why not indulge a bit...

in some Wade Davis explorations.  The main point of his TED talk is to argue against unilinear evolution, a now-long-buried anthropological theory that cultures "progress" from "primitive" to sophisticated as they become more like "us" - a thesis that could be a little disappointing in the wrong hands.  But, like Dave Suggs in his baccalaureate address at Kenyon graduation in 2007, Davis' TED talk is really about weaving stories into a rich tapestry of human traditions.  

So, why not indulge in dreaming of my dream job: National Geographic "Explorer in Residence."  Residence where?  the whole world, a world of beliefs and communities, and "ancient rhythms of landscape [...] played out in ritual," and of, as Wade Davis so passionately says, "raw human genius."  

What came to my mind when he said that phrase?  (Prepare yourself for a mental leap typical of myself...)

The street markets of Palermo and Turkey, held up by countless ropes and tarps lashed tightly to drainpipes and window grates and doorknobs on winding streets and dilapidated walls of bustling, dusty towns.  

(Cristina took this one)p.s. 

Let's move a little further east, and lament the fact that not everyone appreciates the basic genius of tradition and community ritual.  

Umida Akhmedova is an Uzbek photographer on trial in her country for taking photographs that "portray a negative image of the country."  The photos are raw, and intimate, and colorful - check out some of them in this BBC slideshow.  The charges carry a punishment somewhere in the ballpark of 6 months in prison or nearly 3 yeas of forced labor.  Officials say the photos "distort reality" and "portray the Uzbek people as backward.  She has been charged with defamation and insulting Uzbek traditions" (BBC).  It shocks me that so many people would rather look at smiling faces and see ignorance and degeneration instead of exuberance and that raw human genius (thanks, Wade) that keeps peoples worldwide alive and exciting.  

More of her photos here, but without captions or credits or anything.  

growing a city

61st Street Garden, Hyde Park/WoodlawnMonday night was the first community meeting I’ve attended since starting at the Metropolitan Planning Council.  The site in question is in the South Loop, and MPC is part of a collaboration with a few other Chicago NPOs helping a community plan a new park in a strange empty lot near the intersection of two highways, alongside a Metra track, and next to a school, CHA housing project, and a new loft apartment building.  

(The lofts, ironically, are called the Opera Lofts, named after their former tenants, the Civic Opera.  When I came to Chicago during my sophomore year at Kenyon, some key friends and I had a bit of an unexpected adventure wandering through what we had thought at the time was very sketchy Southside Chicago, looking for a warehouse Opera sale of some sort in this building.  I remember thinking we were so very far south, that we’d traveled miles and miles away from my “stomping grounds,” if that’s even possible as a rare visitor.  Now it’s essentially downtown to me, almost 30 blocks north of home.)

The meeting Monday was at once frustrating and eye-opening.  It was a struggle to get any feedback or real ideas out of the dozen attendees, nearly all of them residents of the CHA’s Dearborn Homes projects next to the school.  After the meeting, I took the bus home (changing at a very un-welcoming intersection at 51st and State, waiting for the number 15 with a young woman who asked me what I was doing out so late - it was just before 7 p.m. although decidedly dark - and telling me to be careful out here) with a mind full of positive thoughts about what MPC and NeighborSpace and Openlands are doing, their hard work to get a garden into this empty lot.  I struggled - and still struggle - with my conflicting thoughts about whether the community will step up and provide a leader to actually make it all happen and keep the garden clean and kept up.  I wonder if it is worth all of the time I (and Karin, I see what she is doing, too) spend sitting at a computer in an office making it happen.  Is there a way to get this done that is more fun??  

To add to my thoughts about this process of little bits of communication and publicity and administrative nitpicking all coming together into an event and hopefully eventually a garden, Dad sent me an article by Irénée Scalbert called “Parklife” that got me thinking about the creative process, cities, and modern urban spaces.  

The essay starts by presenting two thoughts that really clicked with me, and made me slog through the middle, which got a bit too philosophical.  The first good thought was that we (modern Westerners, I assume he means) have an idea that good public spaces are epitomized by grand, open piazzas the likes of which we see in classical European cities.  He states it as “the expectation that one or several sides of a public space will be enclosed by a civic institution.”  It’s true - the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Piazza Pubblico in Siena, the countless smaller piazzas in front of neighborhood churches in Italy that are such integral parts of my childhood growing up wandering great urban spaces.  

His second good thought is really more of a suggestion, an appreciation of what I, too, appreciate so much in Sicily and Istanbul, in particular: the fact that “the signs of decrepitude were displayed without shame.”  The youthful spirit of the people is by no means diminished by the fact that their surroundings are largely crumbling from age or simply from disrepair.  

It’s the end of the essay that gets really to my heart, though - he argues that the grand old piazzas that were the centers of great urban spaces in the past are now obsolete, and that the great urban centers are now gardens and parks, public spaces filled with vegetation.  I like this image of the new city being focused on parks - although it does make New York City a bit too perfect an image for my liking, being so full of decrepitude and with Central Park at its heart. 

It’s the work in the garden that he describes, quoting J.B. Jackson, that really hit me: 

“...the garden, no matter what its size, called for incessant, detailed, diversified work - a series of small chores, many of them demanding skill and judgement … each plant, each vine, each tree had to be put in the ground, cultivated, pruned, grafted, transplanted and harvested in a special way and at a special moment, and all this was done by hand or by the use of small and simple tools…”  

There is an admiration here for what I have only recently discovered is what makes me most truly happy: careful, creative, manual work.  And Scalbert not only recognizes the essential nature of this kind of work, building upon each previous small victory, he admires it as I do, the hard work dedication to a place and task and accumulation of knowledge, wisdom even.  “Gardening consists of a vast accumulation of inherited habits, every one of them buried in the depths of material life.  Gardens, like cities, are the sites of innumerable inventions.”  

Here, he got at what I attempt so often to describe most admiringly about Turkey - the resourcefulness, spunk, and passion in every Turk I know.  

How and why did that energy get lost in this process of which I am a part, MPC’s tedious navigation of endless networks of people and papers and administrative processes?

And, so, all of this to say that Irénée Scalbert has succeeded in applying the methods I love to the ideas I love. 

Maybe I should give gardening another shot...