J is for Jasper, both Jasper National Park, and Jasper, AB, the town. I was first there as a girl in the early 1970’s, and remember the giant vehicle that took us out on the Columbia icefields, with a conveyor belt contraption on the wheels. It was red, but according to a photo from a previous decade, they came in many colors.
One of my favorite painters, Canadian Lawren Harris, has a painting of Maligne Lake.
Jasper from Whistler Mountain. Photo by Wayne Stratz, 1996.
In 1996, Stratoz and I took a trip to Jasper, venturing up Whistler Mountain in a tram, and seeing a panoramic view of the town of Jasper.
Rainbow at Athabasca Falls, Jasper National Park, Alberta. Photo by Wayne Stratz, 1996.
We also visited Athabasca Falls, which was intensely loud with the sound of water hitting rocks. This rainbow floated up, seemingly within our reach.
Frank Lloyd Wright designed Dana-Thomas house in Springfield, IL. 1994. Photo by Wayne Stratz.
I is for Illinois and being introduced to the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. I was attending the Library School at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Stratoz and I took some road trips. The Dana-Thomas House in Springfield, IL was the first time I stepped into a Frank Lloyd Wright house and it was entering another dimension. Commissioned by Susan Lawrence Dana, woman of many interests, and in 1902, she asked Frank Lloyd Wright to incorporate her family home, but otherwise let him loose. I am thinking about my one-bedroom-two studio-rowhouse, built in 1900, and how it was a contemporary of the Dana-Thomas house.
Stork Motif at Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, Oak Park, IL. 1995. Photo by Wayne Stratz.
The next summer, Stratoz and I went to Oak Park, IL, and visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s first studio, where he lived and worked from 1889-1909. Having a cat wander over to me as I sat outside was a bonus.
Margaret with friendly cat at the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, Oak Park, IL. 1995. Photo by Wayne Stratz.
Then we headed to the Unity Temple, a Unitarian Universalist Church designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1905. The pastor, Augusta Chapin, was a friend of Anna Jones Wright, FLW’s mother. When the old building was struck by lightning and burned down, Frank Lloyd Wright designed a new building entirely of exposed concrete, with no front entrance, and cubist pillars.
Unity Temple by Frank Lloyd Wright, Oak Park, IL. 1995. Photo by Wayne Stratz.
The Unity Temple site includes this quote by Frank Lloyd Wright:
On Organic Architecture
Organic buildings are the strength and lightness of the spiders’ spinning, buildings qualified by light, bred by native character to environment, married to the ground.
Organic architecture seeks superior sense of use and a finer sense of comfort, expressed in organic simplicity.
I would like to have a free architecture. Architecture that belonged where you see it standing – and is a grace to the landscape instead of a disgrace.
True ornament is not a matter of prettifying externals. It is organic with the structure it adorns, whether a person, a building, or a park. At its best it is an emphasis of structure, a realization in graceful terms of the nature of that which is ornament.
H is for Hampshire College, Amherst, MA. In 1987, I transferred from community college, mostly prompted by hearing a woman in an airport in Michigan, on my way home from the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, telling someone that Hampshire was the only school she could imagine attending. I went to the library, and read about Hampshire in the Peterson’s Guide(print of course), and learned I could design my own major, and there were narrative evaluations rather than letter grades.
I loved the creative concept, the interdisciplinary mash-up. The reality was harder to love. I was lonely. I was a work study student in the college post office(and still remember the box numbers), and was baffled by the student who carried his books in a paper bag, but drove a Mercedes, or the students whose parents could pay the tuition in full. I graduated with student loan debt, and a degree that looked like a mandala. There is a niche market in framing them with round mattes.
My room in Hampshire Mod 13, 1990. Photo by Margaret Almon, probably standing in the hallway to get enough distance.
I lived in Greenwich Mod 13, which was named for one of the towns that disappeared under the the Quabbin Reservoir. My room was pie shaped. In honor of today being Orange Tuesday, I have included a photo of my chair, which came with the room.
