Echoes in Eugene

 

The Australian Pink Floyd Show performing at the Hult Center, August 4, 2026 (my photo).

Earlier this month, my wife and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing The Australian Pink Floyd Show (TAPFS) at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts. I’ve been a Pink Floyd fan since my teens but never saw the band live. TAPFS has earned its reputation as one of the finest Pink Floyd tribute acts, and this was our second time seeing them.

Before Pink Floyd came together in the mid-1960s, Nick Mason, Roger Waters, and Richard Wright were students at the Regent Street Polytechnic School of Architecture in London, now part of the University of Westminster.(1) As someone who also studied architecture, I’ve long been intrigued by the possibility that their education influenced the way they approached music. Pink Floyd’s most celebrated albums—Meddle, The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall—often take the form of carefully structured sequences rather than collections of conventional pop songs. They establish atmospheres, introduce recurring themes, and develop gradually, creating a sense of place within the music.

Waters has acknowledged the importance of their years in architecture school. He recalled that an instructor ultimately encouraged him to bring his guitar into the classroom: “If I wanted to sit in the corner and play guitar during periods that were set aside for design work and architecture, he thought that was perfectly alright.”(2)

So, whether architecture directly shaped their music is difficult to say. But listening to Pink Floyd, I often hear patterns that remind me of the discipline: attention to sequence, proportion, repetition, contrast, and the gradual development of an experience.

That quality was particularly apparent in the TAPFS performance. The heavy bass and percussion in One of These Days and Sheep established a strong rhythmic foundation. In The Great Gig in the Sky, the vocals seemed to expand into the volume of Silva Concert Hall. Run Like Hell moved with a chase-like energy. And The Wall turns construction into its central metaphor, using one brick after another to represent the psychological barriers its protagonist builds between himself and the world.

TAPFS faces the difficult task of reproducing music that many listeners know intimately, down to its textures, transitions, lighting, and timing. Their achievement is not simply that they perform the songs accurately; they also recreate an experience that Pink Floyd constructed so carefully decades ago. For a couple of hours in the Hult Center, the familiar music took on a physical presence: sound filling the room, light shaping the space, and thousands of people listening together.

That may be one reason the music has lasted. Great works do not require their creators to remain present. They can be revisited, interpreted, and experienced by people who were not there when they were first made. I didn’t see Pink Floyd live, but thanks to TAPFS, I could see how the distance between an original experience and its echo can sometimes be surprisingly small. 

(1)    Syd Barrett, another founding member of Pink Floyd, studied art at the Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology. David Gilmour, who had attended high school with Barrett and Roger Waters, joined Pink Floyd in 1967. He initially played alongside Barrett before eventually replacing him. 

(2)    Roger Waters, “Building the Internal Wall,” Musician, May 1992, p. 51.

The Butsudan

A butsudan; not ours, but similar (photo credit: CC BY 2.1 jp, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1801262)

The house I grew up in included a piece of furniture found in many Japanese homes. It was a butsudan—a household Buddhist altar—comprised of a dark-lacquered wooden cabinet with doors and shiny brass fittings that served as a personal shrine for memorializing ancestors and honoring the Buddha. Ours stood about four-and-a-half feet tall by two-and-a-half feet wide and occupied a corner of our formal dining room. The pair of outer doors opened to reveal fabric screens behind them. These folded out of the way, in turn revealing several ornately decorated tiered platforms for offerings and incense burners. I’ve come to think of our butsudan not only as a devotional object but as an architecture of remembrance scaled to domestic life.
 
Butsudans trace back to an edict issued by Emperor Tenmu in 685, encouraging every family to keep a Buddha image and sutras in the home. The traditional lacquered cabinet form we recognize today developed gradually and eventually became a standard across ordinary households during the Tokugawa period (roughly the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries). By then, the butsudan had settled into a recognizable architectural typology: a cabinet with doors, thresholds, and an internal hierarchy of spaces. A butsudan commonly holds a Buddha image appropriate to the family's sect alongside ihai (memorial tablets for the dead), serving two purposes at once: as a site for daily devotion, and as a fixed place where a family's dead remain, in a sense, present in the house rather than confined to a cemetery or a temple's care. Its form is not incidental; it is a domestic micro‑architecture built to house devotion and memory.
 
That underlying impulse, as a fixed place in the home where the dead remain present through offering and ritual, isn't uniquely Japanese; households across China, Korea, and Vietnam keep their own versions of the same idea, each shaped by its own blend of Buddhist practice and ancestor veneration. The object itself is another matter. The cabinet form (the doors, screens, and the internal hierarchy of platforms) is a distinctly Japanese elaboration. Even the relationship to memory differs: in Korea and China, a memorial tablet is often treated as temporary, ceremonially retired after a few years as a specific person is folded into a more general ancestral memory, while the Japanese practice tends to keep the ihai in place indefinitely. These differences matter because they show how Japan gave architectural permanence to a practice that elsewhere has been more fluid: the butsudan fixes remembrance in a built form.
 
