Thom Gencarelli spoke at the December 3rd meeting on the differences between Piaget's and Chomsky's studies on language development, noting that by completing the Chomsky view of verbal acquisition with the later learning of reading and writing, we find that they are both right in human learning of speech and writing.

Dr. Gencarelli engaged the group into a lively exchange by asking for our first memories of using language. Examples were given from ages 2 to 6 or 7. Our remembrances and further questions and comments were enhanced by the friendly atmosphere of the Library of the Albert Ellis Institute on the third floor.

He is Chair of the Communication Department of Manhattan College, in Riverdale, NY; Vice President of the Media Ecology Association; and a Trustee of the Institute of General Semantics.

Lloyd Gilden, President of The Lifwynn Foundation for Social Research and a Director of NYSGS, tweaked the title of his 2008 symposium presentation to "Development of Our Ability to Experience Greater Integration With Our Environment," to emphasize that we can experience ourselves as an "organism-as-a-whole-in-an-environment," as Korzybski said, and, borrowing from Trigant Burrow, added "at-this-experienced-Now-with-inherited-preconscious-and-presimian-origins." Look at your fingers and toes! They're from amphibians and fish that developed bony flip-pers and fins. The current publicity of the find of the "missing link" "Ida," a millions-of-years-old lemur-like ancestor, proclaims our embeddedness in the history of the Universe.

Lloyd showed wonderfully evocative photos of our relationships to the Universe, with pictures of how we all began, in our mother's--and father's--arms, and how we developed, each in our social group, our "Universe of Experience," to use the title of L. L. Whyte's (AKML '69) book. Lloyd showed the importance to athletes, musicians, and the rest of us, to get into the "Flow," the term used by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (AKML '96) to express our integration with the Universe. He showed a documentary with examples from everyday street life, of our embeddedness in the "Klein bottle" interactions with the Universe.

The Institute of General Semantics has been including such experiential dimensions in seminar workshops for years and NYSGS and IGS had an "Intensive Winter Seminar Workshop," 12/28/69 - 1/4/70, at Wainwright House, Rye, NY, with Robert Pula, Charlotte Read, Allen Flagg and Rachel Lauer. "We emphasize non-verbal training to internalize the methodology and make it operative in the nervous system." Participation included sensory awareness, relaxation, and group discussion using National Training Laboratories procedures.

Lloyd led the group in an interactive discussion that elicited experiences that described individual segments of the matrix of experiences he had outlined.

Lloyd ended experientially with exercises in sensory awareness. He handed to each participant a package with a white rose, a sprig of "baby's breath," and a mint and asked us to see, hear, taste, touch, and smell these aspects of the Universe with which we are integrated, "in touch with," in resonance with. It was a "wake-up" call to us to have a "peak experience" (Abraham Maslow, AKML '57).

(BONUS #1) Pete Creelman, from Phoenix, Arizona, attended. He is the son of Jo Braun Creelman, Secretary of NYSGS in '54 - '57, who attended Korzybski's IGS seminars with his parents. However, he was only five years old and didn't understand very much of the sessions, but he did grow up in a GS family, and he made a number of very helpful comments in Lloyd's presentation.

(BONUS #2) Pete brought for our archives three letters from Aldous Huxley to Robert Holston and Jane Heyburn, one a four-page handwritten note and two type-written pages, all signed, from 1956. All are extremely interesting. They are from Jo Braun's files when she was Secretary of NYSGS.

Also of note, The Institute of General Semantics is co-sponsoring Media Conversations VI 2009: An International Conference on Youth, Media, and Education, this coming June 4-6, 2009. Other co-sponsors include The Media Ecology Association, and The Players Club.

Participants include IGS President and NYSGS Vice President Martin H. Levinson, IGS Executive Director and NYSGS Director Lance Strate, IGS Trustee Thom Gencarelli, ETC Editor Bill Petkanas, 2006 AKML speaker Renee Hobbs, and Alan Hayakawa, son of S. I. Hayakawa and co-author of the fifth edition of Language in Thought and Action.

