The epitome and very central teaching of Christianity are two things which are also the same: love God and love your neighbor. The latter is something I would expect any decent human, despite religion or belief system, to agree is a good thing. It is logical to follow, of course — as did the thoughts of a man two centuries past — with the question, who is our neighbor?

When we ask ourselves this question it would be right to respond with another question, who is not our neighbor? Anyone that surrounds us in a way physical, emotional, intellectual, or other is our neighbor. By this we can determine that everyone — from our closest family and friends, to strangers in other continents and faraway countries — are indeed our neighbor.

I have thought that in the case of a dire emergency, such as if there was some natural disaster come upon us, putting our lives in danger, I would foremost tend to my wife to make sure she was okay and safe. I would expect the same of others to put the interest of their own family ahead of others.

So it follows, in this example there appears to be a natural hierarchy established in defining who is our neighbor. My wife is my first neighbor. Following will be the rest of my family, my friends, our neighborhood community, church community, local businesses and organizations. Furthering this line of reasoning, my neighbor will thereafter be my city, other cities, my country. And so we’ve established what seems a natural neighborly hierarchy of near to far. None less important than the other, but caring for those within arm’s reach before those intangible.

Given this, if one will love his neighbor, should he not then put his local economy much before the global? This is the conclusion I have come to, and I struggle to make effort to live by it. (It boggles my mind, for example, that a web designer will not think twice of contracting an overseas developer, and then complain about our present state of economy. All for the sake of saving himself a few dollars in the meantime.)

It can certainly be a sacrifice to spend and hire locally, more for some than others. But it is a sacrifice well worth the gain one will have in the life of a real community. A local, tangible community. This, in part, is loving your neighbor.

Photo by Carrie Neumayer / a pretty pickle

Carrie Neumayer has got some great photos of a Louisville building I’ve been long wanting to visit. Kaden Tower. As she points out, the building is often said to be designed by Frank Lloyd Wright — I’ve been confused about this myself — but she says it “was actually designed by Wright’s protegé and son-in-law William Wesley Peters.” Be sure to see this!

We flew into Albuquerque, New Mexico and took the train to Santa Fe. We stayed at a hostel, met some really great people, ate some really great food, saw some really wonderful artwork (surprisingly), saw some fascinating adobe architecture, visited a parish housing the most kindhearted priest I’ve ever met, and finally we were stranded by Greyhound at ten o’clock at night which forced a budget expansion to include a motel and car rental.

We spent a week in El Paso, Texas for my brother-in-law’s wedding. We were treated all too well. We ate a lot. We drank a lot. I wore a tuxedo. I was privileged to watch my new sister-in-law so joyfully glow during their marriage ceremony which was on a golf course in a country club surrounded by friends and family and desert mountains in perfect sunset weather. I learned how good Jack and Coke is and how great it can make you feel. I learned that in El Paso there was a mountain removed so that Walmart could build a new store, and that swings and mulberry trees have been banned from public parks. In El Paso there is a stretch of I-10 where you can see impoverished neighborhoods of Juárez, Mexico being looked down upon ironically and sadly by towering American bank buildings just across the border. In El Paso the Mexican cuisine is real and delicious.

We drove to Tucson, Arizona, staying in another hostel where I talked to a former architect who doesn’t like Frank Lloyd Wright’s work, nor seemed able to admit Wright contributed anything good to American architecture. We spent time at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum where we saw lots of birds and cacti and other things. We visited San Xavier del Bac Mission which is a Roman Catholic mission started in 1700, the current structure built in the late 18th century. We had seen it featured in a documentary. We ate tacos of cow tongue and cheek.

We drove to Joshua Tree, California. We entered the south entrance of Joshua Tree National Park, exiting the north. In between we saw fields of Joshua trees and weirdly shaped and placed boulders and other plant life, all while the sun was setting. It was strange and wonderful and beautiful. We visited my uncles at their amazing B&B just a mile outside the entrance to the park. We spent a whole day with them and had a great time, and we’re hoping to make it back in the spring when the flowers bloom. We met a neighboring artist and got to tour his studio-property.

We flew to San Francisco, California for the last four days of our trip. When we were in Santa Fe we met Liam Golden, a gentleman working one of the art galleries on Canyon Road. It just so happened to be that we were headed to San Francisco just days after he would be moving back. He invited us to stay at his family’s house. We canceled our hotel reservations a few days later. We arrived at his house per his detailed directions Thursday morning and he welcomed us with open arms and breakfast.

The next few days were spent not per our sketched itinerary (which included such destinations as a forest of red wood trees, Frank Lloyd Wright architecture, Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, etc.), but instead we walked the city, guided by our new good friend Liam. He showed us the way to the beach, the Sutro Bath ruins, sushi, Golden Gate Park, De Young Museum with a towering view of the city, the Japanese Tea Garden, Botanical Garden, Gilbert & Sullivan’s Iolanthe performed by the San Francisco Symphony, William Stout Architectural Bookstore, Chinatown, Huntington Park, a taqueria‎, and amidst all that, many wonderful conversations and (to borrow an adapted phrase from my uncle) time spent existing together in wonderment and appreciation of all things natural and urban. We were also able to visit Holy Trinity and Holy Virgin Orthodox Cathedrals.

Liam is truly a lover of his city, and he is truly a lover of his friends both new and old. His selfless hospitality was something entirely strange and new to me, and something immediately and lastingly bothering for my own lack of it. I am truly and deeply thankful for everything he did for us. I will never forget it. I can’t imagine what our perspective of the city would have been had we not met him.

