Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today is a rare post about something I do not own. I don’t make a habit of it, but this tidbit came to me via our good friend Bruce Simon. (He was mentioned most recently in our trip to Comic Con in San Diego post which can be found it all of its glory here.) Bruce thoughtfully sends wonderful odd treats from dvd’s of cartoons to items like this. Thank you Bruce! If you saw yesterday’s page in all its Felix glory this makes a sort of interesting bookend to the weekend. This one is casually dated ’25, so it is a year after yesterday’s magazine page. (For those who missed it you can find it here.)
This illustration appears to be in a copy of Punch magazine and was drawn by a British man named Arthur Watts. Watts was an illustrator and cartoonist for the likes of Punch and Tatler dating back to 1911. His line appears to have been social commentary on the divisions of class and etiquette of Britain.
There is just a single blurry photo of him on the internet so I offer this – he’s in uniform and does look quite dashing however.
He evidently had a strong dislike of modern art and so perhaps this is a bit of a rib on that among other things? Felix and Bonzo dancing together (ha cha cha!) as a huge mural? I mean, I love it and I’d have it in my restaurant in a heartbeat! Circles that remind me of champagne bubbles encircle them as cartoon cat and dog shake a leg. Was this his low brow elevated to high brow comment?
Pams-Pictorama.com collection.
Interesting – I am just thinking about a truly odd vase I own where Felix and Bonzo are dancing – perhaps there was a thing about them that I don’t know? Was there a bit of interspecies cartoon romance? Huh. (That post can be found here.)
Okay – at least I got the humor here! Undated Watts illustration.
Perhaps it is just me, but I can’t quite entirely catch onto his sense of humor. In this picture, the man who is evidently the Detective is seated drinking alone, next to a crime scene, while the crowd of well heeled hoy polloi keep their distance and pile up to one side. Perhaps his humor is a bit too inside baseball to entirely get today?
His is a bit of a tragic story. Born in 1883, he showed artistic talent when young and eventually went to Slade art school. He served with note and honor in the Royal Marines Corp during WWI. He married a fellow artist, Phyllis Sachs, in 1911 and had a daughter. Phyllis died in 1922 (no record of how or why that I saw) and he remarried in ’24 to Marjorie Dawson Scott. They had three children and in July of 1935 he was rushing to fly home after the birth of their third child when his plane crashed in Italy flying from Milan, never clearing a mountain range and killing everyone.
The daughter from the first marriage became a well known costume designer, Margaret Furse. Among the other children one also became an illustrator, Marjorie Ann Watts – frankly I am inclined to like her crosshatch filled style a bit better.
Marjorie Watts illustration – she seemed to be very interested in drawing anthropomorphic wolves.I like her more linear contrasting style.
However, a hundred years later it is not news to Pictorama readers that Felix and Bonzo were the cultural icons of their day and make fun of them though Watts might, they are still quite fondly and well remembered even today!
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Returning to our rollicking Felix roots today with this odd page which was sold on its own via eBay. I was the only one interested in it and I actually really love it. The overall page has a fair amount of interest – the Gertrude Hoffman Girls dancing in the open air appeared naked at first glance with their brief, thin costumes. That certainly would have been unusual on July 30, 1924, the date on this sheet. Closer inspection shows sort of cotton playsuits.
Found this issue which I assume is the one before mine, July 16, 1924. Looks like fun!
The First “Movie” Garden Party is the heading on this extracted page. It appears to have come out of something called The Sketch magazine. The Sketch had an extremely long life it turns out, running from 1893-1958; it was an illustrated British weekly journal. It is most notable perhaps for having launched the George Studdy Bonzo illustrations in 1921.
Close up on the Gertrude Hoffman Girls dancing.
At the bottom of the page it boasts, The Silent Stage Festivities: at the Royal Botanical Gardens. Below it, The first Cinematograph Garden Party, held at the Royal Botanical Gardens, the original home of the Theatrical Garden Party, was a big success. Scores of well-known screen starts gathered at the festivity, and the sideshows and entertainments were really amusing. Our snapshots show some of the many famous folk who were present, and include the Hoffman Girls’ dancing performance in the open-air arena.
Miss Peggy Ryland has left no tracks online.
