I Love Compost

There's nothing like a shovel full of rich, dark, black compost. It's light and flakey and so so good for you. Well not exactly good for YOU. I mean it's good for the things you grow, and they're good for you -- the city trees and flowers that nurture the spirit and the air we breathe, or the home grown organic vegetables that nourish the body. Good fresh compost is something I think a lot about these days.

My current compost obsession began as one of those innocent conversations with Adam Szpala, my household contractor. We are trying to complete the renovation of a century-old house in Jersey City, a project that I am slowly learning is actually never done. I felt it was time to move beyond the black plastic compost bin we got at Loews. This all seemed easy enough, "Can you make me a compost box for the back yard?" I asked Adam. "Sure," he said. "It'll be about 500 bucks plus a bit more for materials." And of course things escalated from there, as so often happens with "simple" household construction projects.

Of course it couldn't just be a box, it had to be a three compartment affair, you know, one for each stage of the composting process. It had to be constructed with space between the wooden side boards for good air circulation so the organic materials would break down. That probably was a good thing because it would mean using a bit less wood, which was of course the pricey cedar, not the much cheaper but totally toxic pressure treated wood. The box would sit next to the neighbor's garage. "We'd better put a roof on it so the compost doesn't become a sodden mess every time it rains," said my husband Rich, the compost king in our household. I could hear the cash register ringing with each decision. The backyard compost project kept growing and with it, the once modest price tag. While we were at it, we decided that we had to fix the fence out back, too, but that's another story. But The end result, while pricey, has been a sturdy long term productive compost center that will allow us to get really serious about our composting. The massed flowers in our front yard have become a neighborhood landmark. The compost we feed them no doubt contributes to the success of our daffodils, irises, lilies, zinnias, rudbeckia and dahlias that give us almost continuous bloom from April to September.

[The origins of my obsession with compost go way back, to the 1920's I suppose. In some ways compost is in my blood. My Grandmother Gibson was the original organic gardener in our family. My mother told me the other day, "Granny used to order red Niagara crawlers in the mail for her compost pile." My grandmother was famous for the extensive gardens she kept at The Ridge, her suburban Toronto property. And as any good gardener knows, you've got to have compost if you want healthy plants. My father's job was to mow the lawn twice a week with the old push me pull you lawn mower and collect the grass clippings for the compost. (Turns out that I and all of my brothers still use the old fashioned kind of mower - no gas guzzlers for the Gibson gardeners.) Granny inspired my cousin Donald to create a compost pile for his school science project and got him some of her famous red crawlers to put with the straw to make his school science compost. At the end of the season, a very dry one apparently. the science teacher came to inspect the compost. Alas all that remained was a pile of dry straw, no worms, no compost. The science lesson for Donald was that you need a certain amount of moisture to make compost, and without it the crawlers high tailed it back to Niagara.

When my parents built a summer cottage in the Eastern Townships outside of Montreal, along came the compost traditions. It was the early 1950's then and there was no garbage collection in the small village where we lived. Food scraps went on the compost heap, as we called it, and we burned paper and cardboard in an old oil drum. The few glass jars and tin cans we accumulated went to the country dump every now and then, there were no plastic containers in those years. Many bottles like those for milk or soda were returnable and reusable. It was a simple eco-system, we weren't generating tons of trash that had to be carted away to huge landfills, and, by the end of the season, we had compost for next year's gardens.

So here we are, it's 2012 and I am writing this in New York City. According to the Lower East Side Recycling Center, the NYC Department of Sanitation collects 13,000 tons of garbage every day. Of that, approximately 4,940 tons are organic and could be composted into nutrient-rich plant food for the city’s trees and gardens. The average New York City household throws out over two pounds of food waste per day. That, is a mountain of trash and in a landfill, organic matter breaks down without oxygen, creating methane, a powerful, harmful greenhouse gas. By composting, we can take the organic matter out of the garbage equation and recycle it back into the earth to support green growth in the city. PlaNYC, New York's 2007 green blueprint for the city, envisioned the planting 1,000,000 new trees for the city in the next decade. Imagine if the organic trash in the city was transformed into compost to feed all of those trees instead of mouldering in landfills.

