Independence Day

July 3rd Fireworks in St. Louis.

On this Independence Day as we gather with family and friends to remember the birth of our country, may we not forget the bravery with which they took their convictions and formed an unprecedented union. May we find the same bravery in manifesting our convictions and working to actively prevent irreversible climate change, in challenging outdated ideas motivated solely by profit, and in working to include all our communities in societal scaled solutions.

For as the lesser known versus exult:

America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!
...
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free!

or as Langston Hughes wrote (as already I have already quoted on this blog)

"O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be"

On Modernity (and lousy furniture design)...

This really is unrelated, but I feel obligated to share this personal story.

This morning as I pulled on my jeans (two legs at a time like all great men) I realized my pocket seemed a little light. Wallet? Check. Pen? Check. Cellphone? Cellphone!? Fortunately this happened on the day I don't have class until 4:00pm so I did have the luxury of time to search. After turning my apartment inside out (which was a mean feat given that all of my studio supplies are here until I move them back to school tomorrow) I began running over the alternatives in my head. I hadn't used the phone for two days so it could have been left at the library or in Givens Hall or at the community center in The Ville (see yesterday's post) or worst of all on the metro bus. I visited both the library and Givens and checked their respective lost and founds... nada.
I came back home and remembered I took the trash out so I dutifully dug through kitchen garbage just in case... nope. All the while I was thinking if I just had a roommate who could call the phone while I walked around looking for it; such are the joys of living alone, but then again no one eats your food either.

Finally I remembered you can send text messages from your phone on the t-mobile website. I fired one off and heard a glorious beep... somewhere in my 743 sf apartment. So armed with a maglight and the laptop I stalked around the apartment playing a high tech version of hot and cold for an eternity. Wasn't modern technology supposed to change us for the better not make life more complicated in the same routine?

For the record the phone was hiding inside the recliner. It is a recliner that has an internal mechanism that drops the back and kicks out the footrest (one of my sweetest pieces of free furniture ever) and on the left side (only!?) a metal rail serves to catch anything that slips through the cracks. I had even picked up and moved the damn thing twice... if any furniture designers are listening please make sure stuff doesn't fall or drops straight through on everything; after all beauty is a byproduct of intelligent function.

In other news I got into John Hoal's studio so I will be using New Orleans as the site for several urban design projects.

Notes from St. Louis: Winter Night on Skinker

Striding along the rubble strewn sidewalk on the lazy curve of Skinker at an hour until midnight on a cold Monday night, my attention is drawn by an approaching rumble. As I near the overpass with its elegantly spare streamlined details my eyes dart above as the metro train passes over. Adjusting back from the rhythmic pools of bright light radiating from the warm windows my eyes are drawn to a lone mitten among the gravel and litter. I ponder how the intrinsic pairing of mittens and socks always seems to tempt the fates to separate them.

My mind is still on this tack a minute later when I must divert in the street to walk around a militarily anti-urban crabapple tree which has claimed the sidewalk with its lower branches. It is Skinker at night however so I am in no danger of traffic.

As I near the crass glare of the taco and chicken stacks a pungent aroma assaults my nostrils, that of a cigarello. Looking around to see if anyone is blatantly getting blunted in the parking lot, my gaze is caught by motion on the other side of the street.

Under the full moon a stray dog is making his way north on the sidewalk. We exchange quick guilty glances, each one wondering what the hell the other is doing out on this icy night.

I leave Skinker and shuffle my way on the ice towards my warm home.



Don't expect to hear much more from me this week... Studio Final has come calling...