Happy holidays!

cooking, home Shortlink

2011: Less is more

 

2011 was a really busy year for me. Between landscape projects and travel, I have been working diligently on getting our 1907 early Craftsman house cleaned out. Let’s just say we had a lot of stuff we didn’t need.

In July we had (5) dump trucks worth of “stuff” removed from under our house and taken to the dump.  There was a 100 year accumulation of building materials (80 rusty paint cans, crates of rotten books, a parade of old furniture, cat poop, etc.). The front lawn looked like an episode of Hoarders for a few days as we sorted through all this stuff. The neatest thing we found was a dog permit from the 1930′s. I am happy to say we got rid of about 98% of it.

St. Vincent de Paul has come out (9) times to pick up furniture and boxes of household stuff (see photo of one pile above). It has gotten to the point I have them on speed dial on my phone.

Then we had a garage sale to get rid of some bulky items.  On top of that I have posted well over (50) items on Craigslist this year. There was a tandem bike, building supplies, lap tops, routers, servers, endless amounts of furniture, weights, clothing, plants, etc. I even got some guy to come dig all the rose bushes out of our yard – for free on Craigslist.

I still have a few more things to get rid of but I am 95% done clearing the place out. Now we get to focus on the fun stuff — the garden and landscape in 2012!

 

 

 

Los Angeles Shortlink
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Bread Making

If you are interested in bread making I recommend getting the book Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François. This is the main reference book I use for bread making. They have a strategy where you make up large batches of dough and save part of it in the refrigerator for up to two week. When you want to make bread you just pull out some pre-made dough and form it. Super easy. We have been really happy with the quality of the breads.

They also have a bread making blog at artisanbreadinfive.com.

I made 10 loaves of this olive fougasse last Sunday for a food exchange.

 

cooking Shortlink

Confluence Park, Los Angeles

Confluence Park recently opened in Los Angeles at the corner of N. San Fernando Road and N. Figueroa Street.

The project is a collaboration between Mia Lehrer + Associates and WET Design. The linear interactive water feature is meant to represents the Los Angeles River where it meets up with the historic Arroyo Secco. Come check it out. It is right next to Home Depot under the highway.

LINK: Watch Video of Confluence Park fountain

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Balinese Street Fountains

On my recent trip to Bali, Indonesia I fell in love with the quirky street fountains and water gardens. Often small and in front of shops, the water features are usually home made but have ambitious design concepts. The features alone are small, but taken together as a street scape you feel as though you are walking through a much larger urban water garden.

This is a micro water garden in front of a nail salon in Kuta where they do fish tank pedicures. Water bubbles out of the two tiny rectangular plinths. Notice how they extended the geometry of their water garden with the paving. The whole garden is less than 1.5m square.

 

A small sculptural fountain built into the sidewalk in front of a shop. The fountain is only about 1m high. In the US we would probably think of this as a residential or large table top fountain but here it is built into the street scape which gives it a greater sense of monumentality.

 

 


This fountain with an overflowing vessel is located in front of a fine textile dealer in Ubud. The sound of water fountains can be heard on many Balinese streets.


A spiggot on the fountain let’s them water the grass and other plants in their front courtyard directly from the fountain.

PVC pipe and a garden hose create a pretty ambitious water wall on the front windows of this massage parlor.

A large ceramic vessel overflowing with water sits in a nook between building along a major street in downtown Ubud. The water was a little bit funky, but the display of water running off the lip of the vessel was gorgeous and surprising regular. The strong sound of the water curtain could be heard from two store fronts away.

Bali is criss-crossed with channels of all sizes, many larger than small runnel in a shopping district.  Intended for irrigation and drainage, this channel has been transformed into a water feature with the addition of a stone sculpture of a woman (with a vessel) at the water’s edge and the adjacent seating area.

Located 1/2 a block from Kuta Beach, along the sidewalk at the south edge of the Hard Rock Cafe Hotel, this feature combines large architectural water walls,  rain curtains and geysers. Ambitious in scale, this feature becomes a focal point for the whole block and creates a small public space as people gather in front of it.

I love the strong connection between water and vegetation in the fountains in Bali. Almost every time a water element is present there are plants flourishing nearby. Often times, in the United States I feel that we forget to include (or intentionally exclude) plants in large scale water feature designs. On that note, I’ll post more photos of Balinese temple and garden fountains next week.

Fountains, landscape, travel, water Shortlink

Our Balinese Blessing Ceremony

Jonathan and I were married on May 20th at the the Indus restaurant in Ubud, Bali. They have a beautiful terraced garden behind the restaurant with view of a large valley. It was the perfect secluded spot for our small wedding.

A lot of people have asked what our ceremony was like so I thought I would give you the play by play breakdown of a traditional Balinese blessing ceremony.

The Balinese Blessing Ceremony

1. The Mangku (priest) rings a small bell to speak to the God (in Sanskrit mantra) that today a sacred wedding is about to be performed. He rings the bell for a couple of minutes.

2. The bride and groom receive this Balinese dadap leaf, holy water, and burnt rice, which means purification and cleansing of the body and the spirit. The assistant priest then burns 3 stalks of bamboo on fire to symbolize the burning of any sinful past as individuals by the God Brahma (Batara Brahma).


3. The bride and groom receive holy water on their chests to purify and prepare their hearts for a blessed marriage.

4. The bride and groom receives coconut water on their heads using a palm leaf (3 times), and their hands to drink (3 times), and then on their hand to wipe on top of their heads (1 time). Disclaimer: Patty only pretended to “wash” her face so she didn’t mess up her make-up.

5. Muspa- The bride and groom pray:

a. Putting both hands together and raise between eyebrows.
b. Muspa Puyung: Praying without holding flowers. This is to concentrate and centralize all the senses to ask Sang Hyang Widhi Wasa (the highest God) for purity of the soul.
c. The first Muspa: Holding flowers between the two hands and raising them between the eyebrows. This is to ask Dewa Surya (the God of the Sun) to share with us His compassionate radiance to the people of the world.
d. The second Muspa: Holding ‘Kwangen’ (little flower arrangement) between the two hands and raising them between the eyebrows. This is to ask the specific God of the Padmasana (this small tower/temple protecting the hotel) so that we will always be protected and safe.
e. The third Muspa: Using similar ‘Kwangen’ to pray to all the holy Gods and Goddesses to always give us happiness and health.
f. Muspa Puyung (similar to point b above): To show gratitude for everything that we have, every blessing of life that we have received until now.

6. The assistant priest takes floral water using a coconut shell and pours on a bamboo cylinder, symbolizing straining all the past shadows of wrongdoings. The bride and groom then drink this water.

7. The groom and bride receive rice on their foreheads.

8. The bride and groom then eat treats from the offerings.

And that’s it. That is the ceremony.

Then headed upstairs to our private terrace and had out wedding feast. The menu we pre-selected consisted of tofu curry, chicken satay, corn cakes, braised red bean & young papaya in Balinese spices, fragrant yellow rice and coconut crepes with banana filling and gula merah. It was excellent.

PHOTO CREDIT: www.TonnyTrisnawan.com

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Just married in Ubud, Indonesia!

Jonathan and I eloped and were married May 20th, 2010 in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia.

The ceremony was in the garden of the Indus restaurant/hotel in Ubud. We wore traditional Balinese wedding garments. The ceremony was a traditional Hindu Balinese marriage blessing full of flowers, rice, incense and offerings. It was incredibly beautiful.

This illustration gives the Balinese names for all the garments and accessories that made up the wedding outfits. You can’t tell in the picture above, but Jonathan had a sword suck into the back of his garment, just like the guy in illustration.

My headdress took about 90 minutes for the hairdresser to build out of 75+ metal ornaments. It was very heavy and sharp, but totally glam.

A lot of people have asked us about the ceremony. I’ll post more on that soon.

travel, Wedding Shortlink

Top 7 Favorite Fountains

There are a few hundred “famous fountains” that have transcended being local landmarks and have become part of our global pop culture. They are on the covers of travel books, in movies, people make pilgrimages to them, their symbolism is often key to the branding of their cities. Some of the fountains are big and some are small. Some are high tech computerized water expressions, and some are not. As a landscape and water feature designer, I have often wondered which fountains are the most favored, and why. So I created an online survey, to simply ask people, “What is your favorite fountain?”.

Detail of the survey: I posted a link to the online survey on Facebook and on a number of industry related forums on LinkedIn and Land8Lounge.  To my delight I got a number of responses (80+), but not everyone actually took the official survey. I received additional responses to the first question, “What is your favorite fountain?” via Tweets, emails, Facebook, etc. The question also sparked some lively discussions in several of the online forums. The survey was open to the public, but because of the places I posted it, the majority of the respondents were landscape architects, urban planners, architects and people in the water feature industry. I admit this is not the most scientific study, but I hope people find the results interesting and that it continues to generate a dialogue.

The drum roll please… here are the most favorite:

#07: THE PINEAPPLE FOUNTAIN

Location: Charleston, VA | Designer: Stuart O. Dawson,  Sasaki Associates with Edward Pinckney Associates | Year: 1990

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Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Charleston Area Convention and Visitors Bureau

Survey Comments:

  • “The pineapple represents the southern symbol of hospitality.” – survey response

Links:

Waterfront Park Charleston

#06: THE MUSTANGS OF LAS COLINAS

Location: Irving, Texas | Designer: Robert Glen with SWA | Year: 1976-1984

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Links:
Mustangs of Las Colinas

#05: The Dubai Fountain, Burj Khalifa

Location: Dubai, UAE | Designer: Andrea Silva, WET Design | Date: 2009

Dubaifountains

Survey Comments:

“For sheer power and size, I’d go for the Dubai Fountain. It’s akin to three Bellagio’s side by side. And you can feel the throb (or is it a boom) every time it shoots its highest pulse/stream.” – R.F. Land8 forum

“The Burj fountain. Its dramatic movements, sounds, and powerful song selection gives a person chills when they watch it….. and its absolutely unforgettable!” – J.M. LinkedIn Fountain Design forum

Links:

The Dubai Fountain – Wikipedia

#04: Fort Worth Water Gardens, Fort Worth, Texas

Location: Fort Worth Convention Center | Designer: Phillip Johnson and John Burgee | Date: 1974

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Links:

Fort Worth Water Garden – Wikipedia

#03: Paley Park, NYC

Location: Midtown Manhattan | Designer: Zion & Breene -  Landscape Architects | Date: 1967

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Survey Comments:
This feature got a number of votes but no one commented on why they voted for it. I would speculate that people are primarily drawn to the sound of the water wall in Paley Park. What do you think?

