At Home Blog

Maybe it is because I love the element of surprise, but I'm a long-time shopper at yard sales, garage sales, estate sales, flea markets and odd lot shops. I know some people are embarrassed to shop secondhand, but for whatever reason, I've always felt unrepentant about it. Now I don't have to defend the practice; perhaps it's the crummy economy, but secondhand is suddenly chic. The New York Times has a funny little profile today on a Portland couple who seek out high design in low places, and then resell it to wealthy customers. I'm happy to see secondhand vindicated, though of course this means getting up even EARLIER before the good stuff's gone, and having an ever-more-discerning eye for pieces that need refinishing or a lick of paint.

Also: I’ve seen this floating around on my neighborhood Listserv, but was forwarded an official press release today. Apparently ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” is coming to town. Callier Thompson Shea Construction and Design (yes, that’s one business name) and Consolidated Construction will be helping the TV team redo a house here in town; they haven’t revealed who’s going to be the recipient of the makeover, but they’re looking for people to volunteer for the home makeover, so if you want to do something good and soak up a little Hollywood sparkle at the same time, you can pop over to www.extremehomemakeoverstlouis.com or call 636-256-8906 to sign up. CTSC and CC are also sponsoring a pep rally on August 26 from 8 to 11 a.m. at Manchester United Methodist Church (129 Woods Mill Road).

This week, I learned about a particularly nifty concept in architecture: the Scottish "black house." I'm in the middle of reading Alistair McIntosh's Soil and Soul, which is McIntosh's very nonlinear memoir about growing up on the Isle of Lewis, in Scotland. The black house, if you don't want to click over to Wikipedia, is a stone house with a peat roof that has a fire pit in the middle, and no chimney (the peat's permeable enough to allow the smoke to escape). Heating was achieved not just with the fire, but by sheltering cows indoors on one side of the house - their body heat kept the place warm! And both cow and person were sheltered from the bitter winds of the Hebrides. People lived in these until the late 1970s, and in fact older folks who were relocated to "white houses" complained that they felt flimsy, unsubstantial and did not adequately shelter them from the island's strong winds. Though the black houses were abandoned in the late 20th century, folks are now understanding just how ingenious they were from an engineering standpoint; they are effectively zero-energy houses that require no fancy technology. They are now being restored as holiday residences, though the decline in global crude supplies may have folks reviving the black house lifestyle (or something simliar) on a more extended, and permanent, basis.

Here in St. Louis, surrounded as we are by historic architecture, we find ourselves in roughly equivalent situation; I don't know this for sure, but I once speculated while interviewing an architect that during the golden age of suburbia (the 40s, 50s and 60s), builders prided themselves on constructing inefficient houses, because it gave them a chance to show off fancy new HVAC systems; thumbing your nose at the weather was something people had never been able to do, and they reveled in it. He did not disagree. There are some nicely designed ranch houses out there, but for the most part, I think that once oil prices spike back up again and it becomes prohibitively expensive to heat and cool, they're going to suffer like the now-pariah SUV, with the only dirtier possibility for scapegoating being the 6,000-foot monster mansions constructed during the housing boom.

While I'll acknowledge that there are probably very, very few Americans who'd be down with keeping a cow in the house, we should be looking to our past as well. When oil prices climb again - which every expert cautions that they will - whiz-bang "green" technology may be prohibitively expensive. The most rational thing to do is balance new techonlogies with an examination of our ancestor's building methods - many of them used in the harshest environments on Earth - that worked beautifully for thousands of years. The French Colonial families who landed on the banks of the Mississippi, for instance, did not live Cro-Mag lives; sure, they did import faience pottery, perfume and window glass from Paris, but they didn't need electricity. Hell, certain St. Louis City neighborhoods did not have indoor plumbing until the 1950s! And a lot of them went nearly that long without power. It never ceases to boggle my mind how humans exert all kinds of time, money and energy constructing $9 million dollar hydrogen houses when all they really need is a good pile of stones, some peat and some know-how. Of course, the black house serves another important function too, which is to connect us deeply to nature - something the hydrogen house can never do. And I'd argue that this calls us to the use of "primitive" technologies more profoundly than energy efficiency, thrift or aesthetics.

