what to do

I am not sure what to do with this blog. The best jokes I can come up with usually get their punch from being slightly offensive, and, being that I am quite happy with the Landscape Architecture world and would like to do some serious work in it when I get out of school, I am always wary of postings that might offend potential employers, and I never know when I have crossed the line. I try to keep identifying clues to a minimum, but I don't think it would be that hard to figure out who I am here. Sometimes I wish that I had kept it bereft of such clues, so I could just post anything I like. for example, I would like to say that a lot of what Landscape Architects do is more or less exactly the same thing that Landscape Designers and contractors do, except that we dress it up with a lot of pretentious theoretical nonsense. But I can't say that, not here anyway. I heard a landscape architect say "We create spaces. Contractors draw wiggly worms around buildings." Truly there is quite a difference between a space that was designed in a deliberate and thoughtful way by a trained professional and one that was just laid out by a contractor to look neat and organized, rows of hollies interspersed with street trees or whatever. Generally speaking, we do it much better and it is worth the expense (hiring us). But there is at times an awful lot of BS in the process. I guess that is true of many professions. Yeah, I guess, come tho think of it, we are no worse than lawyers or mortgage bankers or real estate developers or any other fee-for-service profession you can name. So I'm glad I did not say THAT.

The other thing I would say, if this were truly an anonymous forum, is that, in landscape architecture, you have a choice. You can work for the devil or you can work for the angels. You are a skilled professional and your services are sought after by the various government agencies and nonprofits who are trying to preserve the precious remnants of our ecological heritage, as well as by the developers who want to destroy it. If you work for the devil, the rewards include riches beyond your wildest imagining, and your name in magazines and eventually in textbooks and the sacred archives of LA history, and you will be lauded as a genius. If you work for the angels, you will labor in obscurity, for a respectable but entirely predictable income for the rest of your days. But of course the choice is much more complicated than that. Best management practices are becoming universally accepted in the construction industry, and the concept of sustainability is being applied more and more to all practices and processes. But to what degree is "sustainability" just a public relations item in the real world of Orlando, Dallas, Atlanta, where the action is? As Obi Wan says, "only a Sith deals in absolutes." I would never seriously put forth the "there are two paths you can go by" dichotomy. But just the fact that it is on my mind is, well, scandalous.

Yep.

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair...

Finally my mosque project is over. I am rather pleased with it, and in a solipsistic spasm I see fit somehow to share it with you all, the fans, the little people, without whom I would not be where I am today, which, you know, is, uh, Starkville, Mississippi. Click on the pictures to make them real big, and if you want to see them in all their intended glory, print them on 11x17 sheets, or, better still, put them in Powerpoint and project them onto the side of your house.

I give thanks

Most of all I am thankful for my good health, my lovely wife and adorable little boys. I am thankful that we are able to live in such a nice home and that Starkville, despite the fact that it is not a very attractive town, is a really really SAFE town for kids to play in. Aside from that, I am really thankful for the BBC world service, which I listen to all night long, although it has kind of turned into all Pakistan all the time, and no word at all on Dog the Bounty Hunter and his quest for redemption, which is annoying. I’m thankful for my parents and for the fact that they both really worked hard to make something of their lives, and that they didn’t become mullet-sporting bounty hunters in biker gear with their own TV show and they didn’t cuss me out over the phone telling me that I couldn’t be part of their bounty-hunting operation. I’m thankful that they started out raising me near the town of Sylva, NC, a tiny hamlet kind of like Starkville, where kids can just roam over hill and dale all afternoon without getting hassled by the cops. I’m thankful for good coffee, pepperjack cheese, the White Stripes, all the characters in the local grocery stores, In Touch magazine, the New York Review of Books, and all the other little things put here for my amusement. The world is so full of such wonderful things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.

