[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Natalia thought you would be interested in this story: NPR : Tiny Houses Find a
Friend on the Gulf Coast
I heard this one. Some of the houses are 70 sq/ft -- but also in "daddy's"
back yard so that the tenant can use the facilities in the big traditional
house.
The Unabomber certainly was a proponent of small houses -- but with
self-sufficiency.
Today's NYT has a fine article: "Bigger Housese, Longer Commutes"
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/realestate/21cov.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
I think the problem is largely that Americans' socialization -- even
many with
PhDs -- does not cultivate in them a love for high culture but rather a
lust for more square feet.
I knew the son of the person I consider one of the important writers of
all times -- not comparatively, but irrespective of comparison: Hermann
Broch.
"Broch's son" lived in a one bedroom apartment with his wife on the
upper east
side of manhattan. It was a small apartment: the kitchen was especially
small,
perhaps 5 by 6 feet??? But it was a place filled with the culture of
pre-WWII "Vienna" (and also a few chotchkies(sp?)). I am sure there
are MacMansions in Westchester that are furnished to a higher level of
culture than Broch's little apartment -- I am sure of this because I
believe there exist persons in our society who have both a lot of money
and also a
lot of cultivation -- but I suspect these are few. Broch's little apartment
was tight on square feet, but rich in "the life of the mind". I loved
visiting
him and his wife -- I would always get a glass of fine cognac (well that
would
probably be available in many of the MacMansions...), but I would
savor to look at the details in the apartment: the lovely japanese
screen on the
libing room wall, the cigarette holder on the table (not that I smoked), the
bookcase, the poster of his father from Surkamp Verlag (sp?).
Aristocracy reduced to having to count its pennies, probably, but
a graciousness that generates a world of meaningful symbols, not just
"space". Of course, the symbols were meaningful *to me*, and
another might have found it all not really serious compared to
acquiring another company or exceeding wall street's
expectations by a quarter percent....
Was man made for the Sabbath, or was the Sabbath made for man?
Was man made for space, or was space made for man?
Of course, given my druthers, I'd like to live some place
like Katsura, or even just an apartment in one of Trump's towers
(there was once a piece in the NYT about an apartment in
Tudor City across from the UN, a "triplex", where the owners,
went away each weekend -- no, not to the Hamptons, no, not to
the Berkshires -- but to their *third floor* for the weekend -->
now *that's* where I'd like to live. But if I can't live there,
I'd rather live in a small place where I had the leisure to savor
my Glenkinchie in my Kakumi Seiho sake cup, than be
putting in sweat equity to earn square feet on the road.
Why is it better to be a kamikaze pilot than to have
a long commute? Because the kamikaze pilot only
has to make the trip once.
\brad mccormick
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--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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