Things not said while serving as a docent in Frank Lloyd Wright's Dr. Maurice and Mrs. Margaret Greenberg House.

I was too tired last night to write very much about the Frank Lloyd Wright tour. Now, I'm up too early. (How does anyone sleep past 5 this time of year with all the birds chirping?) I'm looking at that picture I took of the Greenberg House again and thinking it looks rather ugly! Perhaps it's meant to be seen from a distance, tucked into the landscape. It was supposed to be made of stone, but Wright changed to brick to lower the cost, and that takes something away from it.

The house makes more sense from the inside, which has a huge living/dining room with two levels of big windows that stretch across a long wall and around half of 2 side walls. These look out into the middle of the trees and — if you stand at the raised floor level — the tree tops. There are terraces at the 2 sides, connected by a walkway that goes in front of the long wall of windows.



You don't see the bottom third of the forest because the house projects out over the large boulder that Wright made the starting point of his design. The site is beautiful, but it was rejected by other builders because of the big rock. I was serving as a docent explaining things to visitors on the 2008 "Wright & Like" architectural tour, and at some point in the second hour of describing the design, I thought of the Bible verse, "The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone" (or "cornerstone"). I was talking to a woman and something — I forget what — that she said made the verse spring to mind. In another situation, this could become a conversation, but it was rather obvious that quoting the Bible in this context was inappropriate. Docents are bound by the principle of the separation of church and architecture, are we not? I was not tempted by the seductions of free associating on the spot about Wright and Jesus. I can always go home and blog.

So here's the passage, Matthew 21:42:

Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the Scriptures:

"'The stone the builders rejected
has become the capstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes'?"

This is the part I remembered. Looking it up this morning, I see it continues in a darker tone:

"Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed."

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus' parables, they knew he was talking about them. They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet.

Write your own short story where the docent in the Maurice Greenberg house is talking with a woman, impulsively quotes a Bible verse, and everything subsequently goes to hell.

IN THE COMMENTS: First, there's Ruth Anne:

Hmmm....you're up early and quoting scripture on a Sunday. Perhaps you're being nudged to go somewhere?

Then, there's this thread that begins with rhhardin:

He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed.

This was before paper and scissors.

And later added:

"Do you know that according to Aristotle a person who dies crushed by a column does not die a tragic death? And yet here is that nontragic death hanging over you."

here

Which prompted UWS guy to say:

Of course, a newspaper writer, were he to be crushed by a column, would have died an ironic death.

Also, I clicked the comment section to read short stories...so man-up ye wordsmiths!

Yes! Man-up ye wordsmiths!

Or — per Ruth Anne — God-up!

I was deeply ensconced in Wisconsin architecture today.

I spent much of the day here:



At the Maurice Greenberg House — which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. I put in 2 hours as a docent, posted in the living room, where I pointed out the view and identified the items of furniture that were designed by Wright.

I have more pictures, but I'm I little too tired to do a good job of getting them web-ready. Why should I be tired so early? It's not just from 2 hours of docent work. I also drove many miles around south central Wisconsin, including some grueling time through pouring rain, the kind of rain that renders the windshield wipers useless. And there was another part of the drive where there were thick streaks of lightning and wind so rough I had to grip the wheel to keep from being swerved around. Then I turned the radio on and heard about the tornadoes spotted in this storm. Find sturdy shelter, the warning said. Where? I'm in my car, driving through farmland. I just keep going, trusting in luck and airbags.

Oh, yeah, and Hillary dropped out.

Sorry to take so long to post about it. I've been driving all over the place doing the Frank Lloyd Wright architectural tour. (Photos soon.) But I did listen to the speech live in the car, and I thought it was swell. I can't imagine how she could have done better. Spirited, idealistic, articulate, gracious, inspiring, good-hearted...

Oh, Hillary, why weren't you like this all along?

We cannot let this moment slip away. We have come too far and accomplished too much.

Now the journey ahead will not be easy. Some will say we can't do it. That it's too hard. That we're just not up to the task. But for as long as America has existed, it has been the American way to reject "can't do" claims, and to choose instead to stretch the boundaries of the possible through hard work, determination, and a pioneering spirit.

