Tag: Architecture

It’s Not a Bug, It’s a Feature

It’s Not a Bug, It’s a Feature: luna moth (Photo: Geo davis)

Yesterday I made a passing reference to coder jargon when I said that “the bug is beginning to feel like a feature”. (See “Yesteryear or Yesterday?“) I’m not a coder. Never was. Never will be. But I like the way coders think (and sometimes the way they talk.) You may be familiar with the acronym INABIAF or the phrase, “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature“. Its use long ago jumped the software programming border, and today you’ll hear it bandied about in all sorts of curious contexts. Yesterday’s post, for example…

An adage too often deployed, too often stretched and distorted, tends to become overly generic. Tends to lose its oomph. I’m guilty, of course. But unrepentant. Chalk it up to poetic license. Or digital graffiti. Or wanton disregard for the sanctity of jargon?!

Today I’m doubling down. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

What, you ask, is not a bug? Certainly some of the spunky snapshots I’ve included in this post are bugs. And insects, though I forget what delineates the two.

When a Bug is Not a Bug

So many transfixing bugs at Rosslyn, and so little call for their vibrant mugs. Today I change that.

But what do these fetching flyers have to do with wonky tech talk? I’m working on that. First let’s detour a moment for more versed expertise on the aforementioned phrase.

WE’LL NEVER KNOW who said it first, nor whether the coiner spoke sheepishly or proudly, angrily or slyly. As is often the case with offhand remarks that turn into maxims, the origin of It’s not a bug, it’s a feature is murky. What we do know is that the expression has been popular among programmers for a long time… (Source:WIRED)

This article by Nicholas Carr (@roughtype) handily takes up the INABIAF backstory including a bridge deeper into software speak.

A standard joke is that a bug can be turned into a feature simply by documenting it (then theoretically no one can complain about it because it’s in the manual), or even by simply declaring it to be good. “That’s not a bug, that’s a feature!” is a common catchphrase. (Source:The Jargon File)

More insightful, I think, is the embrace (or at least tolerance of) ambiguity.

It’s not a bug, it’s a feature is an acknowledgment, half comic, half tragic, of the ambiguity that has always haunted computer programming. (Source:WIRED)

Of course this flies in the face of the stereotypical assertion and aspiration of most coders who express a quasi cultish obsession with purity and absolutes and confidence in the incorruptible virtue of science.

In the popular imagination, apps and other programs are “algorithms,” sequences of clear-cut instructions that march forward with the precision of a drill sergeant. But while software may be logical, it’s rarely pristine. A program is a social artifact. It emerges through negotiation and compromise, a product of subjective judgments and shifting assumptions… (Source:WIRED)

This. From ambiguity to social artifact. Indeed. Pristine aspirations achieve by people-powered processes and resulting in people-powered products. The blurring of reality and circumstance, the possible filtered through the inevitable. Subjectivity and uncertainty and inexactness.

It’s Not a Bug, It’s a Feature: rosy maple moth (Photo: Geo davis)

Of Bugs & Ambiguity

Yesterday’s bug reference was a lightheartedly dismissive counter to concerns (anticipated but not advanced) about the ambiguity of unreliable, shapeshifting time in my Rosslyn deep dig. While pouring over a decade and a half of detritus that has accrued during our custodianship of this beguiling property I’ve witnessed time’s tendency to blur and become elastic. Memories and even events themselves can become unmoored from their chronological anchors.

And I was subtly resurfacing an even larger consideration of time and timelessness across the span of Rosslyn’s two centuries. In the case of the capriciously altered boathouse images — a blurred, patinated, age and wear accelerated photograph of relatively contemporaneous provenance — one’s first impression might be to judge the artifact as a time capsule. A voyeuristic glimpse into an earlier time on Rosslyn’s waterfront. Scrolling down through the three images might dissolve the ambiguity despite the absence of dates.

While grappling with our Rosslyn adventure, I’m struck not only by the ambiguity of time but also of memories and perspectives and opinions. On the one hand, there’s disagreement among the cognoscenti about Rosslyn’s architectural lineage. Colonial, Greek Revival, Federal, Georgian, or an amalgam of two of more architectural periods or styles? On the other hand, Susan and my memories about notable chapters in our own Rosslyn record frequently diverge. Countless conflicting recollections surface in our conversations. When certain things happened. Why they happened. If they happened at all!

