Confessions of a Christmas Tree Nut---The Sequel

(Too much still to do, too little time, so I'm re-posting this six-year-old essay about my Christmas trees.  It  still applies--I've got those four trees up now.   But this year I expanded my tree collection, adding two more trees, just as I threatened in the original post.  In the living room, near the large real tree, is a small white one with some of the handmade ornaments I bought in Mexico and India.  And in the family room, a small green tree has appeared decorated with the forest creatures I've collected, mostly made out of twigs and straw and wood.  I couldn't resist giving them a tree of their own.  And I keep thinking of new tree themes for next year.  As for the Christmas cards,they're all going to be late this year.  That's why I call them "Holiday cards" and figure if I get them out before January 1, they still count.)

Above is the Woodland Creatures tree, made up mostly of ornaments I got from Pier One (all at least 30 per cent off, because it's the last minute.) I just couldn't resist these rustic little animals and birds made mostly of twigs and straw and natural products.(The star on top is a tiny starfish.)  The gold stars seem to be made of twigs--I cut apart a Pier One garland to get them. Click on the photos to enlarge them.

And here below is the little white tree I decorated with my hammered, painted tin ornaments  from Mexico and the lacquer-on-wood (I think) ornaments from India.

 

The Mexican tin ornaments are wonderfully crude and folk-y and the Indian ones are so  carefully detailed and elegant, so each country really should each have its own tree.

There's even a Mexican nativity scene of tin.  I love the clay angel at upper left sucking its toe.  And I love the Indian sets of three camels and three elephants.

At Thanksgiving 2015, with the help of kids and guests at the tree-trimming open house on Saturday night before Nicolas's baptism, we decorated the four trees that I always have. And here they are (in photos from 2010, but they look much the same in 2015).

The Real Tree goes in the living room.    I usually pick a color scheme, and this year went with silver and white, with the only color coming from some crazy peacock ornaments I got from Pier One.

With the peacocks, I also used lots of white butterflies (from the Dollar Store) and white birds and angel wings, so I guess the theme of the wonderful-smelling Real Tree this year would be wings.

In the dining room I always put a wire tree to show off my antique ornaments.  And I put a wire from the tree to the window latch so that it (hopefully) can't get knocked over.  You can see that we don't have much snow in Massachusetts, unlike Minnesota, but we will soon.

Some of these ornaments are reproductions, but most are the real thing.  My grandmother had a whole tree decorated with blown-glass birds with those spun glass tails and often a metal clip to hold it on the tree.  I really love the fragile teapots once sold at every Woolworth's for pennies. They cost a lot more now.  The blown-glass ornaments usually say "West Germany" on the metal cap.  The  glass ornaments that were once screw-in light bulbs were made in Japan between 1930 and 1950 and are a lot less likely to break.

In the library I always put my Shoe Tree, which started when the Metropolitan Museum in New York first started selling ornaments based on shoes in their collections.  

This became a kind of mania and now I can't afford to buy the newest ones from the Museum, but I've added lots of cunning real (baby-sized) shoes, and people keep giving me more.  My favorites on this tree are the Chinese baby shoes that look like cats and the fur-lined baby moccasins and the tiny Adidas sneakers. 

On the porch I've put the  Kitchen Tree, or Cookie and Candy Tree.  This was inspired by some friends who live in a tiny apartment and decorate their tree only with cookies and candy and pretzels and candy canes.  Then, when Christmas is over, they put it all outside for the birds and other New York fauna to enjoy.

As you can see, I've cheated quite a bit--adding ornaments that look like kitchen utensils and non-edible gingerbread men and peppermints.  An authentic Kitchen Tree should have chains of real popcorn and cranberries (which we did back when I had children small enough to enjoy stringing them.)

Last year  Trader Joe's sold little gingerbread men with holes already punched in their heads so I could string them on the tree, but this year the gingerbread men are frosted but the holes are missing, so I just  stabbed them with the wire hooks and it worked fine (and any that broke, I ate, of course. They taste better frosted.)

That's four trees so far (six in 2015!)-- and I haven't  shown you my Santa Claus collection and the miniature town in the bay window in the kitchen and the many creche scenes we have from around the world....But let's face it, I have to get back to those Christmas cards.

Confessions of a Christmas Tree Nut --The Sequel

Above is the Woodland Creatures tree, new for 2015, made up mostly of ornaments I got from Pier One (all at least 30 per cent off, because it's the last minute.) I just couldn't resist these rustic little animals and birds made mostly of twigs and straw and natural products.(The star on top is a tiny starfish.)  The gold stars seem to be made of twigs--I cut apart a Pier One garland to get them. Click on the photos to enlarge them.

