Roommate: a friend to cohabit your living space; a person with whom you can coexist and who helps you lower your cost of living; or, hopefully, some manageable combination of the two.
I have mixed feelings on and mixed experiences with roommates. First year of college- strained, stayed out of the room as much as I could. Second year of college- had a single room. bliss. Third year- 6-girl suite heaven. I won't ever have that experience again!! First year in MS- two roommates; one, didn't work out, the other, became a beloved friend who I loved dearly and was totally comfortable with and was so happy to come home to. 2nd and 3rd years, MS- I wasn't really close with these roommates, but it was livable. With the first, I wanted more of a friendship; with the second, I often felt bad for not being more of a friend.
Now in Atlanta, I have a new roommate. I am starting to like her more by the day; we have a lot in common: our age, faith, place of origin, tastes in things in general. I am actually for the first time really getting excited about getting to know her. She is great to come home to.
I wanted to post this short blog to say, it is so nice to have someone to share life with. Meaning, someone with whom to build a household. And for this season of my life, it's roommates; we split buying household needs and goods. Another step towards adulthood: check!
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
DLGAC, Chapters 15-22 (the end)
I've gotten behind in my reading. Shock!
"Unslumming and Slumming": First thing to come to mind is, why in this order? Seems backwards. Jacobs attacks the superficial means for solving the slum problem; when planners "clean up" an area by putting a project there to get higher tax yields, or lure less-expensive-to-support populations back to an area, these are merely shifting slums, not remedying them. She sites Gans' work on the West End of Boston [which I read in Marwell's theory class), which is regarded as a slum but is actually a "stable, low-rent area" where residents are intensely attached to their neighborhood and its upkeep. Also, when people stay by choice, it is practical to stay, where newcomers still come, and where there is a thriving sense of urban vitality, all these factors keep slumming at bay. Jacobs addresses how the city grows the middle class, but this is the class it most often loses, for the above reasons. She urges that this emergent middle class in vital low-rent areas is the "greatest regenerative force" for an energetic economy, but is sadly thwarted because it is regarded as "social untidiness and economic confusion" (290).
"Gradual Money and Cataclysmic Money": There are three sources of money for building in cities: the biggest share is credit from non-gov't lending institutions. The second is gov't moneys, either from taxes or through borrowing power. (Did you know some residences and business properties are financed this way?! I'd like to know what businesses in Jackson were financed by gov't help.) The third source is from investment money (its source being mostly concealed). Jacobs takes an interesting stance on the moral difference between these money sources, as to the private vs. publicness, and legitimacy vs. illegitimacy. She urges that gradual money is healthier for a city, as buildings require constant upkeep after the novelty is gone (remember Pruitt-Igoe?). On the cataclysmic side are the agents of city decay, such as credit blacklisting, which is done when the bank and planners create maps with spot-clearance, excluding help in areas projected to be slums. (I admit, I didn't go into intense detail or probing with this chapter. There is much for me to learn here, in money matters!)
Part IV: Different Tactics (Last Section)
SUBSIDIZING DWELLINGS: Herein Jacobs rails against the government as landlord, as it goes about housing people who cannot afford housing today. She indicts the way these peoples' rents are used almost exclusively on local admin, maintenance and running expenses - i.e., paying combaters of vandalism and sitters in conferences on how to improve project safety. Rather, Jacobs suggests a proper use of subsidy monies, by a "guaranteed rent method," in which there are no low-income ceilings for people which will de-qualify them for subsidized housing. Rather, when this happens, the tenant ought to take up ownership of his unit. Soon, private vs. public housing becomes in-differentiable. Jacobs also makes the point here that it is very important to not transform or replace subsidized housing too quickly; gradual change will bring about the victory of "holding as many people as possible by choice over time" (334).
ATTRITION OF AUTOMOBILES I found this to be a rather dull chapter, except for the fact that I have been witnessing of late, since my move to Atlanta, the true war between cars and pedestrians. Cars don't like the anxiety the pedestrians' safety produces upon them; pedestrians hate waiting for proper times and places to cross. One interesting thing I learned is that some traffic, especially of trucks and buses, is essential for the vitality of a city. OK, so maybe this chapter wasn't so dull, because it also got me thinking, which pressure has given way in Jackson: cars over peds, or peds over autos? Definitely the former. In Atlanta, the latter is making headway, although the disincentives of driving aren't quite high enough to eliminate large numbers of one-drive-only private automobiles. Jacobs says equilibrium has been achieved in no american city as of yet. Of course, this was written in the 60's.
Did you know one-way traffic is a solution to alleviate congestion?! I had no idea that was its purpose. Another golden nugget of Jacobs' philosophy -- that no remedy applied to city life comes without a consequence or new problem -- was illustrated by her point that large parking garages actually erode city vitality, even though they aimed to enhance its economy. In this chapter I finally learned the controversy about Robert Moses, which I never understood before. He was park commissioner in NYC in the 30's, and tried various adjustments to Central Park to get heavy traffic flow to be permitted around or through it, both of which were turned down. Oh, New Yorkers and their protectiveness of their Perfect City dreams!
VISUAL ORDER: As the upper limit of complexity, cities cannot be works of art, Jacobs claims. Art and life aren't the same things; for life, better design strategies and tactics are needed. So, in sum, I like this chapter's premise: practicality first, art second, around the skeleton of practicality. Clear thinking about city planning therefore starts with an understanding that cities ought not aim to be works of art, foremost. What cities need is for their "remarkable functional order [to be] clarified" (377). On the same token, art/design ought not interfere with function; they can co-operate and coexist. The minimization of the impression of endlessness, and artful tactics of suggestion and emphasis, can be well applied to a functional cityscape. Using very well organized writing, Jacobs lays out exact, practical ways artful principles such as these can be applied to cities in a functional, life-giving way. Is this kind of application-/prescription-heavy writing sociological? Or are we now in a different era of sociology, one which is less amelioration-based/driven? Is this because we think this posture in academia is somehow more appropriate or respectable? And why is that? Who decided that and catalyzed that shift in thinking?
SALVAGING PROJECTS Again Jacobs uses this chapter to be a practitioner of specific remedies to this particular city illness: projects laid to waste.
GOVERNING AND PLANNING DISTRICTS Coordinating city planning and mapping and zoning ad building is a behemoth of a process. Jacobs thus advocates for the development of a "'Metropolitan Government,'" which is comprised of separate localities which come together into a federation of powers only for the explicit cause of corporate planning. This is in contrast to what she calls "municipal bigness:" the planners-conquer-all approach, which leave localities helpless to change.
