The Passage Of Time

Louis Menand, a Harvard English professor and longtime New Yorker critic, is right about many things, including his description of how construction happens. In the introduction to his essay collection, "American Studies," describing the redevelopment of Times Square that happened in the early '90s, Menand writes:

"Everyone has had the experience of driving past work crews on the highway. You see five guys sipping coffee and watching one man with a pick while he hacks halfheartedly at some gravel. You suspect that in five minutes the man with a pick will also be on a coffee break. Six months later, there is a new road. Building demolition is like that. You can watch for hours while workers move a few planks on a temporary scaffolding. Maybe a man with a blowtorch is laboring with apparent futility on a huge steel beam. Nothing else is going on. Two days later, a floor has disappeared. At the end of three years, the derelict structure has been obliterated and a new tower, whose erection was similar mysterious, shimmers in its place."

Menand used this passage as a metaphor for the construction of history: In the moment, one never realizes quite what is happening until it's passed, when one notices the accretion and can say, History just happened here. But his insight stands alone as well. Even at the construction site I help oversee, which is minor in size to anything that's built in Times Square, I'm pleasantly surprised at how construction progresses. One morning, preparations are being made to pour a concrete foundation wall and the wall is there by the next morning. Earlier this week, I walked to the site after a couple of days of being away to find long-awaited, 25-foot high steel rebar columns in place. Their height was impressive, a sign that things were happening. Building always seems to happen in the interstitial moments of time, while you weren't looking. Is there another profession that's like this?

Zaftig From All That Trayfe

The appeal of Sunday brunch has always eluded me. On the morning that lends itself best to a leisurely start, why rush to a restaurant to wait for a table on the day when the main chefs are off? Nonetheless, the line at Zaftig's, the Jewish delicatessen in Brookline, was out the door this morning, spilling into Coolidge Corner as it always does. The appeal of Zaftig's has also always eluded me, partly because it's a Jewish deli that isn't kosher. Why lay on the schmaltz when you also include bacon on the menu, especially in a city like Boston and a place like Brookline, where on a regional level there's a high percentage of Jews and plenty more people willing to indulge in the pure experience, and on a local level the town has the metro area's highest concentration of observant Jews?

Fifteen minutes earlier in the Butcherie, the kosher butcher and grocery down the street, there was a woman shopping in an Ohio State sweatshirt (presumably celebrating last night's big basketball victory). This reminded me of Katzinger's, the Columbus deli that, like Zaftig's, recalls a kosher deli but also serves trayfe. Now, in Columbus, I understand this compromise: The general population is largely Christian and Jewish culture isn't very ingrained. To reach a wide audience and stay in business, the owners probably have to offer the option of prosciutto while serving pastrami and dill pickles, both of which are quite good there. But in Brookline, devoid of blond-haired Midwesterners and full of curt, anxious Northeasterners, you should be able to stay true to who you are. Integrity wins in the end.

Me And My New Glasses Down By The Schoolyard

For the first time in eight years, I have new glasses! (Well, it's been 12 years if you don't count the time at college that they were bent out of shape in a game of Ultimate Frisbee and accidentally broken when I brought them to a local optician for repair. The store gave me another similar pair for free. But don't tell my mother this.) In fact, I have two new pairs of glasses after going to an optician in Harvard Square that I recommend -- 241 Optical -- where each sale is a two-for-one discount. The selection isn't incredibly vast, but certainly good enough that there were many options I liked.

The new pair that I wear most frequently is certainly very different than the old pair -- large, tortoise-shell plastic frames instead of slender wire ones where the dark grey color had worn away. The second pair is somewhat of a compromise; it's more rectangular and slender, with a light brown color. People's reactions have spanned a wide range. One co-worker asked me if I had always worn glasses. One friend said it was as though my true personality had finally burst through to rest between my ears. Glasses might superficially define one's personality more than any other article of clothing (or accessory; for someone like me who's worn glasses since he was four years old, they're clothing) because they're so present and so firmly in the foreground. I suppose I wanted something hipper. Yes, that's right, faithful readers: I'm hip!

Above are the two new glasses and the old ones, in order of boldness, starting with the most ostentatious on the left. I thought it was important to include straight-on and aerial views.

Farewell, Mike D'Antoni

Carmelo Anthony isn't a "coach killer," as people have called him since Mike D'Antoni resigned as the Knicks' coach on Wednesday. But Anthony isn't the type of superstar who can succeed no matter the situation; like nearly every player, he needs to have the right team around him. Anthony's greatest weakness is that he needs a disproportionate number of shots to score his points. He thus needs a supporting cast of teammates who can pick up 12 points through a game's interstitial spaces, without having plays called for him, which was the case when he was on the Denver Nuggets, who had players like Nene and Arron Afflalo. Not so with Amar'e Stoudemire, Jeremy Lin and most of the Knicks' other players. However, now that Anthony has hit his ceiling with Nuggets and appears to have hit it with the Knicks, the interesting question is whether he can ever win a championship.

