My writing has appeared on the ArchNewsNow.com web site run by Kristen Richards, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in New York City last night. I invited her up to see my view. On the 41st floor of our hotel, the Doubletree Suites at Times Square. No, my wife Victora and son Billy were there, too, looking out the window. Kristen gave me a copy of Oculus, the journal of the New York chapter of the American Institute for Architects, and right on the cover was Times Square under reconstruction, right below us. The crowds are even worse than normal, squishing onto 7th Avenue people who would normally be creeping down Broadway, which is torn up at this point.
Anyway, after the view, Billy and Victoria went off to visit her sister, who lives in the shadow of the Flatiron Building, and Kristen and I went to the roof garden of Donnelly’s, an Irish pub on W45th. Kristen’s a delight, everything you’d expect from a woman who takes seriously her journalism and its principle of objectivity – honored more in the breach, I think than otherwise. She’s modernist in her sympathies, and yet even though she has control of this global forum for writing about architecture, and could easily dump my stuff into her round file, she runs many of my columns and blog posts – in the face of predictable objections for modernists who don’t like any rain to fall on their cozy orthodoxy. So, of course, Kristen is one of my heroes and we had lots of fun chatting about … well, I won’t tell any stories out of school.
I also am unable to post a photo of Kristen taken while we were “entre booze” – any more than I was able to post George Ranalli’s community center. The computers at the business center at the Doubletree won’t let you copy photos on the web to other locations. Hmm. Kristen pointed out, regarding my camera, what I had not realized, that it has WiFi and can send photos – but it seems I’d have to download a … well, whatever it is, it is back in Providence in the box my camera came in. Oh well. I will try to do as I did with George’s building and link to a photo of Kristen. Here she is!
Well, so I thought. The computer would not let me copy (not even copy!) the link to a site topped by a photo of Kristen. But maybe I can type it into the link icon on wordpress. If so, it will be here. It is an interview of Kristen by the Association of Architecture Organizations.
