Knock, Knock

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Let the cat post begin! It has been awhile since a new cat item wandered into Deitch Studio, but this one was worth waiting for. It came to my via one of my favorite Instagram vendors, Mia @ The Ruby Foxes, or you can find her wares at therubyfoxes.com, but then you wouldn’t be treated to her frequent posts which not only have great stuff, but showcase her two cats (Enid and Astrid) and take the viewer on glorious, daily five mile runs through the British countryside. Her account says she resides in Arundel, Sussex and let me tell you, it is stunningly beautiful.

*Photo from Carl Schurz Park earlier this week.*

This pandemic year has given me a vast, new appreciation for glimpses of other folks lush landscapes as an armchair traveler of sorts – and for what it is worth I try to treat my Instagram followers to my East River views, park foliage and wildlife in my IG stories as a reminder of our urban pleasures. Some of you know that I recently made the acquaintance of a young hawk who insistently swoops in front of me as I entered the park each morning. (Look at me!) Just yesterday he was hunting about a block from the park and I saw him as I headed over, soaring high above me, being chased by wary, angry crows and sparrows. (An interesting example of warring bird factions who wouldn’t typically otherwise unite for a specific cause.)

*Immature hawk (red tail?) posing on a lamppost after flying past me repeatedly one morning while warming up for my run.*

Mia, on the other hand, has hedgehogs in her garden and she has rigged up a camera to film the pudgy little fellows at night! They are delightful! The other day she gave some instructions for encouraging them back to British gardens as they no longer thrive there the way they once did. We all do love the hedgehog footage.

*A glance at the Ruby Foxes IG page. Just out of sight is a rhinestone horsehoe pin I might need if it hasn’t sold. The lower right is a hedgehog night cam video!* *Enid is the pretty long-hair and Astrid the large ear-ed youngster of the kits shown.*

Mia is an accomplished runner and shared views of her muddy track shoes through spring – extra muscle building, those muddy paths I would imagine. She ticks off five miles daily and is very diligent. While I suspect she is younger than yours truly it does inspire and impress me mightily, as my sort of sloppy, very slow and approximately three miles has taken a long time to achieve. Mia sent encouragement early on when I told her I was trying to start running which was also very kind, and she and her five miles in the English countryside are a sort of vision board for me and my nascent, slow and urban, efforts.

However, this is all to say that I found The Ruby Foxes because she sells antique jewelry and other antique bits and pieces on Instagram and I like to see those too. I have written some about my fascination with early 20th century British jewelry and vintage clothing as it is a sort of a parallel universe to the same period in the US. I am enjoying the baubles and bits of their bygone age and as it is slightly different than our own, it has renewed my interest in this sort of thing. (My other posts about this can be found here and here.) I considered it a sign of good mental health when I got interested in jewelry again – proof that some part of my brain was thinking about a future where I would again be out in the world someday. I am developing a fascination with lucky horseshoe pins and insect pins.

*Not doing this little beauty justice, but moonstones are like opals in that they are hard to photograph!*

Recently I purchased a tiny moonstone ring from her. I have long been a fan of moonstones and have had my eye out for a simple, early ring like this one. It is a tad small, even for my littlest finger, but after some to and fro we decided that it could be made a bit bigger if needed. However, best of all, Mia reminded me that ages ago I said I wanted a cat door knocker which she had subsequently tucked away for me until such time as we added something to the order which I guess didn’t happen. I don’t know how I let this little fellow slip my mind because he is wonderful!

He is quite small, the size of the palm of my hand so what, about five inches? As a door knocker he is small, although solidly made of brass and I would imagine he would emit a suitable knocking on your door. (In size he reminds me more of a mezuzah than a door knocker.) Still, I can’t help but feel he is somewhat apartment sized and really would be ideal for a door like ours here where you are never more than half a room away from the front door.

Living in a large apartment building which has restricted front door access (in our case a rotation of doormen) means that not a lot of knocking goes on here. Oddly though, we have a new, shy porter who has instituted the practice of leaving some of our packages at our front door and he quietly knocks when he does it. It made Cookie hiss the first time, which seemed like an extreme reaction. Still, we were all a bit surprised and of course now when you go to open your door you have to find your mask first and chances are you are on a Zoom call for work at the same time and carrying the ipad or phone around with you. It doesn’t happen often and so it is a bit of a big deal.

*Our broken bell, misnamed home and a bit of peeling door paint. I gather these will all be repainted shortly.*

Our NYS regulation fire safe metal doors also seem a tad knocker unfriendly. We technically have a doorbell built into the door although it broke within weeks of my moving in here decades ago and I wouldn’t begin to imagine how to have it replaced or repaired. There is also a bit of press tape with the prior owner’s name stuck in (J. Radigan, whoever and wherever you are) where the broken bell is. We have lived here incognito for several decades. (Yes, I have always been a bit casual about some aspects of home maintenance.)

Meanwhile, I don’t foresee putting this great little fellow out in the hall. For one thing, I like to look at him. He has tiny holes for thin nails and I cannot imagine somehow drilling him into our fire-approved metal door. Since we live in one room, doors are in short supply here, so I think he will grace a wall or shelf instead.

*Cat Knocker, I would guess by the same maker, for sale on eBay.*

I have found some of his feline grinning brethren online – a few identical and a few kissing cousins, likely of the same origin. The general consensus is that he is British and Victorian. The variation that is perhaps more available seems to be just his head, with the bow the actual knocking part, shown above, and identified as the Cheshire Cat. I wouldn’t mind assembling a few more cat knocker variations if the opportunity arises and am a bit tempted by the eBay offer although that one does look like he has been poorly polished at some point.

*Yet another variation on the theme available on eBay.*

I like my guy best I think, with his full cat body, smile and big bow tie. Hard to see but his grin is a bit toothy and there is an almost worn away whisker or two. The smile is a slightly enigmatic one, his toes tucked together and somehow the knocker gives a sense of a tail which does not exist. He will do a nice job of guarding our house, even if it is from the inside and not out.

