"A Rolling Crone" Will Post Daily (Sort Of)

I started this blog a year ago because I was taking a class at the Worcester Art Museum from computer guru and famous artist Andy Fish. It was called something like “Selling Your Art on Line,” and he insisted that every artist or author should have a blog to put their work out there and build public recognition. He also emphasized that the blog should be updated every day.

Daughter Eleni came up with the title “A Rolling Crone” which I loved. I felt that women my age were not adequately represented on blogs and I thought “A Rolling Crone” could provide a forum for intelligent women post-sixty who are interested in art, travel, photography, literature and issues pertinent to cronehood, rather than, say, the misadventures of Britney Spears and Jon & Kate plus Eight.

(Some of my friends strongly objected to the term "Crone”. So I wrote an essay, “What is a Crone, Anyway?”, on Sept. 17, which you can check in the archives to the right.)

I really liked having a way to publish my thoughts and photographs (and sometimes paintings) on the internet, but after 40-plus years as a journalist, I tend to write essays with a beginning, middle and end, between 750 and 1,000 words. So it’s very hard for me to write more than one essay a week, unless I stop doing everything else. Yet Andy said again, when I took a course this year, that I don’t need to post a polished essay every day—just something: a photo, a quotation, anything. (“Joanie’s used to getting paid by the word,” he quipped to the class. “Ask her what time it is and she’ll tell you how to build a clock.”)

He and several students in the class have organized their blogs into categories for each day of the week. This struck me as a good idea, because then people will know, if they’re particularly interested in art, for example, to check on Thursdays.

So I’m going to break the week into categories on “A Rolling Crone”—but, as my friend Susan suggested, I’m not going to start with seven posts a week. Let’s say five and see how it goes. And I can’t possibly do this unless I get input from you. If you don’t want to post an opinion below, e-mail me at joanpgage@yahoo.com with complaints, favorites things, opinions, suggestions: anything in these categories:

Monday: Crone Complaints. I don’t want to sound like those people who turn into curmudgeons as they age, but there are some things that I find annoying or maddening or out-of-control lately. I think that as old, wise women, we have a right to complain now and then. My first Crone Complaint on Monday will have the title “SHOES”.

Wednesday: The Story behind the Photograph. On Oct 2 I told the story behind the civil-war-era photo of a slave with a scarred back—an image that was widely circulated by abolitionists. I also wrote a letter about it that was published in the New York Times Book Review on Oct. 4.

Because I collect antique photographs, I’ve learned many fascinating (to me) bits of history from researching the images in my collection. Like every collector, I dearly love some of the prize pieces in my collection and want to share them.

Thursday: The Artful Crone. I will try to feature a work of art every Thursday with as few words as possible. It may be a work by me, or a favorite artist, or a friend, or a folk artist (or it may just be a mural or graffiti on the street that I saw and liked.)

Friday: Crones’ Picks—citing a book, film or TV show that I like or you like and think other crones would enjoy. This category really needs input from you because lately the only time I have for recreational reading is on a plane. (I try to watch an hour of TV every night while on my stationary bike, but there are very few TV shows I’d recommend right now.) Films… I haven’t seen one I really liked since “Slumdog Millionaire”, although I thought “The Informant!” with Matt Damon was really well acted by the whole cast.

Weekend Essay. Don’t know what to call this yet—I was thinking Sunday Sermon but then no one would read it, thinking it’s about religion. Every weekend, I’m going to try to post an essay about whatever I feel like discussing. Tomorrow it’s “My Life in Junk Jewelry” inspired by the book Madeleine Albright just published: “Read My Pins” telling how, during her time as Secretary of State, she used the pins she collected and wore every day to signal her feelings and goals in her diplomatic interactions.

The following weekend, October 25, I’m going to write a post called “Do You Believe in Ghosts? Do I?” Many years ago, while writing a monthly column for “Country Living” Magazine, I asked for and received 100 letters from readers describing their experiences with hauntings. It turned into a controversial article which the editors told me to soft-pedal , but I’ve saved the letters because they’re full of fascinating detail.

So I hope you’ll help me with feedback and suggestions as I try to make “A Rolling Crone” turn up with a new post [almost] daily.

(If you’d like a free “crone power" bookmark, shown above, send me your address and I’ll mail you one-- or several. www.joanpgage.com.)

