Month: November 2024

T’day Cat Tale

Posted by

2

As is sometimes the case I am on the train and taking a moment to start this post. It is a wet and dark Thanksgiving morning and the train to NJ is crowded. (I can only imagine how crowded the trains on the other side of the tracks going into the city are!) I had to hoof it four blocks to Penn Station in a pouring rain.

Luckily, I was dressed for the elements (that coat I mentioned buying in last week’s post arrived – it is excellent) and traveling fairly lightly. There are a bunch of small hotels near there and many families, clearly here for the parade and holiday, were milling around in front of them, despite the rain. I feel badly for them – even these modest hotels cost them a fortune and it should be a nice treat for the kids – too bad about the rain! Kids looked pretty perky anyway.

The last few minutes of my entry into Red Bank on the train.

I had actually planted myself in NJ on Tuesday night – smartly avoiding the worst of the travel press. Kim had decided to sit this one out in Manhattan so I was hoping for a few days there doing errands and working in the garden to prep it for winter. Then Blackie stopped eating on Tuesday night and the malaise it continued and worsened Wednesday morning. Therefore, I had to come back to New York and we had to take him to the hospital where I work now.

I will start by saying that his vet was responsive in a way that I don’t think any of us feel we can expect from our own doctors let alone our vets. Despite being the day before Thanksgiving, she answered my email at 7:30 am right away and we exchanged several emails before making the decision to bring him in. First, we tried an external stimulant which Kim picked up and applied to no avail.

It was a remarkable relief to see familiar faces around me and helping with him. It had seemed somewhat impersonal in the past when I went there but now I am family. This is especially notable because I have felt isolated at this job and it has been hard to get to know people. However, one of my friends (one of the first people I met there and got to know – she is a Veterinarian Technician) carried him out to me and despite his anxiety he clearly enjoyed Erica’s attentions – that woman knows how to pet a cat!

This stuff is like kitty crack but if they won’t eat it is a very good go to.

His illness, or disinterest in food specifically, remains a mystery. After I got him to eat some Churu at the hospital we decided to take him home last night. I’m glad we did; it was the right decision. He’s diabetic and I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t have to take him in again for a glucose test which will take a full day, but with the holiday if we can get him to eat even small amounts I would rather have him home. He ate a small breakfast for me this morning and so I am heading back to NJ where I will have a handful of friends coming for dinner!

***

Thanksgiving was a quiet affair with the aforementioned couple of friends. I had a winter gardening frenzy of bulb planting (luckily the ground was soft from that Thanksgiving rain) and trimming the dahlias and bagging them up for the winter. Lastly, the geraniums needed to be taken out of the front planters and they are potted and living in the kitchen for now. The trellises I grew my cucumbers on are tucked away in the garage. I had hoped to do more cleanup in the veggie patch but didn’t have time.

Taken this morning. A bit perkier and wondering what on earth Kim and I will do to him next though.

I returned to New York Friday evening. Blackie has resumed eating more regularly but still requiring a stimulant and some encouragement. Essentially we are now in a stage where he’ll eat really good stuff but is still turning his nose up at the healthier real food we expect him to eat. However, he just wolfed down a smidge of smoked salmon so I would say his eating instincts are not totally disabled.

Cookie is taking full advantage of the situation. To be clear, we are martinets when it comes to the cats eating habits. They eat at 6am and 6pm. They get a mix of canned food and dry food is out for them. We have not introduced treats into their lives except to inveigh them to eat on the onset of their stint in New Jersey. When they both stopped eating the first time I was introduced to Churu treats and keep them on hand for such events. Those things must be like kitty crack is all I can say.

Cookie napping recently. I must say, she doesn’t seem concerned about Blackie but is happy about all the treats in the house.

I brought some Churu back from New Jersey with me as Kim had used up our small stash. Cookie keeps taking us over to it and showing it to us – hoping we will take the hint and give her some.

I know I haven’t written much about this new gig. This past year I have been working to get a lot under my belt in a very different area of fundraising and in a very specific place. Building this fundraising operation to full throttle is a journey which has only just launched. I wouldn’t have Blackie or Cookie (or Beau, Gus, Milty, Peaches and Stormy – the NJ Five) sick for anything obviously, but in some ways this recent incident has informed me with an interesting piece of the puzzle for fundraising there.

Some of what I experienced was clearly because I am a staff member, but having used them before with a substantial illness with Blackie, the good communication and much of what I experienced was in play then too – which influenced my decision to take this job. It is a special place, in part possible because it is a non-profit. My job is figuring out how to unlock all its potential.

Gourd-gous

Posted by

2

Pam’s Pictorama Post: The season is suddenly tipping hard in the direction of the holidays and winter. Last night I ordered a new long down jacket online – at the end of last winter the zipper finally broke one I had been wearing happily for decades. (My mother gave it to me so many years ago – it might predate my meeting Kim!) While perhaps not the most stylish of long down coats it was thick and toasty warm. I have tried new zippers on down coats before and for some reason they are especially recalcitrant however.

