Paul E. Fallon's Blog, page 82

Architecture by Moonlight

Architecture by Moonlight: Rebuilding Haiti, Redrafting a Life, is available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and University of Missouri Press.

Please join me at an author event around Boston, and attend a remembrance at the Cambridge Public Library on January 12, 2015 – the fifth anniversary of the earthquake.

Check www.paulefallon.com for updates and additions to book events.

 

Boston Area Events for Architecture by Moonlight – November 2014

Wednesday November 5, 2014  7:00 p.m.  New England Mobile Book Fair  82 Needham Street Newton Highlands, MA

Sunday November 9, 2014  3:00 p.m. Book Ends Winchester 559 Main Street Winchester, MA

Friday November 14, 2014 3:00 p.m.  Harvard Book Store  1256 Massachusetts Ave Cambridge, MA

Tuesday November 18, 2014 7:30 p.m. Interview on NewTV by BJ Krintzman  Comcast Ch. 10, RCN Ch. 15, Verizon Ch. 34

Friday November 21, 2014 7:00 p.m. Calumus Bookstore 92 South Street Boston, MA 02111   Reading with LGBT community focus

Boston Area Events for Architecture by Moonlight - January 2015

Thursday January 8, 2015  7:00 p.m.  Porter Square Books  25 White Street Cambridge, MA

Monday January 12, 2015 6:30 p.m. Cambridge Public Library 449 Broadway Cambridge, MA  Reading and remembrance to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Haiti Earthquake

Tuesday January 13, 2014  7:00 p.m. Trident Booksellers & Cafe 338 Newbury Street Boston, MA

 

 

 

Frivolous Intentions

I’ve been practicing CorePower Yoga for a year now, which means a year’s worth of Intention. Making an Intention in yoga class was new to me. At first it felt forced. Then I got into the spirit of Intention and began identifying people who could use a bit of extra energy. Neighbors suffering from illness, folks struggling with life decisions, friends who could use an extra boost – people I would pray for if I believed in prayer. Sometimes I conjured cosmic, Buddhist sort of Intentions like world peace and universal wisdom. Rarely I sent my Intention inward to myself; a sure sign that I was troubled.

Some teachers suggest Intentions. They ad lib a few palliative words or read an inspiring quote. They have good – intention – though their suggestions never align with my own headspace.

[image error]A few weeks ago, when nothing seemed particularly better or worse in the world or my position in it, Intention came up fast during yoga sculpt and I had nothing in mind. Have fun! Rang through my head. What? I did a mental double take. That is no kind of Intention. It’s silly and ephemeral. But nothing significant would occupy my head, so, Have fun! it was.

When we were in an extended high plank and the teacher invoked our Intention to spur us on, I smiled. When she commanded that our Intention bring us through hamstring curls the fact that I wasn’t having fun – yet – made me laugh. When she brought us back to our Intention during savasana I decided that the prospect of having fun had energized my yoga that day.

[image error]Since then, frivolous Intentions have become commonplace. Some days my Intention is to have fun; other days its to dance, have more sex, or party. My yoga is more carefree, buoyant. Perhaps someday my Intentions will address the world’s major ills directly. For now I enjoy musing about song and dance and having fun. Which may do more for me – and the world – than any somber Intention.

Old Schwamb Mill

[image error]Veer off of Mass Ave onto Lowell Street in Arlington, take the first right on Mill Lane, walk a hundred yards and step back 150 years. That’s when  Old Schwamb Mill, custom oval frame manufactory began creating the most beautiful picture frames in the world, and where the original equipment still operates in its Civil War era building. My friend Bob and I happened by last Tuesday and enjoyed one of the most memorable tours of my life.

At one time seven mills operated along the Mill Brook, which originates in Arlington’s Great Meadow and parallels Massachusetts Avenue through Arlington Heights, Arlington Center, and East Arlington, before joining the Mystic River. These days, most of the mills are remembered only by the names of bulky condominium buildings, but the Old Schwamb Mill was saved from the wrecker’s ball and was listed on the National Register of Historic places in 1971. Today, it is a working museum, open to the public two days a week.

[image error]The Schwamb Mill has made oval picture frames – frames that now hang in the White House and Buckingham Palace – since 1864. It’s hard to know which is more impressive, the four rotating frame jigs that allow a craftsman to create beautiful molding profiles in perfect ellipses of any axial proportion, or Dave, the keeper of the mill for the past fifteen years who dropped everything he was doing to give us a leisurely tour.

