Meridian Place Making

Natural Paramittas

2011-01-12T21:18:00.000-05:00

Funny, this First Week

2011-01-06T11:41:00.000-05:00

Funny, this pause just now - first week of January.

Seems to be working true to form, this annual renewal.

Me, I've seen that the days are getting longer. Gloom doesn't seem destined to consume all.

Miracles have been born. The old year has been cast off, a new one just begun, and

This week, just now, we await some epiphany - some glad tidings of this newness and possibility.

Again.

Then there's all the weeks to come.

Same as it ever was, and as unique as THIS time.

Again.

So be gentle on yourselves, all of them.

Next week will follow the impending epiphany, Sure enough.

Blessed be.

The First Time I Designed for Climate Change

2010-12-18T18:38:00.006-05:00

I suppose it had to happen sooner or later.

I mean, I'm a place-maker, and the nature of places IS changing faster and faster these days. I guess we can design for that.

But it DID happen a few weeks ago, to me, for the first time:

Just now we're envisioning the next development in the evolution of the Pontoon Docks, part of the Royal Docks in East London.

Came up with some good beginning ideas for the regeneration of the place:

Then Haewon asked me whether we would design it for before AND after - Climate Change that is.

Now, the locks into the Royal Docks are upriver of the Thames Barrier (a sea gate that can close if the tide is running too high up the river), so we're better off than some who are below the barrier - like Central London, Greenwich and Canary Wharf.

But, still and all, it seems there are changes afoot in the places where water and land meet, and this is one of them.

And it seems we're going to have to envision this place we're making, both before and after.

This is a first for me.

And how strange is that??

You? How are you adapting to the Earth Changes that accompany Climate Change??

Know any good examples of folk who have adapted their futures to this eventuality??

Any ideas how to make it good?

The Kid Thought I Was Santa Claus

2010-12-12T17:38:00.003-05:00

Bucharest Airport, December, 1998
By then my beard was completely white. But I didn't really know it.

My cheeks have always been rosy. Just happened. My sons cheeks do it too.

In the airport lounge, minding my own business, when this Rumanian kid, looks maybe 6, walks right into my space and, leaning on my lap, says "Santa?".

Such a smile. Such gladness in his eyes.

Interesting kid, I found out. Actually, about 12.

On his way to the American heartland.
His adoptive parents, missionaries, had spent the last 7 months getting him ready to leave Ceaucescu's mass orphanages, where he had lived since his birth.

The Dictator, obsessed with fecundity, outlawed birth control, both before and after conception. The mothers only option was the baby factories which filled myriad orphanages, cribs filling vast rooms, one next to each other, no room to pass among them.

This boy, I was told, was feral and without language when they met him.

Docile mostly, but when food entered the room - an animal, all claws and teeth, climbing across furniture and folks, battling to assure his survival.

Now, a few months later, smile beaming, looking beseechingly unto my eyes - "Santa?"

When I got home, I trimmed my now white beard, not yet ready to be a mythical old man.

And that was years ago now.

Still I think of him as these December 2010 days wend towards Yuletide yet again.

A Conversation with the Yonkers Rotary Club on Thriveability & Economic Development

2010-10-13T06:18:00.003-04:00

On October 7th, I started a conversation with the Yonkers Rotary Club about new ways of framing what is traditionally called economic development - what I prefer to call Community, Cultural and Commercial Development.

I'd like to invite the readers of my blog to join that conversation. The text is at this link.

Have a look. Add some comments. Send me a note.

Let's help good things happen.

The Grace of Pursuing Skillful Means

2010-10-13T03:20:00.000-04:00

An important dharma path for me has long been the grace of pursuing ever more “skillful means”: How to skillfully be what this life, this manifestation of these myriad dharmas, gives rise to. It is one of the bittersweet benefits of 55ness to accept that, in this life, we can actualize this intention ( the work called for in the atta dipa) merely to a degree. At moments, I can see just that which can be achieved as great accomplishment. Other times the glass seems half full, at best.

For example, yesterday it struck me, articulately for the first time, that for me, in this life, most of the formative contributions to my offspring had already happened. Other youths I meet appear to have been raised more skillfully, to have what seem more fortuitous myriad dharmas shaping their lives. Yet, I tell myself, I have moved my cluster of kharma legacies down the pike. My kids are wondrous, and fountains of dharma, shaping what will arise from their ancient twisted kharma, more or less skillfully. I know they aspire (at least at some moments) to evolve, to be the source of ever more beneficient kharma. I know I’ve, more or less skillfully at various moments, armed them with the faith that the nest step can always be towards redemption, towards the tathagata’s call in the Atta Dipa.

Sogyal Rinpoche, in a passage read years ago, one I can’t find again yet, discussed how what some call reincarnation can be seen as the gentle evolution of lineages towards enlightenment (lightening up the tangle of ancient twistedness??). Not a given unique “soul” moving from skin bag to skin bag, but a cluster of dharmas, moving through evolutionary time & its matrix of place/moments, living in these fleeting humanesses, related to lineages of biology and also socio-biology, tendencies and proclivities, mindfulness and mindlessness, moving towards . . . . . . . what? Getting nowhere, but tending towards . . . . . grace, liberation, freedom from . . . . what seems to ail us (I guess). Then . . . what whatness? An emptiness with room for clarity and grace? A bodhisattva’s effort? Whatness??

Or so it seems.

Did you ever see this poem?:

MYRIAD BECOMINGS

Bice C Wilson, Late Winter 2007

Becoming,

ephemeral collusion

Interweaving myriad dharma vectors

tendencies become transient actualities

At every scale of time a stillness

Is,

which,

seen differently

simultaneously shape shifting –

never IS the same.

No thing HAS to be, one moment to the next,

We are given, in this fleeting form

gateways to mindfulness,

senses animating our dance

And somewhere,

among the warp and woof of the

many becomings

we are just now

Sings this spark that knows and chooses,

conducting whatever wholeness we can find

step by step, dancing along the path.

Dancing in fields open, empty of must be,

constrained by conventions,

dancing degrees of volition

the sublime suchness

Open to our intention

Emptily

Now, we again harvest what we've sown.

2010-08-04T18:22:00.005-04:00

In the ways of some of my ancestors, these days,
   The end of July -- beginning of August,
Are the days when the sun really starts to deliver the sustenance that will take us through another year,

These are the days when we start to seriously reap what we've sown.

