Manhattan Reflections

Last Monday I walked from 53^rd and Sixth (where the Limoliner from Boston lets passengers off) across town to 53^rd and Third Avenue.  It was a beautiful day and after I passed the Museum of Modern Art I became fascinated with the reflections in the glass-sided skyscrapers.

 It was like a hall of mirrors in a carnival.  You couldn’t tell where the reflections left off and the real buildings began.

 I’ve said it before—when you’re in Manhattan, you have to keep looking up, or you’ll miss a lot…  stone gargoyles, trompe l’oeil walls leading nowhere, kamikaze pigeons.

 When I got to Park and 53^rd, I encountered this skinny fellow in the middle of the avenue, where public art is often on display.

Here’s what he was looking up at.

 

Here’s a view of him from the other side of Park.  Behind him is Lever House, one of the first famous glass-sided skyscrapers. That’s where, fresh out of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, I had my first real job (in public relations) fifty-two years ago. I had to be at my desk at 8:00 a.m., carrying five New York newspapers that I would read and summarize for the Lever executives—anything that related to the company. Then I would type the news-sheet, mimeograph it, and circulate it within the building. I was on the 21^st floor.  When the subway went through underground, you could feel the building sway. I quit after six months.

Now Lever House has details of masterpiece paintings on its façade.  One of those things you’d miss if you didn’t look up.

When I got back to the apartment, I googled and learned that the statue at 53^rd and Park is a 33.3-feet-tall stainless-steel sculpture by American artist Tom Friedman.  It will be there until mid-July.  The name of it is “Looking Up.”

 

Are the Smiley Face Killers Back?

On March 15, an article appeared in the Boston Globe that began: “State Police on Tuesday pulled the body of a 22-year-old Central Massachusetts man from the Charles River, ending a desperate search by family members and officials after he went missing last month while celebrating his birthday at a bar in Boston.”

The name of the young man was Zachary Marr. He was a student at Mount Wachusett Community College.  As soon as I saw this, I wondered if perhaps his death signaled a return of the fabled Smiley Face Killers gang.  I described the conflicting theories about the group in my not-yet-published book “The Saga of Smiley” in a chapter called “The Smiley Face Murders, the Happy Face Killer and O. J. Simpson.”  (Last month I posted about O. J.’s “suicide letter’ which he signed with a Smiley Face symbol.)

Here’s the section I wrote about the Smiley Face Killers:

As much as he may embody the phrase “don’t worry, be happy,” Smiley has sometimes been used as a symbol of the dark underside of society, appearing as an anti-hero in music, movies, even comics. And when it comes to Smiley, life has imitated art, as the happy face has been co-opted by some evil criminals who are all too real.

Smiley’s most famous link with crime is his role as an identifying mark left near the spots where the corpses of more than 40 college-aged men were fished out of freezing rivers or lakes during the decade of 1997-2007.  Inevitably, the unknown instigators of these deaths were referred to in the press and by investigators as the Smiley Face Killers (SFK for short).

In 1997, when 21-year-old Fordham University student Patrick McNeill wandered off from a night of bar-hopping in New York City and was found floating in the Hudson River three weeks later, his death was ruled a suicide, but his parents refused to believe it. 

Five years after that, in a similar tragedy, University of Minnesota student Chris Jenkins, also 21, was found dead, encased in the ice of the Mississippi River four months after he vanished from a Halloween Party. His death, too, was ruled an accidental drowning; yet another college student who had too much to drink and then fell into a body of water. 

But two retired New York police detectives, who had been investigating a large number of drowned college-age men for years, considered Jenkins’ body the missing piece in a puzzle that connected at least 40 victims, who, they believed, were victims of a gang.  The young men were all found dead in winter in a body of water after a night of drinking.

Retired detectives Anthony Duarte and Kevin Gannon were on the track of what could be the biggest serial killing in U.S. history, which they attributed to a gang they called the Smiley Face Killers. In many of these cases, Smiley graffiti was found painted on a wall, tree or sidewalk near the point where each man was believed to have entered the water.

