An Otherworld

I am looking forward to watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann tonight followed by the Rachel Maddow Show. It will be the first time I've watched anything on MSNBC since my boycott of the station as they suspended Keith Olbermann last week.

Thanks to the social network on the internet, it became possible for ordinary people like me to make some small statement through an action, and successfully aggregate that small statement with all the similar ones to demand something of those working the large machinery of our culture without having to drop everything else.

The benefit of this medium was rooted in its support of viral forms of news (or rumor). Over the physical space of the country or world, and the oppression of news telling in the official news outlets, only connections that can eliminate the three dimensions of space will be able to connect us adequately to each other, and respect our individuality at the same time.

A real possibility of action via social media through the relative ease and accessibility of tools used to publish and process information makes it possible to live an ordinary life and participate in conversations of our time when they resonate with us without having to devote the core of our life to activism.

The petition is one way to aggregate voices to become loud enough to be heard, but I imagine there are a whole range of other tools usable on the social network which could aggregate our will to become a compelling force when our invidual will aligns with others'. Certainly fund-raising is one, but the funds would tend to work through an already functioning body with a complex agenda. In such a case, the work may get done, but might not be done with the simple precision of dealing with a single issue at a critical time.

Boycotts are a good use of social networks. In its ability to communicate in quick succession, a coordinated, short boycott to make a point could create a shock which would be felt by business, without needing to be disruptive in fact. Consciously changing consuming habits in unison with others could express a will that will not be measured otherwise in market studies.

Coordinated action is another use to which social networks could be put; being in a particular place at a particular time for a particular purpose.

Postings and their following chain of comments can help to develop a level of sophistication about issues, when we choose to discuss issues, while allowing us to keep in practice with the mechanism and in contact with each other in the interim. Life need not always be a drama.

The happening with Keith Olbermann drew our attention to the need to defend the world we value, but it also opens up a new discussion about how we can use the tools of a technology that killed the personal world we knew, to a new personal world that could, perhaps,  empower us to lead more satisfying lives.

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After eight years in our house, having sketched out a good kitchen within the whole design of our house, we are acting on making the cabinets work better now. For years, we've kept the doors and drawers closed and ignored our messy inner life which was going on in there.

The understanding that we had about the kitchen when we constructed it intially, was that we had given up most of the cabinetry to store food and tools in order to have an open room to in which to enjoy cooking. We figured that we would be spartan in the tools and food we stored.

There are no wall cabinets in our kitchen. We do have a full wall pantry cabinet which was built with the house in 1890, the base cabinets flanking the stove and the sink, an open shelf under a stainless steel prep table which is the main prep space, and a chest high dresser in the eating area of the kitchen.

Until now, we have used the upper part of the pantry cabinet for fragile foods (ones the mice would be able to get into, the lower part for dishes and canned food or food in canisters, as well as paper towels and bottles. The dresser has more sets of dishes and serving ware. All the pots, pans, bowls and baking pans are nested on the shelf below the prep table. Silverware, knives, wraps, and miscellaneous articles and tools are in drawers flanking the stove and sink. The food in the upper pantry cabinet falls out of the cabinet when you open the doors. The mice can get into the bottom cabinet from the cellar, so the protocol of protecting and inspecting those contents is a job. the dishes in the dresser are heavier than the dresser is designed to take. The size of the drawers in the cabinets flanking the stove and refigerator is too narrow and shallow. The nesting of the cookware under the metal prep table is a sophisticated puzzle.

Over the eight years, George and I have discussed the possibilities of making the kitchen storage work better. Recently we had an idea for protecting the freshness of the food in a coordinated set of nesting containers, which would also render the remainder of the food in the cabinet mouseproof. If all of the food were coordinated in size and could nest, we could fill the volume of the cabinet without the contents tumbling out whenever the doors were open. Since we had never refinished the interior of the pantry cabinet, now was the time to mouseproof the bottom part of it by lining it in aluminum and sealing any gaps that were built into it. the mouseproof containers down there would be replaced with the same system of coordinated, nesting containers to maximize the use of the volume of the space, and the containers would sit on a rolling dolly to allow the nested containers to come out of the cabinet for selection.

This system worked incredibly well. The amount of storage is at least double what it was, and it feels like at least four times the amount of space; in fact, the full volume of the cabinet is not entirely designated, even when thinking outside of our spartan box. All the dishes fit into that cabinet too, opening the dresser for the canned goods in its shallow drawers laying on their sides with the labels facing up.

During the success of the renovation of the pantry cabinet, I finally got the courage to demolish the contents of the sink base cabinet, which was malproportioned. We have a 24" prep sink in that cabinet, and I wanted two 18" cabinets to flank the sink to match the 18" cabinet on the opposite side of the stove. The cabinet had 12" uselessly narrow drawers flanking the sink.