My ancestors called it Lughnasadh, named after Lugh Lamhfada, Lugh-of-the Long Arm,
who was,
   for a while,
   to some who inhabited Ireland
   the sun god, god of all the arts, all that is made -
   He whose long arm reaches down and makes all that life possible.

Right Now,
Summer is at it's maximum,
And just this past Saturday, we woke up in my house and it felt like a fall morning.

Cause right now, summer is at its maximum, and fall is a-comin' in.

You get a glimpse of it in the scent on a breeze,
In a certain kinds and qualities of the light,
   In the way the air feels, just in passing,

Just now -
A glimpse of Fall.

SO, the change has begun,
And the Harvest has begun.

And we'll see how the harvest season will be.

   May it be the best of what you've hoped for and husbanded.

   May you thrive among all that it is.
.

1st Expedition to Pugsley Creek, Bronx North America - Deirdre, Max & Bice - 2010.07.30

2010-07-31T00:21:00.004-04:00

Here at Pugsley Creek,

We found the soup of Bronx life, emerging from under the landfill,
Middens of Bronxes past,
Once marshes beneath our feet now roadbed over crushed mountains laid over the detritis of our pre-decessors, Just Here,

Where the Soup og Bronwes livelihood emerges from man made seemingly dry land,

Out to join Long Island Sound, on it's way into Hell's Gate,

Soon past the maelstrom just past Riker's Island, and the runways of Idlewild.

See the slide show: http://bit.ly/Expedition2PugsleyCreek-1

Multi-media feedback loop - I picture them picturing each other, her picturing me too.

Slides have caption poems,

To the left you see the landfill, accreted over the Bronx's centuries,

And just here, a retaining wall holds back our waste, like a spoon squeezing a tea bag.

And that rivluet emerging - Our Tea,

Heading for the open sea.

Essence of our run-off,
Everything we pour in the earth, just upstream, into our catchbasins and sewer grates.

What seeps from our cellars, and drips from our cars.

What you dropped, just two days ago, and kicked to the curb.

Here, distilled and blended with the actions of others -

Bronx Tea, the soup of our lives.

And to the right, more of our ecosystems,
Waiting for the nourishment the once march has always brought here.

Eating our soup, Bronx Tea, the essence of Bronx Life.

You OK with that??

You hungry yet??

Community Media Evolving in our time

2010-07-09T16:51:00.002-04:00

Thoughts bas I travel home from the Alliance for Community Media Conference in Pittsburgh this week.

See: http://bit.ly/BCW-ACM-2010

H. Donald Wilson's Memorial

2010-06-07T09:47:00.002-04:00

On a crisp, clear Thanksgiving,

My Family motored out in an open boat,
to the bight at Cohasset Bay.

H. Donald Wilson's ashes in a bisqueware basin, crafted by his grandson
Noah Andrew Wilson.

The Pilot of the boat was Douglas Wilson, HDW's nephew,
And sheltering from the cutting wind was his widow,
Mary Louise Swan Baron Wilson (everyone knows her as Peter),
His Daughters
Edith Ramally Wilson & Anne Baron Wilson,
His son,
Bice C. Wilson,
Other grandson,
Ian Benjamin Wilson,
And daughter-in-law,
Lorraine Marion Frye-Wilson.

At the bight the boat paused, and Noah gingerly
Released the basin of Don into the edge of the Atlantic,
Among migrating Blues, Eels
And Stripers,
Eel Grass, Lobsters meandering
Crabs scuttling.

But that was years ago now, and HDW's ashes are now in every ocean -

As they always were.

The only memorial that stands for my father is an Oak Tree,
Not far from the banks of a river many don't know exists
The West Branch of the Mamaroneck, as it, in turn, meanders
Past the City Dump.

An Oak tree planted by his neighbors amid proclamations from local legislatures,
On a misty day, I think in the fall.

Just yesterday I visited the tree,
at the intersection between eternally secret paths everyone walks,
Where of a fragrant summer's night,
Teens rendezvous, and
Dog Walkers linger in the gloaming -

And leave when the mosquitoes arise.

Just yesterday I plucked inch high
Garlic Cress and Poison Ivy
From the base of the Oak,

Then planted a spiral of Lilly of the Valley
Whirling around the mound surmounted by the Oak
A Jewel of Violets at the head of his plaque, amid a
Crescent of False Solomon's Seal (that seemed true to me).

From the side of the road on the hill above
I gathered cast off tree parts
Relics of the March Storms,

With these segments of pitch pine
And weathered rough sawn planks
Buttressed by rotting logs
Garden debris dumped illegally
One random cobble stone,

I built benches
Buttressed by all of these

Placed a single stump

Just so.

SBSVC – An Engine for Community, Cultural & Commercial Well-being

2010-04-21T18:02:00.001-04:00

The South Bronx Social Venture Center (SBSVC) has been designed in fulfillment of BronxNet's 12 year strategic plan which calls for the creation of 4 walk-in community media centers so as to enhance the impact of the burgeoning Creative Economy, knowledge industries and human services sectors on Community, Cultural & Commercial well-being of the Bronx.

SBSVC's proposed location is in the FORMER civic heart of the South Bronx – the former Bronx YMCA building, where the first inter-racial swim team in America started during the 1960's, now a Juvenile Detention facility.

SBSVC's business model is the archetypal marketplace – a dedicated omni-potential place where certain sectors can gather, build their community, cultural & commercial eco-nomies, and thereby their well-being.

SBSVC's Business Model & Architectural Program -

Here's the simple architectural program (the translation of SBSVC's business model into spatial terms) of the SBSVC.

Yes, there is a detailed, sustainable, finance-able business model at the roots of the South Bronx Social Venture Center.

BronxNet has stable, long term revenues related to cable franchise revenues, and can therefore take long term financing in order to carry the cost of capital projects. Of course, every capital dollar that comes from grants or other subsidies will liberate Bronxnet cash flow for use funding program activities.

In fact the development of SBSVC is key to BronxNet's long term financial sustainability – they will own and manage SBSVC, & make revenue from the various anchor institutions who will share the facility, the resources, the capabilities and the marketplace of ideas, careers and well-being that SBSVC is.

