About
About the FLW Newsblog
I went through a Frank Lloyd Wright building for the first time on July 4, 2001; it was Wright’s own Home & Studio in Oak Park. Both my wife and I were dumbstruck — it was the most amazing building we had been in. We stood across Chicago Ave, looked back the house and both said something about it being better than the Parthenon (we’d been in Athens a few months before). As soon as I was home, I began to scour the internet for Wright stuff. I found a lot of great stuff (lots of crap, too), but I never found what I expected to find: a single site with news, events and information.
Being slow-witted, it took me a few years before I realized I could do it myself. By that time I had been running other, moderately popular weblogs on other topics — one on traveling in Greece and another on ancient Greek history and archaeology. I stated the Wright weblog (at the time stupidly named “FLLW”) as an experiment; I didn’t think there would be enough news to warrant a dedicated blog. I was wrong. A few months later, I abandoned the other blogs to focus on The Newsblog. After many missteps screw-ups and countless misspellings, here we are.
Ideally, The Newsblog will become a good spot for new or casual Wright aficionados: links to more information, lists of events and guide to pursuing our particular mania. I think of this place as a community and every reader is someone I’m predisposed to like; all of you are welcome to send along tips, share photos and and air complaints and generally help make this place better.
About Douglas Anders
First things: I’m not an architect, art historian or any sort of scholar at all. I lack any qualification to write about Frank Lloyd Wright. Sorry. Not unlike Phillip Johnson, I have degrees in Classics and history (though unlike Johnson, I’m not a fascist, nor do I lack all conviction) I’ve worked briefly as an archaeologist and been
in the Parthenon,
under the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, and
through a Minoan sewer pipe (I was breaking Greek law on that second one). I’m not an idiot, but pretty much anything built after the Pantheon and before the Auditorium Building I’m going to be completely ignorant of.
I am a smart guy; I’m curious, widely read, and I’ve been doing this Frank Lloyd Wright thing for a while, so I can usually muddle through — but I’m a well-informed layman, not an expert.
I live in Toledo, Ohio, have one wife (Lisa), one child (Gabe, he’s five), one house, one mortgage and two cars. My day job is commercial real estate research, which sounds more interesting than it is — mostly I make the world safe for strip malls. At the moment, I am a former commercial real estate researcher; a victim of the real estate slump. Unemployment is as unpleasant as you think.
I live in a beloved, 1917 bungalow (with unfortunately ill-considered 1970s siding) that has its own history: it was childhood home of a current high-ranking White House official ; Gabe sleeps in his old room.
Beyond that, I don’t think there is anything interesting about me (though I do know Tom Cruise’s father-in-law), but, for the curious, you can check out books I’d like to read, books I’ve already read, sites I’ve bookmarked, photos (mostly crappy) I’ve taken and music I listen to (ABBA? I have no recollection of listening to ABBA; must have been my wife).
Feel free to contact me with complaints, suggestions, compliments or random babblings.
Remember: “This is liberty hall; you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard”.