Duarte and Gannon claimed that the Smiley Face Gang had struck in at least 25 cities in 11 states in the U.S. since about 1997.  Virtually all of the 40 victims were athletic white college males; all were last seen leaving a party or bar with alcohol in their systems, then found dead in rivers or streams. Many attended colleges along the Interstate 94 corridor in the Midwest—in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa–and in 22 cases, a Smiley graffiti was scrawled nearby.  Each death had been ruled accidental by police.

Jenkins’ corpse convinced the detectives that his death was not accidental, because, when his frozen body was dredged from the Mississippi, his hands were folded across his chest in an odd pose that they said was inconsistent with an accidental drowning.

The parents of each of the 40 victims were convinced their sons had not died accidentally.  The press played up the story and detectives Gannon and Duarte appeared on television to discuss their theory.  “We believe they [the killers] were specifically leaving a clue for us or anyone who was paying attention to these drownings,” Detective Gannon told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” He added that these were almost perfect crimes because the water washed away physical evidence.

In life, as on Law and Order, serial killers often like to leave a calling card, and criminologists told ABCNEWS.com that the sadistic Smiley is an example of the kind of signature typically left by psychopathic killers who derive sexual arousal from their killings and are so proud of their murders that they’ll do anything they can to get credit for them.

But Smiley aside, not everyone was convinced there was a pattern here. Police forces investigating the deaths disputed the “Smiley Face Gang” theory that the deaths were linked.  Criminal profiler Pat Brown scoffed that the Smiley faces found near the water were nothing more than coincidences.  “It’s not an unusual symbol,” she said to a reporter for a Minneapolis paper.  “If you look in an area five miles square, I bet you could find a smiley face.”

 On April 29, 2008, the F.B.I. issued a statement “regarding Midwest river deaths” which said in part: The FBI has reviewed the information about the victims provided by two retired police detectives, who have dubbed these incidents the “Smiley Face Murders,” … we have not developed any evidence to support links between these tragic deaths or any evidence substantiating the theory that these deaths are the work of a serial killer or killers. The vast majority of these instances appear to be alcohol-related drownings.

Their word may be law, but in this case, the FBI’s statement was not the final pronouncement on the Smiley Murders. On June 21, 2008, ABC News reported that Bill Szostak, whose son was found in the Hudson River, had written a petition aimed at getting elected leaders to call on the FBI to investigate not only his son's death, but also 43 similar cases in nine states; college men whose deaths had been ruled accidental drownings. He got 900 signatures on his petition the first day.

The FBI has not reopened their investigation, but parents of possible “Smiley Face” victims still maintain a number of web sites that post information about the nearly 100 young men who have died in similar circumstances.  These sites include a Facebook page called “the Smiley Face Killers,” which on April 24, 2013, posted an article from the Daily Mail saying that, “Police found the body of Brown student Sunil Tripathi, falsely accused of being the Boston Marathon bomber, in the Providence River in Boston.”

And just last week, a statement posted on the Smiley Face Killers Facebook page read:

March 15th, 2016, the body of Zach Marr, age 22, was pulled from the Charles River in Boston Massachusetts. Zach went missing on February 13th, 2016, and the circumstances are all too familiar. Zach was "Last Seen leaving the Bell in Hand Tavern, where he was hanging out with friends and family" only to disappear into the night without warning. One month later, his lifeless body is pulled from the river. We see the pattern time and time again, young male, out with friends, dead in water. Marr was a student at Mount Wachusett Community College, and Zach deserved a lot more out of a life that was cut short by the Smiley Face Killers. RIP Zach Marr.

Dining with Nancy Reagan

 The Reagans with Nick and me, actress Kate Nelligan and football great Walter Payton at the White House

My mother always pointed to Nancy Reagan as the ultimate Lady, one who knew exactly how a lady should behave and never raised her voice or appeared inappropriately dressed.  Sadly, my mother passed away in January of 1985 (of  congestive heart failure, the same thing that took the former First Lady Nancy last Sunday) so she never got to hear about our first meeting with President Reagan and Nancy in October of 1985 and our second one—at a White House state dinner—the following March.

