Author: Dave

Five hundred posts would suggest I have something to say… This blog was born from a desire to elevate the English language, highlighting eloquent words from days gone by. The stories I share are snippets of life itself, and each comes with a bonus: a dusted-off word I hope you’ll go on to use more often. Read “Deutschland-ish Improvements” to learn about my backyard European wish list. Try “Slush Fun” for the throwback years of the 7-Eleven convenience store. Or drink in "Iced Coffee" to discover the plight of the rural French cafe. On the lighter side, read "Late Night Racquet Sports" for my adventures with our latest moth invasion. As Walt Whitman said, “That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” Here then, my verse. Welcome to Life In A Word.

Hail, Caesium!

I acquired a taste for Caesar salad later in life. After decades of boring lettuce/tomato and franchise salad bars, I learned to branch out a little. Caesar, with its romaine, croutons, Parmesan, and distinctive dressing, has become my go-to at restaurants. But I always double-check my “hold the anchovies, please” because even a thimbleful would put a damper on things. Kind of like caesium-137.

You probably don’t know much about caesium. Pronounce it just like the salad (or like “seize” in Seize the day!). Caesium-137 is a nasty little byproduct of nuclear fission, deadly enough to turn your life into a… uh, half-life with just a brief introduction. So here’s the story of the little caesium capsule – a.k.a. Little Caesar – that could get away, and did.

It’s a simple enough task, really. Transport an item from Point A to Point B, like the new washing machine we just had delivered from Home Depot. But let’s make the job a little more challenging, shall we? The distance you have to travel shall be almost 900 miles. The journey itself shall be on the oft-barren Great Northern Highway of Western Australia, which isn’t always the smoothest of rides. Finally, transport a potentially lethal substance… without dropping it.

You’d think radioactive caesium-137 – no matter how small an amount – would be literally welded into the delivery truck it rides in. Instead, the pill-sized capsule – already parked inside the density gauge equipment it was a part of, was placed in a “package”, then attached to the truck with four mounting bolts.

Now then, imagine you’ve just completed the long and boring four-day drive to the nuclear waste treatment facility in Perth. You hop off the truck, walk around to the back, open the doors, and discover not only a broken gauge and a missing mounting bolt, but no caesium-137 capsule. In fact, the delivery truck wasn’t even inspected until nine days after arrival.

This scenario raises a half-life of questions for me. First, just how bumpy was that Great Northern Highway? Second, even if the gauge broke open and the capsule got loose, how the heck did it escape, not only out of the package but out of the entire truck? Finally, we’re talking about lethal goods here. Wouldn’t some sort of alarm go off if Little Caesar skipped town? I’m guessing someone is answering these kinds of questions as we speak, and his/her seat is a little warm.

imagine being a member of the ad hoc search-and-rescue crew. Not only are you looking for something that can kill you just by being in close proximity, it’s the proverbial needle in the haystack, only the needle is the size of a paper clip and the haystack is a highway longer than the coast of California. No matter, you’re handed a radiation detection device, the keys to a truck with flashing hazard lights, and off you go. Oh, and by the way, you can’t go faster than 30 mph or your detector can’t do its job.

This isn’t the first unintended release of Little Caesar. He escaped in much larger quantities from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 and from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant in 2011. You can read about nine other incidents involving “LC” here, including one in Seattle four years ago and one in Thailand in March.

At the time I saved this story in January, Little Caesar was still at large. Worst-case scenarios were running rampant. What if LC bounced to freedom on a populated area of the highway? What if a hiker happened upon the capsule and threw it into his or her backpack before returning home? Or, God forbid, what if a bird snatched the capsule in its beak and transported it to its nest in the middle of downtown Perth?

Three months later (this week), I caught up with this story. The run-of-the-mill conclusion is that Little Caesar was found just six days after his escape, off the highway in a remote area not far from the truck’s point of departure. The radiation detection equipment sounded the alarm and led the search team right to our little friend.

As for what happened once LC was found? A 20-meter “hot zone” was set up around him to fend off the inevitable lookie-loos. He was given a thick casing of lead in case he was feeling “radiant”. Finally, Little Caesar was scheduled to be transported to the county health facility for further examination. Yes, I said “transported”. No word on whether or not he made it to his final destination.

Some content sourced from the ABC News article “Missing radioactive capsule found in WA outback after frantic search”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Another Peg in the Car

Our daughter gave birth to her firstborn this week, a precious little bundle with rosy cheeks and strawberry blonde hair. For her and her husband, life has changed forever. And for our granddaughter, barely two days old now, every sight and sound will be a complete and utter mystery. In other words, her game of life has only just begun.

I was only nine or ten myself when I started playing at life. Not real life, of course, but the board game in a box by Milton Bradley . “Life” (as we simply called it back then) was a significant rung up on the board game ladder. Once discovered, “Don’t Break the Ice”, “Hi Ho! Cherry O”, “Chutes and Ladders”, and the well-worn “Candy Land“stayed on the shelf forever. Win or lose, “Life” was a ton of fun pretending to be an adult. After all, we kids had no idea what we were doing.

