Caminothoughts

2004-08-04T20:48:00.000-07:00

Peregrino at Alto do Roque
E. O. Pederson 2004

Ignorance

2004-08-04T16:06:00.000-07:00

The text of an email I sent to a local radio program on Station KUOW where the topic of the day was "pilgrimage"

"Ignorance of the third most important pilgrimage in the Christian world is appalling, evidence of the impoverished state of American education! According to legend, the remains of the Apostle James (Santiago) are buried in Santiago de Compostela in NW Spain. The legend is far too long and complex to recount here, but for over 1,000 years pilgrims, numbering in the millions over time, have trudged across Europe to Santiago. The pilgrimage was the key element in the forging of a common European culture, at least according to Goethe, and references to the Santiago pilgrimage are to be found in a huge array of European literary masterpieces including the Canterbury Tales and several Shakespeare plays. The route was designated by the European Community as the primary European Cultural Itinerary, and today it attracts thousands of pilgrims every year. This year is a holy year, for St. James day was on a Sunday (July 25th), and about million pilgrims are expected to visit Santiago. The pilgrimage is far more important in European culture and history than the better known (in the US at least) treks to Fatima and Lourdes, both products of the past couple of centuries.

I am an avowed atheist, but I have made the pilgrimage to Santiago twice, each time 30 days of walking from the French border, because the route provides an unparalleled view of our common heritage as Europeans. The scenery and the architecture are breathtaking, and the long walk, 20 miles or so each day, is a wonderful chance to think. It also happened to be a fantastic opportunity to meet people from all parts of the world. The city of Santiago de Compostela is one of the treasures of humanity, and it should be a must see for anyone interested in art, architecture, or European culture. Until the Reformation, the pilgrimage to Santiago, along with that to Rome, was to European culture and Christianity what the pilgrimage to Mecca is to Muslims."

The email was sent in response to a rather dismissive conversation the program host had earlier in the hour with a caller who was trying to describe her experiences. The host was well-aware of the Haj, the pilgrimage to Guadalupe in Mexico as well as a variety of new agey pilgrimages yet wholly ignorant of Santiago.

St. James Day

2004-07-25T20:02:00.000-07:00

Cannot let St. James' Day pass, especially as it is a Sunday in 2004, and thus this is a holy year in Santiago de Compostela. The front door of the cathedral is open, and today throngs of people have gathered in the Obradorio to celebrate. In some ways, I wish I could be there (or given that it is already tomorrow in Spain, that I could have been there). At my age and given my temperament, I am really not that fond of large crowds, so I probably would not have enjoyed being there.

Instead today I took a long solitary hike on the Pacific Crest Trail northward for about 8 miles from Chinook Pass. It was far more solitary that I expected, for aside from a couple with two dawgs, and about 5 other hikers, I encountered almost no one except at Sheep Lake, only about 1 1/2 miles from the parking lot and a popular picnic destination. That has been the story on all 4 hikes I have been able to make in the past few weeks, a near absence of crowds or even other hikers. On Thursday I hiked the PCT north to Lake Valhalla from Stevens Pass, and aside from 3 women with their 4 dawgs in the day use area at the lake, I encountered no one.

Today I did encounter my first through hiker of the year, a young man who is into ultralight walking. He has been on the trail for 3 months since starting at the Mexican border, with another 2-3 weeks of hiking to the Canadian border, yet his pack was only a little larger than my daypack for a 6 hour hike! He was using one odd thing, it made me notice him when he was still a mile or more away, an umbrella, useful on this bright and sunny day. I did not think to use sun screen (or an umbrella) and I have a bit of a sunburn in consequence!

Camino Articles

2004-07-19T10:43:00.000-07:00

In the past few days, and rather by accident, I came across two short pieces that some people with an interest in the Camino might want to read. Thanks to the late arrival of my subscription copy, I learned only yesterday of an article in the current Gramophone Magazine (July 2004, pp. 30-31), “Have Choir Will Travel” by James Jolly (The cover of the issue has the note “John Eliot Gardiner on Taking the Santiago Pilgrimage”). The article discusses a pilgrimage currently in progress by the British conductor John Eliot Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir. They are crossing France and Spain, beginning at Jaca walking some bits of the Camino, and presenting concerts in various venues enroute. On St. James Day they will be presenting a gala concert in Leon. Mr. Gardiner is one of the best known conductors of Bach’s music currently working, but the concerts still to come (several in France have already taken place) will include a number of composers more closely related to the pilgrimage. Anyone in the vicinity of the Camino with a love for vocal and choral music would be advised to make a detour to attend the concerts. I certainly wish I could attend one or more of them!

