Frank Lloyd Wright Has No Sense of Storage, But I Still Like His Houses

Going to a major university can sometimes have its advantages.  Like how today I got to go visit a Frank Lloyd Wright house, the only Frank Lloyd Wright house in Florida, which happens to be right here in Tallahassee.  It was so bittersweet.  You see, the family he designed the house for didn't have a lot of money, and they still don't, so the place is falling apart, which is just so sad.  Some parts outside weren't even completed.  The place is called Spring House and it was built in 1954 over ten months with only six men building it.  The only way I can describe the shape is that it's very boat-like.  Here's a picture of the blueprints for a better idea.

The kitchen and the fireplace are round and on the bottom floor there is a bench that runs half the length of the building along the wall in a big open spacious room that pretty much takes up the whole first floor.  Across from the bench, the entire wall is nothing but windows.  We got to meet the daughter of George and Clifton Lewis, the people who had the house built.  Her name is Byrd and I got to sit and talk with her by the round fireplace while I got warm from walking around outside. She told me that when she was in college, going to FSU, she used to sleep down there on that bench.  She said it was beautiful in that room at night when there was a full moon. 

If I could, I would put up a million pictures just to show you how great this place was, because I took a lot.  Honestly, I probably took more than a hundred.  But Byrd's mother, Clifton, who is still alive by the way, doesn't want anyone to publish any pictures.  I can understand that so much, so I'm going to honor her wishes.  I did however, find photos on the Spring House Institute website, so here's some of that.


Vintage picture from the 50s when the house was still fairly new.


The family, way back when.  The girl next to the woman is Byrd.


The entrance nowadays.


The window wall, from the second floor.


The second floor, where all the bedrooms are.  Beneath this is where the bench is.


And for all of you who don't know who Frank Lloyd Wright is, here's a little spiel



Frank Lloyd Wright is a very famous American architect who built the house in the above picture, known as Fallingwater (Oh, and he designed the Guggenheim, but no biggie).  I like to call it the Cantilevered Wonder.  Wright was into organic architecture and Usonian homes (phrases he coined himself).  Organic architecture is basically the blending of buildings with nature so that everything is harmonious.  A Usonian home is characterized by simplicity and practically no storage.  My mom couldn't live in one of these houses.  In fact, I don't think she and Frankie would have gotten along very well.

So what was the point of all this?  Spring House was recently put on the National Register of Historic Places, and the Spring House Institute wants to restore and update it and they need our help raising the funds for it.  They would like we, the students, to create pieces of art inspired by Spring House.  These works will then be auctioned off at a big pricey fundraiser event, with the student receiving half of what their piece was auctioned for, and the foundation receiving the other half.  Whoever came up with this was awesome.  I will definitely be keeping everyone abreast of how my piece, whatever it turns out to be, is coming along. 

 When I have kids, we'll be fieldtripping to this place for sure.


If you want to know more, see more pictures, or donate, you can go here: www.PreserveSpringHouse.org

One Score, One Finish Line, One Novel

I am a writer.  I don't claim to be the next Jane Austen, or anything, though.  I write mostly for myself, because it's something that makes me happy, but it also hinders me from letting other people see my work.  I'm so critical of myself that I feel like other people will be too, especially because I know I don't write nearly as well as some people I know.

For me, writing came from reading; I can see now that it was inevitable.  I don't remember not being able to read.  My mom used to take me to the public library all the time for those events they had for little kids.  I'm so grateful she did.  From then on, I read anything fiction I could get my hands on.  By the time I entered middle school I was practically reading on a high school level.  I was set in my ways, though, and some books I just refused to read.  I loved the genres I loved, and I wouldn't read outside of them, mostly because the few times I had, I was bored to death.  So, die-hards, look away...I've never read Harry Potter!  But that's okay, you'll get over it sooner or later.

In elementary school I read through nearly all of the Nancy Drew books, and by middle school I was mainly into the adventure and fantasy genres.  I was all for anything relating to pirates, knights, and other worlds.  Sword fighting and bows and arrows were usually a must.  A little romance thrown in wasn't too bad, but it was just as good without it.  But by the time middle school was beginning to come to a close, I was having trouble finding books that I liked.  I perused the library for as long as I was allowed, reading countless book covers and many times leaving empty handed, or with a book I never ended up reading more than a few pages of.  Thus, the birth of my writing.

