Friday, September 3rd, 2010
“I am a city planner trained as an architect. One principal characteristic that distinguishes Washington, D.C., from most American cities, and most European cities, too, for that matter, is the rectilinear urban grid overlaid by diagonal streets creating all of these awkward, strange street corners. If you read the urban historians who discuss Washington, D.C., they see it as a real disadvantage to the design of the city.
“What is interesting, though, if you look at what the urban planner Haussmann did in Paris and the outcome of his slashing avenues through the medieval street network of Paris, there are actually a lot weirder building lots in Paris than in Washington. But, the design mentality of post-Haussmann in the late-1800s, as opposed to the mentality when D.C. was designed in 1798, meant that people were more willing and interested in making weird-shaped buildings on weird-shaped lots. Thus, when D.C. was being designed, a lot of these lots sat empty.
These weird leftover lots in D.C. give an architect the opportunity to do a building with an exciting shape without violating the shape of the lot.
“Now in design, there is a lot less admiration of pure forms. Symmetry is out. Why have a square building when you can have a rhombus or a parallelogram or something that is kind of funky? These weird leftover lots in D.C. give an architect the opportunity to do a building with an exciting shape without violating the shape of the lot.
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010
“I grew up in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. When I graduated from college, I couldn’t get into graduate school and rather than be drafted into Vietnam, I joined the Navy and went to Officer Candidate School. I spent a year watching the war and two years in Scotland as a diplomatic courier. I came to Washington in the early 70’s. I had G.I. money and went to get my MBA in computers at American University. My first job in town was in the information business. I was a paper boy and delivered the New York Times at 5 a.m. everyday.
“I always knew that I wanted my own business. I would sell hot dogs on the Mall if I had to. I started a few businesses that failed. Then, I became a consultant. Funny how when people fail, they become consultants! So, I started with a phone and a desk down at Foggy Bottom. I was getting free government information and selling it to Fortune 500 fat cats. It shocked me that a schmuck like me from Wilkes-Barre could make a free phone call and turn around and sell that information for thousands of dollars to some rich person who was too lazy to get it. It was basically a shoe shine business. People spend $5 to shine their shoes when you can get a $2 can of shoe polish at CVS that will last your whole life. That mentality is what this town is all about. After helping rich people for a number of years, I figured that I would spend the rest of my life helping the rest of the country find out how to get useful government information.
The answers are easy, it is the questions that are hard. I really believe that we need to struggle in life to ask the right questions.
“Now, I look back on my failures and realize that they were the result of me not doing things my own way. I thought if I failed that I would have a permanent ‘F’ on my forehead, but people don’t give a shit. They are too worried about themselves. It took me a couple of failures to figure that out. When I started this business, I wanted to have fun. I figured that the worst that would happen would be failing again. When I started having fun, things became different. I realized that I was good at acting foolishly on television. My parents did not admit that I was their kid for the first ten years of my career! They wanted me to act like Henry Kissinger. I wouldn’t sell shit if I acted like that. Life is trying to realize who you are. The more you go through this education system, you are told to be like everyone else. We should be bringing out the best in everyone and encouraging people to do what they are really good at.
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
“I still can’t quite wrap my mind around how this city has impacted my story. I am sixty, divorced and live on Capitol Hill in a very nice neighborhood. My kids went to nice private schools. I run a good business. My husband worked for Congress. We had every reason to believe that our children would go to college, get married and have wonderful lives. We had no reason to think otherwise. I never gave poverty or mental illness a thought. It just wasn’t in my life. Then, my son was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
I never gave poverty or mental illness a thought. It just wasn’t in my life. Then, my son was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
“My son was good looking, popular, very well adjusted and a great student. People referred to him as the perfect prom date. In the fall of tenth grade, he started showing signs of mental illness. He started to ask me if I thought there was something wrong with his brain. He was really struggling in school and began to look odd. The psychiatrist said he was having social problems. The doctors said he would be fine, but he didn’t look fine to me. With time, he became more remote. He lost his affect and ability to smile and interact socially. He would hear voices and have delusions. Shortly after he turned 16, he drank a lot of wine and cut both of his wrists. When they took him away, he was screaming, ‘If you had to live like this, you would want to die, too.’ When I went to visit him, he really wanted to die. He asked me to just let him die. What do you do when your 16-year-old kid tells you he wants to die? We pretty much forced him into medical care. The medicines haven’t done much to help with his hallucinations. He doesn’t know what day or time it is. It has been like that ever since he was 16. He is 27 now.
“For nine years, I have cared for my son because this city does not provide adequate residential care for the mentally ill. My son has Blue Cross Blue Shield and if you look on page 17 of our policy it says, ‘These services are provided unless you have mental illness.’ They provide emergency hospitalization only and then you are shown the front door and given a map with D.C. shelters. There is a group home, but they are overcrowded and you have to be somewhat motivated to live in that environment. My son’s condition is such that he doesn’t comprehend what you are saying to him. That is how ill he is. He can’t sleep at night. He makes strange noises all the time. His behaviors are totally inappropriate. He’s not a good candidate for a group home. And the shelters, have you seen those places? They are pretty rough. When you have mental illness and you’re paranoid it is pretty difficult to tell someone to sleep in a shelter with 50 other guys.
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