Let St. Anthony Find Your True Love (A Valentine Day Ritual from Mexico)

(Last year, while I was traveling in Mexico, I posted this blog post about a ritual and a restaurant I encountered in Morelia.  The restaurant owners claim that thousands of women have found their soul-mates thanks to their "shrine" to St. Anthony.  I'm reprinting this again because the post turned out to be so popular  And at the very end I'm adding a photograph of the Spanish language pledge to the saint posted in the restaurant, because so many women have asked me for it. )

On Tuesday, arriving in Morelia, Mexico on Day One of the Monarch Butterflies and Michoacån Cuisine tour, I didn’t see a single butterfly but did learn about a place that may be more efficient than E-Harmony and Match.com in helping single ladies find the man of their dreams.

It was San Miguelito, the restaurant in Morelia where we ate the first night.  It calls itself a “Restaurante, Bazar, Galeria, & Museo” and they’re not kidding. 

 In addition to scrumptious Mexican food, they sell Day of the Dead figures, Botero-like fat little angels, a wooden chair that is also a skeleton, and aprons imprinted with Guadalupe.

 But the main draw is the back room, which, in addition to dining tables and chairs, holds more than 700 images of St. Anthony of Padua all UPSIDE DOWN.

For over twenty years, according to proprietor Cynthia Martinez, single women have been thronging to this room to beg St. Anthony to intercede for them and send their destined mate to their side.

 There are bulletin boards filled with photos and thanks from satisfied customers who have finally met their soul mate.

Here is what you have to do:  take 13 coins of the same  denomination from two bags hanging nearby.  Line up 13  coins on the base of the main St Anthony statue.  Walk around the statue 13 times.  Pray to St. Anthony.  (Suggested prayer below.  The restaurant also provides a Spanish-language version.)

There is a three-hole notebook below the statue on which you can write your specific request.  One woman covered 21 pages detailing her requirements in a mate.

Nearby is a shelf holding some of the dozens of notebooks  which have been filled in the past two decades with single women’s requests.

Back in the U.S. I had heard that people wanting to sell their homes would bury a statue of St Anthony in the front year, upside down of course, to speed up the sale. (A new friend, Christina, tells me that that’s actually St. Joseph.)

I think the point of the St. Anthony ritual is that, when your wish is fulfilled, you will release the saint and turn him back over.  But the St. Anthonys at San  Miguelito restaurant in Morelia have been standing upside-down for so long, while bringing couples together, that I  don’t think they have any hope of landing on their feet again.

Here is a poster on the restaurant’s wall advertising the Saint’s miraculous powers to lead you to love.

If you want to try this ritual at home:  get your own statue of St. Anthony and 13 identical coins and give it a try.  Here is a suggested prayer I found on the internet.  If you would like to have the Spanish-language prayer given out by San Miguelito Restaurant, a photograph of it is below.

Oh Wonderful St.Anthony, glorious on account of the fame of thy miracles, and through the condescension of Jesus in coming in the form of a little child to rest in thy arms, obtain for me of his bounty the grace which I ardently desire from the depths of my heart. Thou who was so loving towards miserable sinners, regard not the unworthiness of those who pray to thee, but the glory of God that it may be once again magnified by this request which I now make to you. Amen

Here is  a photograph of the St. Antonio pledge that was posted at the restaurant:

Suri Cruise has a Fashion Challenger

Did you know that Suri, the pre-school daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, has a fashion blog that reports on what she's wearing every day?  Suri is famous for her pint-sized designer dresses and the fact that she often wears mini-high heels, even to the playground, causing moms of other pre-schoolers to gnash their teeth.

But Suri had better watch out, because there's another little girl who is threatening to take over as fashion guru and predictor of new style trends. And while Suri is five years old, my granddaughter Amalía is only five months old.  Yet she's  making daring and eclectic fashion choices.

It's all about accessories, and Amalía knows that God is in the details.  Here she  uses her lavender Bumbo chair as a striking contrast to her gray knitted dress.

But when she's in a spring-like mood, she plays off a flowery garden party number against the lavender Bumbo.

Sometimes she wears designer labels like Calvin Klein for public appearances.