The genius of “Life”, like “Monopoly”, is that its players are too young to understand what they’re playing at. In Monopoly, you buy and sell real estate, mortgage properties, and pay income tax, and somehow all of this is “fun” (especially when you win and become the one and only landlord in town).

In “Life”, you’re making decisions ten or fifteen years ahead of your time. I find it ironic “Life” is a game for kids yet it skips the entire chapter of childhood. The first move is to “Start a Career” or “Start College” (you choose). If you start college you “Borrow $100,000 from the bank”, so you’re already saddled with debt. You pay taxes or get a refund. You earn raises or sometimes lose your job. Wait, this is fun? You bet it is. You’re a kid and you don’t know the meaning of “responsibilities”.

Eventually, the colorful cardboard path of “Life” takes you by a church, where you get married and add a spouse peg to your car. Soon after you have babies (more pegs) and soon after that you buy a house. The meandering path continues, until it stops “years” later at either “Millionaire Estates” (you’re rich!) or “Countryside Acres” (you’re not!)

When “Life” is over, it’s time to account for your accomplishments, which means simply adding up all of your cash. The player with the most money wins. Wouldn’t that be an interesting conversation with St. Peter? Hey Pete, I won The Game of Life because I had the most money! Open up the gates – I’ve earned my entry!

“The Game of Life” has evolved since it was first produced many years ago. My childhood plays were on the 1960s version, which included a folding rectangular board with the wandering path for the cars, little plastic mountains you’d pass through at the corners, little plastic buildings you’d pass by here and there, and, smack-dab in the middle, a giant spinning numbers wheel to determine how far your car would go on any given turn.

The 1960s version also had insurance policies, promissory notes, and stock certificates. Art Linkletter, who promoted the board game on TV, smiled out at you from the center of the $100,000 bills. Finally, your choices on your final “Day of Reckoning” were “Millionaire Acres” or “Poor Farm”, depending on the size of your bank account. But even before you chose “Poor Farm” you had a last-gasp chance to win the game by betting all of your money on the numbers wheel.

The newest version of “Life” seems the same, with the little mountains and plastic buildings and giant numbers wheel. But look closer and you’ll find the game is delightfully “PC” now. You can perform “community service” or “good deeds” (which translate to monetary value at the end). Your career choices include less traditional vocations like “Hair Stylist” and “Athlete”. Your housing includes a mobile home or a “luxurious mountain retreat”. You can even sue other players to the tune of six figures. Today’s kids might actually understand that aspect of the game.

Finally, in a full-on nod to modern times, “Life” wants you to know it’s “Your Life, Your Way”. Accordingly, you can choose pets instead of kids. And the little people pegs are no longer just pink or blue because… you know.

Here’s the last word on “Life”. The corner of the box top gleefully shouts, “Now with one-time assembly!”, meaning as soon as you put the mountains and buildings and spinner into place, the board is good to go every time you play it. Now what fun is that? Just like “Mouse Trap”, half the enjoyment of “The Game of Life” was putting the whole thing together. At least we kids understood how to do that. As for what the game itself represented? Not so much.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Phantom Farewell

Tonight, hours after this post goes public, my wife and I will attend a local stage production called Lovesong. It’s our first foray into the offerings of our community theater so we’re really looking forward to it. Lovesong has a run of five evening performances and one Sunday matinee while it’s in town. A check of the theater website indicates about 20% of Thursday’s seats have been sold. By my calculation, that’s about 80% less than any Broadway performance of Phantom of the Opera.

Maybe you heard. After 35 years and 14,000 performances, last Sunday the curtain dropped for good on Phantom of the Opera. Its creator, Andrew Lloyd Weber, was on hand at New York City’s Majestic Theater to offer the cast and crew a personal farewell. He claimed their final performance as the best he’d ever seen. You’ll forgive Andrew for being a little sentimental after all these years.

Theater District, Midtown Manhattan, NYC

Whether the stage production, the 2004 movie, the glorious soundtrack, or even the books on which it was based, you’re familiar with Phantom. It’s a captivating story; part haunting and part romantic, with a lead character who has you wondering, “Is he real or imagined?”. Reading Phantom’s synopsis (which you can do here), I realize I overlooked some details of the story the one and only time I saw the show. No matter. The sets and the songs will stay with me for life.

Phantom took my admiration of stage performances to an entirely new level. The one time my wife and I saw the show, in San Francisco in 1997, it literally took our breaths away. The only shows we’d seen prior were the “off-off-off Broadway” offerings; the kind where they recruit locals just to fill out the cast. Phantom left us yearning for more of the best, including seeing something on Broadway (which we did years later with Les Miserables, deserving of its own blog post).

Phantom was also a technical marvel. What other show boasted a giant chandelier swinging out over the audience and threatening to fall? Or a staircase giving the optical illusion of descending several levels as the Phantom dragged Christine downward? Or the subterranean lake the Phantom rowed across, where you swore you were looking at a giant body of water right there on the stage?

Every Broadway production seems to have three or four unforgettable songs. Phantom was no exception. The show kicks off with an orchestral version of “Phantom of the Opera”, turns sweet with Christine’s solo “Think of Me”, and overwhelms with the duet All I Ask of You and especially The Music of the Night. The latter includes one of the most powerful notes I’ve ever heard, when the Phantom sings, “Close your eyes… and let music set you… FREE-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E…!”

