We didn’t really stop to tour the gardens, but they are obviously amazing. In this season, it’s a sea of tulips.
Inside the Biltmore
We spent just a couple of hours touring the mansion, enough to hustle through all of it, but you could spend a lot longer. Dad and Judith got annual passes, and I can see why they would want to go back many times.
In addition to the many themed and decorated rooms, there was a temporary exhibit of movie wedding gowns. The whole thing just cries out for costume dramas, so not a particularly shocking choice. Here’s a dress worn by Helena Bonham Carter in Frankenstein.
The house was built in 1895 by a young Vanderbilt scion, the grandson of the big railroad tycoon Cornelius. Although they had John Singer Sargent practically on retainer, I liked this portrait of Mrs. Vanderbilt by Boldini more.
Much of the furnishings were collected on his trips to Europe. This 17th-century Spanish strongbox with intricate lock in the top was a standout.
The house was a high-tech marvel. In addition to its Otis elevator (still running on the original DC motor), the intercom system was elaborate and even connected the bathtubs to a supply of hot and cold running servants.
The gym… rowing machines have come a long way.
Worth the exorbitant admission price? All in all I have to say yes. They’ve done a great job with the place.
Biltmore Estate
On Thursday, after a fantastic brunch at Biscuit Head restaurant (why yes, I did eat grits every single day I was in NC), we made the near-obligatory pilgrimage to the Biltmore Estate. It’s a truly impressive property, 8,000 acres of Olmsted-designed grounds, anchored of course by the mansion, which is every bit as grand as the French castles it emulates.
I had to stitch two shots together to get two smiles… 
Going to the dogwoods
Outside Dad and Judith’s new apartment. I thought Asheville was very nice… a lot like Brattleboro only bigger, warmer and more prosperous. If only it weren’t for that pesky state legislature.
Zipping right along
In Asheville, some of the more progressive people eschew duct tape altogether and choose zip ties instead.
Et tu, Buncombe?
On a morning run in Asheville, I was impressed to see that the Buncombe County Municipal Sewerage District has a Latin motto, something the entire state of Vermont only got last year.
I can’t contain myself
After finishing up in Charlotte, I drove to Asheville to see my dad in his new NC home. First stop, Smoky Park Supper Club, built entirely from shipping containers. Great meal, beautiful building.
Numinous
The word “numinous ” is one of the few things I can specifically recall learning in a college class. Of course I learned a zillion things that way, but for whatever reason I have a specific memory of the lecture where this idea was first described.
It is an adjective to describe the wonder/terror you feel in the presence of the Divine. I don’t expect to ever really feel it the way it’s intended to be felt, but sometimes even on this material plane maybe we can approach the numinous in the presence of greatness.
This week I’m in Charlotte NC for a few days, or a suburb actually, and it’s certainly pretty. All the office buildings look fresh-sprung from the lush green grass, and have LEED certification. The wastewater and runoff areas are done up as pretty ponds with fountains. The cars are clean, and driven politely. The breeze is just the right speed and temperature to ruffle the fur on the golden retrievers.
Even the little wild areas around the fringe, off the side of the neatly raked gravel walking trail, are served by an extensive sewer system.
And then, on this morning’s walk, validation. That ineffable contentment, that sense of being in the presence of a wholly other level of real estate development, is real, and has been recognized by people who know about that sort of thing. Divine!
Pamrex 32″
This seemed like a pretty fancy manhole cover, with the hinges and all, and sho nuff it is.
Best of all, the Pamrex web site gave me a term I’ve been looking for: access covers. I’d been resistive to the term “manhole”… but access covers captures the range of things I want to categorize and avoids any potential misunderstandings about just what kind of blog this is.
Old school
In Brattleboro, some of us think fancy colored duct tape is for sissies.
Can you dig it?
And speaking of angles of repose, the big retaining wall project is well underway.
Give a man an earthmover and he’ll dig things up for a day. But teach a man to make the earth move, and he’ll always have a date.
Or something like that.
See that guardrail in the background? Before that went in a couple years ago, they just plowed the snow over the edge. Now, they push it into a nice neat pile with bigass bucket loaders, then later they scoop it into dump trucks and take it to Area 51 where it’s used to keep the aliens cool. All good, and vital to our national security.
The problem comes when the dump truck is in between trips. For those minutes, the guy in the giant bucket loader doesn’t have anything to do. Bored, he drives back and forth tidying up the snow pile. I mean, it’s gotta be kind of fun… ok, Disneyland fun in my opinion… to drive one of those things, and I would do the same. Scrape, lift, push, lift, sprinkle, scrape, repeat, until every little snow lump is piled just up to the angle of repose.
As shown here, all that futzing around with a snow pile centered on the foreground guardrail does have consequences…
The stories we tell
Last night, thanks to the unexpected generosity of the Retreat, we got tickets to The Hatch’s annual storytelling extravaganza at the Latchis.