THE KIND OF PROBLEM A CITY IS In this chapter, Jacobs dabbles back into the philosophical side of comprehending city problems. She holds that the common, misguided camp's approach to city planning is that cities are problems of simplicity (or of disorganized complexity, which are then easily reduced or converted to problems of simplicity), whereas the appropriate approach to city problems is to treat them as problems of organized complexity. The philosophical underpinnings to this is the understanding that problem solving only works when you understand what kind of problem it is. Cities have organized complexity because their "variables are many, but they are not helter-skelter; they are 'interrelated into an organic whole'" (433). Thus, Jacobs pushes for studying cities in a process-driven, inductive, attention-paid-to-the-anomalies fashion - just as she just exhibited for us in this masterpiece of hers! Too bad its genius ca't be duplicated now! This work can only be original once.
In her final page, Jacobs trumpets the city as king (or rather-and I don't know why this is that I like to imagine the city as a feminized power, a queen...is that not the popular imagination of a city? Like that of a ship as being a "she"?) because it is the only place that is a stage for productive innovation and the stunning "juxtaposition of talents." The best cities generate enough energy not just for themselves, but to meet needs and solve problems outside themselves.
THE END
"Unslumming and Slumming": First thing to come to mind is, why in this order? Seems backwards. Jacobs attacks the superficial means for solving the slum problem; when planners "clean up" an area by putting a project there to get higher tax yields, or lure less-expensive-to-support populations back to an area, these are merely shifting slums, not remedying them. She sites Gans' work on the West End of Boston [which I read in Marwell's theory class), which is regarded as a slum but is actually a "stable, low-rent area" where residents are intensely attached to their neighborhood and its upkeep. Also, when people stay by choice, it is practical to stay, where newcomers still come, and where there is a thriving sense of urban vitality, all these factors keep slumming at bay. Jacobs addresses how the city grows the middle class, but this is the class it most often loses, for the above reasons. She urges that this emergent middle class in vital low-rent areas is the "greatest regenerative force" for an energetic economy, but is sadly thwarted because it is regarded as "social untidiness and economic confusion" (290).
"Gradual Money and Cataclysmic Money": There are three sources of money for building in cities: the biggest share is credit from non-gov't lending institutions. The second is gov't moneys, either from taxes or through borrowing power. (Did you know some residences and business properties are financed this way?! I'd like to know what businesses in Jackson were financed by gov't help.) The third source is from investment money (its source being mostly concealed). Jacobs takes an interesting stance on the moral difference between these money sources, as to the private vs. publicness, and legitimacy vs. illegitimacy. She urges that gradual money is healthier for a city, as buildings require constant upkeep after the novelty is gone (remember Pruitt-Igoe?). On the cataclysmic side are the agents of city decay, such as credit blacklisting, which is done when the bank and planners create maps with spot-clearance, excluding help in areas projected to be slums. (I admit, I didn't go into intense detail or probing with this chapter. There is much for me to learn here, in money matters!)
Part IV: Different Tactics (Last Section)
SUBSIDIZING DWELLINGS: Herein Jacobs rails against the government as landlord, as it goes about housing people who cannot afford housing today. She indicts the way these peoples' rents are used almost exclusively on local admin, maintenance and running expenses - i.e., paying combaters of vandalism and sitters in conferences on how to improve project safety. Rather, Jacobs suggests a proper use of subsidy monies, by a "guaranteed rent method," in which there are no low-income ceilings for people which will de-qualify them for subsidized housing. Rather, when this happens, the tenant ought to take up ownership of his unit. Soon, private vs. public housing becomes in-differentiable. Jacobs also makes the point here that it is very important to not transform or replace subsidized housing too quickly; gradual change will bring about the victory of "holding as many people as possible by choice over time" (334).
ATTRITION OF AUTOMOBILES I found this to be a rather dull chapter, except for the fact that I have been witnessing of late, since my move to Atlanta, the true war between cars and pedestrians. Cars don't like the anxiety the pedestrians' safety produces upon them; pedestrians hate waiting for proper times and places to cross. One interesting thing I learned is that some traffic, especially of trucks and buses, is essential for the vitality of a city. OK, so maybe this chapter wasn't so dull, because it also got me thinking, which pressure has given way in Jackson: cars over peds, or peds over autos? Definitely the former. In Atlanta, the latter is making headway, although the disincentives of driving aren't quite high enough to eliminate large numbers of one-drive-only private automobiles. Jacobs says equilibrium has been achieved in no american city as of yet. Of course, this was written in the 60's.
Did you know one-way traffic is a solution to alleviate congestion?! I had no idea that was its purpose. Another golden nugget of Jacobs' philosophy -- that no remedy applied to city life comes without a consequence or new problem -- was illustrated by her point that large parking garages actually erode city vitality, even though they aimed to enhance its economy. In this chapter I finally learned the controversy about Robert Moses, which I never understood before. He was park commissioner in NYC in the 30's, and tried various adjustments to Central Park to get heavy traffic flow to be permitted around or through it, both of which were turned down. Oh, New Yorkers and their protectiveness of their Perfect City dreams!
VISUAL ORDER: As the upper limit of complexity, cities cannot be works of art, Jacobs claims. Art and life aren't the same things; for life, better design strategies and tactics are needed. So, in sum, I like this chapter's premise: practicality first, art second, around the skeleton of practicality. Clear thinking about city planning therefore starts with an understanding that cities ought not aim to be works of art, foremost. What cities need is for their "remarkable functional order [to be] clarified" (377). On the same token, art/design ought not interfere with function; they can co-operate and coexist. The minimization of the impression of endlessness, and artful tactics of suggestion and emphasis, can be well applied to a functional cityscape. Using very well organized writing, Jacobs lays out exact, practical ways artful principles such as these can be applied to cities in a functional, life-giving way. Is this kind of application-/prescription-heavy writing sociological? Or are we now in a different era of sociology, one which is less amelioration-based/driven? Is this because we think this posture in academia is somehow more appropriate or respectable? And why is that? Who decided that and catalyzed that shift in thinking?
SALVAGING PROJECTS Again Jacobs uses this chapter to be a practitioner of specific remedies to this particular city illness: projects laid to waste.
GOVERNING AND PLANNING DISTRICTS Coordinating city planning and mapping and zoning ad building is a behemoth of a process. Jacobs thus advocates for the development of a "'Metropolitan Government,'" which is comprised of separate localities which come together into a federation of powers only for the explicit cause of corporate planning. This is in contrast to what she calls "municipal bigness:" the planners-conquer-all approach, which leave localities helpless to change.
