Pam’s Pictorama Post: In the rhythm of Pictorama posting, jewelry posts tend to appear a bit randomly, as items are purchased or catch my imagination over again. I have written about my passion for opals before and in particular for a ring I wear very often which is referred to as a boulder opal. (That post can be read here.) This is a recent acquisition post.
The charm of the boulder opal (for me) is that it was caught in the act of becoming an opal – forever frozen in the process of change. Wearing this ring so often I have had time to reflect on how much I like that aspect of it. Embracing growth and ongoing change is such an important aspect of life, I like reflecting on it when I look down at the ring and see it’s tiny flares of opal fire.
From my post on the boulder opal ring, shown here in the original listing.
Yesterday a friend was looking at some gem stones at a jeweler we know. One stone she mentioned seeing was lapis on one side and malachite on the other – fascinating! Forever frozen in their native fusion in a shared atmosphere for their evolution. I haven’t seen the stone, but the concept makes my mind twirl a bit.
Therefore, as a result, I keep my eye out for boulder opals which have been snatched from the wilds and made into jewelry. I saw a newer silver ring recently and agonized a bit – I didn’t like the setting so I would want to reset it and the stone was hard to see in the online posting. It sold and I still have mixed feelings about my choice not to buy it.
One that got away…
However, a few months later this necklace came up and from a seller I have never bought from or much seen in my feed before. (The seller can be found at http://trademarkantiques.com.) They were celebrating and promoting October’s birthstone, the opal. The pendant flashed before me in a video in a series of opal items and I snatched it up immediately.
The setting is such that it is clear it is the same dawn of the 20th century period as my ring. (This makes me wonder, was it a sort of thing at the time that fell out of fashion? If I keep looking is this the period I will largely find them from?) Upon receiving it in the mail, I realized that the bezel (the do-hickey where you string the chain through) is unusually small. Luckily I had a very thin gold chain the belonged to my sister, but the fragility and weight of it on the chain worries me a bit.
I gather that the idea of a boulder opal is that it retains some of its “host” rock. I am not clear if that is what is happening in this pendant or if it was manmade or something else entirely. I’ve done my best here to show you that it is a clear sphere chock full of tiny opal bits. These bits are full of fire when the light catches them – the essence of the charm of opals. A little research turns up the answers to my questions – once I figured out the right question to ask, always a trick with Mr. Google.
It turns out that this is a technique called floating opals. This method of suspending bits of opal in a glass orb filled with liquid. The idea for floating opals was created and patented by Horace Welch, a mechanical engineer, in 1920. From what I can find online this would be one of those early designs although others snatched up the technique after his death in the late 1940’s.
From the website where I purchased the pendant.
While the development of this may sound straightforward as a technique it was fraught with issues. Most notably, opals have a large percentage of water in them. This is in fact one of the things that contributes to their being quite fragile. (I once met a woman who sold fabulous high-end vintage jewelry and she told me never to wear my opals on an airplane, especially large ones. The altitude makes them crack. I worry about even shipping them by air now as a result.)
Just floating them in glass didn’t allow for their natural expansion and the sphere would crack. Ultimately Welch settled on the newly discovered Pyrex as his medium and a design where there is a space, hidden by the bezel, which allows for natural expansion and contraction. The “liquid” suspension appears to be confirmed as glycerin which also allows for the natural expansion and contraction of the tiny flecks of opals stones.
Mine has a patent mark (barely visible under a strong loupe) of 1931, the third of four patent marks on his jewelry. The site I found with much of this information gives tips for storing the pendant which I am grateful for (away from other pieces which could damage it), in an upright position if possible (have to think about that…) and of course away from temperature extremes. The chamber can be damaged it seems and air can get into it.
The pendant, which I have not done justice to here, is like a tiny snow globe (I love those too!), worn around my neck. It is infinitely cheering.
I will of course continue to look for boulder and now early floating opals. There is something else called a fire opal (bright orange!) and I have yet to find one that fits my collection. Opal lovers, more to come I hope.
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: It’s a crisp fall weekend here in New York City. Tomorrow will, in part, be devoted to a Halloween Howl dog parade over at Carl Schurz park. I will stop by the animal hospital’s table and visit my colleagues handing out animal care info. Costumed cuties will likely abound so keep a weather eye out for pics on Instagram.
Meanwhile, today’s photo is one of those odd one off purchases for me. Saw it, liked it and followed my nose to purchasing it. I can imagine this being a much loved family photo of this proud family business owner of yore.
It came to me via the Midwest (dealer of all things vintage @missmollystlantiques), but there are no identifiers as to location. Emanelo Fine Cigars are boasted and Camels proudly in large letters below it. The sign that reads Pharmacy is decidedly less prominent, at least for the purposes of this photo.