Links:

Paley Park – Wikipedia

Paley Park – Yelp review

#02: The Fountains of the Bellagio

Location: Las Vegas | Designer: Claire Kahn Tuttle, WET Design | Date: 1997

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Survey Comments:

“Probably the one at the Bellagio. Yeah, I know I’m supposed to scoff at it as a landscape architect, but I love how it works!” – survey response

Links:

Fountains of the Bellagio – Wiki

Fountains of the Bellagio – Yelp

#01: Ira Keller Forecourt Fountain, Levi Plaza

Location: Portland. Oregon | Designer: Angela Danadjieva, Lawrence Halprin & Associates  | Date: 1970

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Survey Comments:

“The Lawerence Halprin fountain at Levi’s Plaza in San Francisco, for the look, sense of discovery it fosters, and especially the sound.” – L.R. LinkedIn ASLA forum

“I’m a pretty big fan of Halprins ‘fountains’/water features. Too bad we really cant design places like those anymore thanks to initiatives like CPTED…d’oh!..forgot this is a fountains discussion.” – N. A. Land8 forum

Links:

Ira Keller Forecourt Fountain – Wikipedia

Ira Keller Forecourt Fountain >> whereintheworldispatty.com

Thoughts + Observations

Historic Water Features:
I was surprised that all the top favorite fountains were under 45 years old. There were a number of historic fountains, such as Trevi, Villa d’Este, and Buckingham Fountain that received a few votes. But collectively they did not rank very high on the survey. Considering how well known and venerated they seem to be, I found it a bit surprising. It makes me want to investigate how people relate to historic water features in modern cities and how they may function differently as they get older.

Sculptural Fountains:
The Pineapple Fountain and the Mustangs of Las Colinas illustrate that sculptural water features continue to be popular with the public and highly iconic. I wasn’t personally familiar with the Pineapple Fountain before this survey. A Google search for the Pineapple Fountain brought up a surprising number of artist paintings depicting the fountain. You can even buy bookmarks depicting the Pineapple Fountain on Etsy. The symbolism of sculptural fountains is often regional, as is the case in both of these fountains.

Show Features:
No big surprise here. The results of the survey confirm that people love huge musical water features. The Fountains of the Bellagio and the Dubai Fountain got high points for their emotional impact, scale and strength. They offer a unique collective experience on a large scale. Sometimes criticized for using a lot of water, these fountains are a guilty pleasure for many people. I loved the comment from the landscape architect who said that he knows that he shouldn’t like the Fountains of the Bellagio but that he does anyway.

Also noteworthy, is that the Dubai Fountain is less than a year old and already ranked in the top 7. I have a hunch that only a huge musical fountain could enter our collective consciousness and become an international favorite so quickly.

Waterscapes:
Going into this, I wondered if one of the huge musical features would get the most votes. The answer was no. Remarkably a gravity fed waterscape in Portland got more votes than any other fountain in the world.  Admittedly a knock-out water feature, the Forecourt Fountain was described in 1970, as “One of the most important urban spaces since the Renaissance”.  Forecourt Fountain and the Fort Worth Water Garden, offer highly immersive, interactive experiences that are abstractions of how water works in the natural world. Waterscapes aren’t fountains to look at, but rather offer watery places to be.

The fact that Forecourt got so many votes indicates that an immersive experience can have the same kind of draw and fame as an iconic water feature. This should be encouraging to people trying to bring these types of experiences to their cities and projects. The challenge, as several people pointed out, is that it would be very difficult to build a water feature like Forecourt Fountain today due to safety and litigation concerns. Notably, the Fort Worth Water Garden has been redesigned to make it shallower after 4 people drown in 2004. While safety is a serious issue, there have been many successful interactive water features and waterscapes built in the last twenty years.

Personally, I think that we will see a lot more waterscapes built in cities in the coming decades. Globally people are being asked to make increased sacrifices regarding their personal water use  (i.e. use less water, don’t water lawns, don’t hose down your driveway, don’t fill your swimming pool, etc.) Urban waterscapes offer a public place for people of all ages to to come together around water communally. I speculate there will be more demand for these types of collective experience with water, when water inevitably becomes more expensive.

Also
The survey also asked what special memories people associated with fountains and what they think the most famous fountain is in their city or country. I’ll discuss these topics in future blog posts.

+There were also a handful of interesting off-the-beaten-path fountains that people nominated. I’ll write more about them soon.

What is your favorite fountain? Why?

Fountains, travel, water Shortlink

Klemm Overall Factory, Bloomington, IL

Jonathan and I were in Bloomington, Illinois a couple of weekends ago for my grand parents 80th birthday. One of our friends at Intelligensia (in LA) told us to check out Coffee Hound in downtown Bloomington. Apparently they compete in the national barista competitions with Intel. So between family events we snuck off to downtown Bloomington, to get some coffee(tea).

We parked on the Square and were walking down a side street looking for Coffee Hound when we stumbled upon this building (see image below). I was flabbergasted. It was like seeing a ghost of a person you have only seen in a photo. I knew in an instant that this was the old Klemm Overall Factory!

My great-great-great grandfather C.W. Klemm owned a number of businesses including the Klemm Overall Factory. It was once the main competitor with Levi Strauss.  Sadly, Klemm’s continued to focus on overalls exclusively while Levi Strauss started expanding into denim pants (aka blue jeans). Klemm was eventually put out of business. (I think there is a lesson in this story…)

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Anyway, I grew up my whole life thinking that this building burned down in the Great Fire of 1900.  My Grandma Honey, Marilyn Christ Anderson, told me she donated a big pile of half melted together overall buttons from the fire to the McLean County Historical Society decades ago. They must have had multiple buildings.

I inherited two pictures of the building (see below).

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This is a picture of the upstairs sewing room at the factory. It kinda looks like the American Apparel of the 1880′s. These days the upstairs is being used by some club that runs model railroads. I would love to visit that the next time we in town.

I eventually pulled myself away from taking pictures of the overall factory (I think Jonathan thought I was a bit over excited) and we found Coffee Hound nearby. While not quite Intelligensia, it was a great place.  I love their old time store front, with high ceiling and original mosaic floors.  We will definitely be back when we are in town.

Bloomington, history Shortlink

Be Your Own Life Coach – 101

NOTE: This handout is from a lecture I gave a year ago on How to Be Your Own Life Coach. It highlights 15 self guided assignments that will help you identify your strengths; allow you tools to better listen to yourself; develop a strength-based set of goals; and set yourself on an path that will allow you to become an even better version of yourself.

M55~Go-Confidently-Henry-David-Thoreau-Posters

15 Assignments
The following independent assignments will take most people 2-6 months to complete. Try to do them in order, starting a new one each week. Don’t get overwhelmed by seeing them all here in a list. Most of them are really fun to do. The things you discover in one assignment will help inform the later exercises. Some, due to their nature, may be ongoing and overlap with some of the others. You will want to make a physical folder or notebook to keep your notes, assignments and ongoing lists in one place. Try to have fun.

01. Find your Strengths
A. Take the Briggs-Myer Type Indicator personality inventory and review results.  You can take it online for between $30-50.

B. Buy the book  StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup’s Now, Discover Your Strengths. The book comes with a code in the back to log onto a website and take the Strengths test online. The website will automatically generate a multi-page report of your strengths for you to review.

02. Pursue your Passions
Make a list of 10 places in your city that you want to take yourself on fieldtrips. For the next 10 weeks pick one each weekend to visit.
Tip: Make a Google map to record all the places you want to go, add things to it on an ongoing basis. You can share it with friends, too!

03. Clean House
Purge 100 things out of your life to allow room for new things. Keep a list of what you have purged.

04. Happy List
Identify what picks you up when you are really down. Make a list of ideas and if you like, write yourself a letter and put it in a place that you will easily be able to find it when you need it.
Tip: Consider sharing your Happy List with your closest friends and family.

05. Identify People to Pull Closer
Make a list of people you want to reach out to and then brainstorm how you can pull them closer.

Tip 1: Read Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazz.

Tip 2: Make a habit each Monday to review your schedule and set up at least one lunch date a week.

Tip 3: Everyone can throw a dinner parties. Or start a book club, salon, bowling club, support group, organize outings or events, etc. Having something to invite people to makes it easy to “Pull” people.

06. Ideal Days
Make a list of all the ideal days that you can imagine for yourself.

07. Values
Make 10 word clusters (3 words each) to define your values.

08. Goals
Based on what you have discovered through Strengths, Ideal Days, the Value exercise, etc. write a series of long and short-term goals. If you already have written goals then use this time to update them. Make them very specific. Then once you have the list break them down into steps to achieve goals.
Tip: Brainstorm way to automatically see your goals everyday.

09. Visualize Goals
Pick 10 images that inspire you to achieve your goals, it could be people, it could be stuff, or ideas. Put them somewhere where to will see them everyday and at the right time.

10. Energy
Identify 5 ways for you to gain more energy and work them into your daily routine.

11. Finance
Review you finances and identify your weaknesses/bad habits. Brainstorm ways to protect yourself from these bad habits.

Tip: Great finance blogs for people in 20’s and 30’s:

http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/

http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/

Tip: One of the best things you can do for your finances, social life, health and state of mind is to learn to cook. Cooking reaps many rewards.