This page has four features, upper left, Miss Peggy Ryland – I am on the fence about whether Peggy, close up above, is a man in drag or not, Kim says no. The almost naked dancers are next over and below them, Miss Chrissie White has a soft drink. Unlike Peggy Ryland who has left no tracks, Chrissie White made 180 movies between 1908 and 1933 and was quite a star. Given this I assume I have at least seen her in passing, but don’t recognize her in the least – nor does Kim. I assume she is with her husband here, Henry Edwards, occasionally her co-star and director. They were evidently a famous couple seen about town at the time. She retired from film early but lived until 1989 and the ripe old age of 94. I am enjoying her outfit shown here – period perfect.
Chrissie White
Speaking of perfection! Now onto the main event – ohhhhh how I wish I could have attended this! Felix-es galore in all sizes, on their costumes, a sign above them sporting him. Here Miss Betty Balfour holds court. Betty I know from her work in the Jessie Matthews film, Evergreen although she is even better known for her turn in an early silent Hitchcock comedy called Champagne. (Kim has seen it and I do not think I have.)
Be still my heart!
Betty’s got her hand on one lovely huge Felix which comes up to her waist, but so many others lurk around. I love how they fall out of the confines of the photo and into the margins. A small one hangs off the sign at the top and one of the minions is holding a sizable one. A close look at Betty’s basket says flowers – I was thinking a Felix might be tucked in there too. Of course if it were me I would want to be in one of the Felix decorated costumes – with a grinning maybe winking Felix embroidered onto my chest! Oh to find one or even this original photo!
Signed postcard for sale on eBay at the time of publication.
That’s it folks, the back of the sheet is devoted to lawn-tennis notes I am sorry to say. Completely lost on me I am afraid. Nonetheless, I will treasure this particular sheet for its Felix fun and preserve it in the Pictorama archive for posterity.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: In some sneaky way our electronic devices missed us while we were on our now annual New Jersey summer sojourn. The electric toothbrush, although charged, stubbornly refused to start upon our return, followed by the new outlet in the bathroom which oddly now seems incapable of operating so much as a nightlight let alone a hair dryer. (In all fairness, after 30 years of owning this coop, the outlet had technically died the first time several weeks before we left last summer.) The dishwasher threatened to go south on us, but has agreed to continue working as long as I commit to smaller loads, although that will make them more frequent. (And I admit to a strange compulsion to always fill it to the utmost before running. I will need to get over that it seems.)
However, last Saturday night while I was wrapping up my reading before turning out the light, Kim asleep next to me and Blackie at my feet, a loud, long crackling noise came from the living room. Blackie and I looked at each other and he raced off into the dark of the apartment, but nothing looked amiss and I continued on, turning out the light and went to sleep. The next morning the television in the living room was dead.
In retrospect, this is not the first time I have heard that noise during the demise of an electronic appliance. Years ago I had a clock radio that made that noise and started to smoke which landed it in the tub of my apartment after unplugging. (If you live in an apartment anything potentially combusting usually ends up in the tub. Probably not really a great idea, but often the best you can figure out in the moment.)
To my reckoning the toothbrush and the television were both reaching their four year anniversary – honestly I am looking funny at my Fitbit watch (sometimes it just dies before being coaxed back to life) and my phone (not holding a charge), which share similar acquisition dates. (All of this more precisely etched in my memory because it was as we were coming out of Covid and things like acquiring a new television or phone were just a bit trickier.) In my way of thinking, the masterminds of planned obsolescence have arrived at the four year mark as the shortest time possible which is unlikely to invoke costly (for them) warrantee coverage or truly shrill outcry. It is just over the line of long enough.
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Televisions have turned the corner into a whole new world. There are a myriad of different kinds which required learning at least a little about. They are despised by many who now use their phone, computer or tablet for whatever streaming consumable they prefer. Or they have extraordinary needs for maniacal fidelity and massive size.
To care only nominally about the definition, let alone to want one to fit comfortably on a table in our studio apartment, is suddenly to want something exotic. Out of the usual also means, probably not in stock and needs to be ordered. In my desire to be efficient I have ended up with one slightly larger than I am comfortable with and which swamps the former tv table I inherited from an early apartment rental and have dragged through a few moves.
Meanwhile, putting aside the group who want massive home theaters, I encountered a fair amount of skepticism about purchasing a television. Aside those who, as mentioned above, just watch things on various hand held devices, there is another whole group who eschew it entirely. In all fairness, I think Kim would happily remain without one as he mostly reads in his spare time in the evening and on weekends. When he wants to watch a film he’s happy to sit at his desk and watch it on the computer. I have other friends who haven’t owned one for years and frankly are surprised I would bother.
