Raise high the roofbeams

"We've removed the ceiling above our dreams. There are no more impossible dreams."
~ Jesse Jackson

Santa Maria Assunta Cathedral, Pisa, Italy

In his April 30th column for WSJ.online, science writer Jonah Lehrer writes that "architecture and design can influence our moods, thoughts and health." As he explains, scientists are discovering that our outlook and our performance on different tasks change in response to aspects of our surroundings "from the quality of a view to the height of a ceiling."

The article put me on a memory path I've traveled down scores of times over the years. It begins when, as a child of three or four, my parents took me to a Roman Catholic mass in a Gothic-style church where the choir sang Gregorian chant.



As light streamed through the stained glass windows and the chanting voices arced and dipped I suddenly had the feeling that my mind was floating through the top of my head to a place way up high in the vaulted ceiling. I wasn't frightened by it. I felt both calm and energized.

Although I gave up religion in my early teens, over the years, when I've needed to think through a difficult problem or even just recharge, I have often found my way to a high-ceilinged church. Even without the chanting choir, the light and those high, beautiful ceilings work a certain magic. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, "Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral." I find that inspiration contagious.

Norwich Cathedral, Norfolk, U.K.

The next time you find yourself near a Gothic-style church, stop in and see how it feels.

In Your Easter Bonnet

On days like this I start thinking it's a pity that so few people still wear hats.

The photo above, from the archives of the Museum of the City of New York, shows top-hatted men and bonnet-clad women strolling past the Croton Reservoir on Easter Sunday in 1897. (The New York Public Library's main branch on Fifth Avenue occupies the reservoir's former site.)

This was the era known as the "Mauve Decade," so it's safe to assume that many of the ladies were sporting that fashion color.

Below, more fancy bonnets from Easters past when people proudly donned their finery and stepped out to promenade with their peers.

A windy, overcast day didn't stop these strollers from showing off their Easter wardrobes.

Was this even for Easter? Who knows, but what a fine hat.

I don't know if this hat was designed to look like a Shih Tzu, but if so — mission accomplished!

And we mustn't forget the tune. Have a lovely day.

One summer day in 1905

"Summer afternoon – summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language."
~ Henry James

About a month ago one of my favorite Internet places, the Shorpy Historic Photo Archive, published this photo. It was taken at the beach on Coney Island in 1905. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Do yourself an enormous favor and go here to see it full size.

Just look at this little one, with her hair ribbon and biggish bare feet and face filled with bliss. Coney Island was a place that beggared the imagination in 1905 — more Disney than Disneyland, with Dreamland and Luna Park enticing visitors from all over the world with exotic architecture, rides and attractions.

At some point I realized my father was a newborn that summer and started wondering what else was going on with children in and around 1905.

After spending time with U.S. Census Bureau records, the Library of Congress and other government and educational sources, I learned these things about the first decade of the 20th century:

• Life was short: The average woman lived 47.3 years and the average man, 46.3. 
• Work was hard. The average work week was 59 hours, for which the average worker earned $12.98. The average teacher earned about half as much — $325 a year. 
• Only about half of all children attended school, probably because so many of them were working. Child labor was unregulated until 1938, when the FDR administration passed the Fair Labor Standards Act.

To engage in child's play on a beautiful summer's day is always a joy for a child, but for some of these children it was probably a rare luxury as well.

E. E. Cummings might have had them in mind when he wrote this poem.

"maggie and millie and molly and may"
by E. E. Cummings

maggie and millie and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,

and millie befriended a stranded star
who's rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles;

and may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
It's always ourselves we find in the sea."


Bonus: I found a film clip purporting to be a trip to Coney Island in 1905 by a group of boarding school girls. I seriously doubt it's a documentary — much of it seems staged. But it does show Coney Island during that same, magical summer.