12. Get a Cause
Identify one important cause that you can passionately support. Join related organizations and start educating yourself on topics related to the cause so that you can be a knowledgeable advocate on that subject.

13. Build a Folder of High Achievement
Get a folder or notebook you like; an Itoya works well for this exercise. Fill the notebook with all kinds of documents that demonstrate your high achievement, you at your best.

Ideas: Recommendations, acceptance letters, resumes, awards, diplomas, creative achievements that you are particularly proud of, things you have written, business cards from all the jobs you have had, press clipping about you, speeches you have given, particularly flattering pictures, bios, etc. Continue to add to it over time. Look at it frequently to remind yourself of your history of success. Before doing that require you to be at your best, flip through the book to boost your confidence.

14. Make Time
Set aside some time every week and time monthly to look at what is coming up so that you can be best prepared and proactive for everything coming up. Use monthly reviews as a time to start a yearly calendar.

15. Time Machine
Identify something you did at some point in your past that you really enjoyed but you stopped doing. Find a way to start doing it again, maybe with a new spin.

Well, and then what? If you are still going strong, kudos to you! You are an even more fabulous version of yourself. Some of these assignments are things you will have to continue to work on in perpetuity. Life is 80% maintenance. Some of these exercises are things you will need to do again from time to time. Keep them so that you can revisit them in future.

Moving forward, challenging yourself, identify an area that you want to become an expert in and develop that expertise. Offer to mentor others, brainstorm ways in which you can contribute to the various communities that already belong and consider creating new communities and organization to serve unmet needs, etc.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did so. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

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Trying to undress my ‘water footprint’ – LA Times

Until last fall, I’d been oblivious to my “water footprint,” which is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce goods and services, according to the Water Footprint Network. The Dutch nonprofit has been working to raise awareness of freshwater scarcity since 2008, but it was through something called the “Green Blue Book,” by Thomas M. Kostigen, that I was able to see how my own actions factored in.

As readers of this column already know, I’ve installed gray-water systems to reuse the wastewater from my laundry machine and bathtub and reroute it to my landscape — systems that save, on average, 50 gallons of water per day. I’ve set up rain barrels and a cistern and dug trenches and infiltration pits to collect the thousands of gallons of storm water cascading from my roof. I’ve even entered the last bastion of greendom — installing a composting toilet.

Suffice to say, I’ve been feeling pretty satisfied with myself for all the drinking water I’ve saved with these big-ticket projects. According to my last Department of Water and Power bill, my household’s daily water use is about 58 gallons per day — far less than the 178 gallons per day I’d been using two years ago, before I became water aware and started conserving, saving and hoarding with all these systems.

Now I realize that my daily consumption choices could have an even larger effect — not only on the local water supply but also globally: 1.1 billion people have no access to freshwater, and, in the future, those who do have access will have less of it.

Each of the four cups of coffee I drink every day takes 37 gallons of water to produce, from the growing of the beans, to their processing, to bringing that brown paper bag of Peet’s Uzuri African Blend to my kitchen. One pound of steak? That takes 1,581 gallons. My car? 32,000 gallons.

via articles.latimes.com

Click link for rest of article.

Posted via web from Patty Lundeen Hume

water Shortlink

Replace stop signs that waste your time | Ted Talk

via cnn.com

Posted via web from Patty Lundeen Hume

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Karl Lagerfeld Flys in a 265-Ton Glacier | Inhabitat

via inhabitat.com

Karl Lagerfeld imports glacier for Chanel catwalk in Paris. I know this is really wasteful but I also think it is pretty amazing.

Posted via web from Patty Lundeen Hume

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Antarctic 50′ Blood-red Waterfall of Primordial Ooze – GOOD

via good.is

Check this out. Click link for more pics.

Posted via web from Patty Lundeen Hume

Uncategorized Shortlink

28 Cool Drinking Fountains ~ Now That’s Nifty

via nowthatsnifty.blogspot.com

Click on link for a gallery of vintage water fountains.

Posted via web from Patty Lundeen Hume

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Sneak Peek at 9/11 Memorial Fountains | Fast Company

via fastcompany.com

Posted via web from Patty Lundeen Hume

Fountains, Uncategorized Shortlink

Brilliant Sun Poem by Jiyeon Song – My Modern Metropolis

via mymodernmet.com

Click link to see more pictures from the One Day Poem Pavillion. So clever.

Posted via web from Patty Lundeen Hume | Posterous

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Literal ‘Street Art’ of Pedestrian Crosswalks | Design + Ideas on WU

via weburbanist.com

See link for a bunch of images of “art” crosswalks. So fun.

Posted via web from Patty Lundeen Hume | Posterous

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6QRUbEcZrI

PSNS Memorial Plaza Dedication

via youtube.com

Someone made this video montage of opening day at Bremerton Harborside Memorial Plaza. The shots start at the upper pool, then along the channel to the middle fountain by the ship mast and then down to the lower pool with the boulders.

LOL. If you pay attention my fiance, Jonathan Hume, just happens to wander through a couple of the crowd shots.

 

Posted via web from Patty Lundeen Hume | Posterous

 

Fountains Shortlink

The Fountain of Youth c. 1500

 

More on the painter Lucas Cranach the Elder on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_Cranach_the_Elder

Posted via email from Patty Lundeen Hume | Posterous

art, Fountains, history, Uncategorized Shortlink

Survey: What is your favorite fountain?

Today, I wrote a brief online survey about fountains and memory (see link below). I asked three open ended questions: “What is your favorite fountain?”, “What special memories do you have related to fountains?” and “In your opinion what is the most well known fountain in your city (or country)?”. I had a long list of other questions I wanted to ask, but I decided to keep it brief and use this survey to test the water (so to speak) and see what kinds of responses people submitted.

Broadly speaking, I am interested in investigating why people identify with certain fountains more than others and also how water features, as gigantic urban engines, influences the activity and development around them in cities. More soon…

Please take the survey. It will take maybe 5 minutes.
Click here to take the survey.

Fountains Shortlink

Rooftop Paintings That Can Be Seen from Satellites | Inhabitat

via inhabitat.com

Posted via web from Patty Lundeen Hume | Posterous

architecture, art Shortlink

Oceans’ Tiniest Bubbles Detected : Discovery News

THE GIST:

  • Physicists have just detected the smallest bubbles in our oceans.
  • Bubbles ring like bells and deflect light in predictable and testable ways, allowing researchers to examine their size.
  • The research could help to explain how gas is hiding out in the water, and how climate and sea life may be affected as a result.

For the first time, the smallest bubbles in the oceans — as tiny as one thousandth of a millimeter — have been detected, say physicists.

If they are right, the researchers may be on their way to unraveling one of the more nagging mysteries in oceanography: How much gas is hiding out in the oceans, and how might it affect Earth’s climate and sea life? Their work may even be able to explain further how sound and light travels underwater.

By both looking and listening for tiny bubbles in the ocean near Hawaii, researchers think they have pinned down the signatures of tiny bubbles at a range of sizes. This all works because bubbles ring like bells and deflect light in predictable and testable ways.

Related Links:

To test for the ringing acoustic signatures of tiny bubbles, physicist Helen Czerski of University of Rhode Island has devised a specially-designed echo chamber about the size of a soccer ball. Ocean water rushes into the chamber and is exposed to many frequencies of sound to see what sizes of the bubbles within. The smaller the bubbles, the higher the frequency at which they begin ringing back in the chamber.

“So we listen for the echoes at all these frequencies,” Czerski told Discovery News. In the actual experiment in Hawaii the echo chamber was dunked off the back of a boat to gather data on the bubbles in the ship’s wake. It was also left attached to a buoy for weeks, where it recorded passing clouds of bubbles made by breaking wind waves.

Right alongside of Czerski’s device was another bubble detector that looked for size-specific optical signatures of bubbles. By comparing the data from both instruments, the researchers are able to confirm the presence of the tiny bubbles.

“The bubbles affect how light propagates through water,” explained oceanographer Michael Twardowski of the company WET Labs. “Different sizes of bubbles scatter light in different ways.”

The manner in which light is scattered allows detection of bubbles down to less a thousandth of a millimeter, or a micron in diameter. It also affects the color of the ocean water as seen from space. As a result, the optical work helps in making better sense of satellite data collected on the ever-changing colors of the oceans.

“In general, the data match pretty well,” said Czerski.

These bubbles are an important means of carrying gases from the atmosphere into the oceans, Czerski told Discovery News. One-half of the atmospheric carbon dioxide, for instance, is thought to enter the sea. Some bubbles are also created by bacteria in the oceans, she said. These can contain waste products of bacteria: sulfur compounds that are known to serve as the seeds of clouds in the atmosphere.

“So the chemistry (of the bubbles) is really important for climate models,” said Czerski, whose research is funded by the Office of Naval Research.

via news.discovery.com

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Faulders Studio’s Building Proposal Grows Its Own Facade | Fast Company

via fastcompany.com

Click on link for more crazy pics.

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architecture, Uncategorized Shortlink

Freeway to Parks: LA to “Cap” Highways

via archpaper.com

See link for more info and pictures.

Breaking news: AECOM just announces that they have the contract to design 4 freeway “cap” parks in Los Angeles. The project is expected to cost a trillion dollars and take 10 years to complete.

The one depicted in this picture looks like it might start about 6 blocks from my house.

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Three Glacier Ice Records, Played Until They Melted

via katiepaterson.org

See link for pictures and a recording from one of the three records.

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From Burnt-out Pier to Light Art Installation « The Dirt

via dirt.asla.org

See link for more info.

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Thickened Waterfront from AALU: Landscape+Urbanism

via landscapeandurbanism.blogspot.com

Some recent water feature designs from a workshop on Contemporary Garden design in Xi’an, China.

See full link for more info and images.

