Monday, October 20, 2008

Hermit crabs from hell.

A bit of good news, by golly.

I’ve always been curious/furious about the way Wal-Mart and their big-box ilk have irresponsibly built and abandoned stores all over this country for years, like giant hermit crabs outgrowing their older smaller shells and seeking larger ones (only these are REALLY large, ugly shells to begin with). Knew I wasn't alone thinking about this phenomenon, and here a new book on the subject: Big Box Reuse (M.I.T. Press) by Julia Christensen an artist and professor at Oberlin College in Ohio.

NPR story is here.

Amazing the uses to which these buildings have been put...libraries, churches, go-kart tracks. Even two museums, one dedicated to Route 66 and the other to Spam (yes Spam!). This is the innovation that made this country great. And i’m not being facetious...this is amazing. Might be better if the monstrous things had never been built to begin with, but we all know they aren’t vanishing in a perfumed puff of smoke, leaving only flowers and unicorns, when the WalMart leaves town or morphs into a Super-Mega-Ultra-WalMart.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Why the Caged Bird Sings.

I heard this really nice interview with Maya Angelou on an NPR music blog that might be oldish, not sure. It was celebrating her 80th birthday.

(When i searched NPR.org, the link was way down, most were about that David Alan Grier who does a pretty fair impression of Maya)

What a joyous lovely woman...I wanted to adopt her as my third Grandma.

Looking for the link to the interview, ran across this great picture of her and Jimmy Baldwin.



Tuesday, October 14, 2008

80 Over 80.

Interesting list on Slate of influential octogenarians (Paul Newman at least, sadly already gone since its publishing)

Where else you gonna find Pinetop Perkins, James Lipton, and Andy Wyeth, right there up against Robert Byrd, George H. W. Bush and Henry Kissinger?