Truly, I had been writing since elementary school, because when you read like I did, there's no way you can't have a bursting imagination.  But later, when I couldn't read, I wrote.  I still have a mound of my crazy unfinished stories, written on various brands of notebook paper, in handwriting so horrible, I myself can barely make it out.  There are pictures too, but we'll talk about that another time.  It got to the point where I told stories to myself in my head as I fell asleep at night.

My senior year in high school I took creative writing.  The class was made up of a ragtag group of various ages.  I think there were about three of us who had voluntarily signed up for the class.  I really got to explore there, and write like a crazy person, so I was sad that it was only a semester class.  It was in that class that I wrote the very first draft of my first complete story.

I had had a scene in my mind for several months before we had to write.  Sometimes I even think it was induced by God.  I can't even explain how you can look at the sky when a random song comes on the radio, and a scene unfolds in your mind that you can't file away.  I didn't even have a story at the time that the scene would fit into.  So when it came time for our fantasy short story assignment, I just created a story for the scene.  It was short and very rough, but it was a start.

In college, about a year after high school graduation, Caroline told me about National Novel Writing Month.  Basically, you write a novel in a month.  Some crazy writing fiend must have come up with it.  Who else would?  I signed up on the website immediately and then settled in on figuring out what to write.  It dawned on me that I had never really hashed out the full idea for my short story back in high school, so I went with that.  I wrote furiously that November, and thankfully my classes weren't too hard.  By the time December 1st rolled around, I hadn't finished, or gotten anywhere near the 50,000 word mark that signals victory.  I set it aside.  Then, literally the day that classes ended that semester, I jumped on that thing.  I was so close.  I don't remember the exact date, but sometime before Christmas, I typed the last word.  It was only a rough draft, mind you, but it was one of the most significant points in my life.

I mentioned earlier that I had a stack of unfinished stories.  On my computer, I have at least thirty unfinished plots awaiting completion.  I even had to limit myself to stop coming up with plots, and put a majority of the ones I already had in a file appropriately named, "You're not allowed to work on these yet!".  Up to that December in 2010 I had never been able to finish a story.  That day, I didn't cruise into the winner's circle, I didn't get prizes galore, I didn't make it to 50,000.  But I still won.  I won because I finished.

(The original name and cover I made.  Who knows what the title will end up being...)

If All My Dresses Were Made of Lace, I'd Be a Happy Girl

When you move from a small town to a place like Tallahassee you get exposed to new things, some strange and some fun.  One of the strangest things about living in a college town is the fashion.  In general, things people wear around here are just a little bit strange to me.  Take, for instance, the current obsession with tights.  Don't get me wrong, I love tights.  They're really comfortable and great for layering, but the crazy girls around here just take it to a whole new level.  Apparently to them, layering is "so last year."  Instead, they like to wear their tights as a substitute for pants.  This drives me absolutely insane!  The most popular look is tights with a hoodie and tall boots, like these for instance:

Sometimes I'm compelled to ask them why they feel the need to show every contour of their booty to the whole world.

With art students, fashion is generally insane.  I've seen anything from cut up t-shirts to shorts that might as well be underwear.  Bras are optional and individuality is so thick you can't breath.  Some things you really just have to see to understand.

I've always had a pretty good sense of style, even though my style changes from day to day, but I've never been able to buy into the general fashion trend of showing as much skin as possible.  My best friend/roommate, Caroline, shares this sentiment.  Caroline is basically my window to the Korean/Japanese world, so I get to hear about all the crazy fashion trends they have over there, like those crazy big eye contacts they love so much.  But last fall I found out about one of their fashion trends that feels like the best thing for you life: Mori Girl.

Mori is the Japanese term for forest, so the whole idea is to look like a girl who lives in/came from the forest.  Lace and natural colors are encouraged, as is layering, and modesty (something foreign here in America) is almost always a must.  To me, lace is one of the best fabrics in the world, and I enjoy coming up with a Mori girl outfit every now and then, even if it's just to rebel from the rebels.  Now I'll leave you with a ridiculous amount of Mori Girl pictures.

