solar flare

As I feel like I'm kind of taking a radical detour with my life right now, I am suspending my activities on this blog and continuing them on a tumblr account: aflare.tumblr.com

This is a strange time in my life. Post graduation, pre-job, Saori's in Germany, and so I have this block of time about six months long before I meet Saori back here in St. Louis to move our stuff up to Boston. So, I'm writing about it, like I always do, and taking grainy photos with my tablet, and you can follow my adventures of getting to Mexico city etc at the other blog site.

I'm not abandoning this story; I'll be back in September. In the meanwhile, vamanos!

Aw, Schnucks

Everyone knows that grocery store chains have different stores depending on the neighborhood. I'm kind of fascinated with how far Schnucks has taken it. A rundown of the Schnucks I frequent:

Olive and Midland
This is basically your lower rent Schnucks, especially since its the closest grocery store to the food desert of the balkanized, poor municipalities north of U city, namely Pagedale and Normandy.
Huge racial diversity here. Some students, mostly from the university housing north of Delmar, a few local Asians, lots of black people, more than any other Schnucks I've seen.
Next door: a dollar store, and a clothing store for plus sized black women.
Not much produce here, ( I have heard a theory that grocery stores in areas considered to be higher risk of shoplifting will carry less fresh fruits and veggies, which have a very low profit margin, and generally mark up the price to compensate for a higher loss rate ) very poor beer and wine selection, no coffee stand. They don't sell the premium orange juice they squeeze themselves, and they don't sell gelato either.
However, they do have the most amazing selection of smoked meats of any of the Schnucks I've seen. There's an entire section of the store devoted to it, actually. And its great stuff too, most of it from local smokehouses and sausage makers.
The store is more spartan, dingier. They started selling products in giant cardboard bins with giant sale signs in the middle of the aisle. It seems clear to me they are trying to attract the Wal-Mart shopper.

Clayton
A little over a mile south and you get to the grocery store that serves the university community and the relatively wealthy neighborhoods to the south and west. It's nice without feeling opulent. In-store coffee shop, sometimes with live music.
Next door: bikram yoga, UPS, frozen yogurt.
They sell the amazing orange juice and the expensive gelato. The smoked selection is not bad either.
Also pretty diverse. Seems to cover a wide range of shoppers. Great produce section, good wine selection, amazing beer section. Best beer selection of any Schnucks. Bustling and busy pretty much anytime. Open 24 hours. Lots of college kids.

Ladue
A little over a mile away is a world of difference in the Schnucks. If the Olive store caters to lower income blacks, this store caters to wealth and Jews. It's a logical step, given its location at the edge of one of the richest neighborhoods in St. Louis, and its proximity to the heart of the Jewish enclave. Walking in, I can always tell we're approaching a high holy day by the featured products on immediate display.
This is what my family calls "the nice Schnucks". It's actually part of a stylized shopping center which has a Barnes&Noble and a Gap. It's a vaguely Virginian style with red brick, chandeliers in the vestibule, and whitewashed wood. It's too pretentious. It looks like an upscale grocery store, although it doesn't have the smugness of nearby Straub's which is an upscale grocery store.
The produce and fruit section here is great- fresh, good looking, and lots of it. They sell the "life changing" Culinaria fresh orange juice. Huge selection of wines and other liquor, great selection of beer, including craft breweries. Coffee and gelato stands in the store. Really weak smoked meat selection.

Schnucks on the Plaza
The single bottle of beer I bought here was placed first in a paper bottle bag, and then in a larger, white paper grocery bag emblazoned with the store name in dignified serif typeface: this is not Schnucks-this is Schnucks on the Plaza.
Since the only large open spaces nearby are asphalt parking lots, I can only surmise that the plaza is a reference to the nearby mini-mall, with only luxury department stores. A friend characterized the area as "disgusting"and I have to agree with him. The architecture style of the area is Virginian plantation. Where the Ladue Schnucks simply borrows some materials and language, these buildings really try to look like plantation buildings. The Schnucks front facade is covered with whitewashed wood slats. It has a steeple. It looks like a cross between a church and a barn.
Next door: Sak's Fifth Avenue, Starbucks, financial advisors.
This is the Schnucks of the wealthiest area of St Louis. Big old houses, golf courses. This Schnucks feels more old money than the Ladue. No crystal chandeliers here, just a straight cold high end grocery. Good produce and veggies, wide variety of gourmet foods, the largest selection of wines of any of the other stores, and in sharp contrast; poor selection of beer, almost as bad as the Olive store. The weak craft beer section says to me that this is a store for old rich people.

Moving frenzy: it begins

Saori and I went to our last university house party last Saturday. The theme was mythical creatures, which was widely interpreted. Some Chinese students came dresses in heels and traditional cheongsam dress. Others just came in 1920's attire. There were not a few unicorns. Brian wore a massive cardboard mythic bird mask/helmet and construction paper wings pinned to his shirt.

Saori and I both came as high school unicorns. I was the super preppie nerdicorn and Saori was the punk unicorn with her golden horn hanging on a string around her neck. We made our costumes with $15 of supplies from the dollar store. The horns we made from Styrofoam cones and gold wrapping paper. I studded mine with brass thumbtacks and added a single LED at the tip, which was really dramatic in the dimly lit party.

