What Is Kathy Lagoli and Why Is She Stalking Bloggers?

On April 6 at 12:08 p.m.  I received an e-mail in my spam folder with the subject line: “Re: Grafton Inn Ambrotype.”

It came from someone named Kathy Lagoli with the e-mail address: Kathy@thingdiamond.com and the message was just one line:  “Would you be available to discuss this on the phone? Kathy”

At the same time she was sending this to me, she (it?) was also sending the same message to approximately a trillion other bloggers, and in each case the subject line referred to some subject they had written about in their blog.

I would have realized this immediately if I had the sense to investigate and type  the name “Kathy Lagoli” into Google.  Try it and you will find page after page of entries with titles like this: “Do Not Open An E-Mail from Kathy Lagoli”, “Kathy Lagoli SCAM!” and  “Kathy Lagoli has Been Here Too.”  All were written beginning April 6.

It seems that all of these astute bloggers smelled a rat and checked her out before replying.  Many of them then changed the password on their blog and even their phone number if they had revealed it.

But I—a rolling crone who is not very astute about such things, wrote her right back BEFORE I checked Google.  Her subject line referred to an antique photograph—an ambrotype—that I wrote about in my blog in January of 2010—it’s a photograph of the Inn on our New England village green that is still in business, and it may be one of the oldest photographs of our village ever taken.

I thought that maybe Kathy was a neighbor who wanted to use the ambrotype for some historical commemorative event—(My same blog post appeared in our local paper.)  Or  I thought maybe she was a collector who wanted to offer me a small fortune to sell the ambrotype.

So here’s what I replied at 10:22 p.m. on April 6—full of personal information that I should have kept to myself—

“Hi Kathy,

You can call me at XXX-XXX-XXXX tomorrow (Thursday).  I’ll be in and out all day because I just got back from Florida and am leaving for New York on Friday, so it’s sort of hit or miss as to when I’ll be in.  But if I’m out and you leave a number I’ll call you back.

Joan (Gage)”

I know you’re thinking that I’ve just fallen off the cabbage truck,  and you’d be right--I’m a friendly person from Minnesota and we’re not very suspicious of strangers.  That’s why they call it “Minnesota nice.”

Then AFTER hitting “send”, I looked at Google and realized I had put myself, my computer and my family in grave danger.  Would some evil apparition out of “Nightmare on Elm Street” come round and break into my house while I was away on the weekend?  Would my Mac powerbook explode in my face? Should I change my password?

I knew from reading all the warnings that if Kathy didn’t get a reply, she would send another e-mail later in the day that read “Hello, Hey I didn’t hear back from you. Are you still in business?”

Oddly enough, despite my effluent, chatty answer to her, I got the above e-mail (still in my spam folder) at 5 p.m. on April 7.  Naturally I didn’t reply.

On April 8 at 1:32 p.m. I got another message from Kathy, this one with a different subject line:  “December—a Rolling Crone: December 2010”. Her one line message this time:  “Hello, is it still availible?” [sic]

Now I ‘m not totally naïve—I don’t reply to messages that are marked “Urgent”, “Dearest One”, “Can I trust you?” and “You have won the Lottery”.   And I’m suspicious of people who can’t spell or who write in  pigeon English.  But I wasn’t clever enough to check on Kathy before the damage was done.

I’ve been spending a lot of time wondering what exactly this mysterious correspondent wants from me. I do realize it’s a robot machine sending these e-mails, just phishing—but I can’t figure out what this phisher is going to do with my phone number and e-mail address.  At no point has she (It) asked me for any money or more personal information.  I don’t have the energy to change my phone number.  Some of Kathy’s victims have written that their cell phones went on the fritz shortly after they gave her their number.  Is it a curse? An evil techno-eating virus?

Then, on Saturday April 9 at 8:46 p.m. I got a last (I hope) e-mail from Kathy—this one went straight to my in-box, not to the Spam.

Here’s what it said:

“Sorry I think I have the wrong email.

Kathy “

She has been an interesting and persistent correspondent, but I’m hoping that,  from now on, Kathy Lagoli is out of my life.

Lunch at Mar-a-Lago with The Donald

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”. 

I was wrong about the First Woman Writer in America!

