John Tuohy's Connecticut History: The Rayward-Shepherd House

The Rayward-Shepherd House

The Rayward-Shepherd House, also known as Tirranna and as the John L. Rayward House, was designed by renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright and built in New Canaan, Connecticut in 1955 for Joyce and John Rayward.

“Tirranna” is an Australian aboriginal word meaning “running waters” – an apt name for this spectacular residence.

Located right on a pond just off the Noroton River, it features elaborate land and water-scaping. Built of standard concrete block (not Wright's more typical textile block), glass, and Colorundum flooring, and trimmed with Philippine mahogany, most of the house conforms to a hemicycle plan.

Its living/dining wing overlooks a pool which steps down to a pond and extensive landscaped gardens, designed by Frank Okamura, landscape architect for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Charles Middeleer, a notable local landscape architect, also contributed to the landscape design.

The Rayward House includes a later (1958) extension by Taliesin Associated Architects, featuring an observatory above the master bedroom dressing room, as well as a playhouse for the Raywards’ daughters, Victoria and Jennifer (1957), also designed by TAA, which echoes the hemicycle form of the main house.

About Short Stories from a Small Town

This is a book of short stories taken from the things I saw and heard in my childhood in the factory town of Ansonia in southwestern Connecticut.

Most of these stories, or as true as I recall them because I witnessed these events many years ago through the eyes of child and are retold to you now with the pen and hindsight of an older man. The only exception is the story Beat Time which is based on the disappearance of Beat poet Lew Welch. Decades before I knew who Welch was, I was told that he had made his from California to New Haven, Connecticut, where was an alcoholic living in a mission. The notion fascinated me and I filed it away but never forgot it.

The collected stories are loosely modeled around Joyce’s novel, Dubliners (I also borrowed from the novels character and place names. Ivy Day, my character in “Local Orphan is Hero” is also the name of chapter in Dubliners, etc.) and like Joyce I wanted to write about my people, the people I knew as a child, the working class in small town America and I wanted to give a complete view of them as well. As a result the stories are about the divorced, Gays, black people, the working poor, the middle class, the lost and the found, the contented and the discontented.

Conversely many of the stories in this book are about starting life over again as a result of suicide (The Hanging Party, Small Town Tragedy, Beat Time) or from a near death experience (Anna Bell Lee and the Charge of the Light Brigade, A Brief Summer) and natural occurring death. (The Best Laid Plans, The Winter Years, Balanced and Serene)

With the exception of Jesus Loves Shaqunda, in each story there is a rebirth from the death. (Shaqunda is reported as having died of pneumonia in The Winter Years)

Sal, the desperate and depressed divorcee in Things Change, changes his life in Lunch Hour when asks the waitress for a date and she accepts. (Which we learn in Closing Time, the last story in the book) In The Arranged Time, Thisby is given the option of change and whether she takes it or, we don’t know. The death of Greta’s husband in A Matter of Time has led her to the diner and into the waiting arms of the outgoing and loveable Gabe.

Although the book is based on three sets of time (breakfast, lunch and dinner) and the diner is opened in the early morning and closed at night, time stands still inside the Diner. The hour on the big clock on the wall never changes time and much like my memories of that place, everything remains the same.

http://www.amazon.com/Short-Stories-Small-William-Tuohy/dp/1517270456/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1444164878&sr=1-1&keywords=short+stories+from+a+small+town

About No Time to Say Goodbye

In 1962, six year old John Tuohy, his two brothers and two sisters entered Connecticut’s foster care system and were promptly split apart. Over the next ten years, John would live in more than ten foster homes, group homes and state schools, from his native Waterbury to Ansonia, New Haven, West Haven, Deep River and Hartford. In the end, a decade later, the state returned him to the same home and the same parents they had taken him from. As tragic as is funny compelling story will make you cry and laugh as you journey with this child to overcome the obstacles of the foster care system and find his dreams.

http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir/dp/0692361294/

http://amemoirofalifeinfostercare.blogspot.com/

http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir/dp/