“All Politics are local.” — Former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Tip O’Neill
Today, in Covid-spreading Lycoming County,—where the worst has not YET happened—returning to physical therapy would be unsafe. For movement–essential for paraplegics like me– I have to create an in-room gymnasium of sorts. Nothing fancy. Sinks at a safe height so I can I can briefly pull myself upright and then safely return to the wheelchair.
Architects: When you design housing, do you keep such necessities in mind? Or do you design from an Americans with Disability Act or other government official standards created by people other than those of us who do not walk, hear, or see?
This is a screen shot I took of me as an avatar in a 3-D gaming engine modeL
Who is an architect? This is the theme of today’s September 2020 US Covid-19 column.
Let us start with my editors here at e-architect who for the past ten years have supporting me in my steadily increasing grandiosity:
Sunset for the vulnerable and what architects can do about it
Dateline: Thursday September 3, 2020. Rural beautiful Lycoming County Pennsylvania, United States. After a lifetime of living somewhere else, this is my perch to learn from its rich architectural history.
Lycoming County—population 116,110—is also the dangerous perch:
+ where I live in a community with severely-limited pandemic testing
+ where health care workers have not been tested regularly
+ where doctors offices and hospitals do not have computer systems capable of handling the data demand of day to day let alone a pandemic
+ where mask-wearing and social distancing practices are openly defied; example. last week my health aide Frank Rasole Jr. (whom everyone calls “Frankie”) attended with his lady friend Jamie a neighborhood swimming pool where over 100 others bathed and frolicked at close distance–few wearing masks
+ where a decaying infrastructure makes inter-county Rust Belt transportation difficult; especially ( as happened not that long ago when I/) one is an ambulance speeding to the hospital and the ambulance is forced to stop because the shocks could not handle the potholes/
Who are the most vulnerable–most likely to die from the Corona virus
I am.
I am a 72 year old paraplegic who has survived cancer four times. Because my spleen was removed, my immune system is compromised. Plus, I am a paraplegic–unable to walk for the past 26 years. My daughters and granddaughters live hundreds of miles away. This year–2020– I had two serious surgeries–each successful despite a regional health care system incapable of handling the Covid-19 pandemic when it will soon strike the Rust Belt of Pennsylvania with disastrous consequences.
During my time here in Williamsport, county seat of Lycoming County, the Jewish community has been supportive (an understatement). Specifically, I am a member of the Orthodox Congregation Ohev Shalom, lover of peace. Ohev Shalom is the only wheel chair accessible synagogue in the area.
Rabbi Hillel asked three rhetorical questions:
Enter the Covid-19 related wisdom of Rabbi Hillel the Elder, our greatest rabbi
If I am not for myself who is for me?
If I am for myself along, what good am I?
If not now, when?
Enter Susan Dooha, Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York (CID-NY):
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Let us pause on Rabbi Hillel’s questions and return to rural Pennsylvania
Last year, I became friendly with my next door neighbor here on the third floor of Liberty Lodge. My neighbor was a construction project manager for a federally funded project. He did not want to be identified; also, he regarded the project’s out of state architect as irrelevant to the design decisions he ordered his construction workers to perform. Here is the video I made of our four mile expedition to the Lycoming College building site in Williamsport.:
Lycoming County is 130 miles ( 209 KM ) northwest of Philadelphia and 165 miles (266 km) East northeast of Pittsburgh, IAs I write from RoomP 310 of Liberty Lodge, reality forces me to focus on these facts, Last month (August 2020), a thousand US Americans died each day–the highest rate in the world. Here in the US, an American dies every minute.
Now would be a good time to hear Bruce Springsteen sing the theme song for today’s column
Lyrics
My City of Ruins by Bruce Springsteen
There is a blood red circle
On the cold dark ground
And the rain is falling down
The church door’s thrown open
I can hear the organ’s song
But the congregation’s gone
My city of ruins
My city of ruins
Come on, rise up! Come on, rise up!
Come on, rise up! Come on, rise up!
Come on, rise up! Come on, rise up!
Come on, rise up! Come on, rise up!
Come on, rise up! Come on, rise up!
Who is an architect?
There are good architects and bad architects. It is time for degrees and licensed professional architects to understand the reality: The customer is king.
Wake up architects and you engineers and construction executives who comprise the AEC community: You work for me.
For ten years, I have been publishing here for e-architect on the necessity to design housing for people like me. People like me are Baby Boomers born after World War II dying in record numbers in US nursing homes designed by architects who did not realize that opening the window and letting in fresh air would prevent pandemic deaths.
