Holiday card

Carrots for the New Year?

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: This odd little postcard was among the ones I picked up at the big sale earlier in the fall. I don’t know why but in my mind I identified these as turnips but they do indeed seem to be carrots.

In a house full of cats (quite literally at the moment) I am here to say I rarely find one playing with a carrot or two, but here are these two kittens, be-ribboned, showing real interest in two. A while ago there was an online meme of cats being afraid of bananas (incidentally, the New York cats do not seem to be performing to type on that) and the internet tells me it is both the smell and because they recognize the shape as a snake and instinct kicks in. I have always doubted that the New York duo have much in the way of survival instinct and perhaps this goes to prove it. I gather it applies to cucumbers too and I could test the Jersey Five – I suspect Peaches will attack it with vigor. Her instincts seem perfectly intact.

Meanwhile, the internet is a bit vague on the point of carrots as a symbol of the New Year (turnips actually fare a bit better) on that score. In other cultures (Jewish New Year, Chinese) carrots seem to be a symbol but not really for January 1. However, this was indeed mailed on December 31, 1906 so no question of the intention there. There are allusions to slices of carrots looking like coins and bringing good fortune. l assume these tabby kittens know something we do not. It’s a bit hard to understand what the creator of the card was thinking – let’s do kittens and carrots he said to himself.

The kits have a carrot each, large and small, as well as bows and bells. The one seems to be tackling the large one. The other one, more timid, just looks on. Below them A Happy New Year. The company that produced the card appears to be J.P. Belle, just identified as Belle in the lower right corner here. Founded in Paddington in 1881 it produced cards until 1939. The official name of the company was J.P. Beagles.

This postcard was addressed to: Madam Donshea, 22 East 21st St. New York City. It was mailed from Jersey City at 3:30 on December 31, just under the wire I would say.

It has me contemplating what I might cook up today and I have promised a friend this recipe so I thought I would share it with you as well. It is a good vegetarian base I use as a jumping off point for all kinds of soups to use up whatever is in the house at the moment. I do it by instinct now so I hope I have given complete instructions. Feel free to ask questions! Happy and healthy New Year to you all!

A photo of the soup taken a while back but you get the idea. this version may have had spinach in it.

Miso Soup Recipe:

Ingredients:

  • 1 heaping tablespoon miso paste (dissolve in a small bowl of water
  • 2 carrots, sliced thin
  • 3 cloves of garlic minced
  • 1 tablespoon gingerroot, chopped
  • Salt, pepper, bay (2 leaves), dried basil and oregano to taste. (I like Maresh red pepper which is a mild red pepper, but you can use black pepper.)
  • half a large red onion
  • 2 containers of vegetable stock
  • 1 container extra firm tofu (shrimp could be substituted)
  • Small bowl dried mushrooms (soaked in water – reserve the water for the broth)
  • Green beans (frozen or fresh) trimmed to bite sized
  • Fresh mushrooms, chopped, optional.
  • Half a cup wine or sherry to deglaze
  • 3 chopped scallions
  • Italian flatleaf parsley
  • Frozen dumplings or pantry gnocchi as desired
  • Also optional: sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, mirin and balsamic vinegar. If you want this spicy jalapeno peppers can also be added.

Instructions:

Start the miso softening in water, mushrooms in a separate bowl.
Chop the onion, carrots, green beans, gingerroot and garlic and soften in olive oil. (If you are using shrimp add them after.) Add salt and pepper. Chop the parsley and set aside. Cut the tofu in bite size pieces and put aside.
Deglaze the pan with the wine or sherry. Add the dried mushrooms and liquid and then the broth and then the tofu. Bring to a boil and add the parsley, scallions and tofu.
Season to taste and add the optional seasoning now. Keep at a boil for a few minutes and then simmer and continue to adjust seasoning – I almost always need salt at this stage.
If using dumplings add them at the end, if frozen when the soup is at a boil, but just before serving or they will fall apart.
This essential base is a good vegetarian option for a number of soups – sometimes I add beans instead of tofu, or shrimp. Any number of vegetables can be added, corn is a favorite, diced tomato and sometimes I use creamed corn to thicken the soup as well – but potatoes can be used to thicken it too.

Snow Person

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Pam’s Pictorama.com Photo Post: Today we woke to several inches of snow and more falling so this card seemed like the logical item for today. Purchased a few weeks ago on eBay, I brought it to New Jersey figuring I might have a big opportunity to post it – and right I was.

