On Framing & Jargon

The following is my side of an online exchange with a group of colleagues that consider themselves traditionalists:

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I'm not so interested in how dead architects thought of themselves as I am in useful ways of thinking of ourselves today. They thought of themselves the ways they did because of the conditions of the day. We should think of ourselves according to the conditions of our day, and how best to respond to them. Framing our work within the current context is essential. Otherwise, we might find ourselves fighting battles that were over long ago.

With that having been said, one construct which I've found very useful is the Classical-Vernacular Spectrum, which is the spectrum of traditional architecture. Even the very highest of the classical has some of the vernacular embedded within it, and even the most lowly of the vernacular is informed by the classical in some way. So classical ideals and vernacular necessities can be found at pretty much any point on the Spectrum, just in varying degrees. There is also a cross-axis from the romantic to the austere. It is possible to place all traditional architecture on this matrix, and arguably, most Modernist work as well.

But back to how we frame ourselves: There's the knowing of history, which can be entirely internal. In other words, just because we know something doesn't mean we have to demonstrate that fact to everyone. But the other issue is how we frame ourselves externally... my fear is that if we frame ourselves strongly with respect to history, then it's nothing for our adversaries to dismiss us with a verbal flick of the wrist: "they're just a bunch of relics, living in the past." The "nostalgia" charges stick as well, along with numerous other malcharacterizations.

As for the issue of jargon, it can be useful if it self-communicates. "Gizmo Green," for example, self-communicates broadly, as do other similar terms. Coming up with terms that spread on their own is highly efficient, because it means you don't have to be there to explain it every time. And you can even retire or die, and because the term has taken on a life of its own, it can spread without you. Buzz-worthy terms do something else as well: they attract inquisitive attention because a new listener thinks "there must be something interesting here because of the buzz, so I'd better listen." Basing our identity primarily upon history has the opposite effect: for all except the history buffs, there's usually the underlying presumption that the potential listener either knows it already, or they can look it up in a history book someday if they're ever so inclined.

Jargon can do the opposite, of course. Obscure jargon understood only by the adherents of the system that spawned it is completely opaque to everyone else. And in being opaque, it has the potential to make the adherents come off as being aloof, or even arrogant. In short, obscure jargon does nothing to advance a cause in most cases.

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Cross-Pollinating #FF on Twitter

#FF, or Follow Friday on Twitter is a time for people to tweet about who they most enjoy following, with the thought that others might want to follow them as well. Often, people send #FF tweets for a single category of people, like architects or planners. Frequently, many of these people know each other and likely already follow each other. Obviously, you pay a lot more attention to your mentions (when someone mentions you) than you do to random tweets in the stream, because someone has said something directly to you or about you. So a #FF tweet from someone else with your name in it gets your attention. Just now, I thought I'd try something a bit different... normally, I have so much going on that I don't participate in #FF, but a lot of people show me a lot of love on Twitter, and it seems like the decent thing to show some in return. So what I did was to select cross-sections of people I like, trying with each #FF tweet to mix it up so that most of the people in each tweet would be unlikely to know each other. I'm hoping that as a result, they'll check each other out and the #FF might be more effective than normal because of the cross-pollination.

What do you think?

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Cross-Pollinating #FF on Twitter

#FF, or Follow Friday on Twitter is a time for people to tweet about who they most enjoy following, with the thought that others might want to follow them as well. Often, people send #FF tweets for a single category of people, like architects or planners. Frequently, many of these people know each other and likely already follow each other. Obviously, you pay a lot more attention to your mentions (when someone mentions you) than you do to random tweets in the stream, because someone has said something directly to you or about you. So a #FF tweet from someone else with your name in it gets your attention. Just now, I thought I'd try something a bit different... normally, I have so much going on that I don't participate in #FF, but a lot of people show me a lot of love on Twitter, and it seems like the decent thing to show some in return. So what I did was to select cross-sections of people I like, trying with each #FF tweet to mix it up so that most of the people in each tweet would be unlikely to know each other. I'm hoping that as a result, they'll check each other out and the #FF might be more effective than normal because of the cross-pollination.

What do you think?

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RAW images

Why shoot RAW images? Here's why: This is the unmodified image that was originally shot (click each image for a link to a higher-res file on my Zenfolio site.) If you're shooting jpg, this is what you'd get. As you can see, the sky is pretty much washed out and a lot of detail is lost in the shadow of the trees. With a jpg file, there's only so much you can do with a mediocre image like this.

The images that follow represent only a tiny fraction of the things you can do with RAW images. For this first modification, I did an auto color balance and an auto exposure, and then bumped the clarity up 100 points and the vibrance 80 points. I bumped up the recovery, which recovers invisible detail from light areas. See all the detail it picks up in the sky that you couldn't see before? Also, if you look in the shadows under the trees, you can see where I was able to pick up some detail that was lost above. Click on the images to get a higher-res view.

