A Photo Tribute to Two Dads and Two Grandpa's

I first posted this on Father's day in 2011, then updated it in 2015, when granddaughter Amalia was 3 1/2 and grandson Nicolas only 11 weeks old.  By then, I wrote, my husband Nick had proved himself a super Papou (Grandfather), even to changing the occasional grandchild's diaper, something he never did with his own kids.

                                                                  Nick &; Christos 1972 
When our three children were born in the 1970’s, my husband Nick was not the kind of dad who'd change diapers, take a kid to the park or coach them in sports. But as these photos suggest, he was always an important presence in their lives, ready to offer support, advice and unconditional love when they needed it.

1. 

                                                               Nick & Eleni circa 1976

This past week, President Obama launched the “Year of Strong Families” to do something about father absence, which he experienced growing up without a father.  Nick experienced it too, because, as he wrote in “A Place for Us”, he never knew his father, a short-order cook in Worcester, MA, until he and his sisters arrived in the U.S. as refugees in 1949 after their mother was executed during the Greek civil war.  Nick was nine years old.  His father, Christos, was 58.

                                                         Nick & Marina, circa  1979

My father, Robert O. Paulson, was born in 1906 and died in 1986.  Because my parents lived far away, he was not a real presence in our children’s lives, but when we visited California in 1973 I took these photos of him showing our son, Christos, his first view of the ocean, and reading to him at bedtime.

I only met my paternal grandfather, Par Paulson, once.  He was stern and completely deaf and the only way to communicate with him was by writing on a blackboard in chalk. But my step-grandfather, John Erickson, my grandmother’s second husband, had a special relationship with me during the years I lived near their small town of Monticello, Minnesota. 

 I still have a small garnet ring that once belonged to his mother. I remember vividly how he taught me to shoot his rifle across the wide Mississippi river, and in the spring, when it was time to get new baby chicks for the chicken yard, he would take me down to the hatchery, pull open drawers of chirping chicks and let me pick out the ones I liked.

                                                                                                   Ida & John Erickson circa1952

 In the current "People" magazine President Obama wrote, “I grew up without a father around. I have certain memories of him taking me to my first jazz concert and giving me my first basketball as a Christmas present, But he left when I was two years old.”

 As he knows, even a one-time memory—choosing chicks at a hatchery, showing a grandson the ocean, reading a bedtime story or unwrapping a first basketball can be a gift that a child will cherish for a lifetime.

Now that we're celebrating Father's Day 2019, I have to add  one more Dad to my tribute:  Emilio Baltodano, the father of our grandkids Amalia, now 7 and Nico, 4.  Emilio is definitely a SuperDad, like many young fathers today.   He attends every school performance, and takes his kids somewhere virtually every weekend--fishing in Central Park at the Harlem Meer, the Brooklyn Zoo, Governor's Island, the Natural History Museum, Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.  Of course every SuperDad has a SuperMom beside him, and the photo above shows Emilio and Amalia at the Father's Day Brunch Eleni put together today to honor  Emilio and her dad, Nick Gage, complete with goat cheese and zucchini frittata, lox, bagels and cream cheese, mimosas, and her famous Strawberry Cake. Papou Nick loved it!

Remembering Sixties Fashions--I Was There!

My previous blog post was inspired by a sticker book I bought for granddaughter Amalia--a very scholarly review of "1960's Fashions"  published by Usborne in their "Historical Sticker Dolly Dressing" series.  I re-posted an essay from years ago about "Horrible Hairdos of My Youth" and  got a big reaction from my contemporaries who also remember those days of beehives and hair spray.  So I thought I'd re-post another essay from the past, illustrating how I was a  total fashion victim throughout the Swinging Sixties.  (Hard to believe that in September I'll be going to my Edina High School class's 60th reunion, where we crones can trade stories about how short our minis were!  This blog post below was originally inspired by my love for the "Mad Men" TV series.)

                                                                                     

As the reaction to Mad Men’s season premiere last Sunday proves, today’s younger (than I am) generations are fascinated with the lifestyle, the fashions and especially the presumed decadence of life in Manhattan in the 1960’s.

For those of us who lived through it, the show brings nostalgia, bittersweet memories of youthful foolishness, and frequent hilarity at anachronisms that slip by, despite the dozens of people on the program who are working to make every ash tray, cocktail shaker and plaid blazer authentic to the period.

I was 19 and in college when the 1960’s began.   In the summer of 1963 I graduated from the University of California,  Berkeley (English Lit.), and entered Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism in the fall for a year-long Master of Science program.   My first job after graduating was in public relations at Lever Brothers—in the iconic Lever House on Park Avenue.  After six months there, I moved a few blocks uptown to  work at the Ladies’ Home Journal, at 54^th and Lexington (right across from what would be Studio 54 where Andy Warhol and Truman Capote played.)

