Kotex Goes Rogue: Madmen's Bad Idea?

I read in the business section of yesterday’s New York Times that J. Walter Thompson has come up with a revolutionary, controversial new advertising campaign for a new line of products by Kotex called “U by Kotex.”

The campaign ads make fun of previous ads for menstrual products which use euphemisms, and it encourages girls and women to sign up at the web site, UbyKotex.com to join a “Declaration of Real Talk” vowing to defy society’s pressure and be out and proud about their menstrual periods. For every signer, Kotex will donate $1 to Girls for a Change—a non-profit in California that puts urban school girls together with professional women mentors.

The ads, (sample above) prepared by the JWT madmen for TV, advocate the use of words like “Vagina” and “tampon". All the ads have tag lines like “Why are tampon ads so ridiculous? Break the cycle!” and end by showing the new line of tampons, pads and liners. They are packed in black boxes with windows that reveal that the tampons inside are not white, but in a rainbow of colors.

When I read about this campaign, even thought I’m as pro-woman’s lib as anyone, I got an uneasy feeling.

Kotex and J. Walter Thompson are trying to convince young women and girls that, by buying their new rainbow-colored tampons and tossing around words like vagina, they are striking a blow for women around the world. But let’s face it, this is just a ploy to sell a product.

(I’m not the only one uneasy with the ads —according to the NYT, J Walter Thompson was informed that it could not use the word “vagina” by three broadcast networks, so it re-shot the ad with the actress saying “down there” instead. That version was rejected by two of the three networks.)

On the web site, however, there are no such problems and the videos on the site demonstrate how to use the products, including inserting a tampon in “an anatomically correct puppet.”

When I went on the web site, I was both amused and uncomfortable watching a very well-acted video showing a young man in a drug store who was completely confused by the chore of buying his girlfriend some sanitary protection. He was asking all sorts of questions of equally embarrassed strangers. Among other things, the young man said, “She said she’d kill me if I bought cardboard.”

Hello? How many women are out there who would send their clueless boyfriend out to choose a sanitary product for them?

Maybe I’m wrong about this ad campaign and women will embrace the suggestion to be out and proud about their menstrual cycle, but to me —a 69-year-old crone— it just seems like an extension of the current trend encouraging rudeness and confrontation in daily life -- most egregiously personified by the reality shows.

But thinking back, I have lived through a dramatic progression in attitudes toward women’s menstrual cycles. Before Kotex started advertising disposable sanitary pads in 1921, women pretty much had to make do with folding and laundering rags on their own.

I got my period at the age of 11 when I was in fifth grade. This involved wearing an uncomfortable belt of stretch elastic which had even more uncomfortable metal gadgets with teeth in front and back to grab the “tails” of the bulky sanitary pads. Having any part of this contraption show through one’s clothing was unthinkably embarrassing, and we would pile multiple petticoats under our voluminous circle skirts to hide any “accidents.

My mother was so leery of anyone hearing her mention the word “Kotex” that when she made a shopping list, she would write that word in the Gregg’s shorthand she had learned in secretarial school. She gave me elaborate instructions for wrapping, double wrapping and then getting rid of the used napkins outside the house—God forbid any male person in our household should suspect what was going on!

When they invented tampons, of course there was much discussion among my age group about how to insert, and whether you would lose your virginity — so I guess the anatomically correct puppet on the web site does serve as beneficial educational tool.

At some point, young women became somehow very knowledgeable about how to deal with the whole menstrual cycle and its accompanying problems. When I tried to broach the subject with my own daughters, I learned they had all the questions answered and under control long before, and didn’t want to hear anything about it from me.

Now that I’m long past having to think about “the curse” or “my friend” as it was euphemistically called, I’m vaguely aware that women today can control the frequency of their periods and even elect not to have them at all. This also makes me feel a little uneasy (like the “revolutionary” Kotex ad campaign) because it seems to me more “natural” and perhaps healthier to allow your body to ovulate every month, the way women have been doing since Adam and Eve.

But after re-reading the above — perhaps the new Kotex campaign actually is a public service to women rather than just a cynical way to get girls and women to buy a new product line.

What do you think?

Circus Freaks and Tom Thumb – The Rock Star of the 19th Century

(The story behind the photos)

Circus Freaks are having a moment.

Recently my friends Andy and Veronica mentioned that they’re preparing art for an upcoming show "paying homage to circus freaks, carnies, and sideshow misfits" that will be held at Space 242 on East Berkeley Street in Boston from April 30 to May 21, 2010., called “Get Your Freak On!”

Then I read about Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sequel to “The Phantom of the Opera” called “Love Never Dies” which will open on Broadway in November. It takes the Phantom to Coney Island, where he runs a freak show.

All this talk of Circus Freaks, who basically fell off the radar back in the 1970’s, when we all realized it wasn’t polite to stare at people who are different, reminded me of a category of antique photos that I had nearly forgotten about—the rabid collecting of cartes de visite and tintypes and cabinet cards of circus freaks back in the 1800’s, especially during the Civil War era . These freaks were mainly working for P. T. Barnum. The most famous of all was “General Tom Thumb”, who never grew more than three feet tall.

I never have collected antique photos of freaks like Barnum’s “Fee-jee Mermaid”, which was a mummified monkey sewn to a fish tail and covered in papier maché-- for the same reason I don’t collect those post mortems of dead babies—they give me the creeps. But I do have several photos of Tom Thumb in my collection (above). Most of these were originally taken by Matthew Brady. (The signatures on the backs, by the way, are printed, not originals.)

During the Civil War era, Tom Thumb was more famous than, say, modern stars like Michael Jackson, Madonna and Angelina Jolie all put together. His wedding stopped traffic in New York City and on his honeymoon Tom Thumb was invited to visit President Lincoln at the White House and then Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace. I think the midget was the most photographed man of his time—even more so than Lincoln.

If you add up all the business-card-sized CDVs that were purchased and put into Victorian photo albums, maybe Gen. Tom Thumb was the most photographed man who ever lived.

His real name was Charles Sherwood Stratton and he was born on Jan. 4, 1838 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. His parents were first cousins. When he was born, he was a large baby—9 pounds 8 ounces-- and he developed normally for the first six months, but then he stopped growing at 25 inches high and 15 pounds.

By the time he was nearly five, he was still the same height and weight.

P.T. Barnum was a distant relative of the little boy and he contacted the child’s parents and said he would teach him to sing, dance, mime and impersonate famous people and would pay him $3.00 a week to appear in New York at “Barnum’s American Museum” on Broadway where several “giants” were already part of the show.

The boy was a quick learner and his tours, as he impersonated characters like Cupid and Napoleon Bonaparte, made him a huge success. (Barnum named him Tom Thumb after a character in English folklore. He claimed he had found him in Europe and brought him to the U.S. “at great expense.” He also said the five-year- old boy was actually 11. “Tom Thumb “ found himself drinking wine and smoking cigars before he was six.)

When the boy was six, Barnum took him on a tour of Europe and Tom appeared twice before Queen Victoria. She was enchanted. According to Barnum, the Queen took him by the hand and led him about the gallery of paintings and asked him many questions, “the answers to which kept the party of nobles in an uninterrupted strain of merriment.”

As they were leaving, the Queen’s poodle suddenly attacked the little man and Tom Thumb used his formal walking stick to fight off the dog, to everyone’s amusement.

The boy was an immense success in London and Barnum had a miniature carriage made to take him around.

On Feb. 10, 1863, when he was 25, Tom Thumb married Mercy Lavinia Warren Bump, called Lavinia Warren. Matthew Brady photographed the wedding party, which included an even smaller best man, known as Commodore Nutt, and the bride’s tiny younger sister, Minnie Warren.

The wedding was front-page news. The streets between Grace Episcopal Church and the Metropolitan Hotel on Broadway were completely jammed with onlookers. The couple stood on a grand piano to greet their 2,000 guests. After the wedding, they were received by President Lincoln at the White House.

In the late 1860’s the couple embarked on a three-year world tour that included Australia. Later they were photographed holding “their baby” which was one of several they borrowed for photos. They never had children and that was wise: in 1878 Lavinia’s tiny sister Minnie died in childbirth.

