Grizzly Pear

I’ve been reading Randy Hester’s Book Ecological Democracy and its been making me think of my place in the field. Randy Hester is a landscape architect so his perspective is at a larger scale. However, the stuff I like to do are all at the smaller architectural scale (and really at the small architectural scale). I don’t know how I got from thinking about sustainability to this realization, but I do think that we can boil down what we do to manipulating systems, arranging spaces, and doing so in the context of surroundings.

I imagine that in my Berkeley days, I would have put the emphasis in spaces (and how they affect community and human interaction). But after living in Houston, I’ve come to realize that integrating sustainable systems (ones that are automatically more efficient and those that encourage more efficient behaviour) are also an important aspect of any project. And as always, I’ve always thought it was strange that architecture lit loves to put each building as a seperate jewel – a tendency that I always thought was quite ridiculous. A building is a function of a multitude forces, and it is silly to try to understand it as an independent entity floating in a formless landscape.

I dunno where this is going as a theory, but it seems to encapsulate key issues that I deal with as an architect.

I just picked up a copy of Invisible Cities by Calvino and it made me wonder…what books are worth re-reading regularly? I looked over my bookshelf and I have to admit I don’t actually see any other book that fits the bill. Maybe the sandman series by Gaiman, but beyond that I’m having a hard time thinking of any. Maybe one of my architecture books, but nothing I can think of at the moment….

I have been reading various books dealing with business and issues related to finding work. Along the way a couple years ago, I picked up a little book by Frank Bettger called “How I Raised Myself from a Failure to a Success in Selling” at a local thrift store. I finally read it this past week. And the best part was his last chapter. Inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s 13 virtues Frank Bettger made his own list of 13 key skills for selling. Like Benjamin Franklin, he then advises the reader to make his own list, and then spend a week emphasizing each virtue/skill. At the end of the year, that would mean that you’ll have gone through the list 4 times and he swears that it is a great way to grow and get better at selling/etc.

The super powerful idea behind Frank Bettger’s chapter is that he takes history and makes it useful for his own purposes.  I think there is a tendency to say “if a great guy did it, then that’s how it should be done.”  However, I think that often leads to inaction since the great person was doing something in the context of their life.  Instead one ought to take the example of history and make the most of it in the context of our own lives.

And in that spirit I decided that it couldn’t hurt to try something similar, though I am kind of switching it a little to include fields of study to emphasize in my spare time.  We’ll see where it goes, I’ll start it up in a couple weeks which will time me perfectly at the halfway mark of this year.

1. Introspection
2. Enthusiasm
3. Architecture (conventional details and construction)
4. Sketching
5. Reading People
6. Business
7. Assertiveness
8. Thankfullness
9. Networking
10. Silence
11. Sustainability (details and construction)
12. Contemporary art/design/architecture
13. Brain rewiring (catch up on old hobbies, ie banjo, novels, photography)

what I really like to do is problem solving (concerning buildings). Along the way I need to make drawings…something I’m good at and something that I also like to do. But really its about solving problems.

I guess that should go with the other random thought from a couple months ago – I’m really more interested in what happens in a building (and building site), what goes in, goes on, and goes out much more than how the darn thing looks.

job searches certainly make you think….

Converted into Houses by Charles A. Fracchia


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Its exactly what you would expect if you pick up the book. Its a cute thin little book with a short paragraph and a couple pages of images about each house. The decor is very much of its time, but still a fun little book to keep on the shelf and flip through every once in a while.

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The Empty City by Andrew Looney


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Fun silly little book. Its not anything too special, and the writing is just ok. But it is fun and worth a read for people who are into the Icehouse pyramid games. The story is basically just about four dudes that play the Icehouse game and the world that happens around and happens to them. Its fun in that it just focuses on mundane life in all its glorious weirdness and this novel is an interesting example of how fiction can actually be a muse to jump start a creative endeavor which has now turned into Looney Labs.

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Now that I have a little free time again, I’ve rediscovered goodreads. I really should just say discovered because even though I signed up a couple years ago, I never really explored the site. It seems lite a really nice intuitive focused social site. Fun stuff and it will a place to help me at least collect my thoughts after finishing each book.
Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader by Bathroom Readers’ Institute


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I wonder if this should be a 5 star because it has been in the bathroom for almost 5 years now. It still manages to entertain with quick hits as always before and I still seem to find things I hadn’t read though I must have gone through it several times by now (albeit not systematically). Fun stuff and full of weird entertaining errata about life.

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Hehehe…since I’ve announced it everywhere its not really news, but just for the record…I passed my last test!

There was a guy who triple posted a highly negative review on a book I liked quite a bit. So I ended up writing a counter review. Its a fun book and it seems that there may be mistakes in it, but in general its a fun read. A good start maybe to further study if you’re really interested in the subject – or not bad as a survey just for the heck of it.

This book is an incredibly fun read and does not take itself too seriously. If you want to read a book about the English language, and you don’t want one that is too scholarly, this is it.

There are plenty of really scholarly works out there – and many of them are pretty much unreadable. And in fact, one of the things this book points out repeatedly is how various theories come in and out of fashion. In linguistics, it seems a lot of the oral history of our words are based off of ideas that are kinda hard to prove. I have no doubt there are mistakes in the book some of which the angry reviewer has noted, but I believe that Mr. Bryson has most likely tried to be as accurate at possible.

Instead of trying to write a definitive work, I think Bill Bryson set out to write a mirror for us to have a laugh at ourselves and our wonderful language. He’s not a linguist – but he’s not a hack either. He is exploring this language and seeing how it stands in this world – among other languages and in its point in history (1989) relative to its lengthy past. And his exploration is extremely well written even if maybe there are mistakes here and there.

I find the book a great read. If you’re gonna write a dissertation or looking for a definitive work (or a book that takes Esperanto seriously), this isn’t it. But if you want to have an enjoyable read chuckling at our idiosyncrasies and learning a little bit more at how we got here, I think you’ll have a great time!