Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers )
This Post was to have been a reflection of my clarklike nature as I prepared to embark upon (another) Wakefield Doctrine roadtrip/jouney of Conquest.1 This is the second trip to Salt Lake City ( our maiden visit to this most excellent of city-like places is totally chronicled in the Post: Me and Mrs. Smith ). Expectations fought with anticipation like a couple junior high school scotts when the mid-transfer student turns out to be totally hot… in other words, the struggle was more fun than the outcome.
In any event, I sat down at the un-godly hour of 3:30 am determined to write a narrative of my perceptions of the implications of the planned road trip…
But that did not happen. Instead what came to mind was a story that I related to Molly, in a Comment over at her blog ( “TheTidyPuzzle.com’… or was that, ‘theWhyOfCourseThatMakessense.com’). The topic of the Post I was Commenting on was, ‘letting go of the baggage of the past’. How it can be beneficial if not difficult. (My) story had to do with an element of my life, the collision of the past with the real and the resultant worldview… (Cut!!)
Sorry to disrupt the narrative flow there folks, but “now” I am sitting in Denver International Airport and I just had to stop trying to write the Post that I was planning to write in order to say, ‘you know how you see a picture of the Parthenon and you immediately think, Ancient Greece! or the Colosseum, you cannot but help think, The Roman Empire! you can even offer the Washington Monument and Capitol Building and who does not think United States of America ( even the boys ages 13 to 67, after they stop giggling, will agree)?
Well, if you ever happen to pass through the Denver airport and you have the slightest understanding of the Wakefield Doctrine‘s 3 personality types, you will be consumed by one word/one concept/one personality type: rogers
My rather limited writing ability and my total lack of knowledge in the areas of architecture and engineering, prevent me from explaining what it is about this place that screams roger. Is it the giant Circus Tent terminal?…or maybe the Security Checkpoint that is situated like the food court of every Mall in the country… shopping travelers are able to stand at the rail of the second level and look down on the screening and security area… no, those are only ‘parts of the whole’. The moment of, …of samadhi (Doctrinistically-speaking, lol) came for me as the doors closed on the underground train cars that were the only way to get from the Concourse to the Terminal. Unnecessary speed of the train, the noise, the emphasis on making the passengers not comfortable…the very design forced you to focus on the train system itself and it spoke the word: roger.
Free Wakefield Doctrine Hat to anyone who goes there and reports back or has been to DIA and would care to share their feelings.
The trip itself? oh, yeah! ‘Overlook’/Stanley Hotel? Looks like what you hoped it would, until you see that it is surrounded by not-isolated mountain terrain (props to Kubrick for the photography in the movie). The video above speaks for it’s own damnself. The Stanley Hotel? Part of the Wakefield Doctrine portfolio now, baby. Doctrine insight? clarks as day trip visitors, rogers as overnight guests… but you knew that, didn’t you.
OK folks! Back to the work at hand. The Wakefield Doctrine needs to get wider exposure to the world at large. We need everyone reading this Post to think of one person (probably your clarklike friend) and tell them about scotts…and rogers. If they respond, then send them here. We’ll take care of the rest.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcveyL_7xn8
1) the word ‘Conquest’ in this context is referring to all the rogers and scotts through history, who have set out to discover and explore new lands, continents, hemispheres and future theme park locations and laying claims of Ownership and Entitlement. We at the Wakefield Doctrine share this enlightened view and do, in fact, claim a ‘Right of Hat’ by which a person2 can claim all lands, people, chattel and even cars and such that they, the Doctrine enfranchised explorer or explorerette, can manage to get into the background of a photo and/or a video. This is not just wishful thinking… this is based on the Treaty of Tordesillas. So there!
2) need to have a hat or some other Wakefield Doctrine endorsed article of clothing, which means getting your very own Wakefield Doctrine hat which is only sent out to them what write us a Comment and becomes a Friend Of The Doctrine3
3) anyone else out there think we need a new acronym for people who decide to take the courageous step of writing a Comment and actively contributing to the advancement of the Doctrine? ( look for a Contest Post coming out this week )
About clarkscottroger
REDRUM….
Bra-vo…on all fronts… “YOU are the caretaker. You’ve always been the caretaker.”
