Welcome to Saved by Design!
New Stuff:
In Random Stuff: Mercurial Gone Bipolar
A new (Not as) Fat:A Bridge to Normalcy
The Rules: Creating Defenses Against Fire
Are You Here? Why I Wrote Staying Put: a segment of Finding Home
News
YOU WON’T WANT TO MISS THIS:
March 3, 2012, 3pm: The New Haven Public Library with Ann Nyberg. Click here for more information.
WHAT THEY’RE SAYING ABOUT MY 2011 RELEASE, STAYING PUT:
Inman News: Home Upgrades that Match Your Lifestyle
A great feature in Houzz with lots of photos! Staying Put: How to Improve the Home You Have
From The Pragmatist in the NY Times: The Guilt-Free Handyman Shopping Spree
The Washington Post: Remodeling Trends Shift with Housing Bust
In US News and Word Report: Is the Weak Housing Market Altering Our Idea of Home?
Pilar Viladas with the New York Times writes, “These pages are crammed with good advice (avoid gutters at all costs; add wide eaves instead) and realistic assessments of the way we live now.” Read the full review.
The New Haven Register reviews Staying Put: Remodel Your House
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JOIN ME…
FOR A TALK:
March 3, 2012, 3pm: The New Haven Public Library with Ann Nyberg. Click here for more information.
March 8-12, 2012: 33rd Annual Lane County Home & Garden Show, Eugene, OR. “Staying Put: How to Love the Home You Have.”
April 19, 2012, 6:30pm: Henry Carter Hull Library, Clinton, CT. “Staying Put: How to Love the Home You Have.”
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READ:
New Haven Magazine: Turret Syndrome
An article about Yale’s new School of Management Building: Lower Whitney Evolves
A Fairly Intense Piece from Design Bureau
I will be a Contributing Expert blogger for ProudGreenHome.com. Stay tuned for links to my articles!
In the New Haven Magazine: Monument to Modernism
From Architecture Boston a reflection on Charette: Tech Kills
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LISTEN:
The latest episode of WPKN’s Homework. In this episode, Binnie Klein and I discuss the power of color. Gray Matters.
Bruce Barber and I discuss life’s amusing realities weekly on the Real Life Survival Guide. Check out our most recent episodes:
- Episode 33: Renovations, Commuting and Life Long Friendships
- Episode 32: Politics, Projects and Parties
- Episode 31: Food!
- More past shows here.
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Episode 33: Renovations, Commuting and Life Long Friendships
(In the words of co-host Bruce Barber as excerpted from the RLSGwebsite)
We had a lively editorial board meeting over delicious Mediterranean cuisine at The Greek Olive in New Haven’s Long Wharf section. (They’re a neighbor to the renowned Long Wharf Theater!)
Our guest editors this week were Erika Horne, Gaye Hyre, Sallie Kraus, and Paul Schatz, and the conversations ranged from coping with family dramas caused by aging parents to cars, commuting and renovation nightmares!
Erika Horne is a life-long Connecticut resident; she grew up in Guilford, but recently moved to Suffield. She is a Supervisor of a Client Service Department for a large medical laboratory, where she has been employed for over 25 years. She has been married for 15 years, and is a mother to one 12-year-old son, James. In her spare time, Erika is a self-proclaimed “foodie,” and she and her husband like to entertain and cook for friends. She frequently likes to read cast-off books from friends’ book clubs (that way she doesn’t have to participate in the discussion and gets to save loads of cash by borrowing the book).
Gaye Hyre is a cancer survivor, and an organizer of last October’s successful ArtBra New Haven auction to raise funds for the Breast Center at Smilow Cancer Hospital. She is already beginning work on the encore, coming this October. Gaye took the Sustainable Building Advisor class (two sessions taught by Duo), and is working on turning her passion for sustainability and conservation into her next career, using her own home as a lab project. At this time of year, she is eagerly awaiting the return of the flea market season. Gaye and Sallie are lifelong friends, have shared various visisitudes, and have lived to tell the tales.
