Stepping Back into My Other Life

Fall classes resumed last Monday and now I can scratch off Week One of my last year in the LA graduate program. I am taking a community design studio and our project for the semester will evaluate and offer alternative design scenarios that address the Lake Delhi dam breach that occurred July 24, 2010. The implications of that disaster are all over the map both figuratively and literally. The earthen spillway blew out after unprecedented rainfall in the Maquoketa River watershed and now there is once again a visible river flowing in its channel where, for the last 80 years, there was a 9-mile long lake.

This past Friday three vehicles headed down the road carrying my studio-mates, two professors, me, and a trailerful of bikes to the project site to experience this altered landscape. We listened to stories, attended a formal presentation, and wandered the backroads searching for clues that might inform a design solution to offer these folks who are lost without their landmark waterbody, Lake Delhi.

Having taken several classes in hydrology and stream study, I found the natural course claimed by the water of the Maquoketa River fascinating, aside from the devastating loss of home and property. Water knows where it wants to be and it goes there. This truism was never more obvious to me as when I stood on the bridge that looked out over the newly formed sandbars dotted with broken boats, their twisted hoists, and other floodwater debris half-buried along and in the now visible river channel.

It was a long day with lots to take in. I was tired when we arrived back at the College of Design...not only physically, but in a world-weary way. I wonder when we as a society will learn to live with the forces of Mother Nature, to become more adaptable to her ways, and be done with this thinking that building bigger, taller, and stronger will dominate and tame. We only end up with a larger pile of debris to clear and a more expensive tab. Enough said.

I am also taking a construction class which should prove interesting. A failed attempt to install AutoCAD on my laptop brought it to its knees. The operating system crashed and I was without a computer for several days. Aside from that technical glitch, the content of the course will be an overview of materials...wood, concrete, stone, and metals. I love the idea of color, texture, and finish, so this should be a fun class.

I am taking a graduate seminar in preservation...a sister course to the one offered last semester. I enjoyed that class, so I am looking forward to our study site of Pella, IA and the Dutch heritage museum grounds there.

I will be backing off the thesis research and writing this next semester....only 1 credit to keep my toe in the water. I am thankful that I did the road trips this past summer so I could get that experience on the ground to better understand the turn-of-the-century Midwestern rural cemetery. Also, I stayed on top of my readings, so that has taken off the pressure this semester. I look forward to the actual writing of the cultural landscape report and treatment plan for Oak Hill Cemetery in Cedar Rapids, IA, which will happen over the next year. : |

So, today I clear the drafting table of the piles of books and papers from this past summer's research. I will work with pen and colored pencils to create a concept plan with both graphics and narrative to begin my process for the Lake Delhi project.

Cancer Horoscope for week of August 19, 2010

This would be an excellent time for you to get aggressively inventive about your education. It wouldn't be too crazy, in my opinion, to launch your own school, with you as the only student. You could design your own course curriculum for the coming years. Decide who your teachers will be. Think about where you can get the stuff you'll need to expand your mind, enhance your skills, and just plain increase your intelligence. You could call your center of higher learning the University of Wily Exuberance or the Academy of Astonishing Grace or the Institute of Getting Down to Business.

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If Homer were alive today, we wonder if he'd write about a potion that stirs up memories of delight, serenity, and fulfillment? Imagine that you have taken such a tonic. Spend an hour or two remembering the glorious moments from your past.

Horoscope for This Week

Here's a thought from the Cancerian philosopher Gaston Bachelard: "He who listens to the singing of the stream cannot be expected to understand the one who hears the singing of the flame: They do not speak the same language." While I mostly agree with that poetic formulation, I think you're about to be a temporary exception to the rule. Normally you are acutely attuned to the singing of the stream; your skill at reading its nuances are supreme among the zodiac. But I expect that in the coming days, you will not only have the power to appreciate the song of the fire; you'll even be able to empathize with and understand people who are entranced by the song of the fire.

Composer Robert Schuman had long dialogues with his imaginary friends, Florestan and Eusebius, who provided valuable ideas for his musical scores. W.S. Merwyn wrote a poem in which he recounted the counsel of his teacher John Berryman: "He suggested I pray to the Muse / get down on my knees and pray / right there in the corner and he/ said he meant it literally."

