Frank Lloyd Wright at the Guggenheim Museum

The main reason we went to New York a couple of weeks ago was to see the first exhibition ever held at the Guggenheim museum featuring its architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. The exhibit commemorated the 50th anniversary of the building, which was completed 6 months after Wright died in 1959, at age 91. Original drawings, models (too few of these) and documents spiraled up the museum’s ramps.

A New Yorker article about the exhibit notes that "staff at the Guggenheim like to refer to the building as the most important object in the museum’s collection...." That is so true. We certainly go there to enjoy the building itself as much as the artwork it contains.

And if you believe the story told by the tour guides at Talesin, Wright's home in Wisconsin, the building was inspired by another object, this conch shell, which to this day sits on a shelf in his home. (I photographed it a few weeks ago through a window, since you're not allowed to take interior photos.)


It was strange and exciting to see Wright’s own drawings of the Guggenheim displayed in that very building itself. It was like walking into an M.C. Escher drawing. (Frink always says he wants to put an LCD TV with a video of a crackling fire in a fireplace over the real fireplace. Or one of those videos of fish swimming next to the fishtank. He's a clever lad, that Frink.)

It was also interesting to compare how the design evolved and changed – how the site selection, the other projects Wright was working on, and the negotiations with the client (who in the case of the Guggenheim, had a mind of her own) changed the artistic vision. Wright, for example, wanted the building’s exterior to be red. In another version, the widest part of the spiral was at ground level.

For architecture buffs and FLW groupies, the actual drawings, often larger than those in books, provided a lot more detail about the plans for buildings, both those that were built, those that were outrageously and brutally demolished (like Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel), and those that were never built (like a huge, spacey Jetsons-mod theater complex and park Wright designed for Bagdad.) Some of the drawings had never been reproduced or displayed before.

Speaking of the Imperial Hotel, here's a photo (from Wikipedia Commons.)



(My Aunt Fern and Uncle Edmond actually stayed there in the 60s, and when I get a scanner, I'll upload Uncle E's slides of this magnificent building.) Ahead of its time (built 1923), it was designed to withstand an earthquake. In a weird twist of fate, at the opening ceremony, one of the worst earthquakes in Tokyo's history struck. While buildings throughout the city crumbled and burned, Wright's hotel was unscathed.

I bet the Japanese are kicking themselves for their short-sightedness in tearing it down. Today, a single plate from the cafe sells for hundreds of dollars and chairs for thousands apiece. People would pay a premium to stay in one of the world's greatest structures. Tourists flock to the bit that remains in a museum. Until we can afford to fly to Japan, the closest Frink and I will ever come is this urn from the hotel, now in the Metropolitan Museum. It stands more than 5 feet tall. And our reproduction Cabaret china from the hotel's less formal cafe. But I digress.

The exhibit also included some computer animations, walking you visually through building. There was a cool "exploded" modle hung on wires of the Jacobs I, one of the most important Usonian houses. (Basically Usonian houses were built for regular folks, whom Wright felt deserved art and beauty as much as the wealthy. They featured a lot of wood and windows, great open spaces (Wright invented the "great room" concept), space-saving built-in furniture, and heated Cherokee red concrete floors.)

I'm getting a little better at looking at blueprints and such, but I am the kind of person who can't imagine spaces very well. (When some people want to rearrange the furniture, they can map it out or even imagine how it will look in their heads. I have to actually move the furniture and see it to decide if it looks good. Usually it doesn't. So then I have to move it back.) More models and animations would have made the exhibit even more enjoyable. Also, I wish they had included more photos of the finished buildings. Because FLW is our hobby, I've seen many of the actual buildings, but a lot of the visitors to the exhibit may not have.

In terms of collecting more objects to clutter our home, we were really restrained. We bought only two books, including the exhibit catalog. And of course I saved the free exhibit pamphlet. It featured this curtain, from the Hillside Theater at Taliesen, Wright’s home in Spring Green, Wisconsin. Seeing the curtain out of context, hung web.

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Playbills from Broadway--Waiting for Godot

A lot of people collect the Playbills from the theater, so much so that there are even special bindings you can buy to preserve them. And opening night Playbills come with a little sticker attesting to that.

