Woodwork in Search of Beauty

Abstract

This seventh grade adventure sprang from the conjunction of three disparate elements: a cumbersome map of the United States left behind by a French visitor, a longtime love for Louise Nevelson's work, and a storage room overfilled with old lumber. The map was hanging above my dresser. One morning when, from my distant bed, I was one more time weighing Nebraska versus Iowa for that pink square under Minnesota, I was struck by the idea of FIFTY. There were fifty of them, and we were fifty of us, fifty seventh graders and me. It was thrilling - even Louise Nevelson did not seem to have thought of boxing the United States. I leaped to my desk and began, with a godlike audacity, to straighten up frontiers and assemble a new square version of our country. The game was on!