No judging my nascent shoveling as shown from upstairs.

First thing this morning had me out for a rare morning of snow shoveling. Ouch! I am perhaps a bit long in the tooth to adopt this as an occupation – today’s snow, shoveled early, was pretty light but already forming and icy layer under it so it was best to get it done early, or at least the first go at it. I don’t have much skill at this shoveling thing although my mom always did it until she grew too old and then she hired someone. I have someone who comes when I am not here or it is too hard, although he is nursing a bad respiratory infection so another reason to give Fitzroy a break.

Snowy backyards from upstairs.

Clearly, we are here in New Jersey, having our holiday break. The New York cats adapted fairly quickly to their surroundings and even Cookie is wandering down the stairs with some curiosity about the house at large. Peaches, the meanest of the Jersey Five, is still hissing at us but allowing me to get every closer before she starts. (Not Kim, he still gets the big hiss early on!) Blackie has made his way upstairs to see his sister, eat her food and give her a hard time. (We separate them here for that reason – we’d never get any rest otherwise. The fighting will continue back in NYC for a bit before it subsides.)

Yesterday, we wandered into Red Bank despite the plummeting temperatures ahead of the snow. I made some interesting acquisitions but more about that to come in future posts.

Kim in his temporary studio earlier today. Snow out the window.

Anyway, this is an odd card. It was sent from Berlin to Monte Video on September 9, 1908. It is too hard to read the full foreign address but it was sent to Herr Christianson with no note on the back and one I am unable to translate on the front. (If someone else can, please share a translation!)

What got me was this strange snowman, slightly strange looking girl (with a bit of a wicked expression on her face) who looks like she is whispering in his ear. She sports a pointed, witch-like hat with a bow. The snowman is complete artifice, is he painted? Perhaps painted on wood and cut out so she can be solidly behind him in her fur trimmed attire. He wears a sort of smushed (top?) hat, has a sort of long pipe and this cheery little broom. I especially like the snow, which I am guessing was a post production addition.

The top of the card, the best I can read it, has Gluckuches and Neujahr printed at the top. The latter seems to bring up German New Year’s cards which is what I think this is. Below is another (very delightful) card that came up when I search Neujahr. Sorry I missed this one on eBay!

Unfortunately not in Pams-Pictorama.com collection and produced by the same company. Champagne! Money falling! Not clear to me what the other woman is dropping – bills? cards?

So on a snowy Saturday in New Jersey less than a week before the New Year, I consider the upcoming one, more than a hundred years since this card was sent. I wonder what secrets of the New Year she whispered into the ear of the snowman and what tales of the year she’d have for the year to come for us today.

On Christmas Day Have Mirth and Laughter

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: We have a cat Christmas card entry of a jolly sort today, something to get us tuned up for Thursday.

Here in Manhattan, after about four inches of snow last week, we were awash in rain yesterday. (We’re talking street flooding – a lot of rain!) Although there is precipitation in the forecast for later this week, I’d gamble a guess that it will be a green Christmas in New Jersey. A few degrees either way though and we’ll see. Pretty as the snow is (see below for some photos of the house last week) I guess I am old enough to see the disadvantages of shoveling (or paying someone to!) and the slippery sidewalks and roads. We do like to take some long walks when we are out there. However, I wouldn’t mind a sprinkling for Christmas though to see if it could put me in the holiday mood a bit which I could use.

Snowy front yard in NJ last week! From a friend’s phone video.

The end of the calendar year is always a very busy time for fundraisers. I believe I have opined on this in the past and since the earliest days of my chosen career, the last weeks of the year have been fraught with either being too busy (at the Met) or not busy enough (my first years at Jazz).

My current gig combines its Top Dog Gala and its fiscal year end at the already very busy calendar year end. It’s pretty boffo. However, now in my second year end there I understand it a bit better and I am hoping for some down time, even while keeping an eye on things at the office. I am also old enough to know that we have a plan we’re executing and what will be will be. It isn’t really the sort of place, like the Met, where someone is going to decide they want to donate a valuable mortgaged piece of property in the last ten days of the year.

Decorating and setting up for Top Dog earlier this month.

Therefore in my adult life there has never really been a holiday season that has been free of work concerns. There was the year I left Jazz right before the end of the year, but that was a year of other losses and the holidays were a bit sad and full of the anxiety of a new job. Sometimes you just do the best you can do over the holidays.

