Baby's Earrings: To Pierce or Not to Pierce

In Minnesota where I grew up, piercing your infant daughter's ears so she could wear earrings was considered tatamount to child abuse.  In fact I didn't get my ears pierced till I was in my 40's.

But daughter Eleni and her (Nicaraguan) husband Emilio and their baby daughter Amalía live in the Latin country of Miami, FL, where  Latino parents insist on a baby girl's ears being pierced immediately and if the pediatrician refuses (as Eleni's female pediatrician did for several years) the parents might try doing the operation themselves.  So Eleni's doctor buckled under and now schedules a "day of beauty" for little girls who are at least three months old.

Granddaughter Amalía passed six months recently, so on March 6 she had her ears pierced.

And Eleni wrote a pretty funny essay on the subject which was posted today on The New York Times' web site  Opinions Page under the title "Baby's First Bling."

Check it out and if you are inspired, add your own opinion of the practice to the comments already there.

And I'll give you more than the NYT web site does.  Here's a photo of Amalía in the doctor's office, happily unaware that she is about to get her ears pierced and a flu shot as well.

And here she is preening with her new earrings as her Papi smiles proudly.

Her Tossed-Out Diary Made her an Author at 92

Angel Franco/ The New York Times

I often say that the Obituary Section of The New York Times is my favorite section because it introduces me to fascinating people I’d never have heard of, like the man who designed the New York Coffee cup or the one who invented the Frisbee.

Last week I learned the story of Florence Wolfson Howitt, who died at 96.  Hers is a story so full of coincidences that, if it were fiction, everyone would scoff.

Here’s what The New York Times obit said on March 7, 2012:  “Florence Wolfson Howitt, whose lifelong dream of recognition as a writer eluded her until she was in her 90s, when the diary she had kept as a teenager was found in a Dumpster and became the subject of a newspaper article and a widely publicized book, died on Tuesday at her home in Pompano Beach, Fla. She was 96.

Florence Wolfson, the daughter of well-to-do parents living in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, was 14 when she was given a little red diary with gold-edged pages. For the next five years, without skipping a day, she wrote four-line entries that evoked her passions.

‘Have stuffed myself with Mozart and Beethoven,’ she wrote on June 28, 1932. ‘I feel like a ripe apricot — I’m dizzy with the exotic.’

‘Went to the Museum of Modern Art,’ she wrote on Feb. 21, 1931. ‘Sheer jealousy — I can’t even paint an apple yet — it’s heartbreaking!’

But she could write, and that was apparent at Wadleigh High, an arts school in Manhattan, from which she graduated at 15; at Hunter College, where she was editor of the literary magazine in her senior year; and at Columbia, where she earned a master’s degree in English literature in 1936. …

She wrote articles for Good Housekeeping, Ladies’ Home Journal and Cosmopolitan, with titles like “How to Behave in Public Without an Escort” and “What to Do With the Unmarried Daughter.”

Miss Wolfson married Dr. Nathan Howitt, a dentist, in 1939. They moved into an apartment on Riverside Drive and 82nd Street. Sixty-four years later, a steamer trunk that had languished in the basement was placed in a Dumpster on the street. A worker at the building pulled the diary from the trunk and gave it to Lily Koppel, a news assistant at The New York Times, who was subletting an apartment in the building.

In July 2006, after searching birth records and locating Mrs. Howitt, Ms. Koppel wrote an article about her for The Times. That led to Ms. Koppel’s 2008 book, “The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal,” and a close friendship. Ms. Koppel, who is now a freelance writer, said in an interview that the diary “was sort of a telephone line across time, and a glimpse into a vanishing New York.”

Profiles of Mrs. Howitt appeared in publications around the country. She was a guest on the “Today” show. She gave readings and interviews at book club gatherings.

Florence Wolfson was born in Manhattan on Aug. 11, 1915, to Daniel and Rebecca Wolfson. Her father was a physician, and her mother owned a couture shop on Madison Avenue. Mrs. Howitt’s husband died in 2007…

“It was the most exciting year or two of her life, something she always sought,” Ms. Fischel said of her mother’s unexpected fame. “She felt like a celebrity and was 92 years old.”

