the local controversy around widening Williamson Valley Road continues. it is a microcosm of the more general issue of development in the South West of the US. Arizona has one of, if not the fastest growth rate of any state and the Prescott - Prescott Valley - Chino Valley "Tricity" area is near the fastest in the state. when the folks moved here and built their retirement home (purely my father's impetus -- the clear-sky suitability for his astronomy), theirs was the second or third home on the street, and the view -- a 200-degree panorama that reached 100 miles to the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff -- was long and relatively free of any spurious Lighting at night. Williamson Valley was still populated by several large ranch spreads, and the road was narrow and twisting as it approached Iron Springs Road and the fringe of northern Prescott proper. that was twenty years ago. the population of Prescott has increased by a factor of four, and the Tricity area by a factor of six. everything from mac-mansions and gated communities to cheap tract housing and trailer courts are changing the landscape on a daily basis. traffic increases, and now, with development along the WV corridor stretching 20 miles northwest along the fringe of the National Forest, the wealthy folks who have chosen to live that far out are upset when the traffic slows their ingress to town. The first five miles of WV road has more than 75 side roads -- everything from driveways to major roads -- many of them blind entrances. the second five mile stretch is more straight and has only around 50 intersections. the City of Prescott, working with Yavapai County officials decided unilaterally (well, with the heavy hand of The Developers behind them!) in a "Master Plan" to widen the road, now two lanes, to five (and sometimes 6 or 7) lanes to accomodate the increased traffic and make the road "safer." if only! giving the drivers who are already tailgating folks going the speed limit (anywhere from 35 to 50 mph) an extra lane means there will be, in effect, an extra fast lane in either direction. that means, if any of the other local 5-lane roads are any indication (including the infamous "Blood Alley" of Rt. 89a between Prescott and Prescott Valley) impatient drivers will be hitting 65 to 80 miles-per-hour in that lane. residents with entrances on the opposite side of the road along that ten mile stretch will be required to cross up to three lanes to turn into their driveways or enter the road. try that with a blind entrance and 80 mph speeders. the body count will be significant.

it is clear that it is the developers who will benefit the most -- that class of people who carve up the ranches into saleable chunks and build houses. most frequent now are the previously mentioned MacMansions -- monstrous homes up to 5000 ft2 (450 m2). emblems of consumerism, with Hummers and other SUV's parked in the drive.

the most annoying aspects of this excess is the lack of design features that show an awareness for the local environment. generally the only nod to the surrounding environment are massive windows (usually placed towards the north-west) which allow the standard spectacle of environment-as-entertainment. no need to actually go outside!

the house my parents designed and built went up during a short window of time when the state and federal government was giving tax credits for energy-efficient features. my father took full advantage of this, although the house was going to be designed for solar anyway. it has active and passive solar components along with energy efficient characteristics like 6-inch outer walls (instead of the normal 4-inch), anywhere from 3x - 5x the normal insulation factors in the foundation, exterior walls and attic, and so on. perhaps the single dominant factor, one which affects the comfort of the house most, is the simple orientation of the foundation. there is a sun room at the south end of the house -- a room that gets a full blast of Arizona sun during the winter months. the room has a concrete-slab floor which acts as a heat reservoir to store the solar influx. the room has a sloping ceiling which carries heated air up towards an intake vent which carries this pre-heated air down to be pumped out into the 4 - 6-foot high crawl-space which is under the rest of the house. the air then comes out floor vents located in each room. this simple system which needs electricity only for the circulation fan -- it easily keeps the entire house at at least 68F in the winter when the sun is shining, the sun room in the 80'sF. on the rare cloudy days, the wood stove in the sun room acts as a substitute. there is a solar water heater which acts as as a pre-heating element for the regular water heater or, it can supply the house with 50 gallons of 100F water by itself. not bad.

sure, my folks were part of that wave of retirees who came 20 years ago, just another wave coming to the warm west. it's been going on for 150 years at least.

presently, along the road, on the wide easements are horse, mountain-bike, and atv trails paralleling the road. These will be wiped out, further reducing the 'useability' of the corridor to local residents.

I dunno. watching the developers consume the landscape of the West is pretty depressing -- unfortunately, though there are alternative ways of going, they drive the process with little effective opposition. there is the web site of citizens opposing the widening at http://www.wvroad.com.