The card at the top of the post sums it up well, Whatever fortune my come after, on Christmas Day have mirth and laughter. Mom and Dad cat (perched on an ottoman) are in an interesting composition of paws and tails. (The adult cats form a really great sort of central square with a paw and a tail leading us in and out!)

Their progeny, in kitten form, giggle and poke each other next to mom on the couch. There’s something about the furniture that makes me think that it is so specific it refers to real furniture somewhere in the artist’s life. It’s a very suburban and somewhat prosperous scene. Whatever their world weary worries are Mom and Dad cat chuckle together.

The artist knew cats. Dad cat is a proper orange marmalade and mom a darker orange and brown mix – producing an orange kit and as well as a black and white tabby. This combination certainly within the possibility of likelihood.

The copyright on the card is actually 1890 by a company called L. Prang and Company of Boston, USA. Below I share (in its entirety) an entry on Louis Prang via the Boston Public Library:

Louis Prang (1824-1909), a German immigrant, ran a highly successful printing firm in Boston during the late nineteenth century. His company produced high quality reproductions of major art work and greeting cards using the complex technique of chromolithography. Prang is often referred to as the ‘Father of the American Christmas Card’ because holiday cards were rarely exchanged in America until his factory began producing them in the 1870s.

A quick look at his other wares in terms of Christmas cards does not show many of this type. He generally seemed to go in more for arty reproductions of flowers and holly. There is a tiny signature for the artwork, EBW. I cannot find tracks on him, perhaps his foray into cat cards was brief – or he eventually expanded his signature.

This card was never sent but in faded pencil on the back, in script, it says, John Peckham.

78th Street on our way to Orwasher’s last Sunday.

So today’s card is a shot over the bow for those of us who are having trouble getting the the holiday spirit. I will spend my day packing us up for our 2-3 week sojourn in New Jersey. And cleaning the apartment – I like to come home to start the New Year in a reasonably clean apartment.

Tomorrow is the 2025 Deitch Studio card reveal. For ongoing readers, you knew it was coming! For now however, try to insert a bit of ho, ho, ho into your proceedings and if not, at least for the day later this week!

Holiday Card and Decoration

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today is the great Deitch Studio holiday card reveal! Apologies up front to those of you who are still waiting for your card in the mail (um, most of you) as we are way behind schedule this year. I am the keeper of the holiday card schedule and I take full responsibility! I know folks who like to have the surprise of theirs in hand before the online reveal. Alas, Blackie’s unscheduled Thanksgiving trip to the kitty ER (that cat tale can be found here) had a ripple effect and our cards were not in hand until earlier this week. Most of your cards are being launched from the Fair Have post office on Monday – think of them as New Year’s cards this year!

Sadly the celluloid Santa did not make the trip to NJ unscathed! Bought these in NYC and packed with extraordinary care, alas!

Speaking of Blackie – he ran us a merry chase yesterday trying to get him packed in his carrier for the early morning trip to NJ. He wedged himself in a tiny space underneath our futon which defies grabbing him without removing the mattress from the bed entirely. Nonetheless, we eventually got him and arrived here mostly intact early yesterday and devoted most of the day to addressing those cards!

Onto the card! This is a sort of sequel to last year’s card. Some think it achieves more highly, others favor card number one. For my part I am pleased with my likenesses of the various cats. Peaches and Gus in particular, but all of them are pretty good. Beau and Blackie are in costume – reindeer and Santa respectively. Everyone else lightly accessorized at best.

My original pencil.

It is the living room of the house here in New Jersey. There is a fireplace here, although I doubt it will return to being wood burning in my lifetime. (An absurd amount of work needs to be done to the inside of the chimney to make it safe – something about lining the inside with ceramic.) I have toyed with a gas or electric insert for it – maybe next year.

Among the sale items at Lowe’s – these were about $3.50 a box!

For those of you who are new to the card tradition, each year Kim and I collaborate on a Christmas card. It has evolved into my drawing it in pencil and then him inking it. I offer the original drawing for consideration. For those of you who missed it last year or want to compare and contrast, the ’23 card post can be found here and the card is below. The post can be found here.

The 2023 card.

