The Chair Volume Iii

A grand epic saga by Robert McKenzie, The Chair series spans centuries, touching the lives of 22 generations of related mothers and daughters, their stories witnessed by a simple pine chair. Resolute, strong, loving, and fiercely protective, these women must strive to pass their values to new generations in a world of racism and sexism, politics, scandal, fashion—even the rise and dominance of baseball. They live in privilege and poverty, with faith and despair, relishing every moment of love even as they suffer abiding grief. In Volume III: Seven, Eight, & Nine, the chair flashes back to pre-Civil War America, featuring a woman from the second Mayflower, her daughter the black-market Irish lace importer, and a Canadian World War I fighter pilot. A blend of history and philosophy told through satire and parody, the story of The Chair could be found in some old trunk in any dusty old attic, but McKenzie breathes it alive with riveting tales that span the real and the imagined.

A grand epic saga by Robert McKenzie, The Chairspans centuries, touching the lives of 22 related mothers and daughters, their stories witnessed by a simple pine chair. Resolute, strong, loving, and fiercely protective, these women must strive to pass their values to new generations in a world of racism and sexism, politics, scandal, fashion—even the rise and dominance of baseball. They live in privilege and poverty, with faith and despair, relishing every moment of love even as they suffer abiding grief. Volume I: Lightning, Thunder, & Glory spans the 1600s through WWI, while Volume II: Faith, Hope, & Lovefollows these women’s descendants into modern times and beyond. An authentic and uniquely American novel, The Chairconjures the very hallmarks of history, yet navigates the simple intimacy of everyday lives to reveal who and why we are. Everybody sits, so find your own seat and discover The Chair.

From a traumatized psyche pours the therapeutic poetry of a licensed marriage and family therapist. As a trauma survivor herself, author Claran dOrr speaks to the hearts of those affected by mental illness in From Behind the Other Chair, her gesture of peace and healing. This is the third of three consecutive, autobiographical volumes of poetry. They begin with the present, flowing backward in time to the original severe traumas she experienced of commitments to a mental ward and jail sentences to the mental health unit of a correctional facility. Poetry is her therapy. By telling her tragic story, she hopes to touch the soul of others with the tenderness of a fellow wounded spirit. Her poetry reaches into the depths of the nightmares of the mentally afflicted who are locked in a prison of their own making. Because she could neither defend herself nor comprehend what was happening to her, her world became surreal and horrific as she spun into a madness she could not control. In From Behind the Other Chair, she speaks to the awful damage she endured and her response to the baffling and dangerous conditions surrounding her.

