Category: The Friendly City
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Bookends
This week, on a First Friday, when the Friendly City filled with walkers exploring the art and music that sprang up all over downtown, I was struck by the way the character of the city seemed encapsulated by its two bookstores: Parentheses and Downtown Books.
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Looping
“You have to be very happy to live in a small city,” the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector once remarked, “because it enlarges happiness just like it enlarges unhappiness.”
Roses, Roots, Branches, Buds
When you first arrived in the city, you were struck by the ghostly atmosphere of the parking lot of Roses Discount Store. That was before you knew the history of this place. Now you can’t help wondering: can a landscape absorb the vibrations of an event, can a loss curdle the air, can stones speak?
Natural Light
Let’s go east up the hill today, then north along Jackson Street, on this keen, sharp-edged morning, when it feels good to climb up through the alleys dotted with azure speedwell.
In the Margin of the Margin
Public space is a border zone, made for everyone and no one.
The Porous Surface
In the Friendly City, March has many moods. It’s not just that it comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, as in the proverb. March is a grab bag of textures, featuring extremes of hardness and softness that seem unrelated, as if they’re happening not at different times but in different countries.
Frozen Children
Walk in any direction and you will find them: the frozen children of our town.