Key to this model is the assumption that the Media-Flex Space that comprises SBSVC will be of use to anchor institutions, non-profits, social entrepreneurs and Bronxites for a long time. The names of the users may change. Hopefully their missions will evolve as the community, its culture and commercial fabric evolves – partly shaped by the capabilities, skills and resources at SBSVC.

Should work, don't you think??

A MARKETPLACE FULL OF SHARED RESOURCES

SBSVC's whole premise is that the access to programs and shared resources it offers will significantly increase the rate of community, cultural and commercial development in its environs. For School children, youth-at-risk, and college students, nascent leaders and entrepreneurs, this will be a cross-roads, gathering place and gateway to livelihoods in the Knowledge, & Human Services Industries and the Creative Economy.

SBSVC is not an Incubator – the new careers and businesses it's services will engender will happen throughout the Bronx, with a concentration in households and commercial spaces in its immediate neighborhood – an area once famous as "Fort Apache", when the Bronx was burning – a neighborhood now home to 1,500 new residences and the home of the new campus of Boricua College.

Complementing SBSVC's educational and workforce development programs in the Creative Economy, Knowledge Industries and Human Services sectors will be a Small Business Mentoring Program specifically to help citizens inspired by its programs to create thriving businesses.

THE MARKETPLACE MODEL

The 100,000 square feet at SBSVC is both dedicated to the use of those social ventures whose services are essential to supporting the well-being and development of its catchment area, and also dedicatedly flexible in terms of the use of its shared resources.

Like any Marketplace – the gathering place itself is permanent, while the services and goods available to the public will change as the needs of the catchment area evolves.

Certain demographic needs will be perpetual – there will be children to raise, youth to find a way in the world, elders to care for and learn from. There will be a need for skills building and mentoring, for community access to education, technology, social networks and workspaces not found in the typical home.

Other Anchor Institutions will have Community Access Offices on site and will schedule the use of classrooms, gathering spaces, and human and technical resources at SBSVC in order to serve their demographics and fulfill their missions. For many of these partners at SBSVC, the nature of their short term, program oriented funding and scale of their needs for program space will scale and evolve. By limiting their permanent leaseholds to the Community Access Offices – walk-in spaces sharing the first floor lobby where Bronxites can connect with opportunities and receive mentoring as they shape their skill-sets and talents – by limiting the partner leaseholds to these small spaces, those partners are not burdened by long term fixed costs, while they are also able to ebb and flow in the services they provide.

SBSVC'S GROWING LIST OF PARTNER INSTITUTIONS

To date, BronxNet has established preliminary partnering relationships with 5 Borough and Neighborhood Anchor Institutions:

RAIN Inc Senior Center
1. RAIN will produce and manage Senior Programs at SBSVC, and all Bronxites will have access to RAIN's Mentoring & Knowledge Center.
2. SBSVC will provide connectivity, data telecom and multi-media content management to this facility.
Bronx Community College (BCC) will:
1. Coordinate college and continuing ed programs in support of the missions of SBSVC and its other partners, as well as career and educational counseling. BCC Students will have access to SBSVC programs, classes and shared resources.
Bronx Council on the Arts (BCA) will:
1. Coordinate arts related programs in
  1. Intro to Creative Economy
  2. Fine Arts
  3. Applied Arts
  4. Career & Business Skills in the Creative Economy
  5. Arts related careers, i.e.: Arts Handling, Arts Administration, etc.
2. Administer Art studio spaces and Artists-in-Residence programs at SBSVC.
3. Provide career and small business mentoring in the arts
Nos Quedamos (NQ) will:
1. Produce health related educational programs in association with its nearby Community Health Center.
2. Realize it's long held dream of opening an urban design academy, to be called: "Nos Quedamos Center for Bronx's Future". The academy will utilize faculty and program resources from BCC, Pratt and other educational partners, as well as the shared spaces & broadband resources of SBSVC.
Renaissance EMS (REMS) will produce, provide and manage:
1. Physical Fitness programs utilizing the existing gym, pool and facilities.
2. K-12 after school programs using SBSVC Shared Resources.
3. Music Education to all generations, with a particular focus on youth, in association with El Sistema USA.
4. Performance Rehearsal Hall & Multi-Media Recording Studio Spaces

BronxNet is engaged in active discussions with the following Anchor Institutions leading toward a partnering relationship:

Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation (BOEDC) may:
1. Provide Small Business and Entrepreneurial Support services, including:
  1. Mentoring
  2. Social Networking
  3. Classes
  4. Finance Assistance
New York Botanical Garden may:
1. Use SBSVC to make their educational and career development programs readily accessible in the South Bronx.
2. Assist in the design and management of the Urban Rooftop Ecology and Agriculture elements of SBSVC
  1. The Greenhouse Commons
  2. Roof Gardens and Orchards
3. Produce Multi-media content originated at SBSVC modeling urban ecology policies and activities for web viewers
Pratt Institute (PI) may:
1. Be the lead educational institution supporting the Nos Quedamos Center For the Bronx's Future

It is SBSVC's intention to ever broaden this list of partners.

It is also central to our business model that the list will evolve, over the years, with stability provided by BronxNet's long term lease, and those of certain other key partners. One of the important replicable models in the facility is its "Social Venture Flex Space", 40,000 sf of leasehold space whose users will change as the needs of the community change.

BronxNet has had working relationships as a Community Media Access provider with all of these partners over the past 18 years.

Each Partner will be a member of the advisory board responsible for coordinating SBSVC programs and resources, and will be responsible for funding their use of SBSVC spaces and resources. In this way, these partners will be provided the use of SBSVC resources with minimal capital investment and operational outlay, while making SBSVC whole for its investment through payment of rent and fees for SBSVSC services.

Each partner will responsible for raising the program funding required to operate the programs they organize, while SBSVC & its advisory board will coordinate and collaborate on fund raising.

The First Floor has 2 entrances – One to the 5,000sf Bronx Hall, a multi-purpose gathering, performance and content capture space, and one to the Community Access Shared Spaces utilized by the range of anchor institutions described above.

The Hall is entered from a community park, past a cyber café, through a Multi-Media Gallery flanked by Conference / Classrooms.

The Community Access Tenant Lobby arrives among 5 Community Access Offices where Bronxites can find opportunities for training and access to arts resources from advanced electronic media to urban design, painting, poetry and all the practical skills that might enable a creative person or a local entrepreneur to build a successful life/work/business.

