bisuburbanality

Lovely morning. Not warm, nice spring chilly. I got out fairly early for a Saturday and wasn't able to get a haircut appointment before 10:30 so I meandered over to the Center to get the weekly rags: HX, Next, Gay city news, Blade, Philadelphia gay news. Really good walking temperature. And still it wasn't 10:30 and St Mark's Bookshop doesn't open until 10. I sat on a bench in Cooper Square but with construction on two or three sides, it wasn't good diary writing or reading space. Off to St Mark's where I found Worlds away: new suburban landscapes. Why is it that if I love walking the city streets so much that I am also drawn to studies of suburbanization process. Is it just that land use and human geography are so much a part of sprawl, strip stores, Googie architecture, etc. Or is it because I'm a Gemini? Christina Peter and I had quite a conversation last night at NYTSL about how we're not overly astrological but recognize that one's sign is reflected in our life course. Her folks said she was a bad Leo and good ... can't remember. She's not aggressive enough to be a normal Leo but has some of the characteristics.

Worlds away has a wonderful lexicon of "suburban neologisms" by Rachel Hooper and Jayme Yen (p. 270-288). It's in the salmon-colored pages. There are also green, blue, ochre, gray, and white pages. I bought the book partly because I knew Laura Migliorino had some works illustrated but also because it's aesthetically pleasing. It's published by the Walker Art Center and was designed by Andrew Blauvelt and Chad Kloepfer. Laura's photos are of families overlain on their domestic setting. The Walker bought a copy of "Egret Street" a year or two ago.

Sitting in Cooper Square was a bit of future tripping. The Technical Services Department is scheduled to move out of the Bobst Library building at the end of the year. Bobst is the central library for NYU, and NYU's libraries are fairly central so there aren't lots of branches though Courant, IFA, and REI aren't dinky operations to be sneezed at. Anyway, we're moving because zoning won't allow NYU to develop any new classrooms East of Broadway. Our space in Bobst is therefore to be converted to classrooms and we'll get windows. The building at 20 Cooper Square looks like a nice loft/warehouse building. Unfortunately, the space can't be ours permanently and we'll have to move in a couple years again. Since the office culture could use a good jolt, I'm hoping that the new environment will be a good jolt. What are the chances of that? A few weeks ago, I would have accepted a retirement offer in a second; recently, I've been feeling more optimistic. ARLIS/NA conference? Visiting with Geurt Imanse who was in town last week? Spring? Or just the Gemini flow?