Cloudy Gray Times, you are now a thing of the past

I had a really fun weekend, and I just finished up a new assignment for my digital media class, so I thought I’d pop up a note.

We got our program for studio, and we’ll be designing “Agate Strings Workshop.” It’s “a place for the making of violins and fiddles, teaching and learning how to play these instruments, and live performances. A group of violin and fiddle makers have joined with several teachers to build a facility where they can share workspace and have a shared interior and exterior place for live performances. They imagine holding recitals for students here, performing here themselves, and inviting other musicians to join them.” The program came with a pretty inspiring speech about the process of design, and articulating the spirit of the place.

Lots of work on the table, but I’ve also been making plenty of time for play. I’ve got two leagues going, and even though the Sunday level of play is a bit more chaotic, it’s still lots of fun. I went to the class potluck on Friday night, and to our Denial team party on Saturday night, both of which were relaxing and entertaining.

I’ve got to get to class, which is a shame, because I wanted to write a bit more of substance, but I’m going to post a poem that popped into my head yesterday when we got the program.

Daily

These shriveled seeds we plant,
corn kernel, dried bean,
poke into loosened soil,
cover over with measured fingertips

These T-shirts we fold into
perfect white squares

These tortillas we slice and fry to crisp strips
This rich egg scrambled in a gray clay bowl

This bed whose covers I straighten
smoothing edges till blue quilt fits brown blanket
and nothing hangs out

This envelope I address
so the name balances like a cloud
in the center of sky

This page I type and retype
This table I dust till the scarred wood shines
This bundle of clothes I wash and hang and wash again
like flags we share, a country so close
no one needs to name it

The days are nouns: touch them
The hands are churches that worship the world

-Naomi Shihab Nye

Dear Diary

Dear Diary,

Today my friend Rima died.

I hadn’t talked to her in about a year and a half – last time I saw her we were playing together at Gender Blender, the tournament in Canada that was my stop off between graduation in Oberlin and adult life in Vermont. She got married this summer to her longtime boyfriend, also a good friend of mine. She had cancer, though, and today she died. I didn’t know that she got married or had cancer until one of our mutual friends called me today to tell me the news. The weird thing is, though, that today as I was biking home, I thought I saw Rima, which was strange, because I haven’t thought about her all that much since closing her last email with pictures of that tournament in Canada. I was thinking about a number of friends, folks I wanted to call and get in touch with, as I was biking, but I wasn’t thinking about Rima, and then I thought I saw her. So I just wanted to record that bit of uncanniness, and say that I will miss her.

Dear Diary,

Yesterday I felt so sad and alone as I sat in studio. My design groove is definitely not back yet, and as I sat there being discouraged by that fact, I started to enumerate all my flaws, and feel entirely inadequate and very unhappy. I felt unfashionable, frumpy, clumsy, and smelly. I felt like the one person I had started to really become friends with was angry with for some undecipherable reason. Thank goodness I had frisbee league – as I ate an apple in the studio and tried not to cry I thought about skipping it, but as soon as I set foot on the fields my spirit was lifted and I felt whole again. I was most certainly frumpy and smelly, but it was of no consequence.

I dressed up today, wore my black heels and a fancy sweater and some mascara. I looked at myself in the mirror, and for the effort, I didn’t think I looked appreciably better, but I thought at least I gave it the effort. I made it through the day with significantly fewer negative thoughts, I talked to my formerly close friend, and decided that I will gently work my way back to being friends with him, and I figured out that I do really have some free time on my hands.

I want tomorrow to go well in the studio, because I need some encouragement from actions, and not just from the kind words of friends.

I’m so glad you’re here, dear diary.

Happy Birthday to Me

I had a wonderful birthday today, including a very happy party last night. We had all sorts of desserts, (it was a dessert potluck) and some dancing, and just a nice little group of people that all fit quite comfortably in our little house.

I spent most of the day in the studio today and didn’t get much done – in part because I had long phone conversations with Dad, Dan, Mom, and Ray. I’m definitely feeling very rough around the edges as far as school goes. I did an abysmal job on our assignment on Friday and I feel like the work I did get done today is pretty substandard. I don’t know what it is, but my jive is off, and I want it back. On the other hand, I’m doing pretty well with the reading and writing, so there’s something.

On that note, I’ve been meaning to write a bit more about the Thinking and Making, but I’m not sure it will happen any time soon. We’ve been reading about Existential Space, and I’m guessing that I might have a few thoughts about our Spatial Composition reading every week, since it’s nice and theoretical.

Off I go to do a bit of reading before bedtime. I’m 24!

Long, dark tea-time of the soul

Welcome back to graduate school!

Actually, today was great, and I’m very excited for the term. I just looked at Sketchup (the very easy to use 3-D computer modeling tool), which I bought earlier today, and it’s fun and easy. My studio is full of people I like a lot, and I think my professor is great. We went out to Prince Puckler’s for ice cream and celebrated not having any work yet.

Denial, my frisbee team, didn’t do so well at sectionals – we went 0-4 on Saturday. So our season’s over, but I had a great time, and actually was very impressed with my personal resilience when it came to being able to sprint for 4 games in a row.

My room’s pretty close to being under control, and I’ve got lots of loose ends to tie up, but I think I’ll be able to handle them. I’m getting excited for my birthday (it’s on Friday, I turn 24), and thinking about a lot of parties, since I’m helping to plan our school potluck, and there are halloween parties and harvest parties galore in the next two months.

I don’t know why my “About” page is all of a sudden titling itself differently in the button bar, but I’m going to try to fix it. Also, lots more coming on the wish list, which is fun to make, but somewhat time-consuming to find the analogous things online to what’s in my head.

Off to bed, tomorrow I have class in the morning.

Thoughts and Developments

Getting ready to go to sleep so that I can wake up early for Sectionals tomorrow. I’m feeling pretty guilty that I’ve let myself get totally out of shape, and a bit worried that things won’t go so well tomorrow, but all that I can do is give it my best.

I put together my dresser today! When we got back from exploring estate sales this morning, the replacement part was waiting on the front porch, so I spent the rest of the day assembling the thing. It looks good, and hopefully it won’t fall apart…

I put lots of pictures on my Flickr accountyesterday, and if you haven’t gone to look at them, you ought to. They’re not beautiful art shots, but there are some fun experimentation shots that I could doctor in Photoshop if I wanted to make them a bit more vibrant, and some pretty decent candid photos, that probably should also be run through Photoshop. Speaking of which, I uploaded my Adobe Creative Suite 2 yesterday, and I feel super powerful. Will feel even more powerful when I know how to use it.

