Immutable Laws of the Universe

Just as the checkout aisle I choose will always be the slowest available option, no matter how few people are ahead of me in the line,

if I am waiting for a train headed north, at least two trains will head south before the northbound train arrives (and vice versa).

Differing Opinions on John Storer

*Architect Sketch of John Storer House

Sometimes, I like to go surfing. I'm somewhat lacking in balance and live on the East Coast, so I of course mean wikisurfing. Oh, the times I've had; the pub-quiz trivia knowledge I've gained! Sometimes though, I stumble across discrepancies, especially when it comes to tangential people in history.

John Storer had his home, of Frank Lloyd Wright's textile-block-house era, built for him in 1923. There's precious little information offered about him on Wikipedia. One spot is in the Millard House entry, while another is in the John Storer House entry. In both articles he is described as a "doctor," yet in one he's described as "homeopathic" and in the other he is described as "failed." The former entry cites Ruth Ryan, a former Celebrity Homes Columnist," but does not provide an active link to the article. Meanwhile the latter does: Hugh Eakin's article is a riot of adjectives; tempestuous, obsessed, untested, free-spirited, and motley, all make appearances in the first two paragraphs of the article, along with rhetorical questions and broad cinematic pronouncements; I can't help but distrust it: there are just too many adjectives to wrangle with.

So my question is, who's right? Or are they both right/wrong? Was he a successful homeopathic doctor, but not a "real" doctor, and thus a failure? Or did he turn to homeopathic medicine after failing to make it as a conventional doctor? Or something completely different?

Searching for "John Storer" and "Frank Lloyd Wright" together on Google returned 9,370 results, but it took till page three to find a substantive article here.

The article is from a series Young calls "Biographies of Homeopaths" (I will, for the purpose of inquiry accept "homeopathy" as medicine), and further down the page she also writes that John Storer was a professor and Dean of The Hahnemann Medical College of Chicago. Hey, professor and Dean (just like my Mom!), that doesn't sound much like "failed" to me. And if like me, you think the failure Eakin refers to may be the mere practice of "homeopathic" medicine, then this article, cited by Young, becomes especially helpful in gauging if not the legitimacy of homeopathic medicine, at least the status of homeopathic medicine in Chicago around the time The Hahnemann Medical College of Chicago was founded.

With a little historical perspective, and with Dr. John Storer's titles, I hope that's not what Eakin is referring to. And anyway, let's remember that at the time (or even sometime after) Dr. Storer moved into his house in 1923, Heroin Cough Drops, Benzedrine Asthma Inhalers, and Lobotomies for Depression were all accepted medical practice.

So, if "homeopathy" isn't what Eakin was referring to at all, what could he be basing his adjective choice on? Another answer emerges when you read deeper into Young's article, as she suggests that Dr. Storer went bankrupt because of the cost of the home. Here the linked source is within a book, Frank Lloyd Wright's California Houses by Carla Lind, which states in the sidebar on the right that Dr. Storer died bankrupt in 1927. The 6 reviews of Carla Lind's books on Amazon are somewhat inconclusive. A few say the books are great, and a few say they're thin and slight on information. That sort of statement makes me doubt that they include a work cited, and I'm not about to buy the book just to find out, which means that without some extra work I can't confirm the possibly sad fate of Dr. Storer.

Regardless, while "failed doctor" adds the flair of desperation to the "motley" bunch that Eakin assembled, and while in assessing his lot at the end of life it's possible that Dr. Storer considered himself a failure, it just doesn't seem like a fair phrase because it implies that Dr. Storer failed "as a doctor," and ultimately, unless other evidence can be presented to contrary, misrepresents the man...

Anyway, if anyone has more information about Dr. John Storer, do let me know.

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Differing Opinions of Dr. John Storer

Found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storer_House_(Los_Angeles,_California)

The Storer House was built in 1923 for Dr. John Storer, a homeopathic physician.

Source: Ruth Ryon (2001-02-03). "Home of the Week: Restoration Has All the Wright Detail". Los Angeles Times.

About Ruth Ryon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Ryon


Found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millard_House

As The New York Times later said of the California houses built by Wright in the 1920s: "It didn’t help that he was obsessed at the time with an untested and (supposedly) low-cost method of concrete-block construction. What kind of rich person, many wondered, would want to live in such a house? Aside from the free-spirited oil heiress Aline Barnsdall, with whom he fought constantly, his motley clients included a jewelry salesman, a rare-book dealing widow and a failed doctor."

Source: Hugh Eakin (2005-08-14). "Fixer-Uppers That Need Love and Concrete". The New York Times.

About Hugh Eakin: http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/hugh-eakin/

Call For Submissions: Cartographie Curieux

Greetings Friends, Acquaintances, One-Night Stands, Frenemies, Editors, Classmates, Professors, Colleagues, and everyone else,

We are pleased to present a call for submissions from our new Web Journal: Cartographie Curieux. Cartographie Curieux is interested in the curious geographies that everyone must navigate as they travel through life. We are obsessed with finding ourselves and we are looking for some good maps to get us there. We think you may be (or know) one of the talented cartographers we are looking for: please send us submissions of any kind: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, interviews, and of course, images which engage with the idea of maps. Surprise us!