I enjoyed myself, only slightly self-conscious about being a graduate in a school party. Adam came too, as a kind of twentysomething werewolf with paper sideburns. I will miss those crowded parties, with the dancing abandon in empty, small living rooms, the do-it-yourself grooveshark DJs, the crowded apartment, running into friends in costume in close spaces and small kitchens.

The apartment sorting and cleaning has begun. Regardless of where I am in two weeks, it will not be here. So, I've started the great sell off on Facebook and craigslist. I sold my TV, my bicycle, a bunch of stuff. And we've sent a lot of stuff to Goodwill as well.

Saori and Dew are taking off Sunday, so time is flying by. I still need to reserve a storage unit in town.

Photos from Mardi Gras

BEEEEEEEAAAAADSSSSSS

I dragged everyone out of bed at 815 am for breakfast. I made a big breakfast of eggs and biscuits and gravy, something to cushion the blow of a day of drinking. I funneled out the jack daniels into everyone's flasks, and essentially shepherded everyone out the door by 940. The mardigras parade leaves Busch stadium at 11am, so we wanted to make sure we had good spots. This is the second largest mardigras in the country, after all.

We parked at school and took the metrolink in, stopping to buy special shuttle passes ($5) good for metro shuttles back and forth to Soulard from the metrolink station. The metro people have been doing this for awhile- they basically doubled their capacity, running trains every seven minutes, and they had probably a dozen busses on full cycle to handle all the partygoers. There was still a huge line of people to get onto the bus. Lots of colorful costumes, lots of people already wearing beads. 

It was kind of chilly when the bus let us off at the drop point. Actually, I really liked the setup. Soulard is separated from the rest of St. Louis by a freeway, and the busses dropped people on the opposite site. There were beer tents already set up, and a huge bank of port-a-potties, and to get to Soulard, you had to cross through light security, checking for coolers, and then cross a pedestrian bridge. It was kind of like, once you crossed the bridge, you were in Mardigras land. As soon as we crossed, we all pulled out our flasks and took the first swig of the day. It was a little after ten AM. 

I thought mardigras, especially in the early, cold morning, a little pathetic and a lot forced. Sad penis necklaces. The crowd not yet feeling the effects of booze, but forcing a bit of joviality in the face of watered down hurricanes and a dearth of coffee. We found a good spot for watching the parade and stuck to it. After awhile we were able to move closer and closer to the point where we were right behind the people up against the barrier. 

The parade was long with a lot of hit and miss with floats. Not one, but two Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtle themed parades. The best was apparently a repeat- a group on bicycles representing Finding Nemo. There were a lot of beads tossed, and everyone around us was pretty civil about bead grabbing. Nobody, apparently, really cared about having beads as much as they cared about catching beads. We ended up with a ton, we all caught about thirty beads, and by the end, we looked like we belonged there. And after all that jack, we were a little drunk too. 

There was a really obnoxious woman behind Saori in her late middle ages who kept shouting "BEADS!!!!! WE WANT BEEEEEEEEEEEAAAADS!!!!!!!" over. and over. and over.  She was also wasted and nearly fell on Saori a few times trying to catch beads. After getting her eye poked for the trouble, she was more careful. 

When the parade ended, we bought some really good chicken shish kabobs and a plate of fries, which a random woman tried to steal "just one!!!! just one!!!!" and I had to fight off her grubby hands. We wandered around Soulard for awhile, marveling at the crowds, and enjoying the scene. Tay and I left Saori behind to scope out a bar (1860) which turned out to be packed with a $5 cover. When we got back to where we had left Saori maybe fifteen minutes before, she was gone. We called a few times, and finally she popped out of nowhere.

"Do you guys want to come up on the roof or you want to walk around some more?"

Apparently, she had been waiting on the steps of one of the old houses in Soulard, and the owner had invited her up to see the roof in his house party. Saori had already made a few friends and pulled us up. We said hello to the owner, and followed Saori up the stairs to the roof, where two young girls were dancing for the growing crowd of guys down below. We sat at the roof edge and enjoyed the view: the empty lot below was the corner of a major intersection, and we had an incredible view of the crowds, the old brick neighborhood of Soulard, and the city in the background. It was an incredible thing, and we all felt like VIPs looking down at the crowds below. 

Of course, things got out of hand, with random people who kept on coming, and then we were on our way out the door when the owner realized that a growing crowd of random drunks on his roof, some of whom were throwing things, was probably not a good thing, so he decided to throw everyone out. We left immediately.

I was getting pretty tired of dealing with the crowds and I wasn't really into hanging around until dark or trying to fight our way into some crappy overpriced bars, so I proposed we get out of Soulard and hit up a bar on the way back home. This was met with general approval, so we headed back out of Soulard, crossed the bridge back to the shuttle busses, and quickly found ourselves back downtown. We walked the few blocks to Bridge tap house, and found a table in the relatively empty bar.

What a contrast to the scene we had just left! Quiet, dark, luxurious, with great beer, (note to self- Ommegang Rare Vos) and good beer snacks (cheese crisps with thin apple slices and spicy mustard, fresh baked pretzel balls with french onion dip). It was good for another few drinks until Saori started nodding off, which was the sign for us to head home.

