#732 The MV World Odyssey, The Dream Ship

 SEMESTER AT SEA SHIP HISTORY

MS Seven Seas, 1963-1966
SS Ryndam, 1966-1971
SS Universe, 1971-1995
SS Universe Explorer, 1996-2004
MV Explorer, 2004-2015
MV World Odyssey, 2015-present

During our previous Semester at Sea voyages when the program was sponsored by the University of Virginia, the MV Explorer was our shipboard home for more than 500 days/nights.  We have a gazillion photos of this modern ship built in 2001 but the beautifully photographed article in Maritime Matters is the place to go to best understand the contemporary style of our previous home.

MV Explorer

The MV World Odyssey is the sixth shipboard home of the SAS program and we are eager to see it up close this fall.  In 1998, she was built in Kiel, Germany - just north of our embarkation point in Hamburg.

MV World Odyssey

We have a lot to learn about our new ship, but we already know that she has a cinematic history. The German television show Das Traumschiff ("The Dream Ship"), based off the American TV series "The Love Boat", was filmed on board for 15 years.  Fans of The Dream Ship have the opportunity to sail during the summer when the MV World Odyssey is not used for SAS.  It would be fun to sail on The Love Boat, ie, the Pacific Princess, but it was decommissioned and taken apart for recycling in 2013.

I've done some serious cinematic research of films set on ocean liners, so I'm happy to have found this cinematic connection with the MV World Odyssey.  For the official results of my research, see my Top 20 Films at Sea and even More Films at Sea. Spoiler alert: My favorite is One Way Passage, 1932.

Yours in dreaming of The Dream Ship,
Mary Jo

#731 Deck to Patio

Converting the deck to a patio is a BIG project!

Thank goodness we have friends and family to help.  When we find the ideal limestone ledge rock at a farm auction south of Aurora last fall, we win the bid for a whopping $50 and start planning a patio.

With the help of our nephew, his skid loader and trailer, the ledge rock is soon residing at our home. Some say the pile of rock even begins to taunt us as we take our time planning our course of action.

The large, well-constructed, 2-level, wooden deck was built by the homeowners two times removed and was starting to show its age.

In removing the deck, we work toward three goals: reduce annual maintenance, increase yard space, and expose the rock foundation on the east side of the house.  We get to work removing the wooden structure with the help of our friend Randall. 

And we find a good home for the lumber too!

We borrow our nephew's hydraulic Deweze hay truck to help extract the deck posts.

And voila!  The wooden deck is gone.

A lot of work is needed on the former-coal-chute-turned-basement-window now revealed by the removal of the deck.  The plywood window covering is replaced with masonry and glass blocks.  The dryer vent, electricity, and sump drain are re-routed through the glass block. 

We are happy to learn that our great-nephew excels at washing basement windows.

Finally, we get to examine those individual pieces of ledge rock up close and personal as we figure out the puzzle of making them fit, lay them down, and make sure each one is level with a slight tip away from the house. 

After we fill in some gravel around the rocks and dirt around the patio,

it's time to enjoy a well-deserved hot dog - on the patio, of course.

Yours in appreciating family and friends in our transition from deck to patio,
Mary Jo

#730 Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again

Mamma Mia, here we go again!  

My my, how can I resist you?  

Mamma mia, does it show again?  

My my, just how much I've missed you"

The two of us are sailing again with Semester at Sea and we couldn't be happier!

In the fall of 2006, we first met up with Semester at Sea, a study-abroad program that sails around the world, and we fell in love with the eye-opening combination of education and world travel.  This fall, we're sailing on our fifth academic voyage to 11 countries over 107 days with about 500 undergraduate students.

We will spend about half of those 107 days at sea.  That's when classes are held and I will be working as the voyage librarian.  The other half of those 107 days will be spent in port, exploring countries in Europe, Africa, and Asia.  Mamma mia, librarianship has been very, very good to me.

It's impossible to share the many fun things that happen during a voyage so I'll offer just one highlight from our 2008 voyage that I've been remembering of late. (And it pairs well with the subject of this blog post.) While we were docked in Greece, our shipboard family (the two of us plus our two shipboard daughters) navigated our way to a local theater to see the just-released Mamma Mia!

