Inspiration

I bought my first piece of signed art today. My fam was walking around Downtown Naples and happened upon the annual art fair. Most of the art was bad but the artists weren't talentless; they just made boring, insipid art. I guess one has to consider the audience - a bunch of wealthy old people probably don't want anything revolutionary hanging on their wall. Anyway, seeing all that stuff reminded me how much I like to make art and how I could make better art than a lot of that; art that people still might want to own.

This all tied in with this week's conversations between my brother and me. Rick's pretty knowledgeable on economics and unabashedly libertarian. He says the economic situation will force people to stop consuming and start conserving. Instead of throwing away a torn shirt you'll take it to a seamstress for example. He also thinks people will become entrepreneurs again. They'll lose their jobs and be forced to create products or services that fill a need. I've had some good ideas that I thought would make money before. But those ideas have never come to fruition because the risk required to realize them was too great. I wonder if getting pushed out of comfortable jobs will force people to wager what they wouldn't before. Perhaps the results will be innovative and fantastic.

Which brings me back to art. It's something I couldn't risk before and the pressure of it made me hate doing it. Now that I'm away from it, I realize I might have some talent, and I might have some good ideas. I bought that picture because it was the first one of the artist's that caught my eye. Michael Bryant is his name. He does the double exposures all in camera, so he's got no idea how they'll come out until he develops the film. I guess it just reminds me that life operates in strange cycles. Sometimes you think you're just going around the same circle all the time and nothing's going anywhere. Then all of a sudden you're someone new, and you're in some new place, and your whole life is different. But at the same time, whatever it is that makes you you is unchanged and you can't escape from it. Nor would you want to.

"plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose"

Hi everyone,

I don't have a transcendent topic for today so I'll just update you.  

1.  I think I won my bout with insomnia.  Two days in a row I've been able to sleep! Hurray.  It might be too soon to call it, but I'm pretty sure it's school/stress related.

2.  I'm going to Abu Dhabi for studio next semester.  Yep I'm pretty psyched.

3.  I don't know what I'm doing with my life. 

4.  I have a gay husband via common law.

5.  My family is getting together in Florida for Christmas and my bro is coming sans gf.  Word.

6. The future, and how my present choices are impacting that future, and how the future does or doesn't influence my present choices, scare me.

Making lists is illuminating.

Sorry for being euphemistic. 

<3 

krayon

Dear World,

If you haven't noticed, things are going pretty badly.  Crime is up in the U.S., terrorism is breaking out all over the world.  I'm writing to you to plead with you.  I'm writing to say we can do better than this.  We have to do better than this.  If we've learned anything from these past eight years, it's that we can't fight terrorism with guns and soldiers.  We can't fight terrorism with strategies or threats.  Terrorism is a tactic and what's defined as "terrorism" is subject to whoever is defining it.  Terrorism comes from hate.  And a lot of the time that hate is understandable.  People have been repressed, abused, and their basic humanity trampled. These injustices breed hate.  And hate leads to violence.  So far our strategy to fight this hate has been more hate.  More violence.  Apparently violence only leads to more violence.  Who knew?

We are very much like animals really.  Dogs bite when they've been abused and they're scared.  We do the same thing. We lash out when we feel this is our only chance to fight back and the world has hurt us enough that we think our cowardly way is justified.

So what I propose is pretty simple and cliche.  I propose peace and I propose love.  I think at our most basic level every human being prefers peace to war, and safety to fear.  We would rather be hugged than punched and we would rather laugh than cry.  Every mother would rather raise her child in a place where he is safe than a war zone where bullets are flying.  We are not such complex creatures really.  

Hate makes us forget what we are, or rather, what others are. Hate makes us forget the humanity in others.  Hate convinces us that they are less human or less deserving of life.  Hate makes us forget that they laugh and cry and have families and memories and souls.  Hate is a powerful, terrible thing.  Hate is the only thing that could convince terrorists to kill at least 125 people in India, or cause such civil unrest in Somalia.  

But we were not born creatures of hate.  Undoubtedly love has been and can continue to be more powerful than hate.  What if we could pause this mess and look each of these gunmen in the eye, ask them what they want, ask why they're doing what they're doing, tell them there's a better way, and that God loves them, and that they don't have to do this.  Maybe they'd keep shooting, maybe not.  I hope that if we could separate these killers from their group mentality they'd come to their senses.  I still believe the humanity in their eyes is the same as that in mine.  

Life isn't so black and white unfortunately.  I can't comprehend what could drive people to kill, but I'm sure there's some twisted logic and a chain of events behind it.  But I'd say any time hate drives us to do anything, it's wrong.  The result of injustice need not always be hate - instead we could strive for justice.  There's a difference between revenge and a longing to make things right.  Revenge is reactionary, forgiveness is revolutionary.

So what I propose is this and it starts with each of us.  What if every time someone pissed us off, cut us off, wronged, hurt, teased, or cheated us - what if we put ourselves in their shoes.  What if we said "Yeah that sucks, but they're just doing this because they've had a bad day or because their mom is in the hospital or they lost their job."  What if we began with forgiveness instead of hate.  What if we really put their predicaments over our own hurt pride?  I think Jesus was the only person who really pulled this off.  What's crazy is that before Jesus there was no forgiveness.  There was no getting something for nothing.  Every wrong had to be righted through penance and sacrifice.  But since he showed up, there's no need for revenge or reciprocation.  He's got it covered.  Now we're free to forgive.  And forgiveness can only come from love.  

So there we have it.  If we forgive and love others we're free to live our lives and work for peace.  All the good things are connected, and so are the bad things.  If we don't forgive then we can hate.  Hate makes us want revenge.  Hate convinces us that others aren't human so violence is ok.  But revenge never rights anything.  It just makes things more wrong.

This isn't really a solution for terrorism now.  I don't know how to stop that.  I don't know how to stop things on a global scale.  All I know is change starts with each of us, and love never fails.  So...what do you think world?  You want to do better?  Because I know I do.  I love you.

-k

Favorite things

Fat squirrels

Smiles to/from strangers

Artists with angelic voices (Alison Krauss, The Wailin' Jennys, Sarah MacLaughlin) 

Staying in bed too long when it's cold

Slow, quiet, late breakfast with coffee and the paper

Finding lost things

Losing found things?

Flannel pajamas

Phillies Win.

So for those of you who've been living under a rock for the last weekend, the Phillies won the World Series!  I'm still a loyal Cubs fan of course, but it was never-the-less exciting to be here for this historic victory.  My post may be trite but as it speaks to both city planning and Philadelphia issues, I'll continue.

Sports bring people together.  At first it sounds like a shallow connection: I like the Phillies and so do you, what's your point?  However, this weekend's post-victory events revealed some of sports' deeper virtues.  

The love of a team transcends demographics.  On Wednesday night after the Phillies win, my two friends and I sprinted from a bar in West Phila. to catch the first cab or bus that would take us downtown.  Plenty of others had the same idea, and as we stood at the corner every single car that passed honked its horn.  People hung out of car windows to slap hands with those outside.  We jumped up and down and yelled and cheered with each other "Go Phils!"  White kids, black kids, young kids, old kids, women, men, everyone, all of us, the whole city was so excited that nothing else mattered.  James and Matt and I couldn't wait any longer so we just started running down the street.  We ran about 6 blocks before we caught a bus to take us to Broad street.  The street was filled.  Packed.  Everyone was chanting and laughing and giving each other five.  Nothing mattered except for a mutual victory.  It wasn't just for a team, but for a city, and for everyone rooting for the Phillies everywhere. 

Now economic planning often shows that building a new stadium isn't worth the city's investment.  I'm inclined to agree.  But I think the value of having a professional sports team runs deeper than mere economic analysis.  Economically speaking, sports bring people into the city and therefore people spend money in the city on dinner and drinks and on transit (where transit exists).  Culturally speaking, sports create a realm of inclusion in which everyone can participate.  They give us something to cheer for together.  

The beauty is this: it doesn't take much to be a sports fan.  Sure, there are people who know everything about every game and every player and every rule; but just by virtue of living in a place you can call yourself a fan of their teams.  My grandmother's first question to my dad after he told her about meeting my mother was "Is she a Cubs fan?"  Grandma Vi didn't know that much about baseball but she knew it was a family value.  You don't have to have money or education to appreciate a walk-off home run or a full count, two outs, bottom of the ninth strike out.  When your team loses you're devasted.  When they lose for a season (or 28 seasons in the Phillies' case, or 100 seasons in the Cubs case) it hurts.  The whole city mourns.  But when you win the whole city rejoices.  A collection of people is united in devotion to a game.  How simple.  How elegant.  The stakes feel so high at the moment, but even if they lose it's not like losing a war.  Sports offer a break from daily life.  They create a melange of sensory experiences - peanut shells underfoot, hot summer day, sitting still, drinking a beer.  They also bridge gaps between generations.  I love that I cheer for the same teams as my father and grandfather.  I love that all I know of baseball I learned from them, incrementally, over the course of 23 years' worth of baseball games.  