Softball

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: As I write this it is developing into a soft spring day here in New York City and if it doesn’t cloud up too much I hope to get out for a run in a bit and enjoy it. There is something about this photo of women playing softball or baseball, which makes me yearn toward summer. On the back of the photo, in pencil script, it says only, Backyard NH Aug 1945. The stately farmhouse in the background and all these trees, it is a regular idyll. It fed directly into my desire for the outdoors this spring as I observe every new sign of growth and progress toward summer daily. (I snatched it up via a sale by @_wherethewillowsgrow_ a favorite photo friend.)

I am very fond of the suspender style shorts worn by the pitcher and the short skirt of the catcher is pretty cute too. There is a protective fence between them and that lovely house so this is a well-used baseball diamond. The photo has a haziness, as if some how the humidity of that August afternoon and the visual incarnation could reach out and frizz my hair a bit, all these years later. The trees seem to fade right into the whited out sky. It is trimmed with those wonderful scalloped edges, the way photos often were at that time.

By August of 1945, I guess WWII was just about to be declared over officially. Of course people would have had a pretty good sense that it was ending, but I wonder if after all those long years they really believed it. Were things already hopeful in August of 1945 or were they just beyond exhausted by it all? Probably both by turns and that six years and the devastation of millions dead is among the world events that greatly overshadows even our current world-wide woes.

Yesterday I made a trip to the East Village for the first time since fall, to see about getting my eyeglasses repaired – they broke just as I was leaving for New Jersey a few weeks ago and I have been living in my spare pair. It was a riotously beautiful day, sunny but windy and still jacket weather. There is a wonderful glut of tulips this spring – speculation in the paper about if New Yorkers are just enjoying them more or if there are more. As a tulip lover I would vote for there are more of them – but we are definitely loving them all.

*Masses of tulips in front of a building on 85th and Second Avenue.*

Meanwhile, East Village residents were out in force on the streets and packing every outdoor hut and cafe. Manhattan has changed I believe for the long-term, in this way, and New Yorkers have claimed the sidewalks and streets. I think it has given birth to a new sort of cafe society outdoors. Temporary huts gradually giving way to more permanent structures and perhaps like Paris, our restaurants will largely open onto the streets.

*Veselka’s has established this substantial outdoor space which now dominates the block.*

Looking more carefully however it is easy to gloss over the vast number of empty retails spots, like a growing gap-tooth smile. Some old friends are among the missing. A favorite toy store has disappeared after 38 years, heart breaking, but not unexpected. I wrote about them in a prior post which can be found here.

*Dinosaur Hill Toys is sadly gone! They had elegant, new toys and I always stopped in to pick up some small token.*

I stopped in at a clothing store on the same block on 9th Street, DL Cerney (@dlcerny, their site can be found here and I have written a little about them before) which I am very fond of. Their men’s trousers have been the only “hard” trousers I have worn since March of 2020 and it is them I will look them to dress me in some sort of return to the world clothing. Their designs, fabrics and tailoring is exquisite. I found them in a little storefront tucked between McSorley’s and a friend’s apartment on 7th Street many years ago. At the time I could only afford the occasional item and they were selling a mix of vintage and their own designs. (I had a pair of heavy, men’s black Cuban heels I wore, resoled and wore through again in my 20’s. Maybe best shoes ever.) Eventually, sadly they disappeared and it was literally decades later that I rediscovered them in a storefront on 9th, further east by a block, having taken over a storefront from another shop I frequented.

Since then, over the past several years, I have been happily clad in their lovely button down shirts and men’s trousers which make me feel a little like Katherine Hepburn, or sometimes just a well-dressed man. My feeling is that I am always perfectly attired (if also very comfortable) in their clothes. I have taken the trousers to London and Johannesburg and worn them endlessly. Having said that the trousers are fairly indestructible and my elderly tailor admires them each time I bring a new pair in to be hemmed with cuffs. For me they are a reasonable starting point for a transition out of daily workout clothes, thinly veiled with sweaters and the occasional necklace or earrings for a shoulders up appearance on Zoom.

As I tried on a few things I talked to Linda St. John, who along with Duane Cerney, are the principals of the business, and a bit of shopping there is also a nice visit with whoever is in the shop that day. We talked a bit about where New York seems to be in the recovery process, and for them it is still a bit discouraging I think. Like those of us in the performing arts (trying to re-open our hall and our club Dizzy’s at Jazz at Lincoln Center), retail continues to lag and in their case the loss of tourism and students (not to mention the subtle migration out of small city apartments to bigger digs for those who could afford it) continues to erode business. They have challenges with suppliers. We are all trying to stay afloat until we reach the shores of better times.

We discussed, as I have with Wynton and my colleagues, whether we are poised at the beginning of the end of this long pandemic haul or not. We may be or is it just the next bend in the road? The end of the beginning rather than the end – I hope not! However, none of us knows what our corner of the world will look like in six months, let alone another year and I think we’ve learned the hard lesson that we only thought we knew before anyway.

It wasn’t too difficult for Linda to talk me into a spring dress, although I had arrived hunting a linen version of the trousers I love, but in a slightly larger (post-pandemic) size than I am in possession of currently. Nonetheless, a dress, even a casual one, is like a stake in the ground, hopeful that there will be summer meals and drinks outdoors and maybe even days at the office as we inch our way forward.

Socialism, Pacifism and Then War: Politics in the Campfire Girls

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Preemptive apologies for those of you who don’t share my passion for early 20th Century young adult literature, because today I am posting about the Campfire Girls as they head into WWI. Also, a warning that I give away some key plot points so be forewarned if you are reading as a review and perhaps come back later after reading if that concerns you.