So many unlikely things gave this woman literary fame at 92.   What if the curious apartment worker hadn’t pulled the diary out of the steamer trunk on the sidewalk?  And what if he never gave it to the young New York Times Reporter?  And what if she never researched to find out the author of the diary?  But in the end, after longing for literary recognition for nine decades, Florence Wolfson Howitt got her fifteen minutes of fame before she died.

Her story hit a sensitive spot in me—because she and I have so many things in common.  Like her, I went to Columbia for a masters degree (in journalism)  When I got married, I lived two blocks away from her building on the West Side.  Like her, I wrote dozens of articles for women’s magazines (and 22 articles for The New York Times.)   Like her, I’ve kept a diary all my life (but not one worth publishing—just a boring few lines on what I did every day.) 

I also have a habit, on my birthday, of making a list of my goals for the year—and then hiding it somewhere in my desk.  Not too long ago I found a list I made when I was fifteen years old.  The number-one goal on my list was “write a best-seller.”

Seeing that brought a rueful smile to my face.  When I was fifteen, it seemed like a reasonable goal, but now that I’m 71, I can only laugh at my naïve 15-year old ambitions.  I have written a few books in my life that were well-reviewed and are still in print, but they were ghost-written with other people’s names on them and told other people’s stories.  I have yet to see my own name on a “real” book. (I’m not counting my Greek Cats photo book as a real book.)

But instead of giving up on my habit of writing a list of goals every year, I’d better sit down and write my list for this year (my birthday was last month.)  The story of Florence Wolfson Howitt has given me hope.  After all, I’m not dead yet....

And, oh yes, I'm designating her as Crone of the Week.  The statue please...

The Shocking Story Behind the White Slave Photographs

In my previous post, I discussed the recently-in-the-news photos of the “White Slave Children of New Orleans” which portrayed only white-appearing slave children, not black ones.  I explained how this apparently wrong-minded and politically incorrect practice of the Abolitionists had originated nearly a decade earlier with a daguerreotype of a white-skinned little girl named Mary Botts.  She was purchased and brought north by her father (an escaped slave) with the help of Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts who paraded her (and circulated her photographic image) around New England making her a celebrity described in The New York Times and other media.

In 1855, Sumner may have been the first to focus on white-appearing slaves to raise indignation against the practice of slavery.  It worked so well that, after Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863, Northerners and Abolitionists who wanted to support schools for former slaves went to New Orleans looking for white slave children to bring up north and  photograph.  According to Celia Caust-Ellenbogen of Swarthmore College, “Keeping these schools up and running would require ongoing financial support. Toward this end, the National Freedman’s Association, in collaboration with the American Missionary Association and interested officers of the Union Army launched a new propaganda campaign.  Five children and three adults, all former slaves from New Orleans, were sent to the North on a publicity tour.

A full page of Harper’s Weekly’s Jan. 30, 1864 issue was devoted to this engraving, which was based on a large-format photograph taken of the group.   Explaining the picture was a letter written by  C.C. Leigh introducing the stars of the new propaganda campaign.  Pay attention to how he keeps emphasizing the intelligence of the children.

“To the Editor of Harper’s Weekly:

The group of emancipated slaves whose portraits I send you were brought by Colonel Hanks and Mr. Philip Bacon from New Orleans, where they were set free by General Butler…REBECCA HUGER is eleven years old, and was a slave in her father’s house, the special attendant of a girl a little older than herself.  To all appearance she is perfectly white.  Her complexion, hair and features show not the slightest trace of Negro blood.  In the few months during which she has been at school she has learned to read well, and writes as neatly as most children of her age.  Her mother and grandmother live in New Orleans, where they support themselves comfortably by their own labor…ROSINA DOWNS is not quite seven years old.  She is a fair child, with blonde complexion and silky hair.  Her father is in the rebel army.  She has one sister as white as herself and three brothers who are darker.  Her mother, a bright mulatto, lives in New Orleans in a poor hut, and has hard work to support her family.  CHARLES TAYLOR is eight years old.  His complexion is very fair, his hair light and silky.  Three out of five boys in any school in New York are darker than he.  Yet this white boy, with his mother, as he declares, has been twice sold as a slave.  First by his father and “owner”,  Alexander Wethers, of Lewis County, Virginia, to a slave trader named Harrison, who sold them to Mr.Thornhill of New Orleans.  This man fled at the approach of our army and his slaves were liberated by General Butler. The boy is decidedly intelligent, and though he has been at school less than a year, he reads and writes very well. …”