I totally understand the urge to keep the program; I always bring mine home, especially from plays I've enjoyed. But mine are never crisp, neat, and well-preserved. Somehow they end up all rumpled and bent from being rolled up, dropped on the floor, stuffed in a bag. But I keep them nonetheless. They are free souvenirs, easy to pack, and a good way to spark my notoriously bad memory for details long after I think I've forgotten the play.

On our recent trip to New York, we saw three plays, all coincidentally featuring well-known screen celebrities and all featuring a rather bleak outlook on life, although that's not necessarily why we chose the plays. The most memorable was Waiting for Godot, starring Bill Irwin, John Glover, Nathan Lane, and John Goodman.

I've seen Godot before and have read the play several times. Waiting for Godot can seem quite despairing, especially on the written page. Full of existential angst and brutality, it's an odd choice for someone like me who trends toward depression. But this production was a revelation -- I had never realized how funny Godot is, in the right hands. Comedy truly is in the timing.The actors in this production hit every note. It was by turns hilarious, profoundly moving, and -- again somewhat unexpectedly-- optimistic. We may not know why we are on this earth or what our lives mean. There may be nothing to do. But we are alive and that is reason enough to keep on living. Or so this production implied.

Lane (Estragon) and Irwin (Vladimir) are excellent, two satellites that circle each other at safe removes, seemingly independent, and yet tethered by the gravity of companionship and need. Glover's Lucky, literally tethered to his master Pozzo by a thick rope around his neck, was an interesting blend of Tim Burton's Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas and the loose-limbed, pontificating Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz (although certainly less cheerful than the latter.)

All the actors were superb, but John Goodman's performance just blew me away. I've often been impressed and surprised by the depths Goodman reveals in some of his films. It's a mistake to consider him only as the funny fat man he played in Roseanne or movies like the Flintstones. He can tap into something very dark, as evidenced in his scary performances in Barton Fink and O Brother Where Art Thou. Here, he plays Pozzo, a cruel, selfish, aristocrat with a vaguely British, uppercrust accent and an imperious, threatening demeanor. Goodman's immense size and power contributes to his threatening posture and makes the scene when Pozzo falls to the ground and can't get up all the more moving. His Pozzo is at once full of aggrandizing self-assurance, unquestioned privilege, barely contained rage, pathetic neediness, and, at the end, wisdom and insight, if only for a brief moment. It's a stunning performance.

We lucked into a brief after-show discussion featuring Irwin, Glover, and Goodman. They talked about the choice of pronunciation (GOD-oh rather than Go-doh), which I at first found disconcerting. Apparently, it's closer to Beckett's original French, and it resonates better with Pozzo. But the most amusing and interesting exchange was John Goodman's answer to the inevitable question about whether Godot is God and what in the heck it all means. "I don't know or care," said Goodman. "I just try to tell a good story." In this, he seems to be echoing Beckett, who once said, "all I knew about Pozzo was in the text...if I had known more I would have put it in the text, and that was true also of the other characters.” Beckett also once said that "if by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot.”

When asked, "how do you handle the humor in such an incessantly pessimistic play," Goodman deadpanned, "with a trowel." He paused, then went on, "What are you going to do? It's an inherently funny play. Samuel Beckett wrote it for Sid Caesar."

I wish I had thought to ask about the obvious blood and bruises on Lane's face. My recollection, reinforced by a quick look at the very interesting Wikipedia entry on the play, is that there was never any evidence to support Estragon's claim that he is beaten every night. This production erases that ambiguity. It might thus also subtly erase the ambiguity about whether the child who purports to be a messenger from Godot actually has met and talked to the never-seen title character, although, as Frink points out, the child is not exactly a reliable witness, as he cannot remember having met Didi and Gogo the day before. This production also encourages a more hopeful ending by having E and V grasp the other's hand in the final scene.

Here's a link to the theatre, where Godot is playing through July 12.

I'll post thoughts on the other two plays, God of Carnage and Exit the King, in the next few days. Read more!

A Tale of Two Chapels

On our recent road trip to visit my great-aunt and see a Frank Lloyd Wright tower, Frink and I also toured two spectacular chapels designed by architect E. Fay Jones. Jones was an apprentice of Wright's who worked primarily in the Ozarks. I wasn't surprised to learn that when he was a high school student, Jones designed tree houses. Tall and narrow, his chapels soar among the trees, bringing the forest inside through walls of windows. With their dramatic, exposed trusses crisscrossing across their ceilings, these light and airy chapels look like they were designed by wood elves. At any moment I expected Galadriel or Legolas to come gliding in.

