Flipping Pencils

Goodbye Where, Hello My Athens

Dan Lorentz — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:33:49 -0400

On June 1, I launched My Athens, a blog devoted to what living in Athens, Ga. makes me think about. I’ll likely be thinking and posting a lot about walkability issues, anti-poverty policy, local media, city planning stuff, infrastructure issues and my neighborhood.

I'm no longer posting at Where, though the blog remains one of my favorite blogs about cities. During my brief stint as a contributor there, I found I increasingly wanted to write and think about a particular place, not cities in general. So, I decided to shift what blogging energies I have to My Athens, which is very local and particular indeed.

Here’s an archive of my most of my posts at Where:

Q&A with "Mayor" of Opportunity City

Introducing Urbanism: Top Books for Curious Novices

Infrastructure Book is Heavy, Useful, Beautiful

A Space So Confined? Saving Grace of Impotent Hatred?

Notes About the Future of Urban Journalism, Part 1

Notes About the Future of Urban Journalism, Part 2

Notes About the Future of Urban Journalism, Part 3

Notes About the Future of Urban Journalism, Part 4

Is Urban Poverty an Acquired Taste?

Rain

Dan Lorentz — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 23:37:56 -0400

It’s raining hard here in Athens, and the sound is amplified into something furious by the tin roof on our house. I can’t help but listen to the rain, and think of a poem I once read. Here it is.

Rain

By Francis Ponge, translated by Peter Riley

In the yard where I watch it fall, the rain comes down at several different speeds. In the middle it is a delicate and threadbare curtain (or a net), an implacable but relatively slow descent of quite small drops, a sempiternal precipitation lacking vigor, an intense fragment of the pure meteor. A little away from the walls on each side heavier drops fall separately, with more noise. Some look the size of a grain of corn, others a pea, or almost a marble. On the parapets and balustrades of the window the rain runs horizontally, and on the inside of these obstacles it hangs down in convex loops. It streams in a thin sheet over the entire surface of a zinc roof straight below me—a pattern of watered silk, in the various currents, from the imperceptible bosses and undulations of the surface. In the gutter there, it flows with the contention of a deep but only slightly inclined stream, until suddenly it plunges in a perfectly vertical thread, quite thickly platted, to the ground where it breaks and scatters in shining needles.

Each of these forms has its own particular manner of moving; each elicits a particular sound. The whole thing is intensely alive in the manner of a complicated mechanism, both precise and precarious, like a piece of clockwork in which the activating force is the weight of a mass precipitated from vapor.

The ringing of the vertical threads on the pavement, the gurgling from the gutters, the miniature gong-chimes, multiply and resonate together in a consort which avoids monotony, and is not without delicacy.

And when the pressure is relaxed, some of the clockwork continues to function for a while, getting slower and slower, until the whole machine stops. Then, if the sun comes out again, the whole thing is quite soon effaced—the shiny apparatus evaporates: it has been raining.

___ ___ ___

Source: The Random House Book of Twentieth Century French Poetry, edited by Paul Auster.

Photo credit: "rain drops" by Flickr user Austin Tolin.

January 20, 2009 in the USA

Dan Lorentz — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 20:24:54 -0500

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Source: Photograph of illustration by Bill Watterson, The Essential Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury, 1998.

Where

Dan Lorentz — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:49:54 -0500

Where, a blog about cities founded and guided by Brendan Crain out of Chicago, has been on this blog’s list of favorite sites almost from the beginning.

I’m pleased to report that I’m now a contributor—one of ten regulars—to Where.

My first post on the blog came in October as part of a Blog Action Day dedicated to discussing poverty.

Today, I’m starting a series of posts about the future of urban journalism—a subject that combines two things I like to daydream about: cities and newspapers.

I’ll continue to post here at Flipping Pencils as usual— that is, every so often.

At the Polls in Athens: A Photo Essay

Dan Lorentz — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:06:32 -0500

First things first

Coffee and the newspaper on Election Day—Tues, Nov. 4, 2008—here in Athens, Georgia. To distract ourselves from useless anxiety, my wife Lori and I decided to visit polling places in neighborhoods all across town. We took a camera and a voice recorder with us. Here's some of what we saw and heard.

***

Roadside electioneering

Yards signs lining Chase St. during early voting hours in front of Chase Street School, a District 5 polling place. The signs seemed to be no closer than 150 feet of the outer edge of the school (see next photo)—which means they were probably in compliance with election rules. But then again, maybe not: all the signs were gone when we returned to Chase Street School in the early evening.

***

Posted

A warning sign displayed at every polling place we went to today.

***

Early line

Voters in line at the Fowler Drive School polling place. It's 7:20 am.

***

Traffic cop for a day

So many voters showed up so early (this shot was taken at 7:36 am) at Howard B. Stroud School's polling place that assistant principal Guy Cooper decided to help direct voters to parking spots. The polling place serves Athens most heavily African-American voting district.

***

Following through even if God's in control

LaJonya Lett sits in a folding chair outside the polling place at Howard B. Stroud School. Here's what she said: "I'm waiting in line for my husband because he's at work. He'll be off in about 20 minutes. I already voted. I had enough sense to go ahead and vote. I'm holding his spot. I voted on Thursday. It's in the Lord's hands. I see that the polls show that Obama's going to win. But you never know. God's in control."

***

Possible global celebration pending

At the Timothy Road School polling place, where George W. Bush beat John Kerry in 2004, voter Dirk Magwitz said: "If he [Obama] does [win], I think there's going to be a national and global sort of celebration. It will be a very precedent-setting day for an endless number of reasons. There's a lot of energy around this one."

***

A name to note

Parshall Bush has voted in Athens since 1972, and for many years he's cast his ballot here at Whit Davis School, which recorded the city's largest turnout in 2004. Mr. Bush says he doesn't expect to be celebrating tonight. No sir.

***

Meeting neighbors is under-appreciated benefit

Before voting at Whit Davis School Kirk Willis, a history professor at the University of Georgia, explained why he likes to show up at the neighborhood polling place on election day: "If you go downtown and vote early, you're standing in line with people from all over Athens, which is fine and you can kind of meet new people. But given the way we live these days, usually you only see your neighbors in a place like this or a school function…or at the market or the liquor store or some such place."

***

As easy as 1-2-3-4-5

Voting instructions and assorted warnings posted at every polling place.

***

Impacting the future?

An Obama volunteer at the Clarke Co. Democratic Party Headquarters on Prince Ave. checks-up on get-out-the-vote (GOTV) progress while Clarke Co. Democratic Party chair Mac Rawson (not pictured) says, "All the effort that's gone in [to campaigning for Obama] registering voters and getting people active and excited is going to have a lot of long-term consequences for Democrats."

***

Hard times ahead

"Whoever gets in office, it's going to be a tough four years," said Brian Cartwright, who works for Cartwright Properties, a commercial property management company. "Circuit City just closed 155 stores yesterday—and that's before Christmas." Cartwright Properties' offices are located in the same building as the headquarters for the Clarke Co. Republican Party.

***

The loneliness of a campaign volunteer

A lone volunteer works the phones at Clarke Co. Republican Party Headquarters. She was the only person in the office when this shot was taken.

***

Hello. Photo ID, please

Patsy Faye Lewis was an official voter greeter at the Clarke Central High School polling place.

***

First time voter

This is Hillary, who didn't want to give her last name, just moments after she cast her first ever ballot in a presidential election at the Fire Station #3—Five Points polling place. The University of Georgia senior voted for McCain because she was leery of Obama's lack of experience.

***

Cheerleaders

Two young women wave Obama signs at the intersection of W. Broad St. and Milledge Ave.

***

Boredom of poll watching

Gay Williford served as a Democratic Party poll watcher at the Athens Transit Multi-Modal polling place. Her job was to report suspicious activities and, periodically throughout the day, report on the number of people who had voted. As of about 5 pm, she said she had seen no suspicious activities whatsoever. "Another year, I wouldn't mind registering people or driving them to the polls," Williford said. "I think I'd prefer working at the polls. Watching is too boring."

***

A normal Tuesday, business-wise

According to Homer Wilson, it was a normal Tuesday for business at Wilson's His & Hers Styling Shop in downtown Athens. But that's not to say the day was normal in every respect. "No, never have [seen an election like this] before," Wilson said. "We had a voter registration drive here [in the shop earlier in the year], and we registered a lot of people. We have never registered that many people before. Never. I voted in advance. My whole family voted in advance. Everyone here voted in advance."

***

Early voting bad for bake sale

Kathleen Killian (left) and Rachel Julian staff the Chase Street Elementary School Parent Teacher Organization's bake sale table adjacent to the Chase Street School polling place. "Last time they were running to the grocery stores to get treats because we ran out at the primary, so we were all geared up," Julian explained. "And look!" she said, gesturing to all the unsold goodies. "But you know, people waited two and a half hours last Friday. That's where all our customers went."