The cabinets were cheap (but new) eight years ago, and because they came with the house, they were free. Since we had no kitchen budget at the time, free worked well, but after having installed a tile counter over them, and plumbing being installed within them, swapping them for the cabinets we want, would have required the help of tradespeople who we are not in the position of paying right now. The hope was that I could alter the cabinet to have the correct proportions without moving it. The fear was that the cabinet would fall apart when subject to the stresses of reconfiguration.

As it turned out, many of the materials used in the cabinet were more substantial than I would have thought. The materials weren't fastened together as well as might be hoped for, which gave the cabinet the feel of being so cheap. The cabinet and the countertop survived being hollowed out, and there were ways of connecting all the parts together to make the middle of the cabinet carry the weight of the countertop (which it evidently never did before).

The three 18" spaces will now be used for a single pullout each, with a deep top drawer, and a side accessed space below. The silverware drawer will have all our silverware in two stacked trays (service for 12 in each tray; more stuff out of the dresser). All the wraps and plastic bags can be nested in another of the top drawers. All the big kitchen utensils will fit in the top drawer between the stove and the sink. One of the bottom spaces will be made light-tight for potatoes and onions. Another will have all the miscellaneous cleaning supplies, and the third is not designated yet. Here too, the space has increased beyond the need.

We have discussed the open space below the prep table, and the thought right now is to develop it as a series of tailored cubbies in a large box which sets on the open shelf. Each pot, pan and dish would have a cubby in this scheme. Each one would be directly accessible, and none would nest in another. this is the next project following the completion of the sink/stove side cabinets.

Over the years I have been in architectural practice, I have wanted to focus on a kitchen to the detail that the cabinets in ours are receiving now, but I imagined that such a discussion required the input of a client to tailor the space to the needs of the client. That would presume that a client would agree to think about the use of the kitchen with such focus. I have never had that opportunity (until now with my partner).

After having done this in our space, I wonder if the key is not the client, but the nature of the space. I wonder if the nature of the solution couldn't fall into categories, and that there could be a range of solutions, each with a way of quantifying the storage, so that a solution could be evaluated and chosen by a client without needing to imagine a way of using the kitchen beforehand. In such a situation, the solution would make sense in the space, and would have large enough capacity to operate well, and the use of the kitchen would follow the actual built structure.

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Closing a door on an cupboard flips a mental switch darkening the memory of what is inside. Life can progress without consideration of the cuppboard's contents except, briefly, while the door is open to store more or retrieve something from inside. The interior can be as organized or as sloppy as is the personality of the person with dominion over and people using the cupboard, yet, when closed, the contents of the cupboard do not trouble anyone.

The issue of kitchen cupboards with doors is that the many of the contents are in constant use. A darkened memory of the contents and their state as well as their overall organization might not be a positive thing. The doors may serve to keep dust and grease off of the contents of the cupboard, but they also serve to permit those items to accumulate, jumble and inexplicably age. The doors open briefly to put things in and take things out. Refreshing an understanding of the individual contents and asserting a fresh order in the cupboard is allowable to lapse as the doors are quickly closed.

In a working kitchen cupboard, methods of grouping things of similar qualities into nestable shapes would serve to partition large undifferentialed closed space into areas which could be recalled upon sight, and could be denser in space usage than the former placement. 

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We furnish ourselves with a variety of objects which span the range from shiny and new to extremely used and broken; from utilitarian, through stylish, to items that tie us to people and times which are gone, but not done with.

The last item I noted, those that are invested with memories or personal significance, are the hardest to keep in good order since it is often too painful to evaluate these. They often just hang around with us, acting partly as a burden, partly as a crutch, only giving us a part of the gift they promise.

Part of the problem with these things is that they are things, and once were utilitarian. The process of living with them invested them with another mystic energy that serves us richly (if we know how to let it). I suggest that the key to letting it is to loosen up one's grip on the object.

Those objects spur memory through sight, touch and smell, and while they do this, they feed life. These same objects often have lost all their utilitarian value due to age fragility or obsolescence. Where should they fit around one?

I think the answer to this follows a look at the individual object's mystical significance.

• If it reminds of a past to leave behind, the object belongs in a closet until it loses its power, at which time it is discarded.
• If it reminds of a past to regain, the object should be visible, but not in the way.
• If it reminds of something good, not to be forgotten, it should occupy a place where it can give the strength that good things do, but not in the way of making good things happen anew.
• If its form carries the magic, the object should be seen, if the smell of it carries the memory, then tuck  it away in an enclosure that one comes across and opens at useful times.

Live with those objects until their magic inhabits one, at which time they lose their importance, and can be let go. Whatever fragility they have, incorporating them into the part of life that will let them do their job will allow life to progress with all its potential richness and gifts. In this way, memories in the form of objects can never weigh one down.