And here below is the little white tree I decorated with my hammered, painted tin ornaments  from Mexico and the lacquer-on-wood (I think) ornaments from India.

 

The Mexican tin ornaments are wonderfully crude and folk-y and the Indian ones are so  carefully detailed and elegant, so each country really should each have its own tree.

There's even a Mexican nativity scene of tin.  I love the clay angel at upper left sucking its toe.  And I love the Indian sets of three camels and three elephants.

At Thanksgiving 2015, with the help of kids and guests at the tree-trimming open house on Saturday night before Nicolas's baptism, we decorated the four trees that I always have. And here they are (in photos from 2010, but they look much the same in 2015).

The Real Tree goes in the living room.    I usually pick a color scheme, and this year went with silver and white, with the only color coming from some crazy peacock ornaments I got from Pier One.

With the peacocks, I also used lots of white butterflies (from the Dollar Store) and white birds and angel wings, so I guess the theme of the wonderful-smelling Real Tree this year would be wings.

In the dining room I always put a wire tree to show off my antique ornaments.  And I put a wire from the tree to the window latch so that it (hopefully) can't get knocked over.  You can see that we don't have snow yet in Massachusetts, unlike Minnesota, but we will soon.

Some of these ornaments are reproductions, but most are the real thing.  My grandmother had a whole tree decorated with blown-glass birds with those spun glass tails and often a metal clip to hold it on the tree.  I really love the fragile teapots once sold at every Woolworth's for pennies. They cost a lot more now.  The blown-glass ornaments usually say "West Germany" on the metal cap.  The  glass ornaments that were once screw-in light bulbs were made in Japan between 1930 and 1950 and are a lot less likely to break.

In the library I always put my Shoe Tree, which started when the Metropolitan Museum in New York first started selling ornaments based on shoes in their collections.  

This became a kind of mania and now I can't afford to buy the newest ones from the Museum, but I've added lots of cunning real (baby-sized) shoes, and people keep giving me more.  My favorites on this tree are the Chinese baby shoes that look like cats and the fur-lined baby moccasins and the tiny Adidas sneakers. 

On the porch I've put the  Kitchen Tree, or Cookie and Candy Tree.  This was inspired by some friends who live in a tiny apartment and decorate their tree only with cookies and candy and pretzels and candy canes.  Then, when Christmas is over, they put it all outside for the birds and other New York fauna to enjoy.

As you can see, I've cheated quite a bit--adding ornaments that look like kitchen utensils and non-edible gingerbread men and peppermints.  An authentic Kitchen Tree should have chains of real popcorn and cranberries (which we did back when I had children small enough to enjoy stringing them.)

Last year  Trader Joe's sold little gingerbread men with holes already punched in their heads so I could string them on the tree, but this year the gingerbread men are frosted but the holes are missing, so I just  stabbed them with the wire hooks and it worked fine (and any that broke, I ate, of course. They taste better frosted.)

That's four trees so far (six in 2015!)-- and I haven't  shown you my Santa Claus collection and the miniature town in the bay window in the kitchen and the many creche scenes we have from around the world....But let's face it, I have to get back to those Christmas cards.

Child Beggars in India

(I originally wrote this post in January of 2009 when I was back from an unforgettable trip to India and my blog  "A Rolling Crone" was just beginning.  It proved to be one of the most widely read of my posts  and also rather controversial, as I will explain in a note at the end.  Since I'm presently in New York City working against a couple of writing deadlines I am (again) re-posting one of my earliest essays, hoping to reach a larger audience than I did in 2009.  As always, I welcome comments from those who may be more informed about what's happening in India now, four years after I was there.)

Everyone who has not yet seen the film “Slumdog Millionaire” should do so at once. It’s an unrealistic fairy tale with an unlikely feel-good ending, but it graphically illustrates the lives of the countless millions of India’s children who live on the street with only one concern: “How will I manage to find enough to eat today so that I’ll be alive tomorrow?”

Everywhere you go in India you will find beggars. This is particularly true in the large cities like Delhi and Mumbai.

Mumbai is a city of 18 MILLION people and HALF of those people are homeless. That means that they live on the streets or in shacks made of tin or cardboard. A night-time drive from the airport in Delhi to Agra gave insights into these hovels and the families who consider home to be a piece of the median strip of the highway. It took an hour just to drive out of the city on a road that was jammed with rickshaws, camels, sacred cows and many, many beggars.

