Pam’s Pictorama Post: This scrappy little feline is issuing a warning – Back up! Cigar in mouth, claw paws and fixed stare, he chomps on a cigar which casts a reddish glow on his face, spewing a plume of smoke. His scratching paws show claws on the ground. He might be old and tatty but he can still fight a good fight. Although I think the admonishment means Get Back I think it also alludes to having your back up.
There is a small squiggle in the lower left corner and while I thought it was a spider or other insect, I now think it is someone’s way of signing their images. Google Images was not able to help me, however I now know that this was actually a woman’s suffrage image which I had not guessed. (I have a few suffragette items, which are frequently about cats, and a post about one is here.) It does make some sense now that I know it. It belongs to a series of cards featuring this tatty tom. This card was never used or mailed.
Votes for Women statue. Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.
Cards like this referred to the changing social role of women and aligning them with cat like characteristics. I look at Cookie and Blackie this morning and I am not quite sure what characteristics they are referring to – I may be missing the point. (Cookie has been pacing the apartment and meowing at us and Blackie is napping on the couch. Neither seems politically idealistic.) I am not so thick however, that I don’t understand that this is a flinty, tough kit who is ready to engage their claws on all comers. Me-ow!
From the same series but not in Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.
I think I chose today’s card because we are mid-summer here in NYC and I am at sixes and sevens. A thoughtful colleague asked what I had enjoyed most about summer so far and my first thought is how hot and wet it has been and I could hardly come up with a pleasant answer. Work has been busy (event in Sag Harbor a week ago) and other than the temperatures and the humidity it has not felt like summer at all. We are generally frayed and on edge here. My fur is standing on end!
Next week sees our month long move to the Jersey shore and some vacation. I am hoping to restore my equilibrium and my spirits with long evenings on the porch among the dahlias and the hummingbirds which come to snack in the evenings. I want to eat my homegrown Jersey tomatoes, local corn and peach ice cream, along with grilling some fish. I want to drink an iced drink and read on the deck with Kim also reading in a chair across from me. (We have a towering pile of books we are bringing!) August is designed to smooth our fur and get us ready for the coming fall ahead.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: This fetching and fluffy feline caught my eye recently. This card is a bit later than the majority of cards in my collection and was sent on September 9, 1933. A woman named Agnes sent it from Whinchmore Hill to Miss Connie Connors at 63, Park Av. Park Estate, (can’t read the town) Northumberland for a penny.
Agnes writes simply, Dear Connie, It seems ages since I have heard anything about you all. Hope you are well. Lots f love, Agnes xxxxxxxx. Presumably it is Connie who had and kept this card to make it down the decades.
And I ask, who wouldn’t have kept this card? This little fellow is caught mid-meow posed on a faux brick wall for this purpose. In some ways it is the evocative bright moon scenery behind him that really does it for me. At the bottom in a script font it reads, A moolight serenade and W. & K. 1592. W&K postcards is the logo for Wildt & Kray, London. The company was founded in 1905 and was active into the 20’s publishing postcards of several genres but most notably cats – including Louis Wain.
Therefore if this card is postmarked 1933 (which it clearly is) it was either a bit old at that time or had been reprinted and distributed somehow subsequently. (Therefore the esthetic appeal to me makes sense since it was likely made before 1925 or so.) You can see it a bit above, weirdly the postmark machine has come through and embossed half this card.
Back of card.
I am glad I have not lived in a time and place where caterwauling is a nightly event. As a cat lover on the rare occasion I have heard it, and the likely fight that might follow I have found it hard to ignore. Just a cat meowing outside will of course garner my attention. Not that I would ever have thrown shoes at them – and not that I can imagine that would do any good.
In this mature period of her life Cookie (age 13) has become very chatty. She demands our attention, especially in the morning, with long, complex cat sentences. This is generally combined with a certain amount of staring (you human fool! why don’t you do as I ask?) and some rolling and stretching and expectation of tummy rubbing. (Cookie is the tummy rubbing-est cat I ever met! Growing up a cat would just bite you if you tried to rub its tummy, but oddly Cookie demands it.)
This leads me to a topic which may require more examination in a later post but there is a movement afoot on the internet where people are teaching their cats to “talk” using buttons spread across the floor. Of course, living in a tiny apartment in New York my first thought was, man, these people have space to spare and waste! Once I got over that, I started following a few people on Instagram who document their interactions ongoing.
To aide your cat or small dog in being a Chatty Cathy!
As far as I can tell one chooses word buttons and spreads them out on the floor and trains kitty to step on the appropriate one to converse. Obviously word choice is limited and a sort of pigeon English (if you pardon the term) emerges. Of course my friends at Chewy sell them but I have no real sense of how popular this trend is.
The account I watch most is a science fiction writer named Alice with a calico cat named Elsie (@elsiewants). Alice says she introduced button talking as something for a novel she was working on and thought her cat would better be able to tell her what toy she wanted to play with. Instead she seems to have gotten a Demanda Kitty (something we call Cookie occasionally) who appears to embody exactly what I always imagined cats would say if they could talk. It is sort of feline trash talking, a series of what she does and does not like and mostly what she wants.