Sarah and I climbed Spencer’s Butte on Wednesday, and I played in my first A league (frisbee) game Wednesday night. The A league here’s pretty good, so I’ll look forward to that. I’m also going to play in the C league on Sunday, so I’ll be back to disc twice a week, which means that if I fit in one more workout, I’ll be in position to maintain my health a little better this semester.

I added a wish list page (look in the top row of options) and took down the photo links page because the former seemed appropriate to start, thinking forward to Christmas, and the latter was no longer helpful because I’m now using Flickr.

So, off I go. Room’s almost under control, house is almost under control, still a bunch of loose ends to tie up before Monday, but am going to play frisbee and go to the Ozomatli concert instead.

Thinking and Making

I had a Mostly Successful trip to IKEA on Monday, and during the drive remembered just how much I love NPR. On the way up, my iPod plug-in alternative to an iTrip broke, so I started to listen to the radio. As the stories went on, I listened to a section on organic farming/land trusts that described a lot of permaculture techniques; a section discussing “small schools” that emphasized that the quality of teaching is the most important factor in education; a section on “The Beauty Academy of Kabul;” a section on Christians United for Israel; a section about the new set of TV shows for the fall season; and a section on how Saturn’s moon Titan is actually a desert with ice as sand and mercury as rain.

So, I made it up to IKEA, walked around for 4 hours, bought a whole lot of furnture, and drove back down to Eugene. I ate dinner at the IKEA restaurant, which was sort of fun, and much of the time I wished that I had a companion, since the whole thing would have been considerably more fun and considerably easier with someone else to chat with and help me roll the two carts I had. In the end I chose the more expensive chest of drawers, but the quality leap was apparent and I felt like I could put together a more complete feeling room with them. (Here’s my table, chair, and stools to make my bookshelf) I also ended up buying soft items that they won’t ship, so I spent about as much as I would have spent ordering online, but got $250 more stuff, rather than $250 of shipping. 

Anyway, I got to think about Thinking and Making, and how those two activities are totally central to life, the sort of yin and yang of my personal existence, but also universally an important dialectic. In particular, the organic farming, bread making, and small school segments on the radio inspired me to ponder the relationship between Thinking and Making. It sort of seems to me that high-quality Thinking demands high quality Making: when you make, for example, a computer chip that processes information with lasers (as I learned that Intel has just done, thanks to the trusty radio), you’ve thought a lot about this and you must make it well to test your theory. But beyond that, more in the sense of the Diamond Age – the Victorian phyle, a group of people who are well-educated and brought up in a neo-Victorian environment, demand high quality workmanship and “real” goods, not compiled with matter compilers, but crafted from natural materials, which the Dovetail phyle create for them. There’s even a discussion in the book in which Nell confronts a woman in Dovetail and asks her about Making vs. Thinking.

It’s clear that individuals can be vastly more talented at one facet than the other. You have a skilled craftsperson or an academic genius, and perhaps they are just terrible at feats of logic or construction, respectively. But, it seems to me that to be a great Maker, you have to be a pretty decent Thinker. On the other hand, I’m not sure that the reverse is true. In architecture, you must be able to make things with some degree of competancy to become a great thinker – your thoughts depend on constructed objects. But in discreet math, which I believe could be used to reason through some of the same problems that architects deal with using design skills, you don’t need to be able to make at all.

When you Make – when you build or tend, plant or teach – you must actively respond to your material, your environment, perhaps a budget: in any case, multiple dynamic influences. Those influences require that you think. You must decide, strategize, and reason. Making demands Thinking. In my definition, Making includes the manipulation of physical objects with the goal of creating a finished product, albeit using finished in the art school sense of the word (a project is never really finished. You reach a point at which you can no longer improve upon the work you have done, and you call that finished, despite its imperfections or potential for further change).

I think where I was going with these thoughts in the car was towards some sort of value judgement. It looks like I was leaning in favor of Making…I see a future in Design-Build. But it’s not that simple. I think that for me, perhaps it’s positive that I’m recognizing my desire for Making, a desire which makes me feel that if I weren’t an architect, I’d be a farmer/homesteader, just because I would be able to be so much closer to the process of making a life with my own two hands. Thank goodness I’m allowing myself to do what I love now, when I’m 23.

Yet, when I consider it objectively, everything I’ve been taught, all of my values, lean towards Thinking. Making is in service to Thinking – it’s what we must do to sustain our bodies so that our minds can soldier on, eventually perhaps reaching enlightenment, but at least coming up with some great ideas until then. The Idea is more important than the Object. The Object is temporal; the Idea is timeless.

So, a value judgement is of no use – I value the temporal as much as I value the timeless, I value the abstract as much as I value the concrete. I value Making and Thinking equally. I make no claim to do so in a constant manner: at noon I may value Making over Thinking, and at midnight the reverse. Nonetheless, right now, at this political and evolutionary moment, when Siberia is melting and we’re embroiled in war in the Middle East, with midterm elections looming, excellent television shows about to air, and the housing bubble deflating, I choose Making.

I don’t want the Making to become mechanistic, I don’t want the Making to edge out Thinking, and in fact, if Thinking doesn’t inspire the Making, then the Making is worthless. I do want the Making to be action taken towards grounding our country. Let’s put up lightning rods and pour strong foundations. Let’s craft things again, take a deep breath and slow down, reorder the economy. I’m not saying much different from Slow Food, Small is Beautiful, etc, but I’m just having a moment of rerevelation, where something you know to be true appears as such before your eyes.

I’m not sure that this is the conclusion I was working towards – my fascination with the Making/Thinking dialectic is still shimmering in front of my eyes, and I still want to get up close and squint at it a little longer, because I’m not ready for a conclusion. I guess I’m so used to coming up with conclusions when I write that I automatically arrived at one. There’s still a lot to consider though. Where does music, poetry, or visual art fit in? What’s up with the dialectic, when we know that anything you can set up as a dialectic is more likely a continuum? What about that whole quality question, and the question of the personal abilities of a Maker and a Thinker at Thinking and Making, respectively? So, I won’t conclude, instead I’ll invite thoughts in response and keep thinking my own.

Which is what I did today as I put together the IKEA furniture. I was disappointed to find that the lampshades didn’t fit my lamps quite right, but I’ve come up with creative solutions that satisfices. I was upset when the left side panel of my new dresser was broken in the box, but pleased when everything else was finally assembled and I could tell that when the replacement part arrived, I would have a lovely, comfortable room.

My two housemates and I made ridiculously fudgy brownies tonight, which three of our architecture school friends stopped by to taste, and it capped off a successful day. I don’t want to jinx myself, but I think I’m on the other side of the rough spot. No more losing things, no more looking and not finding. Back to being receptive, successful, mindful, and at peace with the world. Thank goodness for the rough spots though.

Photos: Tomorrow! The show to watch on TV: The Wire which is actually in its third season. And what else?: My [Christmas] wish list is coming any moment now.

The Story and the Saga

First, woo hoo for four comments on “Brief Interlude.” Now I see why people do the whole reposting thing – it’s exciting to get other people reading what you write.  Thanks to Mark for posting his pics; Thanks to Kate, who doesn’t have any idea who I am and is perhaps my first real visitor to the site [Kate, I played at Oberlin college in Ohio, I now go to the University of Oregon and play with a club team, Denial.  I sure do know Bucky, I captained her freshman year!]; Thanks to Erica for promising to call, I’m looking forward to hearing your summer adventures and smiling at serendipity.

Which I need to do because I’ve been on a downward slope since leaving Vermont (for the visit, not since June).  I’ll start with the story of Vermont, because it’s far more fun than the saga since.

Warning: This is a long post

THE STORY

I arrived after a long, but quite pleasant day of travel to find Seth waiting for me at the train station – a lovely surprise and much better than climbing the steep mile to his house with my two heavy bags.  We got back to the house, watched a bit of Deadwood, and made a lasagna in a cast iron skillet while Stefan mowed the lawn and Colin went out to find Mark N.  The evening was relatively quiet, preparing for the yardsale; Jeff joined us midway with freshly baked pies, and Colin stayed out at the bars all evening after finding the house empty during one of our errands.

We woke up early Saturday morning and went through the familiar ritual of bringing out everything to sell, and then trying to convince people that they’d want to buy the things that had been stored in the less than lovely shed all summer long.  Towards the afternoon we went to the little league field to play a few rounds of double disc court, for which I had an uninterrupted loosing streak.  Post DDC, we began grilling and partying, which as previously stated went smashingly well in the majority, with my usually gloomy iPod actually serving up a good deal of the dance party.

Sunday morning I had my pleasant brief interlude at the computer, went to Mocha Joe’s with Noah, then went back with the whole crowd of folks that had stayed at South Main.  As the day progressed, folks floated away, until we drove Andy down to Springfield to catch his train.  We ate pizza at the Red Rose, a Springfield institution, then headed to Amherst to watch The Illusionist, then grabbed drinks first at the Amherst Brewing Company, then at the Moan and Dove.  Having lived close to there for a year, it was great to finally get to the Moan and Dove, which has very expensive imports of all sorts.  I had a yummy Belgian Farmhouse beer, and in the process of deciding, tried a beer that tasted like white wine.  Very nice to sit around the table with the boys drinking tasty drinks, never want that sort of moment to end.

But it does, and other good moments come. After some house clean up Monday morning, I visited Building Green for Monday staff lunch, where I picked up my new copy of Your Green Home, the book that Alex was writing while I worked there. It’s beautiful, and at least on preliminary glance looked to be chock full of good stuff. All the hard work I did on the bibliography will soon be up online, and the Islandwood case study is about to be posted. The office was full of energy and late summer sunlight. I stayed so long that I had to hurry down the hill to catch up with Tori, my former housemate. I picked up my mail and toured her new gardens, and then we went up to Pisgah, where we climbed up for the view to Monadnock, then down for a chilly skinny dip in Kilburn Pond.

Tuesday we loaded up a truck full of furniture and carted it to Leyden, Mass, the idyllic town where Colin’s parents live. Then Colin and Stefan and I went to the strawbale house Colin worked on this summer and got the first layer of plaster done in all the places it was still missing. The homeowners came back about a third of the way through our time there, and David, the husband/father came out and worked with us. I didn’t get to see Stefan’s strawbale, but it was cool to see how confident and knowledgable they both are about building these days. They’re applying to the Yestermorrow internship for this winter, and I personally think they’d both do very well there. We headed home, watched some Youtube, including my favorite video, Chris Bliss juggling to the end of Abbey Road. Noah came just as we were watching it to pick me up for bowling, which was great fun. The two of us shared a lane next to the whole Putney crowd, and I actually bowled very well, with two games in the 130’s and one 181! After bowling I went to the rennovated Weathervane with Mariah and Emyli for a drink, and then went home and crashed, exhausted.

Wednesday I finally got around to business, after another trip to Leyden. I arranged my hotel for Albany, closed my bank account, withdrew my shares from the coop, mailed myself some of the stuff I acquired on the trip, picked up a couple of cute new shirts, and visited Karamo. At the end of my errands I went to Mocha Joe’s and ran into Mark B, and we got to talk for a half hour before the boys came by. Then the four of us headed to Top of the Hill Grill, the local gourmet grill shack, for a tasty dinner, since the South Main kitchen was stored in Leyden. We hurried back to the house afterwards just in time for George to pick me up to go to Albany in his Prius.

There’s your extended summary of my fantastic Vermont trip, the kind of trip that makes you just really want to stay where you are. And this is where the Story turns into the Saga.

THE SAGA

When I checked into the Howard Johnson, late at night and a little befuddled, I scheduled my cab for the morning, headed out to my room, and got ready for bed. Early Thursday morning I awoke, got ready, checked out and caught my cab. But, I didn’t catch my plane, because I had scheduled my cab an hour late in my readiness for bed the night before. I saw it leave from the gate, turned, and wondered what to do. Luckily, Southwest is awesome and immediately rescheduled my flight through BWI, then Salt Lake, to Portland. So I called Herman to tell him of the change, forgetting that it was 4:00 AM in Portland.

So I had perhaps the longest day of travel in the whole trip, during which I caught a cold, lost my very expensive sunglasses, and had my luggage delayed. Boy was I glad to see Ruth and eat some of Herman’s tasty spinach pies that night. 

The next morning when I picked up my luggage I got caught in accident traffic, but then got to Eugene before two. I immediately started to move and look for furniture. I headed to Springfield at three, and headed home by 4:30 having bought a mattress.

Saturday morning I continued moving, hit up about 15 yard sales, and had no luck finding reasonable furniture for my room. The queen sized mattress took up almost the whole room, and I just wanted cheap, repaintable furniture. I felt sick and alone – my computer couldn’t access the internet at my new house (we just got it going tonight), my phone had gone dead and I realized the charger was in Vermont. So I went to Best Buy, Target (where I squished my finger in the bathroom door), World Market, several “real” furniture stores, and finally home, without having made any progress. I searched online, ate a pitiful dinner, and went to bed.