[image error]The wood frame building is little changed since the Civil War. The rough floorboards, exposed columns and beams, though well maintained, have never been updated. The dark interior, highlighted by sharp light through six-over-six pane windows, is full of workbenches, profile templates, molding samples and well-worn hand tools. Along the south wall, where the natural light is strongest, three frame jigs are permanently bolted to the floors, ceilings, and walls, with cast iron supports. Belt and pulley systems turn the jigs. They were originally driven by water, then steam, and only recently by NStar.

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Dave explains how the oval frame jigs work. The pulleys rotate a huge axle, maybe 10” in diameter, that spin a wide, flat plate. Two other iron plates are attached to this, at right angles to each other. They can be held at a fixed distance from each other yet slide independent of the main element. A large slab of wood is fixed to the outermost plate. When the main axle turns, the inner plate spins in a circle, but the outer plate, and the wood attached to it, spins in an ellipse, with the major and minor axes determined by the distance fixed between the two sliding plates. It’s ingenious and durable; the machines are more than a century old.

Oval picture fra[image error]mes are made from four pieces of hardwood, each one-quarter oval, that are rough cut into thick arcs but have precise finger joints. This rudimentary shape is back screwed to the jig. A heavy iron stand sits to the left of each jig, at the single precise height that is perpendicular to the frame at every point of the ellipse’s irregular turn. Dave pulls an overhead wooden lever the size of a paddle. The belts roll, the plates spin, the wood base and rough frame rotate in what appears to be a wobbly motion, but that movement is precise at the location of the chisel stand. Dave takes a chisel, and with steady hand lays it atop the stand. He gouges a clean, crisp line along the spinning oval.

[image error]It takes about eight hours to make a frame: two hours to cut the four pieces of hardwood into a rough oval and finger-joint glue the edges; an hour to set up the jig once the glue is dry; two to three hours to shape and sand; a final hour for an oil finish. Old Schwamb Mill sends frames out that require gilding and other custom finishes.

 

 

We piqued Dave’s interest with enough questions that he invited us downstairs to see the big daddy jig – capable of spinning an oval frame with up to three feet of difference between the m[image error]ajor and minor axes. Screwed to the template was the largest frame Dave’s ever made – a six foot by four foot oval commissioned by the Harvard Museums. He’d already finished and delivered one; the second was in the final stages of chiseling before final sanding. The size of the walnut frame presented numerous challenges. It had to be built out of eight pieces rather than four, the jig needed additional reinforcing because the template was so big it racked as it swept through a full twelve inch variation in each direction. (The sliding plate offset is one-half the total difference in the axes; a two-foot differential requires the jig be set with a one-foot space in each half-rotation). The mammoth frame is an incredible piece of craftsmanship.

The Old [image error]Schwamb Mill builds about thirty custom oval frames a year, a tiny percentage of what they made when the mill employed more than twenty people in the 1870’s. An oval frame online costs about $40; one from Old Schwamb can cost ten times that. But the point of buying an Old Schwamb oval frame is not to just to encase a photo, but to own a piece of handcrafted history.

Revere’s Ride

I wanted a gift to give my daughter’s Peace Corps host family. I suggested food, maybe chocolate. Abby nixed that idea. She explained via email that chocolate was unknown in her Cambodian village. How about something from Boston, she suggested, maybe a calendar? A Boston gift felt right, but a calendar seemed paltry. I considered a coffee table book or Red Sox jerseys before deciding on a Revere Bowl, that functional, graceful, and historic Beantown classic.

I had never been to Shreve Crump & Low. The tuxedoed doorman greeted my bicycle pants and reflective vest like I was wearing Burberry; the elegant saleswomen smiled at my bicycle pannier as if it were Louis Vuitton. I chose the 8” diameter bowl; I figured it would fit in the plane’s overhead. Visions of presenting this finely crafted piece of our culture to the family sheltering my daughter for two years ran though my head while the saleswoman stepped away. When she returned with an immense silver box with wide ribbon and bow, I realized I’d need a checked bag.

In Phnom Penh, I gave Abby soap, candy bars, novels, and granola; American basics that Peace Corps volunteers crave. Her eyes arched at the silver box. She slipped off the ribbon. Oh, Dad. I know you meant well, but we can’t give this to my family. I didn’t understand why but acquiesced to her cultural sensitivity. We forsook an afternoon at the National Museum to find a more appropriate gift and settled on a World Atlas. Cambodia and the United States bound between hardcovers.

