Timothy A Schuler

For more than a decade, Puʻuhonua O Waiʻanae has served as a sanctuary for islanders unable to access conventional forms of shelter — a safety net beneath the safety net. ¶ For @places_journal , I wrote about the village as a rare place of refuge from, and resistance to, the social and economic forces making Hawai‘i increasingly unlivable today. In adopting the name Puʻuhonua O Waiʻanae, the village lays claim to a history of inclusion and care that is distinctly Hawaiian. This runs counter to local media coverage, which has tended to frame the community as historically anomalous, isolated both from a legacy of dispossession that severed Kānaka Maoli’s generational ties to the islands, and from the lineage of Hawaiian-led, land-based resistance that followed. In reality, the harborside village is one of many puʻuhonua that have sprouted across the archipelago over the past half-century, most recently in 2019 in response to plans to build the Thirty Meter Telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea. In extending its ethic of care to the lands it occupies, @tina.grand writes, Puʻuhonua O Waiʻanae can be understood as a kīpuka aloha ʻāina, a protected space in which Kānaka Maoli cultural practices and land relations persist. ¶ Read the full essay at the link in my bio. All photos by @siahpatterson .

A snippet of a meditation on the Flint Hills, how we look at landscapes, and what happens when we change our orientation: “The horizon is an illusion. The sky meets the ground not ~out there~ but all around us, all the time. It may be a fact of our visual field, but the line is little more than a mirage, conjured by the curvature of the Earth. Like the end of a rainbow, it recedes infinitely before us. The line also deceives us in another way. It obscures the deep, intrinsic land-sky connections that gave birth to the Flint Hills in the first place, and which remain integral to its ability to sustain life. We learn at an early age that plants rely on rain and sunlight and that most inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen. But this is just the barest of sketches of what is a dizzying array of dynamic relationships. If we had X-ray vision, we would see that the ground — and all the life that grows and feasts upon and within it — is not a hard line at all, but a loose and fuzzy interface, permeable, like the wall of a cell, perpetually mediating the meeting of Earth and sky. Perhaps a better way to view the Flint Hills, then, is not in wide, horizontal panorama but in cross section, a tall, narrow slice of stone-soil-prairie-troposphere, a 40,000-foot tableau stretching from deep below the surface to the parapets of the tallest cumulonimbus.” —> Read the rest at timothyschuler.com or via the link in my bio. Originally published in the 2022 Symphony in the Flint Hills Field Journal. The art above, which accompanied the piece, is by Amy Hoagland (@amyhoaglandstudio ).

I wrote 10,000 words on the Kansas Flint Hills, America’s last stand of tallgrass prairie and also my childhood home. Link in bio. Incredible photography by @eeeeeapk @places_journal

Layers of brick, Salina, KS

Domus

Had the incredible privilege of interviewing one of the true luminaires of landscape architecture and ecology, Joan Iverson Nassauer. It’s possible I prepped more for this interview—which we spread out over two hourlong conversations—than any other, combing through Nassauer’s extensive catalog of published research and writings (which stretch back to the 1970s) for clues into what has led to such a curious and humble yet vigorous life. A link to the full Q&A, which also appears in the January issue of @landarchmag , is in my bio. Sincere thanks to Joan for her time and @jenniferxjennifer for the assignment. Last slide is proof that, yes, I own the T-Shirt. 📷 Dave Brenner

Shorn

Eastern red cedar

Foggy Xmas Eve prairie walk

Averi Israel (@averiisrael ) had never been to Kansas when she found out she’d been accepted as a 2024 artist of the Tallgrass Artist Residency. An African American playwright and filmmaker whose work explores themes of race and gender and the lesser-worn threads of American history, Israel wasn’t sure what sort of welcome awaited her in rural Kansas. “It’s unfortunate, but talking about American history can be a scary thing to do these days,” she says. But when Israel arrived in Matfield Green to conduct research for a new film, she was delighted by how open and welcoming – and how knowledgeable of history – the townspeople are. “I wasn’t sure what I was going to find, but I was really surprised to encounter the community at Matfield Green, and people who were excited to recognize an inclusive story of the land,” she says. By the time she departed Matfield, Israel had a completely different conception of this part of the country. “What I learned about Kansas while I was there pretty much refuted everything I was taught to believe about Kansas beforehand,” she says. “I feel like if I was from Kansas, I’d be really proud of my history. It’s a microcosm of the American story.” Read the rest of my story about the @tallgrassartistresidency and what it has meant for one small Kansas town at the link in my bio. 📷 @derekhamm

Sky, recently

I’m giving a talk apparently? Manhattan friends, if you happen to be free at noon on Wednesday come to the architecture building on campus and help calm my nerves k thanks 📷 sj carey