The home is full of unique features and original design concepts.  Additionally, the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture conducts classes there 6 months of the year.

While the architecture of this particular home wasn't necessarily my cup of tea compared to some of Wright's other works, it was still pretty cool (despite being 110 degrees).

By the way, I'd recommend that you not wear a dark navy blue shirt on the tour since a lot of it is outside. Even the parts that are inside don't necessarily include air conditioning.

Cheers,
Braddog

Before I forget, let me say that Dubai is the name of an emirate (one of seven) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the eastern Arabian Peninsula, or that emirate's main city, sometimes called "Dubai City" to distinguish it from the emirate. The Arabic meaning for the word Burj is "tower", which gives Burj Dubai a meaning of "Dubai Tower" or "Tower of Dubai". Having said that, let me get to the nitty-gritty of today's post.

The Emirate of Dubai has attracted world-wide attention through innovative real estate projects and sports events. It's one of the most expensive sites on the planet with imposing architectural structures competing with those located in Shanghai or Beijing in China.

"During the course of the 1990s many foreign trading communities—first from Kuwait, during the Persian Gulf War, and later from Bahrain, during the Shia unrest, moved their businesses to Dubai. Dubai provided refueling bases to allied forces at the Jebel Ali Free Zone during the Persian Gulf war, and again, during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Large increases in oil prices after the Persian Gulf war, encouraged Dubai to continue to focus on free trade and tourism. The success of the Jebel Ali Free Zone allowed the city to replicate its model to develop clusters of new free zones, including Dubai Internet City, Dubai Media City, and Dubai Maritime City.

The construction of Burj Al Arab, the world's tallest freestanding hotel, as well as the creation of new residential developments, were used to market Dubai for purposes of tourism. Since 2002, the city has seen an increase in private real estate investment in recreating Dubai's skyline with such projects as The Palm Islands, The World's Islands and Burj Dubai." [Wikipedia Encyclopedia]

The Burj Dubai, currently under construction, is headed to be the tallest building in the world. It will be considered a monument, a jewel and an icon for the City of Dubai. The authorities of Dubai are very determined that this is so. Construction began on September 21, 2004, and is expected to be completed and ready for occupation in September 2009.

The total budget for the Burj Dubai structure is approximately $1 billion and for the entire new "Downtown Dubai", $20 billion. Mohamed Ali Alabbar, the CEO of Emaar Properties, said that the price of office space at the Burj Dubai had reached $4,000 per square feet. This is one of the reasons, they say this building is an expensive jewel.

As of June 17, 2008, the Burj Dubai had reached a height of 636 meters (2,087 feet), with 160 completed floors. Although the tower actually has risen higher since that time, no height increases will be officially reported until the tower is completed on September 2009.

The design of the Burj Dubai is reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright's vision of the The Illinois Building, a mile high skyscraper designed for Chicago. Also the design of this giant tower is derived from patterning systems embodied in Islamic architecture, with the triple-lobed footprint of the building based on an abstracted version of the flower hymenocallis.

Needless to say, this structure is absolutely impressive. Just describing it will take hundreds of pages, and that would be kinda boring. Instead, I will show you stunning photographs of this giant of the desert that will knock your socks off. I found these photographs while surfing Gizmodo Website. The photographs were taken by David Hobcote who hired a helicopter in order to take a series of amazing high resolution pictures from the air which provide an exact impression of the breathtaking, massive scale of this building.

Sources:

1. Wikipedia Encyclopedia

2. Burj Dubai Official Website

We finally saw the first episode of The Hills.

Lo was really mean! (But so was Audrina.)

We're never interested in Heidi and Spencer.

Mostly we watch for Lauren.

There's something heartbreaking about her idealism.

We can't help but think of her ten years from now, when everything will have changed.

And how little will remain.

Thanks to Lotja Loon for sending her review of the replication of Fallingwater, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr. by Ethos Erlanger and his and his partners Lox Salomon and Ty Jaehun.

