Carol Wallwork’s blog

Designing America

Sun, 7 Mar 2010 10:16:19 -0500

A successful Canadian architect once told me, as he described his perception of the ‘uninspired’ buildings of the University of North Dakota, “People may not learn calculus or English or engineering any better in a beautiful building but they learn about beautiful buildings.”

Frank Lloyd Wright wrestled with creating refined affordable housing, believing his Usonian designs would produce a happier, more enlightened society. Typical Wright grand architectural ideas. Needless to say his buildings still captivate.

About three years ago I toured the Pope-Leighey House in Alexandria, Virginia with a friend and Molly. FLW thought hallways were a just-bearable necessity so he made them no wider than a pullman car aisle. A narrow band of clearstory windows circle the house, visually lifting the seven foot high ceilings with light.

View from front door, kitchen on right Living room-higher ceiling, clearstory windows Interior photos

Wright ‘s ideal must have been T.V. dinners for the kitchen’s the size of a postage stamp although all the cupboard doors open toward the narrow but tall window. He placed carved wooden ‘screens across the clearstory windows, creating a unifying design, privacy and lovely light patterns. There’s a lot of built-in furniture, from the dinette set to dressers. It’s a delightful house to imagine living in.

R. W. Lindholm Station Station, Cloquet, MN 2006

It was also great fun finding Wright’s gas station, in Cloquet, Minnesota. One shouldn’t ask where it is for as soon as you see it you know. It’s the only gas station ever built from FLW’s designs, in 1956, shortly after he completed a home for R.W. Lindholm, also in Cloquet. Wright suggested he also create a landmark building for his service station business.

The design was taken from Wright’s 1932
Broadacre City suburban model with an iconic
cantilevered roof, pointing the way North. It has a
second story lounge and there’s even an infinity of
mirrors in the ladies' restroom! The only other
place I’ve seen that was in the 1929 Fabulous Fox
movie palace in St. Louis.

photo Paul Ringstrom

From it’s inception it was a Phillips 66 station but that company has now pulled out of Minnesota so it’s become a Spur station. It’s constructed of cement block, glass, steel and cypress wood. For many years it was down-at-heel but in honor of it’s 50th anniversary $150,000 was invested in repainting.

Most summers we drive through Wisconsin, but never with enough time to stop and visit Taliesin, Wright’s first planned architectural community. This may just be the year...
All photos by Carol Wallwork unless otherwise noted.

My Ántonia by Willa Cather

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 09:18:11 -0500

Photos: Remains of Ukranian-style soddy near Kief, ND 2007

My first college English class was taught by Jane McDaniel. It left an impression for shortly after I became an English major. She sparked my reading journey.

When Jim, daughter Anna and I moved to Grand Forks, North Dakota, from Cheshire, England November ’75 I enrolled in college. Starting that January I walked the mile from our apartment to class in murky dawn light, often trudging through what locals call ground blizzards, feeling the power of that cold, wide-open flat land.

First assignment: My Ántonia--a perfect primer on the Great Plains.

The Story
In the late 1880s, when 10-year old Jim Burden’s parents die in Virginia, his Nebraska grandparents arranged for him to travel west by train under the care of one of their farmhands, Jake. The train conductor told them of a Bohemian family also on the train heading to Black Hawk, the town nearest his grandparents farm.

“They can’t any of them speak English except one little girl, and all she can say is ‘We go Black Hawk, Nebraska.’ She’s not much older than you, twelve or thirteen, maybe, and she’s as bright as a new dollar. Don’t you want to go ahead and see her Jimmy? She’s got the pretty brown eyes too”.

At the train depot another hand is waiting to collect Jim and Jake for the arduous night-long wagon ride to the farm. “He looked lively and ferocious...the top of his left ear was gone, his skin as dark as an Indian’s. Surely this was the face of a desperado,” Jim speculated. He’d wiled away the long hours on the train reading Jesse James dime novels so his mind was primed for the West.

“I rode in the straw of the wagon box, covered with a buffalo robe...I tried to go to sleep, but the jolting made me bite my tongue...Cautiously I slipped from under the buffalo hide...and peered over the side of the wagon. There seemed to be nothing to see: no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land--slightly undulating...I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man’s jurisdiction. I had never before looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar mountain ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven and all there was of it...Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out...”

The prairie is as much a character as any person in My Ántonia. But it’s Ántonia that captures the indomitable human capacity to adapt and flourish. She watched her father disintegrate on the prairie. He left behind in the old country a vibrant life, frequenting the coffee shops and dining halls of central Europe, surrounded by fine music and fellow musicians. In Nebraska he was trapped at the start of winter in a tiny underground sod hovel with six other people, like a badger.