Clearly the pharmacy was also where you went for your cigars and cigarettes and there is a sign for something called Penetro, which a quick bit of research tells me was a medicated rub. Sort of like Vicks I assume. (That from my childhood – does it still exist? I haven’t heard of anyone using it for years.) There is a tiny advertisement for Kodak also on the far left.
Our fellow, I assume proprietor, stands proudly in front of the establishment and with this splendid popcorn machine which is labeled Hot Popcorn. This is not a photo postcard, but a photo and it shows evidence of having been glued into an album at one point. The Deco border dates it back to the early years of the 20th century, but for decade it is a bit timeless and hard to nail down.
Pictorama readers know that I have restaurants on one side of my family tree and a dry goods store on the other. I would love to have a photo like this of either establishment, but in some ways especially Butler Dry Goods which I retain a very dim memory of having been in. It is more a memory of light and smell and space than of the specifics of the interior.
I inherited a large number of photos which I am going through in New Jersey. I don’t know where they all were because there are many I never saw before. Of course now with mom gone I have largely lost my ability to have the family members identified.
Many of these photos are from my dad’s family and I’m not sure how many she would have known as these were long before her time too. Dad never knew. He seemed to remain somewhat willfully ignorant about his family history and passed almost no stories on. Mom held what tales we had, as told to her by Dad’s mother. I have a few cousins who might find them of interest and I should scan some for them. I imagine I will share the best of the pictures with you all too as future posts.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Ongoing Pictorama readers probably know the rhythm of my posting year and October is time for an anniversary post. Kim and I were married on October 14, 2000, although we had our first date over Veteran’s Day weekend six years earlier which means I tend to think of the period between the end of October and early November as a sort of Kim-Pam fest.
We usually celebrate the weekend after (it falls in the middle of the week this week on a day when I start jury duty), however since our plan was for a day outside we decided to embrace a promising fall weather day yesterday and we put on our walking shoes and headed down to Washington Square Park. Kim is researching a story which concludes there and had already done a scouting trip while I was in Jersey a few weeks ago. I played cameraman and you see some of the results here.
Kim and I ran an errand and started our day walking to the Lexington Avenue subway at 77th Street. Over on 78th we were treated to a view of the dollhouse store (whose windows I like to admire) decked out for the holiday and then a few real townhouses extravagantly decorated for Halloween.
Meanwhile, a short history of Washington Square Park tells us that its popularity dates back to the Lenape Indian tribe using it as a hunting ground and references a now gone trout stream which was called Minetta. (I attempted to take us to lunch at the Minetta Tavern but decided it was too expensive.) From this spot has an emerging history which ranges from free land grants to recently freed slaves, to potter’s field, parade ground and onward to residential square.
An extremely Olmsteadian pathway.
The actual park was designed by Olmstead acolytes, Ignatz Pilate who was assisted by Montgomery Kellogg. Their work on Central Park with Olmstead was enough to have me wondering if I had missed that it was designed by Olmstead as we walked it yesterday. I am interested to find out that the current fountain replacing an earlier one, actually came from the south end of Central Park and is by Jacob Wrey Mould.
Fountain is evidently a hand me down from Central Park.
No less than Stanford White designed the Arch – first a temporary one and then it was so popular the permanent one we see today which was dedicated in 1895. The statues of Washington were added 1916 (Washington at War) and ’18 (Washington in Peace) respectively. The arch always surprises me with how large it is. In my mind it is always about half the size for some reason. A stairwell to the roof and to provide maintenance exists although it is rare to have the opportunity to go up it.
Another Olmstead-ish view.
Volunteers were on the scene collecting garbage and tending to copious plants. The park was full to the brim for a beautiful fall day and there was even a tour bus which let off a stream of tourists more than once. A food truck proffering Southeast Asian food had a long line of customers at the south end near a large dog run I never noticed before and some bathrooms which I am sure are much appreciated although stylistically stand out a bit starkly in design. The homeless gather in the northwest corner and long gone are the people who used to approach you to buy pot there.
Bountiful and well tended beds of flowers.
There were vendors for t-shirts and furry hats, someone reading tarot cards and someone you could pay to “have a philosophical discussion” with, although the aforementioned food truck was the only food offering making me think that you can’t just wander into this prime turf and start selling. In addition, there were pianos at either side of the fountain. When we were there one was playing sort of jazz and early rock ‘n roll tunes (hear a snippet below) and the other more classical including a wonderful interlude with Philip Glass we sat for. West side guy seemed to have the better spot for tips – the tourists enter there. Later in the afternoon the piano player was replaced by a small ensemble playing sort of Cole Porter-ish tunes.
Piano on the westside of the square.
