Travel

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: An odd pairing of two recent photo purchases today under the rumination of travel. I am a homebody in many ways, but I have always also had a travel itch. I have been to Tibet (twice) and been lucky to travel all over Europe, to South America, and most recently South Africa for my jobs first at the Metropolitan Museum and then Jazz at Lincoln Center. (Notably the trips to Tibet were on my own, not for work and I have traveled in Europe on my own as well. Meanwhile, I have documented my conflicted feelings about home versus travel in posts that can be found here and the story of one trip gone very wrong here.) The contemplation of certain destinations have always inflamed this itch – Samarkand, Mongolia, Mustang and Vienna (oddly it has eluded me), remain on my to do list.

Dad traveled incessantly for his work as a news cameraman for ABC. He loved it and it is likely that I inherited the itch from him. (I am under the impression that my mother has only been on a plane twice in her life and perhaps her extreme is what counterbalances the desire to hit the road.) My sister Loren had the itch, although less so than me perhaps; she got engaged while traveling to Prague and made numerous trips to the south of Italy in the last few years of her life. I lost count of the number of times she drove across the country though and she exceeded me there. It felt like she would just do it at the drop of a hat. Although my brother has traveled some, he seems to have been largely free of the burning desire. I would say, after Dad, I get the family prize for wanderlust however, especially on an international scale.

Some of the photos I have been looking at and buying lately are a lot more random than my usual ferreting out of cat and toy photos. Many are clearly old photo albums being broken up and sold, the final refuge for such albums once they have outlived their useful family life. Mostly this just makes me a bit sad and although I am very glad if someone wants an old wedding photo or one of a family vacation. Most don’t speak to me but it pleases me if they can find a home. Sifting through the pile of recent purchases these two stood out for different reasons, but got me to thinking about these destinations as I look at them today.

***

I love this photo of a couple on holiday in New Orleans. They are radiating a good time holiday here, posed in front of this horse and buggy tour operator, probably preparing to step on or having ended their ride. Happy holiday photos (or day at the seaside or in a photo booth) are a genre I pursue and this one fits nicely.

Just behind the horse is Sally’s Original Creole Pralines. (Sally is still selling those pralines and you can get them online.) The horse and buggy are jolly and perfect, but it is their holiday outfits I love. They are dressed to the nines in their late 40’s garb, especially her in hat, heels and spring weight coat. They are radiating a certain kind of posed for travel joy – having a great time and wanting to remember this being telegraphed into the future, and arriving even now.

Sadly nothing is noted on the back – I would like to have their names. The photo is small, only about 3″x4″ but it has this zippy boarder which declares Elko at each corner. There is a production number printed on the back and I assume that this snap was a requisite add-on as part of the buggy ride package, perhaps taken in the beginning and ready by the time you got back.

I have been to New Orleans, twice, and a very long time ago. I have always wanted to go back and spend more time as both trips were brief and rushed. If I really turned the apartment upside down (it is already upside down really as we are packed up in boxes for the installation of bookcases commencing tomorrow) I could probably locate a not very good photo of a 25 year old me in New Orleans, but I know it isn’t as good as this one. My mouth waters for pralines, beignets, and po’ boys just looking at it.

***

The second is a sort of odd photo for me to have acquired. It is small, a snapshot. On the back it is identified as Moutrier, Riviera, 1944. Presumably this is a photo of Allied soldiers during the liberation of France in that year, probably enjoying the Bar and Dancing more than the actual Casino aspect of this establishment. I can’t quite make out the name of the establishment detailed with photos of the performers behind these gentleman.

I bought this one for a few dollars. I like the idea of these guys maybe having a good enough time (given how awful fighting the war must have been, they certainly had it coming) that they wanted to commemorate it – and then keeping this photo for decades. The last of this generation is mostly in their nineties and is going now – sadly the Covid virus having pushed more of them along. I have talked to men for whom being shipped there to fight in WWII was their first trip to Europe, for a few the only trip with no desire to go back, others whose lives would take them there frequently. I know at one who loved Italy so much he and his wife settled there for much of his life after the war, working for the army.

The final trip I took to Europe for the Met, in October of 2016, took me to the South of France and Monte Carlo. While the natural beauty of the coast is undeniable, I found the crowded nature of that city uncomfortable and commercial – every single square inch appears to have been built on. We visited the Casino there, briefly and during the day, but while interesting to see that building, gambling holds very little appeal for me and I don’t appear to have documented that part of that trip. (Photos were prohibited inside the Casino.) I offer instead a photo from the roof of my hotel somewhere on the Riviera – I believe I sent this unremarkable shot below to Kim to show him I was really there, landed and settled for the moment on the first day.

***

Much of my travel for Jazz at Lincoln Center has been domestic. I was in both Milwaukee and Chicago just a week or so before March 13 and the stay at home order for New York City. Without that order I would have traveled to Boston, London, possibly Russia, Colorado and San Francisco in the intervening time. It is hard for me to believe thinking about it now. Admittedly it seemed like a daunting summer even then – albeit in an entirely different way than it has indeed been daunting.