I could keep espousing the personal value of sport but I'll let the events speak for themselves.  The Phillies' victory parade on Friday brought over 2 million people to downtown Philadelphia on Friday.  That's about 500,000 more people than the city's official population.  Even if you think sports are trite, the ability of a game to bring so many people together to celebrate a single event is undeniably astonishing.

Precis: Netherlands

Hi friends,

It's been about a month and I don't know where to begin updating you. The most obviously exciting part was my trip to the Netherlands. Our studio project is to make a plan for the Delaware River Basin about how climate change, especially regarding sea level rise, will impact the area. So we went to the Netherlands and met with all sorts of different officials and spatial planners and professors in different cities to ask questions and compare our problem to theirs. What did we learn? Our problem is nothing like theirs. The Netherlands is entirely planned and engineered down to the smallest acre. All of their trees are evenly spaced. There's no truly "natural" land in the country. Interestingly, Hurricane Katrina's effect on New Orleans was an important event for nearly every one we spoke with. I guess it was a wake-up call and a worst-case scenario if the Dutch dykes ever failed. Don't worry tho - they won't. Their levees are built to a 1/10,000 probability of failure. The New Orleans levees are currently being rebuilt to a 1/100 level. The Dutch think this is stupid. I think so too.

But it was definitely interesting to see our country from another perspective. They think that the states should take more control of things like levees. Because their country is so small and water is their only problem, they can master it and apply that everywhere. Our country is large with a multitude of natural threats - hurricanes, earthquakes, forest fires, tornadoes, etc. Here, people in the Midwest don't really care to spend tons of money fixing levees down in the South, because that's not a relatable Midwest problem. We regionalize these things rather than accepting them as national problems.

In general, the Dutch are very kind. They're just as smart as Germans but they have a sense of humor. They were genuine and excellent hosts. Every meeting had frequent coffee breaks - "We Dutch never start a meeting without a cup of coffee." They also were interested in our problem, interested in collaborating, and interested in whether we liked the Netherlands. There was certainly less anti-American sentiment than I've experienced in visiting other countries. In my opinion, Mary is the only Dutch person I've met in America who reminds me of the Dutch in Holland. The rest of the Calvin College Dutch are poor representations of their ethnic motherland (haha, i'm mostly kidding). The difference is being genuine and open versus conservative and closed? I'm grossly generalizing but I hope you get my drift. I suppose that's why those families emigrated from Holland to Holland MI in the first place?

Besides the people, the country itself is rather beautiful. For those of you who've been to PEI, they're pretty similar, except PEI is way more hilly. The weather is cloudy and chilly but very dynamic. The sun frequently peaks out throughout the day although it's rarely static. Canals roll through all of the brick city blocks. And everyone bikes on those old-school granny bikes. Everyone bikes. Bikes everywhere. When you cross the street you cross a bike lane, a pedestrian lane, a car lane, a tramway, and repeat. It's crazy. So many modes! Planner paradise!

One of the most beautiful sites I witnessed was this: around 4:30 in the afternoon, an 18-year old bikes up to a shop. A girl walks out and sits side-saddle on the rack on back and they ride away. That's how you pick up your girlfriend from work in the Netherlands. That's life.

Of course I have more to tell, but writing it down is harder than saying it. So if you've got more questions we'll just talk on the phone. My class definitely bonded and it was nice to get to know some people better. There were some Phila. city officials on the trip with us and they rented bikes one day and then didn't want them. So a friend and I tried our hand at the biking-someone-else-around thing. It was super fun although a bit scary. I'll throw some pictures in here later.

Just wanted to update you, back to the grind.

<3
k

Believing in things

When P and I were in Chicago we went to the Jeff Koons exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art.  I definitely liked some of his stuff (see picture).  His statement talked about reintroducing a feeling of childlike wonderment.  These sculptures are huge and the force you to see all the little wrinkles and such as if it was a real balloon.  You also see yourself in the reflection.  The scale makes you feel small again.  The material makes you curious - what is that stuff?  How does it work?  How did he make this?  All of those questions are things kids ask all the time but we informed adults usually glaze over.  

Some of his other stuff was less cool and less effective.  We saw a little group getting lectured by the docent and talked b/tw ourselves about whether the artist intended everything the docent was saying or whether art critics just read into it all, whether post-conceptualization and serendipity and process make the product just as much as the initial concept does.  I said without thinking: "Art is something you have to believe in."  And it is.  It requires faith like believing in God or religion.  You have to make a jump because if you never buy into it then you'll never benefit from it.  

I think love is the same way.  You have to believe in it.  You have to believe it's true or that it can be true.  The world you live in is the one you choose to see.  If you don't believe love can be real then it will never be.  If you don't believe it's worth the investment of time and effort and emotion then it won't be.  

Sometimes I scoff at people with more faith than mine.  They believe in things I once did and I think they're foolish for doing so.  That's pretty arrogant and lame on my part.  I just realized that I also scoff at people in love sometimes.  And that's even worse.  I think they can't possibly be that happy, they're way too young to know what they're doing, or they just don't know what they're in for.  Above all things I want to believe in love.  I mean, I've seen it work and it looks like a good deal: my grandparents were married for 64 years.  That's the most beautiful thing I can think of in the whole world.  And my parents have been married 33 years.  They all got married really young and they made it.  

I think my generation's fears about marriage are permeating my idealistic Christian culture picture.  But if it comes down to believing in something hopefully and being in love idealistically, or fearing something and never believing in it enough to let it happen, I'm gonna go with the former.  It's not a question of believing in a happy lie or facing a sad truth.  The difference is that the belief creates the reality.  If you believe it can be good and special and real it will be, and if you believe it will be crappy and terrible and disappointing it'll be that.  In reality, love is both the good and the bad but the picture one paints determines which side triumphs.

My hungover thoughts on a Saturday "morning".

<3

K

Back to the city of brotherly love

Hi friends,

It's been awhile. Sorry about that. I kind of took a break from the computer if I wasn't at work. I read a lot of books and watched the Olympics this summer instead of surfing the web. Twas good times.

I'm back from New Orleans safe and sound. I feel bad that the storms hit right when I left. Fay came literally the day of my departure, and Gustav, that bastard, reared his ugly head a week later. I can't say how glad I am that Gustav wasn't as bad as he could've been. It was also good to see that evacuations went smoothly (relatively speaking). Hopefully this whole incident will restore everyone's faith in the city's ability to manage disaster, both New Orleanians and general Americans alike. I've been in contact with some friends but have yet to get a full report about re-populating the city. Hopefully that part goes well.

After a (too)brief jump back to Detroit and a few dreamlike days in Chicago, I'm back in Philly. I must admit I was more than a little anxious to come back. Who knows why? I guess my life feels hyper-compartmentalized sometimes so transitioning between worlds is disconcerting. Despite my fears, it was an easier adjustment than expected.

I've been moving into my new place these last few days, which is amazing. I'm sharing a rowhouse with three boys (scary right?) My room is big and beautiful as is the kitchen. The boys are great. Moving stuff in was a breeze with so many hands. I came downstairs two nights ago to find them sorting through everything in the kitchen, organizing and cleaning. They're clean! It's wonderful. I'm psyched. I whipped up these margarita-inspired sables au citron as my inaugural batch of cookies. They liked them. We're a happy little family.

I also caught up with most of my city planning friends at a party last night. I didn't realize how much I missed this great group of crazy kids. I can't say I'm ready to start school tomorrow (eek!) but I am glad to be back with friends.

I missed some things about this city. I like that I can easily walk everywhere I need to. Groceries, cafes, bars and restaurants are just around the corner. And like New Orleans, my neighbors here are friendly and say hello. I have yet to walkabout and fully reacquaint myself with the city as I've been busy unpacking and all that jazz. Hopefully this afternoon I can go for a long run around town.

