memoir

Tulip Time: Part Two

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: I continue my second part, tulip treatise today with an odd alignment that came out of tulip talk recently here at Deitch Studio. As occasionally occurs here over leisurely morning work, reading and discussion sessions, Kim and I meandered through both my tulip triumphs in New Jersey and his interest in this book and comic as outlined below and these posts were born. Welcome to The Black Tulip and part two of the Pictorama post.

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I commence with a full admission that before I met Kim Classics Illustrated comics were at best known to me in a theoretical way – a sort of punchline to a joke about not having read a school book assignment – as in clearly they read the comic book version. I confess I have never actually read one to date.

A pile of the comics within eyeshot, next to Kim’s desk, while I write this morning.

A number of years back Kim discovered a guy on 86th Street who was selling them. Not every day of the week, but most weekend days and maybe a few others piles of them on a table with their bright yellow logos being hawked. Over time they began their siren song and Kim was lured into slowly acquiring both those remembered from his youth and then ones he had missed along the way. Slowly his collection grew if haphazardly. I can’t remember now if the fellow gave up before Covid or it was the pandemic that did his periodic business in. And it wasn’t a constant flow, but an occasional addition would be made via eBay. Although he might give a quick look when I was with him it was generally a mission he completed on his own – an excuse for a walk on a nice day and presumably some comics chat.

A better look at that pile. This is just the tip of the iceberg of Kim’s collection.

Kim, a voracious reader and particularly of classic literature, seems like an unlikely candidate however most recently he uses these as sort of massive supplemental illustrations to something he is reading. (The man is devoted to illustrated fiction in all its guises.) A large trade paperback on the history of Classics Illustrated found its way into the house recently and, although he is a committed Dumas fan, his purchase of The Black Tulip I believe was a result of his reading of that. The novel is on its way so he has not commenced reading it yet.

Classics Illustrated (which has lodged in my brain as Classic Comics) had a 30 year run, from 1941-1971, launching with The Three Musketeers. With printing and reprinting and the collecting of them, it can be a deep and largely affordable vein of comics collecting. If Kim were writing this there would be color and lore I cannot provide – thoughtful observations about the various artists who illustrated them, some who were wrapping up a career during the heyday of comics.

The opening pages of our rather tatty copy.

The Black Tulip (based as noted on the novel by Alexandre Dumas) was illustrated by Alex A. Blum (1889-1969) and I would say his illustrations are definitely part of the appeal of the comic. The story takes place during the tulip craze in the Netherlands of the 1600’s after the introduction of the plant from the near east in the preceding century. As you probably know, tulips were wildly sought after and the bulbs traded like gold or cocoa on a world exchange. Fortunes were made and lost in tulips and even poor and middle class families might stake their fortunes on the waxing and waning of them.

Queen of the Night variety of tulip – appears to be pretty much as close as we come to black.

The plot of the novel is the race to develop a truly black tulip and the nefarious individuals who would do anything to capture a $100k guilder prize for the development of it. (For the record, a true black tulip does not exist even today and a very dark purple one called black is as close as one comes.) Since Kim is planning to read the original novel as well so I will have to ask him if they explain why black seemed so desirable – I prefer red and orange among others myself. (It should be noted that blue does not exist either – only a sort of lavender to blue.)

The jolly cover caught my imagination and a stroll through the comic is not disappointing. For the record, there is a column in the front cover called Student Boners which claims to be funny mistakes made on regional state exams – along the lines of Name two explorers of the Mississippi – answer: Romeo and Juliet. There is a bio of Dumas and encouragement to read the full novel at the back. Throughout there seems to be a layer of an in the service of sort of self-conscious educational mission.

The back of the book – free comics tattoos with your purchase of 10 issues.

Along those lines also included at the back is a plot summary of the opera Boris Gudenof (what did kids make of that?); a bio of Alfred Nobel (Inventor of Dynamite!); and an unrelated short story about a dog. Kim informs me that the books had to be weighted with a certain amount of text in order to get a book rate for mailing. (This is part of the eventual undoing of the company as they ultimately lost this status.) There is an emphasis on the great literature these are based on (There have been no greater story-tellers than these immortal authors) and on reading in general.

A page from a story to be published next year called Apocalypso.

As I alluded to above, these comics were a fixture of Kim’s childhood and a recently completed page from an upcoming story for his next book shows a young Kim and a friend in a room littered with them. (We had some discussion over which covers would be featured.) As for me, well my generation had Cliff Notes (which also took a final bite out of these comics) instead. I never read them, but I am sure they were far less romantic and potentially interesting as Classics Illustrated and in addition I doubt that anyone collects them today.

Tulip Time: Part One

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: It’s spring time in full bloom here at Deitch Studio and I bring you a somewhat unorthodox Pictorama post about tulips today. It’s a two part post where Kim and Pam meeting of the minds post as our nascent floral interests convened this month.

I will start by saying that I have loved tulips since college where I remember seeing my first gorgeous bunch of them in someone’s room, a wonderful harbinger of spring. I think they were apricot colored and I guess the whole concept of cut flowers was very adult as well. While we grew flowers in New Jersey my mother, at that time, was not so big on harvesting them, preferring to let them run their course in the yard.

