At home that afternoon Novak’s father spent an hour in the front garden, on his knees, using a shears to trim the grass, the repetitive labour helping the anger seep away. Sitting at the kitchen table, he poured Novak a glass of Taylor-Keith. ‘Arogancki bestie.’ His tone was mild. ‘That’s how I think of such people––arrogant beasts. The strength of the beast and the arrogance of the man. People with position, people with guns, people with the power of the state behind them, people who wield power over others––in business, in war, in the home, wherever. They feel the strength of the beast, they taste the arrogance of the man, and the sickness takes them. All my life I’ve seen it, everywhere I’ve been.’ – Gene Kerrigan, Dark Times In the City
1.
Oliver Wainwright is the architecture and design writer and critic for the Guardian. He made the case this week that the demolition of a building is an act of violence and that reworking them is not only good environmentally but makes for creative design potential, and the preservation of the beauty and legacy of certain structures.
In 2003, Kamikatsu became the first place in Japan to pass a zero-waste declaration, after the municipality was forced to close its polluting waste incinerator. Since then, the remote village (with a population of 1,500, one hour’s drive from the nearest city) has become an unlikely leader in the battle against landfill and incineration. The Kamikatsu Zero Waste Centre’s recycling facility boasts walls made of a patchwork quilt of 700 old windows and doors, reclaimed from buildings in the village. Inside, rows of shiitake mushroom crates donated by a local farm serve as shelving units, while the floors are covered with cast terrazzo made from broken pottery, waste floor tiles and bits of recycled glass, forming a polished nougat of trash. Architect Hiroshi Nakamura said, “The question mark shape can be perceived only from high up in the sky, but we instill our hope that this town questions our lifestyles anew on a global scale and that out-of-town visitors will start to question aspects of their lifestyles after returning home.”
The article also mentions a new book about the architecture of creative reuse written by the architect and teacher Ruth Lang, which takes in a global sweep of recent projects that make the most of what is already there, whether breathing life into outmoded structures, creating new buildings from salvaged components or designing with eventual dismantling in mind. The timing couldn’t be more urgent. As Lang notes, 80% of the buildings projected to exist in 2050, the year of the UN’s net zero carbon emissions target, have already been built. The critical onus on architects and developers, therefore, is to retrofit, reuse and reimagine our existing building stock, making use of the “embodied carbon” that has already been expended, rather than contributing to escalating emissions with further demolition and new construction. (You can pre-order the book from here)
Wainwright first wrote about the salvaging of architecture last January, addressing the need to adapt and reuse, or build only with materials already available. He wrote This is not just about adding more solar panels, biomass boilers, and all the other bolt-on gadgets to tick the green assessment boxes. It requires a fundamental shift in our attitude to materials.
He interviews Dutch architect Thomas Rau who has been working to develop a public database of materials in existing buildings and their potential for reuse. He says, “Waste is simply material without an identity. If we track the provenance and performance of every element of a building, giving it an identity, we can eliminate waste,” and he has developed the concept of “material passports”, a digital record of the specific characteristics and value of every material in a construction project, thereby enabling the different parts to be recovered, recycled and reused. There are now over 2.5m square metres of building matter logged in his Madaster database, and he is currently working with the city of Amsterdam to catalogue the components of every public building in the city.
This was a controversy at the University of Kansas where the The Facilities Administration Building was recently demolished. I reached out to Karl Ramberg, a Lawrence, Kansas stonemason, about whether the building was still standing. He wrote back and said, Alas that building is gone. It is unclear how much stone was salvaged. I talked with a young guy who was getting a couple truckloads and then a day later he said that someone had taken all the stone. Truly a sad story. That building was connected architecturally with all the buildings around it. If we are to have hand made stone buildings in our culture the only way is to preserve the ones we have. You can read more about the story here.
2.
Who amongst us lefties would ever think we’d admire a Cheney? Lord help us all. Cheney spokesperson Jeremy Adler said that “In coming weeks, Liz will be launching an organization to educate the American people about the ongoing threat to our Republic, and to mobilize a unified effort to oppose any Donald Trump campaign for president.” Noble. Right-headed. But, there is no changing the mind of a cultist, and that is what the followers of the orangeman have become.
Damon Linker wrote on Wednesday Feeling admiration for Cheney places me firmly on one side of an incredibly destructive divide in our politics. On Cheney’s side are those who still believe it’s possible, important, and praiseworthy for public officials to place country and Constitution over party, and even over personal self-interest, when they collide. Until fairly recently, this view was widely affirmed by politicians of both parties as well as by plenty of ordinary Americans. Today it’s held by nearly all Democrats and a minority of Republicans.
He goes on to write how the dumbed-down demagogue-sophist expertly uses his pulpit to turn everything upside down. You say you’re motivated by higher ideals, but you think appealing to them gives you a political advantage, which makes you a hypocrite. You’re just pretending to be devoted to a noble cause when you’re really trying to get ahead in an especially dishonest way. We’re both going low, but you fake going high in order to win power. And what could be lower than that?
As reported in Politico, Cheney went on to say “I believe that Donald Trump continues to pose a very grave threat and risk to our republic and I think that defeating him is going to require a broad and united front of Republicans, Democrats and independents, and that’s what I intend to be part of.”
All that said, I’m not forgetting that Cheney voted with the orangeman on most issues and when she said this in her concession speech, “I’m a conservative Republican. I believe deeply in the principles and the ideals on which my party was founded. I love its history. And I love what our party has stood for. But I love my country more,” I wonder if she’s talking about the party her father stood for, or the “Southern Strategy, ” started by Nixon but picked up by Reagan, or the privatization of everything, or the denial of science in regards to evolution and climate change, or the abandonment of abortion rights…you get the picture.