All this to say presumably the Conservancy which cares for the park seems to have a clear hand in the running of it and with the huge number and variety of park denizens on a weekend in October they have their hands somewhat full.
Pianist playing Glass on the eastside of the square.
Kim and I eventually wandered out and in search of lunch. Much in this landscape has changed drastically, like the rest of New York, post pandemic and I couldn’t really find anything I knew. While looking we wandered into the Sullivan Street Tea & Spice Company where I purchased some Aleppo Pepper. (I discovered cooking with this during the pandemic and it has become a staple for me. A post where I talk about my Covid day cooking adventures can be found here. I usually buy the pepper at Fairway, but wanted to try a different one.)
Sullivan Street Tea & Spice Company.
This is a lovely little shop and I wouldn’t mind finding my way back to purchase some fresh cinnamon and nutmeg among other things. I took their card and it declares flat rate shipping for $8.75 and I will maybe consider that too. Could make some nice holiday gifts for my fellow home chefs.
Ultimately we settled down at a restaurant which advertised itself as vegetarian with double smash burgers on offer. It in fact turned out to be vegan and Ethiopian. It is called Ras (on Bleecker) and I don’t know how their other food is, but man, these were the best veggie burgers of recent memory. Stacked high with two thin pea protein burgers, vegan cheese and mayo; I cannot do them justice.
Raz, great veggie burgers and open to the street yesterday.
Kim and I had our wedding party at an all vegetarian restaurant in Chinatown. It was recently opened at the time and has subsequently shutdown. (We had at least one anniversary lunch there before it closed!) We took over the whole restaurant for the party, although take out and delivery seemed to continue on around us. Anyway, the vegan restaurant seemed like an apt and appropriate touch to end the afternoon before wandering back up to Yorkville and hopefully more years and adventures together!
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today’s photo was a photo postcard and it was cut down at some point into this more or less perfect square. Man, the mind boggles a bit at what the rest of it looked like and why it was ultimately cropped – to fit in a frame perhaps?
It comes to me via @marsh.and.meadow on Instagram. While my usual gig with them is jewelry (see one of those posts here), I find that Heather (Hagens) has expanded over time and other tidbits come over the transom. Of course some of them catch the interest of Pictorama. She has expanded her footprint to @marsh.and.meadow.overflow for most of these non-jewelry items. Even for what I don’t buy, I admit to enjoying the passing parade of eyeball kicks.
There is writing on the back and it was mailed. The cancellation survives and it was mailed from Detroit on July 28, 1912 at 8:00 PM. It was mailed to, Hildie Cullen (the name cuts off here), in Nellie, Ohio. A few words exist down the side but not enough to string together, it was a dense note of sorts.
Back of the card. Looks as if there was a whole story being told on the left side.
It wasn’t for the man in drag I purchased this photo, but for the very large, marvelous teddy bear, who stands on his haunches and bears arms! He comes up to the man’s elbow.
If teddies came into being in 1902 (famously Roosevelt declined to shoot a small cornered black bear and the toy was invent and dubbed in his honor) this is how Teddy has grown in a decade. He could be a Steiff made bear and they had plenty of time to grow them this large. He reminds me of my beloved enormous Felix toys which people will pose with across the ocean in another decade or so.
(I can’t say much for the visuals on this, but I thought I’d share Bing singing The Teddy Bear’s picnic for the heck of it below.)
Meanwhile, I wonder if the gun the bear holds is a sort of salute to the Roosevelt story which certainly was likely still in popular memory at that time. It appears that somehow Teddy has an empty Coke bottle balanced on his head as well. Could he be both shooter and target practice here?
The man, carrying a parasol, is in a long flowered print skirt which would have been an old one even for the time. (I’m saying he is not fashionably attired!) He maintains his man’s shirt and a tie, but sports, upon very close inspection, some greenery (leaves) stuffed in his shirt and some sort of ribbon pinned to it. His basket is loaded with some posies and more of the same leafy greens.
I thought he was an older man, but the same close inspection shows that he is young. (Perhaps that shouldn’t surprise me.) His man’s boots just about make it into the photo of the cropped edge, peaking out under the long skirt.
Behind him we see a barnyard scene of doors open and closed. It may have been sent in July, but it looks as if the ground is littered in leaves making me wonder if it wasn’t take in the fall and maybe for Halloween. The quality of the photo isn’t great, a bit over-exposed so it is hard to say. Whoever cut it down had a good eye for composition and it works well in this square format.
It is of course the teddy that earned this photo a place in the Pictorama archive, but it is a well cared for picture and I am glad that it has come to rest in a place where we can enjoy it.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Although some would certainly argue that Deitch Studio’s decor is Halloween each and every day of the year, in reality we don’t really do holiday decorations here. When I was younger I made room for a small artificial Christmas tree (a future post about my mother and her feelings about real trees) and an oversized light up Santa. As cats do, ours at the time liked it very much, pretending they were in a forest fairyland, and I did too. However, the one room that makes up the apartment has grown, well, smaller and smaller over time. Logistically, figuring out a spot where we could negotiate around it became impossible.