Yes, I did smoke at the time--in fact when I went to college there was a “smoking room” on my floor in the freshman dormitory where obsessive students like myself could sit up all night smoking, studying and living on Mars Bars out of the vending machine.  I smoked from the age of 18 until at 29 I married a Greek-American New York Times reporter who insisted I quit. (And I’m still married to him 42 years later.)

The thing you have to understand about the Sixties—and this is starting to be portrayed on Mad Men—is that at some point in the decade there was a watershed moment when everything changed 180 degrees:  everything from fashion, music and lifestyle to views on race, women’s rights, health—you name it. 

When people talk about the “Swinging Sixties” they’re talking about the last years of the decade, from about 1966 on.  The first part of the sixties was a lot like the 1950’s—conservative, uptight, well-mannered (although archaic in beliefs about sex, race, whatever.)  Clothing was  conservative and preppy, fitted to the body.  Just look at the pleated skirts and man-tailored blouses that Peggy, the secretary-turned-copywriter on Mad Men is still wearing in the season premiere, which takes place in 1966.

 Here is a photograph of me in the spring of 1965 when I was headed for the airport in Los Angeles to fly back to New York after a visit with my parents.  Can you believe the hat, shoes and gloves?  I wouldn’t believe it myself if I didn’t have the photo as proof.

And here are two photos of me on the job in 1964 and 65.  You can see that we are rocking the  sculpted beehive hairdo’s that were so lacquered with spray that they were un-squashable, inspiring jokes about rodents nesting within.

So we women all looked and dressed pretty much like the earlier seasons of Mad Men.  Then something happened. I’ve often pondered what it was that revolutionized the Sixties.  When I left Berkeley in 1963 the Free Speech movement was just a-bornin’ and it slowly moved across the country bringing sit-ins and riots on campuses, not to mention the surging of the Civil Rights movement. The Beatles came to New York in 1964  which was a cause of great excitement at the magazine. And there was the Summer of Love in San Francisco in 1967.

And suddenly hems rose to incredible heights while dresses, once structured  and controlled, became loose on the body, like tunics.  On the Mad Men premiere last Sunday, when Megan, the new Mrs.  Don Draper sang her French song and did her sexy dance, which shocked and alarmed her colleagues and her new husband, she was wearing  a black, flowing mini dress that illustrated perfectly the new fashions and attitudes.  Everything that had been up tight until 1966 soon became flowing and loose and very, very short.

 In this photo from Feb. 1967, when I was  discussing a magazine article with Ruth Jacobs on the “Jewish Home Show”, you can see that my beehive has been replaced by a pseudo-Vidal Sassoon, asymmetrical bob.  Though you can’t see it, my A-line dress with a yellow stripe down the side is very short.

On April 1, 1968, I left New York and the Ladies’ Home Journal to travel and work in Europe.  I was leaving partly to get away from the Greek-American reporter who, I was sure, would break my heart.

As soon as I left New York, Martin Luther King was assassinated, then Bobby Kennedy, then, a year later, Ted Kennedy drove off a bridge at Chappaquiddick and the Charles Manson murders terrorized Los Angeles.  From my vantage point overseas, it seemed that my  country was literally coming apart.

I had scored an editing job in London, when Swinging London was peaking.    I met the Beatles, bought clothes from Biba Boutique and shared a flat with three young women who were waiting to turn 21 so they could get their hands on their trust funds. Meanwhile they got up at four every afternoon and circulated from one club to another all night.  I, meanwhile, went to a nine-to-five job and occasionally handed over my rent in advance when the girl who owned the place got in a jam and had to be bailed out.

In 1969 I traveled to Greece, because I had reconciled with the previously mentioned reporter, and he was vacationing there. I arrived with a whole wardrobe of skirts so very short that he refused to introduce me to any of his friends or relatives until I acquired something of a more respectable length. 

 My asymmetrical bob had grown into a French twist and, for some reason, I seem to be wearing a ratty rabbit fur (or something) coat .  I won’t comment on the shoes, but it all seemed very stylish at the time.

I went back to my job in my beloved London, but we eventually agreed to marry (if I quit smoking), so in 1970, I returned to Manhattan. 

On March 18, 1970, at least 100 feminists staged a sit-in at the Ladies Home Journal, protesting the way the magazine’s mostly male staff depicted women’s interests.  They occupied the office for 11 hours.  They held prisoner my highly respected boss, John Mack Carter, and the managing editor Lenore Hershey.  They even smoked JMC’s cigars.