Stratton became a wealthy man with a house in New York another in Connecticut and his own yacht. When Barnum got into financial distress, the petite former employee bailed him out and they became business partners.

On January 10, 1883, Stratton and his wife were staying at the Newhall House in Milwaukee when one of the worst hotel fires in history broke out, killing more than 71 people, but Tom and Lavinia were saved by their manager. Six months later, Stratton died suddenly of a stroke. He was 45 years old and 3.3 feet tall. Over 10,000 people attended his funeral.

Two years later, Lavinia married a younger man, an Italian midget named Count Primo Magri. He and his brother and Lavinia formed the Lilliputian Opera company which toured and even appeared in some early motion pictures. Lavinia died in 1919 when she was 78.

Who is the Crone of the Week?

And the award goes to…no NOT Betty White (who IS experiencing a dramatic revival at the moment) but to Florence Critelli, who works in a Long Island pharmacy and battled with a robber last week, then insisted on finishing her shift and driving herself home. Florence is 91.

Around 11 a.m. the robber entered the Rite Aid Pharmacy in East Northport and handed Florence a dollar for a candy bar. When she opened the register, he reached over and grabbed a handful of cash. The great grandmother of 13 “grabbed his hand to stop him from taking the money and I just screamed,” she told the New York Post yesterday. Then the bandit punched her in the chest, knocking her to the floor and ran out with the cash.

Florence refused medical attention when police arrived and then turned down the suggestion that she go home to recover. “I didn’t want to come home. What was I going to do but sit there and be bored?”

She finished her shift at 5:30 and insisted on driving herself home. She’s been working at the pharmacy for 17 years. She told the Post her hobbies include playing the slots at casinos and knitting and crocheting mittens that are given to the needy. She’s been married twice and has two children and seven grandchildren as well as the 13 great-grandchildren.

I think I’m going to design an award to send to the occasional Crone of the Week who personifies crone power. I think it should be a statue of an owl, since the owl was the symbol of the Greek goddess Athena and also represents wisdom.

Not that it was too smart for Florence to fight back against the robber, but it does show gumption.

I love her attitude at the age of 91 and also the afghan she has on her couch in the photo above. I bet she knitted it herself.

Making Art Out of Junk?

Today I submitted my latest creation (above) for the ArtsWorcester Members Exhibition called “New Again – Exploring Found Objects”. (The exhibit opens on March 19 at Arts Worcester’s Aurora Gallery at 660 Main Street and, because of the excitement and volume of participation, it will continue longer than originally planned — to May 7.)

They didn’t exactly say to make art out of junk. What the call to submit said was “For New Again, ARTSWorcester members are invited to present intriguing and unconventional works of art created from, or inspired by, found objects. Found Object Art explores concepts of identity re-designation by dignifying commonplace objects as works of fine art through the choice of the artist. New Again is an opportunity to re-appropriate natural, recycled and found materials into new works of art.”

Shortly after getting this message, I walked into the local antique store where I have a booth and saw an antique blowtorch that looked to me much like a dragon. If it was still working, I thought, it would even look like a fire-breathing dragon.

Then, when I was in Mexico recently for an art course, I found the carved statue of a warrior angel — carved by an anonymous artist in Puebla -- and it was just the right size.

So I put it all together with a saw blade and a paint pan, paint brushes and some orange feathers and came up with the assemblage (I guess that what’s you call it) that you see above. I call it “Saint George and the D. I. Y. Dragon.” I think the dragon is meant to represent the hassle and headaches we often get into when we undertake a Do It Yourself project around the house. Those tools and paints can get pretty obstreperous and start to fight back.

I hurried down to ArtsWorcester today as artists started dropping off their creations. I glimpsed one that uses fortune cookies and another that incorporates parts of a Barbie doll, as well as reels of movie film. That one moves.

I’m looking forward to the opening reception on March 19 to learn what other lowly objects have been adapted and re-appropriated into new works of art. It should be a very surprising show, especially here in Worcester, a city which blossomed during the Industrial Revolution and then ebbed, leaving a wealth of empty factories and orphaned tools and machinery behind.

Famous Oscar Flubs & Moments

I hope to watch the Oscar Ceremonies tonight—along with half the world’s population – but let’s face it, we’re not watching to see which films will win the little gold men, nor to see who cashes in on the office pool. We’re all watching to see which of our favorite actors, appearing under stress and without a script, will make a fabulous flub or world class blunder.

I’ve been watching the Oscars since just about forever, and I remember them all. Well, I wasn’t old enough, (nor did we have a TV) back in 1945 when Joan Crawford, with her usual diva-ish behavior, feigned illness and graciously accepted her Oscar for “Mildred Pierce” at home in her “sick bed” while the cameras rolled.

Here are some of my favorite ill-planned and poorly executed Oscar Moments – in chronological order. If I’ve forgotten some of your favorites—let me know by leaving a comment below or writing me at joanpgage@yahoo.com. And if I have the wrong year, please forgive, because the 1990 Oscars happened in 1991, for example, which is confusing, and I haven’t taken the time to double check my dates. (Don’t tell my old professors at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. I’m writing against deadline and sometimes, as they often told us, you just have to “Go with what you’ve got.”)

1969—Katherine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand tied for an Oscar but everyone remembers Streisand’s gauzy bell-bottomed pants suit which became transparent under the lights.

1973 – Marlon Brando won the Oscar for “Godfather 1” but in his place he sent a Mexican actress whom he called Sacheen Littlefeather, dressed as an American Indian, to accept for him, while she issued a diatribe against the portrayal of the Native Americans on film. (I vaguely remembered her name as Princess SummerFallWinterSpring, but of course that was the Indian princess on Howdy Doody, which was my very first TV show after we got a television set back in the early fifties.)

1974—Everyone’s favorite Oscar moment was when the trendy, mustached streaker sped behind David Niven—stark naked on camera. Niven never blinked as he remarked that the only laugh the fellow would ever get is for showing off his shortcomings.

1985 – Everyone knows about Sally Fields “You like me, you really like me!” acceptance speech—which is often misquoted and parodied. I wonder how much she’d pay to erase that exuberant speech from history.

1989 – The career of Rob Lowe hit its nadir as he sang and danced with Snow White in the opening number. Think how far back he’s come since then!

1992 – When Jack Palance leaped on stage to accept an Oscar and celebrated by demonstrating his skill at one-arm push-ups, Billy Crystal kept spinning jokes off of his performance all night. (Referring to a choir of children he cracked, “And all them were fathered by Jack Palance.” The ability to think on his feet is what makes Billy Crystal my favorite Oscar M. C.)

1995 – David Letterman’s opening monologue fell nearly as flat as Rob Lowe’s when his “Uma – Oprah – Uma – Oprah” chant left everyone staring, not laughing.

2000 – Angelina Jolie, was so delighted at receiving an Oscar that she enveloped her brother, James, in a passionate, long, sloppy kiss that left everyone else slack-jawed in shock and wonder.

2003--And Adrian Brodie did the same as he attacked presenter Halley Berry in a big sloppy kiss to celebrate being the youngest actor to win an Oscar.

I actually got to attend the Oscar Ceremony in 1991 – (It was the 1990 Oscars.) The reason I got to go is that my husband Nick was executive producer for Godfather III, which was nominated for (but never got) best picture. I’m glad I got to go that once, but I wouldn’t want to do it again, because it’s really boring.

The people who are nominated for something get to sit on the first floor down front, while the rest of us sit in the balcony. The amazing thing is how bizarre are the outfits worn by the folks in the balcony who seem to be mostly would-be actors trying to get attention because they haven’t made it yet. There are long pauses for commercials and people are hired to drift about and sit in the seats of the famous folks below when they nip out to go to the bathroom. The only thing I actually remember about that Oscar ceremony is that Michael Jackson and Madonna, both in white, appeared together as “dates” and sat right in front of my husband.

Tonight I expect to have more fun than when I was there in person, because I can talk back to the screen and get up to get snacks and drinks and even take a bathroom break.

Recent Oscar ceremonies have become sort of boring because they’re so carefully organized, but I’m still hoping for a world-class flub or blunder tonight to add to my Oscar Memories.

Angels in the Architecture – Puebla & Cholula, Mexico

(Please click on the photos to enlarge, or you'll never be able to see them.)