Tuesday

I am feeling much better. Wife is home with the kids, who have the whole week off from school. I am supposed to be studying for an exam, but instead I am fiddling with my blog settings. I added a picture, hope it helps. Our cat is costing us too much money. So what else is new. My mosque design is coming along slowly. I have resolved all the big issues, now I need to redraw the plan and do some sketches. Also create a bunch of inventory and analysis pages. People, if you have time, check out how the White Stripes ingeniously combine old and new with their cover of "Death Letter," which can be found on You Tube. I particularly like the part when Jack sings "so hard to love someone, when they don't love you." and he's looking at Meg and Meg doesn't care. Also another great moment is when he addresses the crowd with the line "don't mind people grinnin' in your face." I'll watch it one more time then I'll get to work.

up all night

PT went well today. The guy was about fourteen, looked exactly like Bobby Kennedy, and was very positive, and it seems that the pain was lessoned some, so my spirits lifted. But now I am staying up all night doing the master plan for the mosque. I am tossing out a picture of the giant marble sculpture that appeared in front of the LA building a few weeks ago. It seems strangely evocative of some archetype, I just can't put my, uh, finger on it...

Thank God for the Continental Cafe...

Well, the radiology came back and the news was less than optimal. But all it took was for the Doctor to say the words "back surgery" and the pain mysteriously evaporated! I am feeling much better now, thanks.

Lordy lordy, between my various ailments and the breakneck pace of the Landscape Architecture culture it is enough to make a fellow want to sing the blues. Down in Mississippi, where I live, the blues are a part of life. Being as I am, however, a white, slightly neurotic graduate student, I am more an insult to the blues than anything else.

The only thing that keeps me going these days are thoughts of Chapel Hill. Walking down Franklin Street to Fowler's grocery and talking to the nice wine merchant there, or going into Big Bertha to buy a case of Little Kings...drinking coffee at the Hardback and chatting with Randy Ward or Andy Roberts...eating a hamburger at the Continental Cafe while the theatrical bald guy refills my tea...chomping on a morning star salad and sipping iced red zinger at Pyewacket...looking down at passers by from the second floor window in the paperback section of the Intimate Bookshop...happy I am to know that it is all still there and I can take the Greyhound bus anytime I want and be dropped off at the downtown depot there across from the Cradle, next door to the Chrysler dealer...

monday

Spent pretty much all of Saturday in a Photoshop workshop. I learned a few shortcuts but it probably was not worth losing a day. So I was too tired when I got home to take the kids up town to see Marty Stuart. The festival was actually not to commemorate Johnny Cash's arrest, as the organizers expressed many times in the local press, but to celebrate the spirit of redemption exemplified in his later years. It was built around the idea of issuing a pardon for Johnny Cash for the 1965 arrest. I just wanted to clear that up.
Pain in my leg is persisting, but I can still walk. Sunday was spent on little household projects. We are planning a party for Saturday. We are gonna steam some oysters.

It's all less than optimal

Nagging pain in my leg has grown to a sharper, stabbing and more persistent sensation. The doctor at student health suspects a disc problem. She prescribed a steroid which did nothing, so she gave me a drug called neuronten, which does nothing for the pain at all but does give me a somewhat loopy perspective for which I am trying to cultivate an appreciation of sorts. Today I got an MRI at the local hospital, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm really hoping this whole thing just goes away.
Halloween was OK, but kind of rushed being in the middle of the week. I skipped the trick-or-treating and stayed home to greet trick-or-treaters, of which we had none. The kids just went around the block with some friends and I hear it went well. Cooked a chicken and some sweet potatoes and ate with our friends and their kids.
Reading about Islam, doing research for the mosque project. Big Johnny Cash festival in town, Marty Stuart is playing, in commemoration of the man in black getting arrested for public drunkeness here in 1965 and writing a song about it. The hotel he and June staid in is now The Dark Horse Tavern, but it still looks like a hotel, I think they still rent rooms. The house where he got busted, for "pickin' flowers" as he put it, is one that I drive by every morning taking the kids to school. There is a brick wall around it now, presumably to discourage future horticultural pilfering. I hope I can convince the family to walk up town and see Marty Stuart tomorrow evening. Small town America.