I am a big fan of vases filled with tulips, all colors and types. Trim the stems and add a couple of pennies – if in the sun or a warm spot they will force quickly. A cooler shaded spot to keep them longer.

Those yards of my youth consisted of sandy stony soil and were resistant to cultivation, despite my mother’s best efforts. As a result her purview was focused. She produced a credible vegetable and ultimately herb garden and managed to get shrubs and trees to grow, but less so bulbs of the annual variety like tulips. (Although someone gave her stunning and unusual iris bulbs which were perennial and a few of which exist in my yard today. Perhaps a future post on them.)

From my former office at Jazz. I generally had cut flowers on my desk each week.

Meanwhile, the lovely if extremely finite, nature of tulips fascinated me. I always say, there’s nothing more dead than a dead tulip. However, if true, in some ways there’s nothing more vibrant than one it its prime – their life and death cycle perhaps being part of the appeal. As plants they hit the ground running, so to speak, and once they hatch from their bulb they race to a full stem, bloom tightly folded. And then, bam! It opens. Amazing! Before you know it, the plant is spent and that’s pretty much it.

If left in the ground you can get a second showing the following year. When I worked for Central Park we had an annual Tulip Toss where the spent bulbs were dug up and replaced with fresh. The bulbs were given to smaller parks and interested individuals who would plant them the following year with a less reliable yield.

Now, I have mostly enjoyed my tulips as cut flowers indoors. However, as Pictorama readers know, I went gardener last year after inheriting the house in Fair Haven. Although I confined myself largely to herbs and veggies, one of my final acts of gardening in the fall was to plant some tulips out in the front yard.

Photo from a friend’s trip to Amsterdam this year.

As many know, a siren call to all wildlife are bulbs, seeds and flowering plants. Now, I try to take a pretty philosophical view of critters munching my blueberries and strawberries (read about that a bit here if you like), and I think mom planted the berries for the birds, but the seeds, bulbs and flowering plants (think geraniums) make me a bit sad. Anyway, understanding that it could result in spring disappointment, I planted a row of tulips and one of daffodils (less tasty it seems) in the front yard.

Our backyard is fenced and I generally do not have deer visit back there (although bunnies, chipmunks and squirrels abound, as well as myriad birds), but the front yard is fair game and can pretty much be considered a buffet for the plant munchers.

Nonetheless, I ordered some bulbs from a nursery and spent a chilly, dirty and backbreaking afternoon of planting last fall. I was a bit late getting them in which was a strike against me.

Last year’s strawberry plant. It wintered over and is laden with blooms already. The birds, bunnies and I will have strawberries galore this year.

My trips to New Jersey are somewhat sporadic and dictated by both things that need to be done there or other things which need to be done in Manhattan and keep me here. However, the women who look after the house and cats keep a weather eye on my garden as well and send frequent reports.

The tulips were not eaten as bulbs and low and behold – they came up unmolested. Now the race was on for me to get to New Jersey before a strolling four-legged resident feasted on them.

I had forgotten that I had purchased these brilliant bright orange and red ones. I zipped down to New Jersey and caught them in their full glory. So cheerful! Their straight stems and gaping blossoms opening to the sun and sky in the morning and shutting down again at night. I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed them.

I left on a Monday night and by Tuesday morning the report came – they were gone. I am so grateful that the critters waited for me, but I guess ultimately they proved to be an irresistible nosh.

By coincidence, last night I was catching up with a Frank Borzage directed film I had never seen, Seven Sweethearts. I am a huge Borzage fan and will sit down for any film of his I haven’t seen and TCM is doing a sort of mini-tribute to him this month. They appear to be focusing on the later films. (Why anyone would show Borzage and not show Lucky Star – an all-time favorite film – I have no idea. I collect stills from them and have written extensively about my love of his silent films here and here for starters.)

Charmingly artificial Borzage background on this still from Seven Sweethearts.

Now, I can’t really recommend this 1942 era film, except Katheryn Grayson (dressed of course in Dutch girl garb) is in fine voice. I wouldn’t say I didn’t enjoy it – there are some unmistakable Borzage touches including some very charming fields of faux tulips. The setting is an imaginary location called New Delft, a sleepy tourist town where some people come and never leave. Central to the town and the plot is a hotel owned by S. Z. Sakall who is Papa to seven daughters – five with sweethearts at the start of the film. Alas, none can marry until the oldest sister and she’s an aspiring actress so no interest in marriage there. You can fill in the rest. It is pretty available to be streamed online (free or nominal fee) and at the time of writing I caught it on the TCM app after a showing late on Thursday night.

All this to say tulips figure largely in the film and there are scenes, glass shots and charmingly artificial sets, of acres of tulips. I especially liked a scene where Katheryn Grayson tells Van Heflin that these tulips can tell the weather – that they close up with the darkening of the sky before the rain. It reminded me of mine, gently opening and closing in the front yard.

Last little fellow who popped up after all the others.

Meanwhile, I got a report that one lone little tulip showed up after the fact and I have the photo you can see above. Tomorrow, a bit more on the background of tulips and, oddly enough, where they intersect with comics.

The Three Month Mark

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: It seems like an odd moment perhaps to have a progress report today, but my mind is deeply there right now so here we go. I have been writing all week – an endless litany of editing and producing so perhaps it is just hard to turn that part of my brain off.