In 2007 Two Twelve designed Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC branding, launch materials and plan document. Since that time, we have been committed to helping other public and private organizations communicate their sustainability goals and performance to constituents and shareholders. The information designers in our Visioning group have been busy creating reports, plans and tools for clients as varied as Building America's Future Education Fund, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, and Citigroup.

We also have a Green Team at Two Twelve that keeps us on track with our environmental mission as we manage our design process and operate our work place. The Lower East Side Recycling Center helps us by making it easy to compost. We collect our organic waste in the office in a covered plastic container and when it fills we freeze it. Every week we take the container to the organization's collection site at the Union Square Greenmarket. They compost the waste that they collect and sell it cheaply as compost or soil to city gardeners.

As I mentioned, Rich is king of compost in our house. That is perhaps because he is the son of Bob Kiamco, crowned king of engineers back in Cebu in the Philippines. With his engineer's mind, my father-in-law has elevated the science of composting to an art. He has a rotating bin composter in which he has made compost in a near record 14 days. He says that the key is regulating the temperature so things will "cook" nicely. He gets the temperature in the bin to 165 degrees - yikes - by adding sawdust from the lumber yard and rotating the bin regularly. The result is that he has piles of compost for the vegetable and flower gardens that he and his wife Benita tend in their suburban Chicago backyard.

In our house, we have some old white enamel pails to collect our green waste and it's amazing how quickly the stuff accumulates. Each time we empty and clean the pails, we add newspaper to help aerate the green waste. This season we will be experimenting with our brand new backyard compost box. At the moment we have sticks and brush in one bin. The middle one has piles of last season's leaves. The third is the active one where we put the household waste and the garden debris that accumulates from weeding. We'll add leaves to that one every so often to keep it light and airy and we'll turn it with a fork regularly to maintain the decomposition and keep it from getting smelly.

This month we celebrate Earth Day 2012. If you are not already, perhaps this is the time to start composting. The Lower East Side Recycling Center has lots of useful information - the basics about outdoor composting and also how to create an indoor compost bin. So think about getting off the garbage grid and making some of that rich dark black stuff for you and your plants.

Black Beans and Apple Pie

The other day I found myself, sitting in a Korean restaurant in Palisades Park, eating a remarkable meal - Bibimbap with Bulgogi, in other words a bowl of warm rice and mixed vegetables topped with barbecued beef. And while eating, I am reading James Beard's chapter on Pies and Pastry in his bible of American cooking, American Cookery. This juxtaposition of Beard's treatise on the American pie and my Korean lunch seems like a metaphor for the circumstances of my life.

I am a white guy, an Anglo-Canadian from the English part of Montreal, firmly rooted in Northern European culture and traditions and married to a Filippino man, the son of two immigrants who began life in the mountains of Cebu in the central Philippines. These days food is one of the things that is both a bridge between our worlds and a barrier I must cross.

The other day I took a cooking class at ICE, the Institute for Culinary Education, on 23rd Street in New York City. It was called the American Pie Workshop and was taught by a delightful knowledgable woman who was formerly the pastry chef at Craft - impressive credential. This was my first cooking class here in the United States, in the past I've just taken classes while traveling. Frankly I didn't learn much in that Pie Workshop. I am actually a really good pie maker, thanks to a lifetime of great pies and pie making lessons from my mother who is an ace with a roller pin. I did learn a few tricks and techniques in the class but more importantly it opened my eyes to the rewards and opportunities of pie making, though it seemed to me that some of the recipes used in the class were not worthy of a Craft pastry chef. For me, a pile of berries and sugar on a mountain of cream and mascarpone does not make a great pie. I am a fan of the classics, a great sweet and tart two crust farm fresh raspberry pie, a creamy-mealy Southern lemon chess pie or my spring favorite, a rhubarb custard pie. All of these creations involve a certain amount - OK copious amounts - of butter, a bunch of sugar and maybe a bit of cream - all staples of the WASP kitchen. In the eight years Rich and I have been together, I have made lots of pies, and we have enjoyed most everyone of them. I think he fell in love with me over a succession of my raspberry pies.