Unfortunately I wasn’t there to see this historic moment, because by then I was writing articles for the company's foreign syndication service and working mostly at home.  But I suspect that pretty soon I may get to see a similar feminist sit-in in the offices of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce on Mad Men. 

Remembering George Whitman--We'll always have Paris

Photo by Simon Nofolk for The Telegraph

(I'm re-posting this from 6 years ago, because I just learned that my friend, award-winning author Nicholas Basbanes, and his wife Connie, are off to Paris, and I wanted to tell them of my experiences visiting "Shakespeare and Company" and George Whitman, who owned the store until his death in 2011.  It's now owned by his daughter. This post is one of my favorites, recalling the years when I was traveling as a single girl, not yet a crone.  I recommend that anyone who visits Paris visits the store on the Left Bank, with one of the most beautiful views in Paris.)

Today’s New York Times carried the obituary for George Whitman, who died yesterday, Dec. 14, in Paris in his apartment above his bookstore “Shakespeare and Company” at the age of 98. There was even a small photo of him on the Times’ front page saying “Heir to a Paris Legacy—George Whitman, owner and operator of the postwar Shakespeare & Company bookstore and a beacon, mentor and provider to generations of young writers.  Page B 17.”

I was immediately transported back to 1969, when, as a single “career girl” in my 20’s, I took two years off, quit my magazine job in New York and traveled, visiting friends from Vienna to Paris to Morocco to Rome and then settled into an editing job in London.

Like every writer of my generation (including Woody Allen) I harbored fantasies of being part of the Paris writers of the twenties, hanging out with the Fitzgeralds and the Hemingways.  I knew all about Sylvia Beach and her famous bookstore Shakespeare and Company, and I had heard it was now owned by a New England eccentric who was continuing Sylvia’s legacy and would offer food, board and books to anyone who wandered in off the street.

I was eager to write an article about him, but the first day I walked into the store, he refused to be interviewed.  When he finally did grudgingly agree to answer some questions, he mixed fantasy with fact, because he liked enhancing his legend.  He told me he was the “illegitimate grandson of Walt Whitman”, but the twinkle in his eye hinted that we both knew how unlikely it was that the poet left any progeny.

Looking today on Google for photos of George and his famous  bookstore on the Left Bank’s Rue de la Bucherie, facing Notre Dame, I discovered that dozens, maybe hundred of writers of my generation visited Shakespeare and Company and had experiences similar to mine and are now reminiscing on their blogs about the man who devoted nearly a century to carrying on Sylvia Beach’s store and her encouragement of writers.  (It's not the same physical store, but Sylvia  late in life gave George the right to use the name.) 

My article on George Whitman was eventually published in the April 1970 issue of the late, lamented Holiday Magazine. As I wrote in the lead, “Between the two world wars, a minister’s brown-eyed daughter named Sylvia Beach owned a famous bookstore called Shakespeare and Company on Paris’ Left Bank. She provided encouragement criticism and occasional handouts to struggling American writers …She published Joyce’s revolutionary Ulysses when no one in New York or London was willing to take the risk…Ernest Hemingway, in "A Moveable Feast", wrote about her:  ‘She had pretty legs and she was kind, cheerful and interested and loved to make jokes and gossip.  No one that I ever knew was nicer to me.’”

In the 1970 piece I chronicled the troubles Whitman had been having with the French Government, which had closed down the second floor of the store because he was using it as a free hostel for young people who wanted to crash there.  I quoted the sign in the window on the day I first entered the store:  “To Those Who Cherish Freedom, Practice Equality and Seek Justice –WELCOME.  We wish our guests to enter with the feeling they have inherited a book-lined apartment on the Seine which is all the more delightful because they share it with others.”

In the article I compared Whitman to “a modern Don Quixote.  He is the image of the knight of the woeful countenance—tall and painfully thin, with watery blue eyes in a doleful, hollow-cheeked face, unkempt red hair streaked with gray and a gray Van Dyke beard that juts out at the world like a defiant Brillo pad.”  (And that was 42 years ago, people, when I was very young and he was already an old man. Twelve years after I visited him the first time, George Whitman produced his only heir, a lovely blonde woman named Sylvia Beach Whitman, who has taken over the running of the store.)

 I found this photo of Whitman, posing with  his daughter Sylvia and  Bill Clinton on a blog  with the unlikely name of Palavrasqueoventoleva 

In “The Paris Magazine”, Whitman’s  attempt at a “poor man’s Paris Review” he wrote, “Why do people always come in and ask me is this your bookstore?  I consider it as much yours as mine ...Go ahead and kick off your shoes and lie in a bed and read…”

Here’s how I described my first meeting with him:   I was peering into the window when a bleary-eyed, bearded figure unlocked the door and, squinting at the sun, asked me what time it was. “Noon,” I replied.  “Come in and I’ll make us some coffee,” he said.

