Distractions, reflections

Distractions, reflections

David Ing, at large … Sometimes, my mind wanders

Jane Jacobs, A Public Celebration, in Toronto

June 13, 2006
Last night, Trevor and I went across town to the Trinity St. Paul’s Church — in the Annex — for “Jane Jacobs: A Public Celebration“. It was a wonderful evening of music and thought, including some readings from her works.

Jane Jacobs passed away in April. This event was organized by John Sewell, a former mayor of Toronto, who was described as “disciple” of Jane. The ground floor of Trinity St. Paul’s Church was filled to standing room, and the balcony was about half full. The attendees seemed to include both people from the neighbourhood who had known Jane, as well as some had travelled from a longer distance.

  • Mary Rowe, president and editor of Ideas That Matter, acted as the master of ceremonies for the evening. She said that Jane wouldn’t have liked this gathering if it was about her. She could, however, warm up to the gathering as a discussion of her ideas. Jane liked debate, and liked having people come to her house to discuss ideas.
  • Ken Greenberg, former Director of Urban Design and Architecture for the City of Toronto, related Jane’s history, as she moved from New York to Toronto. Jane was offered honourary degrees multiple times, but chose to turn them down. Given a choice between celebrity and work, she chose work. Although many have pegged Jane as a pure urbanist, in recent years she spent a significant amount of time in the Toronto suburbs observing and trying to understand how they worked.
  • Ann-Marie MacDonald, a Toronto-based writer and actor, read from Cities and the Wealth of Nations. She read a passage on import substitution, describing the roles that cities played in the a funeral in the south (i.e. the casket, clothes, nails, etc. all came from cities from the north).
  • A quartet, led by Caitlin Brom-Jacobs (oboe) — Jane’s grand-daughter and a graduate of the Eastman School of Music — with Michelle Zapf-Belanger (violin), Carolyn Blackwell (viola) and Anne-Marie Zapf-Belanger (cello), played a Mozart Quartet for Oboe and Strings. The performance was quite moving, and the sound (from our seats in the balcony) was wonderful.
  • A video montage of Jane including segments of her on the streets in Toronto wearing an afghan, and in conversation at home. She described the way she thought as web thinking — perhaps an emphasis on part-part interaction from systems thinking.
  • Vince Pietropaolo, photographer and town planner, described a course from a college in upstate New York called Two Cities, which included a visit by students to New York City, and then to Toronto — ending up on Albany Street, where Jane lived. He read an article from The Village Voice on April 18, 1968 republished in Ideas That Matter: The Worlds of Jane Jacobs, where Jane disrupted a civic hearing, was arrested, and then released by police due to crowds calling for her freedom for two hours.
  • Anne Collins, Jane’s editor from Random House Canada, said that she could hear Jane’s voice in her head but couldn’t quite reproduce the sound. Looking at the cover of Dark Age Ahead, she said that she wished that should could have convinced Jane to put her name on two lines, so that it would read Jane … Jacobs. She said that she was tempted to read from the footnotes, because they provide depth to the body of the chapters. Anne started reading from near the end of the book, and then made the joke that since she was Jane’s editor, she would skip over some of Jane’s explanation to read the final paragraph of the book.
  • Max Allen, a producer from the CBC, introduced a recording of Jane’s 1979 Massey Lecture, that would become The Question of Separatism: Quebec and the Struggle Over Sovereignty. Max pointed out that the discussion on transfer payments is back in today’s headlines. In Canada, three of the provinces are clearly in surplus, and six are clearly in deficit, but Quebec is so close to balancing its books that its separation from Canada could potentially have minimal economics effects (on at least that dimension).
  • The Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band played three tunes. David Buchbinder said that Jane had come to the release party of their third CD, not as a celebrity, but just as someone who was easy to talk with. Dave Wall made a quip that klezmer music can be appropriate for any occasion, because no one understands what the words are about. The final song had a dozen dancers in a chain prancing up and down the aisles between the pews.
  • Margie Zeidler, recipient of the 2003 Jane Jacobs Prize, said that she would give the perspective of a 10-year, since she had known Jane for 30 years. Jane was first introduced as a famous writer, but since Jane didn’t write Nancy Drew novels, Margie wasn’t impressed. They had many conversations where Jane was quite interested in listening to Margie’s thoughts, and Jane occasionally chiding Margie when she wasn’t thinking straight.
  • John Sewell read from Systems of Survival, at the point at which Kate describes how she came about to categorize behaviours into commercial and guardian syndromes. This emphasized a difference that, unlike other animals, human beings can be commercial.
  • R. H. Thomson, a renowned actor, described how after being away for a few weeks in other places, he comes home twice: once to his wife, two sons and dog, and then to Bloor Street, where he knows the shopkeepers. He read from The Death and Life of Great American Cities, where Jane describes an entire day on Hudson Street in New York, where she used to live.
  • Mike Ford, on guitar and then piano, performed two songs. In “Stars shone on Toronto”, he described a peaceful city in the darkness of a power failure. He then sang “Crossroads”– written for the Ideas That Matter conference in 1997 — which includes the lines …
    • The world’s at a crossroads — this town’s at a crossroads
      Jane Jacobs help us decide how it unfolds and what we should do …