The letter goes on to describe the adults in the group—two of them chosen, evidently, because they had physical scars from their masters’ mistreatment.  Wilson Chinn, on the left, was branded on his forehead by Volsey B Marmillion, who branded all his 210 slaves, and Mary Johnson carried the scars of 50 cuts on her arms and back –given by her master because one morning she was “half an hour behind time in bringing up his five o’clock cup of coffee”.

The little girl on the left next to Charley was described  as AUGUSTA BROUJEY, nine years old. “Her mother, who is almost white, was owned by her half-brother, named Solamon, who still retains two of her children. ISAAC WHITE is a black boy of eight years; but none the less intelligent than his whiter companions. He has been in school about seven months, and I venture to say that not one boy in fifty would have made as much improvement in that space of time.”

The man on the far right is  “the Reverend Mr. Whitehead” who managed to earn enough as a house and ship painter to buy his freedom and is described thus: “The reverend gentleman can read and write well and is a very stirring speaker.  Just now he belongs to the church militant, having enlisted in the United States Army.”

The letter in Harper’s ends by telling where the small CDVs of the individuals can be bought for 25 cents each or the large photo of the whole group for one dollar.  This would have been a very good investment, for today the individual CDV’s can cost several hundred dollars or more, and the only copy of the large group photo that I have ever seen was in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum.

Three photographers took photos of the white slave children: Charles Paxson and M. H. Kimball  in New York, and J.E. McClees in Philadelphia (where they were kicked out of their hotel when the manager learned they were not “really” white.) The children were dressed in elegant clothing and posed with props—the American flag, an ornate mirror, books which they were studying—to appeal to the sentimentality of Victorian audiences.  (See my previous post.)  Kimball produced the most “shocking” photo (to Victorian eyes) of dark-skinned Isaac and white-skinned Rosa arm in arm .  (Augusta was in only 2 of the 22 photos on record and Isaac in three, but Rosa and Rebecca are pictured in most of them.) 

The most photographed and most popular of the “white slave children” was Rebecca, 11 years old, posed in ever more stylish outfits.  Prof. Mary Niall Mitchell (who is writing a book about white slave Mary Botts, mentioned in my previous post) suggests in an essay “Rosebloom and Pure White” in American Quarterly, Sept. 2002, that Rebecca fascinated the Victorians because she was closest to becoming an adult woman and the thought of her  sexual vulnerability —a white slave girl who could be bought and sold and raped—fascinated and horrified the Northerners.  Clearly the white children were the result of masters raping the slave women who were their property. Professor  Mitchell repeats the famous quip of southern diarist Mary Chestnut: “Every lady tells you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody’s household, but those in her own she seems to think drop from the clouds, or pretends so to think.”

Professor Mitchell writes in the same essay: “In the images of Rosa and Rebecca, a notion about white little girls as pure and precious things may have been employed to redeem those viewers who had yet to rally around the antislavery cause and encourage them to act on the girls’ behalf.”

Finally, the Abolitionists photographing the “white slave children” were using the new and undeniably “scientific”  medium of photography to battle the beliefs of the leading scientist of the day—Louis Agassiz—famous Harvard natural scientist.  He claimed and tried very hard to prove “scientifically” that the Black race was an inferior and separate biological species.  According to Kathleen Collins in “Portraits of Slave Children” in “History of Photography”, July- September 1985,   “The anthropologist Stephen Jay Gould recently reconstructed Agassiz’ life and thought from his unexpurgated letters in the Harvard University Collection.  Gould concluded that behind Agassiz’ separate creation theories was an initial, visceral reaction to contact with blacks, which left him with an intense revulsion against the notion of miscegenation.”