I have had reason to reflect on how in fact the discipline of writing this blog twice a week every week (since summer of 2014) has formed and honed my nascent skills over time. It has its own voice of course, and that is different than most of my writing for work, but it does help me add a lighter tone to some of the newsletter things we produce and just produce the sheer volume required.

Weirdly fundraising work is a lot of writing. I am not sure it is ever presented that way to aspirants in the field and no one gave me a writing test back when I started. (We still took typing tests! It was at the very end of that era however as computers were just phasing in.) However, unless you work in an enormous shop where all of the proposals and materials are produced by dedicated staff, you end up writing a heck of a lot. (My friends in those large shops assure me that they need to do a lot of editing of that work too because they understand the particulars best.)

Little girl I was holding was a bit smaller yet than this one here.

I give a basic writing test to most applicants – as much to make sure that they transfer information accurately and follow directions as anything else. Folks who will need to do a lot of more complex writing are asked to either do a more advanced test or submit previous proposals or writing samples. When it comes to the basic test I am often shocked by the errors. I mean they could share it with a half dozen of their friends before submitting and I wouldn’t know, yet many don’t seem to bother and there are often egregious errors.

On the other hand, I have also had excellent writing tests submitted by people who were less engaging during the interview process – and let’s not even start with what Zoom has done to interviewing. (Although now it is the accepted first step for every interview.) I try very hard to have an in-person with finalists, although I just hired someone who was moving back to NYC from San Francisco. He seems to be a good hire, although about six inches taller than I had anticipated. He sent a photo of his cat Moose along with his application which of course I found endearing. Moose is a marmalade tabby.

Not Moose, but somewhat like him.

Leaving the writing of others aside, the demand has meant that I have been writing a variety of things pretty much since I walked in the door back in January. While much of this kind of writing and editing is second nature to me, being in such a different organization and trying to capture it has been a challenge. I find myself writing proposals to fund medical equipment I didn’t imagine existed (a 3-D printer which could be used to create everything from a new beak for a Great Horn Bill or a replacement joint for a pup) to writing direct mail copy for an appeal.

A turtle like this one, but not this one!

But how to capture the essence? What’s it like to stand in a back hall and see a tiny turtle no bigger than a half dollar being rushed by for care by specialists in exotic animals. (It was so moving to think someone cared so much for this tiny guy and could even tell he or she wasn’t well.) Or to cuddle a scared tabby kitten from a rescue group which is being evaluated for surgery on a malformed leg so she will be adoptable. (We raise money for the funds to pay for such surgeries and it was my first real encounter with a beneficiary.)

The vets and techs (and really everyone there) love these animals fiercely and they are single-minded in the best outcome for the animal.

Pre-pandemic I bought flowers weekly for my office, but gave it up when we returned to work. This week I bought some in memory of my mom and the one year of her passing. Reminded me how nice it is to have flowers around!

Meanwhile, I have written previously (read it here) my own office is a block away in a somewhat decaying residential building which leaks and lacks public access. (The photo at the top was taken from the rooftop space at our building.) My staff yearns for the ability to have pets in the offices as is allowed down the street in the main building. I hope to negotiate this at some point and install an office comfort cat, but fear at best in reality it will add a cat to my own menagerie on the weekends. (This is the only place I could ever work where the response to I have seven cats is not shock, but more along the lines of – Oh, eight would be great!)

So that is a small slice of life at the new gig – more to come I am sure.

Mom and Snoopy

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today’s post is of a family photo, something I haven’t done in a long time, and it is one of my mom. The one year anniversary of her passing is tomorrow.

I wrote frequently about the surprisingly interesting time caring for her at the end of her life, here and here, and at her death I wrote a brief tribute to her here. However, a friend suggested that I find a photo of her to frame for my office as a way of recognizing the anniversary so I dug through some mountains of pictures in New Jersey last weekend and emerged triumphant.

Many years ago my mother’s mom put together a photo album for mom and her brother John for Christmas. I don’t remember seeing my uncle’s, but mom’s, although slim, is made up of wonderful early childhood photos of her that I had never seen. Mom’s father died young of a heart attack. He was much beloved to me during the short time I knew him (Poppy!), but I was only about four or five when he died. There aren’t a huge number of photos of him at all so it is extra nice to find these.

However, in addition to those photos which are mostly Betty and John as small kids with their various pets, mom had tucked a number of other early photos in and today’s photo is from that batch. This would have been taken around 1969, mom was still wearing her hair a bit long – she cut it short a year or so later, Snoopy just out of kittenhood.

Without knowing for sure I am fairly certain that this was taken at our house in Englewood, New Jersey, It was a tiny, cozy two bedroom cottage on Jones Road and across from what seemed to a tiny tot me to be an enormous park. (Actually, a google search shows a very substantial park on Jones Road, so perhaps my childhood estimate was more accurate than I think!)

Mom is holding the very first pussy cat in a long line of pets, Snoopy. I think I named him, for the comic strip and because he had black spots – he was a cow spotted kitty. In retrospect it is hard to believe that my older sister would have allowed me to name him (she was bossy!), but nonetheless that is my memory.