Meanwhile, thus far the house is only decorated with this wreath on the front door. However, yesterday on a trip to Lowe’s to procure something to melt the ice on the front steps, I discovered boxes of old-fashioned, large colored lights on sale, 75% off – meaning each box was about $3.50. (Those inclined can probably still score these online.) Well, while I had not considered lights for the house or yard I immediately purchased several boxes and an extension cord. I also bought jolly large ornaments which I will hang from a light post out front.

Good buy on over-sized break proof ornaments for outside.

I am hoping we can wander over to the Red Bank Antiques Annex and look for a nice Santa for the mantel so with me luck! I will post an update here and on Instagram if I find one!

Let the Season Begin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feline Greetings from Fair Haven

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today is the annual Christmas card reveal. clearly this year we celebrate the whole Butler crew, all eight kitties, including Hobo.

We are ensconced here at Oxford Avenue for the holiday duration this year. I have inaugurated the holidays by acquiring a violent stomach virus so this may be a bit brief. It’s an odd year, my first without my mom and I am feeling it even more keenly than I thought I would. I am usually pro-Christmas and manage holiday cheer even under duress. This year is tough, although I am curled up here in New Jersey with Kim and all the kitties which helps. Drinking fluids! No baking while this is going on.

Last year’s card – Blackie and Cookie solo in front of our apartment window.

The card has a double meaning this year as I leave Jazz at Lincoln Center for the very different world of fundraising for the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center. Animal lover and rescuer of animals as she was, all of us think Mom would find that an appropriate switch; she was always concerned that my job at Jazz was too exhausting for the long haul, with its travel and many nights.

AMC will be unlike anything I have done before and I don’t dismiss the difference and the adjustment – all fundraising is not the same. Still, my brain itches to engage with new challenges and I think building a full fundraising operation for them is the next best chapter.

Blackie is stalking around the New Jersey house; Cookie has returned to her safe spot under a chair in the bedroom. Beau and Blackie had a hissy hello last night. I think the other New Jersey cats remain largely unaware. There is always an adjustment period.

Kim has taken over my office for the duration and, after a few false starts for a new dip pen holder and something for his ink, he is inking away upstairs.

The original Pam Butler pencil drawing.

This year’s card was conceived of and drawn by me as a tribute to my new cat family and job – I include my original pencil for the first time. Kim inked it and added the logo which is properly Deitchien. Each cat gets a proper portrait. Kim added a little maniacal twist to Cookie who is chasing her tail (as she still does almost daily at 10 years of age) and Beau and Blackie are facing off a bit.

So our best wishes for the holidays and the New Year from us at Deitch Studio and Pictorama. Hope you enjoy it!

A Room with a View

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Drum roll please…because today we have our annual Christmas card reveal! Here at Deitch Studio we have been producing a holiday card for a few decades now. One day we’ll have to see who has old number one because, although I knew we kept some, I am not sure we can lay our hands on it. In the first year, and maybe the one that followed, we hand colored each one (differently) with colored pencil – but we had a smaller distribution back then.

A better look at this year’s card! Deitch Studio collection. Click on it to make it larger.

For those who are new to the card this year the general process is that, after discussing the general subject first, I do the initial drawing. Kim responds with his version and then we might negotiate this or that, back and forth until it is an amalgam of our styles. In general, if we appear on the card, the rule is you draw yourself. (A few card reveals from year’s past can be found here and here, but the archive is chock-a-block full of them!)

Kitty cooks in the kitchen! No, we don’t really let them cook. Deitch Studio Collection.

This year however, Kim has been admiring the view from our window and it permeated my thoughts when I sat down to draw the card and it fell together quickly.

For those who haven’t visited Deitch Studio for awhile, yes, the plants have indeed increased in number and lushness this year. A friend commented on that. For those who follow Pam’s Pictorama regularly you know that Blackie had a rough year and we almost lost him to a bad infection and subsequent diabetes. In fact we had a mini-emergency with him just this past week as his sugar dropped too low. Despite that he is looking like his old self, has gained his weight back and his coat is thick and shining as shown here.

An exuberant Blackie showing tummy and fang recently.

Cookie would have been just as glad (or so she says – frequently) if we hadn’t bothered bringing him home. They are sister and brother and fight as such – love to hate each other I say. It gives them something to do. Cookie is the talker in the family and at nine years old still chases her tail (daily) like a kitten; often in the bathtub. Go cat go! I say she has one cat joke and that is to hide behind the shower curtain in the bathroom so she can jump out, meowing, at an unsuspecting type coming in. I fall for it several times a week. She does a victory lap with her tail after.

