Monthly Archives: November 2014

Extreme Books

You have heard people say books are going away, that we’ll all be reading on Kindles, etc. for the foreseeable future. The more extreme prognosticators declare that whole libraries are in demise, and with the cloud, their books are destined for landfill. (They obviously haven’t read the statistics on the increased use of libraries, and not just for their computers.)

Some book publishers have an extreme prognostication of their own. They have predicted they’ll succeed if they publish general interest books—not coffee table books—with a beautiful design, a gorgeous feel, and a reach toward complexity. Such qualities can be pictured on an e-reader, but, compared to a real book, it would be like listening to a symphony on the radio instead of hearing it in a concert hall—the experience would suffer.

Some publishers, of course, have always published beautiful books—Godine comes to mind—but there is a new emphasis toward making an object that can’t easily be transformed into an electronic mode.

Here’s an example. Chronicle Books’s The Little Book of Jewish Celebrations, written by Ronald Tauber, is a guide to Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot and other holidays and rituals. It is concise, entertaining and readable. The descriptions are amplified by related biblical quotations, a list of important words and phrases, and sometimes sidebars explaining a bit of history. (Full disclosure: the writer is a long-time friend. His book made me pay attention to this trend in the publishing industry.) It’s a book you can’t stop from reading.

It is also a book you can’t stop yourself from stroking. Its navy blue and gold cover has a silky feel—in textiles the feel is called the “hand.” Inside, the pages are enlivened with color, drawings, creative typefaces and charming decorative lines. While graphically much is going on, the division between parts is always clear and readability is paramount. The design of the book confers an importance to the text that would be lacking on a plain page. You could read the text on a Kindle, but you’d miss half the fun.

The Thing The Book is another Chronicle production. My friend, Shari, will love it. This book deconstructs books. In college I was a proper English major. I was told to do what I had always done: read stories and discuss them.

Then things changed. English departments were introduced to and fought over a new approach to literary criticism and analysis—deconstructionism. Deconstructionists don’t enjoy stories. Instead they consider all other kinds of meaning, most of which I didn’t understand or else found irrelevant. Shari, however, loves this kind of philosophical tangle.

That’s what this book is—a tangle, fully decorated with graphics that may hold secrets. I think I know what the Table of Contents is about, but I’m not sure. The cover’s texture is rough, probably a clue to the contents. There is one black page. All parts of a book are scrutinized, analyzed and dramatized, from the endpapers and a book plate to ink. Many writers contributed. Some articles are heavily footnoted, which, I suspect, carries some deconstructionist meaning.

But whether I understand this book or not is not the point. It’s an extreme book, which cannot easily be transposed to your Kindle. I’m giving this book to Shari.

Extreme books have moved into literature too. The Luminaries (Little, Brown) is a novel with a remote setting, swashbuckling characters, an epic tale, and a historic time. I picked it up and didn’t put it down until I had read all 900 pages.

It goes way beyond the usual novel. The deconstructionists will love it. The structure is mathematical. The author plays with the reader, introducing astrological charts and characters representing astrological beings. Again, graphic design plays an important role. You could read this on an e-reader, but you’d miss the fun.

While The Thing The Book did not engage me in the same way as The Luminaries, I did pay attention to its introduction. It is both silly—“[Books] can be used to level a table”—and profound: Those objects, your books, are “a manifestation of your own history,” write the editors. People will continue to read books on e-readers. But, like extreme books, other books will have meaning that can’t be retrieved on an e-reader. They’ll need to be in hard copy and allotted shelf space.

 

Shade or shadow?

When I was 19 years old, I went to Wall Street. It was narrow, dark, secretive—worthy of the cash that I imagined rested behind those vault-like façades. It was my first encounter with shadows bestowing a sense of place, in this case a sense of importance.

Shadows affect people in other ways. They hint of secrets. They evoke menace, as in film noir or in “The Shadow.” Caravaggio used them to bring drama to his paintings.

In Boston, shadows are the bogeyman used to whip real estate developers into shape, causing them to lower the height of their buildings.

But shadows are complicated. If we like them, we call them shade.

The Friends of the Public Garden persuaded state legislators to pass a law in 1990 restricting new shadows on the Boston Common and Public Garden. This year New Yorkers urged their lawmakers to pass similar legislation protecting Central Park from such effects. Shadows on parkland can limit the kinds of vegetation that will survive, and they can also detract from users’ enjoyment of a park in which people seek sunlight as well as shade. That all seems reasonable.

But even the relationship between shadows and gardens is complex. Roses need only six hours of sun daily. Many other flowers and trees, not that much. Shade gardens are easier to maintain—less weeding needed. And consider my city garden. This 40-by-16-foot plot gets a one-hour sliver of sun that steals slowly around the garden walls, mostly in June. Yet everyone who visits it pronounces it beautiful. (I agree.) So much for the benefits of sunlight.

Another prime shadow location is on the southern side of Boston’s east-west sidewalks. The sidewalk across from my building has not seen sunlight since at least the 1890s. Five-story tenements cast it in total shadow. No one notices, and certainly no one has complained.