School starts tomorrow. Did I mention that? Yikes. I'm definitely doing some class shopping. But I'm also excited for the semester. My studio class is doing a long-term plan for the water levels of the Delaware river, so we're traveling to Holland to interview officials there on how they do what they do so well. After living in New Orleans I think I'll be even more interested in the studio. Hurrah.

Well my loves, I should probably get back to work. I hope all is well and we talk (for real) sometime soon.

If you're reading this, I love you.

-k

Life Mix

Hi friends,

I've just returned from a lovely Fourth of July weekend in Detroit.  This trip convinced me that July 4 is my favorite holiday.  There's no expectation or stress or arguing over when to spend time with whom.  Unlike Christmas break, I don't spend half the break in bed recovering from school and hiding from the cold.  On good old Independence day I needn't plan my menu and send invitations two months in advance.  It's just a lovely day of reflection and relaxation spent in the company of friends and family.  This year my sis and I each invited whoever was free. Our small party took the paddle boat around the lake, ate, and played bocce ball before roasting marshmallows over a bonfire, enduring my mother's tall tales, and watching neighbors light illegal fireworks.  What could be better?

It was great to spend time with my sis while she's starting her first year of residency.  I also played some tennis with my  parents, talked to my bro on the phone about America's impending fiscal doom, went to City Fest downtown and had an impromptu Food in the Hood, and saw Wall-E (which I highly recommend).  I hope your weekend celebrations of the nation's independence were equally as pleasurable and festive.

And now to the point: During my trip, Patrick reminded me of something cool that he and his friends did last summer.  They all made Life Mix CD's and sent them around to each other.  It's a pretty simple concept - create a soundtrack which encompasses your life thus far.  Alas, in light of my attempts today, the Life Mix is a dauntingly complex task.  But I think it'll be really fun.  So I wanted to propose that we all make one this summer.  I know everyone's busy, but it's summer, I mean, how busy can you really be?  I guess some of his friends went as far as making CD jackets and writing descriptions for each song/time period.  I beseech you to be as creative as you please.

Let me know if you're in.

Much love always,

-k

A fortnight and a half

Hello dear friends,

The third week of my New Orleans adventure is coming to a close. I apologize for my infrequent posts - apparently computer chargers die in humidity. Luckily I live across the street from the Loyola library so I've been using the computers here.

A few comments on work and friends (as per Brian's request):

Work
I work at a non-profit organization called NHS which serves a number of functions. First, NHS teaches gives homeownership counseling and teaches financial fitness classes. Second, NHS does construction management and real estate development. Finally, NHS has a Community Building Initiative (CBI). That's the department I'm in.

My supervisor also has a Masters in Planning and he's really cool, as is everyone else at NHS. So far we've done a survey of 1200 housing conditions in the Freret neighborhood. On Monday Eddie Izzard (the comedian) did a benefit concert for NHS. We are also working with a group of architects called Design Corps, who are designing and building a new bus shelter for Freret street. My job involves attending a lot of community meetings and giving a lot of presentations. Tomorrow I'm starting a more independent project. NHS recently bought a building which needs to be renovated. I'm going to do some renderings of the re-designed building for a capital campaign. I'm also creating urban design guidelines for Freret Street.

Friends
One other student from my program is down here this summer - my friend Matt. He is working for NORA - the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority. There are a bunch of interns working for the city who I've met and hung out with once or twice. I've also hung out with the Design Corps kids a few times. They're all in their Masters program too and pretty cool.

Moving to a new city is a fun adventure, but, as I'm sure you all know, it takes a while to really settle in and make good friends. Weekends have been fun so far - bars and bands and good times, but lots of small talk and mingling. This Saturday I'm heading to the beach with Matt and some others. It should be a good time.

Life in General
My average day involves going to work, coming home, eating dinner, running, cold showering and then reading. I've read "The Moviegoer" by Walker Percy and "Old Men at Midnight" by Chaim Potok. I just started "Women in Love" by D.H. Lawrence. It's a quiet life. I like the independence and the free time to think. But, conversely, and necessarily, it's a bit lonely.

I actually went to church last Sunday - First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans. I think I'll go again this Sunday but I'll try a different church. I think I'll dabble in Catholicism since New Orleans is such a Catholic city.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading.

-k

First Impressions

I'm writing from my new apartment in New Orleans. There's much to say about this town and I don't quite know where to begin. I wrote a few thoughts in my sketchbook yesterday so I'll start there:

This city is more beautiful than any other I've ever encountered. The trees are majestic and magical, the houses are unique and hospitable. The city emanates a charm which is sincere and unpretentious. Life ambles amiably - not concerned or even aware of the pace at which the rest of the world travels. 'Folks' smile when you pass on the street and make conversation when you sit next to them on the streetcar. Nola is an anomaly. It engages and delights all of your senses without overwhelming them (like a Wes Anderson movie compared to Baz Luhrman). Surely heaven must feel a bit like this place.

But beneath this surface so lovely (and legitimately so) lurks a deep well of sorrow and fear. NO's history seems to divide into two eras: before the storm and after the storm. (One food writer for the Times-Picayune dated his article June 10, A.D. 3 - After the Deluge). It's difficult to even reference the city without placing it in one of these two contexts. I wonder if people get tired of talking about it. I wonder if they just want to forget the disaster that so thoroughly destroyed (and continues to destroy) this place. But the levees still aren't rebuilt properly and a new hurricane season has arrived. Friends who left BS have yet to return. Lives and homes and businesses were lost and never regained. So much devastation - the equivalent of which this country has rarely seen - takes far more than three years to repair.

I read the newspaper today and the main three articles all pertained to Katrina. A to-do list for planning for your family's evacuation took up a whole page. The Army Corps of Engineers remain the bad guys as the levees they're currently building leak. The Corps assures the people that it's fine, but that's what they said last time... There's little trust in the government. Even after three years, the mayor doesn't have a citywide evacuation plan. He says everyone should have their own evacuation plan. Well that should've been the case last time too, but if people are poor and don't have cars they're out of luck. How hard is it to plan to mobilize a mass bus fleet? A few friends and I discussed this yesterday and realized the three of us could probably comprise a feasible plan in a few hours. Bureaucracy is ridiculous.

It would be hard to rebuild a life here if you're not sure it won't just be destroyed again.

But all this sad stuff is balanced by the good that's going on. People are empowered here. They attend neighborhood meetings, they want to know what the city government is doing, and they want to hold the city accountable. Before the storm, folks didn't know they could have a say. Now they're saying it. It's astounding how many efforts bubble up from grassroots. New Orleanians are truly indomitable. They fight for rebirth because there is so much to save here.

My one regret is this: Despite the genuine hospitality and kindness of New Orleanians, an outsider can never become one. Perhaps after many years you can work your way in, but people will always ask "Where you from?" Obviously I don't expect to call myself a local after only a week. But if I did move here for the long run, I wonder if I'd ever be fully accepted. I don't begrudge the locals for it - being "from here" is a point of pride that I wouldn't like to share with outsiders either.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Regarding my life, I work about a mile from home. I walk or ride my bike to work. There's a lovely park right near my house - Audubon Park - where I go for runs and bike rides. (I biked 8 miles today and ran 5.6 Woo hoo!) There are a bunch of cafe's and shops and a Whole Foods on Magazine Street which is also close by. When I want to go downtown I ride the streetcar on St. Charles Street. My apartment is on the second floor of a house in Uptown. It has high ceilings and I have two roommates. The girl goes to Loyola for jazz saxophone and has a puppy. The boy is an mba student from Duke who's interning with a hospital. There's plenty of space for visitors :) It's hot down here but I haven't melted yet. July may be a different story. The food here is amazing. You would love it.

I miss you. Come see me.

-k

Happy Summer everyone!

I'm writing from dear old Michigan. I apologize for my absence - since school ended I tried to take a break from the computer. (My eyesight is officially worse as a result of my last year. Boo.)

These last few weeks have been full of good things. I had tons of fun in Philly before flying to Chicago for my sister's graduation from medical school. We had a party there with all my cousins including bocce ball and running bases. To use a phrase from old days: "good times." Since getting back to the D I've met up with old friends and just generally chilled out. I love Detroit in the summer and am sincerely sad that I can't stay longer. Alas, adventures await.

I forgot to mention I got a job. Although it was so late in the game, it was worth the wait. I'm going back to New Orleans for the summer. Hurray! I leave at the end of this week. So if you need a vacation come stay with me. I promise it's the most magical place you'll ever visit.