John Sobol, Canadian poet, musician, writer, and self-proclaimed cultural catalyst along with pianist Wayne Kelso offer these intriguing new mp3 word-jams from Flying Wolf Media.

digitizing contact sheets. by volume. wondering that, since the last time I was printing, at least 8 years ago or so, Kodak is stopping support to film-based photography! Azo paper, which I printed the contacts on, will be discontinued shortly as will be most of the chemicals I used to use. the question is -- stock up? or give up? I think I'll at least buy a couple bricks of Tri-x Pan film, the film with which I shot a majority of my 35mm images on.

the documentary Fire and Ice about the Finnish-Russian Winter War reminds and reminds of an essence underlying Finland like the Pre-Cambrian grano-diorite shield it sits upon. I often ran across the echoes of this particular event in strange ways. but in the oldest generation in Finland, as in much of Europe, is the haunting look, more pronounced though carefully hidden, from eyes that have seen war. the movie was recently filmed in Finland and contains scenes of both Russia and Finnish re-enactors. along with interviews from veterans and citizens who experienced the incredible and atrocious conditions. the winter of 1939 was the second coldest since 1828. soldiers hit in the heart, with cut circulation, immediately froze in the contortions of death. Finnish machine gunners went insane after killing thousands of Russians, waves storming across open fields in the initial weeks of the war. and so it goes. * Sisu -- Finnish for guts and valor.

former student, Michael Phipps keeps up on his painting and techno-topian musings at the with-style network and blog. this is an image of a recent piece -- Butterfly Cybernetic.

body morphology. body symmetry. of course, beauty is (scientifically) proven to be related to facial and body symmetry among other parameters of length, size, girth, curves, color, and other transitory features that lay upon us in the quick passing ether to being to ether. and there is dysmorphophobia, the fear of body shape being somehow wrong. imperfect. hmm.

spend the evening trashing a 3-inch high pile of class evaluations from my CU teaching days. noting both positive and negative comments in all the dross and three-decimal-place statistical analysis of the results. but feeling quite good about the quite good ratings overall. scanning selected records. uff! why carry it around: why not conflagurate? makes a nice fire to heat the house at least. along with those evaluations, papers a bit more problematic to dispose of -- the daily role sheets -- aka, Question of the Day (as a .pdf page). a literal project in network facilitation. a form where one student is chosen at random every day to pose the question of the day at the top of the page, and the rest of the class has to write in their name, and along with that, in a box, an answer to the question of the day. these played a very interesting role in the class -- they would generally circulate during the entire 3-hour studio class period, between filling out the questions, and subsequent interest in the answers. sometimes they got quite elaborate (What was your most recent and vivid dream?), sometimes basic (what's your favorite breakfast food?). they were always filled out religiously with an attention to detail and careful thought on everyone's part -- interesting fallout from such a basic exercise. and they served that boring function to keep attendance records. ugh. I often thought that I should somehow make this an interactive web project -- for someone to transcribe the answers into a large grid that would be a record of the grouping of the class, but there never seemed to be the time to do it. so, a transitory, functional communications tool which broke down the barriers between peers. and a snapshot of the attentions of young college students in Amurika at the dawn of the millineum. so I heat the room for a couple hours.

Nina sees a project through from a distant beginning to a colorful end, or at least to a plateau, a stopping-point with AuroraLive -- a collaborative live/online project happening on 05 February - tomorrow! I recall back to 1998 when she and Stephen visited Tornio when I was teaching there - on their way to the Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory for consultations. the aurora borealis is literally a scintillating visual experience. catching the eye at unexpected moments, mind cannot first untangle the electromagnetic information that the darkened sky is swirling, and neck immediately gets a crink between the cold and the angle of view. unlike the darksky spectacle Lyrids in temperate June or the Persieds in warm August -- too damn cold to lie down and watch the aurora usually. needful of dark warmth, no Lights, back to earthen gravity floor and face to the eye-soaking mesmerizations. once I saw them in Arizona. as this is a darksky place, especially to the north, on the rim of the horizon, a glow where no far city plasma should be. I discounted the vision until confirmed later. at the latitude of Casablanca. a reminder of polar lives.

Jim sends an invite to a current show at Studio 258 in Denver -- brought to you by discopie.com. this is one of my favorite designs that Jim has available at discopie -- that you can get it on everything from thongs to buttons to tee-shirts. irreverent, thought provoking, and always with a wicked sense of humor. over our 15+ year friendship, it's always a nice surprise to see what's happening in his studio in Denver. and it's one of Loki's favorite places to go, 'cause he always walks away with a special little gizmo from the many glass cases filled with jetsam from the High Water Mark of the Amurikan cultcha of the millineum shift. yessiree!

an exhibition of new work by Eyjólfs Einarsson at Turpentine Gallery in Reykjavík.