Halloween on the other hand was tempting and the door to the apartment beckoned at first. Living in a high rise building at least has the advantage of a safe indoor public space for display. You do soon learn that to decorate your door implies bounties of candy within and Kim and I realized we weren’t really ready for the rapacious distribution center that a building like ours becomes on Halloween. It also occurs early enough that I am generally still at the office and would fall entirely on Kim.
As for New Jersey, for now, my itinerant lifestyle means I decorate broadly for the season. I planted mums in the front yard and bought some pumpkins – a few “ugly” and one regular. These will give way after Thanksgiving to a wreath, maybe some greens on the railings.
Eventually I hope to go all out for the holidays there and give way to some vintage German decorations for Halloween, perhaps a tasteful black cat or two outside, since it is the House of Seven Cats. Christmas too! I’d love a little tree and I am shopping for the right vintage Santa for the living room. I am sad that my grandmother’s decorations disappeared to the four winds, and occasionally I look for their type on eBay – a certain china Santa, a kind of creche.
All that being said, there isn’t as much festive Halloween decorating here as you might think. However, this card just surfaced on my desk (think of my desk as being like an ocean of stuff where things disappear and are randomly thrown back up for discovery periodically), and sadly I am not sure who thoughtfully sent it to me and Kim. It is a reproduction of a very fine card indeed and even as a reproduction it is fairly old. Thank you!
The poem is hard to read but it says:
A very rare sight on Halloween night Is a black cat prowling by candle light If it should be your luck to see – Long life is yours – prosperity.
Oddly it would appear that this flame, which contains the cat and the clever standing mouse or really rat given his size, is almost like a carrot or turnip, or more likely pumpkin reference – if you consider the green bits growing from the bottom. Maybe a squash as a pumpkin sort of tribute? The greens and jack-o-lanterns are very cheerful and decorative which makes you forget the squash-ness/pumpkin-ness.
The cat rides the witchy broom and the rat rides the cat! This nice black kitty sports a ruff around his or her neck and holds a candle, while this wizard-y rat sits on his haunches with this pointed hat atop his head. Wouldn’t I just love to see that sight on a Halloween night! I mean, who wouldn’t?
As things stand now I will be in Manhattan for Halloween and although I expect to see a lot of dogs in costume (an occupational treat), rats certainly abound here and I even have a black cat (or two, although Beau is in Jersey) so it isn’t quite impossible, now is it?
Pam’s Pictorama Post: October is a favorite month for weather here on the East coast of the US. It is when we start to pull our sweaters on and jackets, but we have not yet moved to burrowing in our warm coats and many woolen layers. The holidays and the end of the year still seem pleasantly far in the future. (This year with an anxiety fraught election in the offing, we are staving off thoughts of November.)
When I was a kid it meant you were weeks into a new school year and while the shine was still on the year and the slogging had not started, it wasn’t so new that you were adjusting to it all as you had been in September. All those back to school clothes that were a little warm in September were working better come October and by now your stiff new shoes were getting better worn in.
Late strawberries and the olive tree, residing in the blue pot, which has much bright green new growth.Am hoping it is willing to be coaxed through the winter inside.
Having spent my whole professional career in fundraising, it is the signal to the tumult of year end which is always very busy. (If it isn’t something else is entirely wrong as it was my first year at Jazz.) The summer has been spent laying plans for these last months of the year and we execute them at breakneck speed. My new gig combines the end of the calendar year with the finish of the fiscal year and tops it off with a Gala at the beginning of December – dizzying. (Driven by the close of the tax year for donors, many not for profits will bring in 25 to as much as 50% of their annual income in the last quarter of the year.)
Given my choice (although I rarely have been), it is the time of year I would travel and sometimes I have booked my business travel in the fall when I had an option. (I often did not – fundraisers tend to do things like go to Florida in the winter, or in my case formerly, follow the orchestra somewhere in February and March.) I had the good fortune to travel to Germany on a trip with the Met in the fall once. Lovely!
A friend suggested cutting some of these and drying them to keep inside which was a nice suggestion. These hydrangea have turned this lovely pink late in the game.
But New York is hard to give up in October as it is the time the leaves on the trees start to change which never fails to enchant. The City has whipped itself up for the fall, exhibitions opening, concerts scheduled and more, and is in full tilt. All of the dates with people I had deferred far into the future are appearing on my calendar.