There are companies like Fluent Pet that sell the buttons, lodged in brightly colored mats like those you see in a kid’s playroom. The companies have training instructions (do you want to talk to a cat or a dog?) and of course there are videos online to help. The real question we have to ask is, do we actually want to hear more about what they have to say?
Cookie not really asleep this morning. Do you really want to know what this cat has to say?
As much as I adore Cookie and Blackie, I’m not sure there is much to improve our relationship by giving them more control over the daily demands they already make. Although maybe a diabetic Blackie could communicate better about his sugar levels, too easily I can imagine Cookie pressing the same button again and again – and Blackie always insisting he hates Cookie. I have to say, this might be one area where ignorance is bliss and we shall not go.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: In a better world I would be writing this from home on Saturday morning as usual. I do have some new acquisitions that I am looking forward to treating you to but it will have to wait until Sunday as I am on what is these days, a very rare business trip.
My days at Jazz and even the Met treated readers to a fair amount of travel. Some of it quite exotic and international. (Some of those posts can be found here and here.) However, my current gig fundraising for an animal hospital does not require must travel. However, today here I sit in the rain, in very slow moving midtown traffic, a passenger on a Jitney heading for East Hampton.
Book purchase.Illustration
I frequently say that into every New York fundraiser some time in East Hampton must fall. In today’s case it is an event tomorrow night. I am going out early and staying with a friend until Saturday.
Other purchase and illustration.
Growing up at the Jersey shore my relationship with Long Island beaches is a bit skeptical. While “beach traffic” was a thing of my childhood (we could walk to the beach but you still had to negotiate traffic for any of life’s needs in a car) it could not prepare me for the gridlock of Long Island. Cars line up in long rows for blocks and blocks at intersections. You find that traffic is always a major topic of conversation here – what route did you take and how was it. This year’s event is in downtown Sag Harbor so some lucky folks who live in that historic district will be able to walk.
1937 view of Peninsula House (aka P House) Sea Bright in 1937. It burned to the ground in 1986.
The east end of Long Island has always seemed like the glitzy cousin to my beloved Jersey shore. The old houses here are older and many have more gravitas than our beachside mansions along the ocean. Houses here were built right on the ocean while most of those in Monmouth County are on the other side of a seawall and thoroughfare. Some of those few that were waterside perhaps washed away – or otherwise lost to time like the Peninsula Hotel which used to perch seaside in Sea Bright.
Luxury brands abound here – the streets dotted with the designer clothes of the moment, Starbucks (of course) and the likes of Tiffany. In Jersey the wealth moved more to the riverside and the mansions line those more interior shores.
View from the lovely house I stayed at.
Still, I have never entirely understood the appeal of this location, now with traffic a good more than three hours from Manhattan when I can hop on a ferry at 34th street and arrive on the beach shores of Sandy Hook in 50 minutes.
Another view – with swans.
Work is what is more likely to draw me out here in the summer than leisure activity of my own – my garden in NJ beckons! It has been a few years since my last jaunt during my final summer at Jazz at Lincoln Center when I came out for one of the orchestra’s engagements and to visit supporters out here.
Geese outside my window Friday morning, gently honking.
Then like now I stay in the gorgeous home of a thoughtful friend who I met during my years at the Met. This year I perched in a lovely guest cottage on her property which overhangs the shores of Georgica Pond. It is a heart stoppingly beautiful view of this protect inlet, just a canoe ride around the bend from the open ocean. I woke to geese gently honking out the glass doors to the water. (I wrote about one other sojourn at her house here.)
Views from Long House.Amphitheater there with Ai Weiwei Sculptures Apple tree arbor.
The weather here, like the weather everywhere in the area, has been lousy. Overcast and drizzly days, far cooler here than the humidity of the city which we have been subjected to. (I always vacation in August as over time I have decided that July tends to just have bad weather.) So,although I did get a short walk on the beach I never made it into the pool nor was I able to sit outsie with a book or thihs laptop and enjoy the world going by.
However, in a yard filled with water fowl, birdfeeders, a glory of bunnies and chipmunks there was always something going on. It reminded me so nicely of the river view from the house I grew up in where there was always something to watch or look at in the yard.
Also, the last time I visited here my mom was still alive. I remember sending her many photos of the views here and my fingers still itched to be able to do it.
Images from the Ark at the Church in Sag Harbor.
This weekend’s destination was an exhibition of animal sculptures and a reception celebrating the animal hospital I work for. The building housing it, an exhibition space called The Church, which was once originally – a church that is. Philosophically I believe that Hamptons events consist almost entirely of people who live in greater Manhattan and who you could see there for less cost in time and money. (In other words, this feels unnecessary from a fundraising perspective.)
Aside from the event, my host took me to Long House gardens – the estate of Jack Larsen – where we took a wonderful long walk through the landscape, stumbling on sculpture nestled among the plantings. Having once worked for the Central Park I have some sense of the scope that the care of such seemingly casual plantings need. It was a day closed technically closed to the public and the staff was out enforce to take advantage of the weather between fits of spitting rain, broken by short periods of intense sunny heat.
Main drag in East Hampton taken while waiting for the bookstore to open. The one in Sag Harbor is the good one though!
