The Scottosphere

“Every town has the same two malls: the one white peo­ple go to and the one white peo­ple used to go to.”
— Chris Rock, quoted in The New York Times

“One rea­son for the malls’ prob­lems is that the sub­urbs have changed. When the South­dale shop­ping cen­tre opened on the out­skirts of Min­neapo­lis, the sub­urbs were almost entirely white and middle-class. Whites were flee­ing a wave of new arrivals from the South (the black pop­u­la­tion of Min­neapo­lis rose by 155% between 1940 and 1960). Although [shop­ping mall pio­neer Vic­tor] Gruen could not bear to admit it, his inven­tion appealed to those who wanted downtown’s shops with­out its pur­ported dan­gers. These days, in Min­neapo­lis as in much of Amer­ica, the eth­nic drift is in the oppo­site direc­tion. The sub­urbs are becom­ing much more racially mixed while the cities fill up with hip, afflu­ent whites. As a result, sub­ur­ban malls no longer pro­vide a refuge from diver­sity.”
— The Econ­o­mist, 22 Decem­ber 2007, p. 103

The phrase “refuge from diver­sity” sticks with me. Is that really some­thing peo­ple need to feel comfortable?

Have a great Christ­mas. Stay tuned for some changes within the next cou­ple of weeks…

The griz­zled man crammed into the win­dow seat beside me was leaf­ing through a copy of The Pro­gres­sive Farmer mag­a­zine (“Get More from Your Life on the Land”). Where could he be going?

“Back to my farm in Arkansas. I’m a reg­is­tered cat­tle farmer.”

I learned that reg­is­tered cat­tle are used for things like breeding—not beef. Where was he com­ing from?

“From Delaware. I also run an I.T. con­sult­ing busi­ness, and I have a client there.”

Now that is diversification.

I still haven’t fin­ished putting my China pho­tos on the Web—shocking, I know! But you can see my favorite Widelux shot from that trip in tomorrow’s issue of the Weekly Dig.

A con­cert mini-review

The Tallis Schol­ars (dir. Peter Phillips)
St. Paul Church, Har­vard Square
Decem­ber 7, 2007

I chose this event for my annual dose of live clas­si­cal music pri­mar­ily for two rea­sons: One, they are named for one of my favorite com­posers, Thomas Tallis. Two, the series (the Boston Early Music Fes­ti­val) is spon­sored by my bank, the Cam­bridge Trust Com­pany, which has demon­strated excep­tion­ally good taste in choos­ing what to spon­sor. It doesn’t hurt that I secretly enjoy Renais­sance music, and the New York Times has called the Tallis Schol­ars “the rock stars of Renais­sance vocal music.”

Rock stars for a night, indeed they were. The audi­ence (by my esti­mates 99.5% white and at least 80% over the age of 40) prac­ti­cally gave them a stand­ing ova­tion for walk­ing onto the stage. And it was the first time I’ve ever seen a clas­si­cal group get cajoled into deliv­er­ing an encore. They met our expec­ta­tions though, with a set list by Lher­i­tier, Palest­rina, Mou­ton, Crec­quil­lon, Josquin Des Prez, and Jacobus Gal­lus. I had never heard of Gal­lus before—perhaps because he died in 1591—but the three pieces of his that they per­formed were my clear favorites of the evening. The encore (an unusual ver­sion of In dulce jubilo) was awesome.

The Schol­ars’ blend and tone was so per­fect that, as L. pointed out dur­ing the inter­mis­sion, it is easy to for­get that one is lis­ten­ing to peo­ple singing. The sound is sort of tran­scen­den­tal. Awesome.

Doc­tor, my eyes
Tell me what is wrong.
Was I unwise
to leave them open for so long?

The Jack­son Browne tune got stuck in my head dur­ing my eye exam. I sang it the whole way home. Now this screen is dri­ving my dilated pupils crazy—adios!

This year, we cel­e­brated Thanks­giv­ing at my sister’s apart­ment in Indi­anapo­lis. It was a fun change from the usual rou­tine. The food came out well and every­one enjoyed themselves.