We were only at home for an hour before taking off to Freda, Helena, and Laura's house. These are three Chinese-area friends of ours who invited us to their Chinese New Year hotpot party. Lots of people I knew, a few I didn't. Three hot pots set up, all spicy, with tons of vegetables, beef, fish balls, enoki mushrooms, tripe, etc, and everything washed down with beer.

We actually started the party off with everyone taking a sake bomb, which was highly amusing considering only half of the party had ever even heard of one, so there was a short description and demonstration of the methodology. And there was a lot of spillage and early droppers as people attempted to balance their dixie cups of sake over the cups of beer.

It was a lot of fun, Tay and I ate way too much, but we had some great conversations and Tay seemed to enjoy himself. He later confided to me that I had a lot of really nice, outgoing friends. I'm just lucky that way, I guess. Anyway, we finally headed home and when we got there, we were both wiped out. As Tay pointed out, we'd basically been drinking from 10am until 10pm.

The next day was not nearly as much fun, but at least, by spacing the drinking out through the entire day and taking lots of water, I wasn't nearly as bad off as say, after the farm party.

Getting to Mardi Gras

Tay came to town Thursday night to spend the weekend with us. Over dinner, I asked him, "how much studying materials did you bring with you?"

He said, "Absolutely none."

For dinner, I brought up the idea of going to get chop suey, since St. Paul sandwhiches are a local speciality available nowhere else in the world. And there's a good reason for that, it turns out. So Tay and I both dived into our devices to determine which is the best place to get St. Paul, cheerfully aruging over what makes the "best" sandwich. Is it the shadiest location? The best tasting? The highest rated restaurant? In the end, we went to a place a lot of people recommneded that was actually pretty close by, and got our food to go. It was pretty nice for a St. Louis shop suey takeout shop, actually. All the lights were on, it looked relatively clean, the food was totally forgetable, pretty mediocre even for American Chinese take out. The St. Paul sandwich also pretty forgettable. 

The St. Paul sandwich was invented in St. Louis in the 1940s or earlier by Chinese immigrants trying to lure Americans into the flavors of China via a hybrid dish- it is basically an egg foo young patty sandwiched with mayo between two slices of white bread. Actually, it takes better than it sounds. Slightly. 

Actually, most of St. Louis's culinary specialties seem to be hybrid dishes: 

• toasted ravioli = Italian pasta+American breading and frying
• St. Louis style pizza= New York pizza + plastic
• gooey butter cake = butter, sugar, flour, eggs + Heaven
• Budweiser beer = Czech pilsner + extra water

Friday, after a big breakfast, we drove to Cherokee street to stroll along and take in the neighborhood, and ate tacos for lunch at La Villanessa. Good service, and amazing, huge creamy horchatas which had been blended almost like a milkshake. 

Coffee at Mud House afterwards, and we slowly cruised by some of the ancient mansions at the edge of Soulard. Afterwards, we went on to the liquor shop.

I had been advised that the best way to do Mardi Gras in Soulard is to bring your own flask, thereby not freezing your hands off holding watered down $9 hurricanes and Budwieser beer, which was the only beer sold on the street (a travesty considering the amount of fantastic breweries in St. Louis). 

Those of you who know us will not be surprised to hear that we did not own flasks, so it was a high priority Friday to secure both flasks for everyone, but also something to put in the flasks. Our local liquor store was happy to outfit us. We picked up the standard stainless steel flask, nothing fancy, and a bottle of Jack Daniels since it was the drink we all agreed we could take neat.

After our shopping excursion, we took Tay down to UpperLimits to give him a taste of bouldering. He did really well actually- he has a lot of upper body strength and an athleticism which lends itself to the sport. We all climbed there for about two hours, and finally went home. Ate a smorgasboard of leftovers for dinner.

Superbo...we interrupt this blog title to bring you...a blackout

Just came back from a superbowl party.

I'll let that sink in.

Actually, I went to the trouble to look up who was playing a few days ago, and when I talked to my dad yesterday, I mentioned the fact. He said "ok, who's playing?"
"Well, it's the San Franciso.... 49ers......"
"And."
"And......the.......Giants?"
"Aaaaaant. Try again."

I gave up. I knew it wasn't the cardinals or the rams since they were both home teams. This goes to show the extents of my knowledge of NFL teams.

Anyway, we went over to a friend's house and watched the game. The halftime show was uninspiring although there was a really funny moment when one member of Destiny's child who was shot up in the air to land perfectly on the stage, actually looked terrified as if she had just been, in fact, shot up in the air.

After the performance, the power failed. I mean, totally failed. They said they lost power to half the stadium. I think they were being generous- the lights which remained on were probably safety lights, tied to the emergency generators which would be located on site just for these emergencies. At any rate, the commentators, desperate to fill airtime which was now totally null, made a bunch of stupid pointless comments for the half-hour it took to restore power, interrupted by more commercials.

"At this point, it looks like there was a problem with the power coming into the building"
Astounding. I thought the Astrodome produced its own power.

