Modern life

ORWELLIAN

In a 1946 essay on politics and the English language, George Orwell criticized pretentious diction and meaningless words. “Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable, are used to dignify the sordid process of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic color, its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion. Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, gleichschaltung, weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture and elegance.” What would he have made of today’s slew of popular adjectives: social (distancing),

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THE BEDPAN LINE

I spent some time in a hospital room recently, visiting. The atmosphere was distinctly technological: screens, flashing lights, mechanical beds, not to mention numerous pharmaceuticals. I was brought up short by the appearance of a device that was more Florence Nightingale than Big Pharma: a bedpan. The bedpan was plastic, but I’d always thought of them as glazed metal. Early bedpans were made of ceramic and were heavy affairs. A famous bedpan, made of pewter, belonged to Martha and George Washington, but the device is much older than the Colonial period. The Science Museum in London has a collection of old British and French bedpans,

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ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN

A musician friend sent me a recent article in the Telegraph reporting that “Musical notation has been branded ‘colonialist’ by Oxford professors hoping to reform their courses to focus less on white European culture . . . Academics are deconstructing the university’s music offering after facing pressure to ‘decolonise’    the curriculum following the Black Lives Matter protests.” According to the British newspaper, music professors said the classical repertoire taught at Oxford, which spans works by Mozart and Beethoven, focuses too much on ‘white European music from the slave period.’” Actually, Habsburg Austria-Hungary, where the pair lived and worked,

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THE TROPICAL SHIRT

In a colloquium that took place during the 2016 Driehaus Prize ceremonies in Chicago, Andrés Duany made an interesting observation. He pointed out that Florida Panhandle resort towns such as Seaside, Rosemary Beach, and Alys Beach—all planned by his firm DPZ—were actually urban experimental testbeds with potentially long-term effects. “Americans are willing in the circumscription of a resort experience to try anything,” he said. He speculated that the people who holidayed in these walkable, dense, traditionally designed resort towns—so different from their everyday suburban communities—were affected, that is changed, by the experience. Now, I’m a great admirer of the Seaside prototype,

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PLUS ÇA CHANGE

As one gets older one tends to spend an inordinate amount of time visiting hospitals. Ours is Pennsylvania Hospital, which bills itself as “the first in the nation” and was co-founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1751. The original building was designed in 1754 by Franklin’s friend, Samuel Rhoads (1711-84), a self-taught carpenter/architect. Rhoads, who was later a delegate to the First Continental Congress and would serve as the city’s mayor, laid out two wings connected to a central pavilion. Only the east wing, a sturdy Georgian brick structure, was built before the Revolution. The west wing and the central pavilion,

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HATS

The old Lit Brothers department store (built and expanded between 1859 and 1918) on Philadelphia’s Market Street has a sign over one of its corner entrances, that has always puzzled me. HATS TRIMMED FREE OF CHARGE is embossed into the metal fascia of the canopy. It’s the only such sign. But whose hats, men or women? Did it refer to a hat bought in the store, or was it—as I suspected—an enticement to walk in and get your hat “trimmed,” whatever that meant? And why was this procedure so important—and so common—that it had to be emblazoned over the store entrance?

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ROADBLOCKS

The pandemic lockdown has turned me into a podcast listener. One of my favorites is GLOP Culture, with Jonah Goldberg, Rob Long, and John Podhoretz. In a recent conversation about woke bullying at the New York Times and Slate, Long made an interesting observation. There are too many wannabe journalists chasing too few jobs. What if wokeness is simply an expression of careerism, the young finding a way to make room for themselves by pushing out the old? A recent wokey article in Architect magazine, the official journal of the AIA,

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THE AFTER TIME

A lot has been written about the effect of Covid-19 and the associated year-long shutdown, on cities. The present situation is dispiriting: so many of the amenities that attracted people to cities in the first place—theaters, museums, ball parks, restaurants, bars—are either closed or half-closed. Too many businesses have gone out of business. Municipal tax revenue is down; municipal social costs are up. Commuting is down; crime is up. Tourism—a number one industry in many cities—is down; homelessness is up. Most urban commentators have reverted to their priors. Advocates of decentralization see a further shift to suburban living; digital seers see more work at home;

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