Speaking of geological Legos, I read that when Frank LLoyd Wright was living in Japan, building the Tokyo Hotel, he ordered a million white shirts from the tailors. He was a very, very, fussy person. When they were brought for his approval, he got a little animated about how he wanted them changed, and grabbed a red pen from his desk. He began to scribble notes on the shirts, trying to explain through an interpreter what he wanted. The tailor knew this guy was a BIG SHOT American, the world's most famous architect for decades by then, responsible for every artistic design and detail on what was practically the world's most architected building ~ but he couldn't believe what Mr Wright wanted, and said politely are you sure. Well, Frank, ultimate egotist, said of course duh.
Frank gets his shirts back later, and all are done the same as his sample. Each of his hand-inked notes and specifications for changes have been repeated precisely in red embroidery, on every shirt.
I would really like to have one of those. When I read that story, I thought, I bet Frank threw those shirts in with the papyrus and koi in the reflecting pool. But I'd really like to have them. "Some". (Heck, even one.) They were probably still on the bottom when they later tore down the building, as the Japanese probably assumed that's what Frank had wanted to do with them from the start. Maybe an American christening ritual. (More acceptable to me, more appropriate really, than having a girl go into a new ship and pee on it.) (But I think that's Nordic or English tradition, which explains that.)
Frank's favorite color was red. He drove a red convertible. Early Lincoln, maybe. Drove fast; like Jackson Pollock. It's not surprising Jackson drove fast, looking at his paintings. But Frank died of old adage, and Pollock crashed into a tree at about 100 miles an hour and burst into flames. (The car was home, undamaged.)
Frank died in 1959, and Jackson in 1956!!
Frank once broke into an in-session Chrysler corporate board meeting at (pretty sure on this) the top of the Chrysler Building in New York, with some of his students. He went around the room, ignoring the members, and used his walking cane to point out, and belittle, what he considered cheap and tacky and unimaginative details, and then left. He was wearing a cape.
I like Frank.
Except he abandoned one of his wives. Oh Frank.
He really liked his mother though. (That makes it different, right Penni?)
Some people credit Frank's mother with beginning and fostering Frank's engineering and artistic destiny. She gave him LOTS of toys. He was especially fond of a type of toy blocks popular with upper-crust educationally "bent" families in the last century, called Froebel blocks. Lots of handmade wooden blocks of all sizes and shapes, and Frank spewed them out all over the floor and built, built, built. While his father banged, banged, banged Bach on the piano. Which is remarkable! Because my parents gave me a set of Lincoln Logs. Green planks and brown logs. The planks were for roof, or neatly row-mowed grass if you preferred or wanted to see in the building or weren't sure why roof planks would be green and didn't want to be asked. You could pretty much build a cabin, and that was it. They fit in a Quaker oatmeal box. If you looked, there was actually a Quaker underneath the Lincoln when it came to a stop.
By the way, I just remembered that Paul Gauguin did too. Loved his mother. Anine or Aline, or Aime, or something, Gauguin was her name. That might have been his daughter. Too, she might have been named for his mother, her grandmother.
He also abandoned one of his families. Bad.
Well. That's it for today. Unless I think of something.
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