Writer’s block has plagued me lately, with a half dozen half-baked essays started yet refusing to settle into place. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my career it’s that when words fail, switch to pictures!
And so I present one of my very favorite places in Oakland, the Chapel of the Chimes, a columbarium designed by the legendary Julia Morgan. It’s an incredibly beautiful space, with rooms on rooms and doorways on doorways transitioning to ever more intimate, serene places of rest and contemplation. Despite not being the slightest bit religious, it feels sacred and awe-inspiring even to me.
My inner bookworm particularly loves the library shelves filled with book urns, families living on as volumes of a multi-generational story. If I were to live on in an urn, this is would be perfect.
