Journey to the American West

I’ve written a bit about song lyrics in the past. Some days certain words or phrases just seem to jump out and grab your attention.

The last few days, a few lines that I’d wasn’t able to hear clearly during the performance caught me.

The song is “Another Day” from the broadway show “Rent.” Its got a few good lines;
“forget regret”
“or life is yours to miss”
“no other road”
“no other way”
“no day but today”

I think of this in the context of the speed of life today. There’s always a text waiting for answer, an email waiting, a facebook post to respond to…and when we’re forced away from the smartphone or the computer, we rush, and in rushing around, we miss things, miss people, miss moments that are all around us.
The wind here has been blowing out of the southeast lately. It pushes a lot of moisture up from the gulf so our afternoons and evenings are filled with flashes and booms and torrents of rain. I’m pretty isolated from it in my concrete office building, but the roar of downpour is unmistakable. Yesterday after the roar ended, and the spritzing was still in the air, I walked from the office to the car. Its about two or three blocks but its not a walk through a neighborhood, its mostly through other parking lots. My eyes were drawn to the little clusters of leaves blown out of the trees, the swirling sand at the curb, the storm drain in full gurgle. I’m not sure why. Maybe the noise or the presence of curved things in the rectangle-ruled world of a parking lot caught me.
Either way, it slowed me down.
I’ve been carrying a camera to help me slow down and see the world around me and I found I had to work a bit to take it out of my pocket and take a photo of … what? … sand? … a storm sewer? It seems odd, things that are not especially photogenic and we walk by, but the camera asks us to actually look close, to SEE it, and try to frame it, to BE in the sun (in order to get the sun where it needs to be for a good photo) and it turns out, it slowed me down. I forgot all about linked learning outcomes, about impending layoffs, all sorts of things that weigh on us all, disappeared into that picture…which turns out was not a keeper!

Which is all to say, it probably is true, life is less about the destination, and more about the trip.

One other line from this song;
“give in to love”
“or live in fear”

That one I can’t connect to the parking lot.

But I think its something we all dream about.
Take care of each other.
Use that smartphone to take some pictures between here and there, it’ll help you to slow down for just a few minutes.

It was cool this morning, under 80 anyway, and not too humid. I woke up to a strange sound…quiet! I noticed my airconditioning wasn’t running, neither was my neighbors…I thought “power out” but a quick look to the alarm clock showed the power was still on. But it was very unusual for a July morning here in Texas.

As I drove to the office, I had windows open, sunroof open, and the radio off. More quiet. Its kind of peaceful really. I think we don’t know how much “noise” is in our lives until its not there. Then all of a sudden one finds themself trying to reach for the volume knob to turn down the frogs and cicadas. The constant whir and woosh and squeaks of air systems, email beeps, radio, pandora, itunes, kind of builds a level of nervousness in a person and it reduces the “calm reserve” that we need to get through stressful times.

I spent yesterday reading. A little Aquinas, a little Levy-Strauss, some Heidegger and Crichton too. It was a good quiet way to spend the day after a week of getting thumped every other day, I was ready for it. I couldn’t understand how the caustic emails I was getting were so acutely tuned to what I was doing. And Friday it hit me…facebook! I had been posting artwork and some chatter, responding to peoples posts…the usual things one does to tell friends “We’re attentive to your life.” And I hadn’t thought anyone else could see those, but somehow my torturer did, and each day would send between one and seven emails to reach inside and twist at an old wound, and do it with language that was way too current. So I’m toning down my facebook participation, which is too bad because it really is a good way to attend to friends and former students, but until the courts rule on my torturer, I’ll lay low, stay quiet, read and enjoy the silence as much as I can…I recommend it to you all too!

Now if I could just turn down those Cicadas!
Take Care, be safe

Its been a month of struggle so far, Frank and I were invited to make a proposal for a book, about construction and ornament which, as usual, I think too much about and somewhere inside feel relates to life in general. This is likely not the case, but as is true for all these blog entries, I’ll make a start, see where it goes and try to wrestle it to a conclusion before my few readers click away to something more interesting.

A book about construction and ornament is a curious thing in our time. Ornament has largely been abandoned by architecture since 1908 or so when Adolph Loos thought we needed a break from using it, because the ornament, that thing added to utility to make something more beautiful, had become applied and meaningless.

I thought about ornament and life today, looking at jewelry. Some jewelry is precious in its own right, some very ordinary in terms of its substances, but meaningful in an associative way.

I’d seen a necklace in Chicago this summer, one made of a simple loop of a woven fabric, and hanging from the loop was a sort of rectangular (not geometrically perfect) bit of bark from a Birch tree.

The piece struck me immediately. Maybe it was the bark itself, which I strongly associate with summers in Minnesota where we peeled Birchbark from the trees that fell the previous winter and stored the bark in the tinder box next to the stone fireplace. Mom and Dad would take us to the big city, Grand Rapids from time to time when a part was needed for the outboard, and all six of us would get to walk through the big northwoods souvenir store. A place filled with moccasins, boxes made from aromatic cedar, and all things birchbark.