I have written about this series before (those posts can be found here and here), but this series is a bit hard to get your hands around because as I can best piece it together several authors were contributing books published at the same time so you think you are reading them in order, but you have picked up another story line. Also, many of the sources have listed the order of the books incorrectly further confounding my efforts to read them in some sort of order. The good news, and there is a lot of good news, is that they are widely available by free download, although I have been forced to read them on a variety of platforms – some decidedly less friendly than others, but after all, free is free. Most are available on the very user friendly Project Gutenberg website.

*Camp Fire Girls, circa 1918. Photo courtesy of Latah County Historical Society.*

My best effort to rectify this was to find one author and follow her and I have been reading the books of Margaret Vandercook, aka Margaret Love Sanderson (warning however, that nom de plume was also used by a Emma Keats Speed Sampson), who was known as The Queen of the Camp Fire writers according to a brief Wikipedia entry, one which is especially useful in correctly listing her books. (Love you Goodreads, but you don’t have it straight and neither does the Wikipedia entry under The Campfire Girls overall.) There are 21 Camp Fire Girls books to her name (although oddly Wikipedia only lists 14) and she also wrote the Ranch Girls, Red Cross Girls and Girl Scout novels.

Her bio is brief, born in 1877 in Kentucky, she lived until 1958. Married for eight years to John Filkin Vandercook who eventually became the first President of the United Press Association, so we will assume he was a writer too. After his death in 1908 she started to write professionally and, man, she was prolific – churning out several of these novels a year. Strangely though, she appears to stop writing abruptly, at least in this genre and as far as I can tell, in the early 1920’s. I wonder if she remarried at that time and no longer needed to support herself and her son? A mention is made of magazine work, articles, poems and stories. Also, perhaps they run longer since as I pointed out the list I am working from appears to be incomplete.

There’s a lot of charm in these books and I really took a bath in the lore and accoutrements of the Camp Fire Girls as outlined in the early books – rings, costumes, poems and all. While this remains a backdrop Vandercook stealthily moves us into other territory and as the century turns from the early and mid-teens to 1918 and beyond she is writing stories that are almost contemporaneous accounts of the country preparing for and entering in WWI. There is a strange sense in reading them one after the other, that perhaps they were written in larger chunks and then parsed into pieces that make up the novels. The story continuity from one to another is seamless and more like the next chapter in a book than a new book in many of these.

Much to my surprise in The Camp Fire Girls at the End of the Trail (1917) Socialism pops up. The Camp Fire Girls have been out west for a volume already (also, we are on the second generation of girls here and Vandercook wised up and they age a bit more slowly in the second half of the series) and the younger brother of one is sent to stay with them to recover from the sort of mysterious wasting diseases that seemed to permeate the pre-antibiotic world. He is portrayed as an usual young man, only about 15 years old, and among his peculiarities it emerges that he is a Socialist.

*Group portrait of Socialist Party members gathered for the Socialist Convention and Eugen V. Debs picnic in Canton, Ohio 1918.*

In the first volume of their time out west there is an effort to address the situation for Native Americans which I think was sincere, if ham-handed and wrong by today’s standards. Socialism, which is addressed in the form of young Billy getting involved with railroad union organizing. Seems Billy had gotten an earful of Socialist propaganda from a Russian immigrant working on his father’s farm in New Hampshire. He finds his way into an enclave of railroad workers and becomes a leader among them – but pushing a non-violent agenda among. It ends badly, with violence, for which he is ultimately blamed, but in a glossing over it is quickly remedied by his family’s wealth and connections. It manages to be both sympathetic and yet illustrate what was probably the more accepted feeling of the day about unions and Socialism. While it seemed a bit surprising, again, these were novels that were addressing the current events of the day in almost real time.

*End paper for Camp Fire Girls at the End of the Trail* *via Project Gutenberg.*

Without ruining the plot, I will just say that his pacifism is treated with some thoughtfulness considering how enthusiastically we are told Americans generally geared up for that war. It is fair to say it is presented as an untenable view, but not without sympathy for his position. Frankly, I was surprised and would have expected these books to be full only of endorsement for our entrance into the war.

Vandercook wasn’t done with this character yet and uses him to address pacifism in the next volume as the country tunes up for entry into the war. Published in 1918 The Camp Fire Girls Behind the Lines still has them in the West, but now near a newly established army training base in the country, somewhere in Southern California. Billy has been joined by his brother who is anxious to enlist. Billy, on the other hand, is a vocal pacifist and decries the military approach to solving the world’s problems. He wiles his way into working at the army base and makes friends with the fellows working there, becoming very popular with them. It would seem he intends to infiltrate them and then convert them to his way of thinking, but again, things take a very different turn in the end.

In case you are wondering, these are just sub-plots in these novels which still very much manage to be about this clutch of Campfire Girls and told from their perspective.

Finally, I found myself at the group of novels which deal directly with the war and takes a slightly smaller group of girls to France to help with the reclamation work which evidently began there even before the war ended. First I will volunteer that I thought this was likely where I would get off this trolley because this seemed like an absurd idea and this sort of girls in the Red Cross thing was profoundly uninteresting to me. (As I said to Kim, these kinds of books going to war is a bit like most series going out west, the beginning of the end.)

However, I learned that there is historical precedent for a small number of self-financed women who actually did this – driving cars (a skill which many of their French counterparts did not possess), bringing first aide, childhood education to a generation of orphans and semi-orphans, and all sorts of similar endeavors – a small but determined league of women did do this work taking on six month hitches at a go. (All of the photos snatched here can be found on Mashable, 1914-1918 Working Women of WWI here. A rather excellent entry about some of this history can be found here on the Morgan Library site from one of their exhibitions.)

Women shoveling snow from the road Paris France

Therefore the storyline was an acceptable one and doesn’t entirely stretch credulity as I originally thought. (Learning these somewhat forgotten bits of history along the way is one of the decided byproducts of reading these books.) Again, these books were written almost in real time so I would think she did know what would be believable and acceptable to her audience. If the idea that the Campfire Girls were establishing their first roots in France this way has any historical reality or not.

