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Craigdarroch Castle
The woodwork and the stained glass alone makes the visit worthwhile.
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Wow. The nerve of some people.
For once, the people with the nerve aren’t the rich ones.
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No Owl Should Ask Its Name: Crawford Hoarding
The alarm woke me out of REM sleep again.
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The Gaches Mansion
I love Victorian houses, with their elegant porches, dormers, scrollwork, and spindles. I particularly love the Queen Anne style, because towers and turrets make my imagination run wild. I can see myself living in one of these magical manses, wearing high-collared, full-length dresses. I just can’t picture me paying the heating bill. One of my…
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On Being Politically Violated
The mansion had been locked up for so long that most of us had never glimpsed the interior. There was no need, we thought. It looked beautiful from the outside. Grand. Stately. Well-landscaped. We were proud that it was the blueprint for mansions around the world. We were proud that it was ours. And then…
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The Hefner Spin
Jeez, Hef is barely cold, and he’s already being immortalized. I just heard something on NPR, for chrissake, that said that his magazine sparked the sexual revolution. I almost choked on my M&Ms. Okay, I’ll concede this much: His magazine made sex an open topic for discussion. His magazine normalized nudity. And sometimes, at its…
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Anti-Climax Heights
I was taking a trip down memory lane the other day and decided to Google Earth all my former houses. What an eye opening experience. The house I lived in right after college has been painted hot pink. The one I lived in after that, which was a total dump with rotting floors, questionable plumbing,…
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“Even Cheerleaders get Pimples on their Behinds.”
Those words of wisdom came from my mother on a day when the teenaged me was lamenting the fact that I wasn’t popular, and also complaining about a pimple on my posterior. When insight is put forth so colorfully, it tends to stick with you for life. And while it was meant to apply to…
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Views from my Windows—Part One
One of my first memories of any type of view was the sagging wooden third floor balcony of our shabby tenement apartment. I lived in fear of this view, because every time I stepped out of the house it was a certainty that our neighbor would be lying in wait. She was this loud old…