Who kept the faith and fought the fight; The glory theirs, the duty ours.

-Wallace Bruce

Remember that there are only three kinds of things anyone need ever do. (1) Things we ought to do (2) Things we’ve got to do (3) Things we like doing. I say this because some people seem to spend so much of their time doing things for none of the three reasons, things like reading books they don’t like because other people read them. Things you ought to do are things like doing one’s school work or being nice to people. Things one has to do are things like dressing and undressing, or household shopping. Things one likes doing — but of course I don’t know what you like. Perhaps you’ll write and tell me one day.

—C. S. Lewis, in a letter to Sarah, his godchild, on 3 April 1949

Resolutions:

ought to’s
got to’s
like do’s

If it doesn’t easily fall in one of those categories, I shouldn’t be wasting my time on it.

It hasn’t been for a lack of anything interesting.

Mid summer, my wife and I recently moved into a new apartment – decamping from my longtime proximity to Central Park and moving west to Riverside Park. I’ll update with more entries about the apartment itself shortly, but I wanted to leave a few quick pictures of what we have been working on so far.

The small little rooftop garden we have started has given us an experience of something familiar and timeless. Pushing dirt around reminds me of my childhood. The smell of mint and basil brings back ghosts of our grandparents. While work or life might be adding stress and pressure to our days, this small spot we have created is appearing to take it all away. I’m not sure if creating personal places like this are a testament to our ability to adapt, or our ability to operate in ignorance. Either way, I’m glad we have it.

It might be interesting to let a single, small piece of infrastructure be reclaimed by nature when it lies among constantly new and cared for towers of brick and glass. But what happens when that relic is a city block, a neighborhood, or the city itself?

Photographer and urban sociologist Camilo José Vergara proposed in the late 90′s that a “skyscraper ruins park” be built in downtown Detroit. In his book American Ruins, Vergara suggested that, “as a call for renewal, as a place within our national memory, a dozen city blocks of pre-Depression skyscrapers be stabilized and left standing as ruins: an American Acropolis.”

Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre

What does leaving a city standing as ruins really mean? Movies and photography have always been able to offer attempts at this question. I immediately think of I Am Legend and Will Smith walking through a deserted New York City. Times Square becoming quiet and home to deer and former residents of the Central Park Zoo. It’s easy for art to take a step into the future and create a vision of the “what if?” But what if that vision of what could happen differs from what should happen?

Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre

In “The Ruins of Detroit,” by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, the city once filed with the sounds of clanging machinery and Motown music is silent. The vision is a case of nature reclaiming land and slowly erasing the remaining elements of a failing metropolis. The city is failing, but has it failed? Detroit still remains home for many and not everyone has given up  and walked away. In “Detroit Disassembled” by Andrew Moore, the poet Philip Levine writes: “Their calm in the face of the ravages of man and nature confers an unexpected dignity upon the subjects of his camera, the very dignity I had assumed daily life had robbed them of.”

Andrew Moore

Andrew Moore

A team of explorers stumbles upon the modern-day ruins of ‘Rome,’ the industrial capital of the 20th century that helped to fundamentally shape the modern world. Yet the explorers find irony that a city built upon industrial capitalism and planned obsolescence is now a fossilized remnant of a declining empire.

It’s an artistic dream, but I don’t want it to be the eventual reality.

There are plenty of examples of unbuilt American dreams already in existence. But the decline and desertion of a living breathing dream? How does one address this devastating problem head on, in a realistic manner?

Andrew Moore

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The scene would involve me, my wife, and the imaginary dog that I’ve always wanted to have. We’ll call him Lego for now.

It’s a cabin on the lake…Winnipesaukee for instance.

I’d need my Levi’s, a heavy knit shawl collar sweater over a white T and a beat up Yankees cap. A pair of LL Bean Canvas duck boots and a basic yellow rain jacket when I needed to step outside the safety of the porch swing and find my way through the garden. Mucking around in the muck for some vegetables is always good.

The fireplace is going and the kitchen has a view of the water and the dock. One would have to assume I’m grilling fish, and various other assorted fruits, cheeses and vegetables would be placed on the table. Maybe wine, but most likely local beer.

Monocle magazine, a good book on American history, a telescope for those evening attempts to spot the American flag on the moon.

Miles Davis.

Alot has been written about the consumerism that surrounds Christmas and there is a very long history regarding America’s complicated, but interesting relationship with the holiday.¹ Without getting into a theological discussion on what Christmas, and the holiday season should mean, I believe its safe to say that commercialization has fully occurred and we are knee deep in our habits of consumption. I think one of my favorite commentaries on this topic is the work of Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir.

“We are instructed that our way of life is shopping. That our democracy is shopping. Citizenship is shopping. We don’t need towns and cities anymore because we have a shopping experience.”

“Corporations want us to have experiences only through their products. Our neighborhoods, ‘commons’ places like stoops and parks and streets and libraries are disappearing into the corporatized world. Replaced by ‘big boxes’ and chain stores.”

The larger issues surrounding our nation’s dependence on consumption in all forms is, in general, a difficult problem that desperately needs to be addressed. But I do not believe that all consumerism is bad.