From any engineer’s point of view, I’ll bet that their first consideration was how to move large groups of people from point a to point b. Overall comfort would have to be secondary. Plus, it’s hard for New Englanders to grasp the actual scale of things in that part of the world. They were probably moving you from the incoming airport over to the outgoing one, which is probably five zipcodes away.
In Colorado and New Mexico, I remember becoming slowly claustrophobic about being landlocked; no ocean for 1500 miles in any direction. And yet when I lived a block away from the damned thing, I hardly ever took notice. What a roger.
I wonder if those people would feel hemmed in by large bodies of water.
And consider… Denver’s always been good at moving large groups around. The airport’s not far away from the slaughterhouses…
The first time I was to DIA was before the airport was even open… We went to watch an air show — it was fabulous! Sitting on the roof of the van, getting a sun tan and watching the Blue Angels do their amazing stunts. It was also funny watching the young soldiers marching around with their clip-less M-16’s.
The last time I was there was very uneventful. We found the right gate, picked up the person and left… I still have the tape of metal music I recorded off the radio while in Denver (that was the important thing!).
@Molly Over all, the areas I drove through were interesting, in clarklike way (I drove from the airport west then north to RT 66(!) which I took to the West to the place), the thing I thought I saw was an amorphousness in the physical signs of the resident human population. For the most part, to me most places in this country that you drive through has an immediately identifiable ‘center of community’. A little uncertain what that means, but there is always seems to be a sense of, ‘ok that’s the center of town around here‘ or ‘ok this is where the people are‘…but on my drive through central and northern CO? nothin. Just ‘hey! there’s a bunch of houses‘ or ‘there are some stores, wonder where the people live‘…. I suspect it is not just the size of the geography that creates this effect (I just came from Salt Lake City, so I know that was not it…
..any thoughts?
@the roger the thing about the Airport that impressed me was actually 2 things: the forced emphasis on process and the un-necessary details.
a) The forced emphasis was simply that with all the room in the world*, they made all the humans come to a central point in order to be made a part of the process (most transportation systems are designed to serve the humans, not use them). It was almost as if the designers thought…’hell we have to make them come to the Terminal Building (…” make it a big Circus Tent? sure! why not!!) so that we can make sure they appreciate the huge machine we have built’.
2) once inside ‘the machine’ every detail was designed to force the human to recognize (and appreciate) the magnificence and complexity of the machine…especially the train system. Damn! the train system actually physically forced you to recognize what they built!… (all airports have slide walks that get there a little quicker and some airports surely have shuttle trains, but DIA had a train that accelerates so much that if you do not hold on (as the voice cheerfully commands you to) you will fall down!
*Dallas?Ft Worth is a physically gigantic airport deal with as large a volume of traffic, their solution? they simply have the airlines (if they are big enough in passenger volume) build their own individual terminal! no underground trains or humongus central terminal building.
@AKH …lol (…”come here you little bastard and take your medicine!”)
@DS#1 lol
I have not been to this place. Dulles Airport is rather large and the only “big” airport (OIA doesn’t count lol)
I have been in although memories of O’Hare tell me that that was a pretty darned big airport.
So what is the motiviational drive behind the rogers’ (beyond the obvious) goal of smoothly/seamlessly? showing people the way to go (yeah, there is a pun in there somewhere). I will assume that DIA is not chaotic or “uncomfortable” but a well oiled machine.
Shall I also assume then that the continuity to the place that is DIA, is of a harmonious nature – it was designed with large groups in mind. Separate yet contiguous “locations” accomodating groups of people. A tiny city within a city. (btw, the second level of OIA contains the hotel accomodations whereby you can walk out of your room in the morning and look down upon thousands of people walking, running, standing about….. gives me the shivers!
I have often wondered what it would be like to live in Colorado or New Mexico or anywhere for that matter that is surrounded my mountains and vasts amounts of open land. Would I also feel like RCoyne – claustraphobic? Even though he may not have “taken notice”, his body was accustomed to the “large bodies of water”.
RE: Molly. I also have a memory (music-less) of watching the Blue Angels while sitting on a car….
What was the music you taped? And did that music properly coincide with the emotion of the event? (the thrill of death defying aerial stunts)
Reminder: the music was not really the important part. It was the emotion the music illicited when watching the Blue Angels. It is how music makes we like people feel – the emotion it brings to the surface.