At the turn of the year, the winds of change blew a chilly blast across my kitchen counter. Just before Christmas, Rich and I saw Forks Over Knives, a fascinating movie about the health benefits of a plant based diet. While I found it interesting and informative - the usual tepid WASP reaction to things - Rich saw it as a wake up call. And so just as I was unpacking the butter based leftovers from our Christmas turkey dinner on December 26, the specter of the vegetarian lifestyle loomed. That night was the opening salvo in the plant wars - out came Rich's black bean casserole and steamed kale, while my turkey with stuffing and gravy, candied yams and brussels sprouts and chestnuts in butter stayed in fridge.

This is not what I had signed up for on the altar when we were married last September 30. Didn't our wedding vows say something about regular servings of meat? As it happens, the specter of vegetarianism turned into the nightmare of veganism. Rich waited a day or two to give me the full picture of his new eating plans. It was going to be the full plant based program. Just as we were kissing my famous roast chicken and moist roast tenderloin goodbye, so too we were saying farewell to our Sunday breakfast staples, scrambled eggs and my buttermilk current scones.

The thing is, I am the cook in our kitchen. I usually set the agenda, work out the menu, make the meals - it was I who feed us and our frequent dinner guests. With Rich's embrace of the vegan path, the picture has changed. My lunch in Palisades Park speaks to my moods and feelings - I'm pulled in several directions. These days I am trying to perfect my pies while at the same time exploring new tastes and new foods that this WASPish Canadian never experienced before.

Fresh Fish & Steamed Crabs

Yesterday Rich and I were driving to the Path station and I glanced across to the signs on the front of a neighborhood supermarket. It's a big store, not very appealing, ragged in the way that older urban supermarkets can be. I've never been inside, I imagine that it's kinda grubby and a bit smelly, not where I want to shop. I admit it, I am squeamish and fussy when it comes to my grocery stores. But this time as I was scanning critically across the drab facade, I noticed the signs on the building. In addition to the large name sign for the store - for the life of me I can't remember what it's called - I noticed some other words, mounted on the building in large permanent letters: Fresh Seafood & Steamed Crabs. Remember I am a signage guy, I notice the signs. At that moment, what struck me as very odd were the words themselves. Why would a large, presumably full service supermarket, choose to feature these two particular items in permanent letters on the facade, Fresh Fish - Steamed Crabs. The fish is a general category, but crabs, why crabs, that's so specific. Were they so desirable and hard to find in 70's or 80's Jersey City when the sign might have gone up. It seems inconceivable that a supermarket in 2011 would permanently mount these particular words on the building.

That momentary flash on Sip Avenue set my mind to thinking about food and changing eating patterns. For context, I am in the depths of a six week Detox/Weigh Loss program. I've lost ten pounds (damn, yesterday it was eleven.) It has caused me to examine and reflect on all of my food choices and eating patterns. For now it's no caffeine, alcohol, processed sugars, gluten, dairy, or starchy vegetables (i.e. rice or potatoes), and for two more days, no solid breakfast or dinner. This food shock therapy is designed to cleanse my body and also interrupt all of my previous food routines so I can lose weight and feel better. Thus far I have achieved both in spades. At the moment I am following a detailed roadmap that lays out what I can and cannot eat. This makes the regime easier, if I stick to the path I will achieve the results I am seeking. The harder part is contemplating the road ahead beyond the six week program. What will be my new normal, what will I want to eat, and what will I allow myself to eat. My eating patterns before the program were constructed from a lifetime of experience. I grew up on great food, abundantly provided in a beautiful setting. Mother was a renowned cook and she knew how to present food to make eating a compelling and delicious experience. Long before that Fresh Fish & Steamed Crabs sign went I up, learned to eat three solid meals a day. Like mom, I am a great cook and I too can put on a damn good meal.

So what's the problem, where did I go wrong. I think the key word is abundance. I love the meal, I love the food, I love making it. I've rarely restrained myself - have another bagel with a bit more butter, have a second or third helping of roast chicken, more mashed, a little pie and a little more pie. I've been blessed, all my life the meals have been good. The patterns started way back and they have just rolled on and on over the years. I've been eating like it's 1975 - when I was twenty-five. But I'm sixty now and that can't continue.

