May 21st, 2013

David Stairs


Have brushes • Will paint

I recently came to the end of a three-year creativity cycle. This usually means it’s time for me to relax, reflect, and reconsider my options. For me, a great way to do a little lateral thinking is my annual painting chore.

I live in a 120 year-old wood frame house built by Mt. Pleasant’s pioneer doctor, Peter E. Richmond. Doctor Richmond died in 1910, and his widow sold the place five years later. When I came to it as fourth owner, in 2003, it was sorely in need of paint.


Wood frame Victorians are vertically oriented

In 2004 I bought a 32′ ladder and began the arduous task of repainting a three-storey house. I’ve been painting houses since I was fourteen, so this was not an unfamiliar activity for me. I’d just never before attempted a building of this size.

After that first full painting, I lapsed into a regular schedule of maintenance painting. Like my Father, I planned to touch up one side each year, with a fifth year reserved for the garage. Michigan has rather unforgiving weather. Today, for instance, it rained hard and hailed, as it often does this time of year. Winters are also unspeakably cold, and this is hard on a wooden house.

This is the reason most of my neighbor’s houses are vinyl-sided. But, as Judith Helfand so humorously conveys in Blue Vinyl, not only is vinyl unrecyclable, it’s totally toxic to manufacture. And it’s not the sort of thing one does to a house built in 1895, thirty-one years before Walter Semon received his patent for plasticizing polyvinyl halide products.


Removing loose, checked, or blistered paint

When painting a wooden house, the surface must be thoroughly prepared. This entails scraping or sanding loose paint and washing to remove dust from the surface. Then one must prime coat the exposed surfaces. Some people use compressors to apply paint, but then too, some people listen to loud country western music while painting. I do neither. I’ve always chosen to apply paint with a brush, preferably a horse-hair brush, and to hum my own tunes from my internal playlist.

It’s not optimal to paint in direct sunlight, so I always begin my day on the west or north side and move to the east side in the afternoon. There’s a good deal of moving around when painting, repositioning ladders, picking up paint chips, and clambering up and down, which is really good exercise. I don’t have fear of heights, but I respect them, probably the reason I’ve never fallen. Often nature intrudes. This year I had to trap a muskrat that had hibernated under my garage before I could begin work, and today I was interrupted when my dog uncovered a litter of baby rabbits, forcing me to move them to a more secure hiding place.


In a challenging environment, it pays to use quality paint

One of the things that happens during my summer painting hiatus is I reconnect to the rhythms of the neighborhood. I usually learn the summer-substitute-mailman’s routine, so I can keep the dog inside during his rounds; she hates anybody in a uniform. And I observe all the comings and goings of my neighbors, the utility workers, trash haulers, lawn mowers, and delivery people.


After a couple hours even flattened ladder rungs become tiring to stand on

All in all, if you don’t mind being fifteen feet off the ground house painting seems a pretty healthy activity, aside from standing on ladder rungs. The weather’s been magnificent, clear blue skies and not too hot. I’m able to do a lot of thinking, I get good and tired working, and I take pride in the outcome. On hot afternoons I also treat myself to a 12-ounce Mexican Coca Cola, which comes in a refillable bottle, and is available at the neighborhood party store two blocks away.


Summer reflections

After I get cleaned up from a days’ work, I lay down on my porch swing and enjoy the idea that, like my Father before me, I live in the best-looking house on the block. Not bad for an amateur.

David Stairs is the founding editor of Design-Altruism-Project

May 1st, 2013

David Stairs

Ask a group of student designers, any group, to develop a campaign while working in a large cohort, and they’re likely to react the way my Central Michigan University students did when I first made an unconventional proposal to them back in November 2012. I asked them to consider developing an online fundraiser for a rural African community-based organization. “This is our degree exhibition,” they replied. “How will we get any portfolio work out of this?” they asked in all seriousness. It was a predictable if callow reaction, one young designers are almost programmed to make by years of priming for local competitions through portfolio development courses.