Cookie, always a card, a Noir Alley kitty a few weeks ago.

The view out the window is obviously much simplified, although I like to think it somehow captures the overall sense and mood. Kim was very light in his touch this year and really let my original drawing shine through. The view is quite wonderful, but it is especially nice at night when it is a twinkling wonderland. When I can’t sleep, I come and sit down on the couch (usually with Cookie these days, who in turn requires ear scratching) and spend some time looking at it.

Our view – a dim rainbow in upper right corner.

One of the interesting aspects of the view is that in recent years it is also the northern end destination of my frequent runs. Now when I look out I know it differently and I know the trip under the bridge and up to 114th Street intimately firsthand. I have written more about running in New Jersey than here in the City, but it is in reality my more frequent, if somewhat more static route. (A New York running post can be found here – and one from New Jersey here.) The path along the river is soothing, if windy in winter and hot and sunny in summer, whereas the suburban New Jersey path is more varied perhaps and has surprises like visiting deer and suburban highlights.

The northern part of my Manhattan running route one morning recently.

When I purchased this apartment I had no idea how beautiful the view was as the windows were too dirty to see out. Now it is our escape, bringing the whole world into our single room and we wouldn’t trade it.

So as the holidays approach and 2022 comes to a close, Merry Christmas and the best of New Year’s to all from the four of us at Deitch Studio!

Out with the Old!

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: This year’s holiday card, drawn by me and inked by Kim, is a glimpse into the reality of Deitch Studio – it really looks exactly like this! (Full disclosure, no Christmas tree, not even a small one. There really isn’t a square foot for even the smallest one.) This year’s card is more of a New Year’s one – recognizing the year that has been as we hope to kick it aside in favor of the coming one.

I recently wrote for a Jazz at Lincoln Center member newsletter that 2020 was rare to reflect on a departing year that could be considered universally horrid, but that is what this year has been. Folks have suffered egregious pain and loss from the pandemic, howled with protest in the streets despite it, and went back out into it in order to stand on line for hours to vote. We saw dancing in the street here in Manhattan when the Presidential results were announced, but like all things in 2020, even that has proved to be a torturous and rocky road on the way to resolution.

Much will be written about the year 2020 in the future I think, but for now behind that everyone is still dealing with it and the additional backdrop of everyday struggles which continued apace – one friend reports bedbugs, another has a parent diagnosed with dementia, a third falls and lands in the hospital – and all this in the past week. For many, 2020 is the year that just won’t quit, even as we reach the bitter end. The backlash likely to sweep well into the beginning of the New Year.

There are undeniable bright spots though and commuting by walking ten feet across our studio apartment has been lovely. We joke about it and friends and acquaintances marvel at it, but really, if you have already lived in one room with someone for decades doing it twenty-four hours a day isn’t much different, at least for us. Last March I was deeply tired from too much travel and many late nights at work and I have been enjoying my regular routine and seven hours of sleep nightly – frankly being told I would have to stay home and cancel all upcoming travel was not entirely unwelcome. (Earlier tales of quarantine life at Deitch Studio can be found here.)

The Deitch Studio-Pictorama collaborative holiday card for 2020!

I resumed all cooking duties and we have not only eaten right, but we’ve eaten quite well and my newly restored interest in baking has packed on pandemic pounds which I am now seeking to banish. (It is hard to develop a sense of urgency about it however when my days are generally spent in work out gear from the waist down. Baking posts can be found here and here for starters. I am munching a spice cookie from last week’s cooking adventure as I write this.)

Cheesy olive bread – an early pandemic favorite.

I am fortunate to have a job and also to be able to work from home – Kim has of course always worked here and was the one who had to adjust and make room for me. Workdays have been long, sometimes starting at 6:30 AM and with the evening still finding me at my computer, iPad or phone, but without having to go any place it has allowed me to hone the work down to what is essential and a core fundraising message and method. Talking on the phone almost incessantly is a reality for me and, admittedly with a few bumps along the way, we have found accommodation.

