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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 States

On T.S. Eliot

East Coker

 

T.S. Eliot's legacy remains profound and his poetry moves me deeply.

In 2016 I had the privilege of visiting his final resting place, East Coker.

I read or listen to the peerless Little Gidding often, and almost every line entrances, as if peering through a veil at something once known, but half-forgotten because not looked-for.

On Henry David Thoreau

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In the 1840s Henry David Thoreau swapped his busy schedule in Concord, Massachusetts, for a wooden hut he built himself near Walden Pond. We had the privilege to visit Walden in July 2012; it exceeded expectations in its tranquillity and beauty - and the swim in the pond itself was unforgettable.

Writing in the winter of 1843, shortly after Margaret Fuller’s mentorship made him a writer, the twenty-five-year-old Thoreau awakened to a snow-covered wonderland and marvelled at the splendour of a world reborn.

What's Changing? - Migration
Migration
Halcyon Impacts 15 January 2024

What's Changing? - Privacy

Privacy

 

Please see below selected recent privacy-related change.

 

See also:

 

December 2023

  • AI has become a major tool for computer-generated non-consensual pornography - a problem that disproportionately affects women. In September 2023 alone, 24 million people visited websites that gave them the ability to “undress” - or “nudify” - people in photographs using machine-learning technology.

 

October 2023

On Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman

 

I guess I've been aware of Walt Whitman as an American national icon since I was at university, and have long admired what I may be his most famous poem, I Sing the Body Electric.

It's probably been said many times before, and much more profoundly, and studied and dissected, but the poet's words do indeed seem to crackle with electricity, with vitality, with what Robert Pirsig called in Lila, "dynamic quality". This is a celebration of connecting, of being alive.

"Examine these limbs, red, black, or white—they are so cunning in tendon and nerve; 

They shall be stript, that you may see them. 

On Bob Dylan

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I was relatively late getting into Dylan properly...into my early 20s - although before that I'd appreciated individual songs, such as Lay Lady Lay, Like A Rolling Stone and others.

However, when his force finally it hit me, it hit me hard. Chimes of Freedom, To Ramona and Ballad in Plain D all affected me on a deep emotional level in different ways, while the likes of One More Cup of Coffee had a beguiling exoticism.

 

See also:

On Countries
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Halcyon In Kal… 25 May 2018

 

Imagine that we could build "start-up countries" and escape limiting, outdated forms of governance that hold people back. "Seasteading", according to its advocates, has the promise to do this, creating new "spaces for human freedom".

On The Great Gatsby
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Halcyon In Kal… 18 October 2013

Can we ever escape - do we even really wish to escape - our own green lights flashing across the bay of memory, across the sound of time?

No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly heart.

The too obstrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short cut from nothing to nothing.

They were gone, without a word, snapped out, made accidental, isolated, like ghosts, even from our pity.

The rhythm of the year, summing up and sadness and suggestiveness of life in new tunes.

It took me - at least - half my life to pick up and read such a slim volume, but now I find myself entranced by the clarity, craftsmanship and compassion permeating The Great Gatsby.