But at heart, she's true to her school. (Her mommy's school--Bancroft.)

A daily decision is whether to wear stripes

or dots

or stripes on stripes

or stripes with lavender butterfly sandals

or to solve the dilemma by combining the stripes with giant polka dots.

The unusual fashion choice is what sets a fashion guru apart.  Like a frog hat.

Or better still, rocking Papi's beret.

When it gets chilly in Miami Beach you should really bundle up.

Amalía's life has become complicated with the introduction of real food (in addition to breast milk.)

So many decisions like:  What to eat?

And when you're teething, anything handy looks like something to chew on.

And after a whole day of making cutting-edge fashion decisions, sometimes you just give up and fall asleep in your high chair.

What She Left When She Left for College

Yesterday I was sorting out my books (as part of my New Year’s resolution to de-hoard my life) when I came across a very special book that I had completely forgotten about.  It was a fabric-covered journal filled with about 50 hand-written pages composed by daughter Eleni when she was 17 years old—right before she went off to college.  The entries on each page were brief, and often broken up into lines like free verse. The first page read:

This book belongs to Joan,

The most influential woman in my life.

So that when I’m in college,

You can look at a page a day. 

And it will be as if I’m still here

In my peach jumper.

Naturally I sat down and read it through, laughing and crying as I went.  I have a notoriously bad memory, and Eleni has a scarily good one.  She’ll say things like, “Remember three years ago when we were walking on Fifth Avenue and you were wearing your navy pants suit and I was wearing….”

So I read through this little volume of memories, most of which had floated out of my skull, and I thought what a beautiful thing it was for a teenager to write something like this as a farewell to her mother before setting off into life.

And now, two decades later, Eleni is a married lady with a five-month-old daughter. I hope when Amalía grows up and goes off to college that she’ll take the time to write a journal like this one to her mother, to say, “I love you” and “Thanks for the memories.”

Eleni wrote that journal 20 years ago, and even then her writing talent, eye for detail and sense of humor were evident on every page.  Now she’s about to publish her second book and first novel “Other Waters” on Valentine’s Day.  In the journal she gave me, Eleni was recalling golden moments when we travelled, often just the two of us, the ultimate tourists, on annual trips. We had wonderful adventures, many of which would be forgotten if she didn’t write them down.  Below are some of my favorites.

Page 1. Remember before I was born how you wanted a girl? And you only drank out of the girl mug, and Grandma transferred your coffee from the horse mug to the girl mug.  And didn’t laugh…So you went to the hospital Monday night, because your appointment for a Caesarian was on Tuesday, even though Constantinople fell on a Tuesday.

At 8:15 a.m. on Tuesday, October 8^th they wheeled you in and knocked you out.  Ten minutes later you had a baby girl, perfectly unsquished.  And you asked Daddy what she looked like and he said, “Me”, meaning him. And that was the beginning of as beautiful friendship.

Page 2. Remember that day in the early eighties when we went to Child’s World and a strange man stopped you and said, “My God – you’ve got the best-looking pair of legs I’ve ever seen on a woman”  Remember that?  I thought so.

Page 3.  Remember our long drives to Old Sturbridge Village when we’d listen to Les Misérables,  Fun Rock and Janis Joplin, and stop and get gas and I’d have my bonnet on. Just like Thelma and Louise.

Page 7. Remember the man who pulled me out of the audience to folk dance with him in Greece.  All the Japanese folks took pictures and he told me I was beautiful.

Or

Remember the man on Spetses who hoped you’d be his Shirley Valentine?

Page 8.  In fourth grade I did a report on Massasoit and you colored in all the feathers on his headdress for me. Thanks.

Page 9. Remember that night in the apartment in Kolonaki when you and Marina talked to me at 3 a.m. because the state of the world upset me so much.  I got over it.  I always do!

Page 12.  The first time I went to Greece alone with Daddy you were sure the plane would crash and it didn’t.  So relax.  I repeat.  We are NOT having a crisis!