Wynton Marsalis and I are on the phone so frequently that I joke that sometimes it is as if he is a third person in the apartment – asking after him always or shouting a jaunty greeting to Kim as he signs off a call, Kim tossing out the occasional comment when brought into the conversation. Kim now recognizes the sound of each person’s voice, not just on my team, but for the better part of the entire Jazz at Lincoln Center administrative operation. He listens to Susan and I discussing incoming funds and sometimes lack thereof; as Gaby and I working through a litany of media requests; me addressing my staff in meetings and sometimes even the weekly all staff meetings for the organization. Kim never thought he would know so much about how I spend my workday.

The flea market purchase of a Ruth Fielding novel that kicked off my reading of that series.

I think we will remember this year and shiver in remembrance of days and nights of ambulance sirens and deserted streets here, but I know we will also look back on it as a gift of time we never expected to have, tossed into our laps like a rough nugget of gold, waiting for us to figure out how to forge it into something. We have made good use of our time I think – been productive in our work – fundraising as always for me (if more urgently than ever), art as usual for Kim as he plows well into the next book. What downtime we’ve had has been spent reading – Kim finishing the last of the available Little Orphan Annie strips with regret, me working my way through wakeful nights reading escapist juvenile fiction of the early 20th century, Judy Bolton and now well into Ruth Fielding. (A post about my Judy Bolton pandemic days reading can be found here and here, and while a review of Ruth Fielding is in the works, I mention her in my post about the Miss Pat series and it can be found here.)

Early version of the lucky waving cats that adorn my desk.

Our two cats, Cookie and Blackie, have more than adjusted to the change in human habits and all memory of the “before time” has been erased from their respective tiny feline memories. A real ham, Blackie comes running for Zoom calls on camera, meanwhile Cookie sleeps under my laptop which sits on an elevated shelf which Amazon delivered (along with a world of other things) months ago when my back kept going out. She curls up under the warmth of the desk lamps and between the two waving lucky cats (one recently retrieved from my office), cat kissing them occasionally – and then mystically, in the late afternoon, I look up and it is Blackie there instead. (A post about the lucky waving cats can be found here.) The cats are frankly shocked if Kim and I leave the house for any period of time now. We find them waiting anxiously by the front door when we return.

Blackie and Cookie perched on my desk, awaiting dinner recently.

As I write this I am adorned in an ancient black hoodie that is years old, but has seen almost daily wear in recent months. I am wearing a wonderful pair of silky pj’s on the bottom, a recent purchase from the Gap, they are adorned with stars – a weekend luxury to be in them still so late in the morning, although I could live in them I actually make a point of getting fully dressed, as such, for workdays. Admittedly my “hard pants” and office clothes are now mostly providing nests for generations of moths I have not had the energy to deal with. (Moths are my version of the 2020 pestilence story.) I suspect by the time I get back to them I will chuck most of the whole lot anyway.

Blackie takes over the computer one morning.

What does 2021 hold for us and how will we adjust and meet the challenge of finding our way in the next iteration of the world? I think about it often. We have all changed in the crucible of these strange days and I don’t think anyone will emerge from it the same or unscathed. I remind myself that we will emerge from our cocoons at some point (we certainly hope in 2021), and as our new selves step out into the world to be whatever we have become during these long, hard but interesting months. Here we go then, out with the old and in with the New Year!

The Great Deitch Studio Card Reveal

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Ta Da! It’s that time of the year! With Thanksgiving running late it was a tight turnaround this year and apologies to anyone who hasn’t gotten theirs in the mail yet before I do the online reveal. (And that includes just about everyone at my office.) As some of you might know, the day after Thanksgiving is the day when I sit down and do the first go at the card. This year it pretty much fell together with that initial session and here we are.

Pictorama readers aren’t going to be surprised that the recently renovated kitchen played a role in the Deitch Studio pictorial summing up of the year. (Although I could have shown our window installation as an alternative. Cats installing new windows? Um, gives me vertigo to think about. Those recent renovation posts can be found here, here and here – just for starters.)

I have set Cookie and Blackie to stirring up a storm here. The kitties are very fond of the new kitchen (counters have been duly jumped upon, the floor rolled over and over on, and the cabinets duly sniffed and inspected) although disappointingly the new fridge is too high and narrow for Cookie climbing – she liked towering over everyone on the old one. Of course, in reality we rarely let the cats cook and discourage their use of the stove in general. (I don’t mind them using the microwave, but worry they will be careless and use aluminum in it. And Blackie was showing an unfortunate interest in jumping up on the stove early on which we needed to compel him not to do.)