So Rick and Steven have set me on a new path of moderate and conscious eating, Martha and Rosemary and Rich and all the others are my cheerleaders. So I'll now adopt the first of David's New Rules of Eating
1. Don't eat so much.

And I'm making some other changes too. On that account Fresh Fish & Steamed Crabs might be just the thing for me. But I don't think that I'll buy them at that grungy store we passed yesterday. The reason will be the basis of Rule #2 but I'll tell you about that later.

Hungarian Rhapsody

On a dull December day the outskirts of the city are gray, the trees are bare and the industrial landscape is cheerless. Drab postwar apartment blocks dot the landscape while empty lots and demolition sites are scattered here and there. It could be Newark or Philadelphia or Cleveland, but in fact it's Budapest. The clusters of tile-roofed red brick farmhouses tell me it's Eastern Europe and not the Northeastern US. At the edge of the city the scene changes; I start to see the large fin de siècle buildings typical of many continental cities. We turn onto a long boulevard and I can see why this city has been called the Paris of the east. Grand 19th-century buildings line the street but it's still pretty gray. Then on a prominent corner stands a huge building that tells me this is not Paris. It's red brick, much more detailed than the others, with a fanciful roofline and a tall black witch's hat turret on the corner—I never saw that in Paris. Then closer to the city center is one of those remarkable Budapest buildings that thrills the senses. Heavy stone figures flank the doorways, the windows have scrolls and flowers, the roofline swirls, and gorgeous multicolor tile adorns the peak of the façade. It's Hungarian Secession, the magical marvelous Budapest version of Art Nouveau from the last quarter of the nineteenth century when this was one of the fastest growing cities of Europe.

In the center of Pest the monochrome is broken by bright colors that pop up everywhere, green and ochre of the Zolany tiles on the roof of the Museum of Applied Art, the red and yellow brick on the Central Market, the bright yellow stucco of the University library. Towers and turrets are everywhere. Bright yellow trams glide down the outer ring past the towering wedding cake that is the recently restored New York Palace building. I pull up to my bright cream-colored hotel, another confection on the boulevard. Budapest reveals itself; the scars of war and neglect can be seen on the side streets, but at the same time the colors and energy of change and renewal are visible everywhere. It's quite exciting to see this urban evolution so clearly revealed.

I arrive on a Saturday afternoon, which is men's day at the Kiraly Baths, a small, rather charming 16th-century Turkish bath in Buda. The taxi drops me at the small building on a quiet side street. I open the old wooden door and find myself in the particular world of a Budapest public bath. I check my clothes, don my loincloth, shower, and then plunge into the large pool. The gentle hum of conversation echoes under the ancient dome. These are lively, friendly places, and soon I am chatting with Hungarians, and others too—German, Albanian, Portuguese. It's a very civilized way to socialize on a Saturday afternoon.

Later, I head across the Chain Bridge to my hotel in central Pest. I have a cocktail in the grand lobby while a string quartet plays American jazz with a decidedly Hungarian twist. It's Budapest, beautiful, grand, old world, but also rough at the edges. The surroundings are comfortable but the service is a bit erratic.

That night I head to AlterEgo, a big gay club where new Whitney is blasting from the speakers. I scan the room. A big Hungarian meatball in a tight T stretches his beefy arms over his head—nice. A sassy carrot-top girl in a long black corset dress takes a drag on her cigarette and flashes her lashes—fantastic. Skinny boys with Santa hats dart around the bar—very cute. There's that handsome Albanian I chatted with at the Kiraly earlier in the day. I'm on the town in Budapest. Could be New York or London—or could it?

On Sunday morning I go to the flea market, of course. There's lots of kitsch—heavy furniture, gilt frames, also nice enamel signs, pretty blue and white pottery. It's always fun to see the local mix. Then to the Museum of Applied Art to see the real stuff. In European capitals, the Museums of Applied Art are the places of design history. Budapest has a charming one. It has been rebuilt several times over the course of the 20th century as wars and revolutions took their toll on the grand, graceful building. Right now it has a gorgeous exhibition of Turkish carpets of the 16th and 17th centuries, dazzling. There's also an exhibition of curious Hungarian Art Nouveau furniture which is heavier, folkier, and less refined than other Nouveau. As I leave the building I see the glorious green and yellow tile roof on the building.

