Art by Joon Mo Kang for the NY Times

There is an interesting item in today's NY Times Book Review. It touches upon the burst of outrage initiated in an essay by Ruth Graham. In it she poses the question: should  adults should be embarrassed to read novels geared for the young adult market? You can read her essay here. And the Times item from today's Book Review is here.

I was too busy to really catch the recent debate myself and therefore I was curious as to what all the anger was about. So today I went to Slate and read the essay. And you know what? I largely agree with Ruth Graham, to some extent. At the risk of having to dodge rocks thrown in my direction, I have to say: adults who spend most of their time reading YA, or at least certain  YA books,  are not reading at an appropriate age level. Some years back, I tried to find out what all the hoopla was about "Twilight." I could not endure even getting past the first several pages. It was horrible writing. Truly awful. The worst romance novels are a better read. And, I confess to having read my share of those, too, at some point. In fact, the essentially YA bestseller of 1971, LOVE STORY, as bad as THAT was was even better. And, if the Twilight series were to comprise a good portion of an adults reading list, I would have to think, "Well, I guess other books are just too complex."

And then there are books like The Book Thief.  Was that really supposed to be YA? I think not. That is one of the most beautiful and poetic  books I have ever read, bar none. So, am I dismissing an entire genre or just a portion of that genre? I guess I am dismissing a portion of YA books--the teen-romance portion. Don't get me wrong-- I love romance and happen to be married to my high school sweetheart, so I remember those years clearly and fondly. But teenage romance is something I do not want to spend a great deal of time reading about. Been there, done that. And I also know adult romance is far more enjoyable--and interesting.

Another challenge I cannot do: Teen Tragedy. I cannot bring myself to read "The Fault in out Stars" because as a mother of young adults, reading about young adults with cancer is the last thing I want to occupy my brain with. And I don't want to read about young adults in comas, nor young adults in car accidents, nor young adults in dystopian societies who are fighting for their very existence. Because any time I have to read about young people having their lives threatened or ended too soon, I project my own worry of my own kids into their situations. I worry enough about my own kids. I don't need to fret about fictional kids. It is also why I never watch movies where anything bad happens to kids or animals, but that s another discussion altogether.

Of course, this is not to say I would not enjoy writing YA novels or even Middle Grade novels. I would. I am working on a couple now. After all, I write picture books; I can hear the voices of my inner child very clearly. I can also hear the voices of my inner 13 year old and my inner 18 year old quite well, too, thank you very much. I guess that when I read, I prefer listening to adults.

So, not too long ago, I discovered that the author Philip Roth is from Newark, New Jersey. I believe that I first learned this in this New York Times article, regarding his decision to stop writing.  With that discovery, a tiny little bell went off inside of me, the essence of which one wouldn't really understand unless one is, to be honest, from Newark.  Newark and New Jersey occupy a place in my soul that is hard to define except to say that is was the beginning of my life and it has colored the way I have seen everything since I left. That was in 1962. 

Let's start with Newark. I was born there. Doesn't get much earlier than that. My parents were both from there, attended school there (Arts High), and lived there in the early years of their short marrige. My grandparents also lived there for years in apartments (home ownership being something both sets came to late in life). One pair on High Street in an old stately building behind pillars and lion's heads (I think there were lion's heads) and the other on 16th Avenue, in a fourth floor walk up overlooking a city park that I spent countless hours in. I can still see those apartments in my mind's eye as though it were yesterday. After hours spent trying to "visit" them on Google Street view, I was saddened to see that both sites seem to be reduced to piles of rubble. They say you can't go back again. I guess in some cases you can't even go back and take a walk on Google.

The first ten years of my life had a certain Jersey feeling to it, that that is really to say it had a certain "Newark" feel to it. For example, there has never been a "downtown" since  Downtown Newark, that has been as much fun to be in. It just bustled. Yeah, yeah, it was not New York City, but nothing was or is New York City. I knew that even as a little kid after trips into NY. But, nothing was Newark, either. Nothing was like Bamberger's or Kresge's department store in the 1950s when the top floor actually had a monorail racing around the ceiling of the toy department.

I recall the last time I went to Newark. It was around 1966, I think. We actually went to McCrory's which was always our choice of a Five and Ten for lunch. The same woman I had seen working there in the early/mid fifties was still at the register of the luncheonette in 1966. I remember finding this amazing (it had really only been about 10 years or so ago that I had been there as a really kittle kid. Why would staying at the same job for ten years astound someone? Well, I guess it does if you are 13. How did I know for sure it was the same woman? Trust me. I knew. She had a very disticntive face that I used to stare at when little.

