Category: Place & Space
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Capital Building: A View from Washington – Part 3
Click here for Capital Building: A View from Washington – Part 1 Click here for Capital Building: A View from Washington – Part 2 Not Set in Stone: Memorials for the Future The National Park Service (NPS), the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), and Van Alen Institute collaborated on Memorials for the Future, an international ideas competition that took place… Read more
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Capital Building: A View from Washington – Part 2
Click here for Capital Building: A View from Washington – Part 1 Having finally seen Washington, DC for myself this summer, it was great to connect with this presentation by Marcel Acosta, Executive Director of the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), the Federal Planning Agency for America’s Capital. In it he discusses how the city came to be shaped,… Read more
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Capital Building: A View from Washington – Part 1
In spite of the oppressive heat and humidity of August in Washington, D.C., I did what I like to do best: I walked around, looked at things and talked to people. This being my first trip to the capital, I focussed on the National Mall, exploring adjacent neighborhoods, and my relentless pursuit of Guastavino tile. In D.C., security is the conversational opener in the same… Read more
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Julia Child Cooks Thanksgiving Dinner
This is Julia’s house. This is Julia’s kitchen. This is Julia cooking thanksgiving dinner with Jacques Pepin circa 1999. In her house. In her kitchen. Wishing a Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends. May your year be filled with blessings. Read more
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Manhattan’s Divine Intervention
Unless you leave room for serendipity…how can the divine enter? ~Joseph Campbell A few minutes one way or the other, heading south instead of north, a conversation, a distraction, a photo or lunch. There’s no good reason I stepped into St. Paul’s Chapel at that precise moment and not another. Filled to the brim – standing room only… Read more
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Hello, This is The New York Times Calling
It’s not every day that The New York Times calls one for an interview. But I arrived home recently to find a message from Times reporter Sarah Maslin Nir. The topic? Charity house tours in New York City and the potential breach of privacy that cellphone cameras pose to homeowners. Read more
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The Pilgrimage to Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs was a noted urbanist, writer and activist whose book The Death and Life of Great American Cities has become the go-to tome for community planning and urban development. ********** Like the Camino de Santiago, there are prescribed stops on the pilgrimage to Jane Jacobs, including her two former residences in Toronto and New York… Read more
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Caplansky’s Delicatessen Toronto
There is nothing I like better in this world than serendipity, except, perhaps, a great smoked meat sandwich. So there we were at U of T, hungry and cold, and Husband suggested eating at Subway to which I replied with a choice expletive or two. We’re in Toronto, for God’s sake, surely we can do better… Read more
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Giving Grace to Utility
Excerpt: John Ruskin ~The Relation of Art to Use, 1870 Our subject of enquiry to-day, you will remember, is the mode in which fine art is founded upon, or may contribute to, the practical requirements of human life. Read more
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William Goyen: The House of Breath
…and then I walked and walked in the rain that turned half into snow and I was drenched and frozen; and walked upon a park that seemed like the very pasture of Hell where there were couples whispering in the shadows, all in some plot to warm the world tonight, and I went into a… Read more