Burnin’

I learned today that a Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece is located right under our noses here in Beaufort County. The “Stevens House” is owned today by Joel Silver, Hollywood’s top grossing producer, with films like Die Hard, Lethal Weapon and The Matrix under his belt. According to The Beaufort County Open Land Trust, Mr. Silver has meticulously completed the majority of Wright’s original plan, thus fulfilling Wright’s dream of making Auldbrass a great 20th century architectural treasure.

Here’s more on the plantation from a 2003 New York Times article:

Of Wright’s thousand-odd commissions in the United States, Auldbrass is his only one in the region, and his only Southern plantation. Wright had just completed Fallingwater, the critically acclaimed house perched over a waterfall in Mill Run, Pa., when C. Leigh Stevens, a wealthy Michigan industrial consultant, commissioned a Lowcountry retreat and gentleman’s farm in a swampy, 4,000-acre tract on the banks of the Combahee River, 20 miles upstream from the Atlantic. Wright conceived Auldbrass as a collection of one-story, slender buildings of polished cypress. His design called for a main house, a guest house and cabins, a caretaker’s residence, staff cabins, a barn, stables, kennels for dogs, a ”dining barge” floating in a pond on the property and an aviary, all unified by material and design: cypress walls canted inward at an 81-degree angle, copper roofs, doors with ornamental panes and hexagonal tables.

The monumentality of Wright’s plantation (as all large properties are referred to in the area, whether or not crops are planted) lies in its understatement. Dwarfed by old oaks, obscured by the stables and with a barely discernible front door, Wright’s dark, asymmetrical main house at Auldbrass is a rebuke of the prevailing Southern-plantation ideal — the becolumned brick pile (the most famous in South Carolina being the 1742 Drayton Hall) that rises emphatically out of the grass as the most potent expression of control and order a colonial planter could muster. Commissioned the same year that ”Gone With the Wind” had its premiere, modernist Auldbrass must have seemed as alien to its neighbors in the early 1940’s as Joel Silver does today.

The name Auldbrass is Wright’s modification of ”Old Brass,” the name (which is thought to refer to slaves beyond working age and of mixed African and Native American descent) given to the property in the mid-19th century. Wright’s logo for Auldbrass, a stylized arrow, was his nod to the iconography of the Yemassee Indians, who inhabited this area before the arrival of the British. The same arrow motif is cut from panels just under the eaves of the main house. After dusk, when light from inside the house illuminates the arrow design on these panels, the building has the look of a paper lantern.

Peggy Noonan, author and contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal, is troubled that our nation may be damaged beyond repair.

I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. In fact I think it’s a subtext to our society. I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can’t be fixed, or won’t be fixed any time soon.

Cloning, nuts with nukes, epidemics; the growing knowledge that there’s no such thing as homeland security; the fact that we’re leaving our kids with a bill no one can pay. A sense of unreality in our courts so deep that they think they can seize grandma’s house to build a strip mall; our media institutions imploding–the spectacle of a great American newspaper, the New York Times, hurtling off its own tracks, as did CBS. The fear of parents that their children will wind up disturbed, and their souls actually imperiled, by the popular culture in which we are raising them. Senators who seem owned by someone, actually owned, by an interest group or a financial entity. Great churches that have lost all sense of mission, and all authority. Do you have confidence in the CIA? The FBI? I didn’t think so.

Our elites, our educated and successful professionals, are the ones who are supposed to dig us out and lead us. I refer specifically to the elites of journalism and politics, the elites of the Hill and at Foggy Bottom and the agencies, the elites of our state capitals, the rich and accomplished and successful of Washington, and elsewhere. I have a nagging sense, and think I have accurately observed, that many of these people have made a separate peace. That they’re living their lives and taking their pleasures and pursuing their agendas; that they’re going forward each day with the knowledge, which they hold more securely and with greater reason than nonelites, that the wheels are off the trolley and the trolley’s off the tracks, and with a conviction, a certainty, that there is nothing they can do about it.

You’re a lobbyist or a senator or a cabinet chief, you’re an editor at a paper or a green-room schmoozer, you’re a doctor or lawyer or Indian chief, and you’re making your life a little fortress. That’s what I think a lot of the elites are up to.

Not all of course. There are a lot of people–I know them and so do you–trying to do work that helps, that will turn it around, that can make it better, that can save lives.

Maybe these thoughts go mostly unspoken in Noonan’s circle, but not in mine.

A friend told me the other day that he wants to get into yacht sales. My response was he’d be better off moving to Baja and learning how to fish for his dinner.

Can you say “not qualified”? The White House can’t.

A selection from the letter Harriet Miers sent to President Bush, withdrawing her name from consideration as a justice of the United States Supreme Court:

Repeatedly in the course of the process of confirmation for nominees for other positions, I have steadfastly maintained that the independence of the Executive Branch be preserved and its confidential documents and information not be released to further a confirmation process. I feel compelled to adhere to this position, especially related to my own nomination.

The Bushies have things to hide? This really is news.

One of America’s funniest and most popular bloggers, Heather B. Armstrong, on her virgin 4-wheeler excursion.

The moment I straddled my legs over the pulsating black seat I could feel the spirits of my dead redneck ancestors crushing beer cans against their foreheads, ancestors who raced on the backs of giant boars.