Recently, NYSGS Vice President Martin H. Levinson, Ph.D., was presented the Eighth NYSGS Research Award for his dissertation, "The Effect of General Semantics Instruction on Three Dimensions of Alienation - Powerlessness, Self-Estrangement, and Cultural Estrangement, Among Eighth and Ninth Grade Problem Students."

Also, he has a new book out. Titled When Good Things Happen to Bad People, Dr. Levinson offers an irreverent, fast-paced, fact-filled compendium of fifty case studies of notorious villains from Attila the Hun to Dick Cheney who triumphed in life despite, or because of, their dastardly deeds. The book is the perfect foil to Harold Kushner's international bestseller When Bad Things Happen to Good People. With so many corrupt CEOs making it big these days, it's ideal perusing for our troubled times. Reading about evil has never been so enjoyable!

Testimonials for Dr. Levinson's new book:

"I love this book." - Bernie Madoff

"Hey, I'm not as villainous as Dick Cheney. I would have never accepted five draft deferments if I was asked to fight." - Attila the Hun

"Sadly, I'm not as evil as Donald Rumsfeld. I never had President Nixon call me a 'ruthless little bastard.'" - Dick Cheney

"I appreciate that there are a number of women included in this book. Bad men aren't the only ones who kick butt." - Leona Helmsley

"What's so bad about killing lots of people? A single death is a tragedy, six million deaths is a statistic." - Josef Stalin

"This is a great book. If I wasn't just given a fifteen year sentence for my botched attempt to recover sports memorabilia I'm sure I would have been in it." - O. J. Simpson

Nan Wright, an NYSGS Director since 2003, was honored with an Education Award by the Town of Babylon Department of Human Services at their annual African-American History Program February 28th.

The theme of the program was "Living the Dream." Nan's plaque reads "For Your Resounding Call for Unity of God's People, and Your Exemplary Efforts in the Field of Education."

Congressman Steve Israel presented her with a Certificate of Special Recognition which reads "Your decades of commitment to education are an inspiration to all. I cannot thank you enough for your service to our youth."

Nan has been teaching for 39 years.

In February, NYSGS will be awarding its 9th and 10th NYSGS Research "Non-A"-wards (as in "Non-Aristotelian Awards") respectively to Marleen Barr, Ph.D. and Renee Cherow-O'Leary, Ph.D.

Our research award began when Neil Postman guided some of his NYU graduate students to Ph.D. research in General Semantics, and Harry Maynard’s General Semantics Foundation gave financial support to that program.

The award has previously been presented to Dr. Irwin Berger, Dr. Howard Livingston, Dr. Rachel Lauer, Dr. Raymond Arlo, Dr. John Black, Dr. Terence Moran. Dr. Ruth Ralph, and Dr. Martin Levinson.

The Michael Ruberto Scholarship and Award Committee will give $1,000 to the Ph.D. candidate whose dissertation is on the subject of General Semantics with it acknowledged in the title. Submit the pertinent information to NYSGS.

Numerous people from general semantics, media ecology, and the general public, from the United States and abroad, attended the 56th Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture and a two-day symposium this past weekend, November 14-16.

NYSGS co-sponsored the event along with the Institute of General Semantics, the Media Ecology Association, the Lifwynn Foundation for Social Research, the Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and Fordham University's Department of Communication and Media Studies.

On the evening of November 14 at the Princeton Club in New York City, Douglas Rushkoff, author, teacher, and documentarian, gave the AKML, titled "Playing the Future: Towards a Creative Society." Allen Flagg, President of the New York Society for General Semantics and a Trustee of the Institute of General Semantics, was presented by the Trustees of the Institute of General Semantics the J. Talbot Winchell Award "In Recognition of His Lifelong Service, Accomplishments and Time-Binding Efforts."