My office these days, and the hospital, are along the East River, overlooking the FDR highway. The wind and water are always worse there than anywhere else, even our apartment building which is only one block west. While walking a half hour to and from work is lovely in some ways, come the middle of the winter it will be less charming. I was a bit ill prepared last year when I started in January and am tackling the impending winter pro-actively this year – boots and coats.

An earlier leaf incarnation I snapped a pic of.

Thanksgiving is late this year and in my mind I kept pushing it forward until now suddenly it is upon us. I am using the few days to go to New Jersey (and visit the Jersey kitties) and plant some spring bulbs. We are experiencing a well publicized drought right now so I am concerned that the ground will be as hard as a rock when I try however. Nonetheless, the thought of tulips and other flowers blooming in the spring will drive me forward. Time to take the dahlias in and wrap them up in the chilly garage for the duration of the winter. The hibiscus and a small olive tree (seen below still out on the deck here) are already living their winter life in the kitchen there although I understand that the cats are too interested in them and I think they need to relocate to the bedroom.

Late summer and fall dahlias are more than worth the effort to store them over the winter.

Work and other commitments have kept me from trips I had hoped to make there in November so this week will be the first time I am there in quite a while. I am looking forward to the very last of the tomatoes and a solitary cucumber that is being saved for me.

Back in October I decorated the front stoop with some warty pumpkins – I love them! They are appropriate through November and until it is time to add a wreath to the door and some swags of greens to the railings.

While I am missing access to the Jersey late autumn, Kim has supplied me with a mini-fall here in the apartment. These gourds came from the local grocery and are as charmingly wart filled and interesting as you could ask for. Like mini-pumpkins, they perch (and are occasionally buried by paper) on my desk, little happy harbingers of the season.

Kim has followed that up with an assortment of fall leaves which have started appearing. Not surprisingly, the man has a great eye for leaves. Their passing extraordinary colors attract him and he has collected and attempted to save them (largely unsuccessfully) for years. We tried pressing, the microwave and just letting them sit. He has put them under the plexi on top of his desk. This year he has delivered them to my desk and I have been enjoying the somewhat fragile random harvest of them and they are the season to me this year.

The Christmas Letter and The Fairy Godmother

Posted by

0

Pam’s Pictorama Post: This was a lucky buy. I spotted it in a sale online (once again it was @missmollystlantiques on IG) and took a chance on it for a few dollars. It arrived several weeks ago and has been on my desk waiting for its turn. Apologies if I am jumping the gun on the commencement of the holiday season by a bit. Deitch Studio is at the mercy of the supply chain as well and I am waiting on the arrival of several items.

When I grabbed it up online I couldn’t have known how really charming it would be and I like it so much I sort of want to pass it onto someone else who will also appreciate it. It’s thin – about a dozen pages altogether with four or five illustrations. The two stories were written by Edith Harriet Griffiths and they are splendid. This volume was published in 1911 by something called The Hayes Lithographing Company and it belongs to something called the Christmas Stocking Series, as printed in tiny gold letters on the back.

One of the internal illustrations.

The first title story is straightforward fare about a family where the father is ill and their financial straits spell a sad holiday for them. They cheer themselves up by writing to Santa with their modest list. My favorite part of the story is they send it to him by putting it up the chimney to be swept up and delivered by the draft. (Never heard of kids using that delivery system, but I like it.) The letter finds its way into the hands of a wealthy gentleman (who bears a resemblance to St. Nick – its not clear how these actually get delivered; down the chimney?) and in the form of a doctor who helps to deliver a happy Christmas Day complete with potential job for Dad when he is well again.

From The Fairy Godmother.

The second story is a nice surprise and it is about a little girl who is meeting her godmother for the first time and she dubs her Fairy Godmother. However the story ends up being about her imaginary pet cat who is banished – and later the godmother replaces him with a real kitten. Perfect story for me.

Inside inscription.

This particular volume is inscribed Louise J. Willcoxen from Mamma Feb 15, 1913 penciled in a child’s hand.

From The Fairy Godmother.

There is a later, and seemingly more lavish, edition a few years later and they appear to have added a few illustrations. While either volume is not impossible to find, there are not a lot available.

This volume was recently sold online. It is the later, more lavish volume with many additional illustrations.

I found one copy sold on eBay ($49.99 in bad condition) and it was a re-issue from a few years later. As you can see it is a more festive edition and a number of (nicer) illustrations have been added. It is only The Christmas Letter, without The Fairy Godmother and it ends with a poem The Night After Christmas which appears to be a comic take on the over-indulging at Christmas.

This series, also published as Christmas Stocking Series the same year – was five volumes which I think you could buy individually or as a nice box set.