"As you can see, the lights in the stadium are still off, and we are waiting for official league response."
....

I don't think the power outage was an aberration. From what I know about New Orleans and the amount of infrastructural difficulties the city is suffering, I was surprised that there weren't two blackouts.

The commercials were surprisingly bad. Long, poor graphics. I used to be astounded by the quality of the computer animations used. This was really hack work. I was also surprised by the melodramatic depths to which car commercials in particular would dive. Dodge's commercial about a mythical America of farmers, Jeep attempting to wear a camouflage jacket as a supporter (get it?) of the US armed forces. Lest we forget, Dodge and Jeep are both brands of cars owned by a multinational corporation divided between Italy and the US.

And let's please forget as quickly as possible the simpering ad about the Budweiser (wholly owned by InBev, a Belgian company) Clydesdale and the cowboy.

I was kind of irritated at the cheetah commercial for Sketchers too. I would not put money on the cheetahs surviving to Superbowl 2023.

calls, climbing, and cooking

Thursday night, I met Dew at Upper Limits for some more bouldering. My arms and hands were so cold, it took me awhile to be able to use them well enough to climb. Afterwards, I picked up Saori and we went over for a big plate of curry. The Japanese curry is somewhat similar to Indian, but is much more mild, sweet, and savory. It's more like a spicy beef stew. We ate it in the best way to be served- over a big plate of rice, and topped with bacon and a fried egg.  Oishikata.

Yesterday was a busy day. Saori has set up a workstation in the living room and consequently draws a lot of power, especially for the space heater. When Vivian uses the hair dryer in the bathroom, it blows the fuse, and everything shuts down. So that took some time to straighten out.

I had a phone interview in the early afternoon, and then immediately afterwards dashed over to teach a revit workshop for an architecture studio. The professor of the studio, Cruse, taught me in my first studio at Wash U, and I'd when I heard that the entire class would be working in Revit, and that everyone involved had little to no experience with it, I offered to lend my services. Besides, what the hell else am I doing of use?

Anyway, the studio is very unique- the project is to take two identical vacant apartments buildings, both built in the early 20th century, and refinish one in the typical manner of the developer who owns the area, and the other in a more sustainable way. The two buildings would then be compared as to energy usage, water usage, etc.

The studio itself is held in the top floor of one of these apartment buildings. It's cool to be working inside the building you're investigating and going to change, but it sucks to be so far from your other classes, classmates, plotters, etc. Alex and Luke have done admirably with Revit so far, and I was happy to help them out since I know how frustrating Revit can be. I presented to the studio the basics of navigating revit and making some changes, and hopefully people got a better sense of how it might be used or at least, navigated.

After a few hours of instruction, I biked back home and then Saori and I went out to the Asian markets to get supplies for making okonomiyaki for dinner. Then we drove downtown, and had nearly hit a car on the freeway which had stopped suddenly for a lane closure. The ABS kicked in, and we came within a foot or two of the car in front of us. The car behind us was thankfully far enough back to avoid the same kind of brake-slamming I'd employed.

Anyway, we made it to Climb So Ill alive, and met up with Reid and Kirsten, a very intelligent couple who have led very interesting lives and who are both experienced climbers. We were shortly joined by Dew and Chuck and Alex and Jenn. I much prefer climbing at SoIll to Upper Limits. The gym is huge, the bouldering is a lot more fun, and you climb a lot higher. If not for the membership fees, I'd be there all the time.

I finished a few v1s, and one v2 that was really bothering me. I attempted a few v3s but could barely get started on them. Towards the end of the night, my hands were incredibly raw and finally, losing my footing, and slipping off the hand holds, I ripped one of my callouses open, leaving a flapping bloody wound which ended my climbing for the night. Some of my other fingernails were already bleeding at the cuticles. It stung like something fierce and the chalk getting in there didn't make anything better.

Anyway, we invited everyone over for okonomiyaki afterwards and we feasted again. Okonomiyaki is basically a savory pancake, mixed from a batter with egg, chives, and tons of chopped cabbage. The batter is fried into a large pancake and then served covered with dried bonito or salmon flakes, ribbons of tonkatsu sauce and the spicier Japanese mayonnaise.

Sasha's Wine Bar- done, don't need to do it again.

Saori and I finally made it to Sasha's, a wine bar in Demun which was apparently very popular among our friends in grad school. Vivian was shocked we'd never been there thus far. The ambiance is ok, the crowd was older, the bar is nice. There's a patio outside and a blackboard on the wall with specials written in chalk. They have a decent selection of bottles, but it's all pretty expensive. I ordered a glass of their cheapest red, which still set me back $7. It was good, actually. Lasted awhile. Saori and I had a glass and a half and that was fine for the night. Any more, and I wouldn't have felt comfortable driving. Service, when we could get it, was good.

The band was beyond terrible. They a brass jazz band that was literally painful to hear. I am amazed that when the trumpeter attempted to hit his high notes that no wineglasses broke. And they were really loud. My sense of music is not as developed as Saori's. I thought they were just bad; Saori thought the saxophonist was appalling. Incredibly, there was a table of people right in front of them really getting into the music.

So: Sasha's- check!