What will I be doing there? I'm working with Neighborhood Housing Services through the Rockefeller Foundation. We'll be in a neighborhood with some pretty diverse residents (very wealthy and very poor) so our job will be to build consensus among these different stakeholders to create plans which benefit everyone, and ultimately prevent gentrification. Rents in New Orleans are actually pretty high (on par with Philadelphia or Chicago) due to the low supply, so another part of my job will be to track down the owners of abandoned or vacant properties, convince them to sell to NHS, and then rebuild those houses to give back to displaced residents. Finally I'll be doing some urban design work as well as general design stuff in CS3. So that's cool. I'm psyched.

Despite my overwhelming love for that city, I'm a little wary of spending a summer there. It's currently a mild 90 degrees, and it's only May. July's heat and the swampy mosquitoes might make it a city less pleasant than the one I visited in March. Oh well. When I talked to my boss about job specifics he asked if I was bringing a car. I said probably not. He said it might be a good idea "for groceries, or when it rains, or for evacuation purposes." Oh yeah. Hurricanes. I forgot about that. I naively feel like the worst hurricane already hit New Orleans. They can't get any more for a while right? Duh.

Anyway, as Isaac pointed out, I'll have to think of a clever interim name for my blog seeing as I won't be in Philly anymore. Suggestions appreciated.

I hope you're all having wonderful summer breaks, vacations, adventures, or at least learning a lot in studies and/or work.

Much love dear friends,
-k

And the first year comes to an end.

The semester is finally over. It came to a surprisingly triumphant but almost anti-climactic end. The last month has been wrought with things to do - each task awaited by another in an endless line. I honestly can't say I took a day off in the last four weeks. I've definitely never functioned on so little sleep; prob averaging one all-nighter a week, with a max of six hours any night - usually less. I gave my workshop presentation to the client and faculty jury on zero sleep. I finished our 90 page workshop book in three grueling days. And with one essay test for urban econ it was over. Thank God.

I took the last two days off to become a real person again. I explored the city at a leisurely pace. I saw them filming a movie with Owen Wilson and that guy from Grey's Anatomy (McSteamy I think? Jennifer Aniston is in it too but I didn't see her.) I browsed books with James in two bookstores. We found a garden on the top floor of the Kimmel Center. We ran into five other planners in Rittenhouse Square in the course of fifteen minutes. This is truly the smallest big city in the world. I forgot how Center City feels during the daytime. It's so bustling even in the middle of the week. Oh and I found a new favorite restaurant. I've made a point of trying new restaurants in Philly b/c it's a fun break that doesn't take too long. This one is called The Latest Dish and it's the first place that's really knocked my socks off. Other places have been good, quite good, but this was my fav. So come visit me and we'll go back. I went running the last couple days. I'm finding new music and listening to NPR again. I'm catching up on the headlines. I even watched Top Chef last night.

Today I slept in and read The Life of Pi in Rittenhouse. So far so good. Now I'm cleaning my room, getting my life in order, attempting to figure out where I'm going this summer, where I'm moving next fall, when I'll stop home in Detroit and how long I'll be there.

Cleaning out my school folders is deflating. So much work for what? a few pages that I organize into a clear, expandable file folder. I hate when an end result doesn't reflect everything that went into the product. Maybe the process counts. I hope so.

I do feel I've learned a lot this year. I've definitely worked hard. I think my skills show it. But what? This year doesn't feel like any other school year before. It's not a clean break I guess, because next fall is lingering just around the next corner. I'm not sad to leave friends because we all know we'll see each other in a few short months. It's not a momentous change heading into a new grade. It's just Masters Program Part II. Which is ok. I feel older this year - more comfortable in who I am and more familiar with my shortcomings. Maybe that sums it all up. I spent the first semester feeling uncertain. The second semester showed me who I am but no more about who I should be or who God is or what I should do in my life. Hopefully those things will come.

I do want to say thanks to all of you who helped me through this crazy year. Your thoughts, prayers, advice, words of wisdom and encouragement were highly appreciated. I also sincerely apologize for being a sub-par friend in many respects. I def didn't keep up like I should've. Please know it doesn't mean I don't love you, but that I'm bad at time management.

Anyway, I love you all. And wherever I go this summer, I hope you visit me or I can visit you.

<3

-K

Are you ever just swept away by everything?

Summer or the advent of summer does that to me. Trees that were sticks pop into flowers and then green - green everywhere. Blue skies, sunlight that's golden instead of white, breezes that carry some scent of the season, birds that make noise (too much noise), construction sounds, traffic and bustle, and people are out to enjoy it. I didn't know there were so many people. Three weeks ago campus had a smattering of bench-sitters and small crowds outside for smoke breaks. Now people are everywhere - laying on the lawn, crowding the benches, sitting on steps. We all want to be part of this recently-awakened buzz.

But more than that - what is it? I get sentimental this time of year. I'm reflective of the past year that's gone by, I anticipate the surprises and adventures that summer holds in store. I romantically envision some version of perfection that will surely be my next three months. So much is in store, so much is going on now, all of it's happening too fast to take it in or assess it or even understand and before I know it it'll all be lost. I hate missing out on everything-at-once moments. Spring is the best time to catch them and the easiest time to miss them b/c I'm always so busy with school.

Alas.

Forgive the disjointedness of my brief break from schoolwork.

Hey friends,

So another school year is coming to an end. It's crunch time, but not crunchy enough that I'm freakin' out yet (hence me writing this blog). In any case, I just realized I'm going to be home in about a month. It's going to be summer again. I simultaneously feel like summer just happened and that summer was a lifetime ago. I feel like I've lived about three lives in the last year: Calvin, summer, and Penn. I'm happy with the one I'm in now. I wouldn't want to go back to anything I've been before. I think I'm on the right track life-wise, even though I never anticipated the way things have shaken out. I never thought I'd doubt the things I've doubted. I never thought I'd decide what I've decided. Maybe the first lent itself to the second. This time around though I've owned my actions. I'm not lying anymore, to myself or anyone else. So word to that.

Who knows what summer holds? Waiting to hear back on an internship opportunity. Don't want to talk about it yet for fear of jinxing it. Trying to keep my hopes down. Sigh. Wherever I end up this summer, I don't know if I can handle any more lifetimes. So much change is overwhelming.

Despite the different lives, some patterns emerge. For example, I have a boy problem. I always thought I just fell into relationships without looking for them because I wasn't assertive enough to know what I wanted/didn't want. While I've become more discerning in my taste, it's no coincidence that I'm always in a relationship. Because I don't know how to be friends with girls I just become friends with guys. It's way easier, it makes more sense to me, I'm more comfortable. And then that always ends up somewhere. It's a strange deficiency. I could probably teach a class on dating but I need a class on making friends.

I'm having a hard time foreseeing my future. I'm failing to connect my present actions with possible future consequences. I'm living in the now. How lame that sounds. I don't even know how to picture a future or where or with whom.

Life goes by pretty fast. I always indulge myself in brief moments of perfection. I wish I was brave enough to look at the big picture.

Until we meet again,

-k

Philadelphia <3 and Refrigerator Space

Walking through Rittenhouse Square today on my way to the coffee shop I came to an important realization: I would rather live in Philadelphia than Chicago. In the long run I mean - even after school is over. Maybe this shouldn't be so groundbreaking but it is for me. I've got so much family in Chicago, it's always felt a bit like home, I love the Cubs and the Bears way more than the Phillies or the Eagles. In Chicago's defense, I've never lived actually lived there. So maybe this is an unfair comparison. But Philadelphia is mine. Perhaps it's a function of my "need to be special" personality type, but I like to be original and I like to be independent. I'm the only person I know (besides the people I've met here) who's ever lived in Philly. It's a well-kept secret and I like being in on it. Chicago has no Rittenhouse Square and no flowery trees in Spring, or at least far fewer trees. Philly is somehow more manageable in size. It's big but not too big. It's small enough to feel my own and run into people I know. It's safe but not too safe. There's still grit on my street, and there are still gritty neighborhoods where poor grad students like myself can afford to live and still be able to walk to the park declared one of the best in the country by Jane Jacobs. No one knows how great it is until they get here. Word to that.

I don't know if I want to live in Philly after school is over. I want to hop around the world before settling down. But I can see myself here in the future. That's an interesting feeling. The future's freaking me out at the moment. I've got no internship for the summer yet and I'm starting to panic. Send out a few prayers for me if you don't mind. I've sent a bunch of applications but haven't heard much back. Yikes. Hopefully it'll all come together.

