Sometimes H&G pulls off a weekend edition that's very frustrating for an AT editor: some good information but no good pictures.
We're always interested in what Arrol Gellner has to say (this week he draws a parallel between Victorian domestic architecture and today's McMansions), and we were also very intrigued by the profile of Daily Acts and their eco housing tours.
Highlights are after the jump...
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Slippery slopes: in this piece by Deborah K. Rich, the tips for creating a terraced garden include "start when you're young," and "have good friends."
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Green days: Drew Himmelstein goes on one of Daily Act's eco-housing tours in Petaluma (a "co-housing project"), collects the free gifts (a roll of recycled toilet paper and an eco-smart flourescent bulb) and shares one of the innovative non-profit's pearls of wisdom: "one light and one wipe and one act at a time."
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AROUND THE HOUSE: This week Susan Fornoff's and Sally Socolich's shopper's finds include host gifts (bowls by
Simon Pearce,
Michael Aram, and
Decorative Things), a mango veneer desk,
La Bouquetiere's warehouse sale, and
Philips new-fangled holiday lawn stake lights.
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McMansion trend likely to fade when people get tired of upkeep: Arrol Gellner predicts the trend will swing back to more modest housing, as it did after 1900, "with efficiency-minded magazines such as Ladies' Home Journal leading the charge, overworked homemakers rebelled against the large, ornate and hard-to-maintain homes of the Victorian era." We can only hope.
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Christmas trees may carry pitch cank: A very good reason to get rid of your tree soon after the holidays are over.
Gellner's right, of course... I foresee a dystopic future in which entire tracts of McMansions are carved into rooming houses and small-business offices. These newly high-density neighborhoods will be served by roaming taco trucks serving every sort of fast-food cuisine. (The far 'burbs already have taco-truck food courts at some locations...)