Wow, they had futuristic Space: 1999 monitors and - ah, no, that's art.

Also: AMPERSAND

Almost all the snow is gone. Some thick glaciers still stud the boulevards, but after three warm days they yield to the blade. There’s a feeling of spring in the air, almost. Doesn’t fool anyone.

Second Winter is coming. Not this week or even the next, but it will happen, and everything will be buried anew. But it will be the last offensive.

Ordinary day under the circumstances. A different crew of workmen, very diligent and concerned about not making a mess. Birch, who is no doubt unnerved by the constant procession of strange men in postman-like uniforms, did not nip. Nor did he seize. We're putting this one in the win. I filed two pieces, bringing the weekly total, including Bleats, up to six by Tuesday. One more to do tonight, and alas: I have no outtakes to discuss on the Wednesday Misc Substack, so it'll have to be all new. But what? Let me run for a while and have a whisky and see what happens.

Oh: while I was out walking I received a barrage of podcast notifications, informing me that the rest of Key Changes is now up in audio form. One of the more delightful things you will ever hear. Mind you, I've read it, and heard the author recall the tales over dinner, and I'm still surprised and amused. It's the dry sly narration. There was a scene recounting a memorial for a fellow I never knew, but the audio from long ago was read by a man I've met - Jesus Mahler, to be exact - and I knew the location. I stopped in the woods for a while and listened to the poem, and thought here I am in the middle of the American continent on the other side of the ocean from this story, and it's giving me chills, and, eventually, smiles.

And then I found something quite extraordinary. But that's for Friday.

While browsing through an Architectural Record from 1977, there was a gushing review of the incredibly brilliant Yale Center for British Art by the incredibly brilliant Louis Kahn. I wondered what it looked like today.

Oh the joy

If you’re curious for context, here’s the building across the street, the edifice with which Kahn’s structure was expected to converse:

Here’s what Vin Scully Jr. had to say in the magazine.

Louis I. Kahn's Yale Center for British Art was an unexpected culmination of his career. Two decades earlier, Kahn had set out to free himself from the volumetric envelope of Mies van der Rohe's design. He had also done his best from that date onward to eliminate glass, or its visual expression, from his work. But in the British Art Center, effectively his last constructed building, he not only went straight back to the volume and the bay system of Mies but also brought glass forward to operate at its maximum capacity for visual magic in translucency and reflection.

Bringing glass forward for magic:

The British Center's special site and function surely had something to do with these surprising developments. Directly across the street from it stands the earliest of Kahn's mature buildings: the first in his great sequence of inventive designs. It is Yale's Art Gallery of 1953.

Ah yes. That one. The building that gave us one of the best examples of life before and after the Second World War.

Hint: Kahn's building is on the left.

You know how many years separate those two structures?

Nineteen.

The building on the right was completed in 1928. The building on the left was begun in 1947.

More Vin:

There (in the Yale Art Gallery) Kahn had employed the Miesian envelope and had also fought it, as something inherited and unwanted, with every resource at his command.

Every possible resource.

More:

In it he had thrown out Mies' gently scaled bay system in favor of an enormous semi-space frame in concrete, awesome in scale and permitting (how Kahn was later to regret this fact) the utmost flexibility in interior arrangement. He had also rigorously banished all glass from the major plane of his facade on Chapel Street, while at the west, on York Street, he had left glass, concrete piers, and steel mullions in an unresolved mix along a single plane.

Unresolved?

It looks like someone cut it in half and exposed the gelatinous guts.

It’s 1893.

The newspaper’s motto: “A weekly journal, its interests identical to its people.”

Interesting assumption. No doubt some village free-thinker scoffed at that.

Look, we all make mistakes, I get it, I’ve committed egregious typo-sins over the years, but COME ON

An article on the front page advising people to regard some advertising with skepticism, and imploring businessmen to advertise responsibly.

Oh and by the way a guy shot a dude

Of the what?

"Erysipelas is a bacterial infection of the skin that causes a raised, well-defined, red rash. It typically affects the lower legs, face, or arms."

You can get sepsis from it, so, that was a contrary expiration. (get it?) (sorry)

		I think I had to read it twice to get the point, and I’m still not sure what the point of the point was. Don’t treat horses poorly, I guess.

But what about chickens?

		Farmers, you should spend $25 on a good coop. Have a heart.

Now that you've sampled the little bits of news, find a good comfy chair by the window with good light, and GET TO WORK:

That will do. More Seventies at the Wish Book update, and a Substack leftovers around 11. See you around.