This one is a cool effect that I use fairly often... here, I took the image above and just slid the clarity setting down to -80 rather than the +100 it was in the image above.

Finally, you might occasionally find this useful. In this one, I just took the image above and changed the saturation to -69. Personally, I like the more colorful stuff most of the time, but sometimes this can be useful.

And like I said, these are only a few of countless things you can do with RAW images. Great photographers might have gotten a great image to start with, but with RAW, you have other options as well. Give it a try.

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RAW images

Why shoot RAW images? Here's why: This is the unmodified image that was originally shot (click each image for a link to a higher-res file on my Zenfolio site.) If you're shooting jpg, this is what you'd get. As you can see, the sky is pretty much washed out and a lot of detail is lost in the shadow of the trees. With a jpg file, there's only so much you can do with a mediocre image like this.

The images that follow represent only a tiny fraction of the things you can do with RAW images. For this first modification, I did an auto color balance and an auto exposure, and then bumped the clarity up 100 points and the vibrance 80 points. I bumped up the recovery, which recovers invisible detail from light areas. See all the detail it picks up in the sky that you couldn't see before? Also, if you look in the shadows under the trees, you can see where I was able to pick up some detail that was lost above. Click on the images to get a higher-res view.

This one is a cool effect that I use fairly often... here, I took the image above and just slid the clarity setting down to -80 rather than the +100 it was in the image above.

Finally, you might occasionally find this useful. In this one, I just took the image above and changed the saturation to -69. Personally, I like the more colorful stuff most of the time, but sometimes this can be useful.

And like I said, these are only a few of countless things you can do with RAW images. Great photographers might have gotten a great image to start with, but with RAW, you have other options as well. Give it a try.

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A Most Revolutionary Homeless Mission

I had the great pleasure of working with New Urban Guild members Julie Sanford and Eric Moser for Joel Embry on a mini-charrette that ended yesterday for the Clara White Mission in Jacksonville, Florida. The Mission is run by the ebullient Ju'Coby Pittman, who might remind you a bit of Oprah in her thinner days.

The coolest thing about the charrette wasn't anything we did, but rather what the Mission is already doing: They feed roughly 500 people per day, and they make the assumption that if someone is homeless, they probably have employability issues for some reason or another. And so they've started a jobs training program. The janitorial program might come as no great surprise, but how about this: they also have... a culinary school! They figure that there are tons of jobs in kitchens all over Jacksonville, and until the recent downturn, nearly 80% of their graduates were hired by restaurants upon graduation.

Here's how it works: any homeless person that they feed is eligible to apply for admission to the culinary school. Everyone on the street has issues of some sort, of course, but they need to make sure that the issues are manageable before handing them the knives. Once someone enters either school, they house them in the Mission's dormitory for the duration of the courses. And they train by cooking for those 500 people per day. They also cook for another venue "the cafe," if I recall correctly, located in a downtown church, where anyone can come on the weekends and buy a meal. And they're good at what they do: they provided most of the meals during the charrette, and they were delicious! The bottom line, of course, is that they're taking people that need to be fed and turning many of them into feeders. I find that exceptionally cool.

Our project was to take a parcel of land they own a couple miles away from downtown and develop it into three things: a culinary school and restaurant open to the public, a community of cottages based on our Katrina Cottages work, and an urban farm. They're starting a farmer training program as well, and the food they produce will go first to the mission, then to the restaurant and the farmers' market. They're also starting a building arts school, and the students will build the cottages. By covering the bases of cleaning, cooking, farming, and building, they're providing the most often-demanded skills in our economy. Sheer brilliance, if you ask me. What do you think?

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30 Years After Adopting a Mystery

What happens when you adopt a mystery rather than just leaving it where you found it? It might take years, but eventually, you'll probably unlock it. The day after Thanksgiving marks the 30-year anniversary of the adoption of a mystery that just might play a role in building our world sustainably.

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Humans... Past and Future?

Great image from Steve Coyle... is this what is happening to us?

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Kudos to Apple on iPhone Tethering

Some may have done this for ages, but I've just figured out how to tether my iPhone to my MacBook Pro. I remember trying it before Snow Leopard and it was complicated... sort of felt like a hack or a patch. Now, it's all built into the system. Go to Setting>General>Network and turn Internet Tethering on. Then, just follow the instructions. You'll have to go to AT&T and change your plan; they charge an extra $15/month for tethering, but I'm now debating dropping Boingo and/or TMobile hotspots, as tethering likely will do the job. Plus, you can tether your laptop to the internet from anywhere you have phone access, not just at a hotspot. I'm going to test it for a month or so and see how it goes, but if I can actually drop the other services, then it'll save money. Thanks, Apple!