The more famous of the two is Thorncrown Chapel, near Eureka Springs, Arkansas. The members of the American Institute of Architects voted it their 4th favorite building in America. From a structural standpoint, Thorncrown is probably the more spectacular of the two chapels. And yet, we enjoyed our visit to The Mildred B. Memorial Cooper Chapel in Bella Vista, Arkansas more.

Even though the chapel is a mere quarter of a mile from a shopping center, the town feels far away. We parked in the little lot in the woods and walked down a tree-lined path to the chapel. We were the only people there, and it was utterly quiet. When we opened the heavy door and entered, we were enveloped by the serenity and simple beauty of the chapel, a gothic cathedral with all its walls replaced by glass. We sat in the pews and admired the soaring arches and the light flowing through the windows (although it was a cloudy, winter day). Even though we were there to admire the architecture, it was an extremely spiritual experience. The architecture itself inspired awe and quiet contemplation.





























Our subjective experience of Thorncrown was different, and I've spent a lot of time trying to pinpoint exactly why. The building itself is stunning. And yet, from the moment we approached the chapel, the experience felt less satisfying. First, there was the tall blue sign right near the door telling us to be seated in the chapel. It felt more like an order than an invitation. What's more, the sign stuck out jarringly in our pictures of the building. (We turned it sideways so we snap a couple of sign-free photos.)

When we entered, there was a staff member sitting near the door in a folding chair. Although she was friendly and welcoming, the mere presence of a monitor felt a little oppressive. I completely understand the desire to protect this architectural masterpiece, and to encourage respect for a place of worship. As someone who loves to visit cathedrals, I am often appalled at how rude and disrepectful other tourists can be, taking photos when explicitly told not to, imposing on people's prayers and contemplation by talking loudly, and wearing inappropriate clothing.

But the fact is, the entire time we were in the Cooper chapel, we whispered and were respectful, even though we were entirely alone, and even though there are no regular religious services conducted there to our knowledge. The building itself inspired our awe and respect. At Thorncrown, it was as if our "best behavoir" was not demanded by the spirituality of the space itself, but by the presence of the hostess, who seemed not so much guarding the chapel or welcoming guests, but maintaining a certain sanctity. It didn't help that she was one of those ostentatiously serene people who make you wonder exactly where the line is between sanctity and sanctimonius. She stressed that the chapel was an active place of worship and that "we don't want to be known as a wedding chapel" (a statement belied by their website, which prominently promotes Thorncrown as a wedding chapel.) The didactic impression was reinforced by the chapel's brochure. I didn't save it, but as I recall it was a bit insistent in its Christianity and its stressing of how spiritual the chapel is. It was ironic: When we were left alone to experience the chapel on our own terms, the feeling was one of incredbile spirituality. When we were told how spiritual the place was, the experience was precisely the opposite.

No doubt, devout Christians would probably have a different perspective on this. But for us, appreciation of a beautiful building is itself a kind of sanctity. Jones certainly knew this. Writing about Thorncrown, he wrote that “I saw opportunity here to create architecture. The distinction I am making is that all building isn’t architecture, just as all writing isn’t literature or poetry, even though the spelling, grammar, and syntax might be correct. There is something in architecture that touches people in a special way, and I hoped to do that with this chapel.”

Cooper acknowledges the "special way" the architect and his building touch you by inviting you to visit it as a structure. There is a path the winds through the forest so you can admire the chapel from every angle. Cooper seems to be saying, "I don't care what brought you here. Enjoy it." Thorncrown seemed to say, "I'm glad you're here. Now be spiritual." Even though Thorncrown's website touts the awards and accolades the building has earned, we felt a little guilty being there for the architecture, almost like our mere presence defiled the place.

Perhaps if we hadn't just visited Cooper a few hours before, we wouldn't have noticed a thing uninviting about Thorncrown. And in seeking to explore and explain the source of our different feelings in visiting these two chapels, I have probably exaggerated and overstated the case a bit. Thorncrown Chapel is an astonishingly lovely place, and we plan to return often to experience it in different seasons. If you're ever in Arkansas, I hope you'll get the chance to visit both of these amazing works of art.

Here's a Wikipedia Commons photo of Thorncrown in the flush green of summer (and without the attendant sitting in the entryway).

Links:
Mildred B. Coooper Memorial Chapel
Thorncrown Chapel
E. Fay Jones on Wikipedia Read more!