Reading more Ingersoll

I've been hopping around between books kind of restlessly. I was on a Sherlock Holmes bender for awhile, but I kind of got tired of the pattern of the novels, which all proceed as follows:

1. A mystery is presented
2. Holmes ridicules the police and disappears
3. Watson bumbles around
4. Somebody dies
5. Holmes re-appears and curses himself because he had all the information to make a case and prevent the murder but was waiting for better confirmation of the perpetrator's favorite color.
6. The criminal is caught
7. The criminal tells a long story which takes the form of an adventure novel in an exotic location

So I might have to jump over to the shorter stories.

I've also been reading the collected writings of Robert Ingersoll, a American Freethinker from the late 19th century. Many of his ideas were radical for the times. The latest stuff I've been reading has been addressing rights, particularly those of women and children. He said that women should have all the rights of men, plus one more, the right to be protected. In some ways, he is very paternalistic- he painted the domestic scene as the women as cooks and housekeepers, and glorified the institution of marriage as the highest aspiration of mankind. But he advocated for a democratic household vs the man as the 'boss', and he thought children should be allowed to do and eat whatever they wanted. He was violently opposed to any kind of corporeal punishment, and said quite movingly (something my own parents told me) that you should tell your children that there is nothing they can do, no crime so heinous, that they would not be welcomed back to them with loving arms.

He had some interesting urbanistic ideas. He lamented the fact that so many people were leaving the farms of their fathers to go work in the cities. He saw so much misery in the cities, so he thought that happiness could really only be attained by living and working the land you owned. His proposal was to make farm life more attractive by making it less miserable (why do you rise at 3am? makes no sense), making it more beautiful with trees and paint and plants, and making it more sociable. He wanted villages of intelligent, literate farmers with plenty of leisure time afforded by technology and the abundantly fertile soil (especially in Illinois "The best state in the country and the best country in the world").

Still, it's hard to fault someone who really believes that the purpose of life is happiness and the way to get there is to make others happy.

Along similar philosophical lines, I re-read Moominvalley in November, which is a Finnish children's story about a group of somewhat antisocial characters who grow to find the pleasure of each others company and qualities despite their failings and selfishness.

Farm Party!

My friend Luke has a pretty sweet setup- his parents live on a farm about an hour and a half from St. Louis. The distance means that he has to live in his own place in town, but can still go back home occasionally without too much difficulty, and the fact they live on a farm means that he can host farm parties there.

I could easily write an entire blog post just about this community. To be brief- Germans were one of the first settlers of this area of Missouri. They tended to be farmers, and they tended to keep a relatively tight cultural community and not move around too much. Suffice it say, my friend's family have been on that particular farm for the past 200 years, most of the roads out there have German names, and it seems as though many of the people's names on business signs and billboards were Germanic. Luke's father's side is totally Germanic, although his mother's side is more Alsatian. The food customs endure- the language; not as much.

Anyway, Luke invited a big group of students and friends out including Saori and I on this cold Saturday, and in the end, about thirty kids came out. He provided the hot dogs and associated paraphernalia, and also the makings for smores. He also had a huge fire pit with a bunch of logs which he attempted to light with copious amounts of lighter fluid. Unfortunately, lighter fluid will only take you so far, and so the fire died because none of the logs caught. So, Eagle Scout Badge firmly clenched in my teeth, I kindled a fire in the pit with hay, twigs, and sticks, and that burned long enough to get the smaller logs going.

To his credit, Luke did haul in a serious quantity of wood for an amazing fire. It was actually the nicest fire I've seen in awhile. Darkness fell, the stars came out, and the fire burned really hot. The guests brought beer, and we all settled into a pattern occasionally moving outside to inside, talking, dancing, consuming alcohol, trying to not light our mashmallows on fire, playing cards etc. It was a cold night, but the fire was very hot.

I ate too many marshmallows, too many hot dogs, and drank too many beers. I ended up playing Durak with Brian and Jennifer until a little after 3 am. I'd brought tents, but everyone was welcomed to find spaces inside, so we played human tetris with our sleeping bags in one of the living rooms, and slept where we could. I'm happy we were not outside- the next morning brought a freezing rain.

It was incredibly generous of Luke and his parents to open their house to all of us. Very little got broken, and Luke's mom kindly got out a largest bottle of aspirin I've ever seen and cooked us a lot of eggs and bacon for breakfast. I say "us" loosely because I was cowering in my sleeping bag feeling like I'd been hit with a truck for almost the entire morning. And I wasn't the only one. After a few hours I was able to sit up without feeling like I was going to reacquaint my lap with my dinner, and we left before ten.

The ride home was pretty miserable. It was a huge effort to focus on the road and the cars in the mist and rain, because I was pretty carsick the entire ride back. If anyone as much said "Jack Daniels" I would have lost it. At least my memory tends to keep me from making this mistake more than twice in the same year.

Book sale

As part of our attempt to reduce the amount of stuff in our lives, Saori and I hosted a book fire sale at the happy hour of the architecture school last friday. Those of you who know me know I have several hundred books, so I've been trying to cut some of them down. We went in, priced the books low, and waited for the crowds. We actually did better far than I thought- selling at least half of the books we brought with us. Saori made about $80, and I cleared at least $100. Actually, most of the books Saori sold were formerly my books that she pulled out of my Goodwill pile from a year ago.