Greenwich House Donut #2, Mod 13 Hampshire College, 1990. Photograph by Margaret Almon, as she packed up her grandparents’ van with her worldly belongings.Memorable aspects of Hampshire:
The Hampshire College motto is Non Satis Scire: To Know is Not Enough.
The only sports team I recall was Ultimate Frisbee
Hampshire was created by leaders of the other five schools in the region and I took classes at all of them except Amherst, including a poetry workshop with taught by a classmate of Sylvia Plath at Smith College.
The college had a working farm with sheep.
The array of alumni who have gone on to do interesting things from film maker Ken Burns, songwriter Elliott Smith, director Liev Schrieber, and writers Leah Hager Cohen, Jon Krakauer, and comedian Eugene Mirman.
Grey Towers Milford PA, home to Gifford Pinchot(1865-1946). Photo by Wayne Stratz.
G is for Grey Towers, the home of Gifford and Cornelia Pinchot(1881-1960)and built by Gifford’s parents James and Mary Pinchot in Milford, PA. Grey Towers is now a National Historic Site. Gifford Pinchot had a passion for forestry and is a father of sustainable forest programs in the US, and also served two terms as governor of Pennsylvania. Note the majestic mustache.
Gifford Pinchot
Cornelia Pinchot campaigned for women’s right to vote, child labor laws and after her husband died, ran for the governorship, as well as for Congress.
Grey Towers, Dining Room Finger Bowl. Photo by Wayne Stratz.
Stratoz and I had driven by the signs for Grey Towers many times but it was closed for renovations; finally we stopped in 2002 when it had reopened and took a tour. It rises up like a miniature castle, made of PA bluestone. Beyond it’s formal appearance, we discovered the Cornelia’s sense of playfulness, with the outdoor dining room table called the Finger Bowl. Guests passed the dishes afloat.
The Letter Box at Grey Towers, Milford, PA. Photo by Wayne Stratz.
The Letter Box was an office for Gifford Pinchot and archive of his papers, which are now at the Library of Congress. At the end of a reflecting pool was the Bait Box, a playhouse for the Pinchot’s son. There was some larger than life Maple Leaf wallpaper inside the mansion, and I discovered that Gifford’s father made his fortune in wallpaper.
Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright, Bear Run, PA. Photo by Wayne Stratz, 2005.
F is for Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright. Stratoz and I took a trip to see it for our birthdays in July of 2005. Frank Lloyd Wright’s buildings are a mixture of stubbornness, imagination and delight. A house cantilevered over a stream, practically launched into the water.
Wayne Stratz on the grounds of Fallingwater with a Rhododendron leaf, July 2005. Photo by Margaret Almon.
The tour guide told us that Frank Lloyd Wright used yellow ochre throughout the house, inspired by the color of faded Rhododendron leaves from the grounds. Stratoz happened to find a leaf, and it matched his shirt perfectly. Perhaps Frank Lloyd Wright would approve.
Edmonton Public Library Card c. 1982, Edmonton, AB
E is for the Edmonton Public Library, where I spent every Saturday as a girl, and most Saturdays through high school. This was my first bar-coded library card from EPL, and my name have even been printed by a computer. The Edmonton Public Library celebrates its 100 Anniversary in 2013.
This girl isn’t me, but very well could’ve been in the year of 1975, at the Capilano Branch summer reading club, with a rainbow of books. I received my first library card at this branch, on manilla cardstock with rounded corners, with my name imprinted by a manual typewriter. [Edited to add that this link no longer works, and so far I haven’t been able to track down these archival photos of the Edmonton Public Library].
I found an image of another rainbow, like a colorful barcode, at the downtown branch of the Edmonton Public Library.
Rainbow at Edmonton Public Library Parking Garage via bratli on Flickr
In the mid 90’s, and Stratoz and I lived in Dunmore, PA, and one of the most memorable sights was the blue neon Madonna, which would walk by at night as she glowed. I remember the story that Dunmore had its own coal breaker and survived without annexation into Scranton. Because I was pinning photos of Dunmore for my A to Z Challenge Board, I caught the attention of Terry Lee Keller Dell’Amico, who had originally pinned the images, and was from Dunmore. In fact, we discovered, she practically lived next door to us on Cherry Street. Terry offered to send me more photos, including one of the #5 Coal Breaker of Dunmore, which I’d only heard about.
