Heritage Open Days

More confirmation of the spread of that contemporary and popular sensibility attuned to the resonances of pasts-in-the-present. English Heritage, the government agency, has put up nearly half a million dollars for a weekend of 4500 heritage open houses. This is the biggest heritage event in the UK this year. Peter Saunders in his re-creation of…

the culture of archaeology

Highway 128 Boonville California Since I moved to the United States a dozen years ago, I have spent a good deal of time in Northern California in a small back woods town called Boonville in the Anderson Valley on Route 128 as it makes its way to the Mendocino Coast. Always an agricultural community, logging,…

Olympics opening – (in)tangible heritage

London – the opening of the 30th Olympiad A bucolic pastoral green and pleasant land succumbing to dark satanic mills, in William Blake’s vision, homage also to Tolkein’s pitting of Hobbiton against Isengard’s tower; Shakespeare’s Tempest declaimed by Brunel on the slopes of a druidic oak-toppped Glastonbury Tor; dreams of Peter Pan and Mary Poppins;…

automotive connoisseurship

Palo Alto Concours d’Elegance – . Taking a tour with Jon Summers. What are the values and principles that govern the collection of cars? Just what are the values applied to these extraordinary artifacts? Age, elegance, finish, rarity, historical significance, market value … These are questions of automotive connoisseurship.