As housing and finance continue to implode, the media has been responding with stories that dig into the how and why of it. (If you ask me, it's too little, too late - there were experts and yes, even journalists who warned years ago that that these disasters were headed our way ... and no one really listened.)

I've been following the New York Times' series on "The Debt Trap," and today's piece is especially interesting. They look into how banks spun the idea of a second mortage - which had been in times past a really shameful thing - into something sexy. The bit about the Waltons and Archie and Edith Bunker burning their mortage just goes to show you how culture's changed ... not only do people no longer hold mortgage-burning parties, but would The Waltons or All in the Family even make it onto network TV these days? It seems to me these two things are connected; a culture filled with people who pull up stakes every seven years is not one, I don't think, that really values community. And if you take that back to the roots, that's also a basic disregard for family. Of course, if you have not noticed, there is a sea change afoot - one forced by economic circumstances in part - but a sea change nevertheless. It will be interesting to see what happens next; the talking heads are saying there's more pain ahead in the market, and until the dust settles, it's tough to know what the next housing zeitguest will be.

First, quick: Modern furniture/accessories store, Atom, is having an August clearance sale. Get more info (like what time they're open and what they carry) right here at their site.

Second: it's peak season for the farmers' markets. The Tower Grove Farmer's Market has expanded more quickly than even pie-eyed optimists like myself could've predicted. And my neighborhood farmer's market on St. Louis Avenue is going gangbusters, too. Their site's now full of information and recipes ... and I find recipes to be the difference between being a successful farmer's market visitor versus someone with a lot of rotten zucchini and eggplant in the fridge.

Since the localvore movement is relatively new, most of us aren't used to working with seasonal vegetables (and large quantities of such). My parents are master gardeners, so growing up it seemed pretty normal to spend weeks eating lots of chard and radishes, and then move through tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant and cucumbers, then end the summer eating melons and squash. After moving out on my own, though, I rebelled and lived off Cocoa Puffs and pizza. Though I've corrected back towards the vegetable-fruit thing, I've never been a great cook, so like a lot of people, I'm really flummoxed after I return home with a bag full of stuff that looked good at the time ... things like collard greens and wax beans and a big bushy bouquet of basil ... that I don't know what to do with.

Right now, I find myself with painful amount of eggplant. I've given some of it away, but that doesn't mean the problem is solved. My better half figured out that the smaller, skinner purple eggplants are actually great cut up on pizza; we have yet to find a really good solution for the big white ones, though I must keep reminding myself that when I think I don't like eggplant, it's only because it's challenging to cook. How many times have I melted over a plate of eggplant parmigianio on the Hill? And baba ganoush is one of my favorite things in the world. Scanning this list of top 20 eggplant recipes, I'm reminded that it's basically a Mediterranean fruit, and that even without a recipe, remembering its nature will help me find kindred ingredients in the kitchen when cooking it up. Of course, when all else fails ... anything tastes good fried in butter!

If you drive down Cass, you can see, across from the old Pruitt-Igoe site, the James Clemens Mansion. You may recognize the last name, perhaps; he was in fact Mark Twain's uncle. The mansion, which is currently held by developer Paul McKee, has been rumored to be on the selling block, though no news to report there at the moment. The chapel attached to the mansion is mostly collapsed, and of course, each time it rains, the house itself incurs more and more damage.

As you can see from this collection of black and white photos on the Library of Congress website, in 1960 the house had a bit of bad patching done on the ceiling plaster but was in fairly lovely condition otherwise. If you want to indulge in a really depressing (but illuminating) exercise, search their photo archives for photos related to the Historic American Building Survey, then compare the photos to what's still standing! Actually, looking through the photos, I was struck by the realization that St. Louis peculiar pattern of decay must have begun far earlier than the 50s as is usually stated ... the images of decay in some of these buildings (burnt-out fireplaces, rotting furniture, blistering lead paint on ceilings and walls) look eerily like some of our contemporary neglected historic buidings.