Agassiz himself tried to use the science of photography to promote his theories that blacks were a different species from whites.  Long before the civil war, he toured Southern plantations and had the owners bring forth the most “African” looking slaves.  In 1850 Agassiz arranged for J. T. Zealy, a daguerrotypist in Columbia, South Carolina, to take photographs of African-born slaves from plantations Agassiz had visited. 

The slaves were stripped and photographed and these haunting daguerreotypes were sent to Agassiz at Harvard.  In 1976 they were found in a storage cabinet at the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology. (To see these dags and read a brilliant discussion of Agassiz’s racism and his use of the camera to debase his subjects, go to http://usslave.blogspot.com/2011/10/black-bodies-white-science-louis.html. ) Here are two of the captions:

The Zealy pictures reveal the social convention which ranks blacks as inferior beings, which violates civilized decorum, which strips men and women of the right to cover their genitalia. And yet the pictures shatter that mold by allowing the eyes of Delia and the others to speak directly to ours, in an appeal to a shared humanity.

Agassiz commissioned these images to use as scientific visual evidence to prove the physical difference between white Europeans and black Africans. The primary goal was to prove the racial superiority of the white race. The photographs were also meant to serve as evidence for his theory of “separate creation,” which contends that each race originated as a separate species.

So the Abolitionists who photographed the white (mulatto) children of New Orleans, arm in arm with a black slave child, and who emphasized at every turn the intelligence and good behavior of these children, were fighting fire with fire—using the new science of photography to refute visually the beliefs of the country’s most famous scientist and other racists who insisted that the two races should not and could not be mixed.

White Slave Children of New Orleans – Why?

Yesterday when I logged on to Yahoo, my eye went straight to a “news” article titled “White Slaves Used for 1860’s Fundraiser Propaganda.” There was a brief paragraph expanding on that title and a slideshow of sixteen photographs of well-dressed “slave children”  who appeared to be Caucasian, posed in a photographer’s studio, sometimes wrapped in an American flag with sentiments like “Our Protection” and “Oh! How I love the old flag.”.

I was astonished to see these photos topping the news yesterday, and after a little research learned that the “story” originated with an anonymous reporter for a British tabloid, The Daily Mail, who was using photos from the collection of the Library of Congress for his story which featured 16 photos in an article printed on Feb. 28th.  This piece was picked up yesterday by the Huffington Post and quickly spread to a number of American media.

For many years I have been fascinated by these mass-produced small photos of “white” slave children from New Orleans. (The photos are called cartes de visite or CDV’s because they are the size of a calling card.  CDVs of celebrities and just plain folks were produced, sold and collected in vast numbers during and after the Civil War.) 

I’ve been collecting and researching these “white slaves” photos for years, even going down to New Orleans to see where these children lived.  My primary questions—that I think anyone would ask on seeing these photos-- are: (1) Why did  they [meaning the Abolitionists, for that’s who organized this effort] choose mostly white-appearing slaves instead of black-appearing children, and (2) how did these children feel about being taken away from their families and used in this way, and (3) what happened to them after they were taken back to their families in New Orleans?

The hardest question to answer is the first one.  The reason for choosing white-appearing slave children had to do with 19^th century attitudes about race, about sex and about science—both the new science of photography and the reigning beliefs about genetics, race and intelligence.  I’m going to try to answer some of those questions next week.  To say that fundraisers chose lighter-skinned children because they thought they would raise more money is way too simplistic an answer for this complicated subject.

For now, I’m going to reprint below an article I first posted a year ago, on March 12, 2011 called “A White Slave Girl ‘Mulatto Raised by Charles Sumner’”,  which gives the background to the startling decision to use white-appearing slaves for Abolitionist anti-slavery propaganda.  (I don’t know exactly why, but this post about a little girl slave, Mary Botts, redeemed and brought up north by Senator Charles Sumner, month after month receives the most hits of anything I’ve ever posted. The daguerreotype of Mary pre-dates the New Orleans CDVs by about nine years.) 