Other than talking a little bit with Wynton about it, I have not had a chance to ask the orchestra members about what it is like for them to be grounded for so long. Not just no travel, but even more seriously no gigs at all of course, save those online productions we have managed. For them the rhythm of travel mark the coming and going of their work life each year and this interruption is an epoch. Most, like Wynton, have traveled and had gigs every single week of their working lives, starting quite young.

Even more than after 9/11 it is hard to imagine reformatting our lives back into this kind of travel. Taking off our shoes, stuffing our liquids in a small bag to be presented at the commencement of each trip, all quickly became rote annoyances we took in stride and seem like nothing now. However, in a world where folks are wearing gloves at the supermarket and we look a bit askance at the subway, even hopping on an Amtrak to Boston seems unlikely let alone something we have a craving to do. Having said that I do know people for whom either necessity or itchy feet have already gotten them on planes in recent weeks. For now I am taking it slow, with maybe a trip downtown on the subway planned for our vacation in August.

The Drinkers

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today’s photo is part of a run of early photos I have purchased either on Instagram or in an online version of the Brimfield sale. (I have only been to Brimfield a few times and it is one of my life’s ambitions to go again. As a car-less non-driver there is no good path from Manhattan. Fellow junk collectors who would like to make the trip in future less disease inhibited times, please do advise. Happy to fund gas.)

This photo postcard came out of the Instagram haul. Purchasing on Instagram is like being in a real time auction although there is no raising of a bid – just who gets to claim it. Some are fast paced and other items just sit and get marked down. It is interesting to me to see what @MissMolly thinks I would like from what I have already purchased and when she DM’s me about one. She’s low on cat photos though and I have yet to manage to purchase one from her.

The Brimfield sale (those to follow in future weeks) moved at a somewhat slower pace, which works better for me. I do like to have at least a bit of time to ponder and consider. The Instagram sales are definitely you snooze you lose – the Brimfield one largely allowed for some consideration and even negotiation before things started to get snatched up.

This photo postcard is entirely unmarked and was never sent. I suspect that it was the composition that caught my eye. The photographer caught a good moment with the legs of these gentlemen, their shoulders and that flag creating a triangle in the middle – a sort of perfect composition – with those table legs adding to it. All the gents sport ties so they were dressed for the occasion, the one even completes the ensemble with a vest and watch chain. I would hazard a guess that it wasn’t a day that started out with drinking and smoking, but was ending with it.

Each fellow has a liberal shot of what appears to be hard liquor, with a bottle of beer chaser as well. (Or so it appears to me.) The two younger men may be brothers, a thought that only occurs to me when I start looking hard at it. Cigarettes spring from the mouths of the two guys. I think it is fair to say this is serious business, they do not appear jolly. Their attire marks this photo as very early. The room is pretty nondescript although there is an oddly incongruent and cheerful boarder of flowers on the wall near the floor and what I thought was a series of either small holes or something along the middle of the wall, but turns out to be something on the negative or in the printing. It’s hard to see, but there’s a happy flowered carpet on the floor too.

I spent a little time considering the flag at the back and its position. Taking out the possibility that somehow the photo negative and printing process somehow flipped which could be possible, I wondered what the statement might be. As many readers probably know, an upside down flag is a signal of duress. I had not encountered backward.

Our friends over at Google informed me that the military positions the flag this way (blue section, stars up highest) on uniforms, vehicles and whatnot, making the flag look as if it is waving as the person or the vehicle moves forward. I don’t know that I agree that they achieve this effect, but I guess it isn’t for me to weigh in on. Meanwhile, I admit that somehow I have never noticed this. So much for my general powers of observation. I cannot find any other reference to this positioning of the flag. (Someone with better eyes might be able to date this within a range by counting the stars on that faded flag.)

Meanwhile, I believe there is a general sense that our prolonged quarantine has increased people’s drinking (um, why wouldn’t it?) and probably not always in a good way. Zoom cocktails (starting earlier and earlier in the day it seems) being the social version of this – although here in New York you can sit outside with someone and drink if you are comfortable doing it in what turns out to be a not-quite socially distanced way. (I have yet to do it but I did have an in-person work breakfast outside on the corner of York and 86 the other day. It was very hygienic and just fine.)

When it comes to work if someone invites you to Zoom cocktails it to be a way of saying it isn’t really a work meeting, and maybe you will talk a little work, but you’ll also chat about other things. (Strangely though, like the meetings we have all tuned into, they tend to last exactly an hour.) Whether you have a jam jar of white wine in one hand, cold hibiscus tea (my favorite summer drink which makes me look like I am guzzling red wine), or something harder, it’s up to you and anything pretty much goes – after all, you’ll on someone’s laptop or iPad screen. I personally seem to be consuming the large quantity of my calories through baked goods rather than alcohol, but to each their own.

However, the other evening we (meaning we at Jazz at Lincoln Center) hosted a Dizzy’s Club online event and sent out the offer for cocktail and mocktail fixings for the guests. Although I purchased the requisite box (which came with salted peanuts in a nod to Dizzy himself) featuring Negroni fixings, instead I made a vodka tonic the way I like, with a ridiculous amount of fresh lime. (I had spent the day packing the apartment for the installation of bookshelves and needed the pick me up – more on this in a future post.) In this way, I found myself on Zoom with 60 or so jazz lovers. The evening kicked off talking to the great Catherine Russell followed by a clip of her at Dizzy’s. (I don’t have that clip but instead offer another which at the time of writing can be found here.)

