#nativeplaces

Photographer: @philippe_rikir

Location: Valley of the Gods, UT, USA⠀

⠀

St George’s Episcopal Church a good onion

Much as I admire the superstars of architecture wished upon us by social media, I’d like to make a plea for a little ordinariness in building.

Consider this church in Lake Landing, North Carolina, for example. It’s sheltered in the same gable-roofed box shape that once housed ancient Greek temples and now houses tobacco barns. Ordinary. But the little church gains some gravitas from a cemetery, two ancient cedar trees nearby, and the fact that it has weathered winds whistling over Lake Mattamuskeet for over 150 years.

A church like this can creep into your affections in a way that glitz and steel cannot.

After all, buildings can be friends. And the ordinariness of sunlight on a church porch or a breakfast table happens more often than stardom.

Perry

“I Don’t Know what to call him, But he’s mighty like a rose.” Lyrics by Frank Lebby Stanton Music by Ethelbert Nevin

It was New Year’s Eve at Duke University Hospital emergency room in Durham, North Carolina, and my friend Perry was dying. Few places have the adrenalin rush and high anxiety of a hospital emergency room at night. There was nothing anyone could do for Perry but make him comfortable.

I stepped outside under the canopy where the ambulances unloaded.

A mother and her eight-year-old son offered me a place to sit beside them on the wooden bench underneath the canopy. Then she walked away to talk on her cell phone.

As I sat thinking of Perry, a tiny voice from behind me asked, “What did you get for Christmas?”

It might as well have been Elijah; I was so startled.

I told the little boy that my favorite Christmas present was a book about the oldest living things in the world. And what did he get, I asked? His favorite gift was a football.

Hidcote Manor a remedy for distraction

Let’s face it: Driving in Britain sucks. There are too many cars on the road, petrol stations outnumber tea shops, once picturesque villages are crammed with car parks, and there’s always a double-decker bus swerving in front of you. Besides, my daughter wouldn’t let me drive on a recent trip to Hidcote Manor in the Cotswolds.

Just past the car-choked village of Chipping Campden, she drove into the car park at Hidcote Manor where the very leaves on the trees tinkled with peace and quiet. We spent the day wandering through gardens that were like outdoor rooms embraced by tawny brick walls and hedges trimmed like green velvet. As we strolled between garden doorposts, we remembered what the original meaning of “paradise” was: a walled garden.

Only this was paradise with peonies and vistas laid out by Major Lawrence Johnson in the 1920s for the enjoyment of his guests, and now preserved by the National Trust.

Hidcote welcomed us as guests that autumn afternoon, offering a remedy for distraction. Somewhere in the distance cars flew by. But here, two velvet hedges stretched over 300 feet uphill to the sky.

Kansas Barn everything where it ought to be

Lines In the Sky like smog

Power lines are like a mortgage in the sky. We sign away our view so that we’ll get the energy to toast our bread and dry our hair. Power lines are big money to some, eyesores to all, and essential to civilization. Besides, we couldn’t make selfies without them.

Electrical engineers built the first coal and steam power plant in Raleigh, North Carolina, here on West Street in 1910. Their machines generated electricity for street lights and trolley cars and later for waffle irons and washing machines. Since then power lines have gone haywire. They remind me of the shrapnel scars left in French villages after two world wars.

Others cities manage their electricity in alleyways or underground. In London, the power is beneath the sidewalk.

Here in North Carolina, power lines are like smog. They’re literally in the air, shaping unconsciously the way we see the world.

Palmyra before anyone noticed

Whenever I drive to Charlottesville, Virginia, on Highway 15, I pause at a small courthouse that rests acropolis-like above the village of Palmyra.

I like the courthouse. Its shapely columns and brick walk suggest an approachable, friendly kind of government.

New towns with classical Greek names like Palmyra flourished in the first 50 years of the Republic. Thomas Jefferson and his friends saw architecture as a civilizing force. And to Jefferson, Greek democracy and Greek architecture offered the correct guidelines for constructing a new society in America.

That was in 1831, when Palmyra courthouse was built with plain brick columns and painted wood.

Nowadays, courthouses in our big cities are the size of teaching hospitals. As our society and laws grow more complex, it’s refreshing to pause beside a building that represents democracy at a human scale.

In the valleys around Palmyra, farmers grow corn and soy beans beside forage land for hay. Their houses are shaded by trees.

Dispatch from New Orleans a city's small pleasures