What’s Been Happening?

Entry written 11-13 March 2007:

1. Following the guidance of Cory Doctorow in the December issue of Locus (a magazine for professional science fiction writers and serious SF fans), I have been adding website-type features to this blog. Thus, the addition of a News category and categories pointing to lists of Articles, Books, Book Chapters, and Training Opportunities. The latter don’t make for particularly fascinating reading, but are intended to be useful resources and be readily updatable.

2. In the week since my mom and sister left, we have begun to prepare for the next chapter of the adventure here: conferences (two in March, including the UK-SPR conference in Ravenscar to which we are travelling as I write this); visits home (Diane to California next week; visits to Ohio in June and August), visitors (Mikio Shimizu arrives at the end of this month and has finally managed to get his visa; Kenneth this summer).

3. And I finally found a new regular running route that works for me. It’s about 6 k and takes 31-32 minutes to run: It goes up Clevedon Road north of Great Western Road, to the top of large hill that overlooks the West End and, just at the crest, has a spectacular view to the hills and mountains north of Glasgow. Then there is a steep downhill to the canal, where I turn east and follow the canal, the River Kelvin. After that, it’s down the river to the Botanic Garden, back to Great Western on Kirklee Road, and home again. So I get a bit of the canal and river, and that makes me happy, because I love running next to water.

4. As the week went along, I taught two evenings, covering depressive splits in EFT-2 on Wednesday night, and computer security and ethical issues on Thursday night. On Friday, Wendy and Rosanne came up from England and Mick and I spent much of the day supervising them. Wendy is finishing analyses for a very interesting study of person-centred therapists’ experiences of working with clients with schizophrenic processes and beginning to plan the second phase of her research, a practice-based, treatment development study of the outcome and process of person-centred/experiential work on the same topic. Roseanne is deep in the midst of her study of clients’ experiences of moment of relational depth or closeness. Both had gotten a bit stuck, and Mick and I were able to help them get moving again. As a reward for our hard work, we all (including Diane and Pete Sanders, who was visiting also) went out for a delicious and entertaining Indian meal. Beyond this, I’ve begun serious work on the research protocols for the research clinic, presenting drafts to colleagues. And we also hosted Soti Grafanaki here for a couple days (see next entry). A most productive and enjoyable week at work!

5. To top the week off, I went for a long run based my new route, past Partick Thistle stadium, halfway to Spiers Wharf. At that point, there is a lovely view over the West End, with the spires of Lansdowne Church, St. Mary’s Cathedral, the main hall of Galsgow University sticking up above the rest of the skyline. To the west, was a tall hill topped with an interesting modern church tower (St. Columba’s Catholic?)

6. Then Diane and I went to dinner at Barbara Robinson’s. We had to get up very early the next morning to go to UK-SPR, but it seemed too good an offer to turn down. Barbara is a local Focusing Trainer, who remembered seeing me last May at the Focusing Conference in the Netherlands; we met her at the ecumenical concert at St. Mary’s in January. She and her flat and guests turned out to be even more interesting and fun than we had imagined: Her flat was full of sculptures by her daughter Kate, who was also there; there a fascinating assortment of guests: Ian, a graduate of Strathclyde’s counsellor diploma, who now lives in the Findhorn community near Aberdeen; Annie, who has just published a beautiful, evocative book on the social history of dining over the past hundred years; and Pietro, a clinical psychologists and TA therapist originally from Italy. As with our previous dining experiences, we were once again treated to a sumptuous and delectable meal that exceeded our culinary skills by an order of magnitude! By this time, so many people have opened their homes to us with such heart winning hospitality and conversation that we will never be able to repay their kindness! We left about 11, floating home along Great Western with a sensation of lightness and joy.