Waking up from hibernation

Another two part post – some musings on generation divides to follow the life update.

It’s funny that I just bought furniture for my apartment, since I’m planning to move.  If that move is to somewhere on I-5, I’m good, if not, I’m probably contributing to the awful amount of particleboard in our nation’s landfills.

I cleaned a lot this past weekend, and with the organizing and the beautiful weather, I feel a bit like I’m waking from hibernation.

I realized that I’d sort of been snowed under, with things all over my floor literally preventing me from moving freely.  I subscribe to the idea that a real housecleaning can do wonders for the psyche, and that making doors fully operable and floors clear to walk on can help to make paths in our lives clearer, too.  I realized, too, that the snowed-underness is somewhat chronic for me, but that it might be worse because there were a few things I’d never really taken care of from graduation, plus getting back from LA added an unfinished unpacking to the pile, plus entering into the Cavin Family Traveling Fellowship delayed the cleaning another week.

So, I finally took my car to get washed, which was really so easy that I will totally do it again, and I finally replaced my little old art tacklebox with a set of clear plastic drawers that also hold my office supplies and my sewing supplies.  It’s on wheels, and it almost makes me glad that my desk doesn’t have drawers because it’s great to be able to roll it around as an extra work surface during intense sewing/architecture moments.  I got a new trashcan for our bathroom, our first of which mysteriously disappeared a few months ago.

I also got a bookcase.  I have two wonderful little white bookcases that are painted wood deals from a vintage store in Springfield.  I’ve been watching craigslist on and off, and considering that I went to every vintage/antique/goodwill store I know of in Eugene and Springfield this summer to get those beauties, I knew that chances were slim of me finding a third.  Oh, it was sad to put those plastic dowels through that laminated skin, to nail that cardboard onto the back of that board, but it is amazing to have my books off the floor.

So, I’m set up to conquer the world, by which I mean update my cut sheet and send out applications, redo my last IDP installment, send in my taxes and census form, and finally file away the little bits and pieces that have been floating around wondering where they belong for oh so long now.  If only it wasn’t so beautiful outside.  And, if only I didn’t realize that I’ve been spending way too much time by myself… although with a lot of folks on spring break and a promise of rain next week, I might be successful yet.  Wish me luck in taking on all of those looming tasks – I think it’s going to feel pretty great to knock them out, just like it felt to finally finish furnishing my rooms with the things they were lacking.

Oh, and I didn’t get all new things.  Doing that laundry in the basement, I checked to see if the trashcan had somehow walked downstairs and discovered a somewhat homely but perfectly serviceable coffee table behind what appeared to be an entertainment center.  Yes, it’s got a laminate top, but parts of it were wood, and it was free, and it will go back in the basement when I move.  After six months without a coffee table, it’s awesome to have one.

OK, on to my ponder.  Today I was looking at the Harvard Business Review for graphic design inspiration.  I know, it sounds as bad as it was, but really, I needed to see how they set up their cases, since the cases we’re writing for work are based loosely on their model.  They may not have the best designer on staff, but man can they write a case!  I got distracted by the task at hand by actually reading the article, which was about differences in Gen X and Gen Y approaches to the workplace.  What’s somewhat funny to me is that I think I’ve read the article before, and it’s totally cheesy, and it’s definitely based on caricatures of the stereotypes of the two generations, but nonetheless I was hooked.

I frequently find business writing compelling for several reasons.  I want to be a good employee, and if it’s in my cards in the future a good employer or manager.  I also think that there’s something fascinating about the way that business writing hovers between applied anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics.  I guess the third reason I find business writing compelling is that the people doing the writing know that they’ve got to be compelling, so they generally relate interesting stories, make clear assertions about those stories, develop catchy ways to remember their information, and keep it brief – in other words, they write to be compelling, and the good ones succeed.  Oh, and generally, they don’t go off on tangents like this.

That first reason, though, was what I first thought of when I read the case today.  I saw some similarities between the situation described in the case and my own situation at work, and thought that I might adjust the way I was considering certain parts of the situation.  I also thought that I might be more sensitive to some of the things the case brought to light in my job search.

