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Appears in this episode
Michael Scarmack
Movement within and without, seen and unseen, balanced throughout.
Episode details
Transcript
Is your home your favorite house?
I think my favorite house is the one we live in, having been there over 3 1/2 decades, working and transforming nearly every boxy room in the house.
Is VV (short for Valley View) the Taj Mahal? No it’s not!
Is VV a Villa Savoye? No, but sort of, in some respects.
Is VV a Spring House? No, but it is in other respects, yes!
Is it home? Yes indeed, VV isvery comfortable, quiet, unassuming, simple, relatively safe in a world conflated with meaningless distractions.
This message however, wants to address insights about two houses, in two unique styles, in two different countries, by two respected signature architects. Examining personal observations and literary statements of the Spring House in the US of A and Villa Savoye in France is the focus of our reflection.
Resident Byrd Lewis Mashburn & The Wattendorfs & The Scarmacks (author’s photo)
Lewis Spring House, January 11, 2024
From the book “Frank Lloyd Wright Companion” written by William Allin Storrer, he describes on page 384 about the Clifton and George Lewis residence, known as the Lewis Spring House, designed in 1952, by architect Wright, on a site near Tallahassee Florida. The structure, which is a modified Usonian styled family residence, known as a two-story hemicycle, with the exterior consisting of concrete block, combined with crushed Ocala limestone, and mixed in with concrete, so that the final block was a yellowish sandstone color, and accented with deep square mortar rakes. The upper story is wood sheathed, mingled with expansive glass.
We visited this house after Suzi, a “Sun Town” resident and her sister, Stacey, (my spouse), arranged a tour with the building owner. Bob, (Suzi’s spouse) drove us to the house located in Northwest Tallahassee. Arriving at the only domestic building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the state, we were met in the driveway by the life long resident Byrd Lewis Mashburn. Byrd is one of four siblings that grew up in the structure and the daughter of Clifton and George Lewis, the original owners of the Spring House.
What we thought would be an hour and a half maximum tour of the home and garden, to our surprise turned out to be an all afternoon affair. The afternoon was more than a tour. It seemed as if the original owners were present as relayed through the voice and memories of Byrd. In Mr. Storrer’s book, we learn that Clifton and George were political activists in surrounding conservative environs. The structure itself engages others in the community, then and today, when visiting the house.
Quoted from the Pamphlet, ”… find your ground “, written by the Spring House Institute 1 is the following:
“George thought world peace could be promoted through international law and a more powerful more pro-active U.N.. He and Clifton were traveling to a World Federalism meeting in Lakeland when they met Frank Lloyd Wright. They'd been excited by his Autobiography: here was someone who, like them, believes in pacifism and globalism and hated both ugliness of spirit and ugliness in the built environment. Clifton says, "Mr. Wright had wonderful ideas about how a house could have a soul, about unity and integrity and simplicity.”
Hemicycle pod interior
The first-floor space is magnificently designed as an open plan. An appendage encloses the circularly formed kitchen. Adjacent to the round kitchen is the entry stair frame, the main entrance at the west door, and a fixed dining table and an open circular fireplace. A massive living room bench hugs the southwesterly wall as the occupant gazes upward to an open second story space. The flooring is a red dye added smooth concrete polished surface.
The stairway rises upward and the occupant is met with double door accessing an exterior balcony. The second floor is partitioned with two bathrooms, one adjacent to the Master Bedroom, and further along the cantilevered open hall is the Girls Bedroom and the Boy’s Bedroom, terminating to an exterior balcony through a double door.
The roof is low slope with portions cantilever over the ribboned clear story windows for sun shading and soffit protection. The house was designed as a passive solar structure allowing for cooling through natural convection and heating by the Florida sun. By all accounts from resident Byrd, the house has performed well as low intensity energy ‘consumer’.
Lastly, the building site that was original selected with ten acres by the Lewis couple, was chosen not only for the flora and fauna on the grounds, yet also, for the spring that cast forth water propelling its flow through the site, over a five foot waterfall, along a creek bed, that was later damned up for a pond. During our visit the Cedar Waxwing birds made an unexpected migratory visit of their own. See short video.
As we all know adjacent land owners often refuse to acknowledge what the development of their parcels will negatively affecting a neighbors properties. Because of this negligence by adjacent land owners and their lands evolution, the “spring” is now non-functional, thus making a mockery of the original name sake of the home, the “Spring House”.
Nature’s Side, The Lewis Sprig House
Definitions
Usonian home abbreviated features - not all apply to the Lewis Spring House
Architectural native materials such as brick, wood, and stone, usually without plaster or paint are used.
Built on affordable and atypical sites.
Built-in furnishings added to the efficiency of the space.
Clerestory windows were common and filtered additional light used.
Floor plans where open without-interior partitioning.
Flooring embedded with radiant heat assemblies, FLW “gravity heat”.
Garages usually excluded, carports preferred.
Horizontal lines found throughout the design.
