From the Editor

Which is the best way to learn about an object? To feel it? Surely to construct it. There is no greater form of intimacy for an object than to be created.

It has now been ten years since fort da first appeared as a journal. Something captured the imagination, a risk was taken, and out of a few minds (and a rather small budget) a journal was constructed. The move to create a journal out of a newsletter was bold and challenging: its circulation would still be guaranteed as a part of membership in NCSPP, but would anybody want to spend time reading beyond the ten to twenty pages of a newsletter, given the abundance of journals in circulation? Sustaining local connection while flirting with the global has always been the vision of fort da. Yet, there was, and perhaps still is, another concern that perhaps larger and more formal is less intimate — maybe it is now more intimate for the creators but less so for the readers.

Akin to the pub in the village, a local journal attempts to serve both local needs for connection with the familiar and a healthy dose of interest for the unfamiliar — adventures into strange lands, as in the arrival of the “out-of-towner” whose unusual voice raises both curiosity and interest at the pub. At the “local,” messages could always be left with the fellow behind the bar, but the electronic age sadly offers no local for fort da to inhabit. So, in its stead and in the spirit of community dialogue, we are going to try to provide this dialogue through a link on our website () for readers to comment on and respond to what they read or do not get to read in the journal. If the interest is there, maybe we can have a chalk board in the corner of this local.

A recent trip found me walking around a museum; I came across a design exhibit for a portable vacation home, although “home” would surely be too cozy a term. The unit, resembling a stack of Russian toy dolls hidden away within each other, popped out like rabbits from a magician'