The reason I write this blog, especially when traveling, is to share unexpected moments of beauty that I stumble upon. I’m driven to share these experiences and sights because so often they’re lucky accidents, not even hinted at in the guidebooks.

Often the objects that draw my eye are created by anonymous folk artists – in the name of religion, love (like the carved Greek hope chests for brides) – or just out of the creative urge that wells up in us. I think it’s wonderful that so many Greeks carved their wooden tools and vessels into fantastic shapes, and that the indigenous tribes of India hammered the gods and goddesses into their silver tribal jewelry.

It seems I’ve been collecting angels forever and am particularly attracted to naïve, primitive angels with personality and attitude—not the cookie-cutter kind you see on Valentines. (Haitian art boasts a lot of angels with attitude.)

On the four days in Puebla, Mexico that were the finale of our off-site art class (led by photographer Mari Seder and sponsored by the Worcester Art Museum), I quickly realized that Puebla has angels everywhere, just as skulls and skeletons seemed to be everywhere in Oaxaca. The first row of photos above show the angels we encountered on the edge of the Zocalo guarding the famous baroque Cathedral—part of the historic center that is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Another day we boarded a van driven by Jorge Luis, who for 43 years has been leading tours to Cholula, just outside Puebla, famed for the view of its two snow-covered volcanoes (see the photo of the lovers in the second row above.) The first church we visited there was Nuestra Senora de los Remedios—the imposing orange building perched atop the Great Pyramid of Cholula—the largest pyramid (I’m told) in Mexico, (but not excavated). Angels in Redmedios were typical of the Spanish baroque style of so many churches.

Then Jorge Luis drove us to two other churches that he said had been decorated by the Indians—incorporating their own symbols and faces. In both cases, the outside of the churches is covered with the famous talavera tiles of the region. Once I walked inside the first one -- Santa Maria Tonantzintla—I was stunned into silence, as is everyone who enters. Every square inch of the interior was covered with carved images of Indian angels and saints. You weren’t supposed to take photos, but I took some anyway (in the third row above). At the door an Indian mother with a baby on her back was selling photos of the carvings, including angels wearing the traditional feathered headdress and also cobs of corn.

In the third church—San Martin Texmelucan -- also decorated by the Indians and , according to Jorge, restored since an earthquake some years ago—native workmen were cleaning the stunningly tiled exterior (see the fourth row above). And except for one man, they had no safety belts or ropes to protect them from a fall.

Inside we were allowed to take photos and I took dozens. (See rows four and five above.) If you compare the dome of this church—surrounded by a row of angels – to the dome of the previous church, you will see that there is more organization and less chaos in the décor, but in both churches, I don’t think anyone could count all the angels in a lifetime. No photos can indicate how there really do seem to be flocks of angels swirling overhead in complete confusion and the flutter of wings is almost audible.

The final row above shows two angels who came home from Mexico with me to add to my angel walls. The little red-faced angel with one wing, about six inches tall, was priced at less than two dollars in a Oaxacan antique store (because he only has one wing!) The wooden statue of the Archangel Michael, holding a cross and a sword, was carved by an anonymous artisan in Puebla.

Everywhere I go, even in non-Christian countries, I seem to find angels. I hope that these two will feel at home surrounded by their multi-cultural brethren and bring protection to our house.

Carnival and Christ in Puebla, Mexico

( please click on the photos to enlarge)



I recently wrote about the “Fat Tuesday” celebrations in the village of San Martin Tilcajete outside of Oaxaca, featuring a “faux” wedding, devils, noise, dancing, gossip, ribald behavior and lots of pre-Lenten craziness.

After eight days in Oaxaca, we (students and teacher of our art course sponsored by the Worcester Art Museum) went on to Puebla, a larger city 80 miles southeast of Mexico City which boasts ornate colonial architecture featuring tiles and beaux-arts rococo plasterwork and the famous Talavera pottery.

Here in Puebla, carnival celebrations were in full swing and on Sunday Feb. 2 , as we prowled the large flea market and antique area, we ran into a parade featuring local beauties in white dresses dancing with men dressed as devils, Indians and Spaniards. Their costumes trumpeted the names of their neighborhoods on their cloaks. The costumes were less gruesome than in Oaxaca and the devils far less threatening, but the bystanders were having just as much fun.

That night, as we went to the Zocalo of Puebla, which has been named a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the large plaza was chock full of costumed dancers and music, fountains spurting and children delighted with the carnival activities, balloons and ice cream treats. Clearly families had dressed up the children and driven in from outlying areas, and as we enjoyed margaritas at a sidewalk restaurant, we felt privileged to be included in the Lenten hilarity. Among the mask for sale was a spooky Michael Jackson face.

I’m also including a photo I took from our balcony at the Hotel Colonial of a grandmother and her granddaughter on a bench below. At first I thought she had a baby beside her, but then I saw that it was the family’s Christ Child doll, that she had brought out for a stroll—or to be blessed in church. I’ve learned that the Christ Child doll lies down on the family altar at Christmas but is then put in a sitting position on Candlemas (Feb. 2) and he needs a new set of clothes at that time. The Christ Child in his new clothes needs to be taken to church to be blessed before the beginning of Lent, but this grandmother seems to have overlooked the deadline—or perhaps there’s a dispensation on Sundays?

In Mexico, the symbols of the Catholic religion are everywhere, and while leaving the Zocalo that day I snapped a photo of a woman sitting in a store that sells religious objects. She was almost hidden behind a life-size statue of a bleeding crucified Christ lying on the counter.

(My next post will be: Angels in the Architecture in Puebla, and under the volcano in Cholula.)

More on Oaxaca, Mexico and Art on the Street

(Please click on the photos to enlarge)

Here are the photos of the art on the walls of a small restaurant in Oaxaca Mexico called (I think) Nuovo Babel. I really like the sort of magical realism and graffiti/street art quality of these paintings and I'm sorry I couldn't read the name of the artist in the signature. I thought the wall of men in masks were meant to be superheroes, but the teacher in our art course, Mari Seder, tells me these are members of "Lucha Libre" a violent kind of masked wrestlers very popular in Mexico.

By the way, the title of the masked men painting is "odios" which I'm told means "hatred."

I can't get over how often the skeleton and the skull appear in contemporary Mexican art and folk art. The Mexicans have a completely different attitude toward death than North Americans. It's an accepted part of life--not to be feared. I think the skull on the mariposa (butterfly) indicates that death is just another phase of life, like the transformation of the caterpillar into the butterfly.

I am also posting four last photos that I took before leaving Oaxaca. These are all taken in the immediate vicinity of the beautiful church of Santo Domingo, near the studio where we spent most days of our art class (sponsored by the Worcester Art Museum.) In the last photo --taken to illustrate the amazing colors that you find everywhere in Mexico--the figures are our two instructors, Mari Seder and Humberto Batista, and one of our fellow students, looking into one of the shops on the side of Santo Domingo.

My next post will be about "Life, Death and Carnival in Puebla".

Art and Graffiti in Oaxaca, Mexico

(Please click on the photos to enlarge them.)

In Oaxaca, art is everywhere, from the works of local artists like Francesco Toledo, hanging in galleries and museums, to the embroidery on the traditional trajes (costumes) worn by women in places like Tehuantepec and sold for hundreds of dollars in the shops here.

The people of Oaxaca seem to create art instinctively, even when choosing to paint their houses and doorways in startling colors with a sophistication that never ceases to amaze me. A mask hanging on a wall near the door to a latrine, or signs glued to a wall, constantly make me stop and stare. An orange doorway becomes abstract art worthy of Mondrian. The sign about the ¨Ninos¨advertises that the store is a place to dress your Child of God. These Christ Child dolls which sit on the family altar, evidently need to get a new set of clothes and to be blessed in the church before Lent begins (last Tuesday) which is why I have seen so many people carrying their Christ Child dolls lately.

I’m presently in Oaxaca taking an art class sponsored by the Worcester Art Museum and led by photographer Mari Seder and artist Humberto Batista. They are teaching us the art of collage. Above is a photo of the first one I tried in its UNFINISHED state. I incorporated photos I took of Mexican church statues and photos taken by daughter Eleni Gage and myself of women encountered in various parts of Mexico. Most of them were selling their traditional art — embroidery, bracelets, necklaces, weaving. We always asked their permission before taking their portraits. I’m calling this collage “Our Lady of the Sorrows” because these women all seem sad or reflective.

