Foots Cray Place, near Sidcup, Borough of Bexley
Constructed 1754, burned 1949
The M1 motorway now passes directly over the site
Postcard view, circa 1904
Collection of the author

Frederick George Loring (1869 - 1951) was an English naval officer, wireless expert and writer (Thank You Wikipedia and Google).  In 1904 he accompanied Guglielmo Marconi to America for wireless experiments.  Loring died in Foots Cray, (the area not the house), in 1951.

I always like me some Palladio, as they say.  Which was the point of yesterday's post (see below), although the Second Church of Christ Scientist was built in 1910 and so not quite on the money as they also say, but Wikipedia was down for a worthy cause and nothing to be done except to take a chance and run with it.  In 1904 an article appeared in the New York Times more or less accusing Mary Baker Eddy of stealing all her ideas from the spiritualist Phineas Quimby, but I couldn't find that yesterday either.

Mary Baker Eddy believed in the power of the mind to heal.  Or Phineas Quimby did and she ran with the idea, same thing, basically.  And like it or not, it worked for some people: mortal illness cured with mental discipline.  So I asked an old-time Science of Mind practitioner why you didn't hear more about these kinds of healings these days; how come it seemed to have lost its popularity and never really caught on with a wider audience.  

"Alternatives," she said. "There were less doctors around and not so many medical cures when I was young," she explained, and I believed her (this lady was old).  So why would you go to the trouble to discipline your mind, focus your mental powers and spend your time studying, when now all you have to do is take a pill or get a shot?  Current health-care costs aside, I think she had a point.

Everything changes; there are surprises everywhere.  There's a faith in an idea that becomes so fashionable they build a Palladian villa to celebrate it, and then the idea loses its appeal because of easy alternatives.  Something new comes along, something unexpected maybe, even surprising.  A cure for cancer; the wireless; the Internet.