The second piece is in a collection by the political poet (mostly published in the Nation Magazine), food writer and humorist Calvin Trillin, “Pepper Chase” in Feeding a Yen (New York: Random House, 2003, ISBN 0-375-50808-2), pp. 17-30. The article is an amusing and mouth watering disquisition on the food of Galicia and in particular pimientos de Padron. The pimientos are an obsession with Mr. Trillin, one that began with an accidental visit to Santiago in the 1960s. He describes the market in Santiago, making it sound like it should be a necessary part of the pilgrimage. He also makes one hungry for the foods enjoyed at the end of the trek.

Yet another new Camino Book

2004-07-08T12:55:00.000-07:00

Picked up a new account of making the walk from Le Puy the other day, Conrad Rudolph, 2004, Pilgrimage to the end of the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-73125-1. The book is thin in both its metaphorical and the physical attributes, a mere 131 pp., and many of those are photographs, but for anyone thinking about making the walk, Pilgrimage to the End of the World would be an excellent first title to read. Mr. Rudolph is an art historian, and the contents of his book indicate that interest, but he was also a pilgrim on the long route, so he makes observations on many matters other than simply the art and architecture enroute.

Books on the Camino

2004-05-31T12:07:00.000-07:00

I have just discovered two books on the Camino, new to me even though I have tried to be comprehensive in seeking out titles, both of which appear to be interesting. Bettina Selby was a pilgrim in the early 1990s and began her walk from Vezelay. I always enjoy reading pilgrim journals and books in a journal style for they remind me of my walks and allow me to compare my experiences. The third edition of Michael Jacobs The Road to Santiago is a fine and quite portable guide to the artistic and specially the architectural marvels along the Camino Frances in Spain. I must buy a copy of the book sometime soon.

New Seattle Library continued

2004-05-25T14:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went back to the new library building just to be certain that my rather negative analysis of it was on the mark. While there, I realized that I had not been negative enough. I admit to having a touch of claustrophobia, and I find the book ramp a most unpleasant place to spend any time. Moreover, I intensely dislike elevators, especially for short ascents or descents. It is possible to reach the top of the building from the entrance areas via stairway and/or escalator. So far so good. And one can descend from the top floor reading room via the book stack ramps or a fairly well-located stairway to within a floor of the bizarrely named and even more bizarrely organized "mixing chamber." To get down to that space from the lower end of the book stack ramp, (or to descend to the book check-out facilities and the exits several floors lower), one must either take an elevator or else find a hidden stairway, one marked "emergency use only," to descend one level. From there stairs and escalators can be used to continue down to the exits. Yesterday, as the library was still holding its opening celebration, it was possible to find the stair because a volunteer was stationed close to the elevators, and the doorway to the stairs was open. I doubt the library can afford an employee just for that purpose once it is in normal operation. This peculiar circulation pattern (not too different from the circulation pattern in the Seattle Art Museum so disliked by Muschamp)strikes me as both unpleasant and more importantly unsafe.

Indeed, the whole safety issue and the problem of evacuating the building in an earthquake, fire or other emergency is bothersome. The structural integrity of the building is a scary issue. I am not an engineer, but I do know that books are heavy and a cube, apparently suspecned in midair, containing stacks capable of holding a million and a half items, presents a major engineering problem. I wish I believed it was effectively solved, but the collapse of the new terminal at CDG the other day suggests that audacious architecture, and risky engineering to bring it off, can present serious dangers. How safe is the new library in earthquake prone Seattle? And should a large earthquake occur or a fire break out, how difficult will evacuation prove? How difficult will it be to evacuate the building when an all but inevitable terrorism threat occurs or, worse, an act of terrorism occurs within the building?

The New Seattle Public Library

2004-05-23T20:16:00.000-07:00

Today the new building for the downtown headquarters of the Seattle Public Library was opened to the public for the first time. Despite receiving encomiums from several major architectural critics, none of whom will have to live with, to use or help to pay for the building and its inevitably expensive upkeep, the building is a disaster. In any reasonable sense, Koolhaas’ building is a truly obnoxious bit of blight in the center of Seattle, violating all aesthetic and social principles suggesting that a well-designed building should be sensitive to its context and suitable for the needs of its users. The building meets neither of those criteria. This intensely anti-urban structure would be much more at home surrounded by acres of chemically enhanced lawns, all of it enclosed inside electrified fences, serving as a state penitentiary.