Page 16.            Remember New Orleans:

                            The Jazz Funeral

Marie Laveau

Valentine’s Day

Jackson Square

Beignets – Le Café du Monde

The Fortune Teller

Jambalaya

Gumbo

Pecan Pralines

The Moonwalk

Shalom Y’all

Crawfish

The Farmer’s market

The Beauregard – Keyes house

Cajun cooking with Justin Wilson

Page 17.  Remember Charleston

You driving a rental car as a stranger in a strange land.

The marketplace

Poogan’s porch—one of the several times in our lives I’ve cried at dinner, although I was happy that night.

Tin Pan Alley

The boy in a military school uniform with his suspenders hanging down, feeding doves on the battery with his girlfriend.

Page 23. Remember my sixteenth birthday party?  You made it a highlight of my life.  Thanks.

Page 24. You introduced me to

Fitzgerald

Upstairs Downstairs

Gone with the Wind

Chipped Beef

Soufflés

Appreciating photography

Peking Duck

Flea Markets

People magazine

Page 29. Remember my graduation from kindergarten?  I cried at the rehearsal. [Because she didn’t want to leave.]

Page 31.Together we’ve climbed to Prophet Elias, braved the Dreaded Palomidi, scaled Monemvassia, waterskied and ridden Space Mountain.  We’re unstoppable.

Page 32.  Everyone you come in contact with, from the lady at the bank to Al, loves seeing you because you make them feel important and brighten their day.  You think you don’t have friends, but you have them all over.

Page 33.  How many fifty-one year old women can say they refused Dan Quayle’s invitation to dinner? You can.

.

Page 35.  You gave me my first memory book, fine lingerie and perfume.  What an honour.

Page 37.  Things I got from you:

Blue eyes

A small mouth (no X-rays)

An appreciation of 5 p.m. Sunday afternoon drives, photographs and doors.

A twinkle in my eye.

Page 39.  Remember when I was in 8^th grade, we had a snow day on your birthday and we made a cake and took pictures and God smiled.

Page 41. You are one of the few people who have met the Beatles.  Therefore you will always have a place in Mohan’s heart.  John and Yoko were in their white stage at the time.

Page 42.  Remember our trip to the Dakota with Betsy?  The doorman was from Limerick and feared John was forgotten.  But the next day in Strawberry Fields, a young blonde mother was telling her son:  “There was a man called John Lennon and he was part of a group called the Beatles.  He was killed nine years ago today.  That’s why all these people are here.”  So the legend continues.

Crone of the Week: Hollywood Pioneer Dies at 111

    

University Press of Kentucky

It’s been a long time since I’ve picked a Crone of the Week, but now that it’s awards season,  the honor had to be revived and the statuette dusted off for  silent-era script writer Frederica Sago Maas, who died on Jan 5 at the incredible age of 111. (She was the 44^th oldest verified person in the world.)

                                                                                       San Diego Union Tribune

The New York Times’ obituary for her begins: “She told of Hollywood moguls chasing naked would-be starlets, the women shrieking with laughter.  She recounted how Joan Crawford, new to the movies, relied on her to pick clothes.  Almost obsessively, she complained about how many of her story ideas and scripts were stolen and credited to others.“

In the 1920’s, in Hollywood, Frederica fumed as her writing and ideas were attributed to others. That’s what happened to women writers in those days.  In New York in the 1960’s I often had the same experience.  In fact, when I went to Time-Life headquarters to apply for a job with one of their magazines, armed with my Master’s in Journalism and my Phi Beta Kappa key, the (female) interviewer told me—“if you really want to write, don’t apply here, because women can never become writers at Time-Life, only researchers.” 

But Frederica Sagor Maas found a good way to get back at those people who stole her writing—she outlived them all and recorded her Hollywood stories in a scathing memoir in 1999 when she was 99 years old!  “I can get my payback now,” she told an interviewer. “I’m alive and thriving and, well, you S.O.B.s are all below.”

Frederica Sagor Maas  was born on July 6, 1900 in Manhattan to Jewish immigrants from Russia.  (Her mother supported the family as a midwife.)  She studied journalism at Columbia (as did I), worked as a copy girl for the New York Globe, then became a story editor at Universal Pictures’ New York office.  In 1924, she moved to Hollywood and was signed to a three-year contract with MGM, where she wrote screenplays, including a hit film for Clara Bow.