I will report quite a bookstore discovery in Sag Harbor. I had gone to a satisfactory bookstore in East Hampton earlier in the visit where I was intrigued by a volume or two. However, Sag Harbor Books (info here) appears to have consumed a used bookstore we went in search of and the end result is a combination of books old and new for sale, just a block up from the water. I had limited time there but grabbed these two volumes and will give them a try. If you find yourself in this area make the trip to see it. Ignore the first editions and cases with huge prices and head to the carefully tended and curated shelves of more generic offerings. (There was a strong evidence of westerns and cowboy options. Kim is a fan but his reading so voracious and longstanding that I hesitate to buy for him. He is getting a t-shirt on this trip which is an odd choice, but I saw a color I liked and I grabbed it at a general store.)
General store in East Hampton where I purchased a t-shirt for Kim and some very over priced hair ties.
As I finish this I am on the Jitney this Saturday morning. It will be afternoon by the time it reaches you all and those regular readers may be wondering where I have wandered off to. I won’t get back to Manhattan until 12:30 and will need to get settled with photos and all before sharing this. However, I promise a rare treat in terms of a cat item tomorrow so stay tuned.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Yesterday on a whim Kim and I spent the Independence Day holiday in a remarkably patriotic way with a trip to the Fraunces Tavern museum in lower Manhattan. This important Revolutionary War landmark, where George Washington said farewell to his troops, is tucked among towering modern edifices, near the water and Wall Street. Kim just finished Washington Irving’s biography of Washington and it occurred to me that neither of us had ever been before.
Waiting in line out front for it to open.
The Tavern remains a restaurant and pub (I don’t believe it has operated continuously as there was information about a renovation and restoration at one time in one of the exhibits) and, unsure if it would be the holiday destination for many, I made a lunch reservation in one of the several dining rooms just to be safe. We had a 12:45 reservation which turned out to be about right to see the museum first.
Funny little display in the front wall of the building near where we waited on line.
Luckily it was a glorious day and we hopped on a ferry running along the East River and took it all the way to Wall Street from 90th Street, convenient to our Yorkville neighborhood here. July 4 is one of those holidays when Manhattan generally empties out and aside from some tourists, there is a group of us left to our devices here and that was represented by folks who were lined up to take this local ferry to the beach, biking or like activities. The result was a fairly full but not crowded ferry ride. (I became enamored of the ferry system, running up and down the east side, to Queens, Brooklyn and even New Jersey during Covid and have written about my introduction to the longer on to Jersey here .)
A snippet of the ferry in the East River about to go under, I think, the Manhattan bridge.
It was fun to travel to the museum by water rather than subway, a period appropriate way as the water would have frequently been used for transport in the 18th century. It was also a fraction of travel time – although the wait was longer than for a train and this was exacerbated by the mercurial holiday schedule it seemed to be on.
The museum is just a few blocks from the ferry terminal although Google lead us on a bit of a roundabout merry chase in an attempt to use maps. I think in part the problem is with so many tall buildings that reception is iffy there and the map would not reload properly. Anyway, we arrived as a small parade of folks in period clothes seemed to be wrapping up. (I overhead that they were here from Virginia but I am not sure if I caught the broader reason for their costumed attendance there.)
The Dingle Wiskey Bar, closed, but where we waited for the museum to open. Woman in 18th century dress using her cellphone a bit of a bonus here.
For those of you who don’t know the city, downtown Manhattan is entirely different than the rest of the island. As the area that was first built up, the streets are tiny and narrow. Because it is now the seat of commerce and business, enormous towers have risen and largely block the light from the clutches of tiny, historic buildings. I cannot imagine living or working in the area – it would be like living in an entirely different city. Unlike the rest of the city, lower Manhattan is not on a grid and hence the need for a map to find your way among unfamiliar and twisting streets.
A block or so of historic buildings approaching the museum’s block.
Even for all of that, we arrived early for the noon opening of the museum. There was a line outside but that was really just waiting for it to open – it did not have a persistent line throughout the day although they seemed largely booked for dining.
We were herded into one of the bar spaces to wait which gave us a chance to study that room a bit. There are, I believe, six different dining and drinking spaces (although there was a private dining area which may be a seventh – I lost count.) I was unable to figure out if the configuration was based on the original layout – many small rooms being typical of such an early building. There is evidently a piano bar occupying the fourth, top floor, but it was not open and we didn’t get to see it.
Another view of the Dingle Wiskey Bar.
The museum commences on the second floor which, in its day, would have also been serving spaces. It is not clear to me that this edifice was anything other than an eatery so perhaps all the floors were dining areas. (It isn’t clear that Mr. Fraunces or subsequent others lived there. It seems that in Washington’s day it was open day and night so my guess is he did live on the premises.) A large room on the second floor is said to be where Washington addressed his troops – it seems too small for that leaving us wondering how that worked. A firsthand account of the event is on display but also written on wall text for easy reading.
Arguably the reason we were there – said to be the space where Washington address his troops.A later rendering of the event on display.
The tavern was also used to house some of the governmental staff during that first Presidential term which was served in New York and not Washington DC. I think it housed foreign relations and another arm of government I have forgotten. There is a small special exhibit about the discussion of the British evacuating New York and the trails that were held for traitors to the American cause.
In culinary history, the restaurant is known as being among the first to have a la carte table services while others still only offered family style meals at large tables. As mentioned above, it was also open 24 hours a day – all making it a bit ground breaking in that sense.
