Theory U and Other Textbooks For Rent

 I'm trying to catch up with older unfinished posts. This one's from the George Washington University bookstore in DC from our Labor Day visit for a post-wedding reception for B&J's DC friends and relatives.

University bookstores are always interesting and in the short time I was let off the leash, I perused a couple of shelves.

Maybe most noteworthy is that students can rent their books these days. The rental price wasn't a whole lot different from the used prices, but I guess it saves the hassle of trying to sell it back. And, of course, there are also digital books available online.

Here are a few that were on the shelves.  Note, I'm not recommending any of these because I haven't read them.  I'm just throwing you some brain candy.

"The Theory U (also called "U" methodology) is a change management method targeting leadership as process of inner knowing and social innovation developed by Otto Scharmer and originally based on a process known as the U-process or U-procedure (also called 'bath tub' and 'U Way') developed by Dr Friedrich Glasl and Dirk Lemson of the NPI (Netherlands Pedagogical Institute) in 1968 (Bos, 1974 and Friedrich Glasl & Leo de la Houssaye, 1975) and presented systematically from the 1980s. It has been a valuable tool in organisation development and social development since that time (Allison, 2008, GOSH Trust, Büchele, U). Recently it has been elaborated as Theory U by Otto Scharmer.

"The initial method developed by Glasl and Lemson involved a social process involving a few or many co-workers, managers and/or policymakers proceeding from diagnosis of the present state of the organisation plans for the future. They described a process in a U formation consisting of three levels (technical and instrumental subsystem, social subsystem and cultural subsystem) and seven stages beginning with the observation of organisational phenomena, workflows, resources etc., and concluding with specific decisions about desired future processes and phenomena. The method draws on the Goethean techniques described by Dr. Rudolf Steiner, transforming observations into intuitions and judgements about the present state of the organisation and decisions about the future."  (From Wikipedia)

Barnett (2001) in his theory-laden book The Meaning of Environmental Security, looks at the increasingly global recognition of environmental problems by examining what he calls the “collision of environment and security.” He places the concept in the realm of politics, though embedded in an increasing awareness of the interconnectedness of modern problems. The traditional approach, which Barnett calls a view of environment and security, is that the state is the object to be secured, and this view is consistent with strategic concerns about warfare and territorial defense and is influenced by political and international relations theory.

The alternative approach of including the environment as a dimension of security advocates the security of the biosphere and its ecosystems as a means of protecting the habitat of all life on Earth, emphasizing that it is the eco-systems and ecological processes that must be secured (that is, their health, integrity, and functioning maintained). By shifting the focus to the ecosystem, the concept of ecological security concerns the overall welfare of the planet. (From Haven D. Cook, "Transboundary Natural Area Protection: Broadening the Definition of National Security")

Just Give Money to the Poor:

Amid all the complicated economic theories about the causes and solutions to poverty, one idea is so basic it seems radical: just give money to the poor. Despite its skeptics, researchers have found again and again that cash transfers given to significant portions of the population transform the lives of recipients. Countries from Mexico to South Africa to Indonesia are giving money directly to the poor and discovering that they use it wisely – to send their children to school, to start a business and to feed their families. (from Kumarian Press)

The publisher of Irony has this quote from Barack Obama on its website:

“[Niebuhr] is one of my favorite philosophers. I take away [from his works] the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away . . . the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard.”—President Barack Obama

 From The Irony of American History which was first published in 1952:

 Our dreams of bringing the whole of human history under the control of the human will are ironically refuted by the fact that no group of idealists can easily move the pattern of history toward the desired goal of peace and justice. The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning. Our own nation, always a vivid symbol of the most characteristic attitudes of a bourgeois culture, is less potent to do what it wants in the hour of its greatest strength than it was in the days of its infancy. The infant is more secure in his world than the mature man is in his wider world. The pattern of the historical drama grows more quickly than the strength of even the most powerful man or nation.  [Copyright notice: Excerpt from pages 1–11 of The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr, published by the University of Chicago Press. ©1952 by the Estate of Reinhold Niebuhr. All rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice, including copyright information, is carried and provided that the University of Chicago Press is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the University of Chicago Press. (Footnotes and other references included in the book may have been removed from this online version of the text.)]