On November 15-16 at Fordham University's Lincoln Center Campus, over 40 presenters participated in the symposium titled "Creating the Future: Conscious Time-Binding for a Better Tomorrow." For the program for the weekend, click here.

The weekend proved engaging and stimulating for the many people who attended. Check our upcoming page for details on the meetings and events sponsored by NYSGS in the coming months!

NYSGS has been active again this fall with a wonderful, three-part series titled "How to Improv Your Life: Introductory Lessons in General Semantics." Taught by Ben Hauck, each lesson was quite different, engaging participants with a range of exercises including improving verbal and cognitive accuracy, reporting on and comparing descriptions of different videos, discussing different semantic reactions to a staged argument, among other treats. Mr. Hauck also offered up the history and function of general semantics to provide context for these exercises.

NYSGS now turns its heads to the near future, with the forthcoming Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture by Douglas Rushkoff and following two-day symposium titled "Creating the Future: Conscious Time-Binding for a Better Tomorrow." The events are November 14-16, 2008, and you may sign up for them by contacting the Institute of General Semantics. On their brand-new website, you can register for the AKML as well as pay for the dinner at The Princeton Club preceding the lecture.

For additional information on the AKML and symposium, please visit our upcoming page. We hope to see you there!

It's been a hyperactive springtime for NYSGS with its continuation of the Mind & Consciousness Seminar Series, well-attended lectures by presenters like Lance Strate, Allen Flagg, et al. The final presentation as part of the series is by Alan Steinfeld on June 19th. It is titled "Symbols: The Key to Understanding Reality." Visit the upcoming page for details.

Also, we've just put out the Call for Presentations for November's two-day symposium titled "Creating the Future: Conscious Time-Binding for a Better Tomorrow," being held at the Lincoln Center Campus of Fordham University. The two-day symposium follows a day after the 56th Alfred Korzybski Memorial Dinner & Lecture by Douglas Rushkoff, titled "Playing the Future: Towards a Creative Society." This year's AKML is at The Princeton Club in midtown Manhattan.

To submit your presentation for the symposium, please reply to NYSGS by August 1, 2008. For details, click here for our Call for Presentations.

For a .pdf version of the Call for Presentations, click here.

After our usual summer hiatus, NYSGS will return in September with more engaging meetings, including a fun 4-week introduction to general semantics titled "How to Improv Your Life" by improvisation teacher and long-time general semantics practitioner Ben Hauck.

Recently, Lloyd Gilden led an improvisationally based presentation titled "The Principles of General Semantics to Resolve Social Conflict."

He showed that people respond to conflict situations in a variety of ways, some of which are destructive and some, constructive. Those ways range from aggression and stonewalling, to problem solving and negotiating using the principles of general semantics.

The different possibilities were discussed, and an enactment of the resolution of a conflict between a husband and a wife was presented by two members of a psychodrama group.

Another entertaining, stimulating evening for NYSGS!

May 8th, Lance Strate offers contemporary poetry in a presentation titled "BlogVersed: Readings from the Poetry Blog." Check out the upcoming page for the details. We'll see you there!

So many stimulating meetings already for NYSGS in 2008, and many more to come!

So far, Ben Hauck led a group seminar and lecture on group mindedness, incorporating game theory ideas and improv ideas all within the context of general semantics to bring understanding to the meaning of the word "mind" (at least in some contexts!).

Kathleen Sweeney gave a PowerPoint presentation illustrating the evolution of girl icons in American pop culture. And Ron Gross offered up the lecture, "Let's Stop Boring Ourselves to Death! - Getting from Small Talk to Exhilarating, Important Conversations."

The next meeting led by Lloyd Gilden will incorporate improvisation and general semantics principles and apply them toward the resolution of interpersonal conflict. A dramatic meeting to come!

Happy New Year from NYSGS!

We have many new meetings scheduled for 2008. Co-sponsored with IGS, FIONS & MEA, NYSGS is hosting the Mind & Consciousness Seminar Series, a series that will run throughout Spring 2008.