Fronted by Tom Bodett and led by a gang of local movers and shakers masquerading as soccer moms, the Hatch brings storytellers (in the vein of This American Life or The Moth) to town for a fundraiser. Each year they choose one charity, and last night was Youth Services. A fun event for a worthy cause.
As it happens, there was also a Paul Stone painting available via silent auction… that brings our collection to two.
The program was certainly entertaining, and it really was a good cause, and we were happy to be there. But of course there’s a niggle…
In these times we live in, it has become possible for a whole class of people to get astoundingly good at doing spoken word performance stuff (and also blogging !!!), from standup to serious. This show leans heavily toward the personal and confessional, the kind of reflective story you’d unexpectedly share with a college friend you haven’t seen in 20 years.
Except these stories are edited, polished, perfected, and practiced so they seem even more real than they already are. Which somehow makes them less real to me. Constructed rather than lived… recited rather than shared.
Somehow the standard for “truth” in these spoken memories seems uncomfortably fuzzy to me. In photos, when we airbrush our fashion models, or rearrange the bodies on the battlefield, most people object that there’s been an act of deceit. And when Ben Carson talks about West Point… But when these radio storytellers deliver their homilies about life and loss and love, we aren’t fact-checking. I think even if we did find things to quibble about in these stories, we’d decide that the authenticity of the emotions they conjure outweighs the heavy use of craft to convey them.
Anyway, it’s all just a niggling question, of little real importance. The Hatch’s mission is clear and benevolent … use the power of narrative to raise money for groups that need it. Since I support the causes they support, and since it really was a great show, I’m quite willingly complicit.
And years from now, using all the techniques I’ve been able to glean from watching and listening to Bodett and crew, I’ll lean over to the tourist who just walked into the beach bar and tell him my story.
Student Prince
Last weekend we stopped off at the Student Prince, hoping against hope that there would be early fiddleheads. No, and the rest of the appetizers were not at their best in the middle of a Sunday afternoon. But, we did get to goggle at the beer stein collection and have a nice glass of some German bräu or other, so not a total loss.
Tripping Feyly, Gayly Over the Verandah
Probably Tina Fey and I agree pretty often, but we don’t know each other that well, so I can’t be sure. One point on which we are united, however, is that neither of us is impressed with Gay Talese. Maybe for different reasons, but still, me and Tina, we’re in harmony on this thing.
My reason for being unimpressed with Gay Talese is that I just barely know who he is. He was/is a journalist who pushed at the literary edges of that craft in his own books and some of the major American magazines of the 1960s and 1970s, along with a bunch of other famous guys people. I didn’t really read those magazines at that time, and there are other journalists and other magazines that wormed their way into my reading habits. Mostly, it’s just a generational thing, I guess.
Tina’s reasons, however, are more pointed. At a recent conference, 84-year-old Talese bumbled an answer to an audience question about the women writers who inspired him. None, he said, women weren’t into that kind of thing at that time, didn’t really know of any good women role models for him. Ouch! As recounted in the Brattleboro Reformer, a sharp intake of breath was followed by mad typing on 500 smartphones, and a whole bunch of smart, influential women eviscerated Talese on Twitter. Fey was just piling on, but I love how she did it… an absolute stone-cold put-down, but funny in just her quirky deadpan way even if you didn’t understand the reference: just a silly non sequitur to wrap up the interview. Bam!
But this is not “Boston literary seminar adventure” or “New York literati of a certain age adventure,” no indeed. This is Brattleboro Adventure, and yes this story does belong here. The audience question that started the whole discussion came from local poet and Packers Corner commune co-founder Verandah Porche. Never met her, but I bet she and I would agree on a lot of principles and very few details. I feel the same way about Bernie Sanders, come to think of it. Honestly, I have a hard time getting past her name.
Why would you raise your hand and ask somebody a difficult or challenging or provocative question in public? Maybe you want to call out an old codger whose attitudes toward women are outdated at least and probably worse. Maybe you want helpfully to prompt an expansion of his original answer so he doesn’t unintentionally come off as a misogynist. Maybe you just want to hear your own voice and show your insightfulness. Maybe you hope the answer will shine a good spotlight on the women he neglected to mention. Maybe you’re just genuinely curious. Whatever her reasons, Ms. Porche showed the power of a short, simple question, and reminded us that even our best and brightest have their smudges. For her as a poet, I would think it would be profoundly satisfying to create such a stir with so few words, and profoundly sad that the stir stirred up something unpleasant from the bottom of the pot.
Best of all, she inadvertently brought me and Tina Fey a little closer together (Tina, please feel free to come over for coffee anytime…).
Brattleboro Adventure – the Auckland Edition 