Deservedly, Phantom won the “Laurence Olivier Award” for Best New Musical in 1986, the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1988, and pretty much everything else it was nominated for. Besides the London and Broadway productions, Phantom enjoyed nine worldwide tours and one revival. Over its 35 years, Phantom employed 6,500 people and played to over twenty million theater-goers. Phantom even had a short-lived sequel, Love Never Dies, debuting in London but never making it to Broadway.

Sadly, Phantom’s closing can be considered a casualty of the pandemic. The show was suspended from March 2020 to October 2021 (when all Broadway productions ceased). After reopening, attendance was sporadic because patrons were still hesitant. Meanwhile, Phantom’s production costs continued at a staggering $1M/week, which eventually became unsustainable.

Phantom was originally slated to close in February but once theatergoers found out, the show experienced a brief resurgence and lasted another two months. I don’t expect Lovesong to extend its little run at our community theater. Thanks to Phantom of the Opera however, I’m simply excited for the potential of a wondrous stage performance.

Some content sourced from the CNN.com article, “Final curtain comes down on ‘Phantom of the Opera'”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Crescents and Con Artists

Every Christmas without fail, my family enjoys croissants as part of the morning meal. We pop them into the oven after seeing what Santa left in our stockings (but before unwrapping anything under the tree). So last week, as I loaded our Easter ham into the garage frig, a tantalizing thought occurred to me: the leftover Christmas croissants are parked right next door in the freezer. Could they possibly be as light and flaky as they once were, four months after their initial rise-and-shine?

If you know anything about authentic croissants, “rise and shine” is a fitting description. Thanks to some seriously active yeast, croissants rise to a soft, pillow-y consistency. Thanks to a whole lot of butter (and a little egg yolk), croissants finish with a pleasing sheen on their delicate, crispy crust. If there’s a more decadent baked good on the planet, my crescent-shaped ears are open and listening.

Croissants have been around a long time. They got their start centuries ago in ~~France~~ Austria as the more pedestrian kipferi yeast bread roll. Eventually the French stepped up the game using leavened laminated dough and butter, ending up as the light, flaky, many-layered version you know and love today.

Croissant means “crescent” of course (which is why I get hunger pangs whenever I gaze at the moon). Croissant also has an elegant pronunciation. Turn the “roi” into a “weh”, drop the final “t”, and keep the sound a little inside the nose. Cweh-saw. Congratulations! You speak French.

Even “crescent” has a dignified definition: a shape resembling a segment of a ring, tapering to points at the ends. Can you picture it? Sure you can, because now you’re thinking of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls. They’re so “American”, aren’t they? We take a centuries-old, meticulously refined shoo-in for the Baked Goods Hall of Fame and reduce it to sticky, doughy, fast food; vacuum-packed into a can you open with a spoon.

[Speaking of Pillsbury, here’s something you didn’t know about the Dough Boy, otherwise known as “Poppin’ Fresh”. He has a family! His wife is Poppie Fresh, his kids are Popper and Bun-Bun, his grandparents Granpopper and Granmommer, and his Uncle Rollie. Don’t forget the dog (Flapjack) and the cat (Biscuit). In the 1970s you could purchase the entire clan as a set of dolls.]

Pillsbury isn’t the only crescent con artist out there. Burger King made a name for itself with its popular Croissan’wich breakfast entrees. And Galaxy, the Williams-Sonoma mail-order croissants my family and I enjoy at Christmas, start out as frozen minis, rise impressively overnight on the kitchen counter, and bake to an excellent knock-off of the bakery-made originals.

The preparation of authentic croissants requires time and attention we Americans don’t have the patience for. Watch the following video (which is thirteen minutes long so… maybe not) and you’ll learn what it takes. At the least, you’ll understand why I pay almost $4.50 for a single croissant from Galaxy/Williams-Sonoma.

Most of us wouldn’t make it past the initial “pre-dough” step in the video, let alone the labor-intensive lamination (folding/flattening), forming, fermentation, baking, cooling, and storage. We’re talking hours and hours in the kitchen here, and that’s assuming you have the right equipment. No wonder we’d rather just whack a Pillsbury tube on the counter edge and produce “crescent rolls” hot out of the oven 9-11 minutes later.

Still, I implore you to watch the cweh-saw video. The star of the show is Frédéric from Boulangerie Roy Le Capitole, narrating the process in his beautiful native language. This man could be saying … and then we drag the smelly garbage out to the back alley for the cats to dig through and I’d still be glued the sound of his words. Or, listen to our lovely video host and her delightful French accent (with the occasional incorrect word sprinkled in).

I was so mesmerized by the French voices I really don’t remember much about the croissant-making itself. But it’s hard to forget the facts. Making an authentic batch takes three days. A croissant is 30% butter and can have as many as fifty layers. French bakeries have “bread laws” to protect their artisan products. Finally, you can “hear” the sound of an authentic croissant by pushing through the crispy crust to the softer layers inside.