The first two seminars we have are 1/24 with actor and improv teacher Ben Hauck ("Developing the Experience of Group Mind") and 2/21 with author and media artist Kathleen Sweeney ("Maiden USA: Girl Icons Come of Age").

And we have more meetings in the works! Check our upcoming page for more information. Even better, join our mailing list! Send us an email with your snail-mail address and we'll send you information on future NYSGS meetings.

We hope to see you in the new year!

The New York Society for General Semantics was one of five sponsoring organizations for the 55th Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture and Symposium held on October 26-27 at the Princeton Club and Fordham University respectively. The AKML featured speaker was Dr. Leonard Shlain who talked on "Right Brain/Left Brain: Hemispheric Lateralization and its Effects on Religion, Culture, Gender and History." Shlain is the author of three best-selling books and a professor of laparoscopic brain surgery in California.

AKML guest speaker, Dr. Leonard Shlain	President of NYSGS & IGS Trustee, Allen Flagg

The Symposium, titled "Mind and Consciousness: Understanding / Reconciling / Integrating Symbol Systems and Nervous Systems," featured twelve speakers whose topics ranged from "Practical Fairy Tales for Everyday Living" to "Right Brain, Left Brain and How They Affect our Food Choices" to "Understanding the Decalogue through General Semantics and Media Ecology."

Panelists Dr. Frank Dance (left) Dr. Lance Strate	Speaker & FIONS Trustee Jane Hughes Gignoux
Speaker Dr. Janet Sternberg	Speaker Dr. Frank Dance
Speaker Vanessa Biard-Schaeffer	Speaker Milton Dawes

Before the sessions began, New York Society Vice President Martin H. Levinson was presented with the Media Ecology Association's Suzanne K. Langer Award for his book Sensible Thinking for Turbulent Times. The room where the symposium was held was filled to capacity. Attendees at the AKML and the Symposium were in general agreement that both these events were highly worthwhile learning experiences.

Lance Strate (left) awards Martin H. Levinson the Susan K. Langer Award for his book Sensible Thinking for Turbulent Times
Panel Moderator Ben Hauck	NYSGS Board Member Ben Hauck & IGS Trustee Vanessa Biard-Schaeffer
Attendees of the Mind & Consciousness Symposium

We have some website updates to share. First up, we've added more information about the all-day symposium on Saturday, October 27th, 2007. We've also added information about some of our upcoming meetings--a presentation by Kathy Liepe-Levinson "on presentation," a reading of Iraq the Musical by Martin Levinson, plus information on the next book discussion meeting for Bruce Kodish's book Dare to Inquire. All of this information can be found on our upcoming page.

Also, we've just added an essay by long-time general semantics enthusiast (and actual student of Alfred Korzybski!) David Linwood. His new essay titled "Atheism and 'Negative' Belief" can be found on our essays page.

Our next NYSGS meeting is on Thursday, September 6th. We hope to see you then!

The website for the New York Society for General Semantics has been redesigned!

This new design features a more modern layout, a new color scheme, plus rotating quotations related to general semantics.

Let us know what you think of the new design by sending us an email!

A Call For Presentations has been issued for the day-long symposium co-sponsored by the New York Society for General Semantics to be held at Fordham University's 60th Street Campus in New York City on Saturday, October 27th, 2007.

The CFP is available online here. For your submission, at this time you need to submit a title and short description of your proposal on the general topic of "Mind and Consciousness: Understanding / Reconciling / Integrating Symbol Systems and Nervous Systems." Submissions will take many forms: papers, panels, workshops, art, music, dramatics, etc.

The Symposium is also co-sponsored by the Institute of General Semantics, the Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, the Media Ecology Association, and the Communication and Media Studies Department of Fordham University. It follows a day after the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture & Banquet at the Princeton Club on Friday night, October 26th, 2007.

For more information on the symposium and the AKML, please visit our upcoming page.

It is with great sadness to announce the passing of Dr. Albert Ellis. He passed away on 7/24/07 of natural causes. He was 93.