Frederica married a fellow screenwriter, Ernest Maas, in 1927.  The couple lost $10,000 in the 1929 stock market crash and then found all their screenplays rejected. They were also investigated by the FBI for subscribing to Communist publications.  They struggled to find work as writers’ representatives and then writing for political campaigns. In despair, in 1950, the couple decided to commit suicide and drove to a hilltop where they planned to asphyxiate themselves with carbon dioxide from their car.  But they suddenly changed their minds, clutching each other in tears and turning off the ignition before it was too late.

In her autobiography, “The Shocking Miss Pilgrim: A Writer in Early Hollywood”, Frederica tells stories about early Hollywood stars like Clara Bow, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo and Louise Brooks.  She is particularly hard on her old studio bosses, whom she portrayed as “amoral debauchers”

Her husband died of Parkinson’s disease in 1986 at 94 years old.  Frederica got a job as a typist in an insurance agency by lying about her age.  Then, in 1999, she wrote her autobiography, which is now a standard reference for early Hollywood history. The couple never had children and Frederica died with no immediate survivors. 

The New York Times obituary ends: “As for movies, Mrs. Maas stopped going.  “I think the product they’re making today,” she said in 1999, “Is even worse than the product we made in the early days.”

Resolution: De-Hoard My Life

This image is from freedomcolours.net

My name is Joan and I am a hoarder.  

Both my parents had what I, a layperson--but an expert on those two--would diagnose as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (although we didn’t call it that in the olden days.)  My mother would stack neatly ironed handkerchiefs in a bureau drawer. My father would choose one every day for his breast pocket, and if I simply opened that drawer and looked in, my father would soon say, “Who opened my handkerchief drawer?”

My mother hated it when my father would eat a banana. She’d insist that he take the peel outside to the garbage pail—even if it was midnight during a blizzard.  God forbid he should put it in the kitchen trash and “smell up the whole house”!  If the garbage man came late to pick up the refuse, my parents would be peering out the curtain, fraught with concern.

I realize that my life-long messiness and hoarding is the flip side of that OCD.

We live in a 300-year-old house in a New England village with a vast basement that looks like a wine cellar with rough stone walls. That cellar used to be filled with trunks and storage boxes from my entire life, and everywhere I went, the guilty knowledge of that cellar was an albatross hanging around my neck.  But then one day the basement flooded—an act of God—and we had to rent a dumpster and throw everything out.  It was agonizing to open a trunk and see the water-soaked portraits of my parents that I drew when I was a teen-ager, not to mention all my high school souvenirs, letters home from camp, term papers that got an A+--but it all had to go and I felt better—lighter—afterwards.  Now the cellar holds only mousetraps, Christmas decorations and a few bottles of stored wine.

It was an A-ha moment, as Oprah would say. And if only that were the end of my story. But no.  You see, there’s our attic, filled with household account books going back to the 1970’s and clothes that I couldn’t bear to throw away and all my daughters’ dance recital costumes.

Plus, I have way, way too many books shelved in three different rooms—art and photography books in the studio, hardback books and family photo albums in the library, and paperback books on shelves in my son’s room. (On a trip back he expressed concern that the tall bookcase holding the old New Yorkers and paperbacks was sagging and might fall over and kill him in his sleep.)

In our own bedroom is a low table made of a glass-topped display case that holds some of my daguerreotypes and ambrotypes – part of just one of my collections. (Don’t ask how many “collections” I have!)  Coming back from a trip to Mexico some years ago, I put my Mexican photographs and a pristine new photo album on top of the table, thinking I could put the photos in the album one day while watching television.  Now, of course, you can’t even see the daguerreotypes in the case underneath all the un-organized travel photos.

I realize that there is a whole spate of reality shows about hoarders on TV these days, no doubt with useful advice for people with my problem, and some helpful therapy thrown in--but I would never watch one.  It’s too terrifying to think about those pitiful people huddled among piles of newspapers and trash until they’re crushed to death by their belongings and no one notices until the neighbors complain about an unpleasant odor in the hall. And it's even more terrifying to think that I am one of them! Besides, I'm less interested in the why of hoarding--what makes us do it--than I am in the what now--how do I undo it?