It’s Not a Bug, It’s a Feature: bumblebee (Photo: Geo davis)

It’s Not a Bug, It’s a Feature

I’ve meditated on wavy glass window panes provoking perspective shifts and even paradigm adjustments. I see these flowing lenses as inviting insight as well as intoxication, delivering discernment as often as distortion. And what to make of the potent clarity of art and poetry that can sometimes better translate what facts and artifacts, expertise and authority overlook? Watercolors, for example, can reveal truth more lucidly than photographs. Hand renderings can articulate architecture’s poignance and prowess better than AutoCAD.

Carr’s conclusion invites us to wonder wider about the possible merits of buggy artifacts.

The programmer’s “common catchphrase” has itself become a bug, so trite that it cheapens everything it touches. But scrub away the tarnish of overuse and you’ll discover a truth that’s been there the whole time. What is evolution but a process by which glitches in genetic code come to be revealed as prized biological functions? Each of us is an accumulation of bugs that turned out to be features, a walking embodiment of INABIAF. (Source:WIRED)

And that, friend, is a piece of the puzzle that’s been captivating me for months. My information gathering and analysis and synthesis are rigorous but glitchy. For a long time I aspired to purity, to algorithmic precision. But often yesteryear and yesterday have bled into one another. Often juxtaposed memories mingle and morph, contradictions converge, and dissonance dithers then dissolves. Fragments reveal what we may have missed in the moment. Curiosity and creativity have emerged from the years of quiescence. I’m less and less called to chronicle the past, to husband our history, Rosslyn’s history into some sort of encyclopedic epic. I find myself more and more compelled to reassemble the fragments with an eye to where I am headed rather than where I’ve been. I’m reveling in the playful possibility of reimagining and repurposing these ingredients into a sculptural collage; no, a three-dimensional poem; no, a montage-mobile almost imperceptibly gyrating in the rhythmic breathing of a slowly awakening breeze; no, a lakeside sanctuary braided out of found fragments, aromatic melodies, spring starts, and autumn harvest; no,… A buffet of indecision!

Back to bugs. I offer you three flying features: a luna moth (Actias luna), a rosy maple moth (Dryocampa rubicunda), and a bumblebee. Perhaps, for now, these will suffice.

January 23, 2023
Toward a Barn Vernacular
Barn Vernacular (Source: Geo Davis)

I’ve talked around my fascination with barns, barn architecture, barn construction, and barn aesthetics for long enough. But I haven’t outlined the tenets for my enduring intrigue, nor have I articulated exactly what I mean when I refer to a barn vernacular. It’s time to draft at least a preliminary look at my love of barns. I’ll circle back as I achieve clarity, but in the mean time, I’m going to venture into the white space, plant a flag, claim the territory. Excuse the untidy, incomplete effort. For now. In time I hope to revisit and expand this post, but I’ll start today with a precocious first foray toward a barn vernacular.

Barn Vernacular Haiku
```
          Barn vernacular,
          so utilitarian
          and so efficient.
          — Geo Davis
```
Yankee Barns

In the vernacular vocabulary of quintessentially North American architecture, the barn endures as a practical yet proud icon of rural living. First and foremost a utility structure, the barn evolved to maximize usability while prioritizing efficient construction, cost, and maintenance. Barns have evolved regional and agricultural nuances to accommodate local materials, agricultural use, and climate but the fundamentals are similar. In the northeastern United States consistent elements, volumes, geometry, and even materials appear in many barns. Although history offers various compelling variations such as gambrel roof barns and round barns, one of which existed in Essex in the 1800s, these are not as compelling to me as the traditional New England or Yankee barn. Its familiar austerity, tidy efficiency — and I would argue — its exceedingly pleasing utilitarian aesthetic have appealed to me for decades. Based upon my personal experience it feels like the quintessential barn.

Although the term, “Yankee barn” is often associated with the customs timber frame home building company, Yankee Barn Homes, I’m harkening back to an earlier and broader style of barn architecture.

In New England, English barns were further adapted into larger, timber-framed structures, which became known as the Yankee barn. Yankee barns have large sliding doors on either of the gable ends, with large areas for livestock on either side of a central hallway. Overhead lofts allowed for convenient hay storage, and oftentimes basements were added in the bank barn style.