Kim let me have my head on this one and the result is more Pam than usual in execution I think. Although he always neatens things up (especially lettering – I don’t do that properly at all) and the shading always makes things pleasantly Deitchien. (A phrase I may have coined earlier this year in my happily and totally biased spousal post reviewing Kim’s Reincarnation Stories which can be found here and here. Kim’s book is of course the other big news of the year – the cats could have been reading about themselves in it. Or complaining that they didn’t play a bigger role.) The cats’ expressions are a bit more Kim-ish than Pam too. He has given them a slightly maniacal mad scientist look – probably closer to their true expressions.

book open

From the opening of Reincarnation Stories.

 

As I believe everyone bemoaned this season, with Thanksgiving falling a bit late in the calendar the holiday season is a bit compressed. Kim inked quickly and the printer turned it around fast (a nod to Bill from Yorkville Copy, which no longer exists as a storefront – he comes from Westchester to pick up our original and copy, score and return annually), but that only left a week to get them in the mail. I hedged our bets by making it a New Year’s card.

As I write this part of my brain is taken up with the things that still need doing, the apartment is in a state of chaos, and I long to have a proper workout at the gym after an endless week of work related events. I know you, dear readers, are probably thinking much the same so thank you for spending a little time with Pam’s Pictorama today. A Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and of course every best wish for the New Year from all here, feline and otherwise, at Deitch Studio.

Best Wishes for the New Year!

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: 2018 is being rapidly ushered out the door and today I offer the annual Deitch Studio-meets-Pictorama card reveal. When I designed this year’s card I am not sure I was thinking about making it a New Year’s card, but it seemed to make itself and that’s what it turned out to be. Frankly 2018 was a tough year and I am not sorry to see the hind end of it – good riddance! Meanwhile, this was a rare season when I had an idea for the card and I pretty much sat down and out it came, exactly as I was imagining it. Kim, already deeply immersed in his new book, made some adjustments and inked it up and here we are – ta-dah!

If anyone reading this is post is new, welcome to this Deitch Studio annual tradition. Kim and I have collaborated on a holiday card since the first year we started dating. (May I note, such was the thrall I held over him, even in those nascent days, since it turns out that in reality he isn’t a fan of Christmas in the least.) Anyway, that makes 24 cards. We cannot seem to locate anyone who has good ‘ole number one which we hand colored. (Kim is rumored to have one in his files – somewhere.) By the second year we started rolling them out to a wider audience and a bit more efficiently. The card is generally drawn the day after Thanksgiving – although executed more expeditiously some years than others. I always start the card. Some years Kim adds more, some years less. Generally speaking we each draw ourselves, although this year Kim remains sort of Pam-esque as Kim Deitch fans may note. (Some former card reveals can be found by clicking on: Merry Christmas from Deitch Studio! and Merry Christmas 2015.)

The boat theme is a nod to my father who liked to sail. Born a city boy, something about sailing always intrigued him and throughout my childhood he always kept a sailboat, docked or moored in the river behind where we lived. Since he grew up in Washington Heights, I have no idea of the origins of his love of being on the water. My sister Loren got the sailing bug from him and she and her husband devoted much of their free time, summer and fall, to sailing. I, on the other hand, did not. While I am not as bad as my mother who, despite being the daughter of a fisherman and repairer of outboard motors, goes a bit green just watching a boat bob up and down in the water, I cannot sail a boat any more than I can drive a car. I see the appeal – the quiet of being on the water under sail can be thrilling and beautiful. (My father and sister were both overwhelmingly impressed that I had several trips on the enormous sailboat the Sea Cloud II when working at the Met and it was pretty amazing!) However, the time and money that one needs to devote to this pastime is beyond me and my somewhat inadequate swimming skills mean that I was never destined to be a fan.

One of my father’s trips to the hospital last year landed him in a room with a beautiful view of the Navesink river – we lived on the other side of town on the Shrewsbury river, but both rivers are lovely, if somewhat different. The hospital is built along the river and the views of it seem to be a more or less luck of the draw situation and we won the lottery that time. We looked out and talked a bit about how we’d rather be out on the water sailing than sitting in that room. I think I was thinking of that a bit when drawing this year. I plunked a sailor’s wool cap on my character’s head like dad wore in winter, and set Kim, me and the cats in this tiny vessel sailing and looking forward to the New Year, leaving 2018 behind.