Bernie and me. Bernie retired last Thursday, January 7th 2010. I worked with him for twenty years and it choked me up when he gave me the news.

I learned a lot working with him. I learned a lot about carpentry and making things and thinking about what I was designing that would eventually be built, often by him. You have to throw away a lot of junk before you get to goods. And after you get to the reality there is more work to make it a little more beautiful and then a hell of lot more work to get it built and built right.

If I may paraphrase my hero, Louis H. Sullivan....I have to say that in design: "Fact follows fiction." Bernie helped me to see reality more clearly. He helped me to lose the bullshit. He helped me get to the truth more expeditiously. I will miss him a lot.