Somebody’s Playing My Trump Card

Two weeks ago, when I was invited to Mar-a-Lago, the former Trump home, now a super-expensive private club, I couldn’t resist photographing the portrait above of Donald Trump—a dramatically glamorized vision of The Donald that gives us a glimpse of how he sees himself.

The next day, April 4, I included the photo of the Trump oil painting in a blog post  I wrote called “Lunch at Mar-a-Lago with The Donald.”

Then I forgot about the whole thing until this Saturday, as the April moon turned full, and I learned that my photo of the self-glorifying Trump portrait had become the kitsch seen ‘round the world.

On April 13, Andrew Sullivan, the king of political bloggers, posted my photo of the painting under the title  “A Power-Mad Egomaniac Ctd.” On his “Daily Dish” on TheDailyBeast.com ‘s site.

But Sullivan, who reportedly gets 300,000 or more visitors to his blog in a month, wrote that he had received the photo from a nameless reader who commented:

Many years ago, I attended a social event at Donald Trump's Mad King Ludwig digs, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach. (Trump rents it out to anyone with enough cash.) Donald wasn't there (I think this was during the Ivana divorce, so he was a bit distracted). But he was there in ... oils. Right off the main bar, there's a huge portrait of Trump. Thought you'd get a kick out of seeing how he sees himself.  I swear I am not making this up.

This anonymous reader was stealing my photograph—and even my reference to Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, and claiming it as his own photo taken “many years ago”!

While media throughout the universe picked up Sullivan’s post, I still was blissfully unaware until, on Saturday night, I received an e-mail from another  well-known political blogger,  Michael Shaw, who had somehow traced  the photograph to my blog “A Rolling Crone.”  As he pointed out, even the reflection of my flash in the photograph was identical to the “many years ago” photo from Andrew Sullivan’s reader.

And Michael Shaw wrote a post revealing my authorship titled “Donald Framed” on his blog BagNewsNotes.  Here it is: http://www.bagnewsnotes.com/2011/04/donald-framed/

In the post Shaw, who devotes “BagNews” to visual politics and the analysis of news images, wrote :

A few days ago, Andrew Sullivan posted this photo from an unidentified reader who claimed to have snapped this at Donald Trump’s old Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago estate.  As far as I can tell, the photo was actually lifted and cropped from a blog called A Rolling Crone. The blog …is run by a retired journalist by the name of Joan Gage who offered a post on April 4, 2011, Lunch at Mar-a-Lago with The Donald, which happens to be full of wonderful pictures of the place, including said one above.  (I have written to Joan, by the way, to see if she minds my using the photo since it’s now everywhere.) In the meantime, It’s quite a rendition of the man (quite in the sense of kitsch) as he hypes a potential GOP candidacy for the crass purpose of resuscitating his crass TV show.

By the way, I don’t think the corner is unfinished ala Washington’s portrait.  I think it’s just the flash. The effect, though, doesn’t go badly with that sky and the sense of heavenly power, potential storm and rays from a deity.

I was surprised and impressed that Michael Shaw had tracked me down as the originator of the photograph and published the fact.  My humble blog, which is “about travel, art, photography and life after sixty,” is tiny compared to the blogs of Andrew Sullivan and Michael Shaw.  So far I’ve never gotten any closer to politics as a subject than writing about Michelle Obama’s arms and her one-time lapse in grammar.  (I sent that blog to her office and now receive mailings from the White House  about twice a month, asking my opinion on issues.  I’m sure  a gazillion other folks get the same mailings asking for their opinions, but I’m glad she didn’t take offense at my gentle criticism.)

As my friend and teacher Andy Fish wrote me about the Trump imbroglio, “The internet is kind of like the wild west as far as copyright ownership goes.” 

I’m still feeling my way around this blog-writing thing and it doesn’t feel good to be ripped off and have one’s words or images stolen without credit, but on the other hand,  it was gratifying that Michael Shaw discovered the theft and gave me credit for the photo.  It was exciting, and for a weekend, it was fun to be rubbing elbows with those big-time political bloggers out there in the blogosphere.

(Here’s my favorite comment to the portrait-- posted by "Glen" on Shaw’s blogpost:

“Is this the portrait they display in the attic?  They got the order wrong.”)

Liminal Stages and Death on the Internet

I thought I’d introduce this subject with a photo of a fabulous horse-drawn hearse that I saw in Granada, Nicaragua.  The coffin rides like Sleeping Beauty inside the glass compartment, and you’ll notice that the horses are draped with crocheted blankets.  "Why?" I asked.  "Because this is a very serious time,” I was told.)

My husband claims that I’ve been preparing for death ever since my twenties--over 40 years ago.  I guess that’s what you get when you marry a hypochondriac with a gloomy Scandinavian background. (Remember in "Annie Hall" when Diane Keaton and Woody Allen were breaking up and sorting out their books? She said something like: “All the books with ‘Death’ in the title are yours.”  You should see my library.)

So about death. Like everything else, dying has apparently been transformed by  the creation of the internet.  I think we’re all familiar with on-line memorial pages where mourners can post their condolences and memories of the dear departed.

In today’s New York Times (Jan. 25) there’s a front-page story reporting that  funeral homes are now offering bereaved families the opportunity to invite friends and relatives who can’t make it to the actual funeral to watch the services live on the computer and then re-view the tape over and over again. Some of the companies offering this service to undertakers are FuneralOne, and  Event by Wire.  Even the famous Frank E. Campbell funeral chapel in Manhattan is introducing a webcasting program.