FIRST BLACK WOMAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE -- ELIZABETH KECKLEY

(This is the first of an occasional “Crone of the Week”-- women whose stories I want to tell. I’d appreciate your suggestions of women in history who accomplished something courageous, significant or even outrageous during their cronehood years and deserve to be featured on A Rolling Crone. You can e-mail me at joanpgage@yahoo.com)

Born a slave in Virginia in 1818, Elizabeth Keckley (also spelled Keckly) became—not the first black woman to work in the White House—there were surely some employed as workers and servants before her- but she was the first black woman to have so much influence on and access to the President’s family that she became the first person ever to write a back-stairs book, revealing the inner workings of Abraham Lincoln’s domestic life. Keckley was the only person who could calm Mary Todd Lincoln when she would suffer a nervous crisis before an important event. After the inauguration, Mrs. Lincoln insisted all her gowns be made by Keckley. (One of them is pictured above.) She turned to the former slave for help and advice on domestic details and protocol for White House parties. Elizabeth traded jokes and compliments with the president, who teased his wife about her penchant for low necklines and said to Mary, when he saw the first Keckley-made gown, “I declare, you look charming in that dress. Mrs. Keckley has met with great success.” Elizabeth also served the Lincolns as a baby sitter when the boys were ill, and nursed the first lady when she was suffering one of her crippling headaches.

Elizabeth was born to a slave named Agnes, owned by Armistead and Mary Burwell in Dinwiddie, VA. “Aggy” had been taught to read (which was illegal) and she taught Elizabeth to read and to sew, and they both worked as house slaves to the Burwell children. On Aggy’s death bed she revealed to her daughter that their master, Armistead Burwell, was also Elizabeth’s father.

After Burwell died, Elizabeth was loaned to other owners who beat her, although she defied them and refused to cry out. She was eventually raped by a white man, and gave birth to her only child, George. Since Elizabeth was mixed race and her rapist was white, George was so light that he claimed he was white in order to serve in the Union Army. He was killed in action in 1861.

Through a combination of business acumen, sewing skills and intelligence, Elizabeth eventually managed to buy freedom for her son and herself, and moved to Washington D.C. where she became the most favored modiste to the likes of Mrs. Robert E. Lee. Another socialite introduced her to Mary Todd Lincoln, who had just arrived in Washington and was very insecure about the city’s fashion sophistication and social mores.

Elizabeth then became the exclusive dressmaker for the new first lady, as well as her best friend and confidant. She would dress and calm Mary before every event, fixing her hair, accessories and jewels. As she prepared the first lady, Elizabeth would chat with the president and received many compliments from him for her skills. When Lincoln was assassinated, the first person Mary Todd Lincoln called to be with her was Elizabeth Keckley.

When Mrs. Lincoln moved back to Illinois after the assassination, she insisted that Elizabeth travel with her. Keckley returned to her profitable dressmaking business in Washington, and the widow wrote her many letters. Finally, Mrs. Lincoln, convinced she was running out of money, told Keckley to meet her in New York City where, using assumed names, they tried to sell possessions and clothing of the Lincolns to raise funds. Word got out about what Mary Lincoln was doing, and she felt disgraced by the news reports. Elizabeth Keckley then wrote what was the first backstairs-at-the-White-House tell-all, called, “Behind the Scenes Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House”. In the back of the book was an appendix with 24 letters that Mrs. Lincoln had written to Elizabeth, including the statement that she considered her “my best living friend.” The book was denounced by everyone from Lincoln’s son Robert to the New York Times as “backstairs gossip” that desecrated the memory of President Lincoln, although Mrs. Keckley kept trying to explain that she only meant to defend Mrs. Lincoln.

Mary Lincoln felt betrayed and their friendship ended. Eventually, when the former first lady descended into total madness, her son had her institutionalized.

Meanwhile Elizabeth Keckley continued to earn money by sewing—although most of her white clients had abandoned her. In 1892, when she was 74, she moved to Ohio to become head of the Department of Sewing and Domestic Science Arts at Wilberforce University, which her son had attended. She organized a dress exhibit at the Columbian World Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and, in her 80’s, she returned to Washington to live in the National Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children—which had been established in part by the Contraband Relief Association that Keckley founded during the war to help freed slaves. Until her death, Elizabeth had a photograph of Mrs. Lincoln on her wall. She died in 1907 at the age of 89 and was buried in Harmony Cemetery in Washington. She had been careful to pay far in advance for a plot and a stone, but when the graves were moved to a new cemetery, her unclaimed remains were placed in an unmarked grave.

I learned about Elizabeth Keckley when I bought, on E-Bay, a cased ambrotype portrait of a mixed-race woman. Pinned to the velvet lining was a scrap of paper with the words “Elizabeth Keckley, Formerly a Slave”. Many of my favorite crones were introduced to me through antique photographs that I’ve bought and then researched, to find out their “back story.” In my next post I’m going to show you some portraits of Keckley and ask you to be a detective and help me find out if my E-Bay image of Elizabeth is authentic.