A White Slave Girl “Mulatto Raised by Charles Sumner”

The Story Behind the Photo

When I began collecting antique photographs about twenty years ago, like most collectors I started out buying everything I could find. Then, as I gained expertise, I began to specialize, gravitating toward early images of children, twins (which I wrote about in a April 29, 2010 blog post: “Diane Arbus and Spooky Twins”) and photographs reflecting attitudes toward race and slavery.  (For example, I wrote about the image of “The Scarred Back of a Slave Named Gordon” in a post dated Oct. 2, 2009.  My information about that image was also printed in the New York Times book review of Oct. 4, 2009).

 While collecting slave photographs, I became fascinated with the “white slave children of Louisiana” as I call the series of CDV (carte-de-visite) photos of freed children from New Orleans who appear to be completely white. These small, cardboard-mounted photos were sold in great quantities by abolitionists during the Civil War.  On the back of each photo was printed: “The nett [sic] proceeds from the sale of these Photographs will be devoted to the education of colored people in the Department of the Gulf, now under the command of Maj. Gen. Banks.”

I had so many questions about these CDVs.  First, why did the abolitionists go down to the schools of freed slaves in New Orleans and pull out only those who appeared to be white, then send the children up to New York and Philadelphia to be dressed in fine clothes and posed in sentimental scenes for photos to sell?  Why did black-appearing children not get chosen for this? And how did these former slave children feel about being taken away from their mothers, paraded up north for the media like zoo animals and then sent back down South?  (They even got kicked out of their hotel in Philadelphia when the owner discovered they weren’t “really” white.)

Through research, I’ve learned the answers to some of these questions about the Louisiana CDVs, but that story is for another day when I’ll have enough space to analyze this early attempt to raise funds and arouse anti-slavery sentiment through the new-fangled “scientific” process of photography.

Today I’m only focusing on one photograph that was made about nine years before the Civil War CDVs.  It’s a ninth-plate daguerreotype of a little girl in a plaid dress that I bought on E-Bay in 2000. 

The seller, from Tennessee, included with this cased image information on where it was found. “This…photograph was purchased at Headley’s Auction in Winchester VA, July 1997.  It came…out of the “Ashgrove” estate in Vienna, VA. The house originated as a hunting lodge in 1740 …and was  sold to James Sherman in 1850, who would never  own or hire a slave.  He died in 1865 and passed it to his son, Capt. Franklin Sherman, Tenth Mich. Cavalry.  Capt Sherman’s wife Caroline (Alvord, a native of Mass.) came to the country in 1865 to teach the children of the newly freed slaves.”

The most intriguing thing about this daguerreotype, of course, was the faded inch-square piece of paper glued to the back of the case upon which someone has printed  “Mulatto raised by Charles Sumner”.

I put this image aside in 2000 along with the papers the buyer had sent me about the Ashford plantation, and forgot all about them.

Then, last November, I had a visit from Greg Fried, a professor at  Suffolk University in Boston who wanted to scan some of my photographs for a new web site he was preparing called  “Mirror of Race” (www.mirrorofrace.org.) I showed him the Louisiana CDVs and the daguerreotype of the “Sumner-raised” child. After he left, I went on Google and typed in the words  “Charles Sumner” and “slave”.  I discovered a short article from the New York Times dated March 9, 1855, which read:

A WHITE SLAVE FROM VIRGINIA. We received a visit yesterday from an interesting little girl, — who, less than a month since, was a slave belonging to Judge NEAL, of Alexandria, Va. Our readers will remember that we lately published a letter, addressed by Hon. CHARLES SUMNER, to some friends in Boston, accompanying a daguerreotype which that gentleman had forwarded to his friends in this city, and which he described as the portrait of a real "Ida May," — a young female slave, so white as to defy the acutest judge to detect in her features, complexion, hair, or general appearance, the slightest trace of Negro blood. It was this child that visited our office, accompanied by CHARLES H. BRAINARD, in whose care she was placed by Mr. SUMNER, for transmission to Boston. Her history is briefly as follows: Her name is MARY MILDRED BOTTS; her father escaped from the estate of Judge NEAL, Alexandria, six years ago and took refuge in Boston. Two years since he purchased his freedom for $600, his wife and three children being still in bondage. The good feeling of his Boston friends induced them to subscribe for the purchase of his family, and three weeks since, through the agency of Hon. CHARLES SUMNER, the purchase was effected, $800 being paid for the family. They created quite a sensation in Washington, and were provided with a passage in the first class cars in their journey to this city, whence they took their way last evening by the Fall River route to Boston. The child was exhibited yesterday to many prominent individuals in the City, and the general sentiment, in which we fully concur, was one of astonishment that she should ever have been held a slave. She was one of the fairest and most indisputable white children that we have ever seen.