Then, I thought about that job search, and how this whole internal discussion I’ve had about taking advantage of the downturn to do something more innovative and interesting totally reflected the attributes of the Gen Y thinking presented in the case.  I realized that part of my hesitancy in pursuing that kind of new “job” or whatever it would be that would make living possible as I was doing awesome architecture stuff that was good for people and the environment and let me draw and build and talk to people – that hesitancy comes from my uncertainty that Gen Y thinking is all that good at making stuff in the real world.  It seems clear that it’s got some benefits – open source techniques work for my friend who makes shoes and for some of the bike companies I admire greatly.  Certainly Gen Y thinking is effective in the realm of ideas and technology.  Yet I wonder if Gen Y thinking, as outlined in the article, is compatible with building things, which takes a long time, requires a lot of players and investors, and is meant to last a long time, too.

Here’s the thing.  Part of me is on board with the revolution.  I’m ready to use better platforms to collaborate more effectively.  I’d like to keep drawing by hand, to keep talking in person, but I also think we’re on the verge of having way better modeling software – software that incorporates more of the benefits of hand drawing while it dramatically increases the ability of the modeler to make excellent, easy-to-construct building – and I think that videoconferencing will become more accessible, but more to the point, hard and software will improve our face-to-face meetings, helping us record our thoughts better and launch from those thoughts more effectively.  I also think that design must be at least partially open to the crowd’s influence if it’s going to be relevant, and I think things from coordinating construction to monitoring energy use will all transform in positive ways if we think about them differently.

But part of me thinks that there’s something to be said for putting in your time and going through the established routes.  There is something essential to me about knowing the fundamentals.  And even as I write this, I realize that in some ways, it’s knowing the fundamentals and being tied to those “proper routes” that loose us the ability to look at problems freshly, to hear the voice of the novice that revolutionizes the game.  Fundamentally, I think the same thing is happening in architecture as in environmental change – the status quo is difficult to disrupt.  Building codes and contractual setups change slowly, protecting us from rash decisions, but they can also stymie valid change.  With environmental change, the political and physical obstacles are deeper and wider, but again, they slow change that we can envision, even if we have difficulty implementing it.

Anyways, in the end, I wonder if us Gen Yers, with our impatience; disrespect for pecking orders, lines of authority, and proper protocol; need for feedback; with our life experienced through machines and need for entertainment and instant gratification, I wonder if we can really make great things.  Will our things forever be left unfinished?  Will they be two-dimensional?  Will they speak only to the now?  Or, will they be made faster and better by people who have more time to spend with their families and friends, by people who find that their work is fun and rewarding and challenging, and who tell each other when they’ve gotten it right?

I also wonder if there even is a real, measurable difference, or if it’s just the idealism of the young rubbing up against the conservativeness of the old, dressed up in new phrases, with the specter of technology floating around to scare us all a little.

Well, that’s not where I thought this would end, and not even close to what I thought I would say, but it’s time for me to get off the couch before the day ends.  I’m glad that spring is coming here, complete with adorable little birds at my window, and I hope that it brings even a tiny bit of resolution on the pressing matters in my mind.

Mail Room

There’s a rumor going around that Eugene is going to lose a post office.  Not just any post office, but the one I go to, University Station.

No big deal, right?  There are other POs in town, even quite nearby.  In fact, I now live closer to the main station than to University Station.  No one is going to be prevented from sending and receiving their mail, in no small part because, as Obama recently reminded us, there are many private companies now willing to take part in that transaction who are “doing just fine.”  Yep, “it’s the post office that’s always having problems.”

Be that as it may, I would be greatly saddened if University Station is closed.  Fundamentally, I think that every university should have a mail room.  In fact, it surprised me to find that the University of Oregon had a post office, not a mail room, when I arrived, but I guess there’s a matter of scale that makes the mail room at Oberlin viable, and that at Oregon a post office (Though perhaps the problem lies somewhere in that inequality).

The mail room of a university or college serves its students tirelessly, providing a stable address for those orbiting campus.  It is a place for paying first bills.  It’s where really good things happen when you’ve been away from home for a while – a care package arrives, or just a postcard, when you thought you had been forgotten.  It’s a portal to a place far away.

Amongst the little cubbies or up at the window, you have the sense of really being in a physical place.  You see the postman heft a box of letters dropped into the slot for the 1:45 pick up.  You’ve written on paper with pen, folded that paper, tucked it into an envelope, and licked the envelope closed.  Now you lean against the counter with the envelope in hand and ask for stamps.  You look in the folder proffered – you select from the objects at hand.  You’ll drop your letter in the empty box, they’ll wheel it out with the 5:30 mail.