Despite the novel’s realistic portrayal of the misfortune and tragedy of western settlement it also captures the fertile ground of opportunity. Literary critic H. L. Mencken wrote, I know of no novel that makes the remote folk of the western farmlands more real than My Antonia makes them, and I know of none that makes them see better worth knowing.
________________________________________

Willa Cather was born in 1873. At age 10 she
moved with her family to a small settlement west
of Red Cloud, Nebraska. At the University of
Nebraska she discovered her talent was writing.
After graduating in 1896 she wrote for magazines
and later moved to New York City where she
focused on writing fiction. “Every story I have
ever written has been the recollection of some
childhood experience.” She wrote 13 novels and
several short story collections. In 1923 she was
awarded a Pulitzer Prize. When Sinclair Lewis
won the Nobel Prize in Literature he said that
Cather should have won the honor. The
character of Ántonia was inspired by her child-
hood Nebraska prairie friend Annie Sadilek.
Cather never married. She died in 1947.

Peter Rabbit and friends

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 12:52:17 -0500

Peter Rabbit was a big part of our children’s literary lives. We’ve often read all but one* of the 23 stories to our 3 daughters and grandchildren. (*The Tale of Little Pig Robinson is too long & the last published, 1930.) Potter’s characters use large vocabularies. They have fun names such as Babbity Bumble, Mrs. Tiggy Winkle, Mr. Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise, Mrs. Tittlemouse, etc. They often get into scrapes but live to tell the tale, although Squirrel Nutkin lost his.
__________________________________________________________________

Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) first tried to establish herself as a mycologist--the study of fungi. In her 20s she was the first to observe the symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae. Her uncle presented her paper to the Linnean Society as women were barred from attending. She was also rejected as a student to the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. The Linnean Society issued an official apology in 1997, acknowledging her contributions mycology.

These closed doors led to the opening of others, however. Sixty-seven years after her death Beatrix Potter’s 23 illustrated children’s books are still in print world-wide. The start of her success was the publication of an illustrated letter Potter sent to her ex-governess’ son, Noel Moore, as he recovered from an illness. The Tale of Peter Rabbit is about a rambunctious bunny who can’t resist poaching veggies from Mr. & Mrs. McGregor’s impressive cottage garden, barely escaping the fate of his father, who ended up in a pie there.

Jeremy Fisher Peter

Potter created a bevy of Peter’s relatives and fellow woodland inhabitants in 22 other diminutive books published by Frederick Warne. Although her finely drawn hedgehogs, rabbits and fox strut about in human clothes their animal nature is always near the surface.

“Thank goodness my education was neglected. I was never sent to school. it would have rubbed off some of the originality,” Potter said of her childhood. Governesses and nannies were the norm in her upper class London home. Although haphazard, her education was finer than most moderns.

Growing up in the world’s richest city exposed her to great opportunity. She was keenly aware of other women artists; knowledgeable about publishing and art movements. By attempting to join one of world’s scientific epicenters illustrates how fast her society was changing. The quest to categorize the plant species of the world was the prequel to the Human Genome Project today.

Jemima Puddle-Duck Beatrix Potter’s books

As a child Potter developed a keen interest in the wildlife of Kensington. One can only presume her mother was as laissez faire with her domestic help as her daughter’s education for frogs, newts, ferrets, a pet bat and two rabbits lived at various times in their Kensington home. She was a keen observer, sketching her charges so enthusiastically that by her 10th birthday her favorite present was the book, Birds Drawn from Nature by Jemima Blackburn.

In her early 30s her life changed when several of her illustrated letters were accepted by Norman Warne, publisher. The instant success upon the publication of The Tale of Peter Rabbit was Potter’s path to financial independence, They later planned to marry, despite the objections from her parents because of his lower status, but he developed pernicious anemia and died before the wedding.

Also against her parents objections, she used her income to buy Hill Top Farm in the village of Sawrey, the Lake District in then Lancashire, now Cumbria. The farm’s old stone farm house appears in many of her stories. Potter established herself as a respected farmer, sheep breeder and conservationist. In her 40s she married William Heelis, a local solicitor. She bequeathed her beloved 4000 acre Hill Top Farm to the National Trust upon her death.

For the love of books

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:49:47 -0500

I love to read. When I was about 4, in hospital for an operation, a nurse
offered to read me a letter I’d received, written in cursive writing. Afterwards
I told her, “I can read that.” I couldn’t but I recall longing to understand
that coded language. Not surprisingly I became an English major.
This February I’ll share some of my favorite books--a month long, bookly
Valentine. Here goes...

The Inspector Morse mysteries by Colin Dexter

In the 1980s Jim introduced me to P.D. James. I read each new novel published years apart. I discovered the 14 Inspector Morse mysteries a few months ago. Needless to say they’re a fearsome but delicious distraction.

Morse’s Christian name is Endeavor, not revealed until the second to the last Morse book, Death is Now My Neighbor. “Morse, just call me Morse,” he says. His father was a fan of Captain James Cook who’s ship HMS Endeavor discovered Australia and New Zealand.

