Crying for those we don’t know

Posted on by gcottraux

I am a big fan of the wonderfully crafted NBC drama This Is Us. It makes me cry pretty much every episode. The soundtrack music is well-chosen, and the depiction of past decades makes me warm with nostalgia.

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The cast of This Is Us.

The show is a touching family saga as well as a commentary on issues such as fat shaming, racism, depression, alcoholism (well-depicted, I must say, which isn’t always true), and other important topics. As I have been hearing from more and more people, arguably the heart of the show is father Jack Pearson, played heartbreakingly by Milo Ventimiglio.

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Actor Milo Ventimiglio.

Jack Pearson is a man with demons, he is flawed, but he is a good man. And he loves his family more than anything.

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The young Pearson family.
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Grown up Pearson family.

As a sensitive person who cries at the silliest things, the recent October 16th episode of the show that was devoted to Jack’s  backstory and his volunteering to go to Vietnam in 1971 had me teary-eyed from the get-go. I still tear up when I think back on it. It made me unbearably sad, not just for the characters on the show, but for every young person sent off to war, facing the possibility of their own death, leaving their loved ones behind.

Jack in Vietnam group photo
Jack (in front of the star on the vehicle’s door) with his company in Vietnam.

A big part of what made the story so moving was Jack’s reason for volunteering in the first place. He could have sat out the war with his 4-F classification, using his heart condition to justify not going. But he’s been told all his life that his job is to protect his little brother Nicky. His bond with and love for Nicky is fierce. When Nicky is drafted and  things go badly for him from the beginning, Jack manages to bypass his medical status through a trick his doctor reluctantly passes on to him, and off he goes. It’s not a spoiler that Nicky doesn’t survive. That’s been known from the beginning of the series. It makes it that much harder to watch as Jack goes, since we know that he won’t be able to save Nicky in the end.

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Nicky and Jack.

The episode is so well-crafted, written by series creator Dan Fogelman with Vietnam veteran and author Tim O’Brien, most known for his influential and thought-provoking short story The Things They Carried.

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Wrier Tim O’Brien in Vietnam, 1969.
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Writer Tim O’Brien.

The music that stood out to me and sent me down a rabbit hole of research and music purchasing was Tom Rush’s version of Child’s Song. It is haunting in the show’s context of a young man leaving home for war. The song of growing up and moving on, written by Murray McLauchlan and released by Tom Rush on his 1970 album Tom Rush, will have different meanings depending on your age, family circumstances, etc. Tom Rush has been reported to have said that it took him 3 months after recording it to be able to sing it in public without starting to cry. It’s that real.

 

Goodbye momma goodbye to you too pa
Little sister you’ll have to wait a while to come along
Goodybye to this house and all its memories

We just got too old to say we’re wrong
Got to make one last trip to my bedroom
Guess I’ll have to leave some stuff behind

It’s funny how the same old crooked pictures
Just don’t seem the same to me tonight
There ain’t no use in shedding lonely tears mamma

There ain’t no use in shouting at me pa
I can’t live no longer with your fears mamma
I love you but that hasn’t helped at all

Each of us must do the things that matter
All of us must see what we can see
It was long ago you must remember

You were once as young and scared as me
I don’t know how hard it is yet mamma
When you realize you’re growing old

I know how hard is not to be younger
I know you’ve tried to keep me from the cold
Thanks for all you done it may sound hollow

Thank you for the good times that we’ve known
But I must find my own road now to follow
You will all be welcome in my home

Got my suitcase I must go now
I don’t mind about the things you said
I’m sorry Mom I don’t know where I’m going

Remember little sister look ahead
Tomorrow I’ll be in some other sunrise
Maybe I’ll have someone at my side

Mamma give your love back to your husband
Father you’ve have taught we well goodbye
Goodbye Mamma goodbye to you too pa
Goodbye momma goodbye to you too pa

Little sister you’ll have to wait a while to come along
Goodybye to this house and all it’s memories
We just got too old to say we’re wrong

Got to make one last trip to my bedroom
Guess I’ll have to leave some stuff behind
It’s funny how the same old crooked pictures

Just don’t seem the same to me tonight
There ain’t no use in shedding lonely tears mamma
There ain’t no use in shouting at me pa

I can’t live no longer with your fears mamma
I love you but that hasn’t helped at all
Each of us must do the things that matter

All of us must see what we can see
It was long ago you must remember
You were once as young and scared as me

I don’t know how hard it is yet mamma
When you realize you’re growing old
I know how hard is not to be younger

I know you’ve tried to keep me from the cold
Thanks for all you done it may sound hollow
Thank you for the good times that we’ve known

But I must find my own road now to follow
You will all be welcome in my home
Got my suitcase I must go now

I don’t mind about the things you said
I’m sorry Mom I don’t know where I’m going
Remember little sister look ahead

Tomorrow I’ll be in some other sunrise
Maybe I’ll have someone at my side
Mamma give your love back to your husband
Father you’ve have taught me well goodbye
Goodbye Mamma goodbye to you too pa

 

The feeling of sadness, despair, and gloom I felt might have been compounded by the realization, after watching the magnificent Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary series The Vietnam War that aired on PBS starting in September, 2017, of how little I knew about the conflict in Vietnam and its repercussions, about the lies behind the war, and the needless loss of so many lives. The soldiers who survived came back forever changed and were met with hostility. When I watched the series, I just wanted to curl up in bed under the covers and never come out.

Burns Vietnam

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick
Lynn Novick and Ken Burns.

The feelings that The Vietnam War, This Is Us, and Child’s Song wrought in me reminded me the disturbing and, for me, life changing, art exhibition I worked on when I was with the now-defunct Copia: The American Center for Wine, Food & the Arts in Napa, California.

Copia

As the assistant registrar in the art exhibitions department, it was my task to count and document the condition of each work of art displayed in any exhibition. In about 2003, we presented a show of artist Julie Green’s painted plates, The Last Supper, in which she painstakingly depicts the last meal requests of real death row prisoners who’ve been executed. Talk about a difficult subject…

Julie Green
Oregon-based artist Julie Green and The Last Supper.

Last I checked, the plate collection was up to over 700. That represents 700 real people who have been put to death by various state governments. People who knew they would die, who knew when they would die, and how. Who ordered their last meals, and either ate them or didn’t (I wouldn’t be able to), and then prepared for their executions. As I handled each plate, reading on the backs the locations and dates of the executions and looking at the images of the requested meals, I felt sad, sick, hopeless, ashamed. My intention is not to start a political debate about the death penalty. What I am trying to convey is that sense of empathy for another human being, of trying to understand what it’s like for someone facing their own mortality. I talk about practicing kindness, compassion, and empathy a lot, not because it comes naturally for me but because I have to work at it. Yes, the people (predominantly but not all men) whose meals are illustrated in the plates were convicted of horrible crimes. I am not defending them. I am lamenting a society in which we can justify taking the lives of others.

Across from the Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BART) station in nearby Lafayette, California are the white crosses on the hill that can be seen from Highway 24. An anti-war memorial, each cross represents an American soldier killed in Iraq or Afghanistan since 2006. The last count I found was close to 8,000 crosses on the 2.7 acre hillside. It’s hard to capture the feeling it engenders when seen. It’s vast and beautiful and disturbing and sobering all at the same time.

Lafayette Peace Memorial

I honestly don’t know how to shake off the feelings of despair and hopelessness. One of the things I strive for these days is positivity and cheerfulness. But you can’t always be positive and cheerful , can you? There are bad things in the world, and despite my desire to bury my head in the sand and avoid anything unhappy, I feel like I have an obligation to increase my awareness of what is happening in my neighborhood, my country, my world. It is only with knowledge that we can make change.

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P.S. Maybe it will cheer you up to look back on a younger Milo Ventimiglio, who was Rory’s love interest Jess Mariano on another favorite show, Gilmore Girls, in 2002. I was definitely one of the show’s fans who hoped Rory would end up with Jess. He was the misunderstood, brooding bad boy, just the right counterpart to too-good-to-be-true Rory.

GILMORE GIRLS, Milo Ventimiglia, Alexis Bledel, 'Lorelai's Graduation Day', (Season 2), 2000-2007, p

Maybe that’s what I need–no, not a bad boy, but to watch some Gilmore Girls as an antidote to my “the world sucks” blues. A little time in fictional Stars Hollow, where everyone knows each other and you can drink coffee to your heart’s content at Luke’s Diner. Escapism at its best!

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As always, peace and hugs.

So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright

Posted on by gcottraux

I’m in a Frank Lloyd Wright state of mind at the moment. I go through passions, as any regular reader might have noticed, and right now I’m obsessed with all things FLW. I’m rereading the T. C. Boyle 2009 novel, The Women, about the, shall we say, turbulent relationships FLW (1867-1959) had with the various women in his life. He was not an easy man and his relationships were messy and complicated. In his era, he was in fact scandalous and reviled by some for his flauting of social mores, but today no one would really think it quite that outrageous that he left wives for mistresses. He also was perennially in debt (one of his nicknames was “Slow Pay Frank”), a surprise given his major success.

The Women

 

Boyle himself lives in a FLW designed  home in Montecito, California, which I am sure has a lot to do with his interest in FLW. As a design student at UC Davis back in the day, of course we studied FLW and his enormous impact, and I fnally saw some of his drawings, furniture, and glass designs in person when I made it to the Art Institute of Chicago a few years ago.

 

Author TC Boyle at his home in Montecito, CA.
Novelist T. C. Boyle in his FLW-designed home in Montecito, California.

But my fascination goes back to another of my childhood memories of music in our house, this time from the iconic album Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970) by Simon and Garfunkel.

 

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This album reeived some heavy rotation time on the turntable, along with Carole King’s Tapestry.

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There are, of course, many wonderful songs on Bridge Over Troubled Water beside the title track: The Boxer, Cecilia, Bye Bye Love, The Only Living Boy in New York, among others. But the song that always caught my attention when I was a 9-year old, was, oddly, So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright. I didn’t really have any idea who FLW was, but the song seemed so sad and made me want to know who this man was.

 

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The story goes that Simon and Garfunkel (or as I like to call them, Paul and Art) were renting a house in the Hollywood Hills in 1969 while working on the Bridge Over Troubled Water album. Art saw one of the FLW homes in the area and suggested to Paul that he write a song. What I didn’t know was that Art, smarter than I realized, majored in architecture at Columbia University just in case music didn’t work out for him. Not a bad Plan B. Theories suggest that it’s also Paul’s goodbye song to Art, as the duo broke up after Bridge Over Troubled Water was released. Note the line “all of the nights we’d harmonize till dawn”.

 

 

FLW was undoubtedly a genius, and his designs are amazing. He not only designed the buildings as an architect, he also worked on the details of interior design, including the furnishings, textiles, and art pieces, and even mailboxes. He was known to design the clothing for the women in his life. Was he controlling? I imagine so. And that spilled over into his personal life.

 

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The bit that’s sticking with me at the moment is a scene in the book The Women in which FLW declares himself a pacifist, a conscientious objector to war. That’s cool. I consider myself a pacifist as well. But I’m not a bully, and FLW seems to have been a big one. I’m not a genius either, so…

Much of the novel The Women takes place around Taliesin, FLW’s studio and farm built and rebuilt (plagued by fires and tragedy) in rural Wisconsin, now maintained by the Taliesen Preserve.

 

taliesin
FLW at Taliesin in 1911, when the house was first was completed.

Can one be a pacifist and a bully both? I suppose so. We are, if nothing, complex and contradictory creatures, we human beings. He had a vision for how he wanted things to be, and brooked no nonsense from those around him, but he wasn’t violent and held a deep appreciation for other cultures. Except when it came to food. He was very early 20th century mid-Western in his taste for basic meat, potatoes, and gravy. None of that fancy French stuff for him (one of the many bones of contention with his Southern belle and Francophile second wife Miriam Noel Wright). When he traveled in Japan while working on the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, he had a hard time with what I think of as an amazing cuisine.

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The Imperial opened in 1923 and was demolished in 1968. The entrance lobby was saved an reconstructed at the Meiji Mura architecture museum in Nagoya.

I also think of FLW as an artist, sensitive to atmosphere and color and harmony. We have a model of one of his early designs, the Romeo and Juliet windmill, built for his aunts in 1896 in the town of Wyoming, Wisconsin. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the name of the artist who made the model. When I bought it from him at an Oakland gallery, he was working in the exhibitions department at the Oakland Museum of California. I’ll post it when I recall it. He is a talented artist who deserves credit for his work.

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The Romeo and Juliet windmill.
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Our model of the windmill, photo by Robert Ward.

 

One of Wright’s most famous buildings is Falling Water in Pennsylvania, completed in 1935.

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Falling Water

 

The sesquicentennial of FLW’s birth was celebrated this year on June 8th. This feature by Jay Jones in the Los Angeles Times provides a nice overview of his work: From New York to California, celebrating the 150th anniversary of Frank Lloyd Wright’s birth. One of his more famous and first California homes is Hollyhock House in the East Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Built for oil heiress Aline Barnsdall in in 1919-1921, the house is now part of the Barnsdall Art Park.

 

hollyhock living room
The living room at Hollyhock House. Wright was a pioneer of open living spaces, with the hearth at the center of the home.

Yes, I can see a man who has the kind of vision for open, warm, harmonious spaces and the surrounding of ourselves with beauty as being a man who wants peace and harmony for the world at large. The contradiction is in his very messy and unharmonious personal life. The saddest and most tragic episode was that of his mistress, Martha “Mamah” Borthwick Cheney. Mamah and her husband were clients and Oak Park, Illinois, neighbors of FLW and his first wife, Catherine “Kitty” Wright (1871-1959).

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The Wright Family in 1898, Frank on far right, Kitty in center with infant Lloyd.

FLW built Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, for Mamah, a place where he and she could get away from the press and turmoil caused by his leaving his wife and 6 children and her leaving her husband and 2 children. A disgruntled workman at Taliesin murdered Mamah and 6 others (including her 2 children, on a summer visitation at the time) and set fire to Taliesin in 1914. Distraught, FLW was vulnerable and became entangled with the quite dramatic and mentally unstable opiate addict Miriam Noel, his 2nd wife after Kitty relented and granted a divorce.

Mamah
Mamah Cheney (1869-1914)
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Miriam Noel Wright (1869-1930)

His relationship with Miriam was the most turbulent and fractious, and their divorce battle was a media storm of accusations and paparrazi around FLW’s mistress and later 3rd (and final) wife Olgivanna Lloyd Wright (1898-1985).

Olgivanna
Olgivanna Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1968.

 

FLW was quite proud of his Welsh heritage. The name of Taliesin, and the later Taliesin West, means “shining brow”, and comes from the name of the 6th century Welsh poet, who in Welsh legends is portrayed as a wizard, prophet, and companion to King Arthur.

 

taliesin poet

 

Seems fitting in that FLW can be said to have been a wizard in his own way in the arts, but not in his relationships, and defnitely not with money, except to make it disappear.

Whether Paul Simon was writing his song as a literal tribute to Frank Lloyd Wright or using the name Frank Lloyd Wright to refer to Art Garfunkel, it is a poignant song. And it led me on a journey of discover around FLW and his life. And since I am obsessed at the moment, next up in my book queue is the novel Loving Frank (2007) by Nancy Loran, the story of Mamah and FLW from Mamah’s perspective.

 

Loving Frank

 

Nancy Horan
Writer Nancy Horan

 

I have no plans to travel to New YTork any time soon, but when I do, I will make a pilgrimmage to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, itself a work of art and completed in 1959, the same year FLW died at age 89. True to form, the estate he left behind took years to settle.

 

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Love Frank, hate Frank, or puzzled by Frank and his life, you have to admit he led an interesting life.

 

Tom Wright and his wife, Etsuko Saito, live in a Bethesda home designed by his grandfather, Frank Lloyd Wright.
The signature red tile placed on the facades of Wright’s buildings.

 

 

 

Alternately purring and spitting

Posted on by gcottraux

Yes, the title could refer to a kitten, like little Jarito (I don’t name them!), the current foster kitten in residence.

Jarito
Jarito. I call him JJ.

 

But what I was thinking of with the words “alternately purring and spitting” was Southern writer Eudora Welty and Southern women in American literature. That so aptly describes Southern women to me.

garden
Eudora Welty (1909-2001)

 

I had heard of Eudora Welty.  GRITS (Girls Raised in the South) tend to look out for Southern writers.

GRITS

 

Even though I’ve lived most of my life in California, I spent my childhood years in Atlanta, Georgia and was raised by proud Southern women. Yes, there are a myriad of social justice and human rights issues to discuss when one brings up the Southern United States, but there is also a unique and sometimes beautiful culture that I wax nostalgic over, even though I didn’t necessarily experience it.

welty_why_i_live_at_po

But what led me to Eudora Welty and a fascination with her was hearing actress Stockard Channing read Welty’s short story “Why I Live at the P.O.” (written in 1941) on Selected Shorts, one of my favorite NPR podcasts.

American actress, Stockard Channing
Actress Stockard Channing.

The story is hilarious and poignant and so very Southern. The characters have names like Papa-Daddy, Uncle Rondo, and Stella-Rondo. The narrator is Sister. When I heard the story read aloud, I felt right at home! The story was published in her book A Curtain of Green and Other Stories. Despite its quirky, humorous overtones and absurd (or not, you decide) characters, there is an undertone of isolation and bitterness in Sister’s narration of the 4th of July holiday in small town Mississippi. The P.O. refers to the post office; Sister is the town’s postmistress.

 

curtain

You can read the story here or listen here, if the links work. It’s well worth the $2.99 to buy your own download if the audio link doesn’t work. I tried, but sometimes I fail!

Welty herself was born and died in Jackson, Mississippi. In addition to being a writer, she was also a talented photographer, capturing the lives of the rural poor for the Works Progress Administration during the Depression of the 1930s.

 

Her photographic work is being shown at the North Carolina Museum of Art in the exhibition Looking South: Photographs by Eudora Welty, on display until September 3, 2017. Art critic John Szarkowski wrote:

“Like those of [Helen] Levitt, Welty’s photographs do not show us the only truths of her subjects’ lives; perhaps they show us only the rarest and most evanescent truths, in which case we are the more grateful for these proofs of their existence.” 

Best known for her short stories, she also published 5 novels. She never married or had children, and kept her life mostly private. Her stories focus on individual lives and stories, using local color and humor to convey sometimes stifling environments and families.

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Illustration by Ryan Sheffield for The Eudora Welty Portrait Reader.

 

As described on the website The Bitter Southerner:

Why Welty? For a lot of us who grew up in the South and liked words, Welty represented not only what we knew, capturing the characters and cadences of our region, but also the range of what was possible — telling honest stories about a place that continues to struggle and progress.

As President Jimmy Carter put it when he presented Welty the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980: “Eudora Welty’s fiction, with its strong sense of place and triumphant comic spirit, illuminates the human condition. Her photographs of the South during the Depression reveal a rare artistic sensibility. Her critical essays explore mind and heart, literary and oral tradition, language and life with unsurpassed beauty. Through photography, essays, and fiction, Eudora Welty has enriched our lives and shown us the wonder of the human experience.”

 

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One can visit Eudora Welty’s home and amazing garden in Jackson. The garden was created by Welty’s mother, Chestina Welty, in 1925 and carefully restored by garden restoration consultant Susan Haltom.

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Eudora Welty’s mother, Chestina tends her roses.
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Eudora Welty’s garden.

Welty’s home is a National Historic Landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places. Eudora lived there from 1925, when she was 16 years old, until her death in 2001. It is located at 1119 Pinehurst Street in Jackson. She gifted the home to the State of Mississippi and it is a museum of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

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1119 Pinehurst Street, Jackson, Mississippi.

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I myself am not a gardener. I love the IDEA of gardening, but the REALITY of gardening is another story.

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If you are at all intrigued by the life and work of Eudora Welty, please check out the Eudora Welty Foundation. You don’t have to be one of us GRITS to appreciate her writing or photography. Or of any of the others who I would add to the pantheon of great Southern women writers. Clockwise from upper left: Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Conner, Kate Chopin, Alice Walker, and Zora Neale Hurston. There are many more; these are just a very few.

 

Hopefully you feel inspired to read, write, or take some photographs. Or dig in your garden. Or whatever makes you happy, be it painting, cooking, sewing, etc. They can all be therapeutic activities, good for your mental health and sense of well-being. Even observing creativity is good for you–reading, listening to music, or going to a museum. According to the lifestyle website Verily, such activities:

  • Relieve stress
  • Increase and renew brain function
  • Help prevent Alzheimer’s
  • Improve mood
  • Cultivate your social life

So instead of going to the gym, I think I’ll go read a book. In the garden. With some music. Getting healthy!

painting
Painting by Niels Frederik Schiøttz-Jensen (1855–1941)

 

 

 

Oh, to be Queen (all 5 feet 0 inches of me)

Posted on by gcottraux

I don’t really have a desire to rule a queendom. Okay, maybe I do a little bit. My inner 10-year old does still daydream of crowns and sceptres and beautiful gowns and having all of the coffee and chocolate I want. And kittens everywhere. And peace on earth. And rooms full of books. And time to read them.

my throne
The throne room in Genevieve-landia.

 

But who doesn’t have those daydreams?

Queen for a Day

 

My beautiful sister Cathy was Homecoming Queen at Druid Hills High School. She looked so glamorous in her gown and sash, wearing the tiara, and carrying roses. Her beaming boyfriend (later husband) stood proudly at her side. My equally beautiful sister Ellen raced across the football when Cathy’s crowning was announced, as excited as anyone. I could only dream.

By the time I got to high school, it was clear the title wouldn’t pass down to me. I was a bookish, quiet wallflower. I never was asked out on a date or to the prom. I pretended I didn’t care.

i-shouldve-been-homecoming-queen-but-im-over-it

 

A popular song in the 1970s was Seals and Crofts King of Nothing. I actually managed to use it a reference in an essay at the end of my senior year. It was something about how I saw my future. I got an A, and the teacher read it to the class. I was heavily influenced by J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951), the paean to teen angst and alienation, of course.

Seals and Crofts
Seals and Crofts.

King lyrics

 

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I was trying to be all Bohemian and anti-preppy. I made dresses out of fabric remnants on sale from the bin at the local fabric store (there were such things then) and quit eating meat. I dreamed of going to Mount Holyoke with the other girls like me, and being like one of the characters in Wendy Wasserstein’s play Uncommon Women and Others (1977), which I saw as a teleplay in 1978, starring Jill Eikenberry, a young  and upcoming actress named Meryl Streep, and Swoosie Kurtz. If you can find it, watch it!

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What has renewed my queenly aspirations? Recently, Bob and I binge-watched the Netflix series The Crown. So good! I got to Googling Princess Margaret, and for some reason looked up how tall she was–5’2″. So of course, I had to look up Queen Elizabeth II–5’4″ (maybe shorter now that she’s 91 years old; we tend to shrink as we age).

The Crown.jpg

It made me happy to realize these women were on the small side. I am 5′ 0″. My mother was 5′ 2″.  There are a lot of average height and tall people in my family; we women of small stature are the anomolies. I’m fine with that. I’ve never wanted to be tall. But queen? Maybe.

Queenly and queen-size are reference to large women in the fashion industry. I am in the petites category. Sadly, a lot of petites clothing looks like it was made for little girls, not adult women. I imagine queen-size runs to the matronly, if designers and their stereotypes are at play in other size categories. Designers–get real!

Anyway, shortly after we finished The Crown, we started watching Victoria on PBS. Also excellent! There are many references early on to Victoria (1819-1901) being too small and too short (and too young) to be queenly. That piqued my interest! I Googled. Queen Victoria was–get ready for it–5′ 0″ tall! I am vindicated. I can be queen!

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Queen Victoria at age 24, portrait by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1842.

 

Victoria reigned from 1837 to her death in 1901. She inherited the throne at age 18. As depicted in the costume drama, she had to be feisty and stand up for herself to be taken seriously. Now it is with great seriousness that we picture her.

The Queen 1887
Queen Victoria in 1887.

 

And sing of her. The song by Leonard Cohen (1972) comes to mind. I won’t pretend to understand the lyrics. But it sounds serious.

 

Of course, as portrayed by Jenna Coleman (5′ 2″), she is heartbreakingly lovely and delicate looking. And spunky.

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Actually, it’s pretty good casting when one sees portraits of the young Victoria. Not quite as lovely, no, but there is a similarity.

1842 portrait Franz Xaver Winterhalter
1842 portrait of Victoria, Franz Xaver Winterhalter.

 

Once down the rabbit hole, I had to know how tall other queens had been. Elizabeth I is estimated to have been about 5′ 4″ as well. One of my favorite queens to read about is Anne Boleyn (1501-1536), the ill-fated second wife (1533-1536) of Henry VIII and mother of Elizabeth I (1533-1603).

Anne Boleyn
Anne Boleyn
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The “Darnley Portrait” of Elizabeth I, c. 1575.

Anne Boleyn’s body was exhumed in the 19th century (I try not to think about that too much), and she was estimated by a Dr. Mouat to be between 5′ 0′ and 5′ 3″. (Insert inevitable joke about “with or without her head” here.) I first became intrigued with Anne Boleyn from the 1969 film, Anne of the Thousand Days, with Genevieve Bujold (5′ 4″) playing the queen.

Genevieve B
Canadian actress Genevieve Bujold as Anne Boleyn in 1969.

After watching the series Wolf Hall (2015), another excellent drama based on the Hilary Mantel novel of 2009, I decided to read up on Anne, who was portrayed somewhat less sympathetically than in Anne of the Thousand Days.

Conincidentally, Claire Foy (also 5′ 4″), who portrays Elizabeth II in The Crown, played Anne Boleyn in Wolf Hall.

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Claire Foy as Anne Boleyn.

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After struggling a bit through the Mantel novel, I decided to go a little, shall we say, more readable, with Philippa Gregory’s book, The Other Boleyn Girl (2001), told from the perspective of Anne’s sister Mary.

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I know there is a movie version of The Other Boleyn Girl, but I just can’t get behind Natalie Portman (5′ 3″) as Anne and Scarlett Johansson (5′ 3″; I thought she’d be taller) as Mary. Don’t ask me why; I’m not sure.

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My paternal grandfather’s Aunt Genevieve was Queen–Queen of Mardi Gras in 1888.

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Genevieve Cottraux, 1888.

I have royal blood, so to speak. Do I wear the crown well? Maybe that’s why I like a good headband so much; it’s kinda like a crown. Combine a headband with cat ears, and there I am!

 

I’ll be a kind a benevolent queen. Genevieve-landia will be a happy place of peace and harmony. The motto will be Peace and Hugs. I tried inserting this in a Latin translator and got this:

pacem et cubantem piis foveamus amplexibus

Peace and Hugs is a lot easier. No need for Latin.

By the way, Genevieve Cottraux of 1888–her father was a coffee merchant and her uncle was a confectioner. So my royal blood includes coffee and chocolate. I’m taking applications for Royal Barista and Royal Chocolatier. These are appointments of the utmost importance.

Until my coronation, you can find me wherever there are books, kittens, coffee, and chocolate. Wait, that sounds like home.

 

Mary Pickford, the Girl with the Curls (and the cat, and the cool Google doodle)

Posted on by gcottraux

I don’t usually pay attention to the ever-changing Google doodle. I don’t always get it, not being all that culturally hip, and I am often on a Google mission that keeps me from lingering on the home page. April 8 was a day on which I did linger. I was attracted to the blue background, the vintage female figure with the movie camera, and of course, the cat on the figure’s shoulder.

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Who was the woman, a woman I immediately wanted to be? I clicked. April 8 would have been Mary Pickford’s 125th birthday. I realized I knew very little about Mary Pickford. I had a vague idea of her being a silent-film era damsel in distress, an early cinematic American Sweetheart. But she was so much more than that.

Here is the Google blurb:

 

    • Lights, camera, action! Today’s doodle honors the “Queen of the Movies,” Mary Pickford. An actress, a film director, and a producer, Mary Pickford proved that actors weren’t relegated to careers in front of the camera. She co-founded the film studio United Artists and was one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

      Before she became one of the most powerful women who has ever worked in Hollywood, she was “the girl with the curls,” and one of the most beloved stars of the silent film era. She appeared in as many as 50 films per year, and eventually negotiated wages that were equal to half of each of her films’ profits. She went on to demand full creative and financial control of her films, a feat still unheard of to this day.  

      She used her stardom to bring awareness to causes close to her heart. She sold Liberty Bonds during World War I, created the Motion Picture Relief Fund, and revolutionized the film industry by giving independent film producers a way to distribute their films outside the studio system. She won an Academy Award for Best Actress, for her role in Coquette (1929), and an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 1976.

      Today, we pay tribute to Mary Pickford’s enterprising leadership on what would be her 125th birthday.

      MaryPickford

      Born in 1892 in Toronto as Gladys Marie Smith, she began in a traveling theater company at age 7, with her family, and was known as Baby Gladys Smith.

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      In 1908, a producer gave her the name Mary Pickford, changing her middle name Marie to Mary, and using her mother’s maiden name, Pickford. She appeared in her first film in 1909. 

      It was her performance in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm in 1917 that finally gave her the fame and fortune that she built on to become the Queen of Hollywood.

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      This is from her first talking picture, and the one for which she won an Oscar, Coquette (1929). She is said to have been dismayed at hearing the sound of her own voice.

       

      In her autobiography, Sunshine and Shadow (1955), she wrote that as a young girl in Toronto, she would buy a single rose and eat the petals, believing the beauty, color, and perfume would become part of her.

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      Here she is in 1976 receiving her honorary Oscar; I was dismayed at the zebra skin rug in the foyer at her home Pickfair, but more on that in a bit. It’s a bit sad to watch but remember she is 84 years old in the video clip.

       

 

Pickfair, the estate where she lived in Beverly Hills until her death in 1979, was a gift to her from second husband Douglas Fairbanks.

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Sadly, so-called actress Pia Zadora (“Who?” I can hear you ask) razed the house in 1990, having purchased it in 1988 from Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Russ. In its place, she build a “Venetian-style palazzo”, eventually claiming after much criticism that she did so because the house was haunted, not by the ghost of Mary but by one of Douglas Fairbanks’ mistresses. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. said in a public statement after hearing that the house had been destroyed, “I regret it very much. I wonder, if they were going to demolish it, why they bought it in the first place.” In its heyday, Pickfair was second only to the White House in American house fame.

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Pia Zadora, literal home wrecker.

Zadora sold the “palazzo” (17 bedrooms, 30 bathrooms) in 2006 to Korean businessman Cory Hong. It was listed for sale again in 2008, with an asking price of $60 million.

Despite the zebra skin rug, which seems much more Pia Zadora than Mary Pickford to me, made me think about Ms. Pickford and animals. Many images of her include animals, particularly dogs and cats, but also rabbits and birds.

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Of course this one is my favorite.
Mary Pickford

I wonder, even though in some images I found she is wearing fur, if that is also of the era (like the zebra skin rug), and if she was in fact an animal lover. I feel she might be a kindred spirit.

She was a trailblazer, and even today not many women have the creative control and power she had.

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American woman finally get the right to vote in 1920. Canadian women first received the right in 1916 in Manitoba. The last Canadian province on board was Quebec in 1940.

 

 

I’m never going to be an actress or a director or a producer or any kind of “powerhouse”, but I admire Mary’s determination and seeming sweetness. I’ll have to read more about her. In addition to her autobiography, there are quite a few books about that early era of Hollywood and the people who made it happen. The one I am going to look for is Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood (2007) by Eileen Whitfield.

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In the meantime, this will have to suffice as my homage to Mary Pickford and women like her: strong, determined, and happy to have a cat climbing on her shoulders.

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Peace and hugs from me and little Chiclet, foster kitten extraordinaire.

P. S. Please support me in my fundraiser for Tony La Russa’s Animal Rescue Foundation. My goal is fairly modest. Mary would approve.

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I’m not obsessive, I’m passionate (or, I’m stalking Thomas Wolfe)

Posted on by gcottraux

Can you stalk someone who is no longer alive? I’ve become entranced/fascinated/obsessed with Thomas Wolfe since I brought him up in Look Homeward, Angel, or Things Thomas Wolfe Said. I go through crushes with writers. I’ll become intrigued, learn everything I can about said writer, read everything they wrote, watch every movie made about them or based on their books, until I’ve exhausted the possibilities. Then I move on to the next crush.

I now follow the Thomas Wolfe Society on Facebook. My queue on Audible.com contains whatever they have (and as much as I like the writer Tom Wolfe, it’s Thomas that’s the subject of my interest).

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Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938)
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Tom Wolfe (born 1931)

I saw a post on the Thomas Wolfe Society Facebook page about the movie Genius (Don’t Believe the Haters: In Defense of ‘Genius’), starring Colin Firth as editor Max Perkins and Jude Law as Thomas Wolfe. The post is a defense of the movie, which apparently had detractors. I had never heard of the movie (have I mentioned that rock I seem to live under?). I had to see it. Why? It’s about Thomas Wolfe, and it stars the amazing Colin Firth, handsome Jude Law, always good Laura Linney, and Ice Queen Nicole Kidman. I am not so crazy about Kidman, but in this movie her demeanor and style seem to fit the character, Aline Bernstein, a woman who succeeded in the then male-dominated world of theater set and costume design and could be said to have had a “tumultuous” relationship with Wolfe.

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I found an interesting post on History vs. Hollywood that compares the actors to the characters they played in the film. What is really interesting to me is that this is a predominantly English cast, in a movie filmed in England, about an iconic American writer from the South and the story is mostly set in New York. Dominic West, who I thought was American the whole time I watched The Wire, portrays Ernest Hemingway. Guy Pearce is a convincingly pained and troubled F. Scott Fitzgerald. Why do the Brits appreciate this literary heritage more than most Americans?

 

Fitzgerald was one of my crushes. I went through a fascination with Hemingway the man, but never got so much into his writing. Yes, I appreciate his style and way with words, but I’m not so much into his subject choices. Fitzgerald totally appeals to me: handsome and troubled with a beautiful, crazy Southern Belle wife.

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This was in my freshman year of college, and in my American Literature class with Professor Robert L. Casebeer (real name) in 1980 I wrote many a paper about Fitzgerald.

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My first attempt at college was in Ashland, Oregon, 1979-1981.

Before that, in high school, I went through a serious John Steinbeck phase. I still love his books. I admit to being a total wallflower nerd in high school. I spent a lot of time in my room, drawing and painting and reading and sewing my own weird clothes. No surprise I was never asked to the prom, much less on a date.

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John Steinbeck (1902-1968)

I’ve been through similar obsessive phases with the English writers Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisted) and John Galsworthy (The Forsyte Saga).

Evelyn Waugh, Aged 26, from the portrait by Henry Lamb in the collection of Lord Moyne. Cr: Little, Brown & Co. Memo-hardcopy: 38304

Lest you think it’s only male writers that I stalk, I’ve been through my Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989) phase and an Agatha Christie (1890-1976) phase as well.

 

 

I first became fascinated with Thomas Wolfe back in the 1990s. I got to Wolfe through a desire to live in Asheville, North Carolina. Musically, I was in a David Wilcox phase, and he is (was?) based in Asheville. I was also in my museums career phase, and figured there would be a job for me at the Biltmore Estate. I applied for several jobs, but it’s hard to get an interview when you live 3,000 miles away!

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American folksinger and songwriter David Wilcox
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I’d be so much closer to family than I am in California.

 

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Is it so much to ask for to live in the library at the Biltmore Estate?

And it was my obsession with Asheville that got me to Thomas Wolfe, native son.

There are so many connections I could go into–Paris in the 1920s, where so many artists and writers (the so-called Lost Generation), including Wolfe, spent time. A good account of this is Hemingway’s memoir A Moveable Feast. And one day I will make a  pilgrimage to legendary Paris bookstore Shakespeare and Company, central to that time and that generation.

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But meanwhile, I’ll be listening to the audiobook version of Look Homeward, Angel and dreaming of different times and places.

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Norsk Folkemuseum

Posted on by gcottraux

We spent a well worthwhile day traipsing around the open-air Norsk Folkesmuseum (Norwegian Museum of Cultural History) in the Bygdoy area of Oslo. Over 160 buildings from various parts of the country have been relocated to the museum site, and represent life in Norway from 1200 to the present. My favorite was the tenement building with apartments each restored to a different period in the building’s history, based on real residents of the building over time. And of course I loved the farm areas, with the cows,horses, pigs, chickens. They all looked like they were having a pretty good life, unlike on a real working farm! The 13th century stave church is possibly the centerpiece of the exhibitions. To top it all off, the museum cafe was quite nice as well, open and airy and modern yet obviously based on traditional rustic architecture. And they have good coffee.

Just down the street is the Viking Ship Museum, its simple, elegant white building the perfect setting for the archaeological finds of 3 Viking ship burials in Norway.

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