Soon I was drinking coffee at a table outside the door of the shop, gazing at what must be one of the most lovely views in Paris, while my host opened his mail.  I felt I should explain myself, but when I began he snapped, “No interrogations at this  time of the morning,” and went back to his mail.

Some  customers wandered in and he motioned me aside “I have some good news for you, dear.  I’m going to let you run the store while I take a shower.”  He handed me the cash box, warned me not to sell any books that didn’t have the price written on them and nailed up a “Black Power-White Power” poster on an outside wall.  Then he scrabbled around the messy desk looking for his soap, towel and a candle.  “To cut my hair.”  He lit the candle, ignited his hair, then beat out the flames with his hands, muttering,” Better than a haircut.”  Finally he donned a red-plaid sports jacket, leaped onto his bicycle and rode out the door to the public showers, leaving me with 25,000 second-hand books and the odor of burned hair.

 He never asked me my name and I never got a chance to ask his.

During the next seven hours, Whitman returned two times—just long enough to unload piles of books from the baskets of his bicycle. To my protests that I had to go, he’d mumble, “Lots of important errands to do, lots of people to see. Haven’t paid the tax on my bicycle.” And off he’d ride, red coat flapping behind him.  Meanwhile I sold about $150 worth of books in five languages and refused to sell what were worth about $100 more because they weren’t marked.  The most popular books that day were Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire, L’Anarchisme and anything by Ezra Pound.

By the time the sun was going down, I had been joined by two mini-skirted English girls who had run out of money, a starving French boy who wanted to sell his art books, a young American couple who couldn’t find the friends they were supposed to stay with, a fiery Frenchman with a broken leg who wanted to talk to Whitman about publishing his poetry, and Gerard, a soft-spoken American who had been on the road for seven years and was currently sweeping up the store in exchange for food.  Whitman himself popped in for a minute to say he was going to make potato salad—we must all stay for dinner—and he was just going to the grocery store. Much later, when he hadn’t returned, we raided the refrigerator, ate bread, sausages, cheese and yogurt on the table outside and watched shadows cover Notre Dame while the good bourgeoisie of the neighborhood looked at us with curiosity.  I handed the cash box to Gerard and set out on my Métro trip back to the Right Bank.”

Eventually, of course, I came back and eventually I got the chance to interview George.  One thing he said that I quoted in the article: “My favorite customers are seventeen-year-old girls.  I can’t think of anything more wonderful than  being seventeen and in Paris.  If a girl comes in on her seventeenth birthday, she can pick out any book she wants, free.”

That interview took place in 1969 when I was 28 years old, not seventeen.  When I turned 60 in 2001, I returned to Paris with my two daughters (both of them over 17 by then) and dropped by Shakespeare and Company to find it being tended by a young British schoolteacher.  She assured us that George was in fine health, reigning over his small kingdom as usual.  He just wasn’t in at the moment.

Now George is gone, but I suspect his ghost will still be sitting in the shadows of his dusty, overcrowded store which, according to the Times he called, paraphrasing Yeats,  “my little Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart.”

George Whitman lived a remarkable life.  I’m just sorry I never got a chance to thank him for one of my favorite Paris experiences.

Behind the Scenes at Trump's Mar-A-Lago

Since the President-Elect and his family are spending their  Thanksgiving holiday at Trump's Florida estate of  Mar-a-Lago,  I thought I'd repost a photo essay from my blog of April 4, 2011 to give an inside view of just how over-the-top the place is, not to mention re-showing the portrait found inside that shows The Donald just as he imagines himself to be.

Palm Beach, I’ve noticed, is like Disney World for grown-ups—everything is bigger, better, cleaner, fancier (and more expensive) than in the real world. 

The latest example came yesterday (Sunday) when we were invited to lunch at the Mar-a-Logo Club by a friend who is a member.  (The cost, I’m told, is $150,000 initiation fee and $75,000 each year after that.)

I didn’t even know that Donald Trump had turned his palatial (think Versailles) private home into a private club in April of 1995.  His presence is still everywhere—from the plaque at the door to the name and crest on the paper hand towels (I stole one) in the gold-encrusted bathrooms and on the welcome mat, to a portrait that is apparently meant to portray The Donald at a younger age in sports clothes.

Everywhere you turn there are golden cherubs, marble statues, parrot and monkey motifs and antique Spanish tiles.  Flowers? Chandeliers? Fountains? Swimming pools? Don’t ask.

