Well, one Tower and one Emperor, in particular
It's been a while — okay, it's been nearly three-and-a-half years! — since I've written into this space.
Here, in chronological order, to warm up the trail for those who may have lost the fine scent of me, is what I've been up to and where I and my writing more often can be found these days...
Save Gabe's
I began this February 2007 essay with a meditation on a building in my hometown of Owensboro, Ky., that has been
a city landmark since opening
in 1963 as the latest frontier of the "empire" of restaurateur and local legend Gabe Fiorella, Sr. (1900-1977).
Most current and former residents of Owensboro are unaware that the 13-story building they call Gabe's Tower likely is the earliest-surviving fully cylindrical commercial or residential tower in the country.
This — together with the fact that, for the last 25 years, the building, while structurally sound, has suffered and deteriorated under a series of negligent owners (and, it must be said, negligent City administrations) — may help to explain why residents offered no real resistance to a demolition crusade launched by the current Mayor in summer 2012 and subsequently bolstered by demolition-friendly "reporting" and editorials from the local newspaper, the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer.
So it was that, in August 2012, I launched the Save Gabe's project to raise awareness of the history and the plight of Gabe's Tower; to offer ideas for how the tower might by reimagined and restored as part of a larger strategic plan for the renewal of the tower's economically depressed and crime-troubled neighborhood; and to forge an effective "community of concern" amongst residents and architectural preservationists.
In connection with this project, I've written a series of 34 (and counting) essays and commentaries, which you can read here.
UPDATE: Gabe's Tower was demolished in June 2020.
The Emperor's Bridge Campaign*
I am the founder of a nonprofit, The Emperor's Bridge Campaign, that works on a variety of fronts to advance
the legacy of Joshua Abraham Norton (1818-1880), the San Francisco eccentric and sometime visionary best
known as Emperor Norton.
I launched the Campaign in September 2013 to leverage the strong positive response to my August 2013 Change.org petition to name the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge for Emperor Norton, who set out the original vision for the Bay Bridge with three newspaper Proclamations in 1872.
The petition remains open. But the bridge-naming project has become a "campaign within the Campaign" — and we've built out a larger cultural-historical mission that includes a broad program of research, education and advocacy related to the Emperor.
My writing for the Campaign includes all of the research, commentary and other items on our blog.
* In December 2019, the Campaign adopted a new name that better reflects the full range of our interests and activities — and that better positions us to realize our goal of being recognized as the leading public resource on Emperor Norton:
The Emperor Norton Trust.