Conjure up an imaginary friend and have an intimate conversation with him or her.

Our Man Horace

Any and every one who knows me currently...or reads this blog...is aware that I have started work on my thesis. Last spring semester there was lots of back and forth with my major professor, reading and talking about what I would do for this part of my graduate training.

Once this fundamental piece of the process was in place, I was ready to take the next step. My thesis will be a cultural landscape report and treatment plan for Oak Hill Cemetery (OHC) in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. This 'rural' cemetery was designed by HWS Cleveland in 1869. I made the decision to invest my time this summer doing the footwork (as in on the ground) required of a researcher. I kicked off my adventure by traveling to Cedar Rapids and sleuthing the libraries there...the Masonic Library and the Linn County Genealogical Library. Then I attended a state preservation workshop in Clinton, IA. The first week of June I set off on the Mother of all Road Trips to visit those cemeteries that influenced and those which were graced with HWS Cleveland's beautiful design aesthetic. From Iowa to Illinois, then to Indiana and Ohio, I traveled a road that led me into and thru this background of cemetery history. These Midwestern cemetery visits numbered in the teens. There was lots to experience on the ground and so much to think about for my work that lay ahead.

I have also spent considerable time in front of the laptop, in my pj's all day, searching turn-of-the-century newspaper articles (Thanks! newspaperarchives.com) sleuthing for old fotos and text in an attempt to piece together OHC history. I've been back to Cedar Rapids, this time pestering City Hall for crisp aerial fotos of the cemetery site. I have been gathering and studying reports and maps, but finding very few historical photographs!, that might help to piece together a thoughtful approach for the treatment of this ever-changing landscape.

A second road trip found me zipping around Quincy, Illinois. Cleveland was commissioned to design Madison Park at 24th and Main. It was an old burial ground slated to become a public park close to the turn of the century. When I google-earthed the present-day park, it was remarkable that I was able to trace the barely-visible original walkways he laid out in his 1891 plan. Then in 1896, he submitted a design for Riverview Park as part of an extensive connected park system for the Quincy Boulevard and Park Association. After my visit to the Old Soldier's Home, an integral part of his boulevard plan, I came away with a nagging suspicion that Cleveland and Son (Ralph Dwinel joined his father's firm in 1892) might have designed the grounds there also. In a article I found online from a 1893 Quincy newspaper, Col. Fogg of the Home wanted a 'landscape scientist' to have a look at the grounds to try to get a handle on all that Nature had taken over. The grounds certainly carry the signature of our man Horace.

A third day-trip sent me pounding down I-35, then out on I-70 to Topeka and Junction City, Kansas. It was the hottest day of the year. The car thermometer registered 105 degrees, but it was now or never for me to get there...and back. An 1871 working plan by Cleveland laid out the grounds of the State Capitol in Topeka. Even tho the roads and pathways of the circulation plan were never laid down as designed, his planting arrangements are evident. Some of the old trees encircling the block and standing in groves and allees reveal his vision for this space.

My next stop was Highland Cemetery in Junction City, Kansas, the destination for this 12-hour road trip. Cleveland designed this cemetery in 1870, one year after laying out the grounds for Oak Hill Cemetery in Cedar Rapids. I wanted to compare and contrast this design with the one back in Iowa. Not at all what I expected. No mausoleums. No great monuments. Hot. Dry. Grass thatch left in rows along the markers. Lots of beautiful Austrian Pines, tho. Healthy Austrian Pines....designed placement of Austrian Pines. His work still lives on in these ancient trees staged for great effect.....my constant effort in my professional practice is to create landscapes which may excite in others minds the emotions which similar scenes awaken in my own....HWS Cleveland.

This past weekend I traveled to the Twin Cities with a good friend from the academic world to explore Cleveland's work in Mpls/STP. Some say HWS Cleveland found the most acclaim, quite late in life, here in the Twin Cities. This recognition grew not only from his site designs, but more importantly from his planning skills on a urban/regional scale in laying out the extensive park system in the Cities. Early on, he championed this landscape with its riparian topography and vegetation. His greenbelt plans laid down a protective design before this unique and precious resource was lost forever.