THE KIND OF PROBLEM A CITY IS In this chapter, Jacobs dabbles back into the philosophical side of comprehending city problems. She holds that the common, misguided camp's approach to city planning is that cities are problems of simplicity (or of disorganized complexity, which are then easily reduced or converted to problems of simplicity), whereas the appropriate approach to city problems is to treat them as problems of organized complexity. The philosophical underpinnings to this is the understanding that problem solving only works when you understand what kind of problem it is. Cities have organized complexity because their "variables are many, but they are not helter-skelter; they are 'interrelated into an organic whole'" (433). Thus, Jacobs pushes for studying cities in a process-driven, inductive, attention-paid-to-the-anomalies fashion - just as she just exhibited for us in this masterpiece of hers! Too bad its genius ca't be duplicated now! This work can only be original once.
In her final page, Jacobs trumpets the city as king (or rather-and I don't know why this is that I like to imagine the city as a feminized power, a queen...is that not the popular imagination of a city? Like that of a ship as being a "she"?) because it is the only place that is a stage for productive innovation and the stunning "juxtaposition of talents." The best cities generate enough energy not just for themselves, but to meet needs and solve problems outside themselves.
THE END
Friday, August 12, 2011
Decline & Regeneration: Beware Duplication and Border Vacuums
In this section (ch. 13-14), Jacobs identifies destructive and helpful powers towards killing or enlivening a city.
On destructive force is the continual shifting of a city's center. This happens because a popular locale will become a fad and be reproduced, but will lose its luster with time, as what was once original becomes the norm. As Jane writes, "Diversity is crowded out by the duplication of success" (247). What's needed to protect city vitality, then, are ordinaces that defend against excessive dupication of restuarants, or whatever the thing was that caused the inital economic boom for that prospering areas.
A second source of city decline are the deadening border zones used to separate different areas - i.e., the most classic example being railroad tracks. Also, Morningside Heights Park in NYC is a boarder, with sidewalk use there deadened by the perception of them as insecure areas. Another boarder zone can be a place with one-way traffic - people on one side going and coming, but people on the other side never crossing out of their own side. Borders are active, she argues; they are infertile, unused areas, usually, leading to an "unbuilding, or running-down process" (259). The insightful point here is that running-down is an active movement in a particular direction---even though, true enough, entropy takes less energy than building an area up. I was curious to see what Jane would suggest as a remedy for this problem.
At this point, Jane finally discusses Cetnral Park - you may recall I've been awaiting her view on it. She suggests turning barriers into seams; moving attractions of intensive use to the perimeter, such as zoos, mueums, ponds, rinks, cafes, chess houses, carousels. If the border isn't along a park, relying on counterforces, such as intentionally large and diverse populations, can protect city vitality. Finally, Jacobs argues against pedestrian street schemes if they create borders.
Speaking of walkways reminds me of T.'s recent comment, as we drove down State Steet, that he thinks college campuses ought to hold off on sidewalk construction at first, see where students themselves want to walk, then pave those routes. T. and Jacobs would get along; both see orthodox planning efforts as cou terproductive. When I mentioned to T. that I've noticed heavy use of an outdoor public space - med students and nurses and patients who sit cross-legged near the crosswalk along State Street - I said that I thought a bench should be put there. He disagreed, saying that he thinks it would chase the initial users there, who like it for the fact that they can sit in grass. The users of the space - as unplanned of a socail space as it could possibly be - have already defined it in terms they like and utilize routinely. Why mess with it? Why interfere with organic success?
On destructive force is the continual shifting of a city's center. This happens because a popular locale will become a fad and be reproduced, but will lose its luster with time, as what was once original becomes the norm. As Jane writes, "Diversity is crowded out by the duplication of success" (247). What's needed to protect city vitality, then, are ordinaces that defend against excessive dupication of restuarants, or whatever the thing was that caused the inital economic boom for that prospering areas.
A second source of city decline are the deadening border zones used to separate different areas - i.e., the most classic example being railroad tracks. Also, Morningside Heights Park in NYC is a boarder, with sidewalk use there deadened by the perception of them as insecure areas. Another boarder zone can be a place with one-way traffic - people on one side going and coming, but people on the other side never crossing out of their own side. Borders are active, she argues; they are infertile, unused areas, usually, leading to an "unbuilding, or running-down process" (259). The insightful point here is that running-down is an active movement in a particular direction---even though, true enough, entropy takes less energy than building an area up. I was curious to see what Jane would suggest as a remedy for this problem.
At this point, Jane finally discusses Cetnral Park - you may recall I've been awaiting her view on it. She suggests turning barriers into seams; moving attractions of intensive use to the perimeter, such as zoos, mueums, ponds, rinks, cafes, chess houses, carousels. If the border isn't along a park, relying on counterforces, such as intentionally large and diverse populations, can protect city vitality. Finally, Jacobs argues against pedestrian street schemes if they create borders.
Speaking of walkways reminds me of T.'s recent comment, as we drove down State Steet, that he thinks college campuses ought to hold off on sidewalk construction at first, see where students themselves want to walk, then pave those routes. T. and Jacobs would get along; both see orthodox planning efforts as cou terproductive. When I mentioned to T. that I've noticed heavy use of an outdoor public space - med students and nurses and patients who sit cross-legged near the crosswalk along State Street - I said that I thought a bench should be put there. He disagreed, saying that he thinks it would chase the initial users there, who like it for the fact that they can sit in grass. The users of the space - as unplanned of a socail space as it could possibly be - have already defined it in terms they like and utilize routinely. Why mess with it? Why interfere with organic success?
A City's Personality
When suburbs or towns zone and plan, they aim to avoid the ugly messiness of cities where the old and new cohabit. But to avoid the monotony of homogeneity, but still capture the visual order and "pleasant esthetic" (223), suburban planners will opt for and get, what Jane scathingly calls "results of vulgarity and dishonesty" (229). I assume she means places like the Renaissance Mall, where there is nothing but a "city guise" ... all the while, anyone who has been in a real city isn't surprised to learn that its walls are literally made of painted and molded styrofoam.
It is by reading Jacobs that my eyes have been open in admiration and understanding of Fondren. Truly, it is a city-pocket that can boast "radical inherent difference" in architectural style and building use.