Postcards from 1944 New Orleans

(Click on the photos for a larger view. Click the back arrow to return.)

"My Dear," my uncle wrote in 1944, "The little man has had a very full day, and is now having his demitasse at Broussard’s, an old restaurant in the French Quarter. Shrimp remoulade, soup, plus a few other items. Friday night I have a reception at Antoines, supposed to be something in the food and atmosphere line. Pretty soft, isn’t it?"

This was the message on one of the 6 postcards my uncle sent from New Orleans. I'm not sure what he was doing there in 1944, but it probably had to do with WWII. The cards, marked with a "Red Cross War Fund" stamp, are addressed to my aunt in Houston. They had moved to Houston from St. Louis because Uncle E. wanted to do work that supported the war effort. This followed a devastating rejection when he tried to join the military, one final insult from a bout of TB he suffered as a young man. I remember my aunt telling me how they had to save all of their gas rationing coupons so they could drive their car from St. Louis to Houston. So, when I read my uncle's comment about the"soft" time he's having, I detect mixed emotions: pleasure at indulging in some hard-to-find luxuries during a time of rationing, mingled with a sense of guilt at not being in the trenches like other men his age.

That's one of the things I love about these cards: the intriguing hints of untold tales. I also love how they reflect my uncle's dry, Noel Cowardish wit, how his voice sparkles and smiles through his brief words. Here's another example:

Darling: This town is not so fun as the articles in Colliers and others would have you think, but undoubtably much more so than in the recent past. Plenty of gambling, but the lid is fairly well on so far as [illegible]. The place fairly abounds in night clubs and joints of every description. Maybe whiskey isn’t flowing freely, but most other kinds of giggle or weeping water are.

Uncle Edmond, I should add, was a teetotaler, having given up alcohol a few years before. Again, while the words are mere ripples, dashed off in a hurry, they offer intriguing hints of a deeper back-story whose details I will never know.

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Hand-painted Cards for the American Lady

After my Great Aunt Fern passed away and I was clearing out her house, I found a bag marked "Keepsake Cards by Segar." It was full of exquisite notecards painted in the early '80s by a Sri Lankan artist who was a friend of my aunt and uncle. I don't know when she and Uncle Edmond met him; they lived in Sri Lanka in the 60's, when he would have been just a boy. Perhaps they knew his parents. Or maybe they met him during a later visit there.

Once, Aunt Fern showed me a magazine cover featuring a cubist painting by this artist, who at that time worked in a bank. That was the sum total of what I knew about him. But, thanks to the internet (which still seems to me as magical as Merlin's book of spells) I found several articles about the artist. In one, I read the following:

"One of the handful of Sri Lankan artists who is able to make a living entirely from his painting....Segar [would] occasionally make greeting cards for his friends, especially for the American lady who complained that the Sri Lankan cards are copied, western-oriented and do not depict Sri Lanka life at all. His hand-painted cards were so popular that he got the idea to have the outline printed and get his friends and family to hand- colour them."

Reading this made me wonder if the "American lady" in the article was my Aunt Fern. It certainly sounds like something she would say. I can picture her blue eyes twinkling behind cats-eye glasses as she floated out her complaint in that direct, disarmingly gracious Southern drawl. In any case, here are a few charming early works by this internationally known artist. (Click on them for a larger view. The colors of the originals are brighter.) Read more!

Frankie Gets Her Groove Back

My ex-husband didn't share my itchy foot. To him, traveling was a waste...a waste of time, of money, of time he could spend making money. Although I managed to cajole him to take a few trips during our 25-year relationship, my itchy foot went largely unscratched. As did most of my other needs.

I was 40 when we divorced, childless, shell-shocked, completely unsure of myself. (My ex-husband told me I was no longer attractive. Apparently, he couldn't forgive me for not being the same thin babe he met at 16. I've never seen the woman he had the affair with, but evidently she was more his type.)

The end of my marriage meant the beginning of my travels. For my first solo trip, I chose Iceland, Sweden and Norway, countries that seemed unthreatening to a middle-aged woman traveling alone. I loved every delicious, frightening, exhilarating moment. If I wanted to stay a few days longer than planned, or spend a whole day in a museum, or jet off someplace else on the spur of the moment, I could. I didn't have to debate or consult with anyone.