Sallie Kraus is a lawyer and urban planner specializing in complex environmental/toxic tort insurance claims. She also writes on issues like climate change. Sallie grew up in Stratford and met Gaye Weinstein Hyre in Hebrew School. They have survived high school German, career crises, home renovation, aging parents and lately, breast cancer. Sallie’s favorite gift ever was a toolbox from Gaye. Sallie lived in NYC, now resides in Stamford, recruits Stamford Symphony volunteers and loves the arts. She never sits in the quiet car on her Metro-North commute. She says: “six degrees of separation is for amateurs.“
Paul Schatz is President and Chief Investment Officer of Heritage Capital, LLC, an award-winning personal investment management firm dedicated to growing portfolios and protecting the assets of individuals, trusts, and corporations. As a 21-year industry veteran, Paul has managed over $100 million in collective assets for a broad range of clients. Paul lives and works in Woodbridge Connecticut.
http://cptv.vo.llnwd.net/o2/ypmwebcontent/Bruce/RLSG-33-2012-0212.mp3
A Bridge To Normalcy
Losing weight is so much easier than keeping weight at bay. The rapid loss of so much of me was an open invitation for the fat flood gates to swing back open. Unless I devined a way to a new weight.
When the diminishing returns from my absolutism began to realize themselves (fewer new belt notches became available with each passing month), I began to realize that the speed of my glide path to normalcy was slowing down as spring followed winter. I had to come up with Plan B. As said, the biggest down side to the Stillman regimen was that the vast majority who go through it almost immediately gain back all the weight they had lost. Since I had invested six months in this insanity, I realized that it would be even more insane to flush that effort down the toilet, and given the fact that the cable television producers were still making vaguely beckoning gestures my way (and my visage was going to be plastered all over a couple of heavily promoted web sites), I determined that rather than follow the boom/bust phenomenon I’d always fallen victim to, that maybe, just maybe, at the age of 51.5, I could grow up a little bit and actually adjust to some sort of vaguely responsible body mass maintenance strategy.
With the end of the winter of my dangerous eating, I still had over 20% of the way to go in my gut rehab, and I had to make a transition from radical restriction without undoing all the good work I’d done. I also knew that if any aspect of my focus opened up my food consumption to any interpretations or accountings all would be lost. There were just too many distractions and commitments in my life for me to precisely regulate what I ate on an ongoing basis. So no calorie counting, weighing, or portion limiting. If it’s on the list I eat it.
Although tightly restrictive, the new scheme was a haute cuisine banquet compared to the first six months. So for the last three months of my 9-month odyssey I came up with four draconian, never to be violated rules – with one notable exception – that at social gatherings I could “relax” them to accept alcohol and, if seductive enough, a dessert. Otherwise, the restrictions were pretty basic and extended some aspects of the Stillman syndrome, while relaxing its most stilted “meat only” aspect. In no particular order, I imposed these restrictions:
1. Zero Content Fluids Only. Drinking no liquids that have calories. (If you’re not drinking milk or orange juice, it becomes critical to keep taking a multivitamin every day to keep scurvy and osteoporosis at bay.)
2. White Not Right. Eating no sugars or refined carbohydrates of any kind (pastas, breads, potatoes, white rice, etc.).
3. Fat = Fat. No butter, oil, chicken skins, salad dressing, etc. (And by the way, no matter what anybody says, nuts are virtually fat.)
4. Work it! Exercise for a full hour a day at least six days a week.
I did not get exotic in preparing the excruciatingly limited menu of ingredients to create gourmet fare. The goal of this regime is to de-emphasize food and thus simple straightforward meat cooked in a way that adds no fat and is prepared and consumed with grim determination is the best way to reinforce your resolve.
As with the extreme Stillman regime, it was necessary to have a reduction of menu items to inhibit straying from even this relaxed dietary lock step, so typically I fell into several eating patterns. Lunches would mostly be a clear (non-cream based) soup, preferably one without noodles or rice. Dinner would often involve undressed salad (you feel so virtuous!) or about 8 or 10 oz. of a steamed vegetable, about 6 or 8 oz. of meat and, to my amazement, I would often have fruit, something I previously viewed as being an inedibly bizarre byproduct of plant reproduction (which, come to think of it, it is.)