Massachusetts has passed other shadow legislation—Chapter 91, for example, addresses shadows. But Boston didn’t invent antipathy to shadows, and this city didn’t pass the first legislation about them. In 1901 New York City limited height in residential areas in the Tenement House Act, partly to reduce future shadows. In 1915, New York passed zoning that spelled out how commercial buildings would step back, narrowing as they rose higher, so they would cast less shadow. This zoning felicitously determined the graceful shapes of the Empire State and the Chrysler Building.

Later zoning was not so kind to the eye or the pedestrian. By 1961, architects were smitten with the International Style, and New York changed its zoning again. This time, instead of old-fashioned step-backs, the city used “floor-area ratios” to control height and shadows, but provided height bonuses to skyscrapers that gave the public “open space.” The plazas around such buildings did reduce some shadows, but they also increased wind, destroyed street life and presented a barrier to entering a building. Boston officials have been trying for years to eliminate such plazas and bring buildings back to the sidewalk.

Not all skyscrapers are known for shadows. My favorite is London’s “Walkie-Talkie,” a bulky, top-heavy, 525-foot leaning glass tower, the reflection of which was so strong that it melted a Jaguar on a nearby street. Some now call it the “Fryscraper.” Be careful what you wish for.

I have my own sunlight-creator. A large, newish, glass-clad building behind my house reflects sunlight every April and October for a few days, bringing sun into a couple of my north windows. It creeps me out.

Rather than tweaking design, New York style, Boston has typically, after contentious neighborhood processes, asked developers to take off several top floors. HYM Investments agreed to lower its 600-foot Government Center building by 75 feet. Did this benefit anyone?

Measuring shadows involves many subtleties, but reducing the height of a 600-foot building by 100 feet would typically mean its shadows would be reduced by one-sixth, according to Matt Littell, architect and principal with Utile Design and a consultant to the Public Realm and Watersheet Activation Plan and Municipal Harbor Plan for the Downtown Boston Waterfront.

One-sixth isn’t much in a city where most shadows land on the rooftops of surrounding buildings. Moreover, this project will bring new sunlight to Congress Street, which we’ll probably complain about when we’re walking along on a hot summer day.

Other new projects are coming up, and they’ll all cast shadows, even if they are only three stories. The 600-foot TD Garden tower along Causeway Street will cast the most shadow over the TD Garden and North Station. Some will even increase sunlight in certain places. The Harbor Garage developers say their proposed buildings, one of which is 600 feet tall, would cast only fleeting shadows off-site and actually bring more sunlight on the ground at the site itself, compared to the current condition. Should more sunlight mean a developer can build higher?

It’s not that we shouldn’t consider shadows. But we should realize their presence is more nuanced than they have been made out to be. And if we insist that a building get shortened by 100 feet, or changed in some other way that affects shadows, it should actually matter.

 

Engineering happiness

I recently met a happy man.

Why shouldn’t he be happy? He has what most men want: loving parents, a wife, Jana, who was his high school sweetheart, two cute little boys, a house, good friends, family members who live nearby, good training and a good job. He also possesses a fine sense of humor and good looks.

Aside from his parents and looks, he has achieved his blessings on his own. He made me ponder a question I’ve often considered—how is it that some people figure out life and others don’t?

Maybe it is because the ones who don’t are not tower crane operators, or in the industry jargon, “operating engineers.” About 100 cranes are operating now in the city of Boston. Fifteen are tower cranes.

Thirty-five year old Robert J. Amoroso, RJ for short, operates that gorgeous, red Potain tower crane rising 200 feet (for now) against a blue sky on Franklin Street at Millennium’s growing tower at Filene’s. Counting the operating engineer’s training school in Canton, his apprenticeship and then employment, RJ has hoisted materials for 15 years at power plants, paper mills, bridges, tunnels, and high rises and placed them (don’t say “dropped”) gently on a surface.

“It’s the best job in the world,” RJ said.

That is one clue to contentment—he’s passionate about his work.

RJ climbed his first crane when he was a child. His father, also an operating engineer, showed him the ropes, and RJ knew the job was for him. “He had me running the boom,” he said.

RJ was also impressed with his father’s union, the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 4, a community of men and women who look out for one another. That is another ingredient of contentment—being part of a trusted community.

RJ works hard. He’s up early, driving from his home in Easton into a garage on Franklin Street. Typically, he arrives at 5:30 a.m. so he can climb the crane, check out its parts and get ready for the construction team that shows up about 6 a.m. He stays in the six-by-six-foot cab until the work day is over, which can be 8, 10 or even 12 hours. He is accompanied by his “oiler,” the apprentice operator who assists him. If the ladders leading to the cab are icy from a snow storm, or if a heavy wind buffets the crane, no crane work takes place.

He has his lunch with him. Bathroom breaks involve bottles and buckets. The hardest part of the job, he says, is staying mentally strong. “People’s lives are in our hands,” he said. And thousands of dollars in materials.

Glass, for example, can’t be broken if you’re a tower crane operator trying to set it on a surface surrounded by guys waiting to release it from its straps. And you can’t hit the guys.