It was the Reagans’ U.S. Ambassador in Charge of Protocol, Selwa “Lucky” Roosevelt, who introduced us to the Reagans after Nick’s book “Eleni”  was published in 1984--about the life and death of his mother during the Greek civil war.  Eleni was tried and executed by Communist guerrillas because she had organized the escape of her children from their mountain village. In 1985 “Eleni” became a film starring Kate Nelligan as Nick’s mother and John Malkovich as the adult version of Nick, who, while a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, researched the details of her death.

Lucky Roosevelt gave a signed copy of “Eleni” to the Reagans, who both said in interviews that it was the best book they read that year. They also enjoyed the film. In October of 1985, Lucky invited us to a glamorous dinner party given by her and her husband, Archie Roosevelt, a grandson of Theodore.   The guest list included actress Glenn Close, author Jerzy Kosinski, and Abe Rosenthal, the editor of The New York Times.  I could not tell you what we ate, but here are some things I remember from that party: Lucky had to install $10,000 worth of new draperies in her house to satisfy the security people.  On the night of the dinner, her street in Georgetown was closed, and behind every heavily draped window stood an armed guard.  Nick and I both sat at the President’s table where he regaled everyone with anecdotes and funny stories filled with details—facts and figures rolled effortlessly off his tongue.

One thing I remember is that, between the main course and dessert, the First Lady took out a compact to re-apply her lipstick.  This was something that my late mother had insisted was not proper behavior, so I sent a silent mental telegram to heaven, telling her, “If Nancy Reagan can do it, then I can do it.”

As the dinner ended, both tables of guests moved toward the living room. I found myself walking beside the First Lady and I exclaimed to her “He’s such a marvelous story teller!”

I quickly forgot my comment, but Nancy remembered it, because she noticed and remembered every detail and everything that anyone said.

A few months later, early in 1986, Nick and I received an invitation to a state dinner at the White House to be given by the Reagans on March 18 “on the occasion of the visit of the Prime Minister of Canada (Brian) Mulroney and Mrs Mulroney.”  I began an arduous search for a dress and, with Nick’s help, I settled on one with a long black skirt and a pleated white bodice, folded like a fan.

On the day in Washington, we inched forward to the White House door in a rented limousine and finally were welcomed by military aides who checked our passports. We were led down a long hall and into a room where the roped-off press waited and our names were announced.  The aide with the microphone whispered to me “I like your dress”. I was in heaven. At the top of a staircase,  aides handed us our table assignments. Nick was at table nine, I was at 11.  Little did I know what a significant number it was.

The U. S. Marine Orchestra serenaded us to the East Room, decorated with white tulips and flowering cherry trees strung with tiny white lights.  We began to recognize celebrities, including ballerina Cynthia Gregory, Fiat chairman Gianni Agnelli, columnist William F. Buckley and Prince Karim Aga Khan with Princess Salimah Aga Khan, who was wearing a double row of diamonds interspersed with emeralds as big as marbles.

The orchestra broke into “Ruffles and Flourishes” as a voice announced the Reagans and the Mulroneys. The first lady was wearing a floor-length Galanos gown in wide horizontal stripes of sparkling gold and silver.

They formed a receiving line which we were directed through, husbands first.  (Unaccompanied ladies, like Kate Nelligan was that night, were provided with a military escort for the evening.) Then we headed toward the State Dining Room with tables decked with gold candlesticks, gold flatware and gold bowls of red and white tulips.  And of course Nancy’s famous Reagan china service that cost $200,000 (but from private, not taxpayers’ funds.)

I was led to a table in front of the fireplace and when I saw Mila Mulroney led to a seat across from me, I began to realize—yes there he was!  I was at the President’s table—an incredible favor to a non-famous person like myself.

In retrospect I think it was the remark I made to Nancy about the President’s storytelling that won me that place, because I later learned that the First Lady herself handled every detail of the seating for every event.

The others at the President’s table were: Walter Payton, the famous running back for the Chicago Bears, Allen Murray the chairman of Mobil, Donna Marella Agnelli, Burl Osborne, president and editor of the Dallas Morning News, and Pat Buckley, who sat next to the President, smoking throughout the meal.

Once again President Reagan kept us entertained with non-stop stories.  I was so rapt that, when a waiter stood behind me holding a bowl, the President gestured to me, saying, “You’d better take some salad.” He was telling a series of stories about ghosts his family had encountered in the White House—stories that I like to re-post at Halloween.