Our apartment packed up for the bookcase installation.

However briefly it did seem we were transported to a summer’s evening, wiled away at Dizzy’s, sweating drinks in hand – a serving of spicy mac ‘n cheese within reach and maybe some fried pickles, enjoying some companionable time, listening to the music and watching the view of the sun setting over Central Park. I must say, those were the best Zoom cocktails so far.

View of Dizzy’s, Central Park and the East side out the windows.

Putting the Dog Before the Cart

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today’s photo is not only suffering from age, but probably from being under exposed in the first place. In person it also has a bit of solarization that photos from this period often get, almost as if the silver is rising to the surface, making it even harder to see. I knew this when I bought it (to Miss Molly’s credit she does nothing to enhance the images of the photos she sells – that doesn’t happen often, although in my hobby I come across it occasionally), but I loved the image and I decided to take a chance. It is small, the image is only about 3″x4″. So, my apologies for its inherent short comings.

This photo appeals to me because I would have adored having such a set up as a child. I have written on several occasions about employing our long-suffering German Shepard, Duchess, and my cat Snoopy in a complex series of games and scenarios. The fact that, at least as a small child, I would not have had the appropriate real estate needed to really enjoy such a contraption, I will leave aside – you need some real acreage to really sport about it something like this, but wow – you’d really be doing something!

I have long contemplated that the connection with our domestic animal friends is different when you are a small child. Is it because you are, in reality, that much closer to their own intellectual bandwidth at that point? Or are you just communicating more freely? I have always wondered. I can remember long childish conversations with them both, prattling happily along, looking deep into their eyes as I spoke, absolutely certain they understood every word.

Perhaps because of the sheer amount of attention paid to them, they would allow me to undertake all sorts of indignities that I wouldn’t dream of inflicting on my pets as an adult – trying to ride the dog, dressing up the kitty, adventures with the doll carriage and the like. My parents would intervene occasionally if things got out of hand, but generally we were left to our own devices. I would have been on this dog cart thing in a minute given the opportunity. Duchess, somewhere in dog heaven, is perhaps grateful the opportunity did not arise.

My new always-at-home life has changed my relationship with Blackie and Cookie. It isn’t a coincidence that shelters have been emptied of dogs and cats during the pandemic. They are excellent company during these days that merge into one long working day.

The daily routine of Cookie and Blackie was forged early here at Deitch Studio, formed around Kim working at home and his day. Kim and the kitties start the workday (very) early, and he is in charge of their feeding, morning and evening. (Eating to cats is, without question, the most important part of the day – a brief but glorious interlude. We have strict feeding times in an, ever-failing, attempt to keep them from driving Kim nuts all day while he works.)

Until the middle of March I was on the outer edge of this cat constellation, home on weekends, but otherwise generally in the ongoing daily act of coming and going – packing a suitcase and leaving for days at a time on occasion, very undependable. They expected it and my departures and arrivals frankly rarely rated so much as a flatten ear or a greeting glance from either.

I noticed the other day when Kim went out for a walk that the cats sat by the front door the entire time, staring at it. Waiting and willing him to return. They clearly have very little faith in my ability to open a cat food can.

Yet, I think the cats have, over the course of more than four months, completely erased my daily departures from memory. I too am now a daily fixture – if a slightly less useful one. Blackie makes his appearance in Zoom calls and demands a 3:30 cuddle no matter what else I am doing – and Cookie helps me work out daily (she likes it when my trainer, Harris, appears on the iPad for a FaceTime workout where she flirts with him a bit), and both fight me for my work chair. Kim can vouch for the fact that I talk to them all the time – Cookie tends to actually answer. She’s the chatty kit of the two.

And of course I believe they understand me, or at least a certain percentage of what I tell them – mostly encouragement about being the best kitty in the whole world! and the handsomest boy cat! and even the occasional please get off of the desk – thank you very much! – it isn’t philosophical discussion for the most part. I will have to be home many months longer before I can perhaps find my childhood knack and we can enter into long talks about the meaning of life together, Cookie, Blackie and I.

Queen for a Day?

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: This is one among upcoming posts which will include purchases from a woman I found on Instagram (@MissMollysAntiques) and who commenced our relationship by selling me a nice paper mache Halloween black cat head. (A post about that can be found here.) She appears to be selling out a shop in an antiques mall somewhere in the middle of the United States and I am one of the beneficiaries. (Miss Molly also appears to be a musician, although I don’t know much about that aspect of her biography.)

As I sat writing this blog last weekend, Instagram starting sending me DM messages with photo images that were going on a sort of flash sale she was posting. I was the right captive audience and she was on a run with me as I picked up what ended up being quite a pile of very random, but interesting, photos.