In Jersey, we rode buses. We rode buses all the time because neither my mother, nor  my grandmothers drove cars back then. And, so, if you wanted to get somewhere and no man was handy, you took a bus to get there. You took buses to get "downtown" which was the only place you really shopped, malls being years away.  If you wanted to go to another downtown in Jersey, you rode a bus. Maybe you even had to change buses. If you wanted to go to Olympic Park (and that is a whole blog post in and of itself) you rode two buses. I used my memories of a New Jersey bus when I illustrated Tex and Sugar. I actually looked at a picture of a NJ transit bus from the 50s for that art because that is how buses will remain in my mind forever.

From what I understand from my parents and grandparents, the bloom was already off the rose for Newark by the time I was born. They would spend hours and hours talking about how great Newark was at one time. I guess a city has it's heyday and then it passes. Ask anyone who's lived in Buffalo (like me). It used to be one of the wealthiest cities in the US at the turn of the last century. By the early 70s when I lived there, Buffalo was hurting--big time.

But, back to Newark. As much as Newark was the center of the universe in Jersey, other haunts were never that far from the hub. It's a small state. Like Westfield. Rahway. Elizabeth. That was my last NJ stop. I lived there with grandparents until moving to New York (they stayed). And after Elizabeth, they moved to Paterson, and downtown Paterson had a flavor all it's own, too. Many years spent shopping there in Sterns and Meyer Borthers.

I guess you can say that most places in New Jersey have a sort of Newark feel to them, unless you drive waaaay down to the Pine Barrens and, well, then you are in another country. As far as I know, the Russians who escaped from Christopher and Paulie Walnuts have STILL not been found. But the shore? Jersey all the way. Newark by the sea. When I think of Jersey memories, I think of: Italian ices, going to Kresge's for all kind of children's events, sugar cookies, soft pretzels, Nuns sitting in department stores with tins asking for small change, city buses, diners playing doo-wop, shopping, escalators, people-operated elevators, Ballantine Beer, a big bottle you could see from the Garden Sate Parkway, the Garden Sate Parkway, driving through tunnels to get to NYC, Five and Ten cent stores, parades of policemen (seems like there were always parades in Newark), the Colonade, McCrory's, Route 22 which we always drove on but never stopped at, parks with Cherry Blossoms, playgrounds in parks.... My list is endless, really.

But let's back to Philip Roth, which is why I went down the New Jersey memory lane to begin with ( I could write all day about Newark and Jersey, and still have lots ot say). This week I read, also in the Times, about an event honoring him and a bus tour through Newark as he celebrated his 80th birthday in an artcile, "Goodbye Newark, the Place Philip Roth Never Left."  I was envious. I wish I were there. I would love to time travel back to Newark of years ago, and maybe that might have been the closest one could get to doing that--stopping at the places he knew and lived at.

Of Roth's work, I am guilty of having only read Portnoy's Complaint, and that was many, many years ago and I was very, very young and naive. I can't remember much of the book but I remember being astonished in so many ways a young girl would be. I also remember him doing...um.. something to his family's dinner. And to this day, I have a faint recollection of a line that pops into my head if I hang a bra on a bathroom doorknob...and it does any swinging.

I saw the movie, Goodbye Columbus, It did not evoke Jersey for me.

So I send this question out to cyberspace. Does Roth evoke Jersey and Newark in partlcular in his books? Should I right my wrong and read everything he has written in an attempt to glean any morsel of Newark and Jersey of old? Is there any sense that he was a Jersey boy? Curious and reminiscent minds want to know, because Google Street View left me high and dry.

I confess: while I generally hate the culture of Hollywood and the values of the vast majority of people who live that life and inhabit those values, I LOVE movies. Well, that is to say, I love great movies. And one thing I have come to understand is that the best movies are not just filled with well directed scenes and great performances. No, the BEST movies have fantastic scripts. And those scripts produce lines that stay with you forever and tend to crop up in every day life and it's varied situations.

