Thorncrown Chapel

This will come as a shock to you big city, bi-coastal types but one of the American Institute of Architecture's top ten buildings of the twentieth century is in rural northwestern Arkansas. So can you guess where I went on my Christmas vacation? It was an easy but day long drive down from Des Moines and would be a quick trip from Kansas City. Four lanes almost all the way. Then, boom. There you are in the Ozark mountains looking at a modernist interpretation of La Sainte Chappelle in the woods.

Some fellow from Pine Bluff built his retirement home on a pretty piece of property up in the mountains. He found that a lot of passers-by wandered up his driveway to admire the view and got the idea to build a chapel to inspire and provide respite for these travelers. The chapel opened in 1980 but not before some trials and tribulations that lend themselves well to moral lesions about aligning one's desires with God's plan. The Chapel worked its magic on us. The instant we saw it we went from weary road drones to curious and engaged explorers. Go visit it someday or go to Thorncrown Journal and indulge yourself in imagining the comfort some people must get from having their world ordered and explained by their faith.

Counter Clockwise

Last year we spent Christmas in Arkansas. We went down and sprang Hazel from the nursing home for a few hours and had a lovely Christmas dinner with the "twice removed" cousins. Then we drove up to Des Moines to see my folks. We had New Years Eve in a rest stop in Ohio.

This year we did it the other way around. We went first to Des Moines where we had a truly tranquil Christmas. A tranquil Christmas is highly unusual. My mother only recently noticed that I am an adult and seems finally to have let go of the need to make Christmas into some kind of an "experience." My family was never that numerous to start with even with the various step-relationships so now that we are all grown up and some of us downright aged we just slap a wreath on the front door and call it Christmas. We exchange gift cards for the most part. The really ambitious among us make charitable donations in each others names. Don't get the impression it was not meaningful. This year I had the deepest sense of gratitude I think I've experienced in a long time. This year no one is actively dying. At least not any more than we each are every day. This year no one was facing prison time. This year no one asked me for medical advice.

In retrospect I suspect we are just gathering our energies for another good go around.

FM Wisdom

From a country song:
If you're goin' through hell
Don't slow down.

Christmas Road Trip 2006

For the price of two round trip plane tickets to that holiday hot spot: Des Moines, Iowa we have just returned home from a week long road trip. As usual we left home in the evening and drove all night. When I say we I mean we were both in the car since My Beloved does 90 percent of the driving day or night. As usual we planned to spend the morning in an interesting spot and this time we chose Columbus Indiana. Yes, Columbus Indiana! You mean you didn't know there was a Columbus in Indiana? We'll neither did we until we saw a write up in Dwell my favorite home design magazine. Columbus has quite a collection of modernist buildings and a huge collection of public art in part subsidized by the Cummins family whose deisel engine company is headquartered there.
So we rolled into town around 5am I think and napped in the car for a while. Next we lined up with the locals at a diner which started serving at 6am. I failed to notice the name of the place but had the best road tea I've ever had. Unfortunately the people up at that hour were impressively ignorant about their city so we went over to the Columbus Inn and got a two dollar self-guided tour map. The pictures of Columbus on the Dwell website are probably better but mine have that special quality only the freaking crack of dawn can confer.