We wanted the atlas wrapped. A petit woman laid a generous sheet of gold paper on the counter. She cut the sheet, trimmed it again, and again. I grew more nervous with each reduction. When the remains were scant millimeters larger than the book itself, she started to tape the wrapping directly to the cover’s satellite photograph of earth. No! I reached out to stop her from obliterating the Philippines. Abby, in perfect Khmer, explained that we did not want the paper taped directly to the gift. The woman shrugged. She made tiny folds and sealed them with bits of tape until the book was covered in gold, just barely. She snipped two pieces of thin blue ribbon and taped a cross on the front of the box. After ten minutes of frugal wrapping the woman brought forth a wide chunk of garish ribbon, pulled a hidden string and it blossomed into a gigantic bow that concealed the entire mess.

T[image error]he next afternoon, Abby’s Cambodian family reversed the process. We sat around a wooden table, shaded by the sleeping rooms above. They unpeeled each snippet of tape and smoothed each paper fold with agonizing precision. When they finally exposed the book, Philippines intact, we traced our fingers over each page and scrutinized every image with equal interest, Index included. The map of Cambodia held no more interest than any other. For some reason we lingered long in Paraguay.

Meanwhile the Revere Bowl lay inside its box, zipped inside my duffle, ungiven. Abby was right. There’s no place for a pewter bowl in a traditional Cambodian house. The raised sleeping spaces are private and sacrosanct; public spaces are open to the elements.

We stashed the bulky silver box in the baggage hold of our bus to Battambang. We carried it on the boat to Siem Reap, and the tuk-tuk to rural Bakong. Then we retraced our route. I gave Abby a roadside hug when the bus stopped in her village and then continued with my bowl to Phnom Penh. I checked the silver box at the airport.

[image error]Three flights, thirty hours, a pair of customs lines, two subway rides, one bus, and a four-block walk later, I unpacked. The Shreve box was skewed and cracked, the ribbon frayed. Three security search tags nestled inside the Revere Bowl.

My elegant gift survived its 20,000-mile journey in perfect shape. I could return it; I don’t need a Revere Bowl. But it’s become a souvenir; its function is irrelevant. It looks lovely on my piano.

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Glazed Tile Madeleine

Marcel Proust took one of the most famous bites in the world, gnashing into a delectable madeleine, and thus triggered Remembrances of Things Past. Last night I experienced a similar deja vu, though, being an architect rather than a foodie, my memories were tripped by a glazed tile floor.

I was at Harvard’s Memorial Chapel to hear Nicolas Kristof speak about how to save the world. I knew such an undertaking would require an empty bladder, so I descended into the men’s room before hand. I pushed open the door and confronted a tile floor; white with small blue squares, in a distinctive pattern I had seen before. Actually, a pattern I had drawn before, and supervised its installation in a house renovation in 1990; the very first commission of my solo firm.

The project included much more than an eccentric tile floor. There was a new kitchen, family room addition, study addition, wine cellar and extensive landscaping. The building and landscaping were so well integrated the house was written up in The Boston Globe. When finished, the original 1942 cottage had almost doubled in size and the entertainment-minded couple who lived there could sit 24 for dinner.

But turning a gracious per-war house into a 90’s showcase couldn’t stave off the wrecking ball that swings through Boston’s upscale suburbs like a pendulum of economic privilege. The house was demolished in the early 2000’s to make way for a 7,700 square foot, five bedroom, seven bath manse that presses against its .57 acre lot with the same discomfort as a rich cookie that bloats one’s stomach after a sumptuous meal.

Everything I created is gone. All that remains are the fragments of memory triggered by other spaces, other rooms.

Mindcrowd

Once you get rolling with Internet tests, there seems to be no end of them. After joining Brain Health Registry, which takes about an hour, I was invited to join Mindcrowd, which takes only ten minutes.

Mindcrowd is in the process of developing a database of a million or more people who take two simple cognitive tests. Then, they will ask the same people to take the tests over time to map their cognitive changes.

First test, a two-minute piece of cake. A red ball pops on the screen, and you hit the return key. It is a test of eye/hand coordination.

Second test, really tough. They display twelve word pairs in a sequence on your screen. Then, randomly display one of the first words and prompt you to type in the second word of the pair. Some, like garden & grass have a connection that makes sense. Others like under & life evoked an image I could recall, or at least stirred my criminal mind. Then there were word pairs, like public & hard, that seemed randomly connected  and defied any link in my head. The test repeated three times. I managed to recall four pairs on my first pass, then six and then eight. At least I got better.

