Write to your representatives

My football coach at Baker used to tell us every day at practice that on that day, we would either improve or worsen, there is no such thing as staying where we are. That every practice was an opportunity to get better as a player, and as a team, or get worse. 

He was right, keeping the status quo is a myth that we use to rationalize poor performance. Every day you can either get better at what you do or get worse at it. If you are preparing for a for a football game, you either improve as a player and as a team, or you get worse. If you are designing a building, every line on every page either adds to, or detracts from, the design of the space and to the built environment as a whole. If you are trying to lose weight, every meal you eat helps you get to that goal faster or holds you back longer. I seem to get worse at that one by the day. 

After a day like Friday, we will either get better as a people and as a country or get worse, keeping the status quo is a myth. Inaction is equal to poor action. I have been a strong believer in the second amendment for as long as I can remember, and I remain so today. I also believe that we need to reinstate the assault weapons ban that was in place from 1994 to 2004, and make it permanent. There is no place for weapons of war on the streets or in the homes of America. 

How can I be a defender of the second amendment and also be in favor of an assault weapons ban? Because I believe that the second amendment should be treated just like the other twenty six - with rational thought and reasonable limits. The Bill of Rights grants us the freedom of speech, but not to yell fire in a crowded theater. It grants us the freedom of press, but not to dishonestly slander, the freedom to assemble but not to riot. It protects us from unreasonable search and seizure, but not from warrantless wiretaps of our phone calls.  We should have the right to keep and bear arms, but not assault weapons and high capacity magazines that are specifically designed to efficiently end the highest number of human lives as fast as mechanically possible. 

There are opponents on either side of this view. Those that wish to ban all guns, and those do not want any regulation, whatsoever. I respectfully disagree with both of these views. Shaking your fist and yelling that your side is right and good and that the other side is wrong and evil, is destructive to rational discourse, and accomplishes nothing. We are better than that. At least we can be. 

Statistics tell us that we have a problem with guns in this country, and that the problem is getting worse by the day. Every country in the developed world that has instituted restrictions on gun ownership has been made better because of it. I am not going to draw this out with a list of statistics, but I will encourage you to do your own unbiased research if you disagree with me, and I am confident that you will come to the same conclusion that I have. The number of killing sprees in this country is nothing but unacceptable, and it is time we did something about it. 

Some opponents say we need to ban all guns and ammunition immediately, no compromise. Aside from the fact that this is not politically possible, there is no reason to take away the guns of the overwhelming majority of law abiding citizens and end the long tradition of sport and hunting associated with them.  

Some say the answer is more guns, and have even gone as far to suggest soldiers, or some sort of para-military force in schools. It is difficult to reply seriously to this view, but I will offer this. You know that uneasy feeling that comes with being in an airport in Mexico or Croatia, surrounded by soldiers with automatic weapons, like you've just stepped into a war zone? Is that really the environment that we want to live our lives in, or that we want to send our kids to learn in? And for the crazies who are worried that we might have to someday violently overthrow the government, you really want the government guarding elementary schools with soldiers when that day comes? 

Some say that banning assault weapons will not stop all deaths by guns, so why even bother? It is true that banning assault weapons will not end all deaths, but it is also true that some lives will be saved. We do not have a cure for cancer, does that mean that we should throw up our hands and not even try to fight it? Why waste the billions of dollars spent on cancer research if people are still going to die? 

Because some people are going to live. 

I think that anyone who has lost a loved one to that horrific disease, or anyone who has spent a few more days or months or years with someone they love who has beaten it will tell you that it is absolutely worth the fight. Just because people are still dying does not mean we should stop trying to save others. 

Opponents will also say that if we outlaw assault weapons, then only criminals will have them, and if someone wants to go on a shooting spree, they will find a way to do it. They will get the weapons somehow. I was not given the gift of premonition that these people were, but I am willing to ask this question. What if the next person that wants to shoot up an elementary school tries to find an assault riffle on the black market, but tries to buy from an undercover agent, and the tragedy is averted? 

What if that keeps 27 lives from being snuffed out an elementary school? What if that keeps 20 first graders from being murdered, execution style, each one shot multiple times, one as many as ten times?

What if it was your child that was shot ten times while learning to read? 

While I said that I will not bog this down with statistics, I will repeat just one jaw-dropping statistic from Nicholas Kristof's editorial in Saturday's New York Times. Children ages 5 to 14 in America are thirteen times more likely to be murdered with guns as children in other industrialized countries, according to Harvard public health specialist David Hemenway. Just let that sink in for a minute. Read it again if you have to. Seriously, read that again.  

