So, Tell Me, What's So Bad About A Gentle Recovery?

I don't understand. Pundits fill column space bemoaning the current gentle recovery.  I don't see the problem they see. We're recovering from an expansion built on irrational exuberance. That didn't work out too well for me. How was it for you? Maybe a deeply considered, mindful recovery is the better way. What do you think? Be Well, Bice C. Wilson, AIA Principal Meridian Design Associates, Architects, PC

Vaudeville Wisdom for the Levant

I prefer to call the land east of the Mediterranean, south of Turkey and north of Egypt "The Levant". The Levant is a landscape you can walk across.  The Middle East is no place.  Try, map it.

The Middle East was a term invented by a geographically ignorant American diplomat in the 1700's. 

But why discuss the Levant?  Because hell is life there just now. Because I've been there, and had tea in welcoming houses, and laughed with good people.  Because I know it was once forested with great trees, and verdant with life, song, and prolonged interludes of joy.

And now, our Levant?  Now centuries of bad blood and unredeemed hatred, extended misunderstandings and tragic circumstance, NOW, our levant reminds me of the vaudeville wisdom I often shared with my sons.  It goes like this:

Kid comes to me hurting.  Tells me, "Dad, it hurts when I do this!".  I remind him of the vaudeville doctor, whose answer to the same question from a vaudeville patient was elegant, simple, and hard to actualize.  He said:

"Well, how about you don't do that?  Let me know next week if it doesn't feel better."

And so, Vaudeville Wisdom for my cousins in the Levant, for Bashir Al Assad and the refugees of Bab Al Amr, and for those crossing the Orontes River into Turkey just now in heartbroken darkness and for the tribes of Syria, Israel, Palestine and The Lebanon: if you want the pain to decrease, how about you stop doing that thing you keep doing?  Can't hurt to try.

Be well,

Bice C. Wilson, AIA

Natural Paramittas

Funny, this First Week

Funny, this pause just now - first week of January.

Seems to be working true to form, this annual renewal.

Me, I've seen that the days are getting longer. Gloom doesn't seem destined to consume all. 

Miracles have been born. The old year has been cast off, a new one just begun, and

This week, just now, we await some epiphany - some glad tidings of this newness and possibility.   

Again. 

Then there's all the weeks to come. 

Same as it ever was, and as unique as THIS time. 

Again. 

So be gentle on yourselves, all of them. 

Next week will follow the impending epiphany, Sure enough. 

Blessed be.

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.

A Conversation with the Yonkers Rotary Club on Thriveability & Economic Development

On October 7th, I started a conversation with the Yonkers Rotary Club about new ways of framing what is traditionally called economic development - what I prefer to call Community, Cultural and Commercial Development.

I'd like to invite the readers of my blog to join that conversation.  The text is at this link.

Have a look.  Add some comments.  Send me a note.

Let's help good things happen.