Women grease and inspect the signals Gare du Nord Paris France

Perhaps more to the point Vandercook makes these compelling stories and her descriptions of war torn France have the ring of truth and reality. Although well traveled there is no indication that she actually was in Europe during or immediately following the war and I assume it was newsreels and news accounts that informed her writing – and the tales of these women abroad must have captured her imagination.

Women making missiles in a munitions factory England

Not surprisingly, there is a strong underlying patriotism to these stories, as to be expected. Then again though, there are details which we get from this real time account – the feeling of Paris on the day the armistice was declared; the reaction to Wilson as part of the Peace Conference there which is fascinating and wonderful. She writes about a post-war ambivalence between American and French troops which must have been a real issue. of the day. Incidentally, my pandemic pals, the 1918 Influenza epidemic is entirely ignored.

It is a bit painful to read about as their hopes for a lasting world peace is detailed and never suspecting that we would be back at war a scant twenty plus years later. Sadly we know what the future held and that these hopes for a lasting world peace were not to be.

Family Photos

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today I get to combine my love of early photos with family. While I was visiting mom in New Jersey last week, my cousin Patti took out a huge basket of photos we went through together. Some folks remained unidentified, but a core group appeared throughout. (I wrote about this side of my family back in a post around a photo of a very early family wedding celebration. It can be found here.)

These are entirely my mother’s side of the family, the Italian immigrants who settled on the Jersey shore and ran a series of restaurants and food stands in what was a popular beach community. I apologize for the reproduction quality – I was just taking pictures of these photos on my phone.

As far as I can tell the genesis of these food enterprises was my great, great grandfather – last name Cittadino, first name not known to me. He is shown below in two photos, with car and bike.

I especially like the one of him with a bike. Regretfully no one knew who the two hotsy totsy looking, well dressed young women were. They showed up in some other photos. None of these photos were marked and had largely at one point been in an album, but we realized what everyone does when looking at family photos which is there are a lot of people who were friends or folks they worked with who were like family, but sadly no one remembers now.

The Deli, shown below, seems to have been the first restaurant incarnation of the family. I only recently learned of this earlier version of the family food establishments. As per an email from my mom below, I gather it was a place to eat as well as the take out sale of food. Sorry to say, these two fellows in the photo remain unidentified.

My grandfather had a deli and related food sale place in Long Branch on the Main Street Broadway. Every morning he walked to the bank for day cash on the way passed the owner of the bar getting to the bank. They struck up a conversation the fellow told him he was tired and wanted out. My grandfather then struck a deal walked on to the bank and got the loan went back and gave him the cash and that was it. He walked back to the deli told my grandmother and the customers eating there at the time and agreed all would help move down the street and that is how he moved down to the building with friends and customers helping shortly after when they did.

Norwood was the name of a street in Long Branch, in fact the street where my grandmother and the extended family had a home. (I wrote about that house in a post that can be found here). As per my mother’s email, the deli and the bar that followed, were actually on Broadway, the long main drag of what was once the thriving downtown which I believe ends at the ocean where the Boardwalk once thrived. The family home was within walking distance of the Deli and Bar, I think probably 15 or twenty minute walk, of it.

The family also seems to have two food concessions on the Long Branch Boardwalk as well, one I had always heard about, owned by my Aunt Ro. However, another turned up in these photos and I am not sure who owned this stand, but the general consensus was that this was not Ro’s but another. Not sure who is pictured here either, although he resembles my great uncle Frankie, but is too long ago to be him. Perhaps the Al mentioned on the awning boasting a Quick Lunch.

The family’s bar is what is remembered best by my mom, run by her grandparents, her mom and aunts. Mom would go to their apartment above the bar after school as a small child. Although much of the family worked there – not Mom’s father, Frank, who was an engineer for Bendix. While it is always referred to by family as The Bar, it served a lot of food as well. In addition to the daily fare special Sunday dinners were offered to steady customers, all prepared by the women of the extended family. Mom remembers them cooking non-stop between the restaurant and family.

The photo below is the aforementioned Frankie, father of my cousin Patti who stays with my mom these days and found these photos cleaning out her house. I believe this shot was at the bar although I would have voted for it being one of the beach concessions. (I wrote about my sectioned blue Willoware plates which were the Blue Plate Special plates at the bar and are our everyday dishes. You can find that post here.) My mom and uncle were too young to work there, although my mother used her restaurant background to waitress her way through college later in life.

*Hot dog concession with Frankie manning the flatop and Great Grandpa Cittadino behind him. Pams-Pictorama.com collection.*

The establishment remains today, at 591 Broadway in Long Branch – currently Johnny Piancone’s, ironically also an Italian bar restaurant. I have never been – although once my father and I had pizza in the place next door which I gathered from him had been there as long as he has known my mother.

My uncle ate at the restaurant several years back and they allowed him to visit the apartment upstairs which he also remembered vividly from afternoons there as a child. I have shown the bar today below which I found on the FB page. The bar pictured may be the originally one, although I believe my uncle said it had been cut down. The restaurant appears to have survived the pandemic with outdoor dining in a backyard and I would think doing take out. It’s nice to know that it is still there, still going in its own way.

Jersey Bound

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Last weekend for the first time since October I headed out to see my mom in New Jersey. As I had in the fall, I hopped on the ferry at 34th Street and the East River. I say hopped on, but there is a lot of queuing up, appropriately distanced, and waiting to get on the numerous boats to go up and down the river and coast. The same ferry line that takes me to Highlands goes significantly further north, up to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. (Although perhaps the more substantial model boat that I took home at the end of the trip, more on that later.)

Like many people I have been hesitant to see my elderly mother and possibly inadvertently infect her. She has not been well and I have wanted very much to go, so I took a Covid test and hopped on the ferry last week. I sat on the upper deck outside and it was cold, but a gorgeous day. Like the trip in the fall, it felt strangely heady and almost decadent to be traveling. (I wrote about that first trip out of town in an October post here.)