Jane argues, again using very moral diction, that diversity, and the peculiar and unppredictable uses it sprouts, is "one of the missions of cities" (238). Out of fear that diversity in scale of buildings together in one place will "explode" a street, for instance, diversity is "unnecessarily suppressed" (238). Supressed indeed is the suburban landscape, in its ironic inefficiency and social dryness, compared to the city that hits the planning bullseye, as Fondren does. (OK, maybe I am bringing biad into this.) Only in the city will the strange and the rational be found together, linked by questions. When I studied at Columbia, I found that to be true; the city constantly bombards one with images and social scenes that confront one to examine her own beliefs, and why. In the suburbs, such questions aren't raised; the visual landscape is no catalyst of personal growth.
It is by reading Jacobs that my eyes have been open in admiration and understanding of Fondren. Truly, it is a city-pocket that can boast "radical inherent difference" in architectural style and building use.
Jane argues, again using very moral diction, that diversity, and the peculiar and unppredictable uses it sprouts, is "one of the missions of cities" (238). Out of fear that diversity in scale of buildings together in one place will "explode" a street, for instance, diversity is "unnecessarily suppressed" (238). Supressed indeed is the suburban landscape, in its ironic inefficiency and social dryness, compared to the city that hits the planning bullseye, as Fondren does. (OK, maybe I am bringing biad into this.) Only in the city will the strange and the rational be found together, linked by questions. When I studied at Columbia, I found that to be true; the city constantly bombards one with images and social scenes that confront one to examine her own beliefs, and why. In the suburbs, such questions aren't raised; the visual landscape is no catalyst of personal growth.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
My Only Guarantee
"Although my parents have been wonderful and my husband is an excellent provider, the reality is this: God is my only guarantee. The Knower of all my needs is the sole Meeter of all my needs." - Beth Moore
I'd like to amend Moore's statement by adding to parents, and aunts and brother, and changing husband to boyfriend. She is so, so right. It is a thing only God can do, to balance one in a position of gratitude and adequate vulnerability to open ourselves to love in our human relationships, and yet, never put those loved ones in the position of filling God's role. My parents, aunts, brother, friends and boyfriend cannot ever provide me with all I need to survive. They do not know nor can they meet all of my needs. Not saying that they don't want to, but they simply cannot. They have deep needs, too, which I can never meet. The more I expect my loved ones to resolve my problems for me, and set me free from my sin and hurt, the more I am removing God from His proper place.
I'd like to amend Moore's statement by adding to parents, and aunts and brother, and changing husband to boyfriend. She is so, so right. It is a thing only God can do, to balance one in a position of gratitude and adequate vulnerability to open ourselves to love in our human relationships, and yet, never put those loved ones in the position of filling God's role. My parents, aunts, brother, friends and boyfriend cannot ever provide me with all I need to survive. They do not know nor can they meet all of my needs. Not saying that they don't want to, but they simply cannot. They have deep needs, too, which I can never meet. The more I expect my loved ones to resolve my problems for me, and set me free from my sin and hurt, the more I am removing God from His proper place.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Stinginess & the Beauty of Contrast
Did you know you can be stingy if you're only buying things for someone to prove you aren't stingy? This is a perfect example of righteousness without a changed heart. I recently ruined my largesse by erupting in a point of insecurity, "But, I bought you this and this and this!" Old generational lifestyles and habits die HARD. Who knew my dad's miserliness to the point of social death would carry on in me and be a thorn in my own flesh?! Be a challenge in my interpersonal relationships as an adult? On the one hand, it is admirable to save and be mindful of expenses, not to be wasteful or frivolous. But on the other, it is sad to realize my own fixation on the symbolic value of money in relationships. That is a downside to being one who speaks in the gifts love language. Thanks, Dad! Well, the positive to come out of this is not being broke, and also being inclined to think up good, practical gift ideas. To every point of fallenness, God has provided the redeemed side of it, too. Ah, the beauty of contrast.
Prayer: God, save me from my fix-it mentality, as if I can force myself into un-stinginess! Even my best efforts at generosity carry that shadow of that same old stinginess. I can't fake new life; only You can put it there!
Prayer: God, save me from my fix-it mentality, as if I can force myself into un-stinginess! Even my best efforts at generosity carry that shadow of that same old stinginess. I can't fake new life; only You can put it there!
Mixed Use, City Blocks, Old Buildings, and Population Density
Chapter 8
Here, Jane repeats her main thesis: that a city spot will thrive (safety-wise, economically, in vibrancy) if a diversity of people use it at a diversity of times. As such, I was able to skim much of it. The only fresh thing is her vantage point: she is fighting for primary use buildings as essential in remedying the unbalance of users in an area, as this is the root of city decay. Precepts of orthodox planning and one of its approaches to revitalization, the clean-it-up approach, is nothing but an expensive quick fix, in Jane's eyes, because they do not emphasize or prioritize the primary use. Furthermore, often the places city planners choose to clean up are already thriving off of the principles of mixed use.
A second myth Jane dispels is that nice-looking, well-kept residences are the cause of vitality in an area; rather, the truth is that houses start to be taken care of and get face lifts after the district has found its balance of users. Nice houses are a sign that vitality has already taken place. Say a new museum has brought visitors to an area on weekends and in afternoons, whereas it was previously dead then. That primary use building becomes a "chessman," because it converts pawns to queens (167)! (Wow, what a fabulous analogy: creative, memorable, but still belonging in academic text.)
Jane's word use usually gets my imagination flowing, with the exception of her loose use of "economic." She states that mixing people together on a sidewalk or other public area will breed "economic mutual support"(164), but doesn't specify how. I guess I will have to ask T., who wrote an article in the Boom Jackson magazine about converting an old broken-down factory into a mixed-use building (i.e., like an urban version of a mini-mall, putting the suburban version, strip malls, to shame). I guess it feeds economics because peoples' pathways are easily distracted. That is, I meant to just grab lunch with my friend Gladys, but the bookstore across the plaza had a book display that brought me in, which was perfect for a gift I had to buy anyway. Bada-bing, bada-boom. That mixed-use building doubled their profits on me.
Chapter 9
In this chapter, about the need for small blocks, Jane uses picture diagrams for the first time. Up till now, she has been relying on words to describe spatial things. She offers a way to create diversity in public spaces other than primary use buildings: create center use areas by bisecting long city-blocks with extra streets. This gives city walkers alternate routes to choose from, instead of the same monotonous, self-isolating, long streets that only pool at the end where there is a central point of use (i.e., a subway station). Jane cites the Rockefeller Plaza's extra north-south street as a perfect example of this (how cool that would have been to reference in my St. Patrick's Cathedral section of my undergrad thesis!).