Morse is a senior police detective in Oxford, England. As a young man he dropped out of St. John’s College, Oxford. He was on track for a first but fell in love--lost his focus, the woman and his scholarship. After leaving the Army he joined the police department.

He’s one of the most difficult of the English ‘gentlemen’ detectives---caustic-tongued, head-strong and drinks gallons of the best real ale. He’s also a Times crossword puzzle doer, fretting when it takes longer than 8 minutes. Colin Dexter pens crossword puzzles so wordy clues pepper his mysteries.

Morse’ other passion’s are Wagner and opera. He’s an intellectual snob and a bachelor not immune to attractive female witnesses/suspects. He’s assisted by his trusty sergeant, Lewis.

Lewis is Morse’s polar opposite. He’s a
working class bloke from Wales in the
novels, Newcastle, in the TV series. He
drinks in moderation, is com se com sa
about words and Wagner and is happily
married. He fetches Morse coffee and
beer, despite Morse’ indifference to
paying his fair share of the pub tabs.

Although Morse often misjudges suspects he’s still the best detective in the Thames Valley Police. He regards the grunt work of sleuthing beneath him,so rarely acknowledges Lewis’ mastery at checking alibis, corroborating witness statements with other witnesses, record searches, etc., which Lewis does with affable charm. Meaningless detail for the average detective. But Morse, like Sherlock before him, is a cut above, tapping into his intuition and remarkable memory.

You’ll learn much about Oxford reading these mysteries. Many of the books have a map of the city although the paperback versions are too small. The colleges, Bodleian Library, Ashmolean Museum, Randolph Hotel and Cherwell River all figure prominently. (Dexter lives in Oxford).

I no longer try to solve Morse mysteries. They’re salted with too many characters and plot twists. I read them because of Morse, Lewis and the locale.

Lewis nodded again, then climbed the stairs, wondering
that Monday morning how it would turn out-knowing
how Morse hated holidays; how little he normally enjoyed
the company of others; how very much he enjoyed a very
regular allotment of alcohol; how he avoided almost all
forms of physical exercise. And knowing such things
Lewis realized that in all probability he would fairly soon
be driving Morse out to the Musac-free pub at Thrupp
where a couple of pints of real ale would leave the
Chief marginally mellower and where a couple of orange
juices would leave the chauffeur (him!) unexcitedly
unintoxicated.
--The Remorseful Day

Favorite stories are The Dead of Jericho and The Remorseful Day, which is the last Morse mystery and should only be read after reading all the others.

The novels in the series are:
■ Last Bus to Woodstock (1975)
■ Last Seen Wearing (1976)
■ The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn (1977)
■ Service of All the Dead (1979)
■ The Dead of Jericho (1981)
■ The Riddle of the Third Mile (1983)
■ The Secret of Annexe 3 (1986)
■ The Wench is Dead (1989)
■ The Jewel That Was Ours (1991)
■ The Way Through the Woods (1992)
■ The Daughters of Cain (1994)
■ Death is Now My Neighbour (1996)
■ The Remorseful Day (1999)

There are also several Inspector Morse short stories in Morse’s Greatest Mystery and Other Stories.

Winter forest perils

Tue, 2 Feb 2010 09:37:58 -0500

Porcupines photo: Laurie Swenson, Trail Mix

‘Walking the trails Saturday morning, getting my jolt of fresh air and quasi-wildness inciting endorphins, I spotted poison ivy vining up several trees amidst the stately holly trees and rolling terrain. The vines seemed to stand out in the gun-gray light, reminding me of other perils of the winter forest.

Poison ivy isn’t quite as calamitous as a run in with a porcupine. This boxer named Buck, was waiting patiently in a Bemidji, Minnesota vet’s office with his owner Josh. The photo was taken by Laurie Swenson for her walking blog, Trail Mix, which she writes with Bethany Wesley. They’re reporters with the Bemidji Pioneer newspaper. No, porcupines do not hibernate. Ouch! As you can imagine the vet was busy!

Poison Ivy vines

If you spot vines such as these on your winter woodland hikes -- DO NOT TOUCH! All parts of the poison ivy plant--root, vine, leaf, are
potential allergens to human skin. Oh, to have dog fur in a p.i. forest!

Walney Pond, Centreville, Virginia

Ice
Last but not least: ice. It’s much easier to presume an icy lake is indeed just that in say, Bemidji, Minnesota more than temperate northern Virginia. But even there peculiar subterranean streams can cause the odd unfrozen zone. Know the terrain before treading on ice.

The raw and the cooked

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 11:46:07 -0500

‘Went into Whole Foods Friday afternoon, after Molly’s watercolor class. Molly, Mya and I were drawn to the red snapper on sale (wild caught, Florida coast). We didn’t get home ‘til after 3. In the waning winter light, as I was getting the thyme, rosemary and canola oil to prepare the fish, Molly corralled our catch for its next to the last fling with glory.

Molly with pastels Paulie the African Grey Parrot

Dinner!