Snoopy was just a great cat. You’ve heard tales of my dressing him up in doll clothes and pushing him in my doll stroller – also playing circus dog with him and the German Shephard, Duchess. He was a lovely, easy going boy cat. He and the dog were buddies and unlike the dog, he rarely got into trouble (there was the time he walked across wet red paint on the porch and then through the kitchen, but that would be the exception that made the rule) and was loved by all equally. I believe his origin was as a barn cat – friends of my parents had a farm in South Jersey and supplied us with rather excellent cats for many years.

It’s funny that seeing him so many years later (his life was sadly cut short by an Akita several years later) his spots and markings are surprisingly immediately familiar. Black over one eye. I can remember petting him when I look at this.

My guess is that dad was trying out a new camera as this has a hallmark of being a rather posed photo. Dad wasn’t typically at his best with still photos. If anything I am better with those and lesser with moving images and he the opposite. He had an extraordinary eye for shooting movies, but somehow it didn’t quite apply to still images. This photo for me is an exception however. It captures mom and Snoopy perfectly and even reminds me of the wonderful garden at that house where these trees likely were. (When we moved to the shore, probably later that year, it was many years before we lived in a place with a garden and our first home was sandy, often salty soil right on the river, which flooded frequently. Mom struggled mightily to at least have a vegetable garden and some scrubby trees. Readers know I now glory in keeping up the garden my mom created at the house I inherited.)

One thing of note for me is that mom appears to be wearing both a watch (although on her right arm and she was right handed) and a wedding band. Mom never wore either later in life. I think she went through a series of wristwatches when she was younger and gave up – her active life and hands constantly in things probably did both that and the ring in. I know that the early version of her wedding band wasn’t gold (turned her finger green!) and she stopped wearing it. Years later my father gave her a gold band which I now have, but to my memory she just almost never wore jewelry. (Early arthritis in her fingers exacerbated this. I fight it in my own hands, especially with the fingers I broke a few years ago running.)

She is wearing a camel colored sweater coat, a very mom color. If it was a few years later jeans would be on the bottom half of her, but this early it was probably a skirt or some other trousers. She has a white (cotton I bet) top under the sweater. Mom was very allergic to wool and gave it up early in life. She wore a lot of polar fleece later on.

There is a little tear on the left of the photo where the color emulsion has peeled. I need to keep this in a not especially light or hot place I think. The color is faded.

Clearly I take after my father’s side of the family in this regard as I consider the purchase and wearing of jewelry to be one of life’s great pleasures! (I have written about some of my favorite finds here and here.) My paternal grandmother loved jewelry (Gertie! There’s a whole post for her here.) and my dad inherited that love and bought us three women in his life jewelry frequently. As a result, I have all of mom’s (virtually unworn) and my sister’s which tended toward a more contemporary design than the vintage pieces I am drawn to.

While it is mostly accepted that I resemble my mom more than my dad, I’ve not been sure about that as I age and look somewhat more like Gertie. Having said that, the resemblance between me and mom is strong in this picture, the differences in our coloring being less evident. (Mom was extremely freckled, fair and green eyed – I am fair but less freckled and brown eyed. Her hair had red tints that mine never had.)

Finding this photo was a gift and I am grateful! To have mom and Snoopy together to consider in this picture is a treat I had not anticipated and I cannot think of a better way to honor her life and the sad anniversary of her passing. Thank you mom.

Cats in Hats

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Good morning! Sunny April day here and today’s picture post presents these three self-possessed looking miscreants curled up in a variety of battered chapeaux. Although this was evidently used as a Valentine greeting (written in admirable script at the bottom), I am thinking of it as a nod to the season and time to break out my straw hat.

The two tabbies, who are remarkably identical, are curled up in the first two hats while my sort of tuxie friend is vacating his black one. The disintegrating straw hat is the most interesting, not sure what is perched on the side – a tossed out cigarette? A bit of paper? What I call a claw paw grips the brim. Comfy kitty in the first hat fits nicely, tail curled around himself, the very tip pointing out. The odd fellow (or gal) out appears to be a tux or tuxie mix of some kind, hard to tell as his entire back half is in this black hat. The bad guy hat!

All three kitties have had their attention drawn off camera in the same direction. To that extent at least they are posed.

Someone has scratched into the negative, The Latest Thing in Hats in Wilawana. PA. According to my (albeit limited) map reading on Google, Wilawana appears to be a small town near the Chemung river and on the border of New York state.

In penned script on the back it reads, With love, From Mrs. ME Knighte and For Beulock Cosaiy [?] Wills NY Hamilton Co. However, there is no stamp so it was hand delivered or ultimately put in an envelope.

Dad in his white hat, more or less dead center of this photo.

My father was a devoted wearer of hats. I have written about Dad’s career as a news cameraman for many decades. (One of those posts can be read here.) At more than 6’5″ and with a ubiquitous fisherman’s hat on his head he was easy to pick out in a crowd and we would look for him on long shots of events on other news stations. Although a cotton fisherman’s cap (usually a fairly crisp, newer one) was most frequently worn to work, the older ones and a series of baseball style caps were employed outside at home. My father kept his hat on a great, small bronze statue of a running horse which I (sadly) no longer have, on a table outside our kitchen with his keys in it. I’m not sure I ever saw my father outside without a hat and prescription sunglasses.

The style of hat most frequently worn by my father.