On every voyage, we're given the opportunity to form a shipboard family with students who opt in and it's added greatly to our experience.  We're already looking forward to meeting the newest members of our growing family.

This fall will be our first time to sail on the MV World Odyssey, a 20-year-old cruise ship that is decorated in the 1920s style and still used during the summer months for cruises. Though we will always love the MV Explorer, the previous SAS ship, we're eager to see our fall home in person. 

Yours in gratitude to ABBA and Semester at Sea,
Mary Jo

#729 Lewis and Kate

When we purchased our bungalow in 2009, we immediately started researching its history.  We've learned so much since then due to the truly wonderful research tools at our disposal:

• Aurora Advertiser, microfilmed copies of our local newspaper housed in the Mount Vernon public library
• Aurora Historical Society, its collections, and its collective memory 
• Census records in Ancestry.com
• eBay and its numerous Aurora postcards by phenomenal photographer R.E. Hinchey
• Facebook groups familiar with the house and its previous owners
• FindaGrave.com
• Google Maps with its historic street views
• a Hairstylist who knows the locals
• another Hairstylist who knows the locals
• House owners and family of house owners
• Lawrence County Historical Society
• Lawrence County recorder office  
• Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps housed at University of Missouri and Library of Congress
• Yale University's Beinecke Library and its preserved and digitized copy of Hinchey's 1907 Aurora, Lawrence County, Missouri book of photos

Our most recent discoveries are the photos of Lewis Shaw Coleman and Mary Kate Miller Coleman.  This young couple has captured our imaginations for years because while still in their 20s, Lewis and Kate built an architecturally unique airplane bungalow in small-town Aurora. We have been most eager to lay our eyes on their faces and thanks to the work of the Aurora Historical Society, we are thrilled to digitally hold these images in our house history collection.  

Lewis Shaw Coleman

Mary Kate Miller Coleman

We very much appreciate many library and archival institutions for the good work they do.  And we are especially grateful for those small-town organizations all around the country, such as the Aurora Historical Society and the Lawrence County Historical Society, for working on shoestring budgets in order to accomplish so much in the collection and preservation of historic documents and artifacts that help us tell our story.

Yours in appreciating the great work of local historical societies,
Mary Jo

#728 Ozarks Bungalow walls

We learn a lot during our Aurora haircuts!

In 2015, while getting a haircut at the Hair Shed, Jackie connected us with a descendant of the Seburn family who built the house on our lot prior to ours.

When Jackie retires a couple years later, we find Rachel whose shop is visible from our home.   It isn't long before we learn that Rachel grew up in our neighborhood and her grandfather knows a lot about our house. 

After an in-depth conversation with Rachel's grandfather, we learn the identity of the bricklayer and stone mason. Harry Darnold and his partner Charley Walters were the masons who built the brick and stone portions of our house like the columns on the front porch.

Charley Walters at lower left

Yours in gratitude for Aurora hairstylists and for the skilled masons who built our house,
Mary Jo

#727 Tire Teacup

Where do you go for supplies when you want to make a teacup out of old tires?  My brother's farm, of course! 

Sure enough, we spot an old tractor tire under the leaves that he no longer needs.

The big tractor tire and three big truck tires are too big for our car, but that's OK because my nephew has a big truck.  Perfect!  We get them home and start to work.

 

Kelly says he's never used his sawzall to cut open a tire.  Go figure. 

 

But look!  It works. Steel-belted tires are tricky but Kelly and the sawzall power through.

It works on the big tractor tire too.

Our teacup takes shape with all 4 pieces cut from old tires.

Following a thorough cleaning, two coats of Kilz primer goes on each piece.

 

The pink coat goes on next.  We found the pink paint (officially known as dusty rose) in the basement left behind by earlier homeowners.  There wasn't any pink still in the house when we moved in, so there's no telling how long this paint has been around.  It still sticks well to tires, though.

A few polka dots add a little whimsy.  Four screws hold the handle to the cup.  And we're now ready for the annual car event at the park across the street on Saturday.