Cleveland also designed two cemeteries in the Twin Cities. We visited both. Heading across town, we stepped thru the back door of the Hennepin History Museum to view four original Cleveland plans of several parks throughout the city. They took my breath away! So very beautiful in their simple design. The colors used to render these final plans were subdued with age, but the spiky darkened green graphic employed to suggest evergreen trees brought these old drawings to life. As I traced with my finger the roads and pathways of the plans, each cradled within their protective sheaths, I could only imagine this old man working thru his process to lay down on paper an informed design that would speak to someone 120 years later.

Next, we were off to visit Lakewood Cemetery. This burial landscape was designed by Adolph Strauch whose fame grew because of his visionary work at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, OH. Horace had nothing to do with the planting of trees or shrubbery here, the laying out of roads and walkways or the grassy swales that guided water away from the graves. But curiously, Horace William Shaler Cleveland was laid to rest here in 1900. He and his loved ones are interred in graves that went unmarked for years. It was almost 50 years before someone decided Horace Cleveland needed a proper gravestone.

His six family members are buried along side in a lot measuring 15 x 20 ft...four plots for ashes, three for gravesites. There is no stone monument chiseled with the family name Cleveland. The green lawn offers up a single, flush marker inscribed with a few words about Horace's landscape vision for the Twin Cities...nothing about who he was as a man. He had moved his office to Minneapolis from Chicago in 1886, looking for a change. The Lakewood Cemetery records reveal he purchased this family lot that same year. His youngest son Ralph Dwinel briefly held the position of superintendent of the cemetery. So maybe he did offer a suggestion or two in the form of a sketch, or a word, during his son's short tenure at Lakewood Cemetery. He invested his hard-earned money in 300 square feet of precious ground. He must have loved this very spot!


HWS Cleveland lies in the shade of an massive Bur Oak, Quercus macrocarpa. Mossycup acorns pelt his stone marker. A Norway Spruce, Picea abies, frames the view down the hill and over to the Chapel. He is planted smack in the center of this beautiful designed landscape. He must have stood here one day long ago and envisioned a more mature landscape enveloping this spot where he would lie for eternity with his loved ones. This was also where he and his wife suffered thru the burial of their eldest son Richard J. He would have walked upon this same ground the day he buried his beloved wife Mary Dwinel.

My pilgrimage to the graveside of this most humble landscape designer was a deliberate act to wrap up my summer of exploration and inspiration. My passion for this project has grown leaps and bounds as I have uncovered who this man might have been by reading his personal correspondence, his essays and lectures, and studying his design plans. I have also read and studied what others have written about him. I am ready to offer to the academic world and beyond a thoughtful and coherent portrait of the design intent of Oak Hill Cemetery which Horace W. S. Cleveland laid out in the NE qtr. of Sec 27 of Rapids Township in Linn County, Iowa.

The Floodplain

If one picture is worth a thousand words, then the fotos above are worth thousands and I have to wonder what words come to the minds of the general population when viewing the flooded areas around Ames? These fotos were taken early Wednesday morning after I received an automated call around 4:30 AM. This alert emanated from the city offices warning the residents of the neighborhoods throughout Ames of dangerously rising waters in both Squaw Creek and the Skunk River, each cutting their swath through opposite sides of our fair city.

I brewed my coffee, then headed out with the dog to see what I could see. The recorded message referred to this flood episode as record-breaking, comparing it to The Flood of 1993. Luckily, I live on the upland overlooking the river and its floodplain on the west side of town, so my feet were dry when I took in the view. The water was high, yes, but what caught my attention was the traffic that was circling, trying to find safe passage into and out of town given the rising floodwaters. This was a busy place, my neighborhood, for so early, early in the morning. I noticed a few cars which turned onto the street that headed downhill into the rising water. These folks wanted a closer look at the 'natural' event taking place out the windshield of their vehicle.

On my walk back to the house, I decided to do a quick check of the sump pump...just to make sure it was doing its job. I could hear water falling into the sump pit, then the quiet hum of the motor as it flushed the contents of the barrel into the stormwater line. I knew that where this water was going was only adding to the torrent of muddy floodwater I had already witnessed sweeping across the landscape at the bottom of hill.

Around 11, I ventured back to the flooded parking lot/athletic complex to check on the water level. The scene I took in stopped me in my tracks. It wasn't the water so much as it was all the vehicles parked along the street and the people activity on the hill. It was a curious sight. It reminded me of the cardinal red and gold tailgating that happens most Saturdays during football season. Only it was happening around a glistening body of water dotted with floating Ky-Bo's and Iowa State tent tops billowing in the rush of water.