The rest of the family did not sport hats. I cannot remember my mother wearing one, even on the coldest of winter days. (Mom would head outside with her short hair wet and the ends would freeze. She was hat resistant.) My sister Loren skied and therefore must have worn the occasional winter hat, although I can’t remember it and must feel she eschewed them in general. Edward (who may be reading this) was not especially inclined toward them either. (Ed, have you become a hat wearer?)

The much beloved Buck Jone Rangers hat.

I had an early inclination to hats, but in practice did not really figure them out until well into adulthood. There is my much sweated in cotton baseball cap for running (from the Gap, no logo) which reminds me of Dad’s, keeps the sun and sweat out of my eyes and also helps keep my hair up. Winter running requires a warmer (but washable) hat however – sometimes a hood too – something over my ears. The NJ variant is bright yellow green so I don’t get shot in the woods or runover in the low morning light.

I am very devoted to hat wearing in the cold in general and have a series of wool hats, always one stuffed in my purse in the transitional seasons, just in case. I lean toward a loose black wool one these days. As a kid I delighted in stocking caps and went through a stage of rather electric long ski hats that were popular for a bit. I was employing a wool cowboy style one in winter (sun protection, but good in light precipitation) until it was accidentally taken from a party. It was returned to the hostess, but I have yet to retrieve it from her. That one came from a hat store in Red Bank, NJ near where I like to have brunch if I first come into town on the weekend, the Dublin House.

This time of the year I break out one of a few straw hats. I like a small brim fedora style straw hat, although it has been pointed out to me that if keeping the sun off my face is my motive (which it is in large part) that a wider brim would serve better, but I don’t seem to be able to commit to those hats the way I can to a smaller one. For one thing my head size is small and it has helped to learn that a large hat is awkward on me. I like being able to smush it into my bag if needed. Like Dad I have adopted prescription sunglasses.

These days the favored hat is an aging straw one purchased in the airport on the way back from a business trip. I was in an airport in Arizona I think, on a leg back from California, San Diego I want to say which makes it a number of years ago now. I was killing time and vaguely in the market for a new summer hat. As these things go, I had no idea that I would still be wearing it daily for 2.5 seasons a year for so many years to come. It has only become every so slightly disreputable.

Recently purchased and subsequently installed hat and coat rack in NJ.

It’s elderly cousin is a blue straw version which was purchased in San Francisco on a donor visit years ago when I worked at the Met Museum. I had gone to visit an elderly (and remarkably fashionable) woman out there, Mona Picket, who was appalled that I was wandering around California in spring time without a hat so we went to a department store and bought me this one. Mona has subsequently passed on and I do think fondly of her when I wear that hat. It is very nicely made (and terribly expensive) and will probably outlast me if I continue to care for it.

Last summer Kim and I were on our way to meet people for dinner on the lower Eastside and I stopped us in our tracks to go into a store and buy a rather electric blue one. It was actually a yellow cousin which caught my eye but they did not have that color in my size. This blue one got a lot of action last summer and is my “good” work hat now.

Kim is an inveterate hat wearer in the tradition of my Dad. I’ve seen him through numerous baseball caps since we met, all of which somehow crossed his path and acquired somewhat (although not entirely) indiscriminately. To my memory, in some order or other, the following baseball hats have been employed: a blue Tar Heels one, a favorite was one acquired at a reading he did in Seattle for Fantagraphics, and the sort of stone favorite was a Buck Jones Rangers hat – the remains of which sit on a shelf over my head even as I write.

Seasonally a series of straw cowboy hats followed and there was one purchased at a K-Mart on a trip to Butte, Montana; a business trip for Kim. (Read about that trip which featured a whorehouse museum here!) For a cheap hat it lasted a good long while.

Kim keeps a bright Kelly green leprechaun-ish bowler around for wearing on someday other than St. Pat’s. Early in our relationship I stretched my wallet and purchased him a very good Stetson as a gift. It languished for several decades before it evolved into use and has now been his daily hat for a number of years. It is getting a good worn-in look and gets frequent compliments.

Kim was willing to pose for this out-the-door pic earlier.

I just installed a coat and hat rack in NJ. However, much in the style of my father, our hats are piled near the front door, some decorating an unused lamp. I do try to resist the temptation to put hats on the cats, but sometimes the Devil wins on that one.

Miltie, senior feline of NJ, in a hat from a post earlier this year.

Tiled

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today’s item was one of those now you see it now you don’t – and back again items on eBay. I was surprised and disappointed when it was pulled from sale and equally delighted when mysteriously it was relisted. Evidently it was from an estate sale of tiles. It was listed as from the 1930’s and it is in very good condition so it is hard to say.

I immediately had a vision of a fireplace in an Arts and Crafts style cottage somewhere lost in time, decorated with cheerful Felix tiles! Clearly I would buy the house just for that. (I have a friend whose father heard of a house being torn down with great fireplace tiles and he got permission to go and take them out. They are at the Met Museum now.)

Felix appears to be going somewhere and pointing in that direction, and he has an umbrella which seriously makes me wonder about what the other ones in a series might have looked like. Were they all weather related? Felix in the sun and snow? There are a few minor imperfections in the tile, a small chip or two where the glaze bubbled. It is a very good likeness of the cat though, I must say.

Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

In all my years of looking at vast amounts of Felix items I have never seen another. I have, in my years of collecting, seen an odd thing where sometimes you find something you never saw before and then you start seeing a few more. That happened with the these Felix holiday cards below which I wrote about here.

One other cartoon tile was being sold and I am sorry I didn’t try to snatch it up, but I got so confused by this one being pulled off I lost my focus. It is below and sold for about the same price. This one (is it Betty Boop’s sidekick Bimbo?) was identified as being from Mission Art Tile California. I can’t really find tracks on that either however. It appears to be in similar mint condition.

Not in the Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

I grew up in a house with two massive brick fireplaces. My parents purchased old bricks before that was popular in building and they also bought an enormous beam from a barn which was halved and used as mantels for both. The ancient wood fascinated me, full of worm holes!

We used the downstairs fireplace constantly in the winter months and I do really love sitting by an open fire. My mom later converted it to gas which was somewhat disappointing, but we still used it a lot. The house she left me in NJ has a small brick fireplace, but to reline the chimney (it seems they would pour a ceramic liner into it?) and make it truly safe would cost a bundle so I doubt we will have fires there. I have purchased and set a small fire pit in the backyard to make up for this loss and I hope to be able to engage in using it in the coming warming months.

It makes me happy to imagine a world where fireplaces might have been decorated with jolly cartoon characters. Now that I know about these I will look for more – you never know, I might be able to remodel mine one day!

Within

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: This is a tiny post – at least in that it refers to two petit specimens that arrived in the mail recently, about 30% smaller than I had estimated. These boxes are however still so charming that I am taken with them despite not knowing what use I can put them to. They appeared on my Instagram feed (via @marsh.and.meadow) and on a whim I bought them.

Some of you readers already know I can’t resist a box. I have opined on my love of them before in posts here and here. There is something endlessly comforting about containers – those which promise to hold things, give them a place, put them away appropriately. (In all honesty, it isn’t like I actually always employ them for these rarified purposes once I have them, but it is the thought that counts.)

My original inspirations was that the larger of the two could hold the unruly pushpins on my desk in my office. The fact is that my office is such a mess these days I can’t begin to imagine how I could have focused on pushpins.

Due to construction at our main building I work in a mostly residential high rise tower about a block away. There is a hallway which houses a disparate bunch of us – my fellow fundraisers, various administrative staff, a clutch of doctors and a few data scientists who have recently joined the ranks. My office is spacious enough if remarkably blue in color – I am talking walls. (It lends a certain Smurfness to my Zoom encounters.) We only have partial walls so remarks are occasionally tossed over the wall to the pathologist on one side or the educator on the other – while we simultaneously pretend we can’t hear everyone’s conversations. My job requires a lot of talking, on the phone and with staff, so I am sorry for them as I know I have destroyed any peace and quiet.

The undeniably jolly Rescue container. I have less stress just playing with it!

However, the main point about my office is that it leaks terribly. Skylights that are river facing and given rain and wind coming off the river water pours into my office. The landlord does not seem able or inclined to fix it so this week I packed up the whole thing and we rearranged the cabinets and furniture so my desk is no longer under the leak. I lost about a day of work and am still not unpacked, but I have the additional advantage of being in a sunnier spot under said skylights and my weekends and evenings will be calmer not thinking about whether or not I remembered to stick a plastic kitty litter bin under the leak.

However, somehow in all of that I managed to have a moment to be annoyed that the pushpins for the bulletin board were in an ugly plastic container that tends to spill. This was my solution. And, in all fairness, the larger of the two would probably hold sufficient pushpins for daily desktop needs, even if a tad smaller than planned.

The larger of the two is emblazoned with Pastilles Halda and some related prose which roughly translates to being the best for mouth and throat irritations, larynx and bronchial affections (infections?). Pastilles, melt in your mouth sugar pills, were for various maladies having made their first appearance in France in 1825. Those appear to have been for stomach trouble.

Surprise! Found inside the larger container.

Both boxes are of a hard cardboard, but it is still a bit amazing that they reached down decades to us intact. I will try to be good stewards of them. The sides of each is brightly patterned making them attractive and festive which likely contributed to their longevity.

When I opened the blue one, there was this lovely tiny photo below saying hello. Thank you @marsh.and.meadow! That was a wonderful little surprise. I could do a whole post on this amazing little girl in a huge hat. More or less a one inch square she peers out from under the huge brim, a mass of curls falling behind her. Her attention has been caught looking off to the side where someone was clearly trying to induce her to smile – in the end I think they got the best photo anyway.

Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

Meanwhile, pastilles remain with us today – cough drops and the like. They have slid toward gummies more than hard confections. I’m a fan of a good gummie (am devoted to Rescue Remedy ones that have melatonin to help me sleep), but to soothe a sore throat I like a hard, cherry Ludens myself.

This larger of these two sport eucalyptus and menthol as ingredients. It brings childhood to mind and the various types of cough drops I was plied with. There were the honey and menthol ones that were the most serious, the soft Smith Brothers ones that also came in a honey flavor and then the cherry Ludens which, although I liked them best, were probably lowest on the scale for effectiveness but the most like candy.