As per usual I spent last week bustin' my butt on another project. The results were pretty cool. We took a photo of a crappy street, traced it, then Photoshop-ed together a fixed street and traced that. Even though it was tracing, all the finished products were really different. My prof wanted us to trace because a lot of people don't have drawing experience and he didn't want perspectives and such to get warped (although Photoshopping warps things anyway, but whatev.) We hung up our existing photo, the existing conditions drawing, and the fixed drawing, and then people picked their favorites. My prof (who I don't think likes me very much) spent a lot of time talking about both of mine. I was afraid he'd think my drawings "too sketchy" but he actually really liked them (maybe b/c he didn't know whose they were?) In any case, it made me feel more confident about my urban design skills. Check it:
Existing Thompson Street photograph

Existing Thompson Street drawing
Re-Design for Thompson Street
This project kinda pissed me off because I don't think sidewalk cafe's, street trees, and first floor retail are the solution to all city planning problems. But the exercise was to teach us to draw a convincing vision so I think it served its purpose. I learned to draw trees which was fun. I would probably do a bunch of things better/differently but there's only so much time in a day. My prof said the pavement was "expertly done" and the trees were "fresh and original." Sorry, I'm not tryin' to brag but I realize I do put my work on this blog like a refrigerator. My intent is just to show y'all what I'm doing all day rather than calling you (even though I'd surely rather be calling you). I miss you all dearly and hope to see you sometime, somewhere this summer.

<3
K

I win...kind of

Hi blog,

Sorry for neglecting you, my dear readers, for so long. I've said this about a hundred times this year, but it's true once again: I just finished the biggest project of my life. Seriously. It was ridiculous. I worked pretty much nonstop for five days, averaging about 3 hours of sleep a night. It's done. It looks alright. It could be more perfect. I don't have time for perfect these days.

The project was to create three housing typologies (single family detached, single family rowhouse, mixeduse retail and residential) for a proposed new town, based on principals of critical regionalism and sustainability. My town was to be located in the Shenandoah Valley, so in keeping with critical regionalism, the housing styles, colors, and materials used all had to fit in with the architecture and landscaping and materials that are native to Virginia. We had to do site plans showing how each housing type would relate to the street as well as street sections showing sidewalk widths, bike lanes, streetscaping spacing. We had to do two drawings of each building, an axonometric (which is a 3-D side view) and an elevation. You have to use an architectural ruler so everything is to-scale. So if someone saw my drawing and it said 1"=20' they could get out their architectural ruler and measure a window and know that it was supposed to be 6' wide. Pretty neat.

And then we had to write it all up in a fancy report with a vision and ten principles of design like "the town shall be walkable from end to end" and each principle had to have three guidelines like "Pedestrian pathways will connect each residential street to the Town Center," or "pathways will be 4'-6' and be ADA compliant regarding grade and surface texture." And then we had to draw a diagram for each principle.
It was worth doing. It was excessively long. My professor gave the same assignment last year only they didn't have to write principles or draw diagrams. He was giving us shit for being behind - "last year's class was way ahead of you." But the assignment was twice as long. So eff him.

It was a huge ass project. It was a shit show. I did it all by hand. Some people cheated and used Sketch-Up which we weren't supposed to do b/c it distorts axonometric drawings, but whatev. Hopefully it'll be a good portfolio piece.

Anyway, I've finally gotten some sleep. That was lovely. It's spring here in Philly. I spent the last three months anticipating an impending winter that never came. Thank God. After living in Michigan no winter will ever feel terrible again.

I'm so unfamiliar with having nothing due tomorrow that I don't know what to do with myself.

Gotta get jazzed for six hours of class. Wish me luck.

<3
-K


PS I still have lots and lots and lots to say about New Orleans. I'll get to it tomorrow, I promise.

New Orleans - Day Two: Low-key local interaction

The next day the Rockafeller Fellows (whose organizations we were interning with for the week) had a barbeque to which we were invited. Getting there was kind of a mess since the directions sucked, but it was a lovely drive. Plannerspeak was flying all over the place in our Honda minivan - "This right-of-way is amazing", "check out those set backs," "What a mature treeline - what kind of trees are those?", "This scale is so pedestrian-friendly," "Is that Whole Foods an adaptive reuse?" "Eww what is with that building, it doesn't fit with the rest of the urban fabric at all," etc. etc. etc. It was hilarious. It was so nerdy. We were loving it.

We found Audubon Park finally and not that many people were there. A few blankets were set out. One guy introduced himself and the others kinda hung back. It was a bit awkward cuz we didn't know who was who - who we'd be working with or who was just a friend of someone else. We played football and soccer and mingled a little. It was all less structured than we'd expected. We'd arrived at 1 and most people didn't arrive til 3, the grilling didn't start til 4. By the end of the trip we would understand that New Orleanians lead a laid-back life. They don't start on time and they only end early if it's work. They chill. It's cool. By the end of the picnic we'd talked to a lot of people and it was a lot of fun. Someone brought three pounds of cooked crawfish which they taught us how to peel and eat right out of the shell.

Genevieve, Shayla, and Rachel enjoying themselves at the picnic

When we left the party was still going on, but we wanted to go out and explore more for the day. It was so sunny and pretty but still cool that I really wanted to go for a run. I left around 630pm from the hotel hoping to get back before dark - as everyone warned me. It was a really nice run. New Orleans has a few trolley lines which run down the boulevards in the middle of the street. Local people run or walk along the tracks. I did the same for a bit but the sun was in my eyes so I went back to the sidewalk. I had no idea how far I'd gone but I decided to head back b/c the sun was setting at an alarming rate. I got home around 7:20 and saw I'd gotten a few text messages - "Are you back safely yet?" I was. It was a long run. It felt amazing. (I just checked Gmaps Pedometer - http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1706018 - 6.5 miles - not bad.)

I was about to hop into the shower when James called to say that some people were heading to Mother's in five minutes.
"Could you wait ten minutes do you think?" I asked.
"No, I think they wanted to leave soon," James replied.
"Well, I'll meet you down there in five, and if I'm not there you can leave without me."
Fastest shower of my life. In and out, dried and dressed, hair washing included, down to the lobby in five minutes. I win.

We walked a few blocks to Mother's - a quite unique, cafeteria-style soul food joint, recommended to us by Kate Daniel (the city planning administrative assistant who organized this trip, and our lives in general and who also lived in Nola for a while.) Despite how greasy and gross it looked, it was pretty delish. I got red beans and rice which I doused in hot sauce - as is the custom in this city.

James and James at the Mother's counter
"Who the hell keeps snapping that flash off?" yelled an employee, at which point, I stopped taking pictures.

When we got back, the rest of the group wanted to go see a band play, which I was into, but they wanted to get food first, which I was not into, since it was already like 10 and we had to work early the next day.

So my friend James and I wandered around the Warehouse district and checked out the architecture and urban design there. I know, I know, it sounds super nerdy. And it was. But it was really enjoyable. I wish I'd taken more pictures. Double porches and spanish railings are definitely my favorite details of New Orleans architecture. In Urban Design class, my professor is always talking about "Critical Regionalism" which is new architecture that draws from local materials and arch styles to create something modern and progressive yet contextually appropriate. When he talks about it it sounds all well and good, but he rarely gives us any examples. Walking around an unfamiliar city definitely helped us to talk through what we thought were good and bad designs. This building was one of James' favs:
After walking around a decent bit, we called it an early night and headed back to the hotel. I slept well despite anticipation of our first day of work at Neighborhood Housing Services at 9 am.

New Orleans - Day One: typical tourists

Dearest friends,

I've just returned from a week in New Orleans that was probably the most important of my education thus far. I don't know where or how to begin recounting the events of the week and I know nothing I can say will do justice to the unique magic that makes New Orleans unique to any other place I've ever experienced.

I'll start at the very beginning because Julie Andrews once told me it was a very good place to start. We arrived last Saturday in the early afternoon. Most of us hadn't slept much the night before but our fatigue didn't stop us from hitting the French Quarter as soon as we'd had a minute to change clothes. Only Sarah Marks had ever been to New Orleans before, so all that most of us knew about it were a few streets and food items we'd heard tossed around: beignet, muffuletta, Bourbon Street, French Quarter, gumbo. So accordingly, we indulged in all of these things in the first twelve hours of our visit.

First stop was Cafe du Monde for an afternoon snack. Cafe du Monde is the most famous place to eat beignets in New Orleans, maybe the world. Beignets are sweet, fried squarish pastries topped with piles of powdered sugar. They come in plates of three and are served with hot chocolate or coffee and chickory (coffee and thick cream - quite delicious.)