Well, I'll admit it: I'm wicked jealous of my sister's ability to teach herself anything - including how to spin yarn from fleece - by checking out a book from the library. I'm one of those hands-on learners, which is annoying, because your options are more limited and there is usually a fee involved. Still, I always grabbed a class schedule at the Missouri Botanical Garden, promising myself I'd sign up for some class or another. Inevitably, I'd space out the circular and it would be outdated by the time I found it again.

Anyway, I got an email from the Garden today, which tipped me off to the fact that you can now browse their classes - and register for them - online. Which makes it far more likely I'll take a class (I'm sure the same goes for a lot of people). Some of them are very conceptually clever, like "Yoga for Gardeners," where you strengthen and stretch the muscle groups that really get a workout when you garden, so that your knees, back and neck are not killing you after a long day of pulling weeds. They offer all the requisite greenie stuff (composting, basic organic gardening, native plants) to off-the-radar-gothy stuff, like "The Wonder of Bees" (beekeeping is so Victorian ... and so Syliva Plath!) and the history of bookmaking and printing. My favorite class title so far is "Deers! Oh My!" Which is not a hunting class - I don't think - but a tutorial on how to keep the does and bucks out of your hostas. I also like the looks of their "behind the scenes" series, which are basically field trips to area nurseries, including Sugar Creek Farms, Bowood and Fahr.

One of my favorite parts of going across the street for lunch is walking past the big swaths of lavender they've planted around the parking lot. It attracts bees like crazy. I probably look like a dunderhead, but sometimes I can't help stopping on the sidewalk to watch them weaving in and out of the flowers. In light of colony collapse disorder, I have the same hopeful feeling that I get when I see giant crows strutting across the Target parking lot in back of our building; West Nile didn't wipe them out, and I see more of them every year.

If you garden, of course, you know that bees are absolutely crucial for pollinating flowers, fruit trees and most vegetables, and that there's great virtue in putting bee-friendly flora in your beds. This Saturday, a "bee man" from the Eastern Missouri Beekeeper's Association will be at Bowood Farms to lecture on exactly that. There will also be honey and leaflets on starting your own hives - a practice I know to be entirely legal in rural areas, and in the city so long as you keep only two hives. Out in the county, it's a case-by-case thing, so check with your muncipality before buying your smoker and bee suit. The workshop runs from 2 to 4 pm, and is free. Bowood, who I personally consider to be one of the finest nurseries in Missouri, has a schedule of classes running through early fall, including workshops on butterfly gardens and rain gardens. (You can see their full calendar here).

Also, yesterday as I flew into the Tap Room to pick up a growler of Kolsch for a board meeting (a glass of beer all around can be very conducive to brainstorming), I noticed a poster taped to the front door for the Schlaflea Market, "an urban thrift sale." They are describing it as "the most unusual garage sale this side of the Mississippi" and are anticipating up to 100 tables. Goodwill will be there to accept donations of stuff - all the booth fees will go to Goodwill, too. And perhaps once you've rid yourself of dead weight from your closet or basement, you won't feel quite so guilty if you find a good deal on a lamp, or That's Saturday August 2 from 8 to 4, in the Schafly Tap Room parking lot on Locust. It looks like they are still accepting tables, and they've posted a list of goods on their site that Goodwill will NOT accept, including carpet, old computers and printers, food, building materials, old sinks and toilets, chemicals, major appliances and of course, crappy, beat-up old furniture. Save yourself the gas and the trouble by checking that list before you drive down there, especially if you're trying to get rid of an old washing machine!

Good news for fence-sitters looking to buy a house, and for St. Louis as a whole: Forbes rated us as one of their "Best Cities to Buy a Home." We didn't rate as high as Houston, but being rated number 3 isn't bad! Here's their methodology:

"These metrics indicate places where buyers are investing in homes in order to live, not just make a quick buck, and where the housing market is relatively solid. We culled our vacancy and home price information from the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Association of Realtors."