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Bad CRJ70 Redesign, Delta!!!

The old interior design of Delta's CRJ70 regional jets had small overhead bins but ample space under the seats. The newly-redesigned interiors have even smaller overhead bins and much-reduced space under the seats. There's NO WAY I'm going to gate-check my gear bag, which contains my computer, hard drives, and camera, amongst many other important things. Today, flying on this mis-designed monster for the first time, I regrettably had to unpack a lot of less-fragile stuff like books and store it overhead so the bag would fit under the seat, with my seat-mate, who had to get up, unfortunately blocking the aisle the whole time. If Delta doesn't like that, then my other choice is to simply not fly Delta. My gear bag is that important!

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#LetsBlogOff: Things That Make Me Laugh?

I participate in a new blogosphere phenomenon known as #LetsBlogOff on Twitter, where word of each blog post is spread. Normally, I take the topic in a green direction and post it on the Original Green Blog, but I just can't find a way to do that with today's topic because laughing seems so far from me now. I thought I'd explain why on Useful Stuff instead, since it's my wider-ranging blog.

Why can't I laugh now? Because my father was taken to the hospital in a coma on Friday, and while he's regained some confused consciousness, they still don't know what's happening to him. And this low-hanging cloud over the days that followed has left me with an aching consciousness of his mortality and that of my mother as well. So this post is dedicated to two highly extraordinary people to whom I owe so much.

Dad, you taught me everything I know about craftsmanship and a care for detail, and also about a love for things and places that are beautiful. I remember helping you on jobsites as a child, as you built your cabinets, but you weren't just any cabinet-maker. I also remember when you were injured, and spent the next year in a back-brace and in bed; it's a wonder your back wasn't broken in the fall through a hole in the floor of a construction site someone had carelessly covered with tarpaper. It was during that year that Mother had to find a way to help pay the mounting bills; she started teaching sewing lessons, then became the first author in our family by writing a book on sewing. Years later, an old builder told me that you had been known all over north Alabama as the absolute best. He said "we didn't even call your father by his name; we simply called him "Mr. Perfect." We'd say "this is a job for Mr. Perfect," and everyone would know exactly who we meant."

Dad & Mother, I clearly remember the years that followed. You had each spent your young years in the ministry, so there had been no college for either of you... not that there would have been money to pay for it, as you grew up as the son of a dirt farmer and a coal miner's daughter. And so after the injury, with debts mounting, you found that with no education, the clearest path to income was sales. I remember each time you got into another line of sales, working together, you would soon become the top salespeople in the company... but then the company would fail. That's why, in my mid-teen years you opened a health food store so you wouldn't suffer anymore from the incompetence of others.

Dad, you supplemented income from the store by selling real estate. Mother, you found your real calling as a healer. Or rather, as a facilitator of healing. Most stores focus on the cash register. Yours focused on a circle of benches. Your customers would come in and spend hours sometimes, talking with each other and literally healing themselves. The healing that emanated from your store became so well known that several doctors in town would tell patients "I can't do anything with you, but go see Ruth, and she might be able t help you. Again and again, people would come in for the first time on crutches or in wheelchairs, walking out the door weeks or months later under their own power. Your healing effects grew legendary all across the region, to the point that tens of thousands know you today as "Huntsville's Mother Teresa." I remember wondering years ago how you might die, being such a healer of others. And then it occurred to me: barring an accident, whatever killed you would have to be something that takes your mind. And so you've been dying of Alzheimer's for ten years now.

But things like this, Mr. Perfect and Huntsville's Mother Teresa, as singularly extraordinary as they are, do not begin to tell the story. They say the light in the night sky from the stars you can't see is actually several times brighter than the light from stars you can see because there are so many millions you can't see and only a couple thousand you can see. We are fortunate to have so many family and friends who revere the idea of living for others, but I have never seen anyone live it like you two. Because of this, like the light from the stars you can't see, the magnitude of the good you have done will never really be known. Because it's good done for others in thousands of little acts you've probably forgotten about... acts of healing, acts of encouragement, acts of pointing people in the right direction when they have begun to lose their way... or maybe entirely lost their way. I suspect that if the truth could ever be known, the net effect of 53 years of Fred & Ruth has been more good and more healing than almost any of the great people who made names for themselves in the world's history books... precisely because your greater passion wasn't your own fame, but was making others well and making others better, and then they went and spread the good far beyond what you could have done yourselves.

To simply thank you for this kind of example would be a pitifully trite understatement, and I won't do that. This requires actions, not just words... "go, and do likewise." But none of us who have known you and watched you for years are that good... we're not nearly that good. But the real lesson from your years is the great lesson of life: spreading good like seeds by doing for others can have a far greater effect than any of us could have individually... because it can keep on spreading. And the rest of us can hope for that.

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