***

The projection

CNN calls it around 10:57 pm.

***

Outward reflection of our inner feelings

***

NOTE: All photos by Lori Ringhand.

Insh'Allah

Dan Lorentz — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 00:25:00 -0400

"'Under the sign of death.' Why should not our every utterance come accompanied by a reminder that before too long we will have to say goodbye to this world? Conventions of discourse require that the writer's existential situation, which like everyone else's is a perilous one, and at every moment too, be bracketed off from what he writes. But why should we always bow to convention? Behind every paragraph the reader ought to be able to hear the music of present joy and future grief. Insh'Allah."
___ ___ ___

Source: Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee, Viking 2007.

Why Are Small Towns So Big in America?

Dan Lorentz — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 07:58:00 -0400

Presidential candidates and journalists fawn over rural and small-town America even though most Americans—more than 80 percent of us—live in cities and suburbs. Why?

Read two responses to this question—one from Brookings, the other from BLDGBLOG.

Milwaukee's Best New Brew Pub is Maschine

Dan Lorentz — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 08:34:07 -0400

By Dan Lorentz

MILWAUKEE (IP) – It's a sunny Friday afternoon in September. Johan Macht, wearing a stained apron, is outside buffing chrome with a bar towel.

He steps back. Squints. One last rub.

Now, he can see his mustache on the gleaming surface.

Macht smiles, and in the once grimy and fetid industrial heart of this racially riven Rust Belt city, every part of his new brew pub—Maschine—shines.

And it's not just the chrome-clad exterior that shines. Inside, the mechanical décor glistens. The fare, a German cuisine melded with Soul Food and Latino flavors makes stomachs and cheeks glow with satisfaction. The beers are glorious triumphs.

And the atmosphere—well, how to put it? Maschine radiates genuine multiracial Gemütlichkeit. You'll find out what that means, but first let's follow Macht inside.

A Machine Fueled by Feet and Sun

Inside, you see a profusion of sweaty copper brewing tanks and pipes against the back wall. It all looks a bit like an engine block. That's where Macht spends most of his time. He's one of the pub's four owners, and its brewmaster.

Macht explains that "Maschine" is German for "machine," and the name seems to fit.

Macht points up. You see a giant gear rotating. "That's our ceiling fan," Macht says.

If you're paying attention, you'll see that the gear is turned by a belt. The belt spans the ceiling to a mezzanine lined with stationary bikes. These bikes rotate a shaft that turns the belt that rotates the gear. The bikes are equipped with cup-holders, platforms for food and calorie counters. Patrons who ride long and hard enough on the bikes get free drinks.

From the mezzanine you can get to the rooftop Biergarten. When weather permits, you can dine and drink amid a forest of glinting solar umbrellas. These provide shade and energy for brewing the beer downstairs.

And when you get back downstairs, don't neglect the floor. It's a ceramic piezoelectric flooring system. Which is a mouthful that means the floor harnesses the energy of people walking and dancing on it.

There's a man jumping up and down in a corner of the small dance floor. No music is playing. He's swearing.

"That floor tile has been giving us problems," Macht says and explains that the angry jumping man is Reinhard Hinkelmann, a mechanical engineer, who designed and built most of Maschine's alternative energy systems. He is one of the pub's co-owners.

Macht waves him over to talk. Hinkelmann returns the invitation with an incredulous look that probably intends to convey a message like: "Are you f--king joking? I'm trying to fix this f--king floor tile. F--k!"

Fish Fries, Usinger's Sausage, Collards, Fajitas

Macht pushes through the kitchen door, and instantly hears: "Not now honey, busy…busy as hell."

That's Macht's wife, Steffi Prachel. She's the pub's chef and a co-owner. She's furiously chopping off heads from fish with a gory butcher knife.

Of course, she's busy. This is Milwaukee on a Friday evening. Which means she's preparing for the fish fry rush. The place isn't full yet, but soon Maschine will be jammed with Milwaukeeans from every neighborhood.

Most people, the good folk of Milwaukee included, aren't seeking a culinary adventure when they order a fish fry, and—thank Gott!—you won't get that from Maschine. This is comfort food.

The beer-battered fish—locally caught perch, walleyed pike, bluegills or finger-sized smelt—arrives at table in a paper-lined basket. It's hot and crispy on the outside and moist and flavorful on the inside. Just like it should be.

It's in some of the pub's other menu items that diners may experience a little adventure, may taste a little of what chef Prachel, calls her "comfort mix" style of cooking.

For example, there's the venison meat loaf.

The venison is given some extra fat and flavor from the addition of German pork sausages made at Usinger's, a famous local sausage-maker. The meat is served with collards and garlic mashed potatoes. A potlikker gravy, made from the water used to soften the collards, is drizzled over everything. And there's dark rye bread to sop it up.

The dish is a little bit German, a little bit Soul Food and a whole lot of comfort.

The sausage and sweet pepper fajitas offer a German-Latino comfort mix.

For desert, there's bread pudding and sweet potato pie. There's vanilla flan and rice pudding with cinnamon and cherries. There's lemony poppy-seed cake and apple strudel. And there's plain old chocolate cake and apple pie, too.

Und Don't Forget Das Bier. Oh, ja!

"The kitchen's no fun now, let's drink," Macht says.

Behind the bar, Macht taps generous samples of the pub's three bestsellers.

"354" is the name of Macht's most popular brew. It's a crisp, thirst-quenching Pilsner. The name comes from the federal government's standard industrial classification (SIC) code for metalworking machinery and equipment manufacturers, a once and still important sector of Milwaukee's economy.

Try "Hog Wash," an India pale ale, for something more complex. There are hints of lemon and caraway in it. The name tips its hat to Harley-Davidson Motor Co., which is headquartered in Milwaukee—and whose new motorcycle museum is just blocks away.

If you're in the mood for something dark and Guinness-like, order a pint of "Müeller's Slow Life," which has got to be the flavor opposite of Miller Brewing Co.'s Miller High Life, which is still brewed in Milwaukee (among other places). This is a beer you can't see through. It tastes of cherry, chocolate and honey—and it goes down slow, smooth and burp-less.

In the Valley, Near the Viaduct

Eye-catching design, comforting food and good beer do much to explain Maschine's draw. But Macht says the pub's location in the city's Menomonee Valley near the 16th Street Viaduct is an important factor too.

"We chose this site deliberately," Macht says. "For market reasons, and for symbolism."

From a market perspective, Maschine's in a sweet spot. It's near a major sports stadium, a giant casino and popular new museum. Downtown is not far away, and the nearby interstate makes it easily accessible from almost any neighborhood in the city.

For locals, the pub's location is charged with meanings from the city's history.

In the 1960s, a Catholic priest and civil rights activist named James Groppi led marches in favor of fair housing across the viaduct. The valley and the viaduct, situated between a historically white south side and a black near north side, became symbolic of the city's racial divisions.

But the symbolism of the location goes beyond racial divisions. It also speaks about the city's history as a major industrial manufacturing center. About its decline with the loss of manufacturing firms, the loss of lots of good jobs, and about the valley's revitalization in the past fifteen years.

Gemütlichkeit Reinterpreted

It's now about 6:30 p.m. The fish fry is in full swing. And Maschine is suffused with what the Germans call Gemütlichkeit. Pronounced ge-MOOT-lich-kyt, the word means warm friendliness, sociable coziness.

"Look around," Macht says. "The place is full. But look at who is here. That's what we're proud of."

About fifty percent of the people are white. Forty percent black. Maybe ten percent Hispanic. There are a few who look like they have Asian or Native American backgrounds. Lots of twenty- and thirtysomethings. Lots of children with parents and grandparents. About fifty/fifty gender-wise.

Racially, this approximates the city's mix, though whites are slightly over-represented and Hispanics slightly under-represented. Still, this is a remarkable mix for a pub in a city that has been called—fairly or unfairly—"hyper-segregated."

Macht, who along with Prachel and Hinkelmann are white, says grappling with Milwaukee's segregation is an important part of Maschine's business philosophy.

"Using local produce and products, using green energy, paying fair wages, giving back to the community—we do all that local and sustainable stuff at Maschine," Macht says. "But we really wanted to connect to the social realities of our community, too. For us, that meant trying to break down racial barriers. Maschine is a pub—it's a social place—what better place to try something like that?"

So, Maschine located in the middle of the city. It developed a menu of comfort foods with both wide and specific appeal. Its jukebox has everything in it—from German waltzes, to traditional Mexican oompah-pah music, to soul and rock and hip-hop. Maschine promotes itself in all of the city's various ethnic neighborhoods.