I’m also posting some photos of the graffiti that you see everywhere in Oaxaca. The people who own these buildings consider the graffiti destructive and a terrific nuisance, but I can’t help thinking it’s another kind of striking Oaxacan art. One row of the photos above shows graffiti art taken indoors to decorate a small restaurant called Nuevo Babel. (Whoops--I just realized I didn´t download that series of photos to this Mexican computer--will use it in a posting tomorrow.) I’m sure much of the street art is politically motivated, inspired by the riots here four years ago and government corruption and oppression, but as an outsider, I enjoy it as art without understanding the underlying political message, if there is one.

Last night, Friday, we were privileged to see more local art in the costumes and traditional dances of the seven different regions of the state of Oaxaca, presented at the beautiful Camino Real Hotel in a buffet and dance spectacle held in the former convent’s chapel. The men are wearing costumes of the Dance of the Feather, which symbolizes the Mixtec-Zapotec fight against the Spaniards. The women in the black embroidered costumes come from the Isthmus, where women rule in a matriarchal society. Their dance celebrates the gathering of turtle eggs (with erotic undercurrents.) Each of the seven regions of the state of Oaxaca have their own embroidered costume and dance. In two of the regions, the women dance slowly, looking grimly down at the floor. But not the women of the Isthmus!

It’s going to be hard to leave the colors, flowers and art found everywhere in Oaxaca to go back to the snow of Massachusetts.

Mardi Gras with Devils in Oaxaca, Mexico

I’ve been in Oaxaca for three days now and have had lots of adventures while on an art course from the Worcester Art Museum led by my friend photographer Mari Seder. Today I want to tell you how we celebrated Fat Tuesday in the village of San Martin Tilcajete about a 45-minute drive from Oaxaca. It’s all about devils and gossip and cross-dressing and music and a faux wedding where the bride, groom and attendants are all male.

The bride is prepared by her attendants amid much loud band music, shooting of fireworks and drinking of Corona beer. The nuptial donkey is also decorated. Eventually the band and assorted devils lead the wedding parade to the house of the mayor.

All over town young men have painted their faces, covered their bodies in dark grease (I think from cars) and, wearing skirts of noisy cowbells and brandishing sticks and machetes, they run about trying to terrify people while bystanders hand them cold beers.

When the bridal procession reaches the mayor’s house, there is a false wedding ceremony where a “priest” does the honors and then, in rhyming couplets, tells over a loudspeaker the scandalous gossip about everyone on hand. I couldn’t understand a word of it, but the villagers, from small children to old crones, were doubled over with laughter.

When he concludes, favors like rubber balls are tossed at the crowd and the bride stands on a chair under a tent while ribald comments are made and grotesque monsters dance around her. The devils and monsters terrify the children, make obscene gestures to the adults and generally have a good time dancing.

I wish I could have been able to understand the Spanish, but the bizarre celebration didn’t need an interpreter. It seems that every nationality needs to go a little crazy and misbehave once a year and often it is on the day before the strictures of Lent begin. We have cousins in Corfu Greece who e-mailed that they are off to hear the gossip of their town announced in a Carnival celebration. I don’t know if there was a faux wedding involved (although such silliness goes back to pre-Christina times in many cultures) but I doubt that any other town, including Corfu and New Orleans and Rio, has more fun than San Martin Tilcajete on Fat Tuesday.

More Oaxaca adventures soon!

My Funny Valentine & “Playing with Pictures—The Art of Photo Collage”

When I go into my favorite store—Target-- I always look at what’s in the $1.00 section. Recently it was all about Valentine’s Day and I gravitated straight to these ugly velvet roses that cost a dollar each. “These are so bad they’re good!” I said, snagging three of them. Daughter Eleni feared I would put them in her (unoccupied) room but I promised I wouldn’t. Now they’re in one of the upstairs bathrooms.

I do like things that are whimsical—And today, as I drove into Manhattan on my way to tomorrow’s flight to Mexico, I made a bee-line to an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art called “Playing with Pictures—The Art of Victorian Photocollage.”

Since I am an avid collector of antique photos and I love anything whimsical, I knew this show was for me for many reasons.

The exhibit, which I highly recommend,(Google it!) focuses on albums made by aristocratic English women back in the 1860’s and 1870’s by cutting out photographs of people they knew (often titled and royal) and gluing them into fantasy scenes which the women painted or drew. It’s a trip. Check out 2 examples above.

The exhibit was charming and highlighted something that I have noticed for many years—women in Victorian times poured their creativity into creating friendship books, scrap albums , folk paintings and things like these exquisite and humorous album pages—just to amuse themselves and their friends. I bought the catalogue and may write about it in future. You could see in the photo collages the fantasy influence of books like Louis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland.”

But since I’m off to Mexico in the morning and will be participating in all sorts of crazy Carnival activities in Oaxaca (which I will report, including a crazy faux wedding ceremony and lots of devils and transvestites) I will only say a few things about Victorians and photographs.

In 1839, when the first photographic process was announced by Louis Daguerre, having your portrait taken “by the sun” was a serious business. For twenty years, through the daguerreotypes and the ambrotypes that followed, you had to go to a photographer’s studio—usually lighted by a skylight (because sunlight was required) and you had to sit very still—possibly with a head brace. Children were strapped into chairs to keep them still. Sometimes moms were seated in the chair, covered with a sheet and then they clutched the toddler to keep him still long enough for the photo. If someone died, the photographer would come to the house to make the only photograph his loved ones would have to remember him or her.

Many people gazed at the camera in total terror—having no idea if the photographic process would hurt or not. (And many daguerreotypyists became ill from the chemicals needed to develop the polished metal plates into photographs.)

But in the 1850’s and 1860’s—in time for the American Civil War—they invented metal tintypes, which a solider could carry in his pocket or send home in an envelope, and cardboard cartes de visite, --the size of a calling card--which could be made in multiples for a very low price.

This created a mania for collecting photographs of freaks and famous people, and putting them into albums, and exchanging photos among friends. And many women —especially the aristocratic English women who were encouraged to develop talents like painting, decorating china and playing the piano, as well as croquet and fox hunting—turned their creative drive into making albums of amusing and fantastic pages on to which they glued cut-out images of their titled friends.

The exhibit at the Met makes a big point about how this was done by aristocratic English women, but I know from collecting Victorian photo albums that ordinary women and men in the U. S. as well, turned their photographic experiences into humorous portraits. Before the carte de visite and the tintype, it was an extremely serious business sitting for the photographer. But many funny Victorian photos exist as tintypes or cartes de visite, such as cross-dressing ones like the gentleman above wearing a woman’s hat. Cross dressing and funny poses are frequently found in tintypes and cartes de visite (and if you want to sell me any, let me know.)

I have collected Victorian scrapbooks, photo albums, friendship books and tintypes which display lots of humor and creativity. I want to write more about them later, as I think they are an art form that has been ignored up till now but deserves to be recognized. But for now I’ll just show you the tintype above of a man in a woman’s hat and also the collage a young woman made of her own portrait surrounded by cigar labels. It is a kind of collage that lines a bowl and that sells for big bucks today.

More later. Now I’m off to Oaxaca, Mexico and some crazy happenings to mark carnival!

Oscar, the Cat Angel of Death & Our Cat,“PS”

I’m sure by now you’ve heard about Oscar the cat who lives in a nursing home in Providence R.I. and has accurately predicted 50 times when a patient was about to die.

In 2007 Dr. David Dosa wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine about Oscar’s uncanny ability to sit with dying patients right before their death. Oscar is not particularly friendly and will not sit on beds of patients who are not about to meet the Grim Reaper.

Now Dr. Dosa is publishing a book about Oscar and how the cat, over five years, has correctly predicted which patients are within hours of death—in 50 cases—often trumping the opinions of the nursing staff. The book is called “Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat.”

The whole staff now knows to call family members in when Oscar stretches out beside one of their patients, (who are generally too ill to know he’s there.) If someone closes the cat out of a room of a dying patient, Oscar will scratch at the door trying to get in.