Student brainstorming session

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April 11th, 2013

David Stairs


Young boys on the beach in Allepay, Kerala, India

Designers are frequently talking about skills and aesthetics, practice and theory, and these are important topics. But when it comes to politics, man can they get it wrong! I suspect it has more to do with privilege and cultural blindness than purposeful discrimination. And yet…

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March 22nd, 2013

David Stairs


Winter Park, FL. train station

I’m having this printed on a t-shirt in 100 pt. demi-bold letters:

I survived Universal Studios

Over the Christmas holidays I was invited to Florida by an old friend I hadn’t seen since 2005. Never mind that I have purposely avoided the “Sunshine State” my whole life. Each year my young son and I take a culture trip at holiday time. The last couple years have seen us visit first Chicago’s Field Museum and a Blue Man Group performance, then New York and the U.N., Hi-Line, Empire State, and a Broadway show. While staying with our friends in Winter Park we spent an afternoon visiting the Morse Museum’s fantastic L.C. Tiffany collection. When I walked into the chapel Tiffany designed for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair I did a double take, having just seen Mark Wahlberg’s report on a recent Antiques Roadshow program. We also took in a performance by the Cirque du Soleil company resident at Downtown Disney. But one doesn’t travel to Orlando for high culture, as even the least experienced child knows. In a city based upon theme parks, they are a little hard to ignore.

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February 23rd, 2013

Editor’s note: To celebrate the first anniversary of the Indian Journal we’ve invited our friend Sumandro to share his thoughts on contemporary discussions of the Indian concept “jugaad.”

Sumandro

In a recent essay, Hamid Dabashi has spoken out against the continuation of the obnoxious (colonial) practice of identifying European socio-cultural artifacts as the universal form, while the non-European others get prefixed with ‘ethno’ — such as, referring to European music as ‘music’ and studying non-European music as ‘ethnomusicology.’ The same practice appears in action, and often enjoys uncritical celebration, in the domain of design. We are being told that the Indians have a magic word, jugaad, that means “startling ingenuity in the face of adversity.” The question, however, is why do the Indians need a special word for a phenomena that Europeans (not in the sense of the continent but in vague civilizational terms) simply call innovation? Or, can non-Europeans innovate?


Jua kali lunch box, Kenya

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February 12th, 2013

We’ve received the following link from Susana Nascimento, a longtime D-A-P reader in Portugal, and are passing it along. Best wishes for a successful summer Susana!

February 2nd, 2013

Victor Margolin

Several months ago my wife and I had dinner in a restaurant with another couple. My wife is in her late 60s and I am in my early 70s. The other couple was about twenty years younger than us. In that twenty year difference, however, was a digital divide that defined each couple as living in social universes that were vastly different. The difference does not revolve around an attitude towards technology that is starkly pro or con. My wife and I are both active computer users, we share a cell phone and my wife downloads books onto her iPad. What characterizes the difference is the place that we accord technology in our lives and in our relations with others. Speaking now for myself, I grew up in an era before computers and cell phones when face-to-face contact without any supporting mobile devices was the principal means of contact. Whatever you brought to a conversation had to be part of your internal data bank as there were no supporting machines to provide anything additional. Its true that conversations were less precise than many are today but they had a flow that bound the conversing parties together unobstructed by any attention-diverting devices.

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January 20th, 2013

David Stairs

Amid the controversy over Guantanamo interrogation techniques resurrected by Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty I read Mark Owen’s No Easy Day, the ooh-rah first person Seal Team Six account of the assassination of Osama bin Laden on May 1st, 2011. Suddenly, the notion of watching Jessica Chastain burn up the screen with her focused intensity and sultry good looks somehow seemed to lose its attraction.

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January 4th, 2013

David Stairs


Cutting Corners

One of the most gratifying experiences is having one’s observations corroborated, especially when they are about another culture. Not one, but two Indian acquaintances responded to my last Indian post, Why India Does Not Need Me, with the same remark: it reminded them of a famous speech by Ivan Illich, “To Hell With Good Intentions.” Now I’ll admit, Illich is one of my heroes and, though I didn’t refer to him in this piece, I have in the past.

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December 1st, 2012

David Stairs

As I come to the end of ten months of articles about India, I am a little sad. It has taken an effort, at times, to stick to my original purpose, to observe everyday design in action on the subcontinent. There have been both discoveries and disappointments, but that seems normal— much like life, in fact.

