The First Time I Designed for Climate Change

I suppose it had to happen sooner or later.

I mean, I'm a place-maker, and the nature of places IS changing faster and faster these days. I guess we can design for that.

But it DID happen a few weeks ago, to me, for the first time:

Just now we're envisioning the next development in the evolution of the Pontoon Docks, part of the Royal Docks in East London.

Came up with some good beginning ideas for the regeneration of the place:

Then Haewon asked me whether we would design it for before AND after - Climate Change that is.

Now, the locks into the Royal Docks are upriver of the Thames Barrier (a sea gate that can close if the tide is running too high up the river), so we're better off than some who are below the barrier - like Central London, Greenwich and Canary Wharf.

But, still and all, it seems there are changes afoot in the places where water and land meet, and this is one of them.

And it seems we're going to have to envision this place we're making, both before and after.

This is a first for me.

And how strange is that??

You?  How are you  adapting to the Earth Changes that accompany Climate Change??

Know any good examples of folk who have adapted their futures to this eventuality??

Any ideas how to make it good?

The Kid Thought I Was Santa Claus

Bucharest Airport, December, 1998
By then my beard was completely white.  But I didn't really know it.

My cheeks have always been rosy. Just happened. My sons cheeks do it too.

In the airport lounge, minding my own business, when this Rumanian kid, looks maybe 6, walks right into my space and, leaning on my lap, says "Santa?".

Such a smile. Such gladness in his eyes.

Interesting kid, I found out. Actually, about 12.

On his way to the American heartland.
His adoptive parents, missionaries, had spent the last 7 months getting him ready to leave Ceaucescu's mass orphanages, where he had lived since his birth.

The Dictator, obsessed with fecundity, outlawed birth control, both before and after conception. The mothers only option was the baby factories which filled myriad orphanages, cribs filling vast rooms, one next to each other, no room to pass among them.

This boy, I was told, was feral and without language when they met him.

Docile mostly, but when food entered the room - an animal, all claws and teeth, climbing across furniture and folks, battling to assure his survival.

Now, a few months later, smile beaming, looking beseechingly unto my eyes - "Santa?"


When I got home, I trimmed my now white beard, not yet ready to be a mythical old man.

And that was years ago now.


Still I think of him as these December 2010 days wend towards Yuletide yet again.