Glory Days, and Drinks

Maschine's fourth owner is Anthony Riley, a wealthy real estate investor and former state legislator. Riley, who is black, has no day-to-day role at the pub but did help finance the start-up.

Macht and Riley were classmates at Milwaukee's Riverfront High School in the early 1980s. The socially concerned business philosophy that guides Maschine today started there.

"Riverfront at that time was an integrated school—about 60 percent white, 40 percent black," Macht recalls. "But it wasn't really integrated. In the cafeteria, the white kids sat together, the black kids sat together. After school, black kids went home West across the river, and white kids went East. It was something you noticed everyday."

But, Macht says, some interracial friendships did form. Like his and Riley's.

"It's getting better now," Macht says. "Kids in their twenties and younger are baffled by racial angst. They might be clueless about history, but racial diversity is normal to them."

Macht concedes that Maschine's ownership doesn't itself reflect its own clientele. "It does probably reflect who has a better chance of launching a business here in Milwaukee, and that's troubling."

Macht pauses, surveys the scene in his pub.

"Look out there," Macht says, pointing to Maschine's dining area, "African-Americans are mostly eating with other African-Americans and whites with whites, Hispanics with Hispanics. They're at separate tables, but they are all here together in this room. And it's after school hours, and it feels good in here. That's something."

Riley enters the pub and makes his way to the bar.

"Thank God!" Macht says. "Now, we can change the subject and talk about the Packers and drink properly."

--- --- ---

NOTE: IP is an acronym for Imaginary Press, a wire service providing factually dubious news and feature stories to credulous media outlets worldwide.

Learn more about Milwaukee's Menomonee Valley here and here.

Here's Wikipedia's take on Milwaukee.

Like many American cities, Milwaukee—especially its suburbs—is segregated. But is the "hyper-segregated" label fair? Read about the controversy.

Here's the Web site for the newly opened Harley-Davidson Museum.

Piezoelectric flooring?

Obama Inspires Impromptu Flag Day

Dan Lorentz — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:11:25 -0400

I can't be in Denver tonight to hoot and holler, but I need to show my pride and excitement somehow. So, I put out the flag here at my home in Athens, Ga.

Quick, do the same at your home.

What a great day to be an American!

Mr. Thundermug

Dan Lorentz — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 07:41:00 -0400

Curious sensation of driving underwater

"Within the [city] walls, virtually the only piece of the old fabric that remains intact is the crisscross network of its streets, the straight avenues that run for miles between the gates. These avenues are lined with spreading plane trees whose branches meet across the road. In summer, when the trees are in leaf, it is quite dark underneath, so that in a car you have the curious sensation of driving underwater."

A baboon in the narrowest sense

"All the patients and nurses in the room were staring at the baboon with undisguised prurience. It was the opening he had been waiting for. 'This is rampant discrimination,' he shouted, with gleeful rage. 'I realize that I may be—in the narrowest sense of the word—a baboon, but are you really going to refuse me treatment just because I don't look like you?'"

Proof of particular affection

"Occasionally, if he wanted to show proof of particular affection, Mr Thundermug would sidle up to the teacher as they sat together on the sofa and stroke her hair with his long, delicate fingers, just as he used to groom and pick the lice out of his wife's coat. This had startled Miss Young at first, but he did it so rarely and with such wistful sincerity in his eyes that it always made her tremble with delight, although she was careful to preserve the severe straight face which she had been taught to adopt at her teacher-training college. She was supposed to reciprocate by feeding him grapes or pieces of apple, which she lowered gingerly between his open jaws; or he would stretch out luxuriantly on the sofa while she stroked the warm, tender skin of his chest, which reminded her of chamois leather."

--- --- ---

Source: Mr Thundermug: A Novel by Cornelius Medvei, HarperCollins Publishers, 2007. Listen to a National Public Radio interview with the author here. Read about less eloquent, less fictional baboons here.

How to Stop Student Rot

Dan Lorentz — Fri, 02 May 2008 07:03:00 -0400

When college students cram into homes built for single families, the rot that results is hard to miss. Even if you've never lived in a neighborhood near campus, you'd have no trouble identifying the telltale signs. Trash-strewn yards. Over-parked streets and driveways. Rotting couches on rotting porches. Loud parties into the wee hours.

There is no mystery about why college students make nice, older neighborhoods look crappy when enough of them move in. What is a mystery, though, is why cities and colleges—town and gown—don't seem motivated to do much to prevent the spoiling of these neighborhoods.

Why stop student rot?

But they should be motivated to stop student rot. There are three reasons why.

1. Crappiness and crime. When too many college students move in, they have two neighborhood-killing effects. First, they quickly make houses look like run down tenements. Second, their high turnover rate sucks the life out of the neighborhood by making it hard for neighbors to come to know and trust and respect each other. When neighborhoods lack neighborliness they rapidly become unpleasant, and risk becoming unsafe as well. Cities risk seeing neighborhoods slide into shabby and dangerous places in need of constant patrol. Colleges risk being surrounded by such neighborhoods.

2. Use of prime residential areas for workers and families. Near campus neighborhoods are usually located in desirable parts of town. They are often walkable neighborhoods, close to work, schools and shopping. Such short commute neighborhoods are becoming even more desirable for working families and individuals as gas prices continue to rise and as more people seek "greener" lifestyles. Having such neighborhoods helps cities attract and retain longer-term taxpaying residents. They also help colleges to attract new faculty.

3. Opportunity to harness student energy. Efforts to stop student rot, if done right (I'll suggest ways to do it right below), can transform even large student populations into unalloyed economic and cultural gold for cities. After all, students are hardly just a bane for cities; they are huge assets, too. The trick is to harness student energy to create more vibrant life on campus and in a distinctive student-centered city district.

Myths about student rot

Let's say city and college policymakers now understand why it's important to fight student rot. Let's say they are motivated to act. What should they do?

The first order of business for policymakers should be to avoid acting on the basis of some common myths.

Myth #1: Students are only half the problem. It's true that students and the absentee landlords that rent to them don't cause all the rot. Irresponsible homeowners certainly do exist. So do responsible students. But because you can find examples of bad homeowners and good students doesn't change the reality that most students are highly transient renters with little stake in the neighborhoods they live in and that most homeowners aren't very transient and usually do care a lot about where they live. Students don't cause all the rot, but they are surely responsible for most of it.

Myth #2: Student rot in neighborhoods near campus is to be expected. Well, of course, your neighborhood is infested with students. You live next to campus! What did you expect? If something like that is your response to constituents who complain about student rot, consider this: not long ago neighborhoods right next to campus—right next to lots of students—were populated mainly by homeowners with a sprinkling of student renters. Not long ago many of these neighborhoods were pleasant, cared-for places. An enlivening diversity of people—most with a real stake in a good neighborhood—lived there. This mix often included college faculty, administrators and workers and their families, first-time homebuyers, older folks with long-time connections to the area—and some students.

Myth #3: Increasing student enrollments are the cause. Students flood into once pleasant, stable neighborhoods. Homeowners flee. Neighborhoods deteriorate. Surely, increases in student enrollment explain this. Well, that's certainly part of the explanation. But it is only part because the student flood into residential neighborhoods outpaces the growth in enrollment in most places. Choices made by colleges play a bigger explanatory role. Choices such as: building less on-campus student housing; ending on-campus living requirements for freshmen and sophomores; and banning or severely restricting on-campus drinking. It's these choices—choices that push students off-campus into city neighborhoods—and not increasing enrollments that account for most of the student influx.

Myth #4: New ordinances will solve the problem. Under pressure from homeowner constituents, city policymakers may be tempted to fight student rot with new ordinances. Direct attacks on the problem include proposals to limit the number of students that can live together in one house or to restrict the number of houses that can be rented to students. Other proposals target symptoms: ticketing loud partiers, fining students and landlords for trash and poor upkeep and extending college conduct rules to cover off-campus behavior. There an indirect efforts, too, such as using zoning rules to protect architectural character which may have the effect of reducing the financial attractiveness of chopping-up single-family houses into student rentals. Some of these ideas might be worthy on their own terms or employed as temporary measures. But they won't do much to stop student rot because they don't deal with a fundamental economic fact: the intense student demand for housing near campus and the good money to be made by renting. Ignoring the economics isn't helpful. The force is too strong.

Better ideas

So, what should be done? What might work?

As I see it, the efforts of city and college policymakers should aim at significantly reducing student demand for housing in near campus neighborhoods.

This doesn't mean adopting policies that allow homeowners to shoot students on sight. It doesn't mean dispersing students far and wide. It doesn't mean cutting enrollments.

What it does mean is concentrating most of student life where it belongs: on campus and in a well-defined, vibrant student-centered district.