Diversity grows flexibly, and so perhaps for this very reason, short city blocks must be simply committed to in faith in the city planning stage; they may seem wasteful, especially to the orthodox planner, but their payoff is the end of safety and vitality that is achieved wherever diversity is nurtured.
How surprising it is to me, with my own small background in urban studies, that open space is actually pathogenic to city life. Central Park, I suppose, is an exception. I'd be interested to hear Jane's view on why it is successful.
Reading about city blocks, superblocks, sidewalk use...it all makes me incredibly nostalgic for New York. My time there is no vague, watercolor-washed memory, but is rather as crisp as the apple cider and donuts that farmers brought into the city ever Sunday and Thursday. Ah! New York! If only I had enjoyed and appreciated you more while I had you. I think I did enjoy you to the max, but I also think two years was too brief. I wonder, wonder how Atlanta will stack up, or contrast. Now I have a language and a logic to employ as I actively indwell it.
Chapter 10
Ah! the chapter that gives aged buildings the glory they deserve! I am partial to older city buildings because my church and my physics and foreign language (heck, all my) classes were in old, old buildings. Unlike the way buildings age in smaller towns, city aging has a very magnetic quality to it. Maybe it's just that mildew isn't such a foe in NYC as it is here in Jackson. Mildew will quickly remove any magnetic quality!
Perhaps to prevent compromising Jane's once-again brilliant thinking, I will stick with one excerpt that says it all:
"Newness, and its superficial gloss of well-being, is a very perishable commodity" (193) <---speaks to the fact that building tons of commercial stores at once is a recipe for misuse and disuse of area. Business owners who rent cannot keep up with high renting costs of new buildings. The city-making recipe of newness cuts out those often-ordinary enterprises that cannot make it there, economically (such as "unformalized feeders of the arts - studios, galleries," music supply stores, book stores). Think about it: "large swatches" of new construction lack DIVERSITY. They are inefficient. That being said, new buildings are also needed to avoid stagnation of use and users. What Jane cautions against is the conversion of large swatches of land and buildings. Variety needs to be left intact, for the mingling of old and new, she argues, is the incubator of diversity, new primary use buildings, and truly new city life- not in the form of cheap big-box plastered walls, but in the form of "ingenious adaptations" as store-owners adjust the old uses of old buildings to new ones.
Chapter 11
I just realized the ironic lack of diversity in my writing here. I am, with my writing and summaries, doing the very thing Jane hates: routinizing. Using large swatches of predictable text, or rather, forcing you, my reader (are you out there?) down long, monotonous city-streets with no alternate routes. Maybe I can use this project of mine (reading then writing a response, so I read better and remember this book more) as an opportunity to do what I need to do as a writer: write more concisely. Conciseness can persuade, spark, educate and attract a reader far better than deep detail can. It's a quality of writing I most want to master. After all, some sociologists (such as Georg Simmel) made it into the history books simply because of their ability to publish short volumes on social phenomena. That attracted a far larger audience!
I will give myself a 100-word limit:
Jane argues that the presupposed "correlations between high densities [of people] and trouble ... is simply incorrect," but that dense city populations are rather an asset. To offset the standardization that occurs if a population is too dense or overcrowded, the solution is to cover as much ground as possible with residences. Jane tampers remedy this with a reminder of the previous three diversity-generators: widespread dwellings must also be mixed in with non-residential buildings (mixed use around a primary building), and short streets are needed to avoid endless rows of housing.
With all this in mind, the reader wonders as to how suburbs, with their un-dense, un-overcrowded, far-from hitting the "in-between density" spot, flourish. I've understood for the first time how monotony in stores (building use) can generate a population equally monotonous. Jane is making me all the more skeptical of the suburbs as a healthy living arrangement or option.
That was more than 100 words, and it was an explication (reader's interpretation of text). Maybe next time I will try to use the 4-sentence precis (author-centered summary) formula. That's sure to stretch me lingually!
Here, Jane repeats her main thesis: that a city spot will thrive (safety-wise, economically, in vibrancy) if a diversity of people use it at a diversity of times. As such, I was able to skim much of it. The only fresh thing is her vantage point: she is fighting for primary use buildings as essential in remedying the unbalance of users in an area, as this is the root of city decay. Precepts of orthodox planning and one of its approaches to revitalization, the clean-it-up approach, is nothing but an expensive quick fix, in Jane's eyes, because they do not emphasize or prioritize the primary use. Furthermore, often the places city planners choose to clean up are already thriving off of the principles of mixed use.
A second myth Jane dispels is that nice-looking, well-kept residences are the cause of vitality in an area; rather, the truth is that houses start to be taken care of and get face lifts after the district has found its balance of users. Nice houses are a sign that vitality has already taken place. Say a new museum has brought visitors to an area on weekends and in afternoons, whereas it was previously dead then. That primary use building becomes a "chessman," because it converts pawns to queens (167)! (Wow, what a fabulous analogy: creative, memorable, but still belonging in academic text.)
Jane's word use usually gets my imagination flowing, with the exception of her loose use of "economic." She states that mixing people together on a sidewalk or other public area will breed "economic mutual support"(164), but doesn't specify how. I guess I will have to ask T., who wrote an article in the Boom Jackson magazine about converting an old broken-down factory into a mixed-use building (i.e., like an urban version of a mini-mall, putting the suburban version, strip malls, to shame). I guess it feeds economics because peoples' pathways are easily distracted. That is, I meant to just grab lunch with my friend Gladys, but the bookstore across the plaza had a book display that brought me in, which was perfect for a gift I had to buy anyway. Bada-bing, bada-boom. That mixed-use building doubled their profits on me.
Chapter 9
In this chapter, about the need for small blocks, Jane uses picture diagrams for the first time. Up till now, she has been relying on words to describe spatial things. She offers a way to create diversity in public spaces other than primary use buildings: create center use areas by bisecting long city-blocks with extra streets. This gives city walkers alternate routes to choose from, instead of the same monotonous, self-isolating, long streets that only pool at the end where there is a central point of use (i.e., a subway station). Jane cites the Rockefeller Plaza's extra north-south street as a perfect example of this (how cool that would have been to reference in my St. Patrick's Cathedral section of my undergrad thesis!).
Diversity grows flexibly, and so perhaps for this very reason, short city blocks must be simply committed to in faith in the city planning stage; they may seem wasteful, especially to the orthodox planner, but their payoff is the end of safety and vitality that is achieved wherever diversity is nurtured.
