1.  OpenEd.  Visited one place where there were a lot of poor.  On the
streets, in the parks.  Had quite a few chats with local from Vancouver as
well as visitors.  All the more interesting as a 'problem' in view of the
coming Olympics.  We were also chatting later about the lack of non-white
people at the conference.  One comment - "Maybe we should invite them to
give us advice about what we could do with the "problem of the poor" "

2.  Met a person who had had quite an interesting trajectory: little or no
formal education.  Yet she has moved from job to job, in a range of roles,
picking up skills along the way.  Is there hope for informal education?

3.  I'm not sure I feel the angst that so many posts have expressed about
the lack of non-white faces @OpenEd.  It's far from a simple equation.  Not
that I even know the answer to the equation is.  But as my experience has
been in the last year with five workshops and courses in Christchurch, there
is quite a hegemony around getting together with participants from radically
different cultures.  Positive spill over from the OpenEd conference could
still happen.  I wonder if there were any people from other cultures
dropping in via the video streaming?

4.   Final thought: how much do I feel about the American influence?  As has
been pointed out, there are tons of local repositories: NZ, England,
BCCampus, TAFEs, Africa - and a few 'global' ones, all pretty well based in
the US.

We are on our last day at the farm  (http://potluckfarm.wordpress.com/) A
lot of remarkable conversations. I'm really a little unsure about exactly
what to say, hence this bitsy post.  Where is the reality located somewhere
between the global and the local, the present physically here and the online
presence of friends and acquaintances [which I feel quite strongly,
regularly].  As well as others, like my mother.

Today: coffee, walk with the goats, local salads, picking noxious weeds by
hand, conversations, maybe a swim, berry picking, travel to Seattle.

-Derek