Pretty embarrassing for an English major! I mean, I even took an oral exam in Middle English in college while also reading a Shakespeare play every day.  But yesterday, as soon as I posted “America’s First Woman Author – Hannah Adams”, inspired by a portrait on a daguerreotype in my collection, I received a number of comments from people better informed than I, all asking “What about Anne Bradstreet?"

Anne Bradstreet was born in 1612 in England to an aristocratic family, married  Simon Bradstreet at the age of 16, and sailed to America with other Puritan emigrants in 1630.  Surviving the deadly travails of the voyage and the starvation of the first months, these Puritans soon founded the city of Boston (and Harvard University).  Eventually Anne had eight children and was sickly all her life.  She died at 50.

In 1650, a book of her poems was published in London as “The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America” composed by “A Gentlewoman from Those Parts.” This made Anne the first woman poet published –both in England and the New World.

So what about Hannah Adams, who was born in 1755 and published her first book in 1784-- 134 years after Anne’s book of poetry?

I went back to my research on Hannah Adams, and saw that each biographer had described her carefully as:

“… the first woman in the United States who made literature a profession.”

“… the first American woman to support herself by writing.”

“… the first American author to make a living solely from writing.”

So, although yesterday I wrongly ignored Anne Bradstreet, I was partly right in that Hannah was the first female professional writer who supported herself with her writing.  (She never married and her father went bankrupt.)

I’m delighted that my literary readers corrected me and pointed to Anne Bradstreet, whom I should have remembered from my English Major days.  It was a woman friend from my high school English class—where we were classmates over fifty years ago-- who first pointed out my slip yesterday.

But I’m also still thrilled to own a daguerreotype of Hannah Adams, the first female professional writer, who championed education for women and lobbied for the first copyright laws in our country.  Like Anne Bradstreet, she was one of our feminist godparents and a brave example to all women writers.

America’s First Woman Author (The Story Behind the Photograph)

One of the categories of antique photographs that I collect is photos of paintings, especially portraits.  Photography began in 1839 with the daguerreotype process, and many Americans quickly went to a photographer’s studio carrying a painting of a deceased relative—for how else would future generations remember the face of their ancestor?

The most touching example of this that I’ve seen was a daguerreotype of a man seated in a chair, flanked by his young children, holding on his lap a primitive painting of what was undoubtedly his deceased wife.  Even separated by death, he gathered the whole family together for the only photograph they would ever have.

I bought this sixth plate daguerreotype of an old woman wearing a mob cap (much like Martha Washington) from a seller on E-Bay in 1999.   He wrote that it was “identified by the previous owner as Hannah Adams (1755-1831)”.  He then quoted part of a biography that identified her as  the “first American woman to support herself by writing.”

I researched Hannah and her works. Born in Medfield, MA, the second of five children of a farmer and bookseller named Thomas Adams, Hannah was sickly and was not sent to school.  She read on her own and learned Latin and Greek from divinity students who boarded in their house. Her mother died when she was only 12.

Hannah’s father became bankrupt when she was 17. She supported herself during the Revolutionary War by making lace and later by teaching. (Her father, a scholarly man, also tutored students from Harvard who boarded with them “on rustification”—country leave from classes in Cambridge.)

Hannah was curious about all varieties of religion.  She once said “My first idea of Heaven was of a place where we should find our thirst for knowledge fully gratified.”As she studied, she found herself “disgusted” by the “lack of candor” of writers about religion, who always seemed to prefer one denomination over another—so she determined to write a book comparing all religions  without showing preference for any one. In 1784 she published the result, under the verbose title: “An Alphabetical Compendium of the Various Sects which Have Appeared from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Present Day”.  It sold out, but her agent kept all the money, which led Hannah to lobby for the United States’ first copyright law, passed in 1790.

More books came from this prolific author, mostly about history and religion.  She was much sought after as a dinner guest and houseguest during an era when no women were allowed to attend university. According to one biographer, “She was cherished by affluent New England women as an embodiment of the benefits of permitting female equality in higher education.” When she died in 1831, she was the first of many important figures to be buried in the new Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.

Although Hannah was a distant cousin of President John Adams and stayed for two weeks at his house, she never traveled beyond New England, and she never married.