For example--the great scene  in You've Got Mail , as written by the late Nora Ephron, and as said by the charcter played by Tom Hanks,is that there everything in life can find an appropriate line from the Godfather. "The Godfather is the sum of all wisdom" he says when he tells her to "go to the mattresses." My husband and I laughed ourselves silly when we heard that. We have three boys. We had been saying that for years. That and "It's not personal; it's strictly busines." And there are countless others from The  Godfather, as well as Godfather, Part II. Our favorite from that movie is,"I'm going in to take a nap. When I wake, if the money's on the table, I'll know I have a partner. If not, I know I don't." I'll leave it to your imagination to figure out the life situation we apply it to.

And there are lots of lines from Ephron in "When Harry Met Sally." She was the master of wonderful dialogue.

Lines emerge often for life, if you love movies that you enjoy watching over and over again. There are great lines from Goodfellas. Like when Henry Hill, played by Ray Liotta, tells Tommy, "Tommy you're a funny guy." You can see that bit here.

"I'm funny how, I mean funny like I'm a clown? Do I amuse you?" 

There are several others from Goodfellas, as well. Like the last part when Henry has a busy day and the hellicopters are following him around when he is selling guns,and he almost crashes when he picks up his brother,  and he goes home to make meatbals and sauce, and gets the cut drugs from the girlfriend, and the gal whgo is supposed to fly won't leave without her lucky hat.... Well there were time when I was running around like a chicken without a head and my life felt like that day in the life of Henry Hill.

Of ourse, there is one of my faves, The Graduate. Especially when Benjamin tells his parents he is going to marry Elaine Robinson. "Ben, this idea sounds half baked."

 "No, it's completely baked," Ben replies. Well, we use that one a lot, too.

Others? Well Moonstruck, for one. That script is rich with quotables. "Cosmo, I just want you to know no matter that you do you're gonna die." 

It almost seems as though movies inhabit the collective consciousness in more ways than anyone ever imagined. And, of course, it's been that way, I am sure, for as long as there have been talkies.

This is on my mind tonight because there are some movies , like the ones above, that I never tire of watching because of the scripts. Like Pulp Fiction, for example. Samuel Jackson owns that movie for his lines. Did he shine in it? "Correctomundo!" He was gypped of the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. 

So, the next time you watch a movie, listen to the words spoken. REALLY LISTEN. Great scripts make for great movies. What are some of your favorites? What are some of the lines you find yourself using all the time?

BTW, this is one movie I almost forgot about. "29th Street." I haven't see it for years. I think It desrves another look. The sceenplay? Superb!

Recently I had the pleasure, albeit a somewhat nervous pleasure, of being interviewed by my good friend Monica Lee of Smart Creative Women via Skype (nothing makes you more aware of age and weight than knowing you will be on camera). That interview will go live very soon, but I thought I would share some thoughts that Monica and I never really got to cover fully during the time we spoke, because time did, as time does in real life, fly by.

I have had the good fortune of being able to spend nearly one hundred percent of my time these last forty years, making art in one form or another. I did take a few years off when my two oldest sons were little, but when I think back on that time, I was always dong something creative (and most of it was donated for fundraising events of one kind or another), just not all of it professionally. Aside from that short break, it has pretty much been non-stop all the time.

But, nonstop at what?  Well, nonstop at art. Art in many forms and in many materials for many venues. In short: I've been a painter, puppeteer, doll maker, soft sculpture artist/craftsperson, editorial illustrator, children's book author and illustrator, fabric designer, licensed artist, and now I am also painting again. I’ve also spent a lot of time decorating houses, but, to be very honest, that makes me zero money. It only costs me money. But that's OK. It satisfies my soul. It's a medium I have to work in almost as much as my paints. “House--just another art material and artistic discipline."

But back to business. If I look back over all my years as an artist, I see one thing: my aesthetic sensibility has not changed much in forty years. I am still drawn to the same things I was drawn to in college--characters, details, expressive gestures, and emotions. I love color and texture and patterns. I especially like narratives. Everything I do tends to tell a story, and the story is in the details, textures and characters.

I have written about this before and in much more detail. You can read the first accout I wrote years ago for my very first web site. It really rambles and tells the story of the earliest years. Here is the place to read that. I created an abbreviated version for my current web site. You can ready that one here. 

I’m sharing some recent art here at Cats and Jammers Studio to coordinate with the interview. I am also sharing some of the house and other new art on my other blog, Design Rocket.

