Somebody’s Playing My Trump Card

Two weeks ago, when I was invited to Mar-a-Lago, the former Trump home, now a super-expensive private club, I couldn’t resist photographing the portrait above of Donald Trump—a dramatically glamorized vision of The Donald that gives us a glimpse of how he sees himself.

The next day, April 4, I included the photo of the Trump oil painting in a blog post  I wrote called “Lunch at Mar-a-Lago with The Donald.”

Then I forgot about the whole thing until this Saturday, as the April moon turned full, and I learned that my photo of the self-glorifying Trump portrait had become the kitsch seen ‘round the world.

On April 13, Andrew Sullivan, the king of political bloggers, posted my photo of the painting under the title  “A Power-Mad Egomaniac Ctd.” On his “Daily Dish” on TheDailyBeast.com ‘s site.

But Sullivan, who reportedly gets 300,000 or more visitors to his blog in a month, wrote that he had received the photo from a nameless reader who commented:

Many years ago, I attended a social event at Donald Trump's Mad King Ludwig digs, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach. (Trump rents it out to anyone with enough cash.) Donald wasn't there (I think this was during the Ivana divorce, so he was a bit distracted). But he was there in ... oils. Right off the main bar, there's a huge portrait of Trump. Thought you'd get a kick out of seeing how he sees himself.  I swear I am not making this up.

This anonymous reader was stealing my photograph—and even my reference to Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, and claiming it as his own photo taken “many years ago”!

While media throughout the universe picked up Sullivan’s post, I still was blissfully unaware until, on Saturday night, I received an e-mail from another  well-known political blogger,  Michael Shaw, who had somehow traced  the photograph to my blog “A Rolling Crone.”  As he pointed out, even the reflection of my flash in the photograph was identical to the “many years ago” photo from Andrew Sullivan’s reader.

And Michael Shaw wrote a post revealing my authorship titled “Donald Framed” on his blog BagNewsNotes.  Here it is: http://www.bagnewsnotes.com/2011/04/donald-framed/

In the post Shaw, who devotes “BagNews” to visual politics and the analysis of news images, wrote :

A few days ago, Andrew Sullivan posted this photo from an unidentified reader who claimed to have snapped this at Donald Trump’s old Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago estate.  As far as I can tell, the photo was actually lifted and cropped from a blog called A Rolling Crone. The blog …is run by a retired journalist by the name of Joan Gage who offered a post on April 4, 2011, Lunch at Mar-a-Lago with The Donald, which happens to be full of wonderful pictures of the place, including said one above.  (I have written to Joan, by the way, to see if she minds my using the photo since it’s now everywhere.) In the meantime, It’s quite a rendition of the man (quite in the sense of kitsch) as he hypes a potential GOP candidacy for the crass purpose of resuscitating his crass TV show.

By the way, I don’t think the corner is unfinished ala Washington’s portrait.  I think it’s just the flash. The effect, though, doesn’t go badly with that sky and the sense of heavenly power, potential storm and rays from a deity.

I was surprised and impressed that Michael Shaw had tracked me down as the originator of the photograph and published the fact.  My humble blog, which is “about travel, art, photography and life after sixty,” is tiny compared to the blogs of Andrew Sullivan and Michael Shaw.  So far I’ve never gotten any closer to politics as a subject than writing about Michelle Obama’s arms and her one-time lapse in grammar.  (I sent that blog to her office and now receive mailings from the White House  about twice a month, asking my opinion on issues.  I’m sure  a gazillion other folks get the same mailings asking for their opinions, but I’m glad she didn’t take offense at my gentle criticism.)

As my friend and teacher Andy Fish wrote me about the Trump imbroglio, “The internet is kind of like the wild west as far as copyright ownership goes.” 

I’m still feeling my way around this blog-writing thing and it doesn’t feel good to be ripped off and have one’s words or images stolen without credit, but on the other hand,  it was gratifying that Michael Shaw discovered the theft and gave me credit for the photo.  It was exciting, and for a weekend, it was fun to be rubbing elbows with those big-time political bloggers out there in the blogosphere.

(Here’s my favorite comment to the portrait-- posted by "Glen" on Shaw’s blogpost:

“Is this the portrait they display in the attic?  They got the order wrong.”)

