Saturday Prime

How long shall sinners, O Lord: how long shall sinners glory? / Shall they utter and speak iniquity? Shall all speak who work iniquity? / Thy people, O Lord, they have brought low: and they have afflicted thy inheritance. / They have slain the widow and the stranger and they have murdered the fatherless. / And they have said: The Lord shall not see. Neither shall the God of Jacob understand. / Understand, ye senseless among the people: and, you fools, be wise at last. / He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? Or he that formed the eye, doth he not consider? / He that chastiseth nations, shall he not rebuke: he that teaches man knowledge?

--- Psalm 93:3-10, Second Psalm for Prime on Saturday

Many good works

Today I went to mass at 12:30. It was the first time I've been to daily mass in awhile. The chapel was hot. We are at that time of year when the air conditioning is not on and one day of hot weather - like yesterday - can cause heat to linger in buildings for a bit. The priest was one I did not recognize. He had a booming, measured voice. He was a skilled orator. In his brief homily, he focused on these words from St. John's Gospel:

The Jews picked up rocks to stone Jesus. Jesus answered them, "I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of these are you trying to stone me?"

--- John 10:32

I had never noticed this particular verse before. It is one where I can really hear the voice of Jesus for some reason - a verse where he sounds particularly human. There's just a tinge of sarcasm present. The priest asked us to consider the times that we attempt to metaphorically stone Jesus despite the blessings we are given continually. He then related the scene to the temptation of the devil in the desert: "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test." If something we want isn't given to us from God, what is our response to be? First, thanksgiving for the other blessings we have. Second, hope in the plan of divine providence which is beyond all of our understanding. 

This passage presents a difficult lesson in humility. After mass, there was exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. There's humility.

A Creole tune

Bamboula, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, 1848 - First learned of this piece reading David McCullough's The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris last summer. Gottschalk was from New Orleans, but wrote this piece in Paris as an attempt to synthesize Creole and African music with classical European piano.

Nothin' to see

Travel has always been a predominantly visually-focused endeavor. We have always wanted to see the sights, or if there were any sights worth seeing. In our Age of Instagram, the visual is even more paramount to the experience of travel. As an aspiring design professional, I am of course biased toward the visual both naturally and as a consequence of my education. In terms of our popular culture, I suppose that means that I could probably get more Instagrams-per-square-inch out of more places than the average non-designer.

But, what happens when there's "nothin' to see." In Louisiana, apart from New Orleans, I was told there was "nothin' to see." On the face of it, that's fairly accurate: "the sights" are few and far between. But, it's often a separate joy finding the poetry in the mundane and the routine - even if it's not visually arresting. You can't photograph the chewiness of a piece of crawfish, described by a friend as "a little dirty shrimp." One can take a photo of the magnificent live oaks that shade the campus of LSU, but you can't depict the joy that they bring to the eyes of a winter-bound Northerner who is amazed that such great green things are such an ordinary part of daily life in some places in the world. And, since I attempted it, you can't really photograph the sense of benevolent enclosure those magnificent trees provide. I'd almost consider moving South just for the trees. And what about the rain? In five days I encountered several species of that multifarious creature. There was the light rain that was largely intercepted by the live oaks, leaving the pathways damp but puddle-free; there were clouds that simply stooped to eye-level and deposited their moisture radiantly; and then there were downpours worthy of Noah, soaking, flooding, washing dirt where it shouldn't be and then washing it clean. Then there were the various sociologist's delights. There was the fraternity house of Delta Chi where I was lodging (my friend - a student affairs Masters student - took a job as their house director) which gave me a few fleeting glances beneath the surface of Greek life. The campus provided further people-watching opportunities. I was amazed at how easy I found it to pick out people who were of French descent - the long Norman faces and often long wavy hair I saw everywhere made it seem like I was looking through my grandmother's old family album. The Cajuns were Canadian before they were Louisianian after all.

Sometimes when there's nothin' to see, I think I come home with a better sense of the place and its people.