Dr. Ellis's relationship with the Society was manifold. His most consistent contribution was the use of space at his Albert Ellis Institute on Manhattan's Upper East Side as a location for NYSGS meetings.

To read more about Dr. Ellis's life, please read the following articles from the New York Times: article 1 | article 2

The Media Ecology Association chose NYSGS Vice President Martin H. Levinson, Ph.D., to be the recipient of the 2007 Susanne K. Langer Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Symbolic Form for his book Sensible Thinking for Turbulent Times.

He received the award in June at the The Eighth Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association in Mexico City, Mexico. Congratulations to Marty!

In September, NYSGS meetings will reconvene after a summer break.

In the meantime, we've updated the NYSGS website. We are excited to bring word of the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture which will be on Friday, October 26th, at the Princeton Club in New York City. Our keynote speaker will be the celebrated author and surgeon Leonard Shlain, MD, with his keynote address titled "Right Brain/Left Brain: Hemispheric Lateralization and Its Effects on Religion, Culture, Gender, and History." A day-long symposium will follow on Saturday, October 27th. More information can be found on the upcoming page.

Details are still being firmed up. Please check back for the Call for Papers as well as the symposium location.

Also, we've added to the NYSGS website an essay by Milton Dawes titled "Thinking about Space." Check out the essays page for it and other essays related to general semantics.

Last night was an extraordinary evening for the New York Society for General Semantics. A packed house at the Albert Ellis Institute watched as actress, motivational speaker, and playwright Margaret H. Baker and her cast performed excerpts from Ms. Baker's musical, My Life as a Bald Soprano.

Directed by Jeremy Gold Kronenberg with music by Clint Borzoni, My Life as a Bald Soprano tells the story of a young woman whose identity changes as she learns to accept a rare genetic condition she has, called alopecia areata. The 40-minute performance included live music and a cast of seven (Margaret H. Baker, Gina Bonati, Bianca Gomez, Sabina Machi, Jen Ponton, Michael Simeoni, and Carissa Van Ausdall).

After the performance, Kathy Liepe-Levinson introduced the concept of the is of identity from general semantics, and Ben Hauck led a talkback with the audience on the topic of identity and how the audience members' identities have changed over the course of their lives.

The event was a tremendous success, and we're thankful for Ms. Baker for bringing such a large, diverse crowd to an NYSGS meeting. The meeting raised the awareness of general semantics for the audience, helping to demonstrate how the ideas in general semantics overlap with other critical issues in their lives. We hope that people who attended the meeting will attend future NYSGS meetings. Information on upcoming meetings is on the upcoming page.

Like many things in the universe, the times for the Fourth & Fifth Sessions in the Dare to Inquire: Science and Survival in the 21st Century and Beyond Monthly General Semantics Book Study Workshop Series have changed.

The sessions on Thursday, May 24th, and Thursday, June 21st, will be from 6:30pm-8:00pm.

The performance evening featuring excerpts from Margaret H. Baker's My Life as a Bald Soprano will remain at the original 7pm start time on Thursday, June 14th.

We hope to see you at these engaging events!

On Thursday, May 3rd, the New York Society for General Semantics co-sponsored a workshop with the Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Titled "World Café Dialogue," Jane Hughes Gignoux ran the workshop pulling from her international experience with the World Café dialogue process.

Attendance was especially high for this interactive workshop, which featured groups of four persons arranged in circles to enable small discussions. With the aid of Ms. Gignoux, the attendees chose as their topic of discussion how to engender more win-win outcomes for humanity. In each small group, attendees shared their individual feelings on the topic, then engaged in cross-talk before eventually rotating to different groups of four people.

The World Café format appealed to many attendees for its structure, which enabled the expression of individual viewpoints before discussions about them. The World Café essentially introduced "ground rules" for discussion, ensuring that participants had their opinions fully heard without judgment or interruption.