The long dormant swimming pool and gymnasium will be managed as a community fitness center by a local K-12 after school program. This same agency will provide Music Arts lessons and be the basis of new choruses, bands and orchestras, preparing the next generation of great Bronx musicians.

Meridian Design’s Research & Development Page

2010-04-15T15:20:00.001-04:00

Knowing that Ideas Animate Architecture, and that Practices must be visionary, and visionaries must be practical, our firm has always invested in Research & Development. We gladly participate in the evolution of our communities, of the market segments & industries we serve.

On this page you'll find a multi-media gallery of this aspect of our work. Have a look.

Join the Conversations – Each Title below provides a link to more details about these aspects of our practice.

Sustainability and

the Multi-media Workplace

Our firm has long been a leader in building a culture of sustainability. At the 2010 National Association of Broadcasters Conference, Antonio Argibay presented a paper exploring how the energy intensive Multi-media workplace can re-vision it's workplaces and systems to enhance sustainability.

Place-Making

The simplest description of what we do is that we are Place-makers. We pay attention to the complex conditions currently shaping a place, to the vision, needs and aspirations of our clients that might shape what that place becomes, and to the process by which hundreds of people and places will contribute to intervening in what is to make it better, healthier, more conducive to well-being.

Bice's Blog on this subject can be accessed by clicking on the title above.

Designing the Intelligent Public Way

Since 2008 our firm has been convening this Salon Series and web based collaboration space exploring the integration of Information and Communication Technology into our comprehensive planning for Community, Cultural and Commercial Development.

Meridian Music Project

Bice's practice has long explored ways that the Places we help make can express the pattern of life we all inhabit. This project involves communities collaborating to create Place-Moment Sculptures in Civic Space, each of which expresses, in form, in sound and in data/imagery the daily moment when that place passes under the sun – local high noon.

In aggregate, all the place-moment notes amount to a perpetual multi-media symphony expressing the earth's evolution.

Have a look.

Thriveability

Many folks have begun to question whether Sustainability is something to aspire to. Do you want to just sustain yourself, is that perhaps like bread and water.

Perhaps we want to Thrive. Thriveability is a new Meme.

Bice C. Wilson was asked to contribute a page to a curated crowd-sourced web-book built around words that are aspects of Thriveability.

So, How Is It By You? - Citizen Science Building the Authentic Narrative of the Pattern of Life

2010-04-02T18:41:00.011-04:00

Each of us, each of our communities, paying attention to how it is by Us -
Around us.
How does it smell?
Is it warmed by the sun?
What grows there?
What thrives there?
What's thriving depends on the wellbeing of where we are?
Are our actions enhancing life throughout the ecosystem we are but parts of?

How would we know?

By devising the cultural means to share our understandings of How It Is By Us.

Through perpetual Citizen Science Programs in our Communities , documenting the pattern of life in the ecosystem we are merely a fragment of, each of us.

See Meridian Design's Concept Paper calling for the development of programs engaging citizens in urban design and related citizen science programs. We’ve been helping develop an urban design academy in the South Bronx and are working towards similar programs in my home town of White Plains.

WHY THIS IS ESSENTIAL TO LONG-TERM COMMUNITY SUSTAINABILITY?

An essential and currently largely ineffective basis for judging the merits of proposed environmental changes is to assess their “CUMULATIVE IMPACT” on the well-being of the living systems we inhabit.

Cumulative impact is a cultural construct, one we must define, and to the degree we wish to have uncontroversial civic processes to use this construct, we must develop the skillful means, language and common understandings necessary to civil discourse.

That isn’t working well for the communities I’m a part of just now.

For cumulative impact to be meaningful we need an effective means to account for the cumulative effects of our inhabitation of the landscape and thereby to concur, without rancor on the full cost impacts of our policies and decisions.

Maybe, here in White Plains, our Citizen Science can become an endless and authoritative record of the cumulative impact of human inhabitation of these hills, and of the bottom-lands where once the mist on the marshes looked like “white plains” from the surrounding highlands – could work in your community too.

Want to help?

Scientifically spring, in spite of . . .

2010-03-21T23:06:00.003-04:00

Scientifially, I suppose
There can no longer be any question
That spring will follow

Winter,

Rather inexorably.

Still, I am startled -

To see the life returning so suddenly,

buds bursting,

Amidst what was justly grey and, frankly, full of pain, prolonged, seemingly lifeless, frozen.

How can it be that as a loved one fades towards death, as so many doubt that there is a vital future,

Just the same,

Flowers burst forth,
And joy arises

The sun warms the sleeping greens, and they awaken, full of hope

Neither knowing, nor caring, about
What happened while they slept.

Now, they awaken, simply thriving on the rich humus of past lives,

Lives once mourned,

Now simply nourishment for
Those actors in the inexorable next act.

Place-Making Towards Thriving

2010-03-15T01:03:00.004-04:00

All thriving occurs some Place -
In Community

Vast as the earth, Intimate as your heart.

You, sitting on that rock,

Your loved ones thriving in their dwelling places,

Always some Place,

Never alone

The extended pattern of life we inhabit

Our entire interdependent web

Ever evolves

Towards thriving.

Even when it’s killing us.

This aspiration, an ancient desire,

as yet ephemeral,

Always ephemeral,

Creates by every action

The well-being of myriad Places

Every moment, every day

Places we are in, and Places seemingly remote yet

Always specific, knowable

These make our being

Before / Here / Later

Possible.

RIGHT NOW Unseen Places exist so we can thrive.

Beings sacrifice in our names,

Proffer gifts for our well-being.

Products of Place,

Nourishing us on their way to nourishing some Place else.

We can know and understand that web,

In ways our ancestors only hoped to –

Now knowing, we

Can take responsibility for all the Places ever

Aggregating in us,

That makes us Place-makers,

In every place-moment

Responsible,
Joyful, mournful
Generative, even when destructive

SO, Here, Now, You,

There,

Reading This in That Place/Moment,

US,

together,

Reading This in our Place/Moments --

How can WE build Place-making culture –

Become ever more skillful Place-makers,

Ever enhancing the beauty of the pattern of life?

What are the skillful means we can avail ourselves of?

What do you know? Teach us. Join us.

http://thrivable.wagn.org/wagn/Book+Values#Place-Making [Have a look, Page Around]

Thriveability Aspiration

2010-03-15T00:44:00.003-04:00

Exploring the step beyond sustaining well being – How about thriving, beyond surviving.