First in talking about this photo, let me start by saying I have always been fairly fixated on the idea of ermine. Don’t get me wrong, I am solidly of the camp that believes the little fellows should keep their own fur. Until I looked it up just now I never knew that these weasel-y little fellows are brown in the summer (no one seems to want their little pelts then) and only turn white in the winter, their tails supply the black bits. (They are clearly in trouble then.) The black and white pattern has always interested me though although I am sure that I would be more than satisfied with faux.

I think it is safe to say that no real ermines were injured in the making of this photo studio costume donned by our subject, the young woman here. However, she wears it well – crown perched atop her head and scepter lightly grasped. She takes to being royalty well.

The backdrop puzzles me some. It is a painted scrim of a cottage facade with flower boxes. Seems a bit disparate with the costume proffered. She is very nicely dressed under her borrowed garb. A pretty spring dress, shiny white stockings and white spring shoes all shine below the cape. Her day at the fair or carnival must have been a very festive event. This card is in perfect shape and was never mailed, nothing is written on the back. It is easy to see why it was saved.

A combination of working on this post and the precise point Kim is at in his Little Orphan Annie reading created a nexus bringing to mind a cartoon I had not seen since childhood. (Facebook folks know that Kim has been working his way slowly and joyfully through all of Little Orphan Annie, reading it on weekend mornings while I work on my blog. He’s currently on Volume 14 – 1948-’50; he’s deep into ’49 presently.)

This discussion, about treasure discovered in caves, sent me to the internet where after a few false starts we watched Bugs and Daffy in Ali Baba Bunny. For those of you who know the cartoon I just have to say, Pismo Beach and Mine, Mine, Mine! and you’ll know which one I am talking about. (Kim had never seen it! One of the rare moments when our generational difference is showing.) If you need a giggle – and really, who doesn’t? – I suggest you wander over now and watch it. (At the time of writing it was found here.)

Hitting the Wall: Part One

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Living in a studio apartment there is no way that all of my carefully curated photo collection could all ever find life on the wall here. For those of you who have never had the chance to visit us (the majority of you, to say the least), you may have wondered (or not) about which make the cut and what is up on the walls here. I had not given it more thought than the average person until the Covid craze for Zoom calls commenced. These days our photo laden walls are the subject of some discussion by meeting attendees and other video visitors. It has been intimated that guessing what is behind me has become something of a pastime, much like staring out a window in a meeting, when bored.

Blackie on my chair recently. He and Cookie love this seat and fight me for this chair all day everyday.

Lucky waving kitty who usually lives on a shelf in my office.

A few months ago I shared details in a post about setting up a new base of operations for my daily grind now taking place here in the apartment. (I wrote a bit about the new work set-up here at Deitch Studio in a post that can be found here.) I spend much of my day now, directly behind Kim, utilizing an old drawing table of mine which I frankly haven’t bothered to clear off entirely. At this moment on my desk I can spy: the Halloween cat head from last week’s post; a hand woven bowl from my trip to South Africa last fall; and two waving lucky money cats. (A post about my lucky cat habit can be found here. I brought the second one back from the office recently, concerned he wasn’t getting any light and helping to make Jazz at Lincoln Center more money – we need it!) And lastly, a photo of the costume jewelry designer, Kenny J. Lane.

My photo of Kenny J. Lane, taken by Eileen Travell and a gift from her.

Ken was an honorary board member of the Met. Sadly he died shortly after I left for Jazz at Lincoln Center. He had been very ill, but nonetheless I was very sad I had not had a chance to see him and so my friend Eileen Travell gave me a very lovely photo she had taken of him for a magazine story several years ago. It sits in my office at work on a shelf above me, where I like to find Kenny looking down at me. I found I missed him and retrieved it as well on my recent trip to the office.

From that admittedly choatic table I do my much of my daily work. (Although recently while Kim is working on laying out a new story I have taken a number of Zoom calls on a corner of our bed, set up with my enormous Dean’s Rag Co. Mickey Mouse looming over me, backlit despite having been told it is a bad effect. A post devoted to big Mickey and his acquisition can be found here. A surprisingly few people have commented on him actually.)

Although I have pledged that I will devote some posts to the most popular view and what is contained there, the space above Kim and his work table, which does contain many of our finest specimens, today however I start with a bit of wall that folks don’t see, but one which will disappear soon. Technically it isn’t actually a wall, but the side of bookcase which for many years has held these photos and is where many years worth of calendars have been kept.

Anyway, I have been encouraged to document the wall decoration a bit and I start with this, which has been my view at the foot of Kim’s table where I have written this blog from, for many years because in a couple of weeks it will disappear. After many months delay, soon we will pack up a bunch of stuff (yep, again) and make room for an entire wall of bookcases. This was the next stage of renovating our tiny abode which was scheduled to happen a few months after recovering from the kitchen renovation, but which has been long delayed by the quarantine.

The installation of bookcases and cabinets along the entire wall will hopefully relieve some of the ever-looming piles of books, art, dvd’s, and yes, photographs and even toys, that are currently like topsy everywhere. It does mean that the existing, scattered bookcases will depart including this one. For some reason it only just occurred to me, the other night at 1:30 AM when I couldn’t sleep and decided to worry about things for awhile, that this sliver of bookcase would be gone soon, replaced by my work table moving into that spot after it is displaced by the new bookcases. Where will the calendar go? And the paint pole we use for exercising?

