Friday, October 16, 2009

Preservation From The Inside Out

This is very cool.

A Hands on Education
An innovative college in Charleston, S.C., teaches the forgotten arts of preservation

John Paul Huguley won't be happy that this article begins with him.

He'll tell you that it's the students at the American College of the Building Arts who are the real story. But he was the one who started the Charleston, S.C., school 12 years ago—the first in the country with a four-year program teaching trades that seem to have vanished from the modern world. Timber framing. Stone carving. Ironworking. An entire curriculum aimed at equipping a generation of students with the skills needed to preserve America's historic heritage.

Huguley, 39, is as much an entrepreneur as he is a preservationist. In 2000, he purchased Charleston's 1802 jail—a 22,000-square-foot facility that sat vacant for more than half a century and was threatened with demolition—and turned it into the centerpiece of a fledgling school. Not only do students today attend classes in the jail, where Union troops were held during the Civil War, they are also using what they learn to help restore this neglected vestige of Charleston's history.

Related:

ACBA wants to build a new campus on McLeod Plantation, a 38-acre site on St. James Island in Charleston, and a team of 17 students from the Preservation Studio at the University of Miami School of Architecture has proposed how the college could occupy the site. In the New Urbanist tradition of their school (led by dean Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk), the students' plan marries adaptive reuse with historically sensitive new construction and a mixed-use urban village.

I'd like to go back to school. If they'd let me in.

United States Of Islam

(click to enlarge)
From one of my favorite sites:
The map refers to an organisation called the World Islamic Mission, which is a real organisation, although its website at first glance doesn’t include this map (which was taken here from the anti-Islamic site savecivilization.org).
Notice the inset map lower right.

Republican Defense Pork Hypocrisy

If it increases government spending, vote against it.

If it increases government power, vote against it.

What part of this do Republicans in Congress not understand?

Less spending. More freedom.

This isn't just about TARP, Stimulus or socialized medicine and scads of fascist programs like National Service and the arts.

It includes pork.

Most Republicans support our mission in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most Democrats do not. To Democrats, these missions which defend the United States by eradicating terrorists and free 50 plus million people, take away money for their 50 plus years power surge. Money for troops means less money for power. Power, in Democrat terms, means higher taxes for even more money, more government control couched in do-goodedness and control of the message that points out the wrongness of not infiltrating every aspect of our lives, if only to help us, by righting a perceived socialital slight.

If the Kennedy family (and their servant, Kennedy-lite Kerry) wants a quasi presidential museum for Ted, let them go ask the Kopechne's for the money. If Vitter and Landrieu want money for a Louisianna World War II Museum that duplicates efforts across the nation, let them ask the alumni of the University of New Orleans, where they want to build, to pony up the cash.

If most Republicans support our mission in Iraq and Afghanistan, why are they stuffing the funding for our troops there with pork for Republican pet projects. Correct me if I'm wrong, but acting like big spending, corrupt and amoral Democrats got the Republican Party right where it belongs as back benchers whose opinions aren't asked for nor wanted by Democrats and voters alike. The latter because they feel that if Republicans are going to act like Democrats, why not vote for Democrats who are at least honest about their dishonesty. The former because Democrats don't like competition, there is only so much self righteousness and graft to go around.

Republicans, such as Snowe and Collins of Maine want $20 million in Humvee money for workers in Maine, Republican Cochran of Mississippi inserted 35 earmarks for $206 million in a Murthaean effort to "not cede the power of the purse to any administration." Hey, Thad, why not cede the power of the purse to the taxpayer?

Over all, $2.6 billion in pork was inserted via 778 pet projects. Many of these pet projects were inserted by Republicans and these projects take away from military operations and maintenance. That's guns and ammunition and things like training. Granted, many in Congress don't think these things are important, but that any Republican shares this view makes them hypocritical disgraces.