I like the history of birchbark in Minnesota. Dad once took us to meet a fellow who made birchbark canoes on the banks of the Bigfork river. He was really old then, maybe in his 60’s, but he took time and explained the whole process to us, a process he had learned from the Chippewa Ojibwe Native American tribe. They’d drive stakes in the sand on a flat beach to outline the gunwales, and using split spruce roots, tie spruce and steamed cedar together to form the ribs of the canoe, then overlay the rib structure with large sheets of birchbark, lace them onto the ribs using spruce root, and paint over each joint with pine tar. There’s a great description of a Smithsonian recreation at this link http://www.pbs.org/riverofsong/music/e1-enduring.html

As he spoke, Mr. Hafeman would pick up a bit of root that he kept in a barrel of water, split it with a knife at the end, and pull the entire length in half. I remember the swampy smell of the barrel of roots (you just HAVE to poke your nose in things when you’re 12) and pull some cedar from under a tarp billowing steam to show us how to split (same knife) and form it, and the heated pine tar pot that at least one of us poked a finger in and smeared all over our “good” tee shirt.

He told us the birchbark was an essential part of the Ojibwe life, and that it was disappearing. For many years I thought he meant the birchbark, but now i realize he was speaking of a way of life, where raw things were refined by hand with the benefit of years of traditional knowledge passed on with story and demonstration, just as he had done that day for us. Birchbark had been transportation, shelter, food storage, and a way to preserve the sparse history of each family.

In the souvenir store I had thought the black gridlines on the toy canoes were just a pattern, an ornament, something optional. But that afternoon, Bill Hafeman taught us that those lines were a critical part of the process of making the canoe…without those pine pitch lines, the canoe would leak, and be useless, or worse, dangerous.

I’ve been back and forth to Weiss College at Rice University this past week. To observe and photograph the surfaces of the dormitory. Marcel was good enough to come along and teach me a bit more about digital photography, perspective correction, and exposures for deeply shaded spaces. Early in the week I’d scouted the complex with my point and shoot camera, seeing the curious treatment of mortar joints, the staggered window pattern, distinctive projection of the window head flashing beyond the windows and the exposure of certain supporting lintels.

Instinctively I believed there was something to all this. The surface was too carefully worked to just be a pragmatic solution. Certain things were changed, made more visible than usual. These were all necessary things to be sure. The lintels were needed to support the brick between columns and above windows, flashing needed to protect the lintels, control joints needed to prevent cracking and associated water intrusion…but until just now, I didn’t realize I was looking at the canoe. The raised prow at the front and back decorative but has a role in wave breaking, and gives the Northwoods canoe its distinctive figure. The canoe builder’s knowledge of surroundings, knowing where the large birch trees are, becomes visually apparent looking at the canoe. One with few pitch lines used large bark, one with many used the bark from small birch trees, and more joints means…more leaks down the road…

Somehow I’m trying to think of people in all this, because in many ways, we are the objects we make….or the things we make-make us…I think Churchill said that. “We form our spaces and thereafter they form us” or something. So what is our ornament? Is it just a necklace or a watch? Is it part of us or something we can take off or put on without it changing us? What other outward visually apparent signs of our knowledge (or lack of) do we carry?

I wonder about this because I’ve carried a mark of my carelessness around this week, prominently displayed on my nose!

Last Sunday I was working in my garage/shop/storage space and had stood some square edged (now I know why they “ease” or radius the edges) oak boards that I was going to make into sculpture bases. I was kneeling down, plugging the saw into my improvised electrical center and tugged a cord…that ran under some plywood…that had some pine leaned against it…that was next to the oak…that had the square edge.

Can you see the outcome? I tugged the cord, it shifted the plywood, but my focus was on the cord and on not getting my fingers across the terminals of the receptacle (hey i know THAT much about electricity!) i heard the pine shift but it was a ways away from me so I didn’t look but then (suddenly) i heard the oak next to me (a distinctive oaky sound) and looked up just in time to see the board inches from my face. I closed my eyes, turned my head, but still got smacked with the oak, its square edge neatly scraping most of the skin from the tip of my nose. I was unahppy with the oak, but holding my nose and after some first aid and a nap (don’t work with power tools when you’re tired or grumpy!) went back, cleaned up the fallen cascade of wood, and finished the project…but now a week later, the nose is healing but not pretty. So I mostly hide out here at home, sitting and typing about ornament, birchbark, and meaningful figures and patterns….

The moral of the story…he who has not arranged things neatly (in life) is likely to suffer injury at the hand of his improvisations.

or something

Take Care, be well, watch out for falling oak!

Listening to the news these last months, trying to attend to content and dismiss the hyperbole, brought the words in the title to mind.

I found a few interesting comments and quotations on the general concept of fools and foolishness, one of my favorites is:

“The point of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come.” Peter Ustinov is credited with that one. True he’s not a renowned philosopher, but it does say something about our ability as a people to overlook things, facts of the present and immediate past, and hope for a better future.

Ustinov puts this under the term “foolish” to let us know that in reality, from his perspective, things are what they are, they will be what they will be, and our beliefs, or dreams, or wishes can’t change them. Its some kind of fatalistic approach to life.

That little voice inside me tells me he might be right, but it doesn’t stop me from working to make the future somehow better, better for me, better for people I don’t know, better for my friends and people I love.

Herman Hertzberger told me once that as an architect, he cannot save the world, that he sees himself more like a dentist, just relieving a little discomfort here and there.

Maybe that’s all that’s needed.