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Branson Landing Fire-shooting Fountain


via youtube.com

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Star Spangeled Banner – Branson Landing Fountain


Via youtube.com
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Maryland Plaza Fountain – St. Louis

maryland plaza
via youtube.com

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Civil Rights Memorial Fountain, Montgomery Alabama

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SEE LINK FOR FLICK GALLERY

Fountains, history, water Shortlink

Banpo Fountain at Seoul Design Olympiad 2008

via designboom.com

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The New Lincoln Center Fountain : The New Yorker

via newyorker.com

Link to the 8-page New Yorker article on the Lincoln Center Revson Fountain, designed by WET. It opened in 2009.

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Flavorwire » Reiner Riedler’s Fake Holidays

via flavorwire.com

Real photos of fake holidays…

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Electric Train Rail Turned into Amusement Park in Lima: TreeHugger

via treehugger.com

See link for more pics.

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Petro China Fountain – Night : YouTube

via youtube.com
More Petro China in the evening. 

Fountains, Video, water Shortlink

Petro China Fountain – Day : YouTube

via youtube.com

This WET water feature in front of the headquarters for Petro China is 1000′ long. There is also a set of (2) 300 foot water walls and a bamboo garden in the 16 story lobby.

Fountains, Video, water Shortlink

Creative Downspouts Double as Water-Recycling Planters | Dornob

via dornob.com

Click on link to see more info.

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Re-skinning Towers

via gizmag.com

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101 Sexy Spiral Staircases

via weburbanist.com

Click on link for a gallery of spiral staircase pictures.

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Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Cauldron Malfunctions

If you were closely following the opening ceremonies of the Olympic games on Friday night/Saturday morning %u2014 you might have been taken back to the 2000 Sydney, Australia Summer Olympics, when the Aussie cauldron simply refused to climb a slope.

A similar situation ensued tonight in Vancouver. To describe in words, the cauldron in completion was to be composed of four legs which would rise from the Olympic Stadium%u2019s floor to meet a central cauldron at the center of the stadium floor. Unfortunately, after an awkward five minutes, only three of the four legs arose, leaving a 3/4-completed cauldron, if you will.

Bluntly, the look on Wayne Gretzky%u2019s face (along the with the 3 other final torch-bearers) was priceless. Surely something not to be forgotten.

NBC%u2019s fairly stringent with Olympic content on the web, but if we come across video, we%u2019ll post it up.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 13th, 2010 at 12:36 am and is filed under Miscellaneous, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
via erictric.com

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“Ice Heart” in Times Square

via ireport.com

Click on the link to see a gallery of pictures of the Ice heart.
Happy V-day!

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Separate Water Fountains

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“Civil Rights Segregated Water Fountain 1938. Photo of a young boy drinking from a water fountain for the colored on the county courthouse lawn of Halifax, North Carolina.”

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This image is available for sale at: www.mcmahanphoto.com

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Acid in the Pool: An Ongoing Struggle for Civil Rights

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via awearnessblog.com

From the http://awarenessblog.com blog:

In 1964, a few young blacks decided to take a dip in a whites-only pool at a whites-only hotel in St. Augustine, Florida. The hotel’s owner, James Brock, reacted by emptying jugs of hydrochloric acid into the water to expel the unwanted swimmers.

This act of civil disobedience was one among many in the small city on the northeast coast of Florida, which in 1964 was celebrating its 400th anniversary. Because of that anniversary, the national spotlight was already on America’s oldest settlement, and the leaders of the civil rights movement took advantage of that attention to bring some to their own cause.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself tried to eat at the Monson Motor Lodge, and Mr. Brock pleaded with him to take his business elsewhere. And for more than 40 years, James Brock refused to talk with reporters about the acid incident or his encounter with Dr. King.

Jeremy Dean, a young filmmaker who lived in St. Augustine for six years, was the first. In his debut feature-length documentary, Dare Not Walk Alone, Dean interviews James Brock as well as former activists from the era to raise awareness of that pivotal moment in American history. But he also goes a step further: Dean connects the historical fight for equality to the present, proving that while the movement did great things and propelled society forward, the work is far from over. While blacks are free to eat (and swim) wherever they choose in St. Augustine today, the ongoing disparity in wealth and opportunity indicates a broken system, and it’s not merely about race.

As one of the film’s primary subjects, former activist and current city commissioner of St. Augustine, Errol Jones, puts it: “It’s not an African American problem, it’s an American problem. And it’s not an African American struggle, it’s an American struggle. And we have to address it all as Americans.”

Dean masterfully weaves the narrative of St. Augustine’s troubled past together with the tales of a few individuals, giving a human face to the injustices that still plague not only that city but many, many more American cities to this day.

Dare Not Walk Alone, which took five years to complete, has been shown at 30 film festivals and colleges across the country, and it is available on Netflix.

I saw Dare Not Walk Alone last week at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where the director gave a brief talk and fielded questions after the film. I followed up with this brief interview:

Where did you grow up, and when/how did you develop an interest in social justice?

I was born in Lubbock, Texas, and grew up a missionary kid in Mexico and the Amazon jungle of Peru where I fished for piranha and was forced to eat monkey on several occasions. My parents were very cool people and we would go down there, live with the people and build something beneficial for for the community like a hospital or an orphanage. So that is where I was exposed to diverse people groups and saw the inequality that exists between the haves and the have nots and the clear prejudice against indigenous people in developing countries. So that is why when I came to St. Augustine and part of the city looked like some of the third world countries I grew up in, it really effected me and made me want to know why it was that way.

What sorts of questions did you go into making this film with?

We are generally taught that the Civil Rights movement was a huge success and that it is a thing of the past, but I wanted to know: If the movement was so successful, why is there still so much inequality today?

Did the film’s scope change as you began researching the issue and interviewing your subjects?

The whole process was very organic, but my basic questions never changed. However the world has drastically changed since I started working on the film. We did our first rough cut as Hurricane Katrina was making landfall, so up until then no one was really talking about Southern rural poverty and the legacy of racism, which really bothered me. Katrina and the botched response opened the nation’s eyes to the problem, but sadly we did not make too much headway. Then came the election of President Obama, which has really made a difference. In part because we have a positive framework to begin the discussion as opposed to the usual conversation starters that have more to do with some horrific incident that rightfully enrages African Americans and puts whites on the defensive. I think now we can start the conversation on more of an even playing field. So though we still do not live in a “post race” world, we are making some progress.

How has the film been received at festivals and other screenings around the country? Is there a difference in how it’s received in different parts of the country?

We have gotten responses across the spectrum: some people love it, others hate it, but no one is ambivalent after watching the film. It gets a conversation started, which is about the best thing one can hope for. What makes the film interesting and relevant to audiences around the country is that though the story takes place in St. Augustine, it resonates in other cities because they can see parts of there communities reflected in the streets of St. Augustine. The most common response we get is: “We have a part of town that looks just like West Augustine,” so in that way St. Augustine has become a microcosm for the country as a whole.

What sorts of lessons did you take away from meeting the people you interviewed, and telling their stories?

One of the biggest things that struck me was seeing kids 15 or 16 years old walk out in the street and non-violently stand up to pure evil and hatred, offering their bodies as the ultimate sacrifice without ever fighting back to draw attention to injustice. Some of them even going to jail for up to six months where they were in effect tortured, but who still refused to back down and went right back out on the line to march as soon as they were released. I don’t know too many of us who have that kind of conviction today, even though we need it.

Ideally, what function do you hope your film will serve in the present day, as well as in the future?

Every filmmaker hopes that they will make a film that will change the world, but I hope that Dare Not Walk Alone just keep people talking and reflecting.

What are you working on now? Will you continue to make documentaries investigating social justice issues?

I will always be interested in issues of social justice. My latest project moves back in the art direction with a conceptual art installation exploring the melt down of the economy and is in effect about economic justice, which is at the heart of every social problem.

[Image: Len Murray, Indican Pictures, NY Times]

architecture, history, landscape, water Shortlink

The Electric Fountain, Denver

via electricfountain.home.att.net

This 1908 fountain in Denver was recently restored and rededicated. I love the original renderings and vintage photos on the Friends of the Electric Fountain Website.

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Fountains, landscape Shortlink

Rome of the West: Fountains of Saint Louis

4025555540_80b9ba6b69via romeofthewest.com

Great post from the blog “Rome of the West” on the Fountains of St. Louis.
The fountain at Maryland Plaza, that I worked on a few years back at WET is featured with pictures + video.

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Carl Nesjar’s Anchorage Ice Fountain

via whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com

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See link for more pictures and details.

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Burj Dubai Khalifa Fountain

 

via edibek.com

Link with images of the original renderings for the fountain.

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The Heidelberg Project : Funky Community Art in Detroit

via heidelberg.org

“The Heidelberg Project, bearing the name of the street on which it exists, was started in 1986 by Tyree Guyton. He was assisted by his grandfather, Sam (Grandpa) Mackey (deceased), and his former wife, Karen Guyton. Tyree was raised on Heidelberg Street and, at the age of 12, witnessed the tragic effect of the Detroit riots – from which he claims the City of Detroit never recovered. Though once racially integrated, many neighborhoods have become segregated urban ghettos characterized by poverty, abandonment, and despair.

Armed with a paintbrush, a broom, and neighborhood children, Guyton, Karen, and Grandpa began by cleaning up vacant lots on Heidelberg and Elba Streets. From the refuse they collected, Guyton began to transform the street into a massive art environment. Vacant lots literally became “lots of art” and abandoned houses became “gigantic art sculptures.” Guyton not only transformed vacant houses and lots, he integrated the street, sidewalks, and trees into his mammoth installation and called his work, “The Heidelberg Project”, after it’s location on Heidelberg Street.
Despite numerous awards, the city demolished parts of the Heidelberg Project installation in 1991 and again in 1999. Still, the Heidelberg Project continues to exist, evolve, and grow – providing hope and inspiration to the local community and the community of the world.

Today the Heidelberg Project is recognized as one of the most influential art environments in the world.”

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Lawrence Halprin: Auditorium Forecourt Fountain (Ira Keller), Portland

Landscape Architecture Magazine has a huge 18-page spread on Lawrence Halprin (1916-2009) in the February 2010 issue. It is a great article and you should take a look at it.

