I had a wonderful time in Maryland visiting my bff M*'s family. M* lives in Raleigh (and attends law school there) and her mom's house is halfway. I drove down Tuesday and spent a little time in Columbia, a planned community built by James Rouse in the '60s. It's a shining example of corporatism (gov't of/by/for corporations), suburbanist car culture, and consumerism.
I would love to see a comparison/critique of Rouse and Robert Moses (the I-190 & Robert Moses Parkway guy) and how their planning philosophies relate to current localist, independent, green, higher density, transit-oriented planning (yea Buffalo First!). (Must take at least one urban planning course before leaving school!)
Until I read the wikipedia entry about James Rouse
I didn't realize he was the planner of Boston's Faneuil Hall Marketplace. I knew he designed Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Both these places are used as "good models" for promoting the current plan for the Erie Canal Harbor/waterfront development in Buffalo that uses Bass Pro as an anchor store for an "urban theme park." Benderson, the proposed developer for the waterfront, creates suburban strip malls. I have been questioning the wisdom of the waterfront plan, but being in Columbia again gave it a whole 'nother layer of questioning. (For one critique of the waterfront plan:
)
I stopped in Columbia because it has Daedalus Books, my fav bookstore ever
Lots of academic press books for $5 or less. Yum yum! I picked up a hardback of Octavia Butler's Fledgling for M*.
I also love Akbar
a pretty standard Indian restaurant just a half mile (and 20 minutes of driving thanks to INSANE traffic) away. I find it interesting that Indian restaurants are rather homogenized. Akbar's food is very similar to that of India Gate on Elmwood, Passage to India in Harrisburg, Pangea in the Poconos, and a couple other Indian restaurants that I've been to and can't remember the names of. Is there an Indian-restaurant supply company? Anyway, the manager recognized me, even though I haven't lived there since 2003! I have stopped in during most of my MD/DC trips since then, so I'm not -that- surprised, but I was definitely pleased.
My phone is broken - I also stopped at a Verizon kiosk at a BJs, another half-mile, 20-minute drive up Snowden River Parkway in Columbia to try to get it fixed. The kiosk guy made me call a service line, CSR1 transferred me to CSR2 who decided it was the battery. Although my magic-pixie-dust electronics sense says it's the phone, I allowed him to send me a new battery, "We'll FedEx overnight it! You'll have it tomorrow!" Ha ha. I gave them M*'s mom's address and of course it didn't show up Wednesday, nor Thursday, nor Saturday. So here I am in Pennsylvania with a phone that only works when plugged in, and not even continuously when plugged in, but the battery is probably going to show up at M*'s mom's tomorrow and I'll need to get my hands on it before I'm able to continue the troubleshooting process. *sigh* travel is difficult.
M* loved the gourd (see last post for pix) and book; her mom loved the three gourd ornaments (who knew you could find brown Santas in Tioga County?!?); we played lots of Wii (I'm getting *good* at the table tennis and archery of the new Resort Sports); we drank a lot of Ketel One Citroen, mango rum, lemonade & grenadine; I had wonderful conversations with M's family & fun bunch friends. I'm so glad I went, although I'm sad about missing xmas with A's family. I spent some very pleasant/bittersweet time there tonight, though.
M*'s mom gave me a quesadilla making machine! How neat. I make quesadillas all the time - hopefully this will make it even easier. Jill & Kelly got me one of those nifty Keurig single-serve coffee machines with a whole box of hot chocolate cups.
Appliances!