I knew I loved traveling, but I didn't expect to enjoy my own company so much. And the last thing I expected was to get my mojo back.

I was in Olso, standing on the stairs outside the art museum, pondering where to go next. A young Brit asked me what I thought of the art. We chatted about the paintings--Munch's The Scream was more pastel than I expected--then moved on to literature as we strolled to an outdoor cafe. As the sun began to set, we decided to seek out a spot for dinner. Somewhere over dessert, it finally dawned on me that this young man (14 years my junior) was attracted to more than my sparkling wit and knowledge of Huckleberry Finn.

It would be a better story if I told you we ended up in the sack, but in truth, nothing happened. At least not on that trip. We corresponded and talked on the phone, and the following March I found myself in England, where we spent a lovely week in a romantic 17th-century cottage on a lake.

Although we're no longer intimate--one of the attractions was that we lived in different time zones -- I'm very grateful to my British friend. It makes me smile when he calls every so often and asks if I'm still with My True Love Frink. He sighs when I say yes and then fills me in on the young hotties he's dating.

So, you may be wondering, what does all this have to do with the polar bear necklace at the top of this page, the object that all this wisdom is supposed to be about?

Fast-forward to the next year. I was traveling in Iceland and decided to take a day-trip to Greenland. In a tiny store, I bought the polar bear carved from reindeer bone as a memento of my trip. On the small plane back to Iceland, I met a travel writer. He, too, found me more attractive than my ex-husband had. We spent a few invigorating weeks traveling around Greenland together. I have fond memories of this trip, even though I ultimately realized that I was more enthralled by the travel writer's job than the travel writer himself.

Today, when I look at my little polar bear necklace, I see more than a $5 trinket. I see adventure, freedom, and friendship. And most of all, I am reminded of my first solo trips abroad, when this middle-aged broad got her mojo back. Read more!

My First Solo Meal in Vienna

It was my first solo meal in Vienna, a city I would call home for several months. A little self-conscious about dining alone, I chose a non-hip-looking café, with plush red velvet seats and a clientele that included a few tourists. I was relieved to see a vegetarian menu, but unlike the main menu, which had pages in German, English, Japanese, and Russian, the vegie menu was only in German. The waiter didn't speak much English – a startling pleasure in a world where the edges of cultural difference are being relentlessly eradicated by the Resistance-is-Futile-You-Will-Be-Assimilated globalizing Borg machine. After searching for and failing to find the right words to describe the offerings, he gave up and went to get a waitress who spoke a little English. She described a couple of items, but it was still all a bit confusing. Finally, I recognized the word "spinach.”

“Yes!” I smiled. “I’ll have that.”

I sipped my beer and tried not to look conspicuous as I studied the artsy black and white S&M photos on the walls, which seemed at odds with the stuffy baroque decor. Finally the waiter arrived and placed my dinner down with a flourish: a plate of bright green, algae-colored puree, with a basted egg floating on top.

(I soon learned that Austrians will put eggs on top of just about anything. You can even get a coffee with an egg, not on the side, but right there in the cup. But, they are an enlightened people in many ways; a standard breakfast comes with eggs, rolls, potatoes....and a beer. I can't, however, guarantee that the egg won’t be in the beer.)

The creamed spinach was soupy – a bit hard to eat with the fork that was provided – and was the spitting image of baby food spooned from a tiny jar. This effect was magnified by the fact that the puree and the shredded potatoes that accompanied it arrived on a divided dish, either a deep plate or shallow bowl, which looked just like the dish you'd use to feed a toddler, sans the picture of Winnie the Pooh. I resolved right then to learn to speak German.

In the end, I never did learn much German, despite buying a pile of dictionaries and German CDs. And, even though I became more adventurous in my dining choices as I came to know the city, I found myself returning several times to that cafe, where I ordered that same SpinachGloppenEggen, an oddly satisfying comfort food for a lone traveler far from home. Read more!

Books, Brochures, Bartlesville

Several new objects came home with us after last weekend's road trip through Arkansas and Oklahoma, most of them books or pamphlets from The Price Tower, Frank Lloyd Wright's only skyscraper. Wright called the tower "a tree that escaped the crowded forest." Its main form (the trunk) is a square, made more interesting by the intersecting squares (branches) that bisect it at rotated angles, creating triangular balconies and stairwells. This book, which we bought at the Arts Center on the ground floor, has an interesting history of its construction.






