Dan Hill reviews Alain de Botton’s book about his residency at Heathrow Airport: “A central theme is the (accurate, I think) impression that few industries are as “vulnerable to disaster” as commercial aviation, but that this leads essentially to a kind of pervasive frustration running through much of the experience. Here, the business simply cannot win. It is perpetually teetering on the the edge of delivering failure. All that changes is the scale of ‘disaster’. The fact that you’ve been delivered safely to and from 25000 feet is conveniently ignored by passengers in favour of being miffed by the size of the taxi queue, or by being infuriated by a mildly officious attendant at the check-in desk, or sitting for hours on the runway due to pre-departure engine failure at Bangkok, or by one’s luggage flying to Belgrade while you fly to Buenos Aires. Focusing on these smaller ‘disasters’ is perhaps a way of dealing with the extreme nature of the experience of flying, and the everyday aversion of real disaster by these incredible systems of technology and people. The whole act is too surreal to think too deeply about – so people don’t, generally rejecting thoughts about how precariously they’re travelling by distracting themselves with the more mundane and everyday breakdowns in a system that’s far too complex to run smoothly.” (via.)
Brand Avenue on the banality of Boston’s Faneuil Hall Marketplace, owned by a company on the verge of bankruptcy. It could very well be a skyscraper development in ten years. But will Bostonians care? More from The Boston Globe’s Robert Campbell “I can’t help wondering whether what we’re hearing in all this is the tolling bells of an era that is ending. Let’s go back to Faneuil Hall Marketplace. It opened back in the bicentennial year of 1976, in a very different era. Public life, street life, was moribund in Boston….But the Marketplace was a huge and instant hit, drawing more visitors in its first year than Disneyland… People, it turned out, were starved for the experience of city life, even a slightly ersatz experience.” How curious that urban pedestrian walks grow tedious and commercial. See also: Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Pricey real estate?
Department store apparel sales will get even better toward the end of the coming month. That’s when stores must get rid of winter season clothes to make room for spring. With luxury sales down 35%, there’s a lot of nice stuff on the clearance racks and it will only get cheaper. Some labels refuse to allow retailers to sell cheaper than a certain price. That’s why Macy’s is giving away $10 gift certificates with every purchase and other stores are bundling items or doing similar things to work around brand discount restrictions. Eventually unsold items will be shipped to Ross and Filene’s Basement and similar places. “‘With department stores canceling orders, we’re getting additional brands,’ says Laura McDowell, a T.J. Maxx spokeswoman. ‘They have excess product. They know we pay our bills on time and we can’t return the product.’” (via.) February and March are the best times to check outlet malls and discount retailers. Don’t be surprised if you find high end fashions at TJ Maxx even before then. You could stock up on quality staples from Prada, Marc Jacobs, or Theory, all which could be had for about the price of wine and an entree at your favorite restaurant. Yeah, these are “labels” but the quality tends to be worth it.
“20 percent of the mall storefronts could soon be empty.” What will the remaining structures look like? Check out Dead Malls, which includes maps, a glossary, and histories.
BBC News Magazine on the architecture of shopping malls. Particularly interesting: how designers “integrate into the surroundings so a sense of place is part of what it is.” Also attempts at some resemblance with the natural world. Says another designer, “Most people would prefer to shop in the natural environment, but want convenience as well as not getting wet.” More on malls.
Lisa Selin Davis has a story in Salon about the couple who lived in the Providence Mall (It was covered extensively on the blogs last year. See Ballardian and the artists’ website here.) The couple Michael Townsend and Adriana Yoto crafted a secret apartment inside the massive Rt 95 eyesore. “The mall adventure was to last a week; it went on for four years. If Townsend hadn’t been nabbed by security and charged with criminal trespassing last October, they’d still be camping out there today.” Davis smartly compares their experience to the $1m+ Natick Mall luxury condos just a few miles north in suburban Boston (I’ve been meaning to write a post about the hilarious pseudo-poshness of the “Natick Collection” — its ant farm like freeway chaos and American-travels-the-Continent decor. Eventually.) Of course JG Ballard and Romero allusions can be made, but what I think is interesting is that most science fiction visions of futuristic architecture tend to imagine a massive space — a city or multiple cities — enclosed. (Usually for the purpose of some nuclear disaster or space colony.) Is this a subconscious projection of the shopping mall of the future by the authors? A claustrophobic vision or one of a comforting incubator?
When Humanity Only Survives Within Driving Distance of a Shopping Mall
The city can become an addiction. Live in it too long, and your body will reject the outdoors. Over the weekend, I got up early-ish to catch La Strada at the Brattle (part of the free Elements Of Cinema series.) It seemed like a good Saturday morning thing: get coffee, watch a smart film, maybe browse the dress shops and get coffee again.
But as soon as I opened my eyes, they started to burn. I left the window open that night and the airborne pollens — ragweed or whatever it is that Zyrtec normally takes care of — drifted into my room and into my eyes like evil pixie dust. I shut my window, got dressed, and did what I normally don’t do trying to get to Harvard Square: I drove.
The whole “pahk the cah in hahvahd yahd” thing is a joke not just on the Boston accent. Driving in Harvard Square is kind of like pushing marbles through straws. Saturday morning isn’t much of a problem. Well, any Saturday other than yesterday.
Due to construction, the two and three hour parking spots within eight blocks were unavailable. The open spots were limited to one hour. Hardly enough time to attend a movie and a lecture. No going around it: the meter maids in this city are busybodies. After circling around several times, wishing I were on my bike, I ended up parking much farther than I intended and came smack in contact with exactly what I’d been avoiding all morning: the outside air.
