I am not happy with all that I do on BackChannels, especially if approached as a neophyte in a hurry!

However, a post on a blog need not be academic (and juried), journalistic (and off the street), or even a boldly stated opinion (subject to challenge).  It may be — and perhaps inevitably is — a collection of thought thrown into a conversation.

In relation to the previous, I have an M.A. in “Outdoor Recreation Resources Management” and experience with collecting and analyzing social science statistics, i.e., I got an introduction to empiricism many, many years ago.  That educational experience has had a lasting influence on how I entertain issues when the same involve real people, real life experience, real space.

Creative endeavors involving acting (in creative writing: acting on paper), empathy, imagination have taken different paths in my life, or, to be honest, in my intellectual life, which has been rich.

For both governance and theater, perhaps things come together if and when there’s an accurate perception about people accompanied by an equally accurate apprehension of circumstance (person x place x time| context in history): when that happens, conclusions matter.  Whether noting the absence of an army in the middle for Syrians or intuitively interpreting an often horrific urban circumstance as a challenge in rural development, I hope such thought and contributing process develops value in open conversation.

Why Kibera Slum?

Why 30 percent poverty in São Paulo?

The questions are big chunky crayon questions — they’re not going to get very far, but start to take them apart and distill them down to business and political actors and their decision-making processes . . . then apprehension develops, and then further disassembled culture x ethics x linguistics x psychology x political psychology, things may shift a little bit for the better, so one may hope.

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