Another small holiday book by Edith Harriet Griffiths turns up a bit more frequently and it is The Magic Christmas and Missy and McKinley. It has the same 1911 publication date by the same Hayes Lithography publisher. (Available for $45.95 on Etsy at the time of writing this.)

Currently for sale on Etsy.

For all of that, in my light online research the trail is pretty cold on her as an author beyond these volumes which is too bad because she’s a good writer. I wonder if she published under another name or names and if that is just erased in the sands of time, at least for now.

My volume is illustrated by Nina B. Mason and Frances Brundage and frankly the outside illustration and the overall package is somewhat more impressive than the inside illustrations. I don’t see them team up again although I did find a few further illustration jobs by each of them separately. I like them separately better.

Nina B. Mason painting recently auctioned and sold for an undisclosed sum.

I believe that Nina B. Mason is Nina Mason Booth after marrying a few years later than this book. Her family was intertwined with engraving and lithography with a start in norther New York. A nice bio of her career can be found online here. She was notable for her portraits and illustrations. A quick look online shows some nice oil landscapes by her. There is one kid’s book which appears to be written and illustrated by her. I don’t love the look of it but the inside story and pictures are really loopy! Deary Dot and the Squee!

Not in Pam’s Pictorama Collection.
Apologies – best screen shot I could get. This volume on Abe’s Books will cost you! $167!

Meanwhile, last but certainly not least, Frances Brundage (1854-1937) who was older than Nina Mason and presumably more established. She is the only one of the three who rates a Wikipedia entry (it can be found here) and she had a long career illustrating cute children, cats and the like. Her specialty was Valentines, postcards and other ephemera, much published by our friends over at Raphael Tuck & Sons. (See my Felix cards produced by them here in a prior post!) My favorite antidote is that she sold her first sketch to Louisa May Alcott. It was an illustration of one of her poems.

Of course this caught my eye. It appears to be written by Brundage as well.
I suspect this is more typical of Brundage’s work.

So we kick off the holiday season here at Pam’s Pictorama. Holiday books from the 1910’s could be a deep vein to mine, although a pricey one for the most part. I will be keeping a further weather eye out however and we’ll see what we can find.

From the Archives – a Tatty, Odd Felix

Posted by

0

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today I am pulling a little fellow out of the archive, such as it is. Amongst the (admittedly dusty) Felix toys here at Deitch Studio, there are a clutch of damaged ones that I purchased, usually for the sheer diversity of them. This small example is one of those. Despite his grotty condition, he is outstanding because I have never ever seen the precise likes of him before or since.

He stands about 9 inches high and he sports this large and somewhat elaborate original ribbon. He is in the hands behind his back walking and thinking pose. There is nothing really atypical about his body, although it does have a fair amount of damage, a hole in one leg and a wire sticking out his tail. It is not really excessive damage in the world of 100 year old stuffed toys though. He leaves a small trail of ancient straw and bits when moved around although this is also not unusual.

He maintains his whiskers which are nice and black. He has a small shoe button nose which is also fairly unique. I think that is his nose too – sometimes they look a bit like this but were meant to be covered and I don’t think so.

His good side if you would! Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

He has one remaining glass eye and that type of eye is pretty typical in the world of these toys, although many have the white felt behind black shoe button eyes instead. The brown stitched teeth are odd and I do believe they are brown not just discolored like the white on his face.

However, it is the shape of his face, head and rounded ears that are unusual. I’d almost think it was Steiff except that is not what the Steiff Felix looks like in the least. They seem to have had only one model and it is decidedly different. Most of the early off model Felix toys are pointy and doggy, definitely unlike this well rounded chap. It implies a different maker and I have no idea which that might have been. This Felix was well made – his head turns, although it must be done very gingerly now and every the extravagant bow makes me think he was a better made toy.

Sadly though I have not figured out cleaning the white of his snout which is what seriously disfigures him. It is grimy and darkly discolored but is also fragile (the remaining eye, nose and especially ears) which has left me in a fugue state about how to proceed. It turns out that I am not a brave nor creative repairman of tattered toys. I know colleagues who jump in with good results, but I am a scaredy cat when it comes to cleaning it turns out. Therefore I guess perhaps I am not the best steward of those in need of repair.

I have owned this fellow for longer than I can remember purchasing him on eBay – probably easily a decade – and still I have not taken the plunge. I am open to suggestions! Let me know your thoughts. Maybe I can devote another post to a before and after on him if I were to get great results.

Late Bloomer

Posted by

2

Pam’s Pictorama Post: A particularly prized photo is winging its way to me, but has not yet arrived and we are at the very tip of the holiday season and related posts. So today I devote a bit of space to an odd post, my fondness for amaryllis bulbs, the seasonal floral herald of the holidays.

For those of you who have not dabbled in them, these bulbs are a very hardy and easily grown indoor variety which appear this time of the year. Among the bulbs that can be “forced” and potted inside, the amaryllis appears for the holidays. It shares a bit of shelf space with a small selection perhaps of paperwhites maybe some daffodils, but largely this time of the year it dominates. I say, race to the store and buy one now.