    with the audience singing along in the choruses.

  • The evening closed with a second video montage of Jane at her typewriter and pulling sheets from her stacks of notes. Jane said that she was most proud of her work in Cities and the Wealth of Nations, because that was her largest intellectual contribution.

I see that there’s supposed to be a similar event in New York on June 28, but can’t quite get all of the details.

In doing the searches for web links for this posting, I note that Ideas That Matter volume 3, number 3 includes commentary on Dark Age Ahead, as well as some other authors that I wouldn’t have expected in traditional pegging of Jane Jacob’s work as “urban planning”. These include Robert Lucas (1995 Nobel Laureate in economics) and Henry Mintzberg (from management). I think that I’ll take a break and read a bit more ….

Contact lenses and glasses — both!

June 6, 2006
I’ve been feeling fine since the cataract surgery, but having surgery to only one eye has resulted in a slightly annoying condition. While the vision in my left eye is 20/20, the vision in right eye is about -6. To make things more complicated, I was told by the intern that my left eye had been about -6, and the surgeons put in a lens with a correction factor of 8. This overcorrection complicates reading and working on the computer, because the left eye is bad on short vision, and I’m totally myopic in the right eye. Trying to wear my old glasses with the left lens popped out doesn’t work, because the images from left and right eyes don’t line up. The interim solution has been to wear my right contact lens — which I normally used to wear about 8 to 10 hours per day — now from the time I get up until the time I go to bed, and also wear drug store reading glasses (strength +2) to get by on the computer and reading.

So, I was really looking forward to today’s appointments. First, I had the opthamologist appointment this morning. This was one of the those “wait two hours for a 5 minute appointment” stories. My eye has healed well, and I haven’t any any infections, so the Dr. Squires congratulated me and showed me the door. (He said that I could come back in one year for a checkup, but didn’t seem all that motivated to say that. He seemed to prefer that I come back when my right eye needs a surgery — which will probably be in 20 to 30 years!)

Diana had told me that on her last visit to an opthamologist, the doctor said that a patient may be better off at with an optometrist for getting eyeglass prescriptions, because an optometrist has better equipment and fits lenses all of the time. Thus, I had scheduled an afternoon appointment with Dr. Eddie Chow. Dr. Chow is a family institution, since he fitted me with my first contact lenses around age 17. (He also fitted my sister Jeanne and brother Ben). He’s also the one who prescribed ortho-k (i.e. wearing hard contact lenses while sleeping) for Adam.

For the past few year, I’ve had three pairs of eyeglasses: one for long vision (e.g. driving), one for reading, and one for computer work (i.e. intermediate distances, with Zeiss multifocal lenses so that I can look at some paper documents without changing glasses). Diana and I stopped by Superb Optical on Friday night to look at a fourth set of frames. I thought that I would change the left lens in the three old eyeglasses for when I’m not wearing the contact lens, and would then need new frames for working on the computer when I am wearing the contact lens.

I was surprised today when Dr. Chow said that computer and reading eyeglasses could only be fitted above my wearing the contact lens in my right eye. When the difference between two eyes is so wide, glasses won’t work. (I guess I might have suspected this, from popping out the left lens from my old glasses!) The other unattractive options are:

  • get a contact lens for the left eye — correcting the eye that just had surgery(!) with a multifocal prescription;
  • get LASIK on the right eye to fix the myopia — uggh!; or
  • have a cataract surgery on the right eye — which definitely isn’t covered by provincial health care, and is purely elective, because I really don’t need it — at least for a few decades!

I’m not used to wearing contact lenses from waking up to going to sleep, so my first response was denial. Dr. Chow wrote me up a prescription for multifocal eyeglasses (both for computer work and reading), and told me that I’d have to figure this out for myself.