A TEENAGED GIRL’S MEMOIR OF THE CIVIL WAR

(The Story Behind the Photograph)

The girl in this faded carte de visite (CDV)  photograph was born in 1847, so she would have been 14 when the Civil War began and 18 when it ended.  Her name was  Eliza Buffat (later married to August Jules Truan, who was a seven-year-old boy when he arrived in the U.S. with his parents from Switzerland on the same boat as Eliza’s family.) She was my mother’s maternal grandmother—my great-grandmother. 

Eliza was the child of two Swiss-French immigrants who arrived in the United States on July 4^th 1849 with their four children, including two-year-old Eliza. Five more children would be born to this family, who settled in Tennessee—a state dangerously divided in its loyalty to the North and South by the time the war broke out.

Here are her parents Pierre Francois Buffat—a miller and farmer—with his hand firmly on his Bible,  and Sylvie Tauxe Buffat. I believe these images are modern photographs of daguerreotypes.

Seventy years ago, when my mother, Martha Dobson Paulson, was pregnant with me, she typed up all the family history and memoirs she could find.  Using lots of carbon paper, she made copies for her two children as well as her eight siblings. (Keeping track of history was a lot harder before the days of computers, Xerox machines and the internet.)

Among the memoirs included in the two spiral-bound volumes was a long one by a Calvinist paternal ancestor from Tennessee who was taken at gunpoint into the Southern army after his brother left to fight for the North.  He was captured and put in prison in Chicago, where most of his companions-in-arms died. While that long memoir sounds dramatic, (although it is filled with religious meditations about how Divine Providence kept sparing him because  he read his Bible every day) I prefer the 11-page memoir written by Eliza Buffat for her grandchildren, recalling the life of a teenaged girl in Tennessee (“Northeast of Knoxville”) during those turbulent years.  Because Tuesday marked the 150^th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, I thought I would revisit my great-grandmother's memories.

“Every little incident was an exciting one for my sensitive nature,” she began. ”I had been in my young days exempt from the confinement of the school room on account of sickly infancy and youth and I had been raised to an outdoor life…When the war broke out my habits and taste were still in line with sunshine and carelessness…

“The first I remember of war talk was about the winter of ’60 to ’61. My parents had been reading the newspaper one evening and exchanging thoughts when my Mother exclaimed “Le pauvre Sud” [The poor South] in a very sympathetic voice….About Dec. of ’61…my brother Gus had gone to a neighbor and from there enlisted in the Conf. Army.  One Sunday we were coming back from Sunday School when at the head of the lane…we saw coming up the road the first body of soldiers, only one company of infantry.  The sight thrilled us with enthusiasm for many a day….How we would devour news from the front.  Our enthusiasm was like the mercury.  When good news it would go up—it was oftener up at first; but toward the end, it would be very low.  We girls were so strongly prejudiced against the Federals, we never wore dresses that had blue figures….Uncle Alfred was exempted because he was a miller till about 1863, then no one was exempted; not even ministers. All from 18 to 50 had to go.

“Some of our neighbors who were Unionists had guards to protect them from marauding bands and my father thought as he had taken the oath  [to uphold the Union? JPG] he was entitled to protection and asked for one which was granted and two soldiers were stationed at the mill…One Sunday evening one band of about 15 marauders came at our house to pillage  They wanted meat and we brought them what we could spare, but they were not satisfied and wanted to search the house.  At a sign from my father, we all took refuge in our front room and locked the door.  They came to it, ordered us to open. Uncle Alfred told them we had a protection from the Government and they were liable to be punished.  We had not gotten our guards yet, but Kinzels had, and when they began to pound on the door, my father thought of Kinzels’ guard and turning to me said, “Eliza, prends la corne et appelle.” (Take the horn and call [for help]. )

“I rushed to the attic window and blew a loud call.  We were not suspecting such a quick answer to our distress call.  These men were wicked and proved true that “the wicked will flee when no man pursue.”  They…ran to their horses and when at about 100 yards from the house fired a volley on it but hit no one.  This stratagem succeeded so well that the next time we did the same with the same success, only this time my father and I followed the retreating gang, not thinking of danger.  When halfway to the barn, the gang was at the head of Kinzels’ lane, we saw them halt and fire.  Even then I was not thinking of danger till my father called my attention to the whizzing of balls thick around us….Such was the reign of terror we lied through till near the close of the strife.”

When the dreaded Yankees in the form of General James Longstreet and his men besieged Knoxville at the end of November, the family and their farm were surrounded by troops but the soldiers did “not take a thing except to burn our fences.”  “Then Longstreet retreated to VA for nearly one week and the army passed in order; not as in a hurried retreat.” 