The rapture will probably happen before this becomes popular around here.

The English Language is Ridiculously Awesome, Even Though We Stole Most of It

The first month of 2013 is over, which means I've gone through the first month of my new calendar.  I know that sounded really stupid and redundant, but if you knew how nifty (yes, nifty) this calendar was, you would be as excited as I am.  I haven't come across a word that describes just how nifty it is yet, but the year is young and I have roughly 288 more words to go.  So now, for your enjoyment, have a snack of forgotten English.


shame-faced - The quality of being too fearful of losing the esteem of others or doing something that may give them a bad opinion. Shamefaced, easily blushing, easily put out of countenance.

snow-bones - Remnants of snow after a thaw.

court-holy-water - Insincere complimentary language.

lying by the wall - The interval between death and burial is sometimes spoken of in Suffolk as "lying by the wall."  There was a saying, "If one lie by the wall on Sunday, there will be another corpse in the same parish before the week is out."

trollibags - The intestines. Norfolk. [Still known in Northern England.]

bowssening - Casting mad people into the sea, or immersing them in water until they are well-nigh drowned, have been recommended by high medical authorities as a means of cure.

whizz-bang - A mixture of morphine and cocaine injected subcutaneously.

behopes - Hope, expectation. Ireland, Cheshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire.

fauxonry - Fraud, in the legal sense; falsification of deeds or measures, coining false money, etc.  Adaptation of Old French faussoner, to deceive, faus, false.

vomitory - A door of a large building; from Latin vomitorious.


upputting - Lodging, entertainment for man or beast. Scotland, Northhamptonshire.

real cheese - The Anglo-Indian, by his rough-and-ready adaptation of native words and expressions...is responsible for the currency today of many popular sayings.  Amongst others, such a source has been suggested for the common expression the real cheese, meaning the real thing, quite in fashion, or up to date.  There is a Persian and Hindustani word chiz, meaning thing, and a young Anglo-Indian would frequently say, "My new horse is the real chiz," easily corruptible into the English cheese.
                   - Duck's meat; hardened mucous in the corners of the eyes after sleeping.

boanthropy - A form of madness in which a man believes himself to be an ox.

strowlers - Vagabonds, itinerants, men of no settled abode, of a precarious life; wanderers of fortune, such as gypsies, beggars, peddlers, hawkers, mountebanks, fiddlers, country-players, rope-dancers, jugglers, tumblers, showers of tricks, and raree-show-men.

heterarchy - The government of an alien; from Greek heteros, foreign, and arche, rule.

milkscore - Account of milk owed for, scored on a board.

trumpet marine - An instrument with a bellows, resembling a lute, having a long neck with a string, which being struck with a hairbow sounds like a trumpet.

conbobberation - Conbobberation, helliferocious, mollagausauger, to puckerstopple, and peedoddles were actually in use, and seem unbelievably outlandish today only because of their unfamiliarity...The "tall talk" of the backwoods. moving ever westward with the frontier, left unmistakable traces in the writings of Mark Twain, John Hay, and a good many smaller fry.


Don't you want this calendar now? I thought so.

Brian Selznick is the Bee's Knees

Writing and drawing are my loves.  For a long time now I've wanted both to be my career.  Writing and illustrating novels is something I dream about all the time, even though I don't think I could ever do it as seamlessly as Brian Selznick.  The first time I picked up The Invention of Hugo Cabret I was pretty speechless.  Here was a guy doing pretty much exactly what I wanted to do and totally winning.  I had one of those everything-is-totally-awesome-with-my-life-right-now kind of moments.

(I left the images their original size so you can appreciate the artwork.  Go ahead, appreciate away)



 

When I heard they were coming out with a movie, I was iffy, as I always am with book-based films.  Parts of it I hated, parts of it were okay, and parts of it I liked.  I would say it was down the middle road, nowhere near Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which is burning in the hell of my mind as we speak.  It's safe to say that it, along with the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie, should never come up in conversation around me.