The bottom two images are strange favorites – Halloween photos from a Brooklyn parade in 1917, which I purchased in multiple separate lots but of the same gathering when examined closely. I did an early post about them, back in 2014, which can be found here. I find them unfailingly cheerful and of continued interest.

Lurking above these are two nice examples of photo postcards of Felix at the beach. Pictorama readers know these are like catnip to me and these two examples have been featured previously in posts, here and here.

Photo featured in All in the Family, a January, 2018 post.

Featured in Felix and the Gang, a 2016 post.

Not in danger of are several real photo postcards of people posing with giant black cats, the corner of some sheet music, and a few other gatherings with Felix at the beach. Those will have their due in a future post, as I go around the room. There is also the top of an ancient mirror that came from my grandparents house, oddly hinged, and weighing far more than you would imagine.

Somehow I manage to be both the necessary agent for change here at Deitch Studio (the bookcases, like the kitchen renovation, are my idea) and still panic about it. I have a cat-like dislike of change and wrestle with the need at times – check in with me at 3:00 am in the coming week. As we start to pack up bookcases and hopefully even shed a few things starting next weekend, I hope I can quell my fear of having to find a new place for these beloved photos, the paint pole, and a heavy metal door jam in the shape of a black cat you don’t see in this photo but is directly below. There will be a week or so of upheaval, hopefully resulting in a few more feet for exercise and reveal part of another bookcase I have not been able to access for several years. Wish us luck with the bookcases and more to come on that I bet!

Working It Out

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Deitch Studio followers may already know that Kim is well-documented for his commitment to a daily work out routine. On the other hand, I think I have only touched lightly at best on my own devotion to a work out regime which I am reflecting on a bit today.

Let me start by stating that my interest in anything athletic was desultory at best growing up. If I swam, it was never laps; I might hit a tennis ball around with someone, but rarely really played a game; I would walk to get somewhere, but never was a runner. Like many little girls in the suburbs, I took ballet lessons when little, but while interested was not promising in this area and my parents deftly moved me on from it.

Loren’s rugby trophies from Princeton.

Was it because I grew up in the shadow of my older sister who was captain of every team, winning a myriad of varsity letters? Loren did it all – swim team, tennis, and track in particular, but the only thing that precluded her from joining a team was another that took place at the same time. She was a restless bundle of energy and needed to blow off steam daily and it was a rare day when she didn’t have workouts of one kind or another morning and evening. (I wrote about her rugby adventures here.)

In my early twenties I was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis and I began a program of yoga, developed specifically for me, that was a daily constant in my life for many years. It did a fairly good job at keeping my joints functioning. (My workout was designed by a brilliant man named Allen Bateman who appears to have disappeared entirely off the face of the earth, Google cannot find him.) I turned Kim onto it and he incorporated some of it into his workout, some things that he continues with today. There came a time however when some of the practice was getting a little risky with the advance of the arthritis and gradually I fell away from it. A few years later a sore shoulder which blew up into a frozen shoulder lead me ultimately to Pilates. I loved Pilates and it always makes me feel good about myself and my body.

However, at some point I wanted more exercise than I could afford via Pilates and the instructor of that studio sent me to Harris Cowan, personal trainer (@livestrongernyc), who I have seen pretty much every single week of my life (a few work trips notwithstanding) for the past 9 years. I have followed him to a myriad of private gym spaces – some nice, some just not – over the years. In many ways, I would have considered myself the least likely person to enlist the help of a personal trainer, but the arthritis meant certain concerns if not actual limitations, and as I had never walked into a gym in my life I wouldn’t have known what the heck to do. I joined what passed for an inexpensive gym in Manhattan and set a commitment to myself of a minimum of three days a week in addition to seeing Harris on a fourth.

Harris probably deserves his own future post as a regular and important feature in my life, but for now I will just say that he has always been superb at pushing me just beyond comfort. I am rarely actually sore the next day, yet progress is achieved. He is sensitive to the issues my body has, but generally has a can do no nonsense approach. When setbacks (such as foot surgery) occur he has helped me reset and again we build and move forward. He slowly restored first one shoulder, and then eventually the other, to full usability.

No one could be more surprised than me that it turns out I love lifting weights. Left to my own devices it is all I would ever do in a gym, eschewing cardio (back in the pre-quarantine days when I actually did some), and tedious but necessary things like squats. Actually, I adore the gym. I relax immediately upon walking into a gym. I find that if you are going to hold weights over your head you had better focus your mind on that and nothing else which means it is a method to clear my mind of the constant demanding chatter of work and life.

When I traveled for work it was always the most centering thing I can do. No matter where I am in the country or the world, if I can drag myself out of bed early and to the gym I am the better for it. The first thing I check about every hotel in advance and when I check in is the gym.