For my fellow workaholics I will confide, it was the closest I have come to unplugging in more than a year. I only attended one meeting in two days and colleagues were very thoughtful and there were less emails than usual. I’m pleased to report that no major meltdowns occurred.

I thought I had dressed warmly enough, but was wrong again. I always forget how much colder it is on the water and on a boat zipping along that way. I layered on all of shirts I had with me, put Beethoven on my earphones and watched the scenery while perched outside reading the Camp Fire Girls Behind the Lines which I have downloaded to my phone. (If you are curious about my Camp Fire Girls reading, I have written about those early juveniles from the teens here and here.) The trip is only about 50 minutes (an hour and a half on the train) – twice as expensive, but half the time. Since I don’t go that often it is well worth it.

As we enter the Sandy Hook Bay I start to get nostalgic for my childhood. I remember being in my grandfather’s small fishing boat, the Imp, or later sailing with my dad in that Bay. Not that often, but often enough that the sense memory kicks in when I see it. As we get closer to Highlands memories of walking on the Hook come back too. I have walked it in all seasons, the fall there being especially pretty and quiet.

*Grabbed this photo off of Pinterest, the boat view from a mile or so away from where the ferry docks.*

Highlands and Atlantic Highlands are built into hills right on the water, making for some dramatic, virtually vertical roads leading up to wealthier inhabitants at the top, with commanding views of the water, river and ocean. Perched at the very top are the Twin Lights, important lighthouses in their day, now non-functioning and a museum. Erected in 1828 the existing structure is from 1862. It was a landmark I always looked for from car and boat growing up in the area.

At sea level there are tiny houses, mostly raised with garages on the ground level to address constant flooding. I have always had a yen to own one of these little houses. For some reason, although I grew up along another part of the river, this area always had the pull on my heart. If I had bought a house there it would have been in this area or in Sea Bright on the other side of the Bay.

Mom currently lives in a small town next to the town where I grew up, about 15 minutes from the ferry. After spending most of this year cooped up in our tiny studio apartment, her little house seems expansive – stairs! The surrounding neighborhood is in a glory of spring blooming and flowering trees, tulips and other flowers are just bursting all over.

I got up early for a run and took the route to a friend’s house, figuring I was least likely to get lost that way. It was Edenic. Just running without a mask was blissful. The cherry trees and magnolias were so beautiful (some shown above) I ordered one of each for Mom’s yard for Mother’s Day.

Another morning gave me a chance to walk on a virtually empty beach, a few miles from where the ferry dropped me, in the town of Sea Bright. It was a very warm day and the sand was hard packed for easy walking, the ocean lapping. It too was heavenly.

*Sea Bright and the main drag there, Ocean Avenue, taken from the boardwalk on the beach. Rory’s is the current incarnation of a restaurant I waitressed at in college, Harry’s Lobster House.*

Meanwhile, in the past year my mother has acquired two stray kittens who are in the middle and latter stages of adolescence now. I seem to terrify and fascinate them both, Peaches and Gus. I missed my friend Red who died in the past year as well. (I wrote about him in my post Red Buttons, here.) However, these two keep things lively in the house, racing around constantly. (Gus on the left, Peaches – very worried – on the right.)

On the third morning it was time to head back to Manhattan. I stayed an extra night and took the 6:00 AM ferry back to the City. There were many more passengers than I would have expected and a larger, more no-nonsense ferry in use. The upper outside deck was closed off so I stayed warm inside and watched the sunrise over the river.

Best Wishes for Health and Happiness for the Year 1936

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I purchased today’s card recently on eBay – the lurid colors, patterns complimented the toys nicely – and what nice toys this little girl is sporting! While it was the black cat tucked under her arm that got my attention, it is really that nice dog that steals the show. He has a nice ruffled collar and reminds me of the paper mache bulldogs (growlers) that I have hankered for over many years. I will hope to be in a Paris flea market and finding him someday in the future. I share a French dog cousin of this one, acquired there in 2015. (The related blog post of a jolly raiding of French flea markets can be found here.)

*Dog toy acquired in Paris. Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.*

To be entirely fair to the black cat he is interesting too and one I have not seen before. I suspect he has a nice fluffly tail hiding behind her arm. He has been done in the manner of the Steiff cats, but we can see by his small head and bright white whiskers that he is something else. He would make a nice addition to my collection as well.

This card falls loosely into a category of my collection of French cards, with lucky black cats or real cats, sometimes luridly colored. (The post below can be found here.)

Painted Puss, from Pams-Pictorama.com collection

The photographer for this birthday card had an excellent set though and I am sort of mad for the geometric modern art rug the little girl is standing on. Somehow the many patterns – her dress, the rug and those great striped knee socks – all work together. The contrasting color which would have been applied after wasn’t leaving anything up to chance and somehow the orange bit up at the top brings it all home. The French had something going on with these. It’s a sharp little card.

This card was used as a card, but never mailed. Written on the back in ink, roughly translated a la Google, it reads, Dear friend, Best wishes for happiness and health for the year 1936. Andree and Fernandy (?). That as best I can tell. Of course the front of the card wishes the recipient a Happy Birthday as well. It probably will not surprise Pictorama readers that I would consider it a very nice birthday indeed if I were to receive these toys.

The Greatest Comic Song Yet

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Pictorama readers know I haven’t posted new cat sheet music in quite awhile, but this one caught my eye and I thought it should join the Pictorama collection. Perhaps I will bring it to the office as a return to Columbus Circle offering later this year. (I have written about the sheet music which adorns my tiny office. Those posts can be found here, here and here.)