It is this belief, this optimism, that Senator Obama and I share, and that has inspired so many millions of our supporters to make their voices heard.

So today, I am standing with Senator Obama to say: Yes we can.

ADDED: Ah, here's the whole video.

"I had no horse."

Said Big Brown's jockey. "'He was empty. He didn't have anything left."

Instead of Big Brown becoming the 12th Triple Crown winner and first in 30 years, he was the first of 19 horses going for a Triple to finish last.

The winner of the Belmont was 38-1 long shot Da' Tara. I like that.

"They're dirty little guys, and they don't smell good, but you always feel really good after you plant them."

Would you like to plant an oyster garden at home?

"A jumble of bones in a floppy bag of skin."

Harriet McBryde Johnson. RIP.

"We're not entitled under the law the way it's structured to plead truth, fair comment, qualified privilege or intent or standards of journalism."

Canada's shame.

ADDED: Is this post too short? Sorry, the free speech issue is too blatantly obvious for me to have anything more to say. The substance of Steyn's opinion is irrelevant. Canada should be ashamed that its laws do not protect free speech and that it permits judicial proceedings like this.

What year was it?

My history blogging continues. Before clicking, see if you know the year.

"Boston Corset Maker Says Women Have Grown Stouter" — and the the 21-inch waist is a thing of the past.

The Chief Justice spoke of Lincoln's "Christ-like character," but the President said Lincoln was a "natural human being with the frailties mixed with the virtues of humanity" — as the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated today.

Mrs. A.N. George of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage is offended by the reference to "the tactics of the pole-cat when badly frightened" that appeared in a resolution by the New England Woman Suffrage Association.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyles visits New York and opines on Coney Island, suffragists, plumage laws, and skyscrapers.

Why hasn't the Women's Party put up a female candidate for President?

"Every man turned into a devil. We ran fighting and clawing and scratching and swearing for the ladder leading up to the deck. We found the hatches battened down. Great God, how the men did curse!" A terrible ship fire.

The NYT tries to explain the physics of "Young Professor Heisenberg," and Lady Grace Drummond-Hay talks to General Hermann Wilhelm Goering.

Tom Wolfe "suggested that intellectuals are attracted to socialism because it seems in 'good taste"" and it has the '''secret promise' ... that intellectuals will wind up with power."

The NYT wonders why it is that the 12 greatest women alive in the United States today are all childless.

Blogging from Normandy on D-Day.

Nina writes (with many photos):

Exactly on the midnight of this day, in 1944, the Normandy Invasion began. D-Day. And it started with the Allied army capture of this bridge. The first soldier to die in the invasion, Lt. Brotheridge, is buried nearby. The family Gondree installed a commemorative plaque by his grave. They live in the house that was the first to be liberated during the invasion. This house.

086 copy, originally uploaded by Nina Camic.

Much more at the link.

"Senator Robert Francis Kennedy died at 1:44 A.M. today, June 6, 1968."

That was the announcement, 40 years ago, made at 1:59 a.m., the last entry in the transcripts of statements made by Bobby Kennedy's press secretary from the hospital. The first statement is from 2:30 a.m on June 5th. It is agonizing to read through the transcript and remember the ordeal. At 2:30, surgery was about to begin:

... His breathing is good and unassisted. His heart is good. He's unconscious and the doctors describe his condition as very critical. ...

The next announcement is at 4:45 a.m. on the 5th:

The surgery will take another hour or perhaps two. But Senator Kennedy's life signs remain good — respiration, pulse, blood pressure. And that's all they say...

At 7:20 a.m., the surgery is over and his condition is "extremely critical."

All but one fragment of the bullet have been removed from the head injury. There is still one bullet apparently somewhere in the back of his neck, although this has not been regarded as a major problem....

There is talk of the blood loss to the "midbrain" which controls "certain of the vital signs... although not directly the thinking processes." Everyone was talking about what would be left of him if he survived, so this reference to "the thinking processes" must have stirred some hopes. We were told "the next 12 to 36 hours will be a very critical period."

There's nothing more until a "very short bulletin" at 5:30 on the evening of June 5th. The doctors were "concerned over his continuing failure to show improvement."

The next we heard was the 1:59 announcement of his death, which ends: "He was 42 years old."