Here are three proposals intended to accomplish that:

1. Revitalize on-campus student housing. Colleges should revive the tradition of on-campus living for most students, and build the capacity to house them. Many students today don't want to live on campus. One reason they don't is that most dormitories really suck; they are the American version of bleak East German apartment blocs. But this can be changed. Some colleges are now building new-style residence halls featuring well-designed rooms with fully equipped kitchens, fitness centers, social lounges, movie theaters, pools, game rooms, cable TV and even restaurants, coffee shops and other retail spaces. Even college administrators are starting to realize that cool student housing and other social amenities help with recruitment efforts. When combined with requirements that students live on campus, such efforts create a concentrated, revitalized campus culture. Students like that.

2. End prohibition. When colleges ban on-campus drinking they give students a powerful motivation to move into off-campus neighborhoods where they can party at will without any supervision. Colleges that lift this prohibition and establish policies to allow of-age students to drink responsibly in their rooms and create other venues where social drinking is permitted will be better positioned to intervene when there are problems. Prohibition doesn't stop student drinking; it just shifts where the drinking is done. The responsibility for supervision properly lies with the colleges, not the residents of near campus neighborhoods.

3. Create a vibrant student district. Even where there's a lively on-campus student culture, students will spill into the city—especially into the nearby neighborhoods—for adventure or at least a change of pace. The city should welcome them with a well-defined, concentrated district that caters to their interests and needs. Restaurants. Bookstores. Coffee houses. Smoke shops. Affordable off-campus apartments. Clothing stores. Free wi-fi. Bars. Art galleries. Some high-end condos for the rich kids. A museum. A public water fountain that it's OK to splash around in. Such a district would be extremely appealing—and not just to students. It would harness the economic and cultural energy of students for the good of everyone.

In the meantime

To do these things will require lots of cooperation among city and college policymakers and developers, too. And because it won't happen overnight, city and college leaders must also cooperate on policies for the interim to assure both existing and prospective near campus neighborhood residents that the vitality and quality of these neighborhoods is important.

This means cities should vigorously enforce housing codes and noise ordinances and swiftly fine students and absentee landlords for violations. Colleges should extend student honor codes to encompass off-campus behavior and appoint troubleshooters to work with neighborhood groups and residents to identify and deal with student problems in residential areas.

But don't forget these are temporary "fixes." They are intended mainly to signal that cities and colleges care about the fate of near campus neighborhoods. If intended as permanent solutions to the problem, these policies will only guarantee endless frustration for everyone involved. If the real problem—student demand for housing in near campus neighborhoods—is not dealt with, then the result will be campuses surrounded by shabby, unsafe neighborhoods. This will happen sooner than you think. And when it happens, everyone—students, residents, city leaders and college administrators—loses.

New goal for neighborhood residents

The benefits of these proposals are clear and substantial. Cities get higher quality neighborhoods. Students and colleges get re-vitalized campus life. Everyone gets to enjoy the cultural and economic energy of a new and distinctive student-centered district.

To obtain these prizes, however, town and gown policymakers will have to be pushed into action by the residents of near campus neighborhoods.

But these residents will have to embrace a new, more strategic goal—that of significantly reducing demand for student housing in their neighborhoods.

This means energies currently spent on seeking new ordinances to control student rentals and to punish students and absentee landlords for misbehavior will have to be re-directed. The new work will involve enlisting city and state policymakers to help push colleges to build more student housing and to re-vitalize campus life. It will also mean demanding that cities start working with planners and developers to create student-centered commercial and cultural districts.

Such work will take more time than getting a new ordinance passed, but the pay-off will be much sweeter: a pleasant, safe neighborhood right next to campus.

My Wish List for Lexington

Dan Lorentz — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 20:38:06 -0400

This wish list of city design and city policy features for Lexington, Ky. was created as a brainstorming step for an exercise proposed on Where, a blog devoted to urban issues. Participants in the exercise were encouraged to "go crazy" and "get creative."

My list—which has not been put in priority order and could include many more items—definitely contains some craziness. But I think most of my wishes are pretty tame. Many of them have been suggested by others. Some are already being implemented—at least in part—in the real world.

A pub and grocery in every neighborhood. Everyone should be able to walk to a good, family-friendly pub for a beer, some neighborly companionship and a decent chicken pot pie. And people should be able to walk—not have to drive—to a corner grocery for a gallon of milk.

Tear down the blueglass monstrosity. Let's demolish the Lexington Financial Center. It sticks out like a sore middle finger. And let's not build a 40-story hotel. We need the businesses currently housed in the big glass boxy thing; we need another hotel. But let's build to scale. We're not a big city, and we don't need to pretend to be one to be successful and charming.

Vital diversity is top planning priority. Encouraging mixed-use, commercial and residential, upscale and affordable, low-income and middle-income, black, brown, pink, olive, beige, new and old, in every Lexington neighborhood—all with the goal of preserving existing vitality and diversity or nurturing its growth.

Zero tolerance for homelessness. If you live in town and are temporarily displaced or can't afford shelter, the city should get you a place to live, pronto. And then make sure you get the help you help yourself to get back on your feet ASAP.

Urban focused local newspaper. A paper that really obsessed about helping readers understand city issues well could help build a constituency for good city living. Here's a proposal for such a newspaper.

Wide sidewalks everywhere. The sidewalk grid should be as complete as the road grid, and the sidewalks themselves should be wide enough so couples could walk side-by-side.

Thriving local, non-chain restaurants. Lexington diners should forsake their chain eating habits and give local restaurants a try.

Stallion Transit. This is Lexington's new regional transit service, and it makes taking the bus something you'll actually want to do. There are more buses, more routes, more bus stops and lower fares. But what makes the experience really cool are the custom-designed mid-size buses. They're sleek, silver, surprisingly roomy and free of advertising. The bus shelters are cool, too, and almost always include a bench.

Stop student rot, end campus prohibition. To prevent student rot from blighting nice neighborhoods near campus, the university should build cool student dormitories and require freshmen (at least) to live there. The university should also end on-campus prohibition, and allow of-age students to drink.

Connect the spokes. Lexington's wheel and spoke road system contributes to this small city's fiendish traffic. If more spokes were connected, motorists could find alternatives to clogged spoke roads.

Powerful neighborhoods group. Lexington needs a strong citywide group that champions walkable neighborhoods and fights developer-pushed sprawl. Read my suggestion for such a group here.

Enough with the eternal red lights! Let's prevent the build-up of stopped traffic from blocking intersections downstream and ease across-town travel by changing the street light cycle more frequently everywhere, but especially on major thoroughfares.

Drain the puddles. Almost any appreciable rainfall here results in big, splashy puddles forming in the streets. Other cities have built storm water sewers—some since ancient times—to handle this problem.

jobHarmony.net. This is an employment program, not just a web site. This is where local employers match up with job seekers. This is where employers work with technical colleges to custom-design and quickly implement skill-training courses for their needs. This is where job seekers and workers can access micro-loans to pay for cars, housing costs, new clothes, new skills.

IncuBank. At this quasi-private sector financial and property management company, local small businesspeople and entrepreneurs can apply for start-up loans and subsidies on commercial space and equipment—and get the chance to open their businesses in prime locations throughout the city.

A state earned income tax credit. The city should push the state to offer a state earned income tax credit in addition to the federal credit. This will help put more money in the pockets of local low-income workers—money that, as it's spent or saved, stabilizes the workers and their families and flows back into the local economy.

Bury the wires. Start putting power and communications cables underground. Take streetlights off overhanging wires and mount them on poles like real cities do.

Start Vine Street with a park. Close the street to thru-traffic at Triangle Park, and make the park a welcoming, vine-covered pedestrian plaza connecting the convention center with downtown street life.

Oh yes, and remove the elevated walkway. Give strollers at the new pedestrian plaza Triangle Park an unobstructed view of Vine St. by taking down the very 70ish elevated walkway sticking out from the convention center.

Two-way streets downtown. No city's downtown should be a mere thoroughfare for people going elsewhere. But that's what Lexington's is.

Give us food carts. Pad thai. Fried chicken. Falafel sandwiches. Soul food. Hot dogs. Gyros. Available for sale. In carts. Downtown. Near campus. On campus. Yummy.

Bust property bums fast. When homeowners, renters or absentee landlords violate housing codes, they should be ticketed or fined promptly.

Tow sidewalk blockers. When thoughtless drivers park their cars across sidewalks, the cars should be towed to junkyards and crushed into blocks of scrap metal. (Well, at least they should get tickets.) Sidewalks are for walking, not parking.

Horseback helpers. Not only should there be more cops on horseback, but there should also be a regiment of mounted and uniformed concierges to help guide tourists and townies alike to downtown destinations.