I love this show, which seems to be intermittent at best. They tour very old homes that need rescuing.
Television and I go way back to my childhood. As I have written about previously, my dad was a cameraman for ABC news and although the family media addiction started with non-stop news radio (my uncle worked for that CBS radio affiliate) it morphed over time to owning many televisions. So I watched it a lot as a kid – sometimes the whole family but also alone. It was the background of my life until I went to college and I entered a period of several years that went into my twenties without one.
However I was living in New York and cooking professionally when I fell down a flight of stairs at work and was sent home to rest, flat on my back, for several weeks. My mom sent me a tv and I got the cable hook up and was reintroduced to owning one. I got an extended chance to see what had developed over the previous four or five years (admittedly not much) before returning to the insane hours of restaurant cooking and never being home. (While I was recovering I got a call offering me a much better job cooking for a young chef named Jean-George Vongerichten for a restaurant he just opened in New York City at the Drake Hotel which I accepted with the caveat that I needed to finish my bed rest.)
I was rarely home and awake during that period – in fact I had a boyfriend for awhile who was also a chef and we had opposite shifts. It was like a silent comedy I later saw from Russia about rotating schedules like this sharing a small apartment in Moscow.
Ultimately the career in cooking ended with arthritis having started to snake up my back and hips and the boyfriend was disposed of for other reasons. I went to work at the Metropolitan Museum in the bookstore. Clearly all that would be another post!
I was there from the very start!
Eventually the TCM movie channel was established and frankly for decades my television rarely changed channels. Aside from the occasional disaster (natural or political) which might send me over to CNN, or a period where I needed to see breakfast tv (local news and weather before heading out the door) my set could have been a single channel. This is largely true still today.
However, when March of 2020 hit and suddenly the world shuddered on its axis with the first of the pandemic we watched a lot of news in the beginning. Given world affairs we continued to watch it a fair amount but the sheer number of hours home meant my old friend TCM, but also a new interest that had slowly been developing in what I call Home shows.
A sort of low budget show with very historic homes in the Massachusetts area.
I have always liked to look inside houses. to me they beg to tell their stories. I especially like old ones, the older the better. But in general I like to see what all houses look like inside versus outside. Sometimes I am amazed that ones I find ugly on the outside are quite beautiful on the inside. I like to consider what it would be like to live in them. I am interested to see the light and the views from the windows and what the yard looks like. And yes, I like to think about what it would be like to live in a house rather than a one room apartment. I liked big budget shows, but find interest in the more homespun ones too. I enjoy pondering the very concept of home and what it means to different people.
Like my television watching, I come to my interest in houses honestly. My parents bought houses and renovated them and rented them for a period of years – really mom since dad’s job was more than fulltime. She had a great mind for this and liked both the acquisition and the renovation of them. Her approach to it remains with me after many years. She wasn’t a moving walls around kind of person, but she went into every home assuming renovating the kitchen, floors would be redone and it would be painted. Smart small things.
When mom ultimately looked for a house for their retirement she was a bit broader in her thinking and knew she would be adding a handicapped accessible bath for herself and a things like that. She had limited mobility already so another friend and I did the leg work and as her surrogate I got to look at a lot of houses before we found the one she and dad purchased and I inherited last year.
So during the pandemic year I found great comfort in watching a never-ending, forever unspooling reel of home finding and renovation. In short, the only drama was which lovely house would they pick and what would it look like when it was renovated. Would the young couple choose the house in the country where they could raise chickens? That really suited me fine – life had enough drama and I wasn’t needing more
Home Town was a favorite during the pandemic year. Who knew how many lovely old homes could be bought for a fraction of the value of my NYC studio in Laurel, Texas?
In this way I got to tour lots of old houses (which frankly I would probably have left more intact than most of these folks – I don’t have a passionate need for spaces to be huge and open as seems to be the fashion) and given the high stress of my job (fundraising for a performing arts organization’s survival during a world wide pandemic shutdown) I found great comfort in it.
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Fast forward about a year and during mom’s final months of illness, about the last six months of her life, I pretty much lived in New Jersey. (Posts from that strange time out of time can be found here and here.) There are many televisions (large, wall mounted) in that house and my mother wanted CNN on 24 hours a day. All her nurses knew better than to change the channel and incur her wrath. Oddly my father also watched news constantly at the end of his life. My mother explained that it was her only connection to the outside world which makes sense. I do wonder about this and if it is something about getting old or particular to them. Will I ultimately cast all aside for 24 hour news?
