Exit Manhattan. Enter Adirondacks. Renovate a home. Grow a garden. Live happily ever after. Or not…
Rosslyn Redux
Rosslyn Redux is a vicarious plunge into the idiosyncrasies (and absurdities) of reawakening a home, a dream and ourselves.
redux |rēˈdəks, ˈrēˈdəks|
adjective: brought back; revived; restored
ORIGIN late 19th century: from Latin, from reducere ‘bring back.’
In August 2006 my bride and I purchased Rosslyn, a circa 1820 historic home and boathouse on Lake Champlain. We decamped from a 1926 McKim, Mead and White prewar in Midtown Manhattan; started squatting at Susan’s mother’s Rock Harbor “lake house” 280 miles north of NYC and 10 minutes south of our new home (aka old house); assembled a spirited, character-rich team of carpenters, tradesmen, and artisans; and set out on a quest to fuse historic rehabilitation with green design.
Four years later we finally finished. (Sort of. Except for everything that we’re still working on…) We’d blown our original timeline and budget by at least 400%, we’d tested and retested our marriage again and again, and we’d sometimes-enthusiastically-sometimes-begrudgingly adapted to our new and improved North Country life.
This is our chronicle of the reawakening of an historic home. And ourselves. And our dreams. Simultaneously!
Rosslyn Redux as Transmedia Experiment
[pullquote]Rosslyn Redux is less tidy. More tangled. Less gift. More adventure.[/pullquote]Rosslyn Redux is a multimodal narrative incorporating oral storytelling, digital storytelling and print. This unconventional (and admittedly unfocused) approach leverages multiple platforms — live performance, video, audio, scrapbooking, blogging, social media and print/digital books — to explore the strengths and limits of modern storytelling while embracing author-audience collaboration. In short, Rosslyn Redux is an experiment, less chronicle and more lyric essay. Less memoir; more meditation.
Most memoirs untangle (ie. narrate) a single, tidy story and wrap it up with pretty paper and a ribbon. A gift. To enjoy. And then go on to the next gift.
Rosslyn Redux is less tidy. More tangled. Less gift. More adventure.
Help Create the Rosslyn Redux Story
The Rosslyn Redux blog is a good place to begin. If you’re active on Facebook, Google+ or Twitter (@rosslynredux) you can jump into the story on your social media platform of choice. If you like pictures, perhaps you’ll enjoy Pinterest (or if you prefer only moving pictures, YouTube may be your best bet.) If you prefer live storytelling (or audio/video recordings from live events) check out Redacting Rosslyn. Every day there are powerful new storytelling innovations, and your suggestions are welcome. Thank you.