Dear Friend,

I like collecting things. As an Enneagram 5, I like my resources. One of the things I like to collect is digital images. Whenever I see an image online that I find striking or intriguing, I save it. Saving it is the easy part. So easy, in fact, that I now have over 6,000 images in my database, making it almost impossible to find the right one at the right moment.

Kate Canales, whose TED talk is below, has spent twenty years photographing the handmade signs people make when official design fails them: the tape-and-marker instructions, the hand-drawn arrows, the notes left on doors. What she’s really been documenting, I think, is the human instinct to notice when something isn’t working and do something about it anyway. To pay enough attention to leave a few instructions behind for whoever comes next.

It turns out that paying attention, really stopping to notice what’s in front of you, is a lot harder than collecting, or scrolling, or walking past. So now I’m trying to go through my images to notice them, to tag them so I can find them again. And I’m wondering what else I’m walking right past without really seeing.

With gratitude,
Pastor Sarah

Hostile Architecture

by Peter Marty

Peter Marty is the editor of The Christian Century and a Lutheran pastor, and this short piece is one of those that’s been sitting in my files for a while because I keep finding new reasons to return to it. He starts with park benches — and the growing trend of designing public spaces specifically to keep people from settling in — and ends with a man sleeping in a church doorway late at night. It’s a quiet gut-punch of a column, and a useful companion to the TED talk below:

“Outdoor benches in American life have often served as stress relievers and relaxation havens. Forrest Gump could tell his whole life story from one to anybody willing to sit and listen. My wife and I travel to a Lake Michigan island every summer, where we end each day on a bench along the shore, watching the sun descend into the water. A park bench can also be a safe place for a young or awkward couple to get acquainted without having to look too frequently into each other’s eyes.

“In metro areas today, park benches are becoming an endangered species. Hostile architecture is the name urban engineers give to public space designs that discourage people from settling in. Examples include sloped window sills, retaining walls with spikes, skateboard-inhibiting metal slugs, and benches with multiple armrests to deter those looking for a bed.”

Read the full article here.

CHOIR! of 2500 sings “ANGEL” with Sarah McLachlan

I’ve not been to a lot of concerts in my life (too many people), but a Sarah McLachlan concert is one I did go to in high school when her CDs were in a regular rotation on my stereo. And, I’d probably brave the crowds to go to a concert like this …

The Accidental Brilliance of Makeshift Signs

Kate Canales | TED Talk

This is a video about the signs we put up to help ourselves and one another know what to do. It both opened my eyes to all of the accidental signs around us, and said something lovely about the way in which we look out for one another. Plus there are some funny signs.

Raspberry