I happily stuff earphones with a bit of contemporary fiction via Audible playing in my ears and I am in a blissfully focused, quiet place for 60 to 90 minutes. Exercise does as much (if not more) for my mental state as for my physical one. (Strangely, passages of those novels replayed, bring me right back to where I heard them first, either my own gym here on the east side of Manhattan, or a hotel in San Francisco where I traveled down the block to use a gym for a workout, back when I was still at the Met.) I have a mental image of hotel gyms across the world (they are lousy in most of Europe) and the country – some that were quite nice and others a bit less so. Some crowded, many (most) fairly empty.

My first gym was a small local chain of a few gyms. I went from feeling like an alien there to slowly becoming a fixture there, among a small devoted clutch of folks who were there upwards of four days every week. In the first years of working out I often found myself there six days a week. Because I often only found time to work out before going to the office, I kept a locker at the gym and would shower and get ready for work there. I considered a locker essential as not only did it mean that I could carry less on those mornings, but it also meant I could leave clothes and sneakers there, enabling me to stop by for a workout I had not planned. When the gym eventually did away with lockers as part of a renovation, I somewhat regretfully moved a few blocks up to the more upscale Equinox.

In Manhattan Equinox is somewhat in the upper echelon of gym chains. While I had enjoyed the decidedly low rent aspect of my first gym, I ultimately felt that for someone who spent as much time at the gym as I did I probably could pay more and I sunk happily into the relative luxury of it, although I admittedly missed some of the regulars at my old establishment.

Not that I ever much spoke to them. In my mind I had names for them such as Man Who Reads the Paper on the Bike, but Never Pedals or Woman With Red Hair Who Runs. I never felt the need to really talk to people, although after a few years some of us might nod at each other. One day I ran into one of these folks on the crosstown bus and we actually had a conversation. We commented on how strange it was to see each other fully clothed, ours was a locker room acquaintance and I’m sure the other passengers thought we were very odd. One of them (Thin Man Who Lifts While Biking) turned up at Equinox and we had a happy nod hello to acknowledge the reacquaintance.

Starting three years ago my job at Jazz at Lincoln Center took a ferocious bite out of my time and it has been harder to make it to the gym on weekdays in the past few years. My six and seven day habit became more of a three and four day one with work being a starting very early and ending very late sort of thing. I was still very relieved to get there and let everything else fall away.

My view of Cookie from the floor while working out the other day.

So, of course, living our quarantine lives has meant no gym and I miss it very much. (So much that I dreamed about working out on machines last night – probably the inspiration for this post.) Even the gym in our building (which I also belong to in order to grab more workouts on the fly, yes, I belong to two gyms) is closed by order of state law, unable to open until some future post-phase 4 re-opening. (I occasionally fantasize about breaking into the one in the basement and making off with a few weights and the Bosu ball.) Gyms in New York are in a suspended state in much the same state as our concert hall, awaiting such a time as it is safe for us to return.

Cookie looking a bit critical during a recent workout, perched on Kim’s work chair.

On the other hand, exercise continues at Deitch Studio as a daily ritual. Like so many people these days my new work wardrobe consists primarily of workout clothes – mine starting to get a bit ragged from the constant rotation. Kim and I vie early each morning for time on our 10’x 4′ (or so) space on yoga mats, our designated work out area in front of the flat files and blocking the entrance to the bedroom.

Yep, gym equipment piled up next to DVD stacks and some of Kim’s comics reading.

I have slowly accumulated a variety of weights (luckily I had some from a former period of at home rehab which was a good thing because there was a shortage of them and price gauging online if you could get them at all), a ball, some bands, a foam roller. Cookie in particular is interested in this daily ritual (she is wildly fond of a paint pole we use for shoulder exercises and also comes running if I am using the green band). Blackie, ham that he is, only shows up to say hello to Harris during my Facetime workout however. (Blackie has discovered his inner actor and extrovert tendencies as a video call cat star during these work at home days.)

Yummy corn muffins in progress last weekend.

Harris appears on my iPad weekly, where he watches some random portion of me visible to him, and I work out to his instruction. Not ideal, but it works. And despite missing the gym and a broad variety of equipment there, the good news is that I am back up to five or more workouts a week, biceps gaining ground and abs attempting to keep up with my renewed interest in cooking. (See prior posts here, here and here.) As mentioned above, cardio is a bit of disaster despite the occasional trip up the 16 flights of stairs here; I find myself huffing and puffing when I attempt to walk more than a mile. I am slowly adding in daily walks to offset this until such time that more walking and even elliptical machines are a part of my life again.

However, I often joke that I will emerge from the bunker days with a prison pallor, oddly buff, but a bit puffy and overweight – perhaps sporting a Deitch designed cat tats on each bicep. Perhaps I will work some of that good cooking weight off biking to work in the coming new post-Covid world. I will let you know.

Quite a Kitty

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Pam’s Pictorama Post: I am possibly one of the last people in this country to actually buy something off of Instagram. Somehow, all this time, Instagram has remained sort of pure – few if any ads hit my stream, just an endless stream of mostly interesting and often happy making, (frequently) feline. I follow a few vendors, DL Cerney, maker of vintage inspired clothing (I once wrote about them in a post here), notably among them.

However, for the most part, cheerful consumer though I am, until recently I had never purchased anything off of Instagram. I know people do, I was talking to a friend from North Carolina who said she has spent a fortune on Instagram while grounded from traveling from her job in banking.

