Small Wonder: Wilmington by Arnold Berke
The largest city in the second-smallest state, Wilmington, Delaware grew from a Swedish settlement in 1638 to an industrial port that made flour, textiles, railroad cars, ships—and gunpowder, which transformed a plucky clan of French immigrants called the du Ponts into one of America's foremost families. My favorite landmark was the 1922 public library, built on land given by Pierre S. du Pont. I ogled its terra cotta frieze and plain stone center section, the result of axing a planned portico, as stone owls studied me from second-story windows. You could call it imposing, or call it historic, the library orchestrates classical forms so refreshingly that I called it delicious. A few blocks south on Market Street stands the Grand Opera House, built in 1871 at the peak of Second Empire bravura, with a look-at-me facade of vigorously articulated cast iron. Its restoration in the 1970s was a big deal for American preservation, then getting its feet wet. Pleasantly exhausted by my walking tours, I slid behind the wheel of my car and headed out of town in search of the du Ponts. In 1802, on Brandywine Creek, Eleuthère Irénée (E.I.) du Pont founded his gunpowder plant, Eleutherian Mills. The 235-acre estate, now called Hagley Museum, interprets that industry and the family's entrepreneurial and artistic genius. Down the Brandywine is Delaware's grandest house, Nemours(1910). Architects Carrère and Hastings designed, and Alfred I. du Pont built, this 72-room fusion of French and American taste with Versailles-like gardens. Executive Director Grace Gary took me around, starting at the visitors center, which explains the du Ponts. By this point, I was getting lost in the branches of the family tree—and their world. Alfred ran the firm with his cousins (including Pierre S., who built the downtown hotel), but because of family and company quarrels, ultimately fell out with both. Still, says Gary, "family was vitally important to Alfred. He built Nemours not just for himself, but in homage to the du Ponts." Nemours reopened in 2008 after a major restoration and was as opulent as I had expected, its limestone-and-stucco walls enclosing richly finished and festooned rooms. To cite but one: I have a thing for entry halls, and this reception hall is a confection of faux-stone walls, checkered floor, and a coffered ceiling. In contrast was Alfred's woody retreat in the basement, with billiard room and bowling alley. Best of all was to stand in front of the house and relish what Gary calls "the million-dollar view" of gardens descending a quarter-mile-long axis, their lawns, pools, statues, and stonework guiding the eye. "Modern Delaware is largely the result of Alfred's determination to keep the company in the family and in the state," Gary told me.
See picitures and more of the story at: http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/2011/september-october/small-wonder-wilmington.html

Noble metals are metals that are resistant to corrosion or oxidation, unlike most base metals. They tend to be precious metals, often due to perceived rarity. Examples include gold, silver, tantalum, platinum, palladium and rhodium. http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definitions/NOBLE+METAL?cx=partner-pub-0939450753529744%3Av0qd01-tdlq&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=NOBLE+METAL&sa=Search#906

"I want to impose my will on the wood," says Wendell Castle without irony, taming a gnarly hunk of Peruvian walnut with a 14-inch chain saw. The artist moves around the wood block in his Scottsville, New York, studio—a former grain mill that he converted into a 15,000-square-foot workspace— rasping and trimming to the whine of the saw's engine, almost as if performing a well-coordinated dance. While he begins with a specific form in mind, Castle "reads" the wood's natural grain and approaches each of his pieces as a process of discovery. "You begin to have a conversation," he says. "Unexpected things might happen as I'm digging into the wood." Castle, the founding father of American furniture art, was the most interesting and unexpected story at last December's design fair in Miami. The artist's work was exhibited by three different dealers, and he upstaged most of the hot European designers on show, remaining the talk throughout the fair. As the focus in the art world shifts away from "flavor of the month" designers, Castle's approach to making objects that are both practical and transcendent, along with the serious credibility he has built up over 50 years, have allowed his work to resonate once again with collectors, dealers, museum curators and general design aficionados. "I'm always thinking as I draw," says Castle, who starts each project with a series of sketches. "I try to keep an open mind. What if I do this? What if I do that?" Once he's chosen a shape, he executes a full-scale drawing that he pins to the wall and uses as general reference as he cuts and laminates slabs of wood together, leaving hollow spaces inside. "By the time I start to carve I have the shape firmly in mind," he says. While he shuns mass production, he's recently started to experiment with computer mapping to create cross-sections of more complex forms. He makes a small model from clay or wax and has it digitized. "I'm never going to design directly on the computer," he insists. "I will always work by hand." —In November, a major exhibition of Castle's work will open at the Carpenter's Workshop Gallery in London. See pictures and more of the story at:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903918104576500651646426430.html

See a piano designed by Wendell Castle in Gallery One at The Toledo Museum of Art. Search Google images for wendell castle piano and it should be the first picture on the top left. Compare to a search in Bing images. Yahoo images is "powered by Bing" so gives the same result.

Between a rock and a hard place: a dilemma, more specifically a Morton's fork; a situation offering at least two possibilities, neither of which is acceptable
Between a Rock and a Hard Place (Artifacts album)
Between a Rock and a Hard Place (Australian Crawl album)
Between a Rock and a Hard Place (book), an autobiography by Aron Ralston
Scylla and Charybdis, a metaphor for dilemma from Greek mythology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Between_a_Rock_and_a_Hard_Place

Morton's fork is named for John Morton, Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury, statesman, prelate and principal adviser for many years to Henry VII. The principle of Morton’s Fork was that people who displayed their wealth can afford to pay taxes - or in Morton’s time make forced loans to the king - while those who did not appear to be rich must be saving their money and hence also could be required to make loans to the king. In an extended sense, Morton’s Fork can be used to characterise any no-win situation e.g. “A fine Morton’s fork this - those who went were conspirators and those who stayed away were cowards” (Times Literary Supplement August 17th 1973). Morton’s Fork is a precursor of Catch-22, devised by Joseph Heller in his 1961 novel of that name to characterise a paradoxical situation to which the only logical response is deemed illogical.
http://lawsoflife.co.uk/mortons-fork/

Q: How long does a coin last?
A: About 25 years. U.S. Mint.
Q: Labor Day is next Monday. Just how many people can America put to work?
A: The nation's labor force, which includes everyone 16 and older, is 153.2 million people.
In 2009, real median earnings were $47,127 for men and $36,278 for women. U.S. Census Bureau. http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2011/Aug/JU/ar_JU_082911.asp?d=082911,2011,Aug,29&c=c_13