To the matter of my Christmas… er, Easter croissants, I’m happy (and satisfied) to report they tasted just as good last week as their holly, jolly predecessors a while ago. Apparently four months isn’t too long to wait for good croissants. But three days is too long to make them from scratch so I’ll keep buying from con artists.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Games of the Travel Gods

Blondie is the trend-setting American rock band from the 1970’s. A blondie is also a rich vanilla dessert bar. But just for today, Blondie is the newspaper comic strip that, remarkably, still runs after 92 years. Blondie is the female lead and Dagwood is her food-loving husband. Which brings me to today’s topic. A Dagwood is a tall, multi-layered sandwich… the perfect image for my travel nightmare from last Friday.

It all started with a bridge. Make that seventeen bridges. As my wife and I were motoring mid-morning towards the Charlotte airport, en route to my niece’s wedding in Los Angeles, the Maps app colored the interstate yellow here and there. No big deal; traffic slowed, then quickly started up again. All of a sudden, middle of nowhere, we came to a complete stop. Five minutes passed without movement. Ten. When I finally looked down at the Map app twenty minuets later, our section of the interstate was colored black. Wait, black? Never seen that color before.

My car is somewhere beyond the vanishing point

For future reference, Map app black means “not an option” (or better still, “you’re dead”). Five miles of the upcoming interstate were closed off for nine days to repair all those bridges. We didn’t “eye-spy” so much as a detour sign before we joined the monstrous backup. When cars began leaking into the grass median and making U-turns, I sensed the presence of the travel gods, selecting a dawdling pawn for their vicious game.

Heading back the way we came, the first detour we encountered was the same idea as a hundred other drivers. The off-ramp was backed up forever. Instead, we continued miles further, finally exiting onto a two-lane highway to what can only be described as a drive through the backwoods of the back country of America’s uh… backside. Tight little curvy roads sprouting driveways to nowhere, bars with bars on the windows, churches with desperate Easter pleas like “It’s not about the Bunny, it’s about the Lamb”, and one-stop-sign towns you really don’t want to stop in. Eventually we emerged unscathed (physically, not mentally), flung back to a point on the interstate that wasn’t colored Map app black.

The travel clock ticks faster now. When the travel gods remind you bags must be checked forty-five minutes before departure, beads of sweat start to pop. The Dagwood sandwich gains another layer.

Our daughter (who I now refer to as “GPS Goddess”) expertly phone-guided us all the way into the Charlotte Airport hourly parking garage ($24 USD/day), where she offered a not-so-confident “you’ll make it” before hanging up. And so we dashed, from one end of the garage to the other, down the elevator, across the lanes of buses and taxis, through the under-construction section of the terminal sidewalk, finally bursting through the sliding doors to the American Airlines self check-in kiosks to declare our victory. Which was premature.

Just like the black of the Map app, I’ve never seen a self check-in kiosk dispense a piece of paper saying “See Counter Agent”. Uh-oh. Sure enough, we missed the deadline to check luggage. Our bags were also too big to gate check or they would’ve pushed us through. I thought we were done.

But at the ticket counter, I deflected phrases like “You can’t travel without your luggage, sir” or “We’re not finding any other flight options, sir” with “I have faith in you, American Airlines!” and “You can do this!”, and darned it they didn’t find an itinerary to get this “sir” (and his “ma’am”) to Los Angeles. Through Boston. Uh, sorry miss, isn’t Boston taking us in the wrong direction? She told me not to argue. Add another layer to the sandwich.

Cut to the Charlotte boarding gate. Flight to Boston delayed. Then again. Then again. In a phrase that sounds comical (just not at the time), the gate agent calmly informed passengers “the control tower can’t seem to locate our flight crew”. But then they did, then we boarded, and suddenly we’re flying to Boston… knowing we have, oh, ten minutes to catch our connection once we land.

For the record, you can make a connecting flight in Boston in ten minutes. You need five of those minutes to let the achingly slow passengers in front of you deplane. You need the other five minutes to hustle down the concourse (ignoring the bathrooms that beckon for good reason), cursing the loudspeaker blasting your name with “Flight XXX to Los Angeles, this is your final call. We’re about to close the doors”.

Which is exactly what the gate agents did, right behind us as we sprinted down the jetway, but not before shouting, “Don’t worry, your baggage has a much better chance of making the connection than you do!” [Wrong. Turns out only one of our bags made the flight. The other would arrive (mercifully) the next morning, just in time to change into wrinkled formalwear before the wedding.]

Hoping I looked more like the guy on the left

On the Boston-Los Angeles flight, sitting in the very last row (where you meet/greet every single passenger headed to the bathroom) I let out a slow breath and assessed the good and bad of our whirlwind journey. The good: we’d make the wedding after facing a dozen trip-blocks. The bad: the Boston-LA flight ended up having to go wide-right over Canada to avoid some nasty weather in the Midwest. Add an hour to an already long, seriously turbulent flight. We could’ve headed the other direction and made it to Ireland in less time.

In total, the travel gods played their game for twenty-one hours, leaving us bleary-eyed by the time we walked into the wedding venue the next afternoon. (Hey, at least they got married. After all, the wedding was on April Fools’ Day. A no-show at the altar would’ve been just another layer on the sandwich.)