Yankee barns, also called New England barns, allowed for more cattle to be housed, and were the first step in a continuing trend of larger barns to accommodate more animals. (Source: History of the American Barn – Grit

Well proportioned, not only for agricultural utility but also in a more classic architectural sense, the Yankee barn was well built. The gabled roof was pitched to shed rain, snow, and ice during inclement weather. Positioning the principle entrances at the gable ends proved especially practical in rainy, snowy climates, allowing convenient access without needed to contend with ice and snowbanks collecting rom the roof. And traditional post-and-beam construction was well suited to the punishing loads and the swings in temperature and humidity to which the historically hand-hewn beams easily adjusted again and again over the years.

Here’s another overview of Yankee barns.

Yankee Barns (beginning ca. 1820s) In these barns, the main entrance is on the gable end and the drive bay parallels the ridgeline. Yankee barns usually have a larger footprint than English barns, and are characterized by sawn timbers (circular or water-powered up-and-down), large doors on either end, roofs at half-pitch (45 degrees), and stables along an eaves’ wall. They are sometimes banked with a basement level, and were often expanded by adding additional bays to the rear gable end. Rooftop cupolas and added windows help with light and air flow. Metal roofs became standard in the late 19th century. (Source: New Hampshire Preservation Alliance)

Although my fascination with barn vernacular isn’t limited to Yankee barns, it is my most consistent and encompassing vision. For now, at least, I’ll narrow my inquiry and reflection to this general design.
September 29, 2022
Re-roofing and Flood Proofing

Rosslyn boathouse when re-roofing was 50% complete in the summer of 2010

Last summer (June-July 2010) our biggest concern with Rosslyn’s boathouse was restoring the roof. It’s hard to imagine that a year later our biggest concern is saving the building, pier and waterfront from finally-receding-but-increasingly-rough Lake Champlain flood waters! What better way to distract our anxieties than to look back on drier times?

The cedar shingle was suffering from many years of neglect. Covered with moss and rotted completely through in many areas, it was possible to watch clouds passing overhead (and fireworks) by standing in the second story and looking through the rot spots in the roof! Friend and former neighbor Michael Leslie headed up the project of stripping the expired shingles, rebuilding the rotted beams, sub-roof and related trim including the window overlooking the lake. The following comes from a blog post last July as we rounded the halfway mark.

The hardest part of re-shingling Rosslyn dock house is now behind us. Special thanks to Michael Leslie, Jerry Spooner and Jim Spooner for their progress so far.

In a bizarre twist, David Hislop asked me yesterday, “What’s the story with the dock house?” Hmmm… The story? Well, that’s what I’m writing: Rosslyn Redux. Coming soon to a digital download near you. 😉 Turns out he was referring to the roof. “People are asking why you’re re-roofing it AGAIN.” Again? Apparently a half dozen people have asked him this question. Easy answer. We’re not. It hasn’t been re-shingled since the early/mid 1980’s, but after a quarter century of rain, snow, ice, sun and wind, many of the shingles have rotted through and the roof is leaking, especially the southern exposure. We’d known that we would eventually have to strip the old shingles, but we had delayed as long as practical. Let’s hope the new roof lasts as long as the old one!

Although the re-roofing project took considerably longer than anticipated (this formula has become the rule rather than the exception during the process of renovating Rosslyn), it was worth every second when the beautiful work was complete. And doubly so last winter when snowstorms battered the little structure and again this spring when rain lashed at the roof. For the first time since buying this property in the summer of 2006 my bride and I could stop worrying about the boathouse that seduced us half a decade ago! The foundation had been restored. The structure had been restored. And now the roof had been restored. Life was good…

Perhaps we were too pleased? Perhaps hubris slipped into our homeowner psyche’s? Perhaps. Or perhaps nature’s far more powerful and far more fickle and unpredictable than we can possibly imagine. I’ve commented elsewhere that nature is a formidable foe and a loyal friend. I genuinely believe this, and yet this spring has reminded me that a boathouse built on a pier in the waters of a lake is not natural. It is a valuable architectural artifact. It is an indulgence. But it is not natural. And despite my resolve to balance my lifestyle with healthy stewardship of the natural environment, I never before stopped to contemplate how unnatural this structure really is. Although I’d likely discourage construction of a new albeit similar structure in fragile habitat like Lake Champlain, I never once stopped to consider Rosslyn’s beautiful boathouse a violation of nature because it already existed. It’s part of the architectural heritage of Essex, NY. In fact, we felt a responsibility to restore the boathouse. Indeed I still do, despite my newfound recognition that it contradicts my conventional bias.

