Amalía Does San Francisco (Part One)

 Recently People magazine had a page of photos of Suri Cruise, fashion guru of the pre-school set, hitting the hot spots in Manhattan with a stuffed giraffe as her constant escort (although he looks more like a deer to me.)

During the same week, my granddaughter Amalía, eight months old, fashion guru of the pre-walking set, flew to  San Francisco with her Mommy and Yiayia Joanie to hang out with her Aunt Marina (known as "Tia Marina"), attend a book event presenting her Mommy’s new novel “Other Waters” and take a quick tour of Wine Country and a hike through a redwood  forest.

She didn’t have a stuffed animal as an escort, although a teddy bear was seen atop her head at the Fairmont Hotel, and a certain mooing cow went AWOL before the flight back, but Amalía still managed to flaunt the latest fashions while partying like a rock star on the  Left Coast.

She chose psychedelic clashing colors for brunching at the famous (since 1918) St. Francis Diner in the Mission District near Tia Marina's apartment.

It was Cinco de Mayo, so there was a lot of celebrating (including dancing Skeletons) in the streets.

Amalía admired the fabulous murals on nearly every wall in the Mission District.

She took in the view from the roof of Tia Marina's building in the Mission.

And in downtown San Francisco, on the roof of the buiding where Tia Marina works for BAR Architects, there was a giant heart.

From the Fairmont Amalía walked with Yiayia Joanie to Chinatown.  (It was a very steep hill.)

One day her Mommy spoke at Book Passage in the Ferry Building, about her new novel "Other Waters." That's the Ferry Building in the background below.

Afterward some friends stayed for dinner at a restaurant in the same building.

That night there was a wine and cheese pajama party at the Fairmont, but Amalía, in her jammies, was all partied out.

(Tomorrow--Partying through wine country and the Redwood forest.)

Found Art: Postage Stamps Celebrate U.S. Poets!

It happened on April 21, but I didn’t realize it until I went to the post office recently and learned that the USPS had issued a sheet of stamps immortalizing America’s Twentieth Century Poets.   This made me very happy, because I think poetry is perhaps the most difficult form of literature, but poets today are the least appreciated and the least financially rewarded of any writers (and that’s saying a lot.)

“Throughout the ages, poetry has been regarded as important and providing unique value, giving us all a better understanding of life,” said David Williams, the U.S. Postal Service vice president, Network Operations, on the day the stamps were introduced at the 17^th annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. “That is why the Postal Service is so proud to be dedicating a new commemorative Forever stamp pane that celebrates 10 of our nation’s most admired poets, which include United States Poet Laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners and National Book Award winners.”

Even better, the back of the page of stamps had brief quotations from their works, which really made you want to go back and re-read the poems.

I feel especially close to Sylvia Plath—because she, like me, was a Mademoiselle Guest Editor, (about ten years before I was) and wrote about it in “The Bell Jar”, including the nervous breakdown she had right afterward which led to her first suicide attempt.

I also have a special interest in Elizabeth Bishop because she lived for a while in Worcester, MA, as I do now.

So get over to your nearest Post Office and help celebrate our country’s modern  poets.

(You can see I already used up one Joseph Brodsky to send a letter—Good grief!  I see he’s only a year older than I am, but died in 1996!)

I plan to keep the rest of the stamps as a souvenir of my fellow Americans who have conquered the highest peak of literary accomplishment.   May their memory be eternal and may we continue to get pleasure and knowledge from their work.

Tots with (Antique) Toys—Boy or Girl?

Favorite Photos Friday

(Click on these photos to enlarge them)

(Pushing the wheelbarrow is John Butler Woodward, Jr., photographed on Dec. 9, 1892, 3 years old.)

While collecting vintage photographs, I’ve always gravitated toward photos of children. Even better are images of children with toys, because these are sought by doll collectors, teddy bear collectors; all sorts of people who are willing to pay for a glimpse of the nineteenth-century toys cherished by children over 100 years ago.