Here’s a little Blondie trivia. Dagwood was the heir to the Bumstead locomotive fortune, but when he married Blondie the deal was off. I didn’t know that. I only knew about his namesake – the tall, multi-layered sandwich. Otherwise I might’ve thought to take the train to Los Angeles instead.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Trees We’ll Never See

A few weeks ago my wife requested a landscaper’s estimate to remove six or seven trees from the back of our property. They’ll have to knock down a few lengths of perimeter fencing so they can get their big equipment through, and they’ll make several trips to the dump with all of the branches and stumps they’ll pile up.

But when all’s said and done my wife will have the blank canvas she wants for a future riding arena for her horses. Minus a few trees, of course.

The neighbor lady won’t be happy because she’s all about keeping the trees, She drops hints here and there about “leaving things the way God intended”. She also doesn’t seem to mind the endless waste the trees generate, whether falling leaves from the oaks or cones and needles from the pines. But here’s what I want to say to her. First, we have over forty trees on our property (and thousands in the community) so losing six is just a needle in the haystack. Second, we’ll replace those trees over time, in other areas of the property. We’re already making plans to switch out the rose bushes in our driveway circle for a Flowering dogwood.

I can still hear the neighbor lady pleading, “Dave, do you know how long those trees have been standing back there?” Why yes, good neighbor, I’m sure some of them have been around a hundred years. But just like the ones that came down so our house could be built, it’s time to get rid of a few more. You sort of make an agreement with the forest when you live in it. Let me take down a few of your trees and in return I’ll care for the ones that remain.

Amy Grant, the well-known Christian singer (and most recent recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors), just released her latest single. It’s perfect for the start of spring. Trees We’ll Never See is a gentle, lilting ballad about the brevity of human life. The song covers a lot of ground in its few verses: the things we learn from our parents, the challenges we face, the value of hard work, and leaving a legacy. Amy also reminds us about the importance of faith and prayer (as she usually does). But it’s the song’s title that sticks with me. We’re all planting trees we’ll never see.

I remember talking to one of my cousins years ago, and hearing about a locked-down project he was a part of for America’s Space Administration. I can’t recall the what, where, or why of it all, but I do remember the time frame to get it done. Generations. Meaning, my cousin (and his kids, and maybe even their kids) will be long gone before the work is finished. My cousin is planting a tree he’ll never see.

Here’s my favorite lyric in the Amy Grant song:

Statues fall and glory fades but a hundred-year-old oak tree still gives shade.

That’s powerful stuff in my book. You can be somebody big or you can do something big, but what can you be or do to make the world a better place after you’re gone? I’m still working on my answer to that question.

I first covered Amy Grant a few years ago, blogging about her single I Need A Silent Night. It’s a frank anthem about seeking the Christmas spirit amidst the inevitable chaos. I’m not always struck by Amy’s lyrics but I was then and I am again now.

Here’s my final take on Amy’s song. If you’re familiar with her music you know she’s been around a long time. She released her first album in 1977, meaning almost fifty years and hundreds of songs. And in that time Amy’s style moved a little towards pop and a little towards country, but never far from Christian themes. Trees We’ll Never See could be straight out of Amy’s early years. It’s like she tapped the roots of a tree she planted decades ago, just to create a brand new one for future generations. I’ll keep that in mind whenever we plant our Dogwood.

Some content sourced from IMDB, “the Internet Movie Database”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Advert Converts

Texting while driving has quickly become the norm, at least in U.S. states where it continues to be legal. Not a day goes by where I’m not witness to a slow or erratic driver, the annoying behavior the direct result of a smartphone. My car horn gets a regular punch, reminding drivers, “HEY… the light just turned green!” All of which makes the notion of billboards as a driving distraction almost obsolete.

Like most things, billboards had their young and innocent days. They popped up on interstates and major thoroughfares almost as soon as cars themselves did; bright, colorful advertisements meant to plant seeds in driver brains for future purchases. At last count there were over 350,000 billboards in America alone.

Unlike smartphones however, billboards earn nothing but a passing glance as you speed by. Their images and words are simple by design so you “get the picture” in an instant. A few scientific studies went to great lengths to prove billboards increased the potential for accidents. Others showed they really had no impact at all. Whichever is true, billboards stubbornly continue a part of the urban landscape.

But no matter how I spin this topic, we’re just talking about a straightforward means of advertising. What’s so interesting about that, you ask? Well, let me tell you.

Consider the lifespan of a billboard. The artwork is created on a smaller scale, reproduced to billboard size (previously by hand, now by computer), mounted up high on a roadside frame, and then allowed to distract drivers for months. But eventually the billboard comes back down and you’re left with 700 square feet of heavy-duty used vinyl. What now – off to the dump?

Not if you’re Rareform. This company converts adverts into bags, totes, and duffles. You can purchase anything from a travel surfboard bag to a soft-sided cooler, all fashioned from billboard vinyl. You can even buy a cross-body bag for your laptop, with a cushy interior made of recycled water bottles. Talk about “walking advertisements”, eh?

