I’ve recently started writing for Smithsonian’s Design Decoded blog, which explores a new topic every few weeks through a series of interlocking posts that will, we hope, offer a new lens for viewing the familiar. Our current series takes a look at Design and Sherlock Holmes. A brief excerpt [...]
[Robert W. Tebbs, photographic survey of a Louisiana Plantation (1926); via]
I’m currently reading William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! It’s a incredible book. A visceral portrait of a haunted, Civil War era American South. I haven’t finished it yet, so this post is pretty much spoiler-free, but I was so impressed [...]
The following post was originally written as an entry to McSweeney’s 2011 Column Contest. It didn’t win. But I had a lot of fun writing it so I thought I’d post it here. As proposed, it was an architectural criticism column written from the perspective of a somewhat emotionally dysfunctional [...]
Standing in front of the concrete blocks on a warm June morning, I found myself wondering if they were the ruins of a forgotten city – or maybe a fragment of this city’s forgotten history. The fractured masonry corner before me couldn’t truly be a ruin, though. It was perfectly crafted – too [...]
The iron tracery of the library windows outline stained glass depictions of campus heraldry beside scenes of history’s most famous writers and scholars. As the summer haze seeped into the reading room, its dark wood-paneled walls somehow grew more oppressive. The haze was once much thicker though, and had carried with it [...]
Billboards Are Almost All Right