Here are photos from my collection of children with toys. You can help me figure out if the adorable urchin in each photo is a boy or a girl.  Remember that boys did not put on pants until they were about five or six.  When we see a tot in a lace dress with a large hair bow, today we assume that it’s a girl, but I only have to recall a photo I have of my father, circa 1908, when  he’s about 2 years old, wearing long blond sausage curls, a big white hair bow and a white dress. BUT his hair is parted on the side.  That’s one of the clues:  inevitably in Victorian photos, boys have their hair parted on the side and girls are parted right down the middle—unless the little angel has hair so curly or so sparse that you can’t part it.

 (A sweet little girl holding a boy doll, photographed by Warren in Cambridgeport, Mass.)

Here are some other clues that the kid in the photo is a boy: he has  a plaid or tartan sash, he’s holding a riding crop.  But as you’ll see below, these are not sure-fire clues.

Carrie Taylor—A big girl with a big doll from Ulrichsville, Ohio

 Schenectady, N.Y.

 (I’m betting this one’s a girl even though her doll has a mustache)

This is  Marion Hillard ????ward Photographed in Wilkes Barre, PA on  Dec. 1897 at the age of 2 years, 5 months.  Someone has written under her photo “See!  The pussy cat!” but all we can see is a doll in a little carriage and a wicker child’s chair in the photographer’s studio.

 This dour-looking toddler may appear to be a girl, but I’m betting it’s a “he” because of the side part.  If that teddy bear has a button in its ear, meaning it’s a Steiff, it would sell for a small fortune today.

  This wide-eyed tot (side part=boy?) probably is too young to read the book on the chair:  “Little People.”  He seems a bit overwhelmed by the fancy wicker chair and elegant furnishings of   H.M. Smith’s studio in Portland, Maine.

A popular accessory was the hobby horse or some other kind of steed—probably belonging to the photographer and useful because the child would sit on it and stay still for the photo.  This is a CDV (carte de visite or visiting card)-sized photo taken  by J Edwards in Skaneateles, N.Y.—clearly a little boy, proudly wearing knee pants.

This little one at first seems to be a girl, but I suspect it’s actually a boy, leaning against this fine hobby horse.  No part is visible in his hair. The  necklace of beads around his/her neck would be coral, traditionally given by the god parent.

This curly-headed cherub could be boy or girl. She doesn’t seem too sure about what to do with the riding crop, intended to drive the team of horses pulling the little carriage.  She/he was photographed in Diedenhofen Germany

Boys and bikes seem to go together and there’s no question that this is a boy—Clarence Kimball (written on the back in pencil.)  He was photographed on this bucking bronco/tricycle by J. C. Higgins in Bath Maine.  I wonder if the excellent tricycle belonged to Clarence or the photographer?

Here’s another boy—old enough to ride a two-wheeler and wear knee pants.  I’m pretty sure he brought his own bike to the photographer’s studio to illustrate his skill.

Finally we have this curly-headed tot, sitting on a fur rug and holding a stuffed lamb and a riding crop.  I know she’s a girl, because when I turned over the CDV, I found her name written on the back as well as some words in French that told me she is the descendent of a family steeped in blood and known for literally thousands of murders.  It’s such a good story (a story that I would have never known if I didn’t turn the card over and then research the facts written there) that I’m going to save it for next Friday’s “Favorite Photos” post.

Cheers: Favorite Photos Friday

I'm just back from a delightful stay with daughters Eleni and Marina and granddaughter Amalia in San Francisco (bookended with stays in Manhattan where I am now.)  Eleni was in San Francisco to present her new novel "Other Waters" at Book Passages in the Ferry Building.

Between hiking in the Redwood forests, visiting three vineyards in wine country and eating my way through San Francisco, I hardly had time to open my computer much less post on this blog, but I stored up lots of good things to post about soon.

