bottom drawer

Studio swallows Originally uploaded by hanaloftus The swallows have flying lessons and fluff themselves on the wire outside the studio window where I work. Distractingly lovely creatures.

I thought this story was fascinating and strangely emotional. A team of Urdu calligraphers turn out a daily newspaper in Chennai that is first hand-written, then transferred to printing plates. It has a circulation of 20,000 and a staff of six, led by a 76-year-old editor whose son thinks it is all far too old-fashioned - "I understand Urdu, but have no interest in calligraphy." "In the meantime, the office is a center for the South Indian Muslim community and hosts a stream of renowned poets, religious leaders and royalty who contribute to the pages, or just hang out, drink chai and recite their most recent works to the staff. The Musalman publishes Urdu poetry and messages on devotion to God and communal harmony daily." There is something in this story about how newspapers perhaps should be - not just the endless churning out of barely re-written press releases but something more passionate and personal. It is perhaps how I imagine the offices of our earliest ne...

I thought this was a good piece of true BBC reporting, exploring whether all is as rosy as it seems in the creation of the 'exemplar ecocity' at Dongtan. None of it surprises me - that it will probably become a "suburb for the rich", that it is being accompanied by potentially disastrous development of shipyards and power plants nearby. But I have been surprised that the building and development press have so far been so blinkered as to the reality of what modern China means for projects like this. There is the kind of wishfulness (exemplified by much of what Norman Foster says) for the speed and decisiveness of a totalitarian government in making 'big things happen' - architects and developers appear to long for European systems to work so smoothly. But they seem willing to disregard the trophy nature of these projects; the lack of a strong environmental policy from China in any strategic way; the social consequences of mass relocation of people, moulding of...