January 2010
Can someone please tell me why Nicolai Ouroussoff hasn’t appeared in the pages of the New York Times since December 23rd? That date’s article, about the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis and its engagement of the usual suspects (Gehry, Moneo, whichever Japanese architect is hot right now) to design a suitable campus, was very good! Most of Nicolai’s pieces are, in fact, very...
I’m not really a ‘wedding’ person but yes, I’ve thought about things like which architectural landmark I’d like to get married in/at. My number one choice is Philip Johnson’s Glass House (fig. 1), but many of the young men I’ve dated have been Jewish, so it’s not out of the question to think that my future husband might also be a Jew, and is that...
OK, TECHNICALLY Francis Davis Millet wasn’t a landscape architect, but he was close pals with Daniel Burnahm, Lord and Master of the 1893 World’s Fair. Burnham, a longtime admirer of Millet’s work, tapped the painter (who had lived in Rome! With a man! Yes, like that!) to serve as Decorations Director of the Exposition. That makes it sound like he made banners to be hung in the...
I forgot to tell you that Calvert Vaux wasn’t the only giant of landscape architecture to die a watery death.
Andrew Jackson Downing (fig. 1), author of Architecture of Country Houses (I recommend this, and I especially recommend nosing around libraries, because the drawings in the first few editions are really a sight to behold), was unlucky enough to be on board the Henry Clay (RIGHT!?),...
I can’t not watch SVU when it comes on at 3 in the afternoon, especially if I’m folding laundry and Judge Judy is boring (it’s hard to believe that this happens, but it does!). Today I was majorly rewarded because Benson was all, ‘You, sir, are a pedophile!’ and the alleged pedophile’s response was ‘no way, I was just hanging out in the park because...
an announcement.
whathathgodwrought:
monodialogue and what hath god wrought are teaming up in 2K10 to bring you HISTORICAL CRAFTS WEEK, complete with cooking and crafting projects straight from American Girl and Little House. I have already set my hair in Molly’s pincurls. Watch this space.
I’d really like to write a ‘Where Are They Now’ series about people whose homes were photographed in Home and Garden (or Town and Country, or MAYBE Architectural Digest but that’s have to be a spinoff series, I think). Would anyone besides me read this, though?
Mormon Women Are Very Resilient, or, Lucinda...
America has always been enthralled by conspiracy theories and hardscrabble women much, much more inclined to adapt instead of fold. Here is one such story!
William Morgan was a drunk and wannabe Mason from Batavia, NY. After being rejected by his local order, he decided to basically stitch and bitch at taverns all over town, telling anyone who would listen that his mind was a repository of Mason...
The thing about staying on task at a place like Shield’s Date Farm is that the task is monumentally unclear. On the way there I thought about watching ‘Romance and Sex Life of the Date’ and purchasing more than three but less than seven date-related cookbooks, even though my ‘date special’ is just dates pitted and stuffed inside a wheel of brie, baked. Also I wanted...
“Christmas in Williamsburg”, an article from the December 1992 edition of Better Homes and Gardens, calls the Disneyland of Living History Museums at Christmastime “one of the most beguiling holidays your family is likely to experience”. The article’s author, 41st president George H.W. Bush, also notes that in Williamsburg’s Christmas, “no neon glare disrupts the mood of yesteryear, and...
What is this dismal-fronted pile of bastard...
Yes. Yes, we shall.