This morning I went to the Flea Market, then went back to World Market and Target, again mostly unsuccessfully. So I spent a lot of money on organic groceries, went home, and got down to work on the IKEA website. After I meticulously found a set of furniture that would outfit my room for $250, all of which was available online and which matched reasonably well, I checked out, just to find that the shipping and handling would cost another $250. So, I decided that I’d be heading to the Seattle IKEA tomorrow.

So, now I’ll go to sleep since I’ll be driving 4.5 hours up and back to Seattle tomorrow, and shopping til I drop in between. But then, hopefully everything will be better when I return some order to my life, so I think it will be worth it…

Brief Interlude

It’s Sunday morning, before 8 o’clock, and everyone’s still sleeping at South Main. The house is an absolute mess, and I sort of want to start cleaning up, but I kind of don’t, so I’m writing a few thoughts.

The party last night was fantastic: apple pie, a lot of dancing, and great face to face time with people I very much wanted to see. Only a few moments of heartbreak in the otherwise Very Fun Time.

We also did a good job yesterday with the yard sale, selling two couches, a bed, a trampoline, a chair or two, and a lot of books. Hopefully we’ll sell a few more books today, but it looks like we’ll be missing the early morning crowd.

I saw Ian’s comment and just wanted to say that when I first read The Diamond Age, it totally changed the way I thought. The idea of such a complete work of art is so seductive, and part of the reason that I’m going to school for architecture is my hopes that I can build something half as interesting as the Primer. Also, just to note that what Stevenson describes with the new computer system is the exact way that bit-torrents work, and that the drummers really bring a new meaning to the term collective unconscious. It was sad to finish the book so quickly, but I think it’s one of the few books that I have that I read again and again – I should start keeping track, but I’d say that’s at least the third time I’ve read it.

In other media, the movies just keep getting better. I walked out of Little Miss Sunshine thinking that it trumped all of the movies I saw in Florida; I walked out of Half Nelson thinking that it trumped Little Miss Sunshine. I think Half Nelson hit home for me in part because Ryan Gosling reminded me so much of Mike Levin, one of my favorite teachers in high school (although that in no way implies that Mike was a heavy drug user). I agree with the critics that both Gosling and Shareeka Epps were excellent. As always, more thoughts on both of those films, but I think that, in fact, writing about movies isn’t my strong suit, so I’m going to bow gracefully out of that pursuit.

I am going to do something which I’ve never done before, however, and that’s point you, dear reader, to an interesting piece of news.  This article was brought to my attention by Degs. No surprise, really, but fun to see something that we in the game already knew to be true. I wonder if this will lead to a whole new kind of rankings game in which colleges try to support their Frisbee teams in order to boost their appearance to the populous…worse things could happen.

So, I made it to Vermont, enjoyed my very chill time in Massachusetts, and I’ll probably write up a little summary at some point, with a big influx of pictures on Flickr since I won’t be uploading anything else till then. Right now I feel like I have so much to do here, so many people to see and spend time with, that I’m really regretting that time is short here. But, I’m hoping that the short time will bring major intensity.

Speaking of which, I’m now really excited to go back to school in the fall. Yay, that was the idea of going away for vacation, and it worked!

September 10, 2006Replies 4

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Being Here

Wherein the author explores her surroundings, both physical and mental. 302627282925232422212018191711121314151610 123456789Oct » « AugSEPTEMBER 2006MTWTFSS

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What a day, what a day

Actually, a couple of days.  Let’s go back, back to…Tuesday.  I stayed up late on Monday night, watching movies On Demand.  Tuesday morning I woke up and decided that it was the perfect moment to begin shaving again.  Since it’s been about a year since I last shaved, and I haven’t shaved regularly since high school, this is an undertaking for me.  I got prepared and then took my shower, which was at least half an hour of bending over in the hot water, focusing on my lower legs.  They’re lovely, let me tell you.  Well, upon exiting the shower I felt faint, and stumbled over to my bed, where I collapsed.  I worked hard not to fall asleep, and managed to get myself upright once again, angling for downstairs and a glass of O.J. to get my blood sugar back up.  Well, I didn’t make it.  I fainted right outside of my bathroom, collapsing in a heap on the floor.  I was lucky enough to not hit anything and to come to almost instantly, as my stepmother yelled to ask if I was o.k.  I yelled back that no, everything was not o.k., and she ran up to help me back up.  We made it down half of the stairs before she set me down, telling me that I was actually gray, and went to get me that glass of O.J.  Almost the instant that I started to drink it, I felt better again, but it was really quite a scare that the combination of staying up late, being quite dehydrated from the previous day, and taking a long hot shower could cause me to faint.

After my fainting spell I ate breakfast, read for a while, and then accompanied my dad to Winnie Palmer Hospital, where he works, to see the new building.  He worked closely with the architect, Jonathan Bailey, during the design of the building, and as an architecture student I wanted to check out the building.  It’s a beautiful building, not what you’d think of if you imagined “Hospital.”  It looks more like a hotel, with a lovely open waiting area and café seating on the first floor, and semi-private rooms throughout.  It’s truly state of the art, and I think they did an excellent job of balancing the requirements of the building for privacy and maneuverability.  The concept of the panopticon, that dreadfully unpleasant 19th century (?) prison scheme, is transformed and reapplied here, so that the centralized nurses stations in the various pods of the building have sightlines, which means that doctors and nurses can quickly see where their attention should be focused.  The greatest drawback of the building that I noticed was that wayfinding would be difficult for an inexperienced user: the building is made up of clusters of circular pods, and looks uniform throughout.  There are few obvious landmarks and the color scheme is a constant black, beige, and white.  There are subtle indications of location and there is signage to direct you, but the building isn’t inherently clear.  Still, it’s a lovely building, and I think that as the staff gets used to it, they’ll really begin to value its many great features.

We returned home after the visit to the hospital, and shortly before we headed out for dinner, my mom called to tell me that our dog, Max, had died the previous night.  Max was 13 years old, and was sort of an old curmudgeon, but despite his character flaws, he was so loveable.  He’d bark at anything and wouldn’t quiet down when you asked him to, he’d freak out when a storm came, or when a tall male would approach him, and he’d dig in the backyard, and I spent most of my time being upset with and annoyed at him.  But I’m so sad he’s gone.  He was my quintessential pet, the pet for me against whom all other pets will be measured.  I had other pets before him and have already had other pets since, but he’s Max, my archetypical pet.

Anyways, I tried (and succeeded for the most part) not to cry at the news, since it could have really set me off, considering that it happened to be a year, to the day, since my stepgrandfather had died.  Thankfully, we were heading out to dinner with my stepaunt and stepgrandmother, so I put Max’s death out of mind and just enjoyed the dinner, despite the fact that conversation somehow came around to the various dogs in the family.  I made it through dinner, went home, and got down to packing.

