i'll take toxic holes for $100, alex

you know, it is weird growing up with a toxic pit (basically) in your back yard. less than a mile away from my parent's front door is the berkley pit (as seen above). at more than a mile wide by a mile wide by a mile deep you get an idea of this problem's scale.

so, um, how do i apply to grad school and make it clear that environmental degradation isn't just a theoretical concept, but something that really affects people and communities? i wish i knew a creative way to express why i want to be a professional with the tools to honor the legacy of america's industrial history and the means to begin the process of mitigating the damage industry has caused to cities and towns, making life better for the people living there.

i'm getting constructive about how i'm going to approach this problem. i'm excited to write about this topic. from a personal standpoint, i have my story to offer. i have a lifetime of references to growing up in a community susceptible to the challenges of boom-bust industrial economies, the bi-yearly cancer scares among my peers, the annual lead testing for children exposed to (simply) dirt, etc. and from a political standpoint, i can explain how good policy has helped to revitalize dying communities, pay for environmental clean-up, create new and interesting jobs, and i can best attempt to explain how best practices can enable economic and community development in the future. oh, dear, so much work. such good work, though.

fifty million tissues

i got the flu last week. and by flu i mean everything that is traditionally associated with it the WORST of all seasonal afflictions. the sustained 102 degree temperature and constant exhaustion and the sore throat and muscle aches. i felt like the poster child for a night-quil advertisement. i'm better now, though. and aaron and i are going to butte on thursday and i couldn't be more pleased. home is my favorite of places and i'm excited for the chance to introduce another into the interestingness that butte has to offer. and to celebrate easter. easter is my most favorite of holidays because i LOVE my family's traditional egg hunt. yay!!

koolhaus and really bad window design

For the most part, I love the environment that surrounds me. That is why I started this blog. I decided I needed a place where I could be more expressive about the topic of place. I wanted to give myself a venue to discuss my surroundings and maybe learn a thing or two in the process. I realize I have learned less about my neighborhood than I anticipated and that I am more inspired by the people who surround me than the buildings I walk past.

The more that I think about it, I guess my love of physical place has never been about my adoration for the beauty of cornices and wainscotings or mullions and muttons or even the efficiency and effectiveness of architectural design. My interest always lies primarily in how architecture and interiors reflect the desires of the people who experience them. I am intrigued by why certain classes of people reside in certain types of houses—mostly the working class and their very charming worker cottages—and what this says about them and their values. I am enchanted by decrepit old buildings and the stories they tell, like the 100 year-old mai wah noodle parlor in Butte. In the kitchen of this noodle parlor, in front of the wok stations, are sunken divots of worn concrete where cooks once stood and tirelessly cooked noodle dishes. I like that place is not just about environment, but about people. I think the personal connection is sometimes missing in today’s discourse of architecture and physical place.

Design and architecture is about how people experience them. If we didn’t encounter and participate in our physical surroundings then we may fail to recognize the necessity of their presence in our daily lives. Sometimes I wonder if Rem Koolhaus designed the Seattle Public Library to illustrate the importance of architecture in civic buildings rather than just an ineffective deconstructionist building or developed his ridiculous “the generic city” theory to make people realize the importance of variety in city design rather than making claims that people are not loyal to place anymore. At least I hope that’s the case, otherwise…

What I’m saying here is that I realize structures are important, but I am more concerned about how they affect the people in and around them. I think that’s what I want to communicate about here as time goes on.

a man's boots

My grandfather is 92 years old and wears cowboy boots every day. His boots always come to mind when I think of him. He is a man that I always enjoy hearing talk about his life. His stories are about hard-work and the joy and pain that come with it. He has lived through the advent of the telephone, the great influenza epidemic of 1918 that killed his mother and many other Americans, the Great Depression, and several year-long labor strikes. But his stories are always up-beat with mentions of community dances and parties so people could share food during what he calls the hard times, he talks fondly of meeting my grandmother when, on a break from cattle herding, he rode up to her at a well and she offered him water, honing his talent as a miner, and meeting people that have become life long friends in those moments. I relish these stories and the insights he has because of these experiences. Believe me, I could talk for days about all of the collected memories we share, but now that the time I spend with him is less frequent I call upon my memory to remind me of them. When I do so, one image rushes to the forefront of my mind. That image is his boots.