And so to the Gellert, the remarkable Art Nouveau bath. The high barrel vault lobby is grand and dark with statues and ferns. The stern matron takes my money. I wander to the men's locker, lined with draped cubicles and handsome wood lockers. I change and head into the thermal baths where I am knocked out by a site more magical than you can imagine. It is a giant, dimly lit, blue tiled cavern with men and women (it's family day) drifting in and out of the huge warm pools. The last moments of daylight filter through the glass ceiling so the lights haven't yet been turned on. After the splendors of the thermal baths I get a massage from a huge, hairy Hungarian sumo wrestler. I am flat out, naked on the table, in a brightly lit white tiled room lined with gorgeous polychrome Art Nouveau floral cartouches—it's turn-of-the-century institutional splendor. While the masseur rubs and pounds me, people come and go, the masseur stops to talk, occasionally yelling across the room. Here there's none of that soothing calm of the contemporary hotel spa. Oh yes, I am sharing this large room with several men suspended in a deep pool, hanging from metal and plastic harnesses. Hmm, torture or treatment? Looks the former, but it's probably the latter.

Budapest has a delightful Christmas market in the center of Pest. Little wooden buildings are spread throughout the square, which is ablaze with lights. The building on one side is a giant advent calendar. This is a great place for dinner; people are everywhere, eating, drinking, strolling, shopping. My meal is a steaming plate of stewed cabbage laced with sausage, and I can't resist the freshly fried potato pancake. This hearty meal is perfect after my afternoon at the Gellert. Rows of picnic tables make for a lively outdoor dining room. The girls at my table are all sparkles and spangles like Christmas trees in this Christmas market. Some Eastern European women seem to like a pretty flashy look. I guess the men must like it, too!

On Monday morning I have breakfast at the Gerloczy, a charming cafe near the City Hall. Eggs, tea, orange juice, and toast with some deliciously salty butter. With the International Herald Tribune in hand I can start the day properly, simple good food and a selection of the news and features of the day. That morning, the city is gray and damp but alive with people after the quiet of Saturday and Sunday. The shutters are pulled up, the lights are on, and the city hums. After breakfast I head to the Central Market where I am greeted by a dizzying array of paprikas, fresh fruits and vegetables, meats of all cuts and colors, cookies, cakes, and candies. Why don't we have a big indoor market in New York City?

Before I know it, it's time for lunch with Laszlo, a graphic design professor at the Hungarian University of Fine Art. Over an amazingly delicious chicken paprikash, I get snapshot of Hungarian politics and the recent history. It's a murky business, two decades of elected politicians hasn't produced much in the way of change and open government. We head to the university where I talk about my book and the idea of wayfinding as a design discipline. My audience is rapt as I speak and eager with their queries during the discussion period. I am inspired by my two hours with graphic design students. As design ambassador I talked about the power of design to impact society, to make a difference, to help change the way things are done. It's a powerful message in a country where the wounds and challenges of the 20th century are still visible and the road map through the 21st century is still being drawn.

The day ends with more food, another bath palace. The roast goose at Menza is crisp and delicious, perfect winter food, hard to find in New York. The place has a cool retro '60s decor. I recognize the weird flowery wallpaper—we just ripped out the white-yellow-brown version of it from our kitchen in Jersey City. When it's black and white like this, here, I love it. The final plunge is at the vast Széchenyi, an enormous Beaux Arts bathing complex. The thermal springs run very hot there and so they have a huge steaming outdoor bath. As I float in the misty waters of this giant pool I reflect on what I have seen and heard and tasted and experienced during my few days in Budapest. For me it has been a delicious stew of sensations and inspirations.

