Looking for Dr. Fuller :: Buckminster Fuller Essays

Looking for Dr. overfull Its the next to next to last day of English 381 The Personal Essay. Were reading Annie Dillards Teaching A Stone to blither and I call attention to a blurb on the jacket by Edward Albee. A student notes asks about another quotation from Dr. R. Buckminster Fuller. She doesnt know who Fuller is, and no one else in the class does either, but the running speculation is that hes a fundamentalist evangelist, a sort of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale.I fumble for an exposition of Fuller--architect, philosopher, voice of a generation like Dr. Spock. I joke that I should bring in my Whole Earth Catalog so I idler illustrate my remarks. I explain that Fuller invented the geodesic dome and when some in the class arent certain what that is, I scrawl a bad drawing on the board. Finally someone saves me by mentioning Epcot Center, and we go off awhile on that. I mention that another dome much closer is in Downs, Illinois, ten miles down the road in a one-tavern town. Here is an essay possibility, the connection between Epcot Center and Downs, Illinois. But thats not the road to travel in this essay.At the library I plug Fullers name into the computer. Twenty books pop up, their call outlets ranging from C, to H, to P, to T, and I suddenly recognize a title operate Manual for Spaceship Earth, its publication place of Carbondale reminding me that Fuller taught at Southern Illinois University. Theres a picture of his geodesic dome house in Carbondale, by the way, in the plates between pages 96 and 97 of Ideas and Integrities A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure. For kicks I also ask the computer to find The Whole Earth Catalog, call number AP2.W5. My book search will take me, then, to five different floors.The Whole Earth Catalog is yellowing and brittle. Its publishers, the Portola Institute, probably didnt expect back in 1969 that the they would show up on university library shelves, and so they didnt bother with acid-free paper. When I flip thro ugh the pages I remember the day I bought a copy myself, a subsequently edition, at least, in 1975 and, reading, through it, came upon a recipe for baking bread, from the Tassajara Bread Book. It was summer. Breaking bread sounded like a righteous thing for a college entrant to do and so in my mothers kitchen I measure yeast and molasses and water and whole wheat and salt and oil and kneaded out six loaves.