Mason City: Brad Steiger, The Music Man, The Day the Music Died, and the Griffins

Mason City, Iowa, a city of under 30,000 folks, with a meaning that aligns itself with Freemasonry, was in the news with the death on May 6, 2018, of writer Brad Steiger, 82. 

Mason City is known for its musical heritage, consistently producing successful performers and educators.The city's "favorite son," Meredith Willson, grew up in Mason City and played in the Mason City Symphonic Band as a high school student. Willson's crowning achievement was the famous musical The Music Man. Many of the characters in it were taken from people Willson knew from his childhood in Mason City.

Andrew Griffin on the "footbridge" made famous in Meredith Willson's The Music Man in Mason City - for the Walter Burley Griffin Society's annual meeting in 2014.

The city is also associated with a historical musical event associated with its municipal airport, Mason City Municipal Airport, from which Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper took off on the night of February 2, 1959, after a concert at the Surf Ballroom in nearby Clear Lake, Iowa, only to crash their plane in a historic event later referred to as The Day the Music Died (February 3, 1959).

Andrew Griffin at the very spot where Buddy Holly's plane went down in 1959. More.

Mason City has a few other strange syncs, too.

The Kraft Foods plant in Mason City produces the United States' entire supply of refrigerated ready-to-eat Jell-O pudding snacks. Wow.

Mason City is widely known for its collection of Prairie School architecture, the largest concentration of any city in Iowa. At least 32 houses and one commercial building were built in the Prairie Style between 1908 and 1922, 17 of which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and eight more are contributing properties to a historic district.

The first two Prairie structures, the Dr. G.C. Stockman House (1908) and the Park Inn Hotel and City National Bank Buildings (1909–1910) were both designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The hotel and bank, a mixed-use development at the corner of State and Federal Avenues, was the first to be commissioned by local attorneys James E. E. Markley and James E. Blythe. Within a year, Wright was hired to design the Stockman House by Markley's neighbor.

Both the Park Inn Hotel and Stockman House suffered from neglect and unsympathetic alterations before they were saved by community organizations. In 1989, the Stockman House was moved four blocks to prevent its demolition; it was subsequently restored and opened to the public by the River City Society for Historic Preservation. Likewise, Wright on the Park, Inc. began restoration on the Park Inn Hotel in 2005 and the former City National Bank building in 2007. The organization will reopen both buildings as a boutique hotel in August 2011. The Park Inn Hotel is last remaining of the few hotels that Wright completed during his career and is considered a prototype for Wright's Imperial Hotel.

The Rock Glen and Rock Crest National Historic district is a small enclave of single-family homes situated along the banks of Willow Creek five blocks east of downtown. It is the largest collection of prairie style homes in a natural setting in the world. It features both Prairie School and Usonian design. Five of these houses were designed by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, two by Francis Barry Byrne, and others by William Drummond, Einar Broaten, and Curtis Besinger. More.

Wikipedia notes as one of the "Notable People" of Mason City, Iowa, is Walter Griffin.

Walter Burley Griffin (November 24, 1876 – February 11, 1937) was an American architect and landscape architect. He is known for designing Canberra, Australia's capital city. He has been credited with the development of the L-shaped floor plan, the carport and an innovative use of reinforced concrete.

In 1911 Griffin married Marion Lucy Mahony, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in architecture. She was employed first in Frank Lloyd Wright's office, and then by Hermann V. von Holst, who had taken over Wright's work in America when Wright left for Europe in 1909. 

Marion Mahony recommended to von Holst that he hire Griffin to develop a landscape plan for the area surrounding the three houses on Milliken Place for which Wright had been hired in Decatur, Illinois (my, Loren Coleman's hometown). Mahony and Griffin worked closely on the Decatur project immediately before their marriage.

After their marriage, Mahony went to work in Griffin's practice. A Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony-designed development with several homes, Rock Crest – Rock Glen in Mason City, Iowa, is seen as their most dramatic American design development of the decade and remains the largest collection of Prairie Style homes surrounding a natural setting.

Walter Burley Griffin is the uncle of the grandfather of Andrew W. Griffin, editor of Oklahoma’s Red Dirt Report.