For today's Favorite Photos Friday, I'm sharing two vintage photos under the title "Cheers", because they both seem to be the kind of drinking establishment where everybody knows your name.

The gang at William Duff's Friendship Inn seems to include two employees (owners?) three regular  customers and a cop.  I'm betting that most of these gentlemen are Irish, although I don't even know what town this is in.  If anyone can tell me for sure where this photo was taken, I'll buy them a bottle of Irish whiskey.

Surprisingly, the gang at the J.A. Davis eating saloon includes six women and only three men and one of the women appears to be dressed in widow's weeds.  Maybe she's the widow of J A. Davis?  I wonder if this  establishment has separate entrances for women and men.  I doubt it.  They all seem to be on cordial terms.

It sort of makes you nostalgic for the olden days when an establishment's regulars would call in a photographer to record their friendship and loyalty to the local pub.

American Gothic-- Favorite Photos Friday

This painting by America Artist Grant Wood is one of the ten most famous paintings in the world and one of the most parodied (along with “The Scream”). Wood painted it in 1930.  First he came upon the Gothic Revival-style house in  Eldon, Iowa, then he used his own sister Nan and his dentist  as models for the couple painted in the foreground.  (They never actually stood in front of the house. He painted the elements separately.)

Wood entered the painting in a competition sponsored by the Art Institute of Chicago and though the judges first called it  “comic valentine”, a museum patron (according to Wikipedia) convinced them to award the painting the first prize of $300 and to buy it for the Museum.

When the instant fame of the painting reached Iowa, the natives of the state were outraged at being portrayed as “pinched, grim-faced puritanical Bible thumpers”, but by the time the Depression hit the country, people began to see the painting as a depiction of the steadfast American spirit.. 

The artist’s sister, Nan, was upset at being pictured as the wife of a man twice her age (the dentist who served as the model for the pitchfork-toting farmer), so she and Grant Wood told people this was meant to be a picture of a farmer and his spinster daughter. But everyone who sees the painting sees it as a married couple—pinched and solemn, hardworking and humorless, who have undoubtedly been married for so long they’ve started to look alike.

In my collection of antique photos I have two couples I’d like to nominate as stand-ins for the American Gothic couple—or, since they pre-date the Grant Wood painting by at least 30 years if not more, let’s call them the original  American Gothic.

This pair appeared together in a leather photo case I bought. The images are so clean and vivid that I nearly jumped when I opened the case to find these two sixth- plate ambrotypes on ruby glass.  For some reason, I’m convinced this is the only portrait this couple ever had taken of themselves.  They look like a no-nonsense pair who would not waste money on frivolity like photographs.

The thing that fascinates me about this pair is the woman’s hair.  (And her square granny glasses.)  I’m pretty sure her real hair color would be white, not black, but she doesn’t look like someone who would color her hair (which was considered shocking and almost never done in the 19^th century.)  Maybe she’s wearing a wig?  Also, those crazy banana curls may be made of chenille—I believe I read something about that being a fad back in the 19^th century.

This other pair hang in my bedroom, and every time I look at them I smile.  (I’m sorry I couldn’t get a clearer photo of the man but the light and reflections totally foiled me on the day I snapped the photo.)

These two are examples of painted tintypes, a format that combines two of my great loves—photography and folk art.  Painted tintypes like these usually began with a full plate (about 8 by ten inches) tintype photograph.  Then someone—either the photographer’s staff or an artistic housewife—would paint over the image, sometimes to the point that you could no longer tell it’s a photograph.  Many hilariously non-realistic portraits were created this way.

But just painting over the photograph wasn’t enough.  The mat and frame of the painting were also hand-made and painted to embellish the original photograph.

In this pair, you can see that the lady’s clothing and the flowers in her hair have been painted in, and her cheeks tinted. The man’s hair and beard have been enhanced. 

Then, as is common with painted tintypes, the maker, convinced that “More is More” embellished the mat and frame.  In this case someone did an oval of gold glitter on top of another oval of red paper under the white mat and the three-layered wood frame, which is almost like a shadow box.

