Adagio movement for +/- 600,000 ppl

How are You moving now?

… the School of Architecture at OU in OH.

Thanks to our Aunt Millie and Uncle Lynn, then residents in Hermitage PA, and their friendship with Donald Hunter, also from Hermitage, of Hunter Heiges & Associates, in Sharon, PA, I was hired in 1973 as a summer intern. The internship placed me in a middle sized architectural and engineering firm, well established in western PA and eastern OH.

Whatta a deal. Paid to learn. This work environment was what predated current methods of document creation in design firms, by more than a decade. It was a time before mainframe computing was emerging to begin to replace standing drafting boards, sized bigger than collapsed dining room tables. The Sharon office had rooms full of the oversized slanted desks, where the predominantly male occupants slumped over the surfaces, drawing with graphite lead and black ink, guided by straight edges, T-square and adjustable triangles, with handy slide rules ready for calculating, if needed, and a variety of hand held templates and triangulated multi-sided scales.

The interning time was directly after attendance as a sophomore at the School of Architecture at OU in OH.

… genealogical family tree on the maternal side of my father.

Grandma Angelina (Angeline)

Angelina (her birth name) opened up her part of the duplex home she lived in for me, providing room and board. She was seventy years of age, living alone, confined to the house unless provided transportation by her youngest son or other relatives nearby. I would be able to assist her that summer, however her expectations of helpfulness were not met by me sorry to say. The summer goodbye was painful and to this day I am uncertain if a full reconciliation was ever made.

As with most twenty year olds, my agenda superseded, then and years to come. In retrospect the possibilities for the ultimate collaborative relationship with a living grandparent could have produced fruitful results, now I could find useful as I approach 70 years of age also. For instance her wealth of family history, first generation American Italian, as the eldest of 12 siblings, would have put me light years ahead of managing names and dates in the genealogical family tree on the maternal side of my father.

… changed dramatically for the better.

The local neighborhood boys were welcoming. They liked to ‘somehow’ purchase “Iron City” beer and travel the rural roads on a summer Friday night wasting away the hours. I was invited one night, although I did not relish the experience, nor do I recall returning for any other night time cruises with the boys. Grandma Angelina certainly did not approve of my after work ritual of popping open a number of beer bottles on the back porch.

A big mistake in life, up to this point in time, was leaving the high school Soccer Club in 1970 to join the high school football team in the fall of that year. I mostly sat on the bench, afraid to be hurt by the violence of the game, and didn’t care to drink beer with the footballers that made it so. It was a relief to play soccer on the college team, if for only a brief stint, with super athletes in the fall of ‘71. Eyes wide open, my world changed dramatically for the better.

Eventually we arrived.

I met PJ, from Sylvania OH, Paul from Binghamton NY, and Alan from Lexington OH, in the first two years of college. Al was my dorm neighbor in Washington Hall on East Green, and was a mere month and a day younger than I. As friends go, we were close then. We did our classes and studios together, our studies together, and extra-curricular activities often together. Talk to other students in this discipline of architecture and likely you are to find similar 24/7 histories among them, even to this day.

PJ was the quiet intellectual, fondly known as the driver, steering us in his comfy gold Oldsmobile Cutlass on free Sunday afternoon excursions. Paul the White, with his Afro hair style and superb athleticism, from Upstate, was as fast with speech, as with his tennis serve. Al was the compassionate conservative, driven with passion and kindness beyond compare, in love with his high school sweetheart. All of us, unique, yet somehow able to be at ease with each other in our varied white middle class backgrounds. Creative creatures we were, finding ourselves commonly threaded in the long, historied world of architecture.

That 1973 summer, $10 a ‘Summer Jam‘ ticket sold out 150,000 tickets. Someone in the group of four, probably Paul, bought tickets. The OH trio traveled to Upstate, picked up Paul and moseyed over to Watkins Glen in a car. There was a slight access issue once we neared the venue as vehicles were stacked bumper to bumper for miles. We exited the car in a little hamlet, then began to walk and walk and walk many miles. I tried to hurry the others, sadly I was chastised, rightfully so. Eventually we arrived.¹

Bing Images

History was made.