Speaking architecturally, a butsudan is in many ways a miniature building. The ancient Romans constructed analogous structures: the aediculae, literally Latin for “small house” or “small temples.” These were classically a niche flanked by columns or pilasters and capped with a pediment or entablature, built to house and honor a sacred image or statue. And Charles Moore often used the “geode” as a conceptual metaphor for design that parallels the butsudan morphology: a building that appears plain on the outside like a rough rock, but opens up to a vibrant, colorful, and richly textured inner universe of crystals. He built the idea into his own work more than once. Our butsudan was a geode in the truest sense: a dark, silent shell that yielded upon opening to a radiant, sacred interior of gleaming brass and gold leaf.
 
Whoever crafted our butsudan understood, as any architect should, that a small object can organize the space around it if it's given enough formal authority. Ours was, without question, a focal point of our dining room.
 
My grandmother tended it daily. I don't know the full content of her practice; I was familiar with its rhythm: she placed offerings (usually fresh water, rice, seasonal fruit), lit candles and incense, and followed with solemn chanting and prayer. My father took up tending to the butsudan after, though only on special occasions, New Year's chief among them. His custodianship was lighter than my grandmother’s had been. Even as the intensity of practice shifted, the butsudan’s authority in the room never did.
 
I don't know the butsudan’s provenance. I suspect my grandmother’s parents brought it with them when they immigrated to Canada. It certainly predated anything else our family owned. It was older than the house it sat in, even older than the country my great-grandparents chose as their new home.
 
One of my cousins is now the custodian of our butsudan. I don't know if it occupies a corner as commanding as the one it held in ours. I also don’t know if she tends it the way my grandmother once did. But a butsudan doesn’t just stop being what it is. The doors still open the same way, the platforms still hold whatever is placed on them, and the hierarchy inside remains legible. Well-designed buildings outlast the intentions that first organized them too, and we don't think changes of use necessarily diminish them. Above all, a butsudan embodies a domestic architecture of remembrance by virtue of its form. Its architecture is one that quietly persists, even if the rituals that once animated it have thinned.

Stuff I Stumbled Upon

I sometimes find it tough to decide what to write about for my next blog post. This week was one of those times — that is, until I found inspiration reading a recent piece by my friend and fellow blogger, Mrs. Random. Her blog is a loose, good-natured chronicle of her daily life, on occasion focused on small discoveries she’s made. That recent entry was a simple and fittingly “random” collection of web links she thought her readers might find interesting.  

  
My interests have always been catholic, and I tend to be ADD to boot. This explains the wide-ranging links below; on any given day, I will flit between seemingly random subjects. All that connects these is my wandering curiosity. I’ve hyperlinked the headings, which will open the corresponding website in a separate tab:     
 

AI-designed house, from the Design Intent YouTube channel.

AI Designed This House . . . And It's Weird
If you’ve been a reader of my blog, you probably know I’m fascinated by the implications of artificial intelligence for the architectural profession. I came across this video on the Design Intent YouTube channel, produced by Ryan, an architect who works primarily in the commercial project sector. Like me, he’s inquisitive about AI. Among other things, his channel documents his creative experimentation with 3D modeling and visualizations; in this instance, he lets an AI LLM (Google Gemini) take control over the design of his next house. What he got wasn’t anything he expected.  

 

Anthropeum
I must also give credit to Mrs. Random for turning me on to Anthropeum, an online daily geography‑and‑chronology guessing game built around artifacts from The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s open‑access collection. The way Anthropeum works is that it shows you several pieces of art from the Met, and you must guess approximately where in the world and when it was created. It’s addicting, and my wife and I are now hooked. That doesn’t mean we’re good at it; it’s humbling to encounter the limits of our knowledge every day. Give it a try yourself. 

The New Cholesterol Guideline: What to Know
I’m trying to focus more on my health to help forestall age-related ailments. Unfortunately, my latest lipid panel blood tests show my cholesterol and triglyceride numbers are heading in the wrong direction. Consequently, I’ve become more attentive than ever to the latest developments associated with screening and risk assessment for cardiovascular disease. The web page linked in the header above reports on the latest update to the cholesterol‑management guidelines from the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association. The updates emphasize earlier screening and more personalized risk assessment for cardiovascular disease (using the PREVENT risk calculator for 10‑ and 30‑year outcomes). They also recommend childhood screening for familial hypercholesterolemia and one‑time Lp(a) testing. The updates outline new LDL‑C targets and treatment options, including statins and newer lipid‑lowering therapies.
 

