Views Of A Home (Photography)

The Road To A Home Ends Here (PHOTOS)

NVDL: This blog has been known by other name's, including 'The Road To A Home'. The story below from the New York Times presents what must be one of the ultimate living arrangements anywhere.

By EDWARD WYATT
PALM SPRINGS, Calif., Oct. 30 — The Kaufmann House, a 1946 glass, steel and stone landmark built on the edge of this desert town by the architect Richard Neutra, has twice been at the vanguard of new movements in architecture — helping to shape postwar Modernism and later, as a result of a painstaking restoration in the mid-1990s, spurring a revived interest in mid-20th-century homes.

The Kaufmann House Now the California homeowners who undertook that restoration hope Neutra’s masterpiece will play a role in a third movement: promoting architecture as a collectible art worthy of the same consideration as painting and sculpture.

Those owners, Brent Harris, an investment manager, and Beth Edwards Harris, an architectural historian, are finalizing their divorce, and plan to auction the Kaufmann House at Christie’s in New York in May. The building, with a presale estimate of $15 million to $25 million, will be part of Christie’s high-profile evening sale of postwar and contemporary art.

For the rest of this New York Times article, go here.

Worst Pothole in South Africa

And…it’s getting bigger

The thing about potholes is they sneak up on you. You’ll be driving as you do on the same well worn route and then one day: BANG! And it’s not as if you can just shrug it all off either. Your steering wheel is wobbling, which means tyres are going to start wearing a lot faster too. Is it just me or are potholes coming up all over the country?

Earlier this year I was crazy enough to drive my very low profile car over South Africa’s highest mountain pass, Naudesnek. It’s not a route for squeamish, and I often had to drive with one wheel on the middlemannetjie and the other on the roads shoulder to avoid scraping the undercarriage out from under us. Imagine my surprise then that once back home in the city, it was a pothole that eventually damaged my wheelalignment – despite all that risky offroading!

Now, at the intersection of Jauncey and 8th Street, near the Johannesburg suburb of Houghton, a mega pothole has begun to sink across the road. What makes this crater dangerous, is that it is long and narrow, and its situated on a road beside a school. This means that cars coming from either direction have to dive towards the shallower end of the grave, or risk carnage.

It’s a sticky situation. The tar has been collapsing along a narrow band which was probably dug for a pipeline. The pipeline has sprung a leak higher up in the road, and the downward flow then softens the substructure under the tar, causing it to gradually collapse.

As recently as last week I saw a giant yellow machine doing something in the road (I’m not sure what). When I returned from work they’d dumped a lot of red soil over the growing grave. It has proved to be much of a solution. The depression is spreading in a downwards direction, caving in further and further each day. And one shower of rain is likely to wash away the softening cushion of sand.

If there’s one thing that causes potholes it’s the combination of water, which turns the tar into a dry tissue, and then a constant stream of traffic that begins to break the surface into small pieces.

While I was taking photos, all the vehicles that passed seemed to underestimate how deep it was, and each time you heard a BANG of shock absorbers not quite able to absorb the shock. At least the soil provides some sort of warning that some hazard is in the road. At night, the first time I went over it, the Earth opened in the road and I also drove right over it.

Is this South Africa’s worst pothole? Send us your pictures and let’s see.

I'm Home Not Yet

yet not
on the outside of it
the underside
the right side
the wrong side
never the inside
never knowing where is the glue
or a tall glass
or socks
or something warm
just comfortable
in passing
to some home away from home

in some other street
in some world beyond your street
beyond four square walls
and three square meals
and portraits by uncles and brothers
and of a dead mother

there is some appreciation
at last
of what it takes
to have a home
much less
to run one
to run one's family in one
in a box that you've made for your family

so what if you're not one
for living in a box
not even a cardboard box
that means
whereever I am
I'm home
alone

yet not
on the outside of it
the underside
the right side
the wrong side
never the inside
never knowing where is the glue
or a tall glass
or socks
or something warm
just comfortable
in passing
to some home away from home

Perhaps...
not yet
Not Yet

image courtesy topleftpixel.com