sudden thoughts

i feel like ebenzer scrooge. Right at the end, when he wakes up and it is Christmas morning and he is giggling and spinning around and cries out "I am as giddy as a schoolboy!" That Scrooge, that is how I feel.

See, I had this sudden realisation, and boy, it has me all fluttery inside.

I have been working for Syracuse University, setting up a wood, metal, and plastics shop for them. I have been doing layout drawings and talking to architects about dust collection. I have been inventorying tools in existing shops and talking to faculty members about what kind of usage these shops get and about what kind of usage the new shop might get. It has been fun, in a geeky-tool-using kind of way. I mean, I am having conversations about the role of making in a design curriculum, and about its place in the design process, and these folk are really listening to me when I talk about how important I think it is to have the ability to teach making in a well appointed shop. There does not seem to be a tradition of that, here, and it sounds like they want to change that a little bit. That is not the sudden realisation.

The building that the new shop is going in to is called the Warehouse. It is not on Main Campus, it is downtown. Isn't that a nice photo of it all lit up? It is what it sounds like, an old warehouse that has had a lot of work done to it and is now going to house all of the Design programs at Syracuse University. Interior Design, Industrial Design, Communications Design, all of it. All under one roof, with a wood and metals shop on the first floor and a plastics shop and a spray booth in the basement. This is all just background. It is not the sudden realisation.

So in recent conversations I had been talking about putting a Vertical Wind Air Turbine on the roof to run the shop with. Seems like the wiring would support it, and there is something undeniably sexy about running a TIG welder off of air power, you have to admit. The problem with VWAT's, and, indeed, with air power in general, is that if there is no wind, there is no power. So maintaining a steady stream of juice to the shop or the building is hard. There are a lot of really smart people working on this. And we could set up some kind of augmented power plan, but that is sooo not as cool as saying "Yeah, we get all the power for our shops from the wind." The folks here are open to the idea of a VWAT on the roof, but they want to wait until the technology is all figured out, which is still a ways off. There are, in fact, a couple of buildings on campus already with versions of VWAT's on the roof, so the University is definitely open to the idea. This was not the sudden realisation either.

What you can not see in the lovely promotional photo above is that on the side of the building there with all of the windows runs the Erie Canal. I mean THE Erie Canal. Like "I've got a mule and her name is Sal." That one. The water road that opened the American Middle West and made Chicago what it is and made it possible for the Nation's Breadbasket to be built into what it is (even though we now realise, of course, that industrial farms like that are rife with problems but since this has nothing to do with my sudden realisation we will talk about that another time, maybe).

The Erie Canal. I had been staring out the window at it a couple of days ago, watching the water rushing along, looking at the fine lace of ice along its edges and thinking about what it must have been like to ply that water in flat bottomed barges from the mighty Hudson all the way to Buffalo. I know very little about the Canal, really, and am excited to do a little research.

In 1993, I think, the summer, I was in college in North Carolina. A friend there had been working for Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, NY, and got me a summer job in the prop shop there, making props for the summer season and then being on the running crew back stage. I was not very good at it, I now realise, and a lot of people were very patient with me for which I am somewhat belatedly thankful.

I did a lot of rock climbing back then, and a friend and I used to drive about 45 minutes to Little Falls NY (I think, memories are a little hazy) which had a nice little wall that we spent a lot of time climbing around on. This is a photo of me doing that. Anyway, it was right on Lock 17, which at 40 feet high is the tallest lock on the canal. If you have ever been on the fourth floor of a building and looked out the window, that is what we are talking about here. Your feet would be wet. Pretty tall. I remember watching the boats slowly slowly rise up from way down below as we were resting or setting up a new climb. The wonder of that achievement was lost on my callow little mind. I would like to revisit that lock with a slightly more open prespective. One day I shall have to.

So I was standing in the Warehouse in Syracuse, looking at the Canal and thinking about it and about Glimmerglass, and my friend Kate who got me the job there, and watching the water run, and that is when I had my realisation. You know what it is by now of course. It was that waiting for new technology to be developed makes so much less sense than using technology that we have understood and harnessed for hundreds of years.

Water power. I want to run the shop off of water power.

The building is right smack on the Canal. The water is not frozen. It seems to constantly run. All it would take is a generator of an appropriate size and a hole in the side of the building. It is completely sustainable. It is brilliant. It is simple. There is no good reason not to do it.

I mean, I am sure there are a lot of reasons not to do it, and I am going to have to do a lot of convincing, but damnit am I excited. We are going to run a 21st century wood and metal and plastics shop off 500 year old technology that we put into a monument to 19th century ingenuity.

The poetry of the whole thing just knocks me right out of my socks.

I am trying not to brag too much. I know it is unbecoming. But it is so rare that I have an idea that feels this right and this good and seems this achievable that I have decided to let myself revel in it for a little bit.