Dr. Dosa was worried that families would be horrified to see the furry angel of death lying on their loved one’s bed, but for most, Oscar provides comfort, and he recently received a wall plaque commending his “compassionate hospice care.”

What is the secret of his powers? How does he know? Everyone has a theory. Some devout Christians believe that Oscar is an angel in disguise, since angels can take many forms. On the other hand, Dr. Nicholas Dodman, who directs the animal behavioral clinic at the Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, says it’s possible his behavior could be driven by self-centered pleasures, like a heated blanket placed on a dying person.

Dr. Dosa theorizes that Oscar may smell odors given off by dying cells, like some dogs who seem to be able to detect cancer with their noses. I think this is the most likely explanation.

Reading about Oscar reminded me of an incident that occurred about seven years ago with our dear departed cat “P.S.” (That’s a photo of P.S. near some flowers in the photo above. Oscar’s the one with the wings and halo.)

I was in New York City with my husband when I came down with a 104-degree temperature, chills, aches. I felt miserable, and when we got home, I walked in the kitchen door and straight up the stairs to crash on the bed, feeling too sick for anything else.

Our cat P.S. had been well trained never to enter our bedroom (because my husband really dislikes cats, most especially if they jump on the bed.) But this time she followed me right up the stairs and into the room and onto the bed, clearly concerned and wanting to help me. I hadn’t even come near her, but she must have smelled or sensed that I was really sick when I walked in.

When we put her out and closed the bedroom door, she scratched at it. This never happened before or since in the 18 years of her life. (PS is now planted in the garden under a small statue of a black cat and an azalea bush.)

Luckily, I did not pass away back in 2003. Antibiotics got me well, but I never figured out how the cat knew I was so sick that she’d defy everyone to try to come to me.

On May 7, 2008, in a special euthanasia room decorated with a memorial wall of pet photos, after long painful months of kidney failure and daily re-hydration, P.S. was put to sleep (with incredible tact and compassion) by the veterinary staff. I’m glad I could be with her as she took her last breath. I know she would have done the same for me.

SARAH PALIN, MY GLASSES AND THE FULL MOON

I’m not a fan of Sarah Palin’s political views, but I really like her rimless eye glasses. I admit I do love hearing her talk, with her colorful similes and folksy homilies in that accent that is identical to the one I had when I left Minnesota at 18.

Fifty years after that, last month, my eye doctor gave me a new prescription for my driving glasses—saying I had the beginning of cataracts and I need prisms in the lens and some sort of special film on them to improve my increasingly fearful night-driving vision.

I took the prescription to the optician and said, with some embarrassment, that I wanted glasses like Sarah Palin’s. He didn’t blink. He told me that Sarah had provided a terrific boon for Kawasaki (“Like the motorcycles”), the Japanese company that produces her high-style eyewear.

Sarah has square lenses, I chose ones that were more of a trapezoid. When the optician added the cost of the prisms, lenses and special film to the $250 skeleton of the glasses, the bill came to $465. Ouch!

But I loved my new glasses, which made everything pop into 3-D. At night I could see the road without being dazzled by oncoming cars. I even made a quick sketch of the glasses (above) in my drawing class last Monday when the teacher, Andy Fish, said to draw some small object in detail in our daily sketchbook.

Then, on Thursday night, I went to another class at the Worcester Art Museum and had to park a block away because of the crowd. The temperature hovered around zero and the wind was gusting over 50 MPH.

At 9:30 p.m. I left class, carrying my computer case and lots of other gear, and when I reached my car, I realized I no longer had the new glasses. There ensued an hour of fruitless searching in the snow while I suffered the first stages of frostbite. By now the parking lot was deserted. I couldn’t ignore the nearly full moon overheard —the Wolf Moon-- which is the brightest and biggest of the year. But it did not light my way to find the glasses. I drove home with one eye closed, trying to see the white line on the side of the road.

The next morning I decided to drive back to the Museum before anyone came. I arrived at 8:45 to see, with a sinking heart, that the parking lot had been freshly plowed and sanded.

There the glasses were, ground into the sand and snow; they had been run over. One bow (correctly called a "temple") on the side was entirely missing, and the skeleton was bent out of shape. Unbelievably, the super-strong Polycarbonate plastic lenses themselves were not broken—just badly scratched.

I headed straight for the optician, who shook his head and told me that the lenses could not be saved, the missing temple would cost $75 but the rest of the skeleton could be restored — so the new pair of glasses he ordered for me would cost $280 instead of $460. By then, this seemed to me to be a happy ending to the saga. Sort of.

For the past few days, at the end of the first month of 2010, there has been an epidemic of people losing things. My friend Cookie lost her checkbook and it finally surfaced at Trader Joe’s. (I had to pick it up.) My friend Chris in Florida lost her wallet with a lot of money and all her credit cards. Daughter Marina in Los Angeles, on the same night I lost the glasses, was given her boss’s expensive camera to take to an important event and lost it. Not until the next day, after a sleepless night, did she manage to reach so far into the rented van’s middle console that she could feel where it had slipped.

I spent most of last week trying to find the four high-school yearbooks that Marina had packaged in a box at Christmas, asking me to mail them to her in LA by Media Mail. (Big mistake. You can’t track Media Mail.)

After weeks of stalking the USPS by car, fax, internet search and phone, I got a letter from “Loose in the Mails” at the Los Angeles Network Distribution Center, saying that the box had arrived empty. When things become separated from the parcel they’re in, they’re sent to the Mail Recovery Center in Atlanta.

I spent Thursday and Friday filling in forms, taking photos of similar yearbooks, and writing detailed descriptions in hopes that the AWOL high-school yearbooks will find their way back to my daughter, who is heartbroken at the loss. But I feel optimistic that the yearbooks (which all have the title “Blue Moon” on the cover) will be found, as my Sarah Palin glasses were, although perhaps in an altered state.

I’m blaming the Wolf Moon of Friday and Saturday for this epidemic of lost objects. Full moons really do affect things—if you don’t believe me, just ask a doctor or nurse who works in an emergency room.

The Native Americans called this brightest of the full moons the “Wolf Moon” because, in the bitter cold of January, they could hear the wolves howling forlornly as they crept closer to the warmth of the tribal fires.

Maybe they should have called it the “Lost and Found” moon.

Historic Photo of My New England Village

New England is dotted with picturesque villages, each with its own Common or Village Green surrounded by white church spires, an ornate town hall and imposing Colonial and Victorian mansions. Every Yankee will argue that his own village is the prettiest and most historic.

I want to nominate MY village of Grafton MA , which is celebrating its 275th anniversary in 2010, and to share with you what may be one of the earliest photographs taken of the Grafton Common.

But first some of Grafton’s history:

*Grafton, incorporated in 1735, was originally called “Hassanamesit”, a Native American word meaning “place of small stones.”

*Four acres were set aside as common land in 1728. The present town Common is so typical of New England that MGM filmed parts of Eugene O’Neill’s Ah Wilderness there in 1935. MGM built the bandstand on the spot where Grafton’s first meeting house stood. It has become the town’s trademark. The Common holds a big Independence Day concert annually and the Bandstand is the site for prom and wedding photos and festivals year ‘round.

*In the 1800’s Grafton became a national leader in leather tanning and currying and in boot and shoe production, specializing in work boots for slave use in the South. By 1866 there were 10 boot-making shops, two tanneries and several other leather goods establishments around the Common.

*In 1806 Jonathan Wheeler built the Wheeler block, which still houses the Grafton Country Store and other businesses.

*The Congregational Church at the west side of the common has steeple and gallery clocks made by the Willard family, the famed Grafton clock makers. Their original house and clock factory is now a museum, a few miles north of the Common.

*Shoe manufacturer Samuel Wood built the Grafton Inn, the oldest structure on the Common, in 1805 at the intersection of key stagecoach routes from Boston to Hartford and from Providence to Worcester.

Last week the Grafton News, our small weekly newspaper, stated: “As part of this yearlong celebration, the Grafton News is compiling a virtual scrapbook of the town’s history at www.grafton275.org….If you have a historic tidbits or photos that you would like to share, please email them to us.”