How surprising it is to me, with my own small background in urban studies, that open space is actually pathogenic to city life. Central Park, I suppose, is an exception. I'd be interested to hear Jane's view on why it is successful.
Reading about city blocks, superblocks, sidewalk use...it all makes me incredibly nostalgic for New York. My time there is no vague, watercolor-washed memory, but is rather as crisp as the apple cider and donuts that farmers brought into the city ever Sunday and Thursday. Ah! New York! If only I had enjoyed and appreciated you more while I had you. I think I did enjoy you to the max, but I also think two years was too brief. I wonder, wonder how Atlanta will stack up, or contrast. Now I have a language and a logic to employ as I actively indwell it.
Chapter 10
Ah! the chapter that gives aged buildings the glory they deserve! I am partial to older city buildings because my church and my physics and foreign language (heck, all my) classes were in old, old buildings. Unlike the way buildings age in smaller towns, city aging has a very magnetic quality to it. Maybe it's just that mildew isn't such a foe in NYC as it is here in Jackson. Mildew will quickly remove any magnetic quality!
Perhaps to prevent compromising Jane's once-again brilliant thinking, I will stick with one excerpt that says it all:
"Newness, and its superficial gloss of well-being, is a very perishable commodity" (193) <---speaks to the fact that building tons of commercial stores at once is a recipe for misuse and disuse of area. Business owners who rent cannot keep up with high renting costs of new buildings. The city-making recipe of newness cuts out those often-ordinary enterprises that cannot make it there, economically (such as "unformalized feeders of the arts - studios, galleries," music supply stores, book stores). Think about it: "large swatches" of new construction lack DIVERSITY. They are inefficient. That being said, new buildings are also needed to avoid stagnation of use and users. What Jane cautions against is the conversion of large swatches of land and buildings. Variety needs to be left intact, for the mingling of old and new, she argues, is the incubator of diversity, new primary use buildings, and truly new city life- not in the form of cheap big-box plastered walls, but in the form of "ingenious adaptations" as store-owners adjust the old uses of old buildings to new ones.
Chapter 11
I just realized the ironic lack of diversity in my writing here. I am, with my writing and summaries, doing the very thing Jane hates: routinizing. Using large swatches of predictable text, or rather, forcing you, my reader (are you out there?) down long, monotonous city-streets with no alternate routes. Maybe I can use this project of mine (reading then writing a response, so I read better and remember this book more) as an opportunity to do what I need to do as a writer: write more concisely. Conciseness can persuade, spark, educate and attract a reader far better than deep detail can. It's a quality of writing I most want to master. After all, some sociologists (such as Georg Simmel) made it into the history books simply because of their ability to publish short volumes on social phenomena. That attracted a far larger audience!
I will give myself a 100-word limit:
Jane argues that the presupposed "correlations between high densities [of people] and trouble ... is simply incorrect," but that dense city populations are rather an asset. To offset the standardization that occurs if a population is too dense or overcrowded, the solution is to cover as much ground as possible with residences. Jane tampers remedy this with a reminder of the previous three diversity-generators: widespread dwellings must also be mixed in with non-residential buildings (mixed use around a primary building), and short streets are needed to avoid endless rows of housing.
With all this in mind, the reader wonders as to how suburbs, with their un-dense, un-overcrowded, far-from hitting the "in-between density" spot, flourish. I've understood for the first time how monotony in stores (building use) can generate a population equally monotonous. Jane is making me all the more skeptical of the suburbs as a healthy living arrangement or option.
That was more than 100 words, and it was an explication (reader's interpretation of text). Maybe next time I will try to use the 4-sentence precis (author-centered summary) formula. That's sure to stretch me lingually!
Friday, August 5, 2011
Diversity: Natural after all?
Chapter 7: the generators of diversity
I am not sure I'm quickly sold on Jane's intro: "Diversity is natural to big cities" (143). Only six pages later she points out how the Bronx itself is the perfect example that just because a population is large and urban, doesn't guarantee its diversity; rather, this borough of NYC proves to be much more homogeneous in its loyal residents, resulting in a lack of economic choice and "urban vitality" (one of Jane's several vague phrases that she gets away with just cause she's so cool--maybe that's the difference between academic and theoretical sociology...not that the latter is any less academic, but the prose is so relaxed it just seems too fun to be legitimately academic). I'd like to add that diversity seems like the very last thing to be natural. I remember how the college I attended my freshman year, DU, tried (unsuccessfully) to "enforce" diversity by holding fishbowl discussions, where the facilitators aimed at raising consciousness about race and getting more voices flowing on the topic. Well, let's just say that that goal was a programmatic impossibility with a campus that seemed to have about 95% white students. So in that case, diversity was fought for and yearned for, but alas, couldn't be magically evoked.
I think Jane's point in this short chapter is to argue that diversity and choice in a city setting aren't accidental things, nor do they promote chaos. Rather, diversity must be cultivated, and it will sustain the city's vitality. She supplies for conditions for generating the big D: 1- the outdoors must support people with different schedules and uses. 2-blocks ought to be short as much as possible. 3-building quality and condition must be mingled. 4- people should never occupy one space too densely, for any reason. It turns out diversity won't be easy to come by by her standards, as all four must be present and work in combination to bring out a city's potentialities.
I am not sure I'm quickly sold on Jane's intro: "Diversity is natural to big cities" (143). Only six pages later she points out how the Bronx itself is the perfect example that just because a population is large and urban, doesn't guarantee its diversity; rather, this borough of NYC proves to be much more homogeneous in its loyal residents, resulting in a lack of economic choice and "urban vitality" (one of Jane's several vague phrases that she gets away with just cause she's so cool--maybe that's the difference between academic and theoretical sociology...not that the latter is any less academic, but the prose is so relaxed it just seems too fun to be legitimately academic). I'd like to add that diversity seems like the very last thing to be natural. I remember how the college I attended my freshman year, DU, tried (unsuccessfully) to "enforce" diversity by holding fishbowl discussions, where the facilitators aimed at raising consciousness about race and getting more voices flowing on the topic. Well, let's just say that that goal was a programmatic impossibility with a campus that seemed to have about 95% white students. So in that case, diversity was fought for and yearned for, but alas, couldn't be magically evoked.