 The Mar-a-Lago Estate was built to the specifications of Marjorie Merriweather Post (then Mrs. E. F. Hutton)and completed in 1927. (The name is Latin for “Sea-to-Lake”—it has water views both front and back.)  Three boatloads of Dorian stone were brought from Genoa, Italy. There were 114 rooms in the original villa.  According to a “short history” of the place, “It was Mrs. Post’s plan to bring together many Old -World Features of the Spanish, Venetian and Portuguese styles.”

In January of 1969 the estate was named a “National Historic Site”.  After Mrs. Post died in 1973, she left the place to the federal government for use as a diplomatic/presidential retreat.  It was pretty costly to maintain--so in 1985, it was sold to Donald Trump who used it as a private residence for ten years  (and married his third wife, Melania, there in 2005).  Even his first wife, Ivana, used it for her ill-starred wedding to an Italian 24 years her junior in 2008. 

In April of 1995, it became the Mar-a-Lago Club.

According to the “brief history” available at the desk, Trump has “since built a magnificent swimming pool, an award-winning beauty salon, a world-class spa, one grass and five red-clay championship tennis courts and a remarkable croquet court.…Completed in 2005 is the all-new Donald J. Trump Grand Ballroom—the interior is in a Louis XIV  gold and crystal finish that is one of the finest spaces of its kind in the country.”

We joined our friends for lunch in the outdoor patio (where I ordered lobster quesadillas) and they told us that Jennifer Hudson was on the premises, resting after her recent performance on American Idol, and Joan Rivers had just checked out.

With the Trump name plastered everywhere, it sort of seemed natural that The Donald himself breezed in as we were eating. Wearing a baseball hat and casual clothes, he greeted the several tables of diners, making sure everyone was happy.  I asked about the décor, having been stymied by the mix of Spanish tiles and the Arabic-looking plasterwork.  Was it Moroccan? I asked and he agreed—Moroccan it was!  (At that point neither he nor I had read in the “brief history” that it’s actually “Spanish, Venetian, and Portuguese” all mixed together into a decadent , dazzling, over-the-top mish-mash that would send Mad King Ludwig into a jealous funk. There popped into my memory a French phrase which doesn’t really have an English equivalent.  It was all a bit “de trop.”)

Later in the afternoon we saw Trump depart, along with Melania and her parents, their young son and an older girl who was evidently Tiffany, the daughter he had with second wife Marla Maples.

Throughout the estate, which we explored post-lunch, poking into rooms and peeking behind doors, we kept encountering antique tiles with a Latin motto: “Plus Ultra”, which translates as “Beyond the Ultimate.” This is Mar-a-Lago’s slogan.  As we left, past the gilded cupids and the large brass lions at the gate , I was reminded of another ancient classical slogan carved into the Temple of Apollo at Delphi:   “Midhen Agan”—“Nothing in excess”. 

Remembering Sixties Fashions and Mad Men Days

I posted this over four years ago and forgot about it, but then son Chris and his wife Ruth referred to it--they're researching the Sixties and Seventies for a TV show script--and I thought it was pretty funny, so I'm re-posting it.

 

                                                                                       Megan on Mad Men

As the reaction to Mad Men’s season premiere last Sunday proves, today’s younger (than I am) generations are fascinated with the lifestyle, the fashions and especially the presumed decadence of life in Manhattan in the 1960’s.

For those of us who lived through it, the show brings nostalgia, bittersweet memories of youthful foolishness, and frequent hilarity at anachronisms that slip by, despite the dozens of people on the program who are working to make every ash tray, cocktail shaker and plaid blazer authentic to the period.

I was 19 and in college when the 1960’s began.   In the summer of 1963 I graduated from the University of California,  Berkeley (English Lit.), and entered Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism in the fall for a year-long Master of Science program.   My first job after graduating was in public relations at Lever Brothers—in the iconic Lever House on Park Avenue.  After six months there, I moved a few blocks uptown to  work at the Ladies’ Home Journal, at 54^th and Lexington (right across from what would be Studio 54 where Andy Warhol and Truman Capote played.)

There were no three-martini lunches for someone as low on the masthead as I was, but some of my colleagues did slip out for long lunch hours with older gentlemen and would come back looking rumpled and a bit tipsy.  One voluptuous blonde was having a relationship with a married account executive at J. Walter Thompson and kept us abreast of all the drama.

Yes, I did smoke at the time--in fact when I went to college there was a “smoking room” on my floor in the freshman dormitory where obsessive students like myself could sit up all night smoking, studying and living on Mars Bars out of the vending machine.  I smoked from the age of 18 until at 29 I married a Greek-American New York Times reporter who insisted I quit. (And I’m still married to him 42 years later.)