Frommer’s Guide to India in the “Mumbai” section deals with the problem of beggars: ”Families of beggars will twist and weave their way around the cars at traffic lights, hopping and even crawling to your window with displays of open wounds, diseased sores, crushed limbs, and starving babies, their hollow eyes imploring you for a few life-saving rupees…. In the worst of these tales of horror, children are maimed to up the ante by making them appear more pathetic. The choice is stark: Either lower the window and risk having a sea of unwelcome faces descend on you, or stare ahead and ignore them. To salve your conscience tip generously those who have made it onto the first rung of employment”

In India you quickly steel yourself to the crowds of children who are grabbing your arm, knocking on the window of your car, thrusting flowers into your pockets, repeating endlessly the only words of English they know: “Hello Madame, food, hungry, money, please, eat…”

If you give any of them money or even move toward your pocket or purse, their number suddenly increases tenfold and you cannot move for all the hands clutching at you.

In Mumbai, just outside our hotel, when we walked onto the shopping street of Colava Causeway, lined with stores on the right and street sellers’ booths on the left, all shouting their wares, there were two families of children who were particularly aggressive, following us for blocks, especially a girl of about 11 who kept thrusting flowers onto me anywhere they would stick, and her little brother who seemed to have no adult watching him as he skittered in front of us. I was so annoyed by them constantly clutching at me, but then one night, returning home about 11:30, I saw the family sound asleep on the sidewalk, the children curled into the prone body of their mother, and I felt guilt-stricken. The next day, before I left, I managed to give the girl a hundred rupees without anyone else noticing, and instead of unleashing a crowd on me, she grabbed it, grinned and ran. (It was worth only about $2.00 but that was probably a good day’s income to her.)

The beautiful and sad little girl from Jodhpur in the photo above, who was dressed and painted to look like a Hindu goddess, has a good gimmick, because the Hindu religion emphasizes giving money and food to holy persons as well as to sacred cows. On every street you can see poor Indians putting necklaces of flowers on the ubiquitous cows and feeding them. They also share their food with the bearded sadhus (holy men) dressed only in saffron loin cloths. These holy men live entirely on charity, renouncing all their worldly goods. Feeding them, like feeding the cows, is good karma for the Indians.

The little girls along the Ganges who sell small candles nestled in leaf-bowls are not strictly beggars – they’re actually young entrepreneurs, because everyone who comes to the Ganges wants to sail these candles into the river as an offering (as we did.) At night the boys in their rowboats row the pilgrims and tourists into large log-jams of boats gathered to watch the priests do their twilight fire worshipping on shore and the children selling floral chains, candles and pots of tea scramble agilely from one boat to another.

The children in India who manage to learn decent English are miles ahead of the ones who don’t—because they can move themselves and their families out of poverty and a life on the streets. All the tourists we saw – Japanese, Russian, Italian, Australian – use English as the lingua franca.

We hired Mark, a young man about 18—when we encountered him in Varanasi in a craft store that caters to tourists. His business card said he drove a rowboat and because his English was good, we booked him (at the usual rate of 150 rupees per person per hour) for a dawn trip down the Ganges the next morning.

As Mark paddled through the fog and darkness while the river woke up and the faithful began to bathe themselves and their cattle and their laundry, I asked him if the little girls who sold the candles went to school. He said all but one of them did – her parents couldn’t afford the 300 rupees ($6.00) per month that school cost. He also said that he personally was paying for one child to go to school. I learned that Mark was supporting his entire family of two parents and seven children with his three jobs (rowboat guide, craft store salesman and factory worker.) His father, formerly a carpenter, had TB. His mother had to stay home and care for his six younger siblings.

The biggest surprise was that Mark told us he, himself, despite his impressive business cards, could not read or write. “But how did you learn such good English?” we asked.

“From tourists in the store” he replied. If Mark had the leisure to go to school and become literate, he would probably become the Donald Trump of Varanasi.

I would like to find a philanthropy through which I could sponsor one or two children in India at six dollars a month to attend school rather than begging in the streets. (I already sponsor children through Plan but that goes to the community in Nepal not to the children themselves.) I’ve been googling, trying to find such a philanthropy with access to Indian children, but without any luck so far, so if you have any suggestions, write me at joanpgage@yahoo.com.

It’s really appalling that a country like India, which is now enjoying a huge boom in industry and technical know-how; a country that has a very wealthy class evident in cities like Mumbai and Delhi, cannot manage to provide free schooling for the millions of Indian children who live on the streets.
 

