couple that [...]

The King’s Speech: Fear of Public Speaking Outranks Death

You must do the things you think you cannot do. Why is it so hard? Public speaking, I mean. A great teacher advised me, “you’ve got to put yourself out there”. You have to take a risk, become visible, and make noise to get noticed, if you want a plum job. With three presentations scheduled [...]

Following the Tribe: Don’t make me think!

What happens to make an idea blaze up like a raging grass fire or 12-alarm catastrophe? What conditions have to exist to give birth to a magical viral trend that infects the human imagination? Fire and water both move along the lines of least resistance. Social alliances, the common ground among people, move like that [...]

Hello world!

‘evening all! Wordbone signing on for the first time, so gimme some love till I get the hang of blogging. As a student of the word, I’m  digging up the bones, writing down the bones and burying a few I would rather forget. For starters, a talk I shared with a couple of friends at [...]