I think Jane's point in this short chapter is to argue that diversity and choice in a city setting aren't accidental things, nor do they promote chaos. Rather, diversity must be cultivated, and it will sustain the city's vitality. She supplies for conditions for generating the big D: 1- the outdoors must support people with different schedules and uses. 2-blocks ought to be short as much as possible. 3-building quality and condition must be mingled. 4- people should never occupy one space too densely, for any reason. It turns out diversity won't be easy to come by by her standards, as all four must be present and work in combination to bring out a city's potentialities.
Neighborhoods: Sentimentality or Necessity?
Today I dive into chapter 6.
I agree with Jane, “neighborhood” has picked up a saccharine connotation. It is a sentimental thing. I remember one of my Columbia
One thing really struck me while reading Jane’s insights on what makes neighborhoods succeed or fail: how very similar neighborhoods operate to human male-female relationships. Before you dismiss me as crazy, consider these excerpts: “A successful city neighborhood is a place that keeps sufficiently abreast of its problems so it is not destroyed by them. An unsuccessful neighborhood is a place that is overwhelmed by its defects and problems and is progressively more helpless before them.” “Cities, like anything else, succeed only by making the most of their assets.” “In bad neighborhoods, schools are brought to ruination, physically and socially; while successful neighborhoods improve their schools by fighting for them.”
Now, of course, that last phrase – by fighting for them – reminds me immediately of T. asking me in all seriousness back when we first started dating, “Have you ever fought for someone?” He surmised that I never had. Perhaps he is right. So, like someone who really loves someone else, a good neighborhood fights for its stability and perseverance. This again speaks to the reality and applicability of our good chemistry concept, entropy, to urban studies.
Let me carry the analogy further. Jane states that a city neighborhood cannot prosper if it is inwardly-turned, aims for a town-like coziness, or wants to be in any way self-contained. No – only a neighborhood with mobility and fluidity of use – only a relationship with the openness and freedom created by trust – can make it in a city.
Jane goes on to make a three-legged typology of useful city neighborhood types, varying in size. She emphasizes that city streets need to be in a network with larger city districts (“hop-and-skip” people accomplish this, for they know unlikely people, and thus act as gluing agents to tie neighborhoods into networks). Also Jane emphasizes that district neighborhoods are a necessity, as they stream resources and empowerment to the small city-street neighborhood. Obviously, for Jane, “neighborhood” can take both abstract and literal forms. I can jive with this kind of thinking! Typologies are a clear way to break down huge concepts, when writing and explaining a social phenomenon (what could be more cumbersome?).
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Jane Jacobs on City Parks
OK, here's the goal: one chapter from urban sociologist/anthropologist Jane Jacob's "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" per day, for the next...17 days. Today I read chapter 5, "The Uses of Neighborhood Parks." I said it in an earlier post, but I will say it here again: what amazes me about Jacobs is that she can talk about sidewalks for about 50 pages, and still not exhaust the topic, or bore the reader to death. Now that, my friends, is a sign of genius. She has to be one of the best observers I've ever known. ("Known" used in a very presumptuous way; obviously I never met or "knew" this woman, who died at 90 years of age 5 years ago.)
So here's what Jacobs (can I call her Jane, since this isn't a term paper?) made me think about, with regard to city parks:
1. She's right. City parks usually become nothing more than dispirited vacuums, rather than anchors of social stability. The assumption among city planners is that parks will embue a neighborhood with positive effects, when rather, they actually more often than not become both producers of and hosts of negative urban effects (i.e., housing hoards of indigent men and perverts who just catcall all day long--this I remember distinctly happening during me and T's trip to downtown Denver's park this past March). This is a reminder of a lesson learned in chemistry in 11th grade, which applies here: the concept of entropy. Things tend towards disorder and chaos, unless massive amounts of energy are invested to push against disorder and decay. In the same way, for a park to become an economic asset or have "staying power" over the decades in a city block, requires lots of work on the city dwellers' part. Well, actually, the city planners need to be more careful, too: if the location of the park doesn't have a natural diversity of users and their schedules (that is, if the park isn't surrounded my mixed-used buildings), it is bound for disaster.
2. Hmm. Jane noticed that a tenament stoop invited more diverse, lively and safe company than a nearby park did. She noted that the people all convened there, by choice, being of all ages and balanced in gender, not due to any amenity a park would offer (i.e., open space, playground), but because they all found it to be an agreeable place to share leisure, and enjoy each other and the passing city (p. 94). What is the magic thing that makes some certain place an agreed-upon hang out place? Convenience and high traffic on everday errand paths? That is, requiring no extra effort to go there?
3. Jane notes that some parks, no sane mother would send her children into. This reminds me of the park where mom would frequently send me to ride my bike when I was 8 or 9, across the street from her apartment in a decidedly urban area in metro Denver. What was it about that park that made it OK in a mother's eyes? There were hints of vandalism, and a bit more open space than was probably helpful there (I remember Andrew commenting on bums spending the night there), but also, I do think it got a fair amount of use and play. I also wonder how that park is doing nowadays; did it prove to have staying power? Also, thanks, mom, for letting me go there and explore on my own. That I count as a very fond childhod memory.
4. I love how Jane mixes urban studies with thinking on class. She notes that blue-collar mothers occupy parks with their kids earlier in the afternoon than white-collar mothers, b/c blue collar husbands get home earlier for supper and this the wives have to go and get cracking on the cooking. She also postulates that the class of neighborhood or class of park frequenters doesn't matter for the success of the park; rich and poor alike like their parks (and perhaps for the same reasons). I want to think things through and piece puzzle pieces together to the same degree as Jane does!
5. Why do city parks have closing times posted?
6. This is for you, Thomas and Cathy: "Superficial architectural variety may look like diversity, but only a genuine content of economic and social diversity, resulting in people with different schedules, has meaning to the park and the power to confer the boon of life upon it" (p. 101). Does that make your craft seem powerless, being entirely dependent on its surroundings? Or, from a more optimistic approach, is the task of architecture to harness the powers of the city toward good?
7. Jane names 4 elements of design that abet generalized patronage/usage by city dwellers: intricacy, centering, sun and enclosure. Basically, the first allows for users to never get tired of a complex layout; the second allows for creative uses of a central public space (oh! this was SO the case in NYC's Riverside Park, which hosted a long free concert series every summer on its largest pier...78th street? I totally can't remember). The 3rd and 4th elements are obvious. People and plants like sun; people also like and thrive within felt boundaries (ever hear about that study someone did that found that kids set on a playground with a fence around it utilized a lot more ground than kids set on a playground with no fence around it?).
