Pictorial Font Design | Bradley Kennedy

Image Font © Bradley Kennedy 2014

Above Design for a pictorial font by University of Northern Iowa graphic design student Bradley Kennedy (2014).

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Sarah A. Leavitt, Introduction in Priscilla J. Henken, Taliesin Diary: A Year With Frank Lloyd Wright. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012, p. 15—

The Taliesin Fellowship [Frank Lloyd Wright’s school near Spring Green WI] was received suspiciously by many; newspapers and magazines reported the activities at the farm to be exotic and somewhat strange…Beginning during World War II, the FBI focused on Wright’s antiwar stance and sympathies with Russia and Germany, and investigated whether Wright was unduly influencing his disciples to have anti-American views. Ten years later, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was still worried about Wright and the Fellowship, writing to the Bureau field office in Milwaukee that Wright needed to be watched, given that his “school contained no classrooms” and “appeared to be a religious cult.” Hoover mentioned rumors that “the foundation held dances to the moon, told the students how to think and that if a student did not attend certain meetings which had nothing to do with the study of architecture, the student would be dismissed from the school.” He also reported that his informant “had heard there were homosexuals attending the school.” Newspaper reports throughout the 1940s and 1950s made reference to Wright’s “communist” views and his nontraditional learning environment.

See also: Roy R. Behrens, FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT and Mason City: Architectural Heart of the Prairie (2016).   

Book Review | Taliesin Diary

Cover of Taliesin Diary (2012)

Priscilla J. Henken, Taliesin Diary: A Year with Frank Lloyd Wright. New York, Norton, 2012. 272 pp., illus. 30 b&w photographs. Trade, $34.95. ISBN 978-0-393-73380-8.

Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens

IN 1934, AMERICAN expatriate author Gertrude Stein returned to the US for the first time since moving to Paris in 1905. Accompanied by her companion, Alice B. Toklas (whom she had secretly married in 1908), she toured the country giving talks to promote her new (and perhaps most enduring) book, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

When she spoke at the University of Wisconsin, architect Frank Lloyd Wright was in the audience (she said he looked familiar, but could not remember why). Apparently, Frank and Gertrude and Alice had met earlier in Paris, at which time (as this diary notes) his impression was that Stein was “the most unattractive, uninteresting and dull person he had ever spoken to.” She dominated the conversation, he recalled, while the mute compliance of Alice gave new significance to her name—she was of course, reported Wright, “Alice be talkless.” In Madison, Wright invited the pair to return with him to Taliesin, his famous home and school nearby, en route to their next engagement. But they demurred (exchanging nudge-nudge glances) for the reason, they said, that they liked to travel by airplane. “We want to fly to Milwaukee,” they said.

This book is called Taliesin Diary because its primary text is the diary of an American Jewish woman who lived (along with her husband) with Wright and his wife Oglivanna, their family, and student apprentices for nearly a year at Taliesin near Spring Green, Wisconsin. The diarist was Priscilla Henken, a New York-born high school English teacher, who traveled to Taliesin in October 1942 with her husband, research engineer David Henken. Together, they “slaved” as apprentices in Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship until she left (apparently rather abruptly) in August 1943, to return to teaching in New York, while her husband stayed on until later.

I have read dozens of published diaries from which I have concluded that not all diaries are worth reading. But this one is fascinating, largely because it is candid (albeit often painfully so) and well written. It is especially honest about the corrosive influence of Wright’s third wife Oglivanna (they had married in 1928), who, by more than one account, was the Rasputin of Taliesin. In page after page, don’t be surprised to be taken aback by the abrupt and usually damaging ways in which Mrs. Wright (“La Dame”) jostled to assert control over the apprentices, her aging husband (he was in his seventies then, and incapable of standing up to her), and others who were living and/or on the staff at Taliesin. more>>>

See also: Roy R. Behrens, FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT and Mason City: Architectural Heart of the Prairie (2016).   

Are You Moaw?

From our stash of great Iowa stories and quips, as related in Peter Maas, Underboss (NY: Harper, 1997), p. 466, with thanks to Ryan McAdam—

[When Sammy 'The Bull" Gravano agreed to cooperate with the FBI in prosecuting John Gotti and other members of the Gambino family, an initial meeting was arranged between Gravano and a federal agent named Bruce Moaw. The meeting began as follows:] Bruce Moaw walks over and shakes my hand [Gravano recalled]. He opened the door and I got in. I told him, "Are you Moaw?" He says, "Yes," and I said, "I heard you were from Iowa."

He said that was right and I said, "Well, if I got to trust somebody, it might as well be somebody from Iowa." And off we went.