January 2011

Overrated The king of overrated American architects remains Frank Lloyd Wright, whose genius for architecture was matched only by his genius for self-promotion. Because he stubbornly refused to admit that he was ever influenced by any other architect, except for Louis Sullivan, it is impossible to hold him in such high esteem as he held himself. (A perhaps apocryphal but certainly telling story holds that once when asked on the witness stand to state his name and occupation, he replied, “Frank Lloyd Wright, world’s greatest architect.” When asked why he said such a thing, he responded that he was under oath.)

Overrated It is one of the most famous aircraft of the century. The Spirit of St. Louis , a small single-engine silver monoplane, carried the most famous aviator of the century on the first solo flight from New York to Paris on May 20-21, 1927. Following a hero’s welcome on two continents, Charles A. Lindbergh piloted the Spirit on a tour of the nation, stopping at least once in every state to promote air-mindedness and encourage local airport construction.

The Spirit of St. Louis did everything that was asked of it, and more. But if Lindbergh generated an unprecedented wave of enthusiasm for aviation and pointed the way to the future, his airplane was rooted in the past. With its welded-steel-tube fuselage and wooden wing covered with doped fabric, the Spirit of St. Louis represented a structural form that had come of age during World War I.

Edison, Gotti, Presley, and Ball—and the Sherman tank, and the Spirit of St. Louis and Kit Carson: You know them all, but how good (or bad) were they? For the sixth year in a row, the experts weigh in.

It is an axiom that one technology replaces another only because the new technology is better or cheaper, or both. A century ago, the automobile, despite its high cost, replaced the horse and buggy in a matter of two decades because even the primitive automobiles of the day were faster, safer, and more versatile and reliable than the horse. After Henry Ford came along, they were also cheaper.

Today, electronic technology is replacing mechanical technology for the same reasons. One major American industry now rapidly going electronic is photography. Instead of having film store information by means of changes in light-sensitive chemicals, a light-sensitive computer chip stores it electronically. This information can then be transferred to a computer and viewed instantly on the monitor. The pictures can be stored in the computer, as well as printed out. And digital photography is much cheaper than film photography. There’s no film to buy and no development costs.

When Gregory Peck died this past June, he was mourned and praised as the actor who created the archetypal father and husband figure, exemplified by his idealistic lawyer Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird . But earlier in his career there was another Gregory Peck, one with the range to illuminate a wide range of American types from the simple to the sardonic to the sinister.

Spellbound

(1945)—Peck reportedly wasn’t enthusiastic about Alfred Hitchcock’s cold and calculating directorial techniques in this thriller, which Hitch later derided as “just another manhunt story wrapped up in pseudo-psychoanalysis.” Well, yes, just another one, but one directed with Hitchcock’s style and flair, enlivened by dazzling and amusing special effects from Salvador Dali, and anchored by the chemistry between Ingrid Bergman and the 29-year-old Peck, whose stern chin and chiseled profile conceal undercurrents of fraud. Hitchcock and Peck were both wrong: Spellbound is terrific fun.

In 1912 families descended from immigrants from the hailing area of Norway who had settled around Spring Grove, Minnesota, decided to get together and drive into nearby Caledonia. They arrived on June 19 and had their picture taken. What is notable about this prosperous lot is how avidly they have taken to the Model T. Henry Ford had introduced the car just four years earlier, but clearly the Tm Lizzie is well on its way to accounting for two-thirds of the automobiles in America. As part of its centennial celebrations this year, the Ford Motor Company sent 43 Model T’s from California to their spawning ground in Michigan, and on the way they stopped at the same spot in Caledonia.

Times are tough in the Solomon Islands. With few natural resources, the islands depend on tourism, but their remoteness, often antiquated facilities, and inhospitable environment can make them a tough sell. The government hopes its renovation and expansion of the airport at Honiara (the nation’s capital, on the island of Guadalcanal) will attract more tourists, and earlier this year a Japanese consulting firm supervising the improvement had a helpful suggestion: Give the airport, which has been called Henderson Field since U.S. Marines captured it from Japan in 1942, a more Japanese-friendly name: Chrysanthemum Field.

The idea must have seemed reasonable at the time. The Japanese paid most of the tab for improving the airport, so why shouldn’t they rename it? In Japan the chrysanthemum symbolizes health and happiness. What could be wrong with that?

Walter R. Brooks created one of the most unforgettable characters in children’s books in 1927, when he wrote Freddy Goes to Florida . Freddy was a pig on Mr. Bean’s farm somewhere in New York State; in the two dozen volumes that followed, Freddy would become, among other things, a newspaper editor, a magician, a cowboy, a balloonist, a bank owner, and a political boss. As that range of professions suggests, the pig’s stories were both lyrical and hard-boiled, both morally instructive and witty. Freddy Goes to Florida takes as its premise a bunch of farm animals deciding that if birds can head South for the winter, they should be allowed to as well. Here’s how it begins: