Requiem for a Visionary

One of our original Urban Activists died yesterday.

Jane Jacobs wrote a seminal work on Urban Sprawl back in the 60s, I believe.

it can be found here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067974195X/002-6697606-1509625?v=glance&n=283155


She died in Canada - where she moved during Vietnam to keep her kids from being drafted.

yesterday afternoon.

I didn't know anything about her and now I'm going to go look up her work. She sounds like the sort of person we need now.

I was first made aware of her through work, but I work with a lot Urban Planners, and I think it might have been on quite a few of their reading lists in school.

Killing messages can really keep your reading list down.

I encourage everyone to read her, and also Kuntsler's Geography of Nowhere

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671888250/ref=pd_cp_title/002-6697606-1509625?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155

I went to SA once and they would not let your bring in a book written by a Jew. I have always thought 'killing the massager' thinking as sort of funny. Well face it if we took off the reading list of any one that did not hold to our values we would have a pile of reading about 100 th of an inch tall.Plus who would be interested in reading anything if you knew just what it was going to say.

I had a friend that became Born Again, and from then on she won't read any vaguely spiritual book that does not acknowledge JC as Lord and Savior.

very wierd.


i'm a firm believer in reading anything and everything, even if you do disagree with it.

i do draw the line at Ayn Rand tho, but mostly because she puts me to sleep.


(btw - i chose to play straightman, because i wasn't sure if you were puling my leg, or being antagonistic - hard to tell who has a sense of humor around here soemtimes. *wink* )

When I grew up my mother let us read anything. I do not think some thing that were in print were out in the open as we all heard of the FR. books that one really had to hunt for. I think we came from a very open minded family as we could not even say we did not like Germans in WW2 only their rulers were bad to my mother. Same with the Japanese. My town was not like that believe me.

I lived there during Faisal's reign, when they were "liberal".

I was a toddler at the time, but i remember my dad telling me to keep my big mouth shut about his drinking whiskey.

I've never been able to grasp this willful disdain for information.

I wasn't raised that way either.

Can you think if any thing as bad as that and yet those craze Brits and Am. really drank the stuff. I frankly liked the people and even went to their homes to visit. Usually with the Bedouins who for some odd really would only have my husband and my self come. Other West people would beg us to bring them but one could hardly do that at others homes. I think these people knew we really liked them so we could meet their wifes and children etc. I once got ill and woke up to 4 local men standing beside my bad worried about me. My husband laughed like crazy after and I was besides my self but these men and families were worried and just showed how they felt. We lived on the local society so were with these people every day.

bedouins are truly a hospitable people.


I remember one time, we were crossing some desert or the other, and the car broke down. And my mom was pregnant with my little sister and had horrible morning sickness. Eventually some Bedouins came across us, took us to their home, fed us, took care of my mom, and drove us all back to our home in their truck. I'm not sure what ever happened to the car.

One thing I really miss from time to time, is that halvah you could get at the stores. came in plastic containers, but was like a jelly with fruits and nuts in it. Usually in red and yellow and green.

I know of the stuff you speak of as we used to go to a small city/town and go to their open market and buy all sorts of stuff. I would always have a group of people around me as they rarely saw Western people in the part of the country we were in. (I dressed in a black robe but was hard to cover my hair.)This was along the Red Sea near Yemen. I loved all the piles of spices and green coffee beans and the great smell of the place. I used to buy flower chains and give them to the guards that worked at the place we lived and they loved them.We always brought them flower seeds and veg. seeds from the US and they really liked that and grew some great flowers etc.. You saw no police state part of the country while around these people. In the big cities it was a little different feeling..

I wish i had had a truly aware experience of when I was there. I don't remember great smells - I do remember many days at the Ocean with jellyfish washing up on shore, Camel races, and the smell of Date Plantations - way too strong for me - to this day, i still don't eat dates.


Your experience trading seeds reminds me of India tho - people love trading vegetable seeds and plants their too. I remember my mother managed to get many of the people in her village hooked up with zucchini plants.