When he decided to sell, Eastman was ready for change. One major reason: She wanted to spend more time with her three-year-old son, who loved hanging out at the feed store. She also thought it would be fun, but troubles with her business partner made it less enjoyable than it might have been. After five years of trying to make it work, she wanted out.
They renamed it Kenwood Farmhouse, put “a lot of sweat and some money” into fixing it up, in hopes of turning it into an artist’s cooperative. It worked for a while, but then the recession hit.
As I walked with a friend down the processional avenue which connected the pavilions, it occurred to me: would the emperors have traveled down this same path in a jaded silence? Or would they have been chatting with their courtiers? Would they have been discussing matters essential for the well-being of the Empire? Pretending to be a pompous palace official, I turned to my friend and asked, “Your Majesty, in what shade would you wish the new chambers to be painted?” Upon which my friend replied with as much gravity as he could muster: “Do you have color swatches?”
Every school child will tell you, however, that the answer to the question, “What do dragons eat?” is a resounding: “anything it wants to!” So I asked myself, shouldn’t the other signs—monkey, horse, etc.—be careful too? After all, dragons were clearly at the very top of the food chain and everyone else is surely going to be dinner.
In the case of the Temple of Heaven, our guidebook explained that even the perimeter of the entire compound consciously emulated the Divine Pair. The northern end curves while the southern end forms a box. Then again the most important buildings of the complex along with the platforms on which they stood were round but the vast paved enclosures in which they stood were square. This arrangement is easily discernible if one were to look at the structures from the air.
About two years later, Scheffer and Mayer realized that to stay in business they would need to expand beyond feed. The Valley’s land use and demographics had begun to change, and sales of cattle feed in particular appeared to be headed downward.