But anyways, last year, Brian Selznick came out with another one of his written/illustrated novels, Wonderstruck.  This time he took it to a new level by telling two stories at one time, with the illustrations following a deaf girl in the 20s and the writing following a boy in the 70s, and ending with their stories intertwined.  It was one of the most beautiful books I've ever read.





Selznick has honed in on the fabulous idea of combining writing and art and has taken it so much farther than the little story books you read to your pre-schoolers.  This is essentially what I dream of doing with my life.

Can you tell he's my favorite artist/author?

And if you've been thinking this whole time that these are kid's books, you're right.  Sometimes I'm a 22-year-old kid.  That's just the way it is.

Forgotten English

   So, I got this really awesome calendar over Christmas break.  I was so excited when I saw the name.  Forgotten English?  Oh, ho, ho, there was no turning back after that.  I had to buy it.  I'm only eleven days in, but I can tell this is going to be a good year, even if it's only because I get to read about a crazy new word every day.
   What kind of words have English speaking people forgotten about?  And how does a person just totally forget that a word exists?  I know that's what you're thinking, but I have no answers.  Sorry.  But I can go on in length about some interesting words I've come across so far.  Is that okay? Oh, well, you'll get over it.

Hopshackles
What these were, we can only guess...They appear to be some kind of shackles imposed upon the loser of the race by the judges.  Roger Ascham [wrote in] The Scholemaster (1570): "Some runners...deserve but the hopshackles."
                                                             -Robert Nares's Glossary of the Works of English Authors, 1859

The brand new year started of with this one.  I couldn't get over their definition.  Heh, hopshackles...


Ploughed Rainbow
A field ploughed in curves ("bows") to suit a curving outline, is said to be ploughed rainbow.  Hence, some fields have the name Rainbow Field.
                                                                       -Edward Gepp's Essex Dialect Dictionary, 1923

This one is one of my favorites so far, because the same day that it was on the calendar, I also found a green star sticker on the floor of my room, the same stickers we use in the Rainbows class at church.  I miss those little kids.


Water-wolf
In drinking out of a stream, a man is said to "swallow a water-wolf" which, it is said, lives and grows in his stomach.

                              -Sidney Addy's Glossary of...Sheffield [Yorkshire], 1888

While to most people this may seem on the outrageous and ridiculous side, I find this one hilariously awesome!  Not to mention, this totally sounds like something that would pop up in one of the circle stories my friend Caroline and I write.  I have a feeling there will most definitely be a water-wolf in the current one.

Stay out of those streams and don't drink any water-wolves, people!

Holey Moly, I Can't See Anything!

    My recent acquisition of a pair of jeans from Hollister sparked some very interesting thoughts.  Now before I go into this, I just want to say that a relative gave me the jeans for free, and I’m not knocking free clothing.
    I’m just different I guess, but I don’t particularly like rips in my jeans, nor do I think there is any justification in buying a pair of jeans with rips in them.  If you really want rips, rip them yourself, instead of walking around with holes so close to your crotch that you might as well be a hooker.  This complaint can pretty much go to any store that sells ripped jeans, but thankfully I can find nice jeans around too…ones that cost less and aren’t holey.
    Of course, in the case of Hollister, you might not know whether or not your jeans are ripped until you come out of the store, where you can actually see your hand five inches from your face.  Not even a minute ago, I had a thought that Hollister is a lot like those rides at Disney like Pirates of the Caribbean, and It’s a Small World: really dark, with a few lights here and there.  At Disney, I can understand: they don’t want you to see the ugly things that make the ride as awesome (or as creepy) as it is.  At Hollister, I just don’t understand.  Are they trying to save money on their light bill so they can pay to spray a million bottles of perfume in their stores every day?  Or maybe they’re trying to hide the fact that they jack their prices up for clothes that aren’t nearly worth it?
    In any case, I’m thinking about borrowing my dad’s headlamps so my friend and I can go on a search for a pair of Hollister jeans that don’t have rips or holes.  First one to find a pair wins! What do we win? I have no clue, mostly because I don’t think anyone is going to win.