I am a vehicle.

As a grad student in American history at the University of Delaware in the mid-90s, I participated in a seminar on historiography that explored the range of history writing in just the last 150 years. The center of that discussion was the issue of objectivity. Many years after the fact, I have concluded that no topic can be treated with total objectivity. I am the product of all that I have met; I am a subject and have no alternative but to approach any topic from the place I find myself at any given time. The best I can hope for is the objective treatment of something subjectively chosen.

Actually, the reverse is true: experience suggests that, in fact, my topics have always chosen me. Presuming some degree of wisdom in their choice, I humbly acquiesce, doing what I am able. To understand, interpret and interpolate; to be the vehicle through which the topic passes, hopefully more funnel than filter.

Halsey Wood chose me, unlikely as that may be. He was always and intensely a spiritual man, a "high church" Anglican whose religiosity might have outshone the pope's. Churches constituted the bulk of his architectural practice and the majority of those were for Episcopal congregations. His home included an oratory, a private chapel where consecrated host might be preserved for daily communion. Like some of us, I think he may have worn his humility with pride.

I have been gathering material on William Halsey Wood informally, very informally and haphazardly, for more that forty years, and it's high time I did something with it. If it isn't already clear to me who this man was, why he was important and what value he may have for our time, it never will be...and I will have failed.