The current exhibit at the Arts Center, "Fallingwater en Perspectiva," features oil paintings of what is probably the most famous home in America. The artist, Félix de la Concha, is from Spain. This lucky (and talented) guy got to spend 14 months in residence at Fallingwater, painting it from dozens of perspectives over the span of several seasons. The brochure shows him with one of a series of paintings that, when hung side-by-side, create a 360-degree view of the living/dining room, each from different, slightly over-lapping angles. Stretched across an entire wall of the gallery, this grouping was stunning and a bit dizzying. (The curator complained that it was hard to hang because the paintings were at all sorts of odd angles.) This photo was taken from the exhibit website, which has many other images from the exhibit. (Click on the photo for a larger view.)

I love collecting brochures like this from places I visit. Even if I take scads of photos of a place, when I stumble across a tattered and yellowed brochure years later, it brings back memories -- who I was with, what the weather was like, what kind of flowers were in bloom, details of artworks and facts that I've long forgotten. Even better, brochures don't cost anything and don't take up much room.


Frink, on the other hand, is a collector, especially of coffee mugs, which take up A LOT of space. (If all the neighborhood Starbucks lose their coffee cups in an earthquake, we've got them covered. Someday I'll write a post about our dueling Oscar & Felix personalities when it comes to collecting things.) Frink hoped to buy a mug showing the Price Tower or its cool Wright-designed logo. (The originals are hard to find and beyond our means. Six cups sold at auction recently for $3,000 and two plates sold for $1000 each.) But, aside from some pens and a poster of Wright's presentation drawing, the giftshop didn't have anything depicting Price Tower or its logo. The guide said the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation claims copyright on all plans and images of his work. For this reason, visitors aren't allowed to photograph the interiors. It seems strange that the owners of the actual building aren't allowed to sell souvenirs showing their own property. But we followed the rules and didn't take interior photos (except of our room--shhh, don't tell anyone.) I did find some excellent pictures online if you're interested.


We also picked up a guide to Bruce Goff's architecture in Oklahoma, and a DVD about Shin'enKan, a home he designed in Bartlesville that was destroyed by arson in 1996. Goff was an architect who worked primarily in the Midwest in an astonishing array of styles, from Prairie to Art Deco to what I call Dean-Martin-Meets-James-Bond Martini Modern. Shin'enKan, a hip bachelor pad built for a wealthy young client, was definitely Martini Modern.
















Goff had an affection for recycling found objects long before it was trendy, and a key feature of Shin'enKan was aqua blue glass, left over from glass manufacturing. It was shattered into faceted chunks, which Goff incorporated into the walls of many of his buildings.



This blog has some amazing photos of Goff's designs, including this photo of the lost house in Bartlesville.

For more on our visit to The Price Tower and Bruce Goff's Oklahoma buildings, please visit my travel blog. Read more!

Willa Cather and My Grandfather's Peace Pipe

Willa Cather, knew all about the power of material things, as this description from Lucy Gayheart shows: "Lucy stuck the telegram in her mirror and hurriedly began to dress. She was thinking that years from now, when she would probably be teaching piano to the neighbours' children in Haverford, nothing would recall this part of her life more vividly, or make it seem so real, as that slip of paper."

I have most of Cather's books, two copies of some of my favorites. I prefer the buff-colored Vintage Classic editions. Unlike most paperbacks, whose covers and spines bend and crack, these are supple and flexible, with a clothlike feel that makes them comfortable to hold even with one hand. I got my Vintage Classic edition of Lucy Gayheart, along with several other books, in Red Cloud, Nebraska, at the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial. They cost more than they would have if I bought them used or on Amazon, but I enjoy knowing that they come from the very town where she spent most of her childhood.

There is much of Cather's own material culture in Red Cloud, but the object I remember most didn't belong to her at all, but to Annie Sadilek, the real woman on whom My Antonia is based. I will never forget standing in a frame house, in the tiny bedroom where she slept. Seeing her modest iron bed and faded quilt was incredibly moving. I love My Antonia. It pulses with life, not only Antonia's, but the life of the prairie, where there is "motion in the landscape; in the fresh, easy-blowing morning wind, and in the earth itself, as if the shaggy grass were a sort of loose hide, and underneath it herds of wild buffalo were galloping, galloping."