Interiors lacking ornamentation.
Low-sloped roofing assembly with extended cantilevered overhangs.
Modest in square footage size, anti-McMansion attitude.
Modular furniture was typical.
Natural light amply diffused through the interior.
Passive solar heating.
Plan L-shaped and embraces a garden terrace , however not at this house.
Private front facing with privacy.
Rear-side oriented to the natural outdoor landscape.
Simple houses had no basements or crawl space, set on concrete slabs. Spring House a basement.
Three unique areas: a living space, bedrooms and a kitchen / dining area.
Usonia was FLW word used describing the United States.
Well organized spatial order. (This plan resemble the shape of a boat).
Research at Villa Savoye
In other zoetic messages, Architect’s Fav 5 and Lincoln Logs to Unité Blocks, we have written about Monsieur Le Corbusier. He created an entire vocabulary used by modernists in the the designs of all sorts of buildings and occasionally works of Architecture, see another message called A Happy Place .
Stacey & Michael on the roof garden at Villa Savoye, May 10, 2023
In the summer of 1977, in my early 20’s, was the first time I visited this structure of modernity. We took a day trip out to Poissy, France with a group of Syracuse architectural students studying Parisian urban design for the summer. It was a delightful field trip, having thoroughly been taught some, but not all of its lessons.
Villa Savoye is the masterpiece of Swiss architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, aka Le Corbusier. Commonly cited as the basis for modern architecture, Villa Savoye, found in Poissy, France, is a classic example of Jeanneret's five points of architecture. The villa, less than an hour's journey from Paris, was built in 1929 and is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
“A chapter of the exhibition is devoted to the magazine and the first villas that will be erected as manifestos. With the New Spirit Pavilion designed for the 1925 International Exhibition of Decorative Arts, Le Corbusier concretized the establishment of a cognitive space defining both the pictorial space, the space to "inhabit it", the harmony of architectural compositions and the understanding of the urban domain. Le Corbusier's seminal article "Eyes that do not see" defines the new space of modernity, that of a society carried by the machine, the automobile, the plane, the liner, where movement, mobility impose a new conception of space-time. The villas (Villa Stein, Villa Savoye...) are the manifestos of this architecture organized for a liberated body, thought of as a free plan open to the light.“2
Rear Elevation Villa Savoye, Poissy , France, May 10, 2023
Definitions - Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier's described "five points" 3for proposed building constructions, that when completed, would become works of Architecture were noted early on in the architect’s career. Villa Savoye is representative of the origins of modern architecture and is one of the most easily identifiable and esteemed instance of the International style.
The house was originally built as a country retreat for the Savoye family and displays these five elements.
Pilotis – a grid of slim reinforced concrete columns, pillars or stilts.
Open design of the ground plan – void of load-bearing partition walls.
Free design of the façade – the façade to be uninhibited, lightweight, open.
Horizontal window – ribboned windows sequenced together at a façade’s length.
Note that Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, a French Architect, influenced the first four constructive principles that Corbu adopted, the fifth one about roof garden was Corbu’s initiative.
Frontal Approach and Elevation Villa Savoye, Poissy , France, May 10, 2023
Villa Savoye became the property of the French state in 1958. Proposals to demolish the structure were entertained, until it was classified as an official French historical monument in 1965. The villa was thoroughly renovated between 1985 and 1997, managed for visitation year round under the auspices of the Centre des monuments nationaux (French, 'National monuments centre’).
In July 2016, the house and 16 other buildings by Le Corbusier, spread over seven countries, were inscribed as The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier World Heritage Site by UNESCO.[7]4 As Mssr. Le Corbusier has said, “Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep.”5
The Collision between Wright and Le Corbusier
As a student within the university architectural school in the early 1970’s and later with mentors and colleagues, I was guided primarily by the written and graphic manifesto of Le Corbusier. Indeed, we had a bona fide business call the “Loyal Order of the Sons of Savoye”, (L*O*S*S for short). Our energies spent were on stylistic in content, apolitical, void of endorsing causes or candidates, with the exception of climatic concerns and worldly results.
As a student our professors educated us on Wright’s works, in a context of American Architecture and Architects. The teachings and lectures I do not recall as being extensive nor promotional of his works, mostly academic only. I do remember the mention of the Usonian style and Broadacre City manifestos.
Over a lifetime I have come to the realization that the biophilic components of Wright’s work fare far more benefit to us than the machinations of Le Corbusier Oeuvre Complète (Complete Works) no matter the patience provided the art.
An interior view, Villa Savoye, Poissy , France, May 10, 2023
In July 12, 2015 NY Times article By Rachel Donadio asks the following:
PARIS — Was the paradigm-changing architect known as Le Corbusier a fascist-leaning ideologue whose plans for garden cities were inspired by totalitarian ideals, or a humanist who wanted to improve people’s living conditions — a political naïf who, like many architects, was eager to work with almost any regime that would let him build?