We saw a bumper sticker on a minivan this morning while doing errands on Hilton Head Island. It said, “Slow Down: This Isn’t The Mainland.”

Robert H. Frank writing in Deadalus:

Studies have shown that the demands of commuting through heavy traffic often result in emotional and behavioral deficits upon arrival at home or work. Compared to drivers who commute through low-density traffic, those who commute through heavy traffic are more likely to report feelings of annoyance. And higher levels of commuting distance, time, and speed are significantly positively correlated with increased systolic and diastolic blood pressure.

The prolonged experience of commuting stress is also known to suppress immune function and shorten longevity. Even daily spells in traffic as brief as fifteen minutes have been linked to significant elevations of blood glucose and cholesterol, and to declines in blood coagulation time–all factors that are positively associated with cardiovascular disease. Commuting by automobile is also positively linked with the incidence of various cancers, especially cancer of the lung, possibly because of heavier exposure to exhaust fumes. The incidence of these and other illnesses rises with the length of commute, and is significantly lower among those who commute by bus or rail, and lower still among noncommuters.

I’m thankful for my short commute to and from work–a clear benefit to life in the Lowcountry. Although, it could be even better if there was a bike trail along 278. Greater Bluffton Pathways is working on it.

Thanks to The Practical Hippie for the pointer to the Frank article.

According to reports on CNN and on American Discovery Trail’s own site, Ken and Marcia Powers from Pleasanton, California, became the first hikers to complete a continuous backpack of the country’s first Atlantic-to-Pacific trail.

Ken and Marcia started their 4,900-mile trek from the Atlantic coast in Delaware’s Cape Henlopen State Park on February 27, and took only four rest days on the entire 231-day jaunt.

The Powers had previously completed hiking the “triple crown” (three of the country’s 2,000-mile-plus trails: the Appalachian, Continental Divide, and Pacific Crest). But this is their longest and most impressive accomplishment yet.

These amazing retirees, both in their 50s, saw the wonders of our nation on foot, not in an RV. And as they followed the American Discovery Trail through 13 states, they experienced the best scenery the country has to offer and inspiring acts of generosity from their fellow citizens in this adventure of a lifetime.

They overcame deep snow in the East, a quicksand scare in Utah, close lightning strikes in the Midwest and blinding desert sandstorms in the West while averaging 22 miles a day and taking only four days off during the entire journey.

Joyce and Pete Cottrell, of Whitefield, New Hampshire, were the first to backpack the entire official route of the American Discovery Trail, but they hiked segments out of sequence over two calendar years, finishing in 2003.

The trail officially opened in 2000, 11 years after it was proposed by hiking enthusiasts as the first coast-to-coast footpath.

According to Global Rich List, my annual income places me among the top 0.839% richest people in the world (there’s only 50 million people between me and Bill Gates).

There are 5,949,632,435 people in the world poorer (in financial terms) than me.

Global Rich List is the work of Poke in London. Here’s what inspired them to create the site.

We are obsessed with wealth. But we gauge how rich we are by looking upwards at those who have more than us. This makes us feel poor.

We wanted to do something which would help people understand, in real terms, where they stand globally. And make us realise that in fact most of us (who are able to view this web page) are in the privileged minority.

We want people to feel rich. And give some of their “extra” money to a worthwhile charity.

By the way, the world’s 225 richest people now have a combined wealth of $1 trillion. That’s equal to the combined annual income of the world’s 2.5 billion poorest people.

Bill O’Reilly speaking with Katie Couric on The Today Show:

“To fight every single day of my life, which is literally what I do in this culture war, this intense battle, it just sucks the energy out of you. So, I’m like an athlete. My body’s going to break down sooner or later under the stress of this.”

Wonkette’s answer:

Would somebody please give this soldier, this athlete, this broken-down, sucked-out four-star general and high-scoring quarterback of the Culture Wars a massage, please? Honestly, he makes Keith Richards look like a Noxema Girl.

Island Packet: As the pinch for oil and natural gas supply intensifies, energy companies are beginning a push to seek fuels believed to be off the coast of Hilton Head Island.

Energy industry lobbyists are ramping up efforts to convince state legislators to open up South Carolina’s coast for oil and natural gas drilling. Those efforts come despite federal moratoria on offshore drilling that last until 2012.

Though some state lawmakers insist nothing is in the works for January’s legislative session, lobbyists have acknowledged meeting with legislators on the issue, and the state’s petroleum council actively is soliciting support for exploring offshore resources.

“I’ve had a number of conversations with members of the General Assembly having to do with natural gas drilling,” said Hope Lanier, a lobbyist with Charlotte-based Piedmont Natural Gas, a distribution company that serves upstate South Carolina and parts of North Carolina and Tennessee. “I think there is a lot of positive momentum” for exploring offshore natural gas reserves.

A small provision in a wide-ranging energy bill passed by Congress this summer mandated a national inventory of offshore energy resources, prompting local concern that drilling for oil and natural gas off South Carolina’s prized coastline could be a step closer.

Experts believe most of the oil and natural gas deposits in the South Atlantic region are in an area called the Carolina Trough, a large undersea basin that runs along the coast from North Carolina to northern Georgia. At its closest, near Cape Hatteras, N.C., the trough is about 60 miles from shore.

Near Hilton Head Island, the trough is estimated to be about 150 miles from shore.