Toronto, Ontario; Gravenhurst, Ontario; Denver, Colorado; Boulder, Colorado; Moline, Illinois; Coralville, Iowa
Fort York: Installation of Bruno Billio (2016) Tri-Mirror Sculpture @FortYork, view eastward into quiet downtown on Canada Day. Families and tourists wandering around historic site late afternoon, watch pipe and drum corps with soldiers marching. Rain earlier in the day left the air clean. (Fort York, Garrison Creek, Toronto, Ontario) 20160701Mill Street Beer Hall: Expected @ESLTrio @MillStBeerHall @TorontoJazzFest, found quartet with the addition of keyboard. Venue full of patrons, but much of audience convened for football game, raising cheers as goals scored. Otherwise, relaxed gig with set list modified for the mood? (Mill Street Beer Hall, Distillery District, Toronto, Ontario) 20160702Nathan Phillips Square: Under concert tent @JoeJacksonMusic piano Graham Maby bass @TorontoJazzFest @NPSToronto could be the last musicians still touring and recording from days before we had kids. Have seen them many times, once near stage within spitting distance. This time, DY and I opted for stools on the plaza, outside the reserved seats. On the cover song for the day, DY recognized Knowing Me Knowing You by the second line, I didn’t know until the chorus, as I’m not an ABBA fan. (Toronto Jazz Festival, Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto, Ontario) 20160702Canadian National Exhibition grounds: Shrine Peace Memorial presented in 1930 to Canada by Shriners, with 1958 surrounding fountain and gardens created by Toronto Parks Department. Faces Lake Shore Boulevard, southeast of the Bandshell and southwest of the Better Living Centre. I’ve been going to the CNE since the 1960s, and this fountain was never on the route between sights. The Shell Tower is in the background. CNE is active only in the last 2 weeks of August. (Shrine Peace Memorial, Canadian National Exhibition grounds, Toronto, Ontario) 20160707McGill Granby Parkette: Tent over @WeAreCairo @DowntownYonge via @CMincubator, but no shelter for audience. Performance cut short after 15 minutes for rain, organizers cautious of water around electrified instruments. Sun came out 30 minutes. Band is writing, not touring, this summer, said next show could be in August. (McGill Granby Parkette, Yonge Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20160709Toronto Sculpture Garden: An Te Liu (2015) Animal Vegetable (I) on top of Vegetable Mineral (I), part of six bronze castings in the Sold State installation. First installed with Nuit Blanche 2015 last fall. Waterfall on east wall cooling on a warm summer day. (Toronto Sculpture Garden, King Street East, Toronto, Ontario) 20160711Glorious Chinese Cuisine: Early dim sum, food consumed slowly when I’m the youngest one at the table. Extended family convening on weekday, sister visiting town gives reason for everyone to get together. Our sons have their own lives. (Glorious Chinese Cuisine, Kennedy and Denison Centre, Markham, Ontario) 20160713
College Park: Noon jazz @AllisonAuMusic sax @DowntownYonge @ToddPentney keys @Raj_Maha bass Fabio Ragnelli drums. Morning rain lifted for overcast summer outdoor concert in first of two sets of Massey Hall Band Presents. Workers took break to lounge and relax to music. Construction site behind tent was inactive, so no interference with sound. (Play the Parks, College Park, Toronto, Ontario) 20160714College Park: Lunch jazz @TaraKannangara trumpet @DowntownYonge @MackLongpre drums Julian Anderson-Bowes bass Chris Pruden keys. Second of two sets of Massey Hall Band Presents. Some in audience stretched their break to hear two bands, will have to schedule a club for a full show. White bandage prominent on Tara’s left hand and wrist, didn’t seem to impact holding the horn. (Play the Parks, College Park, Toronto, Ontario) 20160714Yonge-Dundas Square: IndieFriday with @MelanieBrulee @YDSquare @FrancoFete tunes en Français, with introductions some in English. Wandered around Ryerson University, Yonge Street and Toronto Eaton Centre with sister who hasn’t lived here for some decades. Points of references are spaces and businesses that have since changed. (Yonge-Dundas Square, Toronto, Ontario) 20160715
Gravenhurst:
Hometown visit included meeting with chemistry teacher and student council advisor from 40 year ago.
Afternoon homecoming from as far as Texas and California, as close as Bala.
Casual homecoming of friends, acquaintances and neighbours in the park by the lake where we learned to swim. Brown bag lunch, bring your own seating.