Stop hiding certain neighborhoods. Lexington has had a habit of trying to isolate and block certain low-income neighborhoods from the rest of the city. It also allows certain high-income neighborhoods to act like exclusive enclaves. This unacknowledged policy should be reversed, and efforts made to stitch all neighborhoods together into one whole city fabric.

Put a dog park/coffee shop combo near downtown. The fenced-in dog park doesn't have to be big. Nestled right next to it should be a coffee shop where you can get a cup and then sit down to talk to fellow dog-owners while watching the dogs.

Tracking You, Nun Ghosts, Future Slums

Dan Lorentz — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 07:59:00 -0500

Yikes! How to track down anyone—including you—online.

Believe it or not. Dominican High School in Whitefish Bay, Wis. is haunted by the ghost of a nun.

Worry. Do you live in the suburbs? Do you worry about your neighborhood becoming a slum? You should.

City as Image

Dan Lorentz — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 07:10:00 -0500

Why we are fascinated by the destruction of cities

"At a very deep level, the city seems to express our culture's restless dream about its inner conflicts and its inability to resolve them. On a more conscious level, this ambivalence expresses itself in mixed feelings of pride, guilt, love, fear, and hate toward the city. The fascination people have always felt at the destruction of a city may be partly an expression of satisfaction at the destruction of an emblem of irresolvable conflict."

What happens when experiencing the city in real life

"The basic problem is how to reduce a cacophony of impressions to some kind of harmony. … The inhabitant or visitor basically experiences the city as a labyrinth, although one with which he may be familiar. He cannot see the whole of a labyrinth at once, except from above, when it becomes a map. Therefore his impressions of it at street level at any given moment will be fragmentary and limited: rooms, buildings, streets. These impressions are primarily visual, but involve the other senses as well, together with a crow of memories and associations. The impressions a real city makes on an observer are thus both complex and composite even without taking into account his or his culture's pre-existing attitudes."

The impossibility and necessity of imagining the city

"The city is, on the one hand, incomprehensible to its inhabitants; as a whole it is inaccessible to the imagination unless it can be reduced and simplified. But on the other hand, any individual citizen, by virtue of his particular choices of alternatives for action and experience, will need a vocabulary to express what he imagines the entire city to be."

Cities provoke clash of contradictory feelings

"Clashing contradictions: perhaps the central fascination of the city, both real and fictional, is that it embodies man's contradictory feelings—pride, love, anxiety, and hatred—toward the civilization he has created and the culture to which he belongs."

--- --- ---

Source: All quotes from Burton Pike, "The City as Image" from The Image of the City in Modern Literature (Princeton University Press, 1981) as quoted in The City Reader edited by Richard LeGates and Frederic Stout (Routledge, 1996), p. 244-245, 249.

Wanted: Novel that Celebrates City Life

Dan Lorentz — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 07:56:00 -0500

A law professor I know is looking for a novel that celebrates the virtues of city life. She can't think of one. Neither can I.

In the law and literature course that she teaches, her students read—among other works and writers—Fidelity: Five Stories by Wendell Berry. Like many of Berry's stories, these take place in Port Williams, a fictional rural community in Kentucky. I haven't read these particular stories but they are, I'm told, complex and subtle and celebrate what Berry thinks are the virtues of life in a small farming community.

Is there fiction that does the same thing for big cities?

"I've combed through my book shelves," the professor says, "and I can't find anything that treats an urban community as the kind of 'value' protective environment that Berry seems to have created."

Cities play important roles in lots of fiction. As settings, of course. As characters in their own right—think of Dublin in Ulysses or Dubliners by James Joyce, for example. As metaphors and images. But, like the professor, I can't think of any novels or stories that explicitly celebrate the moral and community virtues of city life.

There's got to be something, doesn't there?

Tell us what we're missing by adding a comment to this post.

Implicit Preferences, Pretty Art, Choices

Dan Lorentz — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 07:34:00 -0500

Know yourself? Find out who you really want to be president. Take the implicit association test.

Pretty pictures. Scroll down to see paintings, photographs, drawings.

Tip. Six rules to help control out-of-control choice-making.

Magazines About City Issues

Dan Lorentz — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 07:06:00 -0500

As part of a project to gather useful and interesting sources of information about cities, I've identified a handful of print format magazines (with Web sites) devoted to covering urban issues. These are not academic journals; they are not blogs. (I'll gather those later.) Here's what I've found so far:

American City & County is aimed at an audience of city, county and state officials. Every month it covers a wide range of city-related issues, including economic development, technology and infrastructure.

Governing Magazine is a monthly magazine that frequently focuses on state government, but also has strong coverage of local issues. Congressional Quarterly, Inc publishes the magazine.

Government Technology covers issues such as congestion pricing technologies, voting machines, GIS, cyber-security, and features case studies about how local and state governments use technology.

Nation's Cities Weekly is a publication of the National League of Cities. The weekly is available in a downloadable format.

The Next American City is a quarterly devoted to promoting what it calls "socially and environmentally sustainable economic growth in America’s cities and suburbs."

Faith Without Evidence is Good?

Dan Lorentz — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 06:52:00 -0500

"What is so good about having faith when you don't have evidence? What is the real advantage to that? Why is this something that we want to encourage? Why not say, as I do with my daughter, 'Let's see some proof.' She asked her friend, who believes in Jesus, if she could wait up one night and see Him for herself, and it didn't happen. Why is that OK? Why is it OK for scientists to say that skepticism is the default position, except when it comes to mainstream religion?"

— Natalie Angier

--- --- ---
Source: From "God vs. Science: A Debate Between Natalie Angier and David Sloan Wilson Moderated by Thomas A. Bass." The debate took place April 12, 2007 at the University at Albany, State University of New York. The transcript for this debate—from which this quote is taken—is posted on www.edge.org, the Web site of the Edge Foundation, Inc.

Read a bio of Natalie Angier, who is a science reporter for The New York Times, here. David Sloan Wilson, is a professor of biology and anthropology at Binghamton University in New York. Read his bio here.

Recipes, Lists, Hypocrisy

Dan Lorentz — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 07:22:00 -0500

Tip. Type in the ingredients you have, get recipes for preparing them.

Candy. Top 10 bizarre Mormon beliefs. 15 beautiful sci-fi images. 30 unfortunate quotes.

Question. Is hypocrisy always such a bad quality in a politician?

FixMyStreet: Pinpoint, Track City Problems

Dan Lorentz — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 07:39:00 -0500

FixMyStreet.com is a Web site where city residents can take quick, visible steps toward getting city problems fixed.

Let's say your neighbor's garbage carts have been overflowing for weeks or the sidewalk down the street is crumbling or your other neighbor just had their fourth loud late-night party this week. At FixMyStreet.com you can report the problem publicly—and, if you want to, pinpoint it on a map with a photo you've uploaded and a brief description.

Staff at the Web site quickly reviews your report to make sure it's a complaint that city government can do something about. They make sure you're not a crank. If you check-out, they post your report on the Web site and categorize it by location and type of complaint.

If that's all they did, the site might just be a good way to let off steam. But what happens next is key: the Web site reports the problem to the appropriate agency at the city on your behalf and then publicly tracks whether the problem gets resolved.

FixMyStreet.com is a Web site in the United Kingdom, and I have no idea whether it's working well or not.

Assuming that the idea works, I can't help but wonder if citywide neighborhood groups might benefit from launching similar Web sites here in the United States. (Are there such Web sites? I haven't found any, but I haven't looked very hard.)

A well-managed, well-publicized site like this could be an effective tool for groups pushing for more responsiveness from city government on code enforcement, road maintenance and other quality of life issues.

Good Art Makes You Uncomfortable

Dan Lorentz — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 12:04:01 -0500

Why should art make people uncomfortable? That's the question I asked of a man who paints, writes poetry, does needlepoint (believe it or not), loves to talk and has a real job, too. His answer:

Art that doesn't make you uncomfortable says, "It's OK not to look at me if you don't feel like it."

My friend Jim [James Baker Hall], who was my teacher, said if you write a short story, you have to bend the bar.

We joke about, "Whoa, what the fuck does that mean? Bend the bar?"

But I kind of know. I think of it as a metal bar for some reason.

There has to be enough tension in a piece of art for there to be a dynamic, for there to be energy in it.

Some people don't want tension at all even if it's just from a piece of art.

So, I think good art makes you uncomfortable because you have to put aside whatever comfort zone you're in—not a bad place necessarily, just a whistling state of mind—and let yourself be invited in.

If a piece of art exists long enough and you know it well enough, then you're able to be comfortable in it because you know what happens, right?

So you keep re-telling the story just enough that it makes it scarier for you.

