Taking the time to become expert at most things is a waste of time. The hundreds or thousands of hours spent learning to make the finest quiche, the very best table leg, or the perfect free throw would probably be better spent getting kinda good at a dozen other things. Case in point: Everything we
From time to time I’m reminded of how unrepentant certain purveyors and apologists of modernism are regarding their role in the destruction of our cities. On the website “CityLab” one particular specialist in “design and architecture” (sic) writes about the magnificence of particular mid-century atrocities thrust upon Buffalo, New York in praise of such soul
It was always the incremental autonomy of urbanity which drew me to the city. I was amazed that a bicycle, and later a bus could expand my world so completely. I had grown up nominally in a city, but surrounded by woods. I explored them compartmentally. We, which is to say “kids” did just play
To complete our couple “to do” list for the summer my wife and I finally took the new CT Rail Hartford Line from Springfield to New Haven. We’d taken the train a few times on this route already, just not since the opening of the new Union Station in Springfield and the addition of 7
I care deeply about ideas, concepts, and philosophies. I enjoy discussing things in abstract and perhaps even Platonic ways. But in the end I am a philosophical materialist in the sense that I view things as bound up with and constrained by reality; the ability to dream it does not confer the ability to do
I was watching a lecture by an evolutionary biologist in which he was attempting to explain the existence of romantic love in the human species. His hypothesis was that while upgrading in terms of spouse might be rational for the individual doing the upgrading, the offspring would be endangered by the transition; either through neglect
The recent Strong Towns’ series on Cobb County, Georgia touched upon many of the issues endemic to the American Post War development pattern and the Growth Ponzi Scheme, but the financing of a new stadium for the Atlanta Braves was mentioned repeatedly as emblematic and symptomatic of the mistakes communities fall into as they chase
To create an exhaustive list of everything just in the downtown which desperately needs rehabilitation would be exhausting, and I’m lazy. I don’t mean to imply that everything could or should look like Main Street, just that even the most basic and functional places and spaces can reflect the humanity which in some way they
35 years ago I met a guy from Redding, California. He and I were both living in Spain at the time; estadounidenses from very different parts of the Estados Unidos. It is really just for that reason that I’ve had some notion as to the sort of community Redding was. Was. In the intervening decades
I was 12 years old when my mom decided that she should get a part time job. The Leprechaun Shop had two outlets, one at the Eastfield Mall, and the other at Baystate West. There was usually money for bus fare somewhere in the house and I was free to use it to either go