Old places and some recognition

 

The Black Mountain library, 2026

Entrance to library 2023. the plantings have been cleared by the Beautification Committee and so no more Harry Lauder Walking Sticks or bulbs which pop up early each year. Now we have staid evergreens.

Black Mtn Depot 1910. Photograph by Herbert W. Pelton

Undated postcard but still from yesteryear!

A train at Black Mountain depot, undated.

Black Mountain College Studies Building at Black Mountain College has been named one of just 10 historic places in the United States as part of the World Monuments Fund’s Irreplaceable America list.

A historic building gained "World Monuments" status. It was part of the Black Mountain College.  

Sharing with Sepia Saturday

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Yesterday I decided to plan to get everything packed quickly and then have a last vacation here.  Why didn’t I think of that before? Lots of reasons, mainly health!

So I struggle along. Work a while. Rest a long while. Feel overwhelmed a lot!

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Talked on phone with my son who reassured me that the wildfires north of his town  are not of any concern, and the one in Mesa Verde National park was contained and put out. That was a relief. I remind myself that he had been a wildland firefighter for the National Forest Service for several years, and for AmeriCorps before that.

And the biggest personal relief, which I really didn't expect, was my son telling me to stop thinking I'm going to be a burden to them. I keep doing that, I guess. It does seem to be in my DNA. So I'm going to be a gift to them. I will arrive with a big bow on top of my head. Mom the gift.

This and that

 This week my post for Sepia Saturday is early...since last week I didn't post till Sunday!

by Hazel Larsen Archer, Black Mountain College Studies Building, c. late 1940s. Black Mountain NC campus. Vintage gelatin silver print. Courtesy of Erika Archer Zarow.⁠

This building is among my 2008 photos on my blog about Lake Eden, also on that campus site.

Albert (no other information known, until you go to Sepia Saturday.)

My paternal grandmother "Gummy" with my cousins, her older three granddaughters, Claudette standing on right of photo. and Sandra standing on the left. Gummy was holding myself, Barbara, age 11 months. So glad she dated this. Gummy would have been 57, Claudette 3 years and 10 months, and Sandra was just 2 years and 7 months. They were about 14 months apart but I could never keep up with my cousins.

“The aim of human life is to know thyself,” says Timothy Leary.

 “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” Will Rogers 

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Check out my continuing rambles over on Inner Workings. It's allowed me to let my hair down (figuratively) while focusing on beauty, peace and love over here on this blog. I also have begun a new series started this month "Living till Dying."

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Photo from Google maps...the upscale condos are right next to where these new homes will be built (currently a horse pasture)

A new land trust will be building low and moderate income homes near where I now live. It is presently a horse pasture. My road, Blue Ridge Rd. is soon (whenever the funding comes through) to have an exit from I-40. It will be around 1/2 mile from the new homes. The little road will definitely need to be widened and revamped. Civilization is coming into the country. Here's the article in The Valley Echo.

Bucky Fuller

Just look at all those triangles! This is one of the designs in the gallery that was an extension of the presentation last weekend at the Black Mountain Center for the Arts.

A friend and I attended the Sunday night performance, and it was a really wonderful experience. - Another talented one-man show! And David Novak had the Buckminster Fuller persona down pat.

 And then he even had memorized a whole 2-1/2 hour show(with 15 min. intermission)!  I loved it, and wondered that he is going to be performing it in Poland this next week. I can't imagine being able to discuss these concepts in another language...but apparently he can! The author of the play was D. W. Jacobs, and it's been performed more than 1,000 times since he wrote in in 2000.

My first experience with R. Buckminster Fuller was reading his book "Operating Manuel for Spaceship Earth" back in the 60s-70s...as well as many iterations of the Whole Earth Catalog. He was very popular with the counter-culture, and I was thrilled in 1971 to join a UU Church in Tampa FL that was housed in a geodesic dome.  I also saw the domes in the New York Worlds Fair and Expo 67 in Montreal. Then Disney World had opened in Orlando with Epcot.

David Novak as R. Buckminster Fuller giving a lecture/performance at BMCA

Anyway, I also remember driving my camper van with some friends from Tallahassee to Altanta GA to hear Bucky Fuller speak in person, probably in 1977-78.  We camped in the van after the lecture, which might have been in the Fox Theatre. It was amazing to hear him talk quickly in much the same long drawn-out sentences, with no words less than 3 syllables, and often modifying something that had been mentioned in several sentences prior, but it mostly made sense. When did he catch a breath?

I just looked quickly at his biography, because I was pretty sure he was related to an early UU/transcendentalist, Margaret Fuller.  Yes, she was his great aunt but they never met, because she died about 50 years before his birth. And I learned in the bio that Bucky Fuller was the world president of MENSA from 74-83.

But back to the performance...and the great exhibit in the gallery at BMCA last week.  We quickly looked at the exhibit during the intermission.  It included some panels and artifacts from the Museum of Black Mountain College (Asheville, NC). The college is where Bucky first put his idea of the geodesic dome into models...and finally a working one.