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By Jeffrey Lord on 12.21.10 @ 6:08AM

Requiem: Hymn or dirge for repose of the dead.
-- Webster's Collegiate Dictionary

Christmas, 1985.

Tom Wicker was upset.

The longtime New York Times political reporter turned columnist, an icon of liberal journalism in the day, was furious with President Ronald Reagan and his conservative administration. So he sat himself down during the Christmas season and penned a column titled "Requiem at Christmas."

That would be requiem, as in a hymn for the dead.

The subject of Wicker's fury is worth a look this Christmas, twenty-five years later. His tirade was delivered as Reagan and the conservative movement were riding a wave of public popularity just a year after Reagan's 49-state re-election over former Vice President Walter Mondale.

Why is this important enough to take another look? Because this tale of a supposed political Scrooge and the Christmas Past of 1985 provides a glimpse of Christmas Future for conservatives in 2011.

Wicker, you see, was waxing eloquent about a pond at his rural retreat in historic Rappahannock County, Virginia. There, some twenty years earlier during the height of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, the columnist built his pond on his own property. Perhaps understandably for a man who had spent his life as a liberal wordsmith, Wicker saw this moment of pond-building as "perhaps the single most constructive act of my life."

He also paid for the construction of the pond himself. Good man. A liberal who believes in private sector job creation.

But wait! Paid for it all himself? Then why in the world was Tom Wicker so furious at Ronald Reagan and conservatives?

What was this business of a "Requiem at Christmas"?

Well, there was actually more than a pond involved, you see. First, the government of the Commonwealth of Virginia arrived to stock Wicker's pond "with large mouth bass, bluegills and channel catfish," the latter, Mr. Wicker assures us, "to establish a natural cycle" in his new private pond. But there was something else. There was also a dam. And instead of hiring a private sector contractor to design his dam, Mr. Wicker went somewhere else. Guesses, anyone?

That's right. Instead of pumping his New York Times earnings into this task, Mr. Wicker turned to -- you. You as in the taxpayers funding the federal government of the United States circa 1965. Specifically, in Wicker's words, he turned to "Eddie Woods, the district agent for the Federal Soil Conservation Service, (who) designed the dam so well that the water eventually rose precisely to the little red flags he had set out to predict the shoreline of what he called a 'water impoundment.'"

Said Wicker as his fury rose to what might be called the liberal anger impoundment shoreline of the Times print pond: "That's only an infinitesimal incident in the annals of one of the Federal services dedicated to the American earth and to those who work and cherish it." Indeed, indeed. "Infinitesimal" is precisely the word for whatever federal tax dollars were spent on his pond. Then, without missing a beat or evidencing a solitary thread of irony, Wicker moves his readers from the pond-designing Federal Soil Conservation Service to another agency in the U.S. Department of Agriculture: the Agricultural Extension Service.

There, he fingers Scrooge. Otherwise known as President Ronald Reagan.

While we are left to ponder the fact that good ole Eddie Woods of the Federal Soil Conservation Service was spending his time designing Wicker's private dam on Wicker's private property, Wicker sharply points out: "Now Ronald Reagan wants to kill the Extension Service to save money; if the service is needed his aides say, let the states pay for it."

At this point, Wicker's outrage at this horrifying bit of Dickensian Scroogery from the Reagan White House explodes.

"What effrontery!" he splutters. The nerve of Reagan. Trying to cut back the federal government by suggesting that if a service is so valuable to a state that state should pay for the service and leave the American taxpayer in other states alone.

On a roll, Wicker moves to another outrageous Reagan idea: privatizing the Federal Housing Administration. What a wretched, foolish idea snaps Mr. Wicker. Why, the whole reason for the FHA, a New Deal program from 1934, was that private institutions "failed to make housing loans available to low and middle-income people…in the first place." Translation: mortgages were not given to those who could not afford them.

Imagine that. Way back there in 1985 Mr. Wicker simply can't imagine what could possibly go wrong with forcing the government's way into the private housing market and making sure people who can't afford mortgages get them from the federal government. The very idea of getting rid of such a program made Wicker's bile rise. As with an unrelated Agriculture Department program, this

In the early twentieth century, architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage (1856-1934) was the foremost pioneer in the field of modern architecture in the Netherlands. The controversial building of the Gemeentemuseum (Municipal museum) was his crowning achievement. Unfortunately, he died before the museum was completed.
The 1903 Amsterdam exchange building is the earliest obvious example. His final masterpiece, the Hague Municipal museum, was the crowning glory of a sizeable oeuvre of great international significance as the forerunner of modern architecture. Berlage disliked excessive decoration and expensive materials and wanted his buildings to attract attention by their volume, relief and silhouette. But he hardly ever confined his attentions simply to the architecture. His interventions in the interior and designs for furniture, glass and tableware frequently turned the buildings he designed into total works of art.
Through the main entrance to the museum visitors pass between two pylons to approach the building via a covered walkway flanked by two ponds. The transition enables them to leave the streets of the city and the cares of everyday life literally behind them. The glass sides of the walkway offer soothing views of the building’s reflections in the water. The walkway is intended to conduct visitors into the world of art. By offering a peaceful interlude immediately before they enter the museum, it enables them to enjoy the exhibitions to the full.
The superstructure of the museum is built of concrete and iron. In the 1930s, the use of reinforced concrete was still fairly new. The concrete skeleton was then faced with striking ochre-coloured bricks. The brick walls are not load bearing. To underline this fact, unusual patterns were incorporated in them, suggesting latticework. Built like this, the walls could never have supported the weight of the structure without the concrete skeleton. The design of the museum is based on a grid composed of squares and cubes with sides measuring 1.10 metres. All the walls and columns are located on the system lines and intersections of this grid. The number 11 and multiples of it recur throughout the building. The ochre-coloured bricks had to be specially made to fit these basic dimensions.
Light is an important consideration in the design of any museum. Top-lighting proved to be ideal for paintings, while oblique lighting was best for decorative arts exhibits. One planned to display the painting collections on the upper floor. Pitched glass roofing structures were constructed and glass ceilings and translucent veils installed beneath them to direct the light to the parts of the exhibition spaces where it was needed. Round the edges of the veil, the light filtered down over the walls, while the centre of the exhibition space was rather less well-lit. The electric lighting required on days with lower natural light levels was installed behind the glass ceilings. For decorative arts displays, oblique lighting was the ideal solution. The ground floor exhibition spaces still employ oblique natural top-lighting from windows set relatively high in the outside walls. Its innovative use of light is one of the things that gave the museum the reputation of being one of the most advanced museum buildings of its day.
Temperature control is an important factor in the conservation of any collection. The arrangements made in the museum were ahead of their time. Radiators create movements of the air and therefore of dust particles, which are damaging to exhibits. To get round this problem, Berlage opted for the (then) new and expensive system of panel heating, by which water is heated to around 60 degrees and pumped through a network of pipes inside the walls. The walls then radiate a constant and even heat and no draughts are created. Panel heating could eventually be used in most of the main exhibition spaces on both floors. The period rooms and service areas were heated in the traditional way, using radiators, while the chosen solution for the foyer, the auditorium and the first-floor reception gallery was convection heating. Warm air was blown into these areas through grilles. In the reception gallery, tile work was used to turn these into an attractive architectural feature.