Over the holidays, I announced that my New Year’s resolution was to de-hoard my life. When I stated my resolution at our New Year’s day dinner, my daughter, Marina, was thrilled. “Write it down!” she cried. “Make a list of what you’ll do every day. I just wish I could quit my job and come home and help you do it.”

 (Marina is incredibly neat and clean and organized.  Once when she moved into a house in Los Angeles with four other people, she said to me over the phone “I’m having the best day.  I’ve spent the whole weekend cleaning the bathroom, which has never been cleaned before.”  On another weekend, when everyone was out, she spent the day cleaning the kitchen and alphabetizing the spices. I can hear my parents laughing in the Great Beyond.)

 I’m sorry that Marina’s not around to help me with my resolution.  It’s going a little slower than I thought, one step forward, two steps back.  I’ve finished the pile of papers and files next to the computer, but in doing so discovered a whole cache of staples, ink cassettes and people’s business cards that need to be alphabetized into a Rolodex.  Next project is my vanity and the nearby wicker stand filled with a lifetime of half-used cosmetics, lipsticks and creams. 

(In my defense—when you’re almost 71 years old, you’ve had a lot of opportunity to “collect” such things, and daughter Eleni used to be a magazine beauty editor—which means free cosmetics.)

After the cache of makeup by the vanity I’ll move on to the travel photos on the bedside table.  Not to put them into albums, but to stash them into those decorative shoe-box-sized boxes with room for labels like “Veracruz—2008”. And I am going to take a box of books every week and donate them to the local library, which sells them at book sales several times a year.

By spring I may have moved well into the Studio, with all its paintings, prints and art supplies.  And by New Year’s Eve next year, if all goes well, I hope to have lost…not those persistent ten pounds around my middle, but two tons of junk.

God grant me the serenity to reorganize the things I need, the courage to toss the things I don't, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Wish me luck!

Amalía and the Jumper Chair

Amalía went to Nicaragua for Christmas.    Everybody in Nicaragua loved and adored her and picked her up and carried her.  Nobody put her down for two weeks. Amalía smiled at everybody, even the Santa Claus in the department store.

 She went to a beauty salon where her bangs were cut.  Her Abuela Carmen held her in the barber’s chair so she wouldn’t wiggle.

 Amalía loved her haircut.

 After all the excitement and attention in Nicaragua, Amalía came home to Miami Beach.  There she found a new jumper chair.  It had as many bells and whistles as a three-ring circus, but when her Mommy put her in it, she was not happy.  Amalía wasn’t interested in all the toys and rattles. 

 She sat in her new jumper chair and gave her Mommy a plaintive, pitiful look that said, “Why am I stuck here like a prisoner in solitary confinement?  I want somebody to PICK ME UP.”

 In the end, Amalía’s Mommy picked her up and put her in her red stroller.  Amalía was happy again, because she knew she was going outside for a walk on Lincoln Road.  Soon she’d be surrounded by all her fans making a big fuss over her—the waiters in the Italian restaurant, the ladies in the supermarket, the policemen, the boys on their skateboards.   Amalía likes being a super star.

Happy New Year...You’ve been Hacked!

On Wednesday, at 7:00 a.m., a  phone call from my niece woke me up.  “Are you planning a trip to Scotland?” she asked. 

It took me a while to digest this question, but I soon learned that my niece—and evidently a large number of contacts from my Yahoo mail account, had received the following e-mail from “me”, sent  at 4:06 in the morning.  (I received it too. So did my doctors’ offices and my Pilates instructors.) The subject line read: “It’s Urgent, Please Respond”.

The text read:

 It's me, Joan. I really don't mean to inconvenience you right now, I made a trip to Scotland and I misplaced my passport and credit cards. I know this may sound odd, but it all happened very fast. I've been to the embassy, they're willing to help, but I'm short of funds to pay for my passport fees and other miscellaneous expenses. Please can you lend me $900? I'll pay back, as soon as I get home.

Please respond as soon as you get this message, so I can forward you my details to send funds to me. I don't have a phone to speak with you right now.