I mean, I know it’s a lot to ask, but. . . . . .

Is it too much to ask?

Thriveability Meme is launched and now abroad, burgeoning.

See just “published” curated, crowd sourced, Web Deck, bookish wagn.com Page, . . . . [whatever we call this constantly morphing content thingee product, just until the name changes again].

http://thrivable.wagn.org/wagn/Book+Full

In there, In the “Values” section, my Place-Making

Have a look.

Enjoy.

Paramitas, Natural?

2010-03-15T00:41:00.007-04:00

Natural Paramitas

BCW 15 March 2010

Dancing on the knife edge of practice aspiring to effortless discernment - how to do what comes naturally ?

Ever Mindful that right action has no inherent nature that will be easily discernible from:

Distraction, or

The natural by-product of indigestion,

Compulsion or

Habit or,

Maybe the legacy of all our ancient, twisted karmas, arising from beginning-less greed, hate and delusion

Thus we practice towards a bodhisattva’s natural discernment free of this/that & me/mine, we

Dance [Generosity, Morality, Forbearance, Effort, Meditation, Wisdom, Generosity, . .] Dancing on the tao of natural practice,

Step

ginger, step

Sometimes experiencing moments of joyful ease --

Sometimes, Just Sitting.

EVOLVING TOWARDS A SUSTAINABLE WHITE PLAINS: VISION, CULTURE & PRACTICE

2010-01-13T01:55:00.001-05:00

Access the text of my 12 January 2010 Keynote Speech

at the

White Plains Council of Neighborhood Associations'

STATE OF SUSTAINABILITY FORUM.

Life-and-Death by Uchiyama Roshi

2010-01-10T15:25:00.004-05:00

Water isn't formed by being ladled into a bucket

Simply the water of the whole universe has been ladled into a bucket

The water does not disappear because it has been scattered over the ground

It is only that the water of the whole universe has been emptied into the whole universe

Life is not born because a person is born

The life of the whole universe has been ladled into the hardened "idea" called "I"

Life does not disappear because a person dies

Simply, the life of the whole universe has been poured out of this hardened "idea" of "I" back into the universe

Living in Geological Time, Here in these Headwaters

2010-01-06T09:36:00.001-05:00

Like mountains that cast off

Boulders,

Boulders crashing into

Ravines,

Mountain shards,

Cracking & Splintering their way

Towards becoming sand,

deep in the ocean -

And soon enough, ages hence, becoming mountains of a different stone, yet again.

We,

Each of us,

Live,

Act,

In geological time & space.

The water you drink was also consumed by your ancestors.

The water you cast away will be consumed by your descendants.

The gold you wear may have been worn by Cleopatra,

And the bullet casing in your gun may have once been a cannon on a Man-O-War.

The carbon that makes up your body has been millions of things before it,

briefly,

became part of you.

Your footsteps,

Where you just trod,

They eroded what was.

Now on its way to becoming something else.

SO,

Are you Mindful of YOUR Footprint

On this earth,

Here, in White Plains,

In the highland headwaters,

Of the Bronx & Mamaroneck River Watersheds,

Rolling down hill into the Long Island Sound Estuary,

One of the three mega-watersheds - (Hudson Valley, Newark Basin, Long Island Sound) - Here,

In the Meeting-of-Waters Bio-region -

Where the Appalachians and the Adirondacks

Meet the Atlantic?

Winter Winds

2010-01-03T04:02:00.001-05:00

Winter winds
Test ancient oaks
Liberating once branches
Ready to become
Something else

Random Hafiz at local New Years 1/1/10

2010-01-01T17:49:00.003-05:00

At Nowruz - The Persian New Year, (which has not been yet this year)

It is common for the chief celebrant to open a volume of the poetry of Hafiz,
randomly,
and to read the poem discovered.

Just now,
well, a few minutes ago,
on this other New Year,

I picked up a volume of Hafiz & discovered this:

A Still Cup

For God

To make love,

For the divine alchemy to work,

The Pitcher needs a still cup.

Why

Ask Hafiz

Anything more about

Your most

Vital

Requirement?

Bice C. Wilson's FCC National Broadband Strategy Testimony

2009-12-13T20:31:00.009-05:00

Offered Dec. 11, 2009

At Columbia University

My Background

My name is Bice C. Wilson. I’m a 13th generation resident of the Hudson Valley Bio-region. I live in White Plains, NY, attended Architectural School in Brooklyn, and for nearly 30 years I’ve been one of the two Principals of Meridian Design Associates, Architects, P.C. based in Manhattan.

I am, by profession, a place maker - an architect, and urban planner.

Everything I do considers human interventions that affect the well-being and vitality of places. And so, my testimony today will concern the failure of our civic culture to appropriately plan how our nation's information and communications infrastructure could enhance Community, Cultural & Commercial Development in the neighborhoods of our nation.

Shortcomings in Current US ICT Planning Culture

In 2008 it became clear to me that those building our information and communications technology (ICT) were acting as though their technology was evolving in a parallel universe, separate from the civic culture I am a part of, of design, public policy, planning and place-making.

In response, our firm established a brain storming process to explore this emptiness; the space between the world of ICT visionaries and the world of place-making; with participants from around the country - from libraries, technology companies, academia, designers, and entrepreneurs. This process was called DESIGNING THE INVISIBLE PUBLIC WAY, because the Broadband infrastructure we are strategizing about today is the bones of a new INVISIBLE public right of way.

INVISIBLE because; even though it is a brand new nervous system connecting the sense organs of our communities and institutions, threading its way through the urban fabric,; UNLIKE our roads and railroads, it is invisible and we do not talk about it ,

we do not intentionalize it,

we do not design it,

Our civic culture does not shape it for the well-being of our communities which are SO in need of the vitality made possible only by using this the new source of power –

Not water power,

Not steam power,

Not carbon fuel power,

- Information power.

Where information flows, new futures can happen.

Where It's Not, You Can't

In the Designing the Invisible Public Way (DIPW) process we coined a simple phrase that says it all –

“Where it’s not, you can’t”.

Where there is not the ability to connect into the World Wide Web, you cannot

Do commerce,

Trade information,

Build skills,

Share ideas,

Build human networks,

Make Creative Content

Have fun

Do ALL the things that people do there,

You pretty much can’t do anything that is going to connect you to contemporary Community, Culture & Commerce.