 One reader of the original blog post has repeatedly posted the same criticism of my article, that says in part: "england simply sucked on indias blood no literacy nothing all other factors are repurcussions to the first add to it politics and corruption and u get child beggary whatever this might be.  one very morally inhumane thing is tourist taking pictures of indian beggars to make a mockery . if u can help .help ...if u cant atleast dont spread hopelessness".  

In my defense, I'd like to tell him --(somehow I suspect it's a "him")-- that three years ago, when two friends of mine went to Varanasi, I sent with them multiple copies of the "Ganges girls" photos above to give to the girls along with money, because I suspected the girls owned no photos of themselves.  Whenever I'm photographing children in poor countries, I don't do it to mock them, I do it to celebrate their spunk and beauty--and I try to make sure that they receive copies of the photos. In every case, as with the Ganges girls, the photographs were received with great joy.)

A Mother Kvelling About A Daughter’s Novel

Valentine’s Day was the launch of daughter Eleni’s second book, first novel, “Other Waters”, published, like her first book, “North of Ithaka",  a travel memoir, by St. Martins Press.  Despite having surgery a week before, she’s thrown herself into publicizing the book with book signings and presentations in Coral Gables, Florida (at Books & Books) , and tonight in Manhattan at the Barnes & Noble on 86^th and Lexington.  (Tomorrow she’ll be speaking at the Library in her hometown of Worcester MA, and then  on to Boston, Denver and who knows where else.  With a six-month-old baby.  Who’s still breastfeeding.)  To find out exactly where and when, check out her website:  http://www.elenigage.com/

I’m amazed at how many more ways there are to promote a book than there were back in the 1970’s and '80’s when my husband and I were doing it.  Today many of those roads for making your book known involve the internet—a subject I’m going to write about later, when I’ve seen all the ways Eleni’s using them and how effective they are.

“Other Waters” has already had excellent reviews from the likes of Library Journal and Kirkus Reviews (which is traditionally hard to please).  Kirkus called it “A lovely read” in a review that began  “Can goddesses walk among us?  Can an entire family really be cursed?”

But today I just want to kvell—a more picturesque way of saying “brag”-- because today I saw the review of Eleni’s novel, “Other Waters” in the  March 5 issue of People Magazine—the one with “Elizabeth Smart’s Dream Wedding” on the cover.

The review starts with a photo of the book cover and a small headshot of Eleni and People gives it four (out of a possible four) stars.  The review is by Caroline Leavitt and just In case you don’t have a copy of People handy, I’ll quote it for you here: 

“A Jane Austen-ish plot gets a delicious Indian accent in this effervescent novel by former People editor Gage.  Maya Das, a psychiatric resident torn between her parents’ traditional values and her bustling New York City life, finds her world upended when her grandmother’s death ostensibly unleashes a curse.  Maya’s boyfriend dumps her and she’s faced with a malpractice suit, so she heads back to India to remove the curse, save her family and reboot her life.  But in this exotic, mysterious setting cultures collide, love grows more complicated and Maya finally discovers just whom—and where—she is really meant to be.”

Jane Austen-ish!  A family curse! Exotic, mysterious India!  Doesn’t this review make you want to rush out and buy “Other Waters”?  Well, do it now.  You can even buy and download a Kindle version of it.

Child Beggars in India

(I wrote this post in January of 2009 when I was just back from an unforgettable trip to India and my blog  "A Rolling Crone" was just beginning.  It proved to be the most widely read of my posts ever and also rather controversial, as I will explain in a note at the end.  As President Obama returns from his trip to India and Indonesia, I am republishing it here to up-date it.)

Everyone who has not yet seen the film “Slumdog Millionaire” should do so at once. It’s an unrealistic fairy tale with an unlikely feel-good ending, but it graphically illustrates the lives of the countless millions of India’s children who live on the street with only one concern: “How will I manage to find enough to eat today so that I’ll be alive tomorrow?”

Everywhere you go in India you will find beggars. This is particularly true in the large cities like Delhi and Mumbai.

Mumbai is a city of 18 MILLION people and HALF of those people are homeless. That means that they live on the streets or in shacks made of tin or cardboard. A night-time drive from the airport in Delhi to Agra gave insights into these hovels and the families who consider home to be a piece of the median strip of the highway. It took an hour just to drive out of the city on a road that was jammed with rickshaws, camels, sacred cows and many, many beggars.