The rules for the meat preparation remained the same as in the Stillman cuisine but the quantity was cut by one-half to two-thirds, and I added the augmenting steamed vegetables, almost always at dinner, but occasionally at lunch as well. For a middling man, learning how to cook vegetables feels like channeling the loathed Rachel Ray (could she please, please just get laryngitis.) But if one of us, Mario Batali, can care about vegetables, I guess they do not have cooties after all.
The vegetable softening method was, predictably, pretty basic: buy a larger than normal quantity (an entire head of cauliflower, an entire large bag of spinach, a similar quantity of broccoli or broccoli rabe), chop off whatever offending elements there are (not the spinach ends – that level of micromanagement is insane), cut into ingestably-sized chunks, thoroughly wash, dump into a large cauldron (if I’m feeling anal, I’ll use a steamer insert), let it steam until it seems not quite done, throw in a huge quantity of salt and pepper and let it sit for a little while, toss, and eat.
Although I stopped drinking 100 oz. of water a day, I probably still drank between 40 oz. and 60 oz. a day and still drank two to five 12 oz. cans of caffeine free Diet Coke a day, as well as coffee as needed.
Scattered in during this transition period, as noted, I would allow myself to have an occasional public celebratory glass of wine and perhaps monthly dessert. In my maniacal weight vigilance during this time, I did note that the consumption of extremely refined carbohydrates (desserts) would cause more retention of subcutaneous “stuff”.
The main collateral effects of my long winter’s effort and springtime relief were not draconian, however – basically less energy and a need for more sleep. Over this nine month de-fatting I had a few minor illnesses (I was a little bit feverish and fatigued for about 24 hours) and a classic 6 week coughing thing everybody I knew contracted – dieting or fully fed. Being a middling male, these modest ailments were no reason to go to a doctor and, of course, I went to work every day and infected everybody else at the office.
Mercurial Gone Bipolar
There used to be simple answers to character traits in people. I remember in school that the “nervous kid” was fidgety and often times had to be reprimanded by the teacher. That student now has been diagnosed ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). The quiet kid in the corner that talked to no one has now received a diagnosis of autism. The weird kid who picked his nose but knew every date of the American Revolution now is diagnosed as having Asperger’s Syndrome. Similarly today “Moody” people may have a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder.
There’s no doubt that these behavioral descriptions more accurately reflect what is going on biologically, emotionally and chemically than any of the previous clichés and stereotypes.
It occurs to me that the profession I have dedicated my life to, architecture has offered up sweeping professional stereotypes of “innovation” and “leadership” or just “cool” or “green” to brand our image. In the midst of the biggest building bust in our memory that arguable has made 50% of us under- or un-employed, what emerges to me is evidence of a long term Bipolar personality at the core of its professional angst.
When times are tough, architects become depressive – essentially believe that there is no future, no hope, that what they have to offer goes disrespected, unused and devalued as people think about the dollar first and design second.
When times are good, manic architects feel that they are indispensible and ride the wave of available interest in the luxury of design to assert that they are, in fact, cultural icons.
Like most people diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, the manic phase of exquisite joy and optimism is just as inappropriately amplified as the depressive side of helpless hopelessness. In other words, we are at the bottom of perhaps the most depressive cycle for architects and architecture in my lifetime. A recent article in Salon.com – Architecture Meltdown – has calmly and factually noted that “Some smell trouble in architecture’s sense of itself”. But the truth is, there are architects who find themselves to be relatively busy all the time. And this is not because of society gaining or losing the “truth” about what our value to our culture is. It is because, in a free market economy, what anyone offers in goods and services either has value sufficient to be purchased or, simply does not.
If we continue to offer the manic version of our bipolar professional identity as the norm for most people – the Frank Lloyd Wright, full-on, visionary genius leadership role, we will have extreme meaning for a tiny number of people (now dubbed “the 1%”) who buy the hype (not unlike the cult leader who has undeniable verve, energy, insight and a compelling personality but in the end only attracts a tiny minority of people to follow that brilliance of manic confidence). Alternatively, if we become the embittered, depressive side of our alternate ego, declaring that those who don’t see our beauty are the vast, unwashed bourgeoisie (now dubbed the 99%”) defaulting to a depressing banality of safety and predictability, then we will become bitter dead-enders who simply view architectural design more or less how hackers view their work on the internet: a subversive preaching of a greater verity than the whitewashed generalities of a deluded population.
Just as psychotropic drugs can relieve the manic highs and bring up the depressive lows in a person with Bipolar Disorder, I would advocate that architecture needs a similar stabilizing drug: reality.
Architects offer something that is unique: a confluence of a large number of disciplines, a rare combination of the technical, the emotional, the aesthetic, and yes, the innovative. But at the end of the day, if we want to be more than the leaders of a cult, we need to ground our manic highs and elevate our depressive lows to see that the truth is not necessarily what we were taught in school, but a reality that is often far, far richer, more meaningful and more relevant to more people than those who simply drink our Kool-Aid.
Episode 32: Politics, Projects and Parties
(In the words of co-host Bruce Barber as excerpted from the RLSG website)
We recorded this week’s episode at Bentara in New Haven’s Ninth Square (thanks to Niza for hosting us!), and our guest editors were Mary Elliot, Amy Nawrocki, Eric Lehman, and Paul Sessions.
Mary is a stay-at-home Mom with four children, one husband and no pets unless you count that ant farm on the dresser in her son’s bedroom. She has a Yale B.A., a Ph.D. in English from Boston College, and—in her old life—taught writing, English and American lit courses at B.C., Gonzaga University & Whitworth College in Spokane, WA. Upon the birth of her twins in Colorado, she perished rather than published, but has written a couple of novels that need serious rework before they see the light of day. She likes to play the fiddle, hike, bike-ride and unwind with good friends.
Poet Amy Nawrocki teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of Bridgeport. She is the author of three poetry collections, “Potato Eaters,” “Nomad’s End,” and “Lune de Miel” (forthcoming) and two prose works, of “A History of Connecut Wine: Vineyard in Your Backyard, and “A History of Connecticut Food” both coauthored with her husband Eric D. Lehman. You can reach her by email at nawrocki@bridgeport.edu or Facebook.
Eric D Lehman is a travel and history writer, and Director of Creative Writing at the University of Bridgeport. He dabbles in many genres, and has been published in a wide variety of journals and magazines, from the International Henry Miller Journal to Antiques Trader. His books on Bridgeport, Hamden, and A History of Connecticut Wine are available from The History Press. Forthcoming books include A History of Connecticut Food and the Insiders Guide to Connecticut, both of which will be out in Spring 2012.
Paul Sessions is Director of the Center for Family Business at the University of New Haven. He is also a trusted advisor to a number of family businesses, dealing with succession, communication and conflict, and has been spending a fair amount of time lately coaching individual family members and key employees. He loves his work with families, his partner Gayle, his son Gabriel, his music, great books and good food and wine.
http://cptv.vo.llnwd.net/o2/ypmwebcontent/Bruce/RLSG-32-2012-0205.mp3
How to Watch Football if You Hate It.
Here our family's Dip tries to tip an All-Conference Tackle from Johns Hopkins
This Sunday you, along with over 100 million Americans, and perhaps hundreds of millions worldwide, will likely be in a room with a TV screen in it while grown men run around and crash into each other. I refer to American Football. Of course I am talking about the Super Bowl.
All of us have sung a song, drawn a picture in art class and most of us have acted in a skit or a play. So when we watch a concert, see an art exhibit or go to a movie we have a hint of what we are watching came to be. But with a few exceptions half of us (the female half) have never put on pads and banged into another human. A small minority of the remaining male half has actually done that act on any level as well.
As one who has played, coached and spawned a college player, watching a football game when you have never played is like trying to understand how something tastes if you have never eaten it. You get the idea by association, but you are, finally, just guessing.
For a nation of guessers, those who watch football can be dramatically judgmental. ”Experts” abound because American football is just arcane enough that knowing the jargon and the rules simulates understanding. In this era of video gaming anyone who has played any Madden game thinks they “know” strategy.