I await your response

Joan Gage

When I opened my computer, I saw that many friends and e-mail acquaintances –especially those who lived in Europe—had already e-mailed me with subject lines like: “You’ve been hacked”.  I got more phone calls and a whole lot of e-mails from U.S-situated acquaintances as the country woke up.

In the past I had received very similar e-mails when some friends were hacked—but I think it used to say that they were stranded in London and needed $900.  (Is there even a U.S. Embassy in Scotland? I wondered. )

So I, and most of my contacts, knew immediately that this was a hacker pretending to be me.  And most of my friends (and I) realized that the return address he was writing from was identical to my e-mail address except for one letter missing  (His e-mail address  read “Joan Gag” instead of “Joan Gage.”)

I immediately did what Yahoo Help advised—changed the password to my account.   I also managed to find under “Yahoo Help” a place where I could detail my problem to “Yahoo Customer Care”.  I was given an “incident number” and told that Yahoo would get back to me within 24 hours.

But it’s been over 48 hours now and I still haven’t heard from them.

Since I am, as my blog says, a Crone—over seventy last time I looked—the mind and idiosyncrasies of a computer are a foreign language to me.  Whenever I have a tech problem I look for a member of a younger generation. 

First I called a friend who had been hacked with the same message (but allegedly stranded in London, although I knew she hadn’t left Massachusetts.)

She told me she immediately changed her password, but soon realized this wasn’t enough.  Eventually she had to close down her Yahoo account completely, switching to G-Mail.

A college-age relative, who seemed very computer-savvy, told me that I’d have to immediately change every password I had and probably have to lose the Yahoo account as well.

My daughter Marina, who was visiting for the holidays, exclaimed in horror when she saw that my Yahoo account had over 8,000 stored e-mails. “Don’t you ever delete them?” she asked.

Well I do, but these e-mails—going back to 2008—allow me to contact, say, a fellow vintage-photographs collector in Europe whom I long ago communicated with –thanks to the Yahoo Search Mail function-- by simply typing “daguerreotype” into the search box.  Yahoo knows the e-mail addresses for all my friends, if I just type in their first name—so of course I’d never written all those e-mail addresses down.   While gathering biographies from my Minnesota classmates for the 50-year High School Reunion book in 2009, I relied completely on my Yahoo account’s ability to store e-mail addresses.  Now I had to say good-bye to all this information.   Would I ever get those addresses back?

My daughter and I tried to find a list of my contacts on my Yahoo account before closing it down, but Yahoo listed only 15 contacts for me.  One of my European correspondents suggested that the hacker must have  “wiped out” most of my contacts.

I wonder why my hacker went to all this trouble.  Does he ever find people naïve enough to think they must immediately send him $900 to save me from my plight in Scotland?

I suspect that the door used to get into my Yahoo  account may have been my Facebook account.  My computer teacher, artist Andy Fish, closed down his Facebook account long ago, saying that it brought him so much spam.  But I don’t want to lose my Facebook account as well as my Yahoo account—it’s the only way I can stay in touch with far-flung friends and my kids’ generation.

Another friend thinks my Linked-in account may be the vulnerable spot.

When I think of how many times I’ve given my Yahoo address as the way for a new acquaintance to reach me, I shudder.  I’ll have to get new business cards printed.  I’ll have to inform the various airlines, the credit card companies, every organization I belong to—the mind boggles.

And the same day I was hacked, I received that startling e-mail from the New York Times saying that my home-delivery subscription was being cancelled.  Like over 8 million other people, I tried to call the Times or reach them through their web site to say, “Don’t cancel my subscription!”  But when all lines were tied up and the Times site was unavailable, I began to realize it was all a huge computer glitch.  I guess Mercury was retrograde on Wednesday.

Oh well, here’s to a New Year, a new e-mail account and new ways of  being tortured by my malevolent Mac Power Book.   I think I can hear Steve Jobs, from somewhere in internet heaven, laughing.


Joan Gage --    A Rolling Crone

(P.S. --To my friends and contacts--I haven't closed my Yahoo account yet -- will let you know my G-Mail address when I do.  To tech-savvy readers--I really would appreciate your advice on what I should do next.)