Perhaps it’s a relic of things past, but I think that’s why it’s so valuable.  There’s no scrolling through options, imagining the shapes and sizes and weights of things.  Here, things are measured, they’re displayed in their corporeality.  Keys are turned and doors are opened, objects are filed and sorted.  That’s not to deny the electronic scale or scanner, but it is to say thanks for the man behind the counter, wearing his blue ringer polo shirt, affixing that label to that package.

I think students need to have a place so connected to objects, since many times they’re living a life so overstuffed with ideas.  They need a place that is neutral in the way that government places are; where freedom of speech is practiced in a dramatically different way than in their classrooms.  They are lucky to have a place devoted to their physical connection with those far away, and a place that so effortlessly combines responsibility and spontaneity.  When all of that is at the heart of campus, it becomes an important place for chance meetings or reality checks amongst the craze of finals; when it’s that convenient it doesn’t take away time from studying or socializing.

Against the realities of the federal budget, my fondness for and belief in the importance of University Station will probably weigh naught.  Yet, for that foreign student, or for the man in the blue polo, I’m hoping that my thoughts are worth more than their weight.

Breaking News

Monday September 1

News today has come of a massacre in the apartment of Rachel Auerbach, a woman friends describe as “nice – you wouldn’t expect this of her.”  Worms in her “beloved” worm bin fled its environs last night in search of a better life, only to dry to their deaths on her kitchen floor.  As she knelt to tend the bin this morning, she wondered at their shapes on the linoleum, only to realize that she knelt in a field of death.

“I had no clue they were so unhappy” stated Rachel in a press conference this afternoon.  “Those worms meant the world to me – literally, I thought that with them, I could do my part to help the planet regain some of its fertility and fecundity.  They worked tirelessly towards their goal, sacrificing every day.  But I guess I just didn’t see the signs.  Fewer mature worms, slower composting…I should have known.”

The remaining worms, of which there were few, had difficulty speaking about the horrendous events of the past week.  “The bin has been drying out for a while now, and frankly, Rachel’s been pretty bad about giving us new bedding.  She’s violated our rights on multiple occasions, and if it were up to us, we would have gotten someone else to tend house a long time ago.  We can’t afford any more time with her in charge.”

The worms have steadily graded down Rachel’s performance on vermissues since arriving under her care in mid-April.  To begin with, they rated her highly, just shy of 100%, saying that “she still has some things to learn, but we trust that she’ll get better with some tough on the job training.”  Last month, they began to seriously organize for change, but they said that despite giving her a low approval rating of 54%, she didn’t listen to their pleas.

Rachel admits to turning away from the worms in their time of need.  “It’s been busy around here.  My plants aren’t doing so well either, and I’ve had a lot of other things to take care of.  But, if only I had heard them, I would have done anything for those worms.  I just did’t really know what they needed.”

A service will be held this evening in honor of the worms.  Steps are being taken to amend for the mistreatment so that any remaining worms will not meet the same fate.

Going Home

I thought I’d write a bit about the act of going home; its peculiarities, its necessity, how unattainable it can be. Little did I know how much I might have to say.

I’m in approximately my 26th hour in the airport. The one I’m in now is Phoenix. I spent last night sleeping on the floor of the Las Vegas airport. I’m pretty sure it’s the first time that I’ve slept overnight in an American airport waiting for a flight.

My flight back to Eugene from Orlando didn’t start well. When I got to the gate in Orlando, I found out that our plane was delayed just over an hour for maintenance. Not to worry – my layover was long enough that I would make it to Las Vegas in plenty of time. I wasn’t looking forward to the 2:15 arrival, but I had a cab already called and I knew I’d be just fine.

Las Vegas proved to be much worse than Orlando, though. Already, by the time I arrived on the scene, the action had started. Our flight was canceled, and the crew reassigned to another flight. Almost immediately, though, our flight was reinstated. Without a crew, though, we were stuck on the ground until a new crew could join us. They’d come quickly from elsewhere in the airport … no, they’d come flying in from Tuscon … no, the plane from Tuscon was missing a part, so they’d arrive in a few hours after the part was installed … no, the flight was cancelled.

