inkbluesky

jennie garth’s flower tattoo

Almost all I know about American architect Frank Loyld Wright is from specials that I’ve seen on educational channels over the years. He might be the only architect that people can identify by name. If not by name they may recognize the famous Falling Water house built over a small waterfall or the Guggenheim Museum. I’m late to discovering that among many other things he also was a city designer, Frank Lloyd Wright: Broadacre City

The imagery of Broadacre City was developed through a philosophical convergence of the organic and the inorganic. From the structure of the homes to Wright’s notion of work, there was an inherent attempt to fuse the ideas of pre-modern agrarian life with the ideas of modern industrial life.

There is a smal sketch about middle of a slow loading page. On seeing it I thought that for one no city seems to have been created or expanded based on Wright’s theme and two, after the massive growth of suburban sprawl of the sixties and seventies that it is too late to create Wright’s Utopian urban vision. I’m was at least partially wrong on the first assumption according to this essay,  Return to Broadacre City, What should suburbia look like?

Broadacre City had virtually no discernible impact on the way cities were built; indeed, it is possible to earn degrees in architecture or planning and never hear of it. Yet the urbanizing fringes of Illinois’ cities look remarkably like what Wright imagined 70 years ago, at least in major aspects

I’m not familiar with Illinois so something to look out for if I’m ever up that way.

A Passion for Parrots and the Fight to Save Them in the Wild 

Q. For how long have parrots had an association with humans?

A. Certainly for much of recorded human history. Alexander the Great brought parrots back from his Asian expeditions. The ancient Romans had them, too. When Australia and South America were opened up to Europeans by the voyages of discovery of the 16th and 17th century, the international trade in the birds really began. Today the parakeet is second to the goldfish as the world’s most popular pet.

Q. Do you have any insight why parrots make such good pets?

A. Unlike most other birds, they can imitate human speech. That endears them to people and creates a bond. If you keep a blue jay or a sparrow, it’s not going to do more than hop around in a cage. A parrot will talk to you.

One of the most memorable birds I’d ever encountered was a corella, a kind of Australian cockatoo. In the 1970’s, a woman rang up a research institute where I worked complaining of a bird she’d inherited from her deceased grandfather. We took it off her hands. It turned out this corella had originally been given to her grandfather by some Aboriginals. As a young man, in 1910, the grandfather had worked on the construction of the Australian railway system, and somewhere the Aboriginals had gifted him with this bird. Well, the corella had a repertoire of camp noises from the railway, pots and pans, brash talk — and he did all this in an Aboriginal dialect! Sixty years later! These birds have an amazing learning capacity.

I’ve been around some parrots; African Greys- mean to most people except their original owners and sometimes even then. Sun Conyers - clownish and playful, and when they occasionally bite its not as bad as a grey’s bite. Blue Macaws - great talkers and beautiful, in between on the friendliness scale. I have a tendency to think they’re all better off in the wild, especially the large parrots.