In addition, they compared mortage payments versus rent, current vacancy rates and the stability of the local economy. We were sandwiched right between Austin and Philly; here's what they had to say about us:

"St. Louis is a great place to settle because it's not overbuilt and is reasonably priced relative to income. Thanks to the attractive cost of living, many large corporations--including brewing behemoth Anheuser-Busch and financial heavies Stifel Nicolaus and Edward Jones--call St. Louis home. With a family friendly culture, and a steadily appreciating median home price of $145,400, the 'Gateway to the West' is a great place to buy a home."

I was a little disappointed to notice that they made zero mention of our surrounding universities or cultural outlets; that "family-friendly" tag is pretty much a synonym for "boring" (I know this to be true, because I grew up in Salt Lake City, another place that is considered to be culture-free because it gets the same caption). Maybe they should talk to the folks over at Time Out Chicago, who clearly understand that there's more to St. Louis than chicken fingers and playdates.

While researching something else, I stumbled on this blog post from I09 on "Retro Futurism," that featured excerpts from a mid-60s teen Home Ec mag, "Co-Ed," that speculated on what kitchens of the future would look like. The sheer optimism/dopey-ness of this cartoon gave me a lift:

They also swore we'd be sitting on inflatable sofas and using spray-on curtains. The inflatable furniture came to pass somewhat (those odd, Warholian blow-up chairs you see in pictures of swingin' 60s pads back in the day) though sadly, much of the more whimsical stuff did not. Some of the creepier predictions are almost dead-on - check out the bullet point for "Big Brother Watches Little Brother."

This brilliant commentary in the Washington Independent juxatposes Disney's "House of the Future" (in both its current and Midcentury incarnations) with Frank Lloyd Wright's genuinely visionary approach to architecture. Disney's 1957 exhibit was sponsored by Monsanto, and was made almost entirely of plastic (the wrecking ball bounced off it during the first attempt at demolition). It was mostly just a technology showcase, versus Wright's designs, which sought to mirror deep cultural changes:

"Wright was among the first to notice that family life was changing. With the freedom offered by the automobile and new household electric appliances, it was becoming more spontaneous and informal. The stilted formality of the Victorian house, which depended on a large staff of servants, had become obsolete. Wright seized on the moment to sweep away the rabbit warren of parlors, anterooms and sitting rooms into which Victorian life was shoehorned, breaking down walls to make the household space a relaxed and flowing continuum. The graceful integration of dining and living spaces became the hallmark of the modern house -- and remains so to this day."

The most depressing part of this article for me, especially in light of the housing meltdown/climate change/"peak everything,"was near the end of the piece:

"But the Elias family is considerably less futuristic than the house they inhabit. It creates no mental strain to imagine them sitting quite happily in 1957 at that plastic dining room table of the original House of the Future. Rather than envisioning the family of the future, Disney has conjured up an idyllic and reassuring family of the past.

Nowhere is this more clear than in the architecture itself, which offers no alarming space pods or plastics. This Dream Home attempts no such comprehensive rethinking, offers no new architectural vision. On the contrary, it is a contemporary suburban house by Taylor Morrison, a lucrative homebuilding company that specializes in neo-vernacular houses, notable for their bland inoffensiveness.

In the end, the most revealing feature of the house is that it has, rather distressingly, no bathrooms. Whether that is because the bathroom remains the one bastion of the house untouched by the digital revolution, or because this unmistakable hint of physical reality disturbs the unrelenting theme of virtual reality, is not clear."

A house design suggesting humans had become slightly more tolerant of dealing with nature - including the call of - now, that would be progress!

If you haven't yet taken advantage of MoBot's Kemper Center for Home Gardening, know that they'll do soil testing, help you to diagnose weird plant diseases and help you pick out the right plants for the plot you've got. And next week, they're teaching a class on how to best save and savor those tomatoes, parsnips and whatnot growing in your garden plot through the autumn and winter by canning, drying and freezing them. All the details can be found here.