Not surprisingly, images of Washington and ephemera abound on virtually every surface.
While the second floor has the one period room (also where you pay admission, usually $10 but only $1 yesterday for the holiday, a small shop there as well) and an exhibition space. The third floor are the larger galleries and a room set up auditorium style. (They were actually preparing for a lecture later that afternoon.) The exhibitions are largely reproductions of documents and a smattering of items. The old maps were of interest and some of the letters (the original of Hale’s last letter before he was captured and executed as a spy) are available to be read more easily online with a QR code.
Fewer actual ancient bits are on display than anticipated, but this very old desk/chair was one.
The physical space is a mishmash of period styles and bits. For example, the enormous original plank floors are only in the smallest area with a mix of wooden floors from different periods throughout. Early wallpaper is noted to be from an indeterminant early but later period. Ceilings are low and rooms are intimate – fireplaces in all the original rooms. However obviously the space has been renovated, constructed and reconstructed to make it (somewhat) accessible and work for modern displays.
It was easy to locate where we reside, about halfway down this map, given the islands and waterfront outline.
The displays, as mentioned, are a bit ricky ticky, if you need sophistication you will be disappointed. However, the museum appears to have a robust program of lectures, symposium and especially family activities and while it certainly attracts tourists it is clearly also a part of its community for those who live in the area. (Events around period games, quilts and story time are scheduled for the remainder of July.) I got the feeling that for some folks it is a regular neighborhood hang for food and drink.
More formal dining.En route to bar restaurant.
With that I would say the same about the food establishments. There are programs of live music most evenings and at least one of the bars is for walk ins only. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the prices are not touristy gouge-y, but actually quite average for New York City. I made a reservation through Open Table online and we were put in a long bar space in the front of the building. The other large dining room, running along the side of the building, is somewhat more formal.
Incongruously perhaps, soft rock music circa the 1990’s played (loud but not hideously so) in the bar space we occupied for lunch. Kim had a burger and fries and I had a blackened salmon sandwich with sweet potato fries. Kim had one of a number of non-alcohlic beers and I had a large (very good) extremely local Frances Tavern pale ale. While I was very tempted by the idea of a sticky toffee pudding (I generally cannot resist that description) I decided to be good and allow for the possibility of an ice cream later.
Holiday themed celebrants at the bar restaurant where we ate lunch.
The ice cream never materialized. After leaving Fraunces Tavern we attempted a visit to the nearby Seaport Museum but they had (mysteriously) opted to be closed for the Fourth. Our day ended with ferry mishaps as they decided to run the last ferry earlier than published and police barricades (anticipating crowds along the waterfront for the fireworks which wouldn’t start for many hours) kept us from hopping on the final one. So the day ended on the 4 train speeding uptown and ultimately a happy collapse in air conditioning and with cats as the conclusion to our holiday adventure.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today I find myself at a perch that used to be most familiar, Kim’s computer at the foot of his long drawing table. It is a somewhat superior spot to my usual view of a bookcase at my desk/work table behind where he is seated (even as I write, working away on this Saturday morning). This is one of those “slice of life here at Pictorama” posts.
Back at the commencement of Covid in March of ’20, a very basic beast of a laptop that I had purchased for work went into daily use at home for the next almost three years. (I have written several posts about that work from home period. A few can be read here and here.) That rather anonymous laptop died a slow death after taking a beating during those Covid years. I was very fond of it by then but it had developed the unfortunate habit of locking itself periodically a habit which it could not be broken of. Intervention made it meltdown completely. Rather than take another clunky Jazz at Lincoln Center owned laptop I purchased my own.
Early Covid desk set up with work laptop here.
I turned to a friend who has helped us with computer issues in the past and asked him to find me the lightest laptop possible. At time, January of ’23, my job at the animal hospital wasn’t even a glimmer in my eye yet and I assumed I would return to my domestic and international travel for Jazz at Lincoln Center and lugging a heavy laptop was exhausting. Bernie found me the lightest little laptop in the world – barely weighing more than my elderly iPad and keyboard at four pounds it is a basic but very usable little fellow. Although the travel has largely been to and from New Jersey, I never regret how very light it is, tucked into a bad or suitcase.
It was rebuilt and happened to also come in this sort of pretty rose gold color. It cost me $378. Since it was now my own computer once set up at my work space I migrated to it for everything and left my weekend morning perch at this one, where I had spent many a Saturday and Sunday writing to you all. There were adjustments to be made – most significantly a very small screen, the price of such a small, light laptop. Nonetheless, it has gotten me through many trips to New Jersey and has been my cheerful morning companion daily since its purchase.
Blackie as a hard working home office cat during Covid.
At first I missed sitting in this spot a bit. Looking at Kim rather than at the back of his head as we chat. I get to look out the window from here too. I am though, as I have opined before, very much a creature of habit so my routine has been upset and it leaves me out of sorts.
It is odd to me how attached we sometimes become to these anonymous bits of equipment we spend our days with. Not all of them mind you – some I have happily sent into oblivion. I have not been one much to name them or humanize them, but we spend time with them and unthinkingly store things on them we want to keep. We understand that they are always temporary but periodically we get caught. I don’t have a lot on the hard drive of that computer I don’t have elsewhere but it would be inconvenient to lose it.
Meanwhile, in other news, I have been fighting the good fight with a problem in my mouth for well over a year. Several surgeries and the most recent ending in (very) painful failure. This happened earlier this week. After the unexpected surgery I came home and fell into bed for several hours. When I finally woke up sufficiently at the end of the day to spend a half hour answering the most urgent work emails, I sat down at the computer and signed on and…a black screen. I shut it down and tried again. And again.
I do question, if I need to buy another laptop – would I buy a rebuilt inexpensive one again? I mean, I got my money’s worth in a sense. It is rebuilt so it makes it seem less disposable although as I probe I am not sure if that is true. I am open to suggestions and thoughts on this one.
Therefore, immediately following the writing of this off to the Geek Squad or u break it we fix it for a long morning of waiting and paying. The good news is that the pain in my mouth has started to abate which improves my mood for this venture considerably.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Oh the poor rejected lover kitty! His beloved caroling away with her paramour. So sad! Is she truly fickle? Did they etch their initials together previously in this tree trunk? Or are those the initials of the lovers he he walking by? Or was the affection all on his side? It was not meant to be.
Our third wheel is in a strange stance – partial fight and somewhat flight as the bottom half of him already seems to be walking away while the top half looks back. He wears a nice bow, unlike the singing lover, although Miss Kitty has a red collar on. The cat couple only have eyes for each other so they don’t even see him behind the tree – alas. I’m fairly sure that the toad stools growing at the base of the tree are symbolic. (Danger, poison and no less than Existential Dread according to the internet.)
This card has an embossed quality and was never mailed, nothing is written on the back. It was produced by Souvenir Postcards of New York and Berlin. I assume it was riding the crest of the Wain-esque cat craze of the post-Victorian era. Although anthropomorphic like his these cats are less pointedly satirical. Not sure who you’d send this card to where they wouldn’t feel like you were making some sort of point or message.
This card points to the whisp-o-will nature of cat affection and, shall we say, coupling of felines. I have limited personal experience of this beyond one cat, Winkie, that managed to evade our window of spaying post-adoption slip out and find a tabby with whom she had a brief liaison resulting in four kittens.
My sister Loren holding the mysterious Miss Winkie.
In retrospect, it is hard to associate those kittens with her as she made short shrift of her affiliation with them. We kept them, two gray, a tabby and a orange tiger. They became: Ping and Pong, Tigger, and Squash. Ping was a smart female and Pong a (very) dopey male. Tigger was a nice and very pretty tabby who sadly wandered off, was found once and did it again. (Our cats were free range in those days.)
Meanwhile Squash turned out to be a pale long drink of an orange cat – so long it was like he had an extra vertebrae or two. As a result would often sit on his haunches, like a human on the couch or in an armchair, comfortably bent completely in two. (My brother Edward once declared of Squash, Survives but never thrives, which seemed pointedly accurate. I have to admit that I have no memory of when Squash passed out of our lives as I wasn’t living home at the time but neither do I remember the report.)
Squash was in most other ways a rather undistinguished fellow living quietly in a multitude of cat personalities. (The kitten event had swelled the family total to unforeseen highs!) However, his distinguishing characteristic was his affection for one of the other cats. He was the rare cat in that house who would seek out another and sleep with his arms around him.
Peaches, one of the Jersey Five of cats, hates everyone (man and beast) it would seem, except the elderly cat Milty. She stealthily climbs up on a chair and curls up asleep with him. Milty, whose precise age is not known to me but a rough calculation has around 20, is largely the benevolent figurehead of senior male in that house. He likes to have a brief go at every dish of food as it is put down but otherwise he’s pretty chill.
Peaches, left, with the ever patient Milty.
Meanwhile, the role of senior cat largely belongs to the four year old enormous all black male, Beauregard or Beau. That said Blackie, of the visiting New York cats, believes himself to be senior cat when we are in NJ. Beau will take a certain amount of that since B doesn’t eat with them which would probably cause the imminent collapse of that small kingdom.
There are occasional blow ups and one took place last summer while I was on a call with the two Board Chairs from work. That said, if you are going to have a cat fight explosion while on an important work call its good that you work for an animal hospital. They are very forgiving about animal interruptions on zoom.
Blackie, looking entirely black since we can’t see the white star on his chest.
Going back to Winkie, who was a very smart little polydactyl calico cat. Having produced said kittens (in my parent’s closet, the carpet was never quite the same) and caring for them a scant amount of time she pretended that she had no memory of them nor where they came from and generally treated them with a superior attitude and disgust as interlopers we’d wished on her one day. Such is the attitude of cats.
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today’s treat is a clear example of the curios you will come across if you consistently spend time down a given rabbit hole of collecting as I tend to. Definitely in the more interesting than good, this old press photo caught my eye recently and was on its way to me lickety split. It had found its way from the East coast to Los Angeles, but it is back home in the tri-state area again.
Its eBay listing,1936 Disney Mickey Mouse Costume Atlantic City Steel Pier Midgets Felix the Cat, was designed to catch my attention a few different ways. And really, put that way, who could resist it?
Deconstructing that amazing sentence a bit – Felix? Um, I hate to be a critic but I think they were very safe from copyright infringement on that one. It is somewhat more illuminated by the press information stored on the back. Glued to the back, in a very old fashioned type, is the following breaking news:
Back of the photo.
YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN THAT CAT – That is about what Mickey Mouse was telling pretty Miss Betty Van Auken, New York visitor sunbathing on the Atlantic City Steel Pier. And Mickey’s girl friend Minnie Mouse listened, a little careful of Mickey around such beauty. Mickey and Minnie are members of the Steel Pier midget colony that helps to entertain guests on the ocean amusement structure. It has an index number, A16353 and it says, Ref. Dept. 7-28-36 N.E.A.
The Steel Pier seems to be the major amusement pier in Atlantic City and we will assume it has been ever thus. And while it seems sensible that this figure with Mickey was never meant to be Felix, it’s decidedly un-Minnie like as well, both mask and outfit. (And that suit looks hot for a July in Atlantic City too – she’d have been much happier in Minnie’s usual brief attire!) Mickey still looks a bit overdressed for July, but is in more traditional Mickey garb.
Comic book publication of Stuff of Dreams, #3, cover image.
It took a few times before the midget colony part sunk into my consciousness. Fascinating on its own, it also reminded me immediately of a story Kim did years ago, No Midgets in Midgetville which had roots in an actual town in northern NJ which is said to have originally been the winter home of a group of traveling circus midgets. (That story was published in his book, Alias the Cat which can be purchased on Amazon here or search eBay. Or you can find it in single comics under the name, Stuff of Dreams #3.)
Back cover of Stuff of Dreams #3.
We went and looked at the remains of the enclave of small (and occasionally tiny) houses as research for the story, an interesting morning jaunt with my ever patient father. In these days of tiny homes it is a bit hard to say how much truth was in the story, although some house did seem quite small. (The original story about it being Midgetville originated in the New York Times back in 2002 and can be found here although there are other references to the town online.) Regardless, the idea that circus performers (perhaps of all sizes) wintered there perhaps makes sense and it makes additional sense that perhaps some of those performers went no further than Atlantic City seaside for a summer gig.
Centerfold of Midgetville, Kim Deitch, Stuff of Dreams.
As for Miss Betty Van Auken of New York – it is hard to believe that even a veteran New Yorker showed up in Atlantic in a bathing suit, mincing along in high heels and lipstick for a day at the beach. At first I didn’t even bother googling her but it turns out that 1936 was her year. She has a Broadway role (Dodsworth) and film credits from that year, The Garden of Allah, Oasis Girl (uncredited), and a small part as a manicurist in Big Brown Eyes. The trail grows cold after that.
The weirdness of this duo continues to nag at me though. How odd to be on the seaside pier in roasting July heat, eating your cotton candy and have these two come gamboling up around you. The Stuff of Dreams indeed!
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: It’s a cute kitten post today with this somewhat scrappy looking fellow or gal. For no particular reason I am going to say fellow – something about the build. You have to look a bit carefully to see Sautera? printed at the bottom.
This card was never mailed and there is nothing written on the back. It was produced by Reutlinger Studio, Paris. These were popular photo postcard producers at the dawn of the 20th Century. (There are a few other postcards in my collection by this Peruvian born French photographer. Those posts and more about him can be found here and here. Reutlinger evidently lost an eye to a champagne cork – how very French! A very bad for the photography business as well. And also to note, I always wrap a champagne bottle in a towel before opening.)
When I purchased this card I was thinking that this kitty was perched on a martini style glass (falling into the drink sort of thing), but instead it appears to be a glass funnel of sorts. Try as I might, I cannot figure out what is at the bottom of the funnel, pebbles perhaps? (I considered olives when I thought this was a martini glass.)
It is tucked into the glass neck of a large bottle – and in fact, even if that kit is quite small the funnel and bottle must be quite large – it would have made a truly man-sized martini in retrospect. Having said that, toward the end of his life my father became very enamored of martinis and purchased a few very large martini glasses, but perhaps not quite cat-sized.
A quick translation of Sauterna? from the French is Jumping? I guess he is planning to since curling up on or in the rim of that funnel isn’t going to do much for him. He does have a thoughtful look on his little mug though – a tiny kitten, staring into the void.
There seems to have been a series of these cards and with this very cat, which I have found online and share below. The second one seems to have been more recently appropriated.
Cats are ace jumpers. They seem to understand not only their own overall capacity for the leap, but have the ability to size up distance and other factors which you can see get calculated in their brain. Those of us who live with cats have seen them study such a situation, sometimes resulting in a preliminary butt wiggle – the tail is essential to the balancing act of the cat – especially when it is a floor up trajectory. A cat rarely misses its mark with a jump – and are very embarrassed if they do. I had a little girl tuxie, Otto Dix, who seemed to just float upward. It was as if all she needed to do was think about being somewhere and land there.
And who hasn’t stood poised in a similar, if metaphorical, position? There have been a few notable times in my life where there was a leap to be made. I always think of leaving my job at the Metropolitan Museum to go to Jazz at Lincoln Center as an enormous leap – which it was. I almost broke my neck but I found my footing eventually.
The more recent vocational leap was to the animal hospital I raise money for and that was less dramatic, but a bit of a leap nonetheless. (Posts about those professional leaps of faith can be found here, here and here, although much of my time at Jazz was shared in the annals of this blog.) I am still finding my sea legs on that one so the jury remains out.
Bonus picture of Cookie and Blackie from early this morning – rare sleeping together pose!
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today’s postcard, celebrating a local summer spot where I grew up in New Jersey, seems like a fitting Memorial Day holiday kick-off card. I purchased it at the postcard show bonanza of a few months ago with the intention of framing it for the house in NJ where I am gathering a few early cards of local spots I love.
This one was mailed on August 8, 1923 from Atlantic Highlands at 11 AM. It was mailed to Mr. Robert Del Paso, 44 Est 98th Street, New York. Written on the back is a brief note, Best regards to you and your sister from Dorothy and Eugene.
The view shown here is the one that you now see from the ferry when it pulls in. It looks nothing like this now, a small public beach is at the landing and some low condos not far beyond. Boats dock nearby and restaurants and small businesses dot the edge of the water along with some houses, although you don’t see those right in this spot either, as it is largely in the shadow of a much larger bridge.
The approach to Atlantic Highlands via ferry from 2021.
The first time I took the ferry into Atlantic Highlands, the sense memory of that spot was amazing. On the occasions I would go sailing with my dad or on the creaking wooden fishing boat of my grandfather, the Imp, we would head first under one bridge and then the other and to the bay or ocean. The sense of history smacked me hard being on that spot of the water again.
I have touched on this Jersey shore enclave before, not long ago in a post about Bahr’s Restaurant which can be found here. I opined on the thoughts I had about living there at one time, and the history of that restaurant where I had what turned out to be a last birthday dinner with my sister, a few decades past now.
Atlantic Highlands, and it’s kissin’ cousin Highlands, abut the area of the shore I grew up in. (Highlands is the hamlet slightly further into the river side, Atlantic Highlands faces out toward the ocean and beyond.) However, while Sea Bright, a spit of land that adjoins it, was an almost daily destination, the Highlands while hard by, somehow were the route less taken. I believe that this was probably largely due to beach traffic and while being almost within shouting distance as the crow flies it was rarely the shortest way to go anywhere from Memorial Day through Labor Day.
The parking lot for the ferry, next to the small public beach and some condos.
Once I hit high school we made it part of our route when traffic died down late in the evening. We ate lobster rolls and drank beer at shacks at the edge of the river at the junction where the bay joins the river and the ocean. Also on our route was a movie theater that showed films recently fallen out of circulation for an admission of $1.00. Beyond that, expensive restaurants that hugged the shore and gave a view as far as Manhattan on a clear day and those were beyond our means.
Atlantic Highlands, as shown in this postcard, attaches to Sandy Hook beach (and now state park) via the bay. Not only has this quaint wooden bridge been replaced, but the concrete one of my childhood (which seemed plenty big at the time, bigger than its Sea Bright counterpart which required a draw bridge function for the passing parade of boats) was replaced very recently by a true behemoth of a bridge.
Moby’s lobster shack on the water.
The one in Sea Bright is also under reconstruction and I gather will no longer be the draw bridge of my childhood – it’s opening hourly in the summer was how we timed our days in the summer in order to avoid it and the traffic back-up it would cause. I had a boyfriend in high school who had a summer job working the bridge which was a great gig and the retirement job of numerous fishermen. I don’t know how, in retrospect, Ed got that job but many envied him it. I am sorry to say I never visited the tiny shack mid-bridge that was the man cave you stayed in if you worked the bridge.
The theater is evidently still there.
I’m also sorry to have to say that one of the people I spent the most hours with in Atlantic Highlands is gone now. A long former boyfriend, I had fallen out of touch with Sam Lutz, and found out via local connections that he died a few years ago.
I suspect I will eventually return to writing about this area. For some reason it lives in my memory in a way other places do not. However, for now, this rosy sun setting over the Highlands hills is a good place to leave Pictorama for the holiday weekend as I head out there shortly.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Since cats, both real and cartoon, are more or less my gig I’m surprised that I am only now learning about Bunz, the hardware store tabby, who rules the roost a few blocks away here in our Yorkville neighborhood at a place simply called New York Paint and Hardware. However, it turns out that Bunz is quite the neighborhood celebrity and somehow I have missed him entirely. Kim has had a nodding acquaintance with him on his morning walks, but says that to date, Bunz is usually being petted while getting his morning air so Kim has not actually met to pet him either. Although this establishment is within my territory, I tend to walk by in the evening or run in late in the afternoon of a weekend, I have not seen him. I feel remiss.
The hardware store in question – there is a mural devoted to NYC on the side which is hard to see – more sincere than good. I do wonder if it is the same guy.
There is a strange quality about living in New York which we all accept, but rarely discuss and that is one generally has a set path from your apartment out into the world – an unofficial number of blocks where you shop and eat locally and often you are more devoted to one direction than the other. When running I would hit the tip of the eastern point of the neighborhood and then down the south side which I got to know and because of work, I spend a lot of time walking south on York and First and know it well, but we mostly don’t go south to eat, get take out or shop. (Having previously worked at the Metropolitan Museum I also know the path west intimately but oddly this is a north south thing, not an east west thing.) I speak to people who live on 85th and typically never go north of 86th and I don’t find that unusual.
I have on occasion documented aspects of Friday night take out stroll here at Deitch Studio. (See my pre-pandemic post which was an ode to local take out and a Mexican place we were fond of. Read it here.) This is our walk north most Fridays, often veering west to Second Avenue after a stroll up First. On First I generally like to stop and look in the window of the junk store there. (Some excellent finds from this store have been documented and can be found here and here.) Kim peers a bit at a newish thrift store nearby too. Sometimes the kitties need some food from the pet store on that block and we’ll pick it up on the way.
Me as model – thank you Kim for the pic!
We tend to fiercely embrace our corner of this Yorkville neighborhood. We mourn the tearing down of a brownstone building resulting in the loss of a nice plant store on the corner, the demise of a take out place. The pandemic made us hyper aware of our neighborhood since we rarely left it for a year, but since then and with the effects of the Q line which opened in 2017, the neighborhood has become more popular and shifted. However, generally speaking it is a good corner of the universe, these few blocks of Manhattan all the way over by the river.
Window of the nearby junk store from a prior post.
And, since cats are my thing, I like to think I know a bit about where they reside in the nabe – those who sit in apartment windows daily on my path (I’m talking about you Mr. Tuxedo on the first floor of this building), and a smattering of those felines we think of as bodega cats, the working kitties of the area. Interesting to note that, to my knowledge, the few I am thinking of are all tabbies. Perhaps the tiger stripe of cats is the unofficial mascot of the Yorkville working puss? The only one of the three I have met is a charming youngster on York Avenue who lives in a Deli. I’m not sure that his name is known but I did just find him on a Google search while looking for the cat who evidently patrols the Gristedes on York nightly. His pleasure includes a tree outside the deli where pigeons occasionally perch to tempt him.
I only know of the Gristedes cat because someone I used to work with walks his young lab pup there nightly and the dog became fascinated with the cat in the window after hours on late night strolls. They have a joyous spitty, barking, hissy moment nightly. Mark looked into it and evidently found evidence that the cat is identified as an employee on some paperwork he stumble across in a professional capacity (yes, odd, I agree), although when asked his existence is routinely denied. He is a mouser incognito if extraordinaire as technically he is not allowed to live there.
I came home to this corner on First and 86 being torn down a few months ago.
This past Friday night on our way to pick up dinner (from a new place with an extraordinarily large and diverse menu called Soup and Burger on Second), I noticed this t-shirt in the window of the hardware and paint store on the corner of 87th and First. I pointed it out to Kim and we agreed it is well done.
To backtrack a bit, I have lived in Yorkville long enough that I remember a few decades back (30 years evidently) when this store was the new kid on the block. Ostensibly a paint store with a bit of hardware it did not seem especially useful and I ignored it for a long time. It replaced, to my vague memory, an electronics store which repaired televisions and VCR’s and I had utilized that service. (Yep, seriously dating myself here although we actually still own a VCR/DVD player or two, or three.)
View of First Avenue from inside Taco Today, taken waiting for our Friday night order back in ’19.
Anyway, I don’t know that I darkened their door for years. Slowly however, the hardware aspect took over and it developed a less chain oriented more neighborhood vibe. They are now depended upon for our general local hardware needs (they are the last of several standing) and a look at their website earlier today reveals that I can get my knives sharpened there and I think I will pay them a visit for that. It is funny though how even a chain store can evolve into a neighborhood joint.
So evidently Bunz, this sprightly tabby, rules the roost over there. I suspect that hardware stores must keep some mouse friendly stock which requires the services of such a kitty – planting soil and whatnot. I know of a few Lowe’s and Home Depots that sport Instagram accounts for their flagship cat employees. (Notably there is Leo, another tabby, in a Home Depot in Mt. Laurel, NJ and Francine, a calico mix at a Lowe’s in North Carolina.) Garden supplies and a very old building in the case of our neighborhood store which probably makes it a mousy delight.
Francine, the Lowe’s catLeo, the Home Depot kitty
We didn’t stop on Friday night but I made a mental note to come back on the weekend so we went on Saturday and yes – they were selling the t-shirts and I realized that there was a big stack, organized by size, on a rack by the window. The Bunz tee cost $20 (Kim paid – thank you Kim!) and I got a large but they run a tad small. I asked about the artist and the young man waiting on me just said Shawn which makes me think maybe it is someone else who works there, a nascent illustrator.
It’s a bold design and has hardware cattitude going for it. Bunz sports workman’s overalls, hightops and shades – a cool cat. Both his overalls and his top (striped like him) have his name. Paws in pockets – he is all business. He appears to have a can of paint and brush in front of him and the sign for the store behind him – a decent rendition of the window looking in. Kim says he would personally have made more of the second color and I tend to agree, but these are artistic choices, right? I hoped that maybe their website or account would have his origin story and perhaps where his name came from but alas, currently not.
Bunz from their IG accountHis fame is growing.
So finally I share photos of the real Bunz. He’s clearly a beloved member of the team there and what he might lack in a typical home life seems to be largely made up for by being a working cat with an appreciative following here in Yorkville. Long may he remain at the helm of New York Paint and Hardware.
Pam's Pictorama 