Frommer’s Guide to India in the “Mumbai” section deals with the problem of beggars: ”Families of beggars will twist and weave their way around the cars at traffic lights, hopping and even crawling to your window with displays of open wounds, diseased sores, crushed limbs, and starving babies, their hollow eyes imploring you for a few life-saving rupees…. In the worst of these tales of horror, children are maimed to up the ante by making them appear more pathetic. The choice is stark: Either lower the window and risk having a sea of unwelcome faces descend on you, or stare ahead and ignore them. To salve your conscience tip generously those who have made it onto the first rung of employment”

In India you quickly steel yourself to the crowds of children who are grabbing your arm, knocking on the window of your car, thrusting flowers into your pockets, repeating endlessly the only words of English they know: “Hello Madame, food, hungry, money, please, eat…”

If you give any of them money or even move toward your pocket or purse, their number suddenly increases tenfold and you cannot move for all the hands clutching at you.

In Mumbai, just outside our hotel, when we walked onto the shopping street of Colava Causeway, lined with stores on the right and street sellers’ booths on the left, all shouting their wares, there were two families of children who were particularly aggressive, following us for blocks, especially a girl of about 11 who kept thrusting flowers onto me anywhere they would stick, and her little brother who seemed to have no adult watching him as he skittered in front of us. I was so annoyed by them constantly clutching at me, but then one night, returning home about 11:30, I saw the family sound asleep on the sidewalk, the children curled into the prone body of their mother, and I felt guilt-stricken. The next day, before I left, I managed to give the girl a hundred rupees without anyone else noticing, and instead of unleashing a crowd on me, she grabbed it, grinned and ran. (It was worth only about $2.00 but that was probably a good day’s income to her.)

The beautiful and sad little girl from Jodhpur in the photo above, who was dressed and painted to look like a Hindu goddess, has a good gimmick, because the Hindu religion emphasizes giving money and food to holy persons as well as to sacred cows. On every street you can see poor Indians putting necklaces of flowers on the ubiquitous cows and feeding them. They also share their food with the bearded sadhus (holy men) dressed only in saffron loin cloths. These holy men live entirely on charity, renouncing all their worldly goods. Feeding them, like feeding the cows, is good karma for the Indians.

The little girls along the Ganges who sell small candles nestled in leaf-bowls are not strictly beggars – they’re actually young entrepreneurs, because everyone who comes to the Ganges wants to sail these candles into the river as an offering (as we did.) At night the boys in their rowboats row the pilgrims and tourists into large log-jams of boats gathered to watch the priests do their twilight fire worshipping on shore and the children selling floral chains, candles and pots of tea scramble agilely from one boat to another.

The children in India who manage to learn decent English are miles ahead of the ones who don’t—because they can move themselves and their families out of poverty and a life on the streets. All the tourists we saw – Japanese, Russian, Italian, Australian – use English as the lingua franca.

We hired Mark, a young man about 18—when we encountered him in Varanasi in a craft store that caters to tourists. His business card said he drove a rowboat and because his English was good, we booked him (at the usual rate of 150 rupees per person per hour) for a dawn trip down the Ganges the next morning.

As Mark paddled through the fog and darkness while the river woke up and the faithful began to bathe themselves and their cattle and their laundry, I asked him if the little girls who sold the candles went to school. He said all but one of them did – her parents couldn’t afford the 300 rupees ($6.00) per month that school cost. He also said that he personally was paying for one child to go to school. I learned that Mark was supporting his entire family of two parents and seven children with his three jobs (rowboat guide, craft store salesman and factory worker.) His father, formerly a carpenter, had TB. His mother had to stay home and care for his six younger siblings.

The biggest surprise was that Mark told us he, himself, despite his impressive business cards, could not read or write. “But how did you learn such good English?” we asked.

“From tourists in the store” he replied. If Mark had the leisure to go to school and become literate, he would probably become the Donald Trump of Varanasi.

I would like to find a philanthropy through which I could sponsor one or two children in India at six dollars a month to attend school rather than begging in the streets. (I already sponsor children through Plan but that goes to the community in Nepal not to the children themselves.) I’ve been googling, trying to find such a philanthropy with access to Indian children, but without any luck so far, so if you have any suggestions, write me at joanpgage@yahoo.com.

It’s really appalling that a country like India, which is now enjoying a huge boom in industry and technical know-how; a country that has a very wealthy class evident in cities like Mumbai and Delhi, cannot manage to provide free schooling for the millions of Indian children who live on the streets.


(Nearly two years later I still would appreciate suggestions for a philanthropy that can help me  directly support schooling for children in India.  In many cases it's difficult to be sure the money donated actually goes to the children.