A balsa wood model made by Iowa State University design students shows what the incorrectly-credited "Frank Lloyd Wright-designed" City National Bank building (left) and the Park Inn Hotel in Mason City looked like when they opened.

Tulum/Zama: Dawn Again

Tulum (Yucatec: Tulu'um) is the site of a pre-Columbian Mayan walled city serving as a major port for Cobá, in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. It is a tourist mecca. I journeyed there in the early 1980s, to interview Mayans and Mexicans about their sightings of the little people, the Alux. (See my and Patrick Huyghe's field guide.)

This Maya site may formerly have been known by the name Zama, meaning City of Dawn, because it faces the sunrise. Tulum stands on a bluff facing east toward the Caribbean Sea. Tulúm is also the Yucatan Mayan word for fence, wall or trench.

Dawn Name Game

The name Dawn has been in the news lately. 

Blast #4 of the Austin, Texas, bombs, taking place on Sunday, March 18, 2018, took place in the 4800 block of Dawn Song Drive. 

Also on March 18, an Israeli security guard Adel Kolman was killed by a Palestinian terrorist near the entrance to Lion's Gate in Jerusalem's Old City. The guard was from the West Bank settlement of Kochav Shachar. Shachar means '"dawn" and kochav means "star." The meaning in English is "Dawn Star."

As readers here are rather aware, bizarre accidents, weird crimes and mass violence has touched lives through the names Aurora (which means "dawn") and Dawn.

Some recent Aurora examples are:

Aurora Genai Sheffel, March 25, 2017. Crushed by a log.

Aurora Buol-Smith, March 5, 2017. Her son, who said he was a werewolf, stabbed his mother, whom he said was a vampire, to death.

Aurora Avenue, Urbandale, IA, November 2, 2016. Two police officers are gunned down.

Of course, my many examinations of this thread go back to "Aurora: Synchromystic Wonderland" and "Red Dawn Again" in July 2012.

Zama/Tulum

On March 23, 2018, a family of four were from Creston, Iowa, found mysteriously deceased in a Tulum condo.  They may have been dead for 36 to 48 hours. The condo was at Tao, near Akumal, a tourist-friendly beachfront community. Located between Tulum and Playa del Carmen, Akumal mean "Land of turtles."

Kevin Wayne Sharp, 41; wife Amy Marie Sharp, 38; Sterling Wayne Sharp, 12, and Adrianna Marie Sharp, 7, were found dead inside the condo Friday, March 23, 2018, after their immediate family members had reported them missing to local police when the Sharps did not return to the United States on Wednesday as originally planned.

Please note, Kevin and Sterling both have the "classic middle name" of "Wayne" that Weird News' Chuck Shepherd ties to sinister matters.

On March 24, 2018, after autopsies by Mexican authorities, the cause of death was declared to by asphyxiation of toxic gas. “Any violent act or suicide has been discounted,” authorities said.

h/t S. Hunter

Iowa Police Killings: A New Aurora

Aurora & 70th crime scene.

Two Des Moines/Urbandale, Iowa, metro-area police officers were shot and killed in apparent "ambush style" attacks early Wednesday, November 2, 2016.

At about 1:06 a.m., police from Urbandale and Des Moines departments responded to a report of gunfire at the intersection of 70th Street and Aurora Avenue.

Merle Hay & Sheridan crime scene.

At about 1:26 a.m., a Des Moines police officer was shot near the intersection of Merle Hay Road and Sheridan Avenue while responding to the scene where the Urbandale officer was shot. The Des Moines officer was transported to Iowa Methodist Medical Center, where he died.

Both officers were gunned down in their patrol cars.

As of 7:30 a.m., police identified Scott Michael Greene as a suspect in the fatal shootings. Police said he should be considered armed and dangerous. He is 46, 5 feet 11 inches tall, weighing about 180 pounds, with brown hair and green eyes. He was last known to be driving a blue 2011 Ford F-150 with Iowa license plate 780 YFR. The truck has a silver-colored topper with a ladder rack, police said.