After the cafe we took back to the street where everyone bought muffelatta's - a New Orleanian sandwich. It's a couple different kinds of cold cuts with provolone and swiss and lots of olives on top. I didn't partake but I hear they were good. We wandered over to the river where everyone ate and we watched giant ships roll by. Then we went back across Decatur street and headed west toward Bourbon Street.

Bourbon Street is probably the typical image that comes to mind when one thinks of New Orleans. Nearly every stall is a bar covered with neon signs. People are wandering all over the street with drinks in hand and beads strewn carelessly about their necks. It is only four o'clock in the afternoon mind you. And yes, drinking is allowed in public in this town. Which is amazing. People got their first round of drinks in cups that said "big ass beer." I wanted to hold out so my first drink in Nola would be a hurricane - another famous Nola beverage. We passed a store that had them, (actually every store probably had them) and everyone was like "Get one now!" I was like, "I don't want to be drunk at 4!" They were like "This is New Orleans!" So I gave in. It tasted like red cool aid. It hit a lot harder, but not too hard. I think we wandered back to the hotel nicely buzzed and everyone took pre-dinner naps.

For dinner we went to Oliver's - a nice restaurant on Decatur. I decided at the beginning that I'd eat seafood this week since I'd be wasting an amazing culinary experience if I didn't...and I don't feel that bad for seafood since it seems harder for them to suffer. I had crawfish etoufee. It might be my new fav food. So good. Next we wandered down Decatur all the way to Frenchman Street and found ourselves in an entirely new district - it was a whole block of jazz and blues bars off the tourist path. We went to d.b.a and saw an awesome blues guitarist. After a few hours and another couple drinks we went back to Bourbon Street.

The last stop (around 2 am) was Pat O'Brien's - home of the Hurricane (the drink). I was already pretty drunk. But everyone was having hurricanes and convinced me to have one - which I admit wasn't hard cuz i wasn't exactly at the top of my game as far as decision-making goes. I split it with Sally. I felt fine for the rest of the night - until we went back to the hotel. I got to my room and laid down. At which point I promptly got up, went to the bathroom and got beaten by the hurricane. Alas. Lesson learned.

Jumbled thoughts for the day

Thoughts for the day:

-Can you gossip to yourself? I try not to be the person who tells everyone everything about everyone else. But is it any better to think snarky comments to myself about others? Probably not.

- I'm overwhelmed by the connectedness of the world. You know how if you spend a day playing a video game or working with a certain graphics program or, (in my case for today) graphing transportation systems, everything you see becomes that set of lines or patterns? I was walking down the stairs at a diagonal angle and realized the pattern looked just like the graph for local versus express trains. Maybe that's nerdy. But I think my point is when you throw yourself into one subject that becomes the basis of how you interpret everything in the world. So back in undergrad I saw everything as sociology. And then everything was art. For the moment everything is headway and terminal time and operating velocity and cycle time.

None of these are empirically right. I don't think that everything ultimately comes down to economics or biology or politics or art or sociology or theology or philosophy. Instead it's all so interconnected that you can tap into one of those underlying frequencies and interpret everything through that lens, and it's just as correct as any other frequency. It's fascinating to discover which frequencies resonate with which people.

At the moment I'm hopping between a bunch of them all the time, which is keeping my brain in shape to say the very least. I'm about to finish a bunch of engineering/physics type calculations, after which I'll finish a sketch and layout a portfolio.

-My subconscious life has been affecting my conscious life lately. I keep having these telling dreams, all loaded with subtle and not-so-subtle symbolism. Not only do I remember the dreams in the morning (which I haven't done in quite a while) but they affect how I feel for the rest of the day. It's strange.

-In the same vein, I've been having a disconnect between how I feel and being cognizant of that feeling. For example, the other day I felt all depressed inside, but I didn't consciously understand why. Then I thought it might be because of a decision I made, but I lacked the connecting guilt or conviction to make me consciously comprehend and confirm that I indeed believed I was wrong. The higher-thinking required to connect the causative action to the resulting feeling wasn't there. I just felt weird inside, but didn't feel wrong or regretful in my head. Also odd.

- When I'm doing school work and it's going faster than I expected, rather than working quickly to get it done, I relax my pace and waste time, so I end up finishing at the same time I would've had it taken as long as I expected it to in the first place. How's that for a run-on sentence?

-I'm going to New Orleans on Saturday. Hurray.

Disclaimer

A clarification in response to some concerned comments from readers (all two of them):

I hereby reserve the right to wax melodramatic and employ hyperbole for rhetorical purposes. While the majority of what you read is true, I reserve the right to embellish that truth (to the point of falseness) as I see fit.

Because, let's be honest, dramatic writing is more interesting than dull and mundane, no? And I do what I want.

If I am truly, heart achingly sad or despaired I probably will let you know in a more direct way than writing about it in an obscure blog. For the most part you can assume that I'm alive and well, that I have ups and downs, and that I'll call you if I need you. And you can always call me if you need me. Word? Word.

All good things have endings?

It's one of those mean facts of life that we want what we can't have, once we get it we don't want it anymore, and once we lose it we realize just how much we've lost. Sometimes we're forced to make decisions that go against our emotions. Sometimes logistics and practicality and proximity and timing decide for us, despite the panging objections of the heart. Invariably those decisions hurt - this time, far more than I anticipated. We pretend to be comforted by the fact that it was the right choice. It made sense. It had to happen as it did. And maybe in a few days or months or years it'll all come together as it should. But not today. Today it hurts.

Snow Day

The first significant snowfall since Christmas settled upon my lovely Philadelphia this morning. On the plus side, my only class of the day was canceled. On the downside, so was my flight. So now I'm fixin' to fly out for Detroit at 6:15 am tomorrow morning. This throws a wrench into plans for today and for the weekend, and I'll surely be unable to see everyone I had hoped to in my now two-day excursion to the Motor City.

Alas. The snow isn't all bad; in fact I quite like it. It changes the pace of the city. Somehow it's simultaneously slower yet frenzied. I walked through Rittenhouse Square on my way here (Capriccio on 17th and Locust), and as always, found it to be the most magical place in the world. A couple sipped steaming coffee while laughing on a park bench. People played with their dogs who were so excited about this strange stuff covering the ground. A dad threw snowballs with his three daughters. A bunch of kids in sweatshirts and snowpants were playing football. People are rushing to get outside and enjoy their lives. I love this city. I love slushing around in my snow boots. I love the way my right sock always works its way off my foot in my snow boots. Wait. I hate that. Why only my right sock? It's too funny to be annoying. But I digress.

So an intended travel day becomes a blessed free day? (<----attempt at optimism). I'm here at the cafe to get my sketch on. I feel like I've been working my booty off these last couple weeks and accomplishing little. The workpile is increasing exponentially and I'm barely making a dent. On top of it all I'm supposed to be applying for internships. On Wednesday night I was freaking out about them. Today I'm feeling better. It seems that most firms who do urban design are looking for people with hand drawing skills. Hurray! That's me. Who knew an art major would ever be useful for something?

Strangely enough I'm sketching more than ever lately. It's like now that I don't have to be artistic and don't have to keep a sketchbook, I want to. I'm not afraid of sucking anymore. I mean, I might suck, but at least I'm not afraid of it, and I guess that's what counts. People here are easily impressed and that gives me the shallow confidence to keep drawing. Actually, I just want to draw. It feels good. It keeps me psychologically warmed up for anything requiring creativity. I'm also writing with my left hand a lot - even more than I did in college. I actually like that handwriting better now. And I like my left-handed drawings better. Weird.

I'm leading a double-life. Two cities. Two handwritings. Two faiths (or one faith and a lack thereof). Two sets of friends. It's fractured. It was disconcerting. I think I'm used to it now. The being used to it is disconcerting.

I realize I should put some pictures on here. I'll get on that.

Just wanted to update you.

hearts,
-k

Making plans to change the world, while the world is changing us

Just finished a panel discussion on slum upgrading. The panelists were incredibly established in their fields and accordingly intelligent. I can't ever attend these things without leaving inspired. Even though the problems are staggering and potentially depressing, they're also laden with hope. It's fascinating to see how well people can help themselves with so few resources. It makes me feel lucky and lazy, and therefore liable to be part of the solution.

A recent conversation with a friend revealed to me that not all people care about changing the world. Not everyone has such lofty aspirations. This isn't to sound like I'm really great because I do want to change the world. But rather I feel that because I care (and not as many people care as I previously thought) I have to do something about it. That makes me feel hopeful and accountable and directed.