I remember every detail of that evening—both the embarrassing ones and the glorious ones   Embarrassing: after dinner ended and everyone headed to the next room for demitasse and after-dinner liqueurs, I sidled around our table to see if I could snitch the President’s hand-lettered place card.  As I closed in, the majordomo, a genial white-haired gentleman, handed me the place card.  “Somebody always comes to get it for a souvenir”, he said, smiling.

Glorious moment: after a concert in the East Room, the Reagans danced to tunes from Broadway musicals, played by the Marine Dance Band. Before the clock struck midnight, they started to head off toward their private quarters and as they passed, the First Lady suddenly stopped and seized my hand and Nick’s saying, “We must have a photograph with the Gages before we go.”  I lost the ability to speak.  Nancy pulled Kate Nelligan and Walter Payton into the picture. Flashbulbs popped and then the Reagans were gone. I wouldn’t have been surprised if, at the stroke of midnight, I turned into a pumpkin.

Here’s what I know about Nancy Reagan, who is now reunited with the love of her life:  she noticed every detail, she was the power behind the throne, and my mother was right, she was a great lady.

  

My Stay in the Charles Street Jail

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 During the week in February when my husband Nick was in Mass General Hospital in Boston for cardiac tests and procedures, he booked me a brief stay at the Liberty Hotel on Charles Street, which is only steps away from the MGH.  It turned out to be one of the most unusual hotels I’ve stayed in, because it was built in 1851 to be the Charles Street Jail.  The design, by architect Gridley James Fox Bryant, is considered one of the best examples of “Boston granite style” with an octagonal central building topped by a cupola and four radiating wings .

According to the history available at the reception desk, in 1973, after 120 years of housing some of Boston‘s most notorious criminals, the prisoners revolted because of bad living conditions and the jail was declared unfit.  But not until 1990 were the last prisoners moved to the new Suffolk Country Jail.

When the place re-opened as a Starwood Luxury Collection hotel in September of 2007, the designers, working with the Massachusetts Historical Commission, retained much of the original prison architecture, and also  incorporated the jail theme into just about everything, including the door keys and the “solitary” tag (to use instead of “Do not disturb”).  Keys and Boston ephemera were featured in the framed art on the wall and keys were also in the design of the room carpet.

Here’s the view of Boston from my window—notice the pillow on the chair incorporating the scratch marks that prisoners used to keep track of the passage of days.

The hotel is in fact luxurious, and it boasts six bars and restaurants, all with names playing on prison jargon. In the basement is the Alibi bar—a Boston hot spot.   Other restaurants are called Clink, Scampo (Italian for “escape”) and the Catwalk, where I had a late supper on one of the three catwalks lining the huge central atrium, which were used by patrolling guards to keep an eye on prisoners in their cells.  

 There was live music from the 90-foot-wide rotunda below, and, in front of me, models were being photographed.  In good weather there is also a secret garden in the enclosed courtyard outside, called “The Yard.”

I spent most of my time in Nick’s hospital room, so couldn’t take advantage of the hotel’s many amenities including complimentary yoga, bicycles and shoeshines.  But I didn’t reject the complimentary glass of sparkling wine when I checked in.

The next day, as I was getting used to being incarcerated, Nick’s doctors released him from the hospital, saying the long procedure done the day before had been successful in opening up his blocked artery without having to resort to a bypass.  He was free to go. So before they could change their mind, we flew the coop.

Lunch at Mar-a-Lago with The Donald (Trump, Of Course)

Because The New York Times today featured an article about how Donald Trump hires many illegal immigrants to staff his private club (formerly his home) of Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, I thought I'd repost a photo essay from my blog of April 4, 2011 to give an inside view of just how over-the-top the place is, not to mention showing the portrait found inside that shows The Donald just as he imagines himself to be.

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”. 