Anyway, during that period the noise from mom’s care and the constantly changing shifts of nurses contributed to the insomnia I had developed during Covid when I would frequently get up at 3 AM and start working out of anxiety. (I would often discover the Wynton Marsalis was also awake and we’d work via text for awhile. I’d go to sleep for a bit and wake up around 6:00 and start all over again.)
I still find this show especially soothing. I think it started in Canada and slowly found locations in the United States. A lot of episodes seem to cover the south but NJ featured occasionally. Manhattan never!
I began sleeping with the low hum of HGTV, usually a benign show called House Hunters where folks were shown looking at three houses and choosing one. This would cover the sound of CNN booming from my mom’s room and do a lot to help me sleep through shift changes and folks coming and going. I slept with my phone next to me and if they didn’t want to come and physically wake me up the nurses would call if they needed me.
****
It’s been more than a year since mom passed and I have changed jobs. A new job, settling her estate, inheriting a house and five cats (not to mention some oral surgery which has tormented me on and off since January and doesn’t promise to wrap soon), has made this year tough in a different way.
A pending Presidential election means a certain amount of checking in on the news which we all know is not good. I work on an open floor office currently so I no longer listen to music at work and I miss that. All this to say I unabashedly like having a television and catching a few truly mindless hours of Home shows in the evening before bed.
I confess and openly acknowledge that I would read and sleep a bit more if I eradicated the habit. However, as a life long habitue of television I say the heck with everyone else, I intend to own one (as soon as I can successfully have the one I purchased installed – that is another long, but boring tale) and watch it for the foreseeable future.
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: At first I wondered, as you may be right now, why this card ended up in my feed, until I realized that the woman perched on the back of this motorcycle is holding a tiny kitten in her lap. He or she, a cute little tabby, is snuggled in on the lap of that nice white dress. Although it may not seem so at first, it is indeed a cat photo.
After a bit of consideration, I realized that this seems to be a celebratory photo. Perhaps it was the purchase of this nice new Indian motorcycle, shiny chrome on the handlebars. (Am I wrong in saying it does not yet have its front light?) The fellow is in a suit and tie with a straw hat, perky but not really motorcycle riding ready. The woman, in her white dress, sporting a pretty locket and kitten perched on the back, is the real point of this though. Her feet off the ground, she is jaunty! Her black stockings and shoes – we can just about see them swinging around the kickstand. They are both grinning. Or could they have just gotten hitched?
This is a photo postcard and like so many, it was never sent, but instead kept in mostly pristine condition.
For all of their jollity, the landscape where they are posed is a bit bereft of charm. There is some sort of industrial tower in the background with a few low wooden buildings and trees off in the distance. Closer in is what appears to be a whet stone on a foot activated stand, some indistinct farm equipment near it, further obscured by what appears to be a thumb print in the chemicals used to print this. On the other side there appears to be a chicken or maybe a goose in the background and a field planted with rows of something.
Somewhere there exists (or did) an early snippet of home movies of my mother’s mom and dad, newlyweds, on an early motorcycle. I think they were either on their honeymoon or it was their honeymoon although I have trouble imagining that they rode that motorcycle from New Jersey to St. Louis where his family lived, which is what I believe they did shortly after being married. (I must try to find someone who knows that story.) Anyway, that would have been a couple of decades after this, although not all that many. My grandfather was an engineer and all things mechanical and in motion were his thing. He repaired outboard motors for extra cash, but just seemed to always be tinkering successfully with things. Frank Wheeling, he died young but I do have adoring memories of him from when I was a tiny tot. My guess is he would have liked this motorcycle. (To find a post about my dad as a young man on his jalopy of a bike go here.)
I myself have only been on a motorcycle a few times as a passenger and I did find it sort of thrilling. This motorcycle seems almost closer to the electric bikes we see today. Kim and I have eyed them with a bit of interest, but I am not sure I see a way that we will end up getting to enjoy one unless someone offers us a ride – I don’t think either of us really has any business trying to drive one solo. But I confess, they are tempting and I although I am ambivalent about driving a car these and various scooters (a neighbor in the city has a pink Vespa!) do appeal.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today is one of those day in the life posts as yesterday was devoted in large part to eyeglass repair and rejuvenation in the form of a trip downtown yesterday.