Henry George (photo by Isaiah West Taber, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Georgism 101
I have a limited understanding of Georgism, the economic ideology formed by 19^th-century economist Henry George. For those, like me, who are not wholly familiar with its principles, the YouTube video linked in the header provides a six-minute-long primer. I wanted to learn more about Georgism because some suggest that it can help address housing affordability, primarily through land value taxes. Apparently, such a tax reduces the incentive to sit on unused parcels, makes speculation less profitable, and supports denser, more walkable urban forms. Georgism doesn’t solve zoning, permitting delays, construction costs, or NIMBY politics, but it does attack the speculative layer that inflates land prices. Here in Eugene, a land value tax would likely push more land into productive use and reduce the “empty lot premium” that has driven prices upward. Many people mislabel Georgism as a form of socialism, but it is fundamentally market-oriented and compatible with capitalism. The accusation persists because of sloppy political rhetoric, not because the theory resembles socialism in any meaningful way.
 

*    *    *    *    *    *

So, there you go: four eclectic websites for you to peruse if you’re so inclined. Maybe one or two will catch your interest the way they did mine.

The Birds Were Always There

Pileated Woodpecker (my photo)

For years, the Pileated Woodpecker had been my Bigfoot, Chupacabra, and Loch Ness Monster, all rolled into one elusive, personal cryptid. That changed last month. During an outing with my friend JF Alberson at Camp Serene, north of Noti, I finally saw one. In fact, we saw three. Two appeared to be a pair tending a nest in an old tree. The third may have been one of them, or possibly another bird entirely. Either way, the cryptid had materialized.

That sighting was part of something that has been happening more often lately. I’ve lived in Eugene for a long time, but I haven’t always paid close attention to the places I move through every day. I walk often—sometimes with my wife on familiar in-town routes, and sometimes with friends like JF and Dave Guadagni on our weekly circuits. Over time, I’ve come to recognize the birds that regularly show up in those places.

Fern Ridge Reservoir is different. It isn’t part of my daily orbit, and I only visit occasionally. A couple of weeks ago, JF and I walked along the east edge of the reservoir. He’s an experienced birder; I’m not. My interest has always been casual.

Fern Ridge supports a wider mix of species than the places I usually walk, and that becomes obvious once someone who knows what they’re looking for starts pointing things out. That morning, I saw birds I had heard about for years but had never noticed in the field—Black Tern, Dunlin, Common Tern, Redhead, Black-necked Stilt, Cinnamon Teal. None of them is particularly rare, apparently. I had simply never taken note of them before.

There were others I’ve encountered only occasionally—Killdeer, American White Pelican, Marsh Wren, Western Sandpiper, Belted Kingfisher, Violet-green Swallow. And of course, the birds that are almost always present: Bald Eagle, Osprey, Red-winged Blackbird, Great Blue Heron, Great Egret, American Coot, along with robins, crows, starlings, Canada Geese, and the various sparrows I still can’t reliably identify.

What stands out to me now is how much more becomes visible when I slow down and pay attention. The birds were always there. I just wasn’t observant enough to notice them. That seems to be changing. I’m moving through the same places I always have, but now I'm seeing what was there all along.

Hangar B: A Difficult Loss

B‑17 inside Hangar B (my photo)

News from the Port of Tillamook Bay this week confirmed what many had feared: the Port’s Board of Commissioners voted not to repair the storm‑damaged roof of Hangar B. A December windstorm tore open a 200‑foot‑long gash in the timber shell, and after months of analysis, the Board concluded that even with potential FEMA assistance, the required local match—about $1.3 million for the damaged portion alone—would put the rest of the Port’s operations at financial risk. Commissioners also noted that long‑term maintenance costs already exceeded the building’s revenue several times over.

Hangar B is the largest clear‑spanwooden structure in the world: over 1,000 feet long, 300 feet wide, and nearly 200 feet tall. The Navy completed it in 1942 to house blimps that patrolled the coast during World War II. Tillamook originally had two of these enormous timber hangars; Hangar A burned in 1992, leaving Hangar B as the sole survivor on the site. Only a few comparable structures still stand nationwide. Two remain at Moffett Field in California, and one survives at Tustin after its twin burned in 2023. At the other former blimp bases, the hangars exist only in fragments—foundations, partial walls, isolated arches—after decades of fires, dismantling, and structural failures.

I’ve visited the building a few times over the years and always appreciated both the structure itself and the range of museum exhibits assembled inside it. The Tillamook Air Museum collection included military aircraft from assorted eras, along with trainers, transports, helicopters, homebuilts, commercial cockpits, and the Aero Spacelines Mini‑Guppy. Even large planes seemed to shrink inside the volume, which reinforced the sense that the hangar was the primary artifact.