8. Shout-out to my dog, Columbia. She got mentioned in this chapter as a university that put two-and-two together and used its drama department to put on musical shows and plays in the long-shunned, crime-, bum-, forty-bottle- and streaker-ridden Morningside Park. These activities became "demand goods," and caused the park (which is like a no-man's land separating prestine Upper-West Side from more colorfuul Harlem below) to evolve into a peace-maker between university and neighborhood, rather than as hostile "Turf." I wonder if Yale has fared so well in its New Haven surroundings?
So here's what Jacobs (can I call her Jane, since this isn't a term paper?) made me think about, with regard to city parks:
1. She's right. City parks usually become nothing more than dispirited vacuums, rather than anchors of social stability. The assumption among city planners is that parks will embue a neighborhood with positive effects, when rather, they actually more often than not become both producers of and hosts of negative urban effects (i.e., housing hoards of indigent men and perverts who just catcall all day long--this I remember distinctly happening during me and T's trip to downtown Denver's park this past March). This is a reminder of a lesson learned in chemistry in 11th grade, which applies here: the concept of entropy. Things tend towards disorder and chaos, unless massive amounts of energy are invested to push against disorder and decay. In the same way, for a park to become an economic asset or have "staying power" over the decades in a city block, requires lots of work on the city dwellers' part. Well, actually, the city planners need to be more careful, too: if the location of the park doesn't have a natural diversity of users and their schedules (that is, if the park isn't surrounded my mixed-used buildings), it is bound for disaster.
2. Hmm. Jane noticed that a tenament stoop invited more diverse, lively and safe company than a nearby park did. She noted that the people all convened there, by choice, being of all ages and balanced in gender, not due to any amenity a park would offer (i.e., open space, playground), but because they all found it to be an agreeable place to share leisure, and enjoy each other and the passing city (p. 94). What is the magic thing that makes some certain place an agreed-upon hang out place? Convenience and high traffic on everday errand paths? That is, requiring no extra effort to go there?
3. Jane notes that some parks, no sane mother would send her children into. This reminds me of the park where mom would frequently send me to ride my bike when I was 8 or 9, across the street from her apartment in a decidedly urban area in metro Denver. What was it about that park that made it OK in a mother's eyes? There were hints of vandalism, and a bit more open space than was probably helpful there (I remember Andrew commenting on bums spending the night there), but also, I do think it got a fair amount of use and play. I also wonder how that park is doing nowadays; did it prove to have staying power? Also, thanks, mom, for letting me go there and explore on my own. That I count as a very fond childhod memory.
4. I love how Jane mixes urban studies with thinking on class. She notes that blue-collar mothers occupy parks with their kids earlier in the afternoon than white-collar mothers, b/c blue collar husbands get home earlier for supper and this the wives have to go and get cracking on the cooking. She also postulates that the class of neighborhood or class of park frequenters doesn't matter for the success of the park; rich and poor alike like their parks (and perhaps for the same reasons). I want to think things through and piece puzzle pieces together to the same degree as Jane does!
5. Why do city parks have closing times posted?
6. This is for you, Thomas and Cathy: "Superficial architectural variety may look like diversity, but only a genuine content of economic and social diversity, resulting in people with different schedules, has meaning to the park and the power to confer the boon of life upon it" (p. 101). Does that make your craft seem powerless, being entirely dependent on its surroundings? Or, from a more optimistic approach, is the task of architecture to harness the powers of the city toward good?
7. Jane names 4 elements of design that abet generalized patronage/usage by city dwellers: intricacy, centering, sun and enclosure. Basically, the first allows for users to never get tired of a complex layout; the second allows for creative uses of a central public space (oh! this was SO the case in NYC's Riverside Park, which hosted a long free concert series every summer on its largest pier...78th street? I totally can't remember). The 3rd and 4th elements are obvious. People and plants like sun; people also like and thrive within felt boundaries (ever hear about that study someone did that found that kids set on a playground with a fence around it utilized a lot more ground than kids set on a playground with no fence around it?).
8. Shout-out to my dog, Columbia. She got mentioned in this chapter as a university that put two-and-two together and used its drama department to put on musical shows and plays in the long-shunned, crime-, bum-, forty-bottle- and streaker-ridden Morningside Park. These activities became "demand goods," and caused the park (which is like a no-man's land separating prestine Upper-West Side from more colorfuul Harlem below) to evolve into a peace-maker between university and neighborhood, rather than as hostile "Turf." I wonder if Yale has fared so well in its New Haven surroundings?
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Cosmic Poise
I stole this phrase from Tim Keller. I don't usually listen to him, but lately I have because he speaks generously on the topic of singleness vs. marriage, which is something I enjoy thinking about. He brings up very fresh points and insights on scriptures that I'd never thought of or considered before. He's a great practical preacher of the Word - my favorite kind. Keller used the phrase "cosmic poise" to refer to that quality of unshakability God gives us, when we realize we can have courage and not be afraid under any circumstance our lives bring us. As I begin a new phase of life on new ground, literally new ground in a new city with a new vocation, may my spiritual footings and attitudinal posture remain in Christ. He's my one steady, the one constant in my life who sustains me. Really, pressing into Him will be the answer for any transition I undergo until the day I part with this life.
I think it's curious how I both simultaneously cling to things of this world - the physical blessings of this present earthly life -- and also long to be departed from its worries and seemingly endless burdens, disappointments, fears, etc. It's like CS Lewis said: if I find in myself a longing which nothing here can satisfy, all I can conclude is that this place (earth) is not my home.
So far in my life, I've negotiated as a nomad. I definitely get by on the generosities of others. It's a painful thing to realize, that I'm no self-made woman. I knew that before, but I don't think I ever dared to understand the depth of that truth, previously. When it comes to spending money, I'm ridiculously cheap. Good thing I can still have poise in Christ, after coming face-to-face with some of my ugliest traits. He gives me the ability to correct bad postures, after making me aware of them.
I think it's curious how I both simultaneously cling to things of this world - the physical blessings of this present earthly life -- and also long to be departed from its worries and seemingly endless burdens, disappointments, fears, etc. It's like CS Lewis said: if I find in myself a longing which nothing here can satisfy, all I can conclude is that this place (earth) is not my home.
So far in my life, I've negotiated as a nomad. I definitely get by on the generosities of others. It's a painful thing to realize, that I'm no self-made woman. I knew that before, but I don't think I ever dared to understand the depth of that truth, previously. When it comes to spending money, I'm ridiculously cheap. Good thing I can still have poise in Christ, after coming face-to-face with some of my ugliest traits. He gives me the ability to correct bad postures, after making me aware of them.
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