I went out front to Superb Optical, and immediately saw Edmond, the optician. (He’s another institution!) I asked how long it would take for the multifocal lens, and he said that it would take a week to get one from Zeiss. As an alternative, he suggested that I have separate eyeglasses for computer/intermediate work, and for reading. These lenses would then be all single-vision, and he could make them up while I waited. One consideration was that single vision lenses are relatively cheap, so it’s more practical to try this way first, and then order the multifocal lens in the future if I really felt I need it. I gave him the two newer eyeglass frames that I already had, and he put the new lenses in. It was $50 for four lenses, which seems cheap compared to the history of eyeglasses I’ve had in the past.

While I was having this discussion with Edmond, Dr. Chow walked by, and insisted that I really should have the multifocal lens! (I know that he uses them himself, because he uses optical equipment while seeing patients, and then has to read and write on paper). Edmond says that the optometrist doesn’t always know the best way. I’m usually all intermediate distance — 8 to 10 hours per day on a computer — or all reading — checking the newspaper in the morning, and then maybe studying some academic texts later. I’m picky about my focus — I think that I’ve spent too many years in photography! — so I’ve opted for two pairs of eyeglasses. This is ironically better than my past 3 years carrying around three pairs of eyeglasses!

There is some good news about my condition. I’ve been wearing hard (gas-permeable) contact lenses for 30 years, so in the grand scheme of changes, my having one in my right eye isn’t such a big deal. Dr. Chow said that he has older patients that would benefit by doing as I am, but they can’t get used to wearing a contact lens, and things don’t work out. For me, I can’t warm up to the idea of elective eye surgery, so the single contact lens is the answer. I wonder if I’m going to have issues when my eyes water up in hayfever season, though ….

20/20 vision in my left eye

May 16, 2006
What a difference a day makes! As scheduled (for some months now), I had my cataract surgery yesterday. This morning, I went for the post-op checkup, and I now can report 20/20 vision in my left eye.

Yesterday, my surgery was scheduled for 1:35 p.m. Diana and I went the requisite 2 hours early, and checked into the day surgery clinic (on the fifth floor at St. Michael’s Hospital). It’s been designed as a welcoming place — some benefactors must have spent some time there! — with a wood panel reception area. We were directed down a very long hall — the place is huge — and were given a cubicle large enough for a reclining chair and two guest chairs. The curtain was drawn in front, and I was given the usual hospital gown (actually designed with a side slit) and a very large white terry bathrobe. I removed my street clothes, and was down to underwear and socks under the bathrobe. The nurses went about to correct the attendant who had brought me down: for cataract surgery, they’re only interested in the head, so I could actually have kept my pants on. I opted to stay in my underwear, because it’s about as comfortable as being in my shorts at home.

A nurse came in to do the usual medical history, and put a catheter in the back of my right hand for the anaesthetic. Diana and I chatted for for about 45 minutes until the intern came. At that point, I handed over my glasses to Diana, so I wasn’t seeing much, either out of the left eye with the cataract, or my normal myopic right eye! I was wearing little booties over my socks, and the staff decided that I might as well walk down to the operating room (rather than take a wheelchair).

As the operating staff introduced themselves — it was impossible for me to make them out without my glasses! — I got up onto the operating table. They put a folded towel under my head, and then — rip, in a sound like a roll of Scotch tape! — they wrapped a strip of tape over my forehead and under the operating table. I remarked that this seemed primitive, but obviously functional. The staff bundled me up in warm towels, including a little tunnel for my left arm. I remember the nurse introducing herself, as she must have connected the catheter in my right hand to the anaesthetic. I remember the intern telling me that he was going to clean my left eye with three swabs of cleanser, counting 1 … seeing yellow … counting 2 …. and then … I don’t remember much.

In the pre-admission visit, the doctor had said that cataract surgery calls for a light anaethetic, because the patient has to be awake to respond to requests to move the eye. I can imagine that I was awake, but I really don’t remember anything. I do remember a few voices as they were working through the surgery … it sounded like they were having a little difficulty getting out my cataract, and I heard when they said that the artificial lens was put in … but everything else is pretty much a blur. I barely remember them taking off all of the blankets, getting down off the operating table, and then getting wheeled down to the recovery area. The surgery probably took about an hour.

The nurses asked me for Diana’s name, and she got paged to join me. (She doesn’t get called as Diana Ing very often). The nurses took my blood pressure, and gave me a turkey sandwich and apple juice. (It was annoying to be fasting since midnight the night before, but I was the last surgery of the day). I wasn’t feeling any real pain, just a slight sensation of a dry eye. I put on my street clothes, got in a wheelchair pushed down to the front door, and Diana and I took a cab home.