However if you ask someone who has actually played, or seriously coached, that level of understanding has the street cred of someone who has watched “Saving Private Ryan” telling a vet what a hellish experience war is.
Even more problematically, many, if not most people (including my wife and other son) have almost zero desire to watch football on any level. They do not pretend to like it, let alone understand it. But on this huge national cultural holiday those people feel obligated to watch this one game, just as most of us resign ourselves to eating turkey on Thanksgiving.
How can these victims of our country’s 4 hour mass hype disorder find fun beyond the commercials? Here are 2 very simple ways anyone can enjoy watching the craziness on the field without reading a single article, watching a minute of pregame analysis, or begging your 12 year old nephew to give you a clue.
The first approach is to follow a player that is in the middle of the screen, any player at all (he could have your favorite number, the name of your high school geometry teacher, or just nice thighs). It can be any player, but it’s most fun to pick one of the dozen or so right in the middle of everything because the camera usually has them right in front of you in every play.
Every time the play starts a tiny drama will unfold of what he does and what is done to him. He will do things (and have things done to him) you have never noticed before. He will move unbelievably fast on some plays, be blasted off his feet on others, knock someone off theirs on others. But you have to watch for 10 straight plays – if he is on the field that long.
Then the trick is to pick one player from each team on offense and defense and one or two of them will almost always be on the screen. (Unless there is kicking involved – get a chicken wing during those interludes.)
The second technique is to watch the players completely away from the middle of the screen – the two or 3 players far away from all those big squatting lugs at the middle of the screen. They are virtually dancing a wild ballet running up, back, pirouetting, leaping and sprinting. It is an extreme dance of extraordinary co-ordination between those far away from the middle pile up.
These two approaches are counterintuitive. Strategy is not important. Star players are meaningless. The video game is not being followed. These approaches bring the game down to the level of those who have played it. If you follow these two methods of observing the game you will be watching the game at the level of one man dealing with other men in an extreme and dramatic set of conditions. Violent, yes. But exquisitely human.
Football has all of the coarse, tribal, loutish and thuggish aspects that make it disgusting to many. Additionally, football is full of inscrutable language, trivia, rituals and cultish internal meanings that can put anyone off- even avowed “fans”.
But you can reject all of that. You can focus on the undeniable human acts of courage, grace, athleticism and self-sacrifice that happen on every single play – not by teams with strategies and game plans and hyped personas. The most meaningful part of football, whether at the Super Bowl or a freshman high school scrimmage is the young men giving themselves up in full devotion to their effort, travail and triumph. It can move you deeply if you let it in.
Creating Defenses Against Fire
From the NYTimes
The mayor of Stamford, Michael Pavia, said on Monday that the fire was believed to be accidental, but that the precise cause had not been determined. It remained unclear whether the house had smoke detectors.
Responding to reports that embers from a fireplace may have sparked the blaze, Chief Conte said the city fire marshal’s office had not completed its investigation or revealed the cause of the fire to him.
“I heard it was a Christmas tree, I heard a million things,” Chief Conte said. “According to the fire marshal, this investigation could go on for six months. They have five fatalities; they have to do everything the right way.”
My Take:
When a house becomes a place of mortal danger the impact is transcendentally devastating. Akin to child abuse, the fundamental failure of a place of safety to provide refuge from the gravest of fates pulls the rug out from under our assumptions that hearth and home are our safe harbor.
But homeowners can help prevent tragedies like the one in Stamford with a few simple mindsets:
Any home more than one story tall makes getting out in a fire critical. The house that burned was 3 stories tall, and, like almost all homes in America, built of light frame wood construction – called Type 5 in many building codes. A long way to get out of a quick burning home means timing is everything. And that means smoke detectors in older homes – one in every bedroom, one at both ends of every hallway, one in every stair well – and in the attic and basement.
But if you build or create a 3 story house made of 2x framing, most building codes now require either 2 easy-to-use staircases directly to grade, or a fire suppression system of sprinklers – at least in hallways and stairs. Retrofitting stairs and sprinklers are much more costly that smoke detectors, but detectors are more important – saving lives trumps saving property every time.