Cather's descriptions -- of the wolves chasing the bridal party's sleigh through the snowy forest or of Mr. Shimerda frozen in a pool of his own blood on the barn floor -- form part of my mind's architecture. And I will never forgive Jim for his inability to respond to Antonia, for his need always to see her as a mythologized set piece in his imagined Arcadia.

I'm not sure I understand my fascination with things touched by those I admire, the pull that draws me to visit places like Red Cloud so I can stand where Cather stood, see the very Bible in which she changed the date of her birth (making herself three years younger), touch the white picket fence surrounding her home. But in addition to the books, several objects in my own home intersect with the same cross-country trip that took us to Red Cloud and other places where imagined and real lives blend together.

After we left Nebraska, we headed north, taking in the Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, Wall Drugstore, the Corn Palace. My partner (who prefers to be known in these pages as "Frink") will never let me forget that we drove a hundred miles out of the way and paid a farmer $3.00 to see what Frink calls "The Hole in the Ground." But this wasn't any hole in the ground; it was the actual place where Pa built the dugout described in The Little House on Plum Creek. I snipped a few stalks of grass from the field bordering the creek, which I keep in a vase of dried flowers. Seeing them makes me feel a tangible connection to Laura, who lives in my mind as surely as the grass grows next to the hole in the ground on the banks of that creek. (Truth be told, this was the second hole in the ground we visited on this road trip; we also saw the wagon ruts from the Oregon Trail, which sent shivers up my spine but left Frink cold.)

We also went to Pipestone National Monument, on the South Dakota/Minnesota border. I didn't even know that the monument existed, but as soon as I saw it on the map, I wanted to go there to trace the history of one of the few things I own that once belonged to my grandfather.

My grandfather was the black sheep of his family, a heroin addict and drunk who abandoned his family in the 1930s when my father was six. My father never spoke of him and even changed his own first name to distance himself from a man he seemed to resent bitterly until the end of his life. (Of course, the fact that his first name was Wirt might have had something to do with the name change.) I know little about my grandfather, but I do have a few photographs of him. In one, he is about 13 years old. He stands, looking out with a more imperious version of my father's face, his hands resting on a beautiful, long-legged white dog. This formal drawing-room photograph does not at all jibe with the whispers I have heard about my grandfather, or with another of his things that has been passed down to me: a brick-red stone peace pipe, which I've been told he purchased in 1905 on a trip to Yellowstone. So, when I saw how close we were to the pipestone quarry, we veered again to visit yet another hole in the ground. Frink liked this one far better than the first two.

Pipestone National Monument is small and lovely, with a bubbling creek, a pretty waterfall, and the thin seams of pipestone from which Native Americans still quarry their sacred pipestone. The artist George Catlin, who collected Native American pipes (especially the pornographic effigy models), recorded the origin of the pipestone:

At an ancient time, the Great Spirit, in the form of a large bird, stood upon the wall of rock and called all the tribes around him, and breaking out a piece of the red stone formed it into a pipe and smoked it, the smoke rolling over the whole multitude. He then told his red children that this red stone was their flesh, that they were made from it, that they must all smoke to him through it, that they must use it for nothing but pipes: and as it belonged alike to all tribes, the ground was sacred, and no weapons must be used or brought upon it. (Sioux account of the origin of the pipestone, as told to George Catlin, 1836, from park website.)

By the time Catlin was collecting and drawing such pipes, they were being produced for the tourist trade, and I'm sure my grandfather's pipe was never used in a sacred ceremony. But it is weighty and beautiful in its simple elegance, decorated only with rows of concentric circles carved on the bowl and stem ends. I keep it on a bookshelf in the living room, nowhere near the Cather books, which are upstairs in my office, or the prairie grass, which is in a green vase on the dining room buffet.

Still, these things are all connected in my mind -- Willa Cather's novels, a prairie landscape which for most of my life I knew only from books, a pipe held by a grandfather I will never know at all. The thing that unites them might be simply the roadtrip through the prairies, but it feels deeper than that, like the prairie itself. I remember hearing somewhere that for every six feet of grass growing on a prairie, there are 18 feet of roots growing beneath the ground. That's how these objects feel to me. Somewhere under the surface they are all tangled together, woven by memory and imagination and by a longing for something that remains elusive and mute. It can only be felt, like the heft of a cool stone pipe in my hands.

Click here Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial website. (If you're a photographer, you may be interested in their current photography contest.)

Click here to visit Pipestone National Monument.

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