Recent reporting described steps already underway: fencing installed around the site for public safety, a completed lidar scan documenting the structure, and coordination with state emergency officials to record storm‑related costs. Those efforts continue because they address safety and documentation needs. But the Board’s vote effectively halts any forward motion toward repair, leaving only stabilization, cleanup, and administrative work in place. The museum itself has been closed to visitors since the December storm and will remain closed indefinitely.

The future of Hangar B remains uncertain. The Board’s vote does not authorize demolition, but it also stops any repair effort. Consultants who evaluated the building earlier this year estimated that full restoration would require hundreds of millions of dollars over several years, while dismantling the structure would cost an estimated $50–70 million, placing the Port in a difficult position. At this point, any path toward preservation depends on substantial outside funding, and no such commitment exists.

Removing a structure of this size is not a simple matter of equipment and labor. The cost reflects the presence of hazardous materials, the sheer volume of timber and roofing, the need for controlled disassembly, and the environmental requirements for handling contaminated soils and debris. FEMA may help if the damage is classified within a disaster framework, but even then, the Port would be responsible for a significant local match. State or federal appropriations are possible but uncertain, and private philanthropy rarely funds demolition. As a result, the Port cannot simply walk away from the building, nor can it afford to remove it. The likely near‑term outcome is continued stabilization, documentation, and hazard management while the larger question of the hangar’s fate remains unresolved.

All of this leaves the building in a precarious position. This week’s vote removes one of the few remaining paths forward. I’m saddened that a structure of this scale and ingenuity may not survive, not because of the damage itself, but because the conditions needed to sustain it are not in place.

 

San Diego

San Diego (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Roland A. Franklin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

I’m in San Diego this week(1), a city I’ve only previously skirted rather than truly visited. Back in the mid‑1980s, when my wife and I lived in Los Angeles, we made a couple of weekend trips south through here on our way to Ensenada and Rosarito Beach. This is the first occasion I’ve spent any real time in San Diego itself. 

I visited the Salk Institute on Friday, Louis Kahn’s research campus in La Jolla overlooking the Pacific. I’ve known it mostly through photographs, drawings, and decades of architectural reading. Seeing it in person clarified aspects that images only suggest. The proportions, the material discipline, and the way the courtyard aligns with the horizon all register more precisely in real life. It is a building that rewards slow looking. I’ll write a separate post about the Salk, and possibly more about San Diego, once I’m back home. 

The rest of my time has been spent moving around the city on foot and by transit. I’ve been taking in districts shaped by coastal geography, postwar expansion, and the substantial military presence that has influenced land use and employment patterns across the region. Mid‑century research campuses occupy the mesas above La Jolla, while older streetcar‑era neighborhoods such as North Park, South Park, Hillcrest, Mission Hills, Golden Hill, and University Heights extend inland. Large waterfront redevelopment projects stand next to long‑established naval facilities. Dense pockets of urban fabric give way quickly to open views and steep topography. 

San Diego’s particular mix of institutions, climate, and terrain gives it a character distinct from other West Coast cities. The conditions here are not directly transferable to a place like Eugene, but they echo patterns familiar to cities shaped by long‑term civic forces. Infrastructure, geography, and institutional anchors shape a region’s identity over generations. I’m grateful for the opportunity to spend a few days here, studying a place I once only passed through. 

(1)   I chose to visit San Diego now rather than during the AIA 2026 Conference on Architecture & Design in June. During my trips to the 2018 and 2022 conferences in New York and Chicago, I found I preferred spending my time exploring the cities rather than attending the educational sessions. I also no longer need the CEUs. Visiting now avoids the crowds associated with the conference and other busy periods on the calendar.

Iran’s Architectural Inheritance at Risk

Golestan Palace in Tehran, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most significant surviving ensembles of Qajar-era architecture. (photo by Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Until I considered writing this piece, I knew very little about Iran’s architectural or cultural heritage. What understanding I have now comes from accessible sources: UNESCO reports, news coverage, and the kind of broad overview that a quick survey can provide. That is far from expertise, and I do not wish to suggest otherwise. Even so, a basic acquaintance with what exists in Iran makes the early reports of damage associated with the current American and Israeli air campaign difficult to set aside.

The accumulated layers of many centuries enrich Iran’s built environment. Ancient archaeological sites, Safavid squares and pavilions, Qajar palaces, Pahlavi‑era monuments, and more recent civic buildings stand side by side. Together they form a continuous architectural record that still shapes the nation's cities. When conflict enters that fabric, the losses become immediate and tangible.

Early reporting, summarized by UNESCO and other cultural organizations, indicates that several heritage sites have already sustained damage from shockwaves, debris, and strikes on nearby targets. In Tehran, the Golestan Palace complex—a Qajar‑era ensemble and the capital’s only standalone UNESCO World Heritage Site—was reportedly shaken by an airstrike near Arg Square in early March 2026. Accounts describe broken glass, cracked plaster, damaged mirrored elements, and new structural concerns. While none of this amounts to catastrophic destruction, it shows how vulnerable even well‑protected historic buildings become when they lie close to areas caught in military action. Other structures in the capital, including churches, museums, and civic buildings, have also reportedly been affected simply because they stand within a city now exposed to such pressures.