Think about what the impact of 309 million people doing little things to make the future better. Individually, it would be easy to say that picking up the water bottle in the parking lot doesn’t make a difference and that only a fool would believe it to be otherwise.

But think about it.

390 MILLION people. If every day we did just one thing, in a year there would be almost one billion things done each year. Think about 390 million people going to the gulf, dipping out their one bucket of oil, staying one night in a local motel, eating three meals. The impact of that would make the 20 billion dollar escrow fee tiny.

I believe the future is in a decentralized approach to problem solving. It seems like just a few generations ago, all of America was “off-grid” and “off-pipe.” Every major building in a city made its own electricity, heat, and propulsion for its elevators. Every family farm harvested water and stored it for the dry spells, made electricity, grew food. The rural countryside is filled with remnants of a sustainable society…it worked for a few hundred years…until we centralized the economy.

I’m off track yet again. I’ll close with this quote by Epictetus. “If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.”

Kind of takes one back to Forrest Gump.

Be safe, be good to each other, and when they get that thing capped in the gulf, take a trip, scoop your bucket, and lets go full speed into a foolish future.

…and pick up that water bottle!

When you think about a waking day, a lot of words pass through ones mind. Some words are destined to be spoken, some not. Some of the words are part of a more complex inner thought. Thoughts that really only happen when it gets quiet enough that the world outside isn’t grabbing our attention for one reason or another.

Along this line of words some stick out.

Over the last few days I’ve become aware of the word “rescue” maybe because I was thinking of the people who fly for the Coast Guard, maybe because I was thinking about applying sensor networks for finding people trapped in big debris fields like the one from this week’s tornadoes in Ohio and Michigan. There’s probably other reasons, but I’m thinking about that one word “rescue.”

The Oxford English Dictionary (where else can one start?) defines rescue as “save” and then “from a dangerous or distressing situation.”

Pretty simple. Actually there may not be enough here to write about, but lets see if its possible to drone on for a bit, something might pop up.

Another context where rescue popped up this last week was in the music that my “genius” app on the ipod put together for me. It put two songs together back to back that I wouldn’t have, but maybe Steve Jobs has somehow canned a real genius and put them in an app? The first song was “Love Story” performed by Taylor Swift, followed by the classic Motown hit “Rescue Me” performed by Fontella Bass. Both are less about dangerous and more about distressing situations which seems to be the tricky thing about rescue.

Its not hard to imagine being saved from one distressing situation only to find oneself in another. Kind of “out of the frying pan into the fire.” Both songs focus on the moment of rescue…and from what? Being alone.

Following the logic, being alone must be the distressing situation, and I can see there’s something to that. Maybe not completely a good idea, to see someone else as more interesting to be around than ourselves. But, it could be parts of us want someone else to tell us, we’re interesting and good people, parts of us want to find a way to be more than we’re able to be on our own, and can’t figure out what that means. Having another person around lets us see the world from another perspective. That’s pretty reasonable sounding, especially if the two people share that outlook.

But at the root of the rescue question lies the question. Did we get ourselves in a dangerous or distressing situation and now want someone else to extract us so we don’t have to do it ourselves? Sometimes danger comes at us from outside, and sometimes the the most reasonable person can’t see far enough ahead to not get caught in the flood, fire, hurricane, earthquake…. I can see that. But when the danger or distress comes from the inside, its a different story.

At that moment, when the little voice inside starts saying “rescue me,” its time to cowboy up, look in the mirror and realize nobody but the reflection can save you (vampires and various forms of undead excepted.)

It wouldn’t be as good a song for Fontella Bass to sing “grow with me” or “build with me” but might be the right sentiment. Then again, who doesn’t like the moment when the two are visible in the fog, one on a knee, holding the other’s hand, the thin loop of gold flashing in the morning sun. I haven’t found that in the Oxford English Dictionary yet, but there’s a lot of time in the quiet of Brook Hollow, so I’ll go turn a few more pages and see what jumps out at me.

Be good, enjoy some time alone if there’s time, take care of each other, don’t forget the one in the mirror.

It looks like a typo doesn’t it?

But from time to time, we get presented with certain truths. One of them being that while we become part of something larger than ourselves from time to time, that larger thing, it isn’t always aware of us. Sometimes that’s a good thing, sometimes not.

I tend to identify closely with what I do, and the people in my life are usually those who are part of the same organization. I’m proud of my friends, amazed at their commitment to the larger organization, (which is kind of a nested set of organizations and relationships) and its always a difficult day when you can’t do what they ask you to do. You feel like you’ve let them down, and, I guess I did.

Its not like they ask often, or for trivial things, they have good judgment, great judgment really. They can read a persons integrity in a few short sentences and know things about us we have a hard time learning ourselves. So its hard to let them down. The larger thing we are part of brought us together, and is kind of close (ok, not super close) to being a really good thing. It just needs the right mix of people at all of the right levels, who have a clear sense of purpose, and really, of integrity.

It seems hard to hold on to both of those things, purpose and integrity as one moves upwards in the nested layers of the organization, and today, one of those people who had managed to hold on at a pretty high level decided not to keep at it. We could tell something was in the wind, the person was relieved having made the decision and why not? Those jobs leading the nest are not really super rewarding in our bigger organization, and especially in our time when whittling, reallocating, and from time to time weaseling (such strong language!) resources from one nested layer to another is a way of life. Where is “one” to find satisfaction in such a time and place? Its not easy to answer.