These days I reach for Riccola when I need a serious cough drop. They appeared late in my childhood, closer to young adulthood. I usually keep a few on hand in case a fit of coughing overcomes me or a guest in my office. I still lean toward cherry, but they are very no nonsense it doesn’t really matter.

The Ludens box of my youth.

My friends over at Bach, who make the Rescue products as mentioned above, serve up their line of stress reducing pastilles in a most charming yellow tin with a very satisfying and clever pop top. It is worth having one around just to play with the tin. Sadly the aforementioned melatonin gummies come in a very average bottle, and are in fact too large for this jolly receptacle.

The smaller box appears to have held saffron from Belgium – not medicinal at all. Saffron, which is a notoriously expensive spice, generally comes in tiny receptacles (glass mostly these days, not much bigger than a pill casing) and is of course bright orange. There is no sign of this on the interior of the box so the saffron must have been further wrapped.

Neither of the companies associated with these boxes appear to exist today, although there is a Valda rather than Halda French pastille company that seems to have a fair amount of market share. I could not find a history for it so I don’t know if these are the roots of same or not.

Perhaps once everything is once again put away at work I will share photos of the new office rearranged. I think it could use a few more photos and maybe another toy or two before it is really home away from home however.

Springing?

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Things have been quiet on the acquisition front so I thought I would spend today with just a bit of a life update. Here on the east coast, spring made some real inroads recently, only to roll back temperatures. New spring dresses and trousers hang in the closet with a come hither appeal and anticipation, however temperatures have not risen much above the mid-50’s and the windy morning chill has been more like the 43 degrees it is as I write. Still, the cherry and other flowering trees are in bloom and daffodils and other harbingers of the season are here.

Photos from the NJ garden are coming my way and I am anxious to get there and see them in person, the fruits of some later summer and early fall labor, an afternoon of planting stolen one day. Given some work commitments it will be another couple of weeks before I am out there. I hope to grab a couple of consecutive days though and it will likely be around the anniversary of mom going at the end of the month.

A picture of daffodils from my NJ garden, sent by a friend.

The new job is going well, but it is new which is tiring I think by its very nature. Still learning who is who and where to go for what and how to get anything done. Deciding what the right style for leading this group will be is part of it. They are few but seasoned professionals which is very different than the young green kids I found at JALC when I got there. It is a complex organization and that kind of learning is slow – I was lucky to have grown up at the Met and didn’t have to learn it cold like I am here and it is unlike Jazz where I was thrown into the deep end with a great sense of urgency about raising money immediately.

To date I’ve hired three staff people so the dynamic is already changing before I got at all familiar with it. Having many openings meant people were doing too many jobs and hiring as quickly as possible seemed like the nicest thing I could do for them. The energy is very different and the pace is undeniably slower and more sane.

The job pulls more on my experience at the Metropolitan Museum than Jazz at Lincoln Center did so I also find myself immersed in that period of my life as I sort through files I brought with me when I left there, adding to the layered confusion of what period of my past I am spending time in. I even see more people from the Met these days so I am rolling back time in some ways. (I wrote about my long history working at the Met here.) However, the world has certainly changed in the past seven years and work and managing staff will never go back to being the same. We will always be somewhat hybrid at an office now and need to be nimble and agile in new ways – some of which I, like many managers, are still figuring out.

A low calorie version of French Toast I am fond of these days, perched on a plate I bought on my birthday this year from Fishes Eddy which specializes in selling off whole sets as well as individual dishes.

Meanwhile, in the past twelve months and since caring for mom before her death, many good habits have fallen by the wayside I am afraid. I am picking them back up the best I can. Running has been sporadic and has been put entirely aside between oral surgery and the new job at the top of the year.

I have instituted a diet (when I diet I count calories, although I will grant that what you eat does also make a difference) and I exercise. However I have to rebuild the real habit of either lifting and the gym or get back to running now that the weather is better. I am doing my best to tame my new work schedule to figure that out. It is the first time in years I have not had a steady workout routine and fell the loss of it without quite being able to reconcile it. I am hoping for muscle memory when the time does come.

Pot of soup simmering is always cheerful!

I realized the other day I haven’t made soup in months (two of my recipes can be found here and here) and stocked up on the fixings to do so tomorrow. Nice to get a few pots in before the weather largely grows too warm for it. Soup can take a big bite out of a week of meal planning. I have wanted my weekends away from the stove, but am ready to get back on it. (As I write bags of food from Fresh Direct which just arrived sitting at the front door, awaiting my attention.)

So despite best efforts I have not quite yet emerged as the new next version of me and continue to work on it. As one friend said, I am still in my larvae stage, a gooey not quite moth and not yet butterfly. On a larger scale I think about the looming total solar eclipse in a few days, the comets and planetary activity surrounding it that seems to be in play. I don’t think it is a coincidence that here, in the path of the upcoming eclipse, we would have a rare earthquake as we had yesterday; even the heavens are changing and realigning themselves this spring.

Cathouse

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: A dollhouse setting and a kitten in doll’s clothes – what’s not to like? I was speeding along my feed in Instagram when I stopped in my tracks for this one (sold by @baileighfaucz) and had to buy it. She has a beautifully curated stream of photos, virtually all for sale and I am often tempted. It is only fiscal responsibility that binds me, until I find one like this I just have to have.