Screenshot by Derek Hotger, http://derekhotger.blogg.com/

Image from the 2006 Taschen design calendar, via Narisa on Flickr.

As well as the hotel building itself, he designed some lovely things to fill and furnish it, including lovely blue armchairs, this striking yellow chair and the dinnerware pictured above. I read somewhere that the design of the cups was intended to hide the lipstick stains of (right-handed) ladies in those terrible days before indelible lipstick existed, which sounds very sensible but also a little bit like rubbish - the academic in me needs a reputable citation before I go believing that.

Thanks to modern manufacturers and the internet, I can now have a genuine reproduction set for myself - just US$48 for a set of four plate or mugs at the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation online store. Sadly the reproduction mugs are not as nice as the original cups, so I may have to bid on a full 56-piece original set, as soon as I find myself US$3000 or so.

Art Deco exhibition at the NGV
Still on - until October 5
Open every day 10am-5pm (open until 9pm on Wednesdays)
More info: Arwen's write up

:: Kate ::

Our book club met on Sunday to discuss Loving Frank by Nancy Horan, and we had the great pleasure to have Nancy visit with us by speaker phone!  It was such a treat to have her attend our meeting this way.  She was on her way to the airport to pick up her son but was still so gracious and kind.  She thoroughly answered every question we had with humor and wit, and gave us an incredible amount of insight into her characters, the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the married woman he had an affair with, Mamah Borthwick Cheney.  

In 1907, both Frank and Mamah publicly and scandalously left their spouses and children (8 children between them) to go overseas for two years to carry on their affair, and continued to be together after returning home to this country.  Frank built Mamah a home in Wisconsin called Taliesin, where they lived together out of wedlock until Mamah’s untimely death in 1914. 

Our group enjoyed the book, but most of us disliked the flawed characters and their unpopular choices.  I think we all agreed that we enjoyed the discussion it generated even more than the book, and isn’t that what a book club is for.. great discussion? 

Frank, so flamboyant and eccentric, was such an egomaniac.  None of us cared much for him, although we could see the attraction for Mamah.  He was creative and intellectual, and he was interested in her opinion on everything.  In the beginning of their relationship, Mamah mentioned her grandmother and Frank wanted to know more.  

He sat down again and looked at her.  "Tell me everything," he said.  

Tell me everything.  He might as well have said, "Take off your dress."

Yes, attention is a powerful aphrodisiac.  But the man was horrible with money, he didn't pay his debts or give credit where credit was due to the people who worked for him.  He lived beyond his means and bought things because he "needed to be surrounded by beauty". In one memorable scene he bought a houseful of furniture, including three (3!!) grand pianos, all without consulting Mamah, whom he was living with at the time.  Nevermind he couldn't pay the people who were helping to build his house.  Mamah, infuriated, insisted he return the pianos.

We liked Mamah a bit more, but couldn’t understand why she left her kids for years to follow Frank to Europe.  Clearly she was in love with him, but her husband, Edwin Cheney, was a nice and tolerant man who allowed her to do whatever she wished.  She had money, servants, freedom, friends, hobbies, household help, a caring husband and two beautiful children.  She wasn’t escaping domestic hell so much as carrying on an illicit affair, and I have to say we judged her pretty harshly. 

The issues Loving Frank brought up are still relevant today.  We talked about feminism, a woman’s place (then and now), maternal love vs. romantic love, duty, obligation, motherhood, careers, etc.  We talked about public people who’ve left their spouses for others (Brad Pitt, for instance) and how they are treated in the media.  We discussed how women are treated differently from men in that regard (Britney Spears and how she’s been skewered for being a poor mother).  

Some of us felt Mamah was a terrible mother for leaving her children to have a ‘bigger’ life than the domestic confines she found herself in.  Others felt that her personal growth was important enough to justify leaving her kids.  Some of us felt that if she had left to go on to do something great with her life, we could have been more sympathetic, but in truth all she did was follow a man around.   