Many fam­i­lies have tra­di­tions for what to do with the fol­low­ing Fri­day. We don’t. Clearly some kind of road trip was in order, but there was lit­tle con­sen­sus on where to go. I cam­paigned relent­lessly for a tour of Colum­bus, Indiana—a quiet town of 39,000 about 40 miles south of the cap­i­tal. Even­tu­ally every­body gave in and that’s where we went.

Colum­bus is home to the Cum­mins Engine Com­pany, and seem­ingly lit­tle else. But Colum­bus is per­haps most widely known among archi­tec­ture cir­cles as one of America’s pre­mier show­cases of mod­ern archi­tec­ture. Cum­mins Engine co-founder J. Irwin Miller was an archi­tec­ture lover who in the 1950s set up a foun­da­tion to cover the costs of hir­ing cutting-edge archi­tects to design any new pub­lic build­ings in town: gov­ern­ment build­ings, banks, schools, and churches. So it hap­pens that Columbus’s streets are a Who’s Who of archi­tec­ture. But as the vis­i­tor center’s video is quick to point out, these are not a col­lec­tion of osten­ta­tious show­pieces. Some­how they man­age to fit together organically—visually and func­tion­ally inte­grated with the com­mu­nity. It’s an achieve­ment that has not been par­al­leled else­where, and it’s lovely to behold.

Among the highlights:

• First Chris­t­ian Church (1942, Eliel and Eero Saari­nen). The first mod­ern church in the United States, every­thing about this build­ing is slightly off-center and way ahead of its time.
• Irwin Union Bank and Trust (1954, Eero Saari­nen). Eero Saari­nen is my favorite archi­tect. You have undoubedly encoun­tered his works already: the one-of-a-kind St. Louis Arch, the widely-copied Dulles Air­port main ter­mi­nal, and MIT’s Kresge Audi­to­rium and Chapel. This single-story bank is a gor­geous throw­back to the 1950s. The built-in file cab­i­nets and cus­tom fur­ni­ture are still being used today.
• North Chris­t­ian Church (1964, Eero Saari­nen). This church is a mas­ter­piece. The roof lines and sky­lights are breath­tak­ing. The sanc­tu­ary is spa­cious yet inti­mate, and the bap­tismal font is gor­geous. The land­scap­ing is so well exe­cuted that, some­how, even approach­ing the build­ing by car is excit­ing. I also like the way that the park­ing lot is almost com­pletely hid­den, despite being right in front of the church.
• Cleo Rogers Memo­r­ial Library (1969, I.M. Pei). This is how libraries were meant to be built: red brick, warm wood, and some con­crete thrown in for good measure.
• Colum­bus Post Office (1970, Roche Dinkeloo). Ugly and insti­tu­tional on the inside, but notable for its use of self-rusting Cor-Ten steel on the facade, which gives the build­ing a lovely texture.
• Large Arch (1971, Henry Moore). Many of us have sat on his Three Piece Reclin­ing Fig­ure Draped in Kil­lian Court at MIT. This is a fine arch, and it is large.
• The Com­mons (1973, Cesar Pelli). This mall has decayed to an unfor­tu­nate level of dis­re­pair, but you can appre­ci­ate the unusu­ally broad ges­tures it makes toward com­mu­nity ser­vice as well as shop­ping. Indeed, with most of the stores gone or going out of busi­ness, the place is still abuzz. It pro­vides a stage for per­for­mances, sev­eral large com­mon rooms, a food court, an indoor play­ground, and a sunny home for Jean Tinguely‘s kinetic sculp­ture Chaos I (1971).
• Cum­mins Cor­po­rate Office Build­ing (1983, Roche Dinkeloo). Big, and look­ing a lit­tle for­lorn with all the vines with­ered for the win­ter. The lobby was closed for the hol­i­day, but through the win­dows one could see all kinds of entic­ing gems: antique cars, engines, and an incred­i­ble sculp­ture of exploded engine parts. Julia took the above pic­ture of me with the engine out­side their front door.

Com­ing soon: some pho­tos of Colum­bus, and some lively dis­cus­sion of my trip to Kentucky’s Cre­ation Museum.

“Cuter Scooter defined by elec­tric­ity, portability”