Week of 02/15/2016

We will hold a general discussion of the BOOK, House. by Tracy Kidder. I will be looking for your general impressions of the book, and what your impressions of the various characters in the book are. This structure means something different to each of the persons represented in the book. We'll be looking at a lot of issues, gender differences, class differences, and more. You will probably be a bit surprised by the career paths of the members of the Apple Corps company. You may already be surprised, if you've read that far in the book. The house on the corner above is in downtown Bristol. Click on it to see what other Bristol Greek Revival Houses you and find. This style was popular before the Civil War. Why did the Souweines Choose to live in this style house? Does it have anything to do with the distinction we're seeing between the ideas of house and home. ? Think also about why they chose to move to Amherst. Some of you have mentioned similar things about where you live. It shouldn't take three guesses to figure out what I'm driving at.

I want to move then to a discussion of Kidder's book, starting with a look at some human relations. First, I'd like to look at some inter-generational relationships. On the Apple-Core Side, I'd like to look at the father-son relationships between Jim Locke and his dad, Richard Gougeon and his family history and story, Ned Krutsky has a third kind of life history, and comes to construction by a different route, and while it seems like it would be the most normal way to enter the construction field, Krutsky is often the least happy of the carpenters on the job. Is there anything in his family of origin which might explain this? Finally, Alex Ghiselin. Any of you with some insight into psychiatry might be able to explain first, what his favorite part of the job is, and second, why he may have left his first career for his second one. Could you imagine doing the same thing? Choose your favorite member of Apple Corps and think about why that person is your favorite. How would your parents react to your career choice if you did something similar. A few years ago there was a website for some of the members of the Apple CorpsTeam. Which had evidently broken up. Click here to find out about them. We'll discuss them one by today.

This day we'll turn our attention to the house itself. Below are some photographs taken of the interior. Below those are the floor plans for the first and second stories. See if you can figure out the relationsip of the pictures to the floor plan. You have the plans in your book where they may be a little more readable. How are the rooms related to each other, horizontally and vertically? Which of the Souweine's had the most influence in deciding which rooms went where, or were their influences about equal? Do gender Roles have anything to do with room placement? What do you think?

I hope to have the prompt for the take-home final posted by class Friday. I would have it posted now, but Ihave an appointment in Providence at 4:45 Wednesday and I don't know how long that will take.