We had the well worn “stay at home” vs. “working” mother discussion.  Some of us felt it would be less horrible to leave children behind with family to go explore other options in this day and age, with telephones and email and air travel.  In Mamah’s day, it took a month to go overseas, and there was no such thing as text messaging, IM’s or digital pictures to keep us up to date and connected to our loved ones who are separated from us.  All they had at that time was the painstakingly slow pace of the postal service or telegrams- it took weeks just to receive a letter.  

SO..  Loving Frank is a good book- and a really good book for a book club.  Ms. Horan did extensive research and then convincingly fleshed out her characters through fictional dialogue and situations that seemed very true and believable.  It's historical fiction at it's best. If you want to spark a great discussion with your book group, I would highly recommend it . 

Oh, I almost forgot- we had some awesome food!  What's a book club meeting without good eats??  We decided on a European theme (where the lovers spent 2 years), so we had Pasta e Fagioli soup, bruschetta, some kind of cheesy broccoli pasta casserole, chicken sausage, Boston Crème Pie (not European, but who cares), and (of course) Chardonnay.  Tasty. 

The Loving Frank website can be found HERE.  Discussion questions can be found HERE.  

If you've read Loving Frank, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.  If you've reviewed it, let me know and I'll link it here.

Mamah, May-muh, Martha!  She was born at the wrong time and wrong place! She was educated in Ann Arbor Michigan at the turn of the 20th century, had the pedigree of the upright Midwestern railroaders who valued work and honesty, married a decent and loving businessman-gregarious provider, had the tenacious intellect of a sharp librarian-school marm and suffragist-feminist, was a "looker",  but she was too crazy in love with a man who would have given her the world but could not. Darn!

Mamah Cheney could have had it all but she was sideswiped by her lust for life on the fastlane, the big ego of Frank Lloyd Wright, the promise of being the polyglot sidekick of Swedish born suffragist Ellen Key, and in the end, she had nothing for herself and her two (three including her orphaned nephew) children who she left behind to find love and fulfillment with the iconic architect.

This fictional account of a love story gone tragically wrong and painful, leaves me reeling with wonder, I cannot help but raise some points that challenge thinking outside the home, domesticity, community, society and even world affairs.

First of all, can a mother really be so wildly in love  so as to leave her very young children behind to traipse all over Berlin, Italy and Japan to pursue finding herself and her paramour's budding career? Given that Frank Lloyd Wright was really brilliant (after the fact), was he really worth it?  Her marriage to Edwin Cheney was flailing but was she really really that unhappy? She had little Martha with Edwin while she was consorting with Frank!  I think it was a case of moral fiber fraying and falling dangerously to an abyss that she couldn't get enough fortitude to  figure herself out of.

Granted that it was the zeitgeist of women's emancipation and feminism, the attendant focus on lack of rights to get out of bad marriages, lack of equal pay for men and women, identity issues surrounding motherhood and caring for children, did Mamah really blaze into the forefront to liberate women of all ages for all time? Or did she just end up exonerating  herself?

Was her sacrifice worth the cause?  Her alliance with Ellen Key's cause was almost a chance event in her search for herself and her raison d'etre for villyfying her home and turning her loved one's lives upside down. The Swedish suffragist had modern ideas about women's morality and new feminist roles, I think Mamah was eagerly quick to translate Key's ideas as seen through her private moral dilemma, adultery.  In Berlin, Key was tagged as the "wise fool of the feminist movement", vacillating between being a protector of children and the essence of mothering as a human species-forwarding endeavor versus a woman's fulfilling her happiness through achieving her personhood through being allowed the choices and liberties to propel one's potential. I think Ellen Key was wise, period.  In Nancy, France, she had told Mamah to find herself first, without Frank, and pursue her own niche in the world, otherwise Frank will just be another "diversion". It was Mamah who could not find her moral compass and was torn, time and time again between her love for her offspring and her love for Frank and herself. It is a pity that her "soulful" translations of Ellen Key's work coulda-woulda been heard by a bigger audience had she sent it to The Atlantic Monthly and not published with those who were affiliated with Frank Lloyd Wright's folios.