The Jameh Mosque of Isfahan, whose construction and reconstruction over centuries reveal the evolving architectural language of Islamic Persia. (photo by Hamidespanani, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Isfahan, long celebrated as one of the great architectural centers of the Islamic world, has seen similar impacts. The Masjed‑e Jāmé of Isfahan, along with elements of Naqsh‑e Jahan Square such as Ali Qapu Palace and the Chehel Sotoun pavilion, reportedly sustained damage from nearby blasts in mid‑March. These structures form an urban order whose integrity depends on the survival of each part. Harm to any single element subtly diminishes the whole. Subsequent reporting has identified additional damage to religious sites and museums elsewhere in the country, underscoring how quickly the cultural toll of the conflict has expanded.

Many other places could be named, sites that have not been damaged but that form part of the same cultural inheritance and could be vulnerable if the conflict widens: the earthen neighborhoods of Yazd, the gardens of Shiraz, the archaeological remains at Persepolis. Listing them risks reducing a living culture to a catalogue. The point is simpler. Architecture carries memory forward across generations. It records collective decisions, beliefs, and ways of living that outlast any individual life. When such structures are damaged or lost, something irreplaceable breaks in our shared connection to the past.

Traditional windcatchers rising above the earthen city of Yazd, an example of climate-adapted urban architecture in Iran’s desert environment. (photo by Andrehmarouti, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Four years ago, I wrote about the cultural losses unfolding in Ukraine. That piece tried to understand a place I had never visited by looking closely at its buildings and recognizing how fragile cultural memory becomes in wartime. The situation in Iran unfolds under very different political and historical circumstances: one a sustained ground conflict, the other a campaign of aerial strikes shaped by different strategic concerns. Yet the architectural stakes, even from a distance, remain substantial.

Any military campaign carries the potential for unintended consequences that reach beyond its immediate objectives. Cultural heritage often absorbs the impact of decisions made under the pressure of escalation, even when efforts such as the prior sharing of site coordinates aim to limit harm. Diplomatic attempts to address Iran’s nuclear program continued in the months before this phase of the conflict. Even so, with cultural sites clearly identified through UNESCO, the realities of war have still placed these irreplaceable structures in harm’s way.

There is no ideal way to write about such losses. Reports of damage have come quickly, and even a limited view of them is difficult to ignore. Each affected palace, mosque, or museum narrows the historical record and reduces the physical evidence through which future generations might come to know the past.

Azadi Tower in Tehran, completed in 1971. Its design combines modern engineering with forms drawn from earlier Persian architectural traditions. (photo by Blondinrikard Fröberg from Göteborg, Sweden, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Iran’s architectural heritage has already survived invasions, dynastic change, the long Iran–Iraq War, and the slow erosion of time. I hope it will endure this conflict as well. Yet hope alone offers no protection. The world has witnessed too many examples—including the destruction seen in Aleppo, Mosul, and Sana’a, as well as sites damaged in Israel and Lebanon during the wider regional hostilities—of how swiftly irreplaceable structures can vanish.

If the buildings now at risk in Tehran, Isfahan, and elsewhere survive, they will do so because they were spared rather than because they stood beyond reach. If they do not, the loss will belong not only to Iran but to anyone who believes that architecture records human possibility, and that its erasure diminishes our shared inheritance.

Anchovies, Bell Peppers, and Other Modest Truths

 

Food habits have a way of settling in over time. In my case, one such habit is a preference for anchovies and green bell peppers on a substantial-crust pizza. For my wife and me, Track Town Pizza has long been the go‑to pizzeria, tied to Eugene’s athletic culture as much as to its menu. None of this is remarkable, but it has been consistent for years.

A few years ago, I wrote about my weakness for chain restaurants. That weakness (or rather, comfort) has always been there. What I appreciate, whether in a chain or at Track Town, is predictability. It is the ease of knowing what will arrive at the table.

Cooking has never been my forte. When we cook, we prepare simple meals, nothing elaborate. Food tends to function more as routine than expression, our meals dependable markers in the day rather than creative projects. Now that I’m retired, that routine is more apparent, but it isn’t different.

Places can take on a similar role over time. Certain restaurants, streets, and buildings become part of the quiet structure of daily life. They may not be remarkable in themselves, but their familiarity is reassuring. You know how they work and what they offer. Their steadiness becomes part of the background, a reliable element in the pattern of daily life.

Most people have a few habits that stay with them. Mine happen to include anchovies and bell peppers. They are not fashionable, but they are consistent. That kind of familiarity has always been enough for me. It is simply what I like, nothing more.