The charm of them is that not only are they easy to grow, but they shoot up so fast you can almost imagine you can see it grow daily. Then, out of a huge green shoot emerges usually several large blooms which unfold with similar drama. They continue to bloom and hold their flower for a long time. In a small way, I think it is hard to be unhappy in the face of an amaryllis on a sunny window sill. I guess there must be duds, but I can’t really think of a time one didn’t perform for me.

It seems our bulbs are a hybrid of a species that grows native in South and Central America and the Caribbean. I guess folks grow them outside here, but that is not how I think of them, nor do I even know what time of the year they would reveal themselves outside.

Left to their own devices they will bloom in spring and have to be encouraged to a December bloom instead.

The name comes from a Greek legend. A young maiden named Amaryllis was trying to catch the eye of a handsome shepherd, Alteo, who only had eyes for flowers. After conferring with the gods, she pierced her heart with a golden arrow for 30 nights and finally on the last, the drops of blood that fell turned to blooms and lead him to her. She doesn’t die so all seems like a happy ending, at least as good as you get in Greek myths. It would seem that, like tulips, the it is the industriousness of the bulb growers in the Netherlands which is responsible for most of our holiday amaryllis today.

As we meander into the late winter and toward Easter tulips and daffodils will beckon to cheer us through the last of the winter stint. However the amaryllis kicks off not just the holidays, but gives us one last flower hurrah before the long dark winter ahead. This is the earliest I remember buying them. A Home Depot has just opened near my office (I love stores like Home Depot and especially Lowe’s in New Jersey, although there the fascination is buying garden supplies and plants) and I went in to have a look at lunch the other day and several different varieties were stacked all around.

The sign for the new Home Depot near work, delivered back in September and waiting for installation here.

In the past it had been my practice to purchase them as holiday gifts. I would load up on them and hand them to elderly people I visited for my work at the Met and I would bring a few to New Jersey for my mom and friends there. Whole Foods used to sell them just dipped in a bit of red wax. They were inexpensive and easy to transport. Oddly my memory is that lot had great growing and lasting power and that some even had a second bloom in them. Somehow though, by the time I was shopping for them in mid-to-late December they were hard to find. Occasionally I would order a pile from Amazon (because really, what can’t you get from Amazon?), but even there I was generally picking up the last of them.

In the past few years I have bought fewer. I had always made sure mom had a one or two, there is a large sunny window in the kitchen in New Jersey that is great for them. That was where she spent her days and I would get reports on the progress of the bulb and they brought her great joy, but after she died I drifted away from buying them. I no longer had encounters at work it was welcomed, many of those elderly friends are gone now as well.

Breck’s has a wide variety to choose from but start at about $30 a piece!

However, due to my new interest in gardening, the sites I buy bulbs from started sending me ads for them a couple of weeks ago already. (Spring bulbs from Brecks await my Thanksgiving arrival in New Jersey for planting – largely tulips. Spoiler alert for spring – and I also purchased some dahlias on sale that won’t arrive until early spring planting time.) I was tempted by their sturdy large varieties but they were very expensive, upwards of $35 a piece. For me part of the point is that they are inexpensive enough to be a nice small something for someone, a little nothing with a big pay off over several weeks of enjoyment.

Home Depot was the right price point, although the bulbs are in bulky boxes and some in nice but heavy glass containers. (Warning however, online their amaryllis wares are much pricier – in the store I was able to pick them up for about $16.) Despite being a bit weighty, I bought several and have already started handing them out, kicking off with a visit to a board member’s home yesterday. There is a pile waiting to go to New Jersey for Thanksgiving this year here in the apartment. One left at the office is earmarked for a holiday party in a few weeks.

Another pricey pretty beauty from Brecks!

Your timing has to be right as the bulbs are so anxious to get blooming that they will start even in their packaging. It is an ambitious flower!

Kim has just wandered through on his way out the door to make copies of something and informed me that Frank King, the artist behind Gasoline Alley, ultimately retired and raised amaryllis bulbs. Isn’t it sort of fascinating that a man who wrote what is essentially a real time comic strip would be so devoted to a flower that almost grows before your very eyes? Amazing!

Comfort in Cats

Posted by

1

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Just coming off the Louis Wain Catland bio (I posted about that last week and it can be found here) I am self-consciously thoughtful suddenly about how the public sentiment about cats has shifted over the past 100+ years since humans just started finding their sea legs with them as domestic beloveds.

It wasn’t long after the Victorian period that cats were taken up in popular advertising at the dawn of the 20th century. This grinning black kit with the yellow bow was the longstanding spokes-cat for the Black Cat Hosiery company and was so popular for decades that the advertising items from it remain in high demand and often is quite pricey today. (This bit of an ad with thanks to Sandi Outland, via @curiositiesantique who sent it several months back – the the sea, my desk has spit it up from the depths for today’s consideration and helped inspire this post.)