Horan's skill in writing allowed for her characters to be heard, to be seen in both good and bad lights, she allowed all their foibles, their humanity to filter through the puritanical times when society was quick to judge moral turpitude.  She allowed her readers to look for understanding and to be compassionate; that her characters were flawed, slaves for higher ideals of truth and beauty and most of all, love. But in being so, they chose paths that were dangerously selfish and hurtful to others.

I will not be quick to say that the tragedy of Mamahs' end in Taliesin is divine retribution, but simply a horrific event in the life that already has gone through baptism by fire, a fall from grace that happens when people are just going about their daily lives because people are the way they are, fallen from the very start.

I took the Green Line out to Oak Park, which took f o r e v er. Okay, maybe not forever, but it took a lot longer than I expected. I figured that leaving my house by 9:15 would get me there in time to participate in the 11am tour, but I didn't even arrive at the Oak Park El stop until 11:15. Hrmph!

I started walking the half mile or so to the Frank Lloyd Wright home & studio and admired the big houses nestled in the tree lined streets. It was very picturesque and I enjoyed the walk in spite of the cloaking humidity. I got a little turned around and took what I thought was a side street up toward Chicago Ave. I saw a house that stood out from all the others and thought, "Is that a Wright house?" I kept walking and came across another one. Hmm.... this one is something I recognize from books or movies or magazines. And then my confirmation, not only that I was headed in the right direction, but that I was seeing the work of Mr. Wright, came in the form of a large tour group walking toward me as they listened to their guide explain that "the family living in this house has a true gift because this is an original rose bush...."

When I walked in to the bookstore at the Home & Studio to buy my tour ticket, three people were busy trying to help an Italian couple. I don't know why all three needed to help the couple or why they had to talk so loudly, but I was hot and my brain wasn't firing on all cylinders. I overheard them say that a tour was sold out, but surely they weren't talking about the same tour I was interested in taking. As I waited my turn I looked at all the pretty tchotchkes, wondering which window replica I needed for my new apartment. When I saw that the Italian couple was done with their transaction, I walked back up to the counter. The three helpful people had dispersed and were no longer making eye contact. I guess they were ready for a break. But I wanted to buy a ticket. So I waited a little more and finally caught the eye of one of the young women.

"May I help you?"

"Yes, I'd like to buy a ticket for the 1:00 tour," I said with my most friendly attitude.

She pointed at a sign behind her that I completely ignored because it was so full of information. "It's sold out. Everything is sold out for now. You can buy headphones to do the self-guided tour, but they're sold out or you can buy a map."

I was confused. Could I buy headphones and do a self-guided tour? Did I need the audio if I had a map with all the info? I started to ask, "So, do you have headphones for the audio tour..."

"No."

"OK, I'll buy the map. Does the map have descriptions of the different buildings?"

She shot me a look that indicated I was clearly a dolt and she did not have any more time to spend with me. After visibly sighing, she pulled out a sample to show me that it included little photos and the address of each house, and a street map. From my quick glimpse, it didn't look like the map included any descriptions, but I was afraid to clarify. I decided to take a different tack.

"So, are there placards in front of the houses to describe the buildings," I asked hopefully.

"No, that's why I showed you the sample map." Those were the words she said, but what she really meant was "Just buy the map and get out of my store. I can't handle any more of your dumb questions, b*&@^."

I bought the map and planned my route. I was not disappointed with my self-guided tour, even though I can't tell you anything about the houses (except the one with a placard!). I walked through the neighborhoods and admired the craftsmanship of the homes, marveled at seeing things in person that I've only ever seen in print, and stood dumbfounded that people actually live in these works of art. I'm guessing they appreciate their riches every single day.