It was amusing, if ultimately dispiriting, to read the architectural critics, for example New York Times critic Herbert Muschamp’s dismissal of the Art Museum as “rancid” and his description of the Experience Music Project circus tent as a dead, beached sea-monster even as he waxed ecstatic about the Koolhaas building. In the not too distant future the next New York Times architecture critic visiting Seattle is not unlikely to view the library building as a horrible blotch on the city’s landscape, worse than either of the other two because of its size and location as well as its completely unsatisfactory design for the use it has been put to. Among its traits, architectural criticism is the art of being sneeringly dismissive of all that is not au courant and in step with the latest fashions.

Soon enough the Koolhaas building will not be au courant, and within a decade, perhaps even within a year or two, the cost of upkeep and the dysfunction of the building are likely to be seen by Seattle city government and taxpayers as a burden, perhaps as an intolerable one. The building promises to be anti-functional in ways that cannot be afforded in a time of tight municipal budgets. Those budgets have already led to shortened library hours and periodic week-long closures. Ms. Jacobs, the city librarian, has shrilly stated on numerous occasions that the library operation budget is separate from the construction budget, and thus the costs of construction do not bear on library operations. True enough until now, but what about costs of maintenance and renovation costs to make the building functional, or at least not anti-functional, once it is occupied? Those are no longer construction but rather operational costs, and I have serious doubts the City Council or Seattle voters will be amenable to spending the multiple millions necessary just to make the building a tolerable place for library patrons and a decent place for those who work there.

Perhaps the city government will move the library into to some inexpensive warehouse building, or simply close the library altogether as has been proposed more than once. The Koolhaas library building could then be converted into a new city jail, the function for which its exterior appears to have been designed. The outside of the new library building looks like nothing so much as a deconstructed maximum security prison, the cell blocks exploded and piled randomly on top of each other with the diagonal grid of windows an out-of-scale chain link fence. The poorly articulated entrances are unwelcoming in the extreme, reminding one of movie visions of the gates of San Quentin, Sing Sing or Walla Walla, and saying “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”

While the aesthetics of the building are, to use Muschamp’s term “rancid,” serious criticism must be of how well it is likely to function, and the analysis is not promising. The main entrance was put on the 5th Avenue side, at the top of a steep grade usually avoided by pedestrians and at a maximum uphill distance from the bus tunnel exits and main downtown bus stops. The much more pedestrian friendly 4th Avenue side has but a tiny and uninviting entrance into the Children’s Department. Rarely has a central city public building, especially a library intended for intensive usage, been more deliberate in its disregard of, or perhaps in its outright contempt for, pedestrian access. Although there is nothing close to adequate parking for patrons inside the building, the design is a very suburban one and intended for those who enter through the parking garage, just like suburban shoppers in malls or prisoners who enter jails through underground garages unseen by the public.

Including a couple of marginally interesting general spaces, ones about as visually exciting as the entrance foyer at the new King County courthouse complex in Kent, the interior takes its design cues from shopping malls rather than from successful older libraries. Circulation patterns inside the building are far from readily apparent, just like the most up-to-date shopping malls where the design goal is to keep the customer a prisoner of commerce. Indeed the building is likely to be a nightmarish place for anyone with even the slightest touch of agoraphobia. The bizarrely named mixing chamber will soon be full of people who need answers to the simplest of questions, including all too frequently “how do I get out of this awful place?” The peculiar ramp used for shelving books, and the lack of adequate spaces within close proximity to the book stacks for stopping to browse through titles, make the library particularly unfriendly for research users, especially as the library insists on using the antiquated Dewey decimal system for shelving non-fiction titles. Dewey decimal classification frequently assigns books on similar topics radically different numbers and thus, with the collection ordered solely on that system, at great distances from each other on the book ramp. And each visit to the book stacks from the reading areas will require a patron to lug briefcases, laptops, overcoats, etc., for as in all public buildings there will be the usual “terrorism” panic along with problems of petty theft. Given the pathetic book and journal collection of the Seattle Public Library, serious research is clearly not one of its goals, so perhaps that is a moot issue.