At home, I had some soup (I was on a cooking spurt on Saturday, having found tarkeys on sale for half price on Friday!). I watched tv in bed, and put in eye drops every hour. I guess that I fell asleep about 6:30 p.m., for a few hours. When I woke up, I decided to pop out the left lens from my glasses, which seemed to show that I had normal vision in the left eye, but I really couldn’t get my right and left eyes to line up. I had some cereal, watched some more tv, and went to sleep.

This morning, I had a shower, and decided to put in my right contact lens so that I could wear sunglasses to my post-op appointment. (It’s actually a rainy day). I actually haven’t worn contact lenses since last June, because my optometrist then said that glasses would allow more light into my left eye. Now, however, a contact lens works best. There’s no disparity, as with a pair of glasses with only the right lens in. One thing that I do notice is a slight colour difference between my eyes: the right eye has a slight yellow tinge in it, as I guess my natural lens is getting old.

Diana drove me over to the eye clinic. As we were passing over the Richmond Street viaduct, it’s interesting to observe how blind I was in driving with the cataract in one eye. Sure, I could see, but it was pretty much tunnel vision. With two eyes this morning, I could see traffic, the building, the trees. It was an amazing, joyous feeling.

At the eye clinic, the intern saw me first. He looked into the eye, and said that the lens was perfectly centered. I read the eye chart, and he said that I have 20/20 vision. I asked about the lens that they put in yesterday. He said that my eye is about 6, and they put in a lens to correct to 8. Of course, the downside is that I’m now farsighted in the left eye, so I really need reading glasses. The intern said that the human brain will adapt, so I’ll probably start reading more out of my right eye. He also said that my left eye is still dilated, so my vision should improve over the next few days. He was a bit concerned about a bit of pressure in my eye, but Dr. Squires, joining us, mentioned that the pressure was there before the surgery. I asked what I can and can’t do until the final checkup in three weeks, and Dr. Squires said no jumping up and down — so there goes badminton — no heavy lifting or exertion — so there goes bicycling — but otherwise I can live pretty normally (including showering!)

I’ll get fitted for glasses at the appointment in three weeks. In the meantime, my long vision is great, but with drops in my eye from this morning’s exam, it’s hard for me to judge what life will be like over the next three weeks. In a reversal of the condition before the operation, I can see long distances well enough to drive, but have found newspaper type to be illegible. I’ve been playing with the font sizes on Windows XP, so I can be functional on the computer — albeit with less screen real estate!

[Blogging note: I’ behind maybe 6 posts on multiple blogs, so I’ll be playing catch up over the next few days. WordPress has a feature that enables changing posting dates, so the entries on Fuschl, Finland, Manchester and Hull will still appear in correct date order.]

A mundane visit to Yorkshire

May 10, 2006
My friend Ian says that I take the most mundane photographs of anyone he knows. I’m proud to say: the more mundane, the better. I’m really into local building and architecture, and how people live, work and play in their everyday lives — background social practices1. I find humour in my own preconceptions about the way that the societies work, with that bit of surprise that things can be done differently. With Jennifer generously allowing me to stay in her home, my visit to Pockington, Cottingham (the area about the University of Hull) and Kingston-upon-Hull (Hull itself) was full of these little mundane delights.

Small memories include:

  • Jennifer drove by Pockington post office in the morning, and sent Cameron into the back to pick up a package. The town is small enough that he could go to the back, without security guards or barb wire protecting the Royal Mail.
  • The drive in front of the circle has some other cars parked in it, and Jennifer deftly squeezed her car with about 2 inches on either side of it. I’m a relatively confident driver, but I would have been scared of scraping off some paint, and Diana wouldn’t have even attempted it. Jennifer’s got an amazing grasp of the size of her car. She proved this again later, doing a U-turn/three-point turn in a one-lane street from a parking space with cars parked on both sides, to go the other direction.
  • When we went grocery shopping at Tesco, we couldn’t find canned chicken stock so that I could make soup. (On the other hand, in Finland, Minna had doubts about finding chicken stock in her supermarket, but then found one litre packages of it in the “specialty food” section, as a new featured item). I guess soup-makers are classified as only those who start from whole chickens, and those who like it completely ready-made.
  • Out at a pub for a quick lunch with a professor before a class, he had a beer — 20 minutes before he was to start a class. (The teetotalling culture from IBM still lives in memory, although it was lifted when Lou Gerstner became CEO.)

I got to see a bit of the local scenery while doing errand runs.

