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They say that inside the chest of every man beats the heart of a lion, a Viking, or some other barbarous beast with sharp, drool-dripping fangs. It is this savage core, this chest-thumping inner-thread which periodically causes men to lose control, to throw judgment, taste, and propriety to the wind. Critics blame it for a culture which glorifies violence, subverts reason, and spins backward the clock of human progress and social justice.

Last Wednesday night, it caused Dad and I to drive to the Hanover Mall theater and buy two tickets to 300, which might possibly be the worst film I have ever seen. I will admit to having a soft spot for the ancient historical epic genre. As a college student, I reveled at Gladiator’s romanticized portrayal of Maximus, the Man in Full: cunning general; beloved leader of men; fearless killer; unflagging idealist; dedicated husband; and loving father. His virtue and perfection would inspire laughter and cynicism, if Russel Crow’s performance weren’t so sympathetic. Crow imbues Maximus with a sense of humility and vulnerability that I find irresistible.

I realize that, by any objective standard of cinematic quality, Gladiator is not a great movie. Film historians will remember it as a “box office hit”, a mere “crowd pleasing action epic”. And they would be correct, I suppose. The plot is simplistic and straightforward: a good man is wronged by a bad man, chaos ensues; then the good man gets even, order is restored. Simple, yet I feel compelled. The screenplay isn’t exactly Shakespeare, Trumbo, or even Mamet; yet “Strength and Honor” never fails to light a fire in my chest. Altogether, it’s grand meal, made from humble ingredients. A tough-handed carpenter in regal clothing.

Nobly human. As opposed to 300.

“Spartans! Tonight, We Dine on Turkey!”

Bob Longino of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution managed to encapsulate the movie perfectly: “This film is both beautiful to look at, and bombastic tripe to listen to.” He continues:

“300″ is extreme on every level. It imagines strange beings — a kind of pig man with blades for arms and toady oracle devotees who insidiously lick scantily clad vestal virgins. It presents bottomless pits, a hunchback uglier than the Elephant Man, and the evil invasion leader Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) as a kind of giant she-he cross between a bald, chain-wearing Grace Jones and “Stargate’s” Jaye Davidson.

As a lover of film, I can appreciate the sensuous visual spectacle director Zack Snyder has wrought, and his desire to remain true to Frank Miller’s graphic novels, on which the film is based. As a lover of history, I’m incensed by the flagrant falseness of some of the liberties taken with the historical record. For instance, King Leonidas (Gerald Butler) gives his hoplites a pre-battle pep talk in which he proclaims the dawning of a new age of freedom. This is ridiculous, considering the source: Sparta was less a city than an armed camp, a Stalinistic tyranny in which all inhabitants were enslaved to the belligerent whims of their king. Even in rival Athens, cradle of reason and humanism, slavery was explicit and common. Perhaps in writing 300, Frank Miller was referring to some archaic, Grecian notion of freedom which allowed for the owning of slaves. I can’t say for certain.

I can say with absolute certainty that I will be getting my ancient history fix from other sources. Namely, the books of Michael Curtis Ford. If you can get past the ludicrously comic-bookish cover art on the dust jacket, you are in for a real treat. History brought to life.

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Before you begin building a structure, you have to obtain permits and approvals from various civic bodies. This involves showing your plans to everyone from the building inspector to the fire captain to the health agent. In the best case, permitting is a Byzantine process requiring much patience and decent penmanship. (I begin to wonder how much more paperwork would be needed to nominate our house for sainthood.)

After several days of shuffling, stamping, stapling, and collating, we could see the light at the end of the tunnel. On a cool, early-Spring day, I dropped our kit off on the last stop of its red-taped odyssey: the Norwell Conservation Commission.

The Big Snag

A few days later, the Norwell Conservation Agent came by to look at our site. She looked about, took notes, and gave us some bad, bad news. Much of our lot fit the technical definition of a wetland, and consequently our project would be forced to operate under some rather onerous restrictions.

Before describing them, however, the term wetland requires a bit of explanation. The very word conjures images of a swamp, bayou, or tidal estuary, rife with manatees, mosquitoes, and malaria. It evokes liquid water, and this is somewhat misleading. According to the US Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency, a wetland may or may not actually be saturated with surface or groundwater water at a given time, although it doesn’t necessarily require the constant presence of liquid water to be considered a wetland. The defining characteristics of a wetland are botanical. In other words, the presence of certain kinds of ferns, trees, or undergrowth determine whether or not a piece of land is considered a wetland, legally speaking. This is because the soil in a wetlands area is composed in such a way that only certain species are adapted to survive in them. (Believe it or not, Red Maple is wetland species.)