The subject “Systems sciences and cybernetics” is the outcome of the convergence of a number of trends in a larger current of thought devoted to the growing complexity of (primarily social) objects and arising in response to the need for globalized treatment of such objects. This has been magnified by the proliferation and publication of all manner of quantitative scientific data on such objects, advances in the theories on their inter-relations, the enormous computational capacity provided by IT hardware and software and the critical revisiting of subject-object interaction, not to mention the urgent need to control the efficiency of complex systems, where “efficiency” is understood to mean the ability to find a solution to many social problems, including those posed on a planetary scale. The result has been the forging of a new, academically consolidated scientific trend going by the name of Systems Theory and Cybernetics, with a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary focus and therefore apt for understanding realities still regarded to be inescapably chaotic. This subject entry is subdivided into four sections. The first, an introduction to systemic theories, addresses the historic development of the most commonly used systemic approaches, from new concepts such as the so-called “geometry of thinking” or the systemic treatment of “non-systemic identities” to the taxonomic, entropic, axiological and ethical problems deriving from a general “systemic-cybernetic” conceit. Hence, the focus in this section is on the historic and philosophical aspects of the subject. Moreover, it may be asserted today that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, problems, in particular problems deriving from human interaction but in general any problem regardless of its nature, must be posed from a systemic perspective, for otherwise the obstacles to their solution are insurmountable. Reaching such a perspective requires taking at least the following well-known steps: a) statement of the problem from the determinant variables or phenomena; b) adoption of theoretical models showing the interrelationships among such variables; c) use of the maximum amount of – wherever possible quantitative – information available on each; d) placement of the set of variables in an environment that inevitably pre-determines the problem. That epistemology would explain the substantial development of the systemic-cybernetic approach in recent decades. The articles in the second section deal in particular with the different methodological approaches developed when confronting real problems, from issues that affect humanity as a whole to minor but specific questions arising in human organizations. Certain sub-themes are discussed by the various authors – always from a didactic vantage –, including: problem discovery and diagnosis and development of the respective critical theory; the design of ad hoc strategies and methodologies; the implementation of both qualitative (soft system methodologies) and formal and quantitative (such as the “General System Problem Solver” or the “axiological-operational” perspective) approaches; cross-disciplinary integration; and suitable methods for broaching psychological, cultural and socio-political dynamisms. The third section is devoted to cybernetics in the present dual meaning of the term: on the one hand, control of the effectiveness of communication and actions, and on the other, the processes of self-production of knowledge through reflection and the relationship between the observing subject and the observed object when the latter is also observer and the former observed. Known as “second order cybernetics”, this provides an avenue for rethinking the validity of knowledge, such as for instance when viewed through what is known as “bipolar feedback”: processes through which interactions create novelty, complexity and diversity. Finally, the fourth section centres around artificial and computational intelligence, addressing sub-themes such as “neural networks”, the “simulated annealing” that ranges from statistical thermodynamics to combinatory problem-solving, such as in the explanation of the role of adaptive systems, or when discussing the relationship between biological and computational intelligence.

The Chair Volume IV, Punt, Pass, & Kick tells of a gala retirement ceremony for an employee held on a railroad trestle, a fishing expedition under the Idlewood Arch & Aqueduct, the bravery, battles, and bastions of the Texas Revolution, a quinceañera celebration near Matamoros, a standoff gun-boat battle on the Rio Grande between the Armada de Marina de México and Americans, an all-girl rock band from Topeka, a Thanksgiving dinner in 1971 Beverly Hills, a brunch with mimosas at the Pierre Hotel on 5th Avenue, a lunch at The Horse tavern in Baltimore, a docu-drama about a high-school football team in East Texas, intimate mother and daughter correspondence, an English suffragette who becomes an ocean-liner titan, four brothers from Italy creating a family olive-oil and wine-exporting company, the creator of synonym, antonym, and hyponym awareness for women entrepreneurs, a courageous cattle drive from South Texas to Wyoming, a seascape watercolor painter, and a teenage writer whose unpublished manuscript is found and read by Lana McCracken, the prime character in The Chair pentalogy, a story that can only be found in an old trunk between the real and imagined, a story for all times.

This three-volume work comprises over eighty essays surveying the history of Scottish theology from the early middle ages onwards. Written by an international team of scholars, the collection provides the most comprehensive review yet of the theological movements, figures, and themes that have shaped Scottish culture and exercised a significant influence in other parts of the world. Attention is given to different traditions and to the dispersion of Scottish theology through exile, migration, and missionary activity. The volumes present in diachronic perspective the theologies that have flourished in Scotland from early monasticism until the end of the twentieth century. The History of Scottish Theology, Volume I covers the period from the appearance of Christianity around the time of Columba to the era of Reformed Orthodoxy in the seventeenth century. Volume II begins with the early Enlightenment and concludes in late Victorian Scotland. Volume III explores the 'long twentieth century'. Recurrent themes and challenges are assessed, but also new currents and theological movements that arose through Renaissance humanism, Reformation teaching, federal theology, the Scottish Enlightenment, evangelicalism, mission, biblical criticism, idealist philosophy, dialectical theology, and existentialism. Chapters also consider the Scots Catholic colleges in Europe, Gaelic women writers, philosophical scepticism, the dialogue with science, and the reception of theology in liturgy, hymnody, art, literature, architecture, and stained glass. Contributors also discuss the treatment of theological themes in Scottish literature.