I really admire people who think outside of the box (because I find it so much more comfortable inside). Rareform thinks outside of the board. They brokered deals with advertising agencies for the used vinyl, hired cleaners, designers, sewers, and photographers to produce their one-of-a-kind products, and then created a website to bring it all to you. As Rareform’s founders put it, “We’re in the business of change… and we believe billboards deserve a second chance.” Considering they stock over 50,000 unique re-creations in their warehouse, I’d say they’re on to something.

A billboard can be a cooler if it wants to be

Billboards never really caught my eye until now. Sure, I enjoy their creative advertising tactics, like using several billboards spread out over a mile or two, each one containing part of a message about a business you’ll find off the next off-ramp. Or how about the ones like Chick-fil-A’s, with three-dimensional characters in front of the boards? In 2010 in North Carolina, you could find a billboard of a giant, juicy steak with a big fork sticking out of it, emitting the scent of black pepper and charcoal. Ready to grill?

Today’s billboards, of course, have gone digital. You can pack a rotation of advertisements into the same space where there used to be one. On broadcasts of Major League Baseball, you’ll see advertisements on the walls behind home plate as the camera shows the pitcher’s view of the batter. Those advertisements aren’t really in the ballpark; they’ve just been digitally applied back in the television studio.

None of these billboard tricks impress me like the one Rareform conjured up. I mean, what kind of brain looks at a billboard and goes “Hey, that could be a fashionable bag one day!” Not my brain. Rareform not only diverts tons of vinyl from landfills, it then puts it to practical re-use. Makes me want to dumpster-dive my garbage can out back to see if I can come up with a trash rehash of my own.

Some content sourced from the Rareform website, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Making An Entrance

My son will complete the purchase of his first house next week. We’ve helped him mull over properties the last few months, scrutinizing everything from floor plans to foundations. But I always focus on whether a house has a formal entry or not. There’s something about a foyer that feels essential to me, as if to say, “Welcome!”. Apple must’ve felt the same way when they designed their flagship store in New York City. Welcome to Apple Fifth Avenue.

If you’ve been to an Apple Store (and who am I kidding here; we’ve all been to an Apple Store), you know they’re essentially a room of tables and shelves. You’re greeted up front, asked what brings you in, and directed to wherever you need to go. Apple Fifth Avenue, on the other hand, needs no greeters. Its dramatic foyer beckons you in all by itself.

Apple Fifth Avenue’s entry is a 32 ft. glass cube dropped into the middle of a plaza in downtown Manhattan. The adjacent skyscrapers make the transparent structure stand out even more. There’s no signage whatsoever; simply a large, suspended Apple logo inviting you to descend the elevator or elegant spiral staircase to the store itself (which is entirely below ground). It’s the same strategy employed by the Louvre in Paris, with its above-ground glass pyramid serving as the entrance to the museum’s lobby below.

Without this entry I’m not sure Apple Fifth Avenue’s design would garner much attention, yet there are other elements worth noting. The surrounding plaza is dotted with 62 frosted skylights, bringing welcome natural light to the retail space below. The plaza also hosts 18 “lenses” – reflective steel shells with glass tops – to give you peeks downstairs. In the store itself you’ll find several (real) trees, with seating incorporated into their circular planters.

Apple Fifth Avenue became so popular a destination that secondary entrances were added (two staircases in the plaza) and the square footage of the store itself was doubled.

One of the more interesting stories behind Apple Fifth Avenue’s design concerned the size of the entry. CEO Steve Jobs wanted a 40-ft. cube while the property owner insisted on 30. To bridge the gap, a full-scale mock-up was created and placed in the plaza for Apple executives to see. The problem: Apple didn’t want to draw the attention of the public any more than they had to. So the mock-up was installed for just a couple of hours at 2 a.m. on a random weekday. When a 40-ft. cube was deemed too large (sorry, Steve), it was quickly disassembled to reveal a smaller cube inside – the size of the one you enter today.

It’s about time I included a NYC building in my posts on architecture, wouldn’t you agree? New Yorkers know I had plenty of choices, like the Empire State Building, Waldorf Astoria Hotel, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and Grand Central Station. But those have been around a long time. Apple Fifth Avenue opened its doors less than twenty years ago, and is already in the top sixty on the list of America’s Favorite Architecture.

As I recall the houses we looked at with my son, some had no foyer whatsoever. You walked across the threshold and found yourself standing in the front room or living room. That’s no way to make an entrance, is it? Apple knows better. At most of their stores you get a greeter. At Apple Fifth Avenue you get a full-on welcome.

Now for the latest on LEGO Fallingwater…

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LEGO Fallingwater – Update #10 (Read how this project got started in Perfect Harmony)

We’ve placed the very last brick into place, closing the assembly manual on our ten-week construction of LEGO Fallingwater. 92 pages (or 100%, or 222 minutes) into the build, here is the final product:

The angle of this photo is intended to match the photo above so you can compare the model to the real thing. I want to label the model “crude” but how about “rudimentary” instead? The intricacies of LEGO models have come a long way since this one.

A note about missing pieces. As I worked through the final steps I realized a handful of pieces were missing. I write this off to a less-than-perfect mechanism doling out the pieces for each model (or was this done by hand?) The LEGO Grand Piano wasn’t missing a single piece out of 3,000+. The gaps aren’t obvious at a glance so we can still call Fallingwater complete. Thanks for coming along for the ride!