And here's where they'll gladly take your money.

After Seeing MLK Memorial, Clear that Architect Blew It Abbreviating the Quote

 Last week I listened to an NPR report on the critique of the design of the memorial - basically that a quote of MLK's was shortened and thus taken out of context and, in the words of Maya Angelou,  King was "made to look like an arrogant twit."

The memorial's executive architect, Ed Jackson Jr., is also interviewed.  He acknowledges Maya Angelou's greatness, says he owns some of her books, and that the quote was changed to a paraphrase based on time constraints.

"The statement that she made was very colorful and it  attracted the attention of the reader and that's what writers are supposed to do.  But I'm in the business of architecture and when we are faced to make design decisions, we have to do so with respect to a number of factors

• size, 

• shape,

• distance,

• perspective, 

• height,  

• depth, 

• weight, 

• size of letters, 

• font style.

The message had to be communicated succinctly and then allow the visitor to come around and face Dr. King and have that once in a lifetime experience."

He goes on to talk about the other inscriptions at the monument and how this one isn't going to overpower all the others.  (You can listen to him at the NPR audio - starting at 1:28)

My initial reaction to architect Jackson was not positive.   Font?  Depth?  Did he really say all those things?  Was he serious?  Yes, those are factors, but his job is to make all those things work, not to use them as an excuse to rewrite the words of the man he's honoring.

I visited the Martin Luther King memorial on the Tidal Basin Tuesday.

Now that I've seen the memorial, I have no sympathy for Jackson whatsoever.  He just botched it big time.  Who is he to change King's words?  "Well," he might say, "the symmetry would be better if we left some of his qualifiers out."  (I'm not going to even discuss what was changed and how it affected the meaning.  You can go to the NPR post to see that.)

His idea about seeing those words just before seeing the statue itself?  Well, we came to the statue along the path where the cherry trees line the Tidal Basin, so we saw the statue before we saw the quotes.

OK, here's the main statue of King. 

Behind it is the official entrance through 'the mountains.'  But, as I said, we came from the Tidal Basin side.  On the left (as you look at the statue in the picture above)  are the words "Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope."

The people are looking at the MLK likeness in the front.  That's the Jefferson Memorial on the other side of the Tidal Basin.

Then on the right side (facing the statute) is the controversial edited quote.

As you can see, there is plenty of room on this side of the monument.  He could easily have included four more lines.  He probably would say that it had to be two lines to match the "Mountain" quote on the other side.  He didn't say that, but why else would he have cut it short?  As I said, and you can see, there's plenty of room.  Or he could have used a different quote on this side or the other side so they'd match. 

To put this into a different context, at the nearby Lincoln Memorial the wall to the right of Lincoln has three panels with Lincoln's Second Inaugural Speech.

On the left side (facing Lincoln) is the Gettysburg Address.  It's only one panel.  But that didn't cause the designer's of the Lincoln Memorial to edit the 2nd Inaugural to match the Gettysburg Address.

If it's good enough for Lincoln, I'd say it's ok for Martin Luther King, Jr.

I usually try to see the different sides of a controversy and to understate the situation and let the readers come to their own conclusions.  But in this case it is so completely clear that the architect Jackson's defense of his rewriting of King's words is just mealy mouthed weaseling to justify the unjustifiable.  He was so consumed with his technical issues, that he completely missed the much bigger issue.  This is a monument to MLK, and MLK's original words, in context, and not some abbreviated version to 'fit' what Jackson thought was the proper visual style. 

Oh yes, the other quotes.  They're good.  And the wall they are on shows us how much influence Maya Lin's Vietnam Memorial Wall has influenced how we think of memorials.