  • Brian took me into town (Hull) while he stopped by a optician to pick up some contact lenses. We stopped by a bank branch in the centre of town — I think it only had two tellers. He did point out a few sights. The Beverley Gate was famous for being a key site in in the beginning of the English Civil War in 1642, but was demolished, so that lack of presence hardly stands up to it historicity. We viewed the ferry docks that are now rarely used, as land travel passes over the Humber Bridge, which held the world record as the longest single span suspension bridge for 17 years.
  • Jennifer needed a key cut, and discovered that the local man that does that in Pocklington closes for all of Tuesdays. (Many store owners close on Tuesday afternoons). We drove into Hull to stop at a store that I’ll nominate as best knock-off of a Home Depot that I’ve ever seen — down to the orange signs. They don’t cut keys. We tried another hardware supply store, that also doesn’t cut keys, and were given directions by a woman with such a thick Yorkshire accent that I couldn’t make out what she was saying. She had directed us to a mall, but we never did find it.
  • In Pockington, there are several neighbourhood “family butchers”. I assume that they don’t mean men with cleavers who make house calls!

Naturally, each university has its own quirks.

  • The Business School at the University of Hull has just moved into a newly renovated complex of buildings — a real showcase. The parking lots are on the back side, so employees naturally want to come in through the back door. The back door, however, was not really intended as an entrance, so there’s no pull or knob, and the door always has an impromptu stopper in it to allow people to enter.
  • The computers at the business school have security on the network locked down so tightly, that the physical address of the network card of my laptop had to be manually entered so that I could get access. (Network access is authored by software address at every other network in the world I’ve seen — and I’ve seen quite a few!)

Over time — maybe with too much study of “theory of practice”, I’ve tried to learn to not judge why things are done one way in one locale when they’re done another way in some other locale. People are (generally) smart, so there must be an explanation — although delving into how practices come about can really sometimes get convoluted.

(See more of Pocklington, Hull, and Yorkshire on the snapshot server in our basement).

1This philosophy is associated with phenomenology, including thinkers such as Heidegger: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes this idea in context: ” Phenomenology … leads into analyses of conditions of the possibility of intentionality, conditions involving motor skills and habits, background social practices, and often language, with its special place in human affairs”. 

Sunday brunch/church, train travel, and medieval York

May 7, 2006
After a long day on Saturday, I got a slow and relaxing start on Sunday with Martin, saw more English countryside on the trains, and got a tour of York highlights with Jennifer.

Martin had said that on Sunday morning, there was a church that I might enjoy, “not for worship, but as a stunning place to chill out”. I have to admit to not knowing Martin very well before this trip, and didn’t know exactly what to make of this before I arrived in Nottingham. It turns out that church has been completely renovated into an elegant restaurant — the Pitcher and Piano — and it serves brunch. In my quest for local cuisine, I had the lamb roast, served with more altitude than traditional English servings.

Martin dropped me off at the train station, making sure that I got onto the right track. Unlike my usual behaviour on airplanes, I didn’t feel much like reading or listening to my minidisc player, so I just people-watched and looked out the window at the English countryside. On the first leg, I was seated across from a mother, her one-year-old and four-year-old sons, and her aunt. I could barely understand their English through their accents. I try to not judge parents on their child-rearing styles, and was amused at the mother handling the four-year old. (The aunt claimed that he was a terror). The young boy wanted one of the the baby’s toy, and it was a battle of wills with the mother. My intuition tells me that her sons will grow up to be more competitive than mine.

I changed trains at Chesterfield station, onto a Virgin train. (They have nice interiors, and LCD panels over each seat indicating reservations). There were three young men travelling together, having fun and showing videos to each others on the mobile phones. They must have been 19-year olds, on their way to begin training in the army. I asked if they thought they would see action, and they said that the army was a “great way to see the world”. I didn’t press my view of the world on them, but got to reflect at the optimism of leaving small-town life and leaving the familiar behind. In my day, though, we didn’t have mobile communications for family to phone us up to say final farewells.

20060507_York_station.jpg

At York station, it seems that pay phone has become an extinct species, so the gentleman at the information booth allowed me to use that phone to call Jennifer. She was just minutes away. I thought Jennifer’s car — a Renault — was interesting, because we don’t see any of those in North America. We decided to take a quick look around York before heading off to Jennifer’s place in Pocklington. Since my usual walking tours are around markets and museums, we headed for the city centre.