How Company Alters the Measure of a Walk

View from the top of Mt. Baldy, along the Ridgeline Trail, Eugene (my photo).

I’ve been walking a lot lately, often in the company of two colleagues from my architectural life, fellow retirees Dave Guadagni and J.F. Alberson. We make the rounds of the usual places, including the Mt. Pisgah Arboretum, Dorris Ranch, Delta Ponds, the Ridgeline Trail, and the Amazon corridor. Most excursions cover four or five miles. These are familiar routes, ones we return to regularly. 

What I’ve noticed is how differently those same distances register depending on whether I’m alone or with company. On my own, I’m more aware of the length of things, be it the stretch between landmarks, the grade of a hill, or the time it will take to loop back. When it’s the three of us, the distance feels shorter. Conversation, a shared pace, and the occasional stop to look more closely at something alter the measure of the route. The walk becomes less about getting from one point to another and more about the ground between them. The end arrives sooner than expected. It isn’t only the miles that compress, but what we notice shifts as well. 

J.F. brings birding into the mix, which changes what comes into view. Avian species I’ve apparently been sharing space with for years—Belted Kingfishers, Pied-Billed Grebes, Brown Creepers, Ruby-crowned Kinglets, and more—suddenly register. He’ll pause and point out something I would have passed without a second thought. Nothing about the setting has changed, but my perception has. 

Retirement makes this rhythm possible. The days are more open, and the walks don’t have to be fitted into narrow margins of time. Familiar places can be revisited without urgency, simply to see them again. Repetition reveals small shifts: light striking the same bend of trail differently in winter than in summer, foliage thickening or thinning from week to week, and bird patterns subtly changing. The routes themselves are unchanged, but their reading is not. I’ve yet to see a beaver, an otter, or a fox along these paths, though I know they’re present, a reminder that there is still more to notice.

The Pace of a House

Our new TV.

My wife and I recently switched from cable to fiber internet in our home, mostly for the cost savings. Our old cable speeds had been fine—more than adequate for streaming and email—but the change made clear how far behind we’d fallen on home tech. Almost everyone we know crossed this bridge years ago. 

That switch prompted a closer look at how we actually watch television. Our old set, a once state-of-the-art 1999 model, sits in the bedroom: a 26-inch screen with 720p resolution. Before the new service arrived, we checked its back panel to see if it could accept a streaming device. There, improbably, was an HDMI port—so we plan to purchase an Amazon Fire TV Stick to extend its useful life. 

We've already bought a new 50-inch QLED screen for the living room to match the fiber’s potential. It now sits in front of the fireplace on a new stand, a simple piece of furniture that nonetheless changes the room’s proportions. It’s the first substantial item we’ve added to our home in decades, a small but telling shift in how the house is organized around our daily life. 

Last October, we finally completed a long-deferred maintenance project. With that out of the way, and alongside the move to fiber, smaller upgrades have followed naturally. These include the new TV, a noise-cancelling headset (so I can watch TV when my wife is sleeping), and subscriptions to streaming apps. 

Retirement recalibrates scale. With life’s major transitions mostly behind us, incremental ones come into sharper focus. None of these is momentous in itself. But small changes shape how we live in our homes, especially when larger shifts are no longer driving the agenda. Some people remake their spaces all at once; others, like us, move slowly, letting familiar things continue to serve while new ones find their place. In that slower rhythm, our everyday world has room to clarify itself, and the life we’ve built here becomes a little more legible, one measured step at a time. 

A Lost Oregon Colossus

The Forestry Building, circa 1905 (all images public domain)
 

I recently came across photographs of a Portland structure I hadn’t encountered before: the Forestry Building from the 1905 Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition. Although I had previously heard of the fair, I was not familiar with its architecture. The images of the massive building immediately impressed me.

The Forestry Building measured 206 by 102 feet and centered around a central nave of fifty-two old-growth fir trunks, each about six feet in diameter. Crews selected and matched the logs individually, handling them in ways that preserved their bark. All told, builders used roughly a million board feet of timber. The result was a monumental timber hall that reflected the confidence and priorities of Oregon’s early logging era. Contemporary accounts often described it as the “world’s largest log cabin,” though later comparisons (e.g., Old Faithful Inn) challenge that superlative.

A souvenir postcard image of the Forestry Building from the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition.

Construction of the Forestry Building, 1904.

The Forestry Building as it appeared in 1956.

The colossal central "nave."

Following the conclusion of the exposition, the city retained the building and used it as a museum and forestry hall to house logging and lumbering exhibits. Maintenance proved difficult. Decay, insect damage, and repeated fire scares accumulated over the decades, and by the 1940s, the building faced possible demolition. A restoration effort in the 1950s stabilized it. That process underscored how impossible it would be to replicate its materials or methods from scratch.

