Peter Bohlin

Last night Mr Bohlin spoke eloquently about his life and his love of making things.

Loosely paraphrased - Here are the top 9  things visionary Peter Bohlin shared that stirred me.

1. He finds that the act of making is intriguing because through making things you come in to contact with the essence of their being
2. He explained "I think I am an architect because it was an escape. There was boulder by the house on the edge of the forest , as a child I imagined I lived under that rock”
3. When designing homes or anything - Don't be afraid to discover something you didn’t know was there.
4. Often Modernism looked like road kill. Perhaps intelligent but not satisfying.
5. Up until recently when it came to people's homes this formula applies Available Materials + weather = inevitable design. Consider the similarities between houses of the American South west Pueblos and Residents of the Gobe desert. Another example the people who live in the Marshes in Iraq
   Technology has allowed us to be less connected – good and bad.
6. He has heard that God is in the details, and a lawyer told him the Devil is in the details – He is only sure that someone is in the details.
7. Allow people to have things that they can interpret within your design. Its good to do things you are not sure about.
8. How to please a client? They tell us about themselves, even if we are not looking. When you listen and you get it right, it is powerful because you touch their heart.
9. Most of all - His projects are just breathtaking! TAKE A LOOK!!!

Did you go on the tour of the Bohlin house today? Please share your experiences and thoughts below.



Susan Cooper - Beats the Heather for Us

Susan Cooper was the opening speaker for 2011’s Gathering. She likened the task of being the opening speaker in a most original and apt way. 

In the tradition of English grouse hunting there are people with the task of whacking at the heather to flush the birds up into the air for others to shoot. These people are called “beaters”.

As the first speaker at The Gathering, Ms. Cooper saw it as her role to coax as many metaphors as possible on the topic of  “Home” into the air before us in preparation for our further exploration through out the weekend.

Susan accomplished this task with wit and compassion.  She brought us on a journey of her own memories and the eloquent words of others. Here is a sampling of the lovely conceptual birds sprung from her imaginative heather.

Home as sanctuary, refuge

• A plaque that hung in her house held a quote from John Ruskin:“Home is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not home.”
• As  a child in WWII England, she spent time in a bomb shelter behind her home. She likened it to the kind of place the Mole from the Wind in the Willows would reside.

Home changes as you move from child to adult

• There is home of your origin full of the emotion of becoming who you are.
• The places you live after you leave home, even if comfortable can never be the same as the home you came from.
• In memory your first home doesn’t change.

Home is where you belong

• “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”  Robert Frost

Home is being with the people you love.

• “Home is where the heart is.”

Being apart from your home is painful

·         Immigrant form enclaves partly to maintain an essence of what home had been.

·         Susan Cooper introduced us to the Welsh word “Hiraeth” word to describe the kind of pain  being away from home.  Hiraeth doesn't translate well into English. It is a deep longing for home on the level of grief. It is pronounced with two syllables. The first is like the English here except that the r is stronger. The second syllable is like how a mathematician would pronounce i-th as in the ith row of a matrix. You could also say eye-th.

Home is something you must leave, but then also return to

·         If one is to grow home must be replaced over and over again.

·         No such thing as easy growth unless you are a dandelion.

·         Home can be an Octopus, snare, venus fly trap if you have no courage to leave.

Death is the final home coming – Returning to the Earth

• Susan ended with this gaelic poem.

“Thou goest home this night to thy home of winter,

To thy home of autumn, of spring and of summer;

Thou goest home this night to they perpetual home,

To thine eternal bed, to thine eternal slumber.

The sleep of the seven lights be thine, O brother,

The sleep of the seven joys be thine, O brother,

The sleep of the seven slumbers be thine, O brother,

On the arm of the Jesus of blessings, the Christ of grace.”

Please add more to this post! What metaphors or concepts did Susan mention that I failed to capture? What other concepts or metaphors of home resonate most for you?

SUSAN COOPER is an English-born writer best-known for her children's books, notably the fantasy sequence The Dark is Rising, which won assorted awards,  including the Newbery Medal.