This discovery got my adrenaline going. I googled “Mary Mildred Botts” and learned that the white-appearing slave child who was admired by the New York Times was discussed in a 2008 book called  “Raising Freedom’s Child—Black Children and Visions of the Future after Slavery,” written by a University of New Orleans professor, Mary Niall Mitchell, who (small world!) was someone I had communicated with six years ago while trying to research the Louisiana CDV’s.  I immediately ordered the book from Amazon.

When it arrived, I was stunned to find on page 73 a photo of Mary Botts that was the mirror image of MY dag. (The one in the book was from the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society.)  Prof. Mitchell gave more explanation about why this young girl was photographed and brought north by Charles Sumner.

“By the eve of the Civil War, abolitionists recognized the potential of white-looking children for stirring up antislavery sentiment…Although it was the image of a raggedy, motherless Topsy that viewers might have expected to see in a photograph of a slave girl, it was the “innocent”, “pure,” and “well-loved” white child who appeared, a child who needed the protection of the northern white public.

“The sponsors of seven-year-old Mary Mildred Botts, a freed child from Virginia, may have been the first to capitalize on these ideas, as early as 1855.  Her story also marks the beginning of efforts to use photography (in Mary Botts’s case, the daguerreotype, as the carte-de-visite format was not yet available) in the service of raising sentiment and support for the abolitionist cause.  (bold-facing mine.)

“…In his own characterization of Mary Botts,” Mitchell continues, “Sumner set a pattern that other abolitionists would follow.  In a letter printed in both the Boston Telegraph and the New York Daily Times, he compared Mary Botts to a fictional white girl who had been kidnapped and enslaved, the protagonist in Mary Hayden Pike’s antislavery novel Ida May:  ‘She is bright and intelligent—another Ida May,’ [Sumner wrote] ‘I think her presence among us (in Boston) will be more effective than any speech I can make.’”

This comparison of Mary Botts to the fictional kidnapped white girl worked well for Sumner and the Abolitionists and made the little freed slave quite a local celebrity.  Prof. Mitchell quotes the diary of a Quaker woman named Hannah Marsh Inman who saw Mary Botts at  a meeting house in Worcester, MA (which happens to be where I live now).  On March 1, 1855, Hannah wrote:  “Evening all went to the soiree at the Hall.  Little Ida May, the white slave was there from Boston.”

Sumner realized that he was on to a good thing and circulated   daguerreotypes of the child to prove her whiteness to those who might doubt.  (Keep in mind—the daguerreotype process was the first one ever made available—by Daguerre in 1839-- and the images “written by the sun” on the silvered copper plate were considered undeniable scientific proof of the sitter’s appearance.)  

Sumner passed a daguerreotype of Mary Botts around the Massachusetts State Legislature “as an illustration of slavery” and sent one to John. A. Andrews, the governor of Massachusetts.

Only a year after parading Mary Botts through New York, Boston and Worcester and dubbing her “The real Ida May”,  Charles Sumner’s devout abolitionist views  led him to a crippling disaster, when, in 1856, he was so badly beaten on the floor of the Senate by South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks,  who broke a cane over his head, that it would take years of therapy before Sumner could return to the Senate.