For those of you who don’t know the work of Lawrence Halprin, I wanted to share my favorite Halprin project, the Auditorium Forecourt Fountain in Portland. The project is not over 40 years old but it remains one of the most important and well loved modern water features in America. In June 1970, Ada Louise Huxtable of the NYT’s wrote, “On Tuesday, Portland will start the water flowing in the fountains of what may be one of the most important urban spaces since the Renaissance. The word ‘fountains’ requires a little clarification. ‘Waterfalls” would be a more accurate description.” I think today we would refer to it as a ‘water feature’ or a ‘waterscape’ or maybe a ‘water park’.  The word ‘fountain’ is too singular to express this kind of immersive environment or world.

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It is a place where kids and adults can play together.  It is also a place where active and passive experiences can co-exist right next to one another.

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I get the sense in Halprin’s work that he really respects the intelligence of the end user. The spaces challenge people to climb and explore; it is like exploring a natural waterfall or geology. I wish more playgrounds were like this.

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Read More:
Deep Portland history: Lawrence Halprin and Ira Keller

Photo Credit: I found all the images online. If they are yours please email me.

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Ice House Detroit : Foreclosed Houses

via flavorwire.com

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Check out the gallery of incredible photos of iced over abandoned homes in Detroit. Click on the link above.

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Patty Lundeen Hume LinkedIn Recommendations

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Brooklyn Museum Water Feature : YouTube

(Ignore the pixelization – once it starts the image is clear.)

via youtube.com

The Brooklyn Museum fountain was designed by WET and opened in 2004.
I took this footage of my in progress choreography when the site is still under construction.

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art, Fountains, landscape Shortlink

Bremerton Harborside Staircase Water Feature

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Photo credit: Jonathan Hume and Phuong Phan-McManamna

art, Fountains, landscape Shortlink

Bremerton Harborside Fountain Park

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Photo credit: Phuong Phan-McManamna

Fountains, landscape, water Shortlink

Purl:JFK Plaza

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architecture, Bloomington, Fountains, landscape Shortlink

In Portland, Growing Vertical

PORTLAND, Ore. — Urban gardening used to seem subversive. People planted tomatoes in public parks, strung their hops to rooftops to make homebrew and reclaimed empty lots as community farms, never mind the property owner.

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SERA Architects

An architectural rendering of the trellises designed to shade the western facade of the main federal building in Portland, Ore.

Yet here in one of the more thoroughly tilled cities in America, subversive has come full circle: the federal government plans to plant its own bold garden directly above a downtown plaza. As part of a $133 million renovation, the General Services Administration is planning to cultivate “vegetated fins” that will grow more than 200 feet high on the western facade of the main federal building here, a vertical garden that changes with the seasons and nurtures plants that yield energy savings.

“They will bloom in the spring and summer when you want the shade, and then they will go away in the winter when you want to let the light in,” said Bob Peck, commissioner of public buildings for the G.S.A. “Don’t ask me how you get them irrigated.”

Rainwater, captured on the roof, and perhaps even “gray water” recycled from the interior plumbing are both possibilities, the architects say. But they concede that they are still figuring out some of the finer points of renovating the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building, which was completed in 1975 and is currently 18 stories of concrete, glass and minimal inspiration.

Who will prune the facade? Maybe the same folks who wash skyscraper windows, the architects say. Perhaps the exterior concrete panels removed in the renovation could be reused as salmon habitat in a nearby river.

The G.S.A. says the building will use 60 percent to 65 percent less energy than comparable buildings and estimates a savings of $280,000 annually in energy costs. Solar panels could provide up to 15 percent of the building’s power needs. The use of rainwater and low-flow plumbing fixtures will reduce potable water consumption by 68 percent. And energy for lighting will be halved.

“It will be one of the more energy-efficient high-rises in America, possibly in the world,” said James Cutler, whose architecture firm, Cutler Anderson, led the design work.

The building has long been in line for renovation and improvements in energy efficiency, but money did not come through until the passage of the federal stimulus package last year, with its emphasis on environmentally friendly projects. That intensified the environmental ambitions; the building, the largest federal stimulus project in Oregon, is being renovated under the G.S.A’s new Office of Federal High-Performance Green Buildings.

Not everyone is enthusiastic about the plan. In December, Senators John McCain of Arizona and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, both Republicans, criticized the cost of the project and ranked it second on a list of what they called the 100 worst stimulus-financed projects. The G.S.A. has said that report relied on incomplete data, but the project’s cost has also raised eyebrows here.

Joe Vaughan, a longtime commercial real estate broker here, said that the building’s office space would ultimately cost more per square foot than some other environmentally-conscious projects that are built new.

“As a taxpayer, I think it’s a horrible waste of money that no private developer would undertake,” Mr. Vaughan said.

G.S.A. officials said the cost of constructing federal office buildings cannot be compared to private buildings because of security and other government requirements. Nor, they said, should the construction costs of the building be viewed in isolation.

“The idea is that the cost savings are in the energy efficiency,” said Caren Auchman, a spokeswoman for the G.S.A.

There are questions about whether the efficiency efforts will work as designed. “Most of what we put in our buildings is tried and true,” said Mr. Peck, of the G.S.A. “On some part of it, we’re prepared to be a beta tester.”

“My dream,” Mr. Peck added, “is we will find a technology that needs a test and we will make the market for it.”

The renovation is scheduled to be completed by 2013, said Donald Eggleston, the president of SERA Architects, which is overseeing the project for the G.S.A. This summer, he said, landscaping experts will experiment with vines and cover plants that can endure Portland’s wet, mild winters and its dry, hot summers — and do so at varying heights.

“We may train them on some vines in the nursery,” Mr. Eggleston said. “About 50 percent of the windows we need to shade every summer. You can’t take little seedlings up there in Year 1, because you won’t have anything up there for five years.”

Sign in to Recommend More Articles in US » A version of this article appeared in print on January 31, 2010, on page A16 of the New York edition.

via nytimes.com

Love this rendering of a folded green wall by SERA Architects.

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Uncategorized Shortlink

Light Tartans as Landscape / artreview.com

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Light Tartans

Single frame time exposure photographs created at night using an 8 foot fluorescent lamp with color gels travelling on an installation of a custom metal track system. Step and repeat to cover landscape in real time.

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via artreview.com

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Kitsap Conference Center Musical Fountain @ Night

My friend Phuong Phan-McManamna sent me more photos, this time of the musical water feature at the Kitsap Conference Center at Bremerton Harborside. Thanks again! It is fun to see these night shots. Originally the lights were all supposed to be white but the city maintenance crew added some colored filters for the holidays. I wasn’t so sure about the color at first but it looks pretty good.  The water feature is choreographed to Big Chill era songs like “What a Wonderful World” and “Unchained Melody”.

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Photo credit: Phuong Phan-McManamna

architecture, art, Fountains, water Shortlink

Women of Water : Naiads

via en.wikipedia.org

See the wiki article for an overview of the variety of types of Naiads (nymphs) that preside over fountains, wells, springs, streams and brooks.

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Los Angeles River – South (Downtown – Long Beach)

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The rain finally broke yesterday and I was able to go on a FoLAR (Friends of the Los Angeles River) sponsored Los Angeles River tour that covered the south half of river from downtown out to the harbor in Long Beach. This is a section of the river that I didn’t know as well, since it is farther away from where I live. It was a gorgeous day and you could see the snow capped mountains in the distance at many of our stops along the river.

We stopped first in downtown Los Angeles at a section of the river that is frequently used in filming movies and TV shows. I believe the car chase in Grease was filmed in this section of the river. Then we headed to Maywood where we visited a new neighborhood park that is right up against the river. After that we had a quick stop at Compton Creek but the gates were locked due to the recent flooding. Compton Creek a soft bottom tributary of the LA River. After that we tacos and then stopped at at the constructed wetland next to the LA River in North Long Beach. This was my favorite stop. The river is wider here and they have build great bike paths and bridal trails along the river. Parallel to the river, and right next to it, is a lnear constructed wetland. There were a bunch of people on horse back riding along the river. I’ll write more about this part of the river in a later blog post. And finally we stopped an the constructed wetland at the harbor near the Queen Mary. I expected to see a lot of trash at the last stop but it has all been washed out to sea by the storms.

Here are a few of the images of the trip. Click on any of the photos below to see the whole set on Flickr.

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Link: 20 Most Incredible Desert Oases [pics]

via environmentalgraffiti.com

I just came across this post on http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com on Desert Oases. Some of the pictures are quite stunning…

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architecture, landscape, Uncategorized, water Shortlink

Weekly Tweets @BREAK_urban 2010-01-23

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UNESCO Interactive Map

I came across this great interactive MAP that let’s you zoom in on all the UNESCO World Heritage sites word wide. Try it out!

architecture, art, travel Shortlink

Hello Kitty Fountains by Tom Sachs

via schemamag.ca

Last year, I had an unexpected layover in NYC on the way from LA to Istanbul. Wandering around the city for a few hours I came across a series of Hello Kitty fountains, that were kind of tucked under a building. A little research led me to the artist, Tom Sachs.

I particularly remember this one with tears coming out of Hello Kitty’s eyes. It is a great example of an artist made water feature. It is really fun. Being a fountain designer, I remember thinking that I wished that the streams of tears were laminar and that they could be choreographed… Shooting, choreographed tears would be so cool.

READ MORE: Schema Magazine article on Hello Kitty Fountains

art, Fountains, water Shortlink

Bremerton Harborside Fountain Park in Winter

Last week I got back in touch with a classmate that I hadn’t seen since we were in high school together at Laurel School, in Cleveland. Phuong Phan-McManamna is now an architect and LEED AP in Seattle. She and her family now live in Bremerton, Washington and like to play at the Bremerton Harborside water features.

Phuong sent me these pictures that she shot at Bremerton Harborside Fountain Park earlier this week. She is an amazing photographer. It is really hard to capture water. I love the sparkly holiday lights reflecting across the pools. The whole park looks like a  magical winter wonderland. I haven’t been up to Bremerton during the holidays so it was really exciting to see these pics. Thanks Phuong! It is great to be back in touch.