I have worn eyeglasses since about the time I started office work a few years after college, probably when I was about 24 or 25. Computers, or really the forerunners of office personal computers, were just slipping into the not-for-profit world where we were certainly a beat behind on such developments. (I remember attempting to use carbon paper as there were so few copy machines in the museum. Yikes! I made a mess of that!) Whether it was true or not, the common wisdom at the time was to blame this sort of need for glasses on computer use although how it differed from hours at a typewriter I am not entirely sure.
I come from a family where I was the only one of the kids who didn’t need specs when little. My older sister Loren got them in second grade after it became evident she couldn’t read the blackboard at all. Her eyes turned out to be very bad and plagued her a bit all her life with a need for thick glasses until she was old enough for contacts. Loren always said she couldn’t so much as get out of bed without glasses or her contacts. (She was very athletic and I can remember her saying when she was swimming she couldn’t really see a thing had no idea where the end of the pool was.)
Kim’s readers on his book earlier today.
I know my brother also got glasses in grade school, but I don’t remember at what age exactly. (Edward if you’re there, sorry for this omission. ) My father wore them and from photos I would say started wearing glasses as a young adult, he was nearsighted.
Mom and I did not wear glasses however, at least until I reached the point mentioned above. (She of course eventually fell prey to readers which she bought in the drugstore and kept strewn around the house. Kim does this as well although he was a prescription wearer for distance at some point, his eyes oddly evolved into readers only for the most part.) Whereas nascent computer work may not have caused my initial need for glasses, it did seem to mean that I had to move to progressive lenses after a decade or so of wearing them. I tried contact lenses (hard and soft) briefly but decided they weren’t for me.
My eye doc recommended being thoughtful about where I had the progressive lenses made and to talk to folks and find someone who would really work to find the best fit for how I use my glasses daily. After one or two other attempts I stumbled on Anthony Aiden Opticians in the East Village by accident fairly early on. Anthony himself was there the day I looked at frames and asked about progressive lenses and what he might recommend. It was clear that he knew what he was doing and I ordered up my first pair, the cost of which would take my breath away. However, he and his team are good and as a result I go all the way to the East Village ongoing for my eyeglass needs. (I have experimented with other less expensive places and for me the results were a hot mess.)
Old internet swipe of their facade.
Like many things there seemed to be a period in the early part of the pandemic when they were closed, but I visited by appointment in late ’20, mask and all. They were my inaugural trip down to the part of the city after being largely isolated uptown for months. Zoom wrecked havoc somewhat on my prescription. For some reason it can be hard for me to find the right focus on it and of course one needs to look at a variety of sizes of things on Zoom.
So visits to Eighth Street have become a routine part of our lives. Kim brings a book to read while I do my eyeglass business. It is followed, generally, by a bulk buy of coffee from the place next door (Puerto Rico Import) and maybe Blick for Kim to get art supplies. Lunch is usually pierogi at a Polish restaurant, although yesterday it was messy veggie burgers at H&M Dairy.
Running turned out to be hard on eyeglasses (I run in essentially distance only sunglasses which means I can’t read in them, a fair trade off.) and repairs to those for missing screws and other damage is not infrequent, no less than quarterly. In recent decades I have lost two pairs of sunglasses and one pair of regular ones with no idea in the least how I did it.
B&H Dairy at lunch yesterday.
I buy expensive frames and really have from the beginning figuring if I am going to wear it on my face every day I should like it a lot. Until recent years however I really only owned one pair at a time and then eventually a pair of sunglasses and regular ones. My prescription changes have slowed and having an extra pair has become a reality.
For some reason this summer in New Jersey I beat the heck out of all my glasses. About ten days ago I fell running while wearing my everyday glasses because it was overcast. (When I mentioned this at the store yesterday the two guys just looked at me in amazement and one guy said, You wore your progressives running? Lesson learned. I need to find some old frames and get distance glasses without dark lenses for running in low light.) Meanwhile, a little used pair that was disused due to discomfort was pressed into service and the whole shebang was brought in for a tune up of one kind or another yesterday which was a fiesta of screw tightening and replacement.
Sadly the favorite glasses, which smacked me in the face when I fell, didn’t just need tightening, there was a small break in the frames. Luckily the frames were still stocked and on sale and they popped the undamaged lenses out and into the new frames and they are on my face now as I type.