As soon as I realized that my dag of Mary Botts was one of the images used by Sumner himself to advance the abolitionist cause, I got into an excited e-mail correspondence with the book’s author, Professor Mitchell, and  Prof. Greg Fried, who pointed out something I’d forgotten: an advertising card on the back of my image showed that it was “Taken with the Double Camera For 25 Cents by Taber & Co., successors to Tyler & Co. Cor. Winter & Washington Sts. Boston”,  while the mirror image belonging to the  Massachusetts Historical Society was taken by Julian Vannerson, probably in Richmond,  Virginia, and seems sharper than mine, so mine must be a copy dag. (The only way to copy a daguerreotype is to take a new daguerreotype of it.  Each daguerreotype is one of a kind.  Taber’s price of 25 cents sounds affordable, but at the time, the average working man made only about a dollar a day.)

 Prof. Mitchell is currently working on a book about Mary Botts that will tell more about this former slave’s life, including the drama of how Sumner purchased her and spirited her out of Virginia, how he introduced her to the media and society as a  living advocate for the abolitionist cause, and how her family settled in the free black community in Boston.

I’m eager to learn the rest of the story, but, for now, it’s enough of a thrill just to know that the daguerreotype, taken in 1855, that is part of my collection may represent one of the first efforts EVER to use the modern discovery of photography to touch people’s emotions and change their minds.  This small image of a seven-year-old girl may be an example of the first time photography was used for propaganda, but it was certainly not the last.

A Mother Kvelling About A Daughter’s Novel

Valentine’s Day was the launch of daughter Eleni’s second book, first novel, “Other Waters”, published, like her first book, “North of Ithaka",  a travel memoir, by St. Martins Press.  Despite having surgery a week before, she’s thrown herself into publicizing the book with book signings and presentations in Coral Gables, Florida (at Books & Books) , and tonight in Manhattan at the Barnes & Noble on 86^th and Lexington.  (Tomorrow she’ll be speaking at the Library in her hometown of Worcester MA, and then  on to Boston, Denver and who knows where else.  With a six-month-old baby.  Who’s still breastfeeding.)  To find out exactly where and when, check out her website:  http://www.elenigage.com/

I’m amazed at how many more ways there are to promote a book than there were back in the 1970’s and '80’s when my husband and I were doing it.  Today many of those roads for making your book known involve the internet—a subject I’m going to write about later, when I’ve seen all the ways Eleni’s using them and how effective they are.

“Other Waters” has already had excellent reviews from the likes of Library Journal and Kirkus Reviews (which is traditionally hard to please).  Kirkus called it “A lovely read” in a review that began  “Can goddesses walk among us?  Can an entire family really be cursed?”

But today I just want to kvell—a more picturesque way of saying “brag”-- because today I saw the review of Eleni’s novel, “Other Waters” in the  March 5 issue of People Magazine—the one with “Elizabeth Smart’s Dream Wedding” on the cover.

The review starts with a photo of the book cover and a small headshot of Eleni and People gives it four (out of a possible four) stars.  The review is by Caroline Leavitt and just In case you don’t have a copy of People handy, I’ll quote it for you here: 

“A Jane Austen-ish plot gets a delicious Indian accent in this effervescent novel by former People editor Gage.  Maya Das, a psychiatric resident torn between her parents’ traditional values and her bustling New York City life, finds her world upended when her grandmother’s death ostensibly unleashes a curse.  Maya’s boyfriend dumps her and she’s faced with a malpractice suit, so she heads back to India to remove the curse, save her family and reboot her life.  But in this exotic, mysterious setting cultures collide, love grows more complicated and Maya finally discovers just whom—and where—she is really meant to be.”

Jane Austen-ish!  A family curse! Exotic, mysterious India!  Doesn’t this review make you want to rush out and buy “Other Waters”?  Well, do it now.  You can even buy and download a Kindle version of it.

Amalía Fashionista, Chapter 2

Having challenged Suri Cruise to a fashion showdown for the title of style leader to the pre-school set, granddaughter Amalia, who’s now nearly six months old, knew she’d have to be on top of her game for several important occasions recently.  She paid close attention to the news out of New York’s Fashion Week.

When her Papou and I arrived in Miami, she rejected the ladybug hat we’d brought her, calling it “too Gaga”, but she thought better of the ladybug jammies that came with it. 

 She approved, however,  of the moose-themed onesie from Aunt Robin and Uncle Bob, who live in Jackson Hole, WY.  She said she’d use it while roughing it in Yellowstone Park.

