Veritas et Venustas

Shame On Who?

Photo © 2008 CBS

EVERY DAY, in every way, Hillary is looking more and more like someone who's going to lose. In the video here she looks more like a frightened scold than a tough leader.

And what is she so angry about? Obama does not have "the right to attack" her health plan. Huh?

Then she challenged Obama to another debate. Since he wins those debates, that's a good idea because ... ?

Her full comments are after the jump. Sorry about the advertising in the CNN video, but so far no one else has put the video or the sound bite online. You know they will soon.

From CBS News' Fernando Suarez:

CINCINNATI -- Speaking to reporters following a rally at a community college here, Clinton slammed Obama and his campaign for distributing mailings to Ohio voters attacking Clinton’s universal health care plan and her position on NAFTA.

“Today in the crowd I was given two mailings that Senator Obama’s campaign is sending and I have to express my deep disappointment that he is continuing to send false and discredited mailings with information that is not true to the voters of Ohio. He says one thing in speeches and then he turns around does this,” Clinton said waiving the two mailings at the cameras.

“Just because Senator Obama chose not to present a universal health care plan does not give him the right to attack me because I did. So let’s have a real campaign. Enough with the speeches and the big rallies and then using tactics that are right out of Karl Rove's playbook, this is wrong and every Democrat should be outraged.”

“This election is about misleading, false and discredited attacks that interfere with voters being able to make an informed judgment,” she said.

“I am not going to stand here and see this campaign polluted by the kind of misleading, discredited and false attacks. We deserve better than that. He’s been called out on it, he has been contradicted on it, he knows better and here it is ‘Paid for by the Obama for America Campaign.’”

“So, shame on you Barack Obama. It is time you ran a campaign consistent with your messages in public, that’s what I expect from you. Meet me in Ohio and let’s have a debate about your tactics and your behavior in this campaign.”

ICA & CA Habitat for Humanity Pattern Book

From Classicist.org, the website of the Institute for Classical Architecture & Classical America:

The Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America and the U.S. Area Office of Habitat for Humanity International have embarked upon a national collaboration, with architects selected jointly by the ICA&CA and Habitat, to design Habitat homes that fit within the context of both local communities and regional architectural traditions.

More than building new affordable houses, Habitat for Humanity International’s mission is to help people build new lives. The strength of our democracy is based on individual economic achievement and social mobility. Traditional American neighborhoods provided a range of types and cost of housing, all within a walking distance of daily services, schools and churches. This mix provided role models for success that served to inspire young people. It ensured the long term stability of the community by providing life-long housing options for people: small inexpensive housing for those beginning their careers, larger family houses when children come along, smaller urban housing for empty nesters, and assisted living for the elderly. Studies have demonstrated that over time the social capital created in such neighborhoods is a key in community stability and the health of its residents. Each house built has two roles: one to provide adequate shelter and the other to become part of a neighborhood. The architectural character of the exterior of the house is the most critical part of its design in fulfilling its responsibility to the community.          

Development practices over the course of the last 60 years have eroded, and in some places obliterated, this great American tradition. Instead of building mixed-income neighborhoods, we have built single-income subdivisions isolated from each other. While nobly motivated, much of the low-cost housing built in many communities has been clearly identifiable as different from other housing. Public housing projects may be the most obvious example. And as Habitat affiliates increase their production, the challenge of striking the balance between building simple, decent homes and designing homes to fit the fabric of the surrounding neighborhood intensifies. Communities may resist the construction of housing that doesn’t match the existing neighborhood style because they fear for their property values. Therefore, the goal of this Pattern Book is to provide both an operating manual and prototype house designs that will enable Habitat for Humanity affiliates to design houses that build strong neighborhoods as well as affordable accommodations for the future homeowner.

Download the Overview as a PDF.

The other sections of the Pattern Book are available for download at the ICA & CA website.

