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From the President, December 2003
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I took my first-ever trip overseas last September. My wife and I took a vacation trip to Italy, Tuscany actually. We planned for months, we even learned some Italian. We made all our own arrangements, using our computer to do the shopping. Tuscany is the "state" in Italy that lies along the western (Mediterranean) coast of the boot just below the point where the peninsula joins the main European continent. Tuscany is home to the Arno river which flows from Florence through fertile valley lands to Lucca and Pisa and ultimately to the sea. Tuscany is also home to famous hill-top cities like Siena, San Giminagno, Multepulciano, and Voltera. It is the home of Chianti and Brunello wines, olive oil, and salt-free bread. It is also the home of Michelangelo, Leonardo daVinci, Dante, Brunellescci, Puccini, and hundreds of other world renown artists. It was the birthplace of the renaissance and of Opera. And it is the place from which the white Carrara marble is quarried. The name Tuscany comes from a permutation of the Roman word for the Etruscan people. The Etruscans lived and cultivated these lands in the centuries before the expansion of the Roman empire. There are Etruscan foundations dating from six hundred to seven hundred years before our common era underlying Roman temple facades that are now reborn as Christian churches. The Etruscan people had 12 major cities in the land we now know as Tuscany; people have been living in the cities of Voltera and Chiusi for almost 3,000 years. The quarries established by the Romans at Carrara are the oldest continuously active industrial site in the world. The city and people there are descended the slave encampment that the Romans set on the mountainside to quarry stone for the rebuilding of Rome and its empire. The history of western civilization is laid bare on the streets and hillsides of every hamlet, farmstead and city. Driving through the countryside on the super-highway at 110 kph, one suddenly (however briefly) encounters a remnant of a Roman aqueduct, or an olive grove where the rootstock supporting the productive stems of young trees is hundreds of years old. Everywhere the past underlies the present as an energy source that fuels the new growth. But like the energy of love, it is an energy that is not consumed by its use but rather nourished by it. Here people asked not "what does this day hold for me?", but rather, "how have I made this day into the bud of a better tomorrow?" Recently the Board has been discussing our relationship with student affiliates. Questions arose about why? how much? and when? we should offer support. I understand that we need policies to be fair to each class as it moves through our sphere of influence; I also know that we must have the students, and the more the merrier. The sustainability of our culture is at stake. While in Italy I saw several new farmhouses under construction; by all appearances they were modest two-story homes. There where piles of dirt, stacks of roof tiles, boxes of windows and a 75- or 80-feet tall construction crane on every site. Whatever the modern conveniences were to be; the walls where still load-bearing, two feet thick, solid masonry that could now be most economically laid-up with the help of derrick. These were not homes being built for this generation, or even for next; these were homes were being built for the owner's great-great-great-grand children. The homes of builders that have a "long view" of family; homes that were meant to last for hundreds of years. One of the wine estates we visited has been a family enterprise for over 800 years! So too, our work with the student affiliates cannot be about creating and maintaining members for this generation; it must be about the health and vitality of our community (the construction industry) in the long view. We must learn to undertake our toil in this field as cultivation. Grape vines that are planted in this generation, will produce grapes for next and the wine made from those grapes often is for the next generation still. And so it will go for us; the lessons planted in this season will bear fruit in another that will bring us great joy in yet another - and we must understand two things. First, that these things take time, and second, that we must act to initiate and nurture the cycles. Harold Dean Kiewel, CSI, CCS, AIA, NCARB |
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