Our VV home adopts principles of both Wright and Le Corbusier.
As an architect the principle ethical obligation is to be of service to others welfare and safety to further their dreams of creating built environs. There are necessary lines to be drawn in each and every dream. More than once an employer or a client requested lines to be crossed. I refused then to cross such borders, no such crossing in the future will be realized either.
On the one hand, the structure is set securely with the enclosure of nature’s warmth, while on the other hand, overarching natural light enters massive proportions of southern windows and on the western façade’s length, ribboned windows permeate the wall, one sees to the bocce court view.
On the one hand the materials chosen give notice for more than a keen nod to Mother Earth, while on the other hand, the only mechanized symbol of the machine is the hybrid vehicle itself. Parked, for wheels to rest, on a hand built permeable pebble stone area, where rainwater flows, as it should, into the immediate ground beneath the zone. Access is gained to an outside world in the maddening stream of concreted, asphalted, and graveled paths.
On the one hand the mind set of the VV occupants reflect pacifist ideology, while on the other hand, handily reject fascist authoritarianism.
A Zoetic message
Before there was a Zoetic Message there existed a Zoetic Space.
Like it or not, most all of us share commonly the daily activities of eating, sleeping, seeing, walking, smelling, sitting, tasting, singing, talking, hearing, (or not), touching, working, standing, playing, feeling, jumping, learning, running, traveling, living and loving (some of us), or if we have evolved, all of us, to a higher order, a divine principle, to a purpose beyond our individual selves, to a calling from afar, within our being. Ahhhh, the atmosphere of commonality.
In the context of the built environment a zoetic space encompasses the essential communal functioning activities of a home, the social, eating and food preparation pieces, in our culture known as the living, dining and kitchen. In France these spaces known as salle de séjour, salle à manger, and cuisine, respectfully. All such spaces are vital to our being, hence zoetic.
In the context of the diplomatic ideology of a zoetic message is an opining of life that living on earth remains brief, such that the thoughts and expressions of the individual are key to the degree the common good is willed, for the betterment of the person, the people and the planet. All such speech is vital to our lifeblood, hence zoetic.
Where we live, how we live, why we live, when we live and who we live with is the reflected view of our inner state of aliveness, and, an outward expression of our zoetic-ness.
Thanks for reading and or listening to this A Zoetic Message! Feel free to …
Drawing upon a lifetime of experience and a deep commitment to serving others, Michael Scarmack is a devoted grandfather dedicated to making a difference in the Ohio General Assembly House of Representatives.
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Appears in this episode
Michael Scarmack
Movement within and without, seen and unseen, balanced throughout.
Episode details
Transcript
This is a zoetic message from Michael Scarmack on the first day of the year 2024.
The message is entitled The Eighth Day of Christmas, subtitled, Ordeals and Distress of the Babies of Stacey and Michael.
Outside, now, someone is doing target practice, big C4 type explosions, and interspersed with multiple rapid firing of some kind of automatic weapon sup-positioning they are trying to pretend they're aiming at Bambi, the deer. Well, as we all know, they're probably getting ready for some violent revolution in the coming year.
Yes, it is the eighth day of Christmas, but one would really be hard pressed to understand that.
The neighbors already have their Christmas tree out on the porch, devoid of the ornaments and the lights that once held them either yesterday, or a few days before, and it now is ready for its own demise with decomposition of its needles, branches and trunk.
But the story we'd like to share today has to do with our babies, Stacey and myself.
Andria Claire
Our first child was born in the early years of the 1980s, the late spring of that year and unto the first days of summer.
She was delayed in exiting the womb. We had gone to the hospital. However, the medical staff said, just go home. And so we did for another 24 hours.
Andria Claire came to us that next day with a what one would say, laboring intensely, by her mother, Stacey. She came to us as we were living in a rural part of Athens County, Ohio.
I had a white Dodge van trying to be the semblance of a carpenter without many tools, and had built a structure atop a brand new concrete block foundation, symmetrically situated on a hundred-year plus old oak tree about 200 yards to the east, or shall I say 50 yards to the east of the gambrel roof shaped building.
One loft for sleeping, a lower open space with an open kitchen and a pot-belly coal stove fireplace that actually burned coal. The house was unfinished and although it was insulated the sheathing to go over the insulation was yet to be installed.
We had Andria that year and lived there for some time while gardening in the summer and heating with coal in the winter. Working odd jobs for myself, and Stacey, was working in her social service endeavors at a base minimum wage which was very very little in those early’ 80’s.
There came a time where Stacey and I had returned home with the baby in hand and were confronted with the landowner’s daughter carry a big butcher knife and threatening us with it, exclaiming that house I had built on her father's property was her house, and, we better get the heck out of Dodge. We did that very night. It was an exodus.
It was coming at us violently. We had no other option but to leave the premise and so we did with our one year old child. We went and lived for a while with some friends on the other side of the county.