It also makes me hopeful about my field again. Last semester I was down on planners because historically they have fucked up some cities (i.e. urban renewal). Or else, they've been impotent suckers stuck in big city bureaucracies. But what all of these experts are telling us is "We need city planners because you guys see the big picture." According to these international housing experts and CEO's and World Bank employees, economists and engineers problem solve in ways that don't account for social complexities. So they like us and they need us because essentially, we're generalists.

That feels good. I am a generalist. And up until recently I thought that was a bad thing. I like people and I like science and literature and art, dammit. I'm not sorry for it anymore. As far as talent goes, I don't have much stacked up in any one area, but I've got a little in a lot of different areas, and hopefully that'll be worth something in this field.

Those feelings are reassuring because I've been feeling lost again. This time around though, I don't feel the urgent sense of needing to be found. I'm resigned to it; I'm indifferent about it. I'm changing and I don't know how but I know that I'm different. It makes me feel dishonest or rather, incapable of being honest, because I don't know what is true.

I'm getting confident in my uncertainty. I realize that's dangerous. I fear my new moral-free decisions will be regrets once my conscience comes back. I'm getting assertive. I'm getting blasé. I wonder if I really feel grown-up or if I'm just acting how I think people my age or in my position are supposed to act.

The confidence helps with school though. Last week I turned in my resume and design portfolio for my Urban Design Methods class, complete with three terms which describe my design identity: contextual, comprehensive, catalytic. I used alliteration and I presumptuously claimed to be catalytic. I'm not sorry. We included a page which describes how our layout format embodies our three terms as well as our explanations for choosing them. I explained that while I haven't designed anything catalytic as of yet, I intend to. Those words may not yet be my design identity, but I intend them to be once I'm done here. And I designed my shit the way I wanted, rather than the way my professor might've liked. He's all about stark simplicity - "clean" is his one design term. I respect that, but I had to do it the way I wanted. I don't think it's cluttered or over-designed. I definitely care about criticism and look forward to feedback. Critique is the only way that one can improve. This time around though, (as opposed to in studio art in undergrad), I'm not afraid of not being cool or progressive enough for my professors. I am what I am and I think what I think. By the end of this schoolin' those things will be refined but the basics are established.

I guess I'm progressing professionally. I'm undoubtedly changing personally, but I don't know whether it's for the better or worse. Actually, if I don't know, it's probably for the worst. Oh well. I don't feel much about it at the moment.

I believe in God still, and the person of Jesus is too amazing to doubt. Those are intact. I can't bring myself to go to church. If I could just listen to talented musicians playing incredible arrangements all day I would do that. But I can't. I don't buy much of the rest of it.

One thought keeps resounding in my head, from the movie Paris, Je T'aime. "By acting like a man in love, he became a man in love." This a beautiful thought that might be true. I wonder if I should seek God in this season of Lent, in an according manner and see what I find. I don't really know how to seek tho. I'll ruminate more and decide later.

Unoriginal thoughts on names.

I have much to do as always but am procrastinating to write this blog. I already began one about Brian's visit but was too tired to finish it last night. I'll be sure to complete and post it soon. In the meantime you can look at the pictures on my google pictures website.

At the moment a few thoughts are swirling in my head. Research shows that everyone's favorite word is their own name. Interesting. You never notice how infrequently your name is said until someone says it. Usually, people just great each other with "Hey, how are you doing?", or initiate questions and conversation by making eye contact rather than saying the person's name. But when your name is said, especially by someone you're close to or intersted in, notice your visceral pleasure at the sound.

Names are an interesting phenomenon. I love hearing Julie and Rick call me "Kris" because they have for my whole life and it implies a unique closeness between us. However, if anyone else calls me that (besides my parents maybe) it's weird. Receiving nicknames from friends or bestowing them upon friends establishes some new identity and bond between you. By the same token, I associate some nicknames (Kray) with a specific group of people and a specific time in my life. It's sometimes disconcerting when I'm referred to like that now.
Hearing someone call to herself or others call someone by a nickname you gave is strangely satisfying.

As CB pointed out, I introduced him to my friends as "Crazy Brian", which was almost a self-fulfilling prophesy. I hope I didn't put too much pressure on him to live up to his name.

That's all for now. Back to work.

satisfyingly mundane

I need to stay busier than this. I need to close it off. Token indie instrumental music, cash register drawer, change jingles, people talk, receipts print, giant blue mug sits on yellow saucer, lilac folder crowds table, i'm reading, aesthetics sights sounds can't think feel too much he's not coming. that's all.

La Vita è bella

Sometimes life is too beautiful to comprehend. Maybe it always is, but only on occasion does the gravity of everything, the weight of existence, the overwhelming barrage of sights and sounds to be perceived break through...Sometimes it makes me so happy that I hurt. Or so sorry that I can't possibly deserve to live. Sometimes I fear I wouldn't trade earth for heaven.

The combination of sunshine and city permeates my self-protecting tunnel vision and I can't help but be hit by everything around me. I love the sound of the cars outside my window, the wind whipping through the row houses, the bite of cold as I run from home to ballet and back. Yesterday the sky was palest blue with chalk dust sprinkled on top and I swear I've never seen sunlight so white. It made the city look clean. It made me want to be clean.

I bought sandwich supplies for a homeless guy the other day. In my quest to find God or religion or faith I figured I could start with what I know: Jesus was cool and he loved everyone. It's pretty simple. Love is never hard to give. Or it shouldn't be. I was walking home and he asked me for food. So we went to Wawa and he picked liverwurst and rolls and american cheese. He told me about getting kicked out and how he was supposed to go to a shelter...none of it made much sense but sandwiches make sense. Afterward he wanted money for tokens. He smelled like alcohol. I gave him some change and told him God loved him. He said he knew. His name was Mark. I wish him well.

I guess Jesus would probably have brought Mark home with him until he got back on his feet. I'm not quite there yet. Actually, who knows what Jesus would've done? I'm kind of frustrated with the people who presume they know what God wants, so I guess I shouldn't do the same.

This weekend was the calm before the storm. I relaxed and had fun and cooked and cleaned and made some art. I thought a bit about life and love, but not too much. My dilemma at the moment is this: which is worse, the action of doing something wrong, or the fact that you can justify it to yourself afterward?

Democracillin - the cure to what ails you

On my cold, wet, wintry-mix walk home today I listened to NPR, as is my custom. Terry Gross was interviewing a variety of people about Iraq, asking the question "When and how should we get out?" I hate to admit it but I often ignore such conversations as I find them pointless and frustrating. However, my hands were too cold to get my mp3 player out of my pocket to change the station, so I listened. The first guy she talked to was one of the ones who "planned" the initial invasion and he of course supported the effort, saying things have only improved since we "changed strategies" last year and we just need to "stay the course", whatever the fuck any of that means. (While he was talking I stopped in a second-hand shop to find a hat and stopped paying attention.)

When I went back out (after failing to find a hat) I resumed listening but now the guest was an Iraqi woman speaking on the status of women in Iraq since the invasion. According to the guest, violence against women, such as murder for not wearing burkas, etc. is at unprecedented rates in almost every major city in the country. Essentially, since the US invaded, such extreme, fundamentalist sanctions have only escalated.

Duh. This was not at all surprising to me, not because I'm really smart or I can tell the future. I would have expected that because I took an introductory level anthropology class. In the class we talked about female circumcision and how it becomes more prevalent in the presence of outsiders. A simple fact of anthropology is that when colonizing nations show up in a place, the indigenous citizens often become more fervent in their traditions, religion, and customs. The presence of outsiders creates the need to solidify group identity and combat the new customs and ideas which threaten the indigenous culture.

Anyway, the point of this whole blog is, if I knew this basic fact after taking one freaking college class, who the hell decided our strategies in Iraq and what the hell were they based on? Like, did anyone do any research before we invaded? I mean, you can't even write a college paper without cracking a few books and citing some sources. Shouldn't the invasion of a country, during the process of which many many people can and will die, demand a sufficient amount of research to develop strategies? Like, shouldn't the government consult some anthropologists and economists and political scientists before just showing up? What on earth would lead one to believe they could go into an incredibly complex, vastly different society and culture and expect to change a bunch of shit around? I cannot comprehend the ignorance and ego someone would have to have to think they could.

It's like a drug company CEO (who majored in business instead of chemistry) mixing some chemicals together (Democracillin) and then selling it to the public as "the cure to all social ills", without any trials or lab tests or PROOF that it would work. And so of course the public thinks it's bogus and doesn't buy into it, and the people who do buy it die. Yes, that's exactly what Iraq is.