Here are a couple of the quotes that it would do us well to consider and discuss regularly.

Of course, there's always the possibility that I missed something. That he gave NPR a much better reason than font size and distance etc. for what he did it. But it really sounds like damage control.

Whistler at the Freer - Peacocks and Caprice

One of my favorite museums on the National Mall in DC is the Freer Gallery.

 "The gallery was founded by Charles Lang Freer (1854–1919), a railroad-car manufacturer from Detroit who gave to the United States his collections and funds for a building to house them. The Italian-Renaissance-style gallery, constructed in granite and marble, was designed by American architect Charles Platt. When the gallery opened to the public in 1923, it was the first Smithsonian museum for fine arts. In subsequent years, the collections have grown through gifts and purchases to nearly triple the size of Freer's bequest." (Smithsonian)

It specializes in Asian art, but it also has Whistler's Peacock Room.  The Smithsonian's website tells the story of
this room, how it was designed by an architect for Fredrick  Leyland's porcelain collection.  It has a large painting of Whistler's so the architect consulted with Whistler who offered to touch it up a bit.  Instead he radically changed the room while his patron, Leyland, was away.  Leyland refused to pay the 2000 guineas Whistler billed him for the changes - which included the peacocks, and eventually paid him half the amount in pounds instead of guineas which made it even less. (you can read the whole story at the Smithsonian link.)

Perhaps in retaliation, Whistler took the liberty of coating Leyland's valuable leather with Prussian-blue paint and depicting a pair of peacocks aggressively confronting each other on the wall opposite The Princess. He used two shades of gold for the design and highlighted telling details in silver. Scattered at the feet of the angry bird are the coins (silver shillings) that Leyland refused to pay; the silver feathers on the peacock's throat allude to the ruffled shirts that Leyland always wore. The poor and affronted peacock has a silver crest feather that resembles the lock of white hair that curled above Whistler's forehead. To make sure that Leyland understood his point, Whistler called the mural of the fighting peacocks "Art and Money; or, The Story of the Room."

The story, and much better photos, are on the Smithsonian site.  They also have a panorama of the room showing the ceramics here.

Another room has Whistler's "Nocturne" pictures of the Thames at night. As you might imagine, I found them rather dark and didn't take a picture, but I did find this interesting tidbit about them at abcgallery.com.

In 1877, Whistler began to paint a series of ‘Nocturnes’ based on the Thames views at night. One of his most famous works in this series in Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge, originally called ‘Moonlights’. His patron, Frederick Leyland, an enthusiastic pianist, suggested the term ‘Nocturne’. Whistler replied, ‘I can’t thank you too much for the name Nocturne as the title for my Moonlights. You have no idea what an irritation it proves to the critics, and consequent pleasure to me; besides it is really so charming, and does so poetically say all I want to say and no more than I wish.’
Critics were outraged. John Ruskin, when seeing Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket and other night scenes at the opening exhibition of the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877, broke out in print: ‘I have seen and heard much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face’.  Whistler sued Ruskin for libel and won the trial. Whistler was awarded a farthing damages; his feelings on the subject are embodied in the Gentle Art of Making Enemies (1890).

ABCGallery.com reminds us there can be consequences of saying what you think:

The loss of Leyland as a patron and the effect of Ruskin’s harsh criticism left Whistler in a bad financial position. In 1879, Whistler was declared bankrupt and left for Venice for the next 14 months. During that stay in Venice, he produced four oils, many etchings and almost 100 pastels.

But Whistler was to recover.  The next year, 1889, according to the lengthy abcgallery biography, he was to meet Charles Lang Freer.


The room with the Nocturnes also has a picture called Caprice in Purple and Gold: the Golden Screen.

