It has become a science fiction dream to me. I cannot say I ever thought I would see and feel these temperatures. These temperatures are those of my visits to the desert and hiking the canyons of New Mexico. I imagine the scrub bushes and the dry runoff streams. I taste the red dust on my lips. Then I am jolted back to reality. My sense of place is askew. Our planet is so confused. It’s 104°.
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From outside the color draws me like a beacon. When inside color washes over my body and it changes as I move from one place to another. I’m orange. I’m blue. When I chase the light and it chases me. That experience is the Montreal Convention Center.
When I hear the words convention center I cringe. I have experienced many a convention center and they are uninspired spaces. They have very little if any energy of their own. Visitors come and go but the buildings and spaces created inside are dead except for the mechanical drone of HVAC or escalators. Some of the buildings focus are industrial, some monumental, others overgrown shopping malls.
Why is it that our government buildings are so uninspiring? Is it our culture? Is it because we somehow think that our tax dollars and neighborhoods don’t deserve beauty? I think it is the process that we have for creating public buildings. The process is without inspiration or vision.
Montreal on the other hand had a marvelous vision and they have shared it with all of us.
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The Pennsylvania Convention Center is one of the worse inside and out. I don’t want to go on about it check it out yourself here : http://www.paconvention.com
This is one of the images I’ve taken of our boxes which were piled quite high. The line, color, typography and grid are surprisingly fun. Just had to snap the composition.
Read MoreThis vid is bouncing around on tumblr. It’s a look at how interaction can be so intuitive, and feel so real that other beings interact and experience something very real. Watching this “smart cat” play with an iPad just like it would with a string or a keyboard tells us how far our interfaces have come. How rich a good touch interface can be is very exciting.
Enjoy.
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This is what it looked like in our courtyard yesterday. Over night the wind was blowing so hard that all the windows were covered in snow and we couldn’t see outside. I found this little gap and shot the neighbors doing some shoveling. Of course after they had spent an hour doing this the snow removal firm showed up and plowed. Silly people.
We usually are parked out there. But with the help of our pals David and E we put our car in a garage for friday, sturday, and Sunday. We’ll shovel a bit and get it back in place. Thing is we are expecting snow again on tuesday and wednesday.
This is our second huge storm since moving downtown.
Read MoreIt’s hard not
to jump out
instead of
waiting to be
found. It’s
hard to be
alone so long
and then hear
someone come
around. It’s
like some form
of skin’s developed
in the air
that, rather
than have torn,
you tear.
(“Hide and Seek” was originally published in “The Niagara River” by Kay Ryan, Grove Press Poetry Series, 2005.)
Read MoreA new movement. Think global. Act local.
Small banks actually have an interest in your community. Return the favor.
Read MoreOff rows of windshields
in the Amtrak lot
rain in sudden
clumps like jacks. Parked cars
with people in them
awaiting people they imagine
hurtling through suburbs
of silver woods
awaiting them. True
love needs interference,
a certain blizzard distance,
for the words to worm through.
Remember Iowa?
August storms that would self-spark
as if our fights could trip
the finest wire beneath the sidewalk.
And the sunlight, harder after.