Where it’s not, you can’t

In addition we realized that there is already a VAST EXISTING NETWORK OF CREATIVE ECONOMY, KNOWLEDGE INDUSTRY AND HUMAN SERVICES INSTITUTIONS strewn through all the neighborhoods of our communities and cities,

(well, except for those dark spots, without access to the very institutions critical to the future success of their citizenry – but that’s for other testimony)

Each of these anchor institutions could, if provided with the vitality and potential that comes along with contemporary information and communications systems,

Could dramatically enhance the effectiveness of its core mission,

Could serve as a gateway for the skills building and subsequent use of these resources for its community and client groups, and

Could also serve as enhanced engines of community, cultural and commercial development.

Policy Recommendations:

I suggest that community planners, economic development planners, concerned citizens and municipal officials should integrate this urban nervous system into the spectrum of concerns that are the focus of comprehensive community planning.

The first step in accomplishing that integration will be to map the pattern of Anchor Institutions in our Community Geography, and to assess:

the degree to which these institutions are served by world-class ICT resources and
the capability of those institutions to utilize those resources that become available.

One often hears the excuse that ICT network providers have to build towards reliable sources of revenue, such as buildings with paying customers or wealthy neighborhoods who can purchase premium entertainment products.For example, after 9/11/2001, Westchester COunty was contacted by myriads of potential businesses that wished to relocate to the county. There were many vacant office buildings without internet connectivity.

Becuase they had no tenants, the local provider, who often had fiber passing the buildings, would not connect to them.

Without connectivity, no business would locate there.

This cost the county many jobs and much revenue.

This argument is profoundly disturbing - such an argument would not be considered righteous in the context of the design of any other essential public right of way.
I suggest that a policy should be established to:

Incentivize the deployment of broadband resources broadly and universally to anchor institutions as an essential condition of granting franchises to the controlled monopolies for those services, and
That strictly enforced penalties should ensue if providers fail to provide ubiquitous services - a failure that is woefully endemic in our nation.

I would like to place in the public record the URL of the collaboration website used in what has now become named “Designing the INTELLIGENT Public Way” –

www.dipw.meridiandesign.com

You will also find a link there to a focused study the brain-trust pursued exploring the application of the ideas developed to the future of the borough of the Bronx.

Thank you very much.

Place / Moment Expressions

2009-12-05T10:59:00.003-05:00

This site describes The Meridian Music Project,

http://sites.google.com/site/meridianmusicproject/

Have a look.

Comment, if the spirit moves you.

Enjoy

On Merriness,

2009-12-02T11:51:00.008-05:00

inspired by the Spirit of these times,

Seeking companions in remembering how to do it.

ON MERRINESS

BCW - Solstice 2004

Great Word, Merry.

Old english.

I'm told it has connections to a kind of magic -

A transformative, dancing deep gladness,

A conviviality that can't help but sing,

A refreshing connection with being as beautiful as you really are,

Among a circle of companions,

all bathed in a glamour,

Confident that unbridled joy in just what is,

just who we are,

is enough,

At least for this while.

Merry –

Sadly,

A vestigial intention,

Now,

A word with faint echoes of magic.

We gather for the ceremony,

not knowing how to enter in,

not knowing how to disrobe and cleanse ourselves,

How to allow ourselves that Holy Day respite.

Wanting so badly the respite,

Recalling that food and drinking are involved,

that gathering has something to do with it.

Scared to raise a toast,

to laugh uproariously.

to forgive a slight,

to give grace in the moment,

Waiting for the rememberer of the ceremony to arrive and awake the magic for us

(forgetting that the remeberer was lost,

years ago,

and that with their last breaths

they hoped we now knew that

the ceremony was to be found inside us, among us,

could be sparked by the spirit and the trust the times need)

Knowing the need in these dark times to find beauty,

Even in our peril,

To trust the deepness of the cold nights,

Knowing that the cold fields patiently await the efforts of our springs

(Which are next - but not yet),

and meanwhile,

In these coldest moments,

Even still, Life stirs,

Deep beneath the creeping frost,

(Maybe not knowing that Life is

Strengthened by the sound of song and dancing feet –

Awaits this vital cue, ours to give,

Sometimes forgotten),

Meanwhile,

These days are right

for us to gather at hearths and tables,

Singing,

Telling our stories,

Finding lost love in the leaf litter of past life.

Beloved,

Trust yourself in this season.

Seize the threads of merriment and

Patiently,

with the grace YOU are,

Restore the magical fabric of joyous impulsive trust,

Start the singing,

Get up and dance,

Sit down and talk,

Welcome wanderers.

It's that time.

Enjoy,

At the Very End of the Diamond Sutra

2009-11-27T14:25:00.003-05:00

Slicing through all the rest, at the very end of the Diamond Sutra, in the 30-some odd chapter, after teaching about many subtle and challenging ideas,

The Tathagata suggests that - relative to a disciple who could understand all the profound complexities just described - if a worthy son or daughter merely REALLY understood the following lines, if they really lived BEING these lines, well they'd gotten it:

"So you should see this fleeting world:

- A star at dawn,

- A bubble in a stream,

- A flash of lightening in a summer cloud,

- A flickering light,

- A phantom and a dream"

Enjoy,

Bice C. Wilson

What Arose After First Studying the Genjo Koan

2009-09-29T11:23:00.002-04:00

MYRIAD BECOMINGS

BCW Late Winter 2007

Becoming,

ephemeral collusion

Interweaving myriad dharma vectors

tendencies become transient actualities

At every scale of time a stillness

Is,

which,

seen differently

simultaneously shape shifting –

never IS the same.

No thing HAS to be, one moment to the next,

We are given, in this fleeting form

gateways to mindfulness

senses animating our dance

And somewhere,

among the warp and woof of the

many becomings

we are just now

Sings this spark that knows and chooses,

conducting whatever wholeness we can find

step by step, dancing along the path.