 One reader of the original blog post has repeatedly posted the same criticism of my article, that says in part: "england simply sucked on indias blood no literacy nothing all other factors are repurcussions to the first add to it politics and corruption and u get child beggary whatever this might be.  one very morally inhumane thing is tourist taking pictures of indian beggars to make a mockery . if u can help .help ...if u cant atleast dont spread hopelessness".  


In my defense, I'd like to tell him --(somehow I suspect it's a "him")-- that last year, when two friends of mine went to Varanasi, I sent with them multiple copies of the "Ganges girls" photos above to give to the girls along with money, because I suspected the girls owned no photos of themselves.  Whenever I'm photographing children in poor countries, I don't do it to mock them, I do it to celebrate their spunk and beauty--and I try to make sure that they receive copies of the photos. In every case, as with the Ganges girls, the photographs were received with great joy.)

Cinco de Mayo and my Studio

(Please click on the photos to enlarge)


In honor of Cinco de Mayo, a Mexican holiday that is celebrated more in the U.S. than across the border, I’m posting some photos of my studio, which is a celebration of Mexico, its art and folk customs. It’s also an informal exhibition of treasures collected during travels to Mexico, Greece, and India. It throws Hindu gods, carved wooden crucifixes, figures of saints and angels and goddesses together in one overcrowded space, but they all seem to be happy together.

Our house is an antique New England farmhouse and every other room is decorated in character, with Windsor chairs, blanket chests, stencils of pineapples and antique quilts. But in my studio I’ve gone crazy with primitive art and color and my favorite collectibles. (As I mentioned the other day, I seem to collect EVERYTHING.)

One wall is all book cases and cabinets built to hold my books on art and photography. In the cabinets below are craft supplies and many glass-topped display cases with my antique cased images (daguerreotypes and ambrotypes) sorted according to category.

That makes it all sound organized, but, as you can see from the photos, it’s pretty much a mess, which I think is an artist’s prerogative. (Who said a messy desk indicates a creative mind? It certainly wasn’t my mother!)

Right now it’s messier than usual because I’ve been pulling out my watercolors of Greek scenes and people in preparation for the Grecian Festival art exhibit at our church, St. Spyridon Cathedral, coming up on June 4, 5 & 6.

While photographing my studio, I realized that it’s not only a celebration of Mexico and India, it’s also a celebration of women (especially Crone power!) There are so many angels, saints and goddesses, subconsciously chosen, I think, to direct their divine powers toward my painting and photography.

And everywhere there are handmade textiles and embroideries, carvings and paintings, mostly made by women and attesting to their religious or political beliefs and hopes.

Most of the women in Mexico and India who sold me their handiwork are living on the edge of poverty, using their talents and skills to survive. I feel very fortunate that I can not only travel and admire their work and afford to buy it, but that I also have a room of my own to display and enjoy it.

If you look closely at the photos you will see:




On the wall – hupils—embroidered blouses from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec-- which the indigenous women still wear as part of their local costumes. The various designs and colors identify the village they come from.

Hindu gods and goddesses—all in a row.

Retablos—paintings on metal asking for a favor from a saint or thanking the divine powers for favors received.



Greek votives figures (tamata)—silver or tin shapes that are hung on icons, to do pretty much the same thing.

Dolls from my vast collection of dolls of the world—including women and children dressed as Zapatista leader Commandante Marcos—masked with guns and ammunition belts!



A book of Graciela Iturbide photographs.

A cross made out of bottle caps

Kites of paper designed by the famous Oaxacan artist Francesco Toledo who celebrates his Mayan ancestry.

Day of the Dead posters from Oaxaca.

Wooden animals (Alebrijes) carved in Oaxaca of copal wood

Carved textile stamps from India for making block-printed fabrics.

An embroidered pillow from Guatemala, of a man walking through what appears to be a graveyard.

A plastic tote bag with a sequined Guadalupe.

Garlic against the evil eye.

Painted bowls made from gourds



Purses made from antique hupils

A Greek shadow puppet

Lots of antique photos

Photos of my kids when they were young.

Madeleine Albright and My Life in Junk Jewelry

(Okay, so I’ve missed my first self-imposed deadline! This was supposed to appear on the weekend. And instead of the “Crone Complaint” appearing on Monday, it will appear on Tuesdays. Hopefully by next week I’ll get the categories on the right weekdays!)

I recently learned about former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s new book “Read My Pins—Stories From a Diplomat’s Jewel Box”.