The thing you have to understand about the Sixties—and this is starting to be portrayed on Mad Men—is that at some point in the decade there was a watershed moment when everything changed 180 degrees:  everything from fashion, music and lifestyle to views on race, women’s rights, health—you name it. 

When people talk about the “Swinging Sixties” they’re talking about the last years of the decade, from about 1966 on.  The first part of the sixties was a lot like the 1950’s—conservative, uptight, well-mannered (although archaic in beliefs about sex, race, whatever.)  Clothing was  conservative and preppy, fitted to the body.  Just look at the pleated skirts and man-tailored blouses that Peggy, the secretary-turned-copywriter on Mad Men is still wearing in the season premiere, which takes place in 1966.

 Here is a photograph of me in the spring of 1965 when I was headed for the airport in Los Angeles to fly back to New York after a visit with my parents.  Can you believe the hat, shoes and gloves?  I wouldn’t believe it myself if I didn’t have the photo as proof.

And here are two photos of me on the job in 1964 and 65.  You can see that we are rocking the  sculpted beehive hairdo’s that were so lacquered with spray that they were un-squashable, inspiring jokes about rodents nesting within.

So we women all looked and dressed pretty much like the earlier seasons of Mad Men.  Then something happened. I’ve often pondered what it was that revolutionized the Sixties.  When I left Berkeley in 1963 the Free Speech movement was just a-bornin’ and it slowly moved across the country bringing sit-ins and riots on campuses, not to mention the surging of the Civil Rights movement. The Beatles came to New York in 1964  which was a cause of great excitement at the magazine. And there was the Summer of Love in San Francisco in 1967.

And suddenly hems rose to incredible heights while dresses, once structured  and controlled, became loose on the body, like tunics.  On the Mad Men premiere last Sunday, when Megan, the new Mrs.  Don Draper sang her French song and did her sexy dance, which shocked and alarmed her colleagues and her new husband, she was wearing  a black, flowing mini dress that illustrated perfectly the new fashions and attitudes.  Everything that had been up tight until 1966 soon became flowing and loose and very, very short.

 In this photo from Feb. 1967, when I was  discussing a magazine article with Ruth Jacobs on the “Jewish Home Show”, you can see that my beehive has been replaced by a pseudo-Vidal Sassoon, asymmetrical bob.  Though you can’t see it, my A-line dress with a yellow stripe down the side is very short.

On April 1, 1968, I left New York and the Ladies’ Home Journal to travel and work in Europe.  I was leaving partly to get away from the Greek-American reporter who, I was sure, would break my heart.

As soon as I left New York, Martin Luther King was assassinated, then Bobby Kennedy, then, a year later, Ted Kennedy drove off a bridge at Chappaquiddick and the Charles Manson murders terrorized Los Angeles.  From my vantage point overseas, it seemed that my  country was literally coming apart.

I had scored an editing job in London, when Swinging London was peaking.    I met the Beatles, bought clothes from Biba Boutique and shared a flat with three young women who were waiting to turn 21 so they could get their hands on their trust funds. Meanwhile they got up at four every afternoon and circulated from one club to another all night.  I, meanwhile, went to a nine-to-five job and occasionally handed over my rent in advance when the girl who owned the place got in a jam and had to be bailed out.

In 1969 I traveled to Greece, because I had reconciled with the previously mentioned reporter, and he was vacationing there. I arrived with a whole wardrobe of skirts so very short that he refused to introduce me to any of his friends or relatives until I acquired something of a more respectable length. 

 My asymmetrical bob had grown into a French twist and, for some reason, I seem to be wearing a ratty rabbit fur (or something) coat .  I won’t comment on the shoes, but it all seemed very stylish at the time.

I went back to my job in my beloved London, but we eventually agreed to marry (if I quit smoking), so in 1970, I returned to Manhattan. 

On March 18, 1970, at least 100 feminists staged a sit-in at the Ladies Home Journal, protesting the way the magazine’s mostly male staff depicted women’s interests.  They occupied the office for 11 hours.  They held prisoner my highly respected boss, John Mack Carter, and the managing editor Lenore Hershey.  They even smoked JMC’s cigars.

Unfortunately I wasn’t there to see this historic moment, because by then I was writing articles for the company's foreign syndication service and working mostly at home.  But I suspect that pretty soon I may get to see a similar feminist sit-in in the offices of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce on Mad Men.  

The Executioner’s Granddaughter

Discovering the history behind an antique photograph is my favorite kind of research.  It's like finding a window into another era or like time-traveling.  I first posted the story below, "The Executioner's Granddaughter",  four years ago and it has remained one of the most popular of my posts labelled "The story behind the photograph."

