Love your children

No society that loved its children would divorce them so completely from contact with soils, forests, streams, and wildlife. No society that loved its children would create places like the typical suburb or shopping mall. No society that loved its children would casually destroy real neighborhoods and communities in order to build even more highways... No society that loved its children would build more shopping malls than high schools. No society that loved its children would leave behind a legacy of ugliness...

Loving Children: A Design Problem by David Orr

via Stork Bites Man

So, in 2013, ...

"Energy, action — and patience."

Important and Importanter —

Posting on Reference Library is on hold.

Hurricane Sandy may have passed but the storm is just beginning. The situation around New York is not over and is in fact getting worse for many people. If you can't get someone food, water, candles, coats, gloves, bleach, gas, or a place to sleep then donate to the Red Cross. Don't forget that many people in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and parts of Pennsylvania are still hurting and in real need.

And don't forget to vote on Tuesday. I am not just voting for the next four years, I'm thinking about the next forty. I'm voting for the kind of place I want my daughters and son to live in. I don't need a CEO of America, Inc. I'm voting for a president for the people. Find your polling place here.

My Pie Town

My Pie Town
Debbie Grossman

"...I loved the opportunity to look at Doris on her own and imagine a different life for her. I thought it would be fun to remake the whole town in a way that reflected my own family, and I imagined a Pie Town filled with women."

More: here (via kottke)

Jean Ritchie

More: Folkways (via Minna Gilligan)

Life and Stuff —

"Roseanne" by Hirschfeld (via bummertimes)

Curves, Outside and In —

At Wharton Esherick's house.

The Centaur —

Excursus I: Reference Library
Up On My Back, And I Will Take You Thither

Excursus is a new series at ICA that invites the public to come together, converse, and peruse archival material in the context of the present. Andy Beach, known for his blog and curatorial interventions under the name Reference Library, inaugurates the series with Up On My Back, And I Will Take You Thither, a project that takes inspiration from the Centaur Book Shop, Philadelphia’s own Prohibition-era radical press, record store, and bohemian meeting place.

Celebrate the opening with a talk about the Centaur by curator Lynne Farrington of Penn's Rare Book and Manuscript Library. To be followed by an after hours reception on the ICA terrace. Tonight at 6:30!

icaphila.org


Top: The Centaur (sign for Centaur Book Shop), Wharton Esherick, 1924; at his home in Paoli, Pennsylvania. Bottom: The Sign of The Centaur, Andy Beach and Happy Signs; installed at the ICA, Philadelphia.

3/11

The Japan Tsunami, months later (Eric Kvatek)

Great Lakes

Rest in Pieces

The Barnes Galleries and Arboretum closed today in preparation to be moved to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway building in Philadelphia.

The Barnes Foundation
1922–July 3, 2011

Paul Cézanne, 1895–1900
Nature Morte au Crâne
The Barnes Foundation

GET AWAYS

Sunset Phillies

Top photo: Manny D. (5/23, Phillies 10-3)
Bottom photo: me (same time, different view)

\\\\

It's that time of year again.

Blessed to be alive —

I spent a lot of time at The Pig while visiting my Grandma, stocking up on Donald Duck orange juice, Moon Pies, Pepsi, and pork sausage. She would perform magic in the frying pan then turn out the best buttermilk biscuits using the leftover sausage grease. Hang in there, Smithville.

Photo: Alan Spearman, The Commercial Appeal

The Fab Five —

Watch it before it gets pulled off youtube.

Related: Money and March Madness (Frontline); Unpaid Interns, Complicit Colleges (NY Times)

Give $10 US or CDN the easy way —

thanks/via Jennilee

TO BUCKETY BILL, 1952

Wharton Esherick (at Wyeth)

Small Scale

If a factory began to "grow" or to be noisy at night or on Sunday, that would mean that another such factory was needed somewhere else. If waste should occur at any point, that would indicate the need for an enterprise of some other sort. If poison or pollution resulted from any enterprise, that would be understood as an indication that something was absolutely wrong, and a correction would be made. Small scale, of course, makes such changes and corrections more thinkable and more possible than does large scale.

From An Argument for Diversity by Wendell Berry (1988)