This is what I wondered. Do any of these people realize the forces of water? Do they comprehend what these floodwaters are all about? Do they understand what it is that is causing this very natural act, this disturbance, that turns so destructive to our efforts in the planning and building of our communities? This day seemed to be entertainment for the masses. Everyone held cell phone and digital cameras above their heads trying to capture the expansive wet landscape in this very soggy moment in Ames history. But really, were they comprehending that how we chose to build and live on the land is causing this sort of event that, along the way, wastes our precious financial resources.

Water knows where it wants to be and it goes there. Pretty straight forward. Seemingly simple. We can try to dominate with more fill, higher levees, stronger dams, but we should really take a longer look at that rush of water spilling over parking lots, thru commercial buildings, or into our basements. It would help us understand that when we build in the floodplain with the idea that we can 'catch and convey' our stormwater worries away, we are asking for trouble. When we pave over our soils to accommodate our vehicles, we are setting up a system whereby we shunt torrents of water that carry pollutants, sediment, and garbage into our creeks and streams. Nothing can stop the force of water and yet we continue to ignore what Mother Nature is showing us. If fact, we make it easy for this liquid force of nature the tear down and ruin what we try to build.

Feast or famine. Most of the time these waterways barely carry any water. But when an unprecedented amount of rain falls in one specific area which happens to be the watersheds for two usually lazy rivers in Ames, all hell breaks loose. Water knows where it wants to be and it does go there.

from Another Gardener's Bed-Book, 1933

August 8th...Ancient Nudism. It is all very modern to claim that sun-bathing is a product of our own era, yet the ancient poets were always having their lady loves dance diaphanously across the mead and maidens go out at dawn (I suspect in their night-gowns, as one of our guests did once, to the shocked surprise of a dignified father-in-law) to gather fresh dew for a cosmetic. The modern school of nudist poetry not yet having risen, permit me to quote these two lines of intimate loveliness written by Michael Drayton in the 16th century:

A world to see, yet how he joyed to heare
The dainty grasse make musicke with her feete.

American Arborvitae - Thuja orientalis

Holy Horace! I found the Lake!!!

Last May, after completing my spring semester, I headed over to the Masonic Library in Cedar Rapids, IA. I wanted to visit the Linn County Genealogical Society to do a little research for my thesis...a cultural landscape report and treatment plan for Oak Hill Cemetery in Cedar Rapids, IA. I opened a plat book for the City of Cedar Rapids dated 1907 and found this map.

The year 1907 would have fallen between the 2nd and 3rd expansion of the cemetery. This burial ground was first laid out in the mid-1850's as a simple grid atop a hill south of Mount Vernon Road. However, as the demand for burial spaces increased, the newly incorporated Oak Hill Cemetery Company contracted in 1869 for the services of one HWS Cleveland of Chicago to design a landscape of extraordinary beauty. The management was so pleased with the overall effect when that plan was laid upon the ground that they again hired Cleveland in 1880 to expand his design for more avenues, walkways, sections, and lawn to the east and south .

Cleveland would enmbrace what some thought to be constraints of a site as opportunities to build unique features into the design of his parks, estates, and cemeteries. It is possible that it was with this 2nd expansion in 1880 when Cleveland, as a landscape engineer and designer, recognized the natural drainage of the site as an opportunity to channel stormwater by way of a large swale running downhill from east to west and into a built lake in the low-lying ground that could not be sold for burials plots in Oak Hill Cemetery.

I spent this past Tuesday perusing old Cedar Rapids newspapers on NewspaperArchive.com searching for any mention of Oak Hill Cemetery, but more specifically, the lake. I wanted to find confirmation that this lake was in fact built. Was this 1907 plat map copied from an original design filed in the city offices? I have not as yet found any design plans that exist today. Every other plat map is simply labeled, without any specific detail. Note the simplicity of the Bohemian Catholic Cemetery to the southeast. But this 1907 map is a detailed plan showing avenues, sections, vegetation, and that beautiful lake. Nothing links Cleveland with this 'lake' plat map design, but all his signature characteristics are on that page and the paper trail I am following suggests the possibility of a connection.