I had a fondness for the Dunmore Candy Kitchen, and perhaps the lovely mosaic floors worked their way into my heart, and my desire to make mosaics. Terry sent me a photo of her favorite stained glass window at the Dunmore Presbyterian Church. There are hidden treasures everywhere.
C is for Canada, my home and not so native land, since I was born in Albuquerque,
and my parents moved to Canada when I was a baby.
Canada didn’t get a flag of its own until 1965 when Prime Minister Lester Pearson
made it a priority, and a competition was held.
In Junior High I had a unit in Social Studies about the history of Canada called Evolution, Not Revolution, and this is illustrated in an account of Joan O’Malley,
who sewed the first prototype as at the request of her father
who worked for the Canadian government:
I really didn’t realize what I was getting into when I got that phone call from my father in 1964. I was just doing my father a favour; not participating in history. Let me tell you, I don’t think of myself as the Betsy Ross type. [bold added]
And sewing the flag was not easy. I was no professional –
I had just sewed some of my clothes before this.
My sewing machine wasn’t made for such heavy material. But eventually, the flag came together.
At the time, it wasn’t the best way I could think of to spend a Friday night.
In fact, my father was more excited than I was about the whole thing –
he was the one who got to deliver the prototypes to Mr. Pearson’s house.
Even though I may not have realized the importance of what I had been asked to do then,
I felt good about sewing the prototypes for the flag. It was certainly not a request people got every day.
Northampton County Area Community College, Bethlehem, PA, c.1986
On Tuesdays I feature something orange, and for the A to Z Challenge, I also needed the letter B. I found this Northampton County Area Community College(NCACC) logo in my old papers from 1986. NCACC is located in Bethlehem, and it’s where I went my first two years of college. From far north in Canada, I had applied to Oberlin, Brown, and Vassar, because they were part of the guidance office’s small collection of college catalogs, but I had no idea of the competition. I was on two waiting lists, which disappointed me then, but now seems miraculous.
I also applied to several Canadian universities and was planning on attending University of Toronto, but imagining moving all the way across Canada from Alberta to a city I’d never seen was overwhelming. I decided to spend the summer with my mother and sister in Bethlehem. A friend from church suggested I look at going to community college until I figured out what I wanted to do. I loved NCACC, and it’s where I met Stratoz. B is for Bethlehem, the Christmas City, with a star on the hill made of lights.
Self Portrait on a Bethlehem Porch, Margaret Almon, 1987.
It is the first day of the 2013 A to Z Challenge of writing a blog post a day for the the month of April. This my 3rd year of participating in the A to Z and I am writing about places I have lived or love. A is for Alberta, Canada, where I lived until I was 17 years old.
I realized that I didn’t know how Alberta got its name, and discovered it was named for Princess Louise Caroline Alberta(1848-1939), 6th child of Queen Victoria, and Lake Louise was named for her as was the town of Caroline, AB. At one point, there was talk of combining the territories of Alberta and Saskatchewan into one big province named Buffalo, which would have shifted this to the letter B. Princess Louise Caroline Alberta was an artist, and she married(a “subject of the crown”), and did not have any children.
I learned a song about Alberta in the late 1970’s, and we sang along with a loud cassette tape recording, but I can’t remember it’s name. I did find Hey, That’s Alberta, written by Carol Bonham of Delburne, AB, which declares in the liner notes that this was a Provincial Song, an Alberta Anthem, which could spread the fame of Alberta to every corner of the world. Alberta has it’s moments of fame, and enfolded within the name is this Princess I never knew about, who I have more in common with than I would have expected. Alberta, that’s where it’s really at.
![Flag Design [QaSena] / Suggestion de drapeau [QaSena]](https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7012/6483309963_65d5e2e783_z.jpg)
