Thomas Pynchon on Pizza

...as all but crunchy with fistfuls of herbs only marginally Italian and more appropriate in a cough remedy, the rennetless cheese reminded customers variously of bottled hollandaise or joint compound, and the options were all vegetables rigorously organic, whose high water content saturated, long before it baked through, a stone-ground twelve-grain crust with the lightness and digestibility of a manhole cover. Pynchon being Pynchon, pizza appears fr...

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Our New Linoleum Floor

...by Forbo. We returned to this material for two reasons: it’s historically appropriate for our 98 year old house and we like the more muted and natural colors of Frobo’s linoleum line. And we also found out that the kitchen floor of the Gamble House was recently redone with Forbo linoleum. “Linoleum” has become a generic term associated with all kinds of sheet flooring materials, but real linoleum refers to a product made with solidified linseed o...

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Irving Gill: the Greatest Architect You’ve Never Heard Of

...od the Mediterranean climate of Southern California and designed buildings appropriate to the climate. I don’t know why we don’t have more courtyards like this one designed by Gill. He pioneered concrete tilt-up construction and was a master of the multi-unit bungalow court. Most of all I think he understood form and proportion. That’s how you can spot his elegant buildings. If one were to write the Southern California version of William Morris’ N...

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The Year We Gave Up Our Smart Phones

...re of success became making something that was so well put together and so appropriate for its setting that nobody noticed it? The revolution came sooner than expected. With the tech bros locked up on Mars we freed ourselves from the shackles of “surveillance capitalism.” For a time some of us went back to flip phones but that interim period didn’t last long. In the end we all realized that we just didn’t want our work and leisure interrupted and...

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How to Garden With California Natives: Lessons from the 2016 Theodore Payne Garden Tour

...ing a residential garden in California: natives look best when grouped and appropriately spaced into a mass that mimics the density of native chaparral. Spacing can be tricky. You have to pay attention to nursery labels and not plant too far apart or too close together. Not that plants always perform predictably. You have to go back and edit: fill gaps in or take stuff out. The best gardens on the tour got the massing right like the Hessing/Bonfig...

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