As always, I tried to verify that my daguerreotype was in fact Hannah Adams.  The engraving above is the only authenticated image of her that I could find.  It’s obviously based on a painting, and “my” Hannah is a painting, so we’re dependent on the skills and vision of the two artists for an answer.  Nevertheless,  I’m happy that the image I bought, of a crone who was born before the American Revolution, introduced me to Hannah, the feisty and intelligent trailblazer of every woman writer came after.

March Madness, Spring Fever & Oversized Art in Manhattan

I drove to New York last weekend to see all the photo-as-art shows, including AIPAD at the Park Avenue Armory, but really, I was desperately seeking signs of Spring, which usually shows up in Central Park about two weeks ahead of its arrival in Massachusetts.

We dined Friday night at Il Cantinori  Restaurant, as guests of owners Steve Tsolis and his wife Nicola Kotsoni, where a towering bouquet of forced cherry blossoms redoubled my resolution to look for flowers blooming in Central Park.  (Il Cantinori has always been famous for its extravagant floral displays, which are created by Nicola.)

Running all over  Manhattan, I never managed to take my camera into the Park—no time—but as I scurried about, I began to feel like Alice in Wonderland, encountering all sorts of super-sized flora and fauna.

Walking up Park Avenue from 57^th to 67^th, I photographed gigantic red and pink roses—rising up to 25 feet high.  They were created by artist Will Ryman, who decorated them with whimsical beetles, bees, ladybugs, aphids and thorns. (He said the thorns are meant to give them  “a sense of foreboding”.) The artist had even scattered giant rose petals on the mall outside the Armory, six of which will also serve as lawn chairs when the weather becomes balmier. (The display of giant roses went up at the end of January and will stay through May, when Park Avenue’s traditional fields of tulips will add color.)

A Park Avenue restaurant displayed giant daisies, probably inspired by Will Ryman's roses.

Whimsy also greeted me on 57^th Street as I saw tourists photographing each other in front of the windows of Louis Vuitton, featuring super-sized ostriches and ostrich eggs decked with super-expensive shoes and luggage.

Saturday night after dinner we walked to Central Park South because I wanted to get a look at the spring solstice’s full “super moon” which was supposed to be bigger than ever before or after.   But I only succeeded in annoying the horses lined up with their carriages waiting for tourists.  The moon was a disappointment: it looked no bigger  than the street lights.

On Sunday, as we drove away from our hotel on Seventh Avenue, I glimpsed yet another super-sized Manhattan animal –this giant red-eyed rat.  New Yorkers know that it means that the employees are on strike and some non-union scabs have crossed the picket line.  Not exactly a cheery sign of spring, and I don’t think it really counts as art, or even pop art, but it made me smile anyway,  remembering a dog-sized rat that once crossed my path running into the Park.  As Cindy Adams likes to say at the end of her column:  only in New York!

Elizabeth Taylor's Premonitions of Death

Hearing of Liz Taylor's death saddened me, although I never met her, because I almost feel we grew up together, ever since "National Velvet" in 1944.  Well, I was only 3 then, and she was 12, but I've always followed her illnesses and romantic adventures with interest.  And I always thought she was intelligent (if not in her choice of husbands), honest and selflessly dedicated to the cause of eradicating AIDs.

I also vaguely remembered hearing that she had ESP and twice demanded to get off an airplane because she (correctly) believed it was going to crash.  I just started googling to confirm that memory and found this quotation from an interview with her, but I wasn't able to ascertain when it took place or who was asking the questions.  But here are her (alleged) words:

"The first time it happened to me was when I was nineteen and Michael Wilding was thirty-nine. He was such a gentle gentleman. We were going to Rome for the weekend and I turned to him and said, Michael, we have to get off this plane now. I said it with quite certain knowledge. The stewardesses helped us get our bags. Since we were well-known they did it as a great favor. They got us off, the plane took off, and it dissolved in mid-air just outside Rome. Later, I asked Deepak Chopra, How do you know the difference between a premonition and certain knowledge? And he said that’s it, it’s a certain knowledge.

