You can't read Chicago Architect, the glossy magazine published by the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects, online--it's free to members and available by subscription to the rest of us for $35 a year. But the AIA has posted an interview with Chicago architect Walter Netsch, who died in June. It's not the world's most fascinating Q & A--the Art Institute has a much more in-depth one here (PDF), conducted in 1995--but it's notable because it was conducted just last year.

Among other things, he discusses climate change (briefly), his fight to keep his license, and which among his many projects (including the U.S. Air Force Academy, the U of I Chicago Circle campus, and "brutalist" libraries at the U. of C. and Northwestern) he considered failures (bold emphasis mine):

Z: You've had many successful projects. Do you consider any of your projects to be failures?

W: I did some dorms at the Air Force Academy long after we did the campus itself. They really were awful. They were for visiting officers who were out there to have a good time. Well, I didn't design them a good-time joint—the dorms I designed were rather perfunctory.

It was a case of the wrong architect and the wrong client. That project was a flop. I wasn't proud of it at all. But I wasn't going to design a nightclub or a whorehouse. That's what it became. They had a particular ethic of their own. It's not mine. And I didn't understand that. I misunderstood the client, in other words, and designed a lousy building for them.

The Inland Steel building. That could have been quite wonderful. I designed a double glass curtain wall system, much like what you see some architects doing today. It was very energy efficient. But in the middle of that, I was assigned to lead the Air Force Academy campus project. Twenty thousand raw acres to plan, design and build. I wasn't going to complain. But Bruce Graham finished the Inland Steel Building. It could have been a better building.

UPDATE: The Chicagoland Bicycle Federation will be announcing the program at a press conference August 13 at 11 AM at the Garfield Park Conservatory.

Last June Tasneem Paghdiwala wrote a Reader cover story, Where Would Jesus Park?, about the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation's Sunday Parkways proposal, which would close some streets to motorized vehicles for bicyclists' enjoyment on Sunday mornings. The story focused on the CBF's clash with churches whose parishioners park illegally, with the city's cooperation, along the parkways during services.

Today local bike advocate and occasional Reader contributor John Greenfield posted a detailed update and commentary on his blog, Vote With Your Feet. The good news, he writes, is that the program will finally start October 5. The bad news is that it will "take place on fewer days, for less miles, with more car traffic and worse scenery, than originally hoped for." He's got lots more details on that, plus (in scattered form) route information (click on the map that accompanies this post to enlarge).

Last week's Reader story on the protest over conservative pundit James Dobson's induction into the National Radio Hall of Fame has drawn considerable reader comment.  Now Truth Wins Out, the gay advocacy group making the protest has an additional target -- a  U.S. Senate resolution congratulating Dobson on the Hall of Fame honor. The resolution was introduced by Kansas Republican Sam Brownback. 

Chris Bowers writes:

"[Paris] Hilton's response is now the top story on Google News, and apparently the McCain campaign is receiving so many media requests about it, that they had to post a response on their website. They have gotten into a spat with Paris Hilton, which there is basically no way to win. Hilton has nothing to lose, and the back and forth just highlights the frivolic idiocy of McCain's recent attacks." 

If you want to know why I've stepped away from blogging in a nutshell, it probably has less to do with the substantial projects I have on my plate than the fact that I don't have the tolerance or the money to do the spectrum of psychoactive illegal drugs it would require to understand the coming events of the next three months, which will determine the future Leader of the Free World. (Did I mention that The Mayor is putting off the city's DEFCON-3 budget to attend a world party of obscure sports thrown by the Chinese government, the IOC, and Coca-Cola? And that the athletes are wearing masks so they don't get instant black lung? We want to invite who over in 2016?)

It's not so much that I don't have a joke here--and I don't--as I don't have a clue, anymore. I've read most of the classics of campaign literature going back to Theodore White's The Making of the President, and none of it prepared me for Paris Hilton going on Funny or Die and pwning the possible future president of the United States. And it making the public debate over who will lead our country more substantial than it had been previously. When Funny or Die is doing David Axelrod's job better than him, we are in strange times.

It's a good time for Web design and power outages, is what I'm saying.

Apartment Therapy's Chicago office just linked to this Wall Street Journal trend story on the controversial practice of dog rental (and the less controversial practice of neighborly dog sharing). 

To folks looking for regular canine contact without the responsibility of full-time dog ownership, permit me to humorlessly suggest a solution that didn't come up in the piece: volunteering at a dog shelter. I volunteer at this one, but there are many, many other options. 

In an essay for the Martin Marty Center, U. of C. doctoral candidate Aaron Curtis notes the similarity between a certain blog project and a recent trend in religion. Rupa Shenoy's Reader story about "Lo," the woman spending a year doing everything Oprah tells her to and blogging while she goes, prompted Curtis's meditation on DIY spirituality -- and on the hostility Lo has provoked from some of Oprah's devotees.

Here we have a perfect articulation of a prevalent form of modern spirituality that some, especially in orthodox and evangelical circles, have labeled 'flexodoxy' -- what theologian and scholar N.T. Wright describes as 'free-for-all, do-it-yourself spirituality.'

And ironically,

With Lo's experiment the culture of flexodoxy [asserts] its own orthodoxy. . . . Those aspects of Lo's project that do resemble more traditional religious practices are precisely the ones that are most threatening to this particular "faith community."

I'm stepping away from the blog entirely for a few days, and will be dialing down my participation for awhile thereafter. My divided attentions are needed on some major projects, but I also need to recharge a bit, or at least work up the energy to be a control freak on some other stuff, and reinvest myself in some other interests. And catch up on correspondence (private to lots of people: sorry). So you should, in my stead, start seeing some other Reader voices on here, which I trust will keep you entertained.

Oh, and: I haven't posted any pictures in awhile, so I wanted to draw your attention to a couple lovely, humane galleries of portraits by only-connect, taken at Pitchfork and Sherman Park. Here are a couple, but you won't get the full effect without browsing the galleries. These kind of pictures make me want to be less of an agoraphobe.

To get all poor-man's-Susan-Sontag for a moment: I think the beauty of them is their stasis. Most festival and concert pictures are about mass and movement (like this one, from the same set), about lots of people doing crazy things, so they emphasize action. By shooting in tight focus, from the neck up, and, most importantly, with total, "boring" symmetry (asymmetry, as Blair Kamin emphasizes, creates motion), these photos are about individual people and stillness, an unconventional and riveting choice for an event like Pitchfork.

In a surprise and unprecedented move, Mayor Daley today postponed the city’s preliminary 2009 budget until Sept. 30 — and cut spending by $6 million more — to work to solve Chicago’s worst budget crisis in a generation.

I'd say this delaying tactic would hurt us with the IOC, but, well, um.

Now's a good time to read all about TIF districts!  

Also: the housing market isn't going to get better for awhile; Ben Joravsky's most recent TIF news.

Update: "And yet, we still have people calling for a bottom in financial shares. Folks -- this ain't over by a long shot." Trickledown: it works both ways.

Related: The post in which I explain the credit crisis.