One of our bookish professors who has actually published a few books on architecture pulled me aside and as half-jokingly asked how I could sell my architecture books. I replied that these were just the ones I didn't feel I really needed or had already read. He was unconvinced- "some of these books don't get reprinted," he reminded me. If I kept all the books I'd ever received or bought, I'd have literally a wall of books by now, probably about a thousand volumes.

It's really not a matter of how many books you have anyway, its how many you read, how many you reference. If I don't re-read the Annals of Archaic Architecture: Andean A-frame Apartments, it might as well be on someone's else shelf than my own. If I never crack open LeCorbusier's Lesser Known Poetry it might as well be in more interested hands. Just because this is my blog, here are more books which didn't make the cut to stay on my shelves:

• Nanotechnology Flooring of the Future
• Vaguely Spanish Mission Style Strip Malls
• Hand Drafting
• Green Detail: Sustainable Bathroom Partitions
• Theories and Manifestos of Architects Before Employment
• Aliens: a Revisionist History of Architecture
• Theodore R. Q. Spalling- The Father of Mall Photo-studio Design
• Modern Marvels: the Indestructible Tacoma Narrows Bridge
• The Phaeton Expensive Book of Expensive Houses
• Interinterstices: The spaces between a space and the space between that space and another space
• Mind-Blisteringly Expensive Materials for Facades
• The Coffee Table-Sized Coffee-Table Book of Coffee Tables
• Sustainable Design: Growies on Walls, Yay!
• Architecture Now! Detroit
• Modern Bidet Standards
• 152,752 Amazing Projects That Will Never Be Built
• We Just Scanned Every Piece of Paper in the Office including Chinese Takeout Menus and LL Bean Catalogs to Make a Thick Book With no Organization or Narrative with an Introduction by Bruce Mau
• Plumbing Masters of the 21st Century
• Fundamentals of Subway Restaurants Construction
• Oversimplified Mechanics for Dummies
• Mashed Potatoes and a Spoon- the Design Secrets of Zaha Hadid
• How Architecture will Save The World
• The Architect's Guide to Retirement

walking trip: St. Louis south

I enjoy long walks, but today was an especially long walk. I got up early and decided that what I really wanted to do was to walk across the city of St. Louis. I'd been kicking around the idea for awhile- the city is actually only five or six miles across the widest point East-West, and perhaps double that in the North-South direction. I'd figured out a route from the Shrewsbury metrolink station to the Lacledes' Landing metrolink station, which angles Northeast and cuts sharply north from Soulard.

The best way to get something done is to start, so I started with a mile walk to my local metrolink station, and caught a train down to Shrewsbury. The first thing you do is cross the river DesPeres, which my old DP professor referred to as the river DisPair, with good reason: constant low water, highly contaminated, ugly as sin. Actually more canal than river. Northhampton is a pretty boring first-ring suburb, although I found a donut shop down there for breakfast.

I walked past Civil Life, the brewery/public house, but it wasn't until I hit Cherokee street that I was really entertained by the urban fabric, which melted the distance. I stopped at Mud Cafe for coffee, and ran into a former professor of mine and we chatted a bit. From Cherokee street, I continued to Betton Park, and Soulard before heading north into the desolate and industrial zone outside the downtown. Finally, I passed by the Gateway Arch and made it to the train station, approximately four hours after I started.

The total distance was 10 miles, not including the 2 additional miles for the walk to the metro station and back. I could do it again, and skip everything west of Grand, and north of Soulard.

Three quotes

Tuesday night, Saori and I went to go hear Geographer live at the Firebird. It was kind of funny because everyone dressed very similar to how architecture students dress- kind of upscale, kind of hipster. Beards, beanies, and PBRs. Cheap tickets ($12) and a pretty good show. Geographer is pretty good- I bet the next time they tour St. Louis, they'll need a bigger venue. The lead singer is pretty phenomenal. Really has a hypnotic, stretchy voice.

For Martin Luther King jr. Day, I re-read "Letter from Birmingham Jail" which is just an amazing document. Although he edited later when he was released from the jail, the power and urgency and moral ground he lays out is clear and bold as fire:

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; [....] Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

and

Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. 

and

So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? [....] Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

This MLK jr interlude actually interrupts a book I was reading of a collection of writings by Robert Ingersoll. Ingersoll and MLK make interesting bedfellows- both I believe were fundamentally humanists- they both fought for the dignity of life and equality and justice, but they were diametrically opposed as far as religion goes. Ingersoll was a civil war veteran, political figure, and orator, and extremely vocal atheist. His speeches are filled with fire and rage towards to the church as the great blocker and oppressor of human dignity and progress. There is humor too, but it is the deadpan humor of the man who is trying to comprehend why the rest of the world remains with its head in the sand:

Is it possible that an infinite God created this world simply to be the dwelling-place of slaves and serfs? Simply for the purpose of raising orthodox Christians; that he did a few miracles to astonish them; that all the evils of life are simply his punishments, and that he is finally going to turn heaven into a kind of religious museum, filled with Baptist barnacles, petrified Presbyterians, and Methodist mummies? I want no heaven for which I must give my reason; no happiness in exchange for my liberty, and no immortality that demands the surrender of my individuality.