I have written about the company on other occasions so if you want more info on the company you can find it in a post here – and more here. The above ad is from a July, 1907 McCalls magazine and other ads on the page are for, most fascinatingly, H&H Pneumatic Bust Forms (yes, like stuffing your bra – no one will know) and Modene hair removal for face, neck and arms – it cannot fail! Our black cat was in good company.

Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

So in a mere few decades cats began to morph into the area they would command for many decades to come. However, I think it is fair to say that with the part of our lives that are now lived online some of us have taken our interest in cats to a much more highly developed level.

A photo of a young Betty Butler, holding our cat Snoopy back in the 1960’s from a Mother’s Day post this year.

Speaking for myself, my interest in cats began as a small child. Pictorama readers know that I have written numerous times about my childhood cat friends, Snoopy, a white cat with black cow spots with whom I shared many important childish conversations. But there was also Pumpkin who came to me as a tiny kitten ball of orange fluff and grew into an enormous faded-orange tabby who followed me around with dog-like devotion. As I got older my cat Winkie, a tiny tortie polydactyl with huge toed front paws like mitts, was my particular confidant. As a young adult Otto Dix (Miss Otto Dix), a tuxie from a corn farm in New Jersey, became my constant companion and closest friend, a very special cat especially smart cat who I still miss to this day.

However, until relatively recent years, my love and interest in cats (other than what I collect of course) was limited largely to those I knew – mostly my own or those of my mother. I suppose it started even before the pandemic, but certainly during those long days and nights that following cats online became a habit. First there was Maru the Japanese cat (to be precise, a Scottish Straight cat who lives in Japan) who can’t resist box and likes to get into boxes, some that are way too small for him. There was the somewhat neurotic French cat, Henri, a long haired tuxie who has Existential angst. The French also brought us cats playing Paddy Cake which never fails to make me laugh and for some reason is only funny to me in the French – there is an English version.

Still, those were occasional and one-off entertainment. I believe for me that cats as a form of online entertainment and escapism was born of the darkest period of the pandemic, fueled by late nights of waking up and worrying about work. Unable to sleep, I would read Judy Bolton novels (the first in a lot of early series books I read and I wrote about Judy Bolton here) and take a spin through Instagram, sometimes buying the odd item, but also entering the world of cats online and sometimes following even their most daily routines.

I’m probably skipping ahead a bit but Sadie and Dottie (@sadieanddottie), a tuxie and a white kit with cow spots, and who appear to live in Queens, brightened many a dark day when I realized a new post or story had been posted. These largely consist of these two cats growing up, but mostly doing cat stuff like watching birds and napping. Yes, I can watch my own cats do that (although Deitch Studio is situated a little high for birds out the window) and I do, but it turns out I like to watch other cats do it too.

A screen grab of this little video of Sadie.

With almost 14,000 viewers cat mom Lauren Grummel and cat dad Chas Reynolds, Jr. appear to have their hands full supplying frequent doses of their kitties going through their daily paces. A favorite post is an imaginative one of Sadie (the tux) sailing away on a boat at night in search of parents who will give her more treats instead of telling her she’s had enough. (Find it here.)

There is @Fatfink (aka Devlin Thompson) who I first got to know on Facebook, but now is an Instagram constant. His record of the comings and goings of his small menagerie of four cats, (these days Clawford, Kookie, Mr. Biscuits and Miss Rupert), which includes some recent rescues and things like his daily fight over his dinner with them or other such tidbits, are interspersed with an aligned interest in comics – but it is really over the kits that we bond. He sends me great cat videos too which I often find first thing in the morning and cheer my day.

Newly acquired Clawford.
Clawford recently introduced to this rather rarified Deitch portfolio!

A friend on the west coast started supplying me with both funny and moving video snippets of cats during the difficult period of caring for my mother although she continues to send them since I like them so much. These videos, many from The Dodo are chock-a-block full of cats paired with a myriad of other odd animals as friends (deer, dogs, cows) or doing un-catlike activities like motorcycle riding or boating. It is especially lovely and a real kindness as she herself isn’t especially fond of cats so she seeks them out just for me.

Most recently I have fallen hard for team Penny and Felix on Instagram. Penny (@pennythegingercat) is a somewhat sardonic and absolutely adorable orange tabby female (yes, a rarity) and Felix (@felixthepalegingercat) her younger brother, a lean and lanky light orange fellow. (Penny alone has upwards of 650,000 followers!)

The antics of these two (two accounts means twice the fun) include but are not limited to: Felix’s impatience over getting his breakfast in the morning, Penny’s preference of Dad over Mom, Penny sleeping as a face down loaf and the like. These have cheered me endlessly over the past year. Highlights have included Penny entering the Olympics this year as a gold medal winning cat loaf champion and I credit the duo for having invented the term skippity pap (or at least made it enter my personal lexicon) – which is accompanied by a sort of whoosh-smack sound effect that is especially satisfying. It is among the few accounts I turn my sound on for routinely.