 

Last week, as I was selecting antique photos of children with toys from my collection for my post of May 18, I picked up this one of a curly-headed moppet holding a toy lamb and a riding crop.  It’s a CDV (carte de visite) a calling-card-sized photo that could have been taken any time from 1854 to 1900.  The photographer is listed as “Samson” in Liege, Belgium.

Then I turned the card over and saw some words in French that set me on a path to a fascinating story about the man who executed King Louis XVI and nearly 3,000 others.  (His son guillotined Marie Antoinette.)

I didn’t need my high school French to translate the words on the back of the card as: “Louise Samson, Descendant of Sanson who decapitated Louis XVI, King of France.”

I don’t know why I never noticed this inscription before.  But thanks to the internet, which I didn’t have when I started collecting photos, I quickly learned the bizarre story of Charles Henri Sanson (1739 to 1806) who was the  fourth in a six-generation dynasty of Royal Executioners of France.  His great grandfather and grandfather and father were all named Charles Sanson too.

The Charles Henri Sanson who beheaded Louis XVI really didn’t want to be an executioner—he longed to be a doctor—but when his father became ill, his bossy paternal grandmother forced him to give up the study of medicine and take over as royal executioner to continue the income and position of the family.

It was this Charles Henri Sanson who introduced the guillotine –invented by  Joseph-Ignace Guillotin--as the executioner’s weapon of choice, because it was more efficient and humane than previous methods.  He was no doubt inspired by a very messy and unpleasant execution when, as Wikpedia puts it, “In 1757 Sanson assisted his uncle Nicolas-Charles-Gabriel Sanson, executioner of Rheims, with the extremely gruesome execution of the King’s attempted assassin Robert-Francois Damiens.  Through his well-executed intervention he shortened the quartering of the delinquent and thus the pain  His uncle quit his position as executioner after this event.”  (Wikipedia also says of Sanson, “His hobbies included the dissection of his victims and the production of medicines using herbs he grew in his garden.  In his free time he liked to play the violin and cello.”)

Charles Henri Sanson put on the blood-red coat of the master executioner in 1757 and held the position for 38 years. He performed 2918 executions.  He executed Louis XVI on Jan. 21, 1793 at the Place de la Revolution which is now Place de la Concorde  He was assisted by his two sons,  Gabriel, the youngest, who was supposed to eventually take over the job, but Gabriel “died after slipping off a scaffold as he displayed a severed head to the crowd,” (talk about irony!) so the position fell to the older son, Henri (1767-1840) who took over in April, 1793 and remained the official executioner of Paris for 47 years.  Only six months after  he started, Henri  executed Marie Antoinette.

His son, Charles Henri’s grandson, Henry-Clement Sanson, took over the job in 1840 and served until 1847.  He was the sixth and last in the dynasty of executioners.

One of my favorite stories  is this: “An anecdote reports that Charles-Henri Sanson after his retirement met Napoleon Bonaparte and was asked if he could still sleep well after having executed more than three thousand people.  Sanson’s laconic answer was, ‘If emperors, king and dictators can sleep well, why shouldn’t an executioner?”

Thirty-seven years after the beheading of Louis XVI, Alexandre Dumas interviewed Henri Sanson—Marie Antoinette’s executioner--about the king’s behavior on the scaffold. Dumas asked about the report that there was a “wrestling bout” between the king and the four assistants at the foot of the scaffold. 

Henri replied, “The King had been driven to the scaffold in his own carriage and his hands were free.  At the foot of the scaffold we decided to tie his hands, but less because we feared that he might defend himself than because we thought he might by an involuntary movement spoil his execution or make it more painful.  So one assistant waited with a rope, while another said to him ‘It is necessary to tie your hands.’  On hearing these unexpected words, at the unexpected sight of that rope, Louis XVI made an involuntary gesture of repulsion.  ‘Never!’ he cried, ‘Never!’ and pushed back the man holding the rope.  The other three assistants, believing that a struggle was imminent, dashed forward…It was then that my father approached and said, in the most respectful tone of voice imaginable, ‘With a handkerchief, Sire’.  At the word ‘Sire’, which he had not heard for so long, Louis XVI winced and…said ‘So be it, then, that too, my God!’ and held out his hands.”

As for little Louise Samson, the innocent child holding the lamb in the photograph above—she would not have been the grandchild of Charles Henri , because his son Henri died in 1840.  She could be the child of Charles’ grandson, Henry-Clement Sanson, the sixth and last executioner, but I suspect she’s another generation removed. 