 Valentine’s Day is a big challenge for a fashionista, and Amalía said nothing is “tutu much”  for such a romantic occasion. (Mommy is wearing Missoni from Target.)

 February 16 was a very important occasion, as well, because it was the launch of her Mommy’s new novel “Other Waters” with a reading and book signing at “Books & Books”, the renowned bookstore in Coral Gables (and several other locations.)  Amalía greeted everyone with her usual warmth and charm, but unfortunately fell asleep and slept through the entire presentation.  (But she’ll be at several more book parties, readings and signings in Manhattan, Massachusetts, and elsewhere.  For details check her Mommy’s web site: www.elenigage.com.)

 Yesterday, because her Grandma and Grandpa were staying at the famous Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, with its elegant pool, Amalâ knew she’d have to choose a swimming ensemble equal to the glamorous 1930’s ambiance of the place.  

She settled on a navy and yellow daisy-themed one piece bathing suit with a cloche swim cap and matching sandals.  It even came with its own terry robe.

Amalia spent the day by the pool, but the combination of sun and water proved exhausting, and she decided to take a power nap before dressing for dinner.

And today, like the jet-setter she is, Amalía had to choose her wardrobe for her flight to Manhattan, where her resort wear wouldn’t do at all, especially in winter’s cold.  The first thing she packed was her (faux) leopard coat.  She knows that it’s all about animal prints right now.

Valentine’s Day the South Beach Way

(This Valentine Vision, seen on Lincoln Road selling the plants perched atop her  voluminous skirt, seems to have escaped from "Alice in Wonderland".)

I’m back in Miami Beach and every day I push my grand-daughter in her stroller up and down Lincoln Road, the 8-block long pedestrian mall which is the main street of South Beach.  As we promenade,  my jaw often drops at the exotic, outrageous and just plain weird things I encounter on this Main Street of Bizzaro World, home to art galleries, drag brunches, mimes, clowns, evangelists, flea markets, produce sellers, Hasidic Jews, bikinied beauties and a whole lot of homeless people rubbing elbows with tourists, models and club goers.  Adding to the excitement are the many kinds of vehicles threading through the crowds: skateboards, Segways, bicycles, and every kind of stroller and motorized chair.

Like every Main Street in the U.S.,  Lincoln Road is now awash in Valentine’s Day decorations and gifts, but here in South Beach they do Valentine’s Day their own way.

The Britto Art Gallery on Lincoln Road is devoted entirely to selling the work of Miami’s most famous (and controversial) artist, Romero Britto.  He was born into abject poverty in Brazil in 1963, is self-taught and arrived in Miami in the 1980’s.  His cheery, comic-book-like images of Mickey Mouse and smiling cats, the Statue of Liberty and the Virgin of Guadalupe now sell for many thousands of dollars each, and he has  designed for Miami huge street art, parking meters, china, purses, umbrellas, luggage, even the uniforms worn at Miami airport.

Serious art critics in Miami scorn his art and dismiss Britto as a “hack” but yesterday, people were streaming into the gallery, filled with his “heart” images for Valentine’s day and streaming out with purchases in his distinctive winged-heart shopping bags.

 Many other stores on Lincoln Road had striking Valentine-themed displays yesterday, suggesting that you tell your valentine you love him/her/it with:

 Lingerie,

 Wigs and dresses,

 Jewelry,

 Shoes,

 Books.

 Paul’s French bakery had heart-shaped bread and macaroons.

 A sports bar encouraged Happy Hour with an inflatable teddy bear

 A man was kissing two parrots he had saved – one fell from a tree, the other was given up by his owner.

 A psychic was busy doing readings.

By this morning (Monday) things had quieted down a lot and the crowds had thinned out except for two models being photographed.

 But on Valentine’s Day lovers of every persuasion will be thronging to the outdoor restaurants, bars and happy hours, the flames of the outdoor heaters will flicker (because it’s unusually cool for Miami Beach), music will be blaring from every restaurant and bar, and South Beach will be celebrating love—every kind of love—in its own unique way.