I do admire that she’s intelligent, articulate as hell, and willing to stand up to the lying liars, but, in the meantime, I’ll be most thrilled if she plays a large part in nailing them all to the wall in the next six months.
3.
Speaking of what the Republican party stands for, they have been yammering for years about how government is the problem, and if you just left it up to the ‘market’ to take care of you, da money will magically trickle down and *presto*–– all of us schmoes would instantly be upper-middle class. Since the age of Reagan, where he infamously said, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” those good old boys, and a few women, legislators have been using any means to obstruct bills that address things people need and care about.
Demonstrating the opposite view, I find it astonishing that the lowly approved President Biden has kicked some major ass and, by a razor-thin margin, has pushed through Congress the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. All of this needs to translate into Democratic votes this November.
I heard an interview on NPR the other day with Mitch Landrieu, President Biden’s point person overseeing the rollout of the new federal infrastructure bill. Here’s a guy with his shit together and he’s responsible for the $1.2 trillion being doled out for public works. He said, “My mission is to run to the fire – not to wait for them to come to us – but for us to go to them.”
The orangeman talked big during his 2016 campaign repeatedly touting that his administration would invest $1 trillion in infrastructure. Zip. Nada. I think that actually putting in the work to achieve something on this scale would’ve interfered with his golf game. In an interview with Route-Fifty, Landrieu introduced a 459-page Guidebook that details of all the funding opportunities available through the infrastructure law. He said, “It’s based on the premise that you shouldn’t need a lobbyist to get to your government.”
He went on to say, “The term ‘equity’ is a term that’s designed to make sure that people who have been left behind and left out are included. That clearly involves people of color – Black, brown and every other color on the rainbow in America. But it also means that people that live in rural areas – who may be white – as well have gotten left out. People who don’t have a college degree feel left behind and forgotten.”
“When [Biden] talks about equity, he talks about everybody. Now some people want to make it about race. We absolutely have a problem with race in America that we have to work through. And the president has been working on that issue as well. But this bipartisan infrastructure bill is for everybody.”
I guess when yay-hooz on the right with their giant, gas-guzzling pickup trucks and confederate flags thought they were insulting Biden with their Let’s Go Brandon bumper stickers, he actually did ‘Go’ and got shit done. Thanks, yay-hooz! One more example; his administration’s Dept. of Education has just canceled $3.9 billion in student debt for over 208,000 borrowers. All remaining students who attended the now-defunct ITT Technical Institute (ITT) between Jan. 1, 2005, through its closure in September 2016, including those who have not submitted a borrower defense claim, will have 100% of their loans canceled. ITT alumni join the ranks of students from DeVry University and Corinthian Colleges. This brings the total amount of loan relief provided by the administration to an estimated $32 billion, including $13 billion for defrauded borrowers. Bwwaahhhaaahhhaaaaaaaaaaa….
4.
As I said above, all of this needs to translate into Democratic votes this November. In Arizona alone the slate is packed with election-denier types; Mark Finchem, Kari Lake, Blake Masters, Abe Hamadeh, and Paul Gosar. The New York Times even calls it the Republican Party’s Anti-Democracy Experiment.
I follow a page on Facebook called Sons of Liberty and the following rant pretty much sums up my views:
Look. If you thought voting in 2016 and 2020 was the most important vote and now you could relax, then sadly you're mistaken. Just because Trump lost doesn't mean the danger has passed. Mid-terms are still fucking important.
Some of you out there are of the opinion that your vote doesn't matter, or that the candidates are shit. Okay we get that, but jesus fucking christ put aside your indifference or your moral high-horse protest vote, and join the rest of us in the 21st century. We are still in deep fucking trouble here.
If the GOP wins the House or the Senate (or both) in mid-terms, here's what you can expect to happen in many states, if not across the entire fucking country:
1.) Donald Trump gets a pass and goes scott-free, and every investigation will be halted. Anything that comes before Congress, the Supreme Court, or federal judges, will probably get tossed. You can be sure this will embolden him to become the GOP Primary for 2024, and see point #2.
2.) Expect gerrymandering to become widespread as Republicans gerrymander their way into winning elections forever, from local to presidential.
3.) Birth control? Nope, Republican Jesus wants you to shit out babies so they have an infinite supply of cannon fodder and wage slaves.
4.) Abortion? Nope, see #3. And guess what, you cross state lines to get the job done, or leave the country? Murder charge.
5.) Bye-bye public schools, now you all go to private religious schools where you learn about how the Civil War was a good-hearted misunderstanding and Black people fought for the Confederacy willingly because their "masters" were just good family friends.
6.) Trans rights? Gay marriage? You're all criminals now. If we can't turn you into birth machines to appease the Blood God, then you're going to prison.
7.) Social Security and Medicare? Gone. Bye-bye. Oh btw you'll still pay taxes on it, but it won't be going to citizens.
I think you can see where this is going, so that's enough probably-not-hyerpbole-anymore.
GO FUCKING REGISTER TO VOTE AND HELP VOTE THESE FUCKS OUT OF OFFICE. Yeah a bunch of moderate/centrist Dems are garbage, but holy fucking shit they're not trying to make The Handmaid's Tale a reality. Suck it up, or stop pretending you give a shit about women, minorities, the LGBTQ community, and everyone else who isn't a conservative cultist. It's Gut-check time.
And here’s a cute kitten…
And now…
All I could think about when reading the first section today is all of your artwork reusing waste materials to beautify our world. Ahead of your time, Gary.