The Tragedy of La Ronda

As some of you may or may not know, I am big into historic preservation.  Whilst scouring the internet for mid-century furniture, I stumbled upon an architectural salvage site that listed salvage from 'Addison Mizner's La Ronda'.  I figured it was of some importance.  What unfolded was a sad story.

Addison Mizner designed high-end residences in the well known city of Boca Raton, FL.  This was his claim to fame.  La Ronda was not in Florida.  It was in an area called Bryn Mawr, PA and is known as 'The Main Line'.  The movie, 'The Philadelphia Story' is centered around the socialites of 'The Main Line' area in Pennsylvania.  The area has large, grand estates that take up numerous acres of land.  It's the Newport of the mid-atlantic region.

La Ronda was purchased by a couple and demolished.  The area lacks an historic preservation ordinance which would protect these properties.  The house was well-kept and not in disrepair.  The couple that bought La Ronda claimed that it lacked modern ammenities which was why they were tearing down the 14,000 square foot mansion. 

The community fought to save the property and several alternative options were presented to the couple.  All of them were beneficial and would have allowed the couple to benefit financially.  Ultimately, they decided to not go this route and demolish a beautiful home that epitomized a bygone era of American history.

What really saddens me is that these assholes bought a beautiful, architecturally important home with the sole purpose of ripping it down.  Why?!  They could have bought land elsewhere or found something in disrepair.  Instead, they picked this house and razed it.  The craftsmanship both inside and out was breathtaking.  The house cost more than 3 million when it was built in 1929 and had beautiful woodwork, stonework, and leaded/stained glass...

To me, this drives home the need to protect our past.  While it is true that only a select few can afford grand homes like this, we all can appreciate them.  These old homes showcase talent on an epic scale.  New homes built today don't have hand carved millwork, or leaded glass.  They are pre-fabricated and put up with veneers of stone instead of stone blocks.  The pride is gone from our building industry; it is simply about getting the building up cheaply and quickly.  The new house that will replace La Ronda will be a sad glimmer of the magnificence that once stood there.
 
By destroying our past, we are ultimately destroying our future.  RIP La Ronda, 1929-2009

Putting Pen to Virtual Paper

The last few months have been kind of a creative slump for me. I used to draw on a frequent basis, but I haven't actually done a full-scale drawing since 2006. This is partly because of our move to Maryland and then in turn, our move into our house. My job has also shifted to include more responsibilities. It bothers me that I am in a creative black hole. Sure, we painted the living room and lower level of our house. Yes, I designed our living room theme and came up with a kick-ass exterior color palette. While these have been victories on the creativity front, it seems that something is missing.

I've actually given it quite a lot of thought and I think I have found a partial explanation. In my early 20s (God, it is sad that I actually just typed that) I had a retail job that was headed nowhere and no where near the fiscal responsibility that I have now. I used drawing and model building as a kind of creative escapism to escape the crap job and the crap apartment. There's something I miss about those days. Sure, I didn't have healthcare and I had a car that was beat to hell. We did live across the street from a crack house. But looking back on it all, it seems that it was almost carefree. Our jobs barely paid our bills. We had some serious credit card debt. We blew our paychecks on going out and whatever else struck our fancy. I guess that's the tradeoff. Now I have a good job and a surplus of funds. I have a car that runs (despite the need for constant maintenance). I have healthcare and we have wiped out our credit card debt.

I no longer need creative escapism. I miss it though. I miss writing my dark poetry and creating drawings to go with it. This blog is the closest I've come to what I used to do and it is actually tough to come up with ideas. I remember a time when I could look at a sheet of paper and see the drawing I had not yet started.

I used to be a dreamer and now it seems like I have woken up and can't get back to sleep. I can remember a time when I couldn't fathom the idea of not drawing.

How does one get a jump start on creativity?

I Morti

I am not one to ponder on things. Well, okay, I am. However, recently I have been watching these apocalyptic shows on the History Channel and ABC and pairing it up with 'The World Without Us' by Alan Weisman. Needless to say it has made me dwell on my own mortality and what I will contribute to this world.

This all started in early 2008 when the History Channel aired 'Life After People'. For those of you that know me pretty well, it is a safe bet that I will bring up post-apocalyptic goodness in a conversation at least once. The shows premise was to show what our world would look like should humanity up and leave. It wasn't pretty. In all reality, not much would survive seeing as we've abandoned more permanent building methods for ways of building that require constant maintenance. The show had CGI special effects that showed what a world devoid of man would look like. It was really cool and got me on a post-apocalyptic kick.