Read the rest of Kristof's op-ed here. 

I have fired hand guns and automatic weapons, own a couple of shotguns, and I love to shoot. I would even support the right to continue to shoot automatic weapons at licensed and inspected ranges controlled by the state. But ordinary citizens should not be able to own them or carry them on the street.

I'm willing to give up my right to own an assault weapon to give the small chance that a day like Friday can be avoided in the future. Are you willing to give up yours?  

I will be writing my representatives to voice my opinion, and I encourage you to do the same. Ask your representatives to act in the best interests of our children, and not to tuck tail and cower to threats from the NRA.  

I know that there are many out there who disagree with me, and I encourage you to write as well. If you are not willing to give up your right to own an assault weapon to give the small chance that six people wont be killed at at a shopping mall while talking to their congresswoman, or that your neighbor wont be killed while watching a movie at the theater tonight, or that the child down the road wont be murdered at school tomorrow, that is your right, and you should make it known. 

We will either get better as a country, or get worse, there is no such thing as staying the same. 

If you live in New Haven, your Representative is Rosa DeLauro: 

Washington, D.C. Office 2413 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 (202) 225-3661 Fax:(202) 225-4890

Main District Office 59 Elm Street New Haven, CT 06510 (203) 562-3718 Fax:(203) 772-2260 Phone: 203-378-9005

Senators are Joe Lieberman: 

Connecticut Office One Constitution Plaza 7th Floor Hartford, CT 06103 860.549.8463 (Voice) 800.225.5605 (In CT) 866.317.2242 (Fax)

Washington DC Office 706 Hart Office Building Washington, DC 20510 202.224.4041 (Voice) 202.224.9750 (Fax)

And Richard Blumenthal:

• Hartford
  90 State House Square, 10th Floor

  Hartford, CT, 06103
  tel (860) 258-6940
  fax (860) 258-6958
• 
  
  
  

  Washington D.C.

  
  

  702 Hart Senate Office Bldg.

  Washington, DC, 20510tel (202) 224-2823

  fax (202) 224-9673
  
  

  If you are in Lawrence or northeast Kansas, your congressman is Kevin Yoder: 
  
  
  Washington, DC

  214 Cannon HOB

  Washington, DC 20515

  Phone: (202) 225-2865

  Hours: Monday-Friday

  9:00AM -6:00PM EST
  
  

  
  

  
  

  Overland Park

  7325 W. 79th St.

  Overland Park, KS 66204

  Phone: (913) 621-0832

  Fax: (913) 621-1533

  Hours: Monday-Friday

  8:00AM -5:00PM CST

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Senators are Jerry Moran: 

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Russell Senate Office Building

  Room 354

  Washington, D.C. 20510

  Phone: (202) 224-6521

  Fax: (202) 228-6966

  
  
  

  
  

  
  

  P.O. Box 1154

  23600 College Blvd Suite 201

  Olathe, KS 66061

  Phone: (913) 393-0711

  Fax: (913) 768-1366

  
  
  

  
  

  
  

  and Pat Roberts: 

  
  

  Washington, D.C. Office

  
  

  109 Hart Senate Office Building

  
  

  Washington, DC 20510-1605

  Phone: 202-224-4774

  Fax: 202-224-3514

  
  

  Overland Park, KS Office

  
  

  11900 College Boulevard

  
  

  Suite 203

  Overland Park, KS 66210

  Phone: (913) 451-9343

  Fax: (913) 451-9446
  
  
  
  
  
  

Happy 100th, Woody

Yesterday would have been Woody Guthrie's 100th birthday, and nearly fifty years after his death in 1967, Guthrie's songs about the common man in 1930s middle America are as poignant as ever. Guthrie used hillbilly humor, broken English and a thick Oklahoma accent to tell his story because he wanted his message to be heard by the men and women he was singing for. Covering a Woody Guthrie song has become a badge of authenticity for American artists, and without Guthrie the landscape of American music would be wholly foreign.

Before Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, The Band, The Grateful Dead, Bruce Springsteen, Emmylou Harris, Johnny Cash or Jeff Tweedy, there was Woody Guthrie.