I only add people to the feed occasionally, mostly keeping away from politics and famous folks, and I try to put out in the world what I like to see myself. There are photos of the cats, my neighborhood, toys, art and music. When I traveled for work I posted those photos and I frequently posted from Dizzy’s and other shows.

Like this blog, I do it purely for pleasure and therefore focus on what makes me happy. I have happily watched fostered kitties, Rupert and Pumpkin, join the two glorious gray Persian kits, Bam Bam and Mr. Biscuits, in the cheerfully chock-a-block filled home of the people known only to me as fatfink and Motivated Manslayer. (I knew from day one those kits would join that household permanently. Like my father used to say about my mom, What foster? Cats come into this house but they never leave.) I follow the conservation studios at the Met and keep an eye on what they are working on, see what my friend Eileen is doing in Vermont during the quarantine, and keep track of Eden out in Santa Barbara.

However, I acquired a follower recently who had a nice Halloween cat head as her avatar and the moniker of missmollysantiques. A look at Miss Molly’s account showed a glory of rather interesting item images, including several black cats, and so I made a rare add to my feed. What I didn’t realize is that she is a seller of such items and shortly after adding her she had a sale.

Well, my somewhat latent buying gene kicked back in and I purchased this beauty of a black cat-o-lantern almost immediately. (Several photographs followed subsequently and perhaps you will see those in coming weeks although I am a bit slow for the fast pace of purchasing this way. As I hesitate a minute or two too long an item is snatched away. This is speed buying.) Miss Molly appears to be a young woman from St. Louis, Missouri and she is evidently selling out the holdings from her space in an antiques mall there.

I have known for years that I wanted a specimen example of one of these early paper mâché Halloween cat heads. I remember the first time I saw them was in Cold Spring, New York at an antique store that had a fabulous display of early Halloween items and toys. They were priced far beyond my means, but I was fascinated by them – the jack-o-lantern pumpkins as well as the black cats. I believe it was awhile longer before I saw one of these heads that still had the paper insert and that was sort of another kick in the head revelation too.

Pams-Pictorama.com collection

Halloween collectibles are a deep and heady genre to themselves and have always been pricey. Despite a prevalence of black cats I have only nibbled around the edges of it. I bought a number of reprints of the turn-of-the-century, do it yourself holiday decorating books by the Dennison paper company. (I wrote about them in a popular post that can be found here.) The arrival of eBay softened the Halloween market somewhat, but at the high-end objects remain dear. I paid up for this item, fair market value anyway I would say. I think it was in part pent up desire, but also it was just there for the buying and bam! It is mine. No buyer’s remorse here.

On one hand these jack-o-lanterns (I think of this as a cat-o-lantern) are somewhat primitive by the slick standards of today. However, the paper mâché is strong and these have held up to decades of use with only signs of wear around the edges and ears. It is fragile, yet oddly sturdy too and the inside smells of age and paper glue. I believe this kitty was likely made in the 1930’s, a generation or so after the introduction of such items, some coming from Germany and others made in the United States.

I cannot imagine how putting a candle in this did not result in a fire, but it is early for there to have been another light source option. (There is no evidence of candle use inside this one. As you can see if you look carefully, I have employed my cell phone flashlight here.) Miss Molly was offering this cat and another, cat head on a fence design which I liked, but the condition on this one won me over.

Inside the cat-o-lantern, no evidence of lit candle use.

I might have given him a few more whiskers if left up to me, but he is nicely molded around his eyes, nose and mouth and the back of his head is shaped like a pumpkin. (Imagine a line of these and some pumpkin heads lighting up a nighttime window while you trick or treat.) I might have been tempted to lavish more orange paint details on him, but once you see him with a light inside you realize all that is unnecessary. He is in his glory in the dark and lit up from the inside!

July 4

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today is more of a rumination on the past post so you might want to get out early if you don’t like those. I don’t own either of these firework labels, but I like the idea of industrious kittens preparing your firecrackers for you, yet still playing – kittens will always be kittens! Letting them play with your fireworks is probably a bad idea however, needless to say.

Pictorama readers know I grew up on the Jersey shore (one post, about the other end of summer and the local fireman’s fair can be found here), and by this time in the summer a beloved routine of maximized daily beach going would have already commenced. Waking to an overcast and potentially rainy Fourth, such as I see out my window right now, would have equaled tragedy indeed, but then again every day missed out in the sun and water during those summers was a catastrophe. In this way I feel deeply sorry for the kids who, due to the virus, won’t be able to go to the beaches and pools this summer. It was a precious release valve of my childhood.

Meanwhile, my parents shared a deep aversion to crowds. For my father as a news cameraman it may have been the daily need to fight his way through them, his more than six feet four inches enabling him to make his way so he could get the shot he needed for the news. My dad was appalled when he discovered that I used to routinely go to see the Thanksgiving balloons blown up each year. He always said it was one of his least favorite assignments, along with shooting the parade on Thanksgiving Day. Just shook his head in amazement like how could he have failed so as a father. Needless to say, much from my kid-perspective disappointment, we never went to see the parade either.