Later we moved on to a small shack on a beautiful, beautiful ridge closer to the city of Athens, but out a bit, surrounded by pasture land and the nearest neighbor a quarter of a mile up the road.
Cara Marie
It was in this place our second child, Cara Marie, was to be born. I had a job working in a restaurant in the city and Stacey had concluded she could no longer do her social services work. Our second child came upon us early in that year, nearly 41 years ago this month.
We returned from the hospital to the wood fired cottage, if you like, that had the composting toilet situated in one small closeted room, which had to be cleaned by hand, periodically, if you've ever gone that route, you know what I mean.
I recall cutting a hole into the center of the wall between the living and bedroom to allow the heat to flow
We got to the point where the recession of 1982 was pretty deep in Ohio. I knew there was something I had to do as I was working outside of my profession.
So we had an exodus again. This time we moved many states away to the southeast in the subtropics to Boca Raton. There there was plenty of work.
I worked in my profession and ended up at a very prominent architect's office on the main strip in Boca. Twice we had made passage from one place to another to escape the distress of the situation. Certainly both were ordeals to confront.
Our third child came along towards the end of the third year after Stacey had had two miscarriages in a city that seemed not receptive to attending to patients without maternity medical insurance policies. I recall that I had to work the bingo shift at a local church to help defer some of the costs.
And it's not understandable why two miscarriages happened, but for whatever the reason, our life proceeded. So there was a pause for about three and half years before the third child came into being.
Emma Elise
It was in today's society, living in a state where they have a six week ban on abortion and also, if they were able to pass that extreme legislation again, my wife, with her two miscarriages, probably, probably would not be able to receive the medical attention given the law, the extremist legislators had passed and continue to try to inflict on women all over the state.
The state of Florida has this similar legislation today. It's really a shame to think what a woman has to go through from these arcane laws men seem to like to put into place.
Emma Mae (Elise) was born to us in the summer of the mid 80s in Florida. Within eight days we moved to back to Ohio to escape what we thought was a threat, certainly a distress of seeing on the kindergarteners exterior lockers and the elementary school.
“We have the right to inspect all lockers for guns and drugs”, posted right on the locker themselves.
Back to familiar grounds in Ohio with its cold winters, cloudy, cloudy days with our third child in tow in that old yellow Volvo stopping at my Aunt Mae's in Montgomery, Alabama, where there was no crib. Obviously that was understandable having to return.
So Aunt Mae took out her dresser drawer, padded it nicely, and little Emma slept her eighth night in that crib of a dresser drawer.
Luca Augustine
Our next child was born to us late in the decade of the 80s, and he was born in Lancaster, Ohio. His grandfather was ecstatic for whatever reason. Maybe the patriarchy with the last name was constant on his mind, but it gave him happiness, as it did us as well.
So we had a family of four children. Luca Augustine was somewhat free of the ordeals his sisters had experienced as babies. He was welcomed in the neighborhood with signage of welcoming a brand new baby in a new neighborhood, with blue ribbons and the promise of a good life to come.
The neighborhood, however, seemed to become disingenuous, when they learned of our faith and political leanings, which seems to have exploded since into an apparent divisive age today in the U S of A.
Zoetic Message
So this all relates to Christmas in this way. As I understand it, it becomes a zoetic message. And that is this:
We have a time where certain elements of people want a nationalist religious state. And it seems, as I listened to the gunfire outside, that this is not the intent nor the understanding we should have of Christmas. It's based on the birth of a baby into a world of domination and religious differences, of authoritarianism and all the kinds of things that are being recycled today.
However the purpose of the birth of the Christ-child was to bring hope, loving understanding, peace into a world that needed it, desperately. While we reflect on the 8th day of that birth, we reflect on the ordeals and distresses of the babies of everyone's families.
We could try more at obtaining the peace and love of the Christ and reduce our actions of killing multiple people with firearms, or despicable remarks, or extreme legislation.
If we just collectively would sit down, think it through, decide to act more responsibly, in responsible, moral, fruitful avenues, we would be able to celebrate all 12 days of Christmas every year with bliss.
Thanks for reading and or listening to A Zoetic Message.
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1963 revisited with French dressing
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Dec 11, 2023 • 21M
1963 revisited with French dressing
Young boy’s reflection of space in a time
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Appears in this episode
Michael Scarmack
Movement within and without, seen and unseen, balanced throughout.
Episode details
Transcript
Yo La Tengo, ”The Asparagus Song”
Their legs and knuckles interwoven They've been together for so long They've all grown up just like asparagus Don't you let Ma know She’ll want to feed you
Lyrics: Emily Hubley, 1984
You may have come across the about page for “A Zoetic Message”. If so you know the first line states ’Moving in life, listening to movements, moment by moment!’.
That phrase encompasses many notions in a very short length. It also has much to do with the recollection of this story. The story begins 60 years ago this week. It is truly a tale of moving in life, in this instance, from one country of the world to another country on the globe. The moving involved listening. The listening had to do with an American culture and a foreign culture and the combination of cultures. I cannot write this piece, unless I recall the moment by moment that transpired.
