Paging Walter Gropius. Walter Gropius please call 2599.

Originally Posted:
Thursday, July 24, 2008
1:53:00 PM CDT
Feeling Thoughtful
Hearing Coldplay's Amsterdam


Did I hear what I thought I just heard?

I stopped clicking my SketchUp drawing, took the headphones out of my ears and turned to my neighbor, John, with a look of perplexity on my face. At the exact same time he stopped what he was doing, looked up with a mirrored look on his face. Kara and Melissa, who sit behind John and me, paused from their work and turned around to us with a plagued look of confusion. At the same time the four of us said, Who did she just page?”

I’m pretty sure she said Walter Gropius.
Yes, that’s what I thought I heard too.
Me too!
Is he still alive?
NO!

The four of us decided that someone was either having a little fun, or that Walter Gropius’ name is a code word for someone. Like in a hospital when Dr. Pyro is paged in the case of an emergency fire on a particular floor. Just to make sure, we looked Walter up on the employee list on the intranet. And yes, in fact, Walter Gropius, may he rest in peace, does not work here.

(FYI- For those of you who don’t know who Gropius is, he’s one of the founders and first Director of the Bauhaus in pre-WWII Germany. Gropius and his faculty at the Bauhaus are responsible for the modern movement in architecture and design. When the Nazis shut the school down due to its progressive thinking, Gropius, van der Rohe, Kandinsky, Nagy, Breuer and others fled to the United States to teach at our prestigious universities therefore shaping the modern aesthetic of American buildings. There’s your quick history lesson for the day.)