The Forestry Building, engulfed in flames, August 17, 1964.

In August 1964, faulty electrical wiring started a fire that entirely destroyed the building within hours. The intensity of the radiated heat was enough to blow out the facing windows of the nearby Montgomery Park Building. Nothing inside the Forestry Building survived. The loss removed one of the last physical links to the state’s early timber identity.

In response, civic and industry leaders established the Western Forestry Center—now the World Forestry Center—building a new facility in Washington Park to continue the educational mission. It occupies a similar footprint but did not attempt to replicate the original structure.

The historical information and images in this post come from several sources, including the Pacific Coast Architectural Database and Offbeat Oregon. Encountering the Forestry Building through their accounts was a surprise, a reminder that even in a region I think I know well, significant pieces of its architectural past can still surface unexpectedly.

The Clarity and Ambition of 2001: A Space Odyssey

Theatrical release poster.

A film that taught me about the potential of disciplined artistry is 2001: A Space Odyssey, a rare work marked by clarity and unprecedented craftsmanship. It was my introduction to the films of its director, Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999). Today, 2001 serves as a touchstone, a reference point against which I’ve measured the ambitions of other filmmakers and other creators, including architects. 

I first saw 2001 upon its initial theatrical release in 1968, at age nine, sitting beside my father.(1) I found it slow, strange, and interrupted by an intermission I was grateful for. I didn’t understand the film at the time, but I now find it almost startlingly clear. What once felt ponderous and opaque now seems spare and incisive. Its simplicity is part of its power. 

This lucidity stems largely from Kubrick’s collaboration with science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008). Clarke brought scientific precision and philosophical directness; Kubrick contributed visual imagination and a readiness to excise anything superfluous. Together, they created a work neither a novelist nor a filmmaker could have achieved alone. The film’s confidence—its trust in the viewer to follow without hand-holding—arises from that partnership. 

The cinematic landscape of the 1960s is easy to forget now. Most science fiction films of the era were earnest but visually limited—heavy on rubber suits, painted backdrops, and theatrical staging. They had their charms, but they looked like products of their budgets and time. 2001 appeared almost alien by comparison: clean, convincing, and deliberate in its pacing. Its realism and discipline were unusual then, and they remain striking today. 

The Monolith as first seen in the Dawn of Man sequence.

I’ve watched 2001 more times than I can count, and I’ve also enjoyed several of Kubrick’s other films—Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, and Full Metal Jacket. Each has a quality I can only describe as “Kubrick-esque,” though defining that term precisely is difficult. It has to do with the way he framed shots, the deliberate pacing, and the sense that the viewer is a bystander within each scene. You observe without being pushed toward a particular emotion. The camera held its ground and allowed the world to unfold.

For all their scale, Kubrick's films are scrupulous. Nothing is wasted. He explained only what he had to. 2001 is like a structure you inhabit rather than a story someone recounts. To many, it seems enigmatic; to me, it is forthright. Such measured composure feels increasingly rare. 

Astronaut Frank Poole's body floats lifeless in space.

One aspect of 2001 that continues to draw me in is its scope. “Epic” comes to mind, though not in the conventional sense of spectacle. Kubrick’s epic quality emerges from stretching time and allowing vastness—of space, history, human aspiration—to linger on screen. The film moves from prehistoric Earth to the cosmos with calm assurance. I sense a similar breadth in Barry Lyndon and even Full Metal Jacket: the story as part of a larger world, shown without haste or apology. 

2001 attempts something most films wouldn’t dare: depicting human evolution, cosmic mystery, and the limits of understanding without overt explanation. To some, this renders it obscure; to me, it distills the work to essentials. Clarke’s influence shapes its architecture—the leap across millennia, the serene acceptance of humanity’s smallness, the notion that evolution is wondrous yet indifferent. Clarke supplied the conceptual framework; Kubrick stripped away the safeguards. The result is mythic yet exacting. Once you settle into its rhythm, the narrative feels almost inevitable. The power lies in how little is said and yet how much is conveyed. 

The Star Child looking upon the Earth.

It’s natural to question whether admiration for an artist is misplaced. In Kubrick’s case, I’ve found nothing that disqualifies him in my eyes. He was private, intense, and demanding, but not cruel.(2) Stories of his perfectionism are real, though often exaggerated. He pushed actors and crews because he believed repeated takes eroded self-conscious performance, yielding more natural results. Some found it exhausting; others thrived. But there’s no evidence of the abuses that have tarnished other directors. By most accounts, he led a disciplined, ethical, and surprisingly ordinary life—devoted to family, uninterested in fame, loyal to a small circle. This knowledge doesn’t improve 2001, but it does ground my regard. 