I had read a lot about the Shambles on the Internet, and I like to walk urban areas. The area has many of the original features from medieval days, although the butchers that gave the area the name have long since departed. The cobblestone streets were actually wider than I had expected. Most shops were closing in the late afternoon, but I wasn’t looking to buy anything, anyway.

20060507_York_Shambles.jpg

Jennifer led me over to York Minster. Describing York Minster as a cathedral is an understatement. Any one of the four or five major gathering places could easily be described as a cathedral with some grandure. Services were in session while we walked around the other areas, and we got to watch the choir promenading out. Unexpectedly, these students from the Minster School choir were all girls.

20060507_York_Minster.jpg

The drive to Pocklington revealed more of the English countryside. I saw lots of fields of yellow flowers, which I guessed as canola — known as rapeseed in the UK. Jennifer says that when the crop is mature, it emits a foul odour, so it’s possible to smell harvest season.

At Jennifer’s house, I unfortunately usurped her son Cameron from his bedroom, as he got to stay in the livingroom for the week. Jennifer’s house is in a small subdivision outside the centre of Pockington itself.

(See more of York on the snapshot server in our basement).

Planes and trains and visiting Nottingham

May 6, 2006
I haven’t seen much of England, in my past travels. I’ve been through London a few times on business, and had a vacation with Diana where we saw Slough, Oxford and Greenwich. On way to visit at the University of Hull, I thought I’d meet up with Martin Gladwell, on his home territory of Nottingham. I’ve heard that Nottingham is a fun town.

The day didn’t begin well, starting out to the airport. Petri had called for a taxi to pick me up a 5 a.m. for an early flight.  After getting caught up on a bit of e-mail and packing, I went to bed about 10:30 at night, … and the next thing I knew, light was just breaking and Petri was waking me up to say that the taxi was waiting. I had set multiple alarms, but must have set them all wrong! (That’s a stress signal for me!) I took a few minutes to quickly finishing packing the last few items into my suitcases. I got in the taxi, and arrived well in time for the flight. (The waiting taxi charged me an extra 20 Euros). The flights, routing from Helsinki to Copenhagen to Manchester, were relatively uneventful.

When I arrived at the Manchester airport, the customs officials wanted to check my baggage. This wasn’t like American customs check — the British official was quite friendly and relaxed. Afterwards, I asked why he thought to check me. He said that from my baggage tags, he could see that I had arrived on the Copenhagen flight, but he couldn’t tell from where. The customs officials weren’t busy that morning, so I guess that they had the opportunity to indulge every curiosity.

While in Finland, I was able to receive a text message from Martin on my mobile phone service, but it doesn’t allow me to reply internationally. Martin was waiting for me right outside the arrival area doors in the Manchester airport terminal. He had arrived from an IBM meeting in Madrid the previous evening, and stayed overnight in a hotel. I trailed him down to the train station, and he helped me buy tickets for trip to Nottingham, as well as to York on the next day. I made jokes that I was getting used to having all the arrangements done for me, because in Finland, it seems that my hosts (Minna, Taina, Ritva, Annaleena) can always get simple things done faster in the native language.

20060506_Manchester_airport_train.jpg

We changed trains at Manchester Piccadilly1. When travelling from one country to another on a single trip, I feel slight cultural dissonances. Certainly, the architecture in British train stations feature Gothic or Roman touches, whereas Finnish buildings are either Scandinavian modern or rustic (as in the old houses in Porvoo). On the train platform, the crowded space, the casual style of dress, and multitude of ethnicities was a completely different feeling from being in Finland. We waited for the train beside two old Chinese ladies carrying plastic shopping bags — as they would in Hong Kong or in Toronto — chatting in the Hoisan dialect (that my parents speak) about the price of groceries. I assume that whatever immigration policies prevailed in Canada in the 1960s and 1970s also prevailed in the UK.

We got onto a crowded car on the train, and seats were full. In the entry passage, I sat on the jump seat, and Martin sat on his suitcase. Chats with other passengers suggested that this train to Sheffield and then Nottingham often runs to capacity. Most interesting to me was the large number of passengers on the train going to watch the football game. They were carrying around large cans of beer in plastic shopping bags, and casually consuming them. I told Martin that I was unsure whether this was legal or illegal in Ontario, because it just isn’t done2. The football fans weren’t threatening — some came as complete families — but Martin warned that they could get loud. They gave me a good sampling of football songs and cheers as a natural part of their trip.

At Nottingham, we took a taxi back to Martin’s flat. I was intrigued the by the design of British “black cabs”: there’s no trunk, but an entry into a massive passenger space with doors wide enough to bring in luggage. If more passengers come in, there are jump seats (facing backwards). These are so practical, I wondered if anyone has ever tried importing them or building something similar in North America3.