Homes built before modern building codes (like the one in CT) often do not have barriers built into walls that suppress fire from spreading – blocking air/flame from invisibly firing up thru the wall cavities, making ceilings absorb heat with fire-rated sheet rock and having garages and mechanical rooms (where there combustion occurs on purpose) sealed from the rest of your home. Adding sheet rock, fire rated doors and fire-stopping is required by most towns in many renovations like the one the home in Connecticut had just finished, but the level of code-compliance retrofit beyond the “grandfathered-in” status is often a judgment call by the local officials and builder involved.
Additionally, homes built before modern building codes can have two stairs, great fire separations and smoke detectors, but can still be unsafe in a panic situation. The actual dimensions of the stairs’ risers and treads can be too steep, diagonal corner treads can be too narrow, railings can be missing or open at their ends and grab clothing, hallways can be too narrow, floors can have little level changes lighting can be spotty or missing – so those fleeing the fire can have their own home cause a trip and fall death sentence.
When a home is occupied while construction is ongoing, or even small bits of the project await finalization while the vast majority of work is done, the opportunities for fire, falling and toxic byproducts causing illness abound.
If you only see the downside of any situation you might not get out of bed in the morning, let alone buy an antique house and undergo a full-on remodeling – but life is a series of risk-reward judgments – and in most things domestic, if you know the dangers and have good advice of experienced professionals you can narrow the window of vulnerability, and mitigate danger in the place you should feel safest – home sweet home.
Episode 31: Food!
(In the words of co-host Bruce Barber as excerpted from the RLSG website)
This week’s conversations took place at one of our favorite restaurants in New Haven: Union League Cafe (thanks Jean-Pierre!), and our guest editors were Cynthia Lyon, Susan Jacobs, and Cynthia’s sister, food critic Todd Lyon.
Cynthia is the founder and leader of Eight To The Bar, where she is also the primary songwriter and arranger. She has also played with Amyl and the Icons and The Dirty Blondes of New York City.
Susan has practiced law for more than thirty years, devoting her practice to Divorce Mediation and Collaborative Law. She is active in community theater and has served on numerous boards and commissions in the Town of Woodbridge.
Todd has been covering the local restaurant scene for 20-plus years, for The New Haven Register, The New Haven Advocate, Connecticut Magazine and now the newly-launched Daily Nutmeg. She has authored, co-authored and/or ghost-written 17 books on subjects as diverse as Champagne, business and kissing. For the last seven years, she and co-owner Nancy Shea have run Fashionista Vintage and Variety, a clothing store for eccentrics.
http://cptv.vo.llnwd.net/o2/ypmwebcontent/Bruce/RLSG-31-2012-0129.mp3
Episode 30: Warmth, Email, Books and Relationships
(In the words of co-host Bruce Barber as excerpted from the RLSG website)
We gathered to record Episode 30 at Cafe Romeo, the hip, delicious East Rock coffee shop. We were joined by Anne Witkavitch, Kristin Huffman, and Mark Branch, and hosted by Chris Mordececai.
After getting her MFA, Anne Witkavich left Corporate America and started her own communications & change management consulting business. She also compiled and edited the award winning book, Press Pause Moments, and began teaching writing at WCSU. Anne is a health and wellness enthusiast and stays active with her husband, two children, dog and cat. Her philosophy is that if you have a vision and a plan, you’ll get where you’re going no matter what life throws at you.
Kristin Huffman is a multi tasker who really doesn’t like to multi task. She is a producer, Broadway performer (in the Tony Award winning show “Company”), Artistic Director and founder of The New Paradigm Theatre which is hosting the “So ya wanna be a Broadway Star” competition Jan 28/29th in Stamford. Kristin is a professor at The University of Hartford (Hartt school) and Western CT University. (She was also Miss Ohio and a runner-up to Miss America which paid off all her student loans at Northwestern University!)
Mark Alden Branch is the executive editor of the Yale Alumni Magazine and a writer with a special interest in architecture and design. He is the father of two boys and lives in the East Rock section of New Haven.
http://cptv.vo.llnwd.net/o2/ypmwebcontent/Bruce/RLSG-30-2012-0122.mp3