Concrete hills

Between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, I-10 runs its path and neither swamp nor lake nor width of bayou can stay its course. A good portion of the road is a causeway built above the bizarre merging of land and water at the west end of Lake Pontchartrain. Other parts of the same lake are prone to various acts of apparent hubris: a highway bisects it from north to south, power lines stand a mile out in the midst of the flat waters, laughing at anyone who thought that electricity and moisture couldn't be friends. But here lonesome trees claw their way out of the swamp, only to be assailed by Spanish moss. The earth undulates between wet and dry with baffling rapidity. The only hills are concrete - the road will occasionally lift itself over a particularly wide channel of murky water, or it will reach even more remote altitudes launching itself across other roadways. From the summit of these concrete hills, one gets an almost unsettling view of the landscape. One is not supposed to see from up here. This is the privileged domain of the pelicans and the egrets and the cranes. But then you're back to the pancake flatness of the marsh and the traffic, crawling along like an alligator.

Traditionalist Urbanist

Pope Pius X once said that the true friends of the people are neither the revolutionaries nor the innovators, but the traditionalists. This quotation sprang to mind the other day when I saw a little video on urbanism produced by Alain de Botton. In it, de Botton explores six principles for making a good, beautiful city. As usual, he is a bastion of sensibility, pointing out that we may not say that beauty is objective but few people vacation in Frankfurt or Birmingham. We instinctively are drawn to and swept up in certain "beautiful" cities that exemplify the points de Botton brings up.



The video, posted on ArchDaily - a prominent online architecture outlet - aroused a bit of criticism from the commentariat, who alleged that de Botton has nothing new to say. I would agree. De Botton is not advocating some sort of novel urban theory - the 20th Century is littered with failed urban utopias. Instead, he is pointing out that the successful characteristics of Paris or Barcelona can and should be exported and even demanded by the population. We know we like these places so why do we let those in power say that all is subjective and any development is inherently as beneficial as any other development? The world is becoming rapidly more urban, the question is whether we will demand the tried-and-true planning methods that have sustained and delighted humanity for thousands of years or else be seduced by the dollar and all of the revolutionaries and innovators it motivates.

Product of being busy

Often, when I have many things I need to work on, I feel more creative. I'll find myself procrastinating by putting my mental energies into things that I find more interesting. Part of me thinks its a complete and utter waste of time to indulge in this habit, yet, I can't help but thinking that sketching or designing for fun teaches me things that can be applied later. Or that allowing a creative outburst stimulates the brain and allows me to be more productive overall. In any event, I've been a flurry of activity lately, as we find ourselves in the pre-Spring Break crunch.

Today, I partially developed a design for a house. The behind-the-scenes work has its genesis in a number of thoughts I've been having about an ideal room. What does the ideal room for living look like? While in France, I was consistently drawn to the high ceilings and comfortable proportions that the French employ in their apartments. Part of the delight was due to the large, famed French windows that could be accommodated by the larger proportions of the room. My other inspiration is also French in a roundabout way - the beautiful home of our Paris studio professor here in Washington. He designed and built a house on a wooded site in northwest DC that takes advantage of heavy timber construction and a large "great room" that can be adapted to many uses.

So, back to the ideal room. Assuming myself as the client, what would my main living space look like? Where would I want to invite people for dinner? I think a large room would be ideal - with the kitchen elsewhere (I wouldn't want my dirty dishes on view during after dinner conversation). Not too much furniture, either. After our final dinner in Paris, we went back to my sketching professor's apartment, and the evening quickly turned into a salsa-dancing lesson - we were able to push all of the furniture to the edge of the room, open the windows and have a dancing extravaganza til the wee hours (the good Côtes du Rhône helped considerably). Regardless, the ability to be flexible is important to me. Of course, whenever I'm designing a house, I always think about what Christmas would look like there, and how Thanksgiving dinner could be accommodated. These rituals comprise only a fraction of the year, but then again, given their importance, shouldn't they be easily adapted into the architecture of a home?

Above, you can see the fruits of my labors. Essentially a two-story concrete box, the room makes use of a variety of wood details to add warmth. Steel beams and simple lightbulb light fixtures add a casual, industrial feel. Bookshelves divide the dining area from the entry hall and kitchen beyond. Upstairs, a small balcony overlooks the space, providing an isolated perch for reading. The master bedroom and a small office space are behind the balcony.

So now I've designed a house and taken the time to write about it. I really should get back to real work.