Notice that the family name Sanson has been changed to “Samson” for Louise, and the photographer who took the photo in Liege, Belgium, is also named Samson.  This child’s father may have changed his name and moved to Belgium to escape the blood-soaked history of his forefathers and open a photography studio.

Or the inscription on the back of the CDV may be wrong.  Maybe Louise is not really descended from the famous executioners.    But even if this is the case, I’m glad that the written words led me to a fascinating history that I’d never heard before. It’s accidental discoveries like this—sheer serendipity—that keep me collecting antique images and looking for the story behind the photo.

Lunch at Mar-a-Lago with The Donald (Trump, Of Course)

Because The New York Times today featured an article about how Donald Trump hires many illegal immigrants to staff his private club (formerly his home) of Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, I thought I'd repost a photo essay from my blog of April 4, 2011 to give an inside view of just how over-the-top the place is, not to mention showing the portrait found inside that shows The Donald just as he imagines himself to be.

Palm Beach, I’ve noticed, is like Disney World for grown-ups—everything is bigger, better, cleaner, fancier (and more expensive) than in the real world. 

The latest example came yesterday (Sunday) when we were invited to lunch at the Mar-a-Logo Club by a friend who is a member.  (The cost, I’m told, is $150,000 initiation fee and $75,000 each year after that.)

I didn’t even know that Donald Trump had turned his palatial (think Versailles) private home into a private club in April of 1995.  His presence is still everywhere—from the plaque at the door to the name and crest on the paper hand towels (I stole one) in the gold-encrusted bathrooms and on the welcome mat, to a portrait that is apparently meant to portray The Donald at a younger age in sports clothes.

Everywhere you turn there are golden cherubs, marble statues, parrot and monkey motifs and antique Spanish tiles.  Flowers? Chandeliers? Fountains? Swimming pools? Don’t ask.

 The Mar-a-Lago Estate was built to the specifications of Marjorie Merriweather Post (then Mrs. E. F. Hutton)and completed in 1927. (The name is Latin for “Sea-to-Lake”—it has water views both front and back.)  Three boatloads of Dorian stone were brought from Genoa, Italy. There were 114 rooms in the original villa.  According to a “short history” of the place, “It was Mrs. Post’s plan to bring together many Old -World Features of the Spanish, Venetian and Portuguese styles.”

In January of 1969 the estate was named a “National Historic Site”.  After Mrs. Post died in 1973, she left the place to the federal government for use as a diplomatic/presidential retreat.  It was pretty costly to maintain--so in 1985, it was sold to Donald Trump who used it as a private residence for ten years  (and married his third wife, Melania, there in 2005).  Even his first wife, Ivana, used it for her ill-starred wedding to an Italian 24 years her junior in 2008. 

In April of 1995, it became the Mar-a-Lago Club.

According to the “brief history” available at the desk, Trump has “since built a magnificent swimming pool, an award-winning beauty salon, a world-class spa, one grass and five red-clay championship tennis courts and a remarkable croquet court.…Completed in 2005 is the all-new Donald J. Trump Grand Ballroom—the interior is in a Louis XIV  gold and crystal finish that is one of the finest spaces of its kind in the country.”

We joined our friends for lunch in the outdoor patio (where I ordered lobster quesadillas) and they told us that Jennifer Hudson was on the premises, resting after her recent performance on American Idol, and Joan Rivers had just checked out.

With the Trump name plastered everywhere, it sort of seemed natural that The Donald himself breezed in as we were eating. Wearing a baseball hat and casual clothes, he greeted the several tables of diners, making sure everyone was happy.  I asked about the décor, having been stymied by the mix of Spanish tiles and the Arabic-looking plasterwork.  Was it Moroccan? I asked and he agreed—Moroccan it was!  (At that point neither he nor I had read in the “brief history” that it’s actually “Spanish, Venetian, and Portuguese” all mixed together into a decadent , dazzling, over-the-top mish-mash that would send Mad King Ludwig into a jealous funk. There popped into my memory a French phrase which doesn’t really have an English equivalent.  It was all a bit “de trop.”)

Later in the afternoon we saw Trump depart, along with Melania and her parents, their young son and an older girl who was evidently Tiffany, the daughter he had with second wife Marla Maples.

Throughout the estate, which we explored post-lunch, poking into rooms and peeking behind doors, we kept encountering antique tiles with a Latin motto: “Plus Ultra”, which translates as “Beyond the Ultimate.” This is Mar-a-Lago’s slogan.  As we left, past the gilded cupids and the large brass lions at the gate , I was reminded of another ancient classical slogan carved into the Temple of Apollo at Delphi:   “Midhen Agan”—“Nothing in excess”.