These couples clearly have been together so long they started to look alike, and their stern visages embody, like the Grant Wood portrait,  the best qualities of the steadfast American spirit.  They are the salt of the earth.

May Baskets & May Wreaths

(I posted this last year and am posting it again by popular request. The crazy no-snow winter has changed the sequence of flowers now in bloom--The forsythia is long gone, lilacs are peaking, even clematis is opening, but the idea of May baskets and May wreathes remains the same--glorying in the beauty of spring.) 

Some sixty years ago, when I was a little girl in (first) Milwaukee, Wisconsin and then in Edina, Minnesota, on the first of  May we would make May baskets out of construction paper and fill them with  whatever flowers we could find in the garden or growing wild. We would hang the baskets on the doorknobs of neighbors—especially old people—ring the door bell, then run away with great hilarity and peek out as the elderly person found the little bouquets on their door.

 Thirty-some years ago, when we moved  to Grafton, MA, I continued the same tradition with my three kids, but then they grew up and moved away.  Just today I looked out at all the flowers popping up in our yard and reflected that all the old people in our neighborhood had died.  In fact, I realized, the only old people left were my husband and myself, so I picked a small May Day bouquet for us out of what’s growing—white violets and purple violets, cherry blossoms, forsythia, wild grape hyacinth--  and here it is.

 In 1977, when the children were all small (the youngest was one month old) we moved from New York City to a suburb of Athens, Greece, courtesy of The New York Times, which had made my husband a foreign correspondent there.  In Greece, even today, whether in the country or the city, on May 1 you make a May wreath of the flowers in the garden.  Roses are in full bloom by then in Greece, along with all sorts of wild flowers. You hang the May wreath on your door.  It dies and dries and withers until, on June 24th, St. John the Baptist’s Birthday, the dried May wreath is thrown into a bonfire.  The boys of the town leap over the flames first. In the end everyone leaps over the fading fire saying things like  “I leave the bad year  behind in order to enter a better year.”

Here is daughter Eleni in 1980 wearing the wreath that was about to go on the door. Next to her is her sister Marina.

 In Greece, even today, you’ll find May wreaths hanging on the front doors of homes and businesses, although I don’t know if anyone still throws them into a St John’s fire.  In Massachusetts, the tulips and forsythia are out, the bleeding hearts are starting to bloom, and soon the lilacs will open, filling the air with their beauty and perfume.  But today I gathered a small bouquet of May flowers and remembered the years gone by.

Found Art: A Walk to Central Park

I’m just back home from a week spent babysitting the adorable #1 granddaughter in Manhattan, and once again I’m reminded why New York is my favorite city in the world (especially in Spring).  Every block  holds surprise glimpses of beauty and art, if you just look.  (Look up for sculptural and architectural surprises that might be missed.

Below are some of the sights I passed every day on the Upper East Side while pushing the stroller the three short cross-town blocks to Central Park, where three playgrounds, all a stone’s throw from the Metropolitan Museum, awaited. You may not count all of these as found art, but I do.  This is why I heart New York (now more than ever.)

 Cookies at Eli’s on Third Ave.

 Flowers outside our front door.

 Pansies in a restaurant window.

Tulips on Park Avenue. (Now they’ve finished. )

Window boxes & a sculpted head next to the garbage pails of a brownstone.

Artists selling their work outside the Metropolitan Museum.

“Woman on Horseback” on 79th  Street

Terra Cotta Warriors—All the way from China to Times Square.

A dry fountain in one playground.

Three bears outside a second playground, on the south side of the Metropolitan Museum.

The bears are irresistible to young and old. Everyone wants to climb and take a photo.

Okay, this rat, slightly larger than the ones in Central Park, is not really art.  He turns up whenever union members want to complain that a store is not hiring union labor.  While the rat could not be called artistic, he always makes me smile, because he’s a true New Yorker.