Archive for October, 2008

LOOKING LOCAL

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008

I love libraries. For a professional lifetime, I’ve been plotting ways to make them ever better. I didn’t think much about how they looked as I passed by; they were mostly non-wood monuments with pillars, steps, and/or lions (and more recently glass) or they were architects’ fancies. And that was okay, until I saw Jamie Wyeth’s exterior drawing of the proposed Jackson Memorial library in Tenants Harbor. It is a classic Maine house, it is local, and it is just right.

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Fig. #46. My neighbor Harry’s house from the sea: c.1861 lovely with few ”amendments” but classic lines and a garage across the street. I don’t have a picture of Ginny’s house, at c.1831 Harry’s slightly older next-door neighbor house, but it has an ell and attached barns.

Jamie Wyeth’s painting, a treasure in itself, is of a classic Maine house with two fireplace chimneys, dog-house dormers (“They’re gable dormers,” my son says, but my neighbor Harry always thought they looked like doghouses.), big brass portholes (homage to the sea?), parts that could be finished later if money is tight or need is light, like enduring Maine houses, and maybe my favorite part, a grounded cupola without a widow’s walk, but with a copper roof and windows all around, a reminder that libraries are windows on the greater world, just like the returning seafarers.

Thomas Hubka’s Big House, Little House, Back House Barn is the only book I know which addresses the homegrown architecture of Maine, but I don’t know if any local houses are included. The very good news is that a Tenants Harbor neighbor’s daughter is an architectural historian interested in local (vernacular) architectures of many places, including Maine, so I’m looking forward to her possibly forthcoming book.

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Fig. #49. Harry’s house from the road: The attached “boathouse” makes an ell and a patio. The garage across the street is long moved, thanks to great new neighbors.

How sensible, then, to cloak a Maine harbor library in a classic Maine house with seafaring amendments and happy memories. This is a great idea. I hope it happens.

Posted in Books with Ties to Tenants Harbor, General Discussion, Maine Books, Roseledge Books | 1 Comment »

HOW DO YOU REMEMBER?

Monday, October 13th, 2008

We were all of an age, though I more so, talking about how we remembered book lore. I argued for webs of proper nouns, especially names because they are more easily checked for misspellings, and connected by moving information. Reader Steve mentioned Jonathan Spence’s book, Matteo Ricci’s Memory Palace, in which each of many rooms in the palace houses a subject. I haven’t read the book, but this seemed a useful device for assigning meaning to my connected facts.

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Fig. #40+. How about granite bricks/blocks to house the subjects of one’s mind, especially as the b/b’s are varied in size, placement, and color but each necessary to the wall’s standing. I love this rock wall in Tenants Harbor.

Then, Eureka! (That is a little librarian joke.) I remembered the Dewey Decimal System. As a long ago library cataloger of books, I knew well Melville Dewey’s classification system for all of 1876’s knowledge which he divided up into 100 subject/parts. Could Dewey parts be like subject rooms? An aside: Dewey was a strange, if clever, man. For instance, he placed the subject women in the high 300’s between folklore and holidays, instead of with men in the low 300‘s. This particular ninniness was changed in later editions, but psychology is still a subset of philosophy.

I’m ordering Jonathan Spence’s Matteo Ricci’s Memory Palace. I love Jonathan Spence.  I don’t know of an introduction to the peculiarities of the Dewey Decimal System or any other classification scheme, but each has them. Any suggestions?

Why read? Reason #4: Readers make good conversation last longer and continue later.

Posted in Activity Books, Commenter Dialogue, General Discussion | No Comments »