refrain

The vertebrae texts of my architecture criticism are now Ruskin, The Nature of Gothic, a Wendell Berry collection called The World-Ending Fire, and Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death. And lots and lots of short readings and other media in between. I’m pleased with this historical sweep and its gathering of material culture criticism (buildings, landscape and locality, technology) as social criticism, especially by three men who are politically uncategorizeable. My students are open, game, still pliable. I may just recite to them, weekly, the message: it’s never too late to become more of a human being, less of a machine.