Just last year I acquired a wonderful cased image-- an ambrotype of the Grafton Inn, which has functioned as an inn on the Common for its entire 205 years. It’s one of the favorite images in my collection of antique photos. So I scanned it (above) and e-mailed it to the editor with the following letter.

Dear Grafton News,

I am attaching two views of what probably may be the earliest photograph of Grafton you receive.

It’s an ambrotype of the Grafton Inn. Ambrotypes were introduced in 1854 and were popular until 1861. An ambrotype is a negative image produced on a glass plate which becomes positive with the addition of black backing.

(The first kind of photograph, introduced in 1839, is a daguerreotype –an image produced on a silver-coated copper plate. Both daguerreotypes and ambrotypes must be protected by a piece of glass and then a brass mat and then they are kept in a case which opens like a book.)

This is a 1/6 plate ambrotype, which means it is about 2.5 by 3 inches in size. It has black paint behind the image and the paint is damaged. I am attaching one view of the image with the protective mat and one in which I took away the mat so you can see more of the scene. Clearly the image needs cleaning and restoration but I am not expert enough to do this.

This image of the Inn could date from anytime between 1854 and 1861. If you look carefully you can see the figure of a little boy holding the horse and carriage (while the owner of the carriage, inside, is probably taking some refreshment.) There is also a figure in white clothing in the side door, watching the boy. I think it may be a woman with a white apron.

The editor of the Grafton News, Don Clark, wrote back the same day that he intends to publish it both in the newspaper and on the website. So I thought I’d give a sneak preview to the readers of ”ARollingCrone”.

The color photo above is one I took a few years ago, showing the Inn and the Bandstand as they look today.

My Favorite Painting by an Unknown Artist

I fell in love with this oil painting the minute I saw it hanging on the wall of a couple of friends in Cambridge. This (above) is a snapshot I took with my camera, that I keep pinned to the wall near my computer. The flash washed it out a little, but you can see it pretty well.

My friend Caroline found this painting some years ago hanging in a crowded antique shop in Vermont. She asked about it and managed to buy it for a reasonable sum. (She didn’t say how much.)

Turns out this is not really the work of an unknown artist—the painting is named “Last Respects” and dated 1984 and is signed by Eugene A. Fern, who was, according to his obituary, “a writer and illustrator of children’s books.” But as far as I can tell, he’s not a listed artist nor did he ever acquire fame or fortune from his paintings. He is best known for his children’s book “Pepito’s Way.”

Here’s his New York Times obituary in its entirety, dated Sept. 11, 1987.

“Eugene A. Fern, a writer and illustrator of children’s books, died Sunday, apparently of a heart attack, at his home in East Hardwick, Vt. He was 67 years old.

“A professor of art at New York City Community College, now New York City Technical College, for 29 years, Mr. Fern retired to Vermont in 1975.

“Over many years, he wrote and illustrated a number of children’s books, including “Pepito’s Story,” “What’s He Been Up To Now?” and “The King Who Was Too Busy.”

He is survived by his wife, Claire; a son, Arnold, of Manhattan; a daughter, Marcia Boston of Cambridge, Mass., and a granddaughter.”

As I said, I fell in love with the painting at first sight and I didn’t need to know anything about the artist, because it was all there on the canvas. In my mind this was clearly a painted autobiography of a man who had been a fair-haired little boy, a dark-haired teen, a soldier, a groom in a tuxedo, who grew a beard and lost his hair in his later years.

The ghosts of his former selves, transparent and each wearing a golden halo, are clustered around an open coffin that allows us a small glimpse of a white-bearded corpse of a man—the only full-color flesh-and-blood person in the painting of eight individuals.

But the ghosts of the old man’s departed selves are not looking at the corpse; they’re looking at us, the viewer. Perhaps their intense regard is meant to tell us what often was written on tombstones: “As I am now so will you be.”

I find this painting moving and brilliantly composed and painted.

I know that this will cause truly hip and knowledgeable art experts to curl their lip in scorn, because I am aware that realistic and figurative art is not “in” at the moment. Reading reviews of a recent Venice Biennale, I got the feeling that there was not a single painting in it, abstract or not. From what I read, everything seemed to be a video tape or a light show or an assemblage or an installation or a pile of found objects on the floor.

But I’m pretty old-fashioned, and when I went back to painting at the age of 60, I started with flowers and landscapes and stuff, painting en plein air in the hot sun of Greece, but pretty soon I discovered that a painting that has no human figure or face in it tends to bore me. So now I concentrate pretty much on genre, portraits, and figure drawing. All very out of style, but I keep watching and hoping for a return to representational art.

I like to share from time to time my favorite paintings by other artists and I particularly wanted to share this one, because I feel it must have been Fern’s masterpiece and his memoir. He painted it in 1984 when he was sixty-four and he died three years later. He died young, but he evidently saw his death coming and it inspired him to painting this “Last Respects” as a summary of his life and a warning to us.

More Detail on Haitian Survivor Mireille Dittmer

Today's local Florida paper, the SunSentinel, Jan. 19, has a photograph of Mireille Dittmer, whom I wrote about yesterday. She's now in Boca Raton Community Hospital after being trapped in the wreckage of a supermarket in Haiti for more than five days. Luckily, she has no serious injuries beyond bruises. "It's amazing she didn't sustain serious injuries," said her doctor.

Mireille told a reporter that she had no sense of day and night in the wreckage. Steel bars formed a cocoon around her and she was in a kneeling position for 108 hours. Doctors said a person can survive six to eight days without water. She was trapped more than five days, although she guessed that it was eight or more.

Mireille said that the only thing that gave her hope was her Catholic faith,. During the days of darkness she spoke and prayed with five other trapped people, although she never saw their faces. She remembered a family--a man, woman and child. "We just kept singing hymns in French," she said.

When she heard rescuers on the fifth day she called out "Help. I'm thirsty." A firefighter from Fort Lauderdaler, Lt. Jeremy Rifflard, taped a bottle of water to the end of a stick and passed it to her. Ultimately she discovered he was her neighbor in South Florida.

Mireille told the reporter --concerning the family trapped in the rubble with her--she knew that the woman did not survive but thinks the man and child were saved after she was.

It's terrible to think of those who will be dying now after so many days without water, but every rescue like Mireille's is a solace and proof that miracles do happen.

One Miracle in Haiti

Yesterday (Sunday) I learned from my friend Patricia Butler who lives in Puerto Rico but grew up in Haiti, that her niece, Mireille Dittmer, had been found alive in the ruins of a Haitian Supermarket. She had been trapped in a kneeling position between two walls for five and a half days. She was dazed and had some injuries to her legs but seemed otherwise okay after that incredible ordeal. If you type her name into a news search you can see a video of her sons in South Florida talking about their mother's miraculous escape. As the news from Haiti grows increasingly grim, it's inspiring to hear about the occasional miracle like this one.

The local papers here in Florida list all the places you can wire money and help and warn to beware of scammers and use only organizations you've dealt with in the past. I'm going to use projecthope.org.

Here's the news story about the rescue of Mireille:

For five days and 12 hours, Michael and Ricky Dittmer had been waiting for word from their mother in Haiti.

"Just five days and 12 hours. I couldn't sleep. We couldn't eat. It was a horrific experience. Definitely, the worst five days of my life," Ricky Dittmer told CBS4's David Sutta.

The family in Haiti found her car parked in front of the Caribbean Supermarket – all five floors collapsed in the earthquake and there were reports that indicated that more than 60 people were inside. There were no doubts their mother -- Mireille Dittmer -- was one of them.

"It just horrified me to think about it," Ricky Dittmer said.

Sunday morning, however, brought news reports that brought hope. On CNN, they saw a picture of her dazed, but alive.

"After all this time to be in there and still be alive and well is a miracle, definitely," Dittmer said.

Mireille's miracle gets even more incredible. The rescuer drilling his way through concrete walls and floors was a firefighter from Pembroke Pines and her neighbor.

"I heard she's on her way," said Michael Dittmer.

South Florida firefighters put Mireille on a flight home Sunday afternoon. Her son immediately turning to Facebook, the social networking site, to express his joy.

"I'm just going to tell her how much I love her. How much I've missed her. I can't wait to see her. I really can't wait," Michael Dittmer said. "Just keep the hope. Don't give up. To the firefighters don't give up either."