Check Out Our Nascent Website: ttp://www.cartographiecurieux.com

And LIKE us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/CartographieCurieux

We review and publish submissions on a rolling basis and plan to publish our first work in April of 2012. Some maps we’d love to publish:

Fantasy, blueprints, schema, diagram, to buried treasure, to nowhere, home, the backyard, offices, alleys, migration patterns of Canadian Geese, birds-eye view, the body, heaven, hell, daytrips, the mind, maps best viewed with red-blue 3D glasses, your career, well-intentioned but inaccurate, our career, fog density patterns in San Francisco, dungeons and dragons, territories, a backpack, macro and micro economies, the ocean floor, the highest points in Iowa, cotton candy trade-routes, maps that require a QR Code reader, “Family Circus” style misadventures, sculptural, ideas, the internet, the blogosphere, outlines, maps that employ erasure, sunken cities, invisible cities, as-yet-unbored subway lines, bird houses, carpet stains, concentrations of all-you-can-eat buffets in Ohio, and geographies we can’t imagine without your help…

Send All Submissions here:

submissions @ cartographiecurieux.com

Thanks in advance for your support; we hope your work finds its way to us soon.

Best,

Ori Fienberg
Michael Allen Potter

P.S. And LIKE us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/CartographieCurieux

5 Months of Notepads

Last night, at the Prudential Center's Barnes and Noble, my Mom, apparently not remembering this post asked me again why I don't use Moleskine notepads.

The simple reason is that they just don't meet my needs, as I outlined in the previous blog post. This picture, which includes a handful of the notepads I've been filling over the past few months, illustrates another reason that I didn't think of before: variety. Moleskines are classy, but they're also fairly staid. I think they make a few in pastel colors, or other "designer" editions (with corresponding designer prices). There's something highly pleasing to me about having different notepads with different colors and designs; it reminds of the pleasurable chaos of ideas coming into being. I just can't imagine being as happy going through a homogenous stack...

U:35 Reading, Tuesday 3/6, Marliave

I will be reading along with Ron Spalletta and Emily O'Neill Tuesday night at the Marliave.

Of course, Tuesday has already passed, so I sort of drophttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifped the ball as far as pre-event self-promotion, but here's a little post-event self and series promotion.

Daniel E. Pritchard, Editor of Critical Flame started the U:35 Poetry "a Reading Series of Apostate Youth" after overhearing a group of older poets proclaiming that really, the true writing of poetry doesn't begin till poets are at least 35 years old.

The series is held bimonthly, upstairs at Marliave, which is a cozy venue, and serves up some tasty bar food.

The reading was a grand success and I look forward to attending more in the future.

Editor's Choice. . .

I'm please to announce that my submission for the Mid-American Review's 2011 Fineline Contest "for Prose Poems, Short Shorts and Anything In Between" was selected as a Finalist, and ultimately will be published as an "Editor's Choice" in the spring issue, available at the 2012 AWP Conference.

The name of the piece is "Sidekicks" and it features detective work, bartenders, mechanical bulls, and real bulls.

Over the past few years I've been a Finalist for several writing contests, but never a winner, and I think this was a very near breakthrough. Maybe "Editor's Choice" was a breakthrough.

What do you think, can I call myself an award-winning poet now?

My Unique Name --- An Interlude

I am the only "Ori Fienberg" in North America, and for now, if Google is to be believed, the world.

Some of this is because "Ori" is a unique name outside of Israel. Some of it is because "Fienberg" is a unique spelling (The likely apocryphal story of why the family name is "Fienberg" is worthy of it's own post on another day).

When I first started to care about what popped up when someone searched for me on the internet I would always start by typing in my name without quotes. Invariably I would be prompted: "Do you mean Ori Feinberg?" Who was this person who shared my name, but for a slight spelling variation (also, I don't know his middle name)? Why did Google prefer him over me? What did I have to do to be the dominant "Ori F---berg" (there's also an "Ori Fineberg" in Israel)? Apparently Mr. Feinberg has an MA in Contemporary Art, and at the time was an aspiring gallery owner. Every now and then I'd receive an e-mail intended for Mr. Feinberg, sometimes in Hebrew, which I'd forward along to him.

Last night I was checking my e-mail and saw that one of my colleagues had sent out a general update in which she instructed students who did not know their Workshop times to e-mail me. Great! But evidently she doesn't know how to spell my last name because she gave them the g-mail address for Mr. Feinberg. I e-mailed the students with my real e-mail (which the students and my colleague should have anyway), and then I sent an e-mail to Mr. Feinberg, apologizing for the random queries he might get, and asking if he could please forward them to me.

Later this morning he replied to say he would (he never has before, and given how often my name is spelled wrong on name tags at events, I can't imagine that he hasn't received anything before), and then suggested that in order to avoid this in the future I should change from g-mail to Yahoo. While I can't help but feel some small connection to Mr. Feinberg, in part because of our names, and in part because we both value the arts, his response seemed rather presumptuous. I never told him he should change *his* account when I received his e-mail.

Perhaps his suggestion stems from some insecurity: not long after I discovered he existed through Google's suggestions I eclipsed "the other Ori F" in internet presence. I suspect when he Googles his own name it asks him if he meant "Ori Fienberg." I've been there, so if this is the case I understand his irritation. But despite this and the minor inconvenience he may have had in the past when he deleted messages intended for me and now when he may choose to forward me a few student e-mails, I don't have any plans to change the main e-mail account I've had for 7 years.