Yours in getting into the automotive spirit,

Mary

#726 Happy 150th, Frank Lloyd Wright!

Frank Lloyd Wright’s 150 birthday is coming up on June 8, 2017.   

In celebration of that important event, I interviewed Kelly, the Wright expert in my life. 

When did you first learn of Wright?

It was Wright’s furniture, not his architecture, that first grabbed my attention.  My dad was a carpenter and I remember becoming interested in old oak furniture through my folks and their friends Jim and Phyllis.  I started looking at books about oak furniture and came across Wright’s furniture designs.  I’m lucky to have had such an early introduction to carpentry through my dad. 

What do you remember about your first visit to a Wright house?

In 1995, I visited Wright's last Prairie House, the Allen house in Wichita.  From the street, the red tile roof and horizontal lines stood out.  I remember the large, open living room.  We had to pass through the entry space, a gateway of sorts, and I felt special about being inside the house, standing in the living space, slightly elevated and sheltered from the street outside and still connected to the outdoors.  This house made me even more curious about Wright and the following year, I attended my first Wright Plus Housewalk in Oak Park, IL.

So you’ve been following Wright for more than 20 years.  Would you call yourself a fan?

Yes, I’m a fan of his architecture, his furniture, his entrepreneurial spirit, and his vision.  He foresaw how the auto would change the way we live.  And how it would change the way our cities look.  His Broadacre City urban planning ideas were centered around a mobile, auto-centric middle class which shortly came to fruition.

And how do you think your interest in Wright has changed the way you live?

It has made me more thoughtful about design and about how your surroundings make you feel.  The horizontal line as the line of domesticity is something I’ve thought about when renovating our Ozarks bungalow.  It really does inspire calm. I appreciate how Wright’s architecture blends with the landscape and helps the occupants feel connected to the landscape. 

I’m married to you so I know you may have more to say about this question.  How else do you think your interest in Wright has changed the way you live? 

Learning about how much he cared about the way house design impacts his occupants has made me more thoughtful and more intentional about that same topic.   Eliminating unnecessary clutter and ornamentation from life has simplified and improved it.  To learn about people, look at their buildings. 

You mention the Ozarks bungalow.  Would you say that its 1914 design was influenced by Wright?   
His Prairie houses from that time period blurred the line between inside and out and I think the design of this house does the same.  I see concepts that he popularized with walls of glass and connections to the landscape from each of the rooms. The wide overhangs do deliver that sense of shelter.  One of the reviewers for our National Register nomination commented that our house combines Craftsman Bungalow and Prairie elements. 

What are some of the benefits of your interest in Wright?

Wright connects me with a community of scholars, architects, students, lovers of Wright, haters of Wright, and has given me a reason to visit buildings off the beaten path from Japan to Buffalo. Through Wright, I first learned of Fay Jones, whose large body of work is centered around Arkansas, his home state, near where we live.  Training and volunteering as a guide for Wright’s Bachman-Wilson house at Crystal Bridges Museum upped my game while connecting me with like-minded guides and museum guests.  

What do you wish I would have asked you about Wright that I haven’t?

How many Wright buildings have you visited and which would you most like to see? 

How many Wright buildings have you visited and which would you most like to see?    
We’ve seen about 50 Wright buildings.  There are about 70 open to the public.   I’d most like to see Teater’s Knoll in Bliss, Idaho because of its remote dramatic location overlooking the Snake River and its soaring native stone and glass construction.  It is privately owned and not regularly open for tours. The pictures look fabulous!  

Finally, what are you going to do to celebrate Mr. Wright's 150th birthday?
We have two fun Wright events planned this week and another this summer.  This week, I'll be giving a couple tours of the Bachman-Wilson house at Crystal Bridges - which I love doing.  And we'll also be touring for the first time the Sondern-Adler home in Kansas City.  This summer, we'll be attending MOMA's exhibit, Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive. In between, I'll probably pull a book off one of my Wright shelves for re-reading.  But, as you well know, we celebrate Wright a lot around here even when it's not his birthday.