Then came 'The World Without Us'. This book, by Alan Weisman, is what 'Life After People' is partly based on. My father-in-law told me about it, stating "it's right up your alley." He was right. I started reading it and at first, it paralleled the History Channel special almost to a tee. Then we got into nuclear waste and weaponry, and non biodegradable items. The book slowly shifted focus from a world without us to a world that we are screwing up. Granted, in order to really predict what the world would be like without us one would need to look at the current environmental nightmare to gain an accurate perspective. I actually had to stop reading the book for a while because I found that I was getting depressed. That was back in February.

In late April/early May, I discovered that Life After People had become a weekly show on the History Channel. I set my DVR to record them and I picked up 'The World Without Us' again. Big mistake. What made it all worse, though, was the ABC special 'Earth: 2100'. The shows idea was to follow the life of a fictitious person named 'Lucy' from her birth in the good 'ol days of 2009 through her death in the 2090s. Of course, the world deteriorated into chaos as the environment and our natural resources became more and more depleted. Throughout Lucy's 'life' they interjected with current events and such, which just made the special all the more depressing. What's worse is that the world they presented could be a possible scenario. The point of the show was to explain that the end of the world doesn't just happen in an instant, it takes time and gathers strength. In the end, the US was thrown into the equivalent of the Dark Ages and the country splintered into almost feudal states. Ugh.

I was depressed for 3 days after Earth: 2100. It was a special brand of awful. The problem is, while I like apocalyptic alter-realities, the notion that our current actions could lead us to that sort of world both terrifies and depresses me.

Needless to say, I have pressed 'pause' on my apocalyptic show-watching for the moment...

Our house, in the middle of our street

Looking at my last post, I realized it has been a while since I've written anything. Ah, the joys of home ownership. My parents warned us. "You'll never have free time again." "A house is like a sponge. It will just keep sucking up your money." My parents are into the realism approach. No congratulations or well done, just the hard facts of life. And they were right as usual.

Besides the home of never-ending projects, work has also kept me extremely busy. To make a very long and complicated story a shorter complicated version, our IT department decided to integrate our applicant tracking system with our HRIS system. This involved scrapping our old ATS for a new, shiny one. It has been painful, to say the least. In fact, just thinking about it is tensing up my back, so that is all I will write on the subject.

Back to the house. Okay, so when we bought the house, we realized the entire inside would need to be painted (except for the bathrooms and kitchen initially because they are all wallpapered, which is a separate blog in itself). So we have the lower level painted, the living room and hallway, my office, and we just started our bedroom. One of my friends accused us of being pokey, which while true is only half of the story. We are perfectionists when it comes to painting. My wife is the perfectionist with the actual painting and I obsess over the taping. Need proof?

This is our living room accent wall. We were feeling particularly inspired by our 70's furniture and decided to run with it. This took us about a 4 days and if you look up close, the squares are pretty much perfect. My wife touched them up freehand. We have an illness, the two of us. Eventually, I would like to get a 1950's credenza for the TV and gadgetry that goes along with it, but mid-century modern is in right now, so the credenzas start at $300 and go from there. That's money that could be used elsewhere in the house. Plus, I would feel pretty awful if I bought a nice vintage piece and then proceeded to drill holes in it for our wiring. Something about that seems just, well, wrong. Unfortunately, there aren't new options out there that I can find.

Speaking of money, we live at the Home Depot. It started off all fun and such, but as time has gone by, I've grown disillusioned by the mega box hardware store. They usually do not have what we need and their prices really aren't all that good. We've started shopping elsewhere lately, hitting the local hardware store (which has odd hours but has what we need) and contractor supply places. The internet has proven useful as well, as our tastes tend to run left of center and the neutral palette of Home Depot just doesn't cut it. For instance, I decided that in keeping with our mid-century theme that the Schlage Orbit line of door knobs would go splendidly (which they do), but Home Depot carries practically everything else except that line (idiots). We found a discount doorknob place and got all of our doorknobs for about $300, which isn't bad considering we've got plenty a door. Oh, and if you are looking for retro-inspired curtains, check out this site. Her prices are reasonable and her curtains come in an array of mid-century and retro patterns. Yay!