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Flexibility in planning is an architectural method of conserving the resources, both physical and cultural, of this place. Flexible residential planning could add another dimension to sustain us.

As I see it, a building which has a number of ways of using it safely, gives that building a longer life cycle before it requires replacement or alteration. This conserves physical resources by limiting the amount of building materials to one round of construction, and postponing the resulting garbage from replacement. The cultural fabric is conserved through the longevity of the building, which adapts and contributes to the changes in the society without having to be suffered with as obsolete, be radically altered or replaced.

The third dimension that flexible residential planning could offer is a healthier more durable relationship to each other through an alteration of the way we define dwelling.

My work in flexible planning has been to break down the traditional house or apartment into its individual sleeping spaces which are able to connect to a set of common spaces. The idea has been to be able to subdivide a large dwelling into smaller components which serve needs at different times in life. Two examples of this would be a four bedroom house which can divide through its stair to two separate apartments, each with two bedrooms; or an apartment which can be rented with two, one or no bedrooms, the untaken bedrooms able to operate as single room occupancy units (hotel or rooming units).

Looking at typical zoning regulations, the standard of governing occupancy in a dwelling is the family unit, a group of related people. The number of family members is not governed as a use limitation. The number of people unrelated to the family is generally limited in the allowable uses. Use limitations govern the use of a property within a given district, independent of the size or accommodations of buildings in the district. A simple, small building would be governed the same as a large building with abundant accommodations within that same district. It is what is possible to do on a given parcel of land.

The qualities of families changed a lot during the twentieth century. Children were less connected with their parents in many families because they were not supervised primarily by their parents. The ability to reside in shared accommodations became less comfortable and less peaceful during that time. In some places parents and even their grown children remained in the same dwelling because housing costs were so high that the children could not justify an independent start. Alterations to dwellings of this sort occured to achieve needed privacy. Partitioning the floor plan, and locking doors were some of the alterations.

The cost of housing pushes some people to share living accommodations in order to have a life which independent from their family. In an ordinary house, where all features except for the bedrooms are shared, the same privacy conditions develop.

If the concept of dwellings were to change in nature to address those issues of privacy, perhaps it would not be important to establish the family relationship of people to be able to house people in a healthy way. The configuration of the dwelling would determine the constellation of people who could inhabit it. In this case, as in the zoning ordinance and the housing standards limit the occupancy of a given building through area regulations, further definining plumbing and privacy regulations could allow a rational discussion of the health safety issues of a given building accommodation.

Once habitation density were discussed and finally regulated with regard the health and safety of particular living accommodations, then flexible planning could create buildings which could contain ever changing dwelling sizes and arrangements to suit all economic situations and life/age conditions. Such buildings would have to be constructed in a more substantial and fire-safe way, since the boundaries of dwellings would be mutable.

By supporting habitation of all social arrangements, such planning would sustain us in that our built enviroment would safely support our style of living in any particular period no matter what period that building was built in, leading to continuity of social fabric and enduring use of resources.

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I voted this morning,

It is forecast that the loud force which squelched opposition while in power with, "get out of the way until you can win an election", then obstructed the normal operation of the government after it lost power, will again ascend to power. The destructive policies that were pursued will be pursued again, after only two years to have forgotten or reassign blame for their damage.

The image that the work of the goverment has stopped due to the obstruction of the opposition is false and can be filed among the other images that are being kept alive; that our president is a foreign operative, and not legitimately elected, that the current government is fiscally irresponsible, that there is a threat of socialism in this country (if only). Those images are remembered while all of the progressive movement our country has made (if imperfect) has been forgotten.

We live in the ruins of a representative democracy. Peaceful periodic transfer of the power of government to representatives chosen by a vote of the citizens is the way that a diverse society can be governed in the interest of all the citizens. A direction is chosen, for a period of time, by the will of the majority. The will of the majority is reevaluated periodically, and the method of reevaluation is accepted by all as legitimate.

Bullying has undermined our representative democracy in that a bully (or bullying class) does not accept the social rule for decision making. A bully will force his will on others, and where his will does not prevail, obstructs the will of others until he can weaken the others' will and his can overcome it.

I know that I am disturbed by the lack of action of the current government in protecting the existing limits and balances on governmental power, and its actions to undermine standards of equality and justice. I am also horrified that the governmental crimes of the past have been declared off-limits to prosecute by the present government. Those "witch hunts" were necessary both to rectify a wrong, and perhaps more importantly, to push back against the bullying of our system of government. Fear of retribution as an aid to reformation, or at least to force a little introspection would help us all.

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We attended a painful performance over the weekend which promised to be an exposition of "the time" through musical performance and interstitial narrative overlayed with pictures. There was some confusion as to whether "the time" was 1985, of which mention was made, or 2010, as if it were 1985. I couldn't recognize the sentiments at all, and it did not go unnoticed that the performer must have been no older than 10 in 1985.