One of those many moments is retrieved from Our Mother’s obituary, (Dorothy Flournoy Scarmack).
As a devoted wife, Dorothy was dedicated to the nurturing, education, character development and cultural enrichment of her children, whom she claimed as her most important gifts and “masterpieces.” Dorothy provided her children with multiple opportunities for personal growth by reading to them, encouraging them to do well in school, cultivating their appreciation for history and the arts and tending unceasingly to their emotional health and physical well-being.
Great Grandma Dorothy with Aria
Have you travelled to Paris?
How our mother with her 5 children from age 1 year old to 10 years of age, I nearing 11, made it to the Parkersburg WV airport from Athens, OH, remains unknown to me. Some sort of van like vehicle must have chauffeured us there, with a military personnel escort. We were without our father’s presence. He had two months earlier advanced to France. On this 10th day of December in 1963, these 5 children of Dorothy and Vincent, Sr. were taking their first flights on airplanes to reunite with the ROTC Sargent from Athens.
The day described above was fast approaching the darkest day of the year, the winter solstice. Thus much of the next 24 hours occurred under dark winter skies. Recalling the hours that day, our mother keeping her three sons and two daughters assembled, suggests a mental picture of a mother goose leading her little ducklings all in-line with her steps, she, hoping above hope the little ones followed her.
It may be that you find what you read and hear, here, is of a little value to you, perhaps without purpose. I think, however, four of my five siblings upon reading this story might admit to themselves the ten year old ‘Airman Mike’ somehow will find purpose that he, Mike, did just that. Mother, with the youngest one in her arms, and the oldest one strategically sweeping the end of the line, to keep strays from straying, bantered onward.
Military dependents, well at least ask Airman Mike, are as if they are also enlisted within the service, full of the ‘Yes Sirs’, and the ‘No Sirs’, the cropped haircuts, the pristine edged lawns, the entire Chain of Command as ordered. Quite patriarchal, as well, in the 60’s. Coincidentally the US of A Commander in Chief was assassinated a mere 18 days before our touchdown on the European continent.
Not to digress from the emphasis of the message, 8 years later the same siblings, plus one, revolted against Airman Mike, who, without any conscious awareness had just been following the dictates that encompass a military lifestyle. We shall not digress.
The family meandered through the doors
The family meandered through the doors of the air terminal, darting for a fast few minutes eating of food fuel, before takeoff, a time before fast American cuisine had entered the ethos.
Walking to an awaiting plane, Mother managed all 6 individuals to cluster safely on the tarmac to the open door of the military cargo plane. Not a jet, but a modified C-46, two propeller engined Air Force aero plane. The C in C-46 is for ‘Cargo’. The Machine had been fitted with a dozen, or three, seats to carry humans, in this case, not supplies of war or peace.
Being dependents of a soldier in the US Air Force we had the undistinguished seat assignment in the back of the plane. This placement made for sustained and substantial bumpiness. Little brown bags were placed at the back pocket of the front facing seat. I experienced its usefulness on this first flight, unfortunately. Fortunately, for me, in the next sixty years of air travel, that was the last such required use of a motion sickness bag.
This connecting flight led the immigrating clan to MaGuire Air Force, Burlington County, New Jersey. Some fleeting memories suggest another walk on a tarmac, up a single story exterior stair to the body of a 707 dual engine jet, much smaller than the jet I road today landing in Paris France at 2:17 AM eastern daylight time April 30, 2023.
What is one landmark you know?
Yes, of course the one you certainly know, is the Eiffel Tower, world renown for its place in the 1889 Paris Exhibition, designed by Gustave Eiffel, commemorating the 100th centennial anniversary of the French Revolution.
le chocolat
This message centers on the 60th anniversary six American citizens arriving in France for the first time in their lives. Our Dad, met us at the airport, on the tarmac (cannot do that much anymore in Paris) and proceeded to chauffeur us to Laon (pronounced ‘Lon’) France. One notable figure from Laon is Jacques Marquette born there on June 1, 1637. The explorer joined the Society of Jesus at age 17, became a Jesuit missionary. Marquette University, in Milwaukee, WI is named in his remembrance. I always pick Marquette in the NCAA March Madness bracket, which the basketball team often shows.
Laon, France
The hilly district of Laon (Latin: Laudunum) has always been of some strategic importance as it was fortified by the Romans. At the end of the 5th century, Saint-Rémi, archbishop of Reims, instituted a bishopric in the town, and it remained a religious and intellectual centre until the Renaissance. Laon was the medieval capital of the Carolingian kings. Hugh Capet, however, who became king in 987, seized the town with the connivance of the local bishop and then moved the capital to Paris. In the 12th century Laon revolted against the authority of the bishops, but Louis VI quashed the rebellion.1
The French in us all as part of the Scaramuzzo-Flournoy family. We lived on the fifth floor walk-up apartment in the City of Laon. I was caught dropping glass jars from that level. I may tried to excuse my ill thought-out actions as a Galilean science experiment gone awry. We played with French children our age, shared conversations of what they took for lunch to school, our mustard on white bread sandwiches versus their French chocolate infused soft dough baguette. Yes really! We tried to be conversant with the French language we learned in our American school studies.