This is a screen shot I took of me as an avatar in a 3-D gaming engine modeL
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Twenty six years ago, when I was losing the ability to walk, I tripped on my feet
I fell against the couch (purchased impulsively after having admired it so) and dislocated my shoulder.
While waiting for the ambulance to arrive, Amelia, then four years old, asked, “Daddy, does it hurt?” I wanted to lie to my daughter, but reality intervened. The pain from my shoulder came so quickly, that all I could say was “Yes.“
“When you become disabled in the suburbs where the vast majority of US Americans live, the best thing you can do is move.” Moving is what I did to the Silicon Valley of California. In the process, my interaction with the built environment caused ad hoc architect me to make me realize: To make a house a home, the house must comfortably interact with the workplace, the grocery store and other community making sites— requiring an ad hoc architect to become a PNC ad hoc town planner.”
Note: My next column will contain an e-architect exclusive: An hitherto unpublished chapter on designing a bathroom, the most dangerous room in the house for paraplegics like me.
For ten years, I have been publishing for e-architect articles, columns and videos on my disability perspective.
When I began writing here, I thought of myself as an outsider to architects in effect saying, I may not be an architect, but I know people like me who cannot walk nor stand for more than one minute can make your design more more effective. It is in response to the deadly pandemic that I helped e-architect launch the first Architects for Change webinar series organized around Rabbi Hillel’s three questions. The remaining two questions will be discussed in the next column.
To return to quetion “If I am not for myself who is for me? the two principal presenters in July ( stay tuned for more presenters) were Susan Dooha, representing the shameful present, In New York City ( as elsewhere in my country the failure of the design community to prepare for this shameful present is an daily (nay, hourly) concern for the Center for Independence of the Disabled, NY. Please go to the CID-NY website and hit the donate button. Susan needs your money. https://www.cidny.org/ ]
As a grandfather, my self-concern is for the future as well as whatever present is left to me. Enter Chris Lepine, Director, Zaha Hadid Architects, London who presented the future.
My editors beckon: “All right, stop writing, Joel.”
Isabelle Lomholt and Adrian Welch, Editors at e-architect
“Good night and good luck,” as Greensboro, North Carolina born Edward R. Morrow, my hero, used to say.
My hero Edward R.Murrow broadcast this 1960 example of classic investigative reporting.This documentary was broadcast on Thanksgiving Day where I watched it at my maternal grandmother’s apartment in Brooklyn. I was 12 years old at the time.Murrow’s documentary shaped my future career in measurable ways. Note the hideous conditions of farm worker housing. Little effort would find in Florida and Canada- where inadequate housing for migrant workers in danger of spreading the Corona virus have been reported. Think Black Lives Matter when you hear the words of a grower Murrow quoted: “We used to own our slaves. Now we just rent them.”
Joel
[email protected] 2019: East Third Street Williamsport, PA, US 17701
Please feel free to phone me at US 570-772-4909
Copyright © 2020 by Joel Solkoff. All rights reserved.
Door by Kathy Forer sculptor. From her Architecture collection. Copyright 2020 by Kathy Forer, published by permission.
Coming soon to this column, Abraham Lincoln’s Washington. While pursuing the hotly contested Republican nomination in 1860, Lincoln gave a speech of his soon-to-be Civil War (1861-1865) Age which reverberates in our Covid-19 Age (March 2020 and for the many years that will follow)
Abraham Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
Architects take note and do something about the coming reality of billions of additional emergency housing dollars being poured into combatting Covid-19. As this 1861 photo shows, the Capital was under construction when Lincoln took the oath of office “to protect and defend the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. The following month, when the Civil War began, there was a lot of defending required to do and few resources left to do it. Even so, President Lincoln over the worst years of the bloody Civil War, made sure the Capitol dome was completed and expanded following the British in the War of 1812 who burned down the Capital (and also portions of the White House).
Washington DC was a malarial swamp at the time. President Lincoln could have cleaned up the swamp in the area now The Mall and cleaned out the mosquitos. The mosquitos may very will have given Lincon’s beloved son Todd the malaria that killed him. Princeton historian Jon Mecham insists that completing the Capitol (which happened four years later) was critical to the War effort whose purpose was to bring our country together.
Equally critical to the Covid-19 battle, Professor Meacham insists, is establishing the kind of strong federal process comparable to the US response to The Civil War and more immediately in daily comparisons to he bombing of Pearl Harbor. I will have you remotely visit my Capitol and the Washington DC designed by Pierre L’Enfant whih did not turn out entirely as he had planned.