As far as I know, his boots have made the rounds with him for about the last quarter century of his life—all the years of my life or maybe longer. The steps he takes in those shoes are the steps that are part of who I am. When I was little I watched him pull galoshes over them to shovel snow during the harsh Butte winters, I watched him leave paths of smushed grass when he watered the summer-length lawn, I watched him give my brother and sister “horsy rides” on the end of his leg when they were babies, I watched him take long morning walks in those after breakfast, and smash pop can’s under his feet on the concrete in the garage. I gather comfort from knowing that there is something as simple as a pair of shoes that make my grandfather make sense to me.

I like that the things I love so much today are pieces of my grandparent’s and parents lives before I knew them. My grandmothers’ earrings, pins, and plates, my grandfathers’ jeans, boots, and hats, my mother’s books, camera, and photos, and my father’s records, belt buckles, and t-shirts; I like that when I hold these things or wear these things I come to know them in a different way. I like how I get a better sense of them as an individual. I like that these things were loved by them and have become important to me and also hold the potential to become something special to someone else in the future. For me, the handing down of objects is part of the intergenerational fabric of my life, it keeps their history (and somewhat my own) current and alive. I like that. I like that history isn’t just the past because for me it as present as the boots on my grandfather’s feet.

dancing on smoke stacks

Twenty-six miles from my hometown is a little town called Anaconda, and in between the two is another little town called Opportunity. My grandfather likes to make this joke that goes, “what lies between Butte and Anaconda?” I reply, “What?” He delivers, “Opportunity.”

Way back in the day, we’re talking in the days before American Industry had to outsource portions of industrial procedure to China, Anaconda was home of the largest smelter works in the world. The stack itself is about 500 ft. tall and is one of the more remarkable structures in southwest Montana, and is the tallest masonry structure in the world. What is important about this stack is not its design or how remarkable the engineering of the structure is, but rather what once happened on top of it.

In 1919 a celebration was held to dedicate the smoke stack before the smelter operations began thus turning the stack into a glorified chimney. In the days before the scaffolding was removed a group of men and women climbed to the top of the stack and had a party. My great-grandmother was one of them. At the age of 19 she climbed a unbelievable 500 ft. and danced on top of the smoke stack, a story she relished telling until late in her life. This is what women of Butte did; this is what Julia Rafferty had done. She was a gilded-age flapper, a dancer, a college graduate, a teacher who drank Manhattans with dinner, a woman who never once wore pants, and perhaps most importantly a woman who so greatly feared growing old out of fear for missing an experience that she lived her life for the feelings of youth. I gather that she was one of my mother’s strongest influences--a feminist before the feminist age, yet a woman of tradition, insight and progress.

I think about my grammie today because my newest thing is to savor my time and live a life less rushed. I am realizing that I am incredibly young and still have so much to learn. Do you remember being young, I’m thinking of those post-adolescent college years here, and thinking that you know everything there ever was to know about life? Then one day you are surprised to find yourself in a car accident or keying your neighbor’s car or ruining your friendships over small disagreements and then all of a sudden realized you know nothing at all. Well, I have been there and I should not have been so naive to think they would stop once I graduate from college or got a real job because these moments just keep on presenting themselves. Yesterday I was discussing a few things with my mother and she got all “are you even thinking?” She started in telling me how much time there is in life, how many goals I have yet to attain, how many things I have yet to experience and I kind of had to stop and agree.

I mean, I want to think I know everything, but I don’t. I have so much yet to learn. And for the first time ever it felt good to make that realization. It felt good to realize exactly how young I am and how much I have ahead of myself. And it makes me sad to think about how little I’ve been expressing myself and how limited my experiences have been and how rushed I let myself feel. And how important it is to slow down and savor my youth.

I’m so wildly, deliciously young!! And I’ve got all sorts of things ahead of me. Good things. Things I think will be the most defining, wonderful moments of my life.

I think all I really needed was a friendly reminder and some calm encouragement from the mom department telling me that it’s okay to climb high walls and dance on buildings and try to see the things others will not ever see—to take advantage of the opportunities that come my way. And that it is okay to take risks and have experiences because I’m young and I have to learn it sometime. And in the long run it is those youthful adventures that will keep us young beyond our years.