The more I think about it, the more pissed off I get. The World Bank, the IMF, the UN, all of these organizations are running around the world telling other countries what to do and fucking things up. (Only recently with micro loans did "development initiatives" actually start helping those countries instead of hurting them.) Essentially they mess with nation's natural economies, crops, and cultures, and apply some formula which just makes the countries prisoners to shitty, unfair global markets. The story goes like this:
UN/IMF/World Bank: You must produce and export corn and soybeans!
Developing Country: But those crops don't grow well in our climate...
UN/IMF/World Bank: We don't care!
Developing Country: But then we won't have time to produce the things we normally do...
UN/IMF/World Bank: We don't care!
Developing Country: But if we export all the corn and soybeans, and don't have our normal crops what will the people here eat?
UN/IMF/World Bank: We don't care!
Developing Country: If our production is based on a global market how will we ever make enough money to get out of this rut?
UN/IMF/World Bank: We don't care!

Etcetera. Now some might say "well, we've got to do something to help the Third World countries. God knows they're so poor and AIDS-ridden and their economies and governments are unstable." Those people are idiots. Do you want to know why there's so much political instability in the global south? Colonialism. For hundreds of years, whitey (my ancestors too...) sailed round the world fucking shit up, systematizing racism, etc. India for example had a very functional, prosperous economy before the British showed up. Yeah, they might've been agrarian systems, but people worked and ate and there wasn't this outrageously polarized, fantastically terrible poverty.

Then the idiots might say "well colonization ended like a while ago, why haven't they gotten their acts together?" Because "development" picked up where colonialism left off. Development agencies export western notions of effective economy and society, which are all normative and biased. All of these freaking "development" agencies try to "help" these countries and "end global poverty." Do you think Bono and Jeffrey Sachs are revolutionary? They're not. The UN's current initiatives are hardly different than the ones from they had in 1950's. Western agencies talk big lofty goals, and try to achieve them by applying our western knowledge to entirely different cultures while the natives look around and are like "what the fuck are you doing? We already know what crops grow here, we know our culture, but the big system is so broken, and you guys just keep making it worse."

The thread that ties it all together: cultures are like nature. You know when some ecosystem has a problem and some idiots are like "ooo we should bring in this plant and it'll fix it!", and then that just creates a problem about a hundred times worse than the previous one? Governments are the same way. Countries and cultures are incredibly delicate. There's a balance between religion and ethnicity and economy far too complex and intricate for an insider to entirely comprehend, let alone an outsider. This isn't to say one country should never attempt to help another, but rather, these problems must be approached delicately. First, as with any problem in any subject, the scope of the problem has to be defined. You can't just say "They need democracy" or "Let's end poverty." Anyone who's ever taken any sort of science class knows that you have to operationalize the variable. What measureable thing is wrong? How are you going to measure those goals? We're never going to get out of Iraq because no one ever claimed clear goals about what we wanted to achieve in the first place. We can't ever succeed. "Democracy" can't be measured.

Why the fuck do we learn this shit in school if our leaders just do whatever the hell their enormous egos tell them to? From what I can see, our invasion of Iraq followed zero principles of international relations or effective political science. From talking to my friend Stacy, (who was a neighborhood planner in Baghdad), our government-sanctioned tactics break all of the rules which anthropology has shown to be effective. In the development field none of the lofty goals about "eradicating poverty" have ever been achieved - because they're not measurable. And no one is held accountable for them. So the UN and all the world governments who sign on to these agreements (like the Millenium Development Goals) which promise to fix shit don't have to answer to anyone if they fail. And they have failed for about 50 years.

I guess I just think whoever is running the world sucks at it. If you want to improve a place maybe you should go ask the people who live their what they think the problem is. If you want to know what works you should probably observe before you solve. I obviously don't think Bush intended to solve anything. But whatever his goal was, I think he failed. Even idiots should know the scientific method. Even if his goal was evil I wish he had operationalized it, because then we wouldn't be stuck in a war we can't win. You cannot accomplish a vague, subjective notion by virtue of the fact it's subjective. That's why we can't win the war on terror or the war on poverty.

End.

For auld lang syne

The events of the past month were far too varied, extensive, and influential for me to adequately summarize here. Suffice it to say it was a good month. I freaked out for a week in the beginning, lived in an alternate universe for a while, stopped trying to figure things out, saw a lot of movies, slept in, played cards with the parents, traveled to five different states, and somehow ended up in a peaceful, rejuvenated state of mind. Most importantly, I spent time with pretty much all of the people closest to me, and became even closer to most of them. I think I realized which people are the friends I've kept for a long time and will keep forever. Ultimately I feel lucky to have such amazing people in my life. I can't express how refreshing and comforting it was to connect with people who I get and who get me, especially after feeling significantly disconnected over the past semester.

On the plane(s) from Chicago back to Philly I attempted to sleep but I think my subconscious mind was trying to sort out the comprehensive range of emotions I've experienced from the last week in Detroit through this weekend in Chicago. Fatefully I woke up toward the last 20 minutes of the flight and ended up talking to the guy next to me. He was going to Pittsburgh to meet up with some people with whom he works on Harley's. He was one of those outgoing, simple-speaking people who, with little prompting, explained to me his philosophies on life. "You see, the thing about it is...," he said: "...the glass is half full", "...you can't control what happens but you can control your attitude," "...stress doesn't help anything," "...if you've got a lot to do just assess the situation, prioritize what you have to do and do it," and "if you're doing something that you'd be ashamed to tell other people about then you know it's wrong and you shouldn't do it. You should never do anything you're ashamed of." All these tidbits seem like cliches but sometimes the simplest lessons are the ones of which you need to be reminded the most. Twas a lovely, serendipitous, dare-I-say God-influenced encounter.

So now I'm back. I got home late-ish last night after they lost one of my suitcases. Oh well. Upon walking in the door, I was surprised at how good it felt to be back. Even though I'm sometimes lonely here, the converse benefit is that this life feels very much my own -- my apartment and my food and my schedule and my time. I don't have to wait for anyone else to call or make sure I spend adequate time with everyone or let anyone know where and when I'm going. I woke up late today and ate oatmeal before walking around the city, with certain goals in mind but ultimately accomplishing none of them. I had coffee with Clint and Christy and decided to take ballet twice a week. I'll probably go to the gym before I make dinner and go to bed. I didn't do my homework.

It's a new year. It feels like a new year. I feel more certain of who I love and comforted by who loves me. I finally stopped trying to find myself and my beliefs and my God and it seems like they're now finding me -- thanks to some good friends. Life is so much to deal with, too much to really process everything. The moral: I'm privileged to share life with the people I do.

so this is the new year

I suppose a new year calls for reflection. For perhaps the first time, this year feels like a marked departure from the previous one. School, friends, family, relationships between myself and those people, have all changed considerably from last year. I think the biggest change is faith. I believe in God definitely and Jesus also, and I'm into the Bible, but...I just don't buy anything else. I'm not sure what I believe and consequently I'm not sure how to translate that belief into guidelines for my life. Beyond the obvious things like treating others as I'd like to be treated, I don't know how to apply faith to general life, like propriety in relationships for example. I don't know what my faith is, but even if i did, i think i'd reject all the traditions.

so first. i'm over religion (not faith). this shakes my worldview. i'm lost. this isn't new. but the point is...what's the point? the point is we're defined not by our beliefs but by our actions. it doesn't matter what one thinks is true if she doesn't act accordingly. I need to define myself this year. find myself. i think it starts with being decisive. by that i mean i need to own my actions. i need to be proactive in determining my own fate. letting others decide for me or being too afraid to assert my feelings had caused me nothing but strife in the past. whatever befalls me should do so because i chose it. and i'm going to be alright with what i choose. i'll try to choose rightly according to my newfound lack of guiding morals. yes. the year of decision.

second. i feel old. twenty-two sounds kind of young but i feel like an adult. a grownup. i feel like the weight of my future is constantly upon me. like every decision i make is going to be a permanent one. career, city, love, faith. that's scary. i know i can't decide uncertainty away. i know i can't make all the right decisions. i know my decisions don't have be permanent, but they feel it. eww life feels so serious.

third. death. i lost my Grandma Vi around this time last year and now Grandma Betty's in the hospital. This sucks. I don't want them to die. ever. my life is not complete without them. death is permanent and i'm not into that.

i'm tired.