I’m happy this person has been able to hold on to what they value through the trials and tribulations of daily life in a big nest. I’m happy they kind of know what to do next, which voice inside to hear clearly. But, that said, there will be a hole in the nest, in each of our nested layers as this “one” slowly moves out. I feel it already, maybe the quiet evenings allows for too much reflection. We shared similar values, similar commitment, but I always thought they were stronger, could work through the conflicting situations that we are presented with each day. It turns out everyone is human, and in many ways, thank goodness for that!

But back to my first point.

I think to act in one’s own best interest is unavoidably an act of separation. And its hard to act in one’s own interest for many of us. Some of us spent our lives trying to keep family, colleagues, everyone around us happy, and lose ourselves along the way. So I felt poorly when I didn’t jump up to volunteer to take a spot in the bigger nest today, and hope it won’t separate me too far from my friends.

We all make choices about our future. We have to, and its inevitable that we’ll disappoint some people in the process. But our friends while being disappointed will still accept us even after the we choose for ourselves…we all hope for that.

I’m getting a little or a lot lost here, but thanks to the head of our nest for years of looking after us at their own expense, thanks to those that take us in and accept us, and please know that no matter which voice inside you follow, there’s always a spot in the friends nest for you.

The whole nest metaphor needs some more elaboration one day. It just occurred to me that one can get pushed out of a nest, just as easily as one can leave the nest on their own…

I’m a bit more obscure than usual since recent events aren’t fully public yet, I’m hoping readers will recognize who to thank and who to forgive and let back in the nest.

Take Care of each other.

I did something this weekend that I hadn’t done in maybe….45 years? I ironed a shirt.

Wash and Wear has been steadily improving since 1965 so I hadn’t really needed to iron but the wrinkles were there as was the iron and board and I thought, “I can do this!.”

Its funny how muscle memory comes back. Its been a long time, but I found myself knowing how to proceed along the shirt, managing to work the wrinkles out of the back, front, and sleeves without “ironing-in” more wrinkles.

I was remembering Mom teaching us to iron. We started on handkerchiefs, moved up to pillow cases and sheets, and once we quit “browning up” the items we were ironing (I stopped moving the iron once when a really compelling scene played by “Bozo the Clown” came on WGN) we graduated to ironing Dad’s shirts.

Like shoe shining, ironing paid a little bit, maybe a quarter or so, but back then, eight quarters meant a new Revell, AMT or Monogram model, and three more meant new paint colors!

I was also remembering, it was one of the few times we could get one on one time with Mom. When she was teaching us, we’d have her attention, until a scream, a crash or a thump would divert her to another part of the house. (who was that thump?)

I remember the ironing lessons, like the bowling lessons (push, swing, glide, release) and the friday night at the fights wrestling events, (didn’t Lori always beat us?) (unless we cheated and tickled) all took place in the “new addition” as we called it.

This strikes me as odd since it was the only addition to the house back in those growing up years. I remember the addition was built by Dad and a fellow named Ted who was a carpenter I think. John and I hammered nails into the plywood floor there and it had some sliding windows that we still call “the andersons” and each of us kids knows which windows they are.

Like a few projects, the addition didn’t finish up all at once, and I think there still is a switch that dangles on some wires over the dryer to turn the lights on there, and the dimmable light in the middle of the room, that we once pulled down low over the card table to work puzzles, now is too low to walk under without clanging my head.

The addition could be reached by either walking through the kitchen, utility room or by walking through the bathroom and dressing room. This whole-house loop became an endless loop for us to chase each other, our dog, and sometimes the rabbit around the first floor.

I’ll be back to see the addition again this summer, will be again amazed at how small it seems, remember the floor fans we’d all lay around on hot summer evenings, watching the first color tv! I think we all watched the Beatles on Ed Sullivan there, the tv debut of the Jetsons, and after school with Paul Revere and the Raiders. (What were we thinking?)

All these memories came back to me as soon as the hot iron hit the cotton fabric yesterday. I didn’t have the tv on so I managed not to burn the shirt, and was pretty satisfied with how the final product seemed almost starched, perfectly smoothed and was the most comfortable thing I ever put on. (warmed clothes are pretty comfy)

Amazing the things that triggers memories of out past.

Be good to each other this week!

“When you get to the fork in the road…take it.” I think Yogi Berra is credited with that little nugget of wisdom. I heard someone say it today on the radio and like most of my odd cascades of thought, it triggered my memories of the people who stood at the fork in the road at some point (that became a key point) in my life.

Its going to sound like I’m not grateful for everything everyone has contributed to my life (remember “people come into our lives for a reason, or a season…” and however it worked out, i learned from every knock in the head from the panchesin brothers, the handgun held to my forehead by that fellow named Marmesh (guns in dorms are a bad idea), mr. t in fargo, not living up to his partnership principles, I’m sure I’ve learned from all of them but I can’t say they were positive forces in my life at this time.

