Size Revisited
'Most of us are in business to earn a living,' wrote Stephanie Rose to open her Natural Companions column in the May 2005 edition of WaterShapes, 'which is probably why so many of us think of the high-end market as the place to be.  . . .  But when I look more closely at the work I've done through my career, I believe we might be overlooking valuable opportunities for personal and professional growth by being so single-minded in
Printed Legacy
The process of selling off back issues of WaterShapes has been a sentimental journey for me, and I know it's going to become even more so when the recycling truck shows up on June 1 to clear away all of the unclaimed copies:  I love those printed relics with all my heart, and I hope I'll be packing lots of them up in the next few days and
The Aquatic Quiz #26
Zoo Project: People Will Swim with Polar Bears and Live to Tell the Tale  
Up the Hill
This is another instance in pond construction in which experience is a huge advantage:  When it's time to size and set things up for a long, cascading stream leading down a reasonably steep hill to a pond-free basin, there's nothing about the process that I'd like to approach without knowing
Setting Personal Standards
'I've had the pleasure of teaching hydraulics to watershapers in a variety of classroom settings,' noted Dave Peterson in opening his Currents column in the May 2010 edition of WaterShapes.  'These courses . . . ask a lot of the students who sign up for them . . . [and] I find it enormously encouraging that so many people are focused on spending the time and energy required to improve their skills and
Chemical-Free? Really?
It started a couple years ago:  More and more often, I was meeting clients who wanted great pools and spas that involved no chemical enhancement - just the water itself. These were generally people who had studied up.  They had rejected dichlor and trichlor and were opposed to any kind of cyanurate presence.  They'd considered saltwater pools until they figured out that chlorine was part of the package.  They'd looked at ozone and were concerned
Shaken Loose
Every time there's an earthquake in any populated place on the planet, my heart and thoughts go out to those who made it through the experience and to the families and friends of those who didn't.  The recent deadly quake in Nepal is another in a long line of seismic events that trigger memories of my own experiences when the ground has started
The Aquatic Quiz #25
Caroline the Black Lab Causes Pickup Truck to Plunge into Pool  
The Evolving Studio
I've been working with digital design technology for nearly ten years at this point, and I have to say that the rate of change with both the software and the hardware has been rapid enough to make a casual observer's head spin.  And that's fine, because those of us who've been involved with it from the beginning have come to expect no less. In my case, however, I didn't start out with computer design.  In fact, I'd been working as
Face Time
A few weeks back, I paid a visit to Santa Rosa, a city in the heart of California's Sonoma County wine appellation.   I wasn't there to taste wine, surprising as that may seem.  Instead, I went to visit with Jim Wilder, a regular WaterShapes contributor and fountain specialist who's spent his career working up and down the valley, quite often