The model here was

". . . Whistler’s mistress, Joanna Hiffernan, called Jo. For a few years, this beautiful, red-haired Irishwoman managed Whistler’s affairs, keeping his house and assisting him with the sale of his work. To give herself respectability, she called herself Mrs. Abbott; her drunken father also referred to Whistler as ‘me son-in-law’. She sat for many of his . . ."  (abcgallery)

"Although The Golden Screen is in some ways a conventional Victorian painting, the model wears a Japanese costume and is seated on the floor like a courtesan. The composition is even more radical than the pose, considering the prevailing pictorial style: to Western eyes, the picture appears full of spatial puzzles, with a lacquer box that looks out of perspective and a folding screen that seems to float above a tilted floor. Whistler's concern was not to create a convincing illusion of space but to arrange shapes and colors like the patterns painted on the golden screen. Moreover, in documenting his collection, Whistler may have appreciated the typically Japanese means of structuring pictorial space, in which every object is shown in fuller dimension than is possible with Western perspective.
Whistler designed the frame and decorated it with Asian motifs, including badges of palm leaves and paulownia blossoms, in imitation of Japanese family crests." (Smithsonian)

This is a glimpse of just two rooms from the Freer, one of the smaller museums in the Smithsonian collection of museums.  Like all of the Smithsonian locations (including DC's zoo), the Freer is free. (Don't tell Eric Cantor.)  I'll try to get up more from the Freer soon.  

Oh, yes, here's a portrait of Whistler in 1865 by Henri Fantin-Latour.  Whistler would have been about  31.

Capital Bikeshare - Very Cool DC Bike Sharing Program

OK, I don't really know how cool it is because I only just saw it for the first time last night and I haven't tried it.  But it looks cool, and it has a cool website, and I want it to be successful.  It's called Capital Bikeshare.

Here's the station across the street from our hotel.  For $75 a year you can check out a bike any time.  You have 30 free minutes to get to another station.  Over 30 minutes and they charge you $1.50 and it gets higher the longer you keep it.  The idea is to encourage short rides so that as many bikes are available as possible at any given time.

I know I cut off the prices - $5 for a day and $15 for five days.  

There are 110 stations in DC and Arlington with 1100 bikes. 


The website shows all the stations and you can click on a station and see how many bikes and empty slots are available at any given time - so you can plan where to get or drop off a bike.  You can read the blog in 42 different languages, like Hungarian for Ropi or Spanish for Tomás, though they cold do fine with the English.

Here's their video explaining how it works.

Alaska to be Buried in Virginia

Speaker after speaker told us at Ted Stevens' memorial in Anchorage that, in Lisa Murkowski's words, "Ted was Alaska."


The Anchorage Daily News reports today that Ted is to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

For My DC Readers, The Goldenberg Duo - A Musical Treat

The world works in mysterious ways* and the internet makes it seem more so. There's a concert in DC on August 8, 2010 - the 36th anniversary of Richard Nixon's resignation**:

William Goldenberg, Distinguished Professor of Piano at NIU, and his sister, Susan Goldenberg, violinist in the Kansas City Symphony, have performed as the Goldenberg Duo for 30 years at various universities and performing arts series. On August 8, the Duo will perform at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. as part of that institution's ongoing performing arts series.

This comes from The Arts@NIU (Northern Illinois University) website, which probably explains why William Goldenberg, who is a professor there, is highlighted and not his sister, who is not a professor there.  So I'll highlight her here. 

So, what's the mysterious way here?  Well, I never heard of that website until today when someone got to my blog from that NIU post on the concert. At the very end it says:

An excellent review of a 2009 concert by the Duo may be found here.

Clicking on the 'here' above will get you to an April 2009 post I did of one of their Anchorage concerts.  I would distinguish between an 'excellent review' and a 'positive review.'  Excellent review refers to the quality of the review in my mind and while it is pretty good - mainly because of a perfect Richard Musil quote I had just read - I don't think NIU would have linked if it hadn't been positive about the music.   There's also a video from my little Canon Powershot which will give you a sense of the music. 