Despite being The Greatest Comic Song Yet I will admit up front that I was unable to find any sign of a recording of this tune, The Cat’s Dead. A few of his more popular tunes such as And Her Golden Hair was Hanging Down Her Back and Comrades have left some creaky musical tracks. (Period recordings of these can be found on the DAHR, Discography of American Historical Recordings site here if you are curious. However, a better rendition if you actually want to hear the lyrics is the Youtube recording from a performance at the Metropolitan Museum in 2016, performed in the American Wing. It can be found here.)

*Pams-Pictorama.com collection.* *Featured in a 2017 sheet music post.*

According to Wikipedia, Felix McGlennon was born in Glasgow in 1856, the son of an Irish shoemaker. McGlennon, who specialized in comic dance hall and vaudeville songs, settled in Manchester, England where he published his first penny songbooks. He later emigrated to the United States in the mid-1880’s and this song and his others of note seem to be published in the United States in the 1890’s. He took his success and return to England and set up his own music and postcard publishing company there in 1909. He lived until age 87, dying in 1943.

My favorite part of the brief Wikipedia entry claims that he had no musical training and picked his tunes out on a toy piano. I share two quotes from the site below which I gather more or less summed up his philosophy on his music:

Assume, if you like, that what I write is rubbish. My reply is “It is exactly the sort of rubbish I am encouraged by the public to write”… All my life I have tried to produce an article for which there is a public demand. If I visit a music hall, it is with the single object of instructing myself as to the class of thing that is pleasing the public. Then, I try to write it – and write nothing else.

On another occasion, he said: “I would sacrifice everything – rhyme, reason, sense and sentiment – to catchiness. There is, let me tell you, a very great art in making rubbish acceptable.

The Cat’s Dead is considered an American song, published in 1893 by the Anglo American Musical Agency, but it has an English copyright. It would appear that the song and music is by Mr. McGlennon.

Sadly there is no artist credit for the great cat art on the cover which is of course why I purchased it. There is a tiny company credit which reads, NAT PH. ENG Co NY in the lower right corner so presumably it came from an engraving company library of sorts.

The music cost a rather dear forty cents. Google tells me that is about $15 in today’s money.

Our feline fellow has something of the old Confederate soldier about him – something about his vest. He has lost an eye and uses these odd crutches (I like that you can see his claws on his paws), but of course there’s something about him that makes you think he could still do a jig if he had enough liquor in him. I love his face with that sharp toothy grin, whiskers aplenty and the one smiling eye.

The lyrics are sort of awful and I will spare you those – all about the various ways they went about killing the cat who always repeatedly came back – until the end of the song. Although, as we see from the cover, Don’t you believe it!!

A Girl’s Best Friend

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: It is an intensely foggy morning here in Manhattan and we can see nothing but a sheet of white out our 16th story window. It is a bit doom and gloom so I have dug into my photo archive for a jolly one and have come up with this calmly happy one of this full-on flapper and her canine friend on a porch swing.

It is printed on photo paper, not a photo postcard, and bears signs of black photo album paper on the back. It is a very good shot with those interesting shadows I couldn’t have resisted either and the porch railing, the swing she is on, and trees behind create a nice frame of geometric shapes. However, the printing is a bit disappointing, not enough contrast and the blacks sink together although a careful look indicates that there was information there. They have cheated a bit and there is a white line added behind the dog’s hind quarters which I can see on the original, but you probably cannot in reproduction of the photo above. Nonetheless, despite any flaws, she takes us right to a time and place and holds us there for a moment.

I don’t know why, but it is her shoes that interest me in particular. As a collector of vintage clothing and photographs, you rarely get to really see shoes and while these aren’t notable, I just find myself looking at them and thinking, well, hmmm that’s what women’s shoes really looked like.

Recently a seller on Instagram has had a few pairs of women’s shoes from this period (@witchyvintge or witchyvintage.com) and they are surprisingly modern. There was a pair with kitten heels – or perhaps really more French heels – from this period that I commented I could slip on today and happily wear – if of course I ever wore anything but sneakers and slippers these days. (As an aside, @witchyvintage posts and sells some of the most remarkable vintage clothing I have ever seen in my years of collecting it. There are everyday pieces from the 1800’s, everything from long calico work dresses to corsets and dress clothes, the likes I have never seen outside a museum exhibit. It is fascinating to see them and know there are collectors out there who are sourcing and purchasing such early pieces actively.)

*From Witchyvintage.com*, *still available,* *$265*

Her hair is styled in the signature Louis Brooks bob of the day and it does a fair imitation. I wonder if it went up in the back the way Louis’s did. Her embroidered dress is perfectly of the time and so is the long strand of beads which was a length popular in the teens through the thirties, but not beyond.

This doggy is a large fellow to be even a partial lap dog, but canine affection knows no bounds. Dogs species are not well developed asset in my toolbox, but this seems to be an Airdale. I have never known one personally, but he seems very likable and clearly devoted to her. I remember when I was a kid our German Shepard couldn’t understand that she was no longer a puppy and would try to climb into bed with my parents, up between the headboard and their pillows. This of course was more possible for a pup than a seventy pound dog and caused some chaos – among the kids and cats that were also likely climbing on my folks at the time.

It’s hard to see the stages on the leaves on the trees, but I am going to gamble and call this an early spring photo, with the trees just starting to bud, about the same as where we are now in the process, maybe a week or two behind. Just warm enough to sit on the porch a bit in the sun without a coat and cuddled up with your dog.

Treading Gently

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: It seems safe to say spring is finally on the rise here in NYC and this month marks six months in my experiment with running so I thought I might give a bit of an update today. February threw down some serious snow which brought me to a complete halt for awhile, however after several weeks in captivity I forced myself to head back out (with some trepidation) to see how much ground I had lost. Much to my amazement I pretty much picked back up where I left off.

For those of you who missed my earlier post (it can be found here) I started jogging because otherwise during our long pandemic period, I found myself not moving from my home desk (Deitch Studio is also a studio apartment and our single room leaves little room even for pacing), and watching as many hours melted rapidly into days. I don’t have much time and I wasn’t able to get much walking done in the hour or so I can devote to it so in a bid for efficiency I began running.