Purchase the Habitat Pattern Book

The Habitat Pattern Book is available for purchase through the ICA&CA. Please contact info@classicist.org

Waldo Peirce

Waldo Peirce, Self-Portraits (Click on photo for larger image)

WALDO PEIRCE was the type of character the Harvard Lampoon likes to claim. A Harvard classmate of the American Communist John Reed, Peirce once decided to travel to London with his classmate on board a cattle ship. Once the boat left the dock, however, Peirce decided the accommodations were lacking and dove overboard and swam back to Boston. Unfortunately for Reed, Peirce declined to tell anyone what he was doing, and when Price was nowhere to be found, the ship's captain threw Reed into the brig. Luckily for Reed, Peirce took a more comfortable boat to England, arriving in London just in time to save his friend Reed from standing trial for his murder.

According to Harvard Magazine, Peirce's friend Ernest Hemingway once asked his young son Jack, "Who is the greatest man you know?" — expecting to hear "Papa." Jack quickly responded, "It's Waldo."

Peirce was the son of a lumber baron in Bangor, Maine. My grandfather was in the paper business in Bangor, and became friends with Peirce. On March 6, we're selling two paintings Reed gave my grandfather. C'mon down.

Terrible Towers

Prince Charles, New Buildings in Old Places

TOWERS can be great in New York. They've been a part of the city's character since the 1880s, and they became mythic in the 1920s, when every Hollywood movie studio had elaborate sets showing the New York cityscape, the most elegant and romantic place in America at the time (a great website about this is Celluloid Skyline).

We're having a problem now that we're building many towers with high embedded energy costs and that rely on technology to light and ventilate floors that are too large to be naturally ventilated and lit. Not to mention that many of these glass towers kill the streetscape and are boring on skyline.

The situation is different in Europe, where historic cityscapes that have survived for centuries have no buildings over 8 stories. The French national parliament debated the "Manhattanization" of Paris a hundred years ago, deciding that all Parisians have the right to justice and beauty — and therefore Paris would have no towers.

In the 1970s or so, the city allowed one much-hated tower, which many Parisians hope will be torn down. And then the city planned La Defense, an abysmal quarter of towers thankfully concentrated on the edge of the city, where they're less bothersome. Nevertheless, their poor design was one of the causes for the famous headline in the New York Times, France Has The Worst Modern Architecture In The World.

The citoyens there are baffled that Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë wants to bring towers to other parts of Paris. It's a situation that I admit I don't know much about.

London has been less lucky. I was a student there when there were only three towers in the city, one of which was an American hotel that looked into the back yard at Buckingham Palace. Despite the undeniable unpopularity of these towers, London later allowed more towers, like Richard Rogers' fiercely anti-urban Lloyd's of London tower, and the boring masses concentrated at Canary Wharf.

Now London's famous Socialist mayor, "Red Ken" Livingstone, has aligned with big business and is proposing many more towers for the city, so that London can get even more investment bankers. He doesn't seem to see the irony of the alliance. (More irony, the Financial Times is against the towers.)

When you step out the door of the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, the worst of these towers stands on axis at the end of the street, rising like an alien spaceship above the city. Nicknamed "the Gherkin," it's a sinister building that looks like the world headquarters for the New World Order.

Prince Charles has more against these towers then the fact that they look down on his private garden and his Institute. "The pockmarked skyline of London" is his newest battle with the Modernist establishment in Britain, led by Red Ken's allies, Lord Rogers and Sir Norman Foster, the architect of the Gherkin.

You can read his speech here, and watch it here.

The Mayor Proposes

And Duany Disposes

London Towers

I'm so glad that Congress, under the direction of a Red Sox owner, is spending its time investing New York Yankees, at the same time they allow George Bush to spend $177 million a day in Iraq.

WHAT a coincidence that when every team has steroid users, the Red Sox owner concentrated on the testimony of a Yankee clubhouse employee.

The team with the second most players implicated was the Mets, who were responsible for one of the two or three worst moments in Red Sox history. For the sake of propriety, Senator Mitchell should have leaned over backwards to have other teams involved, including his own.

Yes We Can Part II - No You Can't

Yes We Can

Remember this guy?

HE opened his heart and let it fly. And everyone got it.

Amiamo la bellezza

Art (Young At Heart)