As a side note I received my Sacrament of Confirmation in 1964, from the Bishop of Soissons, Alphonse-Gérard Bannwarth †, with a slight tap to the face in the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Laon) built in the twelfth/thirteenth century. It was with great significance, both physically and spiritually, that I took the name of Anthony of Padua within this grand unified style of early Gothic architecture.
Laon presided as the capital of France from 936 to 987. It was one of the first towns to obtain a charter, and that was granted in the year 1111.
Laon Air Force Base 1963- 1964
The air base, about 7 miles from the City of Laon. It must have had as much of a strategic importance for the American Armed Forces as it had for the Roman Empire 2000 years earlier. The air base while our father was stationed there was part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, we all know as NATO. NATO at that time had a group of 15 “free” nations held in alliance to protect the countries against communist aggression. Just as today, the thirty-one sovereign NATO nations (Sweden inclusion is pending) the original 12 country of the Washington Treaty, in Article 5, ‘an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all’.2
Loan airbase was a tactical field, responsible for enemy reconnaissance and aside housing missiles, incognito, the flight deck was populated with F101 Voodoo Jets. American airmen and Airmen dependents had access to more than one could ever find in the Mall of America. American Family School, I attended, was the most significant facility for me personally. The nuns of the parochial school I had attend the previous four and one-third years had instructed me well. I excelled in the school.
The actual facilities on the base conjoined as an Americano Oasis.
Let’s start with the rod and gun club, photo shop, hobby shop, woodworking shop, writing school, bowling center, auto hobby shop and social services. There was the Officers club, the Non-commissioned Officers club, and the Airmen’s club. The press was present in American newspapers like, the Stars and Stripes, New York Herald Tribune, and the New York Times & Tribune. Further there was a library, movie, theater, auto parts store, class VI package store well stocked, commissary, (grocery store), and of course the post office.
The base exchange held a barber shop, beauty shop and salon, bakery, and just general type merchandise. A Family Service Center, Air Force Aid Society, American Red Cross organizations were present. Further in place was a watch repair, education center, banking, hospital services, family dental, two chapels with Protestant, and Catholic chaplains, and a Jewish synagogue in nearby Reims. In France, it existed for and by the people of the US of A.
Why France?
Sure wish I knew that answer. I often trace the family tree to residents that immigrated from France to other countries, some landing in the US of A in the years of pre-revolutionary war dates.
After nine year tour in Athens, OH, Ohio University ROTC Air Force program, Sargent Scarmack, was transferred to Europe. He had already had tours in Nome, Alaska and Korea and places in between, and others were to follow in an Air Force career. Why nine years? Yes, why France?
Light Pole, Athens, OH
Why Not France?
President Charles De Gaulle, the one that rewrote the French Constitution, decided for his countries national interests to remove Frances’ military forces from NATO, then on April 1, 1967 all US military installations were closed permanently. No countries have left NATO since its founding.
Our Mother miscarried a fetus within the rooms of the fifth floor walk-up. I saw her, then secretly cried for the loss. We moved on to the next air base soon there after but before the boot of the US Military from France by De Gaulle.
Zoetic Message:
A contradictory Zoetic Message would be this. Grow asparagus, if one can, travel.
Asparagus produces rootedness, stability, order, nourishment, spring hope, greenness, delectable dishes, and will see the fruit of this labor, year in and year out. If one, as part of a culture, protect our lands, our waterways, and the air we breathe, one’s asparagus will perennially keep one’s values and life’s purpose, close to home, clear minded. All life will be safe and prosperous.
Fair chance bullets pointed to kill will not replace asparagus tips sautéed to eat. Airman Mike need not worry the parents frolicking in bombed out ruins of buildings with unexploded ordinance.
Tours of duty to supply the war effort will not take flight, instead, the ships become sea bound only for guided tours for tourists. Airman Mike’s march for patriarchal control will not leave love unattended, as his heart allows his spirit to flow through a space in a time.
Grandma Angelina explains to me a few months before we move to France, as paraphrased here, “Michael you are a very fortunate boy. There are not many children your age that have such an opportunity to travel the world. Remember that and make the most of the experience.” I took the sentiment to heart. Travel has been good.
Bon appétit and Bon Voyage!
Thanks for reading A Zoetic Message!
A Zoetic Message is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Their legs and knuckles interwoven They've been together for so long They've all grown up just like asparagus Don't you let Ma know She’ll want to feed you
Lyrics: Emily Hubley, 1984
You may have come across the about page for “A Zoetic Message”. If so you know the first line states ’Moving in life, listening to movements, moment by moment!’.