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Photo credit: Phuong Phan-McManamna

architecture, art, Fountains, landscape, water Shortlink

Artist Statement

I don’t make paintings/drawings/collages.
I make places; ground.

The places I create have multiple periods of occupation. The geology and archeology of the land is evident in the stacking, layering, repetition, rules, erasure.

Time, weather, water, gravity, pollutants act as outside forces changing the place. Chance, disaster, intuition, occupation, imposed rules offer new opportunities for change.

Never truly “finished” these places are frozen in time, a snapshot of a place at a particular moment in history. Looking into them you might see hints of what they were before and what they may become in the future.

Patty Hume | Art Shortlink

A Rare Luis Barragán Fountain at an L.A. Home?

See full post at apartmenttherapy.com.

Luis Barragán is one of my favorite architects and the possibility that he may have designed this residential fountain in Los Angeles is really exciting. I came across this article in the LA Times Home and Garden section last year. I’d love to see it in person…

More on Luis Barragán: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Barrag%C3%A1n

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It is Time for Red Cross Training

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I have been thinking about taking a CPR class for years and finally around to signing up for an 8 hour Adult CPR and Standard First Aid class offered by the Red Cross.

I took the class last Monday, coincidently the day before the huge earthquake devastated Haiti. Watching the news since the, I realized that even with my very basic training that I could give some level of aid in an emergency if something were to happen in Los Angeles or wherever I may be. It is a good feeling.

What was the class like?
There were about 25 people in my class, 22 of them were there because their jobs required them to be certified. I was one of the few people who signed up on my own. The instructor that often times when he polls people that everyone is there because their job requires them to be certified. The Red Cross recommends that someone in every household should have basic First Aid and CPR Training. So it is clear that a lot more people should be volunteering to get the training.

In the morning session we learned about conscious choking, CPR and AED. We took turns performing CPR & AED on dummies. We did a lot of role-playing and critiquing peoples responses. In the afternoon we focused on First Aid. Our classroom looked kind of like a field hospital with people being bandaged and splinted on the floor. We learned how to make splints out of trash or whatever was handy. Much of it was very basic but it gave me the confidence to know that I would be responding to a situation correctly.

Find a Red Cross class near you.

coaching, medicine Shortlink

Snaps: Driving into Los Angeles in Rain


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Here are some of the 700 pictures I took as we drove back home from Palm Springs in a storm.

art, California, landscape, Los Angeles, Pictures, travel Shortlink

Weekly Tweets @BREAK_urban 2010-01-16

tweets Shortlink

Restored Creek + Fountains of Cheonggyecheon, Seoul

800px-Seoul_Cheonggyecheon_river g130118_u42682_mayor_cheonggyecheon-full Right: Mayor Lee of Seoul

When I was in Korea last spring a colleague took me to visit Cheonggyecheon, a restored creek and greenway in Seoul. We stopped on the way to dinner, so I didn’t get the time to explore the entire length of the project, but what I saw was really exciting. Seoul is a vast, modern almost endless city where neighborhoods seem to go on and on and blur into one another. The creek/greenway really grounds and created a sense of place and order within this district. And it is magical when it is all lit up at night.

In 2003, Mayor Lee (see photo above) initiated the project to demolished a raised expressway, daylighting the creek below, and sculpting and transforming it into a series of water expressions. It is a long linear park, in the spirit of the Highline in NY and other creek and river project worldwide.

The genesis of the creek is a fountain with a field of frothy jets. The water pours over a cascade and water wall initiating the water way. Parts of the creek are very angular and urban, other parts are much more naturalized with significant vegetation continuing right up to the water. At various points along the creek there are water jets creating ephemeral fountains. Near the amphitheater there is a large ambient show. In other places spouts of water pop up from time to time. SEE LINK BELOW FOR MORE PICTURES

Visit my Flickr Gallery of Cheonggyecheon (18 images + comments!)

[mappress]

MORE

Wikipedia page on Cheonggyecheon
Guardian article on Cheonggyecheon
lacreekfreak blog post on Cheonggyecheon

Official website of Cheonggyecheon

Fountains, landscape, water Shortlink

Craftzine.com blog : Rug Weavers of Kerman, Iran

via blog.craftzine.com

This is a great short post on the process of weaving a traditional rug in Iran.

Posted via web from Patty’s posterous

Uncategorized Shortlink

Just made a Posterous blog to aggregate my online data

I am changing my name soon and I will be going by Patty Hume.

Read my personal blog posts at:
http://whereintheworldispatty.com

Tweeting: @PattyHume  & @BREAK_urban

via pattyhume.posterous.com

Anyone using Posterous? I am curious how more serious social media users are using it for SEO.

Posted via web from Patty’s posterous

Uncategorized Shortlink

I now own 12 square inches of Detroit

lovelanddeed

I just purchased 12 square inches of land in Detroit as part of the Loveland project. I was fortunate not to have to take out a loan as this investment only set me back $12 dollars.

I have so many ideas for Detroit. I want to build something that will help promote tourism in the rust belt.

The deed and exact location will be mailed to me. More on this soon…

Interested in buy a pocket sized piece of Detroit? LOVELAND

art, landscape Shortlink

Join the Angelino Heights Facebook Group

angelino-heights-downtown-la--large-msg-11825632093

It is my dream to be able to walk to a lot of friends houses. We now have a Facebook group for people that live in Angelino Heights (Echo Park, Los Angeles). If you live around here please join and invite your friends.

NOTE: This group replaces the now defunct Angelino Heights MeetUp group.

Join the Facebook group

Echo Park, Los Angeles Shortlink

Weekly Tweets @BREAK_urban 2010-01-09

tweets Shortlink

Water Walls of Roberto Burle Marx

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Here are some pictures of water walls by Roberto Burle Marx that I have taken in Venezuela (c.2001) and Brazil (c.2009).

I find it particularly interesting to see the types of water expressions that he associated with the walls. Most of the time, water walls have some sort of water sheeting over the face of them. RBM does this in one case at Sitio Roberto Burle Marx, but most of the water wall examples have more unusual water expressions associated with them, such as falling water and sprays of droplets.

Parque del Este opened in 1961.
Sitio Roberto Burle Marx (his estate) was an ongoing project. I am not sure the exact dates of the water walls. He moved there full time in 1973. Does anyone know?

Note: In most of the cases the water walls are not operating in the photos, so you have to use your imagination a little. Click on any the images below to read my comments on each wall in Flickr.

Fountains, landscape, water Shortlink

Paintings + Collages

pinkpatch1b

art Shortlink

Snaps: Emscher Park, Germany

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I visited Emscher Park, in Duisberg, Germany in May of 2000. Backpacking in Europe by myself,  I made a trip to Duisberg just to see the park.  I think it was only a year or two old at the time. Peter Latz, the landscape architect, was teaching at PENN at the time. I was going to silkscreen t-shirts that said ” I heart Emscher Park” when I got home that summer but I never got around to it.

There are a lot of wonderful details in the park: thick industrial walls cut as doorways, garden rooms, unexpected views, and simple playscapes for kids.  I didn’t like how tied down all the trees were but I think it is sort of a German aesthetic.

If you are interested in learning about the brownfield aspects of this project check out the EPA website: Emscher Park Case Study | Brownfields and Land Revitalization | US EPA.


architecture, landscape, water Shortlink

Walk: Hyperion Avenue

IMG_1777

Here are some of the highlights of a walk we took yesterday from Intelligensia (@Sunset Blvd & Santa Monica) up to Ballar Hardware on Hyperion Avenue, in Silverlake. Most of the pictures are taken along a one mile stretch of Hyperion that is not very walkable. I have driven it a 1000 times but couldn’t really remember anything that was on that part of the street. Walking the street allowed us to discover all sorts of interesting moments. Not only did we see a lot of architectural and landscape details but we found 3 restaurants that we want to check out: Barbrix (wine bar), Vietnamese Soy Cafe, & Casito del Campo.

Slick on any of the images to see more on Flickr.

landscape, Los Angeles, walks Shortlink

Weekly Tweets: Los Angeles 2010-01-02

  • 12 things that became obsolete this decade: http://bit.ly/5uM7qZ land line, FAX, film, hand written letters, CDs, classifieds, encyclopedia #
  • Gracias!! RT @ParqueDelEste: Que bien ! RT @whereispatty Land/Arch Pics: (…) @Parque del Este – Roberto Burle Marx http://bit.ly/56XfZS #
  • Dishes from @heathceramics packed in Expandos – green alt to popcorn. Check it out Video: http://bit.ly/6jAzOq http://bit.ly/63FgdN #
  • More: Apartment Therapy post on ExpandOS . http://bit.ly/6S28sf – Crate & Barrel uses them too! #
  • Decade in Design (year by year): http://bit.ly/8SiKd1 #
  • Neighborhood branding. "What if there was a lower west side?" http://bit.ly/8DXiBG #
  • interesting @narrowstreetsla altered pics of LA Streets to make them narrower. Sunset Blvd: http://bit.ly/5J36Rg + http://bit.ly/6Ysz3m #
  • XBox for xmas… and suggestions on fun games to play? I am more into Tetris/Space Invaders /Pacman then killing people in 3-D #
  • Just made reservations @parkrestaurant for New Year's Eve! #
  • Cubicles are the Phone Booths of the Future : Essay by @benjamin_gran http://bit.ly/5oTCMk #
  • SO… I decided to change my last name when I get married in 2010. I am changing my name to Patricia Ann Lundeen Hume… or Patty Hume. #
  • too bad RT @highlysocial: Sixth artLA show, faced with poor economy and new competition, is canceled http://bit.ly/5PUHbQ #
  • 2010 resolution: Buy a reusable water bottle + use it! 80% of 28 billion single serve bottles end up n landfills. Sigg: http://bit.ly/75fcmF #
  • Good for u! RT @_bkt: down with internet censorship! just made an official request for Dubai to UNBLOCK flickr.com #
  • Happy New Year everyone! Have a great 2010! #
  • #tenyearsago today I passed out in a grocery store in W. Phili. EMT thought I might be pregnant. I was not. #
  • #tenyearsago I lived at Spruce and 45 St, in Phili and was finishing grad school at PENN and working at Rohm & Haas as a web designer #
  • If you are interested in my landscape/architecture/ water /urban posts please follow me at @BREAK_urban. #
  • I am changing my last name to Hume when I get married soon. I am starting to transfer my online identity over in preparation. #
  • if you want 2 continue reading my personal tweets please follow me @PattyHume – I am going to stop broadcasting from @whereispatty soon #
  • The water features of Villa d'Este, Tivoli, Italy: http://bit.ly/8BKjZu #fountainfriday #waterfeature #
  • Thanks tetris splash looks great! RT @partymomma tetris splash #
tweets Shortlink

Patty Lundeen = Patty Hume

Yes, that is right, I am changing my name when I get married in early 2010. My name will change from Patricia Ann Lundeen to Patricia Ann Lundeen Hume, or more commonly Patty Hume.
I am getting a jump start on the process by changing my online identity and starting to get people used to my new name. I am calling this Phase 1. Phase 2 is changing my bank accounts, drivers license, ss, passport, legal documents, credit cards, contracts, etc.

