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In 2002, CABE [Commission for Architecture & the Built Environment] published their report The Value of Good Design: How Buildings and Spaces Create Economic and Social Value. Beginning with the Vitruvian triad as a sound basis for judging architecture ‘now as when they were conceived’, they offered a further disambiguation of good design: order; clarity of organization; expression and representation; appropriateness of architectural ambition; integrity and honesty; architectural language; conformity and contrast; orientation, prospect and aspect; detailing and materials; structure, environmental services and energy use; flexibility and adaptability; sustainability; rounding it all off with ‘a final point’ that a building is beautiful when ‘the resulting lifting of the spirits will be as valuable [a] contribution to public wellbeing as dealing successfully with the functional requirements of the building’s programme’.
The word ‘beauty’ appeared to be making a comeback, but only as an emergent property of the sound delivery of other things.

architect, verb, Reinier de Graaf, (Verso)

Much of the pure aesthetic pleasure of Leigh’s work comes from these unpredictable elements: the swirling colors of her glazes, the way they bubble and crack. But the emotional and intellectual force of the punctum lies elsewhere—in the small but noticeable drip of mossy green glaze hanging off the chin of an untitled bust in the first gallery at LACMA, or in the impress of a fingernail near the base of an ocher bust (also untitled) at CAAM. Details like these suggest something outside a flat binary of visible/invisible or seen/unseen. They suggest, to my mind, a redistribution of subjectivity—character, agency, will, private consciousness—away from the face and toward obscure or secreted regions of the body, where their meaning becomes less obvious but also more potent, no longer constrained or patrolled by a racist logic of surveillance.

Refusing the Eye, Anahid Nersessian on Simone Leigh, (NYRB)

There was a time when, though my path was rough,

         This joy within me dallied with distress,

And all misfortunes were but as the stuff

         Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness:

For hope grew round me, like the twining vine,

And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine.

But now afflictions bow me down to earth:

Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth;

                But oh! each visitation

Suspends what nature gave me at my birth,

         My shaping spirit of Imagination.

For not to think of what I needs must feel,

         But to be still and patient, all I can;

And haply by abstruse research to steal

         From my own nature all the natural man—

         This was my sole resource, my only plan:

Till that which suits a part infects the whole,

And now is almost grown the habit of my soul.

Dejection: An Ode, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Other Significant Others, Rhaina Cohen. (The Marginalian)

Abolish the Family, Sophie Lewis. (Verso) (Liber)

À Haïti, au cœur de l’enfer, La Libre, Reportages publiés le 13 août 2024.

I’ve never spoken to anyone about this.  Until now, until you.

I slept once in a field beyond the riverbank,
a flock of nightjars watching over me.

[…]

I gathered a handful of my coyote’s bones, his teeth,
and strung them all on fishing wire—
a talisman to ward off anguish. A talisman I hold out to you now.

Please. Come closer. Take this from my hand.

Dolores, Maybe, John Murillo

A narrative poem, hard to quote. Very good.

“I can change through exchanging with others, without losing or diluting my sense of self.” The Archipelago Conversations of Édouard Glissant and Hans Ulrich Obrist.

I like this jasmine, Jasminum fluminense (fluminense = of the State of Rio de Janeiro ). It is deemed invasive and should be destroyed.

Native to: Tropical West Africa. The genus Jasminum, of the Oleaceae or olive family, contains over 200 species of vines or shrubs with opposite leaves, many with fragrant flowers, native to the warmer parts of the Old World. Brazilian jasmine was introduced to Florida in the early 1920s via horticulture and has escaped cultivation …

An aggressive, troublesome, difficult-to-control weed; can weed; can climb high into the tree canopy of mature forests, completely forests, completely enshrouding native vegetation and reducing native plant diversity. Has vigorously invaded intact, undisturbed hardwood forests in South Florida. (Plants)

If you have purchased plants from The Huntington, you may have noticed that some of the labels include information other than the plant names and growing instructions. Those additional details might include the person who introduced the plant into cultivation, its geographic origin in the wild, notes about its natural habitat, and the source of The Huntington’s stock plants.

Provenance, or the ownership history of a valued item, is generally associated with works of art. But plant provenance has become increasingly important in the horticultural realm due to the escalation of plant theft from both botanical collections—including, unfortunately, The Huntington’s—and wild habitats. Like works of fine art, certain plants are highly prized and sought-after in a growing black-market economy.

Sandy Masuo, The Huntington