We joined plus or minus 600,000 other people, mostly our age, who basked in contiguous music presented wholly by three acts. First, The Allman Brothers Band featuring blues, country, jazz, with southern rock and roll; second, the Grateful Dead, known for its collage of fusing bluegrass, blues, country, folk, gospel, jazz and psychedelic rock musical ingredients; and third, The Band, a musical band playing Americana, country, folk, jazz, rock, and rhythm & blues, were the 3 acts. Why would more bands be needed to perform with live instrumental jam bands like this? None needed.

Music obviously was a strong influence in the the early lives of the four trekking across the Mideast and Upstate onward to this adagio movement for +/- 600,000 others. We slowly moved on foot to hear the great musicians of their day, play, then left even slower back toward the little hamlet. I didn’t make it. Two of the foursome completed the return trip to the car, then came back to pick two of us up. Sunday evening I was back in western PA to see the national news coverage and visual reports of the weekend’s bash. History was made.

… granted, sealed and certified

Living life adagio² is beneficial, except that when it is not. Moving at a slow speed, i.e. not quickly, can lead one to constant contentment, peacefully in tune in one’s own environs. Our sleep, our eating, our diligence at work, our listening, our speech, our caring for others, our generational relationships slowly solidifying at a selfless pace make for harmonious zoetic surrounds. Yet we often find our sleep times cut to the unhealthy minimums, our meals found in fast food lines, indoors and out, our work riddled with troubled outputs, our listening non-existent, our speech garbled, our lack of compassionate interaction with earthlings and earth alike, and our so needed human contact void of empathy, no matter the station of another’s life circumstance.

Late in my internship at Hunter Heiges, the thirty something fellow sitting behind me, opened an envelope one early afternoon. The envelope content was from the State of Pennsylvania Architectural Board of Examiners citing all requirements to proclaim the use of the term ‘Architect’ by this fellow had been satisfied, verified with the bonafide signatures included. Such elation and joy was blasted throughout that drafting room by one man alone. I was touched by his reaction.

The entire work summer confirmed and convinced me, I too, should become an architect. My own path would require an adagio movement of seventeen years, inclusive of three universities, multiple design offices, a dozen or more registration tests, then unceremoniously a notification received that I had successfully qualified to be admitted into the profession. The state mandated qualifications for use of a professional seal for the betterment of society was granted, signed and certified.

Certification of Qualification No 9358

… an adagio movement in life is easy & vital.

When Angelina was born in Canfield OH in 1903 life was lived at a much slower pace. I am not convinced a faster pace life experience enhances living. Looking a the progression of human longevity through the lens of our generations of ancestors, an adagio movement appears. Twenty to thirty years to the next set of parents, then ten to twenty years of child bearing, then a repeat from birth to death of seventy years, plus or minus wars, famines, slavery, inequality, and injustices. ‘The Hare And The Tortoise’ Aesop fable moral lessons are truly applicable.

The rabbit race is full of hazards. One can act slowly and continuously thereby not risk mistakes, misguided choices. It is easier to be obliterated moving at high speeds, than stepping consciously and perceptively, just as a musical adagio movement score.

My three collegiate friends left the school in 1975 as the powers that be played their fast game politics and proceeded to close the school, however our relationships continued. Alan called me March 25, 2020 as I was on a WV interstate exiting NYC because of shutdown in the City. I found out within a tens days or so, he was in hospice, dying from the slow movement of bodily COPD. He died soon thereafter. I am left with the magnificent memories of long lasting exchanges over five decades.

There really exist no tangible recollections of the actual songs sung that day in 1973 in the mind’s eye, without the aid of props. Yet as a tortoise, I recall the totality of escapades, trials and tribulations, and know inwardly these are not to be discarded.

A zoetic message suggests an adagio movement in life is easy & vital.

1. Bing Images Watkins Glen, NY July 1973
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=july+28%2c1973+summer+jam+poster+public+domain&qpvt=july+28%2cn1973+summer+jam+poster+public+domain&form=IGRE&first=1&tsc=ImageBasicHover

2. adagio (Italian for 'slowly', from ad agio 'at ease'