I took a bath this morning in six war speeches, and a sprinkle of peace. Looks like ever body is declaring war against the forces of force. That's what you get for building up a big war machine. It scares your neighbors into jumping on you, and then of course they them selves have to use force, so you are against their force, and they're against yours. Look like the ring has been drawed and the marbles are all in. The millionaires has throwed their silk hats and our last set of drawers in the ring. The fuse is lit and the cannon is set, and somebody is in for a frailin. I would like to see every single soldier on every single side, just take off your helmet, unbuckle your kit, lay down your rifle, and set down at the side of some shady lane, and say, nope, I aint gonna kill nobody. Plenty of rich folks wants to fight. Give them the guns. - Woody Guthrie

Woody's repertoire was beyond category. His songe make my head spin, made me want to gasp. For me it was an epiphany. It was like I had been in the dark and someone had turned on the main switch of a lightning conductor. - Bob Dylan

I love a good man outside the law,

Just as much as I hate a bad man inside the law.

- Woody Guthrie 

"This Land is Your Land" by Guthrie has become the sort of alternative National Anthem, and while Guthrie himself sang many versions of the song, the folk song sung by children in school across the nation usually has a few of his original verses missing: 

As I went walking I saw a sign there

And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."

But on the other side it didn't say nothing,

That side was made for you and me

Nobody living can ever stop me,

As I go walking that freedom highway;

Nobody living can ever make me turn back

This land was made for you and me.

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;

By the relief office, I'd seen my people.

As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,

Is this land made for you and me?

David Rawlings and Gillian Welch do a great version together. Here it is, inserted into Rawlings' song "I Hear Them All"

Here are a few more Guthrie originals and some subsequent covers. The songs are authentic in their narration of depression-era America, and while they are stories of the downtrodden, struggling, and heartbroken, there is always an underpinning of optimism and pride that hold everything together. 

Freedom

There was something about freedom he thought he didn't know

                                                                                          -Neil Young, Hangin' on a Limb 

The Move

Moved to a new apartment in New Haven last weekend. I will post some photos and sketches of the neighborhood, Wooster Square, later.

For now, I had a some requests to send photos of the new place, so I decided a take a few more than a few, and make a little video out of them.

For this move down the road tonight, the video is narrated by Hayes Carll, and his song....Down the Road Tonight...

"
The Move 1 from C T on Vimeo.
"

Maurice Sendak

And Max the king of all the wild things was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all. 


Then all around from far away across the world he smelled good things to eat so he gave up being king of where the wild things are. 

Levon Helm

1940-2012

If you pour some music on whatever's wrong, it'll sure help out

Lafayette Park - Detroit

About a week ago, Google celebrated Mies van der Rohe's 126th birthday with a doodle of his 1956 project, Crown Hall, at the Illinois Institue of Technology in Chicago. The doodle came complete with four box girders, their eight supporting columns, and 'Google' cleanly spelled across the facade (The letters with appropriate levels of transparency, according to their clear or frosted glass hosts, were a nice touch). So I wanted to take a minute to write a bit about Mies' Lafayette Park project in Detroit.

I had the pleasure of sitting in on a lecture in January at the Yale School of Architecture by Charles Waldheim, Chair of Landscape Architecture at Harvard. Waldheim is often credited with coining the term Landscape Urbanism, or the use of landscape and the organization of horizontal elements, rather than buildings, as the driver of urban form. I tend to recoil from the thought of sprawling landscapes as an organizer of city form, while visions of lifeless, drab suburbs flash in front of my eyes. I usually find myself gravitating towards dense cityscapes, vibrant neighborhoods and tree lined streets, pockets of the city carved out as park space. I am of the mind that urban spaces should be urban and rural spaces should be rural, both valuable to each other, yet independent. The space in between the two tends to struggle for identity.

Lafayette Park is certainly more park than urbanism, yet I find myself drawn to its serene configuration. The project was the first urban renewal project in the US, and remains arguably the most successful, despite Detroit's present condition. Mies is often credited with the project, probably because his is the most famous name of the group, but the project's success is a direct result of a triumphant collaboration between architect (Mies), planner (Ludwig Hilbersheimer), landscape architect (Alfred Caldwell), developer (Herbert Greenwald) and city. Lafayette Park is the largest collection of Mies buildings in the world, but it would not have succeeded had all the valuable pieces not performed their roles so well.

Hilbersheimer demanded that the project be available to residents of every social and economic situation. Caldwell brought a sophisticated ecological infrastructure, and Mies designed refined yet affordable buildings. While it is no secret that Mies was a tireless self promoter and the number one starchitect of his day, his clean and efficient buildings often cost less per square foot than many of his contemporaries. Lafayette Park is a shining example of that ability.

