House as Architecture: Class 1

VITRUVIUS - Greek architect, circa 1 A.D.


This fall I'm taking a University of Washington extension course called "House as Architecture." It's intended for the general public interested in building a new home or remodeling/adding on. I fall into neither of those catagories, but it's a good opportunity to learn some basics. Someday I will build something and for now, I can write about it. So that's what I'll be doing from 6-9pm every Wednesday. There are no grades, so I will certainly pass, hopefully at the top of my class.

For those of you planning construction on your new or existing cottage, I will provide weekly reviews. Each class will feature a Seattle architect or engineer who will share experiences on topics such as: Writing your "program," site selection, kitchens and baths, coding-zoning-permitting, working with builders, cost expectations, etc.

Meeting 1: Introduction
The first class stuck to the poetic, discussing how the best architecture speaks to the best personality in the home owner. Or, perhaps, it brings out the best personality in the homeowner. It's a bit like "You are what you eat." The Cottage Living crowd, of course, knows this.

Our instructor, Seattle architect Bill Zimmerman, used the teachings of Vitruvius, a Greek architect from the 1 A.D. time period, to break the craft down into three parts.

Mr. Vitruvius, break it down...

FIRMNESS - Designing a body that can sit on the ground (and deal with the local environmental stresses)
COMMODITY - Basically, the balance between form and function - how much value do you put on the various components of your structure. Where do you spend your money?
DELIGHT - It must have beauty and symmetry to create delight.

Blog Clogs Arterie

I am new to the almighty Blogdom, yet I am already feeling its power. This weekend I went to the small logging town of Forks, WA to look into a story on the source of wood and paper products. Forks' main street begins and ends where Highway 101 slows down for one blinking light and one traffic light. Despite its proximity to the nation's most rugged, arguably most beautiful coastline (20 minute drive to La Push) in one direction and the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve Hoh Rain Forest in the other, the town remains a pass-through kind of place. Its residents depend on the ever-shrinking logging business. There aren't many places to eat. The Forks Cafe works fine.

I didn't feel up for steak or a burger (last night) so I jumped on the breakfast-all-day option. Oddly, though, it offered four main items: Canadian ham, bacon, corned beef hash, or hamburger steak. Each served with two eggs, hash browns and toast. I like eggs and bacon so I ordered the bacon. A few minutes later, a plate came to me with six slices of the thick-cut, well-cooked stuff. Six slices all tangled up in one another like an unruly litter of puppies. To the side sat my eggs over easy, toast, and hash browns.

Six slices.

That's when the blog tried to kill me. I told myself not to eat them all... I'll wake up sweating, parched, perhaps lethargic in the extremities. But the thought of writing about having eaten an entire plate of bacon as my dinner entree was irresistible.

I strategically placed one piece on an egg sandwich. Repeat. Eggs down.

I tried to sop up yoke with the third slice and it worked about as well as cleaning a paint spill with a wet shower curtain. But I ate the yellowed slice and it was good, too.

My final two toast halves enwrapped four and five like broken-zippered sleeping bags around boy scouts.

The sixth sat alone, ignored by me, the proud, healthy, disciplined diner. But the waitress dallied and the bacon remained, an island of savory temptation. I tried to keep my eye on the televised football game. But it wandered, following my mind.

The blog, David. Think about the blog for once.

Bacon VI went down smooth and naked, nothing to compete with the buttery fat edged in salty crispness.

Blog: +1 | Blog CEO's Life Expectancy: -1

Sidewalk Reunion

BRODY IN AUSTIN, TX

I’m sure it’s been explained in the world of physics – some formula about the more things move around the more likely they are to collide – but I just had a full-circle collision with a complete stranger.

Brody Douglas Hunt was born in the wrong half century. He should have popped up in the 1940s. That way he could have spent his early twenties traveling with Cash and Waylon and Willy. Or maybe he’d have fit in with Kerouac and the Beats as the honky-tonkin’ yodeler in black.

Instead, Brody lives with us, in the 21st Century. Sort of. He calls his home “Travellin’ Through” and he wears black cowboy jeans, boots, and a black cowboy shirt, sometimes with a red stripe or white lines down the buttons and around the chest pockets. He carries a guitar in a black case and his dog Jacko is black. Brody makes music on the street and it’s good. His voice, like his look, is vintage, sounding old and youthful at different times. He sings forgotten tunes from the Old West. He’s a music buff and not one who panders for money with a guitar and a Jimmy Buffet song.

