MountainMornings

Since Bob has retired, I’ve found our roles have reversed. I was always the one in the know, collecting local news and crafting interesting stories that would eventually help light up the wood stove. Newspapers still sell, but mostly online today. Without my deadline, I write whenever I please about whatever I want, and I’m no longer constantly on the hunt for tidbits of local lore.

Bob, on the other hand, has been picking up garbage once a month with a dedicated group of neighbors, and has joined a few Nashville associations; he’s become a regular social activist!

Aside from catching up on all the development going on in North Nashville, including going to those dreaded zoning committee meetings, he’s signed us up for something called “The Villages.” And no, it’s not that place in Florida.  https://www.aarp.org/home-garden/livable-communities/info-04-2011/villages-real-social-network.html

This is a national aging-in-place movement that started in the Back Bay area of Boston – which is strangely enough where I started my college career at Emerson in 1966. We have a core group of people dedicated to keeping our community informed and helping our neighbors; almost like co-housing. Our weekly ride to T’ai Chi with a 93 year old friend, who stopped driving at 90, is one small part of this plan, which also includes pot-luck suppers. Mostly, it’s a way to stay connected, stay in our homes, and combat loneliness.

I’ve mentioned many times that our generation was going to age differently. After all, we brought you the Women’s Movement and the Civil Right’s Movement, so it’s only fair we bring you the Old Geezer Movement too.

Anyway, our Village has organized a day trip this weekend to Alabama. Why, one might ask would I want to go to Alabama just when the weather has dipped below freezing? The state that just might elect Jeff Sessions again to the Senate. The state with probably more Confederate flags flying than any other state in the union.

Because it’s the site of one of the prettiest Frank Lloyd Wright houses in the country and I LOVE Frank Lloyd Wright – and it’s in FLORENCE, AL! https://www.wrightinalabama.com/

“A genuine work of art—from the floors to the furnishings to the faucets—the Rosenbaum House grows naturally from its surroundings, cascading down a 2-acre lot facing the Tennessee River. It is one of the purest examples of Usonian design (named for the USA) with open floor plans and rooms that naturally flow from one to another. Built in 1939, the same year Wright delivered his treatise on organic architecture, this significant structure is cypress, glass, and brick and still has original hardware and furnishings designed by Wright.

Frank Lloyd Wright freed Americans from Victorian “boxes” and revolutionized art and architecture. He was born just two years after the Civil War and died two years after the launching of the satellite Sputnik and is considered to be America’s greatest architect. Originally built for $12,000 as an affordable, middle-class home, the house is the only Wright design open to the public in the southeastern United States.”

Call me excited! People fly in from all over the world to see this house! Our Rumson house had his Usonian style, and our home on a mountain in the Blue Ridge was designed with clean white oak floors and trim with lots of windows. I’ve been an Art Deco fan girl since forever and yet only managed to look from the outside at one of Wright’s homes in Minnesota once. Or was that St Louis?

Somehow, in all my trips from VA to TN, I never stopped at Falling Water in PA, and that’s something I’ll have to add to my bucket list now.

Note to self, don’t forget to Facetime with Aunt KiKi (my Daughter-in-Love) from Alabama since she is one super talented designer in California and working on many renovations of this vintage.

Happy Weekend Y’All! Oh and here’s an old pic of our VA not/so/big house. I do miss my little 3rd floor aviary.