I’ve joined the Soroptimist International of Gippsland group this year. This week we had a film at The VRI called ‘The Breaker Upperers‘ and the director/writer/actor Jackie Van Beek (who is the daughter of one our members) was available to speak to us about the film. It was hilarious and hearing from Jackie enriched the experience. It was a great night. We also got a sneak preview of our project this year Gippsland Woman which will be a website that lists all the women’s organisations and activities in Gippsland.

I went to Bond Street in Sale for a workshop on community capital. The space is so beautiful. I met David Willington who has the space and is running the social enterprise. He’s bringing opportunities for local artists and performers to have a space.

I listened to a couple of the What if series from The Wheeler Centre. This one was the most powerful to me – https://www.wheelercentre.com/broadcasts/podcasts/the-wheeler-centre/so-what-if-we-didn-t-have-prisons. I am grateful to the women who spoke for their honesty and sound logic. The action they spoke about at the end is something we can do. It costs nothing. Know your neighbours and community. We can solve problems when we get to know each other.

I read this from Adult Learning Australia – https://ala.asn.au/stories/bringing-indigenous-knowledge-to-indigenous-education/. In light of the What if we don’t have prisons podcast, this work is overdue for educators.

https://99u.adobe.com/videos/63706/dr-vivienne-ming-share-your-vision-with-the-world# I loved this talk. The transcript is available also. See below for my favourite paragraph. I’ve highlighted some key parts that I liked.

“I was giving a talk recently to a room about a little less smaller than this, but a similar crowd, and they were chief innovation officers and chief technology officers. Near the end of this talk, these are big industry. These are people that notoriously spend trillions of dollars a year, supposedly, on innovation, and yet, do you feel like you have $1.5 trillion worth of innovation in your life? Not really for me. He said really bluntly and frankly, “I’m in this giant company. I don’t understand, how can I get my team to innovate?” I just said something in the moment, which probably came across as very harsh, and I was surprised at how well taken it was, which is, “If the cost of losing your job is greater than doing what’s right, then you can’t innovate.” If you can’t walk away from whatever you’re doing, then you can’t truly do something worthwhile. If you can’t tell someone a truth because you’re afraid that they won’t hire you again on freelance or they won’t keep you on staff, or the audience won’t get your sense of humor, you’re not being creative. Creativity is not simply exploring the unknown. It is that. And let me tell you, as much as I love building AI and machine learning systems, that’s what they can’t do. They cannot explore the unknown. Maybe someday, some jerk like me is going to build that, and we even have ideas about where we’re going in this space. But right now, artificial intelligence is fundamentally a tool, and you’re the artists.”

I finished listening to The Diamond Cutter by by Geshe Michael Roach and Lama Christie McNally this week. It’s a good book and I intend to read and highlight some of it in the future. I continued reading some more of  Your Daughters of Freedom by Clare Wright, the past – who’d go back there? really!

I had the best massage this week on my day off. I had been pretty bent out of shape this week until I got an appointment with Annabel. I didn’t think it was possible to get it all handled in one massage, but I should have known.

I also got to spend some time with my son today, which is always a pleasure.