Ricky Dittmer said he hopes his story will give hope to other families in waiting.

"I just want this to be an inspiration to those who are waiting, those who have friends and family who they haven't heard from because it can happen," Dittmer said. "Miracles do happen and they are working around the clock. They are doing the best they can."

Haiti & Florida – Trying to Connect in a Disaster

E. M. Forster -- "Only Connect"


”Comatose iguanas tumbled off trees. Countless native and exotic fish floated to the surface of ponds and estuaries. Manatees huddled at power plant outfalls. Sea turtles, seized by the cold, bobbed like beach balls. Even the elusive pythons, the tree-trunk-wide snakes that infest the Everglades, have slithered out of hiding to soak up the sun.”

This was the lead to an article in “The Palm Beach Post” today --Thursday, Jan,. 14—with the title “Exotic, Native Species Clobbered by Cold.”.

All of the front page of the paper was taken up with the disastrous earthquake in Haiti and the desperate attempts of Haitians living in Florida to get news of their loved ones. Seven of a group of 14 local students from Lynn University on a goodwill mission to Haiti have been accounted for but the other five students plus two professors are still missing. They were staying in the Hotel Montana outside Port-au-Prince, which collapsed with 300 people inside. Imagine what their parents and loved ones are going though as they try to obtain news from the disaster area.

God seems to be beginning 2010 with the kind of natural disasters that remind us how tenuous is existence and how randomly disaster can end lives. We can also stop to reflect on how spoiled we have become in this age of instant communication—always connected through texting, e-mail, cell phone, computer news.

On Sept. 11, 2001, on a boat near Santorini, Greece, we learned that a plane had hit the World Trade Center before the second plane hit. But all the parents on that boat who had children living in New York City spent the next three days trying to get through somehow by phone to learn their loved ones’ fate.

Just a few years before that, we didn’t have cell phones that could tell us how our children were when they were, for example, traveling through Europe on a EurRail Pass. I always ponder the plight of the parents of the immigrants who came to our country in the 19th century—including our Swedish, Norwegian, and Greek ancestors. Imagine the mothers saying good-bye and god-speed to their sons and daughters, knowing that they would probably never hear their child’s voice again.

Here in Florida, where we are visiting friends, the desperate attempts to learn news of the Haitian disaster seem particularly heartbreaking. Evidently phone and all other methods of sending news are down, and the only ones that work are Twitter and Facebook. Young computer experts are setting up social networking sites on Facebook to share news of who survived and who died. I don’t understand why Twitter still works in Haiti when phones and e-mail don’t, but perhaps one thing that will emerge from this tragedy is a lesson to us in how to communicate with each other in the 21st century when disaster strikes.

We all remember how, in September of 2001, cell phones became useless because of too much traffic (while cell phones and voice mail were used by the victims trapped within the buildings as the only way to say goodbye.)

While my kids constantly text each other and are grimly trying to teach me to do the same, I can barely manage to send a text and cannot seem to transfer my swift typing skills from the computer keyboard to my Blackberry with its itsy bitsy keys. But one of my resolutions had better be to perfect this skill before disaster renders my phone and e-mail lines useless.
* * * * * *

I apologize for letting my blog, A Rolling Crone, disappear from the blogosphere for the last few weeks. The pressure of the holidays—decorating, cooking, Christmas Cards, gift buying and wrapping, driving people here and there—coupled with the death of a member of our extended family-- have played havoc with our usual holiday routine and my plans to blog more frequently were the first to go. I have been scolded by my revered computer teacher, Andy Fish, and, considering that I will be returning to his classes in about a week, I will add to my list of resolutions for 2010 the following: I resolve to blog more frequently—ideally daily, ( but I don’t think I’ll ever make it)—And I further resolve to make my blogs a forum for the interests and concerns of women over sixty who are, like me, Rolling Crones. If you have any suggestions as to how I could best do this, please e-mail me at joanpgage@yahoo.com.

Is Cooking an Art or Obsolete?

The other day at an auction of Ephemera, I bought, for $10, a batch of vintage cookbooks which included such rarities as “The ‘Silent Hostess’ Treasure Book” (1930), the “Metropolitan Cook Book” (1922), “Dishes Men Like” (1952) the “Southern Cook Book” (1939), “A Book of Good Eating” from “the Woman’s (sic) Auxiliary of the New England Baptist Hospital” (1971), “New Brunswick Recipes” (1958), “Saint Paul’s Parish Album of Good Eating”…you get the idea.

I’m not a foodie or a gourmet cook who can read a cookbook like a novel searching for new culinary tricks. In fact my bible after I got married in 1970 was the “I Hate to Cook Book” by Peg Bracken—as far as you can get from Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.”

But I did get quite a few chuckles perusing these vintage cookbooks and reading the culinary wisdom so earnestly laid out in them.It was like time-traveling into the past.

Turns out the “Silent Hostess Treasure Book” was produced by the General Electric Company in 1930 to introduce homemakers to that new invention, the Electric Refrigerator:

“First came the electric iron—the steps it saved from the stove to the ironing board and back again amounted to several miles a year. Next, the washing machine, to save backs from aching and knuckles from cracking—and again a saving of time. And then the vacuum cleaner—what a relief from the tiresome and dirty task of sweeping! Each new electric appliance contributes its share to the lightening of household tasks.

“And now the electric refrigerator. Not only can it save the housewife time and energy, but it can actually work for her. With a little planning on her part it can take an active part in the preparation and serving of her meals.”

The book then explains how foods should be placed according to the various temperatures of the various shelves (check out the photo above) and tells the housewife “You can save yourself many trips to market. You can prepare meals in advance.

“For the homemaker without a maid, one of the most informal and enjoyable occasions is to entertain at Sunday night supper (see Page 7) or the late supper ‘snack’ served after the movies or theatre (see menus, pages 28 and 29.)”

Here’s one of the suggested Sunday Night suppers: Russian Canapes, Stuffed Tomatoes in Aspic, Celery Hearts, Cheese Biscuit, Caramel Ice Cream and Tea.

Most of the menus and dishes suggested in this book would not go over very well with men (or women) today, because there is so much reliance on things in aspic and tiny sandwiches filled with pastes like: peanut butter and chopped dates, mixed with mayonnaise. There are also a lot of “surprise” dishes like a multi-layered “Surprise Sandwich Loaf” filled with chopped raw cabbage, pimiento, chopped, cheese relish and “1/2 lb. Yellow or snappy cheese”

The last part of the book, which details how to defrost the refrigerator, describes refrigerator accessories like white enamel containers, glass refrigerator dishes and rubber trays. I suddenly realized: they hadn’t invented plastic yet! I also realized that I probably haven’t defrosted a refrigerator in 30 years.

So what are the Dishes Men Like? That small cookbook, published in 1952, was produced by Lea & Perrins, Inc. makers of “The Original and Genuine Worcestershire Sauce” and it seems that nearly every dish preferred by men requires Worcestershire Sauce.

Evidently Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce is essential in the cocktail hour for dips and cheese spreads and “Mystery Cheese Ball Spread” (probably related to those “Surprise” dishes from General Electric.) It’s even essential in a pick-me-up on “the morning after” to cure your hangover and “immediately set you right for a good day’s work.” Here are two suggestions: “Add 2 teaspoons Lea & Perrins to a raw egg, stir and swallow. Or Add 2 teaspoons Lea & Perrins to an 8-ounce glass of tomato or sauerkraut juice and drink contents as quickly as possible.”

Both those recipes, which sound like something right off my beloved “Mad Men”, would drive me to drink.

The rest of the book demonstrates that Lea & Perrins is the magic ingredient in “Easy Beef Pie with Cheese’, various fondues and meat and chicken dishes, Oven Welsh Rabbit (Rarebit) with Beer and Rink Tum Diddy Rabbit (Rarebit). That last one is NOT the name of a Rap singer.

The “Metropolitan Cook Book” published by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in 1922, intends to inform the housewife how to provide healthy, nutritious and economical meals for her family. It warns her that meat “should be removed from the paper as soon as it is received from market and should be kept in a cool place. Always wipe meat with a damp cloth.” (No GE refrigerator back in 1922!)