Anyway, I'd urge my DC readers to consider attending this concert on Sunday.  The Duo have a real musical connection and it should be fantastic.  From the Museum's site:

Steinway Series (Aug 8, 3pm)
Susan Goldenberg, violinist with the Kansas City Symphony, and William Goldenberg, distinguished professor of piano at Northern Illinois University, present an eclectic program including works by Frank Bridge, Samuel Barber, Claude Debussy, and Ludwig van Beethoven.

And it's free!  And air conditioned. 


*I realized as I was typing it that the opening sentence starts with a cliche, and so I thought I should at least find its origin.  Googling only got me uses of it online by other people.  Two quotation sites gave me:

Search Results for “World Works in Mysterious Ways”

No documents match the query.

Methinks that 'mysterious ways' simply means 'ways we don't understand.'  Probability explains a lot of 'mysterious ways' - after all, even though the odds of winning the lottery might be ten million to one, at least one person will buy a winning ticket.  And the power of google increases the odds people will make obscure connections they never would have made in the past.   

**I'd also note that the reason I know the exact date Nixon resigned is that my son was born two days before.  So, if you know him,  wish him a happy birthday Friday. 

Oh yes, one more connection.  I spent two summers at NIU in DeKalb.  That's where my Peace Corps training was. 

What Color is his Parachute? Remote is Relative

Andrew Sullivan has a guest blogger posting from Dutch Harbor.

by Dave Weigel

UNALASKA, AK -- When I agreed to blog here for a week I gave a quick word of warning: I was set to spend a week in Dutch Harbor, the remote fishing town made globally famous by 1) the series "Deadliest Catch" and 2) fish.

"Remote" is a word we like to misuse, like "awesome" or "ironic" or "electable." You go to a hunting cabin in West Virginia and you say you're in a remote location. But I am about as far from the great mass of humanity as I could be right now. This is obvious if you open a map and notice that the island is closer to Pyongyang than it is to Seattle. . . [it goes on here]

He parachuted in from DC and thinks he's remote. Of course the people who come from Dutch Harbor think DC is remote.   And maybe being far from the great mass of humanity gives one a chance to connect with the earth and life as most humans knew it before they all moved to the big cities.  But as long as he can get to Dutch Harbor's bars and internet, he's still far from where he can truly bond with nature.  And by the way, most of the guys with the Alaska T shirts aren't from Alaska.  [You have to read the rest of his post to get that.]

The center of the universe is where ever 'home' is. If you look at a map of the US and draw a line down the middle, Chicago is clearly to the right, or east, of that line. But as the settlers all started on the East Coast, they thought Chicago was in the Mid West.  And they still call Chicago the Mid West even today.  They think the East Coast is the Beijing of the New World.  Growing up in LA, I was always confused by references to us in 'the Far West.'  I lived there.  It wasn't far at all.  It seemed that New York was more appropriately the Far East.


So what is Dave Weigel doing in Dutch Harbor?  I guess he was trying to get as far away from his known world as he could.  The Washington Post reports:

David Weigel, who was hired by The Washington Post to blog about conservatives, resigned Friday after leaked online messages showed him disparaging some Republicans and commentators in highly personal terms.

Weigel, whose tenure lasted three months, apologized Thursday for writing on a private e-mail exchange that Matt Drudge should "handle his emotional problems more responsibly and set himself on fire." He also mocked Ron Paul, the Texas congressman, by referring to the "Paultard Tea Party."


The Daily Caller reported more inflammatory comments on Friday, with Weigel writing that conservatives were using the media to "violently, angrily divide America" and lamenting news organizations' "need to give equal/extra time to 'real American' views, no matter how [expletive] moronic." When Rush Limbaugh, who has called for President Obama to fail, was hospitalized with chest pains, Weigel wrote: "I hope he fails."[to continue reading the post]

I guess the editors don't read too many blogs.  Weigel probably assumed that it was ok to    write like that in private since most bloggers do it publicly on their blogs.  But if this was supposed to be "Inside the conservative movement" why did they have someone who doesn't sound at all like an insider.  Or maybe this is a glimpse into what it looks like on the conservative inside.