After three iterations Mindcrowd revealed my total score of 61% and offered me comparative results. I landed right at the median of all men. I scored higher than others my age, lower than other single people, but higher than married people. (Why is there an 8% difference between the singles and marrieds? Do married people prefer to forget pairs?). I was in line with others holding post graduate degrees, but the most interesting aspect of the statistics is that there is virtually no difference between how people score on these tests and how much education they have obtained. In fact, the highest scores among educational levels are those with only some high school, who average 66%. Perhaps the less formal education you have, the more you have to depend on your memory to get through the day.

Join the database at www.mindcrowd.org.

 

Uber Bargains

This essay was published in WBUR Cognoscenti as Driving a Hard Bargain: Calculating the Toll of Uber’s Reduced Fares on 9/23/2014.

A cab ride from my house in Cambridge, Mass., to Logan Airport, a distance of 10 miles, costs $60.00, including tip. It takes 20 minutes without traffic, 40 minutes during rush hour and up to an hour when there’s an accident or construction. For a mere $3.70, the bus and subway get me to the airport in the same time it takes a cab at rush hour. When I have an early morning departure or a late night return, however, the MBTA, which is closed at these times in provincial Boston, can’t get me there. That’s when I have no choice but to take a cab and open my wallet – 60 dollars wide.

Now there’s Uber, the Internet ride service available 24 hours a day. Although it has a variable pricing scheme that relates price to demand, the times I need it for airport runs are among its least expensive periods. The first time I used Uber was for a 1:00 a.m. return trip. A friendly fellow in a clean car picked me up at Logan and deposited me home within half an hour for $28. Less than half the price of a cab seemed like a good deal.

A few weeks later, my housemate was flying out early. Uber had been advertising price cuts, and he got a ride to Logan for $14.00. This seemed like a very good deal; so good that when I did the math, it seemed unsustainable, perhaps exploitative.

Take $14.00. Deduct the $1.25 Mass Pike toll and Uber’s $2.80 (20 percent) fee. The driver received $9.95 for his effort. A fair assumption might be that an Uber driver has a passenger 50 percent (Slate) of the time. At 4:30 a.m., the trip takes only 20 minutes, so let’s assume this trip is equivalent to two-thirds of an hour’s effort. If so, the driver is making $14.93 an hour, just shy of the magic $15.00 minimum living wage many people clamor for these days.

But wait a minute: An Uber driver is not an employee. He is an independent contractor. He has to use and maintain his own car at an estimated rate of $5.60 in gas, maintenance and operating costs for a ten-mile trip. (IRS) He also has to pay for all of his own benefits. On this early morning trip, the driver is netting less than $10.00 per hour.

Every day, we encounter people who make this kind of paltry money — at fast food counters and big box stores, for example. We may wish these people made a living wage in a generalized way, but since our interactions with them are fleeting, we don’t feel individually responsible for their paltry earnings. Taking a private car to the airport before dawn is a personal experience. If the driver is not making a living wage, I feel a more direct responsibility

Uber reports that drivers can make $60,000, even $90,000, a year, but that math is hard to balance (Washington Post). Uber advertises that tipping is not required for their standard cars (Uber). When I offered a tip to one Uber driver, he declined. I had no way to provide a hard currency ‘thank you’ to a particularly good driver.

Uber’s price cuts hurt drivers more than they hurt the company’s bottom line. When lower prices increase demand and market share, Uber’s 20 percent share of reduced fares is offset by the increased number of fares, while each individual driver can only make a finite number of trips per shift.

Uber’s low fares are yet another example of disruptive technology driving market efficiency. By creating direct connections between customers and providers, rideshare services threaten to make taxi companies, with their costly medallions and jurisdictional restrictions designed to protect turf more than provide value, as quaint as bookstores and travel agencies. That may not be good news for taxi drivers, but the concept seems fair.

Unfortunately, we remain a few steps away from a perfect marketplace. Uber is still the middleman, albeit one with speedy apps rather than a dispatch office. Uber tries to increase demand for rideshare services and swell its market share with the same fervor that old-fashioned cab companies protect their designated territory. Uber’s cost for incremental riders is negligible, so cutting fares to the bone to grow demand makes sense.

At some point, there will be a limit to fare cutting. Either Uber will not be able to attract drivers, or the drivers will not maintain their cars, or the service will deteriorate, as cut-rate services tend to do. But when equilibrium is achieved, will an Uber driver’s ability to make a decent living factor into the equation, or will we wind up with more people without traditional employment supports – social security contributions, health benefits, sick time, vacation time – who must rely on our shrinking social safety net to get by?