My favorite recipe in the book is “How to make toast: Cut stale bread into 1/4 inch slices, put slices in a wire toaster, lock toaster and hold over or under the heat, holding it some distance from the fire that it may dry gradually, and then brown as desired.“ The toaster oven was clearly far in the future, much less Pop Tarts and Eggo Waffles.

My favorite cookbook in the batch is “The Southern Cook Book –322 Old Dixie Recipes” (1939). As my daughter pointed out, it’s hopelessly racist with drawings of “darkies” --cooking and napping and eating watermelon, the illustrations embellished with jokes, songs and quotations in stereotypical southern black dialect.

Here’s the quotation that starts the book: “’Case Cookin’s lak religion is—/Some’s ‘lected an’ some ain’t,/ An rules don’ no mo’ mek a cook/ Den sermons mek a saint”.

Indeed the book is racist and clichéd and demeaning to southerners, but where else would you find “Creole Soup a la Madame Begue,” “North Carolina Syllabub (A Builder-Upper)”, “Burgoo For Small Parties”, exactly how to dress and cook an Opossum, and the recipe for “Tallahassee Hush Puppies” as well as a long story about their origins.

“Good Eating” from the “Woman’s Auxiliary of the New England Baptist Hospital" had a wealth of “Food Facts and Fables” including this one: “Pretzels were born about 610 A.D. when an Italian monk took strips of leftover dough and folded over the ends to represent arms crossed in prayer. When baked, the monk gave them to children who learned their prayers. He called them ‘pretiola”…loose interpretation, “little prayers.”

Each one of the vintage cookbooks had nuggets of information and recipes that I’d like to try, as well as recipes I wouldn’t eat on a bet. After paging through all of them, I realized that today, the housewives of America (and I mean ME above all) don’t really cook.

I know several women who are brilliant cooks of the Julia Child ilk—but they treat cooking as a fine art, not a dull daily necessity…because we have so many conveniences and so many kinds of already-prepared food, that no one has to cook every day, the way our grandmothers did. (When I was little my paternal grandmother, born in Norway but reared in Minnesota, would bake bread every morning before breakfast and then call up my mother—her daughter- in-law—to ask if she’d done HER baking already. She hadn’t. My mother was as lackluster a cook as I am, and we had the same weekly series of meals. I believe Thursday was tuna-fish-noodle casserole with crumbled potato chips on top.

Tomorrow I’m serving Pork Roast Florentine filled with ricotta & feta cheeses, roasted red bell peppers and spinach, rolled up in a spiral and finished with a garlic-rosemary sauce. I got it at Trader Joe's and just have to put it in the oven for 40 minutes. Trader Joe’s also has a Tarte de Champignon and Ye Olde Yule Log and Scallops on the Half Shell and Spice Nog Cake. It’s my new favorite store. I’m just sorry Peg Bracken didn’t live to see it.

Gate Crashers at the White House

How Did the Salahis Do It?

From the very beginning, I’ve been following with fascination the story of how Michaele and Tareq Salahi managed to crash the Obamas’ first state dinner last Tuesday night for the Prime Minister of India.

I’m intrigued by how they managed this coup, because I know how thorough is the vetting of guests for White Houses State dinners —at least during the Reagan era and the Clinton era, when my husband Nick and I were privileged to attend state dinners for prime minister Brian Mulroney of Canada in March 1986 and for the President of Greece, Constantine Stephanopoulos, in May 1996. (That's us with the Reagans, above.)

The invitation, topped with a gold-eagle presidential seal, arrived more than a month before the event. Out of the envelope, addressed in calligraphy, came the invitation itself and a small card with a yellow imprint of the White House and the words ”Please present this card with identification at the East Entrance, the White House. Not transferable.”

Another card advised: ”Please respond at your earliest convenience giving date of birth and Social Security number.” This, of course, was so they could do a background check to rule out any dangerous or undesirable guests.

On the day of the Reagan event, we, in formal dress, rode in a limousine to the East Gate. (We were almost late because neither one of us could tie Nick’s bow tie—The concierge at the Madison Hotel provided a pre-tied bow tied just in time.)

A long line of limousines waited at the East Gate. As we inched forward, security men and women checked our photo identification against their lists of guests who had been cleared.

An early article on the Salahis reported that their limousine was turned away at this point (after holding up the line for a long time) and that the couple then drove to another gate where they eventually managed to convince someone to let them walk in, trailed by a cameraman and a make-up person.

I can hardly believe this is true. Surely the cameraman and the make-up person were not allowed inside the White House gates! But clearly the Salahis were—presumably thanks to some clever fast -talking on their part. I've read that they are now marketing to the press their first interview about their scam and hoping to get “well into six figures” for it.

I would NOT want to be the person who let them in. According to yesterday’s New York Post, “The red-faced agency had its internal office of professional responsibility launch a probe into how the Salahis got in. The office has been reviewing video-surveillance footage and interviewing every agent on duty at the White House state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, sources said.

“The startlingly botched security has the potential to force out Sullivan as chief of the Secret Service, said a law-enforcement source with connections to Washington.”

When Nick and I went to the Reagan and Clinton dinners, they took place in the State Dining Room. The Reagans invited only 116 guests, compared to the 400 invited to the Obama state dinner. The Obama dinner last week was held in a tent on the South Lawn. But first the guests and the Salahis had to go into the White House, be announced, and –as the front-page photos showed on Saturday —they pressed the flesh with the President in the receiving line in the Blue Room.

At the Reagan and Clinton state dinners, we had to go through several check points before actually sitting down to dinner.

A military aide welcomed us at the door of the White House. We then walked through the ground floor corridor past the portraits of former First Ladies and another aide announced each person’s name (and title) to the press corps waiting the next room behind ropes. (Back in 1986, unaccompanied women were provided with an escort-- a military officer wearing his dress uniform.) After walking past the crowd of reporters, television crews and cameras, we climbed a staircase and were greeted by social aides who gave us our table-assignment cards.

Then we walked beneath the crystal chandeliers of the great Entrance Hall while the U.S. Marine Orchestra serenaded us. We entered the East Room where we were once again announced by name and title. There we drank and chatted until the President and First Lady and the guests of honor arrived and formed a reception line.

Social aides herded us in their direction, husbands first. The ambassador in charge of protocol stood at the head of the line, whispering each person’s name into the President’s ear. At the moment you are greeted by the president, a White House photographer takes your photograph, which is mailed to you sometime after the event —with the President’s good wishes scrawled on it. The White House photograph of the Salahis being greeted by Obama was quietly released to the press on Saturday, along with a statement from the director of the Secret Service, Mark Sullivan, saying that his agency was “deeply concerned and embarrassed” by the events.

In the photo Michaele, wearing a long red and gold sari, clutches Obama’s hand in both of hers while her husband beams.

At the Reagan and Clinton dinners, after passing through the reception line, the crowd filed into the State Dining Room, where round tables awaited with gold candlesticks, gold vermeil flatware and vermeil bowls filled with flowers. At the Obama dinner, the guests were directed out to tables under the tent on the South Lawn.

At this point, the Salahis reportedly slipped away. They knew there were no place cards with their names on the tables. (How they managed to get out without making themselves conspicuous is a good question.)

(The dinner which the Salahis did not taste was vegetarian except for an optional shrimp dish, because the Indian Prime Minister is a Sikh – meaning he doesn’t eat meat or drink alcohol. Was alcohol served at all at this state dinner? And how was that arranged without upsetting the observant Hindus and Muslims there?)

At the state dinners we attended, after toasts by the president and guest of honor, everyone moved to the another room for demitasse and after-dinner liqueurs, and then to the East Room where musical entertainment takes place. Then there was dancing, led off by the President and First Lady.

Eventually we’ll learn how the Salahis pulled off this trick that left the Secret Service in shambles and embarrassed the Obamas and their staff at their first State Dinner. Ronald Kessler, author of “In the President’s Secret Service” said that threats against the president have increased 400 per cent since he took office.

Luckily for everyone but the Secret Service, the Salahis did not intend to harm the president —they just wanted to get Mrs. Salahi on “The Real Housewives of Washington D.C.” And I’ll bet she does get on that show… if she manages to stay out of jail.

But for now I suggest that the lesson we’ve learned is that a good-looking blonde in a gorgeous red dress (or sari) can talk her way in just about anywhere.