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright told how a lecture he received at the age of nine helped set his philosophy of life. An uncle, a stolid, no-nonsense type, had taken him for a long walk across a snow-covered field. At the far side, his uncle told him to look back at their two sets of tracks. "See, my boy," he said, "how your footprints go aimlessly back and forth from those trees, to the cattle, back to the fence and then over there where you were throwing sticks? But notice how my path comes straight across, directly to my goal. You should never forget this lesson!"

"And I never did," Wright said, grinning. "I determined right then not to miss most things in life, as my uncle had.

~ John Keasler

Oscar Wilde said, "Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative." So stop getting up at 6:05. Get up at 5:06. Walk a mile at dawn. Find a new way to drive to work. Study wildflowers. Read to the blind. Subscribe to an out-of-town paper. Canoe at midnight. Teach some kid the thing you do best. Listen to two hours of uninterrupted Mozart.
Leap out of that rut. Savor life. Remember, we pass this way only once.

~ United Technologies Corp. Message

When I did and my life passes before me, I'll replay the tapes of many experiences I had during my life. I'll remember the time I spent as a literacy volunteer for a Korean immigrant or hiking in New Mexico and the Grand Canyon. I'll remember the impromptu solo tour given to me by the elderly caretaker of Exeter Cathedral one cold day when I wandered in alone. I'll remember the time I kept a promising student from dropping out. I'll remember the quiet stream hidden a few hundred yards behind a subdivision. I'll remember taking a long, circuitous route across campus because it passed all the pretty spots. I'll remember getting a plunger caught in a tree (don't ask) with my daughter. I'll remember finding out that thunder isn't caused by two clouds bumping together. But I doubt that I'll look back on that day I crossed tons of things off my to-do list.

We often confuse productivity with living. Of course, we need to be productive, but the truly amazing parts of our lives are the things that go on around us all the time — if we take the time to notice. Today's quotes are a reminder that life is all around us in the smallest details of our daily lives. We often need to work deliberately to see them, and we do that by poking our head up out of our rut and seeing what life has to offer.

How about taking some time today to figure out what you're missing? Get up early and watch the sun rise. Stay up late and count the stars. Volunteer some time to someone who needs that special something that you have to offer. Do anything differently; in fact, do everything differently: brush your teeth with your left hand, drink tea instead of coffee, draw a picture of the weed that's in your lawn, or read a magazine about a topic you no nothing about (better yet, read a magazine about something you hate). Stop, look, and listen.

The point is this: get out there and bring some life into your life. Once you've done that, you can share what you've seen, heard, or learned. Maybe the person you tell will start to look, too. Then what do you have? A trend. And you've always wanted to be trend setter, right?

Make a great day.

I prefer Wright's other Dallas building, the Gillin House, which was featured in Wes Anderson's first movie, Bottle Rocket.

Or pretty much any Wright house, including the Boynton House, which I used to live by, in Rochester, NY.

 

Don’t know if Frank really said this, but it rings true.  I’m back at near starting point.   

Spent 5 days on a writing retreat building a plot for a project that’s hounded me for several years.  After much deliberation, had decided to use fiction, rather than nonfiction, to build layers of imagined history.  Spent a couple days constructing elaborate timelines to keep characters and historical events straight.  Drafted some pretty bad prose.  A lot of bad prose. I was on the road. 

Have also been researching novels on similar topics, and last night, found one with a plot roughly like mine.  The specifics diverge, and I hope my research is more solid, but it’s close enough.   

Back to the drawing board.  Who knew a keyboard could cause such trouble?