Often in a great movie, for example, you can see echoes of other great pieces of art. But now it's cast in this new way. It doesn't mean that it's a better piece of art: it just means that it surprised you. It got you involved again, and you didn't know what was going to happen, and there's a kind of discomfort in that.

You could even think of being engaged as a form of discomfort. Because comfort is a kind of disengagement. It's like you're being neither here nor there with your attention. It doesn't matter if I look at that painting or not.

Like a painting by Thomas Kinkade.

He's sold more art than any painter in history. And his art sucks. Because there's no focal point, there's never any tension. It's like an affirmation that says, "You're a good boy," right? "You're so good!"

If you're struck by some thing's beauty, and then when you go back to your ordinary life and your ordinary mindset, you notice a contrast. It's different than driving down the street. You've been moved.

If you just look at the paintings of Franz Kline or Mark Rothko, which don't have any subject matter, your mind may never say, "Well, that's just a stack of blobs of paint for a Rothko" or, "That's just something my 7 year old could do."

It [the painting] is actually going straight to your lizard brain and having some kind of effect that is significant. Mark Rothko just did color fields, stacks of color. But you could make a bad Mark Rothko painting that just fit so seamlessly into the landscape that you don't notice it.

Just to be encouraged to notice is enough to make some people uncomfortable, I think.

It's a matter of degree, depending on the person, and how afraid they are.

I think some people who have really great lives don't spend very much time being comfortable at all. They are willing to look.

I keep thinking of this Pink Floyd song, "Comfortably Numb" and how those two words are kind of similar.

Nothing's wrong with being comfortable. I'm not saying everybody has to look at art all the time.

But if you're an artist, you have a job. Like if do foot massage, then you're going to have to take your shoes off. And if I don't make you take your shoes off, then I can't do a good job.

If you don't want anything that you see to ever change, if you don't want any texture for your eyeballs or your earballs or whatever, then you're just going to be comfortably numb.

I think it's the job of the artist is to add that unique, discrete piece of texture to the world that is different than something that you run into everyday.

Art has got to wiggle its way past your ordinary defenses, and anytime your defenses get penetrated there's some kind of discomfort, even if it's fun.

--- --- ---

Read about James Baker Hall.

[A reader suggests this link to a Web site with photographs and other work by James Baker Hall.--Feb. 5, 2008.]

Look at paintings by Thomas Kinkade, Franz Kline and Mark Rothko.

Listen to Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb." Read the lyrics.

NOTE: Interview subjects are promised anonymity. The answers are transcribed from a recording, which is then erased. Answers are lightly edited to improve readability. I do not necessarily share opinions expressed by interview subjects.

God Called Jack Home for a Haircut

Dan Lorentz — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:41:51 -0500

LEXINGTON, KY – Taped to the front door of Chevy Barber Shop at 442 S. Ashland Ave., this note tells customers that Jack Parker, shop-owner and barber, has died.

In Oct. 2007, Parker celebrated 30 years of operating his shop at the Ashland Avenue location. His daughter, Leigh Ann Greathouse, is also a barber and will continue to run the barbershop.

Parker died Jan. 18.

Link to Parker's obituary.

In Praise of Ibuprofen

Dan Lorentz — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 11:01:04 -0500

Mind Hacks, a blog about neuroscience and psychology, spotted this clever and true tribute to the painkiller Ibuprofen:

I Prefer Ibuprofen
By Matt Harvey

Life is so much easier with effective analgesia

The purpose of pain is to say to the brain:
Ow! Houston we’ve got a problem…
But once we’ve got the message we don’t need it again and again…

What do we want? Symptom Relief!
When do we want it? Now!

When you’ve had enough of it there’s just no need to suffer it
Just pop a little caplet and Ibuprofen will buffer it

I've had a go with Aspirin, Codeine and Paracetamol
With Solpadeine, Co-codamol, with Anadin and Ultramol
I love them all, I really do, but I prefer Ibuprofen

There are other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs around
Your NSAID’s these days are quite thick on the ground
There’s Naproxen, there's Nabumetone
and, of course, there's Indomethacin
Each with much to offer us. But I prefer Ibuprofen

I love the way the compound sticks its cheeky little hand in
The way it blocks the enzyme that creates the prostaglandin

Reducing fever, inflammation, and mild to moderate pain

Yes I know it isn’t curative, in anyway preventative
But to dwell on what it doesn’t do is anally retentative
I know it doesn’t treat the cause, the cause will still be there
But it lends a hand, it puts the ‘pal’ back into palliative care.

It does exactly what you’d expect it to say it would do if it came in a tin

Why Can't Newspapers Be Fun to Read?

Dan Lorentz — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 07:45:00 -0500

"Stop being important and start being interesting."

That's Michael Hirschorn's advice to newspapers, which continue to hemorrhage readers to the Web.

In an essay peppered with manifesto-like slogans in the December 2007 issue of The Atlantic, Hirschorn—an editor at the magazine—argues that "serious" news such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times print on their front pages needs to be "sexed-up." He says such news needs to be "marketed with the kind of zeal that so far only [media-baron, owner of the New York Post and now The Wall Street Journal Rupert] Murdoch has been willing to muster."

Hirschorn's right, I think. It's important to understand, though, that he's not saying that newspapers will survive only if they fill their pages with irresponsible, sensationalistic crap.

When Hirschorn says newspapers should "stop being important," he means that they should face up to the fact that traditional news—the reporting of government hearings and meetings, the recounting of sports events and summaries of earnings reports—is now available to readers within hours or sooner on the Web from wire services and other sources. "Readers," he suggests, "might no longer need newspapers for news."

How can newspapers "start being interesting"?

Hirschorn says news stories need to be "sexed-up." By which he means they've got to be "pleasurable." Which he defines as "stories that are just fun to read."

And what is a "fun to read" news story according to Hirschorn?

He takes his cue from newspaper readers themselves, examining a sample of the most e-mailed stories from three top national newspapers. He describes his admittedly un-rigorous sample of stories as a "rich stew of global affairs, provocative insight, hot-button issues, compelling narrative and enlightened localism."

Most of these stories were fun to read, Hirschorn says, and they all exhibited "virtues like deep reporting, strong narrative, distinct point of view and sharp analysis."

Which means—if Hirschorn's not fooling himself and us—we don't have to worry that sexing-up necessarily entails dumbing-down the news.

As I've said, I think Hirschorn's suggestions are on target. The Web has given newspapers both a license and a kick to reinvent themselves.

Newspapers, I think, need to embrace their papery-inky incarnation as well as their relative "slowness" (in contrast, that is, to the quickness of the Web).

What does that mean?

For one thing, it means newspapers should fall in love with graphics-on-paper again. They should become masters of the imaginative and striking display of visual information, be less afraid of colors, experiment with different paper sizes and weights. For another, it means that newspaper stories need to be very interesting indeed, and written with brio and style and backed by excellent reporting.

Read my article about The Sunday City, a local weekly, for a more full-bodied description of what I take to be Hirschorn's principles about the pleasures of newspaper reading.

Haidt's Happiness Formula

Dan Lorentz — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 05:56:00 -0500

For an explanation, go here.

Strange, Indescribably Strange and Short

Dan Lorentz — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 23:12:22 -0500

"How strange, how indescribably strange, that behind the wall, this very wall, there's a man with an angry face sitting on the floor with his legs stretched out, wearing red boots"

"His overcoat was long and thick, of a purple hue, either plaid or striped, or maybe, damn it all, polka dot."

"On those days, I would try to manufacture a joyous mood for myself. I would like down on my bed and smile. I'd smile for twenty minutes at a time, but then the smile would turn into a yawn."

"Reason? Rapture? Rectangle? Rib? Or: Mind? Misery? Matter?"

"Marina told me that one Sharik visited her in bed. Who, or what, this Sharik was I couldn't for the life of me determine."

What the hell is this? you may ask. These are lines from very short stories by a Russian writer named Daniil Kharms (1905-1942), who starved to death in the psychiatric ward of a Soviet prison during the siege of Leningrad.

The lines above are taken from a handful stories by Kharms published in the New Yorker. You can read the full stories--the longest of which is about 625 words--here. They were translated from the Russian by Matvei Yankelvich, Simona Schneider and Eugene Ostashevsky.

Here's another collection of his stories.

Both the New York Times Book Review and The Guardian recently published articles about Kharms' work.

Read Wikipedia's biography of Kharms here.

Two Billion Heartbeats in a Lifetime

Dan Lorentz — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 07:15:00 -0500

"Every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime. You can spend them slowly, like a tortoise, and live to be two hundred years old, or you can spend them fast like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old."