20060506_Nottingham_taxi.jpg

We took a few minutes to drop off baggage at Martin’s flat, and headed out to catch a double-decker bus into the city centre of Nottingham. While it might have been nice to see Old Market Square before the construction started, it’s currently under construction to become the winning vision of a new public space. On a Saturday afternoon, the Broad Marsh Shopping Centre and pedestrian shopping streets were bustling. Nottingham has a great energy about it. Unlike many other places I’ve visited, the people don’t seem stressed, and many have smiles on their faces. Martin says that Nottingham is a popular place for stag nights and hen parties, so it’s not unusally to see troupes of women cavorting together while dressed alike (e.g. as nuns).

We stopped for some tapas at La Tasca — a bit of calamari, some chorizo, some (non-salty) anchovies. We stopped into St. Mary’s Church — it dates back to construction in 1376 — and I was amazed by the dates and inscriptions on some of the crypts built into its walls.

20060506_StMarysChurch_crypts.jpg

As it started to rain, we retreated in the City of Caves for a tour of underground Nottingham (literally). Actors told history about the medieval tannery pits — the tanners never caught the plague because even the rats couldn’t stand the smell — as well as the caves used as shelters during the bombings in World War II. Martin and I then wandered over by Nottingham Castle, where we looked at the Robin Hood statue and plaques on the wall.

20060506_Nottingham_Robin_Hood_statue.jpg

I was intrigued by two uniformed officers taking digital photographs of a very nice sports car parked nearby — and Martin informed me that digital images are a method of presenting evidence on parking tickets in the UK.

For a late afternoon break, we stopped by Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem — which proclaims to be the oldest inn in England, back to 1189 A.D. Martin and I sat out in the courtyard, listening some boisterous drinkers in the main room singing pub songs (e.g. old Beatles sounds, Paul McCartney would be proud!) until the barman complained about the volume. I guess every bar has its limits. Martin had previously pointed out the Bell Inn, nearer to the center of town, that disputes the “oldest inn” claim. Dating “from timbers in the Bell Inn” reveals construction circa 1420, whereas Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem’s “building itself dates from the 16th or 17th century” — although its “caves may date to the 11th century”. More interesting for Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem is the Cursed Galleon in the Rock Lounge. It’s a model ship over the bar, and “last 3 people to clean it have all mysteriously died”.

We went back to Martin’s place so that he could have a quick nap, while I caught up on e-mail. For the evening, we decided on a Japanese restaurant for a quick dinner, and then on to a (relatively quiet and smoke free) pub. I might have been in the mood for some music — jazz or folk — but it seems that Nottingham gets so much business on weekends, that venues don’t need live music to attract customers. Music is something that happens on weekend nights. In any event, I got to meet Martin’s friend Roger, and we had an interesting conversation about rock musicians getting old. Roger’s band used to play progressive rock, so it’s a real challenge to remember guitar parts, not only because progressive rock can be intricate, but also because some pieces run 10 to 12 minutes in length!

By the end of the evening, I was pretty wiped out, so I was happy when Martin offered me his bed and he slept on the couch. It’s been a long time since I’ve stayed with a bachelor, so I’ve almost forgotten what living alone is like!

(See more of Nottingham on the snapshot server in our basement).

1I asked Martin about the etymology for piccadilly. He didn’t know. Geraldo Carneiro cites two alternative etymologies: “I’ve learned from Jorge Luís Borges a probably false, but delicious, etymology: “Piccadilly” was the place in which the Portuguese made his “pecadilhos” (little sins). Afterwards I learned from Anthony Burgess (funny as those two writers have the same name, signifying bourgeois) that the word “Piccadilly” came out of a family of fat people that created “pickardils”, that means healthy pigeons, if my precarious English does not fail (and it does!)”.  

2Now at home, I can see that the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario says that it’s illegal: “It is illegal to transport beverage alcohol in a motor vehicle, a motorized snow vehicle or a boat unless the beverage alcohol is in a container that is unopened and the seal unbroken, or unless the beverage alcohol is packaged in baggage that is fastened closed or is not otherwise readily available to anyone in the vehicle. In a boat, the beverage alcohol must be stored in a closed compartment.” 

3“Black cabs” appear to be all built by London Taxis International in Coventry. It turns out that there’s been a London Taxis of North America company out of Massachusetts since 2000, and they received a U.S. government approval for import as taxis in 2003.