Life is complex, and contradictions are everywhere. I don’t pretend to know all the right answers, nor even very many of them. But I’m beginning to suspect that the silver lining of Lake Champlain’s destructive flooding this spring is that I’ve been forced me to recognize and grapple with the contradiction in preserving Rosslyn’s boathouse despite the potentially adverse environmental impact. It has reminded me that conviction is handy but not infallible, that conviction must be balanced with questioning and humility.

So, I’m finally flood proofing my optimism! I’m still soggy and still anxious about the waves rolling through the interior of the boathouse and crashing against the rapidly eroding bank supporting Route 22, but I’m beginning to see that the glass is half full after all. And Lake Champlain? It’s still overfull!

May 13, 2011
Almost Logical

What if? Wondering what life would be like living full-time in the Champlain Valley…

Within minutes we were tripping over each other, drunk with excitement, imagining one whimsical “What if…” scenario after another. No filter, no caution. Our reveries flitted from one idyllic snapshot to another.

“What if I finally sat down and finished my novel?” After dawdling self indulgently for a dozen years – writing, rewriting, discarding, rewriting, shuffling, reinventing – my novel had evolved from failed poetry collection to short story collection to novel to a tangle of interconnecting narratives that loosely paralleled my life since graduating from college. Too much evolution. Too little focus. But what if I made time to sit down and knock it out? Reboot. Start over. Find the story. Write it down. Move on.

“What if you weren’t sitting in front of your computer all day? Every day?” Susan asked, returning to a common theme. “What if you went outside and played with Tasha? Took her swimming or hiking or skiing every day?”

“What if all three of us went swimming or hiking or skiing every day? What if Tasha and I went jogging along Lakeshore Road instead of the East River?”

We could waterski and windsurf for half the year instead of just two or three months, starting in May with drysuits and finishing in the end of October. We could sail the Hobie Cat more instead of letting it collect spider webs on the Rock Harbor beach. I could fly fish the Boquet and Ausable Rivers in the afternoon while Tasha snoozed on the bank. We could join Essex Farm, the local CSA, supporting a local startup while eating healthy, locally grown and raised food. I could grow a vegetable garden, an herb garden, an orchard. Susan could work for an architecture firm in Burlington and volunteer at the animal shelter. We could buy season passes to Whiteface and downhill ski several days a week. We could cross country ski and snowshoe and bike and rollerblade and kayak and canoe and hike, and maybe I would start rock climbing again. And how much more smoothly the Lapine House renovation would be if we were on-site every day answering questions, catching mistakes before it was too late.

“I could interview candidates for Hamilton!” Susan said. She had recently become an alumni trustee for her alma mater, and her already high enthusiasm had skyrocketed. She had become a walking-talking billboard for the college. “You know how much more valuable it would be to interview candidates up here? There are tons of alumni interviewers in Manhattan, but in Westport? In Essex? In Elizabethtown?”

Suspended in lukewarm bathwater, our collective brainstorm leap frogging forward, it all started to make a strange sort of sense, to seem almost logical.

June 10, 2011
1882 Harper’s Weekly: Children’s Excursion to Lake Champlain

When I stumble upon artifacts specific to Rosslyn or Essex or Lake Champlain or the Adirondacks I’m usually unable to resist collecting and showcasing them for others to enjoy. Often I can explain precisely why the artifact is of interest, but other times I’m unable to explain clearly, succinctly the appeal. Today’s discovery is fated to this latter purgatory I’m afraid.

1882 Harper’s Weekly: Children’s Excursion to Lake Champlain

This antique print appeared at auction but its purchase eluded me. It would have been nice to get a closer look, and to properly decipher the artist’s name (not 100% ineligible in this digital facsimile).

According to the auction listing, the page was pulled from the July 1882 issue of Harper’s Weekly, and the title offers a glimpse into the narrative it was illustrating.

THE “TRIBUNE” FRESH-AIR FUND—CHILDREN’S EXCURSION TO LAKE CHAMPLAIN
Harper’s Weekly, July 1882

This evocative antique drawing captures the hope and energy of a children’s book illustration, inviting daydreams of carefree country living along the shores of Lake Champlain.

There’s plenty to appreciate in this drawing. My eye is especially drawn to the vignette subtitled “At a bee swarming” and located near the center of the image. While the drama of finding and trapping a bee swarm (presumably to populate a bee hive) is the clear focus of this freeze-frame, it’s the background which leaps out at me. Do you see building boasting a sunburst ornamented pediment? The architectural illustration may or may not have been inspired by a visit to Essex on Lake Champlain, but it certainly appears likely!

October 14, 2019