The Invisible (Old) Woman

One of my favorite "older woman" bloggers is Judith Boyd who calls herself the "Style Crone" and is, like me, in her seventies.   She just published a blog post called "The Orange Jacket and the Concept of Erasure".  Her post and her orange jacket were inspired by an essay in the Feb. 2nd New York Times Magazine, written by Parul Sehgal , on "Erasure"  in which Sehgal says: “Erasure refers to the practice of collective indifference that renders certain people and groups invisible.”  Judith, the Style Crone, said: "Sehgal’s focus on older women at the end of her essay was profoundly powerful.  'There has been a blank around the lives of older women, who report feeling invisible as they age – which is, as it turn out, more fact than feeling.'”  Judith concluded: "I learned that no amount of orange could change the fact that older women are not 'seen' in our culture."

 Reading this inspired me to re-post an essay of mine that first appeared on "A Rolling Crone" on July 19, 2011 called "The Invisible (Old) Woman"  Here it is:

 A couple of days ago, my husband and I were staying in an antique-filled small hotel in Chania, Crete, which had, in the parlor, a wall of books in many languages discarded by previous guests.  (This is one of the delights of staying in small hotels.)

I picked up a paperback by Doris Lessing called “The Summer Before the Dark”, published in 1973, and I finished it as we arrived in Athens on Sunday night.

Briefly, it’s the story of a 48-year-old British housewife and mother, Catherine (or Kate) Brown, married to a doctor, who takes a summer off from domestic life, because her husband is at a medical conference in Boston and her three teen-aged children are traveling with friends in different countries.  She lets their house for the summer and begins working at a job as a translator at conferences around the world.  (Luckily, she’s fluent in four languages.)

When her well-paying work is over, Kate takes an American lover who is much younger—in his early 20’s.  They travel in Spain, he becomes very ill from some never-specified disease, then she becomes ill and returns to London alone, staying anonymously in a hotel. 

By the time she’s well enough to get out of bed, Kate has lost 15 pounds, her clothes hang on her, her dyed red hair is coming out gray at the roots and her face has aged dramatically.  As she weakly walks around London, even passing her own house, where her best friend doesn’t recognize her, Kate realizes that, by suddenly aging from an attractive, stylish, curvy redhead into a skeletal old hag in baggy clothes, she has become invisible.

Several times she plays this game: she walks past a group of men who ignore her or goes into a restaurant where the waiters scorn her, then she goes back to the hotel, puts on a stylish dress and ties her hair back, adds lipstick and returns to the same places, where she is coddled and admired.

I admit that it’s plausible for a 48-year-old woman to transform herself at will from an invisible hag into a noticed and admired woman, but when you’re sixty, or seventy (as I am) you’re permanently in the “invisible” category, unless you’re, say, Joan Collins or Jane Fonda.

I’ve been noticing this “invisible woman” phenomenon with both amusement and consternation over the years.  Haven’t you had the experience of walking into a coffee shop or a department store or a cocktail party where everyone looks right through you and you start searching for a mirror to make sure you’re actually visible?

Yesterday we checked into the Grande Bretagne Hotel in Athens, one of the grand old luxury hotels of the world.  We arrived a bit out of breath because there was a taxi strike and we came via subway, dragging our suitcases up stairwells when there was no escalator.

My husband walked in first and I was greeted on all sides: “Welcome back Mrs. Gage!”  My suitcases disappeared. Cold water was provided.

A couple of hours later, I came down to the lobby to ask a question at the concierge desk.  There were three concierges and no other guests waiting.  The white-haired concierge was on the phone confirming someone’s dinner reservations.  The middle one was explaining to the youngest one about the book where must be recorded all cars and busses and pick-up times. I learned a lot about the hotel business, standing there 18 inches in front of them, until finally one of them noticed me and said “Oh hi!  How can I help you?”

A more fraught episode occurred Saturday in Crete at the magnificent wedding reception of a very prominent Cretan family.  Nick and I passed through security and into the estate, up some stairs where we were greeted by waiters with glasses of champagne and a world-class view of the sea below.  Lit by the full moon was a football-field- sized clearing by the seaside, filled with flower-laden tables and lighted by candles and lanterns. I stopped to admire the view, then turned toward the swimming pool area where the family was greeting guests, but my husband had vanished into thin air.

For half an hour I walked around the pool area, even wandering into the nearby yard where I thought Nick might have gone to escape the crush.  As I circled, I kept looking for a familiar face, but the only ones I recognized were from TV and the newspapers. The predominant languages were French and Greek, which I know (far better Greek than French), but I couldn’t imagine plunging into one of the groups surrounding a prime minister and blurting out in any language: “Hi, I’m the wife of Nicholas Gage”.