The first person I remembering changing my life direction was my friend Rick. We had shared all kinds of Mitty-esque improvisations, some social indignation (who doesn’t in high school?), some losses (Greg and Dusty) but one day we were looking at the graduation order on the high school counselor’s door and both of us were in about the same place (not tellin…) and he was talking about going to college. I’d never thought of college until then. Rick talked about the process for applying to NDSU and the architecture program and how they were going to pay him to be a dorm resident assistant (but he wasn’t on duty the night of the Marmesh thing) so he encouraged me to apply, helped me with addresses and things, and soon I was sitting up at the kitchen table in the middle of the night waiting for Rick and Mike to pick me up and drive me (with my one footlocker) up to Fargo to go to college! Amazing.

Mom had one more lesson to teach me that night, showing me how to play different poker games, and taking pretty much all my travel money in some game called “in-between.” I thought she was going to give it back and when Rick pulled up in the 66 Bonneville, or was it a Catalina?, (either way I think it was the largest car ever built) I asked Mom for my money and she said “no and let that be a lesson to you, don’t play cards for money!” It was to be one of a series of life lessons that wouldn’t be initially positive, but upon reflection I can see that I learned something….

The Bonneville’s (I’m pretty sure) cavernous trunk swallowed up my footlocker easily and I tumbled into the back seat for the 14 hour drive. I remember Rick had two eight track tapes (and a pioneer player?) one was the Doors, and the other was Carole King… I can still sing most of those lyrics.

I met a second person at a fork in my life during the second year of school in Fargo. Late one evening I was working in the studio, standing up at the drafting board, which I had tilted up to save my back, when I became aware of of someone watching me. I looked up to the top edge of the board and saw two eyes and black hair, then Professor Loh stepped out from behind my board and asked “do you want to be an architect?” It was late, I was tired, and had only known Professor Loh from his fierce reputation. Back then almost every faculty was fierce. I remember walking into a review as a freshman, when a faculty from Australia stood up, took a dime (it was 1971 after all) out of his pocket, leaned down and slowly rolled the dime across to the student who was not looking too confident standing in front of their work. “Pick it up.” Professor Pike said, “go ahead, pick it up, and go call your mother and tell her you’ll be home tomorrow because you will NEVER be an architect.” Holy cow!

When Professor Loh asked, I said “yes, sure” doing my best Fargo accent (should’ve added a “you betcha”) he told me to be in his office first thing the next morning.

I knocked on his door, he invited me to sit (Thonet bentwood chairs I think) and asked me “What do you want to learn?” I told him the courses I was taking, structures, professional practice, studio…. and he cut me off saying “No, what do YOU want to LEARN?” I stammered around for a bit, and realized I had no clue what I wanted to learn, no clue that I had a choice of what to learn, I’d always thought the curriculum was a given, that you had to learn what they taught, here was someone telling me no, that wasn’t enough.

He finally threw me a lifeline and offered that I might want to learn about how to see and break apart a problem. Feeling like Ralphie after he told Santa he wanted a football for Christmas instead of a Red Rider something something bb gun, I nodded to Professor Loh. He gave me some books to look up in the library and read (my first card catalog adventure) and told me to come back in a few weeks. As we met, he showed me how to see a larger problem as smaller and smaller parts, how to map the parts for interrelationships, structure the parts according to ways of moving through buildings (linear, centroidal/radial, field) and how to put it all back together again.

Every quarter for four years he did that….and near the end, I kind of had answers to what I’d like to learn. One day at the end of fourth year, he asked me again. I said “I want to learn the problem solving process for large urban development plans” or something similarly silly. He stopped me cold with a wave of his hand saying “no, it is time for you to learn about mystery in architecture….and I cannot teach you anything about that.” He left NDSU that summer with his wonderful spouse Alice, they went to San Luis Obisbo. Professor Loh is listed as an emeritus faculty on their website. I’ve written to extend my thanks, and hope the message gets to him.

It turned out, learning about the mystery in architecture was really hard. I flailed about thinking it was in the light, or in the scale and then back-burnered it and accepted an invitation to teach. Cecil Elliott was the new department head at NDSU and hired me and Dennis, who’d graduated a few years ahead of me. That first year teaching was one terrifying moment after another. Cecil would take Dennis and I out for dinner and somehow calm us down and get us refocused for the next day in the studio or the classroom. Cecil was the first person to talk to me about how students learn, about letting people make their own mistakes, and being there to help them back onto a path towards success. He also said we had to make each point three times, in three ways, so one of the ways would “stick” with the student. That first year was kind of a mess (sorry to you all who experienced that) but by my third year of teaching (alternating with practice every other year) I was feeling pretty good about my teaching.

Friday, as I was greeting students coming off the stage in graduation, I thought back to a lot of those students from NDSU. Darla is a successful faculty and kind of an academic entrepreneur. Cindy is back teaching there, Dale and most others are architects, having had long careers by now and are almost to retirement!

Back to the point… In my third year teaching, Cecil and I went to dinner, and he told me he wasn’t going to hire me anymore. I was kind of floored, I thought it all had been going well, but he explained. If I was going to keep teaching, make a career in teaching, I needed a graduate degree in architecture, “and not from anyplace in the Midwest, go where they don’t think like people here.”

