Ingenuity

The application of skill and imagination to create new things I’ve long thought that typewriters were amazing. I used the above machine in my freshman year of college. The image called out to me, so I decided to try and understand why. Consulting the web, I discovered that in 1575 an Italian printmaker named Francesco […]

Entrainment

Getting on board the thoughts of others The image of these tractor tires calls to mind the word “entrainment” because they are essential components of vehicles designed to pull and plow. According to several dictionaries, to “entrain” is to pull, drag or draw along. Because the word describes a process, social scientists apply the word “entrainment” […]

Tranquility

Reflecting as a floating leaf One among many leaves that float on the surface of life, I ride the waves. The calm— meaningful conversations, helping where help is needed, Linda’s cooking; Graeter’s ice cream; Skyline chili, Scott Hamilton’s tenor saxophone; Chuck Mangione jazz; Andrea Bocelli; Beebe Adair piano backroads to photograph; photographing in the studio; […]

The Noosphere

Outside and above the biosphere there is a field of mind. ”Because satellite dishes look skyward, I sometimes imagine lines of light, like coherent laser beams, streaming out of them toward their satellites. If those beams could somehow become visible at night, globally and simultaneously, the resulting web of crisscrossing lines and waves would be […]

Purpose And Mission Statements

A gateway to peace of mind Twenty-twenty will be remembered as a year filled with crises. The Coronavirus pandemic, Black Lives Matter, political stalemate, police brutality and social polarization top the list. And scientists say the coming decade will be the tipping point in climate change. All can be seen as a catalyst, moments when […]

The “Me” in Media

Is media the boss of me? Or am I the boss of it? What we communicate internally—whether in dreams, fantasies, fears, or aspirations—are to some degree written large upon the billboards, headlines, screens, and ads of our civilization. In this sense, inside media becomes inside me. —  Tom Cooper, Professor of Communication, Emerson College. What we […]

Success

  Personally, spiritually, professionally, economically, socially, and politically we’re all climbing ladders toward “success.” What prompted the selection of this image for contemplation was hearing someone in a television commercial ask, “What do all artists seek?” His answer: “Recognition.” Ugh! I couldn’t let that go. Did Michelangelo sculpt and paint to be recognized—or for money? […]

VI. Equifinality

  This is the 6th  in a series of postings on the theme of whole systems thinking. The whole system’s principle of “equifinality,” a term coined by the father of systems theory, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, holds that in open systems, for those that have external interactions, a given end state can be reached by many […]

Equifinality

Every member of a living system has equal opportunity to change it   The whole system’s principle of “equifinality,” a term coined by the father of systems theory, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, holds that in open systems, for those that have external interactions, a given end state can be reached by many potential means. To lock […]

Change

Aligning and allowing can make the best of it This image has special meaning for me. I was in high school, a new member of the camera club, wandering the streets of downtown Cincinnati at night looking for something to photograph. A building had recently been demolished at the corner of 5th and Plum Streets […]