My talk ‘Humanity’s Deep Roots’ went well last Sunday with a good audience, which is always very appreciative. We’re friends really and in this we are support to each other, a treasure to cherish particularly at our age as we all have most of it behind us.

Yesterday I was mistaken about our colleaguel breakfast and decided to have coffee and muffin at the new Tim’s in the North Hill shopping centre. That muffin was rubbery and not that healthy I think. The food court was quite busy with seniors, regularly meeting there like I do with my colleagues when I get my dates right!

I used to make that circle so often when working at SAIT as an instructor and coordinator from 1973 to 1999.

I then walked that old familiar walk through the center and out towards SAIT. I used to make that circle so often when working at SAIT as an instructor and coordinator from 1973 to 1999. Once at the SAIT station I took the train to the city centre and the bus from there to Shumir’s. Walking from there I stopped at the Lindt store for their flats on sale at 2 for 6$$.

Then on to the fancy Second Cup at 17th for coffee and cake. I already had bought a Globe at the North Hill, so I settled in for a read. From there I walked onto my place, where I arrived at 10:20am, having left at 7:45am! An unusual tour of the town, but refreshing as I am quite stuck in my habits about going out, as I have my walks and habitual pit stops.

During the rest of my day I had lunch at 11 and a snooze after that. Next was cleaning up and filing my talk papers in place and transferring the audio files from the RCA recorder to my computer. I also read some news on the web and in the evening cleaned up my computer desktop, which took quite a while. In doing so I spotted two forgotten daily entries that never made it onto my websites daily entries. Two from 2014 and one from 2016! I am [Now 9:37 after a long call from my sister Els] still trying to fit these old entries into their year catalogue.

Thinking about my talk yet this morning I recall the fact that all the world’s ancient agricultural societies also developed methods of recording, mostly script, but the Inca used coloured and knotted rope bundles that administrators carried with them. This combination of invention - agriculture and recording - made me think that when you harvest food and store it for distribution later, you need a system that keeps everybody honest and secures equitable redistribution. So, agriculture necessitated the invention of writing I suggest.

This has a parallel in our culture as well. The early ENIAC computer was invented in part to process USA census data, because the manual counting was not yet completed when the new data was already coming in. Again recording relating to governance of the population triggered computer development. Today of course some people do not know how to drive or even walk without some kind of computer input!

The handed down narratives define humans as agriculturalists and herdsmen, but that does not go back far enough for humanity to day to have a common origin…

Last night I made my first notes for the next talk titled “Humanity’s Unfolding”, which is scheduled for mid August. This talk is the twin of the one I just completed. These two together are an attempt on my part to come to a new narrative for our planet wide human community that has validity for all the different peoples that populate our earth.

The handed down narratives define humans as agriculturalists and herdsmen, but that does not go back far enough for humanity to day to have a common origin, which can be found back 60k years ago when homo sapiens spread out from Africa to populate the earth.

This states my intent and effort, but I am one among many others who are grappling with this need for a narrative that fits our time and ‘closes our world’, defining sense and meaning for it and us.
<10:00am and 10:30am with a coffee assisted edit~