Okay, that's all I got for now. With any luck, I will be inspired to write more (Or have more time on my hands to do so). However, seeing as this house won't paint itself and the yard won't prune or mow itself, chances are good that my next post won't be until September (although once the leaves start falling, I will be busy once more). Oy. It never ends. :)

What's In a Name?

People have never asked me why my nickname is 'Blue Jay'. Most probably assume that since my nickname is Jay, I adopted the nickname Blue Jay because I thought it funny or clever. Little do they know that the name comes not from a bird, but from a New Year's party.

It was New Year's, 2002. We still lived in our (first) crappy apartment and would often crash at our friends' houses to avoid dealing with said apartment. We had been invited to a New Year's party at our friend Marie's house. Nicky had to work late and was going to come by after work with a friend of ours, Jenn. I had the day off and had a friend visiting from Maryland, so we went to the party early.

Needless to say, there was a lot of drinking. We got there and everybody was practically blitzed already. My friend and I walked into the main living room and when Marie spotted me, loudly announced:

"Blue Jay is here!"

This was followed by some giggling by Marie and by drunken laughter from 5 or so people milling about.

The logic was simple. My name is Jason, but I go by Jay. I had inadvertently dressed in blue jeans, a blue sweater, and a blue fleece. The only thing not blue were my black shoes.

The name stuck and I have been henceforth known as Blue Jay. Ah the wonders of alcohol!

Meet Artemis

For every Yin, there must be a Yang. For every up, a down. You get the idea. You've been introduced to Clyde, now let me introduce Artemis. Artemis is 7 years old and is albino. She is also deaf. This makes for fun times. Albino cats tend to be deaf and their eyesight tends to be less than perfect. She possesses both of these traits. Our Artemis has other fun 'quirks', if you will. Her remaining sense are heightened, especially her sense of smell. This makes for some very amusing situations. For instance, the litterbox sends her into sensory overload. She will often get into the litterbox, do her kitty business, and then bolt like a bat out of hell from it, spraying kitty litter all over the place as she flees. This means one of two things I've concluded:

1. The smell of whatever she has created is just that foul.

Or

2. She expected to get in the litterbox and play around and was surprised when nature took its course.

Either way, it is definitely amusing. We learned early on that disciplining her was next to impossible, so when she does something wrong (like randomly leaves us a present for no apparent reason on our dining room floor) our recourse is to clean it up and hope her neurons keep her from doing it again for a while. In order to get her attention, we have to tap the floor. She has grasped the 'summoning fingers' and usually will respond with a grunty 'umph' when summoned.

This leads me to her 'meows'. They aren't like a normal cat's noises. They are unearthly. When she really gets going, it sounds like someone is killing a cat really closeby. Her death yowls, as we refer to them, usually occur due to one of the following:

1. Kitty nightmare

2. No vibration to determine if anyone is nearby

3. Looking for attention

She will also randomly run and attack Clyde whilst making the death yowl. We haven't figured if these are meant to be playful attacks, since they are declawed. Clyde doesn't treat them as such, so they are probably meant to make him back off. Of course, everything is Clyde's fault in her eyes. Everything. If one of us harasses her, it is his fault. If he looks at her funny or if it is perceived that he looks at her funny, it is his fault. If he strays into her perceived territory, it's his fault. And our little 9 pounder attacks like her life is in jeopardy. It is really quite amusing.

This is why she is named after the goddess of the hunt.

Meet Clyde

This is Clyde. He is my 9 year old cat. Clyde is smarter than the usual cat in that he appears to understand English; well, at least respond to it. He knows how to lead us to the food bowl or water bowl when it is low. He also knows his name and will respond with a 'mrow' when you call him. Additionally, he responds to his numerous nicknames. Speaking of nicknames, I have decided to list what I call Clyde on a fairly regular basis. Here goes:

1. Mr. Mew
2. Mr. Tail
3. Pon farr kitty
4. Mr. Honch
5. General Meow
6. Chairman Meow (I alternate between general and chairman)
7. Mr. Puffy Cheeks (in homage to my deceased cat Rascal)
8. Clyde-je-woo
9. Woo
10. Scooter (after a disturbing incident involving Easter grass several years ago)

It is a pretty impressive list for a cat to respond to. Mind you, if I piss him off, he will just sit there and glare at me while I call him stupid names. I can see it in his eyes that he understands but will not humor me since I have annoyed him and now must suffer the 'silent treatment.'