Dancing directions

Peculiar travel directions are like dancing lessons from God.

So sayeth a character from Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, which is a philosophy I have attempted to take to heart. Which is why, when a friend asked me if I wanted to go to beer school, I immediately replied "yes" and why today, when another friend came up and asked if I wanted to drive to Farnsworth House, an architectural icon and 4 hours from St.Louis, again I replied with the affirmative. 

So I'm going to be driving to Plano, IL, with three Chinese students and one Spanish architect, Alfredo Paya Benedito to see the deeply contested work of Mies van der Rohe.

Should be an interesting day.

This comes on the heels of another interesting day. This morning started with a structures exam, which I actually felt pretty good about considering I only did about a third of the homework. Right afterwards, I got got chewed out by my studio instructor for not having enough work done. I lost a lot of time working for the GAC yesterday, taking prospective students to the hotel from the airport. After getting yelled at for a few minutes, I left studio and went to buy some model supplies. I bought around $40 of concrete and $20 of wood, and hauled it back to studio. Actually, I barely was able to squeeze the 10' board into my Prius, but I did it by wedging the board in diagonally all the way up to the dashboard. Got back to studio, quickly sliced the board into 2' sections in the wood shop, and then took one of the prospective students back to the airport for his early flight out of town.

It's been kind of fun shuttling kids around. They have this nervous/eager look to them, they look so young. The way the whole thing worked is the school rented minivans and SUVs for us to drive, and we would send in a greeter to the terminal to collect the students while the driver hung out at the cell phone lot or circled. My greeter was one of the most stoic and taciturn students I've seen in the school. In the car ride, I was making all the conversation with the student. At least he hung in for a long time.

Anyway, after I got back to campus, it was time for happy hour (free beer for this time/mixer with the prospective students) (also where I was approached and asked about Farnsworth house), then there was a lecture by Juhani Pallasmaa on comparative phenomenology/existentialism in literature vs architecture, followed by a very nice dinner in Holmes Lounge, the very nice beaux arts former reading room of the library. Everyone calls it Hogwarts. Good dinner, mediocre wine, (but after a few beers at happy hour, who really cares?) and good desert. Our table was dominated by the presence of one of our senior professors who has a tendency to name-drop and to monopolize conversation. It was an interesting study in the subtle art of putting down other schools while appearing to be balanced, especially in the context of quietly selling the school to the three prospective students at the table. Actually, most of what he said made sense to me, and I frequently agreed with his assessment of the school and its comparison to other campuses.

After dinner, more free Blue Moon beer at the Blueberry Hill bar.