There is probably well over 100 documents I need to change. I don’t mind changing it conceptually but it is a pain and time consuming. I’m pretty sure that if men changed their names when they got married that it would make it easier. For example, the Social Security Administration could contact all the other government agencies and make a universal change. It would be so much simpler. Currently they only let the IRS know.

Internet, Wedding Shortlink

Fountain Friday: Villa d’Este

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I took these photos of Villa d’Este in 2002, when I was in Italy for the Landscapes of Water conference in Barri.

Villa d’Este, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is a great hillside water estate, built between 1550-1572 in Tivoli, near Rome. The estate was commissioned by Cardinal d’Este.

Pirro Ligorio and Alberto Galvari designed the water features, Thomaso Chiruchi provided engineering and Claude Venard manufactured key equipment. The landscape and water features were partially inspired by the ruins of Emperor Hadrian’s villa Adriana which I also visited .

They claim that there are over 500 jet or water expressions within the garden, but I would guess there are about 10 main water features.  All the fountains are gravity fed from a source at the top of the hill. The water continues out of the garden to serve as a source of water for the village below.

Some of the most famous fountains at Villa d’Este:

  • Le Cento Fontane (The Terrace of 100 Fountains)
  • Fontana della Rometta (Fountain of Rome)
  • Fontana dell’Ovato (Oval Fountain)
  • (Fountain of the Dragon)
  • (Fountain of Diana of Ephesus)

Click on the pictures below to see them larger on Flickr and to read the comments.

Read more: Villa d’Este – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

architecture, Fountains, water Shortlink

Fountain Friday Series Begins

What is Fountain Friday?
Starting in 2010, every Friday I am going to be blogging about a different historic fountain or water feature. I want to skip around the world and through time to look at how people have used water features as social, economic, environmental and artistic engines. I am kicking off the series this week with pictures from my trip to Villa d’Este in Tivoli, Rome.

Are you on Twitter?
I will be posting links to the articles via Twitter with the hashtag #fountainfriday.
Follow my personal tweets @PattyHume  and/or my landscape/urban/water tweets @BREAK_urban

Know someone who would be interested in Fountain Friday? Send them a link to this blog!

Want to blog/tweet about water features too? Feel free to use the #fountainfriday hashtag.

Fountains, tweets Shortlink

Anderson – Christ – Klemm Family Pictures

00000176

Here are some of the family photos that I recently had scanned and then posted to Flickr. They all come from the estate of my maternal grandmother Marilyn Christ Anderson, from Bloomington, Illinois.

Bloomington, geneology, history, IL Shortlink

Weekly Tweets: Los Angeles 2009-12-26

  • Looking for awesome yet reasonable space to rent for party (100ish people) in Palm Springs October 2010. Ideas? #palmsprings #
  • Seeking pool side party venue palm springs. Ideas? #
  • Just bartered two extra XMAS stockings for two used tennis balls. I'm stoked. #
  • Scary : RT @sustaincities: The Burj Dubai as Storm Machine http://bit.ly/8s5Jk4 #
  • #upintheair made me cry. Good movie. #
  • I was mentioned in the Bremerton Patriot's 2008 year in Review. Go Bremerton! http://bit.ly/6ZIxZU #
  • Patty’s Top 10 Gift Ideas for Your Friends + Family who have Everything : http://bit.ly/64uGC0 #xmas #gifts #iwant #lists #
  • Is this the end of Christmas Cards?? I send about 50 each year. To me they are as important as the tree. http://bit.ly/5S7YhJ #
  • Real Christmas Trees "Greener" than Artificial – We we going to get bigger fake tree – maybe we should go real. http://bit.ly/6JTZUt #
  • Nice. Check out WET work at City Center. RT @_bkt: what ive been working on in vegas for the past month: http://j.mp/8JiDY7 #
  • Are dogs really bad for the environment? http://bit.ly/5fvVP9 #
  • Just signed up for a 1 day Red Cross First Aid + CPR class. I have been thinking about doing it for years… #
  • Land/Arch Pics: Univ. Central de Venezuela – Villanuena http://bit.ly/73WzeF + Parque del Este – Roberto Burle Marx http://bit.ly/56XfZS #
  • RT @BREAK_urban: Landscape Architecture : "The 'scape' is killing the profession." http://bit.ly/7ET6Jw #
  • RT @BREAK_urban: Predictions 2010: WSJ: http://bit.ly/6M58CO Econ Times: http://bit.ly/4sdYgk PR WEB: http://bit.ly/6Z9Hjw #
  • RT @BREAK_urban: Become a fan of BREAK_urban on Facebook: http://bit.ly/75mg7E #
  • Just secured the Twitter name @pattyhume for future use after I get married in a few months #
  • Merry Christmas!! And get off the computer already. #
  • RT @fountaineer: First things first, LOL RT @whereispatty : Secured the name @PattyHume for future use after I get married in a few months #
  • Merry Xmas Twitter friends! #
tweets Shortlink

Snaps: Universidad Central de Venezuela – Villanueva

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I love the Universidad de Venezuela. The campus is the masterpiece of architect Carlos Villanueva and in my opinion one of the most visually exciting campuses anywhere. Here are a few pictures from my visit in 2001.

Not only is the landscape and architecture really exciting, he collaborated with a number of international artists at the time to commission a number of monumental works. Off the top of my head I know that the largest Calder & Miro are permanent architectural installations. The Calder installation takes up the entire ceiling of the concert hall.

via Carlos Raúl Villanueva – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

architecture, art, South America Shortlink

Snaps: Parque del Este, Caracas

Here are a few pictures that I took at Parque del Este in Caracas in 2001. The park was designed by Roberto Burle Marx in 1956.

Berriz fig 2a derlas

architecture, landscape, Pictures, South America, water Shortlink

Patty’s Top 10 Gift Ideas

White Gift Box with Red Satin Ribbon Bow

- Tom Binh luggage: Excellent laptop bags, backpacks and luggage made in Seattle. I have the Smart Alec backpack and the Large Cafe bag. My backpack and computer bag look brand new after going to the moon and back. Great design, construction and customer service.

- Travel Powerstrips: Monster MP OTG400 BK Outlets To Go 4 Outlet Travel Power Strip (Black) This is what you need to charge a cell phone, ipod, camera, laptop, etc. in a hotel room when you only have one outlet. I always pack my travel powerstrip. It is a great gift for people who travel. They also have it in white!

- Baggu Bags: The best reusable shopping bags in a rainbow of colors. I always get compliments on my bags at the farmer’s market. They just came out with an extra large size perfect for laundry/drycleaning and a baby sized one.

- Happy Tape: I admit I have a tape fetish. You can find amazing patterned and solid colored Japanese tapes at this website. Their ten roll sets and tape dispensers make great gifts.

- Hammacher Schlemmer Electric Blanket: This electric blanket was probably the best gift I have ever received. You can’t even feel any wires in it. You can use it all year long. It is soft like a Muppet. I love my blanket.

- Moleskines: The best selection of Moleskine notebooks and planners is on the Moleskine website. The Moleskine Accordian File Folders and Classic Hardcovers make great gifts.

- Gift certificates for Mani/Pedi: at a location near your gift recipient. You can find a a great nail place on Yelp. You could even throw in some OPI nail polish or a manicure set.

- Letter openers: Everyone should have one handy where they open their mail. Here is a nice one from the MoMA store that doubles as a ruler.

- Fountain Pens: I prefer Waterman. They last a lifetime.