Dancing in fields open, empty of must be,

constrained by conventions,

dancing degrees of volition

the sublime suchness

Open to our intention

Emptily

Rubble Beach, Pythagio, Samos, at the top of the Aegean Sea

2009-09-26T16:03:00.022-04:00

Rubble Beach - Pythagorio,

Samos, at the Top of the Aegean

Usually,
Stones at this stage,
At the edge of the sea &
Tending towards sand,

The one's I'm used to seeing,

Usually,

They came here

Tumbling down streams,

From distant mountains

Or dropped far from home by Lazy glaciers

But these,

These were once this city -

Built and ravaged.
Rebuilt, ravaged,

The families who carried them Here
Hopeful for generations the

Beauty of this,

This
Glorious place,

Have seen,

Generation after generation,

Of warfare,

rape,

Endless cycles

Of enslavement,

liberation,

soldiery,

Victory of, by, to.

Now,

Lounge chairs
Carry all the tribes who once invaded,
now invited - if only for a while -

to relax on the Rubble
Of their Ancestors Making.

Frakking The Catskills - Or There Goes The Water We love So Much

2009-07-28T22:11:00.005-04:00

Have you ever spent time by a brook in the Catskills, watching a spring drip out from the mossy edge of a shale cliff? Do you drink the water collected in the Catskill Aqueduct System? Does the re-forestation of the Catskills and the return of so many life forms that had been absent since the last deforestation of the region, well does that inspire you with hope for the future of the planet?

Does your idea of a fine afternoon in the mountains exclude the sound of "Frakking" - the rhythmic din of massive industrial compressors pumping high pressure bursts of pristine surface water into shafts dug into the Marcellus Shale Beds under your feet, accompanied by the outflow of toxic, now-former, process water bubbling up from the wellhead and seeping along the many fissures into the water feeding that mossy spring and your wells and reservoirs?

Well, if you answered yes to ANY of these questions, well, you have a new cause to get active about, because that is the future being developed right now in the Catskills you know and love.

Here is the most recent post from the Catskill MountainKeeper on the subject.

And here's VERLYN KLINKENBORG's NYT Editorial on the subject from today: Walking the Land Where The Drilling Rigs Will Go.

Coincidentally, today's Science Times had an article about the sensitivity of songbirds to incessant loud noise - they did their field work among the frakking rigs in the Colorado Gas Shale. Hey, some birds liked it.

Some Birds Thrive in Noisy Neighborhoods

So, what do you think? Should this be done in your name??

What can we do to stop this insanity?

I'll post more when I find some suggestions. Please pitch in with your suggestions in the comments space.

This is kind of important.

So, who's Designing Cyberspace anyway?

2009-06-28T20:37:00.006-04:00

Cyberspace is evolving among our culture just now. Are there intelligent designers intentionally devising this new extension of the public domain?
Is it public? Should it be? Up to where?
Does it have formative Community Master Plans, Cyberspace Use Regulations and Construction Codes?
Who says?
Who can do what where how to whom there, and when will they be able to?
Who else can or will be able to?

Space happens as dimensions and forces interact - a constantly evolving and morphing expression of interdependent origination.

Our culture has, throughout its evolution, regularly devised new dimensions of space.
The distance of our hearing and the sweep of our vision.

The circle of light cast by a campfire, and the greater circle cast by a giant bonfire.

The racing edge of fire gone wild, and the dimensions of the smoky wind foretelling catastrophe.

The sound of bells cast of hard won ore, echoing and de-crescendoing down our valleys.

The brief bulletins of beacon fires and the mountain-speak of yodeling.

The directives of semaphore, and the inklings of intuition.

The distance a courier can run from the sea into the nearby mountains and say why he ran here before expiring.

How far a horse can run before you need to trade him off before proceeding.

And how many way stations it takes to reach the edges of safe domain.

I'll leave the reader to fill in the increments of new dimensions our predecessors left for us to inhabit, right up into the space we are currently devising among us - cyberspace.

Wise persons from ancient animists to Kevin Kelly, Thomas Berry, E. O. Wilson and Juan Enriquez have, each in their own spheres of interest, suggested that beings participate in their own evolution by acts of volition, creative synthesis and the cultural processes that shape habits, expectations and developments.

Kelly and Enriquez suggest that the technologies we have for ever been developing are evolutionary extensions of our selves.

Skeptical? Remember the last time you forgot your smart phone, were disconnected from the possibilities that exist only in cyberspace and felt incomplete? Ever experienced the technological equivalent of "phantom limb syndrome" - felt the vibration of a cell phone that wasn't in your pocket?

How much time do you spend in Mediaspace? Have you ever, of an afternoon, decided not to go stroll in the park, but to spend time visiting with friends in cyberspace?

What animal functions do you accomplish in cyberspace? Find community? Pursue politics? Make business? Store valuables? Have sex? How many generations of avatars have you spawned? How many web alter egos do you have? Has anything happened to any of them while you were distracted by reading this?

Hadn't you better go look in on the place where you can find them? Is your financial portfolio still where you left it? Has anyone kidnapped your identity while it was being conveyed from here to there?

What intrigues me is - Who's designing cyberspace anyway? Who decides where the new rivers of data will flow, and who can build on their banks and harvest their cataracts?

How is the pollution of those man-made natural resources noticed, defined and ameliorated?

Isn't cyberspace part of the Commons, that space too valuable to be owned, the life making place, the 3rd Place, the Great Good Place, depended on by all for the well being of this and future generations?

Who has the right to fence it? What constrains the behavior of those given the franchise to realize cyberspace? Does it become theirs? Am I trespassing if I find myself there?

Who told that troll he could make me pay to enter that commons?

Did you know that the USA has, even up until today, lacked a national broadband policy? The FCC is embarking on crafting one just now.

What ways do your communities shape the development of this new public right of way, the web commons?

Do you have access to its benefits? How would you have a say about it, as you expect to have a say about your meatspace Master Plan and Development regulations?

And are the answers to these questions acceptable to you?

Here are some links to web places where these issues are being grappled with:

Our National Knowledge Infrastructure at Work Producing a National Healthcare Day of Service at the digital behest of our President

2009-06-27T11:46:00.004-04:00

Today, June 26 is National Health Care Day of Service. Throughout the
nation, in public places, both "tangible" and "virtual", folk have
been organizing for weeks at the behest of Organizing for America (www.my.barackobama.com) - and for the benefit of the public commons.

Me, I'm writing the first draft of this at Kinko's, while copying flyers for distribution at a Health Care Reform Teach-in in my home town, White Plains, NY. I write this on my iPhone, which will
wirelessly post this for you to see.

This event was produced largely in cyberspace, and likely wouldn't have happened if I did not have ubiquitous access to information technology and the world-wide-web.

