It's taken me a while to succumb to the world of web logs--I'm still far too much of a purist to use "blog," although that may be the next standard to go--but I've been thinking of late that keeping a web log might be a nice way to atone for my sins as a correspondent. When I accidentally clicked on the blogger tool on my google toolbar, it seemed fated to be.

I wouldn't dream of opening this with a whine, but things are messy right now. I'm in the horribly busy season at work, and I'm also sick. To balance out that misery, I should note that I've also just finished reading the best book ever, Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities. She comes out swinging--the first sentence reads "This book is an attack on current city planning and rebuilding"--and proceeds to demolish quite a few of the tenets of planning that were taken for granted in 1958 and are still with us now. It's amazing. I'm reading Christopher Alexander's A Timeless Way of Building now.

And why am I on this urban planning jag? I was inspired by a talk I attended last month about redeveloping Seattle's waterfront, which was sponsored by Allied Arts of Seattle (http://www.alliedarts-seattle.org/). It was wonderful to hear planning professionals talking about alternatives to the kinds of big-city development we've seen over the past few decades.

I hope you all are doing well--updates are always welcome!