Charles is a staunch champion of saving antique buildings and casts a pink-rimmed eye of suspicion in the general direction of Brutalism and the pragmatic yet soul-crushing, indeed inhospitable to humankind, towers built in the 1960s and 1970s as public housing here and in Britain. IMHO, Charles has been proven correct about environmentalism, organic farming, preserving the old folkways of the countryside, and the articulation of good reasons why no one in their right mind, if given the actual choice, would choose to live in a place like the Pruitt-Igoe public houses in St. Louis, even if the design of the Pruitt-Igoe public houses was inspired by Le Corbusier.
Charles has also shown his hand — a flashing glimpse of his full house of cards — in regard to his feelings about authoritarianism. All stand and applaud the king. See his recent speech to Congress. Tacky gold-leaf signage at the White House and the defacing of the 1919 Warren and Wetmore facade of the Commodore Hotel — to create the 1980s abomination that is the shiny, brassy Grand Hyatt next to Grand Central — aren’t the only reasons King Charles is the enemy of Trumpism. The enmity, elegantly veiled as it has been, is also political. Aesthetic taste cannot, I guess we have all noticed by now, be uncoupled from politics. It’s kind of wrong of me to say so. Pointing out the evident lust that rulers like Vladimir Putin or Nicolae Ceausescu (or Gaddafi, or Stalin, or Kim Jong-il, or Mobutu Sese Seko, or Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan) have for all things shiny, brassy, gilt, and grandiose — architecturally speaking — is dangerous territory for a newspaper columnist to wander into. Poking at the connection between autocracy and golden bathroom fixtures brings us dangerously close to other bruises: class snobbery and educational elitism. But it’s interesting, is it not?
My ex-husband accuses me of being a monarchist. It’s not true! My political beliefs are squarely in the lineage of Tom Paine. But I encourage you now to google the words “King Charles” and “Transylvania” to enjoy a voyeuristic peep at the 18th-century farmhouse the king owns in a remote Romanian village called Viscri. The fact that this fabulously wealthy monarch — this relic, himself, of an ancient way, a ruddy walking mummy of near-forgotten rituals, speaking in a now-strange tongue — would spend some of his vast cache of gold renovating this humble farmhouse in the best possible taste (which is to say, hiring local craftsmen to rebuild it with traditional methods that are endangered themselves by globalization and mass production, whitewashing the interiors, and furnishing it with hand-woven textiles and antique-tiled wood-burning stoves) endears him to my heart. He is the antithesis of Trump. What a perplexing turnaround. What a strange how-do-you-do: the American leader today representing the ultra right, and the monarch, of all goddamn people, representing an odd sort of, well, leftie-ism. Or at least tree-hugger-ism.
All of which brings me, via an admittedly convoluted path, to the East Hampton Middle School building on Newtown Lane. I’ve read here in The Star that — if the residents of the school district approved the bond at a vote scheduled to be held yesterday, after my deadline — the middle school will be getting a major redo, to the tune of $9.14 million to address “needs” and another $6.45 million for “wants.” Some $3.94 million is being spent on new windows. I hope the new windows open.
I actually look back fondly, for the most part, on my days at the middle school, and I attribute those pleasant memories to two things: one, several excellent teachers, and, two, because the building was excellent. A stout, brick building with large windows that let in natural light (and that actually open), and wood floors that squeak under the soles of your sneakers — it’s a pleasant setting in which to learn. It’s conducive. Whoever set this standard for the classic American public school building of the 20th century was onto something.
My memories at the middle school are very sensory. Some bad, some good, of course. It was the scene of our adolescence, the building a sort of space capsule in which — at 10, 11, 12, and 13 — we floated like cosmonauts toward the future, sometimes giddily but more often than not uncomfortably, unmoored from gravity, swirling in space in brand-new penny loafers that pinched, embarrassed by everything (the awkward tightness of the waistband of our white carpenter pants, the smells of other peoples’ bodies in the locker rooms and stairwells, the contrast in body mass between a girl of 12 and her crush, a featherweight boy of 12). The bad odor of rotten apples inside my locker, because I refused to eat the fruit and sandwiches my mother packed (don’t ask!) and left them there, smoldering in brown paper bags.
The more pleasantly perfumed memories from my middle school years relate to the porousness of the school building; it was not our prison. We were let outside at lunch each day, free to wander unsupervised around the village, boisterously eating Sicilian slices at Brothers Four Pizzeria and slurping Slush Puppies on the sidewalk outside Dreesen’s Market, our tongues painted cherry-red, pumpkins and maple leaves painted by our classmates on the storefront glass. The old steam radiators clanged and purred with warmth, making you drowsy in your argyle sweater as Mr. Yardley explained the economic forces that fired the guns of the First World War. Through those big, wood-framed windows facing south toward Herrick Park, the world was green, green, green, the tree limbs waving soundlessly beyond the glass on the April wind. Your daydreams carried out right through the glass and into the warm air as May arrived and the academic calendar rolled toward summer vacation.
Cinder blocks and fluorescent lights are the enemy of learning, in my opinion. If you don’t believe me, ask King Charles. Your brain doesn’t work as well in a classroom confined by a drop ceiling of acoustic tiles. You need organic materials, wood and glass and natural light. I’m confident science will prove Charles and me correct, eventually.