  • Translate

  • Recent Posts

  • Archives

  • RSS on Coevolving

    • Rethinking work, with the pandemic disruption | IJOTB (2025)
      Two years after submitting an academic manuscript and responding to double-blind reviews, “Rethinking work, with the pandemic disruption” has now been published in the International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior (IJOTB) as earlycite. The article has a DOI (Document Object Identifier), and should be streamed with an official volume and issue number soon. The […]
    • Evolving Styles for Learning Systems Thinking | Systems Thinking Ontario | 2025-02-13
      The 128th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario was convened in person.  The classroom was filled with current students, alumni, our regular participants, and a few curious newcomers. Moderated by Zaid Khan, the conversation was sparked by Stephen Davies and myself (David Ing) on the evolving styles in learning systems thinking.  Stephen has been leading SFIN-6011 […]
    • Systems Approaches (Project Language + Literature Reviews with Generative AI) | OCADU | 2025-01-20
      The “Understanding Systems” SFIN-6011 course is a requirement in the master’s program in Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCADU.   For winter 2025, the class is now led by Stephen Davies, breaking the incremental evolving of content since 2008.  While still on faculty at OCADU, the original course designer Peter H. Jones is now a Distinguished […]
    • Generative AI and Inquiring Systems: Ways of Patterning and Ways of Knowing | Systems Thinking Ontario | 2025-01-08
      In the 1970s, five ways of knowing were established by C. West Churchman in The Design of Inquiring Systtems. In the 1990s, his student Ian Mitroff carried on the tradition and extended that work in The Unbounded Mind.  Now in the 2020s, the technology of Generative AI opens up opportunties to query or request responses […]
    • STPIS 2024 Proceedings: Reifying Socio-Technical and Socio-Ecological Perspectives for Systems Changes
      For readers with an interest deeper than the 15-minute presentation given in August, the Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Socio-Technical Perspectives in Information Systems (STPIS 2024) have now been formally publishied. The invited paper on “Reifying Socio-Technical and Socio-Ecological Perspectives for Systems Changes: From rearranging objects to repacing rhythms” was reviewed by the […]
    • Systems Thinking Ontario as Systems Convening | ST-ON | 2024-10-21
      The 125th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario coincided with the closing day for the RSD13-RSDX online program.  As a regular systems convening group, we’ve had monthly meetings since January 2013. Zaid Khan moderated  a discussion including me (David Ing), Tim Lloyd, Allenna Leonard, and Kelly Okamura. We recollected starting as a spinoff from Design with […]

  • RSS on Media Queue

    • 2018/04/17 Susan Rogers on Prince, production and perception | Ableton
      Rhythm and pitch are primordial to language. Susan Rogers, after a career becoming Prince's recording engineer, turned to complete a PhD in psychology focused on music cognition and psychoacoustics.Read more ›
    • What to Do When It’s Too Late | David L. Hawk | 2024
      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 ›
    • 2021/06/17 Keekok Lee | Philosophy of Chinese Medicine 2
      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 […]
    • 2021/06/16 Keekok Lee | Philosophy of Chinese Medicine 1
      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 ›
    • 2021/02/02 To Understand This Era, You Need to Think in Systems | Zeynep Tufekci with Ezra Klein | New York Times
      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 ›
    • 2019/04/09 Art as a discipline of inquiry | Tim Ingold (web video)
      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 ›

  • RSS on Ing Brief

    • Installing WordPress Studio on Manjaro Linux
      In 2024, WordPress Studio was released, making installation on a local computer simpler. The instructions were modified from MacOS to Ubuntu Linux, by Daniel Kossmann, “How to install WordPress Studio in Ubuntu Linux” | Jun 15, 2024 at https://www.danielkossmann.com/how-to-install-wordpress-studio-ubuntu-linux/ I already had NVM installed, but in Terminal, with the result “command not found”. In the […]
    • Notion of Change in the Yijing | JeeLoo Lin 2017
      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 […]
    • World Hypotheses (Stephen C. Pepper) as a pluralist philosophy [Rescher, 1994]
      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, […]
    • The Nature and Application of the Daodejing | Ames and Hall (2003)
      Ames and Hall (2003) provide some tips for those studyng the DaoDeJing.
    • Diachronic, diachrony
      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 […]
    • Introduction, “Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, volume 2”, edited by F. E. Emery (1981)
      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 […]

  • Meta

  • Powered by FeedBurner

     Feedburner

    • Creative Commons License
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
    Theme modified from DevDmBootstrap4 by Danny Machal