CLAUDE-NICOLAS LEDOUX

The French architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux is associated with the late eighteenth centuries return to nature, exeplified in philosophy with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but in which case with architecture means a return to ancient classical forms of the Greco-Roman. Ledoux's buildings are overtly restrained and severely classical, sometimes categorized as Architecture of the Revolution, exemplifying in masonry the ideals of the new order, stripped of nearly all ornamentation and even at times considered avant-garde by contemporaries. 

Nevertheless, some stunning and ethereal buildings are the result, including Madame du Barry's Pavillion du Louviciennes. The design was awarded Ledoux, over the King's architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel's objections, by du Barry; the plans were completed in 1770 and the building itself completed in 1771 and inaugurated on September 2 of that year. Gabriel oversaw completion of the interiors and oranament for the pavilion. Built only as a tableau of reception rooms with views of the Seine valley it proved so popular with the King and his mistress that du Barry intended to replete the building with all the rooms necessary for living, however the King's untimely death disrupted any such notions. Unpopular with the new King, Louis XVI, and his young queen, Marie Antoinette, du Barry nevertheless retained the deeds of both the Chateau and the Pavillion.

The Pavillion du Louviciennes was really the onset of Ledoux's career. Many of his later buildings are now lost, some to the very Revolution which inspired them; yet others, so modern and spectacular in device they never left the proverbial drawing board, seem futuristic in many ways even to our eyes today. A fine facsimile of a portfolio of Ledoux drawings is available from Tachsen Press and includes many elevations and floor plans worth anyone's time and interest.

Americans know the work of Ledoux, and his contemporaries such as Gabriel, far better than they know. Jefferson, Adams and Franklin, all having acted as ambassadors to the French court, saw the authority and monumentality of French Neo-Classical architecture and brought these forms to both their residences and the public buildings of the fledgling United States. Washington, D.C., is itself a tribute to French classicism as planned by Major Pierre-Charles L'Enfant in 1791 and mapped in 1792. Having fought along side George Washington in the Revolutionary War, he requested and was given the honor of devising the new capital's layout. Created on the mostly vacant acreage betwixt the Potomac and East Rivers, the ten mile tract gave an unrivaled potential for innovation. Washington was built on a wheel spoke axis taking full advantage of views and neo-classical proportions; both the Capital Building and the White House represent the zenith of French influence on the Americas.

CLAUDE-NICOLAS LEDOUX

To My Valentine

It is twenty years, now, my Love. Twenty years of joy and heartache, of laughter and tears, of learning what love really means and of how it has shaped our lives.

Tonight you are far away, an oddity for us two whom rarely spend even hours apart. It is difficult to not have you here in the house, smoking your cigarettes and typing away at your computer for hours. (Though the air is fresher!) Your sandy hair, tousled and unkempt, is not within my reach this evening, soft as cornsilk, to run my fingers through, as I stroke your brow. Your arms, in which I lie so many evenings, too, are lost me this night. And other body fragments, too, which have made intimate so many of our nights are lost to me this evening.

But, still you are near. The bed clothes store your scent, and so do your shirts, Your various projects lay about unfinished, partly constructed or unconstructed. Your photos are within my view. Yes, even miles away you're still here with me - each object in this house holds your memory as easily as a vase holds flowers; and the perfume of those sweet, sweet thoughts I've stored deep inside me waft ever gently to my mind.

And, soon, My Love, you will return to me, you will come home and I will have you in my arms again. But all that is intangible will still be here, too, receded, but ready, always to come forth to sooth and calm, to remember soft kisses and music which is ours...

A Minimum of Dignity, Please.

This is the most heart wrenching story, but it's not the only one. 

A woman in Florida never got to see her partner before she died. The Hospital, Harvard medical, refused her permission to see her partner - until the sister of the dying woman gave her permission to do so.  Don't be fooled,  this story just keeps repeating itself over and over again all across the country, but especially where there are no laws demanding equal treatment for Gay families.

Write your Congressmen and Congresswomen, please. Demand that laws denying our right to civil marriage and domestic partnerships be overturned so that GLBT couples may have the same ability to be present within the critical and important moments of their  lives, just  as you do.

Click the Headline to go to the Video.

Stranger in Paradise

I don't know if I'm able to write about death without sounding either cloying or detached. The Spectre seems to be so very close these days, and many whom I've respected or whose work I've loved are now gone. Judy Garland and Grace Kelly, Rock Hudson have stories which resonate with my experiences. Heath Ledger seems only the latest of far too many; in the past few years I've said goodbye to Audrey Hepburn and Dan Fogelberg, as if they were friends - and now others I do know intimately are approaching goodbyes; my friend, Patty, won't be here for a great deal longer and my Mom, too, will be gone soon. And, perhaps, Dad. I wonder if I will lose my Mark? How do you continue without your heart and soul guy? It's not the leaving that hurts so, their agonies are through. It's the remaining behind. The horrific emptiness at feeling bereft of companions whom we believe believed ad felt as we do. 

I think of the thousands of young men and women whom are dying in an unjust war and their parents burying them. I think of my Gay brothers whom are attacked by strangers whom hate for the sake of hate, and especially of the ones whom in despair take their own lives because they don't believe, can't fathom being loved. The commercials of children dying in Darfur or at St. Jude's are too real and too close, and even the abused animals with great sad eyes tear at my heart as if I knew each of them - and I wish I could hold them and take away their pain. Or maybe it's my pain I wish they could take away. 

If you love them, hug them, write or feed the ones you love enough will it carry you through the long years of loneliness you expect? Will watching their films or listening to their songs fill the days? Will reading old Christmas cards or crying at Irish music bring Mom back for a few minutes? Will sending money ease the pain? What is there that can make any of it mean something worthwhile? I hear in my heart the fluttering wings of angels and I see in my mind's eye old holy cards stained with the tears of the Saints and bloodied Sacred Hearts pierced with swords. I remember believing in Church and Country, some time long ago, when I could brush the dust off a butterfly wing and not regret it, a child scientist exploring a life's demise with disquieting aplomb. Now I think of, long for another life, a heaven, a paradise, the celestial globe; a garden unending where decay at last ends and the cherry tree blooms in the midst of snow falling softly. Quiet, beautiful and filled with many songs, the sea thundering to the the lawn's edge and there, amidst every contradiction, they are all there again, with the bloom in their cheeks and the fire of stars always in their eyes. Stranger things are true.