Ontario Fire Service Memorial Pipes and Drums performing at the Boomer Dinner and Dance. Bagpipes indoors always wakes people up.
Town of Gravenhurst Baby Boomers Reunion for attendees of Gravenhurst Public School or Gravenhurst High School born between 1946 and 1964. (Gull Lake Rotary Park and Centennial Centre Arena, Gravenhurst, Ontario) 20160716
Mount Pleasant Cemetery: Additional visit to graves, with brother and sister coming into town. The tree that we stood under on a previous visit has its top either broken off or chopped off. Extra time was spent on removing flowers that had overgrown, hiding the headstone. After a visit to Pine Hills Cemetery earlier, I took a nap in the car. (Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto, Ontario) 20160717Yonge and Dundas: Scramble crosswalk gives 20 seconds to clear intersection around 10:20pm on a Thursday night in July. City is still active with pedestrians on a weekday, will be busier on the weekend. Heat alert during the day, so a late night bike ride still warm in midsummer. (Yonge Street at Dundas Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20160721Toronto Pearson Terminal: One destination, two routes. DY on 8 a.m. to New Orleans on way to Denver, I am on 8:30 direct. She’s flying on points, saved enough for another trip to Vancouver. I signed up to defer from overbooked flight to later, but UA doesn’t need that seat for someone else. (Toronto Pearson Airport, Terminal 1) 20160723Central Park Station: On A line from northeast Denver near UC Anschutz campus to Union Station, on route to Boulder. Got a lift from hotel to train station. Woke up early, still in Eastern Time zone, also breathing harder due to higher altitude. (Central Park Station, Denver, Colorado) 20160724
Wykoop Plaza: Interactive water feature just outside Denver Union Station has toddlers running through the water jets, watched by parents on a hot Sunday morning. Fountains cool the air, drain slots on the south side of attraction. (Wynkoop Plaza, Denver, Colorado) 20160724
Visual Arts Complex: Ceremony honouring 60th year of the systems sciences conference, which is one full cycle in the Hindu sequence. Conference in Colorado overlaps with conference in India, so we have the world surrounded. (Visual Arts Complex, University of Colorado, Boulder) 20160724Pearl Street Mall: Rock waterfall on pedestrian mall has flowers painted on, and a few leaves stuck on. Escaped conference on evening to get off campus and see the town, restaurants and stores open. Relaxed pace for slow stroll back over a big hill onto campus. (Pearl Street Mall, Boulder, Colorado) 20160725
Boulder Creek (small branch): Small brook between two houses in city centre, walking southbound on 15th Street, south of Boulder Canyon Drive and north of Arapahoe Avenue. The town is especially pleasant on a summer evening. Found the major branch of the Middle Boulder Creek at the boundary of the university, just before a long walk up a steep sidewalk. (Boulder Creek on 15th Street, Boulder, Colorado) 20160725
NCAR: Field trip includes trail towards Bear Peak, behind the National Center for Atmospheric Research building designed by I.M. Pei. Boulder regulations didn’t allow building over 8,000 feet, so deal was made to all citizens free access to park, which serves as trail head to Bear Peak and Green Mountain. Winding 2 lane paved road on the way up. (National Center for Atmospheric Research, Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, Colorado) 20160727Denver Union Station: Routing back from Boulder bus to A Line train for hotel nearer to Denver Airport. Dragging luggage, not much time to see the city. Tired from conference with full agenda. (Denver Union Station, Colorado) 20160729Denver International Airport: Both from DEN, different destinations before reuniting in 11 days at home. DY flying to Vancouver via San Fran, long layover may be tough to shorten with standby, because carry-on luggage had to be checked. My routing to Moline, for quiet period of writing. Rest welcomed after a hectic conference week. (Denver International Airport, Colorado) 20160730Quad Cities Airport: Cherry sculpture by Jay Stratton (2016) titled Vortex, in MLI airport terminal, on display by Quad City Arts. Reflects the organic nature of the region. Quad Cities International Airport, Moline, Illinois) 20160730
Costco Coralville: Covered parking lot for big box store is cool for summer, must be convenient for the snows winter. Big shopping trip for groceries, while we’re in town from the farm. (Costco, Coralville. Iowa) 2016032
The International Society for General Systems Research formed circa 1956 became the International Society for the Systems Sciences in 1988. In 1985, Bela H. Banathy organized the annual meeting on the theme of “Systems Inquiring”. Proceedings normally are published in the year following. In 1987, John A. Dillon summarized Banathy’s perspective in the yearbook, General […]
For five immersive days, a team of six researchers had the opporunity to collaborate on ideas on rhythmic shifts (mostly based on Systems Changes Learning) and anticipatory systems (in the legacy of Robert Rosen). The 2024 Banathy Conversation was organized by the Creative Systemic Research Platform Institute, facilitated by Susu Nousala, Gary S. Metcalf, and […]