Our trip began as an itinerary of destinations. It became rather a pilgrimage. The geographies, the wildlife, and the architectures were beautiful, but the people we met were beautiful beyond compare, and they will be living memories of our trip.

I don’t know how to put it all in words, and some of it I cannot, but this trip became of upmost importance. My life is forever changed, and I’m eager to see what fruit might be bore of it, eager to see what’s next.

Many more photos on Flickr.

That is what summer’s for: pilgrimages, earth and sea, sun and affection, friendship and prayer, gardens and voyage to mountain and shore.

Just as the light turned green and we were trying to figure out if it was our mayor, another cyclist — of whom in his approach had apparently been calculating the timing of the light, possible throughway space, and his own speed of travel — whizzed by the man of prior description on his right side, which was what appeared to be about 3 feet of space followed by the curb. On his left, a few feet and a car. The racing cyclist did not announce himself. He made the calculation and took the risk — risking not his own well being only, but also that of the other cyclist.

It was in the next moment I realized that the stopped cyclist was indeed our Mayor Jerry Abramson. The racing cyclist whizzed by. When the mayor realized what had just happened, he pedaled forward and began yelling at the other cyclist to get his attention and call him out on his carelessness. But the racing cyclist would not hear because he was wearing earphones. And by his speed he was too far ahead to hear the slow traveling voice of a cyclist in the rear.

It all happened very quickly. There was no impact, no one got hurt. Just another case of a reckless cycler in our streets. But I wanted to remember this image of our Mayor Jerry Abramson who, riding his bike alone and approachable on Frankfort Avenue, set a good example for other cycling citizens to follow.

Thank you Mayor.

A society that produces “gardens” (or “anti-gardens”) like Central Park is one that assumes nature and culture are fundamentally and irreconcilably opposed. And it seems to me that in order to design true gardens of distinction one must have a vision of how the two can be harmonized. It may be this that we lack. Americans have historically tended to regard nature as a cure for culture, or vice versa. Faced with the question of what to do with the land, we always seem to come up with the same crude alternatives: to virtuously subdue it in the name of “progress,” or to place it strictly off-limits in “wilderness areas,” hallowed places we go seeking an antidote to city life.

…the good building is not the one that hurts the landscape, but is one that makes the landscape more beautiful than it was before that building was built.

There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

(via Derek)

A lot of people have this idea that art is created merely to impress the artist or their audience. Look what I can do! And a lot of people looking at art walk away with the impression that their 3-year-old could have done that or better.

It seems comparatively easy for an artist to answer the who, what, where, and how of art making. Answering why is another story altogether. It is, I would argue, the most difficult question to answer in art making. It requires us to think beyond mere subject, technique, style, form, light, energy, etc. It requires us to embrace ideas and philosophies on a level of defense or simple curiosity.

This new-to-me perspective on why we make art is that of asking and exploring questions — through curiosity, wonder, and yearning to know the world and creation on a level deeper than our capitalistic society gives us, through means of image making, form construction, writing, music, etc.

Consider this from Milton Glaser, which I have shared here before:

For me, drawing has been the most fundamental way of engaging the world. I’m convinced that it is only through drawing that I actually look at things carefully, and the act of drawing makes me conscious of what I’m looking at. If I wasn’t drawing, I sense that I would not be seeing.

When I read this I am reminded of my wife’s senior art project (photo above). She spent countless hours in her studio drawing little seed pods in charcoal on grand scale. It was a means of knowing these tiny life-givers as more than mere passersby, more than their byproduct. It had not to do with impressing people. (Although, both herself and others are indeed impressed by the work.) It had not to do with artist ego. It had not to do with hopes of “selling out” and moving into commercial work. It was curiosity, wonder, and yearning; asking, seeking, knocking. It was a matter of seeing with new eyes, understanding with a new mind.

I make no claim of being among image makers that are capable of answering the question of why in a worthwhile or satisfactory manner. I do, however, hear the question, and know that it ought to be answered.

Why, dear artist?

I’ve used 37signals’ Basecamp and Backpack off and on. Online/offline access have been issues with the flux (although Basecamp has also seemed a bit too much for just myself).

My brothernlaw recently had his apartment broken into, his computer and backup drive stolen among other things. He was good to be making a backup of his computer, but his mistake was not keeping that backup in a remote place. He lost everything. Major bummer. Good news is that he’s getting a new aluminum MacBook.

Well, I am learning to love The Cloud.

A prerequisite problem with offline access is the impulse “need” to be online or connected all the time. The guys at 37signals have written about this, reasoning why they don’t bring offline access built-in to their apps. Given my example of “vacation” above, a large part of my own problem requiring offline access is due to my own lack of proper work scheduling. I shouldn’t be working while on vacation. Neither do I want to be. There are definitely times and places without internets and offline access would be nice, but they are few and far between. For the most part, I am within range. Such is business life built on interwebbed technology.

Moving forward, I just switched all my dressedinvalue.com email over to Google apps, and I just want to tell you that I absolutely love it. I’ve been using Apple Mail for a while which is supposed to learn over time what is considered junk and what’s not. It has done a decent job, but in the past month or more it’s somehow become dumber. I don’t know what happened. Maybe the spammers got smarter. Google mail is so amazingly smart with spam, I don’t ever see any of it. And I love the interface. I’m using Fluid to launch it on my desktop.

I’ve also started using Highrise from 37signals which is helping me keep track of proposals and contacts and commitments I’ve made (sometimes I forget).

And for the past year I’ve been making remote backups of my computer and external drive with Jungle Disk. It’s nice to know that if my computer breaks or is stolen, I can just get another one and get all my data back.

All thanks to the The Cloud. Thank you Cloud.