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
For those who haven’t read the 1965 Emery and Trist article, its seems as though my colleague Doug McDavid was foresighted enough to blog a summary in 2016! His words have always welcomed here, as Doug was a cofounder of this web site. At the time of writing, the target audience for this piece was […]
In the famous 1965 Emery and Trist article, the terms “causal texture” and “contextual environment” haven’t been entirely clear to me. With specific meanings in the systems thinking literature, looking up definitions in the dictionary generally isn’t helpful. Diving into the history of the uses of the words provides some insight. 1. Causal texture 2. […]
Towards appreciating “action learning”, the history of open systems thinking and pioneering work in organization science, the influence of Action Learning Group — in the Faculty of Environment Studies founded in 1968 at York University (Toronto) — deserves to be resurfaced. 1. Trist in Canada 2. Environmental studies, and contextualism in organizational-change 3. Action learning, […]
The news that Doug McDavid — my friend, colleague, and one of the original cofounders of the Coevolving Innovations web site in 2006 — had passed, first came through mutual IBM contacts. More details subsequently showed up on LinkedIn from Mike McClintock. Doug left us on May 9, while working at his desk, likely in […]
One of the challenges with the development of pattern languages is the cross-appropriation of approaches of techniques from one domain (i.e. built physical environments) into others (e.g. software development, social change). The distinction between pattern language and form language is made by Nikos Salingaros. Design in architecture and urbanism is guided by two distinct complementary […]
The 1995 article by Spinosa, Flores & Dreyfus on “Disclosing New Worlds” was assigned reading preceding the fourth of four lectures for the Systemic Design course in the Master’s program in Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCAD University. In previous years, this topic was a detail practically undiscussed, as digging into social theory and the phenomenology […]
In web conference, #HermanDaly says #EcologicalEconomics used to get attacked from the right, now it's from the left. Panel @revkin @jon_d_erickson @ktkish @sophiesanniti #TimCrowshaw #KatieHorner livestreamed #sustainwhat .Read more ›
Complementing the idea of a @longnow , @nfergus provokes the challenge of a #shortthen as the online social media platforms distract the larger perspectives on history.Read more ›
Social ecology and environmental psychology described @dstokols @Social_Ecology , interviewed by @katiepatrick . References #WilliamsJames on attention. Book on Social Ecology in the Digital Age released in 2018.Read more ›
Concerns on #personaldata should be reframed as interpersonal, says @sheldrake , less the nodes and more the edge connections. “I want to take back control” superficial, @hartzog says control doesn’t scale. Agency is about negotiation in the world, more rhizomatic…Read more ›
Doing science should be wayfinding (pathfinding), says #TimIngold , gaining grounding in the art of paying attention, towards research as the pursuit of truth. Truth is more than objective facts, where science and art are embraced with materials, so that we can see the quality inside the natural world as it forms, rather than as […]
We should be more vigourous, says @MazzucatoM , in debating differences between value extraction and value creation, and between profits and rents. Lecture at Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford U., January 2019Read more ›
Proponents of #SystemsThinking often espouse holism to counter over-emphasis on reductionism. Reading some definitions from an encyclopedia positions one in the context of the other (François 2004).
Saying “it doesn’t matter” or “it matters” is a common expression in everyday English. For scholarly work, I want to “keep using that word“, while ensuring it means what I want it to mean. The Oxford English Dictionary (third edition, March 2001) has three entries for “matter”. The first two entries for a noun. The […]
It's been challenging to find sources that specifically define two-word phrases -- i.e. "systemic change", "systematic change", "systems change" -- as opposed to loosely inferring reductively from one-word definitions in recombination. MartinReynolds @OpenUniversity clarifies uses of the phrases, with a critical eye into motives for choosing a specific label, as well as associated risks and […]
The term "environmental" can be mixed up with "ecological", when the meanings are different. We can look at the encyclopedia definitions (François 2004), and then compare the two in terms of applied science (i.e. engineering with (#TimothyFHAllen @MarioGiampietro and #AmandaMLittle, 2003).
While many outside of the field of architecture like the #ChristopherAlexander #PatternLanguage approach, it's not so well accepted by his peers. A summary of criticisms by #MichaelJDawes and #MichaelJOstwald @UNSWBuiltEnv is helpful in appreciating when the use of pattern language might be appropriate or not appropriate.
Systems thinking should include not only thinking about the system, but also its environment. Using the term "field" as the system of interest plus its influences leaves a lot of the world uncovered. From the multiple definitions in the International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics , there is variety of ways of understanding "field".
