From the Blog

Wounded veteran gets rooftop support

by JAMES MILLER, The Marion Star, May 14, 2014

Mike Zucker enjoys the view from atop his four-story building on South Main Street Photo: James Miller/The Marion Star Source: www.marionstar.com

Mike Zucker enjoys the view from atop his four-story building on South Main Street
Photo: James Miller/The Marion Star
Source: www.marionstar.com

MARION — Mike Zucker settled into his new digs high atop a downtown four-story building at noon Tuesday.

“I’m just soaking up the sun and living the dream,” said Zucker, owner of Zucker Insurance and the 50-foot-tall building at 196 S. Main St., where his rooftop encampment rests.

“When I come down, whenever that is, I’ll know I’ve done something to help the cause,” he said from his cellphone.

Zucker’s self-imposed isolation is an attempt to remind people about the upcoming Operation Steel Warrior benefit concert Saturday at Veterans Memorial Coliseum. The event will benefit U.S. Army Capt. Ben Harrow, who lost both legs and part of his right arm while serving in Afghanistan.

The concert is sponsored by Nucor Steel, and the proceeds will go to Building America’s Bravest, an organization that builds “smart homes” for military veterans with disabilities like Harrow.

Zucker’s goal is to sell 1,000 tickets for Saturday’s show, which will feature local country acts Fogery Run and Steel Creek. Nashville recording artist Colton James will headline the show.

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Rooftop Films brings interesting films to exotic locations

by ROBERT LEVIN, amNewYork,  May 14, 2014

The Roof of Brooklyn Tech, which will be hosting screening for Rooftop Films Photo: Irwin Seow Source: www.amny.com

The Roof of Brooklyn Tech, which will be hosting screening for Rooftop Films
Photo: Irwin Seow
Source: www.amny.com

The experience of going to the movies should be magical and romantic. Too often, in this age of cookie-cutter multiplexes, abundant price gouging and poor projection, it’s anything but that.

Enter Rooftop Films, the annual summer festival devoted to showing interesting independent films in spots atop and within city structures, on nights that often include live music and after parties.

“It’s about an experience,” says Desiree Akhavan, whose film “Appropriate Behavior” screens at the festival in July. “Right now we’re consuming films in a really different way, on the Internet and on our Apple TVs but very rarely are we going to the theaters.

“With independent films, there are only a couple theaters that you traditionally go to. But when you’re out of your element and you have an evening based around a movie, which includes live music and drinks, it’s a completely different experience.”

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Rooftop gardening in Williams-Sonoma early Summer 2014 catalogue

From the Williams-Sonoma early Summer 2014 catalogue.

Tips from Amy Wilson principal designer at The Organic Gardener on how to make the most of a rooftop.

View also: 7 Expert Tips for Rooftop Gardening

 

Williams-Sonoma's "Agrarian Guide" from their early Summer 2014 catalogue

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Taking it to the top: New rooftops bars in NYC

by CHRISSY RUTHERFORD, Harper’s Bazaar, May 9, 2014

There’s nothing like hitting a rooftop bar on a warm summer evening for post-work cocktails. We’ve rounded up 4 of the new and newly revamped rooftops to take in the view this season.

Photo: The Skylark Source: www.harpersbazaar.com

Photo: The Skylark
Source: www.harpersbazaar.com

1) The Skylark
For midtown revelers, enjoy your libations with a gorgeous view of the Empire State building and downtown Manhattan.

2) The Roof, Viceroy New York
This upscale rooftop bar has a picturesque view of Central Park, the perfect setting for a sunset Instagram. Look out for cool DJs providing the soundtrack for your Friday and Saturday nights.

3) Top of the Standard, High Line
While this rooftop isn’t new it did just get a serious makeover during the Fall of 2013—so this year if you’re lucky enough to make it to the top, you’ll enjoy the Havana-nights decor, as well as the resident chef Soa Davies’s fine Japanese BBQ from Robataya Grill.

4) The Jane Hotel
Maybe the most exclusive rooftop to hit for a drink this summer— the Jane’s rooftop is finally open to the public, but by appointment only.

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Students can learn to garden in series of University of Maryland-hosted workshops

by MADELEINE LIST, The Diamondback, February 20, 2013

Photo: Diana Daisey Source: www.diamondbackonline.com

Photo: Diana Daisey
Source: www.diamondbackonline.com

Most students have to rely on the dining halls or fast food options for food, but some will soon learn how to grow their own.

All it takes are the right tools and techniques and a little bit of guidance. And that’s where Melissa Avery steps in.

Last Tuesday, nearly 20 students gathered at the Apiary for the first in a series of winter workshops about gardening. The Arboretum and Botanical Garden and a collaboration of the university’s Community Gardens hosted the workshop, called Gardening 101. Avery, master gardener in training, instructed attendees on the basics of gardening, and answered questions from students about how to raise their own plants.

Because winter isn’t the season for planting, people interested in gardening have a few weeks before spring to learn the basics, said Yixin Chen, communications manager for the public health garden and sophomore nutritional science major.

“It’s a great way for people who are interested in gardening to realize, ‘Oh yeah, I can do this.’ Having that knowledge is a big first step,” she said.

Georgia Handforth, a co-manager at the Rooftop Community Garden and a senior communications and sociology major, said it’s beneficial for students to learn how to grow their own plants on the campus.

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Hedge two-way mirror walkabout, Metropolitan Museum, New York – review

by Ariella Budick, Financial Times, May 5, 2014

'Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout' sits on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum in New York Photo: Hyle Skopitz Source: www.ft.com

‘Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout’ sits on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum in New York
Photo: Hyle Skopitz
Source: www.ft.com

A seriously charming and richly allusive installation has appeared on the roof of the Met

The Metropolitan Museum’s remote rooftop garden has always offered savvy visitors respite from hall after hall of sublime majesty. Right now, it opens on to an artificial-grass oasis that hovers like a magic carpet above the edge of Central Park. Lawn chairs are temptingly scattered about. The view beckons. And off to one side, a mirrored pavilion perches on its glowing patch of green, catching the kaleidoscopic tumult of the city and playfully casting it back.

Dan Graham collaborated with landscape architect Günther Vogt to transform the Met’s severe space into “Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout”, a seriously charming funhouse. It’s a mind-bending piece of walk-in sculpture, a two-chambered bubble of mirrored glass and steel that invites viewers to glimpse themselves in its reflective surfaces. However we look at it, we see ourselves askew – here, sleekly thin; there, grotesquely fat, mixed up with the people on the other side of the transparent wall and a flickering melange of sky, leaves, buildings and passing clouds.

Graham’s rooftop pavilion teems with allusions. It invokes, first of all, the extravagantly ornamental structures – faux Greek temples, mock gothic ruins – designed as picturesque points of interest in 18th-century English gardens. At Stowe, Lord Cobham hid a “Temple of Ancient Virtue” among the vegetation, honouring the greatest Greeks and expressing his yearning for Hellenic antiquity. Graham has fallen under a more modern version of the neoclassical spell: he finds inspiration in the stripped-down austerity of Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion, which he admires both because it was always meant to be temporary, and because it effectively blends vegetation and reflective glass.

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