Now for one last nod to Frank Lloyd Wright…

Oak Park Home & Studio

It’s fitting to finish where it all began. Wright’s first design (of which he was the sole architect) was his own home, built just west of Chicago in 1889.

Frank Lloyd Wright Home & Studio, Oak Park, IL

The house’s style, “Seaside Colonial” (borrowing from similar designs on the East Coast) was Wright’s first experiment with the Prairie Style elements that would later come together in so many of his other designs. The exterior is grounded with brick and stone while the interior has a largely open floor plan. The barrel-vaulted playroom was built on a smaller scale; a deliberate nod to its young occupants.

The rapid success of Wright’s architecture practice allowed for the expansion of the house a few years later, including the large octagonal structure you see on the left (for drafting studios, offices, a library, and a reception hall). Wright wore all the design hats on this project, including the mechanical systems, lighting, furniture, and decor.

Wright’s Oak Park Home & Studio is a National Historic Landmark and is open to the public. Even better, you can take a walking tour through the nearby neighborhoods to see ten houses he designed that still stand today.

Some content sourced from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation website, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

All Manor of Reflection

I find music boxes enchanting, especially the small glass cases where you can watch the cylinder spin its tune like a lazy water wheel. It’s as if someone opened the top, held it up to the wind, and captured a simple melody floating by. Maybe this is why I find the concept of a glass church so appealing. Welcome to California’s Crystal Cathedral.

Whether or not you liked Phillip Johnson’s Glass House from a couple of posts ago (survey says “not”), you’ll concede he was creative in his use of glass. The Crystal Cathedral is, by far, his most impressive example. When it was constructed in 1980, it was immediately dubbed the largest glass church in the world. By a mile.

Johnson designed the Cathedral (partnering with architect John Burgee) for Dr. Robert Schuller. Rev. Schuller was a televangelist in the 1970s, beginning his ministry by preaching to carloads from atop the refreshment stand of a Southern California drive-in theater. The proceeds of his Sunday morning “Hour of Power” financed the Cathedral, on a property Schuller called a “22-acre shopping center for Jesus Christ”. As for the building itself, Schuller declared, “If a two-by-four comes between your eyeball and the changing edge of a cloud, something is lost”. Hence, he demanded a glass church.

The Crystal Cathedral is impressive enough to look at from the surrounding parking lot; a flattened diamond floor plan covered with 10,000 rectangle panels of glued-on mirrored glass. But walk inside – and believe me, it’s a walk – passing beneath the floating bleachers of pews and choir lofts into the explosion of the sanctuary itself, and you’ll understand why the Cathedral really “shines”. The space is so vast that – like some of today’s enclosed football stadiums – you’ll swear you’re still outside.

The Crystal Cathedral is a glass music box of sorts. Its organ is the fifth-largest in the world, with 16,000 pipes. Its choir numbers into the hundreds of voices. Needless to say, the church service needs to be grand to satisfy a room of 2,500 parishioners.

As much as I prefer a modest venue for worship, I can appreciate the megachurch approach if it’s done with a modicum of grace. I’m not sure this is the case with the Crystal Cathedral. Down the center aisle you’ll find a long reflecting pool, spotted with gushing fountains that suddenly cease when Schuller appears at the pulpit. A pair of towering “Cape Canaveral” doors behind the altar swing open, so Schuller can give a wave and a prayer to the masses parked outside. And in a full-on nod to Broadway, the Cathedral’s annual “Glory of Christmas” pageant includes a smoke machine for storm simulations, seven flying angels, and scores of live animals (everything from camels to water buffaloes). Should this surprise me, in the cavernous glass box of a world-famous televangelist?

The Crystal Cathedral is open to the public… er, if you’re willing to take in a Catholic Mass while you’re at it. Schuller’s Reformed Church ministry filed for bankruptcy in 2010 (in part because of the overwhelming operating costs of the facility). Schuller himself died in 2015. Soon after, the local Catholic diocese purchased the property at a deep discount and renamed it “Christ Cathedral”. I hope the fountains, spaceship doors, and Broadway shows have taken a break since then. After all, the building itself is ample reason for reflection.

Now for the latest on LEGO Fallingwater…

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LEGO Fallingwater – Update #9 (Read how this project got started in Perfect Harmony)

We worked off-model again this week, on the house itself, assembling one floor at a time before everything comes together. 80 pages (or 88%, or 203 minutes) into the build, this is what we have:

It’s convenient to halt the construction for this photo, because you can see the individual floors before they’re stacked together and hidden. The level in the foreground is the bottom story, with the living room in back and smooth decks in front and to the right. The other level is the middle story, a bedroom with smaller balconies to the left and right.

Next week I’ll assemble the top (and final) level, a “gallery” whose use was as much for the surrounding views as for the interior space. Then I’ll stack the floors together, insert them into the open space you see to the right of the glass tower, and our Fallingwater model will finally be complete.

