Dressed In Value is a graphic design studio in Louisville, Kentucky.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

I’m swelled with ideas and longing and memory, but at a loss for words. What can I say? The American West is amazing.

We flew into Albuquerque, New Mexico and took the train to Santa Fe. We stayed at a hostel, met some really great people, ate some really great food, saw some really wonderful artwork (surprisingly), saw some fascinating adobe architecture, visited a parish housing the most kindhearted priest I’ve ever met, and finally we were stranded by Greyhound at ten o’clock at night which forced a budget expansion to include a motel and car rental.

We spent a week in El Paso, Texas for my brother-in-law’s wedding. We were treated all too well. We ate a lot. We drank a lot. I wore a tuxedo. I was privileged to watch my new sister-in-law so joyfully glow during their marriage ceremony which was on a golf course in a country club surrounded by friends and family and desert mountains in perfect sunset weather. I learned how good Jack and Coke is and how great it can make you feel. I learned that in El Paso there was a mountain removed so that Walmart could build a new store, and that swings and mulberry trees have been banned from public parks. In El Paso there is a stretch of I-10 where you can see impoverished neighborhoods of Juárez, Mexico being looked down upon ironically and sadly by towering American bank buildings just across the border. In El Paso the Mexican cuisine is real and delicious.

We drove to Tucson, Arizona, staying in another hostel where I talked to a former architect who doesn’t like Frank Lloyd Wright’s work, nor seemed able to admit Wright contributed anything good to American architecture. We spent time at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum where we saw lots of birds and cacti and other things. We visited San Xavier del Bac Mission which is a Roman Catholic mission started in 1700, the current structure built in the late 18th century. We had seen it featured in a documentary. We ate tacos of cow tongue and cheek.

We drove to Joshua Tree, California. We entered the south entrance of Joshua Tree National Park, exiting the north. In between we saw fields of Joshua trees and weirdly shaped and placed boulders and other plant life, all while the sun was setting. It was strange and wonderful and beautiful. We visited my uncles at their amazing B&B just a mile outside the entrance to the park. We spent a whole day with them and had a great time, and we’re hoping to make it back in the spring when the flowers bloom. We met a neighboring artist and got to tour his studio-property.

We flew to San Francisco, California for the last four days of our trip. When we were in Santa Fe we met Liam Golden, a gentleman working one of the art galleries on Canyon Road. It just so happened to be that we were headed to San Francisco just days after he would be moving back. He invited us to stay at his family’s house. We canceled our hotel reservations a few days later. We arrived at his house per his detailed directions Thursday morning and he welcomed us with open arms and breakfast.

The next few days were spent not per our sketched itinerary (which included such destinations as a forest of red wood trees, Frank Lloyd Wright architecture, Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, etc.), but instead we walked the city, guided by our new good friend Liam. He showed us the way to the beach, the Sutro Bath ruins, sushi, Golden Gate Park, De Young Museum with a towering view of the city, the Japanese Tea Garden, Botanical Garden, Gilbert & Sullivan’s Iolanthe performed by the San Francisco Symphony, William Stout Architectural Bookstore, Chinatown, Huntington Park, a taqueria‎, and amidst all that, many wonderful conversations and (to borrow an adapted phrase from my uncle) time spent existing together in wonderment and appreciation of all things natural and urban. We were also able to visit Holy Trinity and Holy Virgin Orthodox Cathedrals.

Liam is truly a lover of his city, and he is truly a lover of his friends both new and old. His selfless hospitality was something entirely strange and new to me, and something immediately and lastingly bothering for my own lack of it. I am truly and deeply thankful for everything he did for us. I will never forget it. I can’t imagine what our perspective of the city would have been had we not met him.

Our trip began as an itinerary of destinations. It became rather a pilgrimage. The geographies, the wildlife, and the architectures were beautiful, but the people we met were beautiful beyond compare, and they will be living memories of our trip.

I don’t know how to put it all in words, and some of it I cannot, but this trip became of upmost importance. My life is forever changed, and I’m eager to see what fruit might be bore of it, eager to see what’s next.

Many more photos on Flickr.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Father Jonathan Tobias:

That is what summer’s for: pilgrimages, earth and sea, sun and affection, friendship and prayer, gardens and voyage to mountain and shore.

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

A couple days ago we were driving home on Frankfort Avenue. We were stopped by the red traffic light at the intersection of Frankfort and Ewing Avenues. There was a man on a bicycle also stopped at the light on the opposite side of the street, headed the opposite direction. I thought he looked familiar. I thought he looked like our mayor. His head and build were large like his would be, and this man was wearing a Louisville cycling jersey which seemed appropriate.

Just as the light turned green and we were trying to figure out if it was our mayor, another cyclist — of whom in his approach had apparently been calculating the timing of the light, possible throughway space, and his own speed of travel — whizzed by the man of prior description on his right side, which was what appeared to be about 3 feet of space followed by the curb. On his left, a few feet and a car. The racing cyclist did not announce himself. He made the calculation and took the risk — risking not his own well being only, but also that of the other cyclist.

It was in the next moment I realized that the stopped cyclist was indeed our Mayor Jerry Abramson. The racing cyclist whizzed by. When the mayor realized what had just happened, he pedaled forward and began yelling at the other cyclist to get his attention and call him out on his carelessness. But the racing cyclist would not hear because he was wearing earphones. And by his speed he was too far ahead to hear the slow traveling voice of a cyclist in the rear.

It all happened very quickly. There was no impact, no one got hurt. Just another case of a reckless cycler in our streets. But I wanted to remember this image of our Mayor Jerry Abramson who, riding his bike alone and approachable on Frankfort Avenue, set a good example for other cycling citizens to follow.

Thank you Mayor.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Michael Pollan on American perspective of We and Nature, from his book Second Nature:

A society that produces “gardens” (or “anti-gardens”) like Central Park is one that assumes nature and culture are fundamentally and irreconcilably opposed. And it seems to me that in order to design true gardens of distinction one must have a vision of how the two can be harmonized. It may be this that we lack. Americans have historically tended to regard nature as a cure for culture, or vice versa. Faced with the question of what to do with the land, we always seem to come up with the same crude alternatives: to virtuously subdue it in the name of “progress,” or to place it strictly off-limits in “wilderness areas,” hallowed places we go seeking an antidote to city life.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Frank Lloyd Wright remarking on the Marin County, CA Civic Center:

…the good building is not the one that hurts the landscape, but is one that makes the landscape more beautiful than it was before that building was built.