I was 17 when this happened, and of all the assassinations of the 1960s, this is the one that had the deepest effect on me. I wrote this a while ago:

When Bobby's coffin was on public view in St. Patrick's Cathedral, [my friends and I] got in my car and drove in to New York City (from Wayne, New Jersey) and waited in the long line to file past. I remember the feeling of being around the other mourners and how extremely kind I thought it was when office workers brought us cups of water from inside their building. In the end, we teenagers started worrying that our parents would get upset, wondering where we were, and we left the line we'd waited in for hours.

When I was in New York this past year, I happened to walk by a rather ordinary high wall next to a sidewalk and recognized it as the wall over which the office workers handed those cups of water. It was something about their concern for us that made me think that our parents worrying was more important than getting to the coffin. But I have often regretted that we didn't stay there in that line. We'd come so far.

Now, I'm looking at some more of the articles in the NYT from 40 years ago. (My links will get you to PDFs of the articles, but you may have to pay to see them.)

Here is the article describing the shooting:

The Shooting: A Victory Celebration That Ended With Shots, Screams and Curses; SUSPECT IS SEIZED WITH GUN IN HAND Men Wrestle Him to Table as Kennedy, Bleeding, Lies in a Corridor

A thin, intense man stood on the platform in the glare of television lights. He had come to share victory with those who had helped him win it....

Another article:

"Hysteria" in West Is Feared by Arabs

Amman, Jordan. Palestinians here voiced fears today that "a wave of anti-Arab hysteria"... might follow allegations that a Palestinian Arab had shot Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

"Jewish propaganda" was one Palestinian Arab's reaction to reports that Sirhan Bishara Sirhan had been charged in the case.

"It's outrageous!" declared Amman's semi-official newspaper, Ad Destour. "What Arab in his right mind would do a thing like this? The only people to benefit from such actions are the Jews."

Some Palestinians expressed the belief that Sirhan was a "hired killer" and part of a Zionist plot to discredit Arabs."

In his column, Tom Wicker quotes Gene McCarthy:

"It is not enough, in my judgment," he said, "to say that this was the act of one deranged man, if that is the case. The nation, I think, bears too great a burden of guilt, really for the kind of neglect that has allowed the disposition to grow here in one's own land, in part a reflection of violence which we had visited upon the rest of the world."

Wicker also quotes Representative Gerald Ford:

"Surely there can be no further quibbling about the urgent need for tougher law enforcement legislation."

It remains to be seen whether those who agree with this will be willing to include some practical limitation on the purchase and possession o the kind of handgun with which Robert Kennedy was assassinated, or the cheap rifle that killed his brother.

Here is a piece on Sirhan Sirhan's father:

"This news made me sick when I heard it. If my son has done this dirty thing, then let them hang him."...

"I'm deeply sorry for both of them, for my son and for Mr. Kennedy. I admire the Kennedy family very much. I prayed that Robert Kennedy would be elected President so he could do many of the good things for the world that his brother did."...

"Please tell the Kennedy family that I am very, very sorry... I don't know how he could have done such a thing," he said. "Ours is a deeply religious family... We hate this sort of thing, this violence and death. It is not our way."

The family was Greek Orthodox, and Sirhan, as a child, had studied at a school run by the Lutheran Church of the Savior.

Here's a piece called "Tragedy Stalks Kennedy Family In a Long Series of Misfortunes."

Experts were consulted to explain it:

Experts Link Attack on Kennedy To a Strain of Violence in U.S.

A strain of violence in the American psychological make-up, going back even earlier than frontier days, was suggested yesterday by some experts as the cause of increased crime, rioting in the streets and acts of individual violence such as the shooting of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

Dr. David Abrahamsen, a psychiatrist..., said here that Americans condone violence.

"We love it," he said. "We love to fight. The frontier days made the gun manly.

"We feel we can have anything we want. We have a unique society — so affluent... In France, they can riot for three weeks and only two people are killed. Can you imagine how many would have been killed here?..."