ตรงดิ่งขึ้นไปนิทรรศการที่อยู่ชั้น9 โดยต้องต่อลิฟต์ที่อยู่ชั้น5 หรือจะเดินขึ้นก็ได้เป็นทางสโลปแบบ กั๊กเกนไฮห์มของคุณแฟรงค์ ลอยด์ไรท์ก็ได้(ไม่เคยไปหรอก ดูรูปเอา)
..ถึงชั้น9ลงทะเบียนเข้างาน ก็เริ่มชมงาน ในงานก็รวมภาพถ่ายฝีพระหัตถ์ ของสมเด็จพระเทพฯ แยกเป็นปีทั้งเมืองไทยเมืองนอก
มีหลากหลายมาก ทั้งน่ารัก สวยงาม ตลก มีหมด ในงานจะฉายวีดีโอวันเปิดงานที่สมเด็จพระเทพฯทรงอธิบายเหตุผลว่า ถ่ายรูปนั้น เพราะอะไร ทำไม ดูแล้วยิ้มเพลิน ไอ้ที่เคยสงสัยว่ารูปในกล้องที่พระองค์ใช้จะเป้นรูปยังไง ไปงานนี้ก็หายสงสัย แถมประทับใจอีกตะหาก

ใช้เวลารวมๆประมาณชั่วโมงนึง ว่างๆลองไปดูนะ

อ้อลืม มีหนังสือรวมภาพถ่ายขายในงานด้วยนะเล่มละ 900 รายละเอียดเพิ่มเติม ที่นี่

ปล.นี่ก็ประทับใจ ตัวอาคารที่โดนไฟอาคารส่อง(ที่ไว้ส่องตึกให้ดูสวยๆตอนกลางคืน) ทำให้เห็นความรีบเร่งในการก่อสร้างให้ทันกำหนดตามแบบไทยๆ ก็ดี ศิลป์ดี..

Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright's Home and Studio in Spring Green, Wiscosnin, has several gardens also designed by Wright. (If you know much about FLW, perhaps you know that Wright designed everything connected with his homes. He was not only the architect, he also designed the furniture, rugs, and everyday house implements from dishes to lamps. And some of his clients even allowed him to design their clothing, including magnificent dresses, so that they would FIT into his vision of his perfect environment. (Susan Dana from Springfield IL was his favorite client because she agreed to any of his ideas AND funded them promptly!) Hmm. Maybe Frank was a bit of a control freak in addition to all his creativity and genius.

Anyway, Wright brought thousands of art objects and artifacts from Asia to the US, most notably from Japan, and used them throughout many of his homes, in his designs and in his gardens. These two cranes are in the garden near his bedroom in Taliesin. He could open his bedroom door which was set into a wall of framed windows, take a dip in his 8 foot deep plunge pool, and then wander a bit through his flowers and sculptures.

It really would have been an insomniac's solution - a dip in a cool pool and then a midnight stroll in the gardens. I'd much prefer that option to the one I take nearly every night when I find myself awake, lying awake and watching the ceiling.

Do you think FLW would mind a new occupant?

Living next door to me, Woody is well aware of my new concrete obsession.
He treated me to a few pictures, while at Broad Margin, courtesy of his iPhone camera. The 50 year old concrete kitchen countertops are in fantastic shape says Woody.
And you thought concrete counters were a new decor thing!

Something that is new... David K and Harry Brown's master bath!

Below are some pictures of the final product courtesy of Mike Queeney of Shadowbend Photography.

Thank you Woody and Mike!

It's funny - you know he's an architecht but what else? I read a bio on him on the net and learned that he had about 3 wives and at one point lived a somewhat double life balancing two seperate families and his career. Sounds like drama to me - it is no wonder he was thinking about keeping things simple. 

Some of his work can be found at www.wrightontheweb.net (in case you aren't familiar)

So I like this one - it goes with the cliche "getting back to basics".  So I like to keep things in life simple and drama free.  I think that my quest for this peace gets more and more difficult with each coming day. Whether work drama, family drama, and normal hustle and bustle - it is increasingly harder to accomplish the basic things that I feel would make my life more complete and balanced. 