I met Brody last April in Austin, TX. The light was dusky and he was packing up his guitar near a wildly decorated costume store. Students flooded the college-district streets for first-Thursday partying. I asked Brody if I could photograph and interview him for a collection I’ve been accumulating over a few years.

Here are his responses to my standard interview questions:

LIVES IN: Traveling through (born in Springfield, OR)
PROFESSION: Timber feller and yodeling country singer
FAVORITE PART: I like the yodeling. I love it. And for timber work… there’s nothing like being covered in tree blood at the end of the day.
LEAST FAVORITE: Chainsaws and working in woods – the vines, the blackberries, getting hurt. Hung-over mornings. And my least favorite part of being a musician is when I’m a broke musician.
FREE TIME: Pinball. I hunt wild mushrooms. I drink a little bit of beer.
TRAVEL: If I could travel anywhere, anytime, I’d like to do a mountain of cocaine and play pinball with Waylon Jennings.
LAST MEAL: Bean and pork quesadilla – something that somebody gave a friend of mine. The price was right.
BOOK: It’d be an autobiography and it’d be called “Roadie’s Booty: A Tale of the Hunt.”
RELIGIOUS: No. I would not say so. I got some ideas about some things but I don’t tend to spread them around.


And that was it. I went my way, a plane back to Birmingham. Brody went his, hopping a train bound for New Orleans, I think.

Two weeks ago, six months after Austin, while walking down Port Townsend, WA’s Main Street during the Wooden Boat Festival, I heard that old yodely voice crooning a far-away country song. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tall man in a black suit. Brody stood between two other instrumentalists, his sideburns hinging to the lyrics, a crowd of five or six listening. He finished and I shook his hand. He remembered me. I wanted to buy him a beer but he quickly started picking and howling away. So I listened and walked on, amazed at the physics of it all.

BRODY IN PORT TOWNSEND, WA

People Watching with a Destination

Why travel if not to see other people in other places? Ask seasoned travelers their favorite spots to people watch and you’ll likely hear a Parisian café, a Central Park lawn, the Hollywood strip. My friends would likely cite the Talladega racetrack infield or Burning Man, but it’s all the same – a stationary spot amidst a mass of eclectic movement.

I’ve recently discovered a more efficient, productive form of people watching: Public transportation. And I don’t mean airlines; no one counts those as public transportation. Air travel is more like being chained to a wildly bucking bronco quarter-machine outside a dysfunctional department store in a 1970s strip mall. Nothing good happens there and you leave sore, feeling slightly less human, and 25 cents dumber.

I’m talking buses, trains, ferries. I’ve been using the bus lines to get around Seattle this summer and it always leaves me in a far better mood than were I to drive the same distance. Yes, it feels nice to be part of the “green” patrol of gas-free do-gooders, but the best part is seeing and hearing the people, even the ubiquitous bus-riding nutjobs.

On a train ride to Portland I had an entire four-seat booth with table to myself. I set up my laptop and plugged it in to a floorboard power outlet. The guy behind me agonized over math problems in preparation for the GRE test. The older gentleman across the way noticed and offered a friendly tutorial; he’d taught high school math for decades. I spent a half hour chatting with the diner car chief and met two talkative twelve-year-olds on their way back from a Justin Timberlake (JT) concert. So I learned about that, which was nice.

And my parents recently visited me in Seattle, where I relocated months ago. Out here water separates the mainland from dozens of islands and the Olympic Peninsula. We took a ferry to Orcas Island. Ferries are the grand marquee of public transportation – cruise-like in scenery and bus-like in rapid usefulness. Kids run from one side to the other looking for dolphins or sea birds, lovers drape over the rail planning adventures, friends sit inside at a booth playing cards. I listen to dad analyze the intricacies of ferry schedules. Vinyl booths and cloth seats might not have the allure of a sidewalk café in Paris and I might not spy an Olsen twin. But I'll keep an eye peeled for osprey, and ears tuned for juicy gossip. At the end of it all, at least I’ve gotten somewhere.