Another interesting question is why the Knicks chose to spend so much money four years ago on a relatively well known coach like D'Antoni, when they knew they'd surround him with subpar players for the first two years simply to clear payroll and then pair him for the next two years with a superstar like Anthony, whose approach to the game is inherently different than D'Antoni's. D'Antoni takes a lot of criticism for being the type of coach who can't win a championship. He promotes offense over defense, when stingy defense makes the difference in the playoffs, the argument goes. But D'Antoni maximized the talent of those great Suns teams last decade, when most of the players were fast, athletic and not terribly interested in defense. They were the league's most exciting team for several years, made two conference finals, and probably would've made the NBA finals in the 2007 playoffs if not for Robert Horry's hip check of Steve Nash late in the fourth quarter of Game 4 of the Spurs-Suns series, which then led to the silly suspension of Stoudemire and Boris Diaw for briefly walking on the court. D'Antoni also has a great mustache and gets comically worked up about officials' bad calls, which is often. He deserved better than the Knicks gave him, not that the Knicks' executive leadership has been competent for the past 12 years.

Why Water Valley, Miss.?

One of the wonderful things about urban planning is how it permeates so much more, even sometimes interior decorating. The Times had a heartwarming story last week about a quartet of 30-something, fashionable and plucky women who through their interior design talents and love of homespun gentrifying retail have revived Water Valley, a fading small town in Mississippi. They bought run-down early 20th-century houses and turned them into gems that anyone in the Northeast could love, and opened a small art gallery and a cafe-grocery. Everyone else in town is apparently noticing how much livelier things seem. (One is even married to LCD Soundsystem's former tour manager!) Who wouldn't want to rescue a small town like this and leave their style imprinted on downtown?

As wonderful as the Southern folk art, trim details and wall decorations are in the photos, they're also excellently executing a blueprint of urban planning. For rural towns to succeed in the early 21st century, they need to cultivate homegrown talent, support locally owned businesses and redevelop the historic housing stock (or other historic and cultural assets). They also need to be exceedingly patient. I'm sure Water Valley's resurgence isn't as simple as the article makes it seem, and that many people were involved beyond this group, for a longer time. But large companies no longer open branches in rural towns and employ a plurality of the residents. Instead, a much more nuanced, imaginative path is required. This is an overly simplified version of that wonderfully nebulous term "place making," which, I like to think, essentially means: Be distinct! As globalization compels convergence, find people and things that combine to create texture and variegation.

The other interesting question is: Why Water Valley, Miss.? Mississippi, and every state in the U.S., have dozens of similar towns that have lost their original mission and are struggling to reinvent themselves. Why did these women chose Water Valley? The biggest hint is probably that it's only 25 miles from Oxford, where the University of Mississippi is located. The university is the firewood and then a collection of people are the spark. There are only so many reputable universities, though. What else can play that role? And more broadly, are the values in this story and in this blog post niche ones or more mainstream?

Above is photo of Water Valley's downtown that I found of Flickr. I love the old Coca-Cola ad on the building and the suspended awning.

When Satire Just Won't Do

The Harvard alumni magazine, like its peers, is usually filled with gauzy profiles of academia, student life and the many famous graduates of the Crimson Tide. But the current issue pulls back the curtain just a bit too far on the business school. In a story about all the exciting India-related things happening at the university, there's this tidbit in a photo caption: "A new required course places all 900 first-year M.B.A. students in one of 10 foreign countries for a weeklong project; the largest contingent went to India. In Mumbai, one student team worked with a chain of 'hypermarkets' trying to win business from small neighborhood grocery stores."

This encapsulates why it's so easy to vilify and dislike HBS. That's right: Not only does the school create the next generations of financiers -- who crash international capitalism into the rocky shore -- it also works hard to maximize the dislocating effects of globalization by helping chain retailers take customers away from small, local middle-class business owners! No to independence and the community, yes to strategic growth plans and corporate headquarters! (The accompanying photo shows a generic-looking supermarket.) Typically one wouldn't expect the alumni magazine to be the publication that confirms a school's unseemly stereotypes, yet here it is. The editors might want to add another layer of review for their next issue.

This also makes me wonder what stirs an HBS grad's nostalgia for his years on campus. Usually an alumni magazine has paeans to that great professor, those late nights in the library or stimulating discussions in the classroom, but here it's fondly recalling learning how to be the man.