July, 2025 - Bob Croft

Transforming the L L Steward House into my home

After close to two years marketing my former office, the L L Steward House, as either ready-to-move-in furnished office space or as a needed renovation home, I gave up. In May 2025, I began finding homes for my desks and credenzas (acquired in 1988 from Valley National Bank – very nice pieces, solid and HEAVY), keeping the barrister bookcases and courthouse chairs. In June, I began refinishing wood floors, painting, and moving 25 years of accumulation from 718 W. Roosevelt into 522 (books and bookcases first!)

My sales listing (second agent to try) expired in June; I’d already secured quotes for most of the residential conversion. Major work began: Major backyard tree and cats-claw removal, in preparation to demolition (by Chickasaw Demo, on 7/13) of the concrete parking lot occupying most of the backyard. Confirmed topsoil addition, irrigation system, paver borders, drip system and sod to begin week of 7/28.

Are the Founders still relevant?

Caught a segment of Hoover’s “Uncommon Knowledge”, featuring Condoleezza Rice, on the topic of America’s founding. Host Peter Robinson (one suspects acting as an agent provocateur) asks how the framers of our Constitution could possibly be relevant in today’s diverse society. They were, after all, white males.

Condi replies, with remarkable eloquence, “So?”

After a moment for that to sink in, she follows up with “And your point?”

They also grew up in the mid-eighteenth century, a very long time ago, and were products of the Enlightenment, the frontier, and the Great Awakening; of a society in which religion was a touchstone and belief in God unquestioned; of intense loyalty to one’s local community (Jefferson, and R. E. Lee as late as the Civil War, referred to Virginia, not America, as “My country”), and to the land. Surely all more significant formers of one’s intellectual foundation than mere gender or skin color. And yet they displayed a deep understanding of human nature, as opposed to society, itself very slow to change.