Throughout the day on Tuesday, we watched as Hurricane Ernesto traveled across Cuba and made landfall in Florida, trying to determine whether my plane would be able to leave the next morning.  I was lucky to find that the signs posted at the Southwest terminals on Wednesday morning stated that planes leaving at 8:50 and later would be delayed; my flight departed at 8:10.  I’m not sure that they did actually delay the other planes, since the reports of the day that I received said that it was mostly dry and that the storm was no worse than any other storm, but I’m glad I didn’t have to find out.

I spent pretty much the whole of Wednesday traveling.  My flight was uneventful, the way I like it, and then I waited an hour at the
Albany airport for the bus to the bus station.  There, I waited three and a half hours for the bus to Great Barrington.  That wait was less than pleasant, but the bus ride itself was actually rather nice.  I decided to stop reading, since I was going through my book much too quickly, and instead, I just looked at the passing landscape and thought about life a bit.  I pondered how Oberlin orientation was going and made a note to check in with Caitlin and Anna before they began trying to co-captain the Preying Manti.  I thought a bit about the previous day’s adventures, and about the four feature films that I’ve watched so far this break (Match Point, The Lord of War, Supersize Me, and My Summer of Love).  I got excited about visiting my Grandparents.  

But, the sort of revelation that I had pertained to the upcoming
Vermont visit.  It struck me that with the going away party for the
South Main gang, and just the fact that I’ll be there towards the end of summer, I imagine the visit will feel like the end of summer camp.  You know that time when you’re staying up late at night, going through these rituals of trying to get the most out of being with another human that you are particularly enamored of?  When you’re trying to get the last drop of a place, trying to suck that last little bit of marrow out of that particular part of your life?  Except that while I imagine that will be the emotional setting of the situation, I can also see the distinct possibility that I will in fact be on the outside of the rituals.  In my mind’s eye I can see this plate glass wall dividing me from those moments of deep experience; after all, I’ve been away for the past three months, and since it’s summer in Vermont, that counts for a lot, since everyone has come out of hibernation.  I’ll do my best to make sure that those mental pictures don’t play out that way in reality, in part by making this trip full of new things, not just replays of old times, but at least I’m prepared for the possibility of that lonesome feeling of being the outsider.

As a counterpoint to all those thoughts, however, I just want to say that I really do like being in this part of the world.  The mountains are about the right size for me, about the right distance apart, and there are lots and lots of trees.  There are lovely old houses, and the sky is blue.  Particularly in Brattleboro, people are comfortable with one another, and there’s a lot going on at the small scale.  I know why it was hard to leave here, and why I thought I might end up returning.  I think that this trip is confirming for me that it’s a real possibility that I would move back to Vermont at some point in my life.  The similarity between Wales and Vermont also still pleases me (Back story: I wanted to visit Wales, inexplicably, for many years while I was growing up, and finally went in 2003 when I was studying abroad in London.  It was my first real adventure totally alone in the world for just over a week, and I walked around the countryside just absorbing it and pondering life.  It was a fantastic and formative experience).

Of course, as always, there’s more to tell – of today’s stroll around Great Barrington, where I ran into Emily and arranged to tentatively get together with her on Saturday, and where I tried on a fabulous and fabulously expensive sweater by “Amiee G;” of last night’s conversation with Grandpa about the merits of thinking and the wonder of life; of how I can’t get enough of the Diamond Age – there’s always more.  But for now I’ll get going and spare you from this grandiloquent mood I’m in.  Hooray for making it through such interesting times with such grace and flair.

Flickr, I hardly know her

Couldn’t resist.

As we speak, I’m uploading my first set of photos to my new Flickr account.  Very exciting, but a somewhat slow process.  The photos just happen to be – you guessed it – pictures of my cube house.  Because of that, some of them required serious photoshopping, since they’re photos of flat drawings.  Hopefully they come out o.k. online.

What to say, what to say. On Saturday, I went to Speaking of Women’s Health, a conference which my stepmom Debbie helps organize.  It was really fun to be able to go with so many of the women in my family, and the speakers that I saw were very good.  It’s inspiring me to be ever more careful about sun tan lotion and perhaps to take up shaving since part of the gift bag is a very nice razor.  Debbie did a great job, and I’d definitely go again.

I’ve just blogged a photo from Flickr, so I guess that will show up before this post.  But I don’t want to have to individually blog each photo I post, so I’ll have to figure out a way to finesse the system. I guess I’ll just recommend that you, dear reader, look at the set to which the photo I blog belongs.

So, I guess that after all I don’t have much to say, because I’m now burned out on all this technology.  I’m rereading Diamond Age, one of my most favorite books, speaking of technology.  I left the Bible with mom, but I think she might get me a copy of that translation as a gift, which will be interesting.  And today I took some pictures of flowers around the house before my battery ran out to both test out my new memory card (hooray) and to get to know my camera in a more than business relationship.  Those, of course, will be uploaded to my new Flickr account at some point, perhaps when I am again using my fast little Mac.

Ok, off to edit the Flickr post and go get dinner.

Cube House Drawings Layout

Cube House Drawings Layout 

Here’s my first attempt at blogging from Flickr. This is the photo of all of my drawings from the Cube House project. It shows how the three pages related to each other. I chose to draw in pen on double matte mylar, which turned out to be really fun. The drawings have life to them because the lines aren’t ruled exactly straight – if you look closely you’ll see there’s quite a bit of wobble. But, that wobble gives them a nice hand illustrated look. Also, using pens means keeping a steady line weight. Unfortunately it also puts limits on how light and dark you can go. I used six weights of pen, but the one complaint I heard about the drawings was that there was not enough variation in line weight. I would have liked to poche (fill in with shaded or, in this case, solid tone) the structural members in the plans and diagrams, but since I was holding off on that for if I had enough time, I didn’t get to that. I think that would have solved the line weight problem.

Reflections

I’m going to put a bit of concerted effort into thinking about my first term of grad school.  First, let me whine for two seconds – I miss my PowerBook in all its speed and beauty!  At least I have a computer to be going on.

So I broke my cardinal rule of blogging, which was that it doesn’t matter how long, you should have a post up pretty much every week.  But, while time managment got a little close there, I actually learned pretty precisely how long it takes me to do certain tasks, how much faster I can go in some situations than others, and how I can be wiser with my time in general at school.  Also, how much I feel like doing anything else when I’m done with work, to which the answer is not very.