Strung along through the night, my 62 fellow travelers and I had set up camp in the A terminal of McCarran airport with thin blue blankets and pretzels past their expiration dates. I found a secluded spot with a plug, plugged in my computer and set my pillow on top of its warm cushioned form, and created a little nest of blankets and woolen hats and bags. I tuned out the slot machines and drifted in and out of sleep each time a new announcement came over the PA.

With the final announcement of the cancellation and a hasty handing out of meal vouchers, we trudged down to the ticketing counter, moving in the opposite direction of the first early morning passengers. In line for another hour and a half, we overheard stories and exchanged rumors; we tried not to stare at the man going to visit his dying sister and the man about to miss his son’s wedding; we wondered what we would do if we were stuck in Vegas for two days, when all the hotel rooms in town were probably booked.

Then, with the good news that there was some space on the 1:09 flight from Vegas to Phoenix that would connect with the 5:56 flight from Phoenix to Eugene, the waiting began. Since then, I’ve pretty much been sitting, or, on occasion standing in line. Now, the cheer has just gone up: We’re Going Home!
Boarding is about to start for the final flight of the journey, so I’ll have to report on the outcome and give a more meaningful ponder to the more existential aspects of going home once I’ve arrived there. For the mean time, I’ll say that I flew through The Road, which was weirdly appropriate reading to have with me. I appreciated that my request for a lunch voucher was filled by the counter agent with no questions. And, I enjoyed some of the moments of conversation with my fellow travelers quite a bit, although perhaps not quite as much as I enjoyed conversations with longtime friends over the phone. I’m going to get on the plane now (only 45 minutes late this time)!

Goings On

In the past three days I:

Won a dance contest dressed as a zombie
Completed a studio midterm
Witnessed the 3 am ramblings of a racoon
Rallied for climate action at a Ducks game
Failed to produce any drawings for tomorrow’s seminar
Listened to an intriguing lecture about the Architecture Association (in London)
Contemplated quitting school
Contemplated studying abroad in Italy this spring
Enjoyed beer at the Beer Stein, a local restaurant with over 900 beers
Disengaged from my bike seat while moving forward (slowly, thank goodness)
Wondered what’s going on in my head

Hmmm.

Return to the Prosaic

I’ve been told that I’ve been missed by my vast readership, so here I am, trying to write over the past month and a half.

I’ve gone for two runs since I returned to the US on the 6th, and I’ve started a large book, and generally kept a low profile, since I needed a vacation from my vacation.

I finished the term, and was glad to have that done. My studio partners and I submitted our project to the competition, despite many last minute revisions and extreme difficulty with the printer. The moment of truth came when I was helping Michael cut his presentation boards during the long wait for my boards to print. I held the ruler as he cut – and in his sleep deprived state, slipped and sliced my finger. The cut opened up the floodgates, and everything that seemed wrong about our studio, and about our trip to Finland, and really, about the world, just hit me and, in typical fashion, I lost it. Then, eventually, I stopped crying, and we sent off our project, which did print in the end; we made a lovely model; we had a fun send-off party; the cut, which wasn’t actually very deep, healed; and I think that after all, the experience let me get over some of the silly things that weren’t ideal about our trip and enjoy just how worthwhile and once-in-a-lifetime it was.

We set out after Finland on our travels. We visited Stockholm, Copenhagen, Bergen, Oslo, and the Lofoten Islands, with boat, plane, train, and automobile. The overwhelming feeling was that everything was much more expensive than we’d expected. We saw many fascinating things, despite our attempts to economize, and of course, many pictures will eventually make their way to Flickr. Highlights include going to the Louisiana Museum in Denmark and pretty much all of the Lofoten Islands/Norway.

If there is some sort of overwhelming reply of curiousity about the trip, I can add more details, but since I think I can pretty much count on sharing stories personally with most of my vast readership, I’ll leave it at that. These experiences will undoubtedly surface in the future as they’re now a part of me.

Three more overall highlights from the academic portion of the trip – the lecture series we had was wonderful; our model of the sauna we measured at Kiljava was archived in Finland’s Museum of Architecture; I learned AutoCAD in two days thanks to my studio partners.

