Fall\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Back to School Moon<\/p>\n
How can city dwellers, big city dwellers, stay in touch with the natural cycles, with the rhythms of the Great Wheel?\u00a0 This was on my mind yesterday as I walked around the loop.\u00a0 There are, of course, the occasional plantings decorating outdoor cafes, the greenery of Grant Park and Millennium Park, even a lushly planted median on the boulevard of Michigan Avenue, yet these seem like captive specimens, botanical exhibits in a zoo for denizens of concrete, stone, metal and glass.<\/p>\n
When I went out for a walk this morning, wandering down Jewelers Row, out to Michigan Avenue and down to State Street, building facades began to show themselves.\u00a0 Here there were floral inspired Prairie School designs.\u00a0 There were viny elements in tile and plaster ascending the column of a building.<\/p>\n
At 30 Michigan Avenue an idea began to form.\u00a0 There on a frieze perched above a\u00a0 soulless slab of polished marble that defined a Walgreens were small medallions punctuated by a familiar face, the Greenman.\u00a0 He looked like this one.\u00a0 There were four, separated by the flowery medallions.\u00a0 After that, the plant inspired architectural design appeared, as if by magic.\u00a0 For those who have eyes to see, let them see.<\/p>\n
In a flash I realized what I dislike so much about Modernist architecture.\u00a0 It does not acknowledge the real context in which it exists.\u00a0 This Bauhaus influence attempted to rid the world of the Greenmen, the vines, the flowers, the sinuous riverine shapes that the late 19th and early 20th century architects considered essential.<\/p>\n
And they were essential.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 In our cities we put on a brave front, raising\u00a0 our forests of buildings that shade out the sun, paving over the earth so trucks and cars can move about with ease.\u00a0 Tunneling electricity so even the night cannot dominate us.<\/p>\n
We still need to eat. Our lives depend on the vast unbuilt land where the primary things that spring from the earth are corn stalks and wheat fronds.\u00a0 Where animals may outnumber humans and the humans work with and for the plants.<\/p>\n
We still need to breathe.\u00a0 The lungs of mother earth, the circulatory system that cleans our air consists in large part of trees.\u00a0 The forests lie outside our urban boundaries, though they do join their city cousins in their work.<\/p>\n
We still need to drink.\u00a0 Fresh water comes from rivers, lakes, streams and aquifers either far away from city centers or buried deep beneath them.\u00a0 Care for the source of our drinking water means\u00a0 caring for those ends of the earth from which it comes.<\/p>\n
Thus, it is not an idle question to wonder how we connect with the Great Wheel, with the changes of season and the growing of food, the cleansing of water and air.<\/p>\n
The design motifs inspired by green leafy beings recognized that dependence and writ its continuing message on the walls of the buildings which we use and which we see each day.\u00a0 They inspire us and help us recall mother nature in\u00a0 her beyond the city state.<\/p>\n
There was. too, another reminder.\u00a0 I looked down Washington from Wabash and my gaze carried up the\u00a0 building led me to a patch of blue sky.\u00a0 There was the moon, a half moon, the Back to School moon, framed by buildings with leaves and greenmen and flowers.\u00a0 These are enough.<\/p>\n
One thing more.\u00a0 Remember Ozymandias, King of Kings.\u00a0 Recall the ruins of Babylon, Xi’ang, Epheseus, Athens.\u00a0 Cities do not last.\u00a0 Nature reclaims them all at some point.\u00a0 What seems so permanent, so imposing, so there only awaits its end.\u00a0 Which will come, sooner or later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fall\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Back to School Moon How can city dwellers, big city dwellers, stay in touch with the natural cycles, with the rhythms of the Great Wheel?\u00a0 This was on my mind yesterday as I walked around the loop.\u00a0 There are, of course, the occasional plantings decorating outdoor cafes, the greenery of Grant Park and … Continue reading The Great Wheel in the City<\/span>