Archive For The “Personal Essay” Category

Lever House, the Not for Nothing Trendsetter

By | June 19, 2014

With all due respect to the other 14 specimens of modernist architecture on Ada Louise Huxtable’s Park Avenue tour, none of them outshines Lever House, designed in 1952 by architect Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM). In “Park Avenue School of Architecture,” Huxtable praises Lever House as a pacesetter of the new curtain […]

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Brush

By | June 19, 2014

During the summer of 2006, I accompanied a San Diego State faculty colleague and a group of students on a study tour to Japan. The first couple of nights we stayed in a modern business hotel in Tokyo. The rooms were very compact and geared for efficiency, the norm by Japanese standards. Included among a […]

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Cuppa Comfort

By | June 19, 2014

The teakettle exhales. I toss the daily paper on the kitchen counter and rush to quiet the piercing pitch. Tilting the kettle, I flush just enough steamy water into the mossy green teapot to warm it up, then douse boiling water over three scoops of tea. I prefer loose tea to tea bags. The flavor […]

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