No fossil fuels required for these airplanes.

Some purists prefer driving stick-shifts to automatics. Others like to play LPs on a record player instead of listening to an iPod. And then there are the model airplane purists, who power their aircraft not with electric motors, but with strips of rubber.

For George Benson, building the plane is as important as flying it.

George Benson, who will turn 82 in June, is one of these purists, as he is an enthusiast of rubber-powered model airplanes. He remembers growing up in England, when there was a huge interest in the latest civilian and war planes both in Europe and in the United States.

Benson and his father would build and fly the planes into the early years of World War II. Model airplane competitions were intense, and sometimes there were larger, heavier, and noisier gasoline-powered models.

Nowadays, technology and modern materials mean just about everyone can use a remote control with a model airplane that is purchased ready to fly and usually manufactured from molded plastic. Some prefer a challenge, so they fly “free-flight” models that are unpredictable: they go where the wind blows.

Models are often built—without nostalgia—to plans from the 1920s and ‘30s.

But the devotees of rubber-powered model airplanes go so far as to keep their art close to the way Alphonse Penaud invented it, back in 1871. His “Planophore” achieved a flight of 131 feet in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris. Strips of rubber powered his model airplane, which was a delicate arrangement of balsa wood and tissue paper.

That’s the way Benson and his colleagues like to keep their hobby. They belong to the Marin Aero Club, in the San Francisco Bay Area, and they meet regularly to fly their planes. They also show the younger flyers how, when it’s done properly and if all goes well, the planes are “trimmed” to climb steadily, reach level flight, then slowly glide back to earth. But there are endless variables; one of the most common is a rising warm air “thermal,” which can make the plane soar out of sight in minutes.

Marius Canard at age 17, learning about the hobby.

Benson, who is a long-time resident of Mill Valley, California, says the hobby is incredibly satisfying. There’s pride in the workmanship required to construct the planes, and in the skill to “trim,” or adjust them, to fly well.

“Once flying,” he says, “it is a beautiful sight to see one’s handicraft overhead with the sun streaming through the tissue, revealing the wood framework.”

No seatbelts or traytables. Just sun, wind, and handicraft.

Benson reveals there’s really only one drawback: “With an exceptionally long flight, one occasionally loses a plane.”

Roberto Soncin Gerometta is an established travel and corporate photographer based in San Francisco.

For more information, see the Marin Aero Club blog.

A Shaker dressing room.

“Don’t make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both necessary and useful, don’t hesitate to make it beautiful.”
—Shaker design philosophy

Shaker interiors often feature wall pegs. (Photo: Thomas.Merton)

An elegant, minimalist—yet somehow grand—aesthetic is on display at the living history Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky.

The 3,000-acre compound, founded in 1805, features 34 restored buildings and an extensive museum collection. There are also acres of farmland planted with heirloom varietals.

Bedroom. (Photo: Thomas.Merton)

The visual experience brings to mind the “Less is more” credo of Mies van der Rohe.

More on the history of the Shaker sect.
More on Shaker Village.
Pegboards and hangers available at Shaker Workshops.

Photos via Flickr. Front page photo by lumierefl.
A version of this story is at Remodelista.

A race in the White House. (Photo: whitehouse.gov)

Now is a good time to point out there’s a much less exalted road to pet ownership. Take me: eight months after 9/11, I was in New York City and I wanted a dog. Bad. I needed a reason to go outside three times a day on weekends.

So I started looking at shelter dogs on line. I’m not resentful there was no international search for my dog. Actually, I enjoyed the search a little too much. It got to the point where I was spending hours on line looking at dogs in shelters as far away as Wisconsin.

I was turned down by one rescue league because I had never owned a dog before. Taken aback but undeterred, I showed up at Bideawee, right in Midtown Manhattan. I needed two IDs, a letter from my landlord, a copy of my lease, and a whopping $35. Mishka, a “blue shepherd mix,” came home with me that day. Simple.

Mame with Mishka, years after the shelter rescue.

Even if you, as a prospective dog owner, have needs that are satisfied only by certain breeds, there are rescue leagues that can help. Say you yearn for an energetic freak in the house: the Viszla Club can help. Or you have a butcher in the family but you’re a vegetarian—turn to one of many Great Dane Rescue Societies. If you need a portable, four-legged boss, try the Chihuahua Club of America. For a complete listing of breed rescue leagues click here.

You may not get a six-week-old puppy from a rescue league, but you can certainly return stability to the life of a dog whose owner has been forced to stop caring for their pet. And that’s the real problem: home foreclosures, or stays in jail, can leave an animal homeless.

Aloha, Bo! (Photo: whitehouse.gov)

Naturally, shelters are feeling the pinch, too. Bideawee, where I adopted Mishka, is an animal welfare organization founded in 1903; because of a shortfall in donations, it recently closed one of its satellite operations.

With the thousands of dogs all over the country waiting for a home, you don’t need to live in the White House to give them one.

Mame McCutchin keeps a blog about Mishka. Front page photo of Mishka’s nose, by Jen Minary, is titled ‘Welcome to the Holland Tunnel.’