springsummer2009

• From the Editors
If we are able to see more clearly the web of forces structuring, to a greater or lesser extent, our lives, we may be able to hoist ourselves atop the oblongs for a few moments—or even longer—and hear more clearly what it actually is that beats in our deep heart's core.

• When the Wood is Green: Fiction by Alan Walsh
Think we're here to hold things up gentlemen you think we're paid to roll out the red tape beat the thing to death you know how long it took the boys at Lontana getting this passed it was timed on a stopwatch. Came in I shouldn't think less than under a minute reason why we're in this mess system of committees approving committees only advantage they have over us.
• Stand, Don't Deliver: A Conversation on Aspects of Architecture
Despite the fact that I may sound against or critical of modern architecture, I actually like it quite a bit. But my main criticism about it is that it couldn't deliver what it was ostensibly standing for. Modernism, philosophically, required a constant awareness, a never-ending critical attitude towards whatever was happening at the time. However in the case of architecture, it became a style, a typology. Just as deconstruction became a style. So, while on the one hand it is quite interesting in that there's an unavoidable link between certain philosophies and architecture, on the other hand, when it comes to translating those philosophies into architecture, architecture becomes trapped in a static form: a style. This is one of the shortcomings of contemporary architectural theory: trying to apply philosophies that are created outside of architecture to the built environment, or trying to find aspirations from philosophy and making an effort to materialize thought in built forms…which, again, eventually ends up being a style with no dynamism.
• Low Relief Sculpture by Sam Duket
• Robert Frost's Twitter Page by Jim McGrath
This decaf coffee tastes an awful lot like regular coffee. Maybe I'm just wired because I'm watching CSI.
5:37 PM Jan 22 2009
• Poetry by Rane Arroyo, Mark Terrill, and Rebecca Morgan Frank
• The Straddler Review: Raise the Floor in collaboration with James Comerford
The pervasive idea of recent years was that of the permanent upside, turning, for example, short-sellers into the dastardly arch villains of the "unforeseen" slide in the market. The wide-eyed, ever inventive capitalist who borrowed $10 million to speculate on potential gains in Las Vegas real estate was keeping the economy going. Those who sold $10 million worth of GM stock short, knowing full well that its management was incompetent and intended to flood the market with products that no one wanted, lobby against fuel efficiency stipulations on which foreign car firms were mysteriously able to capitalize, and burn cash suing states for their clean air laws were just there to spoil the party.