Some funeral directors offer the on-line funeral service for free, according to The Times, and others charge $100 to $300.  A family can make the funeral broadcast open to the public or issue invitations along with a password. (I wonder, does Evite do funerals?) This service has allowed the military colleagues of a Marine killed in Afghanistan, for instance, to view his hometown funeral including the arrival at the airport, the graveside ceremony and the 21-gun salute.  The father of the young Marine said he watches the funeral over and over again on the computer. “I don’t know why, but I guess it’s healing.”

Two weeks ago, the cover story in the Sunday New York Times Magazine of Jan 9, 2011 --“Ghosts in the Machine”-- was all about what happens to the words and images of yourself that you’ve posted on the internet—after you die.  Will you be remembered by your last foolhardy Tweet?  By those embarrassing photos on Facebook? Entrepreneurs, according to The Times, are popping up who will manage your digital afterlife for a fee—acting as a virtual executor who will categorize, file, organize or just do away with your on-line self. 

Andy Fish, the artist and instructor who taught me about blogging and Photoshop and computer illustration, says that he plans another kind of digital immortality—in which he can communicate with his fans from beyond the grave.  Andy often writes  a week’s worth of posts for his blog,  www.AndyFishWrap.blogspot.com , and then schedules the dates on which they will be posted on Blogspot.  Using that facility, he plans to post an annual message on his birthday well into the next century, even if he’s already gone to his reward.

Death, of course is one of life’s major passages. So why not make some plans for it ahead of time? 

For a woman’s group I belong to, with a different topic for discussion every month, we once wrote and read aloud our obituaries. It was a worthwhile exercise.  Leaving a draft of one’s obituary probably would be helpful to  survivors as part of your  internet estate unless, like my husband, you already have an up-to-date bio on your computer for public appearances and press coverage.

(One of Nick’s colleagues at The New York Times back in the day was the head obituary writer. He was always amazed that he could get in to see anyone—no matter how important—by mentioning his job.  Every big shot cares about what his Times obituary will say about him.)

Speaking of life passages, daughter Eleni Gage just launched her blog “The Liminal Stage”, on New Year’s Eve, which she calls “The most liminal night of the year".  The subtitle is:  “Navigating a modern world with the help of time-tested traditions.”

"Liminal" comes from the Latin word for “threshold” and Eleni has packed several liminal moments of her own into the last year: getting engaged, then married and moving from Manhattan to Miami. 

Here you see her at her wedding in Corfu, Greece, about to toss a decorated wedding bread to the single ladies behind her (a Corfiote twist on throwing the bouquet.)

Eleni  majored in Folk Lore and Mythology at college and, like me, she really loves learning about traditions, rituals, superstitions, divination – in all cultures.  She writes on her blog:

“It’s precisely because people get anxious around liminal stages, and the questions they raise, that cultures develop rituals designed to bring comfort, protection, and luck…My family is Greek so we throw pomegranates on our doorstep to invite abundance, and sit down to a meal in which a lucky quarter (wrapped in tinfoil for hygiene) is hidden inside a meat pie. …Whoever finds the quarter is guaranteed a good year, an extra little burst of confidence with which to face the unknown future. That’s the point of rituals, and of this blog–to invite luck, to celebrate a given moment, and to use traditions to do what they always have–to give yourself the tiniest sense that you can control what happens to you, even if that’s just an illusion.”

 You can find Eleni’s blog at www.TheLiminalStage.com or by clicking on the title in my blog list to the right.

A Rolling Crone Gets Rolling

Here is my very first post -- I've spent far too much time getting ready to do it or, as my mother Martha would put it, spitting on my hands.

It's time to put up or shut up and so I'm trying to launch this ship TODAY despite the fact that I foolishly signed up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo is their web site) -- for which more than 100,000 would-be novelists have promised to write 50,000 words of a novel in the month of November. (You will hear more from me about that as the pressure mounts.)

That's 1,667 words a day every day, and since I have a slight cushion, as I'm at 21,343 today, Nov.13th, I'm taking off time to start the blog A Rolling Crone. (The name was daughter Eleni Gage's inspiration.) You can get to it on www.arollingcrone.blogspot.com. Soon I’ll also have it linked to my website: www.joanpgage.com.

“Why a blog? you ask? “There are too many already! And let’s face it—you’re not a pundit, you’re just a crone.”

Well, a year or so ago I took a course at the Worcester Art Museum called “Marketing your art on the internet”, taught by a computer expert, artist and genius named Andy Fish. He told us we all must have a website and a blog which we update daily. So I’m finally doing it. I promise not to write anything about the following: Obama. McCain, Palin, the bailout and Joe the Plumber. (Unless it’s about hairless Aztec dogs suitable for Obama's allergic daughter, which I plan to write about soon.)

What I will write about, as the spirit moves me, is art (I just got back from Manhattan where I visited exhibits by Banksy and Van Gogh—a study in contrasts); cats (in NYC I visited to Madison Square Garden cat show—what a trip!); my travels (next up three weeks in India), along with photos illustrating same.

I will try to address issues and events that are of interest to crones over sixty, who are definitely under-served in the media. Yet we are, as a friend remarked, the pig in the python—the huge population of women who are still tuned in and creating despite (or because of) our age.

The blog is also meant to be (as explained by Andy) a sneaky way to call attention to my paintings and my newly published photo book “The Secret of Greek Cats, Feline Photos and Cats’ Tales of Greek Life and Lore” (now only $10 on my web site: www.joanpgage.com or www.GreekCats.com ).

About the photo: It's me and some of my watercolors at last June's Grecian Festival at Saint Spyridon Cathedral in Worcester, MA where I was privileged to show some of my paintings (and even sold some!) I also was lucky enough this year to have my first solo show of my watercolors at The First Show Gallery at C. C. Lowell in Worcester.

I hope you’ll tune in to this crone’s journey!

Joan Paulson Gage

Questions, remarks, slander? Write me at JoanPGage@yahoo.com