- Gift certificates to the Container Store: Who doesn’t need matching hangers? Or a lazy susan for spices? Or sticky hooks?

tweets Shortlink

Weekly Tweets: Los Angeles 2009-12-19

  • RT @botanybuddy: Gardeners- Approx 3/4 of botanical names commonly used (even by USDA) are invalid. Bookmark this site: http://www.itis.gov #
  • Great NYT article on how to get rid of cable + set up TV with a computer: http://bit.ly/6enER7 #
  • LOL – I thought life was 90% maintenance. RT @zappos: "Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it." -Lou Holtz #
  • Recycling posters: Downloadable /printable wheat paste posters to put on bins/trashcans: http://bit.ly/65dl58 #
  • Crazy: RT @BREAK_urban @Planetizen @ArchitectureMNP video from the top of the Burj Dubai, looking down [craziness]: http://bit.ly/1x6WWF #
  • Today: supervising grading & stair building, on-line shopping, attending 3 hour lecture for science teachers on effect of plastics on water #
  • Dear @Sephora, All I want for the holidays this year: OPI 212-Sephora (smoky black w iridescent, gold + copper glitter) #sephoraclaus #
  • Fancy USB Jewelry by Tonia Welter : http://bit.ly/8mJ0pt #tech #jewelry #
  • RIP Flight of the Conchords #
  • What you don't know about plastics and the oceans will freak you out. http://bit.ly/7fVlF0 #water #plastic #ocean #
  • THX- RT @BREAK_urban @fountaineer Anyone passionate about urban design, planning and redevelopment projects should #follow @BREAK_urban #
  • Is it the end of #xmas cards? I have only gotten 1 so far! http://bit.ly/4WrE3B #
  • Lumia, #Citycenter @fountaineer: Looks like H20 @ LEX Courthouses Plaza RT @jenleo: Las Vegas WET fountains http://bit.ly/8APfpmity Center #
  • Melt this… Insane WET ICE feature @ #CityCenter, Las Vegas: http://bit.ly/56BzX2 #art #
  • Elin Nordegren spokesperson for Puma? Ha. Rad — http://bit.ly/6SDtSd #
  • Octopus snatches coconut and runs – http://bit.ly/4QUIGA #
  • World’s Largest LED Project – Hotel in Abu Dhabi – Yas : http://bit.ly/6Eu7Nr #
  • My fiance @johnny66 told me this morning that I should "let my freak flag fly" – he was speaking of my professional freak flag #
  • Yeah. RT @zappos: "Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake." -Henry David Thoreau #
  • "Click-Out" art of Swedish artist Michael Johansson : http://bit.ly/52wwdQ #
  • Awesome. RT @TheEastsiderLA: Animal rights group PETA will open expanded LA office w 40+ workers in Echo Park #
  • #PETA relocating to #echopark !!!!!! I think we may now be the most vegan neighborhood in America. – http://bit.ly/7kSwYY #
tweets Shortlink

Michael Johansson – BOOOOOOOM! * ART

Michael Johansson – BOOOOOOOM! – CREATE * INSPIRE * COMMUNITY * ART * DESIGN * MUSIC * FILM * PHOTO * PROJECTS.

architecture, art, consumer Shortlink

Do you EOM?

One of my favorite quick hacks is EOM (End of Message).
If you send someone or a group of people an email you can write a short message in the Subject line and them type EOM at the end. The person reading the subject line in their email knows that there is no text in the email and that they don’t even need to bother opening it. It essentially turns an email into a text message.

Uncategorized Shortlink

Weekly Tweets: Los Angeles 2009-12-12

  • Business class and #airtran are a contradiction in terms. No movies, no meals, wahhhh. #
  • #thingsIlove : #water #muji #mandarinaduck #lariver #pizza #madmen #owls #tomatoes #yellowcurry #frye #BA #LA #echopark #bookclub #kuna #NYC #
  • Reading article in #afar mag re: bog snorkeling competition. Dirty job but someone needs to pull out the ancient bog people #
  • RT @fountaineer: Hopefully WETs fountains at City Center will bring respect back to that property. I'm eager to go back there now. #
  • ! RT @TEDchris: Impressive. 56 newspapers create a single editorial plea to mark the launch of the Copenhagen summit http://bit.ly/8xgZVr #
  • watch – 12 min you will always remember – Sunitha Krishnan's fight against sex slavery http://bit.ly/5UuPaK #
  • MIT team wins Darpa's treasure hunt in less than one day http://bit.ly/7eq2cK #
  • Streetcars coming to your city??? http://bit.ly/8ETVFv #
  • So does #CORN – RT @uncouthgourmand: Bacteria has a great sex life. #
  • I'm all for waterfront development but call me a skeptic, no critical mass : Cleveland Looks to Remake Waterfront – http://bit.ly/4nG9xu #
  • Water Is The New Oil says Steven Solomon, writer of "Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization" : http://bit.ly/4tTzBn #
  • Everytime I go to the newstand I miss #Domino #
  • If you miss Domino Magazine check out the new online Lonny Magazine: http://bit.ly/rnSjO #
  • Rainbow over LA River : http://bit.ly/5nZ4Pe #
  • If you miss Domino Magazine check out the new online Lonny Magazine: http://bit.ly/rnSjO #
  • Hipsters repaint bike lanes in brush off to Hasids – Brooklyn http://bit.ly/4BJOSG #
  • Signed up for knitting website #raverlry http://bit.ly/6ufLDX #
  • To everyone who wonders what Twitter is good for – I tweeted bookclub is reading Foie Gras Wars + the AUTHOR @MarkCaro tweeted me back! #
  • 7 Most Mind-Blowing She-Daredevils in History – check it out :http://bit.ly/58SgGQ #
  • Listen to NPR story on Charles Babbage – he designed a computer in the 1840's: http://bit.ly/8XUVd2 #
  • Read the Text of Obama's Nobel acceptance speech. It is a great discussion on war and peace: http://bit.ly/4DmmcO #
  • Great idea – Alyssa Milano uses her birthday to raise $ for #water #UNICEF \\ http://bit.ly/4Byld7 #
  • Bring one to Echo Park ! RT @lastreetcar: Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard has secured $250k for LA: Streetcars http://bit.ly/90MltX #
  • Most amazing salad dressing ever – Miso Mayo – you can put it on everything! So Good!!!! In LA, buy at Nature Mart – http://bit.ly/57N7R8 #
  • Most amazing condiment ever – Miso Mayo – you can put it on everything! So Good!!!! Get at @WholeFoods – http://bit.ly/57N7R8 #
  • Our wedding blog is up: http://bit.ly/4zIy1n #
  • RT @KohlerPR: Kohler got fed grant 4
    energy-efficiency. lights, kilns, Kohler will use $ to cut company's energy use http://bit.ly/812YkZ #
  • I've been doing this for 23 years – Eat less meat and dairy to fight climate change : http://bit.ly/8eZSe0 #
tweets Shortlink

Addicted to Miso Mayo – Get Some

This stuff is so good!

cooking, Veggie Restaurants Shortlink

Come Tweet with Me

Tweet, tweet, tweet. Everyone seems to be hopping on Twitter lately. I have been getting a lot of question: How does it work? Is it useful? What can I do with it? What do all these things mean: @, #, RT?

I briefly tweeted a few years ago, before it was uber popular. At the time I didn’t know that many people on Twitter and getting my family and friends to sign up was like pulling teeth. Back in those days people primarily got updates via text message which I ultimately found messy and distracting. So I gave up on it and said some bad things about Twitter.

But Twitter has evolved in many ways over the last couple of years. One of the fundemental changes is that most users use Twitter applications to manage their feeds either on a computer or phone. So I decided to give Twitter another chance a few months and started tweeting @whereispatty & @BREAK_urban.

Initially I was motivated to tweet because I wanted to send micro-updates to my blogs while we were on a trip in South America. It worked great for this purpose allowing me to be sending updates from my Iphone as we hiked through the jungle in Brazil. But I quickly found other ways to make use of Twitter:

-keeping tabs on what is happening in landscape/urban design/water fields (much quicker than reading 25 blogs everyday)
-answering obscure questions (Example- What is a good WordPress blog to use for a wedding blog? @Geekybride had the answer)
-Local Echo Park news (traffic jams, specials at neighborhood restaurants, classes, sales at boutiques, police reports, etc.)
-Status updates from friends (like Facebook)
-Links to interesting articles
-Making unexpected connections. I tweeted that my book club was going to read the Foie Gras Wars and the author @MarkCaro tweeted me back!
-Quick research. You can instantly get a thousand movie reviews for something that just opened that day.
-Direct connection to customer service. I sent message to @tombinh that I lost a zipper pull on my backpack and they sent me a replacement ASAP.
-Business development and networking with people you might want to know
-Humor! There are some really funny people on Twitter. Try @rainnwilson or follow the discussion between the FAKE Mad Men characters @bettydraper/rolodex

Internet, tweets Shortlink

Our Wedding Blog is Online

If your into mushy stuff, check out our wedding blog for all the updates: Patty + Jonathan’s Wedding Blog
Picture 1

Wedding Shortlink

Weekly Tweets: Los Angeles 2009-12-05

tweets Shortlink

YouTube: Insane Wave Pool in Japan

Insane Wave Pool

I had a dream I was in this wave pool last night. It was really scary.

Video, water Shortlink

Weekly Tweets: Los Angeles 2009-11-28

  • Catalog Choice – great website where you can opt out of catalogs you don't want to receive, or change address – http://bit.ly/5JsDlb #
  • Just finished Girls Like Us : Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon–And the Journey of a Generation. GREAT READ. http://bit.ly/6pnCZD #
  • New Twittelator – just out – supports lists #
  • RT @thealisonbecker In NY, I am constantly trying to get rid of change – In LA, I am constantly trying to get it. #
  • RT @stellaimhult empty google wave. #
  • There is a name for our crazy hedge that has all types of stuff growing in it – a "tapestry" screen. http://ow.ly/Fbks #
  • Got a pizza stone in the mail from King Arthur Flour. So Excited. #
  • The Walking Paths of Brasilia – blog post on footpaths / desire lines people take across modernist city http://bit.ly/7jPLb8 #
  • Listening to Roberta Flack while I do office work. http://bit.ly/6bPD5W #
  • Yeah, that is how I feel about 1/2 my posts – RT @johnny66: lazy + twitter = LITTER #
  • Just send email to #Muji begging them to open a store in LA. What are we, a 3rd world city? #
  • I also regularly email Trader Joe's and Whole Foods trying to get them to open a store in Echo Park. Yeah, OK it might be gentrification. #
  • #Madmen fans: read this interview with the woman who plays Carla http://bit.ly/4DJvF7 #
  • Dubai World Asks for Time to Reorganize Debts: http://bit.ly/63OWCz #
  • RT @Cameron7183 "For with you is the fountain of life: in your light we will see light." (Psalms, 36, 9) #
  • I used #Shazam to discover Mulatu by Mulatu Astatqé http://www.shazam.com/music/web/track?id=44263062 #
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Weekly Tweets: Los Angeles 2009-11-21