If you, like me, have been feeling guilty about not volunteering to fill sandbags in nearby flooded communities, there is something you can do instead: donate to Slow Food's Terra Madre Relief Fund, set up to help embattled Midwestern farmers, many of whom have lost their farms ... and this year's crops. Most of us are at least a little stretched after coughing up $4+ for gas, but think of it this way: by helping Midwestern farmers, we will be able to help everyone keep down food prices later this year - and that will help everyone. (If ever there was a time when it was clear that we are all connected, it's right now!) See more on St. Louis' Slow Food homepage.

This weekend, antiques dealers from as far away as Cincinnati and Horseshoe Bend, Ark. will set up tables in the Greenfelder Recreation Complex for the third annual Missouri Heritage Art and Antiques Show. Why so many non-Missouri dealers at a Missouri Heritage show, you ask? Well, the heritage part actually comes in after the money is counted. Your admission price goes to support the work of the Webster Groves Historical Society, specifically upkeep on the Christopher Hawken House, the first house in the state to receive federal funds for its restoration. The house was built in 1857 along Big Bend Road, but encroaching development threatened its existence, so in 1970 it was moved to Southwest Park. It's now a museum, open to the public, decorated to period style; they sometimes host traveling exhibits, too, like the doll exhibit that passed through this spring.

The Details:

Missouri Heritage Art and Antiques Show
benefiting the Webster Groves Historical Society
Greensfelder Recreation Complex
550 Weidman Road
Admission: $6
Times: Saturday, June 28th 10am-6pm
Sunday, June 29th 11am-4pm
www.willowrush.com/MO.html

Dana King, whose projects have appeared in our pages many times (she was on one of the designers on our Haven of Grace project, which you can read about in our July/Aug issue, which will hit stands any second now, if it hasn't already) is the creator of an ingenious concept: the Design Hop. Basically, she and fellow designer Gina Adolphson are heading up monthly in-house design clinics where they gather groups of women and then bouce from house to house, moving furniture, hanging pictures in new places and basically helping you to maximize what you've already got. If you wanna set one up for your Jet Set, Dana's blog has all the details.

As gas prices continue their upward creep, many of us are having the epiphany: Yes, Virginia, there are reasons to create dense, walkable urban communities that are built around people, not cars. But of course there are better reasons than that.

Kaid Benfield, the Smarth Growth Director for the National Resources Council, points out many of these benefits in a terrific post on Switchboard this week, wherein he lavishes praise on Old North St. Louis and its continuing renaissance. As Benfield points out, it is a renaissance that is green-minded, resident-driven and creative. Progress has been sustained and careful, with an emphasis on quality rehabs and affordable housing - it is a recovery that's sustainable over the long term, both economically and environmentally. This is in stark contrast to the Ponzi scheme approach to real estate that's gripped the country for the last several years - and we've seen what that can do, both to indvidual families and the economy as a whole.

I love this quote:

“Every now and then I run across a story that is so good, that feels so right, that I thank my lucky stars for the freedom NRDC gave me to evolve my career into working for better, more sustainable communities. This is such a story, and it reveals an historic, diverse, inclusive neighborhood that is reclaiming its identity, restoring its infrastructure, empowering its residents, and securing its future. The community wins, and so does the environment, because the Old North neighborhood in Saint Louis is the very antithesis of sprawl.”

Speaking of green … take note that the Greening the Heartland Conference kicks off next week, which is really exciting! Can’t wait to see the ripples that emanate from that. You can read their blog here. And since we began this post with a mention of gasoline, I’d be remiss in not mentioning that St. Louis Green is sponsoring a screening of the excellent documentary, GasHole, at the Hi-Pointe Theatre this weekend. Check it out.

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• High Design in Low Places; "Extreme Makeover: Home Editon" comes to town
• The Greenness of the Blackhouse
• NYT Examines Second Mortages and "The Debt Trap"
• August Clearance Sale at Atom; What to do with too many eggplants?
• Photos of the James Clemens Mansion in 1960, on the Library of Congress Website
• Not Book-Learning, but Learning About Books ... and Deer, and Compost
• Bees and Fleas
• So Buy a House, Already
• More on Houses of the Future
• "Houses of the Future" Tend To Say More About the Present ... and the Past

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