“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”
― Charles Bukowski

In the 1970s I hung out at the Minnesota Historical Society a lot, in their old building, not far from the Capitol. Their reading room was frumpy and newspapers, of course, were on microfilm in a room across the hall. If you’ve ever used a microform reader, you know they were designed by Dr Mengele.

Staff at the reference desk were business-like but pleasant, helpful to a fault. I was especially pleased with the photocopying, which had to be done by staff, on their schedule, not yours. Resources were retrieved from the “stacks” by runners, again, when there were enough call slips to warrant a trip. Once you got used to the rhythm, your time was unbearably productive.

One of the more unusual staff wasn’t part of the archive, so your path was unlikely to cross his. Frankly I can’t recall how or when we met but it was memorable. His name was Charles W. Nelson and he was the Society’s “historical architect”, in charge of the statewide survey of historic resources and involved with National Register nominations, which is probably how I met him.

I didn’t know Nelson well enough to call him “Charlie” but I did hear stories about his time in the architecture program at the UofMN, while it was still a Modernist institution. Apparently, Nelson took assignments seriously but betrayed the interest in historical buildings by responding to all the studio projects with buildings that were Richardsonian Romanesque or Italianate or whatever struck his fancy, I suspect. I wasn’t intelligent enough to ask him about that, nor did I see any of the actual work. But the very idea fascinated me and laid the foundation for my contributions to the Agincourt Project. To whit:

• a 1915 Carnegie-era public library — the project which generated the whole project in the first place — in the style of Louis Sullivan, with an Arts & Crafts spin. I’m very happy with the planning of the library; it would work well, I feel. The scale of the building is good, but the details are still a challenge…after fourteen years. Stay tuned.
• A Methodist Episcopal church circa 1920 in Akron-Auditorium mode. Having studied A-A churches for twenty years, if I couldn’t meet that challenge it would have been time to hang it up. But here, too, I’m a plan guy: I have doubts about its three-dimensionality.
• The Episcopal church of St Joseph the Carpenter was also a cake walk, possibly the easiest of the projects I took on: A modest 1870s “Gothic Revival” design, renovated in 1898, with an Arts & Crafts chapel addition in 1915.
• Fennimore County courthouse #2, an opportunity to lock horns with the Richardsonian Romanesque. But that was too easy, too generic, so I increased the “degree of difficulty” by assigning the commission to my research interest William Halsey Wood. Why? Because #1) I admire his work; #2) he never designed a public building, hence I was free of precedent; and #3) it’s a complex program with multiple departments (which can become little fiefdoms) more or less equivalent.

There are other projects but these are my favorites.* Some time before I cut ties with SODAA, it would be fun to stage an exhibit of this stuff. Fun for me. Others? Who knows.

And now it would valuable to chat with Charlie Nelson about something we seem to have in common — except he died in 2007. RIP, Mr Nelson, fellow traveler.

* The sign insanity is doing the same thing repetitively, but expecting different results. Such has been my experience in doing history-based studios. Enough said.

Home Grown

It’s a borderline revelation to revisit the blog and find themes that weave their way haltingly throughout, many of them freudian and unintentional. I suspect that it may be a generational thing.

Sure, a disproportionate share of historical change happens incrementally — watching those hands on the clock move so subtly that we fail to notice — which means the changes I’m talking about were already well under way when I arrived consciously on the scene in the late 1940s and early 50s, so I can’t claim to have had much to do with them other than being an interested observer. But it’s clear that the Agincourt of my “youth”, the Agincourt I’ve imagined from that time, has extended its influence into the present. It’s resisted those processes because I want to recreate a time less fraught, more user-friendly, than the “time” outside this bubble that I’ve created. Mea culpa. Pendulums swing and the Bedford Park of my own experience has come back to haunt me in the best way possible.

As I reflect on all these small gestures, they’ve obviously had a cumulative effect on this fictional place. Consider a few of them:

• DeBijenkorf’s Department Store takes its name from a real Dutch institution, the Netherlands’ equivalent of Nordstrom’s or what in my own experience Marshall Field once was but is no more. So, an opportunity to introduce Dutch immigration to the U.S., of which Iowa has a disproportionate share [viz. Pella]. But subconsciously I was reflected a much closer encounter with Iowa local history: Steve Varenhorst, a former student of our program at NDSU, came from the family of a home-owned department store in Storm Lake — just down the road from Agincourt, in fact. I hope Steve doesn’t mind.
• It has been shown that the shorter the distance from production to point-of-sale, cost is reduced and freshness maintained. So agribusinesses like Fennimore Industries reflect that relatively recent understanding. And a manufacturer of pots and pans would have employed locals and used local materials to the greatest extent possible.
• Even something as minor as The Periodic Table, a locally-sourced restaurant found by Rosemary Plička and her husband Brad Nowatsky, reflects that “home-grown” intention. I genuinely hope it’s been a success since its founding more than five years ago.
• Strangely, the internet has contributed to this phenomenon. A used bookstore like Shelf Life could never succeed with only a local audience. But posting its stock on search engines like Biblio.com, Alibris, and others puts a dealer like Hamish Brookes in a competitive position. So, too, for “Alouette” brand maple syrup, produced in Vermont by Catherine LaFarge, Howard Tabor’s sister, formerly local distribution expands to serve a world-wide consumer base.
• There has also been a tendency for Agincourt to take care of its own: “Pliny’s Purse” is a local benefaction; or “Common Ground”, a local initiative to provide WWI doughboys with benefits that would have to wait for the G.I. Bill to be put in place at the conclusion of WWII.

What about “home delivery”? I recall the knife sharpener who made the rounds during the spring and summer months. Home delivery of milk and other dairy products. The Fuller Brush Man. The goddam Good Humor man, for krysake! What about local beer that doesn’t have to be pasteurized, made both safe and tasteless at the same time? How much of this has managed to hold on through those lean years of globalization?

I should rest my case — before I bore you, exhaust my arsenal of examples, or unintentionally offend. But you get the point. “Think globally. Act Locally.” It really is a question of the chicken and the egg and the distance between them.

By the way, if I intend to offend you, you’ll know it.

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