Meanwhile, I am very grateful for their attentive and always unfailingly cheerful help and service there. They will be seeing me again soon if I find a pair of glasses and have those distance runners made.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today’s jewelry post might seem familiar to some longstanding readers. You’d be right because the skull on this necklace is the mate to a ring I have had for about 8 years. At least I think I may have included it in a prior post (or not since I can’t find one) and I have mentioned Muriel Chastanet Jewelry in Los Angeles, a family business where wonderful jewelry can be found. You all know that in addition to antique cats, I am a woman who likes her jewelry.
While I don’t know the precise history or age of these skulls there is a Victorian tradition of memento mori bone skulls in jewelry. The Victorians were notoriously fascinated with the ultimate connection to death and the idea that we should mind that life is fleeting and can end abruptly, therefore we should make use of today. (Skulls and those made of yak bone in particular, were and are a popular Tibetan motif and I own some necklaces of carved skull bones from my trips there. They are distinct in their carving style, often made into what we might think of as rosaries and different as shown below.)
These Tibetan bone beads available on the internet.
The skull in this pendant and that of my ring are extremely similar, with the pendant being slightly larger and arguably more finely detailed. Different kinds of animal bones were used really as a visual substitute for ivory which was more expensive although still used at that time.
However the carving on both of these these is particularly fine and while many bone skulls labeled Victorian or Georgian are available, with a quick look just a few at auction have this much detail and are as nicely carved. The skulls are both in new settings. I saw the ring for sale about ten years ago now. At the time I didn’t think I was leading the sort of professional life where a large skull ring set in gold was appropriate. (At the time I advised older people on charitable gifts through their estate plans – a Victorian skull ring seemed a little pointed!)
When I left the Met a few years later to take the job at Jazz at Lincoln Center somehow it didn’t take long for the ring to roll back into my consciousness. I reached out and asked if by chance it was still available and Gizelle laughed and said that it was clearly meant for me and no one else. I wear it frequently and receive many compliments on it. The markings of the bone and the carving etched into my mind from staring at it day in and day out.
My much worn ring with a similar antique skull bead.
Fast forward a number of years. I always knew she had a couple of more of the skulls which could be set and the idea of a pendant nagged at me cheerfully for a bit and I finally told her I wanted it. For a number of reasons many things slowed the design and execution on both sides and it was about a year before it was completed and in hand.
Gizelle made the thoughtful suggestion that as my mother Betty had passed recently what would I think of including her initials in the design? That seemed very meaningful and as you can see there are intertwining B’s for Betty Butler in the back. (All of the photos are in antique boxes I have collected and are in no way connected with the skull pieces.)
The back with a double B for Betty Butler.
The skull is somewhat heavy, perhaps too much for a gold chain I decided and so thus far it is living on this silk cord quite happily. It will never be quite as intimately familiar to me as the ring since it lives on my neck and I don’t get to look at it daily the same way. I rarely wear them together (that is a lot of skull, let’s face it) although I sometimes I can’t resist. I have read that Victorian jewelry is becoming more popular and influencing current designers. I am ahead of the curve on that one I think and this one, with Mom’s initials tucked in, is most special to me indeed.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: This photo postcard makes me think about my mother who loved ducks, geese and swans. Frankly she was less romantic about chickens which she grew up around although she bore them no ill will and being a vegan did not eat them nor their eggs. Mom did tell stories about her childhood and how they roosted in the neighbors trees and would occasionally torment her on her way to or from school.
It’s a pity this photo was poorly made, overexposed and with an odd sloppy line of poor printing at the bottom. (I have improved it some before sharing with you.) However my mom would have liked this card.
Those things notwithstanding, it is a compelling image and caught my eye online a week or so back and I purchased it for the house here in New Jersey. It is a photo postcard and was never used.
Photo of a photo of the house I grew up in.
As some readers know, I grew up in a house on an inlet of a river here, the Shrewsbury River. It was within walking distance of the ocean and as a result my childhood was full of time on the water – swimming in the ocean and walking the beach or crabbing off our dock or taking a rowboat out in the backyard. Mom’s nascent passion for animals first took the form of cats and dogs, strays and kittens that needed home.
However, later in life mom started feeding a flock of swans inhabiting the secluded inlet near our house. Then, slowly, she started helping out with an injured swan, goose or duck. Before long she was traveling to fetch a stranded pinioned one here or one that swallowed fishing line there. Betty became the go to for injured waterfowl for not just the surrounding counties but even in the surrounding states. Swans and geese that could not be released back into the wild were placed in areas in New York and New Jersey with appropriately large water bodies where food would be available and people would care for them.
A dahlia also on the hummingbird path of nectar.