It remains to be seen if glare will make reading in the various sitting areas all but impossible. The vast expanse of glass is not promising, but the difficulty and expense of cleaning it may in short order make the glare issue also moot, for the glass will soon enough become opaque with urban grime. Heat gain and problems of air circulation are also matters of concern. Will it take half the electricity production of the Skagit River dams just to keep the greenhouse-like building at a tolerable temperature during a warm and sunny summer? This afternoon with a little sun and a large number of visitors, it was close to uncomfortable. Will the stench of the unwashed street people who will soon call the library home, several of them were walking around looking for a place to settle when I visited today, make the air all but unbreathable unless the library becomes a ventilation wind tunnel as its continuous floor plan will facilitate? Will the escalators work, and if so will they become a noise generator just like the escalators in the old central library? Will noise levels in the vast hard-surfaced spaces make the building an aurally uncomfortable place to be, let alone allow it to be a decent place to read, think, and do research? These are but a few of the many technical problems any semi-competent architectural analyst should have asked long before construction began. The answers to those questions I have seen are not promising, and my first visit to the building suggests they were inadequately addressed. I fear the glamour of a “name” architect was so strong that any practical question was soon forgotten in the garish light emanating from celebrity.

Whatever the technical problems may be, and based on the experience reported with other Koolhaas buildings they are likely to be numerous and extremely expensive to repair, the interior of the building certainly does not show how very much money was spent on furnishings and interior design. The ticky-tacky finishes have the look of cheap materials purchased at a local Home Depot. Where they have color there are lurid and garish color schemes, including a dominant shade of nauseating green for circulation elements, a color which, if colors could make one sick, would be virulent indeed. The furniture looks as if it has been purchased in the lower price aisles at IKEA. It will be interesting to see what condition the furnishings are in by the end of the summer not to mention in a year or two. Lots of technological gimcracks, mostly of the kind that will not survive the first few years of hard usage, have been included. It is said that the building is a “dumb” one; that is it has few hard-wired technologies. If so, that is one of the building’s few virtues, for most of the new technology it currently contains will be outdated in two or three years, if it isn’t already. Libraries are notorious for adopting inadequate technologies, usually at the expense of an old, extremely useful and well-tested technology, the printed page still the best servant for most patrons’ needs.

There is a long and distinguished history of library building in the United States and abroad. From that history have come a few truly exceptional buildings, inspiring and functional at the same time. The Boston, New York and Los Angeles central public libraries and several major university libraries come to mind. . All of them have recognized that a library can contain works of art and it can have some artistic elements of the highest order as part of its design, but in the end it is, and must be if it is to function for the purpose it was built, a warehouse with sitting rooms attached. The history of libraries has led to some good and useful rules of design that are ignored at the risk of creating a library that fails to meet the needs of its patrons (and sometimes is also a truly awful place for its employees). The Koolhaas building has ignored or blithely pushed aside most of those rules. Whether, despite its design, it succeeds or not remains to be tested, but if I were asked to place money on a bet that it will be a miserable failure, I know how I would bet.

Camino of Thoughts

2004-05-22T12:55:00.000-07:00

I will on occasion post thoughts here about various matters relating to my personal interests. These include walking the Camino to Santiago de Compostela, architectural history, Spanish history, urban development, and higher education among other things.

This is a holy year in Santiago, for St. James Day falls on a Sunday, and though I am neither a Catholic nor religious, of late I have been thinking fondly about once again walking to Santiago. I have walked the route twice, in 1998 and in 2001, and found the experience to be a most wonderful one. Both my walks were not in years deemed holy years, and the Camino in Autumn was uncrowded (in a few days I shall post my logs for those walks). When July 25 falls on a Sunday and a holy year is declared, the main doors of the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela are opened, and many more pilgrims make the trek, or at least the last 100 kms of it than in a typical year. Already I have read reports about crowding at refugios (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Santiagobis/ ).
Anyway, I doubt that I shall have the chance to make the walk this year.

Meantime, in my free time I am reading lots of Spanish history, my current reading obsession. Yesterday I picked up a copy of a new book Stein, Stanley and Stein, Barbara H. 2003. Apogee of Empire: Spain and New Spain in the Age of Charles III, 1759-1789. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins. () At about 400 pages, it should occupy my reading hours for awhile. I shall post comments on the book as I read it.