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what if they find it's totally random and completely tangential

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2006.05.05 14:44
Favorite archinect poster
Yeah, the monk is right. If you really are gardening and sweeping (gosh I love sweeping) you really aren't thinking of other things. Like when I actually do thinks of the others there before me, it's usually, "Huh, I've been here all morning and this is the first time today I've thought of the other spirits. Hi guys!"


2006.05.05 14:28
Favorite archinect poster
regarding astral planes, I've actually been spending a lot of time lately gardening at a quondam 17th century North American Swedish fort (sic) site. While weeding, and sodding, etc. I sometimes think of the others who were once there too--world traveling Swedes (sic), George Washington (sic), John and Abigale Adams (sic), Thomas Jefferson (sic), Benjamin Franklin (sic)--plus Diocletian because he retired as Emperor and belovedly took up gardening.
There's going to be lots of raspberries in about a month and a half, and I've found three very young peach trees. So far the history of the place records two peach groves to have been here, the first planted by the rich Quakers that owned the place sometime after the Swedish settlement (sic), and the grove planted by my mother throughout the mid-1980s to mid-1990s. I'm insisting on a new peach grove reenactment.
There was tons of spontaneous dill last year, but it's not gonna get that far this year.
Doing this stuff myself is all very new to me, but thankfully the best resident gardening mentor is still alive to teach me as I go along.


2006.05.05 14:09
Someone want to clue me into the Deleuze, de Landa, architecture connection?
I can clearly remember discussing D'Arcy in the Intergraph computer room at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Fine Arts sometime during the 1985-86 academic year. It was after I demonstrated the various results of the 'scale and rotate' command to one of the architectural faculty there. How many gateways to D'Arcy are really out there?
I can't for the life of me remember the faculty members name, but he was older and British (or was he a New Zealander?). Anyway, later that year he got one of the architecture students pregnant and a very quick marriage ensued.
Mille Plateaux published 1980.
A Thousand Plateaus published 1987.


2006.05.05 13:48
Favorite archinect poster
It's interesting how once a deception is seen the deception itself disappears and all that's really left is the truth.

2006.05.05 13:21
Old bmw's?
When I was 17 my father gave me my first car too, his first 1963 Mercedes, when he bought a second 1972 Mecedes for himself. What an early 1970s high school babe magnet that was. Won't you know it though, my first collision experience was with a Lincoln Continental Mark II in the high school parking lot--pure circus maximus. I still wonder how there was no damage to my car.
And then the 1963 remains became a beloved 1980s fashion statement.
And then in 1999 van Berkel and Bos write, "The architect is going to be the fashion designer of the future." Gosh, it really took them a long time to figure out what I could have told them about the future a long time ago.
Who owns Jeep these days?