Courtesy: Michigan Modern

The city of Detroit has been slowly decaying since the first half of the 20th century, this project was an effort  to curb the trend of flight to the suburbs that Detroit, along with so many other cities, experienced in post-war America. The site of the project was formerly known as 'Black Bottom' section of Detroit, named for rich soil deposits brought by flooding in the early years of the city. The neighborhood's residents were displaced and the buildings demolished, sitting empty for years, while the city haggled and argued over what to do with the site before bringing in the team of Greenwald, Mies, Hilbersheimer and Caldwell.





Greewald declared when the project started that "this city is damned, but by no means doomed". He envisioned a community within a city where the residents could live, work, shop and play. The program included dwelling units, office space, shopping and a public school. Greenwald knew that the project would not be able to house enough permanent residents to support the retail that was required, so all of the large commercial blocks were located at the periphery of the site, creating a porous boundary to the park that could be accessed by both insiders and outsiders.

In his lecture, Waldheim drew some fascinating parallels between the abandonment of 20th Century Detroit and the abandonment of ancient Rome, and how the later played a crucial role in the development of the type of landscape urbanism that makes the former such a success.

Rome sat as an empty shell of its former self inside its Aurelian walls for nearly a millenium, making present day Detroit look like Paris. In the sixth century, the population of Rome dropped from over one million to less than 30,000 people due to warfare, famine, and social unrest. The population of Detroit has dropped from over 1.8 million at its peak in 1950, to under 900,000 in 2009.

The Ruins of Detroit is the website that immediately came to mind during the lecture.

He tied in the notion of urban landscape's origin as a theatrical backdrop founded in 14th Century theater and art where landscape was used as a way of seeing the world. How modern landscape is a product of emotional loss, the loss of a tie with man's foundational natural surroundings. He also highlighted Claude Lorrain's paintings of the small pieces of the disabitato that remained in the 16th century. His landscapes were so attractive because they depicted not what is rural, but what was once urban, which is fascinating to me.

Lafayette park, while not a pure urbanism, is certainly not suburban or rural. It is a unique project that broke a lot of rules and succeeded. Members of the development team made demands that were adhered to - mixing of social classes, richly functioning ecological systems, world class architecture - and the project is an overwhelming success by any measure. A superb example of urban renewal that can work. Certainly not what comes to mind when I think of what downtown blocks of major cities should be, but a fantastic project. 

Present day Detroit is often referred to as a blank cavas for architects and city planners. Lafayette Park certainly shows one way to paint the Image of the City.  

Courtesy: Dwell

Dwell

Michigan Modern

For more images and testimonials of Lafayette Park, here is a New York Times interactive feature and a slideshow from Dwell.

Ralph McQuarrie

Ralph McQuarrie, the artist who gave life to George Lucas' script for Star Wars, died last week, so I wanted to give a little tribute to the man whose mind changed the world of design and of filmmaking forever.

McQuarrie used his experience as a designer, animator, technical illustrator for Boeing, and as a soldier in the Korean War to create some of the most recognizable characters in history. I always find myself drawn to artwork that references a technically rich base to create a fantastically vivid story. McQuarrie was certainly a master of that. 

Here is a quote by McQuarrie that I enjoy: 

"I used to try squeezing work out, but it's like toothpaste in a tube that will only come out so fast … There's no point pounding my brain – the best thing I can do is collect my thoughts as soon as I'm told what's needed. Then I lie down and let it gel unconsciously. I sort of semi-sleep, and somewhere along the way of going to sleep or coming out of it, I get exactly what I need – it's just there, rising like the bubbles in champagne from somewhere inside."

In addition to Star Wars, McQuarrie worked on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Arc, Cocoon, and more. Many of the most iconic scenes, images and characters in (at least my) history of film were born out of McQuarrie's imagination.

Here are a few of his visions before any actors were ever cast.

Kansas

I wanted to post this before the Missouri game, but an uncompromising work load caused a bit of a delay. I actually got the idea for the drawing and started laying it out on Kansas Day, January 29th. I decided the Missouri game would be the natural time to finish and publish the drawing, but alas, here we are, March 3rd. We just happen to be taking on the apparent new rival tonight, though. Texas. They are down this year but will surely be back. 

No rivalry could ever dream to match what we had with Missouri, but against Texas, at least we will be playing a team that is able to compete for a championship on an almost yearly basis. 

I want to be able to put my thoughts on the death of our rivalry with Missouri on paper at some point, but for now, here is a drawing for the Texas game. It didn't turn out quite like I wanted it, but I hope you like it...Rock Chalk.