It was a beautiful day. Low 80s, clear skies, perfect for biking, running, reading under a tree, anything outside. But rather than delighting in the weather, I was cursing it. Lightheaded, my eyes feeling like sandpaper lined the rims, sneezing, I was just a mess. I thought wearing glasses would make it better but it was just the opposite: contact lenses shield against these allergens. The sunshine was bouncing off the lenses, only making the situation worse.
This is urban New England, I’m hardly Lawrence of Arabia in a sandstorm, but it bothered me so much, and realizing I was already twenty minutes late, I returned to my car thinking, “how far to the Cambridgeside Galleria?”
I was looking for refuge from the outside world in the form of a shopping mall. My body was rejecting nature in favor of the sanitized, always-68 degrees shopping center down the street. So I watched the sky from the Whole Foods cafe, waiting until I could blink again without discomfort.
Just as domesticated pets can’t make it in the wilderness, city people, according to the “hygiene hypothesis,” live in such clean conditions their immune systems weaken. Preschool peanut bans are so prevalent and contentious, I wouldn’t be surprised if the DEA gets involved eventually.
In addition to increased sensitivity, cities produce more ragweed due to CO2 levels — increasing with climate change. There are additional ripple effects on tree pollen, fungal spores, and other allergens. And warmer climate means the allergy season is much longer than it ever was before.
Years ago, people with severe allergies found relief in the mountains. But “increased human activity such as building and other disturbances of the soil, irrigation, and gardening, have encouraged ragweed to spread to these areas as well.” We’re building our way unhealthy.
Damien Atkins’s play “Lucy” (Kurt Anderson interview here) is about an anthropologist with a 13 year old autistic daughter. She comes to the conclusion her daughter “is perfect. She’s the future,” making a stunning hypothesis that autism is evolution. Mankind is protecting itself from the devastating environmental consequences of modern living. (A little Kumbaya, but quite a lot smarter than whatever M Night Shyamalan was going on.)
Wall-E so radically tackled devolution with the future human race portrayed as gelatinous blobs. More accurately they would have sneezed uncontrollably at contact with the plant.
Todd Haynes’s 1995 film [Safe] was a great comment/parody/prophesy of the modern age fraught with yuppie ailments:
“Safe” has been described as a horror movie of the soul, a description that director Todd Haynes relishes. California housewife Carol White seems to have it all in life: a wealthy husband and a beautiful house. The only thing she lacks is a strong personality: Carol seems timid and empty during all of her interactions with the world around her. At the beginning of the film, one would consider her to be more safe in life than just about anyone. That doesn’t turn out to be the case. Starting with headaches and leading to a grand-mal seizure, Carol becomes more and more sick, claiming that she’s become sensitive to the common toxins in today’s world: exhaust, fumes, aerosol spray, etc. She pulls back from the sexual advances of her husband and spends her nights alone by the TV or wandering around the outside of her well-protected home like an animal in a cage. Her physician examines her and can find nothing wrong. An allergist finds that she has an allergic reaction to milk but explains that there is no treatment for that sort of allergy. She sees a psychiatrist who does nothing but make her nervous. In the hospital, Carol sees an infomercial for Wrenwood, a new-age retreat for those who are “environmentally ill,” and leaves her husband and stepson to try and find salvation at this retreat: headed by a phony, grandstanding, “sensitive” individual named Peter Dunning.
I remember watching it in high school, thinking “just get over it!” Likely someone is thinking the same thing reading my opening paragraph. It’s embarrassing, but I’m not alone:
Ragweed pollen and mold thrive in the opposite conditions. So when it’s dry and windy, you get ragweed; when it’s damp and rainy, you get mold.
Here’s the other cheerful news, you might want to prepare for a worse ragweed season next year. Dr. Mark Dykewicz, chief of the Section of Allergy & Clinical Immunology, at St. Louis University School of Medicine says that next year’s ragweed crop will be from this years rainy, fertile conditions.
In Europe, they are putting up “Wild West ‘wanted’ posters” advocating burning the ragwood (”ambrosia”) plants, which climbing north to Germany, and even Scandinavia.
‘Some gardeners naively think it is an attractive plant and give it water and fertilizer in their front gardens,’ says Susanne Schwarz of Berlin’s Health Department.
‘They should be eradicating this menace instead,’ she adds. ‘Best thing to do is pull it out by the roots and burn it, since the seeds can remain fertile for up to 40 years.’
In case you’re wondering, yeah, I’ve got a doctor’s appointment this week. In the meantime, a friend advised me to take local honey because the pollen in the honey acclimates you to the pollen in the air. Sounds unlikely, but I appreciate the concept as a narrative. Maybe if The Happening hadn’t resigned itself as a joke, Mark Walberg would have hunted the wilderness for an antidote. A lab set up in the fields somewhere. The twist ending M Night Shymalan forgot to write, like a riff on Dorothy’s discovery: the answer is “no further than our own backyard”
Until then, closing my eyes is as heavenly as a dive in a pool full of feathers. And I’m thinking allergies are nature’s way of reminding us to pay attention.
Photography by Julia Fullerton-Batten.
Previously:
Who Needs Sleep?
An Apology for Idlers
Related links:
- Hygiene Hypothesis on PBS, Evolution: “The Evolutionary Arms Race”
- Architects take Beijing’s smog into account, LA Times (via.)
- Ragweed Allergy Heats Up With Climate Change, Medical News Today
- Take Me Out To The (Peanut-Free) Ballgame, Channel3000
The Church of Scotland’s new moderator maintains the “Mod’s Blog.” The Times shares with us some of his bon mots, “Came up with idea for a new device — the iPray. No idea yet what it would do.” The piece is written by Allan Brown, who has another funny article about how sushi and shopping malls are incompatible, at least in Glasgow.
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