Watching all of the married students, I definately had a revelation that I was spending way more time at the studio than was really necessary.  In part, I get social time there, and really enjoy hanging out, poking around at other people’s projects or doing work that could be done elsewhere in that social situation.  But, towards the end of the semester, I realized that studio needs to be studio time – aka, when I’m there I’m focused on my work.  Once I’ve completed my goals for the day I can go home, even if the project as a whole is not done.  Steady work does actually turn out to be more effective, since my mind needs time to percolate, as my 11th grade English teacher used to say.

I think in large part that revelation came about when I headed up to Kleinman.  I still had to edit my paper and add in all of the images, plus I was reeling over the Wednesday night redesign of my cube house, and gearing up for the final haul.  But I went to the tournament and had a great time and didn’t end up in any worse of a position school-wise (how likely was I to catch up on drawing homework that weekend anyway?). 

At the same time, I realized that I don’t have the energy to do much more than retain important friendships that I already have, and that with smarter use of my school time, I should be able to do the phone calls and emails that I really enjoyed this past year in Vermont. It’s been tough to join the frisbee team and not have time to really become friends with my teammates.  I definitely still feel like I’m outside the scene, even though I always feel welcomed.  So, keeping up with the Oberlin crowd, the Brattleboro crowd, and those folks I deal with day-to-day in Eugene should be enough, and I’m not going to go looking for new folks in the fall. Oh, and keeping up with the workouts will doubtless take up lots of time too, and is really important since it feels dreadful to be so out of shape.

Some of the other technique oriented things I discovered – when working, it’s always good to keep moving.  There is a pace that’s natural to maintain, when you’re in flow, and it’s not that you can intentionally get there, but you can do a lot to help yourself get close.  I found that as I did my final presentation, I made work circles: I got my model mostly done, so that if I had to turn it in I’d only be partially mortified, then I got my drawings almost all the way done, then I finished the model, then I put final touches on the drawings.  All the while I was making design decisions. 

That way of working turned out to be really effective – you spend all of your time doing something and none of it worrying about how much there is to do.  It came out of the feeling that I don’t play enough with the problems before I go ahead and attack them (which is why I keep doing total redesigns at the last minute) and the advice to constantly switch media.  If you’re drawing, make a model, if you’re modeling, write a narrative, if you’re writing do some diagrammatic analysis, if you’re diagramming, go look at precidents. 

One thing that Mike (my professor) wasn’t helpful with was process work.  I found that the way I interacted with him most successfully was by asking him very direct and specific questions, and that led me away from taking the time to explore and process. I’m reading Graphic Thinking for Architects and Designers now to try and get a bit stronger on the open-ended sketching and analytical diagramming, because I think those two skills could help me out a lot on doing my own process work.  My summer at Harvard was invaluable if only for their emphasis on generating designs from the process work, and thus their instruction in different angles of attack.

Process work is prehaps the most fun part of school, but it’s by far the most daunting.  You sit down with a clean desk and your new assignment and you have two weeks to turn that vague idea you had during the presentation of the assignment into presentation drawings.  You know that you’ll need time to do those final drawings and craft the final model.  You’ll need time to get the structure and the concept working together.  You’ve got to work pretty fast to get something out on the page, but it can’t get fixed too soon.  I think that, in fact, other than noting initial reactions, I perhaps shouldn’t be “designing” anything for the first day or two.  That’s the time for exploration.  There’s so much to understand in any of these projects that two days isn’t close to enough time to explore, so I should at least be giving it that much time.  I guess that in the fall we’ll have one project for the entire semester, and I’m not sure whether that will be broken down or not.  If it is, I’m vowing, right here and now, to note my initial reaction then make a concerted effort not to try to design anything for quite some time.

There’s a sort of pressure to have something on the page that comes from both the looming deadlines and the other folks in the studio who are all talking about what they’re doing and asking what you’re up to.  I want to be a part of that conversation, but I’m realising that it needs to remain constructive.  There are some people with whom you can have really great discussions and get wonderful ideas, but when they ask you what you’re up to, it’s ok not to have a floorplan to show them.  I think I’d actually feel even more like I was doing my work well if I instead showed them some serious site analysis or a great set of sketch models.

Which, by the way, were one of the great triumphs of the final project.  Towards the end, I finally got the idea of how to make quick sketch models.  One of the reviewers at the final review (not one of mine) suggested that one should make at least six sketch models before you get anywhere near choosing a scheme to work.  While I don’t think they meant to imply a magic number, it’s an indication of how important it is to work in three dimensions from the beginning of the design project.

It was also gratifying to hear that my final scheme seemed “comfortable” to both of my reviewers.  They both seemed to like the design very much, and I think that a lot of that came from trying some of the ideas from Synthesis 9.  I guess I’ll put more up about my final once I’ve got a way to upload the photos.

Actually, this is probably way too long and I should shut up.  I’m not sure I got to the real meat.  As usual, a few thoughts before I hang up the towel: I’m focusing on the work and ideas next semester.  No matter how frustrating the professorial or organizational situation, no matter how annoying my classmates, I’m in school to have the pleasure of interrogation, to form opinions and explore alternatives.  I talked to the boys of South Main last night, (which was great and I’m very excited about visiting VT), and felt like that level of intellectual conversation is vital to my life and I need to transfer it out to Oregon if I’m to feel at home/like I’m getting what I came for there.  And on that note, the other book I’m reading right now?  The Bible.  A little light summer reading.

More soon, as always. 

The Close of Another Chapter

I’m officially done with my first semester of grad school, and in fact I’m already a few days into my vacation.  I’ll be bopping all over the east coast in the next few weeks, and I didn’t bring my laptop for security reasons, but I’ll probably still be writing more often than when I’m in school.  Especially since I have a lot to ponder after this first semester.

Since I last wrote, I finished the paper, went to the tournament, scrapped the design I was working on for an entire redesign of the cube house, completed the final design including model and three sheets of ink on mylar drawings, completed my sketchbook, had my exit interview, and started these intercession travels.  There’s a lovely picture of Herman and Ruth at the tournament that you should check out as a teaser to further stuff…for now I’m going to go enjoy pizza and conversation with the fam, who just walked in the door – Liz and Ricky and B.  Lovely!

Study Break

Taking a quick break from writing a paper to say hello to myself, remember that I am a real person, not just an automaton that goes from task to task, doing whatever she is told.

Actually, I’m quite enjoying writing the paper – the one about the Glasgow School of Art – as I did a sizable amount of research and got a feeling of actually being there. Strange, though, that I know how different it must be to visit than to look at photos and imagine. It’s a good exercise, though, because it’s fairly analogous to the design process. Yes, I make models, but a fair bit of what I do is sit and look at what I’ve drawn and imagine the reality it implies. Each drawing brings me a step closer to what that reality might be like.