For that reason I am especially pleased Kim and I got married in October. It was an event I got to schedule and choose and October was a lovely day and is a lovely moment for our anniversary. Although our level of celebration is low-key (watch for a maybe post next week) fall is a nice time to be out and traipsing around a bit together.
A friend staking these in my absence. The apricot one is the first I have seen from that plant!
I head to New Jersey tomorrow (the heating system needs to be serviced and turned on), where I get reports that the dahlias are full tilt. One I had never seen bloom before has turned out to be a favorite apricot color. Zinnias which took their own time about flowering are finally hard at it. I will plant more (and perhaps earlier) next year though as they are very jolly.
Cabbages – thoughts anyone?
Some errant cabbages have taken hold and I am not sure what to do with them – will they become more like heads? How do I cook these? Also, something is eating them. Sadly the cucumbers may come to much fuss about nothing and not produce that much in the end. Maybe I will even get to sit out with the fire pit tomorrow night. I never seem to be there for the right weather.
My vulnerable young fig tree needs wrapping in burlap soon and the hibiscus and olive tree, in pots, will need to move inside for the winter. The dahlias will need to be dug out and stored too once they are done, but that is more like a trip in November.
Saved this hibiscus from a damaged half-price shelf at Lowes and it is lovely.
However, I find this fall haunts and chases me a bit with hints of sadness for the waning year. Perhaps just too much change with mom passing, job shift and the like – I don’t respond to change well in general. The fall is not filling me with optimism and energy the way it usually does. However, a day in the garden tomorrow, cuddles with kitties and a anniversary day with Kim next weekend should do much to set me right again.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today is a rare post about something I do not own. I don’t make a habit of it, but this tidbit came to me via our good friend Bruce Simon. (He was mentioned most recently in our trip to Comic Con in San Diego post which can be found it all of its glory here.) Bruce thoughtfully sends wonderful odd treats from dvd’s of cartoons to items like this. Thank you Bruce! If you saw yesterday’s page in all its Felix glory this makes a sort of interesting bookend to the weekend. This one is casually dated ’25, so it is a year after yesterday’s magazine page. (For those who missed it you can find it here.)
This illustration appears to be in a copy of Punch magazine and was drawn by a British man named Arthur Watts. Watts was an illustrator and cartoonist for the likes of Punch and Tatler dating back to 1911. His line appears to have been social commentary on the divisions of class and etiquette of Britain.
There is just a single blurry photo of him on the internet so I offer this – he’s in uniform and does look quite dashing however.
He evidently had a strong dislike of modern art and so perhaps this is a bit of a rib on that among other things? Felix and Bonzo dancing together (ha cha cha!) as a huge mural? I mean, I love it and I’d have it in my restaurant in a heartbeat! Circles that remind me of champagne bubbles encircle them as cartoon cat and dog shake a leg. Was this his low brow elevated to high brow comment?
Pams-Pictorama.com collection.
Interesting – I am just thinking about a truly odd vase I own where Felix and Bonzo are dancing – perhaps there was a thing about them that I don’t know? Was there a bit of interspecies cartoon romance? Huh. (That post can be found here.)
Okay – at least I got the humor here! Undated Watts illustration.
Perhaps it is just me, but I can’t quite entirely catch onto his sense of humor. In this picture, the man who is evidently the Detective is seated drinking alone, next to a crime scene, while the crowd of well heeled hoy polloi keep their distance and pile up to one side. Perhaps his humor is a bit too inside baseball to entirely get today?
His is a bit of a tragic story. Born in 1883, he showed artistic talent when young and eventually went to Slade art school. He served with note and honor in the Royal Marines Corp during WWI. He married a fellow artist, Phyllis Sachs, in 1911 and had a daughter. Phyllis died in 1922 (no record of how or why that I saw) and he remarried in ’24 to Marjorie Dawson Scott. They had three children and in July of 1935 he was rushing to fly home after the birth of their third child when his plane crashed in Italy flying from Milan, never clearing a mountain range and killing everyone.
The daughter from the first marriage became a well known costume designer, Margaret Furse. Among the other children one also became an illustrator, Marjorie Ann Watts – frankly I am inclined to like her crosshatch filled style a bit better.
Marjorie Watts illustration – she seemed to be very interested in drawing anthropomorphic wolves.I like her more linear contrasting style.
However, a hundred years later it is not news to Pictorama readers that Felix and Bonzo were the cultural icons of their day and make fun of them though Watts might, they are still quite fondly and well remembered even today!
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Returning to our rollicking Felix roots today with this odd page which was sold on its own via eBay. I was the only one interested in it and I actually really love it. The overall page has a fair amount of interest – the Gertrude Hoffman Girls dancing in the open air appeared naked at first glance with their brief, thin costumes. That certainly would have been unusual on July 30, 1924, the date on this sheet. Closer inspection shows sort of cotton playsuits.