That phrase encompasses many notions in a very short length. It also has much to do with the recollection of this story. The story begins 60 years ago this week. It is truly a tale of moving in life, in this instance, from one country of the world to another country on the globe. The moving involved listening. The listening had to do with an American culture and a foreign culture and the combination of cultures. I cannot write this piece, unless I recall the moment by moment that transpired.
One of those many moments is retrieved from Our Mother’s obituary, (Dorothy Flournoy Scarmack).
As a devoted wife, Dorothy was dedicated to the nurturing, education, character development and cultural enrichment of her children, whom she claimed as her most important gifts and “masterpieces.” Dorothy provided her children with multiple opportunities for personal growth by reading to them, encouraging them to do well in school, cultivating their appreciation for history and the arts and tending unceasingly to their emotional health and physical well-being.
Great Grandma Dorothy with Aria
Have you travelled to Paris?
How our mother with her 5 children from age 1 year old to 10 years of age, I nearing 11, made it to the Parkersburg WV airport from Athens, OH, remains unknown to me. Some sort of van like vehicle must have chauffeured us there, with a military personnel escort. We were without our father’s presence. He had two months earlier advanced to France. On this 10th day of December in 1963, these 5 children of Dorothy and Vincent, Sr. were taking their first flights on airplanes to reunite with the ROTC Sargent from Athens.
The day described above was fast approaching the darkest day of the year, the winter solstice. Thus much of the next 24 hours occurred under dark winter skies. Recalling the hours that day, our mother keeping her three sons and two daughters assembled, suggests a mental picture of a mother goose leading her little ducklings all in-line with her steps, she, hoping above hope the little ones followed her.
It may be that you find what you read and hear, here, is of a little value to you, perhaps without purpose. I think, however, four of my five siblings upon reading this story might admit to themselves the ten year old ‘Airman Mike’ somehow will find purpose that he, Mike, did just that. Mother, with the youngest one in her arms, and the oldest one strategically sweeping the end of the line, to keep strays from straying, bantered onward.
Military dependents, well at least ask Airman Mike, are as if they are also enlisted within the service, full of the ‘Yes Sirs’, and the ‘No Sirs’, the cropped haircuts, the pristine edged lawns, the entire Chain of Command as ordered. Quite patriarchal, as well, in the 60’s. Coincidentally the US of A Commander in Chief was assassinated a mere 18 days before our touchdown on the European continent.
Not to digress from the emphasis of the message, 8 years later the same siblings, plus one, revolted against Airman Mike, who, without any conscious awareness had just been following the dictates that encompass a military lifestyle. We shall not digress.
The family meandered through the doors
The family meandered through the doors of the air terminal, darting for a fast few minutes eating of food fuel, before takeoff, a time before fast American cuisine had entered the ethos.
Walking to an awaiting plane, Mother managed all 6 individuals to cluster safely on the tarmac to the open door of the military cargo plane. Not a jet, but a modified C-46, two propeller engined Air Force aero plane. The C in C-46 is for ‘Cargo’. The Machine had been fitted with a dozen, or three, seats to carry humans, in this case, not supplies of war or peace.
Being dependents of a soldier in the US Air Force we had the undistinguished seat assignment in the back of the plane. This placement made for sustained and substantial bumpiness. Little brown bags were placed at the back pocket of the front facing seat. I experienced its usefulness on this first flight, unfortunately. Fortunately, for me, in the next sixty years of air travel, that was the last such required use of a motion sickness bag.
This connecting flight led the immigrating clan to MaGuire Air Force, Burlington County, New Jersey. Some fleeting memories suggest another walk on a tarmac, up a single story exterior stair to the body of a 707 dual engine jet, much smaller than the jet I road today landing in Paris France at 2:17 AM eastern daylight time April 30, 2023.
What is one landmark you know?
Yes, of course the one you certainly know, is the Eiffel Tower, world renown for its place in the 1889 Paris Exhibition, designed by Gustave Eiffel, commemorating the 100th centennial anniversary of the French Revolution.
le chocolat
This message centers on the 60th anniversary six American citizens arriving in France for the first time in their lives. Our Dad, met us at the airport, on the tarmac (cannot do that much anymore in Paris) and proceeded to chauffeur us to Laon (pronounced ‘Lon’) France. One notable figure from Laon is Jacques Marquette born there on June 1, 1637. The explorer joined the Society of Jesus at age 17, became a Jesuit missionary. Marquette University, in Milwaukee, WI is named in his remembrance. I always pick Marquette in the NCAA March Madness bracket, which the basketball team often shows.