— from "Joyas Voladoras,*" an essay by Brian Doyle

--- --- ---
Source: Brian Doyle, "Joyas Voladoras", originally published in The American Scholar, Autumn 2004 and reprinted in The Best American Spiritual Writing 2005, edited by Philip Zaleski (Houghton Mifflin Co.) 2005, p. 44.

* Joyas voladoras: Spanish for "flying jewels." It's what the first European explorers in the Americas called hummingbirds.

A Stray Cat Killer With Good Aim

Dan Lorentz — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 07:05:00 -0500

Unlike my Wisconsin friend who missed when she shot at a feral cat, Jim Stevenson of Florida hit his mark.

On the downside, his better aim got him thrown in jail. On the upside, it got the New York Times Magazine to write about him and his cause—saving native birds from feral cats.

Read the New York Times story about sharpshooter Stevenson and his cause here.

Read an interview with my friend, a passionate bird-lover with—let's admit it—not perfect aim and her views on controlling feral cat populations to save songbirds here.

Aggregators of Crazy Shit on the Web

Dan Lorentz — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 20:44:53 -0500

grow-a-brain offers a daily package of links organized around a common, though often whimsical, category. Examples of categories: unusual meat and vegetable links, nature's unusual mysteries, unusual language links.

The Obscure Store and Reading Room collects odd but true news stories from reputable newspapers, including, for example, this story about cows fleeing from a truck as it pulls into McDonalds.

At Boing Boing, which calls itself "a directory of wonderful things," you can link to things like a Web site that offers free old science fiction radio plays, a time-lapse video on YouTube of a house demolition and blog post that lists just a few of 400 plus uses of vinegar, the wonder substance.

Your Views are Biased

Dan Lorentz — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 07:07:00 -0500

And so, apparently, are mine

This Wikipedia article about cognitive biases—the common flaws, glitches, blind spots and errors in our interpretation of experience and our decision-making—is truly humbling.

According to the article, a catalog of our mental frailties includes:

--31 decision-making and behavioral biases, such as the bandwagon effect (believing things because others do);

--26 probability and belief biases, including the gambler's fallacy (assuming that because we lost the lottery last week our chances are better this week);

--20 social biases such as the illusion of transparency (overestimating people's ability to know what we're thinking); and

--8 memory errors, including the hindsight bias (otherwise known as the 'I-knew-it-all-along effect').

Want to Boost Mood? Think about Death

Dan Lorentz — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 07:18:00 -0500

If you're not clinically depressed, thinking about your own death might be a good way to improve your mood.

That's according to a recently published study—"From Terror to Joy: Automatic Tuning to Positive Affective Information Following Mortality Salience"—as summarized in Time Magazine.

Click here to read the article and find out how this counterintuitive finding might just make sense.

(Thanks to Mind Hacks for spotting this.)

Zen Habits

Dan Lorentz — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 07:24:00 -0500

Zen Habits upsets expectations, which is a good thing in this case.

Zen Habits is a blog that offers tips on how to be more productive, but also gives concrete advice about how to do nothing. It offers lots of advice about doing things that will make you happier, but does so without promising permanent bliss.

The posts are written simply and clearly, and are usually in the form of lists. You'll find posts such as top 20 motivation hacks, 75 simple pleasures to brighten your day and 10 things you can do today to simplify your life.

Among my favorite posts are a guide to creating a minimalist home and 50 tips for frugal living. A post about the 10 benefits of rising early and how to do it is well done, but not something I'll be trying. This is a very popular site, and it's clear why.

The Shortest Stories Ever Told?

Dan Lorentz — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 07:27:00 -0500

Can you write a story in just six words?

To get inspiration from some big-time writers, read this collection of six-word stories from Wired Magazine.

(I found this via Yehuda Berlinger's blog, Gaming and Blogging in the Holy Land. Here's a bunch of his six-word stories.)

Mystery of Sewers, Purpose of Pipes, Glory of Rust

Dan Lorentz — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 07:12:00 -0500

If you're curious about what your city's underground infrastructure looks like but are too chicken to climb down into a storm water tunnel or to lift a heavy metal grate and drop into a utility tunnel, you'll want to take a look at The Vanishing Point.

This site documents one man's explorations of our industrial infrastructure and landscape. Much of his travels are underground in sewer tunnels, but he also explores power generation plants and abandoned, dilapidated industrial buildings.

There are lots of eerie photographs in dark tunnels and shots of beautiful rusting metal tanks, beams and bolts (scroll to orange-ish photographs toward the bottom of the page). Don't be such a stranger to the structures beneath your feet that make your urban lifestyle possible, visit this site. At least you won't get caught trespassing.

You're Gone, We're Gone, It's All Gone

Dan Lorentz — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:09:00 -0400

1. Your house without you.

2. The earth without us.

3. The galaxy without life on earth.

Kill a Stray Cat, Save 20 Songbirds

Dan Lorentz — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 21:11:13 -0400

You kill feral cats when you have the chance, don't you? That's the question I asked of a woman who loves National Public Radio, her husband, songbirds, shooting and her dogs. She lives on a couple acres in rural Wisconsin. Her answer:

I would if I could actually hit the damn things.

Unfortunately, my aim is not as good as I would like it to be.

I love songbirds. In Wisconsin alone, feral cats kill about 39 million songbirds every year—every single year.

There's two million wild, feral cats roaming Wisconsin.

And the problem is, this is not a native species.

They are killing—they are devastating—our wildlife.

I am all about destroying non-native, invasive species. And I've tried.

[Once] I was out deer hunting—not like I was out going after cats—and the cat came along the trail where I normally do my deer hunting.

And your favorite gun-toting Democrat just couldn't pass up the opportunity.

But I just missed unfortunately, darn it.

Probably just as well…the dogs would be rolling in it.

They [the cats that roam on her property] could be [a neighbor family's pets], but these cats don't have tags.

My dogs have collars and tags.

These cats are roaming wild.

I think that cats are fine if they are in the house. That's a house cat.

They're fine if they are in the barn. That's a barn cat.

I don't need a cat on my property. I didn't ask for it. It's kind of like trespassing as far as I'm concerned.

I didn't ask for the cats.

Just like I didn't ask for mice.

My dogs eat my mice.

I love snakes and frogs.

And I love having the birds around. I really enjoy the birds.

I love listening to them, watching them.

And you know that there are cats out there waiting to catch the birds. Up to two million feral cats out there in Wisconsin.

There really shouldn't be that many out there.

Now, it's a crime—I think—it's a crime to shoot a cat. I'm not sure. But it shouldn't be.

People should think about the fact that they are allowing these cats to go out un-neutered and un-spayed.

You know it's one thing if you've got a cat and you're responsible for it.

I don't allow my dogs to be un-neutered and running around the neighborhood and getting all the other dogs pregnant. That's not what we do.

But cats are very prolific…

So would I do it [kill feral cats if given the chance]?

Yeah, I really would.

I really, really would.

I'm all about it.

Did I mention I got another shotgun for my wedding anniversary this year?

--- --- ---
Are feral cats really responsible for declining songbird populations?

Read a National Geographic article about the controversy.

Alley Cat Allies, a national group that advocates a Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) policy as the best way to control feral cat populations, argues that the predatory behavior of cats is widely misunderstood.

In 2005, some conservationists in Wisconsin floated a proposal to allow hunting of feral cats. Read a news report about the proposal, and another about the fate of the proposal.

Science Notwithstanding

Dan Lorentz — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 07:53:00 -0400

"[Science] has no real agenda. What I mean by this is that by its very nature science cannot be forced in any particular direction. The necessarily open nature of science (notwithstanding the secret work carried out in the Cold War and in some commercial laboratories) ensures that there can only ever be a democracy of intellect in this, perhaps the most important of human activities. What is encouraging about science is that it is not only powerful as a way of discovering things, politically important things as well as intellectually stimulating things, but it has now become important as metaphor. To succeed, to progress, the world must be open, endlessly modifiable, unprejudiced. Science thus has a moral authority as well as an intellectual authority."

—Peter Watson

Comment:

Science as a metaphor for a certain open, modifiable and intellectually honest approach to dealing with the world is a powerful, and worthy metaphor.

But I'm not so sure that I can so readily endorse the notion that the "necessarily open nature of science…ensures that there can only ever be a democracy of intellect" in science as actually practiced by actual scientists in actual scientific institutions. Scientists are people. Scientific institutions are human institutions. You can't just waive away with a "notwithstanding*" the lessons of actual historical experience. Neither people nor their institutions have ever been effortlessly democratic.

Science does not ensure a democracy of intellect; but a scientific ethic is the only way to build even an imperfect, fragile one.

--- --- ---

Quote from The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century by Peter Watson (HarperCollins Publishers, 2002), p. 4.