RJ likes the view from the cab and is proud of his skill in operating the crane. People who work hard, acquire a skill and then deploy it to accomplish something greater than they are—in RJ’s case, building a giant building that could stand for centuries—will probably be happier than those who don’t achieve such goals.

RJ makes good money, and a well-paying job is another ingredient for happiness. Tower crane operators are paid, counting all benefits, between $75 and $90 an hour, with take-home pay around $55 an hour—double for overtime. RJ cautions that days can add up between jobs, so following his father’s example, he plans on being out of a job six months of any year, although that hasn’t happened recently.

Operating a tower crane can be dangerous work, but one peril RJ hadn’t counted on was tangling with a hawk.

As he was climbing a crane last year at Tata Hall at the Harvard Business School, a hawk attacked him, ripping his arm and causing him to fall upside into the cage around the ladder below. After 16 stitches and four days rest, he was back on the job.

RJ’s crane is now at the highest level it can go without being attached to the building. That will occur in December, and it will gradually rise to 610 feet as the building rises. It is slated to come down next October.

Jana recently brought the boys to the parking garage near the crane to watch their father work. The boys were transfixed. “They can’t get enough of it,” said RJ.

Soon, when Bobby Junior is five years old, RJ will put him in a harness and climb with him to the cab.

It looks as if happiness will continue into the next generation.

Nothing ventured?

The controversy over bringing the Summer Olympics to Boston in 2024 is soooooo Boston. It’s got all the usual characters, all the usual conflicts. It’s the grumps vs. the dreamers. Cautionists (seen as wise) vs. gung-hoists (seen as foolhardy.) Pessimists vs. optimists. Naysayers vs. soothsayers. It is a rich narrative to follow, and it looks as if it will continue for at least several more weeks.

I’ll say at the outset: I’ve got no skin in this game. The Summer Olympics are not high on my list. On the other hand, I like a good spectacle, and I’m willing to put up with inconvenience to enjoy it.

It is curious that both the promoters and the doom-sayers tout Boston’s characteristics —the best universities in the world, devoted sports fans, deep history and most of all, a place so innovative that it has a 1,000 acre Innovation District, and entrepreneurs so cutting edge that they lurk in micro-apartments, starting companies, taking them public and making a killing.

If we’re so innovative and entrepreneurial, then why aren’t we all behind bringing the Olympics to Boston? It is the quintessential entrepreneurial venture. And it requires innovation. Of course it will cost zillions, be a big mess, and we may have to pay off the Olympic Committee if we want to get the nod.

That’s what entrepreneurs do. They take big risks. They can lose oodles of money, much of it belonging to other people. They might fail. They face problems. They can get scammed.

I know because I once was an entrepreneur. I started a newspaper. I wrote a business plan. But I was scared of the unknowns. What if my costs outran my income? What if I had forgotten something? What if I were sued by the subject of a news story? What if it were too much to handle? How do you handle payroll anyway?

I even had to deal with corruption. A distributor phoned, threatening that if I didn’t use his company, he’d make sure I failed. (I asked him to fax over a bid, and he never did. Bullies have a hard time following up.)

Despite my anxiety, I went ahead. I wouldn’t find out if it worked unless I took serious risks. I consoled myself by saying it is only money. A couple of evenings I cried.

Gradually, things got easier. I actually made money. My employees got health care through the newspaper, since a business that can’t afford health care for its employees isn’t much of a business. Four employees were able to buy houses based on their earnings. My venture had been successful.

Bringing the Olympics to Boston isn’t different, except in scale, from any entrepreneurial effort.

The effort stands now at the business plan stage. John Fish and his cohorts are putting on the finishing touches, investigating aspects of what an Olympic bid entails and how the Olympics would work in Boston. The information they have gathered will be valuable. But, like all entrepreneurial ventures, this one has risks.

Many writers point them out. One letter to the editor in the Boston Globe inexplicably claimed that because Boston’s streets are not based on a grid, the city can’t handle such an event.

Other opponents point out real problems. They point out that cities have lost money, and that expensive structures, purpose-built, have had to be demolished. Writers point out the extreme costs, expected and non-expected, of such a pageant. Predictions are dire: the city will lose tourists, money, pride, and the ability to move around during the games. We’ll be distracted from addressing other needed matters. The Olympic Committee is corrupt and won’t treat us fairly. (This is when our former governor, Mitt Romney, with his Olympic experience, could come in handy.) Proponents and opponents differ on whether London made out well or terribly, but opponents are certain that Boston will suffer greatly.

If we’re such an entrepreneurial city, why are we so afraid of the real risks the opponents point out? If we’re so smart, why do we think we can’t solve the problems that will arise? World class? World Class cities dream big dreams and take risks.

It will be costly. Most important ventures are. Remember the doomsday group that opposed burying the Central Artery? They were right — it was expensive and difficult. But where would we be today had we taken their advice?

Bringing the Olympics to Boston will be risky. It will cost more than we budget for it. It will disrupt us as we build it, and it will disrupt us while it is going on. Somebody will have to fight with the Olympic Committee along the way.

I don’t know, if we are chosen, whether things will turn out badly or well. I do know that taking a risk and prevailing is one of the most satisfying things a person, and a city, can do. And remember, it is only money.