Systems Processes Theory has been under development for many decades, led by Len Troncale, a past president of the International Society for the Ssytems Sciences. Many have found getting a grip on the science to be a demanding task, both in scope and in depth. Over many decades, Lynn Rasmussen was a collaborator, refining and […]
The Socio-Technical Systems (STS) perspective, dating back to the studies of Eric L. Trist and Fred E. Emery, was on the reading list of organizational behaviour classes in my undergraduate and master’s degree programs. It wasn’t until 15 years later, when I got involved with the systems sciences and David L. Hawk, that the Socio-Ecological […]
Civic Tech can be described as projects using technology “for the public good“. Civic Tech may be related to, but different from Gov Tech. For the May 2024 Systems Thinking Onrtario, we had two knowledgeable guests in conversation. Dorothy Eng, executive director of Code for Canada since 2021, related her professional journey from engineering to […]
On my May trip through the UK, I accepted an offer to lead an Expert-Led Session at the University of Hull. I had previously been a Research Fellow of the Centre for Systems Studies, but haven’t travelled to the Hull for some years. As we worked out the arrangements, I found out that the seminar […]
David L. Hawk (American management theorist, architect, and systems scientist) has been hosting a weekly television show broadcast on Bold Brave Tv from the New York area on Wednesdays 6pm ET, remotely from his home in Iowa. Live, callers can join…Read more ›
Following the first day lecture on Philosophy of Chinese Medicine 1 for the Global University for Sustainability, Keekok Lee continued on a second day on some topics: * Anatomy as structure; physiology as function (and process); * Process ontology, and thing ontology; * Qi ju as qi-in-concentrating mode, and qi san as qi-in-dissipsating mode; and […]
The philosophy of science underlying Classical Chinese Medicine, in this lecture by Keekok Lee, provides insights into ways in which systems change may be approached, in a process ontology in contrast to the thing ontology underlying Western BioMedicine. Read more ›
In conversation, @zeynep with @ezraklein reveal authentic #SystemsThinking in (i) appreciating that “science” is constructed by human collectives, (ii) the west orients towards individual outcomes rather than population levels; and (iii) there’s an over-emphasis on problems of the moment, and…Read more ›
In the question-answer period after the lecture, #TimIngold proposes art as a discipline of inquiry, rather than ethnography. This refers to his thinking On Human Correspondence. — begin paste — [75m26s question] I am curious to know what art, or…Read more ›
How might our society show value for the long term, over the short term? Could we think about taxation over time, asks @carlotaprzperez in an interview: 92% for 1 day; 80% within 1 month; 50%-60% tax for 1 year; zero tax for 10 years.Read more ›
The appreciation of change is different in Western philosophy than in classical Chinese philosophy. JeeLoo Lin published a concise contrast on differences. Let me parse the Introduction to the journal article, that is so clearly written. The Chinese theory of time is built into a language that is tenseless. The Yijing (Book of Changes) there […]
In trying to place the World Hypotheses work of Stephen C. Pepper (with multiple root metaphors), Nicholas Rescher provides a helpful positioning. — begin paste — Philosophical perspectivism maintains that substantive philosophical positions can be maintained only from a “perspective” of some sort. But what sort? Clearly different sorts of perspectives can be conceived of, […]
Finding proper words to express system(s) change(s) can be a challenge. One alternative could be diachrony. The Oxford English dictionary provides two definitions for diachronic, the first one most generally related to time. (The second is linguistic method) diachronic ADJECTIVE Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “diachronic (adj.), sense 1,” July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/3691792233. For completeness, prochronic relates “to […]
The selection of readings in the “Introduction” to Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, volume 2, Penguin (1981), edited by Fred E. Emery, reflects a turn from 1969 when a general systems theory was more fully entertained, towards an urgency towards changes in the world that were present in 1981. Systems thinking was again emphasized in contrast […]
In reviewing the original introduction for Systems Thinking: Selected Readings in the 1969 Penguin paperback, there’s a few threads that I only recognize, many years later. The tables of contents (disambiguating various editions) were previously listed as 1969, 1981 Emery, System Thinking: Selected Readings. — begin paste — Introduction In the selection of papers for this […]