Despite his stature as a prominent auteur, Kubrick never fully captured the broader cultural embrace accorded some of his contemporaries. His films are demanding—cerebral, unsentimental, and resistant to easy emotional release. He produced relatively few, labored slowly, and declined to explain his intentions. Critics often favor accessible artists; Kubrick withheld himself. 

Yet this may explain his enduring impact. His films avoid dating through facile answers or trendy flourishes. They remain open, enigmatic, and vital. 2001 stays with me, not as philosophy or guide, but as a work I admire for its clarity, ambition, and discipline. I don’t seek meaning in it, but I value how it embodies qualities I prize: patience, precision, and trust in the audience.

(1) I still remember how eager I was to see the real year 2001, should it turn out anything like the future the movie had envisioned. But I also remember realizing I'd be an unimaginable 42 years old in 2001. Downright ancient! Would I even live to see it?! 

(2) Some readers might disagree. It's true that Kubrick pushed Shelley Duvall (1949–2024) to her emotional and physical breaking point during filming of The Shining—resulting in exhaustion, hair loss, and near-constant distress—but she later spoke of him with respect, describing the experience as intensely challenging yet profoundly valuable.

Notes on the Meaning of Life

 Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

As 2025 draws to a close, like many others, I find myself reflecting on what has passed and what might lie ahead. One question in particular presses a little harder with each turn of the calendar: What is the meaning of life?
 
The question, of course, is an ancient one, rooted in the moment humans first recognized their own fragility and their inability to obtain clear answers from the world around them. Like most people who have lived long enough, I’ve asked it too. Many today find meaning through faith; I sadly expect my experience will end when I die, so I look instead to what countermeasures I can enlist here and now.
 
At sixty-six, the question feels more insistent. Each year brings new frailties, losses, and reminders that time moves quickly. The runway ahead is certainly shorter than what has already passed beneath me, and the finite limits of my life are more visible. With them comes a measure of existential unease. To keep that unease from ruling my days, I try to steady myself with a few essential preconditions—the small set of things I've found I need to stay grounded.
 
I know how fortunate I’ve been. My career unfolded during a period of progress and possibility, in an era when architecture’s tools and horizons expanded and when my own circumstances allowed me to grow. I did not face the barriers my parents endured, nor the deprivations of a world war or a Great Depression. I have lived through what, for me, has felt like a golden time, and gratitude for that shapes my answer to the question of meaning today. I do not take anything for granted.
 
I’ve lived this life alongside others—colleagues, students, friends, and fellow citizens. Their presence guided my days as much as anything I did alone. I’ve found meaning in shared work, conversation, and the ordinary ties that bind people together, making it both communal and personal. Even amid uncertainty, I still take joy in everyday moments: watching an Oregon Ducks football game; sharing a meal with my wife, family, or friends; walking under Eugene’s gray winter skies. Such moments remind me that meaning isn’t only found in grand gestures but in the texture of daily life.
 
With that in mind, four imperatives remain:
 

• Take care of myself. The ability to move, think, and manage daily tasks is the foundation; without it, the rest cannot hold.

• Sustain a lifelong partnership. Marriage to my wife is my greatest source of steadiness and meaning.

• Keep writing. Writing keeps me engaged, curious, and able to make sense of experience.

• Protect the living world. Everything depends on the systems around us; my efforts are small, but I contribute what I can to preserve the ground beneath our feet.

 
Others might add friendships beyond family, an inner life, avocations, or civic and teaching commitments—all of which matter deeply to me. But when I assessed what I could not surrender, these four remained. They are minimal, sufficient for me, even if imperfect. Others will arrive at different answers; these are simply the ones I have found I cannot give up.
 
When I fulfill these imperatives, the question of meaning grows quiet. When any one imperative is threatened, it returns loudly. The closest thing I’ve found to an answer is simply the stability these four provide in the face of the unknown.
 
My thinking didn’t emerge in a vacuum. I recognize the Stoic focus on what lies within my control, the pragmatic test of belief through results, the existentialist resolve to choose without guarantees, and the humanist conviction that meaning is rooted in this world—through health, partnership, expression, and care for the Earth. Meaning, for me, is not a single revelation but a mosaic of fragments tested against lived experience.
 

At the end of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, a hostess in an evening gown (well, Michael Palin in drag) opens an envelope and reads in a bored voice: “. . . it’s nothing very special. Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book now and then, get some walking in, and try to live peacefully and harmoniously with people of all creeds and nations.” Comic, yes, but also plain-spoken wisdom.
 
My four imperatives are a footnote to that list—just what I’ve found I can defend day after day, after every grander answer has fallen short.
 
So, that is all I have for now, on this threshold of 2026. May the coming year remind us to care for ourselves, honor our partnerships, keep writing our stories, and protect the living world we depend on. May gratitude and meaning accompany us each day. May we continue to return to this question with fresh eyes, renewed humility, and the lightness of laughter. And may we remember the communal moments that make life feel whole.