Je me souviens

"He thought of the war and the English with the same bitterness. How could French-Canadians -- the only real Canadians -- feel loyalty to a people who had conquered and humiliated them, and were Protestant anyway? France herself was no better; she had deserted her Canadians a century and a half ago, had left them in the snow and ice along the Saint Lawrence surrounded by their enemies, had later murdered her anointed king and then turned atheist. Father Beaubien had no fondness for the Germans and no wish for them to win the war; he knew nothing whatever about them. But he certainly knew if a people deserted God they were punished for it, and France was being punished now."

--- from Two Solitudes by Hugh Maclennan (1945)

The book Two Solitudes is apparently a landmark of Canadian literature (I confess my ignorance of all Canadian literature outright - unless you can count Life of Pi). It takes place during and after World War I in Quebec, and follows the soap-opera-esque actions of the aristocratic Tallards - an old French landowning family who practically run the small fictional town of Saint-Marc. Adding depth to the story are a Nova Scotia sea captain who buys land in Saint-Marc, causing a stir amongst the entirely French population; the parish priest who resents Mr Tallard's anticlerical streak; a prominent English banker in Montreal; and Mr Tallard's Irish wife and two sons. 

I remarked a few weeks ago about "the pre-revolution" and how interesting it is to me to see what gives rise to massive social change. In the 1960s, Quebec (and France, but that is a separate issue) went through a massive societal upheaval known as the Quiet Revolution. The Church and the conservative provincial government were swept out of politics and social life. What had been one of the most institutionally vibrant centers of global Catholicism saw all of its influence vanish almost overnight. Of course, the Quebecois still employ church vocabulary as swear-words, even if fewer and fewer of them understand their origin. 

In any event, Two Solitudes paints a rather convincing picture of pre-Quiet Revolution Quebec. The Church was The People and they both resented what they perceived as English intrusion on their land and their way of life. I read somewhere that apart from the various Native American cultures, the French Canadians and the American Confederacy are the only "defeated" peoples of North America. They are the only two groups who have been told that their way of life and their rights to self-determination are wrong. Of course, we can exhaust a lot of time arguing over the merits of each, but I present the comparison as a way of understanding the thinking of the time period. In any event, the Quebecois in the Nineteenth and early-Twentieth Century regarded the English in much the same way that a Southerner might've regarded a Yankee during Reconstruction. The difference, as you may have guessed, was the Quebecois saw their struggle through intensely religious eyes. Not only was their way-of-life being repudiated - their faith was as well.

Thus, it seemed only natural that Church and State would make an alliance to assail what both saw as a common enemy. Yet, not every French-Canadian refused to fight. And, after the war, Canada had begun to develop a cultural cohesion distinct from the rest of the British Empire. World War II sealed the deal, and the post-war economic boom brought prosperity to both English and French in Canada. Thus, what good were the old Church-approved nationalist arguments that hinged on English oppression? Hadn't the period of the Church's usefulness in French-Canadian society run its course? If the national government is going to allow our French schools and our French culture in our French province, why do our institutions still need to be in the hands of the Church?

This is in my mind when I read about people wanting to build "a Catholic culture" that simply stands in opposition to the mainstream. I think the experience of the French Canadians should give us pause to examine our motives. The Gospel is a freeing joy, not a hammer with which to pound away at a perceived grievance. A Catholic culture that rests on the joy of the Gospel - difficult though it may be - will be ten times stronger than one that has its basis in the negation of the current cultural climate. If that climate improves, at least one historical example warns us that the Church will have then have simply been viewed a means to an end.

Extraordinary architecture

As part of my research-assistant duties, I've been editing a collection of 700-some written accounts of people's 'extraordinary architectural experiences' which were submitted as part of a survey of over 3,000 people in 2007. Reading them closely - in addition to taking a hideously long time (the Word document is about 500 pages) - has been interesting. There are some patterns and some buildings (the usual suspects) that crop up again and again. But, it has gotten me thinking about what I would submit to such a survey. I have been fortunate to be quite well traveled in my short life, and I've seen a lot of architecture, but to boil it down to a few 'extraordinary experiences' would be difficult, let alone a single one. The other, more formidable trouble is how to muster the appropriate words to describe the experience. Many of the stories sound flat simply because what they are attempting to describe is as difficult as pinpointing what is special about the architecture in the first place. One particularly poignant story that sticks out in my mind simply said, "I have no words. If I did, why bother building?"

I think my post the other day about Casa Malaparte would be perhaps the closest I could get. But that was a single moment. I could never describe the whole experience of the architecture of that place in the same detail.