At the far end of the swimming pool, on a white banquette, was a young woman in a long brown dress completely absorbed in her cell phone.  I decided to take the other banquette and watch the parade of Parisian fashions pass by. Unfortunately, I had left my phone at the hotel.

Eventually my husband re-appeared.  He had gone with friends to find the lists for our table seating. After we clambered down to the sea and found our table, I had no trouble talking to the Greek jewelry designer on my right and the elegant Frenchman across the table, but that first half hour of invisibility wasn’t fun.

But sometimes I delight in being invisible.  Yesterday, I repeated a summer ritual. I walked from Constitution Square down Hermou to a tourist shop just below the Cathedral on  Mitropouleas Street to  deliver another batch of my Greek Cat books for them to sell.  Then I went to a small restaurant called “Ithaki” where every summer I get a really good gyro and some chilled white wine. I sit at the same table every time and watch the owner charm the passing tourists into sitting down to eat.  I’m fascinated by the man’s ability to know each person’s language. He’s way more skilled than the usual restaurant shills who try to lure you in with the two or three sentences they know.

Yesterday he charmed two pretty girls from South Africa into sitting at the table at my left, treating them to a piece of his “famous spinach pie” as an appetizer.  Then he gathered a rollicking table of Italians and told them which beer to order.  Directly in front of me were two American boys who had befriended two girls whose accents suggested that they came from someplace once in the USSR. “Oh, I’ve always wanted to see America,” I heard one of them say.

Wrapped in my cloak of invisibility I could hear the South African girls complaining about their parents: “If my mother ever found out!”  I could watch the American boys rather awkwardly courting the much more sophisticated Slavic girls.  I reflected that every young person should be required to take a year off before the age of 30, to tour the world with a backpack and sit in a taverna like this one, listening to the owner speak a medley of languages and learning about the world.

When he brought me the (very modest) bill, I tried to tell the owner that I come back every year because I enjoy watching him speak so many languages so well, but he just shrugged and rushed off to greet some Japanese tourists.  I think he didn’t hear me.

Obama’s Mama Collected Textiles and So Do I

  

  In the “Antiques and The Arts” newspaper, some years ago, I came across a small item that thrilled me.  It said that Barack Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, wove textiles for wall hangings early in her life, and when she moved to Indonesia with her son in the 1960’s, she began to amass a collection of the vibrant batik textiles of the country.  “She did not acquire rare or expensive pieces, but rather contemporary examples that were an expression of a living tradition, patterned with both classic designs and those of passing fashion.”

Later, I learned, when Ann was studying anthropology at the University of Hawaii, she tried to find ways to help craftspeople.  She worked with the Ford Foundation in Jakarta and with USAID and the World Bank, and set up micro-credit projects in Indonesia, Pakistan and Kenya to benefit poor women making textiles.

I have always considered textile-making (weaving and embroidery) a fascinating art form. In many countries this is the only medium of artistic expression available to women and the only way they can earn money.  Whenever I travel, I buy textiles –ideally from the women who created them. Now my walls are covered with antique American quilts, Mexican huipils, Haitian voodoo flags and Greek embroidered table runners.

 Most pieces cost under $100 but they’re priceless, because they embody the maker’s artistic talent as well as (in some cases) their religious or political beliefs and their dreams, for example the wedding couple on a tablecloth that a young Greek girl embroidered as part of her dowry. (The teapot is also from an Anatolian tablecloth.) 

Around 1970 I got interested in antique American quilts. On our second floor stair landing I hung a “Tumbling Blocks” quilt behind a sea captain’s chest full of teddy bears.

The section from an unfinished velvet and silk Victorian quilt is called “Windmill Blades” and the large “Barn Raising” quilt on the staircase wall is from a very old variation on the Log Cabin pattern.

Mexican and Guatemalan embroideries fascinate me with their sophisticated and wild use of color. I’ve decorated the wall of my studio (shown at top) with antique, wonderfully embroidered Mexican huipils.  The design of each blouse indicates the native village of the woman who wears it. 