Found this issue which I assume is the one before mine, July 16, 1924. Looks like fun!
The First “Movie” Garden Party is the heading on this extracted page. It appears to have come out of something called The Sketch magazine. The Sketch had an extremely long life it turns out, running from 1893-1958; it was an illustrated British weekly journal. It is most notable perhaps for having launched the George Studdy Bonzo illustrations in 1921.
Close up on the Gertrude Hoffman Girls dancing.
At the bottom of the page it boasts, The Silent Stage Festivities: at the Royal Botanical Gardens. Below it, The first Cinematograph Garden Party, held at the Royal Botanical Gardens, the original home of the Theatrical Garden Party, was a big success. Scores of well-known screen starts gathered at the festivity, and the sideshows and entertainments were really amusing. Our snapshots show some of the many famous folk who were present, and include the Hoffman Girls’ dancing performance in the open-air arena.
Miss Peggy Ryland has left no tracks online.
This page has four features, upper left, Miss Peggy Ryland – I am on the fence about whether Peggy, close up above, is a man in drag or not, Kim says no. The almost naked dancers are next over and below them, Miss Chrissie White has a soft drink. Unlike Peggy Ryland who has left no tracks, Chrissie White made 180 movies between 1908 and 1933 and was quite a star. Given this I assume I have at least seen her in passing, but don’t recognize her in the least – nor does Kim. I assume she is with her husband here, Henry Edwards, occasionally her co-star and director. They were evidently a famous couple seen about town at the time. She retired from film early but lived until 1989 and the ripe old age of 94. I am enjoying her outfit shown here – period perfect.
Chrissie White
Speaking of perfection! Now onto the main event – ohhhhh how I wish I could have attended this! Felix-es galore in all sizes, on their costumes, a sign above them sporting him. Here Miss Betty Balfour holds court. Betty I know from her work in the Jessie Matthews film, Evergreen although she is even better known for her turn in an early silent Hitchcock comedy called Champagne. (Kim has seen it and I do not think I have.)
Be still my heart!
Betty’s got her hand on one lovely huge Felix which comes up to her waist, but so many others lurk around. I love how they fall out of the confines of the photo and into the margins. A small one hangs off the sign at the top and one of the minions is holding a sizable one. A close look at Betty’s basket says flowers – I was thinking a Felix might be tucked in there too. Of course if it were me I would want to be in one of the Felix decorated costumes – with a grinning maybe winking Felix embroidered onto my chest! Oh to find one or even this original photo!
Signed postcard for sale on eBay at the time of publication.
That’s it folks, the back of the sheet is devoted to lawn-tennis notes I am sorry to say. Completely lost on me I am afraid. Nonetheless, I will treasure this particular sheet for its Felix fun and preserve it in the Pictorama archive for posterity.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: In some sneaky way our electronic devices missed us while we were on our now annual New Jersey summer sojourn. The electric toothbrush, although charged, stubbornly refused to start upon our return, followed by the new outlet in the bathroom which oddly now seems incapable of operating so much as a nightlight let alone a hair dryer. (In all fairness, after 30 years of owning this coop, the outlet had technically died the first time several weeks before we left last summer.) The dishwasher threatened to go south on us, but has agreed to continue working as long as I commit to smaller loads, although that will make them more frequent. (And I admit to a strange compulsion to always fill it to the utmost before running. I will need to get over that it seems.)
However, last Saturday night while I was wrapping up my reading before turning out the light, Kim asleep next to me and Blackie at my feet, a loud, long crackling noise came from the living room. Blackie and I looked at each other and he raced off into the dark of the apartment, but nothing looked amiss and I continued on, turning out the light and went to sleep. The next morning the television in the living room was dead.
In retrospect, this is not the first time I have heard that noise during the demise of an electronic appliance. Years ago I had a clock radio that made that noise and started to smoke which landed it in the tub of my apartment after unplugging. (If you live in an apartment anything potentially combusting usually ends up in the tub. Probably not really a great idea, but often the best you can figure out in the moment.)
To my reckoning the toothbrush and the television were both reaching their four year anniversary – honestly I am looking funny at my Fitbit watch (sometimes it just dies before being coaxed back to life) and my phone (not holding a charge), which share similar acquisition dates. (All of this more precisely etched in my memory because it was as we were coming out of Covid and things like acquiring a new television or phone were just a bit trickier.) In my way of thinking, the masterminds of planned obsolescence have arrived at the four year mark as the shortest time possible which is unlikely to invoke costly (for them) warrantee coverage or truly shrill outcry. It is just over the line of long enough.
****
Televisions have turned the corner into a whole new world. There are a myriad of different kinds which required learning at least a little about. They are despised by many who now use their phone, computer or tablet for whatever streaming consumable they prefer. Or they have extraordinary needs for maniacal fidelity and massive size.