If When, I get this balance ( I estimate february 2009), I will look to have these parts that make my life whole:

• REAL food - meaning not fake bs but real fruit, real veggies, real ish! I know I will feel better.save some money and probably lose some lbs.
• put first things first - okay I stole that from Franklin Covey's 7 Habits - but it's true - my ideal "firsts" are God & Family(my kids)
• Clear Clutter - while this includes actually doing the things I see being done on Clean House rather than just watching, this is a neccessity for my dwelling and my relationships - everything toxic HAS to go - even my bad attitude!

If all goes well, I will be back on a more focused track so I can focus even MORE energy on what matters most - God, Family and fulfilling my passion!!!

As I mentioned before, Don and I went on an backyard chicken coop tour on Sunday. The event is sponsored by Mad City Chickens who's aim it is to educate the urban population about the benefits of raising poultry right at home, here, in the city. I hadn't heard of the organization until I read about them in the paper this week but they're really organized and have even had a documentary made about them.

Do you know how many people there are raising chickens in your city? I didn't think there were any here but apparently there's a whole bunch. Coop quality varies, I am sure. Of course, the coops on the tour were probably much nicer than average. Kind of the livestock equivalent of the Parade of Homes.

If I had a chicken coop I would make it look like a Frank Lloyd Wright house. Something with recognizable features but more energy effecient and raccoon proof than Frank's real houses. Then we could dress up the chickens in little black fedoras and train them to peck at peoples wallets. What a worthwhile way to spend my time that would be! That dream will have to go unrealized because, due to houses in extremely close proximity (less than 25 feet), we can't have chickens, or even a duck, where we live (unless we keep it inside. I've asked and I don't think that will happen). The first time someone contracts any kind of illness you know who they're going to blame-the people who built a  chicken coop 22 feet away from their kitchen window. That's why the law is there, I guess-to protect everyone.

But just because we can't have them doesn't mean you should count yourself out of the urban chicken raising game. Chickens are in. I think they're the new pot bellied pig, except better. They eat corn and the excrete eggs and compost-able material. When properly maintained the coops have no discernible odor. Chickens can be very friendly, pets even--but unlike conventional pets, you have the option of eating your chickens should they vex you or become a load when they stop producing eggs. It's a win-win situation.

According to Madison law, each household is allowed up to four chickens. Here is what four chickens look like:

At one of the stops I took a picture of a little girl holding what was obviously her chicken. It was similar to the caramel colored one above. Chickens are surprisingly large--from toe to crown it was almost half the girl's size. Unfortunately, I didn't ask her mom if I could post the photo so I'm not going to. That chicken was subjected to a barrage of little girls bent on petting it, and the chicken was chill. When the little girl's mother called it, the chicken came running. That one is not going to get eaten, ever.

Some coops were cute:

Some were more basic:

All of them functioned well and were home to very clean and healthy looking birds. From looking at the front of any of the houses you would not guess that there were chickens living in the backyard. They really don't take up a lot of room or stink or make that much noise. You can only have four, remember, so it's not all that much work to take care of them.

I bitch about this city a lot but there are some really cool things here--like that coop tour. I like listening to people talk about stuff that they're really into and those people were really into raising chickens in their backyards. It was a fun day.

I'm going to visit my family in a week and my parents made reservations for us to tour Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater.  I'm so excited!!

Alrighty, I can accept that.  Who am I to dis Frank Lloyd Wright?  Hold on a second...I wonder how Wright would feel about how his design concept matured into tract housing with row after row of identical, boring splits?  Would he consider "that" organic?  Hmm, I highly doubt it.  Would he cringe when he saw the modern take on his original split level idea - the split foyer, or bi-level, house?   I shouldn't speak for Wright, but if he were alive today, I think he'd be very disappointed.  He would probably be the first person to say, "Absolutely, re-design that house to give it some character!"