Spring Break 2012 was so crazy

The sash cord in the double-hung windows at the Rosson House offices broke yesterday, creating a terrific crash inside the wall.  I didn't know double-hung windows functioned by way of counterweights inside the sills.  The maintenance guy came and removed the panel, revealing four hanging lead weights covered in the furry dust of almost a century.

A director, docent and myself watched the whole thing with great interest. I don't think this guy is used to ripping panels off of windows to a room full of women saying, "Ooooh!"

More Historic Phoenix

Here are some pretty good shots of houses in Phoenix that live on the historic register.  Most of them I've never seen before.  The Victorians!!!  Oh my god!  I'm so shocked at them.  This is what happens when you never get into the avenues.  I've been telling people that we have two and a half Victorians left in the whole city, super wrong.  It seems like we have...five or six!  Big news here.

The ones in extreme disrepair make me want to weep and lament openly.  As Little Edie Beale would say, each case is the worst thing to happen in the history of America.  I don't know what it is about Victorian and Edwardian structures but they make me want to JUST DIE I love them so much.  Seriously, I'm like one step away from moving to Detroit and buying a block of empty Victorians for $10,000.  Worth it!  I'll live in the best one like a little troll that no one sees/believes is there, and folktales will evolve about me.  "If you listen hard on a cold evening when the moon is full...you can hear her yelling at her cat."

I'll just stop there.

If you scroll down halfway, you'll see the Osborn house on 12th Ave & Pierce.  He has an early shot and a contemporary shot.  There are 11 people in the old photo, I wonder how large the house is.  Looks pretty big for being so olde in Phoenix.

I will be skulking these houses on a tour, as I am also trying to figure out which dilapidated, burned-out crack house on Van Buren is the old Tovrea home from before they bought the castle.  Exciting.

Finally

Something good going down in preservation!

Is the Knipe house being restored?  This pic is from the Arizona Preservation Foundation's Facebook, but there's no information there or on the website. The side of that truck says "AZ Shoring Bracing".

See here for a July 2010 post in which I flip out about the house's unstable future.  There seems to have been lots of debate about whether to bother with it as it is so deteriorated, and Leighton G. Knipe is not famous in spite of having left an architectural legacy in Phoenix.  The Downtown Phoenix Journal (link below) lists some of his works, but there are/were lots of private residences on that list, too.

So what's going on!  Why are they fixing it!  What's going to happen??  I can't find any information on the internet.  The last reference is something about La Grande Orange looking for a downtown Phoenix location.  Will I someday buy a latte and a $3 cookie at the spot where I used to hang my fingers through a chain link fence, wondering if it was worth the risk of potential homeless attack to enter?

Architect Bob Graham talks about why he thinks the house should be restored here.  It's obvious that no one has actually researched L.G. Knipe beyond basic information about his Phoenix contributions.  HLAME.

Pat!

For years,
"What's that thing?"
"A rabbit ambulance."
end of conversation.

Today.

Elizabeth I

by Lisa Falzon.  I love it.

I am also enjoying this excellent history (& stuff) blog.  She's very well-written and just my style. 

What was I going to do today?  Oh, right, loll around on a couch at Lux and read all the "Anne Boleyn" tags on this blog.  DONE.

I'm trying to stay focused on being a winner at life, which basically involves staying on task and getting things done.  Results have been "ok" so far.  I feel like a martyr because I made an obnoxiously complex cake for my mother's birthday and helped run the kid's craft thing at the museum in the same day.  Any time I positively interact with strangers, particularly strange children, I expect a medal.  Also, I was hit on by a girl today after I showed her how to weave a rag rug out of strips of t-shirt material using a hula hoop as a loom.

Free tip: just because someone tells you they're into history (or whatever), don't assume that means they hang out at the ren faire, because I don't.  And DON'T LOOK SURPRISED when I say so.  It makes me worried that I'm exuding a vibe. 

A ren faire vibe.

There's always one weird thing that stands out in memory to demonstrate a particular moment in time.  A random thought or night or object.  I have no idea what will ever remind me of right now.  I don't think I'm paying attention to anything except that tiny place in the back of my brain where everything is private and mine and I don't have to deal with complex interactions.  Lots of stuff going on, not too interested in any of it. 

Wish I had a

I'm re-reading The Bell Jar for a class.  I first read this in my second year of high school, and didn't like it very much.  I expected it to be something completely different and couldn't really grasp her subtleties.

I thought it would be some kind of handbook to young adulthood, a mystery map with dotted lines and arrows for the wary and different.  I assumed, like a lot of people dumbly do, that the suicide somehow indicated some kind of hard-edged sophistication and esoteric knowledge that others could find in her words, hidden like little easter eggs.  I assumed something similar about Colette and sex and was equally disappointed.

Well, scratch that, because I love The Bell Jar.  She is so crazily artfully brilliant with words, I am underlining and folding pages of this library copy only to find I'm turning page corners that have already been creased.  Too insanely, understatedly good.

It's been so long since I have been free to read prose of any enjoyable kind that I'm amazed by how good it is, and how fast the reading goes.  I've been blearily hovering over one miserable textbook page after another for a while now, always looking for any excuse to be released, that I was worried that I no longer liked to READ. 

In the book, Esther's first vaguely sexual encounter with her boyfriend is a perfect mirror to my first vague encounter.  Almost identical.  It hadn't yet occurred when I first read the book.

Grandma's House

Geodes, stained glass pyramids, and cats.

Party like it's 1899 Forever

I made the beginnings of a rag rug for an upcoming event at the museum.  The point is to highlight examples of bygone home handicrafts as well as to show kids that there are many ways to recycle.  Scrap fabric from worn out textiles or clothes is braided and then stitched together.  It is, as they say in California, hella easy.  Examples on flickr.

Rag rugs seem to have been the dominion of rural women just trying to make do until the Arts & Crafts movement (1860 - 1910) popularized them as an art form. Old ones are fairly pricey (and awesome) on Ebay. 

I totally love them, but this is going to have to go to the back of my "free time shit to do" pile because I don't have scrap fabric, and I need to embroider pictures of Ray Smuckles saying rude shit first.  Stay tuned for an Anita+Brittany clothing line consisting of silk-screened and embroidered hoodies and shirts with pictures of Ray saying WE DOIN THIS! and Roast Beef saying "I am the guy who sucks. Plus I got depression." 

Questions, see Achewood.  Start in 2005 or prior.

How I feel when

I see there's a job opening at the Poe Museum in Baltimore.

Um, ETA?  It's not in Baltimore!  It's in Richmond!  How do we not notice this information?  Eh so I don't know about all of that.  It's been a while since VA has been in the news for something other than encroaching on women's rights, know what I'm sayin.

It's too bad, because I feel like this museum was made for me, just like 30 Rock and the soundtrack to The Piano.  An early 18th century stone building, an excellent collection, a monthly promotional event called Unhappy Hour?!