* Whenever I encounter the word "notwithstanding", I get tripped-up by the meanings of the words that seem to comprise it: "not" and "withstand." For me, this word flips between two opposite meanings even as I look at it. It's like a linguistic version one of those figure-ground visual illusions, where sometimes you see the vase and sometimes the two faces.

The dictionary says "notwithstanding" means that something is the true despite opposition. And sometimes I understand that immediately. But sometimes I initially read "notwithstanding" to mean the opposite of what it does mean. I intrepret it to mean that an assertion cannot withstand opposition, that some assertion cannot overcome opposition.

So, for example, sometimes I think I should be able use the word like this: "Notwithstanding the secret work carried out in the Cold War and in some commercial laboratories, the idea that science ensures the democracy of the intellect falls flat." An alternative sentence with an essentially equivalent meaning could be written: "The idea that science ensures the democracy of the intellect cannot survive in the face of what we know about the secret work carried out in the Cold War and in some commercial laboratories."

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word comes from a loan translation—a literal word-for-word translation (also called a calque by linguists)—of a word from one language into another.

In this case, according to the fourth edition of the American Heritage Dictionary, the translation was from a Medieval Latin phrase into Old English. The Latin phrase was: "non obstante", which meant "being no hindrance." In Old English, non become not. That makes sense.

But translating obstante involves two Old English words. The first is "with" which back in the day apparently sometimes meant "against" and "standan" which meant "to stand". So, putting it all back together again: non obstante became "not-against-standing".

Notwithstanding: something that does not stand against something else. For some reason, thinking of the word this way helps me understand it like everybody else does.

Rarely Noticed Bodily Sensations, Vol. 1

Dan Lorentz — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 07:48:00 -0400

Loss of heat from the tops of the ears.

Air moving on the surface of the eyes.

Blurry, translucent squiggles floating indolently on the eyes.

Tongue resting against slimy inner sides of teeth.

The cool, combing sweep of air into the nostrils.

Upper lip lying—almost hot—on lower lip.

A dull, static throbbing from the teeth and jaw-line.

The miniscule metronomic swaying of the head from the neck.

A nest of potential twitches on the spine between the shoulder blades.

A coiled, ticklishness in the wrists.

The ball of heat held in the palm of a closed hand.

The stretched rise and fall of the belly.

The slightly warm, soft weight of the penis.

A smooth heaviness in the thighs.

An arc of coolness along the arches of the feet.

The thick, tightness of the skin on the heels.

3 for Sci-Fi Fans

Dan Lorentz — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 07:34:00 -0400

1. A "statistically" generated list of the top 100 science fiction books of all time.

2. The top 50 dystopian movies of all time, listed, ranked and described.

3. Strange Horizons, a Web-based weekly magazine devoted to speculative fiction. Includes stories, poetry and reviews.

The Useless Satisfaction of Venting

Dan Lorentz — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 07:39:00 -0400

Dear Diary:

I had a good, sharp question to ask.

My hand shot up three times seeking recognition by the chairperson of the meeting. The small room was crowded and seething with angry neighborhood residents like me.

Finally—on the fourth upward thrusting and wagging of my hand—she called on me.

I stood, took a breath and then began muttering qualifications and temporizations, which quickly felt like obstructions I was tripping over and so I abruptly launched into making some sweeping generalizations (full of bad grammar and lacking in logical connectors), my voice steadily rising all the while, gaining a momentum that rapidly culminated in a short series of angry declarative sentences.

Applause erupted. A reporter asked how to spell my name.

I sat down, feeling good. Damn it.

After the meeting, while I walked to my car I realized I hadn't gotten an answer to my question. This was about to make me angry until I realized something else: I hadn't actually asked a specific question. And something more: not only hadn't I asked the question I wanted to, I sat there for at least twenty minutes after making my speech feeling as if I had actually accomplished something.

My quote didn't make the paper the next day.

An answer to the question I had intended to ask would have been useful. It was a good question. About something worth knowing. Really.

--- --- ---

Read a newspaper story about a study showing that venting anger may do more harm than good.

Telling Lies to Get True Information Fast

Dan Lorentz — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 07:19:00 -0400

Do you lie to people to get your research done? That's the question I asked of a man who has written and updated tourist guidebooks about a number of foreign and domestic locations for popular guidebook publishers. His answer:

Yeah, you really need to do that for quite a few reasons.

For one, it makes things go faster, but also you have to do that to get an honest answer.

You can't show up at a place, tell them, "Yeah, I'm going to be writing about you, reviewing you in essence," and get the same answer you that you would if you get if you just show-up as a nobody at the front desk. For hotels, sometimes for restaurants, tour agencies and those sorts of things…you just don't tell them you're a writer so that you get the right answers.

Early on, for my first book—the Minnesota book—the price would be the first thing I'd ask, and then I would ask to see a room. And if they asked why, I would say I was reviewing the place.

I've had people insist that I had to talk to managers.

I had one desk clerk—in…ah, where was it? I don't know—say, "Sorry, the manager's not here. You'll have to come tomorrow." And then proceeded to lecture me about how I'm not allowed to write about a place without their permission.

I was tempted to give a 60-second lesson on the first amendment, but I just left and didn't come back.

There's a lot a people who do not know what a guide book is—even here in the U.S. They're very confused when I ask them questions. They do not realize they exist. No joke. It's far more common than you would think.

Sometimes I have to explain, and I'd just say, "Oh, well a guidebook, you know, if you're going to visit England or Ecuador or a place like that you might go to a bookstore or library and get a book that tells you where to stay and what to see." And they say, Oh, OK that's good idea.

I can't tell people what I'm doing.

In smaller places, I have to come up with a story, because if I tell them that I'm working on writing something, they will not answer the questions—even the simplest of questions such as, "What's the price of the weekend tourist trolley that takes you to all the sites?"

Whenever I work in foreign countries, I never write down my occupation down as a writer on a visa application.

When I was in Chad, there had been a coup attempt in the capital a few weeks before I arrived. And the soldiers were extremely suspicious.

Most of the foreigners they see coming around—I should say most of the white foreigners they see coming around—are in the white SUVs that all the NGO [non-governmental organization] workers and U.N. officials drive.

So when they see one on a bus, they don't know what to think.

I had a visa, but I also had to get paperwork to leave the capital. When I got the paperwork, I certainly didn't tell them what I was doing. I just said I was going to visit a beautiful place. That is what I told them. You have to butter them up a little bit.

And the soldiers, I certainly never told them what I was doing. I didn't pay any bribes in Chad, but I certainly had to get people who I met on the bus to sort of come out and get on my side and talk to soldiers into letting me go and see places.

I would never, never tell a solider or a policeman what I was doing in some of those countries.

In order to go to southern Sudan, the guy who got me the visa—and I don't know the details of how he got it for me, I just know that the business was transacted on the streets in front of the official building, not inside. That's all I know.

When he submitted it, I don't know where I was going to go so he put on the list a large number of towns so I'd be OK if I went to any of them. And he sent it in.

Got a phone call a couple days later saying that he and I would need to have a meeting with—I don't remember who it was, but somebody quite high up…he was high up enough that it made my friend nervous.

We had the meeting, and I just explained that I was going to go visit these places because it seemed beautiful—and again sort of do the talk about how great the country. He said, "OK, why don't you submit the paper differently and list the only the towns you're really going to visit and come back in a couple days, and you're OK to go."

It turns out that one of the towns that my friend had written down on this paper…there had been some violence there a few days previous to when I submitted my application. So he actually was just looking out for me, probably…probably.

Anyhow, had I told him I was going there to write about the area, there was no chance I would have got in.

It [not revealing your purpose] is what you need you need to do.

In my personal life, I would never…I'm a completely honest person. I would never deceive someone for ill purposes. But this isn't for an ill purpose either. It's for a greater good, I guess you could say.

It's a tool of the trade—that applies to the U.S. and that applies to the Sudan.

Not revealing what you're doing gets you through things faster.

Someone hears you're working on a book, they tend to want to talk a lot longer. Even if you're just walking through a small town museum where you don't have to ask any question, if you just start talking to someone and say, "I'm here working on a guidebook," they'll start wanting to tell you every little thing.

On the other hand, you sometimes get very good little gems out of those conversations. But it's not always possible. You might have to see three museums before they close at 5 o'clock, and you got to work fast.

--- --- ---
Read about Minnesota, Chad and Sudan on Wikipedia.

Can't Do; Can't Not Do: Imagining the City

Dan Lorentz — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:46:00 -0400

—Burton Pike

--- --- ---
Source: Burton Pike, "The City as Image" from The Image of the City in Modern Literature (Princeton University Press, 1981) as quoted in The City Reader edited by Richard LeGates and Frederic Stout (Routledge, 1996), p. 245.