Make No Small Plans

I read the International Herald Tribune over breakfast in a charming café in downtown Budapest the other day. The paper was filled with interesting stories, some looking back, reflecting on President Obama's big decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan, others looking ahead to the climate conference getting underway in Copenhagen. It was all fascinating and quite terrifying. The President's Afghan gamble is a big one. The stakes for this nation are high, the personal stakes for our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president contemplating an escalation of the war are even higher. Though this military exercise is designed to improve the security of the United States, it's a risky strategy that is as likely to fail as it is to succeed. The paper described the President's intelligent process of debate and discussion that lead up to the decision—it was impressive. For the moment I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Much more of the paper was devoted to a discussion of the issues facing the climate diplomats meeting in Copenhagen. The issues at hand there are the biggest ones imaginable: the health and safety of the planet. The questions are not at all clear and the answers are much less so. The potential for conflicts are enormous, interests and histories and economies and resources are deeply divided. Though the debate about global warming continues, most agree on the need for change. To highlight the perils of global warming and the associated rising sea levels to their tiny island nation, the cabinet of the Maldives recently held an underwater cabinet meeting in scuba gear! As the country with the largest economy and the world's biggest polluter, the United States has a tremendous responsibility to change course. China, India, and Brazil, with their huge populations and rapidly growing economies, are feeling the pressure to create a new development model. Smaller developing countries want economic support for the changes they must make. Oil-producing countries are suggesting they should be compensated for the loss of revenue that would result from greener living. The plans under discussion are big and wide-ranging. They all involve international cooperation and the flow of money back and forth. Emissions targets are being discussed, strategies debated.

I am a designer and I am interested in how we can help design the solutions to these problems. Far from the diplomatic chambers, designers are creating change, inventing new ways of processing waste, running cars, harnessing energy, packaging products, communicating more efficiently with less, changing behaviors and outcomes. A few of these inventive minds and smart entrepreneurs are American, many are not. Again I agree with the President, who sees green business as one of the saviors of the American economy. As the world's richest and most polluting nation, we Americans have become way too complacent and lazy, and not nearly as creative as we need to be. We have to believe in the reality and feel the importance of all of this, to understand the implications and engage in a new way of living at all levels. The big plans stimulate the small moves. All together it can make a difference.

As I waited for my plane to Warsaw I saw a very small thing, something we Americans would never do. At the waste bin in the café, the trash was going in the usual place. On top of the stand lay a pile of small sugar packets, unopened and unused. Americans would pitch them along with the mountains of other trash; apparently Hungarians think differently. Why waste perfectly good sugar? They put them back into circulation and reduce the needless sugar consumption at this small café. It's a state of mind. We think supplies of sugar and other commodities are boundless. Hungarians know otherwise, they remember the scarcities. This mindset can change behavior, stimulate new kinds of thinking, and point the way to a new respect for our planet and its resources. So let's make the biggest of plans, but not forget the small things that each of us can do to preserve the planet for those who will come after us.

Beijing Morning

The cab pulls away from the protective cocoon of the Peninsula Hotel. Another dash across this great big city. I think we are headed north, or is it south? I give up trying to figure that out as images catch my eye. When we pass Wangfujing, the main shopping street, a crowd gathers for a small ceremony. A phalanx of military guards in their crisp green uniforms with red-trimmed caps set the stage for the dignitary who will preside at this little event. The formality of the guards is contrasted with the tacky stage with its bright red balloon arch and the paper towers with levitating lanterns. The Chinese love ceremonies with dignitaries. We certainly learned that last year at the Olympics.

We go a little farther and across the street; the staff is lined up outside a restaurant, dark-suited waiters on the left, white-coated kitchen staff on the right. Their leader barks commands like a marine corps drill sergeant and they respond in unison like a bunch of new cadets during training. Will they be cooking meals in there or planning an assault on the senses? This being Beijing, clearly both will be happening.

There's a shop called Sweet Potato Workplace. Hmm, who's doing the working, the people or the potatoes? I wish I could do the eating. Farther on we head into an older neighborhood. The street is lined with lovely arching trees and hutongs, the traditional house-lined alleys of Beijing, small shops along the bigger streets, courtyard houses in the back. The austere gray-roofed homes provide a beautiful setting for the deep red, green, and yellow temples which punctuate this older urban landscape every so often. It makes a for a beautiful ensemble.

Elsewhere, massive gray stone square towers mark the portals of the old Ming city. These are the only remains of the city walls torn down in the 1960s by the Communist government in an effort to open up and modernize the city.

