Tag Archives: postaday2011

A Dog’s Life

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Looking for a sense of community in an increasingly impersonal world? Pining for person to person connection in a high-rise apartment building? Nostalgic for The Way We Were? Well, get yourself to an off-leash dog beach.

There’s a feel of carnival in the air as dogs pour out of back seats and wriggle their way around the tailgates of vans and station wagons. Families, loaded up with folding chairs, carry coolers and tubs filled with rawhide bones and aluminum watering bowls.

The dogs lead the individual parades with wagging tails and smiling faces. If you listen, you’ll hear them yell V A C A T I O N.

There is instant camaraderie. Barkley, the Dalmatian, rushes up to the Max, the Boxer, and invites him to join him for a swim. Thor, the squat little bull dog, chases Louise, the well-groomed poodle. A trio of Golden Retrievers rush into the surf like a team of horses and a pair of mixed breeds chase after sticks thrown into the waves.

There is a lot of dog talk. And grinning. And admiring gazes. And understanding and appreciation. Welcome to the United Nation of Dogs, not a bad place to visit.

Shore Like it

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The boardwalk in Ocean City, New Jersey was built by railroad dudes in an attempt to keep sand from cluttering up their club cars. Walking the boards is just as much of an activity as going to the movies or playing miniature golf.

Benches are placed strategically facing the long row of food vendors. It is a lively food circus that has the walk-away food that you get on the midway at a state fair: lemon italian ices, fried pickles, and funnel cakes covered with whipped cream and chocolate syrup, vanilla custard cones with sprinkles, corn dogs and hefty paper sleeves full of steaming french fries.

Image by Shannon Reynolds

Mack and Manco’s is a pizza place that has 3 shops on the boardwalk. They are rightfully proud of their places and their pizza. The crust is thin and crispy, the ingredients are fresh and the portions big. It’s finger food that you fold and eat, holding it away from yourself to keep your shirt clean.

After that, it’s nice to lean back and slow drink a diet coke and look at all the Jersey boys.

It’s Ours

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The National Gallery of Art was created for the people of the U.S. in 1937 by an act of Congress when they accepted a big gift from Andrew W. Mellon. He donated old master paintings, sculpture and a building to be constructed on the National Mall. Opened to the public in 1941, the building was at the time the largest marble structure in the world.

Mellon hoped that his gift would spark similar gifts and so it did. And the generosity continues today.

One of my favorite places is the gallery that houses works by Alexander Calder who shook up the modern art world with his three-dimensional figures in space. He is well-known for the invention of the mobile, whose parts drift together in comfortable harmony.

Here is a herd of his animobiles, a term coined by his wife, to describe his imaginative  menagerie created in the seventies.

Image by Shawn Reynolds

Unquotable Quote

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I love this. The anonymous bystander who says about the criminal that sparked the movie, The Departed, being apprehended today. So he was a mobster. Everyone has a profession.

Is this a part of the problem?

 

 

Who woulda thought?

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A satisfied bean-bag-bed user.

Move over futon, there’s a new boy in town. If you are wondering where to put up guests this summer without remodeling your house, consider a bean bag chair that turns into a queen size bed.

Let’s face it, unless you’re maybe a caterpillar looking for some place to puff on your hooka, a bean bag chair is not a fashion statement. But this version made by Corda-Roy’s is such a good idea, it sneaks right under the radar.

The chair will set you back $259. A modest investment for a place to chill out while you are recovering from a long week-end on Sunday evening and eating a grilled cheese sandwich and iced tea.

Sounds of Silence

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I have noticed a few things are moving toward extinction: ashtrays, phone books, 45 rpm records and customer service. The only thing that I will miss is the last one. I always enjoyed the little bit of an exchange with a stranger treading together on common ground about a product or a service. But it’s a lost art.

Do you have ice in a bag?

Yes.

Silence.

Yeah, good. Where is it? (Should I really have to ask!)

Out there, she said, gesturing in the direction of the front of the store.

Silence.

And there is some inside.

Inside?

Yes, she said, gesturing to the left side of the store.