Drawings become like notes on the imagined places in my head (in fact we have a book called Visual Notes which I recommend, and want to get more thoroughly familiar with, but which addresses more the notation of actual real places). Yesterday, I did just go outside and sit with my eyes closed, imagining that I was approaching the site of my Cube House (the third part of the compound we’ve been designing). I felt kind of dorky, but it worked. I’d become familiar enough with my rough plans and sections and my sketch model that I could start imagining the places that they enclosed, complete with patterns of light and material choices. Pretty cool!

The drawing class we had was very helpful, and perfectly timed to make that envisioning exercise totally worth the slight embarrassment I felt. They told us how to trace over pictures to get perspective shots of an imagined building. It’s sort of like a collage, you just take the lines you want and then add the rest from your brain or from another underlay of a different photo. I made some very convincing drawings of my buildng, and called it a day.

This whole thing was in part inspired by Mackintosh’s moves on the facade of the Glasgow School of Art, and by that building in general. I do hope that I always have a history class to feed me inspiration! I’m planning to really start a scrapbook sometime soon…

Speaking of inspiration, I bought plane tickets for a trip home to Florida, then up to visit Grandparents in Massachusetts and friends in Vermont. The South Main gang will be on the verge of moving out of their house by the time I head their way, so I should be in for another lovely, melancholy saying good-bye party. The trip as a whole has been inspiring me to keep plugging away – I’m so close to being done with my first semester! I’ll finally have time to change addresses and close my old bank account! 

Also, I’m heading to Kleinman, a tournament in Portland, this weekend, which is my main inspiration for trying to finish my paper tonight. We all know how much work one gets done at frisbee tournaments.

Also, I just added a link to Practical Action, the British group that works to get appropriate technologies out there, in use. Check out the gravity ropeway on their front page. All my designs should be so elegant.

So, I was thinking that I’m not feeling challenged enough by the school, but then, I was thinking harder, because that’s what Rachels do best, and I realized that I need to meet the challenges they are giving me head-on, and then I can see how I feel from there. Basically, that means no more whining about anything, ever, and the resoluteness to stand up for what I believe to be true and right, coupled with the intelligence to know when I haven’t got a clue and the flexibility to hear and enact valuable changes to my opinion.

Doesn’t that sound like a set of traits that everyone would be better off displaying?

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.

Finally, a weekend

This weekend has been lovely. Compared to pre-architecture school era (or PASE), I worked a whole lot, but now that I'm in architecture school era, (or ASE) it was a relaxing weekend.

We had four things to do this weekend - a precedent study of three braced-frame towers, a midterm analyzing a building, a model of a set of code-compliant stairs, and a presentation of our drawings from Timberline lodge. Plus, I probably should have caught up in my sketchbook and put the rest of my trees into my site model, but I didn't, and I feel o.k. with that decision.

It turns out that other than the presentation of the drawings, this was actually quite an inspiring set of assignments. I created a set of triangular stairs, which sort of went beyond the call of duty, but made the assignment more interesting for me. Unfortunately, as I went along, I lost a bit of interest, so the construction is a little less than fine hand joinery, but it suffices, gets the idea across.

Then, for my midterm, I analyzed the Glasgow School of Art, by Charles Mackintosh. This turned out to be an easy assignment because the building is pretty awesome. Something I'd like to visit sometime - Mackintosh was one of the reasons I decided to go to architecture school. I'm not really sure how to sum up what I wrote, other than that I hope it's not over the top, but at least it's the midterm, which was sort of just assigned to help us get started for the final, which is a 15ish page essay on the same building; I'm now about 3 pages in.

The tower precedent study was what really got me though. There I was, sitting in the introductory lecture on the tower project (the next building on our imaginary lakeside site, to be adjacent to the wall house), hearing this assignment and thinking about how little I wanted to go look at water towers, etc. But once I started looking for towers, after getting sidetracked thinking that I'd study the Rundetaarn and other Copenhagen towers, I found some pretty awesome ones. Here's my list:

• Tour d'observation, Berinzenne (1995) and Tour d'observation, Gedinne [aka Millennium Tower] (2001)
• Suchov – Turm, Technische Berufsschule Zürich
• and a fourth one that I didn't follow through with due to a paucity of images, Aussichtsturm "Lothurm", Magglingen

A great contrast to the Mackintosh building, but also fun to find these very new pieces of architecture and be able to annotate them freshly, without having in mind all of the commentary of former critics. So, overall, a good exercise.

In addition to all this schoolwork, I got a chance to look at a potential house for the fall (very nice, but perhaps a little out of my price range, depending on what we can bargain with the landlords); eat birthday cake and nachos, in that order, with Shannon and Brian (two of my new, non-school friends who are dating and happen to have the same birthday); laze about in bed a good deal; go to a winery in Salem for a concert; and go on a couple of runs (in which I realized just how much sitting in the studio I have been doing). So, I'm feeling fairly well recharged for getting back to school tomorrow, and I'm also feeling ready to make those pesky change of address calls...

Hooray for R and R, in whatever small doses it can be found.

All Drawn Out

Back from our two-day trip all around Oregon, and I'm all drawn out. We stopped at the High Desert Museum, Warm Springs Museum, and Timberline lodge yesterday (Tuesday) and today (Wednesday) we left the Timberline lodge and drove to the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center and Multnomah Falls. At each stop on Tuesday we drew interior, exterior, and detail drawings, plus we were supposed to draw diagrams of the landscapes and a section of our drive from Eugene to High Desert and from Warm Springs to Timberline. Today, we only had to draw at the Columbia Gorge Dicovery Center (plus finish the Timberline drawings), so we got to just enjoy the falls and the Vista House.

As much as it was a bit of overkill, and a lot of riding on the bus, the trip was enjoyable. Still, it was exhausting, because when we weren't drawing, we were all still in the getting to know you mode. I think it's particularly strange - we've spent a lot of time together, but in individual pursuit of the same goals, rather than in collaborative work towards a single accomplishment. That means that we have a lot to compare, rather than a solid baseline shared experience. So conversation tends to revolve around school, or other points of comparison (in particular, our opinions of each other, which makes me feel like I'm in middle school again, but sometimes our previous lives), rather than moving into new territory. It's somewhat frustrating because it takes a lot of work to continue the conversations, but the payback is relatively low. I'm looking forward to some mellowing out of the group.

One high point - last night I stayed at the Silcox Hut (7000 ft elevation) on Mt. Hood. Twenty-six of us shared the bunk house. I signed up late, so I was on the floor in front of the huge fireplace. Before we went to bed and after a good hour of casual conversation in the fireplace hall, Jake and Eric (the guy I was going to live with originally) were headed back out to sled a bit more on some lunch trays they had lifted earlier in the day. Kyle and I headed out with them, and we had a great time sledding down Mt. Hood on the tiny little trays. Throughly out of breath and much colder, we headed back in to the warm fire. It was a nice little snippet of time without the pressure to impress anyone, and some much needed physical activity after the long day of sitting.