Laon, France
The hilly district of Laon (Latin: Laudunum) has always been of some strategic importance as it was fortified by the Romans. At the end of the 5th century, Saint-Rémi, archbishop of Reims, instituted a bishopric in the town, and it remained a religious and intellectual centre until the Renaissance. Laon was the medieval capital of the Carolingian kings. Hugh Capet, however, who became king in 987, seized the town with the connivance of the local bishop and then moved the capital to Paris. In the 12th century Laon revolted against the authority of the bishops, but Louis VI quashed the rebellion.1
The French in us all as part of the Scaramuzzo-Flournoy family. We lived on the fifth floor walk-up apartment in the City of Laon. I was caught dropping glass jars from that level. I may tried to excuse my ill thought-out actions as a Galilean science experiment gone awry. We played with French children our age, shared conversations of what they took for lunch to school, our mustard on white bread sandwiches versus their French chocolate infused soft dough baguette. Yes really! We tried to be conversant with the French language we learned in our American school studies.
As a side note I received my Sacrament of Confirmation in 1964, from the Bishop of Soissons, Alphonse-Gérard Bannwarth †, with a slight tap to the face in the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Laon) built in the twelfth/thirteenth century. It was with great significance, both physically and spiritually, that I took the name of Anthony of Padua within this grand unified style of early Gothic architecture.
Laon presided as the capital of France from 936 to 987. It was one of the first towns to obtain a charter, and that was granted in the year 1111.
Laon Air Force Base 1963- 1964
The air base, about 7 miles from the City of Laon. It must have had as much of a strategic importance for the American Armed Forces as it had for the Roman Empire 2000 years earlier. The air base while our father was stationed there was part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, we all know as NATO. NATO at that time had a group of 15 “free” nations held in alliance to protect the countries against communist aggression. Just as today, the thirty-one sovereign NATO nations (Sweden inclusion is pending) the original 12 country of the Washington Treaty, in Article 5, ‘an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all’.2
Loan airbase was a tactical field, responsible for enemy reconnaissance and aside housing missiles, incognito, the flight deck was populated with F101 Voodoo Jets. American airmen and Airmen dependents had access to more than one could ever find in the Mall of America. American Family School, I attended, was the most significant facility for me personally. The nuns of the parochial school I had attend the previous four and one-third years had instructed me well. I excelled in the school.
The actual facilities on the base conjoined as an Americano Oasis.
Let’s start with the rod and gun club, photo shop, hobby shop, woodworking shop, writing school, bowling center, auto hobby shop and social services. There was the Officers club, the Non-commissioned Officers club, and the Airmen’s club. The press was present in American newspapers like, the Stars and Stripes, New York Herald Tribune, and the New York Times & Tribune. Further there was a library, movie, theater, auto parts store, class VI package store well stocked, commissary, (grocery store), and of course the post office.
The base exchange held a barber shop, beauty shop and salon, bakery, and just general type merchandise. A Family Service Center, Air Force Aid Society, American Red Cross organizations were present. Further in place was a watch repair, education center, banking, hospital services, family dental, two chapels with Protestant, and Catholic chaplains, and a Jewish synagogue in nearby Reims. In France, it existed for and by the people of the US of A.
Why France?
Sure wish I knew that answer. I often trace the family tree to residents that immigrated from France to other countries, some landing in the US of A in the years of pre-revolutionary war dates.
After nine year tour in Athens, OH, Ohio University ROTC Air Force program, Sargent Scarmack, was transferred to Europe. He had already had tours in Nome, Alaska and Korea and places in between, and others were to follow in an Air Force career. Why nine years? Yes, why France?
Light Pole, Athens, OH
Why Not France?
President Charles De Gaulle, the one that rewrote the French Constitution, decided for his countries national interests to remove Frances’ military forces from NATO, then on April 1, 1967 all US military installations were closed permanently. No countries have left NATO since its founding.
Our Mother miscarried a fetus within the rooms of the fifth floor walk-up. I saw her, then secretly cried for the loss. We moved on to the next air base soon there after but before the boot of the US Military from France by De Gaulle.
Zoetic Message:
A contradictory Zoetic Message would be this. Grow asparagus, if one can, travel.
Asparagus produces rootedness, stability, order, nourishment, spring hope, greenness, delectable dishes, and will see the fruit of this labor, year in and year out. If one, as part of a culture, protect our lands, our waterways, and the air we breathe, one’s asparagus will perennially keep one’s values and life’s purpose, close to home, clear minded. All life will be safe and prosperous.
Fair chance bullets pointed to kill will not replace asparagus tips sautéed to eat. Airman Mike need not worry the parents frolicking in bombed out ruins of buildings with unexploded ordinance.
Tours of duty to supply the war effort will not take flight, instead, the ships become sea bound only for guided tours for tourists. Airman Mike’s march for patriarchal control will not leave love unattended, as his heart allows his spirit to flow through a space in a time.
Grandma Angelina explains to me a few months before we move to France, as paraphrased here, “Michael you are a very fortunate boy. There are not many children your age that have such an opportunity to travel the world. Remember that and make the most of the experience.” I took the sentiment to heart. Travel has been good.
Bon appétit and Bon Voyage!
Thanks for reading A Zoetic Message!
A Zoetic Message is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
