Gimme Shelter

I recently visited two buildings.

The first photo shows a ceiling in the Great Hall of the Museum of Man in Gatineau (also known as Hull, the French side of Ottawa). Soaring, lofty, colorful, beautiful, and certainly not of the "everyday", this is a very wonderful place.



This second photo is of a place I stopped a day later in northern N.Y. Simple, functional, colorful and beautiful in its own way. Here is a home built in the style commonly seen in my part of the world, and this one happens to have been the boyhood home of "Farmer Boy", the husband of Laura Ingalls Wilder who wrote Little House on the Prairie.



I was alone here at the Wilder home because by the time I arrived the caretaker had gone home for the day. The late afternoon was quiet, lacking any sounds of civilization; moths and butterflies silently worked the wildflowers in the adjoining meadow. I walked down through the woods to the river, then returned to the house and peeked in the kitchen window at the dry sink, churn and other simple furnishings. Turning around, I spied a few cherries hanging red and shiny... and within reach... Eeeeewwwhh! Sour!!! (I guess that's what I deserve for pinching one of Almonzo's fruits).

Mankind is capable of some very nice work, and although I was awed by the beauty of the museum, I felt so very much at home at Almonzo's farm. Each building was carefully crafted, a monument to its era's artisans; the Wilder farmhouse has withstood the test of time, and I suspect that the museum's Great Hall will also.
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