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The 52:52:52 project, launching both on this site and on social media in early 2024 will help you address 52 issues with 52 responses over 52 weeks.

A Mundane Comedy is Dominic Kelleher's new book, which will be published in mid 2024. The introduction is available here and further extracts will appear on this site and on social media in the coming months.

This site addresses what's changing, in our own lives, in our organisations, and in wider society. You'll learn about key changes across more than 150 areas, ranging from ageing and time, through nature and animals, to kindness and love...and very much else inbetween.

Halcyon's aim is to help you reflect on how you can better deal with related change in your own life.

United Kingdom

What's Changing? - Europe
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Halcyon In Business 1 January 2020

 

Please see below selected Europe-related change from 2015 and earlier, For change from 2016 onwards, please see What's Changing? - Economics.

 

December 2015

 

On Midsummer Eve

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We can be at our most reflective, and perhaps society could be at its most reflexive, around St John's Eve and the other, similar seven calendar points...

Goin' ridin' down by Avalon
Would you meet me in the country
In the summertime in England
Would you meet me?
In the Church of St. John . . .
Down by Avalon . . . .


 - from Summertime in England, by Van Morrison

On George Orwell

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According to Open Culture, Orwell's Animal Farm was almost never published.  The manuscript barely survived the Nazi bombing of London during World War II, and then initially T.S. Eliot (an important editor at Faber & Faber) and other publishers rejected the book.  It eventually came to see the light of day but, reportedly, Animal Farm still can’t be legally read in China, Burma and North Korea, or across large parts of the Islamic world. 

However, the Internet Archive offers free access to audio versions of Animal Farm and Orwell’s other major classic, 1984.

See also:

On Podcasts

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I have listened to and would recommend the following podcasts (2015-2018 recommendations to follow):

 

2014

On Shakespeare

Shakespeare

 

To The Globe to visit the exhibition and then watch Taming of the Shrew as a groundling. Great fun.

However, my relationship with the Bard's works has always been a complicated one. Over time, I will try to develop some of my thoughts, inspirations and reservations here.

For now, some others' more interesting observations:

  • According to Harold Bloom, Shakespeare invented modern humanity. If this seems to go too far, he at least captured human complexity with greater inventive skill than any English writer before him, and possibly after.

On Careers

Imagine a job "big enough for the spirit".

Roman Krznaric gave a talk on his book, How to Find Fulfilling Work, as part of the launch of The School of Life’s practical philosophy book series. Krznaric offered five essential ideas for career change, drawing on career advice from Leonardo da Vinci, Aristotle and a woman who gave herself the unusual 30th birthday present of trying out 30 different jobs in one year.

On Dawn

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If you've ever wondered why bird species sing in a particular order as the sun rises, rhe UK Wildlife Trusts and the Royal Horticultural Society, which run the Big Wildlife Garden competition, explain what you might hear and when.

Up at 5am on 17th May 2012; the Belgian dawn not only full of unseasonal frost, but also alive with an almost deafening inter-bird competition to see how could rule the airwaves. Need to do that again as the longer days have arrived in Spring 2016.

 

On Altruism

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Imagining, while still healthy, donating organs to total strangers without expecting anything in return. The BBC nterviewed a man who did just this after his wife committed suicide.

She had been suffering from progressive multiple sclerosis, and when the pain and suffering became too much for her to bear, she took her own life, leading him to a suspended prison sentence - for failing to stop her - and ultimately to the decision to help others to live by doing as much as he possibly could - by giving away one of his kidneys and part of his liver, and then waiting to become a bone marrow donor.

On Objects

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A History of the World was a partnership between the BBC and the British Museum, involving schools, museums and audiences across the UK. One can listen to and download all the episodes of the radio series A History of the World in 100 objects.

One hundred 15-minute programmes, each focusing on an object from the British Museum’s collection told a history of two million years of humanity through the objects we have made, starting with the earliest object in the museum’s collection.

My personal highlights included the following:

1. Mummy of Hornedjitef (-260BC, Egypt): status, legacy, journey beyond death (see image).

2. Olduval Chopping Tool (-2m, Tanzania): adaptable, can skin and butcher animals