The dynamic cat duo’s mom and dad (mom is the voice over for the most part) do a brilliant job of editing, voice over – they are top pros at it and I bless them daily for these inventive missives that come over my transom, brightening all days. Quite simply I cannot recommend them enough for a cat dopamine daily dose.

Four out of the NJ Five here – Gus missing.
Blackie and Cookie peevishly sharing the bed with each other and of course Kim recently.

I have written before about social media and my belief that if content is carefully chosen and tended it can be a rabbit hole of blissful escapism. During the brutal hustle and full-on assault of our shifting political world I have found myself diving deeply into this somewhat alternate universe of cats. As the mother of the NYC duo Cookie and Blackie, and the Jersey Five (Beau, Milty, Gus, Peaches and Stormy) and the head of fundraising for a major emergency animal hospital – you’d think I would get enough daily dose of the kitty world, but simply, no – quite simply, I prefer even more.

I started subscribing to a daily newspaper in high school and have more or less read one daily every since, butI lately find my ability to read above the fold reduced to a nervous skittering across headlines as I head down the page to stories about things like a research study on puppy kindergarten – the super socializing of puppies to see if they make better service animals (NYT and can be found here). So today I pay tribute to those folks online who may not inform my politics, nor deliver my news, but who are vital community which cheers my daily existence.

Let the Season Begin

Posted by

0

Pam’s Pictorama Post: A friend and colleague who began her life in Finland (she lives in Ohio today and works remotely for me a few hours a week), told me the other day that when she was little parents were so invested in the idea of the Christmas holiday that it was common to hire a Santa to come to the house. She said that when she realized that Santa wasn’t real, she felt she could not say anything because it would hurt her parents.

I love that story, and I have great affection for this card I just bought which shows the other side of Nordic holiday spirit. I am unsure what country this originally hailed from, although I purchased it from someone in the Netherlands who also did not know the origin of the card. There is a tiny NTG in the lower left corner and writing in another language and incredibly small that I cannot decipher. The internet was not much help on this front although another seller of postcards thought NTG was German. I have not found evidence of other cards like it, but perhaps a series of them lurks somewhere yet.

Gnomes are evidently thought to deliver Christmas presents in Scandinavia in the 18th and 19th centuries, helpers to Father Christmas. (Families left bowls of porridge for them – perhaps a bit less appealing than our cookies and milk!) I would suspect this is where the idea of our elves as Santa’s helpers come from.

I will say that I purchased this card on eBay for very little and utterly uncontested! I gather that I am the only one who was looking who saw its charm, but I am pleased to add it to the Pictorama collection.

Of course it turned up for me because of the weird tabby cat. If you look very closely he appears to have a tiny antler, possibly drawn on. Puss seems to be pouncing on him while this gnome protects Santa with this long stick. Santa and the gnome are small children in costume and the cat is, well a cat, probably one that hung around the photo studio catching mice and playing bit parts. His tail is curled upward and we can see his nice white tummy and white feet. I think we can assume if left to his own devices he would have liked to knead biscuits on the Santa suit and take a cat nap.

Santa plays his role with some drama – oh no, the antlered cat attack – his cottony beard, brows and hair contributing to his look. The gnome goes at it with great gusto as well. Also beard and with curling hair coming out of his pointy cap (his own?) he grins with gnome-ish fervor as he saves Santa. I like his pointy shoes.

One can imagine that the day shooting this was pretty much a good time for all. The set certainly is stark with a few large stones to the left and in front and this sort of nest of twigs behind the gnome. In addition to that odd little antler being drawn in, a very careful examination shows a very small smattering of white dots down the middle of the card which I assume are meant to be snowflakes. Otherwise this is a rather barren set making it feel a bit like Santa on the Moon.

Back of the card – no evidence of being mailed despite being addressed.

I share the back of this card which I cannot decipher although omitie appears to be Romanian and means to omit – I assume that this was meant to say – I didn’t forget Edmund! While fully addressed there is no evidence of it being mailed with a stamp or cancellation. The writing in pencil seems to be earlier seller’s marks. So was it just dropped by a mailbox perhaps?

So here we go, kicking off this holiday season here at Pictorama. This photo postcard embodies both some humor, but also a tiny bit of historic grit and well, a pleasant sort of meanness. Just what we need as we sally forth into the season ahead.

On the Wall

Posted by

1

Pam’s Pictorama Post: The other evening I was meeting a former colleague and we were discussing the shifting sands of the office place – he who now works entirely remotely for a national not-for-profit and I am who am still adjusting to life at an animal hospital where many things are different. The conversation somehow turned first to mail (I am struggling with the local post office) and then to handwriting. I told him that when I worked at the Met I handwrote many notes and that I hoped over time that when people saw the envelope they would recognize my handwriting immediately.