The lady posing above with her work is Maria, whom we met in the marketplace of San Cristobal, Chiapas, Mexico.  She was the best among the many women weavers and embroiderers who crowded the marketplace.  (San Cristobal is heaven for the collector of textiles.) 

Near the border of Guatemala I found the embroidery at left made by a Sandinista woman who was also selling dolls with faces masked like Comandante  Marcos. The pillow at the right, made in Guatemala, looks to me like a man walking in a graveyard.  Could this be a memorial or something to do with the Day of the Dead? 

Daughter Eleni, who studied folklore and mythology, introduced me to the sequined voodoo flags made in Haiti and used in religious rites.  They are usually made (and signed) by men and they represent the gods who take possession of the worshiper.  These sequin flags and the artists who make them are taken very seriously as art now, which means they can be very expensive. The two large ones represent La Sirene—-The Enchantress—and Baron Samedi—who mitigates between life and death.

 

Textile artists reflect the life they see around them—the Greek wall hanging is an island scene with table, chairs and cat. The festive wedding scene (brought from Pakistan by Eleni) shows a wedding party celebrating beneath an umbrella.  

 

This exquisite, antique Chinese embroidery (now framed under glass) was in a box of textiles that I bought for $75.  The detailed work and the wonderful reproduction of all those birds, animals and flowers make it beyond price. The knots are so small, I think it must include the “forbidden knot” that would make the sewers eventually lose their sight. 

 

  

 Finally there is lace: a simple lace handkerchief and lace runner that I'm told represents French cathedrals.  It may sound silly to buy pieces like this for a few dollars and then spend a great deal more to frame them, but I do it, because I consider them found art.

It cost a lot more than a few dollars when I encountered this stunning set of Madeira lace work – ten place mats and a table runner—at a summer yard sale near our village common.  They came with their own blue brocade carrying case plus a handwritten note that it was “Made on the Island of Madeira for the Beede Family, makers of Madeira Wines”.

I couldn’t resist, telling myself it was for a daughter’s trousseau, but let’s face it, young women today have no use for fragile lace tablecloths, napkins and embroidered linens, so the fine Madeira set now lives with the “turkey work” embroidered pillow shams, the hand-smocked baby dresses (mine! from 75 years ago!). and the Dresden Plate quilt that my grandmother made for my mother’s wedding in 1932—all stored in tissue and special boxes, hidden under my bed.

Amalia's Florida Escape

All winter I've been going out on the balcony in New York looking for snow but nothing happened.

Then at the end of  January, Yiayia and Papou said that we should come down to South Beach, Miami for a long weekend because Papi was traveling in Asia on business.

Here we are in the airport: Mommy, Nicolas and me.

When we got to the apartment in South Beach where we lived when I was born, Nicolas took a nap in the courtyard while Mommy worked and I rode my bicycle around.  

It has three wheels and gives directions in Spanish.

Inside the apartment I showed Papou and Yiayia what I had learned in gymnastics and yoga.

One day we went to Flamingo Park where I rode on the dinosaur that used to scare me when I was little.

And went down the big curvy slide

While Mommy and Nicolas sat under the Banyan tree

Then we all rode on the little train. I was the engineer.

Later we went to Espanola Way and had crepes at A La Folie.  I made a design out of the sugar packets.

Then we went to the gelateria place nearby.

I got strawberry. I always get strawberry.

On another day we went to Lincoln Road and I did crafts at Books and Books with my Miami friends Eleni and Phaedra.

I colored this purse.  Do you like it?

On Lincoln Road, Nicolas liked to crawl around on the grassy knoll.

And at night on the grassy knoll I would shoot off into the sky rockets with colored lights, sold by the rocket man, while behind me a man was dancing and vogue-ing.

We were supposed to fly back on Sunday but all the flights were cancelled because of a huge snowstorm in New York, so we went to Eleni and Phaedra's house for dinner and their Mommy cut the King cake.

Finally on Tuesday we got on a plane for New York and Nicolas screamed and made a big fuss until Yiayia showed him Peppa Pig on her phone.

In New York there were huge piles of snow everywhere and the cars were all stuck in the snow.  After school on Wednesday, outside our apartment building, Yiayia and I made our first snowman of the winter.

It was the best snowman on East 80th Street.