Much to our dismay, certain parts of our lot ran amok with a wide variety of wetland species. The Conservation Agent issued us a set of terms that had to be satisfied before we could proceed with construction. To wit, we were obligated to hire an environmental consultant to prepare an ecological impact statement. We also had to have a surveyor prepare detailed drawings of our lot, with elevations and markings denoting the flagged wetlands areas. Additionally, we had to design and install an erosion-control system, consisting of straw bales and plastic netting, which lined the perimeter of the wetlands areas.

There were other restrictions; namely, we couldn’t place a dumpster on site with several hundred feet of the flagged wetlands areas. Since our one-acre lot was barely 140 feet wide, this was a de facto ban on on-site waste disposal. Altogether, these conditions put us about six weeks behind schedule, and added tens of thousands of dollars of unexpected expenses to a project that hinged on thrift.

Steve Ivas: Environmental Consultant

Our first call after receiving the order of conditions from the Conservation Agent was Steve Ivas, an environmental consultant based in Norwell. I would highly recommend Steve to anyone contemplating land development in the South Shore of Massachusetts, and I will happily provide his contact information to anyone interested in retaining his services. Steve kept a bad situation from mushrooming out of control. He assisted us in preparing an impact statement, implementing erosion control measures, and surveying the affected areas. He also helped us understand the nature of the wetlands issues itself. He was featured prominently in a segment on the Bob Vila program.

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Last time, I wrote about why we needed to build an addition onto my parent’s home in the suburbs of Boston, and how we came to do it on the Bob Vila television program. Today, we’ll get into everything that had to happen before we could break ground. Before beginning any project, you need to do your homework. For us, this meant designing the building, obtaining permits, and planning the work.

We began with the design. Dad had been playing around with ideas for the addition since 2002, but his drawings didn’t have the necessary polish or precision. We would require professional CAD drawings if we were to find other project participants and subcontractors.

I contacted Henry Weinberg, a friend and architect at Payette. I’ve known Henry for years, and have found him to be skilled, diligent and talented. Over the course of several weeks, Henry helped Dad turn his drawings and ideas into a set of plans that were structurally sound, and incorporated green design features.

Green/Sustainable Design

In recent years, there has been much talk about green design and construction. Green construction (also known as sustainability) originated as an outgrowth of the environmental movements of the 1970s, and also as a reaction against the energy crisis of the same period (some have suggested that the concept of “green construction” was first codified in E. F. Schumacher’s 1973 book Small is Beautiful). More specifically, green refers to non-toxic, sustainably-produced materials, energy efficiency, quality and durability, and reuse/recycling. Design features such as solar hot water, energy-efficient windows, and bamboo flooring are often considered to be “green”.

We knew what green design was, and we had a sense for how we wanted to incorporate them into our project. What we didn’t know was how to find manufacturers that would be interested in showcasing their products on our show. At Henry’s suggestion, I attended the Boston Society of Architects’ 2005 Build Boston convention. If you work in the construction industry and live in eastern New England, I highly recommend it. After walking the floor for a few hours, I had found what I needed: several prospects whose products and services were a perfect match for our addition. It was there that I met Tim Cutler of T.J.’s Plumbing & Heating, who would arrange for the donation of Viega PEX radiant tubing, and a Viessmann boiler and solar hot water array. Build Boston also yielded National Fiber, a manufacturer or recycled cellulose insulation, and GroSolar from Vermont, who donated a complete photovoltaic solar system.

Dad did his own research and found Reddi-Form, a New Jersey-based company manufacturing Insulated Concrete Forms (ICFs). They were also motivated participate, and agreed to supply materials for all of the exterior and basement walls. This part of the process is really fascinating, and I’ll get into it in great detail later.

With our design in hand, we set out for town hall to get ourselves permitted and approved. I anticipated needing two weeks to get everything squared away, assuming that everything would go smoothly. In my next post, we’ll discuss the danger inherent in making assumptions.