Mom just doesn’t like crowds and will do anything to avoid them. And when I think about it, summer crowds in that shore town meant long traffic jams. I can see being in a car with a bunch of kids in the oppressive summer heat (our cars did not have air conditioning back in the day – yes, I am that old – and we frequently had ancient automobiles as well); stuck in traffic, waiting for the drawbridge, or just in a mass of cars released or heading to the local race track, Monmouth Park and the beach – was not attractive. But also, my parents eschewed large group gatherings.

The drawbridge between Rumson and Sea Bright which figured largely into my childhood, causing traffic chaos and which I crossed on foot with some trepidation.

Anyway, it was a fact and that meant that no amount of wheedling and cajoling or nudging would get them into a car to take us to see fireworks on the Fourth. They even avoided the small town parade that took place early on the morning of July 4, except for a year I vaguely remember being pressed into service to march with my Girl Scout troop, Brownies most likely. For my folks it was a weekend to stay home which they took to with a certain fierceness which was unlike their usual casual willingness to comply with our simple childhood whims.

As a kid this was nothing short of a grave injustice. I loved fireworks with the strangely delayed boom, boom, the cascades of color and the patterns of the lights. Seeing them on television, or off in the distance from our backyard, just didn’t cut it when I knew a few miles away I could have, in theory, had a front row seat. We had a sailboat and we might have, like hundreds of others, taken it out and watched them over the water. (River traffic on those nights was easily as bad as land traffic however, and frankly my father’s somewhat dubious skill as a skipper may not have qualified him for that tricky night maneuver, heading to a different river and involving two drawbridge openings. Of course I didn’t realize that as a kid.)

Therefore, I have no memory of viewing fireworks in person with my parents as a child. I don’t remember discussing this parental failing with my siblings, although I must have talked to my sister about it. It must not have concerned Loren much or I would have remembered – she was the more vocal of the two of us. Edward was much younger and did not weigh in on the debate either. Perhaps he remembers something of it I do not.

Adolescence brought some independence and I routinely imposed firework attendance on a long line of boyfriends. Most complied with some enthusiasm – we picnicked in parks, swatted mosquitoes and took the displays in, shrugging off the crowds and the parking problems. The best was going out on a motor boat with friends of friends one year and parking more or less right under where the fireworks were going off – close enough that the curling hot little bits of burning paper falling from the sky landed around us in the boat. It remains the peak firework viewing experience of my life.

I probably should have stopped there, but human nature being what it is I continued to pursue firework watching through my early adulthood. Displays switching here in Manhattan from East River to Hudson, and I would head over to the East River on those designated years (for some mystical reason I never tried to see them from the westside), to watch them on the FDR. Even here in Manhattan the density of humans thronging over to the viewing area meant a long, hot walk and wait for crowded viewing, followed by a still hot and very crowded walk back to packed subways and buses. A bridge would always seem to obscure your view. It took years for me to get it out of my system.

Somewhat like my childhood home on the river, Kim and I live with a view of the East River, although we face northeast and see the river as it turns a bit toward the north. And much like the backyard of my childhood, we have only partial and obscured views of the fireworks in Queens in most years and a very poor one (high rises in the way) of those set off over the East River. Early on I made nascent attempts to head over to Carl Schurz Park, or to scamper up to the roof with a pint of ice cream to have a look. Although I gave up on it years ago, I still have a small itch most years, to see them.

This year the fireworks are canceled in New York, although illegal ones have strangely abounded since early in the spring, occasionally waking us and rousing the cats to head for safer ground, such as under the bed although it is such a regular occurrence that they generally ignore it. Kim woke to a cacophony of car horns at Gracie Mansion a few weeks ago, protesting the illegal fireworks which also set off car alarms. (I slept through it, but read about it and the point of it days later.) Although I prefer fireworks to the sirens of ambulances that we heard throughout the nights of March and April, it is far from soothing and there are nights when it tests my already frayed nerves.

Because going out for groceries in our pandemic pounded city still seems like a big deal – our newly introduced outdoor dining seeming radical to my pasty housebound self – it would have been unlikely that we would deviate and embrace public Independence Day celebration. I have finally become my parents and avoid crowds.

Meanwhile, as a fundraiser for organizations that end their fiscal year on June 30 and begin anew on July 1, in recent years I have generally found myself exhausted over this holiday, the end of a final long sprint to the financial finish line, and in other years I have extended it with vacation just to catch up a bit.

Vacation days are going begging this year though as Jazz at Lincoln Center battled through the end of last fiscal year, having already gone more than three months without earned income, our hall dark and our orchestra unable to play. We hit our marks for last year, but now go barrel headlong into an even more difficult year, facing at least six months without earned income and trying to charter an unknown course ahead. Not to mention that it is also unclear what vacation means now, without leaving our 600 square feet and computer screens. Still, we’re slowing to a halt for a day or so here at Deitch Studio, pausing and catching our collective breath, before heading back into it.

Pam's Pictorama

All Pam, all the time

Month: July 2020

Travel

The Drinkers

Putting the Dog Before the Cart

Queen for a Day?

Hitting the Wall: Part One

Working It Out

July 4