To care only nominally about the definition, let alone to want one to fit comfortably on a table in our studio apartment, is suddenly to want something exotic. Out of the usual also means, probably not in stock and needs to be ordered. In my desire to be efficient I have ended up with one slightly larger than I am comfortable with and which swamps the former tv table I inherited from an early apartment rental and have dragged through a few moves.
Meanwhile, putting aside the group who want massive home theaters, I encountered a fair amount of skepticism about purchasing a television. Aside those who, as mentioned above, just watch things on various hand held devices, there is another whole group who eschew it entirely. In all fairness, I think Kim would happily remain without one as he mostly reads in his spare time in the evening and on weekends. When he wants to watch a film he’s happy to sit at his desk and watch it on the computer. I have other friends who haven’t owned one for years and frankly are surprised I would bother.
I love this show, which seems to be intermittent at best. They tour very old homes that need rescuing.
Television and I go way back to my childhood. As I have written about previously, my dad was a cameraman for ABC news and although the family media addiction started with non-stop news radio (my uncle worked for that CBS radio affiliate) it morphed over time to owning many televisions. So I watched it a lot as a kid – sometimes the whole family but also alone. It was the background of my life until I went to college and I entered a period of several years that went into my twenties without one.
However I was living in New York and cooking professionally when I fell down a flight of stairs at work and was sent home to rest, flat on my back, for several weeks. My mom sent me a tv and I got the cable hook up and was reintroduced to owning one. I got an extended chance to see what had developed over the previous four or five years (admittedly not much) before returning to the insane hours of restaurant cooking and never being home. (While I was recovering I got a call offering me a much better job cooking for a young chef named Jean-George Vongerichten for a restaurant he just opened in New York City at the Drake Hotel which I accepted with the caveat that I needed to finish my bed rest.)
I was rarely home and awake during that period – in fact I had a boyfriend for awhile who was also a chef and we had opposite shifts. It was like a silent comedy I later saw from Russia about rotating schedules like this sharing a small apartment in Moscow.
Ultimately the career in cooking ended with arthritis having started to snake up my back and hips and the boyfriend was disposed of for other reasons. I went to work at the Metropolitan Museum in the bookstore. Clearly all that would be another post!
I was there from the very start!
Eventually the TCM movie channel was established and frankly for decades my television rarely changed channels. Aside from the occasional disaster (natural or political) which might send me over to CNN, or a period where I needed to see breakfast tv (local news and weather before heading out the door) my set could have been a single channel. This is largely true still today.
However, when March of 2020 hit and suddenly the world shuddered on its axis with the first of the pandemic we watched a lot of news in the beginning. Given world affairs we continued to watch it a fair amount but the sheer number of hours home meant my old friend TCM, but also a new interest that had slowly been developing in what I call Home shows.
A sort of low budget show with very historic homes in the Massachusetts area.
I have always liked to look inside houses. to me they beg to tell their stories. I especially like old ones, the older the better. But in general I like to see what all houses look like inside versus outside. Sometimes I am amazed that ones I find ugly on the outside are quite beautiful on the inside. I like to consider what it would be like to live in them. I am interested to see the light and the views from the windows and what the yard looks like. And yes, I like to think about what it would be like to live in a house rather than a one room apartment. I liked big budget shows, but find interest in the more homespun ones too. I enjoy pondering the very concept of home and what it means to different people.
Like my television watching, I come to my interest in houses honestly. My parents bought houses and renovated them and rented them for a period of years – really mom since dad’s job was more than fulltime. She had a great mind for this and liked both the acquisition and the renovation of them. Her approach to it remains with me after many years. She wasn’t a moving walls around kind of person, but she went into every home assuming renovating the kitchen, floors would be redone and it would be painted. Smart small things.
When mom ultimately looked for a house for their retirement she was a bit broader in her thinking and knew she would be adding a handicapped accessible bath for herself and a things like that. She had limited mobility already so another friend and I did the leg work and as her surrogate I got to look at a lot of houses before we found the one she and dad purchased and I inherited last year.
So during the pandemic year I found great comfort in watching a never-ending, forever unspooling reel of home finding and renovation. In short, the only drama was which lovely house would they pick and what would it look like when it was renovated. Would the young couple choose the house in the country where they could raise chickens? That really suited me fine – life had enough drama and I wasn’t needing more
Home Town was a favorite during the pandemic year. Who knew how many lovely old homes could be bought for a fraction of the value of my NYC studio in Laurel, Texas?
In this way I got to tour lots of old houses (which frankly I would probably have left more intact than most of these folks – I don’t have a passionate need for spaces to be huge and open as seems to be the fashion) and given the high stress of my job (fundraising for a performing arts organization’s survival during a world wide pandemic shutdown) I found great comfort in it.