The description said: “Read My Pins is a story and celebration of how one woman’s jewelry collection was used to make diplomatic history. Exploring the use of the pin or brooch as a means of personal and diplomatic expression …(it] offers a whole new side of Secretary Albright.”

The New Yorker mentioned that, when diplomatic negotiations stalled, Albright might wear a jeweled turtle, or a contentious encounter would inspire a rhinestone bee or a crab pin. In Iraq she was called a serpent in the press, so she thought it was amusing to wear a snake pin “when we did Iraq things”.

I love that our distinguished Secretary of State did this, because I suspect that high-level male officials seldom signal their feelings, hopes and goals with their fashion choices, as women almost always do. (But I read that Bill Clinton would wear a special tie to signal Monica Lewinsky.)

So, inspired by Madeleine Albright, I pulled out a bureau drawer that has been collecting all sorts of costume jewelry over the past four decades. Even my brownie pin was in there, as well as some TWA plastic “junior crewmember” pins from the days when children would be taken into the cockpit to meet the pilots. (Nowadays you can’t even congregate near the cockpit door!)

I found my sorority and Phi Beta Kappa pins and the charm bracelet my parents gave me with charms for various high school accomplishments. The day after graduation I left on a student trip to Europe where I collected a silver charm in each city—silver beer stein, Arc de Triomphe, Tyrolean bell, etc.

I felt like an archaeologist digging through that drawer. I’ve never been much of a jewelry person, even though my husband has bought me beautiful pieces over the years, including a gold necklace with a Greek coin of Alexander the Great from 300 B.C. But wearing expensive pieces makes me nervous—I think I’m going to lose them—so the good jewelry usually lives in a bank safe deposit box.

My mother only wore silver—to go with her trademark silver hair. I have a number of deco-style pins of hers as well as a miniature silver spoon. In the 1930’s, when a bride chose a sterling flatware pattern, she would be given a matching pin. I opened a small jewel box of hers, lined with velvet, and found her gold thimble and a small ornate silver cigarette holder. The box still smelled like her—Arpege perfume and cigarette smoke—although she’s been gone for 25 years. And I found her hat pins-- long, lethal-looking, each topped with a pearl or semi-precious stone.

She and I both had birthdays in early February so we often gave each other our birth stone, amethyst. In one tiny box I found an ornate amethyst lavaliere with a note: “This was given to me by Joanie in August 1980—it is to be returned to her. Martha Paulson”.

I think you can tell that neither my mother nor I ever threw anything away—but unlike me, she had everything organized and labeled.

The most valuable jewelry my mother left me was a brooch of giant rhinestones made by Eisenberg. She wore it when she had her portrait painted, and I wear it whenever I need some serious 1940’s style glamour and bling.

I found a large sunburst necklace made of beads and seeds bought for a dollar through a bus window in Morocco in 1968 when I was still in my semi-hippie phase. There was a gold brooch of a sailing ship bought in Switzerland when my husband and I completed a book about Greek ship owners in 1975.

I found a little gold Aztec -looking figure of a man with a tiny emerald in his chest which my husband brought back from Colombia while researching the narcotics trade for The New York Times. He said that emeralds improve the changes of becoming pregnant. It worked. And during a long-ago memorial service for Nick’s mother Eleni in his mountainous village, he looked on the ground and found a small, perfectly heart- shaped stone. He had it set in gold with “My love always” engraved on the back. I think that’s my favorite piece.

Eighteen years ago a friend who has a birthday close to mine gave me a silver and turquoise pin of a wide-eyed man holding his arms up (“thinking ‘Oh My God, I’m fifty!’” she said.)

Because I collect hands, my children often give me hand jewelry-- from Greece, Israel, India, and places I can’t even remember.

I discovered a flamboyant beaded collar or ruff that I bought in Mexico and never had the nerve to wear. (I can’t carry off dramatic jewelry very well.) On a piece of string I discovered a smiling Toltec god’s head made of clay that was put around my neck by Indian children while we celebrated the spring solstice and the vanilla harvest among the pyramids of El Tajin, Veracruz, Mexico. As the pyramids came to life at night with colored lights, and the indigenous people sang and danced, it was like time-traveling back to an era long before the Spanish came.

I’m very big on good luck charms, figuring a little protection can’t hurt—so I’ve been known to wear my little orange figure of the Hindu god Ganesh and the Om symbol on the same chain as a Greek “evil eye” charm. And in my trip to India this year, I went crazy buying “tribal jewelry”—hammered silver cuffs and necklaces picturing the Hindu gods. Now I need the courage to wear those dramatic pieces out in public, as Madeleine Albright did every day when she was representing the American people.