Betty fought for these birds as well as other animals – helping to shut down puppy mills, purveyors of sick dogs. So many rescued bunnies found a home in our backyard that they were all so tame they would come right up to you if you sat out in the yard. I would come to New Jersey for a visit and the guest bathroom would be commandeered by a swan. Even at the same time, a rescued cat might be healing in an upstairs room. Somehow it all seemed quite natural at the time. Or at least it was our normal.
Strawberry plant currently on the deck which seems to be a happy stop for hummingbirds.
In her last years mom had a commanding view of the deck and the yard from the chair she spent virtually all her time in. It was planted for the explicit pleasure of birds, bees and butterflies. However, it wasn’t until after her death that I started spending time outside here and on the deck and began to realize how successful she was. Furry bees buzz busily everywhere, but especially early in the morning and evening. Hawks fly overhead, but sparrows, robins and a host of other birds amass. Bunnies of the more shy variety nibble greens in the yard – I think they and the chipmunks eat more heartily when unobserved, or so it seems from the consumption of my berries and veg.
Front of the NJ house earlier this week.
Most notably I never knew about the hummingbirds. I have loved the idea of them from the first I learned about them in sixth grade, but it was years before I saw one in person. I used to try to temp them to feeders with syrup water concoctions. It turns out that they love this yard! They appear to have a path from my dahlias, to a strawberry plant with bright red flowers and then to two Rose of Sharon trees (one white and one purple) that technically belong to my neighbor but hang heavily over my side of the fence. and amazingly enough, if I sit quietly on the porch long enough, one will pause en route, pausing, suspended in front of me in greeting.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today is an oddball post – I wish to introduce you all to Peaches, the second youngest, female cat of the New Jersey tribe of five. She’s also one of the meanest cats I have ever met. Perhaps considering her story she has some snark coming to her. I will let you decide.
Most readers know that in April of ’23 I inherited a house and five cats from my mother. At her behest, the cats continue to reside here where someone cares for them and the house when I am not here, as Deitch Studio in Manhattan is still our home base. This presents some logistical problems, but fewer than I might have expected when my mother first presented this request, as it became clear that her time was limited.
Shown here with Hobo, our outdoor visitor. They look so much alike! Seems impossible that they are related – Hobo lives too many miles away. But still…
For some background, my mother had briefly whittled her cat family down to something manageable a few years ago when she adopted, first, an all black kitten (Beauregard or Beau) from an agency in Newark, but then followed in rapid succession by two who came to the backdoor (Gus and Stormy) and Peaches whose story I am going to tell today. After the acquisition of Stormy (the youngest) I did request that she stop acquiring cats as it was clear that these were indeed going to end up being my cats.
Our holiday card featuring the whole family (including Hobo) for a quick cat reference.
Unlike the others who, as outlined above, either came through the front door via adoption or showed up repeatedly and starving at the back, Peaches was acquired sight unseen. My mother loved to tell the Peaches acquisition story.
Prized spot in our bedroom.Forbidden territory when the NYC cats are here.
At that time, now about three years ago, my mom had a cousin living with her. They had both grown up in a nearby town called Long Branch and her cousin inherited a house there, but lived with mom for a few years. Word was, back near her house in Long Branch, a friend heard a cat meowing over several days and had called Animal Control to find out what was going on and get the cat.
Seems somehow this cat had gotten away from the mother and the litter and was trapped in a basement after falling down a hole. Poor little thing was starving and crying.
Peaches does play with toys.
My mom knew that it was likely that a feral kitten would ultimately be put down as unadoptable. She called Animal Control in Long Branch as soon as the cat was picked up and told them not to put her down and that she would take it.
I guess the guy said, Lady, you don’t want this cat! It is the meanest cat we’ve ever had to catch. So wild we had to use a broom handle to move the carrier with her in it! And of course mom said she didn’t care and wanted the cat.
She very much enjoys watching the activity on the deck where chipmonks and other critters have been known to roam. Recently I found what I think were groundhog muddy tracks across it so quite a show.
She arrived and was christened Peaches for the woman who had heard her and called Animal Control originally. She entered our house at the time as the youngest and only female cat of the house. To my knowledge no one has ever actually touched Peaches since she came to Oxford Avenue. She hid at first and then slowly assimilated to the extent that she would hang with the pack of cats but keep a wide birth (six or more feet) from any human.
Left to her own devices (which she largely is) she seems quite content.