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Fast forward about a year and during mom’s final months of illness, about the last six months of her life, I pretty much lived in New Jersey. (Posts from that strange time out of time can be found here and here.) There are many televisions (large, wall mounted) in that house and my mother wanted CNN on 24 hours a day. All her nurses knew better than to change the channel and incur her wrath. Oddly my father also watched news constantly at the end of his life. My mother explained that it was her only connection to the outside world which makes sense. I do wonder about this and if it is something about getting old or particular to them. Will I ultimately cast all aside for 24 hour news?
Anyway, during that period the noise from mom’s care and the constantly changing shifts of nurses contributed to the insomnia I had developed during Covid when I would frequently get up at 3 AM and start working out of anxiety. (I would often discover the Wynton Marsalis was also awake and we’d work via text for awhile. I’d go to sleep for a bit and wake up around 6:00 and start all over again.)
I still find this show especially soothing. I think it started in Canada and slowly found locations in the United States. A lot of episodes seem to cover the south but NJ featured occasionally. Manhattan never!
I began sleeping with the low hum of HGTV, usually a benign show called House Hunters where folks were shown looking at three houses and choosing one. This would cover the sound of CNN booming from my mom’s room and do a lot to help me sleep through shift changes and folks coming and going. I slept with my phone next to me and if they didn’t want to come and physically wake me up the nurses would call if they needed me.
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It’s been more than a year since mom passed and I have changed jobs. A new job, settling her estate, inheriting a house and five cats (not to mention some oral surgery which has tormented me on and off since January and doesn’t promise to wrap soon), has made this year tough in a different way.
A pending Presidential election means a certain amount of checking in on the news which we all know is not good. I work on an open floor office currently so I no longer listen to music at work and I miss that. All this to say I unabashedly like having a television and catching a few truly mindless hours of Home shows in the evening before bed.
I confess and openly acknowledge that I would read and sleep a bit more if I eradicated the habit. However, as a life long habitue of television I say the heck with everyone else, I intend to own one (as soon as I can successfully have the one I purchased installed – that is another long, but boring tale) and watch it for the foreseeable future.
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: At first I wondered, as you may be right now, why this card ended up in my feed, until I realized that the woman perched on the back of this motorcycle is holding a tiny kitten in her lap. He or she, a cute little tabby, is snuggled in on the lap of that nice white dress. Although it may not seem so at first, it is indeed a cat photo.
After a bit of consideration, I realized that this seems to be a celebratory photo. Perhaps it was the purchase of this nice new Indian motorcycle, shiny chrome on the handlebars. (Am I wrong in saying it does not yet have its front light?) The fellow is in a suit and tie with a straw hat, perky but not really motorcycle riding ready. The woman, in her white dress, sporting a pretty locket and kitten perched on the back, is the real point of this though. Her feet off the ground, she is jaunty! Her black stockings and shoes – we can just about see them swinging around the kickstand. They are both grinning. Or could they have just gotten hitched?
This is a photo postcard and like so many, it was never sent, but instead kept in mostly pristine condition.
For all of their jollity, the landscape where they are posed is a bit bereft of charm. There is some sort of industrial tower in the background with a few low wooden buildings and trees off in the distance. Closer in is what appears to be a whet stone on a foot activated stand, some indistinct farm equipment near it, further obscured by what appears to be a thumb print in the chemicals used to print this. On the other side there appears to be a chicken or maybe a goose in the background and a field planted with rows of something.
Somewhere there exists (or did) an early snippet of home movies of my mother’s mom and dad, newlyweds, on an early motorcycle. I think they were either on their honeymoon or it was their honeymoon although I have trouble imagining that they rode that motorcycle from New Jersey to St. Louis where his family lived, which is what I believe they did shortly after being married. (I must try to find someone who knows that story.) Anyway, that would have been a couple of decades after this, although not all that many. My grandfather was an engineer and all things mechanical and in motion were his thing. He repaired outboard motors for extra cash, but just seemed to always be tinkering successfully with things. Frank Wheeling, he died young but I do have adoring memories of him from when I was a tiny tot. My guess is he would have liked this motorcycle. (To find a post about my dad as a young man on his jalopy of a bike go here.)
I myself have only been on a motorcycle a few times as a passenger and I did find it sort of thrilling. This motorcycle seems almost closer to the electric bikes we see today. Kim and I have eyed them with a bit of interest, but I am not sure I see a way that we will end up getting to enjoy one unless someone offers us a ride – I don’t think either of us really has any business trying to drive one solo. But I confess, they are tempting and I although I am ambivalent about driving a car these and various scooters (a neighbor in the city has a pink Vespa!) do appeal.
Pam's Pictorama 