Tune in next Thursday as construction continues! Now for another nod to Frank Lloyd Wright…

Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church

Since we toured a cathedral today, it seems only fitting we acknowledge one of Wright’s handful of religious structures. Wauwatosa, Wisconsin’s Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church was one of his last designs, not completed until after his death in 1959. Wright consulted his wife (who was raised in the faith) on its important symbols. Accordingly, the dome and the Greek cross play significantly in the building design. The structural arches and pillars reflected on the exterior allow the sanctuary to be an uninterrupted circular space. The dome is not as you would imagine the interior to be, but rather the cap on an inverted dome, reflecting as a sort of bowl suspended above the sanctuary.

Lest you think Annunciation Church is a bit of a spaceship, the design intentionally pulls elements from its more famous predecessor, Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul, Turkey. Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church is included on America’s National Register of Historic Places.

Some content sourced from Johnson/Burgee: Architecture, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation website, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Pandora’s Box

When America’s cities bred lifeless glass-and-steel skyscrapers in the 1960s, an architectural movement was born known as postmodernism. “Postmod” buildings were bold reactions to their dull and repetitive counterparts, using more distinctive materials and brighter colors. Perhaps no better example (or context) exists than in the city government offices of Portland, OR. Welcome to the Portland Building.

Every structure I’ve covered in my recent posts on architecture lands on the American Institute of Architects’ America’s Favorite Architecture list. Even Phillip Johnson’s Glass House – the one I have a love/hate relationship with – makes the cut. But not the Portland Building. This may be architect Michael Graves’ signature design but it’s also known as “the building we love to hate”.

Take a good look at the Portland Building photo and tell me what comes to mind. Christmas gift? Child’s transformer toy? Strawberry-chocolate cake? I suggest Pandora’s box. I studied the Portland Building in college because the construction was completed in 1982, in the third year of my degree. It was a landmark statement of postmod. It was also a disaster from the day its doors opened.

Architects don’t always consider the practical aspects of a building, and budgets sometimes compromise on essentials. As soon as the city’s employees moved in, they realized the tiny windows don’t bring in much natural light, and the lack of adequate ventilation made it something of a hot box. Of greater concern, the Portland Building ran into water infiltration and structural issues almost immediately. The building required the first of several remodels only eight years after its construction, even though the city commissioners would’ve preferred it demolished instead. Like Pandora’s box, the Portland Building seemed to be an endless font of bad news.

There’s not much to say about the Portland Building to entice you to visit (not even the rather bizarre 6.5-ton copper female poised menacingly above the entrance). The building is surrounded by blocks of nondescript skyscrapers, which makes the design all the more jaw-dropping when you see it in person. The only vote of confidence might’ve come from Portland’s mayor himself when it opened. He proclaimed the building “Portland’s Eiffel Tower… an emblem of the city which will draw the curious from around the world”.

The “goddess” seems to wonder why you’d even enter the building.

The negative commentary is much more fun. A columnist from a local paper described the Portland Building as “something designed by a Third World dictator’s mistress’ art-student brother.” Architect Pietro Belluschi said “it’s not architecture, it’s packaging… and there are only two good things about it: it will put Portland on the map, architecturally, and it will never be repeated.” Travel + Leisure magazine called it “one of the most hated buildings in America”. Need I say more?

The Portland Building is a case study of noteworthy architecture, yes… but that may be its only upside. The difference between “attractive” and “atrocious” can be as wide as the Grand Canyon. There’s value in whether you “like” a building. There’s also a reason you won’t find many other postmodernist structures in Portland.

Now for the latest on LEGO Fallingwater…

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LEGO Fallingwater – Update #8 (Read how this project got started in Perfect Harmony)

Today the off-model structure finally settled into the base, in a brisk twelve minutes of assembly time. 70 pages (or 77%, or 181 minutes) into the build, this is what we have:

As you can see on the left, the house is starting to rise rather dramatically from the underlying landscape and water. Check out the photo above to understand the vertical glassed-in area that rises from the bottom of the house all the way to the top.

Boring as the build has been these last few weeks, I realize the underlying structure is necessary to support Fallingwater’s distinctive concrete balconies and stone chimneys. I also realize I have only two weeks remaining on this project. No wonder the piles of remaining pieces are dwindling! And rudimentary as those pieces may be, I expect the last two chapters to really bring the house into its fullest presentation.

Tune in next Thursday as construction continues! Now for another nod to Frank Lloyd Wright…

Taliesin West

Most of Wright’s life (and designs) took place in America’s Midwest, but at some point the architect visited Arizona and later created the winter getaway he described as his “desert utopia”. Taliesin West is a campus of buildings, constructed of local materials intent on blending in with the surroundings – rock, sand, redwood; even canvas for the roofs. The structures are low and horizontal, connected organically by walkways, terraces, and gardens. The furniture and decor were also designed by Wright.

Is there a Taliesin East, you ask? Of course there is! Wright’s primary estate was built in the Wisconsin River valley on one of his favorite boyhood hills.

But over the years, Taliesin West has gained the most notoriety. What was once Wright’s winter residence, studio, and offices is now a National Historic Landmark and a museum to the man. Taliesin West serves as the home of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and School of Architecture, and is open daily for tours.

Some content sourced from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation website, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.