I came to exercise late in life, but pre-pandemic was a happy gym rat, cramming it into early mornings, evenings and weekends. (I have written generally about my workout and that post can be found here.) However, I have always been a reluctant runner. I dislike treadmills (I don’t really imagine that will have changed when I get back to them) and running was sort of a final frontier of exercise I had not embraced.

*Dramatic signs that spring is unfurling earlier this week.*

My mother ran and was in fact a high school track and field star whose records there were only broken decades later. (I believe it was the long jump she excelled at.) She ran for a brief period when I was a kid, but she had largely given it up as an adult. My sister, Loren, ran. Loren was a bundle of hyper energy that needed to be released daily in large dollops or she was impossible to live with. Therefore it wasn’t unusual for her to run and bike, swim or play tennis together in combinations daily. She ran cross country, was on the track team in high school and generally distinguished herself as she did in most things. (Loren’s college rugby career in is mentioned in a post here.)

It can only be said that I did not inherit my mother’s genes in this area and it must be my more sedentary father I take after. I frankly cannot imagine my father running – it isn’t an image I can conjure if I did indeed ever witnessed it. He was a tall man, 6’5″ and skinny in his youth, but he filled out as an adult, muscled from his work carrying camera equipment for his job daily. Still, other than a daily work out of reluctant stretches for a bad back, executed on the floor of the bedroom, there are no memories of dad and exercise.

Frankly, I run badly and I am relieved that it is very unlikely I will actually ever see myself run. I run slowly – there may be people who walk faster than I jog. My strides are short and plodding. I seem to be a different animal than many of the folks around me, boasting their shirts from the marathons they have run, bouncing, gliding and zooming along. Young, old, women and men of all ages generally make a better job of it. It is only thanks to my long time trainer, Harris Cowan (@livestrongernyc) that I have managed to ease my unwilling body into running.

*Area I start my warm up in each time. Often there are others working out, walking dogs or on their phones. These trees have been late breaking into bloom.*

However, doing something with determination even if badly, is a good foil for the narrowness of our current cooped up state I think. I remind myself to be grateful to my body for what does achieve, not critical for its failure to do it better. It’s been good to put myself up against something hard that is concrete and which can be chipped away at. Running makes me use another part of my brain and gives a rest to the thorny problems of work and what needs to be done, or what has risen to the top of my agenda for fretting. Releasing the problems for a time allows me to better work through them later I think.

Strangely and unexpectedly I have started listening to classical music, largely orchestral, while running. I run along the east side esplanade, along the water (my brother Edward reminded me in my prior post that our East River is actually an estuary) which tends to be glorious with the sun rising over it in the early mornings. I will never tire of the various moods of the water – choppy with current one day and still the next. It reminds me of the river which was always in our backyard growing up.

*View of Roosevelt Island with water sparkling during a run earlier this week.*

However, not to be too romantic about it, on the other side of me each day is the FDR drive and a noisy endless bevy of cars, fighting their way to their early morning destinations. Therefore, it is not the glorious sounds of nature I would enjoy if I wasn’t plugged into my phone. Audio books were always my go to when exercising and I have listened to some wonderful things. Yet I was finding increasingly that they weren’t right for running, distracting but not in a good way.

I switched to a music mix I had used occasionally for workouts which ran I admit with some embarrassment heavily to Bruce Springsteen (can’t take the Jersey out of the girl I guess) which did the job but was a bit repetitive. However, one day it started with a curiosity about Beethoven’s 7th symphony and the feeling I had never really listened to it. I downloaded it and decided I would listen to it while running – which I did many times over several weeks. After that I wandered over to Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony which has long been a favorite, but I hadn’t heard in a long time. I welcomed spring with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. (Admittedly, I have pretty routine taste and I suppose if I want another challenge I could actually start learning about classical music.)

I listened to a Beethoven violin concerto and realized that after years of it making me sad after my sister died, more than a decade later now I love listening to the violin. Staying with Beethoven I was listening to a piano concerto yesterday and realized I have rarely listened to much piano at all and what an amazing instrument – one-stop shopping for a full orchestra in a single instrument. The education of my ear which I had been receiving with live music via jazz on the job in recent years, has taken a turn with classical music.

*The long incline at about 80th Street on a cold morning.*

My experiment with running began with a combination of walking and running. Running as long as I could, followed by periods of walking which became shorter over time. I achieved a milestone the other day and did virtually the full run without a break. (There is a steep incline at a land bridge which I have yet to tackle at even a slow run.) I had dragged myself out that day which it turned out was a gentle spring morning not to be missed and was rewarded. For those who have followed my running via my IG stories, I am taking fewer photos now that I am walking less!

*Little guy found a cache of nuts and was happily porking down the other morning while I stretched at the end of my workout the other day.*

Frankly most mornings it is still sheer will that gets me into my sweats and out the door. (I wrote last time that I was doing the post simply to keep me from quitting the whole venture.) It is hard and drinking coffee at my desk or even lifting weights in the comfort of the apartment is more appealing. However, once I am out it is good for me and I am seeing spring unfold in the park where I start and end my jaunts. Earlier this week a hawk swooped right past me at eye level while I warmed up with a few moving stretches pre-run. (He was a big fella and I was glad not to be a small mammal or bird. Yikes!) Plants are beginning their persistent and riotous emergence and squirrels and birds are suddenly everywhere, feasting and frolicking. When I look back on this time I think it will be these mornings I remember best.

Mysteries of the Easter Bunny

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: I purchased this little guy a couple of weeks ago. I saw him on Instagram one afternoon and grabbed him (sold by @marsh.and.meadow antiques), and I was just delighted when he showed up. Continuing with yesterday’s jewelry theme I also purchased the lovely Czech glass necklace below from Heather @marsh.and.meadow antiques. It was new old stock and she had a fistful of them! When I wore mine, to a rare in person lunch earlier this week, it was the first it had ever been worn despite being decades old.

