Tribal Gathering

Last Sunday, Hilde and I spent the afternoon at the Phoenix Tribal Gathering, a rather small event mixing Pagan, New Age and Celtic enthusiasms, held at the Irish Cultural Center near downtown Phoenix. 

Hance Park
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The ICC is part of  Margaret Hance Park; when the section of I-10 that runs through the actual city of Phoenix was finally completed, the section between 7th Avenue and 7th Street was made a sunken area with the freeway going thru a half-mile-long tunnel.  The topside of those tunnels couldn't support the weight of full multi-story buildings like surrounding areas, so the major chunk of it was landscaped and turned into Hance Park; besides the general park area, it also includes the Japanese Gardens and the Irish Cultural Center.

The ICC is a nice looking building, even if it's not an authentic stone building; the stone facing (which is probably fauxstone) is a passable imitiation.  It would probably look more authentic in overcast weather with a light drizzle.  Get some ivy growing up the walls, even better.

Burton Barr Library

There's quite a contrast between the ICC and the ultra-modern Burton Barr Library (the central Phoenix branch) across the street.

(I guess the reward for spending one's life as a political hack is to have a park or public building named after you.  Meh.)

We have quite a few contacts in Pagan, etc., circles, so we caught up with some friends, browsed the crafts contest entries, listened to a little music, and browsed the various vender booths.  One booth was not only offering massages, they had a new puppy with them.  Massage therapy and pet therapy in one!  (I took advantage, since my shoulder was starting to ache by that point in the day.)

I also had a Tarot reading done.  I'm a pretty thorough skeptic, but Hilde's more open to that sort of thing and urged me to have the reading done.  Very interesting results.  I don't believe in Tarot as prediction or prescription, but I think they can help trigger lines of thought that may help reach decisions that had been treading water before.  So the results seem to have helped firm up some decisions I'd already been considering, about how to deal with the consequences of breaking my arm last December.  It's a pretty distant possibility that I'll go back to the status quo I had before the accident, so I need to figure out in what direction I want to go and try to take steps toward those goals.   I'll probably say more about that in another post.

But it was good to get out of the house for a little while and not have it just be for a doctor's appointment.

Paolo Soleri, 1919-2013

I've been surprised that I've seen so little mention in science-fiction circles of the April 9th death of visionary architect Paolo Soleri. Soleri originated the term "arcology".

The idea of an arcology is an imploded city, the opposite of sururban sprawl. His massive book, THE CITY IN THE IMAGE OF MAN (1969), featured drawings of massive (but relatively small-footprint) self-contained cities, cities that reached high into the sky and deep into the ground. Because they were designed to be self-contained and self-supporting, they could be located in marginal areas. (One design was for a city using air-space by spanning a section of the Grand Canyon.)

A 2011 article on ARCH DAILY gave a good overview of his life and career.  He spent more than forty years slowly building a small-scale version (5,000 intended population) arcology, Arcosanti, still not complete, in rural Arizona, assisted by students and acolytes.  With shoestring funding (mostly by sales of ceramic and metal bells made by Soleri) and built largely with hand labor, even the fraction completed so far is impressive. 

I believe Soleri's work was one of the big inspirations for Robert Silverberg's "Urban Monad" stories (collected as THE WORLD INSIDE), tales of life inside mile-high skyscraper-cities.  Soleri's work and ideas have influenced other writers' "future cities" as well.

Personally, I came across a copy of CITY IN THE IMAGE OF MAN in the Arizona State University library in the early 1970's.  (It's fair to call it a coffee-table book; it's literally about the size of a coffee-table top.) "Wow," I said as I paged through it.  "Wow."  Sensawunda extreme.

Soleri may not have been a science-fiction writer, but his vision and ideas have surely influenced the field.  So, again, I'm surprised that I haven't seen more SF people commenting on his death.

Paolo Soleri, 1919-2013