The JHB was known as the “Plywood Skyscraper” after having faulty glass windows that would pop out during it’s construction in the 1970s.
Police were left closing off surrounding streets whenever winds reached 45 mph
Also interesting description of two 300-ton weights that sit on the 58th floor to damp swaying motions.
via wikipedia. Researched due to an article today about MIT suing Frank Gehry over the Stata Center.
I happen to be particularly fond of Puddingstone, the conglomerate rock found around Boston. It’s also the official rock of Massachusetts; specifically Roxbury Puddingstone.
It’s a nifty looking rock, or rather a collection of different rocks within a sedimentary rock.
It also has some fantastical elements:
Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a poem entitled The Dorchester Giant that describes Boston’s puddingstone being the result of the abandoned children of a giant flinging plum pudding about:
What are those lone ones doing now,
The wife and the children sad?
Oh, they are in a terrible rout,
Screaming, and throwing their pudding about,
Acting as they were mad.They flung it over to Roxbury hills,
They flung it over the plain,
And all over Milton and Dorchester too
Great lumps of pudding the giants threw;
They tumbled as thick as rain.
Puddingstone is also to be imbued with magical and protective powers. Herfordshire Puddingstone was used to cover the top of witch’s coffin to prevent her to escape in death.
There are so many overlapping assumptions and statements in this congressman’s statement it’s amazing. It’s also amazing how 40 years of history inures you to something viciously contested by minds great and small.
On September 21st [1964], Congressman Donald C. Bruce of Indiana lashed out at the Daisy and Ice Cream ads at a Republican Ward dinner. He suggested that the spots aided Soviet political goals by “repeating as fact a Communist-sponsored lie which for years has been Kremlin-directed propaganda aimed at neutralizing the American will to resist the Communist program for world conquest by promoting fear of ‘the bomb.’”
William Bernbach himself defended the Daisy spot in no uncertain terms to the New York Times in October of 1964:
“The little girl commercial was deplored on absolutely erroneous grounds. The central theme of this campaign—whether you like it or not—is nuclear responsibility. Perhaps that theme is not a tasteful one; there is no way to make death pleasant.”
The divisiveness of the ad seems understandable considering the studies of mortality awareness.
from CONELRAD’s history of Lyndon Johnson’s atomic responsibility, anti-Goldwater Daisy Ad. (via BoingBoing)
I’ve had these notes kicking around my desktop for a few weeks and just got around to typing them up into a cohesive post.
I’ve an avid participant of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center’s Tuesday Luncheon Series. On February 27, author Matthew Pearl gave a great talk on copyright in the nineteenth century; I have reordered and summarized the content, though you can listen to the full audio. Through analysis of the writings and motivations of numerous 19th century authors, publishers and tradesman, Matthew Pearl carried an interesting theme: the intellectual property rhetoric of pirates and thievery was pure artifice until the rhetoric itself was codified as law, or still in some cases, not. …read more
One evening, not far earlier than today, I was sitting upon Boston Common enjoying the last sloping rays of the day. As was my habit, I blissfully blocked out the city around me to better enjoy the feeble warmth of a setting sun.
Sometime in this I was taken unawares by a man I did not know. His face told of a race not estranged from these shores and his eyes shone with long familiarity to the world. He sat beside me and from his mouth came a string of words I willed myself to make sense of. He told me of something most wonderful, most horrible, and from which I am forever changed.
Boston is a city of gross extremes: poverty and wealth, light and dark, high and low: the crumbling triple-deckers of Roxbury and the affluent brownstones of the South End, the Irish enclaves and the Haitian Mass, the deep tunnels of the T and the airy heights of the JHB.
Boston has not always been this way. …read more
Last weekend I took part in a fantastic community exploration walk of Dorchester organized by Boston Cares. About 15 other people and myself met at the Codman Square Health Center with it’s Executive Director Bill Walczak, our guide, and Tiffany, a Boston Cares’ volunteer and the coordinator of the walk; the walks themselves were Tiffany’s original idea, too.
Bill was a fantastic guide with expert knowledge of Dorchester’s history, politics and residents. Originally a farming community, Dorchester was settled one month before Boston in May, 1630. Historically, Dorchester was nearly twice the size it is today; originally defined by creeks long lost and buried, today mostly arbitrarily assigned ZIP codes shape its borders. …read more
