Here are a few links that inspired me last week…

New York Social Diary’s interview with Clemens Weiss, complete with studio tour:

Thanks to sfgirlbybay for the tipoff about this fun flickr group, The Organized Collection:

Trying to be green is totally frustrating and exhausting sometimes. Beware the greenwashers, but if you are carrying reusable totes when you are shopping, you are taking a step in the right direction.

This post from the mid-century modernist makes me smile:

SpaceInvading keeps up the good work with some modern dream houses (click on the pictures to connect):

Added to my reader this week, the A plus B

Clemens Weiss photographs y Jeffrey Hirsch, via New York Social Diary

Organized collection photo by Camilla Engman, via flickr, via sfgirlbybay.

SpaceInvading photos by (1) Unknown (architects are Preston Scott Cohen) and Daniel Moulinet. Click on images to link to more information.

I was sad to read that J. Max Bond Jr. died on Wednesday. Mr. Bond had an illustrious career as an architect and educator, in spite of being told by one of his Harvard professors that he should forget about it because he was African-American. At the time of his death, Bond was working on the National September 11 Museum at the WTC. One of his many projects was the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Change here in Atlanta. I did not realize that he was related to Julian Bond until I read his obituary on Thursday (in 2004, Julian Bond was inducted into the Civil Rights Walk of Fame, part of the same property as the MLK Center). To learn more about J. Max Bond Jr., his remarkable career and family, there is a concise but informative summary with links here, and you can read the obituary in full over at NYTimes.com. I have to share the last two paragraphs, which really got to me:

Despite these insider’s credentials, Mr. Bond never lost an outsider’s perspective, applying it critically in 2003 to early plans that called for public spaces high up in the new skyscrapers at the World Trade Center site.

“It’s always been difficult for young blacks, for young Hispanics, for anyone who looks aberrant to get access to the upper realms of Wall Street towers,” Mr. Bond said. “For a city of immigrants, the public realm is more than ever now the street.”

photo swiped from University of Michigan Visiting Faculty page

I just got my internet going for the first time since this morning (comcast – ugh!) and now I am GORGING. While catching up on the latest Huffington Post entries, I perused the slide show of Mitt Romney’s humble ski chalet in Deer Valley Utah. Apparently, the Romneys are “downsizing and simplifying.” Maybe he’s going to follow the current hot political trend of thinking about Abe Lincoln, and trading down for a one-room log cabin. Can you imagine how much it would cost to heat this massive manor? It is 9,500 square feet. They have so many lights on for this photo that at first glance I thought it was on fire. I’m just picturing those energy meters going around and around at warp speed when I look at this:

I’m all for big timber, stone fireplaces, and a bit of hokey-ness in a mountain house, but the decor in this thing is so over-the-top fugly it makes me retch. In a 5.25 million dollar house, I expect a little better. Some of those light fixtures belong in the ugly lighting hall of fame. Ugh, and that wooden cowhide-covered coffee table, words escape me:

For another ridiculous ski lodge on the market, click here.

images from previewutah.com, via thehuffingtonpost.com

You may have heard about the controversy regarding Facebook’s recent changes to its terms of use. I admit it, I first read it on Perez Hilton a few days ago, and the next thing I knew I was reading about it in the paper and hearing about it on The View. OK, I really only watch that show to see how bad Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s outfits are and laugh. Today when I logged in, I saw this:

It’s funny, can you open up a newspaper lately without some sort of Facebook article? The New York Times seems to have one every day – the etiquette of dropping “friends,” Burger King coupons, 25 Random Things About Me (wasn’t this circling the blogs two years ago?), Facebook is fogey-friendly, whatever. It’s been an amazing phenomenon to watch, and this latest controversy was such a great example of how an issue can first emerge on blogs and then later land in the major papers and talk shows.

Do you use facebook? Were you reluctant at first but eventually succombed to peer pressure? What do you like about it? What don’t you like about it? Were you really worried they would use your pictures in some unsavory way?

OR

I was just thinking about these economic times, and I wondered, even if a family’s financial situation is  stable, is this a time when people pare down and get minimal? Do they think about how much more efficient and affordable a smaller, emptier space is? Do they wind up selling everything they own on eBay? Or, just happy that there is a chicken in every pot pie, do they feather their nests, hunkering down at home and fussing with the tea cozies they’ve been knitting? What do you think?

Stairway photo by Todd Eberle, from the book Minimum

Hearth photo by Suter Hedrich-Blessing, from Better Homes and Gardens Decorating Ideas, 1961