corrente

In honor of riggsveda's first day, and for those of you who can't visit Philly, here's a brief tour of The Mighty Corrente Building. I've cribbed most of it from the guide's spiel on The Philly Phlash, our municipal tourist bus, for which The Mighty Corrente Building is, of course, a stop (two stops, actually, because of its vast size and variegated features). At left is an image of one one of The Building's lesser wings.

While climbing the marble steps up to TMCB, you will pass between two monumental chained weasels, sculpted in Vermont marble by Philadelphia's own Alexander Calder IV. Swinging open the Rodin-esque bronze doors, you will enter The Great Hall, whose vaulted deep blue ceiling is a veritable firmanent of glittering stars, each a blinking point of light that represents a writer or an alert reader in Corrente's globe-girdling network of correspondents.

Mounting the marble stairs to the executive cloakroom, be sure to admire the brightly burnished solid gold Louis Quinze taps on the wet bar——

Dammit, my pen ran out of ink, and I couldn't take any more notes. "Underground bunkers" .... "wine cellars" ... "mushroom farm" ... "rooftop Zen garden" ... "sunken pools with nymphs" ... And something about a nut case under the stairs.

Well, you see what I mean. It takes a heap o' living...