June 5, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
EDEN, N.C. Sounds change with the seasons, of course, but this spring, among the usual mix of bird song and lawn mowers, there are notable silences in this town of 15,000 people.
First, the whistle that used to signal the start of three daily shifts at the Karastan rug factory, a brick mill whose smokestack has towered over downtown for generations, isn’t blowing. The work force has dwindled to a few as the operation prepares to close, after 93 years.
Inside the mill, it’s quiet too. When the train ran, it drove directly into the factory to pick up goods. The rooms and halls are so large, as James Ivie, a retired educator and preservationist said, “You can drive a Sherman tank down them.” As of March 2021, many of these massive rooms were empty. The remaining employees no longer wear earplugs. Instead of blanketing the place with the percussive din that only a room full of power looms could produce, most of the machines sit silent and still.
On Globes:Â My late uncle was a successful business man and world traveler. He kept this globe on his office desk. I was always fascinated by it as a child, because it could be turned on to light up and show the countries of the world. When he died recently, he left the globe to me. It is 11 inches high by 10 inches in diameter, and is mounted on an oak stand. I plan to keep it as a family heirloom and would like to know more facts about it, its value and the globeâs history.
A. D., Des Moines, Iowa
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Artist Dan Johnson (1918-79) designed furniture for many companies with the midcentury modern look. He worked in Rome and California and designed a number of lines of modern furniture, especially chairs and tables, for Danish and U.S. companies.
Johnson often used thin, patinated metal, iron or aluminum for arms, legs and seats, and added caning or fabric upholstery. All of his designs looked lightweight, but a chair with a bronze or iron frame is heavy and hard to shove into place at a dining-room table. One of his most famous designs was the Gazelle line designed in Rome and then sold in the U.S. He used metal parts patinated “Pompeian Verde,” a green color that was inspired by the excavations at Pompeii.
Marshall Field & Co. Clock in Chicago
Every Dec. 31, when the hype of New Year’s sequins and resolutions threaten overload, I escape. I become five again and recall my family’s first celebration in America.
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is a pensive time; a moment to search deeds and cleanse oneself of the year’s wrongdoing and wrong-thinking. America’s party hats and countdowns to midnight were as alien to my parents as self-flagellation. But as new arrivals they wanted to be American.
So when their friends, the Tschewicks, mentioned New Year’s Eve, my parents listened. After all, the Tschewick family had arrived in the U.S. a year before us.