*Photos snatched off of Instagram and from Marsh and Meadows Antiques.*

I first met the proprietor, Heather, under the guise of her account, @_wherethewillowsgrow_, for the purchase of vintage photos and then I realized she sells other interesting stuff from her other account. She included this nice little photo of a family, shown below, in the package with the Czech glass necklace. I consider these folks as part of my Easter celebration in their spring hats and dapper clothes. (Also to say, she recently sold a necklace made of operculum which vaguely fascinated me, but I didn’t see it in time to pull the trigger. How is a necklace made of those somewhat ephemeral things? Find a post devoted to a pile of operculum here!)

Meanwhile, this great little Easter fellow presents this enormous spotted egg, tied with a big bow – and he sports a jolly big bow around his neck as well. I like this sort of frame he is in and I love that the back continues the design, bow, egg and bunny back. I realize that if you look carefully he does have a cotton tail which extrudes from the frame. He has a sweet face and expression and this is a very big egg he has. Although the pink in his ears is mostly missing, the tiny daubs of green and blue and gold in the flowers around the edge show a level of care in his making. He’s enjoyed a place of pride on my desk since he arrived and frankly I just like to have him there, pick him up and look at him.

There is a bale and he is meant to be a necklace. I would definitely wear the little fellow, although he is somewhat season specific, perhaps a thin bit of ribbon instead of a chain. No matter, I just like having his cheerful self around.

Admittedly I come at Easter from a largely non-ecumenical perspective. Easter for me will always be the launch of spring despite what the calendar or weather has to say about it. With a Catholic grandmother and Jewish grandparents, it has a mixed smattering of Passover thrown in and my childhood memories of this time of year are filled with Easter bread, matzoh brie, matzoh ball soup and of course chocolate. Easter and Passover are about food and family.

I am one of those kids who somehow subconsciously thought that bunnies laid eggs and that’s why the Easter Bunny brings eggs. At some point I realized that wasn’t the case and I admit it has always confused me. Yes, I understand the whole eggs and Christianity thing and the prolific bunnies of spring, but it was always remained a strange marriage in my mind. How did we end up with bunnies that deliver eggs? Chocolate eggs at that? And it seems to be a male bunny on top of it. Screwy.

I think I have touched on the big family Easter gatherings of my childhood in previous posts. (I wrote about the magic of my grandmother’s kitchen back in the 2015 post Ann’s Glass which can be found here.) I can remember Easter egg hunts in her generous yard – me in an Easter suit, white tights with baggy knees; I remember one in particular that was light blue and even had a little hat. (My mother was not prone to dressing us up as kids so perhaps that is why I remember the occasion, although I believe it is also documented in a photo somewhere. I think mom felt just keeping us clean and clothed and getting us to where we were going was generally sufficient when managing three kids.)

I always liked the stuff of Easter, the celluloid grass, small silky toy chicks, sugared eggs with Easter scenes unfolding within them. I liked the smell of Easter egg dye and vividly remember the messy joys of making those. (There was the year that our German Shepard, left unattended one afternoon, ate the better part of a dozen of our finished dyed Easter eggs. She didn’t get sick; she never did. Just took it in stride. However, I was very angry at her for robbing me of this ephemeral pleasure of the season.) Fluffy baby chicks, tiny soft bunnies, strange plastic eggs filled with toys and candy – what’s not to like?

*Strangely Peeps creep me out and I have never eaten one. I know they have some intense fans.*

I was thinking this morning that I have no memory of how we ultimately consumed all those hard boiled eggs each year, although we must have since mom didn’t waste food. My mother was not a maker of egg salad nor deviled eggs though and I do remember that the Paas dye seeped into through the shell and colored the inner eggs in places. I have specific memories of discovering egg salad and deviled eggs in adulthood. Maybe the dog got more of them each year than I knew. I will have to ask mom on the phone later.

My father, although Jewish, faithfully supplied us kids with baskets of Russell Stover baskets of candy every year, on into young adulthood, with amazing consistency. (My father was very good with the delivery of candy and there were equally consistent Valentine’s Day, heart shaped boxes each year. Those started with Russell Stover, but in adulthood morphed into Godiva and others as we got older.) The Russell Stover company still makes very similar chocolate eggs and baskets – they remained strangely constant over the years and I see them in the drugstore in the weeks leading up to Easter.

Most years I breakdown and purchase one of the chocolate eggs, filled with either strawberry or maple cream – the taste of childhood! Of course there were always the chocolate bunnies. I was a tad sad about consuming their cute selves – always ears first, eyes of hard sugar. Mom helping when they were solid chocolate and harder to break apart. It was always a somewhat inferior chocolate, but rapidly and joyfully consumed nevertheless.

For my father, non-observant though he was, this time of the year my mother would always make matzoh brie which we called fried matzoh. She had learned this from his mother, early in their married life I gather. Matzoh ball soup was a constant throughout the year, but would always be made too. In young adulthood I mastered both – my matzoh brie is a scrambled one like my mother’s; it tends to come more like an omelet when I purchase it in diners, usually on the Lower Eastside, and I like my matzoh balls a bit firmer than some people. (There is always a discussion of fluffiness.) Lots of salt and some pepper in the fried matzoh – I know exactly how my father liked it.

In retrospect it is a bit strange to think that we would have an Easter ham with my grandmother on Sunday, when we probably had matzoh brie for breakfast the day before. My diet (which promises to be a feature of my life well into summer at the rate I am going) and Kim’s aversion to eggs (he is probably turning green just reading about all this egg consumption) means alas, we will not celebrate the advent of Easter and Passover related food this year. Perhaps next year will be a different story and I will find the recipe for the glorious fat loaves of Easter bread my grandmother used to make and treat you to the story of baking them.

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