 and

Now and then somebody examines, and in spite of all keeps his manhood, and has the courage to follow where his reason leads. Then the pious get together and repeat wise saws, and exchange knowing nods and most prophetic winks. The stupidly wise sit owl-like on the dead limbs of the tree of knowledge, and solemnly hoot. Wealth sneers, and fashion laughs, and respectability passes by on the other side, and scorn points with all her skinny fingers, and all the snakes of superstition writhe and hiss, and slander lends her tongue, and infamy her brand, and perjury her oath, and the law its power, and bigotry tortures, and the church kills.

but it's not all invective to religion-

Fear paralyzes the brain. Progress is born of courage. Fear believes- courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth and prays- courage stand erect and thinks. Fear retreats- courage advances. Fear is barbarism- courage is civilization.

Forget the pale banalities of the presidential debates- I want to see Robert Ingersoll up against C.S. Lewis.

v3

I started rock climbing last semester with Dew, Chuck and Saori. It's great to start a new hobby/sport/whatever in a group of newbies, because then you have at least each other to compare your progress against and to support and challenge each other.

When we started four months ago, none of us could finish any of the routes in the gym, including the v0s. In rock climbing, there is a sub-sport called bouldering where you climb without a harness, typically to low heights, and it's apparently much more technical than straight rope climbing.

Bouldering is also possibly the cutest sport there is, narrowly edging out real-life Quiddich. Climbers squeeze their feet into tiny, brightly colored pointed shoes. Many of these shoes use velcro fasteners. The only way they could be any cuter is to put unicorn stickers on them. Climbing attire could be mistaken for yoga attire, except for the short pants which hit the leg mid-calf. These tend to be just slightly less adorable than the shoes. Then there is the activity itself. A good climber moves like a ballerina on the wall, carefully and skillfully contorting, extending legs and arms, making controlled movements and small leaps. And not at breathtaking heights either- only a few feet off the floor typically.

Still, for all that, it can be incredibly intense, a brutal workout, and at times terrifying. I've really enjoyed it. It's rare to me to find something that works my arms and core that I find compelling enough to keep at it. Today I finished my first v3. Now, every route is set by people with different abilities and judgement, and the rating of the route is often highly subjective. Actually, I've climbed more difficult v2s before. But it was still a kick to finish this route clean.

Kansas City field trip

Friday, we took a field trip. Saori, Vivian, Chuck, and I drove out to Kansas City in the morning, mostly to see Steven Holl's iconic Nelson-Atkins art museum. It's about a four hour drive, so we split up the driving two there and two back. The drive out is not horrible- the landscape quickly transitions from the gentle hills of St. Louis to the great plains. We gassed up in Columbus and got to Kansas City around two in the afternoon.

I'd done a quick pass through google to try to find some good Kansas City BBQ, but even though we found a place with a Zagat rating of 28/30, we were not impressed. I did kind of forget that Vivian is vegetarian in picking out the place, so that wasn't great either. We promised to go someplace with more veg-friendly options for dinner.

I was surpised by how much the I liked the city- the skyline, at least, is much more progressive with more interesting modern architecture, and the downtown felt a lot more vibrant than St. Louis. We walked down to a river observatory above the Missouri, and then stopped for coffee at the CityMarket. It was late in the day on a friday, so few stalls were open. Definitely a good spot to go visit on the weekend though. We did finally get over to the museum just as the sun was beginning to go down, so we got a lot of photographs with the changing light conditions.

The museum has actually got a decent collection of work. In my experience, smaller, private museums like that have a few masters but they're typically B-side works. This was pretty good stuff. Not many masters, but what they had was good.

The building we came to see is actually a modern addition to the older neoclassical edifice. The addition's walls are actually all frosted channel glass which is backlit, so the entire building looks like a series of glowing boxes emerging from the rolling grass landscape. It also makes a fantastic backdrop for silhouette pictures, and we spent at least an hour hopping and skipping and making poses in front of the glowing facade. Actually, it was the highlight of the trip.

After the museum, we went to dinner at a thai noodle shop/retro diner. Loved the interior design and the feel of the place, with stacked noodle boxes on racks in the asiles, worn diner tables and booths, and lasercut wood light fixtures, but the food was just ok.

I took the last leg of driving, getting us back to St. Louis around 1:30 in the morning.

What Killed the Haitians?

I recently came across an interesting position based in Boston with a group I'll call RH design group.
They were looking for "Design Fellows" with the possibility of travel to Africa and Haiti.

Apparently RH is kind of a NGO non-profit which does architecture and public health and design for some of the worst-hit areas of the world, focusing its attention on Haiti and Africa. The first line of their philosophy page states, and I quote:

In 2010, a single earthquake in Haiti killed over a quarter million people due to a combination of infrastructure failure and resulting outbreaks of disease.

While this is technically true, it carefully frames the area in which they have capacity or willingness to work.

What killed all those Haitians?