That we could do so is quite remarkable.

Having initiated an initial mobilizatipn meeting of 15 persons at my house on June 16th, in response to an email recieved from OFA, I networked, largely online and discovered the Westchester Health Care Reform Task Force (westchesterhealthcarereform.org).

I've met once in person with a small fragment of the membership, and we subsequently collaborated using our nation's Infomation and Communications Technology (ITC) systems with dozens locally and around the nation to produce this event

Most of our time together organizing has been spent in the nation's newest Public Commons, what I call "The Intelligent Public Way" (dipw.merdiandesign.com). I obtained a permit to set up our booth ina public park at the heart of White Plains' commercial district - with two phone calls and 5 emails - the permit was sent to me by email. The organizers developed hand out documents in an exchange of emails.

We've set up a google sites web collaboration site, and purchased a more elegant URL from register.com, from which traffic is forwarded to google. Go visit -www.westchesterhealthcarereform.org.

Well, handouts are printed, debit card retrieved from the walk-in copy machine.

I'll send this off (over radio waves that comprise part of that Intelligent Public Way)

[Just got home and editted the typos too challenging to correct on my iphone. The day was a success - 25 volunteers handed out 175 fact sheets, sold 12 bumper stickers, and got 113 postcards written out which will delivered by hand to Senator Schumer. We engaged about 250 people in discussions on health care reform, including one gentleman who felt it a foolish undertaking.]

Teillard De Chardin suggested that our species would build the "noosphere", the global sense organ / nervous system / space in which the earth would know herself, allowing us to inhabit her more wisely. And so we have. That nervous system, the Intelligent Public Way, the Web Space Commons, made this event possible.

How cool is that?

People in Iran, China and other nations are seeing this commons being proscribed by authoritarian governments. Many of us take our access to these systems for granted. Still others among us have no access to this public space where most information flows and transactions are effected in our time.

We can do better.

These ICT resources are largely in private hands, and those private owners do not have the same interests as the commons do in terms of the shape of this new nervous system. It's not that the incumbent owners are venal - the public realm has also failed to devise the cultural and political means to tell them what is needed, and how these systems should be integrated into our cities as an infrastructure to enable Community, Cultural & Commercial development.

Can't blame the marketplace for not having sold us what we haven't, as a national culture, told them we want.

Here in the USA, we're just beginning to craft a national broadband strategy (www.bb4us.net). We're the only developed nation in the world without one.

How silly is that?

Enjoy,

Bice C. Wilson

Beginnings - Teaching Kiteflying in Bed Stuy, 1977

2009-06-26T15:23:00.004-04:00

The most formative experience underlying my life-practice occured on a blustery March afternoon in 1977.

I was crossing the one big lawn on the campus of Pratt Institute, Brooklyn.

I saw 2 young boys attempting to fly a kite.

Unsuccessfully.

Walking over to them I noted that they had come from the nearby neighborhood (whose residents were largely structurally poor or working class and neglected) and were wearing those imitation Artic Jackets, blue with orange lining in the hood, and fake wolverine fur trim. Both were black, maybe 7, or underdeveloped for 12.

They were playing with one of those diamond shaped, wax paper kites on a balsa wood cross that many of us know - the ones with a space ship image on them. It was put together in ways not shown on the directions, and not flying.

I offered to help. They gave me the kite. I put it together correctly, and found some trash paper nearby to use as a tail to counter the gusty winds.

The string they had was a spool of industrial thread from their mother's piece work sewing at home. It was strong enough. I made a yoke, tied on the tail and the spool to the yoke and handed it to them.

Now, for anyone who knew kites and the wind, this was a day that required no running to get a kite skyborne. Merely holding it facing the wind and letting go would suffice.

They were unable to loft the kite. They had no idea how to address the wind.

I showed them, and walked away to the sound of their excited directions to each other as the kite danced above them.

As I left them I was mindful of how much I had learned in my childhood about the fundamental interactions of the pattern of life by flying kites, sailing, playing with snow runoff rivulets on the hills of White Plains, spending days knee deep in living streams, days watching wildlife in the saltgrass marshes and exploring the dwindling woodlands for ponds full of reptiles, and similar playful activities.

Fluid dynamics, flows, dams and catastrophic failures of blockages, how the invisible wind can change the fate of kites. Cycles of life, struggles, birdsongs marking boundaries, fish sheltering in the eddies behind boulders.

I expected that the boys had not lived in places and cultures where those lessons came readily to hand. And yet, I knew that they had internalized other aspects of the pattern of life that I could not imagine.

I reflected on the fact that our urban environment often fails to celebrate the very forces that can teach us, vicerally, how life works: The storm runoff I spent days knee deep in, treated as waste, and shunted into a pipe as soon as possible to be mingled with our effluents and expedited into our waterways to cause rapid flooding, and close beaches when the underground rivers were in spate.

Places barren of life other than human and our domesticated companions.

The plazas where invisible winds undress people, blow over furniture and make kites of abandonned plastic bags.

Having studied the incremental development of NYC, I knew that, as each farm was monetized and sub-divided, it was assumed that there was no need to celebrate the pattern of life - one was surrounded by ever dwindling but reliable living systems, and besides, it was miracle enough to gather millions of folk into a city and have toilets and under ground sewers to eliminate epidemics.

Life, in that sense, was a problem we had solved successfully.

Before I arrived a block away at my apartment, I had picked up kite string at the art supply store, and I'd made several commitments to myself:

To always have kite string at hand in case the next boys did not have adequate thread (and I have done so to this day - it's just down stairs)
To devote my practice to re-integrating the passive didactic learning that arises from the celebration and mindful enhancement of the pattern of life, which we are each of us always an ephemeral expression of.

And I have done so to this day, in everything I have done since.

Building Meridian Design Associates, Architects (www.meridiandesign.com)
Living an integrated life in my communities. (www.westchesterhealthcarereform.org)
Pursuing the practical application of powerful ideas, such as:
Bio-regionalism (http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1561&context=ced/places)
Archeoastronomy (http://sites.google.com/site/meridianmusicproject/)
Evolutionary Urbanism (http://dipw.meridiandesign.com/, http://sites.google.com/site/dipwbronxwhitepaper/)
Living in Long Time (sustaining family, marriage, partnerships, community, places)

That is what I do.