Travelogues & History
Ever since people started adding swimming pools to their backyards, the companies that make the equipment, tools, systems and accessories that drive or ease their use have tried to reach and influence consumers. Real successes in those efforts can probably be counted on the fingers of a hand or two; I’ve always thought that, as an industry, we do a much better job of talking among ourselves at trade shows and in trade magazines than we do at getting to consumers where they live. You’ll be glad to know that this is not a discussion I want to pursue here; rather, I want to focus
By Jim McCloskey A few weeks back, I came across a story on a celebration that ran off the rails in San Diego’s Balboa Park. In the wee hours of August 12, a party instantly organized on social media lured an estimated 1,500 people to participate in a gigantic water fight. Unfortunately, the park’s largest open and available source of water to
Back in a time before I had anything to do with watershaping, I lived for a few years in Eugene, Ore. – a smallish college town that always left me craving more-urban spaces. Portland was up the road by a couple hours, and in the days before our first child appeared, my wife and I would make fairly frequent trips to visit the closest real city we had available. We loved
In one of my very first Travelogues (see the October 26, 2011 edition of WaterShapes EXTRA!), I wrote about Washington’s Bainbridge Island – and more specifically about Bloedel Reserve and its large reflecting pool, which was showcased by Kelly Klein in Pools, her wonderful coffee-table book. I’ve just returned from another trip to the island and once again
When our kids were young, Judy and I took them on car trips all over California and visited as many parks and missions and monuments as we could. My favorite spots always seemed to include water – a variety of beaches, lakes and rivers mostly in the stretch between San Diego and San Francisco. And among those favorites, there was (and still is) a special place in my heart for
I’ve spent a considerable amount of time in Pittsburgh through the years. My mother was born up the Alleghany River in Brady’s Bend, my father closer by in the suburb of Swissvale; both grew up in the city and attended the University of Pittsburgh, where they met and fell in love. My sister now works at their
Let’s journey to the Lone Star State once again to see an appropriately grand-scale waterfeature – and another exuberant collaboration between renowned architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee, who also devised the Fort Worth Water Gardens highlighted in the January 25, 2012 edition of this newsletter. This time, we’ll stop downstate in Houston to see the monumental Williams Waterwall in
Just about everyone is familiar with Hoover Dam on some level, but in considering it from the perspective of watershapers whose working lives depend on containing and controlling water with concrete structures, I’ve always thought this engineering marvel is worthy of
Thomas Jefferson was a founding father of the United States in more ways than one. Indeed, the author of the Declaration of Independence was also an architectural scholar and dedicated adherent of the philosophy and style of Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), an architect of the Italian Renaissance who
While sorting through family photos for a personal project a few weeks back, I came across a computer folder filled with images I’d taken the last time I visited my sister in Washington, D.C. It had been a blustery, damp day and none of the shots I took was particularly good, but they brought back fond memories of
