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 idea of managers being proactive only dates back to 1964, as classes of functions described by Abraham Zaleznik: homeostatic, mediative, and proactive. Predispositions may or may not be altered through educational development.
Fit the people around an organization; or an organization around the people? Working backwards, say @MitroffCrisis + #HaroldLinstone, from current concrete choices to uncertain futures, surfaces strategic assumptions in a collective decision, better than starting with an abstract scorecard to rank candidates.
Should we do, or not-do? Russell Ackoff, over many years, wrote about (negative) potential consequences: There are two possible types of decision-making mistakes, which are not equally easy to identify. (1) Errors of commission: doing something that should not have been done. (2) Errors of omission: not doing something that should have been done. For […]
The final publication of the October 2016 Relating Systems Thinking and Design Symposium workshop "Some Future Paths for Design Professionals: DesignX and Systemic Design" was published as “Systemic Design Agendas in Education and Design Research” in FormAkademisk, following 2 years of rewrites, reviews and revisions.
Federated wiki is deployed on a node.js server, an environment which has become available on some cPanel shared hosting providers. Here are some instructions written while restoring a wiki site originally installed in 2014-2015 on a cloud provider.
Reading The Undoing Project, by Michael Lewis, reminded me of a PhD course at UBC with Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, before they were recognized as Nobel prize candidates.
Before judging democratic systems over authoritarian, examine the functioning of governments through its diplomats, where plutocracy has an alternative in meritocracy, says @mahbubani_k @longnow @asiasocietysfx. [1:19:30] … when people compare the American government with the Chinese government, they say: “This…Read more ›
The story of #JosephNeedham by @simonwwriter, about the scholar behind the 27-volume Science and Civilisation in China starting in 1954 and continuing after his death in 1995. Arriving in China in 1942, Needham discovered gunpowder, printing and the magnetic compass…Read more ›
Talk at @gtalug on Let’s Learn Tech Online @torontolibrary with @p2pu @CiscoNetAcad @TorontoESS. Linux Unhatched online course conducted in groups of 8 to 12, meetings twice per week in person. Non-technical facilitator encourages peers to work out understanding together. Found…Read more ›
The WordPress O2 plugin with P2-Breathe theme results in a Facebook-like or Twitter-like streaming interface. The idea was first presented in 2013, evolving from the P2 theme in 2009 (originally launched as Prologue in 2008) when hosted on wordpress.com. “Beau…Read more ›
Talk at the Centre for Human Ecology, Glasgow, announced at http://www.che.ac.uk/tim-ingold-talks-about-the-sustainability-of-everything-10th-sept-2016/ Video posted at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncLv9Gk7XrI and https://vimeo.com/182572764 This digest was created by editing the text transcript generated by Youtube. View the video yourself for a more authentic reproduction. Lapses, grammatical…Read more ›
In deciphering Yin-Yang and Five Elements (Five Phases) thinking, #Kaptchuk (1983) has a footnote and then an appendix that clarifies the way forward for appreciating foundations of Chinese medicine favouring the former.
The field theory in psychology by #KurtLewin 1943 derives from classical field theory (viz. electromagnetism and gravitation), predating quantum field theory (viz. subatomic particles). For psychology, Lewin wrote in 1943 how history (and a subjective view of the future) matters. It is correct that field theory emphasizes the importance of the fact that any event […]
Many who cite #KurtLewin haven't read the original 1947/1951 writings, say @strategybuild @ToddBridgman @kgbphd with the "refreezing" part of "unfreezing → changing → refreezing" emerging in a subsequent career of an idea that can be traced genealogically and archaeologically.
Human organizations may learn from wolves, with groups of 2 to 6 taking down elk, and cooperative expert groups of 9 to 13+ taking down larger bison. #DanielMacNulty, #AimeeTallian #DanielRStahler #DouglasWSmith (2014).
Meeting effectiveness is reduced after 7 people are involved, say @BainInsights consultants #Blenko, #Mankins, #Rogers. Follow the Rule of Seven for meetings. Who should come to a meeting is always a sensitive issue, and the basic precept is often “The more the merrier.” But more is rarely better when it comes to making decisions. Our […]