A man named Scott Greene, who matches the description of the suspect, recorded himself protesting against police, as he was being kicked out of a football game in Urbandale, Iowa, on October 14, 2016. He reportedly had been holding American and Confederate flags in front of African-Americans, and had formerly been in trouble for calling a neighbor the "n-word."

He was captured Wednesday morning. Near the G-Trail in Redfield, Iowa. That's correct. Aurora. Redfield. (http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2016/11/02/scott-michael-greene-convicted-combative-2014-encounters/93157528/)

Aurora (dawn) is a familiar moniker in the twilight language name game, especially since the Aurora, Colorado (red dawn) shootings of 2012. Now we have the combination of Aurora + Red(field) again.

Jennifer Lawrence plays Aurora Lane in Passengers.

Sheridan means "wild" or "wild man" to some. The more standard origin states it is from an Irish surname which was derived from Ó Sirideáin meaning "descendant of Sirideán". The name Sirideán means "searcher" in Gaelic.

Merle means "blackbird" (via French, from Latin merula).

Des Moines traces back to the French, being a city "of the monks."

The way to the meaning of the word Iowa is through the Ioway. Ioway is the French transcription of Ayuway, which is what the Illini and Meskwaki called the tribe. The roots of this word only get more twisted. Ayuway is actually an alteration of what the Dakota called the tribe: Ayuxba (AH-you-khbah), which is believed to mean “sleepy ones.” Ayuxba to Iowa: the “sleepy ones.”
The Ioway tribe do not refer to themselves as the Ioway, but Baxoje (BAH-kho-jay), a name believed to come from what the Otoe called the tribe. The Otoe and Ioway sometimes camped with one another. Once, the Ioway camp was covered in ashy snow. The Otoe called the group baxoje, “grey snow” or “ashy snow-heads.” Source.

Iowa is part of the disputed route of the oil pipeline, the subject of a First Peoples protest, which is mostly not in the news.

Stand with Standing Rock has become the protest call.

Beyond FLW: Griffins, Fairies, and Decatur's Millikin Place

The name Millikin means the grandson of Maolagan ("little bald one").

The name Griffin is Welsh and the meaning of the name Griffin is "strong in faith" and "lord." Borrowed from the Welsh, Griffin is from griffinus, a Latinate form of Griffith which was used in the Middle Ages. Griffith is a Welsh name of debated origin. Some believe it to be an Anglicized form of Gruffydd, the Welsh form of the Roman Rufus (red, ruddy). Others however, think the name is derived from the Old Welsh Grippiud (prince).

The name Mahoney originally appeared in Gaelic as O Mathghamhna, which is derived from the word mathghamhan, which means "bear."

In a PBS documentary called Walter Burley Griffin: In His Own Right, my grandfather, the late Dustin Griffin, makes it clear that the famous designer and architect Frank Lloyd Wright – who worked with grandfather’s uncle, Walter Burley Griffin – gets credit where credit is not due. ~ writes Andrew W. Griffin (pictured below), on June 20, 2014. 

Peter Proudfoot, a Rome Scholar in architecture and an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of New South Wales, in his provocative 1994 book The Secret Plan of Canberra...suggests that Walter Burley Griffin’s winning Canberra design was used to implement cosmic symbolism, sacred geometry and a geomantic arrangement to integrate surrounding natural elements like the Chinese idea of feng shui.
The “ancient science of geomancy” – the idea of man in harmony with nature and “deified landforms” – was at the root of the Griffin plan, claims Proudfoot in The Secret Plan of Canberra. ~ Andrew W. Griffin

Marion Mahony Griffin was a keen horticulturist, graphic designer and painter. Her artwork includes portrait miniatures, a large mural, Fairies Feeding the Herons in a Rogers Park school (1931).

Marion Mahony, a Frank Lloyd Wright associate and the first licensed female architect in the United States, created my hometown of Decatur, Illinois' tribute to Prairie Style Homes: Millikin Place.

The Adolph Mueller House (part of Millikin Place) is different than any of Mahony's previous homes, which has led some to speculate that she was inspired by the man hired to design the landscape, Walter Griffin. After collaborating on the Millikin Place commission, the two later married and became internationally famous when they won the commission to design Canberra, the new capital of Australia. Source.