The Washington Post Ombudsman, on a story about the firing, raises a similar point.

. . . But his departure also raises questions about whether The Post has adequately defined the role of bloggers like Weigel. Are they neutral reporters or ideologues?

And, given the disdainful comments in his e-mails, there is the separate question of whether he was miscast from the outset when he was hired earlier this year. . .

So Dave, if you have some time in Anchorage on your way home, give a shout and meet some not very remote Alaskan bloggers. 

The National Gallery's East Wing

Back to DC Wednesday, we went through the underground passage from the National Gallery to the East Wing.

Then you look up.

Sol Lewitt

Lewitt up close

Max Ernst
[UPDATE Sept 2012:  I immediately thought this was the piece I'd seen at Dokumenta 3 in Kassel, Germany in 1964 and eventually found the picture of me sitting on it.]

Lichtenstein

Stuart Davis

There was something about this black and red painting that really drew me.  It's called Achilles and was painted by Barnett Newman in 1952.  Here it is close up.

Two Calders in a room full of Calders

Jackson Pollock close up

And this one is for my daughter

Turners, Constables, and Winslow at National Gallery

We're in Omaha for the conference now, but I want to catch up on some of the DC sights. We did a number of things very superficially, but just walking through some of these rooms was like an aesthetic massage.

We finally got to the National Gallery.

The museum has a 'quick visit highlights' sort of guide so you can see their = - what should I say? most famous, most significant, best works. This one of Napoleon by David was on the list. But we got there accidentally.

Doug had suggested we go see the Turners in our quick visit at the National Gallery in London and somehow we missed them altogether. He also had planned to take us out to Constable country - where Constable painted in Essex. So these pictures are for Doug. The one above is a Turner. This British site says Turner is the Romantic painter of light.

Here's a Constable.  We did have a day with sunshine, but from what I can tell this isn't typical. 

More Turner.

Turner close up.

Even closer.

This is a closeup from Edward Hicks' Peaceable Kingdom.

I liked this one, but didn't get the name of the artist.  But I'll put it up anyway. 

And this is one of my favorite Winslow Homer paintings.  It's called Right and Left. 

I like to see artists working in the galleries like this. When I took a computer art class long ago, we all had to copy a masterpiece. I found I really discovered so much more in the picture than I ever would have. I'd recommend to anyone to even just try to sketch a picture. You suddenly see details and nuances you don't catch on the first 50 looks.

OK, next will either be a post on the conference or the East Wing of the National Gallery. I have shots of some delicious paintings.

More DC Walking Wednesday

We're headed to the airport early today and after a plane change in Detroit, we should be headed for the conference in Omaha.  Meanwhile we were tourists again yesterday in DC.  After the bookstore we wandered past the White House. 

I didn't ask what this was about.  I didn't want to know.  But I had the impression they didn't like Obama. 

These folks were taking their pictures in front of the White House.

Here's a  Segway tour group also near the White House.  They did look like they were having fun.   It's good to know some people have discretionary income these days. 

We talked to a very nice woman named Denise who said she wasn't allowed to have her picture taken who works for an organization that does security and clean up in the downtown area.  She said this was the old post office and you can get tours up to the top of the tower.  But we wanted to see the National Gallery of Art.  But on the way, I couldn't resist stopping in at the Natural History Museum.

This tarantula was live in the insect zoo.

The Komodo Dragon - a kind of monitor lizard - was stuffed.

And then there were several rooms of skeletons.  These two are from a swordfish.

Woodpecker.

Alaska Brown Bear.  But now that I think about it, it isn't very big.

The Hope Diamond.

Then off to the National Gallery.  I'll post that later.