It's that color. Maybe it's because I asked it to do something from "The 80s."
We were awakened in the middle of the night by strenuous dog barking. Much growling. Usually Birch sleeps on his bed, through the night, but I guess he gets up to walk the perimeter from time to time. At first I thought “he’ll quiet down soon” but he did not quiet down soon, at all. Something was wrong.
There was a turkey on the shed.
Sounds like a tune you play to get people square dancing.
I can only imagine what alarms it rang in his head, what dark malevolence it represented. I just wondered how it got up there, because we never expect wild turkeys to fly. They’re too ungainly, too much of a waddling bird-blob. But there it was. Eventually he calmed down, his job done: he had informed us, and as usual - just like the mailman - we did not take the situation seriously.
Well, fine, don’t come begging to me when it’s inside the house and gobbling all the food.
It was a significant interruption, and hence the cup of coffee I’m having now, at 12:30 PM. Everything feels like so, so Wednesday at the moment, the sodden top of the hump, the slough of despond of the afternoon stretching ahead. I will finish my coffee and go work out, which is supposed to release the brain chemicals that provide the minor mood-delusions.
Does anyone like afternoons? I hate afternoons. It might be the result of never having a job that required anything in the afternoon. As a waiter, I worked in the evening, sometimes straight through ’til dawn. As a writer, I work in the morning when I’m keen and the evening when I’m getting that odd second wind arround 9. Never had anything that required a great deal of personal diligence and effort between 1 and 5.
Everyone feels the hours drag in the afternoon, a remnant of being in 6th grade and watching the hands move so very, very slowly towards 3.
When you’re in 6th grade and you get out at 3, there’s new life and purpose. You get to go home and watch TV! By the time you’re settled in, it’s 3:30, and 5:00 seems reasonably nigh, and after 5 it’s the Time of Supper, depending on when Dad gets home.
I was glad I was able to give that to my daughter, really. It wasn’t me who came home, it was my wife, but the idea of Someone Coming Home and the dinner time beginning was the same. It anchored the day and it anchored the family. All the kids I knew had dads who Came Home from Work around the same time.
I’ve no idea if it’s still the same. Or if it’s just another one of those things we thought was the settled way of the world now going forward, since we’d basically figured things out, but has been abandoned because the buttresses that held up the walls have crumbled.
Buttresses, you say. Yes, I guess I reached for a word and that’s the one that showed up in my hand when I pulled it out of the bag. The family is the structure with the big colorful windows and ceiling and spire, and its height is made possible by the structures that support it. Name them what you will. Safety, religion, culture, law, and so on. Stability.
I was reading the r/teachers subreddit - oh, the things you learn about schools today - and came across this. The writing is not what one might expect from an educator, but that’s not the point.
The Neverending Incessant Noise
Has driven me absolutely fucking crazy. It's too much and it starts the moment you enter the building. Earlier in my career I don't think that I was as sensitive to all of the stimulus, but now I just can't take it. This job comes with ALOT of bullshit, but I do well to push it out of my mind most days. The noise though. I can't work around that. I can't think. I'm absolutely drained at the end of the day from that alone and it's really affecting my happiness both inside and outside of work. Even when I manage to really sell and plan a well thought out day for my students...I can hear: teachers yelling in their classrooms, the halls, kids screaming, banging on desks, arguments, announcements, phones ringing, chromebook noises, sound effects...etc. THROUGH SEVERAL FEET OF FUCKING CINDERBLOCK AND CONCRETE. I just wish everyone would shut the fuck up for 5 minutes lol.
All my schools were quiet, except between classes. Then it was the usual jokey ruckus. Of course, the locker-slamming calamity when the bell rang and we escaped, to go home, to wait for Dad and dinner. But otherwise quiet and composed.
I wonder if this was just Fargo, or the times.
Our weekly recap of a Wikipedia peregrination. Expect no conclusion or revelations, but if you've been with us since this started last year, you know . . . sometimes we learn interesting things.
Yes, it's nother look at the early 60s Architectural Forum magazine, and its all-in rah-rah look at the modernism people would come to hate. Why? Because the clean spare new look would dominate new construction, and spread a vacant sense of sameness to cities across the country. Also, because we tire of the new and eventually find it archaic, novelty-added sensation seekers that we are.
Sometimes the magazine’s ads showed something interesting, a break from the box:
I don’t know that it was ever the Dolphin. All evidence of its existence points to the Sheraton nameplate. I can’t find it today.
Most of the pictures, though, are like this.
11 East Adams, if you care to make a visit.
Interchangeable off-the-shelf International Style stuff. Rote.
Here’s another example of the shining ideas of the day:
Still standing, and just as dull today as it was then. This has to be a case of a clueless client. You say this is what all the new executives prefer?
We do.
Isn’t it a bit . . . monotonous?
Oh no! It projects stability and continuity.
Okay, here’s the check.
This one is in my neighborhood:
Still the same . . .
With boring additions.
So you can see the problem with post-war architecture: it’s hard to build on to the old plain style without coming up with some ghastly hybrid.
And now, the piece de resistance, and I wish someone had:
Look at the way it stands in front of the gorgeous old Jewelers Building.
Largest white-marble clad building of its time! And it did nothing with that fact, nothing at all. I wouldn't mind it so much if it hadn't accentuated its horizontal lines, which just holds it down.
But . . . is the Jewelers building really that good?
The massing is rather plain. It’s a smaller box plopped on top of a bigger box. The transition between the main tower and the slender portion isn’t managed particularly well.
But you don’t care, because it has all sorts of gewgaws that reward the eye.
A paper announcing the name change had another skyscraper project:
The site today:
Therein hangs all sorts of tales, you imagine. Did they build it? I don’t think so. The building adjacent gives evidence of a neighbor, but the blank walls and windows don’t quite fit. Was it wrecked for a new building that didn’t materialized?
Anyway. Back to the Portland building. The really boring one. It has a sculpture called “The Ring of Life,” a clunky abstract thing.
It looks like it should be in a Star Trek (original series) episode. The lobby of some Federation sub agency, or maybe a planet where they have world government and everyone wears robes and maybe they’re telekinetic.
It has a Wikipedia page of its own. And I think we can rest here.
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When I see that the population is around 50,000, I think "Fargo sized." Big enough to have a substantial downtown. Most of these old buildings are from a period when the city had far fewer people, though, so let's see what a town of 25K could summon up in the first few decades of the previous cventury. 
Now we're downtown. Nice Italianate structure, no? Unfortunate blinding. 
