On Summit

This blog post actually has its origins in early 2020. That spring, The Metropolitan Museum of Art was hosting a major  Gerhard Richter retrospective at their Met Breuer location. Gerhard Richter is one of my favorite contemporary artists, so plans were made for a big NYC trip in June that would include the Richter retrospective and more. Then COVID happened. The Met's blockbuster retrospective, originally scheduled to run March 4 - July 5 lasted just over a week, closing, as much of the world did, after March 12. It was disappointing to be sure, but I wasn't alone there. In truth, if your dashed travel plans were the worst thing that happened over those weeks and months and years, you could rightly count yourself among the lucky. Still, it was a missed opportunity, and one that stayed with me. Fast forward five years to the late summer of 2025 when I learned that the Foundation Louis Vuitton in Paris was mounting an even bigger Gerhard Richter retrospective   ! Well, it...

I feel like I've been slacking recently in my efforts to keep up with this blog and the work that's been happening at the Akron almost-mansion. That's a testament I think to how busy I've been, and also to how weirdly routine this whole project has become. I don't want to say the novelty has worn off (the house still offers its share of surprises), but we'have fallen into some pretty regular patterns this winter. We drive the 110 miles north almost every weekend to patch, sand, prime, and paint. We spend a day and a half covering ourselves in the dust of the 20th century's finest paints, wallpapers, hardwoods, and plaster and then traverse the same 110 miles back home. We move garbage, cardboard, tools, and equipment out of one room and into another (and then out to the garage). We go up and down two flights of steps; first for the joint compound tape, then for our masks, and then again for the right screwdriver. We misplace tools only to trip over them minu...

In a previous post , I channeled my inner-Woody Hayes to offer shout outs to the contractors who are helping make our Akron almost-mansion a habitable reality. Now, I want to give shout outs to the family who have been with us every step of the way too. A pair of siblings are seated on a functioning radiator in an otherwise empty room, save a portable table saw. They are smiling and appear happy. Before we embarked on this journey we held a "family meeting" where I laid out our plan (such as it was. LOL.) and described what we were going to need to make this project happen. Specifically, I made clear that my wife and I couldn't do this without their help. We lived (and still live) 110 miles away from the house we're trying to rehabilitate. I shared their would be times folks might be called upon to meet contractors, accept deliveries, take out trash, and otherwise represent our interests in matters related to the house. A group of people are pictured raking an unreaso...