"I saved Richard’s life and the people he was working with, his secretary and his make-up man. We were staying at President Tito’s house in Dubrovnik. And they were shooting on all the real locales and it took two helicopters to get them up to this battleground. I said, Get off the helicopter and get into the other one. I said this to Richard Burton, the man who took no shit from anyone. They got on the other plane, and the helicopter plowed into the mountain, killing everyone.

"It has happened throughout my life, but it has slowed down now–and nothing disastrous has happened."
     
She also claimed to have foreseen Michael Todd's death in a plane crash--She said when she told him good-bye and he headed to the airport and his death,  they were both weeping.


 And she claims that during her various illnesses, she has already died  four times--once when she saw Mike Todd waiting for her on the other side but he told her she must go back, because she had important work to do. 


 I suspect she's in heaven now surrounded by Mike Todd and Richard Burton and many other lovers.

          

Since I occasionally nominate women of a certain age as "crone of the week" for something remarkable or courageous or outrageous they've done, I hereby propose the late  Elizabeth Taylor for "Crone of the Year.

Times Square, Pompeii, and Japan

 (Please click on the photos to enlarge them)

Every time I return to Manhattan I’m reminded of why it’s my favorite city in the world.  Nowhere else can you find such a mix of faces, languages, rituals, talents, and incredible sights.  This past weekend, as the weather turned spring-like, I was constantly reminded of a P.R. slogan from the 1970’s, (when Manhattan was so much scarier, dirtier and less friendly),  that we single working-girls would toss around with heavy sarcasm during the  sweltering, foul-smelling hot months:  “New York is a Summer Festival.”  This past weekend, the city was indeed a spring festival with crowds on every corner in a party mood.

On Friday, we walked from the hotel at 56^th and Seventh Avenue.  It was the first time I had seen Broadway and Times Square since they turned it onto a pedestrian walkway.

In the olden days, the only moving sign on Times Square was the Camel-smoking man on a billboard who blew real smoke rings into the air.  Now, all the billboards seem to move with mind-blowing activity and color. 

One huge billboard projects the actual crowd of pedestrians on the sidewalk below, who are frantically waving at the camera.  There is a pretty woman on the billboard with a magnifying glass who periodically magnifies some of the eager wavers.  In other words:  go down to Times Square and you can be on a billboard like all the models and actors.  After some searching, I decided that the pretty girl a with magnifying glass does not actually exist—she is virtual, but the waving tourists are real.

Of course I photographed the statue of George M. Cohan. (For you youngsters, he was the guy who wrote “Give my regards to Broadway”—a song that inevitably gets stuck in my brain and drives me crazy.  He was a songwriter, playwright, actor, singer, dancer and producer who lived from 1878 to 1942.)

Crowds of eager tourists surrounded the sight-seeing-bus stops and watched an artist who seemed to be creating his paintings out of spray paint and selling them on the spot.

Times Square is a photographers dream.  

The reason we were going to Times Square was that I wanted to see the Pompeii exhibit which had gotten a good review in the New York Times.  I realized that, even though it was tourist-y, that was probably the closest I’d ever get to the real Pompeii, which has always fascinated me. 

At the climax of the exhibit,you are herded into a closed room where a vista of the city of Pompeii and the volcano Vesuvius are projected on one wall. Thanks to special effects, you see the slow pattern of destruction as the volcano smoked, then erupted over a period of about 36 hours.  The floor shakes and the sound intensifies as the roofs collapse. There is smoke, fire, lava, and then at the climax, a giant wave of hot ash and intense heat overwhelms everything including the audience.  The winds whips by you and then the wall in front of you opens and you see the white plaster casts of the dead bodies (including a dog and a pig curled in their last agonies.)  You can walk among them--the family of four including two children and the man who died trying to crawl up a staircase, the couple reaching out to each other and a room full of 12 skeletons including nine children. These casts were made by pouring plaster into the hollow impressions left by the bodies that were encased by the ash as they died.)

Although I had planned weeks ago to visit the Pompeii exhibit, the drama was made so much more real and poignant by the tragedy in Japan. It was impossible to watch the tsunami of ash coming at you without thinking of the thousands of innocent people there who suffered a death much like those who died in Pompeii, but they were swept out to sea without  even the memorial left  by those who died in 79 A.D., who were preserved in solidified ash so that we can share their agony two thousand years later.