Summer came and I was back in the office in practice. Deaner, Steve, Harold, and even Rick made up the office team, with Fred anchoring specifications, and David, just back from his Master’s degree. David and I had set up a small business (that folded pretty quickly) where we had lots of time (hence the folding) to talk. He was super enthusiastic about the school he had graduated from and the faculty, Milka (emeritus and still a force), Charles (now a university president!) and like Rick did for me in high school, David connected me with the addresses, and people to talk to about applying. That summer I sold my sports car (you cannot get dual Su carbs to stay in sync long enough to start a car at -40 anyways) and drove around the country touring schools of architecture from Fargo to Boston and down through Virginia. At most of the schools I could recognize what they were doing, functional diagram, extrude, render… no mystery there.

At Virginia Tech, I walked in the door saw a group of students making models that weren’t stylized, inflated boxes but were bones. Very nice bones too, beautifully proportioned, clearly structured by an underlying geometry, I went over and was talking to a student, describing what a powerful entry sequence they had developed. The student said “no, its not a building, its 3 and 7.”

Again I was floored, I had no idea what these people were talking about but, it did seem mysterious enough so I applied, was accepted, sold my sensible sedan for a 300 dollar pickup, (didn’t think to look under it and see the blocks of wood wedged in the broken springs,) and set out for Virginia. As I pulled into the driveway of the apartment in Blacksburg, every red light on the dash appeared, the engine made some bad banging sounds and I coasted into a parking space. I think it was towed away by the person who finally bought it. So I did lots of walking and the day I was walking along the highway, footlocker on one shoulder, chain to lock it to the desk on the other, a car pulled up next to me, slowed, and honked…it was David!

He had moved to Atlanta, and his spouse had parents in Blacksburg! What an amazing moment, well, until you realize Blacksburg is a really small town if someone you know is in town, you’ll see them or they’ll see you before long. But it was great, David introduced me to his parents in law, they let me take a hot shower (no power to my apartment yet…hmmm…and today the hot water heater blew so it was a cold shower for me here…maybe that’s why I’m typing all this?)

The first week of school was also mysterious. Professor Brown gave us all (4th year, first professional masters students and one year post professional students like me all together) a project, told us presentations were on Friday, then left. That Friday, all the students are posting beautiful colored-pencil diagrams and those odd bones models while Tom (another architect in the class) and myself posted dozens of sheets of analysis of the problem. Professor Brown walked from one project to the next, talking about the potential for wonder and architecture in each. When he got to my analysis, he lifted each sheet slowly, looking carefully at my work (I was feeling like Ralphie when he turned in his Christmas “theme”) and then without raising his voice or asking a question said “there is no architecture here” pulled the pins from the wall and let the drawings flutter to the floor. Again, I was stunned. He kept on talking about wonder and architecture and came to Tom’s analysis, same thing happened.

Tom and I spent that evening in the Cellar, with pizza and beer. I remember us saying “we have cards in our wallets that say everything we DO is architecture!” (a clear sign of too much beer.) And I think I said “well, I came here because I had no idea what they were doing so I’ll bite.”

I spent the next 10 weeks on every Sunday morning (exposing my unchurchedness here) photographing the student’s desks, then every Tuesday and Wednesday night watching slides while I ate at home. I finally started to see what Professor Brown meant when he spoke of “the architecture of brick or the architecture of the water’s edge, or the architecture of a wall” and Professor Loh’s words rang in my ears. The mystery of architecture at last!

Professor Brown taught me architecture as Professor Loh had taught me problem solving. After a few years of practice (see reference to Mr. T and his lapse in the early paragraphs) I was fortunate to be invited to interview for a teaching position at Virginia Tech.

I was pretty nervous in the interview. My slides were bad, an even balance of over and under exposed diagrams and pictures, and I was talking like I was at a school board meeting, pitching our firm’s services. The faculty was very polite, tossing me mostly softball questions but there was one that again changed my direction in life, and one that took me up to the day of my interview with the promotion and tenure committee for that all important tenure decision.

The life changing question came from Professor Ferrari, who is credited by many with having built the pedagogical side of the school at Virginia Tech, with Dean Burchard forming the political and organizational landscape. Professor Ferrari asked me to back my slides up to a drawing I had made of the plan of the Pantheon in Rome (a building I hope to see one day.) With the slide up, he asked “so, are you closer to the white or the black part of the plan?” without thinking I said “the black.”

Without really knowing what I was doing, I had just committed to a career focused on the fabric of the building, its structure, its enclosure, its surfaces, and somehow looked past the white part of the plan, which was the space enclosed by the black lines describing the exterior walls. I didn’t know until a few years later, that Professor Ferrari had asked another fellow that question in the same faculty search. Frank and I finally figured it out some years later, it might have been at a memorial service for Professor Ferrari I’m not sure.

The other question, that took me six years to answer, was asked by Professor Rott, who still shapes the graduate program at Virginia Tech with his high standards for clarity in thought and word. He asked, “on what grounds, other than health, light, air or code, do you argue for a window in a wall?”

Six years later, I’m sitting across the granite table top in the dean’s office (a great design by Bob Dunay) and all of a sudden it hits me. Professor Rott didn’t ask, but I offered that I had the answer to his question six years prior. “The presence of the wall.” He knew what I meant right away.

Thirteen years later, a fellow named Cho changed me, but instead of offering a fork in my life path, he forced one. A few years after that a fellow named Tyler, who I never met, showed me another fork in the path of life, maybe the most noble one I’ve come close to.

My daughters regularly teach me about faith and strength. I’m not sure they know that but I think of it every day.