The Gathering Invocation

Vibrant Invocation – Home in the Heartland

Nathaniel and Jacob Parkman performed  Irish dances to evoke the spirit of home through their interpretation of  "Home in the Heartland." I offer this poem to celebrate their wonderful performance:

Two young men take the stage,

Two young men stand stock straight and serious,

Two young men bob and float,
Two young men clomp and stomp their deft feet,

Two young boys leave the stage share a high five for another fine performance.

They shared one of their favorite songs with us:

Homecoming at The Gathering

Our theme this year is -  "PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL HOME: MEMORY, GRACE, AND STRUCTURE".

Anytime fancy words like "Metaphysical" are trotted out, I start limbering up for some mental gymnastics. To be sure I knew what I was talking about I went and looked up "Metaphysics" in the Dictionary:

• Metaphysics - "the philosophical study of the nature of reality, concerned with such questions as the existence of God, the external world, etc".

Wow! There is nothing I love more than ruminating about the nature of reality. But to be honest, I have floundered a bit with the abstraction of this theme until I was inspired at dinner tonight.

During her introduction, Charlotte Ravioli mentioned how Keystone College President Dr. Edward G. Boehm, Jr has fostered a greater awareness of the school's history. Specifically that in 1868 the founders of Keystone Academy chose to start the school as a memorial to all the souls from this area that did not return from the Civil War. 

 MEMORY + GRACE = STRUCTURE

• MEMORY The memory of those who did not return home
• GRACE  the kindness of those remembering the ones they lost
• STRUCTURE brought this school and this event into being.

Through the farsighted kindness of those remembering their loved ones a far reaching legacy emerged - Keystone College.
This may be an overly literal interpretation of our theme this year, but it works for me.   
How do you interpret the theme of "PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL HOME: MEMORY, GRACE, AND STRUCTURE"? 

Please feel free to comment.

The Gathering 2011 Writing Project

The Gathering, July 14-17, 2011 is coming soon, but perhaps not soon enough for some of us. The theme “Physical and Metaphysical Home: Memory, Grace and Structure” offers much fodder for those with an active imagination.

With the intention of enjoying and connecting with each other prior to those anticipated days in July, let's write a short story together.

How it works:

1.      Respond to the prompt below by posting a comment on the Gathering Facebook Fanpage.

2.      Read the responses others have posted there and click on “like” for the ones you like the best

3.      After a review period we will close for voting and amend the story with the most popular selection, adding it to the text body (on the Gathering blog) 

4.      The next prompt for input is posted for commentary. (rinse and repeat and soon our shared story has emerged!)

5.      If you have feedback for how to make this work better or editorial suggestions as we go along not specific to the initial prompt, email here.

Some loose guidelines:

1.      Responses should be your own text, not excerpted from others’ published works.

2.      Please select the topic and wording that are respectful to others and reasonably “Facebook”.  

3.      Restrict your response to no more than 1 paragraph.

Let's start with this intro (append where indicated below)

 Adele was in the bedroom of her prim house in Conneticut, sorting through her closet and chest of drawers. She was preparing for a much-anticipated road trip with her best friend.  Even though this travel was planned months in advance, her packing was a last minute rush job. Even in the summer it was impossible to pack light when spending a few days in Northeastern Pennsylvania. The weather changes so much within a few hours, especially up in those endless mountains.

She found the duffle bag on wheels in her son Eric's room. He left it behind from his college sports days. It was just right for this type of adventure. Shorts, long pants, capris, flip flops, wedge heels, walking shoes, trench coat, sleeveless blouse, quarter length boat neck tee, cardigan - that bag could hold it all. 

 Janet, her companion on this trip, was the type who was always punctual. Adele expected her to arrive any minute, proudly displaying her new hybrid car. They were off to another writer's conference. Now that they were retired, these had become a tradition. They both found it a fun way to tour the highways and byways, meet interesting people and see their favorite authors up close.  But the conference in the sleepy town of LaPlume was the one where they met 8 years ago and it had a nostalgia to it. They looked forward to it more than others.

Add to the story here by posting a response on the Gathering FanPage Here: Janet arrives 15 minutes late, something unusual has happened to her on the way. What was it?