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If I had to make a list of my favorite things, perusing bookstores might well top it. I love bookstores. I love everything about them. I particularly love the old ones, whose stacks are filled with worn, used, dusty volumes on diverse and esoteric topics. There’s just such a place within walking distance of my apartment: McIntyre and Moore Booksellers. Great place; not very big, but it bursts at the seams with the type-set thoughts of countless authors of various stripes, alphabetized and Dewey decimalized for your convenience. Each book, of course, contains the same basic ingredients (wisdom, ignorance, arrogance, candor, wit, and others), but the recipes are infinite. I always find something interesting there. Even a quick stroll through the gardening aisle can yield something cool.
Several weeks ago, Kara turned me on to a repository of information that I find to be equally intoxicating: Lynda.com! For a very reasonable subscription price, you get access to video-based training on hundreds of software titles, computer topics, and programming applications. I’ve probably logged over a hundred hours in their Online Training Library since I subscribed. In nearly two months, I’ve studied Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Adobe GoLive and Photoshop, PowerPoint, Typography, Color Theory, HTML, XML, CSS, and JavaScript. I’m addicted. It’s like the Matrix, although it isn’t quite as easy as having the information downloaded directly into my brain (and despite my repeated inquiries, lynda.com has yet to release a program teaching Kung Fu).

I just got a marketing email announcing lynda.com’s latest release: Digital Audio Principles. Just last week, I was wishing they’d create a title on this topic! Either lynda.com can read minds, or I’m omnipotent. There’s only one way to find out: if by this time next week, Katie Couric is reporting that world hunger has been ended by the miraculous appearance of steak-growing trees, we’ll have our answer…

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I’ve been reading Peter Drucker a lot lately. Who, you ask, is Peter Drucker? For over forty years, he has been the so-called dean of business literature in the United States. He has authored scores of books about executive effectiveness, the philosophy of management, and coined the term information economy (ring any bells?). He was one of the first so-called management consultants, a profession he began in the mid 1940s for such clients as Alfred P. Sloan. His body of work is the forerunner of more contemporary effectiveness literature such as Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and has earned him a place in the pantheon of management/professional/interpersonal thinkers such as Lao Tzu, Epictetus, Sun Tzu, et al.

According to Drucker, all problems are essentially generic in nature. But what does that actually mean, you ask? I’ll attempt to elucidate the Dean’s words with a rather mundane example: let’s say that you own a particularly difficult toaster. Each and every morning, you put two pieces of cinnamon raison bread into its slots. You then offer up a prayer to the toast gods, that they may choose to spare your breakfast this morning. However, after several minute of tense waiting, the toaster spits out your offering like an angry volcano. And why does this happen? The reason, dear reader, is painfully obvious: with some crucial piece of the toaster’s mechanism malfunctioning, any bread you put into it will be similarly reduced to nuclear ash. This issue is generic, because we can generalize that any other toaster which contains the same set of malfunctioning components will become a toast destroyer.

Where are we going with this, you ask? Drucker, in his attempt to spell out the critical characteristics of an effective executive, declares that anyone worthy of the name must be capable of making good decisions. Furthermore, any capable of methodically making good decisions must first understand that all problems are have a broad, generic base. Good decision makers don’t make many decisions; rather, they focus their intellectual energies on the core of the issue at hand, and make monumental decisions that address the problems core. They may go back to their previous decisions and make numerous small adjustments as their understanding of the issue evolves, but these are analogous to the course corrections of a cargo ship on the Pacific Ocean bound for Hong Kong that must plot a new course around a storm. The destination hasn’t changed, although the tactics to get their alter with the introduction of new information.

Drucker appears to be in good company: Aristotle states in the first book of his Metaphysics that knowledge of everything belongs to the man who can understand the universals. Universals, he continues, are the broad generalities that encompass all individual events and occurrences in our universe. What makes them the true gauge of wisdom? They lie below the surface, many layers of abstraction removed from the visible world of our senses, and hence require the greatest level of intellectual power to comprehend.

I’ve read several of Drucker’s books, and Covey’s as well. Like anyone reading effectiveness literature, I do this because I see holes in the armor of my own “effectiveness”, and want desperately find some sort of caulk that will plug them. Being human, however, I understand that this is ultimately too much to ask. That’s what I like about Drucker (and Covey to a certain extent): they embrace the realities of life that most decisions are fated to be wrong, that many projects are doomed to go awry. The best we can do is develop a methodical approach to addressing problems that is based on the understanding that issues are best addressed with universal principals. Like Voltaire’s Candide, all we can do is cultivate our gardens and do the best we know.

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