What is it about bikes at MSU? Here’s a look at the relation between people, bikes, and the environment they inhabit – and create – at MSU. LINK –> Essential Nuisance (iPad optimized PDF document) Continue reading Bikes: Essential Nuisance
If you have ever been nearly hit by a texting driver that is drag-racing around Circle Drive, you might get to breathe a little easier when you walk around the MSU campus from now on.
After tearing up Beal Street and Circle Drive for improvements to the campus-wide steam heating system, construction crews have made a few major changes to the roads and sidewalks. Most notably, the sidewalk which runs on the south side of Beal Street, high above a bank on the Red Cedar River, now only extends from the IM Circle building to the intersection with Circle Drive. Probably a good idea to remove that sidewalk, as it was slowly sliding down the bank towards the river. The new sidewalk now gives a pedestrian crosswalk to the north side of the street. Note to MSU, it would be good to install a traffic sign for eastbound traffic on Beal Street at this crossing.
Continue reading “Better pedestrian walkways at MSU”
If there is one thing to be said for the Eli & Edythe Broad Art Museum ( Web | Twitter ) nearing completion in East Lansing, it is that everyone seems to have an opinion on it. Buildings in East Lansing have a few different feelings, ranging from depression-era projects, cheap glass and steel ventures from the boom years of the 1950s, and a few structures pre-dating World War I. The Broad Museum, a project of Zaha Hadid Architects, sticks in your eye, which is exactly why I like it so much. Not every building on a college campus should look the same. The new design helps to give the Michigan State University campus a more timeless feel – suggesting that the university has lived through more than one time period. It shakes up the routine of college buildings that are nice to look at, but predictable.
Continue reading “Broad Art Museum irks many, but adds to the landscape”
Here’s my entry for a photo-blog for an upcoming trip to Botswana with the MSU College of Education. I’ve got five photos to encapsulate five elements of culture and geography in the USA. Want to guess what I chose for a landscape? It’s a landscape only a few would choose. My view of The States (Andy Driska) « msubotswana2012. Continue reading My view of The States (Andy Driska) « msubotswana2012
On a recent trip to Chicago, I caught the final day of the Public Works exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Photography. This was right up my alley, I love looking at the landscape and what humans do to it. In most cases, “progress” on the landscape involves a typical set of development behaviors; cut down the trees, grade the land, put in drainage, etc. These behaviors are so deeply ingrained into the default construction code that trying to do something different requires too much thought. When we see the cranes and bulldozers, we typically think “progress,” and so we don’t tend to ask too many questions.
Frank Breuer, Untitled, 2004 (1523 Plum Island, MA)
Continue reading “"Public Works" on display”
Michigan Radio recently ran a story on The Cost of Creativity, a think piece designed to show the importance of arts funding to a state with a huge budget deficit. The story included a segment that discussed photographers “parachuting in” to Detroit, taking pictures of the numerous architectural landmarks that are now in ruins, then leaving to tell a “cliche” story of urban decay. One Vice Magazine column categorized the obsession with decayed landmarks as “ruin porn,” (I found myself thinking, “that’s a good point,” then questioning the source as I glanced at the widget next to the article that … Continue reading Abandoned Detroit: "Ruin Porn"
I stumbled upon this index of “Happiest American Cities” and it got me to thinking about just what exactly makes me happy to live where I live. East Lansing, Michigan, is not the kind of place I brag about living. It’s not “where it’s at,” but for me, it has what I need: I walk to work each day, I enjoy my job and my education at Michigan State, and I have been satisfied by the relationships I have formed with the many people I have met in the past half-year. It doesn’t have the vibrancy and diversity a huge … Continue reading Does where we live make us happy?
Just watched this gritty documentary on dancing, fatalism, and pill-popping in coal country W.Va. Best part, hands down… one of the dudes shaking a bottle of pills, “that’s the Boone County matin’ call.” The movie chronicles the White family of Boone County, WV, who seem to be a relic of the Hatfield-McCoy era. The movie is marked by rampant drug use, mostly snorting prescription pills like Xanax and Vicodin, and lots of casual pot smoking. This goes on during most family gatherings. In the final scene, where they are having a party out at a city park, the little kids … Continue reading Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia
Main St. Anytown U.S.A. http://www.thedailyshow.com http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:371595 Most states (47 of 50) are out of money and looking for ways to generate revenue without increasing taxes or changing tax structures. The fear seems to be that if taxes are increased, businesses and people with higher incomes will leave the state and relocate to other states where taxes are lower. I think this argument is too simple. It’s impossible to have low taxes and a high standard of living. A high standard of living means good schools, affordable health care, transportation infrastructure, clean and safe neighborhoods. That has a cost. It’s a … Continue reading From the Daily Show – Revenue Crunch for States
Andy Driska 
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