Soon the old city gives way to broad avenues lined with apartment blocks of gated communities, one with an Egyptian temple entry. At the driveway to another, a dwarf in a red silk jacket and black top hat directs traffic into the complex—quite surreal. Huge restaurants sit on many of the streets. They are all adorned with large gaudy signs, bands of neon, letters on top which punch the skyline. I imagine what delicacies the troops inside are preparing—Beijing Duck no doubt. Is there anything better? Bright contemporary restaurants like Do Dong with their eager young staff prepare the duck so that it is light and crispy and absolutely delectable.

As we head farther out, the buildings are taller and newer, huge blocks of them along the busy boulevards. Many are international-style buildings, business centers for the exploding capitalist enterprises here. But this is Beijing, so some of the buildings have decorative tops, temple roofs 30 or 40 stories up in the sky. In this dense urban skyline it is amusing to see these buildings with their "hats," a curious juxtaposition of the modern and the traditional city. Corporate logos and hotel names also dot the skyline; apparently there's no zoning to limit the proliferation of urban signage.

As we pass through the Central Business District, the blackened hulk of Rem Koolhaas' Mandarin Oriental Hotel building sits angrily, a ruined but shapely block next to the dramatic sculptural China Central Television tower which stands like a giant Lego construction in the sky. The hotel and cultural center burned on the last night of the Lunar New Year in February. The hotel was set ablaze by an illegal fireworks display held too close to the unfinished building. Fire equipment couldn't reach high enough to douse the flames. The massive ruin is a cautionary note on the pitfalls of instant overdevelopment. For this New Yorker it provides haunting memories of 9/11 and the ruins of my old office building at 90 West Street.

We're arrived at the conference center...well, not quite. My cab driver wants to dump me out across a busy highway across from the hotel with no apparent route to the front door. I flap my hands and point, she responds in Chinese, somehow we communicate. She understands what I want and makes the elaborate loop needed to get me across the road. It's the Beijing version of the Jersey left turn.

This is my second visit to the Chinese capital and on second glance Beijing has more appeal. Then it was bitterly cold, now I'm enjoying lovely fall days. While before it was a complete mystery, now it begins to make sense. I understand more of the geography and the urban structure, where to find things, and where to look for them. I'm not afraid of it, I can connect with it. A sweet eager smile from a handsome driver in a passing truck helps to bridge the gaps of time and space and brings me right here and now.

Remembering Myself

Recently I had the chance to reflect on my life and what I have accomplished as a designer. Where do I begin? Should I say the Yale School of Art, where I finally finished a full university degree and from which I set up the business that is still my daily home and workplace? Perhaps it is further back, when I ran away to Europe and found myself as a gay man who desired the love of other men. Or should I go back even further, to the real beginning, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where I was born at mid-century? It has been a journey over time and space. I am the sum of the parts of my life, the places I have lived, the people I have known, and the experiences that I have had.

Recently I was made a Fellow of SEGD, which is the professional association of designers who do the kind of signage and wayfinding work that I am known for. With this award, my peers have recognized my career and achievements. It was a splendid moment, fellow professionals saying that I had accomplished something significant, a room full of people gathered to honor me, David Gibson. It was my moment. How to describe the journey that I have taken to arrive at that very moment?

I have always loved biographies. This comes from two interests: my baser love of gossip and stories about people, and my higher love of history, the sweep of people and places and events. My library, which is finally coming out of boxes after a year in the closet, is filled with biographies, memories of my temporary companions, Bloomsbury, gay and lesbian notables, people in the arts, any number of people who adorn the walls of London's National Portrait Gallery. I have a particular love of English history. Despite this Anglophilia, last year I had my French period. Here's how it works: Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette lead me to Antonia Fraser's biography of the French queen, which formed the basis of the movie. I enjoyed the texture of Fraser's acclaimed telling of the life of this notorious and fascinating woman. This book lead me to Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution, a fascinating account of Marie Antoinette's wardrobe, the clothiers who kept her supplied with gorgeous attire and her evolving image as the style icon at the center of French life headed toward the cataclysm of the Revolution. This overload of Antoinettiania left me wanting to know more about the dynamics and logistics of life at Versailles. Along came Versailles: Biography of a Palace to answer all my questions about the history of the French court, how it was built and how it was used, who lived where, all about the kitchens and toilets and salons of the huge palace. This is how my mind works, a book or movie opens the door to a world I didn't know. I find myself wanting to open other doors to learn more about other parts of the story.