Martin H. Levinson, Vice President of NYSGS and Trustee of IGS, will receive the MEA's Susan K. Langer Award for his book Sensible Thinking for Turbulent Times. Dr. Levinson is also the author of The Drug Problem: A New View Using the General Semantics Approach and his new book Practical Fairy Tales for Everyday Living.

For more information about the MEA conference, please visit the conference website, http://www.media-ecology.org.mx.

On Thursday, April 12th, Jackie Holtzman, daughter of the late general semantics teacher Harry Holtzman, gave a slideshow presentation and talk on the artwork of her father and of his friend, Piet Mondrian. She titled her presentation "Modern Art: Impact, Imagination, Insight."

Jackie Holtzman and NYSGS President Allen Flagg

Several attendees remarked how viewing the slides of the artwork made them experience deep, profound reactions. The slides of the artwork also turned a few heads.

Attendees take in the artistry

Congratulations to Consultant Member Phil Ardery from Louisville, KY, who was elected at the recent board meeting to the Board of Directors for the New York Society for General Semantics.

Phil also recently gave a presentation on general semantics and sustainable living to NYSGS at the Albert Ellis Institute.

NYSGS recently hosted its first in a multi-month series of book study sessions around Bruce Kodish's evocative book, Dare to Inquire. The sessions continue on March 22, April 19, May 24, and June 21, continuing in the Fall. In March we cover Chapters 8 & 9, "A Relational Worldview" and "General Semantics." Stop by for a lively discussion and pick up the book at a reduced cost!

NYSGS also has some exciting presentations coming in March and April. Phil Ardery will fly in from Kentucky for a presentation, and Jackie Holtzman, daughter of famed GS teacher Harry Holtzman, will give a presentation on art and general semantics.

We've also just added a bio of Alfred Korzybski, which you can access from the navigation bar on the left. Written by Susan & Bruce Kodish, it gives a nice abstraction of Korzybski's life.

Check our upcoming page for more information and check back for information on our other meetings in 2007.

Happy New Year from the New York Society for General Semantics!

NYSGS has meetings coming up in January, February, and March. For our January 18th meeting, we will venture into new territory with a play reading of Katherine Liepe-Levinson's work-in-progress On the Shoulders of Apes. The reading will be followed by a discussion.

The New York Society for General Semantics recently was visited by Montreal resident and Institute of General Semantics Ambassador at Large Milton Dawes.

Dawes gave an enlightening interactive workshop titled "General Semantics as Generalized Science." He detailed the steps of the scientific method and showed how the method's principles can be applied in everyday living for improved sanity.

We have added two of Dawes's handouts to the NYSGS website. Please visit our essays section to read them.

We've also updated our upcoming section with information about the November and December NYSGS meetings. They make up our "Author Meets the Public" series this year. Our first is with Dr. Martin Levinson on Thursday, November 9th at 7pm. Our second is with Dr. Lance Strate on Thursday, December 7th at 7pm. We hope you will participate in these exciting evenings.

On Friday, September 8th, the New York Society for General Semantics celebrated its 60th Anniversary with a symposium at Fordham University titled, "The World in Quandaries: Coping with Controversial Communication in the Global Village--Personal, Social, National, Cultural."

The event attracted people from New York State, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Iowa, Wisconsin, as well as Montreal, Canada. Our keynote speaker was Former FCC Commissioner and University of Iowa College of Law professor Nicholas Johnson.

Johnson's keynote address can be found on his website by clicking here.

Also, as an addition to the NYSGS website, Martin Levinson has contributed a recent letter to the editor he wrote titled "Instant Gratification." It can be found on the essays page.

NYSGS is proud to announce the launch of its redesigned website.

With this redesign, we hope that you are able to keep up to date with the activities of the Society and easily find information about upcoming meetings and conferences.

Plus, the redesign includes a section devoted to short essays related to general semantics written by NYSGS members. As we add new essays, we will make mention of their appearance via this news section.

Please take a look around the redesigned site, as well as the "about gs" section. Let us know what you think by dropping NYSGS an email.