Abrahamsen asserted that our affluence makes us think "we can have what we want," and we become frustrated and violent when we don't get it. He calls "frustration" the "wet nurse of violence" and says that public figures symbolize America, and "authority figures... have to be killed by those who feel frustrated by authority." The article also quotes a psychiatry professor, Dr. John P. Spiegel, who said: "The population as a whole is conditioned to expect violence... Behind this is America's gun fetish and the notion that a gun can be used to solve conflict. There is an emotional addiction, as strong as any any other addiction, such as drugs, to guns."

"It's like saying when a soldier puts on combat gear, it's a cross between a human and a shrub."

"It's not a cross between a human and a shrub."

Here's another video with Ricky Gervais and Karl Pilkington. (Subscribe to the podcast if you love this stuff.) Karl has some ideas about the stick insect:

I apologize to the flies... and taunt bees.

Okay, okay, I get it. The "cute bee" is not a bee at all. It's a hoverfly. So flies can be cute, and it's not proved at all that bees are cute. They are ruthless killing machines. They are the devil. They are naughty. I get it! I apologize to the flies.

And when a bee dies? (Be aware — bee, aware — that there are a couple flashes of naked bottoms in this hilarious Ricky Gervais clip with Karl Pilkington talking about a dead bee.)



I think I could write a good childrens book called "I Apologize to the Flies" if you would just help me figure out an equivalent rhyme for about 20 other insects.

"And I will be deliberate and systematic about it, because this will be my final counselor when I’m making decisions in the White House."

Based on that quote from Barack Obama, I'm going to predict that he will not pick Hillary Clinton as his VP. If that's his picture of what the Vice President will be doing, I don't think HC is in it.

"I consider all American laws under the Constitution to be evil and not of God."

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, on trial, looking like this now:

He particularly took issue with a society that allows "same-sexual marriage" and other things that "are very bad." He said he could not accept a U.S. lawyer because the nation is "still in Iraq and Afghanistan and waging their crusade."...

[W]hile Mohammed has asked for the death penalty so he could become a martyr, he seemed content to stir things up on his first day in court. He sat smugly at the defense table after the others declared that they wanted to represent themselves, taking a legal approach to which they are entitled but one that could turn Guantanamo's highest-profile military commission into a circus.

So, you could tell from the look on his face that he's delighted by the prospect of a courtroom circus — that there is some fun yet to be had in his pre-martyrdom life?

"It would be the grimmest irony imaginable if feminist irredentism helped elect a candidate as anti-feminist as John McCain."

Michelle Goldberg opines on "Clinton dead-enders and the crisis in the women's movement." Presumably, "anti-feminist" = anti-abortion.

Amy Sullivan asks "Why Didn't More Women Vote for Hillary?" She distinguishes between "optimist and pessimist feminists." The "pessimists" think Clinton is the one chance we have to get get a woman President. They have "outmoded" ideas about sexism and workplace barriers or think in terms of their own life experience facing barriers. But there are plenty of "optimists" who think things are going rather well for women and more female candidates will be coming along soon.

And then there's this idea that Obama is actually "the girl in the race": "Clinton came out tough; she voted for the war. Obama came out as the person bringing people together and offering messages of hope and reconciliation." Sullivan is quoting someone else there. The notion is that women bring something different to politics. Of course, if Clinton had acted as if she wanted to bring femininity to the presidency, she wouldn't have gotten as far as she did. So then, maybe only a man can openly offer to do those stereotypically feminine things.

"This is it — this is what it's all about."

What music makes you feel that way? Jac says it's this, as he makes a few recommendations to a friend who's looking to "knock the cobwebs out of my itunes library." I love all his selections, but especially this.

Do you ask for help from friends and family when you're trying to figure out what new things to listen to? Do you read the opinion of experts (which experts)? Do you twiddle the dial of the satellite radio or fool with YouTube in the hope of catching something that pleases you? Do you try to get others to listen to what you like? And if you have kids, are you the one showing them what to like or are they the ones showing you? I remember when, years ago, I was the one bringing things to their attention, but there was a point, also years ago, when the tables turned. Oddly, they liked what I played for them, and I like what they play for me.

I say oddly, because when I was young, my parents' music was not only intolerable to me, but I thought it somehow needed to be defeated by my music. And I was outraged when something that didn't belong — like Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night" — got played on Top 40 radio. It was a music war. We were all anti-war back then, but somehow we pictured music as war.