Over the past several years she has thawed slightly. She now willingly sit in the same room as us, sometimes quite close. When I am feeding them she will come right up to me but if I try to touch her or get too close where she is curled up she will hiss, spit and growl. On this trip however, she “accidentally” jumped up on the arm of my chair and stared me in the eye for several long moments before panic set in and she flew back off. I was as stunned as she was.
Milty and Peaches.
She has one outstanding cat friendship in the house, with Milty, our most senior cat. I will occasionally find them sleeping together. She’ll go over and gently groom him once in a while. It seems like an unlikely pairing, but I am pleased she has a compatriot among the cats.
This just the other day. Happy Peaches.
There have been days this summer when I have caught her rolling and stretching happily. I think she is a contented cat in general, even if her interactions with the human population are limited. I used to joke with my mother that in ten years when Peaches was happily installed on my lap being petted we would look back and remember how we couldn’t get near her. I am less sure of that future, but she’s one of the Butler family cats now to stay.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: It feels like I just posted our arrival in New Jersey – and we do have at least another week here, but I can’t argue with the Fair Haven Fireman’s Fair which is a true harbinger of the end of summer here in Monmouth County. I like to remind Kim that I have been coming to the Fair since I was a tiny tot – winning goldfish was a great thrill but they did not have extreme longevity and Mom vetoed them in favor of a tank of tropical fish. (For more on that adventure of my childhood find a post here.)
We perched at some picnic tables to scarf down a soft serve.
I think there was a hiatus with my folks ignoring it and then I resumed in high school and college. By that time I was able to embrace all the rides, although I have no memory of any except maybe the Ferris Wheel. As Kim pointed out though, even from last year to this one there was an upgrade to the rides.
This one was Kim’s favorite!
This year Kim and I kicked off the evening with dinner a rather super Mexican restaurant and carrying our leftovers (food and drinks) made some of the more adventurous rides a bit hard to figure out. Also, long lines to buy digital tickets and then for the ride made it more of a commitment than I was ready to make. However, I did get ice cream (the recent oral surgery fiesta made cotton candy seem ill advised somehow) and we even ran into Mike, the guy who works on our garden – and worked on my mom’s for many years.
Dinner at Dos Banditos here in Fair Haven and just steps from the fair.
We enjoyed the wildly flashing and multi-colored lights and watched as youngsters and their parents tried to flip floppy frogs of rubber onto faux lily pads, or raced to squirt water or roll balls faster than their comrades. Participants strapped into to rise slowly in the air and then be spun around.
We especially liked watching this one slowly raise the people up before starting to turn.
A kiddie ride but we liked being under it.
Sadly, the prizes leave a lot to be desired. (Shown above – if they wanted to give me the knockdown doll I might have gone for that!) As someone who collects carnival prizes from the early 20th century these are a bit of an effrontery. Think of winning a Felix like the one below which I believe were prizes – or the chalkware we collect today – Felix, Mickey and others. I doubt that fake ET stuffed animals will be collectible in 2040, but we’ll see I guess.
Meanwhile, back at the house the dahlias are delightful. A storm the other night damaged some of them but luckily some quick staking and taping seems to have rescued them. (The second photo in the rotation is of a dahlia a friend gave me in memory of my mom and this first year it has bloomed beautifully!)
Bumper crop of cukes will likely really hit after we leave I am sorry to say.
The cucumbers were growing so aggressively that I added yet another trellis to see if I could keep them from choking everything around them with their little tentacles. As I pointed out in an earlier post (here) the bees adore the yellow flowers and buzz angrily at me when I try to work out there. I do wonder if the fall will bring cucumber galore for each of the flowers out right now.
A successful evening of bbq shown here.
As I write, I have cleaned off the grill in order to make some veggie burgers and maybe a few ears of corn tonight. Kim and I will take a walk to the grocery store – much more Manhattan than Monmouth County.
Cookie and Blackie adjusted more quickly this year. We put Cookie in Kim’s studio upstairs and kept Blackie’s base as our downstairs bedroom. I won’t say the New Jersey cats are thrilled with Blackie’s efforts to roam the entire house. He goes upstairs to bug Cookie periodically. Sometimes Beau follows and an explosion ensues.
Blackie visits the kitchen – cautiously!
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A hummingbird graces us with a long, slow drink at the flowers. Thanks to the flowers and flowering trees we are treated to them in numbers I have never seen locally. Another summer drawing to a close here in Jersey.
Backyard post grilling, about the hour the bats show up.
Pam's Pictorama 