After a solid 4 hours of staring at the screen of my laptop, I found the following in the Evening Gazette dated May 7, 1883, "The new artificial lake is completed and the water, which is to come from a spring in the hill about a quarter of a mile south of the cemetery, will be turned on within a few days. " I can only surmise that they were getting ready to fill this newly built "artificial lake" in time for the Veterans' Day celebration at the end of the month.

Here in this simple passage, I have discovered a nugget of confirmation that the lake shown in the detailed cemetery plan on this 1907 plat map of the Oak Hill neighborhood had, indeed, been built. Could it be a water feature designed by one HWS Cleveland of Chicago in his 1880 expansion of Oak Hill Cemetery? It is a possibility...

It was a good day of honest research.

Cancer Horoscope for Birthday Girl

"Give us this day our daily hunger," prayed French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. It was his personal variation on the "Give us this day our daily bread" line from the Lord's Prayer. I suggest you use his formulation as your own in the coming week, Cancerian. It's the high season for your holy desires: a time when your mental and physical health will thrive as you tune in to and express your strongest, most righteous longings.

Tomboy

Some one left a comment in response to the Samuel Johnson line that I posted on my sidebar the other day. It substituted 'tomboy' for 'female'. It got me to thinking about the term 'tomboy' and how it might apply to this line...the endearing elegance of female friendship.

The plot of Rasselas aside, I had originally posted this line because it intrigued me...was Johnson's observation about the 'endearing elegance' of two women as friends, or was he speaking of his friendship with a woman? Was it just a guy-gal pal thing, or a friendship that entailed something more? And then there was this comment left on my blog that added a whole other dimension I hadn't even thought of. Is there anything elegant about a tomboy, or endearingly elegant about a tomboy, albeit female, friendship? Was this commenter thinking about friendship as one of a tomboy with her guy-pal? Or something more?

I know how I define the term 'tomboy', but I was curious what the literature had to say. I turned to the hand-held Webster's...a girl who behaves like a boisterous boy...and that worked for me. Then I googled it and up popped the wicked-Wikipedia...a girl who exhibits some characteristics of the gender role of a boy including the wearing of typically masculine-oriented types of clothes and engaging in games and activities that are often physical in nature, and which are considered to be the domain of boys.... OK, I can buy that. The next line caught me by surprise...there is a perceived correlation between tomboy and lesbianism. Hmmph! That thought had never crossed my mind. Never.

I remember a time when I was proud to call myself a tomboy. I fit in with the boys AND the girls. It was the best of both worlds. And I never thought about the sexuality of it at all...and certainly never any elegance. Then puberty hit. I suppose my fear of all that happens to a young girl's body during the 'hormonal turmoil' caused me to cling ever more tightly to my 'tom-boy-ism'. Who doesn't remember the special 'pull-outs' for the girls during the junior high years? I attended those talks in the 6th and 7th grade, but I never really thought it would happen anytime soon. I think most of the information about the transformation (boobs and babies, but especially periods) went in one ear and out the other. I labored under the notion that it (my period) would happen, I'd get over it, and then move on. I refused to believe my mother when she told me that this wasn't a one-time deal, this was EVERY MONTH FOR THE REST OF MY REPRODUCTIVE YEARS!

Well, puberty happened and life went on. Now that I am on the other side of those reproductive years, I wonder about that tomboy thing. Do I still cling to that side of me? Can a woman of a certain age still be a tomboy? I realize that it is such a basic part of me that I had long since forgotten the tag because there were so many others that have applied over the years...friend, girlfriend, lover, wife, mom, gardener, and now student. However, somewhere along the way I figured out that I can 'be' a tomboy along with all those other roles. I still treasure all my tools and I use them to build things (did you see the foto of that grand stairway in my sidebar?). I still lace up my work boots when the job calls for it. I can dig in the dirt with the best of the Boys, but I can also slip into something that knocks the socks right off those same Boys.

I suppose that a tomboy friendship between two women could possess endearing elegance, but that comment left on my blog seems to suggest something other. The endearing elegance of a tomboy friendship between a man and a woman is a delightful thought. The woman who understands this powerful combination of tomboy and sexual creature surely has a leg up for an endearingly elegant friendship.

image credit: www.sophiemckayknight.com/.../tomboy