One evening, according to Eliza, a group of high officers including, she thought , Longstreet himself took over their house for a “consultation (to which we did not take part.)”  While the officers were in the house  “a man of mixed uniform came in and put a bold face to the situation and was closely questioned by the officers….After the army was all gone, a neighbor found on a tree, about one mile from us, what must have been the fate of a spy.”

When Longstreet retreated and Confederate soldiers moved in to the farm, according to Eliza,  “Their conduct was always marked with courteousness and appreciation.”  The children of the family played games, pulled tricks and chatted daily with their favorites among the officers and soldiers.  A Captain Parker gave Eliza a little doll he had found on a skirmishing field—it was dressed in Yankee blue. “We became attached to some of those officers and generally invited them for breakfast” which nearly led to one man’s being court-martialed for leaving his post.

When more Yankees in the form of  “General Gillem’s  men, and the 113 KY” moved on toward Virginia, an officer of high rank demanded that  Eliza’s brother Alfred “show him the way to Bean Station…It was a ridiculous request to think of 10,000 men starting and having no leader.”  Alfred pleaded that he did not know the way until the officer drew his pistol. “He answered not a word till about 14 miles from home they turned him loose and he turned his horse homeward through woods he knew not, but God watched over him.”

Next came the 118th Ohio regiment to take over their house and farm until they were driven back by the Confederates. Sometimes the family found their property in the line of fire between the two forces.  At one point, Eliza’s father heard gunfire and told her to bring the family’s last horse –a mare--into the barn for its safety, but the horse had sore feet, couldn’t walk  and Eliza “fancied I could hear bullets whizzing like bees,” so she left “Bichette” to her fate.   The mare survived.

Shortly after, her father became ill and told Eliza and her brother to find a doctor who was visiting in the area.  It was bitter cold.  “We found two poor horses that we rode 4 miles on frozen roads… When we approached the house we saw a big placard nailed to a tree on which was in big letters ‘Small Pox.’ We did not stop at the sight but were admitted by the fire, where the doctor was sitting, having several big pusticles [sic] visible on his face.”

The ailing doctor gave the children a prescription for their father and the next morning, in a snowstorm,  “Brother Emile and I started to walk into town to get medicine.  I had on a ‘split bonnet’, a warm linsey dress and a thin green and black checked cape….I unknowingly dropped my cape and went perhaps two miles before I found out.”  The children evaded soldiers on guard, made it to a drug store, and when they started back in the snow, Eliza found her cape, to her great relief.

“During all those dark days we’d keep a supply of provisions concealed.  My father made a sham wall to the attic and we’d hang old clothes around to hide all joints.  Also we’d take some large sums of money and papers to hide [buried outside].  Twice my father took me to share with him where he was putting some.”

 “Girls and women had to work like men,” Eliza writes. "We did not cut wood.  But my tendencies were to work with horses. … My father yielded to my great wish to let me plow.  With my little brother Emile, we raised the two ’63 and ’64 crops.  Plowed for wheat, corn and potatoes and sugar cane.  We’d use only shovel plows, but managed to do fair work.

“All the time that troops occupied Knoxville, their favorite place to camp was on top of the hill east of the old Scotts Mill. ...At Scott’s Mill they were near a large spring.  We’d have to go through their camp on the way in and out of town, but were seldom spoken to by anyone.”

“The Northern soldiers, real soldiers, did not do much harm,” Eliza related,   “but the loose people following armies are dreaded. They had mercenary men who lived on what they could steal.”

She ends her letter to her grandsons, “If ever you are called to fill a place in our Government be faithful and work for PEACE. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.'  Grandmother Truan."

Then she added a P.S.:  “Pennies were not used to make change till after the war. The last of Confederate times, we’d pay $10.00 for a calico dress and $20.00 for a sack of flour.” [These were outrageous prices  because the average working man made about a dollar a day.]

And that was the end of my Great-Grandmother''s recollections of a teen-age girl who wasn't afraid to confront  Smallpox, enemy bullets, a shovel plow and attacking gangs of thieves  when she was a young teenager in Tennessee.

What Is Kathy Lagoli and Why Is She Stalking Bloggers?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hi Kathy,

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

Joan (Gage)”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s what it said:

“Sorry I think I have the wrong email.

Kathy “

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

Lunch at Mar-a-Lago with The Donald

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was wrong about the First Woman Writer in America!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March Madness, Spring Fever & Oversized Art in Manhattan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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