There was a terrific post on Metafilter about the On Verticality blog: On Verticality "explores the innate human need to escape the surface of the earth, and our struggles to do so throughout history."
In the comments, a couple of folks mentioned Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, which I'd never heard of before.
What a magical flock of ideas fluttered in my mind at that phrase.
It's a beautiful building; I could look at it for days, and I can just imagine exploring it, floor by floor, room by room -
and I'm not sure which would delight me more: the actual classrooms and labs (and language labs!) it holds, or the ones in my head.
Wikipedia describes theatre arts and social work and English classrooms, and views of the city, and a vast Commons Room, and 31 Nationality Rooms.
I would so love to visit. I would so love to live there.
(I love that Pitt students call it Cathy.)
And from that article, I learned about the buildings nesting Peregrine falcon, and the FalconCam that shares them with the world, and from that, I learned about the National Aviary - America’s only independent indoor nonprofit zoo dedicated to birds. They care for hundreds of birds (and other creatures! including sloths!), and they sponsor conservation projects and community science projects.
Plus, the pictures of birds at their site are just beautiful.
Birds, books, buildings ... some of my favorite things, a delightful wander through the internet, courtesy of the good people of MetaFilter.
Photo of the Cathedral of Learning by Carol M. Highsmith, from the Carol M. Highsmith Archive at the Library of Congress