In a tree, the fork in a limb is often a weak point, a place where there is a split, a crack, and a failure waiting to happen the next time the wind comes up. I think these life forks could’ve been that way. Changing ones path in life is always risky, you never know how it will go, who you will meet along the way, but I believe there are moments when people show you a quality, speak to you sincerely, and it hits you just at the right time, when you’re open, receptive and ready to risk.

So, its another “Forest Gump” ending, like a box of chocolates, you never know what that person you’re standing next to might be able to do for you, they almost never know what they’ve done, (unless you tell them) never know that their moment of insight, of sincerity, has entered you because for some reason you were ready.

The flip side of that might be that if we’re not walking around open, ready, sensitive to what people are trying to tell us through their words and actions, we might completely miss the taking the fork in the road.

Soooo, be open, be ready, be respectful of those you meet each day, they might just change your life.

Be good to each other.
Take Care

Yesterday’s painting happened like this:

First I lay out a square, no meaning or intent, just a square with a square inside.

Second, I choose color. I’d been working with dark colors so I choose white for the center just to make a change.

Third, I develop the texture as I apply the color, moving the brush from the centerline to the edge of the inner square. The sun is up now, and bathes each brush stroke in low angle warm light, shadows form, cast from the liquid thickness of the paint.

Fourth, I choose a color for the outer square. I choose blue, mostly arbitrarily and mix it with the remaining white on my mixing paper. I add a bit of mixing media to thin the mix.

I apply this color to two edges of the outer square, mitering the corners as I go. The mitering comes to me as I look at the diagonals used to draw the square on the canvas.

Fifth, I run out of the blue white mix. This happens often, and since I don’t record what proportions I used to make what color, I don’t even try to match it, but take it as a sign that I should change colors.

So both the mitred corners and the two-color outer square comes from me trying to hear the painting as I paint it. Its like seeing every point of resistance, every problem as a proposition from the work to me. There is always a choice, to listen or not, and some days I don’t listen, but I did yesterday and thought about another color.

Sixth, I chose the yellow ochre thinking that when combined with the blue, I’d get a nice green. This painting and a few of my recent ones are kind of “build ups” of color. So in this one, I start with white for the center element, then add blue to the remaining white on the mixing sheet to get the outer square mitre on two sides, then add ochre to the blue to make a green for the other two sides of the outer square. Again, no mystery or intent, just thought it’d be pretty and that by always linking two colors in the mix, that the painting would hold together a bit better.

Seventh, I start applying the green from the miters outward, remembering that I had made a mistake on an earlier painting, and didn’t quite merge the two colors, but let the white canvas show through from below. It really brings your eye to the point where two colors don’t quite meet. So I leave a sliver of canvas visible and paint from the mitre outwards and fill the remaining outer square.

Eighth, I step back and look at what is on the canvas, thinking about some yogurt for breakfast, something isn’t right. the center white square is too independent of the outer square pieces. I start to get disillusioned with the piece and go for the yogurt. A piece of florist wire is laying on the counter, its a cast off bit formed when I was thinking I’d hold the lily up off the bottom of the cylinder of the tabletop pond. I open the yogurt, the foil top tears in half and I dig in the drawer for a spoon to get the rest of the foil off. I’d put the yogurt down on the counter and it made the wire twist up and catch a bit of sun. I pick the remaining foil from the yogurt to open it, grab the spoon, lift the yogurt and the wire falls back.

I’m seeing the wire, thin, a bit curved lay on the tile countertop. The tile is chunky and the contrast with the wire is strong in both the thinness of it, its curve against the grid of the tiles, and its green color against the beige countertop. I pick it up and carry it with the yogurt back to the painting. I’m standing over the painting, holding the wire, spoon, and yogurt, go to fill the spoon and drop the wire into the paint. It lays there for a quick expletive and I snatch it up. As I stand looking at the damage of the wire in the thick paint, I see that it has left a track across the high parts of the brush strokes. The track is thin, the paint is thick, and as I removed the wire, a bit of blue has been dragged into the white.

I’m thinking of how friendships begin now as I look at the blue dragged into the white, I don’t know why, but I see the wisp of blue extending into the white as the first gesture from one to another. We make these gestures sometimes out of politeness, sometimes out of compassion, sometimes as an entree to meet someone and occasionally, each little wisp of effort takes hold, a dialog of little efforts exchange between two people and even more rarely, become a mesh or a netting of efforts that become the shared experiences and gestures that hold friends together. Mostly here I was thinking about when I first met my friend Rick in high school, from that first gym class, we worked on cars, met other friends, took days off from high school, and as a group (Nancy, Diane, John and John) we cooked, saw the auto show, went to the indiana dunes, all sorts of things that bit by bit wisp by wisp bound us together in friendship. Mostly, I’m thinking of this because Nancy and I found each other again on facebook recently and I’ve been trying to think of how to describe my life since we fell out of touch (the wisps snap when you don’t maintain them) during college.

So I pick up the wire and begin dragging thin bits of color from the edge square into the white center square, bits of color across the open white mitre joint, imagining each wisp will bind the parts together just a bit more firmly. After scratching the wire through the paint in rectilinear patterns, I sweep it across the canvas, and curl it into the sweep at the end.