The verso of a postcard from a prior post – sometimes the writing is half the fun, other times indecipherable.

Even less than a decade ago mail was a much bigger part of my job. This area in fundraising has had a continued contraction and, while I am far from an expert, I am struggling to find its place at work as older supporters still like it but it is expensive and you can lose money. Direct mail aside, my days at the Met were packed with notes written – a constantly dwindling pile of cards atop my desk for notes to attach to things, my business card and stacks of cards from the museum’s shop which I worked my way through with birthday wishes and other occasions. For years all of our invitations were handwritten and stamped. We did them at home and were paid by the piece – I helped pay for my trip to Tibet by addressing envelopes when we opened the new Asian Art Wing there.

At the Met we had a mailroom which collected our piles of mail and delivered ours to our office. I have learned over time that this is a luxury in offices.

Our Top Dog Gala invitation this year. We are celebrating the work of the police dogs and this handsome German Shephard is representing for it. Invitations have printed envelopes now.

At Jazz I immediately noticed fewer written missives, as well as less time on the telephone – everything was pretty much online and email including invitations. If not a dedicated mailroom, an office manager did distribute mail and bring it to the post office daily. Covid interrupted even that and mail stilled to a full stop and barely ground back into use in the post-Covid work world.

My office today slots mail into boxes in the main hospital building which we try to pick up daily. Somehow I have never gotten the swing of mail pick up there (due to construction it moves around) and we tend to stamp and mail things from public boxes or a trip to the post office. It isn’t true but sometimes I feel like the only person who produces mail beyond the occasional mailing of things like Gala invitations.

Very recognizable Louis Wain signature as per yesterday’s post!

However, what we really touched on the other night and what has stayed in my mind since is the memory of handwriting I have known. I recently had to go through check registers of my mom’s for tax purposes and spending the day immersed in her (slowly deteriorating) handwriting made her and that final year together very real again.

I have only a few samples of my sister’s writing, although it was a neat distinctive cursive I would recognize anywhere – she had the habit of looping the bottom of her capital L’s backward as part of her signature. I never asked her about that.

I saw less of my father’s handwriting than other family members, but certainly would recognize his signature. Somewhere I have a few letters from him, written while he covered the Olympics in Sarajevo. Meanwhile my maternal grandmother had a round script that would come with birthday cards, some of which I still have.

Autographed books, always with a picture, by Kim here and below.

There are those folks whose handwriting I realize I do not know, or only have an inkling of, like my father’s parents who died when I was fairly young. (To my brother Edward, I am realizing that we never correspond with handwritten notes. I don’t really know yours although maybe I would recognize it if I saw it?) I have friends whose handwriting I can see in my mind – some former colleagues and others like my friend Suzanne who is an artist and whose very round writing is distinctive in my mind’s eye.

Kim’s handwriting and his signature are of course well known and very recognizable. Legibility in his line of work is essential. He eschews my cursive as hard to read. (There was a time when I was younger when I corresponding in a tiny neat print, but I found it labor intensive for my needs.) Recent trouble accurately reading numbers people have written on things has reminded us of the importance of neatness – not just for cartoonists, but for all of us. After all, first and foremost, it is a form of communication.

One of the nice things about living with Kim is he continues to receive (and send of course) letters and packages in the mail. We get more real mail than most folks.

I especially like this one for Shroud for Waldo!

When I was in college I remember a professor at the beginning of a course talking about how handwriting was a mark system like any other, one we use constantly and defines us. (She also pointed out that how we dress is another visual vocabulary all our own and I think of that sometimes when I put on make-up which in some ways is the closest I get to painting these days.) However, handwriting is the one that is intimately tied to who we are and is our very own – obviously like finger prints our signature can be used to identify us in a court of law; it is that singular.

Of those folks like my mother, father and sister who are now lost to me the thought of their writing, coming across it or remembering it, makes me miss them all the more. However, it is a comforting odd bit of us that we keep, thoughtfully or unconsciously, and remains in the world long after we are gone.

Catland: Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania

Posted by

1

Pam’s Pictorama Post: I haven’t posted a book review in a very long time and I am not entirely sure I have ever written one for a contemporary volume (Kim Deitch books notwithstanding of course), let alone a non-fictions one. (My reading and therefore posting runs heavily to very early 20th century fiction, largely by women. For a few examples you can look here and here.)

However, it seems quite logical that I would break that ground today with this recently published book as it combines Louis Wain (of whom I have posted often – try here and here for items from my collection) and the Victorian cat craze which helped launch the cat as house pet relationship as we know it today. Catland Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania by Kathryn Hughes is more or less hot off the presses. Hughes has worked the Victorian history side of the street before and draws heavily on her accumulated knowledge for this sizeable volume.