My archeological dig into my costume jewelry has left me with two resolutions: I’m going to try to wear these souvenirs of my life more often. And when my daughters come home for Thanksgiving, I’m going to let the them choose which ones they want, while I can still remember the stories that go with each piece.

The Hindu Wedding -- at Last!

A friend (Hi Althea!) wrote: “I read your blog Monday (snow day) expecting to have a full accounting of the wedding. I loved everything else you wrote about, but no wedding? Maybe it’s going to be a book?”

It’s true I’ve been putting off describing the Hindu wedding that was the centerpiece of our trip to India, because there’s just so much to say. So I’ll do it with photos. And in two parts. (If you click on the photos they get bigger.)

The bride’s parents spent months planning a wedding so fabulous –three days of celebration, with fireworks, marching bands, dancers, musicians, buffets, and so much more. I ‘m sure I’ll never see another wedding to compare with this one.

The first party—New Year’s Eve—was western style so I won’t show any photos. It was held in a nightclub called “On the Rocks”, next to our hotel, the fabulous Ajit Bhawan which was a Maharajah’s palace and is still decorated entirely in the style of the Raj, with vintage autos and a staff of tall Rajput Warriors in turbans, who always greet you with the prayerfully folded hand gesture of greeting and the word “Namaste.” The brother of the Maharajah still has his private living quarters in this hotel and he invited the entire wedding party to come from the nightclub to his place after midnight so, as fireworks greeted the New Year, we were running through the palace grounds to the afterparty in a bar which seemed ready for Humphrey Bogart and Sidney Greenstreet to walk right in.

The next day the bride’s family led us to their local temple to Ganesh, the elephant god, to make offerings in honor of the wedding. We all rode in the ever-present motorized rickshaws—called Tuk-Tuks—and the one for the bride was specially decorated. The offerings in the temple given by the bride’s parents were sweets, money (distributed to beggars and holy men) and the marigold necklaces called malas given to the god.

That night, the bride’s parents’ front yard –about the size of a football field, it seemed—had been converted by miles of draped fabrics and sparkling lights into a huge tent complete with stage, dance floor , tables, chairs and an immense buffet that reached around two sides of the field. All sorts of vegetarian delicacies were prepared before our eyes, from the round breads dipped in ghee at one end to huge vats of a milky sweet dessert drink and fried pastries at the other end. I took a photo of one of the lady servers because I was fascinated by the bracelets she wore on her upper arm. How did she get them on?

The invitation to this event came with a real peacock feather, for peacocks were the theme of the night—visible everywhere including behind the stage. The ladies were invited to come early for the Mehendi—when everyone’s hands were decorated with henna by artisans hired for the occasion. The bride’s decorations were the most elaborate—she and the groom (who is not Indian but from California) had their feet and hands decorated. Both their names were worked into the bride’s design—which the groom has to discover for himself.

In addition to the henna-decorated hands, each woman was given bangles to match her garments, made by a man who created them from resin and sized them on a hot iron. The bride emerged from her house, looking like a film star in her red and gold sari, her arms heavy with gold bangles, and flowers woven into her hair. Her good-natured groom was dressed in a traditional groom’s outfit.

Couples began to arrive, piped inside and announced by musicians. This before-wedding party is the Sangeet which literally means “singing together”. Traditionally, it’s a time for good-natured teasing of the bride and groom. A troop of tribal musicians and dancers performed first. The women dancers gave me my first look at a popular trick—they would bend over backwards until they could pick up a ring from the ground using their EYELASHES. Don’t ask me how. Later I saw other dancers pick up things like a razor with their eyelids!

The bride’s family and siblings and cousins offered their own entertainment—dancing and singing popular Bollywood love songs. A group of their friends (including my daughter Eleni, the blonde in turquoise and pink) had been practicing a Bollywood dance number—similar to the dance at the end of Slumdog Millionaire. (I’ve heard that taking Bollywood dance lessons is becoming a craze in the U.S. now.)

At the end, the bride and groom and their parents also danced, and the bride’s funny uncle—the man in a dark suit with a long pink scarf-- performed a hilarious parody of the traditional bride’s dance—shy yet seductive.

The little children fell asleep on the canopied divans, while everyone else sang, danced, cruised the buffet, and admired each other’s saris or salwar kameezes or other traditional dress. No one wanted to go home, but the next night was to be the even more lavish wedding itself!