Black and White

Black and White

Comments 0 Comment

When she was young, my daughter Celia once asked me if the past was lived only in black-and-white. It was a good question, I thought, since that’s the way she’d seen it depicted in old photographs. 

But as those of us who’ve lived in the past (at least her past) can attest, it happens in color. 

I spent a few hours in the black-and-white past last night, perusing a book of photographs of Lexington, Kentucky. Many of the snapshots were taken in the 1930s, when my parents were children. There were the storefronts (including Leet’s, owned by my great uncle), the interurbans (street cars that went into surrounding small towns) and the intersections (Main and Lime) of their youth.

While the photos were sepia-toned, I reminded myself that Mom and Dad saw these sights … in color.

The City Beautiful

The City Beautiful

Comments 0 Comment

In one of the last chapters of Devil in the White City, the engrossing nonfiction narrative of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, author Erik Larson writes, “The fair taught men and women steeped only in the necessary to see that their cities did not have to be dark, soiled, and unsafe bastions of the strictly pragmatic. They could also be beautiful.”

The fair gave common folks a glimpse of what cities could be and inspired artists to create beautiful fantasy cities of their own. Walt Disney’s father, Elias, worked on the fair and its beauty rippled down to his son, Walt, who created his own “White City” in the Magic Kingdom. Author L. Frank Baum visited the fair and it informed his vision of Oz. 

Though some critics complained that the World’s Fair, with its emphasis on the neoclassical, actually delayed a more uniquely American architectural style, the pendulum seems to have swung around on that point. “The fair awakened America to beauty and as such was a necessary passage that laid the foundation for men like Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe,” Larson notes. 

Daniel Burnham, the architect who created the fair, later devoted his expertise to helping real cities attain the sweep and majesty of the White City. He drew up plans for parts of Chicago, as well as for Cleveland and San Francisco, and he helped fully realize Pierre L’Enfant ‘s vision of Washington, D.C. 

It was beauty that drove this quest, the desire to replicate the grand cities of Europe. A noble occupation, I think, and one to admire.

The Old World

The Old World

Comments 0 Comment

I want to stay with the filing topic today, because when I file, I read, and when I read, I remember. 

The folders I’m going through are full of the notes and research I collected for the articles I wrote when I was a full-time freelancer. I toss most of the research and notes, but I keep the assignment letters, list of sources, and the piece itself. The “wheat” is small and the chaff is plentiful. 

What emerges from this winnowing is not only a set of skinny file folders, but also the portrait of an age. It was a golden era for magazine writers: publications were plump, editors were many, business was brisk.

It’s a different world now, a leaner, meaner one. And while I try not to let it bother me, I miss that old world. 

Filing Al Fresco

Filing Al Fresco

Comments 0 Comment

Yesterday was picture-perfect: clear skies, low humidity, a freshness in the air after Monday’s rain. It was one of those days I didn’t want to be inside. 

And yet I’d come back from the lake determined to make decluttering a larger priority and tackle those file boxes in the basement. What to do? Haul them up to the deck, of course.

My back isn’t happy about it today, but that’s what I did. They shared the glass-topped table with the parakeets, who also didn’t want to be inside on such a glorious afternoon. 

Papers were tossed, order was imposed and Vitamin D was absorbed. Who could ask for more?

Long-Day Season

Long-Day Season

Comments 0 Comment

The headline caught my eye just in time to save the page of newsprint from becoming part of the fire-starting equipment last week at the late.  “Darkness creeping in as long-day season ends,” it said. 

Apparently Saturday, August 6 was the last day we’ll have 14 hours of sunlight until May 2023. It was the end of what the article called the “brightness quarter,” the 90 or so days of “solar beneficence and dazzle” we receive every May, June and July. 

It’s also the end of long twilights and drawn-out dawns, of slower living made possible by humid air and looser schedules. You might even say it’s the end of that feeling of limitlessness and possibility that summer brings. 

But that would be a gloomy thing to write on a spectacular late-summer morning, not in keeping with the bountiful daylight we still enjoy. 

Topology

Topology

Comments 0 Comment

Last week’s get-together meant I focused more on family than landscape, but on walks and short drives to beaches and beauty spots I laid eyes once again on a landscape I love.

What is it that inclines us to a certain place? I think it has to do with what Annie Dillard calls “topology … the dreaming memory of land as it lies this way and that” — a quotation that serves as the frontispiece to this blog.

Dillard was describing her hometown of Pittsburgh in this passage from An American Childhood. But topology — the study of a region as defined by its topography — can apply to any place that strikes our fancy, that holds within it the balance of sky and meadow, shade and sun that makes our heart sing.

These are our places of memory, whether we’ve been to them hundreds of times … or only once.

Campfire After Dinner

Campfire After Dinner

Comments 0 Comment

A requirement of any lake trip is a campfire after dinner and the promise of some sticky, sweet s’mores. The children had a chance to eat these treats, the rest of us, too — although I cheated this time and just nibbled on a few squares of chocolate, forgoing the graham crackers and marshmallows. 

But I found the greatest pleasure in staring at the fire. Watching the flames flicker and dance, marveling at the colors, savoring the warmth, too. (It’s chillier here than back home.) 

We sat by the fire until it burned to embers, an owl sounded behind us, and daylight faded to black. 

The Paddle

The Paddle

Comments 0 Comment

The wind finally eased enough to make it possible to kayak around the lake, or at least our small portion of it. A brief rain squall engulfed us as we made our way to the dock, but it passed just as quickly. 

And then … I was on the water again, moving in that way that only water provides: bobbing and slicing. There are more motor boats in this location, and their wakes kept me on my toes. They also reminded me of how much I need to work on my upper body strength. 

All in a day’s work … or at least a vacation day’s work. 

(The lake in the distance, with a bucolic foreground.)

The Shortcut

The Shortcut

Comments 0 Comment

When I reached the top of the hill, a rise barely perceptible when driving but all-too-noticeable on foot, I could go straight or go back. Turning left or right wasn’t possible, due to the high volume of traffic and distinct lack of shoulder. 

I wasn’t ready to go back, so I forged ahead, onto Toothpick Road. There were trees and homes tucked away in them. There was a steady descent. Most of all, there was the promise of the park at the end of it all. A small brown sign I hadn’t noticed before pointed me in that direction. 

And sure enough, two brief turns later, I was crossing the bridge that leads to the park. Water to the left of me, water to the right of me, all shining in the late-day sun. 

I thought about the route I had been taking, which was several miles longer. I couldn’t wait to get back to the house and tell everyone about the shortcut I’d found. 

But my news was greeted with confusion. Everyone else had already discovered Toothpick Road. Their GPS programs had routed them that way from the beginning, whereas I, well, I hadn’t been using an app to get to the lake, thinking I knew the way from last year. 

Still, a shortcut can be a glorious discovery, even when it’s old news.  

Lake’s End

Lake’s End

Comments 0 Comment

An early-morning walk on an unfamiliar road, each turn a revelation, each house a mystery.

The tentative goal: to find the dock where we can park kayaks. But that’s just an excuse to explore. 

People wave and smile as they take out their trash or water their plants. I wonder if they’re native to this place or tourists here like us. 

Fifteen minutes down the way, I come to the lake’s end. Or at least the terminus of this inlet. It comes to a gentle stop, this water; it empties into a field of green.