The Naughty Puss by Louis Wain.

Hughes uses Wain’s biography as a rough parallel to the rise of cat breeding and ownership – perhaps a fair measure as one could say that Wain’s art, intertwined with the newly found fondness for felines, helped drive the mania but was also driven by it. She loads it up with an equal amount of stories and tidbits from broader Victorian life, but centered mostly on a newly formed cat craze as it were.

While Hughes does take the opportunity to set both Wain’s autobio and previous chroniclers straight on some points, his biographical bits are interspersed throughout by chapters devoted to other aspects of cat related Victorian life. (Somehow I had missed the fact that Wain had a cleft palate which was largely hidden by facial hair as an adult and I had no knowledge of the family history designing and making liturgical fabrics – the latter being of much interest when you consider his sense of pattern and design.) Evidently Wain gilded the facts of his life liberally (lied) during his lifetime making some of it up out of whole cloth more or less.

circa 1900: Cat artist Louis William Wain (1860 – 1939) draws inspiration from a pet. (Photo by Ernest H. Mills/Getty Images)

Hughes’s Wain is a socially awkward fellow, albeit it with flashes of attempted showmanship, who was most comfortable wandering off into his own world, In his public persona he judged (the newly created) cat shows, gave demonstrations of two fisted simultaneous cat drawing, and wrote some vaguely (and then increasingly) unhinged editorial pieces for the papers of the time. On the other side of the coin, he and his family declared bankruptcy more than once; he had a tendency to wander off for periods of time, and of course eventually he sadly drifts (almost retreats) into his decorative cat laden world of insanity.

Much the same could be said about Victorian England and its relationship to felines. First, it is clear that there was a pretty hard line between the nascent “purebred” (often pampered) pets of the day, and the run of the mill kitty of the street. The practice of bringing a street kitten or cat into your home was not the norm and, aside from those which were kept for work such as mousing, those cats were at best left to languish in the streets.

Tabbies in the Park and black and white print by Wain.

Some of the Victorian practices concerning cats are not for the weak of cat-loving heart to read so fair warning here. There were descriptions and stories I glossed over at best and I suggest same for Pictorama readers. A chapter on Victorian taxidermy (including a woman with a literal cat hat and cat tail cape – Eeeck!) isn’t even the worst of it as the period does seem to have a glib cruelty to it. However, not all the cat tales are bad ones and there were numerous fun bits and pieces that I’ve been reporting to Kim in bed for weeks now.

The book is gloriously well illustrated including, but happily not limited to a color section. Wain’s work lends itself even to black and white reproduction and Hughes uses it to good effect in support of her points as well as being fun to look at.

My favorite chapter in the book was on the Wain futuristic ceramics which I have always had an interest in and it answered at least some of my questions about these. A somewhat luxe line of teapots and the like in true Futurist forms, Wain had the bad luck of launching his line in June of ’14, just as war was overtaking Europe and Great Britain. Not the best time for offbeat ceramic cat-ware.

A bevy of the ceramics!

Produced by a company called Max Emanuel there were 19 patented designs in the first batch with names as diverse as The Mascot Cat and Road Hog Cat. The choice of colors where the larger designs were produced was referred to by a critic as an angry cake decorator on acid. Evidently there was even at inception a riot of designs, colors and finishes for the items, manufactured at two different plants which would make positive identification hard even then and almost impossible now that forgeries have flowed into the market. Still, I would snatch one up if I could and liked it and remain unconcerned about proof of origin.

The most disappointing chapter was on Wain and Felix! Other than the story of Sylvia Pankhurst’s Felix factory on the East End of London being told (Pictorama readers may remember that from a very popular early post that can be found here), Hughes does a rough retelling of a the plot of a silent cartoon that is easily viewed on Youtube. I’m mystified by why she included Felix if she was so disinterested.

Christmas was a favorite and very lucrative time of the year for Wain from the beginning of his career.

Wain and his sisters eventually leave London to reside in a suburban seaside town near Margate (one of his boosters in the magazine world was an early investor and set them up there), and this holiday retreat lifestyle inspires some of Wain’s most entertaining cards and images – cats golfing, boating and swimming as well as sly social commentary found even in Catland.

From the Pams-Pictorama.com collection. Sadly not Wain and Eliot, not yet…

Meanwhile, of course I have wonderful day dreams about Louis actually wandering over to the Felix photographers in Margate where so many of my Felix photos were made and having a postcard made with an arm tossed around the shoulders of a tall stuffed Felix – this is now united with my day dream of finding one of the giant Felix dolls from those establishments.

Furthermore, as it happens eventually TS Eliot was also nursing a nervous breakdown in the neighborhood – in a town just on the other side of Margate. It is irresistible to imagine that they met at that time, perhaps had a coffee and were strolling the boardwalk together. And perhaps they wandered in and had a picture postcard snapped for posterity – to show up in my collection one day.