2006.05.05 12:57
Protonike on May 3rd
Last weekend I started reading John Curran's Pagan City and Christian Capital: Rome in the Fourth Century from the beginning. I've owned the book for a few years now, but I've only read the ""Constantine and Rome: The Context of Innovation" until now. While reading "Conservator Urbis: Maxentius in Rome" I was constantly thinking of Eutropia, Maxentius' mother, and thinking how Maxentius seems to have learned much from her (except who his real father was). Then (on 2 May), while reading "The Christianization of the Topography of Rome, AD 337-384" I learned how Athanasius (St. Athanasius of Alexandria) is integral to the Pope Liberius / Antipope Felix II affair. [Yes, "Is there more "evidence" here of an imperial law of silence regarding Helena and the Cross?" is a question also now in my mind.] To be honest, all I really know about Athanasius comes from the five pages on Athanasius in Butler's Lives of the Saints, which I've read a few times over the last seven years.
On May 3rd I again go to read Butler's 'Athanasius' and I'm pleased to find 2 May is the feast of St. Athanasius of Alexandria (he died 2 May 373), but since it was 3 May I first checked to see what are the feasts 'today'. Aha, the quondam feast of The Finding of the Holy Cross, and a new passage of interest:
"Another apocryphal story which bears, though less directly, on the finding of the cross, is introduced, somewhat as a digression, into the document known as The Doctrine of Addai, of Syrian origin. What we are told here is that Protonike, the wife of the Emperor Claudius Caesar, less than ten years after our Lord's ascension, went to the Holy Land, compelled the Jews to reveal where the crosses were hidden, and distinguished that of our Saviour by a miracle wrought upon her own daughter. It is contended that this legend has suggested the story of St Helen and the discovery of the cross in the time of Constantine."
Immediately, I want to know more about Protonike, but there is nothing in Encyclopedia Britannica on her. Since it's already late at night my computer is off, so a web search will have to wait till 'tomorrow'. I'm nonetheless wondering if the Syrian-wife-of-an-emperor Eutropia knew about Protonike. Anyway, on to Athanasius, and another (re)new(ed) passage of interest:
"Upon his arrival [at Constantinople] he [Athanasius] accosted the emperor in the street in the attitude of a suppliant, and obtained an interview. So completely did he seem to have vindicated himself that Constantine, in reply to a letter from the Council of Tyre announcing that Athanasius had been condemned and deposed, wrote to the signatories a severe reply summoning them to Constantinople for a retrial of the case. Then, for some reason which has never been satisfactorily cleared up, the monarch suddenly changed his mind. Ecclesiastical writers naturally shrank from attaching blame to the first Christian emperor, but it would appear that he took umbrage at the outspoken language of Athanasius in a further interview. Before the first letter could reach its destination, a second one was dispatched which confirmed the sentences of the Council of Tyre and banished Athanasius to Trier in Belgian Gaul."
So, I wonder, did Athanasius trespass a law of silence actually face to face with an Imperial?
Alas, yesterday I quickly find out that Protonike is a fictitious character. I had no idea historical fiction had such an old history--it wouldn't surprise me though if Eutropia occasionally dabbled in writing some historical fiction herself. And now I see that there is also a thin line between historical fiction and imperial laws of silence.


2006.05.05 11:18
What if?
I don't know about the next five years, but I have time to do pretty much anything I want today, like write that email entitled "Protonike on May 3rd" and start blogging "Architectural Writers in Philadelphia" (over the last hundred years or so).

2006.05.05 11:00
Old bmw's?
Back in the early 1960s Mom used to say if she ever buys her own car it's going to be a BMW (very rare in the US back then). Since Dad already had a Mercedes, I then naturally came to the conclusion that BMWs are ladies cars. Nowadays, I see all over the place that everybody wants to be a lady.
After Mom's triumphal proclamations she'd always say, "It's Bavarian, you know."
Yeah, there's no doubt I've pretty much known a concentrated camp queen since the day I was born.

"Not only can you eat Pears Helene, but soon you can read Pears Helene too."


2006.05.05 10:41
Flying Pigs, the CAC and Sunday Brunch.....
I didn't see any mention of it, but surely you're all going on a toilet room tour too. I'll be there in spirit for that for sure, because you'll all be thinking of me virtually everytime you're in a toilet room, now for sure. Don't forget the black markers for signing some urinals, although I hear the latest thing now is to draw mustaches on them.

What's this, cast in place thinker meets read a novel?

2006.05.05 10:25
Architectural Pedagogy
Since it's one of the things I want to do before I die, I'm developing a course for blind people who want to teach some courses in architecture. It turns out here though that the blind people themselves are already the only people that can effectively teach this course. "It looks like," the blind consultant said, "maybe you should be developing a course for sighted people to learn how to accept blind people as capable of teaching some courses in architecture." "I think you're right, but you still like my idea of buildings (and classrooms) covered in braille, don't you?" "Oh yeah, especially the one mixed with carved hieroglyphics."
meanwhile...tick tick tick...


2006.05.03 18:33
Somewhat Incompletely Louis I. Kahn

Louis I. Kahn, Trenton Jewish Community Center Day Camp, 1957.   Aerial view from local.live.com

Louis I. Kahn, Trenton Jewish Community Center Day Camp, 1957. Plan

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