There is something about the scale of the furniture in this picture which appeals to me. The kitten is too big for the space but only by a little, like a fluffy oversized giant kitty in his or her space, unable to sit in the tiny chair or at the little table. The wallpaper (wall covering?) is closer to kitty’s scale, just a little too big for the furniture. Somehow the little landscape is precisely above the cat’s head, right in the middle of the picture.

Beau last week, very reluctantly wearing a party hat.

There are many textures between the fabric wall covering, the blanket or towel on the floor, a little lacy tablecloth, and the cat’s dress. There is that little landscape which we can read as a painting or even think about it as a window to the outside. I like to think the thing next to it is a calendar, but I think it is another picture. The wrapped white box (is that a tiny mirror atop it?) reads as a refrigerator to me although it could be a clothing cupboard too.

Kit is right in the middle of this evenly divided picture. It is well lit, but a bit heavier from stage right or our left, casting shadows on the carpet for the chair, cat and other objects. (It is also quite overexposed drifts all the way to a white out in the lower right corner.) This kitten is a solid citizen, fluffy and gray. He or she looks barely patient with this process.

Miltie sporting Winsome’s hat.

Kim has gently suggested that it isn’t nice to dress our kitties up and take pictures of them, so I mostly contain myself on the subject. Winsome and I have made a few attempts at cats in hats in New Jersey recently. There is part of me that would love to be setting them up in dioramas and taking their photos. Perhaps it was my profession in a past life – or maybe I was the cat!

Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

The Pictorama collection does not tend to a lot of this genre of postcard (I think of them as the equivalent of the Dogville Comedies for cats, for those of you who are in the know about those) – kittens dressed up and posed in various scenes. The rather superb one of kittens in a faux balloon above was the only that I could think of off the top of my head. (That early post can be found here.)

There were several others from the same set, but while tempting none of them were quite as engaging for me and no others were purchased. While professionally made, there is a charmingly homemade quality to this one (for the record, there’s no identifying photo studio, nothing written on the back and it was never sent) and I think the photographer just happened to hit it right on the nose.

Ma Cheri Petit Josette

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Cat annoyance and dog acquiescence seems to be the theme of this card. Kit and pup are about the same size and both qualify for this nice little comfy looking house. Although kitty has laid claim from atop, this little doggy fellow guards the entrance. Feline high ground notwithstanding, the dog blocks the door – although he isn’t really as this is a set and I don’t think the cat or the dog would especially choose to curl up inside this adorable little house. In fact I am not sure either would comfortably fit, although we all know that wouldn’t stop the cat if indeed inclined.

The animals of my past have generally preferred without rather than within. For example, there was briefly a doghouse in our backyard. My dad purchased it secondhand somewhere, perhaps one of his beloved garage sales, and painted it up, making it a fair replica of our house. A neighbor with a sense of humor supplied a tv antennae. (Oh gosh, how many readers don’t even know what that is?) It very much resembled Snoopy’s doghouse in the comic strip which would have appealed to my father. He liked to read it to us as kids.

A black cat in cat house card I entirely forgot I own, from a 2018 post called Cat House. Pams-Pictorama.com collection.

A large pen of open rails and wire surrounded it and our German Shepard, Duchess, was invited within. I have no memory of Duchess in that doghouse however and she was rarely in the pen as she mostly lived in the house. Although our cats were free-range, our dogs never were and considering she was a sizable German Shepard of somewhat mercurial affections, that made sense. (Another doggy denizen of Waterman Avenue actually spent more time in it, a naughty rescue named Charley Brown – beagle mix. Perhaps the doghouse influenced my mother’s naming convention.)

The pooch in this card is wearing a leash it might be noted, although he is clearly placid. So while seated quietly enough here, he was not wandering at will. Kitty is beautiful and fluffy, very photogenic indeed. She is pissy, all annoyed ears though as only a cat can be. There is a small food or water bowl on one side of the dog and the interior of the house is alluring with some cushy looking material stuffed inside. Something is attached to the front of the little house and it is very speculative, however it may actually be the dog’s leash. The tiny abode is made of some nice wicker-y material and oddly it appears to levitate slightly – the cat’s weight on an uneven surface tipping it?

A similar situation from a 2019 post, called Mornin’. Pams-Pictorama.com collection.

The three different colors and textures help make this image work. Fluffy kit, woven house and sleek, shiny coated canine. The cat’s ears and tail do the rest – I suspect she was a pro. One can imagine a photo studio back in the dawn of the 20th century, snapping pics of posing animals all day long until enough images for a continued line of cards could be produced. I think a lovely way to spend one’s days. As I have already said, regular intervals of dog petting at work has increased my quality of life substantially in recent months.

French readers please feel free to send a rough translation!

I am supplying a photo of the back of the card and perhaps someone fluent in French can translate it for us. The hand is fine and even, but small and too hard for me to see clearly enough to try to get a translation. It is clearly from Papa to his daughter Josette. Someone else has included a small message in bright blue ink – Jeanette? A sister? The card is addressed to Mademoiselle Josette Cauchois, 15 rue Saint Laurent, Chantilly. It is postmarked Paris, 1914, but the date is obscured.

Not knowing Josette’s situation it is pure speculation, but I must say, I would be very pleased to have received this card from my own Papa.