Silence.

Where, inside? (I don’t work here, you dumbo.)

Well, over by the ice cream, she declared looking at me as if I had asked where do babies come from? As I walked to the car with the ice I knew that I’d never be back again and I wasn’t a bit sorry.

Hanna, Indiana

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Art by Tyson Grumm

I was looking for a place to eat Greek take-out in the middle of the afternoon the other day in northwest Indiana. Zooming down the highway I caught a glimpse of a picnic shelter and found myself in Hanna, Indiana.

There are 463 people in Hanna; on the Welcome to Hanna sign, it says “unincorporated town.” Best I can figure, being unincorporated means Hanna residents aren’t taxed by a city government. ‘Course on the down side, there aren’t any city services either.

The park is trim and clean. There is a baseball diamond with a painted dugout.  There are concrete block restrooms, a  concession stand and playground equipment on a mulched surface. The picnic shelter has a Lions Club International logo, a group whose by-words are, Community is what we make it.

Looks to me like the people in Hanna, Indiana don’t need no stinkin’ city.

Fallingwater

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Liliane Kaufmann loved margaritas, Chesterfields and Fallingwater, her country house  built on top of a waterfall. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, it was a retreat only a couple of hours away from her Pittsburgh home but light years away in concept.

Liliane’s husband, E.J. Kaufmann, owned Kaufmann’s Department Store and the site of Fallingwater was once a summer camp for store employees; at the time, one of the out buildings was known as Hangover. (Kaufmann was no slouch when it came to building a strong work force.)

In 1933, the Kaufmanns decided to reclaim the site for a private home. First and foremost, they wanted a place to embrace and pay homage to the beautiful natural setting. Wright’s signature style was established and his reputation for uniting buildings with the natural world was also well-known.

The architect and clients formed a collaboration that resulted in an astonishing house.

This is the famous photo shot; so famous it's the last stop on the tour called, The View.

Put the house across from the waterfalls? No. Way too conventional. Site the house right beside the falls? Yawn. No. We are going to build this place right over the falls.

After that decision, in 3 years the house was built by hand from the surrounding sand, stone and soil of the hillsides. The walls are stacked stone, all of the floors in the house are stone slate and the terraces are poured concrete.

Seventy years after it was finished, Fallingwater is a National Historic Landmark entrusted to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy; 135,000 tourists visit annually. Visitors can tour all three floors as well as the guest house; the family’s furniture and art work are still in place giving the sense that Liliane Kaufmann might show up at any moment.

On the way to front door past one of two pools at the get-away.

Isn’t Life Really a Detour?

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I have a GPS that plugs into my car for that little bit of travel help when navigating unfamiliar territory. So an hour and a half after motoring on down the highway on the way to the east coast from Iowa, I program it and fire it up.

The woman inside the device is quick and precise, “Re-cal-cu-late. Re-cal-cu-late. Exit next ramp, turn left at the stop sign and right at first opportunity to proceed east on I 80.”

I stare at the new road route that illustrates her directions and damn if she isn’t right. Omaha is not the way to Washington DC. On the up side, we are traveling through country that deserves a second look.

Shortly after that I turned on the foreign travel guide just for grins. In an hour and a half, I learn how to order, “Two beers, please. And do french fries come with that?” I think it  might come in handy in case we end up in Munich for happy hour.

Don’t Miss This

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There are sights and then there are sights. The rest stop  on East I-80 right outside of Iowa City is really worth a stop. It is a clever tribute to  Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the U of I, the oldest graduate creative writing program in the country.

Celebrating its 75 anniversary this year, the workshop can boast of 17 Pulitzer prize-winning authors and thousands of remarkable writers. This public works project is one that really works for that public.

A giant pen stands guard; it rests in a pool of ink after writing IOWA across the front of the building with a flourish.

Literary quotes are everywhere — in steel cut-outs that form the wind and shade buffers for the picnic tables, updated on an electronic message board that circles the generous lobby and inscribed on inside walls.

On the floor is a quote from Jack Kerouac from what else but On the Road? I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.

Way to go, Hawkeyes.