Life in Progress

What happens inside of the House in Progress

The New Kitchen

Eight. Long. Years.

Four and a half years without a working oven.

Four and a half years of using a toaster oven instead of having a real oven.

So much better now.

(Even though it was getting dark out, I couldn't wait to take photos.  Better photos later.)

Thanks IKEA!

(Yes, IKEA.  Those are IKEA cabinets.)

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I Don't Know Where She Gets This From

Yesterday, we re-discovered a signed Lewis Black poster that my nephew had picked up from a show that he and I had gone to at the Chicago Theater last winter.  It was in the "boot" of the Mini Cooper that Aaron usually drives.  (Yes, he is 6'7".  Yes, he fits.  No, he will not allow me to shoot a video of him folding himself into or unfolding himself out of his beloved car.)

It was intended as a souvenir for our neighbor, Brian, but had not actually made it out of the Mini before a wee bit of windshield wiper fluid leaked onto it.

As I stood in the living room examining it, wondering if the hazy blue splotch was THAT noticeable, Grace spotted it.

"COOL!" she instantly exclaimed.

No, she has never seen or heard Lewis Black perform, except for when she was in utero and my addiction to The Daily Show meant that, every night, I was sprawled on the couch with my big belly as my fetus was dancing around to the opening theme music.  (True story, and my sister can back me up on this because she was there a few times when it would happen.  Whenever that music came on?  Instant party in the Womb Room that included much rolling and flailing and kicking, so much so that anyone sitting next to me risked getting booted by the baby.)

Until now, we thought that this incident was a fluke.

Now we're not so sure.

Secondlove_lb

 

We'll know more if Grace requests a bee costume for Halloween.

Fostering Sustainability and Dignity through Architecture and Design

ruralstudioRural Studio and an Architecture of Decency

June 3, 2010
» Download (mp3, 53:09) | » Listen now (flash, 53:09) | » Podcast
Auburn's Rural Studio in western Alabama draws architectural students into the design and construction of homes and public spaces in some of the poorest counties. They're creating beautiful and economical structures that are not only unique but nurture sustainability of the natural world as of human dignity.

via speakingoffaith.publicradio.org

My involvement with change, design, and social impact is a filter through which I see everything. And I am most delighted when I stumble across more and more work being done to create change and social impact through design, user research and participatory methods.

This podcast is a wonderfully constructed story about the Rural Studio and how they are changing lives--for architecture students and the communities they serve--through thoughtful engagement of citizens, modeling possibilities, and working with them instead of for them. Inspiring!

Hand Hygiene

Mert

Although the one of the specific solutions developed by the DFA team is still under wraps because of non-disclosure agreements, you can get a little bit of a sense for how change + design was leveraged to improve hand hygiene in a project for NorthShore University Health System.  MSLOC students Sara Levinson and Katy Mess, Global Health & Psychology student K.C. Porter, Industrial Engineering students Hannah Chung and Mert Iseri, and Intergrated Science student Yuri Malina were involved in the project.

Designing Change


Megillah Esther

There were other things in the plastic Dominick's bag.

Like this officially Scooby-Doo-ish mysterious scroll, for instance.  I didn't post it yesterday because I was unsure of what it was and turned to my handy dandy oracle, Ask Metafilter, for help.

It's a Megillah Esther, the book of the Hebrew bible responsible for the Jewish festival of Purim.  Scrolls that should be treated as Holy, are most often kept in a synagogue's Ark, but sometimes are kept in private homes...though never in an old plastic Dominick's bag for a few decades.

No, it is not in the bag anymore, now that I have found the bag.

Like the Ida Rai paintings, this is something that I want to research a little more.  I would love to know the origin of this scroll.  There are some clues at the end of the scroll, such as this mark (translated from Hebrew by helpful Mefite, milestogo):


The end does have the scribe's name: Servant of God Yaakov (jacob) Halawah Son of Rabbi Yitzchak Issac, whose soul is in heaven. That is just the final two lines, with the acronyms (identifiable by the apostrophe) expanded.

The paragraphs above that are a blessing recited by the reader and a poem recited by the congregation after the reading is done.


Mefite Joe in Australia had this to say about the scroll:

It's a fascinating find. First, milestogo is correct about it being a Megillah and the name at the end.

I'm not a sofer (ritual scribe) but it looks too well written to be written by a student. Do you see the even spacing and regular sizes of the letters? Students tend to bunch some letters together and space others out. On the other hand, those are pretty major corrections (especially the half line of Esther 4:11 that was omitted) and I think they've been done by another hand. The additions at the beginning and end look different, too.

My theory is that it's an old megillah (the parchment looks crinkly, and megillot don't get used much, so that implies a lot of age) that was demoted because somebody noticed the errors. A later owner added the corrections. A third owner (not the original sofer) added the introductory and closing invocations - the one at the end is unusual and may help identify the origin of the scroll.

Added to my To Do list: "Research the possibility of finding out who the scribe was."  Right under, "Finish preparing for meeting with five teams of students, and complete the slides for tomorrow's class." 

I need more time in my day.

Anyone know a sofer?

p.s.  Did you know that Megillah is the origin of the phrase "the whole Megillah"?  The scrolls are quite long to read.  True story.

 

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More art mysteries at the HouseinProgress: Ida Bagus Rai

Grace had a playdate with her friend, Mia, last Friday and Mia's family came over to enjoy some pizza at the end of a long week.

Mia's dad, Mark, hadn't been to the house before, so I gave him the tour which included pointing out some of the things that we had found in the house and kept since moving in almost seven (7!!) years ago.  And he asked the question that many folks ask when we explain what we were confronted with back then, "Do you think there is anything else you haven't found yet?"

"There probably is," I laughed, not knowing how much I believed that, but anything can happen in this crazy house.

Then I was looking for something in a closet that we rarely use on Saturday and pulled out this plastic Dominick's bag from decades ago (the graphic design on the bag places it between the 50's and 70s.)  Inside were rolled up canvases and scrolls.  Because I had a few minutes I glanced over them, then put them back.  Two of the scrolls looked very pretty so I pulled them out on Sunday night and snapped some quick photos, showed them to Aaron, rolled them back up, and went to bed.

This morning during a Google search, I found out that they pristine art works from the Bali/Indonesian artist, Ida Bagus Rai.  In a Dominick's bag.  In our closet.

The colors are so vibrant that it is hard to convey them in photos.  Especially photos taken in a dark room, on the dining room table, before we went to bed.

Dang it.  Part of me is excited, because...wow.  And part of me is freaked out because OMG I cannot move through this house sometimes without being terrified that I will accidentally destroy something important and valuable.  What on earth????

(download)

The Design for America Students

Friend and colleague, Jack Vinson, asked me about some of the projects that the DFA students have been working on.

Of course, my FAVORITE one (the one I was the design coach for) is now under wraps because of a non-disclosure agreement that has been signed regarding the solutions.  It's the project that involves hand hygiene and the reduction of MRSA and C Diff hospital-acquired infections.  Hopefully, we'll be able to share more about that at a later date.

In the meantime, I'll post a few of the projects that the students have worked on here.

This one, The Right Angle Project, was developed in response to the waste of fresh water the students observed occurring in a university cafeteria.  Their challenge was to make changes in the process of delivering dirty plates to be cleaned by the cafeteria staff so that scraping the food off of the plates before rinsing was unavoidable for the cafeteria user.

After they tested the prototype, the dishwashing staff wanted the students to leave their prototypes in place because they worked so well and saved so much work (and water!)