Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Green Homes and Renewable Energy Festival

This Saturday, 9/27/2008. Come on by: http://greenhomesstlouis.org/index.html

Monday, September 8, 2008

for Peter Fuss

hom·age (hŏmĭj, ŏm-)
n.
1. Ceremonial acknowledgment by a vassal of allegiance to his lord under feudal law.
2. Special honor or respect shown or expressed publicly.

[Middle English, from Old French, probably from omne, homme, man, from Latin homō, homin-; see dhghem- in Indo-European roots.]


In the mid 1980s I went back to school at Missouri-St. Louis to study philosophy & art history. Peter Fuss was my first professor, in my first class. He took me under his wing and thus began a relationship that would have a profoundly positive impact on my life. My education to that point seemed more about what to think rather than how to think. He helped me through difficult passages and texts from Kant, Descartes, Arendt, Heidegger and through complex literature like Melville and Dante.

I will be 50 in a month and I once again have the pleasure of Pete’s company in a great reading group that gets together twice a month. It seems like a good chance to say, ‘thanks’ to dedicated teacher, philosopher and critic.


Monday, September 1, 2008

Technical School in East Africa

Ck out this website: http://www.samepolytechnic.org/school.php in order to see some details of a design-build project Boa Construction is helping sponsor. They are using locally available material and a team approach to produce a sustainable result.

"The Samé Polytechnic Project is a collaborative design effort between five disciplines comprised entirely of students of the College of Architecture and Environmental Design at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. The students are representatives from the majors of architecture, architectural engineering, construction management, city and regional planning, and landscape architecture and together, form one interdisciplinary team. The team is responsible for designing a technical college to be built in the northern region of the United Republic of Tanzania in Eastern Africa."
One of the project participants has a travel blog: http://mhbrandt.blogspot.com/ Take a look @ these sites when you get a chance and help out if you can.