The music I taped was not at the Blue Angels event — my dad insisted on listening to the broadcast associated with the event that day.
I taped music at Christmas time, when we were picking up my aunt from the airport (much to my dad’s dismay!). The songs I remember are Call of the Ktulu (first time I had heard it) and Alien Nation. We also got the Ironman/Santa Clause parody. lol
Odd that you should mention emotion, because the thing I recall most was a houmous to me event that took place after we left the Blue Angels show. My dad wanted to see some store, that was in a newer neighborhood (not on our old map), so he drove around awhile, trying to locate it… He got lost, saw some young men hanging out under a lamp post and decided to ask them for directions.
For the humor: My dad is 6′, 200+ lbs, bearded, wears a boony hat, carpenter pants and combat boots. These young men were black and dressed in baggy clothing. There was 7-8 of them. We pulled up near them, in our old car. They backed off. My dad reached down and took his wallet out of his boot, before getting out of the car — they backed off farther. Then he approached them… they yelled, “What do you want?” He told them and was hurriedly given accurate directions form a distance…
Gangsters? –that’s what friends from Denver told him when he related the incident to them– Afraid of my dad?
@DS no, no it was not…it was an airport designed by a roger who has lost his/her disguise…it was a giant construct to force/compel and otherwise require the ‘human component’ to recongize and (therefore) admire the magnificence of the roger behind it all…it was appalling. Imagine a Disney Theme Park, where once you have paid your admission and entered through the gates are locked in and your goal is get out but… Cinderella has a short black dress on and there are 7 small men who force you to pay her…and Goofy shows up and insists that your wife dances, “just one dance, ga huh!’ and Snow White is insisting that you give her money..
Sort of like that…I’ll tell the story on the next Wakefield Doctrine Saturday Night Drive
@ Molly… your father he is a clark?…
Anybody remember airports in the 60’s and 70’s? I took my first commercial airline flight in the 1970’s, while still in high school. Some of the things I remember:
It was an event. People wore nice clothing. No jeans with a tee shirt. No security or supervision to speak of. The stewardesses were pretty and young and wore very short skirts.
Flying was alluring and fascinating. Unlike the airports of today, gathering and leading the herds, every man for himself, bumping into each other without so much as a “sorry.” It was glamorous. It was a privilige. Boarding the planes. Feeling exceptional. Being able to smoke anywhere you wanted to in the airplanes. Into my teens I can remember flying continentally and internationally. Since my father was a captain for American Airlines we were given extra treatment and attention. Imagine getting that today?
And security? It really didn’t exist unless you had to go through customs. And that was fairly uneventful (unless you had some really good Jamaican weed that you were bringing home) Yes, that was me. But I didn’t get caught since, again, my father was an airline captain. They just let us through after checking our passports.
These are my memories of travelling through LaGuardia Airport, Chicago-O’Hare, John F. Kennedy, Dallas/Fort Worth…
I will never forget those days.
@AKH
the thing that I don’t get is the food…of the passengers not the airline.
I usually sit in the front of the plane so I get to see everyone that gets on board and would someone please explain to me what has changed in our culture since you flew the friendly and polite skies?
Why is a full meal considered necessary when you are on a flight that lasts only 90 minutes (or even 4 hours), and yet the number of passengers I have seen heading to their seat with water bottles… pizza boxes, these square styrofoam containers that are big enough for full meal including the side of salad…granted maybe they are afraid that the plane will crash softly somewhere without cooked food within reach…but jeez can’t they wait until they get on the ground…. 90 minutes later? There is something very weird about that in this culture..
Yeah! What’s with the food?!? I’ve only flown a couple of times, but the things people took w/ them to eat…
@Clark… Yes, with a strong side of roger.
Food and drinks were almost always served no matter how short the flight was. Passengers most certainly did not bring water bottles (unlimited free juice and soda if I remember correctly.) And styrofoam containers? Never. I used to bring a small snack (an orange or an apple) for international flights.
@Molly – you and Dad good at the Father/Daughter Dance things:)
@AKH – methinks clarkscottroger is referencing our culture’s present day consumer programming – eliminate the notion that there are times one should defer instant gratification! “Decorum”? WTH does that mean? “Wait until after I have paid for that food/drink in the grocery store before eating/drinking it?! Why?!”