I’ve had great experience using Uber, and I want the service to succeed. But I also want people to earn a living wage. I hope that Uber and its competitors structure fares to achieve that objective.

 

I am an Interior Designer!

Twenty years ago, a so-called friend came into my house and announced, “It is hard to believe an architect lives here. It is impossible to believe a gay architect lives here.” His comments stung, but only a little. I knew that my shabby Victorian with its plywood paneled walls and fluorescent fixtures would be featured in Architectural Disgust before they’d ever grace the pages of Architectural Digest.

Over time I made improvements. The paneling vanished, so too the wood stove and the wagon wheel chandelier. The old place has nice rooms now and a soothing, unified palette. The architect in me brought out its good bones. But as an integrated piece of design, it’s nothing special. I am too fond of found objects, from my dining room table to the rock I dislodged from our RV in the Grand Canyon, to create any sort of unified interior.

That’s all going to change.

This week, my long time housemate Paul is selling his house in Vermont and moving his belongings here. For six year’s he’s kept two Spartan rooms, but come Thursday his fine antiques, cut glass, claw-toothed tables, heirloom china, and wingback chairs will spill into the rest of the house. While he packs boxes up north, I have been strolling through my airy spaces imagining how different, and how elegant, our house will be. Many of my curbside finds will go back to where they came from to make room for his finer stuff. I can only hope their next keeper gets as much sturdy, silent service from them as I have.

My reverie has revealed something I never knew before; that there is a strong theme to my home’s interior. That I am in fact, an interior designer, with a style so straightforward it can be described in one word – toys.

Anyone who visits our house knows the obvious toys. My living room has only two furnishings – a pool table and a piano, sentinels to the full range of high-brow/low-brow adult play. But so many more toys have accumulated over the years: the shelves of games that decorate the den; the chinning bar in the back hall that fits between two jig-sawed moldings; the lead soldiers on the living room window sash, ever alert to the non-existent threats of passing Cantabridgians; the in-line skater bendee entwining the kitchen chandelier; and, of course, the wind-up nunzillas that I crank up when I’m stressed.

Over the years, the big, garish, plastic toys have fallen into the basement; Little Tykes has no claim on the living spaces any more. My children’s best art has moved off the refrigerator and into frames, while their lesser oeuvre has settled into flat files (Architects have things like flat files in their houses). The toys in my house have become more refined, but still the place is defined by toys.

 

 

 

I am confident all of Paul’s beautiful objects will fit in our home, although – despite my being a lousy pool player – the pool table is definitely staying put. I’m hoping the other toys will be able to stay as well. With so many more actual treasures, my soldier guards will have to be more vigilant than ever.

Long Island Wonder

Long Island is well known for its questionably proportioned architecture, derived from a thirst for consumerism and New York moxie.

 

 

But on my first trip to Suffolk County I discovered the beauties of the North Shore in the charming village of Seatucket, which has some distinguished architecture.

A post office that is both dignified and domestic.

And Frank Melville Memorial Park – a tranquil private park in the village center.

The park has beautiful expanses of paths, trees, and ponds

A refreshing bamboo forest

And sunning turtles

The north shore’s beauty cannot be eradicated by the tacky houses, and it is enhanced by Frank Melville’s legacy.

Brain Health Registry

Please consider joining the Brain Health Registry. If you are interested in participating in Alzheimer’s research or just like to take online tests (as I do), it is a fun activity that helps create a data base to support ongoing research.

It takes about an hour to get set up for the Registry. Once you have filled in the usual passwords and personal history, there is a terrific Cognitive Performance Test that establishes your baseline cognition. It’s basically a bunch of card tricks.

There is deck of cards on your computer screen. When a card flips over, press the ‘K’ key to indicate the card has flipped. Easy. Then, press the ‘K’ key if the card is black and the ‘D’ key if it is red. Still easy. Next, the screen shows a card and you press ‘K’ if you have seen it before, and ‘D’ if you have not seen it before. Not so easy. Actually, very hard. After bruising my ego, and getting eight incorrect, the fourth segment is easier. Just hit ‘K’ if the card displayed is the same as the one just shown, or ‘D’ if it is different. No so difficult.

The point of the test is to establish a baseline performance. I will be prompted to take the test in six-month intervals to see how consistent I do over time. Think about doing it as well.