Since I moved to Jersey City, I have appreciated my daily PATH train journey. I get on the train at the beginning of the line in the morning, settle into my seat, open my book, and find myself transported not only to New York City, my morning destination, but also to the court of Versailles and the minutiae of the queen's toilette or the layout of the king's apartment.

Recently my morning journeys have taken me to England—more precisely to London between the wars (World, not Iraq/Gulf). Remember I said I was an English history fan. It all started with Bright Young People, a charming account of the Bohemian aristocrats who dominated the gossip sheets of the Twenties with the outrageous costume parties and drunken country house revels, frothy stuff about a city and country clinging to many of the old values while also tossing others away amidst the social wreckage of World War I's aftermath. This naturally lead to Evelyn Waugh, a witty right-wing Anglo-Catholic novelist who wrote fictionalized accounts of his time as a bright young person. This quote from Vile Bodies captures the period:

"Oh Nina, what a lot of parties." (...Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St John's Wood, parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and night clubs, in windmills and swimming baths, tea parties at school where one ate muffins and meringues and tinned crab, parties at Oxford where one drank brown sherry and smoked Turkish cigarettes, dull dances in London and comic dances in Scotland and disgusting dances in Paris—:all that succession and repetition of massed humanity.... Those vile bodies....)"

The trail lead me to Anthony Powell, a novelist, journalist and astute observer of the London scene from the Twenties to the Seventies, a kind of English Proust. He knew them all and wrote about all of it in a twelve-book novel series and four volumes of memoirs. I found reading back-to-back Michael Barber's biography of Powell and Powell's abridged one-volume autobiography a great inside-outside view of a rich and fascinating twentieth-century life.

By now I was hooked and headed down the rabbit hole of London literary life. With Tom Driberg I hit pay dirt. This fragment of his Times of London obituary says it all.

"Tom Driberg, who worked for some years under the name of William Hickey and died under the name of Lord Bradwell, was a journalist, an intellectual, a drinking man, a gossip, a high churchman, a liturgist, a homosexual, a friend of Lord Beaverbrook, an enemy of Lord Beaverbrook, an employee and biographer of Lord Beaverbrook, a politician of the left, a member of Parliament, a member of the Labour Party National Executive, a stylist, an unreliable man of undoubted distinction. He looked and talked like a bishop, not least in the bohemian clubs which he frequented. He was the admiration and despair of his friends and acquaintances."

That is brilliant biographic writing, an obit as only the Brits can do it, a snapshot of this man in all of his complexity and variety. Yet again I headed for the autobiography (Ruling Passions) and biography (The Soul of Indiscretion) combo on Tom Driberg. His is the great story of a public life lived in and out of the shadows in Parliament and in public washrooms where he found sex on a very regular basis when being gay was neither accepted nor fully legal.

So back to that luncheon at the conference in San Diego where I was preparing to take the podium and accept my Fellow award. I had prepared a visual presentation of my own journey, an interweaving of the highlights of my life and the work I have done. I had a moment of real panic—what the hell was I doing going on about myself in this professional context? I was not hitting just the high points. I included my sojourn in Denmark in the Seventies and the Aussie porn (soft-core Seventies literary porn) star (well, maybe a "featured actor," as they say on Broadway) that I fell hard and fast for. It was weird to see his rugged, handsome face up on the screen at an SEGD event. I don't even remember his name. But I sure remember the excitement of allowing myself to love a man. OK, it was infatuation, but it was real and it was me. My fears about the talk melted as I took the podium and began to talk abut my journey, Montreal, Cornell, Nova Scotia, Yale, Two Twelve, New York, relationships, 9/11, travel, my book, on and on. I felt it, this was MY moment, the people was there to hear about me. It was all over in about twenty-five minutes. The applause was sustained, the audience loved it.

Over the next three days of the conference, many people told me they were inspired by my talk. I was surprised and delighted. People are not used to the mix of the personal and the professional that I offered up that day. I guess other people like biographies as much as I do. And I have lived an interesting life; I have a story to tell. This blog is my story.