I have a couple of drawings I'm very happy with, some that are quite a bit more rough to put it charitably, and lots that I didn't get done. I hope to clarify tomorrow what level of detail and preciseness vs. expressiveness and expansiveness we need to be capturing, which is probably a question that I should have asked before the attempting the assignment. Oh well. On a happy note that relates both to the drawings and to this little bloggy-poo, I was doing my reading today and came accross this quote from Edward Fischer: "Judged by the days, life does not make sense. Judged by the years, things add up and a plan emerges. A good reason to keep a journal is to have the consolation of seeing patterns form." A lovely sentiment, if expressed in a melancoly mode.

Hoping to get some fun/free time this weekend, along with doing a lot of drawing, starting the next project, writing the History/Theory midterm, and dealing with loose ends that have been hanging since the beginning of the term. Good news, though - I can now take my computer in to the studio, which means that I can spend even more time there...

One down...

Hoo-ray, I finished the first project. I'm up doing laundry before tomorrow's field trip to the Timberline lodge and surronding area, since I've hit my two week mark.

(Some time last year I decided that I would simplify my life and get rid of a lot of extra underwear. I had enough underwear that I could go for about 5 weeks without doing laundry, which meant that once I actually got around to doing laundry, I had about 4 loads to wash, which took all day and was no fun. Now I'm forced to do laundry every 2 weeks or so, but it's only one or two loads, so it's totally manageable and I no longer dread it.)

I just had celebratory drinks and dinner at the corner pub with a bunch of the other single folks in the program. It was a good time, but surprise, surprise, all we did was talk about the program, and specifically about the other folks in the program. Still, good venting and relaxing time.

The review was super relaxed. To my disappointment, the U Oregon reviews are not juried, meaning that instead of having to stand up and present your project in front of a set of 4 reviewers and your whole class, you present your project at the same time as another student to one other reviewer. Therefore, your project is compared with this other person's by way of proximity, although your schemes may have very little to do with each other. The format allows the reviewers to give you some direct feedback, but it cuts down on the sometimes interesting tangents that reviewers can get on when they are discussing your project in a jury format.

I, and most of the other people I talked to, thought that the reviewers were extremely kind to us. While it's nice not to leave the room crying, sometimes it's helpful to just hear point blank what is not working in your scheme, rather than trying to figure out what someone doesn't like when they're trying to couch their criticism positively. The second reviewer I presented to was much more helpful and straightforward than my first reviewer. They both accepted my sliding premise. The first reviewer seemed uncomfortable with the lack of definable private space in the concept, but wouldn't just come out and say it. The second reviewer pointed out that the covered outdoor space on the south (lake) side of the project was pretty unresolved and needed more consideration as to how it fit into the overall scheme. No one seemed particularly concerned with the quality of the drawings or model, which I worked very hard on, although they did seem to be generally happy with the level of work I put in, which is all I could have hoped for.

Just to explain a bit, the scheme was for a house that would start out as the main house on a lakeside property and become a guest house when the real house is built. The building site was on the west side of the property, defining that edge of a preexisting foundation at a spot on the site between a fir forest and an oak savannah. We were given some pretty straightforward structural requirements, and I began by trying to set up a house on either side of a wall, but since we only had 300 square feet to work with, it clearly didn't work comfortably within the restrictions. So, I thought about how that wall might work, and asked myself what was the most perverse thing I could do to the inhabitants of the site. I thought of Peter Eisenman's house in which he divides the bed in two, and came up with the idea that the bed could slide under a wall and turn into two couches. Then my professor pushed me towards opening up the space (since it was less than 300 square feet, putting a foot thick wall through the middle of it actually took away a significant amount of square footage and cut out a lot of light), and I had to figure out how to create the two-couch condition without a wall, since I had adopted the language of sliding throughout the house and wasn't about to let that generating phrase get edited out yet.

So, the solution was to design a sliding counter/table/backrest that moved in the same direction as the bed. It generated the great praise from my studio instructor that it hadn't caused him to throw up yet, and that if I didn't do it now, I'd never do it, presumably because at some point I'd realize what an idiotic idea it would be. Well, that just made me more confident that it was the right thing to do, so I put lots of work into finalizing the plan, drafting beautiful drawings and crafting an impeccable model. As much as the Career Discovery program gave me skills to deal with this program, I think I may have overdone the amount of work I put into the project, and maybe in the future I can take it a little easier. One way or the other, I'm done with the project.

Tomorrow's field trip should be lots of fun, although it seems like an incredible amount of drawing to do in two days. I'd better get on top of packing and sleeping so that I can get there on time in the morning. Hopefully we'll get nap time at some point, because I can't keep going at this pace indefinitely...

Will try to get drawings/diagrams in a format that I can post them soon. The good news is that I'm set up to bring my computer into the studio, but that could end up backfiring by meaning that I never do real work. Oh, the double edged sword.

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.

Final Countdown

My last few moments as a free woman. Today I didn't go see the black sheep and alpaca, which was my original plan for the day, but I did spend some quality time in the kitchen, which is always fun to do on those 98 degree days. I wanted to make bread one last time before I no longer had 5 hours of uninterrupted baking time, so I very lazily made some challah.

That and a couple of phone calls pretty much made up the day. Connecting with Colin and Josie made the day worthwhile, so it didn't really matter what else I did.

A few notes: so far I've gone swimming twice in snowmelt water up in the rivers around here. I feel very proud of myself for getting out to the rivers, and even prouder for going in. It's not like Florida, I'll tell you that!

I didn't get to listen to the lectures, but a) I'm about to go into high-gear lecture listening mode, and b) I did get to watch the Green Butchers last night. Green Butchers was really fun; stomach turning, visually playful, and stocked with an acute sense of weirdness. I especially liked the ending, which seems like the perfect Hollywood ending gone absolutely stupidly out of whack. I would highly recommend it if you, like me, enjoy strange Scandanavian films.

Oh, and I wanted to say, thanks to everyone who has commented as yet. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to/want to comment back, but I guess I'll know eventually. Chef Yang disappeared because I thought he was spam - he was too witty for me. So, dear readers, keep up the good work and perhaps someday I'll get bold enough to engage in a dialoge, rather than just my current pleasant noncommittal yammerings.

Well, I'm off to bed to fitfully toss and turn in anticipation for my big day tomorrow. Wish me luck!