Now I’m thinking of Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, one of the “Glasgow Four” a small group (like my high school friends) that changed the art and architecture of a city, a country, and now their few remaining works draw tourists “toshies” from all around the world to come and see their work. Macdonald’s works are mostly feminine motifs, and the continuity of the curved lines she uses seems to be a useful contrast to the rectilinear patterns I just made in the paint with the wire…so I clumsily turn the curve into a very abstract figure, cradling a flower bloom (you’d never guess it to see it) I’m feeling better about the painting now, and bring one more tiny element into it with the wire. I etch the cotyledon, the “seed germ” that architect Louis Sullivan places at the beginning of his ornament into my wisps of color thinking that this painting is a beginning of a new series of studies, and that the seed germ may bloom into something at some point.

I take a few snaps with my point and shoot camera, pick up the yogurt, stare a bit more at the lily rising in the glass column on the dining table, and head to the bath to get ready for work.

All this is to say, the paintings I do begin simply, and I’m looking for something to catch me, to speak to me, like walking through a garden. I’m trying to slow my mind down enough to let something pop into my eyes and reach me. Each time that happens, I’m outside of myself, forgetting my calendar, forgetting the past, it helps me to enjoy that moment when the sun is low, the birds are noisy, and the yogurt is still cold.

I enjoy the memories and thoughts that this process brings to me, and somedays, my mind is already too busy when my feet touch the floor to have this dialogue with the work. But somedays it works.

Almost forgot, here is the overall piece.

Thanks for helping me think of this, have a great day, be good to each other, listen to your work!

Early May has a number of associations, some being the end of winter in the northern latitudes, some being celebrations of a new season of growth (the dance around the May Pole with each persons ribbon winding around it to brighten and renew it), some being an anonymous expression of affection (the May Basket) and an end to the twelve hour working day.

History records that in Chicago, a labor strike to support the formation of the 8 hour work day would erupt into a chaotic scene with a small explosion in Haymarket Square that would forever be associated with the emancipation of working class Americans (to work only 8 hours a day) from the expectations of the privileged class who lived off the 12 to 16 hours of daily labor of others. The start of May is thus associated with workers in many countries.

A worker labors to live I think (and it could be a professional lives to labor.) In agricultural America, work had been seen as its own reward, a source of pride, something to be accomplished with skill and discipline, and when one is observing the work of a dedicated person, the hallmarks of pride in a job well done might still be observed. Accuracy, on-time completion, a visible ingenuity, and follow-through connect a task well done with thousands of similarly proud workers around the world.

All this comes to mind in early May for me, partly because it was the run-up to my few weeks of work with Dad at the lake. I was remembering tonight that the highest compliment Dad ever paid me was to call me a good mechanic, a worker knowledgeable of the tools, materials, and methods of their trade, and willing to bring this knowledge to bear in the interests of doing good work as part of a life ethic. Garrison Keilor still signs off his radio show by saying “do good work.”

Oftentimes today it’s hard to become knowledgeable about ones work. The software we use changes twice a year it seems, the time allotted to assigned tasks shrinks a bit more each year, and the people we need to coordinate with seem busier and busier each year making it harder and harder to do a job well. The stresses of less time, less support, and less familiarity mount on all of us and seriously challenge this nation-building ethic of doing good work.

A person could rightly ask, “Does something have to be done perfectly?” I remember seeing a tee shirt on a construction site in Fargo once that read “It may not be perfect, but its good enough for you.” I thought it was funny at the time, but today as I read the strain on the faces of the people I work with, work for, work under, I realize that the compression of time-on-task doesn’t just mean jobs don’t get done as well, it more importantly means that the fiber of good people, trying to do good work, because that’s who they are, is being challenged at best, and at worst, undermined, eating away at who they are, making it harder for them to show their children pride in good work. Its a scary thing to nibble away at the fiber of a persons being, one never knows when that fiber will yield under the stress, separating that persons pride in work, pride in self from their daily life.

This is pretty rambling, I know, but that’s what happens when I write late at night. Snippets of the day seem to merge. A conversation with a good fellow who proposes making something look like it’s fixed instead of fixing it, a normally patient student getting testy at the thought of reworking a problem discovered in these closing hours of the studio project, an excellent student expressing the willingness to misrepresent their own thoughts instead of quickly reworking and presenting a more handmade explanation over an incorrect polished-looking computer rendering. This same day revealed snippets of great work, follow through on questions, jumping in to cover (my) calendar misunderstanding (Thanks Mark!), a table filled with people working over the smallest nuances of language to help a struggling apprentice learn from an assessment and proceed to future success.

I really work with good people, which inspires me to do good work, and it reassures me that the privileged haven’t bent the fibers of these people too far, that they will go home with a bit of pride in having done well today (Thanks Ginger, Mallory and Hala) and as a faculty member, I felt good going home knowing I cajoled, lent confidence (and my best pen!), and respected the work of the students I worked with today.

The weekend is on us now. Typically a time when most of us think we don’t work, but really, we’re just working at other things. Working at building families, futures, relationships, and even ourselves. If you get a chance, thank those you work with during the celebrations of workers that is May Day around the world. I’ll slip some donuts into the studio to support the student’s efforts to not just appear to, but to actually do the work to do it right.

“Be well, do good work, keep in touch” says Garrison Keilor each week. To that I’ll add, “thank those who do” (especially remember your Mother’s work next weekend!)

Take Care, be good to each other.