One could argue truthfully it was the individual's bodies that failed to keep them alive: that their human frame was not robust enough to survive being crushed by falling concrete floors and walls, or the massive loss of blood resulting from lacerations and crushed limbs, that the heat-removal and fire-retardant systems of the skin were overwhelmed in massive conflagrations, acute dehydration, and a host of infectious diseases. The death toll was a result of catastrophic biological failure: it's their fault they died because flesh is weak against steel and stone.

At a level higher, one can say it was not that people were too weak to survive, but that it was the concrete, fire, lack of water, and bacteria and viruses that killed them. Clearly, this is only slightly less absurd, but similarly accurate, to saying that the reason the Haitians died because they were mortal.

I am speaking here in what are absurd, brutally terms because this is literally how people die. Horrible injustice and horrible tragedy has fallen on Haiti, but no one points fingers at the falling concrete or the various bacteria and viruses.

Let us take a step up- why did the buildings fall apart? Why did people die of dehydration? What were the circumstances that hundreds of thousands of people were killed by diseases which are easily treatable and preventable?

This is the circuit in which RH design group operates- it was failures in architecture and infrastructure which caused the deaths of all those Haitians. The death toll was a result of catastrophic technical failure. On a certain level this makes sense for a design group to propose. If you ask a barber why a date didn't go well, and he's going to suggest you need a haircut. Most architecture firms as they are now can only provide architectural solutions. Improvements can only be made laterally- if the building collapsed, build another building, or better, build a stronger building.

This, for me, is where I get really tripped up. I'm a designer. I see my task as making things better, or to put a finer point on it, to make life better, for as many people as possible. But if I'm only designing architecture and infrastructure, I'm just designing survival gear- literally, making hard hats and steel-toed boots. Maybe that's really it. It's just incredibly frustrating to be stuck at level 5 spending a life of work to mitigate the simpler mistakes made at level 4.

Because to accuse failures in architecture and infrastructure of killing Haitians is about as worthless a statement as blaming the falling bricks themselves. Architecture and infrastructure are products of human endeavors. Let's keep climbing the ladder of things that killed all those Haitians:

Why did the buildings crumble? Lack of building codes or enforcement, poor quality building materials, poor (or none) structural design of the load-bearing system. Most of these buildings were put up by people who lived there, paid for themselves, and built by people typically just like them with little to no training in construction.

Why did the infrastructure fail? lack of robustness, lack of maintenance, it was obviously not built strongly enough or with enough redundancies, and probably of poor materials and design. One could argue that it was a lack of Haitians doing things they should have been doing which lead to so many of their tragic deaths.

Questions lead to more questions higher up the chain, and most of them have to do with money; money, because we live in a world where the groups in power have decided that money is the best way to decide things. The government claims to be too poor to fund the expansion, maintenance, and repair of infrastructure. Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. If Haiti was as rich as Chile, which suffered a worse earthquake with a miniscule fraction of the casualties and damage, or Japan, which is routinely pelted with far worse earthquakes with minor transportation delays, then do you think you would have seen the same body count?

Of course not. By that logic, then, you could reasonably say that the reason a quarter million Haitians died was because their country is so dirt poor they were continually living on the edge of catastrophe with absolutely no tolerance or ability to accommodate the slightest disaster. It was an economic failure which doomed those Haitians.

Saori had a friend in Tempe who drove this car which was a deathtrap. It was an ancient sedan which was so decrepit it didn't even have seats in the back. People sat on the floor on a piece of cardboard and slid around because there weren't any seat belts. Or airbags. Or anti-lock breaks. The ignition system was held together with tape and a cheap pen such that when the car turned too fast, the pen fell out and the car simply turned off. And it could only possible to make right handed turns. The slightest mishap would easily maim or kill everyone on board. He didn't drive it because he came from some culture which prized individuality, he drove it because he was poor. You could argue that he didn't need to drive it at all, and that he could have taken public transit, but if Haiti is this car, there is no public transit on the world stage to fall back on.

Why, then, is Haiti so poor? There's many answers to that question: corruption, structural disinvestment by the international community, high incidence of natural disasters (which takes us back down a step or two. The country next door is doing quite well by comparison.) I think it could possibly have something to do with the history of Haiti:

Haiti was a slave-owning colony of France, and then the slaves revolted and drove out the French. The French, in retaliation, convinced the rest of the world to not engage in trade with Haiti (which was only real potential source for generating wealth). Haiti, with its wealth of natural resources, began to starve cut off from the rest of the world, and finally agreed to Frances terms in return for the lift of the embargo: payments for the loss of life and property in the rebellion.

Haiti was subsequently forced to make annual payments, equaling about 40% of its annual GDP, to France, until the middle of the 1940's. IMF loans and Structural Adjustment Policies came with caveats and long strings attached. Remember the deathtrap Haiti's driving around? They've been told that they have to compete with Lincoln towncars, BMWs, and Aston Martins- the free market as a freeway. The IMF will buy Haiti some gas... and tell them to drive faster to try and catch up.

At the top of the ladder of inquiry, I am attempting to argue that what killed so many Haitians, and what continues to kill and stunt and deform around the world, is both the heritage and the perpetuation of global economic system of deliberate disenfranchisement, inhuman and unfair practices, and gross mismanagement at the world stage.