Too Much Taupe!

Everywhere I look I see too much taupe.  Yes taupe it is, not tan, not brown, not beige, but taupe as in the color of pantyhose.  It doesn't go well with the rich natural colors of red pressed brick or yellow common brick seen in downtown Crookston.  If you look closely, there is a soft teal color on the four upper story windows on the right.  This is a much better color and combined with gold makes for a historically correct color combination for this building.  Much more pleasing to the eye.  This much taupe calls attention to the remuddling of the storefront and the wrong sized windows.  I know it was popular in the seventies to fill in and put in smaller windows for the sake of "energy savings,"  but now there are triple glazed windows for a bigger R Value while matching the original window opening. Worse yet, is the missing parapet. Where did they all go?  And when?  But I digress, back to taupe, covering homes it is the perfect backdrop for colorful flowerbeds, but downtown, yech.  Even if I wasn't a historic preservationist, too much taupe is just not in good taste. Check out the historic color collection at Crookston Paint and Glass.  Please rate this article, Too Much Taupe, on a scale of 1 to 10.  10 being the least hateful thing about Crookston, 1 being the most. 

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Ten Things I hate about you.

This is the introduction to a series of ten blogs focused on ten things I hate about my hometown, Crookston, Minnesota.  I was inspired to write this series by the following quote from the work "Othodoxy" by G.K. Chesterton on loving the world enough to change it.  If you like this quote, follow this blog for my Top Ten.  Feel free to comment as well.

     "What we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it.  We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surley contentment;  we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent.  We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre's castle to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage to which we can return at evening.
     No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world...(but) can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing?"

Duluth Economic Business Authority creating jobs in local businesses - Lake Voice

They found some money...
Duluth Economic Business Authority creating jobs in local businesses - Lake Voice

Stephen Moore: We've Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers - WSJ.com

Stephen Moore: We've Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers - WSJ.com

A picture of a downtown to die for

The photo is of Franklin, Tennessee and is part of a series of "America's Most Romantic Streets" at http://huff.to/gjBc6H.

Saving the Soul of a Barn | Daily Yonder | Keep It Rural

Saving the Soul of a Barn | Daily Yonder | Keep It Rural

How I feel about the Palace Hotel

Photo from the Crookston Times    Push Play to listen while reading...


"Patient Trust in Ourselves and the Slow Work of God"
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.  I am, quite naturally, impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.  I like to skip the intermediate stages.  I am impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.  And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability -- and that it may take a very long time.  And so I think it is with (historic preservation).  Ideas mature gradually -- I should have started early and let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste.  I shouldn't have tried to force them on, as though (we, Prairie Skyline Foundation) could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on our own good will) will make (us) tomorrow; Only God can say what this spirit (of restructuring our organization) gradually forming within (us) will become, and (we must) accept the anxiety of feeling in suspense and incomplete. Adapted from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.  

Who knows what will become of us. We are heartbroken.

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