So, now that I’ve vaguely covered that vast and interesting part of my life, I’m once again on solid ground to keep reporting to you the prosaic and mundane…thank goodness.

Not What I Expected

Life rarely is.

Didn’t expect to measure a smoke sauna – it makes you smell like smoke, and it might get you a little grubby with soot, and you’ll likely have a backache by the end of the day.  Smoke saunas are dark, so you’re also likely to feel some eyestrain.  Makes you wish you’d have gotten the chance to take a smoke sauna after all that work…

Didn’t expect to upset my boyfriend by drawing – it turns out that when you’re so much of a perfectionist that you can’t let anything happen differently than you envisioned and you can’t admit that you’re making life impossible for those around you, you can really bug people.

Didn’t expect to eat great meals all week on 30€ – including homemade ice cream sandwiches and a meal of grilled salmon, reindeer and lingonberries, mashies, cauliflower, and mixed berries with cream/ice cream.

Didn’t expect to want to be with the aforementioned boyfriend significantly more after our long, tense discussion of many of the things that often come between us.  Then  less when he seemed unable to consider forgiving my aforementioned stupidity about the drawing.  Then more when he showed himself more than capable of that forgiveness.

Didn’t expect to read Harry Potter so soon to its release date – did expect to enjoy it, and succeeded, despite feeling quite guilty as I repeatedly slipped away from social time post-dinner and post-sauna.

Didn’t expect to get to go to Rauma’s Lace Week, let alone the Night of Black Lace – and didn’t succeed, since the tourist book printed the wrong date for the event, and the city of Rauma turned out to be almost a ghost town because everyone had partied too hard the night before.

Didn’t expect to be quite as disappointed as I was by The Simpsons Movie.  Don’t know why.

Didn’t expect to have a delicious desert of Buckthorn sauce over ice cream at a fairly fancy restaurant in Rauma at the end of the strange day of finding ourselves a day late for the big party.

Didn’t expect to miss out so completely on Gingerbread building.  Or to be so enchanted by the Turku castle.  Or to spend so much of the time thinking about past places and people.  Didn’t expect to forget the name of the street I lived on in Brattleboro (Elliot St.) or the ones I lived on in Oberlin (Pleasant and Cedar).  Or to be so nostalgic about both places during such a supposedly exciting trip around the world.

Didn’t expect to ever be so confused about so many things.  Still awestruck by life, though, so don’t worry too much yet…

The Rollercoaster Ride

Arg!

I’m running behind and feeling overwhelmed. I had a beautiful concept for the tower project , complete with variations . Then, I started to engineer in the stairs, the railing, and the top observation deck, and just couldn’t figure out an elegant way to keep the very scuptural skeleton clear while making it an inhabitable building. So I ditched it and completely redesigned.

I reintroduced the triangle stairs, added a CMU wall for strength, capped it off with a triangle observation deck. After significant tweaking, it regained the upward thrusting arms on the forest side, and got fairly well proportioned. It’s ok, but I wasn’t that excited about it. It relates pretty well to the wall house, but it’s pretty static and doesn’t have the gracefulness of the more sculptural tower. I wish that I had stuck it out with the other concept, but at least I didn’t have to feel like I was muddying up that idea. Perhaps the dual tripod will have its day in the sun.

As far as making friends goes, that’s been pretty successful, and I’m starting to feel like I’m creating a fairly comfortable group for self. Here’s a picture of what happens when grad students are playing in the studio:
That’s Charlie, decked out in vinyl drafting board cover, some very cool paper that has little slits cut into it all over so that it stretches out, and holding Kyle’s concept model. It was over 100 degrees this weekend, and they turned off the A/C in the studio Friday-Sunday. Suffice it to say, it was disgustingly hot and not conducive to work, but quite a bonding experience. Also, Friday night I got about 15 people to come with me to Prince Puckler’s, the local homemade ice cream shop, where they have Sundaes with the local chocolate shop’s fudge for $2.75 on Fridays. Yay for ice cream.

I’ve gotten housing for the fall with a girl named Sarah. It’s a two person house that she’s currently living in, and I’ll need to start collecting furniture, but she’s got the common rooms covered. More on that later, I’m sure, but good to have a place to transition into.

And now, I must get back to work. The next part of the project, a cubical house, is entirely uninspiring to me. I spent the morning making a little cube with volumes carved out, and while it wasn’t entirely unpleasant, I was fuming the whole time about my professor and the assignment in general. After talking this weekend with brother Dan, I’ve started to feel like I should have looked a bit harder and visited the schools. I think that in the fall, my misgivings will prove unfounded, but right now I’m doing a bit of the old regret thing. Anywhoo, the cube making took longer than intended, and I ended up not having as much time for drawing/napping as hoped. So, with a two hour nap under my belt, I now have about 10 hours of drawing to do. No, I won’t get it all done, but I’m going to try for a solid two hours of work.

Oh, there’s so much more to say. An abrupt realization this weekend: there are more people my age in this program (about 60) than I knew of in Brattleboro, although thinking about it a bit harder, I realize that with the School for International Training, there were many more people that I didn’t know. Still, gives a sense of scale. Off I go.

Alive and Kicking

I never would have thought a week and a half would feel so long, but it seems more like I've been in school for a month and a half. We started right in with a design project, and without explaination of how to draft or make a model. They changed our schedule so that we now have class from 8:00-6:00 with a one hour lunch break, and it's pretty brutal, because at the end of that time there's inevitably a pile of homework to do. So, long story short, I've either come home around 12 a.m. and read for another hour, or around 9 p.m. and crashed out. Then I generally get up at 6:30ish. It's quite an adjustment to make, and one made more difficult by the strange eating habits it fosters.

Part of the difficulty is that this past weekend I went to Potlatch, in Seattle (You should know not to take frisbee pictures seriously). I worked in the studio all day Friday, and got to the fields just before midnight. Caitlin Cordell and I shared a tent at the fields. I played with Entropy Punch, the Oberlin reunion team. We quickly dispatched our first opponent on Saturday, and then settled in for a deadly second round bye. Meanwhile, one of our six women went to the hospital and was told not to play for the rest of the day as the result of an inconclusive shoulder diagnosis. Down to five ladies, we played and beat Denial, the Eugene team I'm about to become part of, and Smells Like Tacoma. By our fourth game, we were pretty beat, and indeed we got beaten by a California team. At the end of the game, in an attempt to revitalize myself, I chugged about a quart of pickle juice - let me recommend that you never do such a thing. I felt miserable the rest of the evening, but that probably worked in my favor, since I avoided the hangover on Sunday morning.

Sunday we lost one, won one, and lost one. Our win was pretty exciting: we were behind 13-7, and pulled out the energy to win 16-14. At the end of our games, I went to find my ride, only to discover that they had already headed home and weren't answering their cell phones. So, I asked around until I found some other Eugene folks that were heading home, and ended up getting to see the finals, in which Bomb (Carleton reunion team) bested Vagabonds (Portland), but not getting any work done.

I guess my bad luck in getting left was karmic repayment for my good luck of winning the bookstore's Book Award, which gave me $400 worth of books and supplies! So, as soon as I get a spare moment, I shall take in my receipts and get money back that I've already spent, and in the mean time, I'll keep buying the supplies I need without worrying about where the money to pay for them comes from. Super sweet.

So far I am enjoying the program, particularly the history and theory lectures. I'm excited about my current design for our first design problem, although I'm anxious to work out all the details. The problem is to build the first of three structures on a lakeside site. The site slopes down to the lake, with a fir forest to the north, a fern gorge to the east, oak savana to the west, and the lake to the south. Our house, the "Wall House," is on the western edge of the "bench" (a preexisting foundation structure), and acts as a gatehouse, temporary house for the owners during the construction of the other house, and a guesthouse. The house is 300 square feet of less, with requisite attached outdoor space and strict structural requirements. I've been working a lot with sliding, and had the queen sized bed sliding underneath a wall to create a condition of two couches, but the professor strongly suggested that I get rid of the wall since it's such a small space. I think I'm going to heed his advice, but now I have to figure out how to create the two couch condition, since I'm determined not to have a murphy bed and I'm also not digging the futon option.

So, I'd better get to sleep so that I have brain power to tackle the task at hand and not cut myself with an X-acto. Oh, and I have big plans for posting more photos and drawings (did you see my photos from our field trip?). Once I get my computer set up to work in the studio, I bet I'll be posting more often. Until then, I'll just keep wondering around looking lost whenever I'm not bent intently over my cardboard and cutting mat.