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November 15th, 2012

David Stairs

“It’s not a blue world anymore, Max.”
—Chief Blue Meany speaking to his assistant at the end of Yellow Submarine

The aftermath of the 2012 election got me thinking about color. The typical red/blue dichotomy that the media has devised to represent our apparent “bad blood” has been an all-too-familiar-display since Election Day, to the extent that it must appear to people from other parts of the world that Americans fall in to one of two primary-color races: Blue Meanies or Red Ragers.


image courtesy of POLITICO

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November 2nd, 2012

David Stairs

I once saw a mounted policeman in Philadelphia charge down a street at a full gallop chasing a felon. In my neighborhood, South 9th Street, there were even a few remaining stables. This was, of course, a 17th century city that late in the 20th century that still had a mounted police unit. In most places in America, those times are long past.


Temple elephant on Pondicherry street

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October 15th, 2012

David Stairs


Workers unloading a truck at night

America, land of gizmos and gadgets, began its history so labor poor that it accepted the evil of slavery for more than three centuries before its Civil War eliminated the scourge.
India is very different.

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October 1st, 2012

David Stairs

This article was suggested by Chris Stairs, who is also responsible for some of the photos


Urgent entreaties, Sankey Tank vicinity, Bangalore

Trees and diatoms, two of the things we most need to sequester CO2 and produce oxygen, one macro the other micro, are both under constant pressure from human activity. Global warming, ocean pollution, and deforestation are creating havoc, but do enough people care? And what are the attitudes toward trees in India?

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September 14th, 2012

David Stairs


In the tea shambas of the Kanan Devan Hills Company, Munnar

When it comes to tea, the Indian place names roll off one’s tongue: Assam, Darjeerling, Ceylon. Tea is grown in many other places, but it is in India that it became a world-class cash crop, under the avaricious guidance of 19th century English businessmen.

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September 1st, 2012

David Stairs

“Oh Mother, today I remember the sindoor on your forehead, the red-bordered sari you used to wear, and your eyes—calm, serene, and deep.”
—spoken by Bimala in Home and the World, by Rabindranath Tagore

On the matter of women’s dress, there are two approaches in India, traditional and westernized. There’s not much to tell about the latter other than that it’s branded designer wear. But of the traditional, two main forms exist, the sari and the salwar kemeez.

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August 20th, 2012

David Stairs


Sign for women’s washroom in Hindi, English, Urdu, and Bengali. The water is held by the right, or eating hand.

As goes its plumbing, so goes a nation; in this we do trust. The Romans supposedly poisoned themselves with lead piping, while Africans often don’t use pipes at all, preferring pit toilets and jerry cans. Indians have their own problems with hygiene; public urination is common among men.

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August 9th, 2012

David Stairs
Special thanks to ajantriks for help with this article.


Hindu temple, Chowdaiah Road, Bangalore

On the weekend The Avengers opened in Bangalore, one week prior to its release in America, theaters were jammed with middle class Indians flocking to view the latest exploits of some of their favorite heroes. Whatever you may think about the Marvel franchise, now a part of the Disney empire, you’ve got to admit it really delivers action. But why would Indians be so interested in the exploits of heroes, gods, and monsters?

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August 2nd, 2012

David Stairs

Adolf Hitler once referred to the British as “a nation of shopkeepers.” But the Brits had nothing on the Indians when it comes to small business. One needn’t look too far to notice the importance of commerce to India. It is tantamount to a religion. I remember how focused Indians in East Africa were on business, often to the dismay or resentment of Africans. It goes without saying that, in their own bailiwick, Indians have to hustle to survive, and competition is keen.

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July 27th, 2012

David Stairs


Madhya Pradesh, in north central India

When one thinks of France one automatically pictures the Eiffel Tower; New York and it’s the Statue of Liberty; India and 9 out of 10 people will say “Taj Mahal.” India is home to many other significant sites, including many of World Heritage caliber. Think here of the Red Fort in Delhi, or the Sikh Golden Temple at Amritsar. For me there was only one place I didn’t want to miss while in India: Khajuraho.

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