I learned several things today: 

• It takes real skill to lead a non-profit board through the strategic planning.
• Traffic is often slow through the Caldecott Tunnel.
• I'm lousy with following driving directions.
• It's wonderful not to have to commute by car.

I just got back from a morning strategic planning retreat for Westminster House, for which I am a board member.  It was held at Moraga Valley Presbyterian Church, an architecturally lovely space that would be even enjoyable in sunny weather.  I got lost driving  there, partly because I misread the directions.  After I got over some grumpiness, I finally got into participating in the retreat -- which I thoroughly enjoyed.  We had some outside facilitators who worked hard and did a fine job with a difficult task:  squeezing a process that we would ideally spend an entire weekend on into four hours.  We did some good work, but I'm zonked.  The drive back to Berkeley was slow and wet and, if I were in a bad mood, exasperating.  I was thankful to have some quiet moments as my car slowly squeezed through the Caldecott Tunnel, thankful for rain, for the privilege of helping to build an organization, for being part of a board of thoughtful, caring, cooperative, dedicated people, and for not having to drive every day.  I was also thankful for our facilitators, for people such as Katherine Mitchell of CORE, who has worked with the Interactive University.  They work miracles at times, forging out of  meetings  learning moments, new understandings, cooperation, epiphanies, social bonding,  previously unheard voices, hopeful directions. 

I'm read with interest what Isaac lists as interesting books or articles.   Manuel Castells has definitely been an author whose works I've wanted to read but never quite get around to doing.  Same with Steve Johnson (although I'm less intimidated by his works).  I was bummed that Feed, an online magazine that he founded went under.  

Talking about books:  what's the best way to refer to a book on the web?  In the long term, I'd like to embed bibliographical information as a web object (XML, perhaps) that the reader can grab.  Sometimes I've linked to amazon, though I fixed mixed feelings about doing so.  For a while amazon.com loomed as  the evil empire about to destroy independent bookstores.  Now, on the surface at least, it doesn't seem so menacing.  The reason I link to amazon is the amazing community of readers (and their commments) gathered at amazon.  Providing that commentary is a service to my readers (I think);  Now, should I set myself up as an amazon affiliate while I'm at it?  If someone ends up buying a book on my recommendation, should I benefit monetarily from that transaction?  I have not thought seriously of doing so, primarily because linking to amazon is already more commercial than I want for the purposes of my blogging:  I want people to know the book I'm referring to -- and it just happens that amazon is the best all-round book info source that's generally linkable.

Another Morimur review.

Mixing two of my interests:  Jon Carroll on the New York Review of Books