I did recognize bits of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" in the intersong monologue. The role of Hedwig seemed to have figured large in the performer's biography. Sadly, the performer never exposed himself or his core motivations in the performance, whether in the style of 1985 or today.

Thinking back to other characters I have met, fictitious or seemingly genuine, my connection to them has come from learning their inner pattern from their outward jumble and so, seeing the wanting within them that leads them on.

Thinking back to 1985, the mess we were all exposing to the world as ourselves, a composite of the cultural images which we layed over our selves, those who were interesting and inspiring shuffled and sorted that mess into beautiful and compelling patterns which showed a life direction to something better.

It would be an interesting project to develop the narrative to express the beauty of the soul of a person in 2010. I wonder what that would be. I am pretty sure that the methods of communication of 1985 would be inadequate to do so.

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The election is a couple of days away, and the chaos that we have been living in the United States is ever growing. The lack of interest in justice that the people governing now have shown us makes it possible to imagine the elections giving power back to the people responsible for the chaos in the first place. I imagine, at first, that is an impulse to milk the old world for just a little more selfish comfort before we drop back into the reeking rubble of our collapsed society (and world). The rhetoric, however, makes me think something else is planned for the coming regressive change of power.

Although it is the general population which may be showing its choice to go back to the policies of the past, which were proven as failures, the rhetoric indicates that only some of us are going to be permitted to be the happy pigs we all formerly were. The remainder of us are going to be forceably trapped in the societal rubble around us now that will continue to collapse further. I wonder that the ordinary voter refuses to see that.

Through the last ten years, features of enslavement have been presented to us for our consumption. I think people haven't found those losses to be so unfortunate, and I am predicting that if the forces which are pushing our country to the right prevail in this election, there will be a swift roll-out of the remainder of those features.

I would propose that the way back from this state is to act decisively for a world we would want, not react against the obvious evil to settle for what might be a lesser one. Voting after consideration and conscience, without fear of the outcome, I think, is our only chance for a better civic american life.

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I suggest that the pursuit of historic preservation be changed in scope, to serve our need to be connected to our past. It should be widened to include every part of the built environment which undergoes change, and preservation of physical building fabric should emerge out of the documentation we should demand, so that we can allow our history to move along with us as a living society.

All projects which alter the built environment should be required to be documented to the degree that the culture wants a connection to its past. This degree should be stated, and the documentation should be archived with the local historical society at public expense. The documentation of existing conditions and their changes would include drawings, descriptions and photographs. Doing this would establish factual conditions and relationships of the built environment through time (what remained at the date of a change) and at particular key times (the change from what to what). This would be the rich material for future historical analysis.

The parts of the built environment which are considered to be culturally valuable would merit further consideration.

• Obsolete construction would merit documentation of the construction assemblies as they are exposed  for replacement or repair. This would permit failing assemblies to be improved to perform better without losing the historical progression of building technology.
• Important planning concepts and building forms would merit additional documentation specific to the cultural significance that was identified by the culture at the time of a change, for setting the ground rules for maintaining the condition into the future (either in place or reconstructed elsewhere).
• Culturally important historic fabric which has survived intact would merit enumeration of the parts to enable its maintenance in its intact state (using historical parts and new materials manufactured in a historically accurate way). It is the authenticity which is the critical cultural value in these places.

The built environment of a living society is always changing, and the alterations of time itself alters the cultural meaning of all the parts. Documentation allows us to see our past to the best of our ability at any time. Preservation of parts of the built environment which we find important or beautiful anchors us on earth to ourselves. We strive to grow culturally, and cultural growth requires cultural memory. As we move culturally into the future, we should be incorporating the built parts of us which make us better, and retain the rest in cultural memory.

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There was recently a call for submissions for an exhibition for artists to present an image depicting the library of the future. The deadline was too short for me to draw anything to submit, but I have been thinking about this idea since. I have been trying to reopen the library in the village in which I grew up since 1980. In 2010 I am close to succeeding.

I see a library as being the center of community activity, physically connected to a repository for all the community's cultural communication. The repository would contain all the writings, drawings, recordings, of material which were left behind by community members. The collection would grow, and be organized, but never culled, and all the original material would be accessible to all people in the community. This would be an ideal and timeless library.

The library of the future would have a catalogue component which does not only reference all the material in the library, but also accepts and records comments, cross references, and connections, which would be recorded in the use of the library by its citizens. This system of pathways to the material of the collection would tame the ever-growing size of the collection and the collection would be enriched by the registration of its citizens' use of it.

Such a library would develop into an intertwined system of original and derivative thoughts registered in a place; an inspired future for our archive of knowledge.

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