While I personally find the holiday season to be about giving – giving of my time and undivided attention, giving of my talents to make their day a bit easier, giving of unconditional love – if done with the right intentions, there are instances where consumerism can be used for larger environmental or social goals. Companies and organizations are trying to use consumerism for good. The idea of ‘one for one’ is being followed to help bridge the gap between consumerism and the need to help others. Project(RED) is probably the most notable, but others like Tom’s Shoes and the World Food Programs’s Feed Bag are trying to combine our desires to do good, feel good, and sometimes just look good, into a mission of meaningful change that helps more than a corporate board and its shareholders.

One criticism of the movements listed is that while everyone may want to do good through their actions, where do “the right reasons” and the trait of humility play into these actions. Not everyone wants to walk around as a billboard highlighting their charitable work. Is there another way that could cater to clients that want to shop with a conscience?

My wife and I have always had a dream to have our own storefront…selling our artwork, furniture, clothing designs, and basically anything else we either made or felt we needed to share. But the objective was always about taking our love of beautiful things and joining it with the idea of giving back to the community around us by supporting local craftsmen, artists, and community organizations. While in Paris (I promise at some point, I’ll stop indulging in my Francophile obsessions and get back to bikes or something), we saw that our dream could indeed be a viable reality.

Merci is a 1,500 square meter shop in the Marais neighborhood of Paris where 100% of the proceeds go to a foundation that helps women and children in Madagascar. Opened within a 18th century building in March of 2009 by Bernand and Marie-France Cohen (the couple behind the luxury children’s clothing brand Bonpoint), the idea of the store is a response to a series of questions:

Give, but how? How to be supportive? How to generate funds in a sustainable manner without calling for donations or charity?

Can you operate a store as a classic commercial shop and not as a charity store? A concept store combining luxury consumerism with philanthropy?

As part loft, part cafe and part garden space, the store is filled with vintage and new clothing, designer furniture, a flower shop, and other items that cover a range of aesthetics. Alot of the clothing on sale has been created and priced exclusively for Merci. Designers like Isabel Marant, Azzaro, YSL, Chloé, Stella McCartney, A.P.C. and Paul Smith all lent their hand by offering unique pieces at 30% to 40% below market. This effort on the part of Bernand and Marie-France and the designers they stock has allowed them to give back to a cause close to their heart. Through her 30 years of work with Bonpoint, Marie-France Cohen has established connections where she is able to track funds and keep focused on the priority of getting young women and children off of the streets, teaching them skills and trades to help them achieve a better life.

While Merci is decidedly an upmarket experience, high end brands are balanced by simple glassware, vintage Bakelight switches and sugar cane fiber plates. It’s a step away from somewhat intimidating “gallery” shops like Moss or Colette. Merci is an approachable blend of the rare and everyday with products whose value lie more in their function, their spirit, and their ability to not become obsolete as fashions change.

Images by Morning by Foley

Consumerism is a fact of life. Especially in this country, the all consuming nature of our daily lives is what fuels our economy, and by extension our democratic process. But, I don’t necessarily read it as a signifier of something inherently bad.

Since projects like Feed Bag exist, and stores like Merci are able to open and give back, what would happen if more communities were filled with businesses like these? Is there a sustainable economic model of business that is less about the accumulation of wealth and growth, and more about giving excess back to those less fortunate?

¹ The short history of Christmas in America basically follows along the lines that the original Puritan settlers viewed the holiday as a pagan, Roman winter celebration. Even as late as the Civil War, Christmas was recognized in only 18 states. It was Clement Clarke Moore’s publication of “Visit from St. Nicholas” where the popular emphasis turned towards the holiday being a domestic celebration with a formalized image of a white-beared man giving gifts to children. In that story of gift giving, the door to commercialism was opened up with the retail industry fully embracing the holiday “Christmas Shopping Season” as its own.

NOTE: This post was originally featured on Intercon January 20th.

Or are the mundane and curious details of every day life I’m observing actually this much better (or worse) than my point of reference? I’m thinking of Amélie and the simple joy she found in cracking the crust on a crème brûlée. Is the crust that much better in Paris, or would any and every thing be better in Paris?

I recently came across an interesting article in the Economist that addresses my question:

“Foreignness is intrinsically stimulating. Like a good game of bridge, the condition of being foreign engages the mind constantly without ever tiring it. John Lechte, an Australian professor of social theory, characterises foreignness as “an escape from the boredom and banality of the everyday”. The mundane becomes “super-real”, and experienced “with an intensity evocative of the events of a true biography”.

An American child psychologist, Alison Gopnik, when reaching for an analogy to illuminate the world as experienced by a baby, compared it to Paris as experienced for the first time by an adult American: a pageant of novelty, colour, excitement.”

I wonder if in traveling only briefly to a new city or country location, will our fresh perspective on the mundane enable us to accurately capture the essence of the city? Or are we only seeing a “[popular] and unrealistic ‘postcard’ image of the city that fails to shed light” on the reality of the place.

I would like to think with previous travel experience and a healthy dose of research you could come up with a believable (and accurate) version of how many would perceive a place. But then again, the perception of place (its sights, sounds, smells, cultural and sociological intracacies) are such a personal experience.