What message would I love to give other artists? This: don’t be afraid to re-invent yourself and try new things. Life as an artist is a wild journey on a winding road. A few years back, I posted a long post about moving in random directions in life, seemingly as if by pure serendipity. Well, life is that but it is also by luck and pluck, and maybe much less by design than we think. Please read that post, Serendipity + Pluck = Life.

Much of the art here is from my 2011 Sketchbook Project, “Coffee and Cigarettes.” I loved doing that book. I have done two others since. You can see the digital scans of my book here. And you can see the show opening containg paintngs based on the book here.

Participating in the Sketchbook Projects for the Art House Coop really feeds my artistic soul. My most recent book was titled “Strangers.” In doing that book I dedicated it to my painting and drawing professor of my sophomore year of college, John Patrick Murphy II. John was the head of the art department at Rockland Community College for more than 30 years. On the very first day I met him, I shared some paintings and he gave me advice that has stayed with me all these years: “Barbara, draw out of your head.” Meaning, draw from the well within you that has your memories and your impressions. And that is the way I have worked ever since.

John very recently passed away. This post is dedicated to him, because, really, meeting him and getting to know him was pure serendipity and it pointed me along the way on my own artistic journey.

All Photographs © Irina Werning

Here we go again. I discovered this on Jeannie Jeannie. Wonderful pictures that chronicle the passing of time. This time we have shots by photogrpaher Irina Werning as she gets her subjects to strike a pose and don clothing that match, as much as possible, a shot from when they were very young. 

You know I love this stuff. I love seeing the evidence of a life that has been lived or is in the process.This tempts me to try and do the same thing with pictures I have. I have one picture from 8th grade of Phil and I and Bobby Stewart, another classmate, that we need to recreate if we can manage to get together sometime in our life.

Go check out the rest of these pictures. They will make you smile but you might also find yourself waxing a little melancholy. Time stops for no man... nor baby.

This is so in tune with my pulp fiction covers and Fancy Nancy YA book jacket, that I HAVE to share a  link sent to me by my friend Liz for "Vinatge Valentines WTF." And if you these are strange, wait until you see the rest of the fantastic collection.

Just could not resist this. Guess there is nothing new under the sun, especially nick names.

Or as Fancy Nancy might say, "This is a super, wondrous, sensual example of of how I am gonna look after some enhancement surgery to make my body "Fancy."

I tried. I really really tried. But..but I didn't try THAT hard.

Of course, my reputation is still intact. I am talking about my obsession with finding imagery and posting it on Pinterest. And lately, my biggest pleasure has been finding old paperback pulp fiction covers and then adding my own captions. 

You don't know about Pinterest? That might be a good thing, because it is already an addiction for me when I need a few minutes of down time from work. It's like keeping scrapbooks of your favorite imagery, and getting to share it with EVERYONE. And the site is growing. Here is a piece on it from Mashable.

My Flag is Down is actually from my own paperback collection. As my friend Liz said, "I bet it won't be down for long."

And I just discoverd the newer, less "upright" cover for this novel. By the look on his face, I'm not so sure this Taxi driver will know what to do to get that flag up again.

Pop over to my Pinterest Board and have a look see for yourself. But be warned--Pinterest is great fun!

(Incidentally, I happened to catch Tarrentino's Pulp Fiction on TV last night. I do love that movie!)

I live for this kind of photography: haunting shots of once lively and active places, now in ruins. There is something that hits a nerve somewhere within me that makes me look at the disintegration of old structures, and see it not just as it is, but as it must have been. 

There's a lot to read and a lot to see in this wonderful photo essay about  New York's North Brother Island and abandoned Riverside Hospital from The Kingston Lounge, which may soon become another favorite photo blog for me, right up there with Shorpy. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves and the history tell it's own story.

Simms Tabak was one of very favorite illustrators, if not THE favorite. He very recently passed away and since I find that this blog seems more and more to be about losing artists who have touched me, it would be terribly remiss to not talk about Simms.

Although I got to know his books through reading them to my youngest son, Ben, I actually got to know his art when I first used one of his designs to wallpaper the room of my middle son, Mike. That was more than 22 years ago. Sadly, I cannot find a single image to post to show that lovely wallpaper. And it has been long papered over. It do remember that it was leaping kids, a boy and a girl, doing jumping jacks or something to that effect. If anyone has any left or knows where I can get some, PLEASE contact me!

I just discovered a wonderful video created based on his Old Lady WHo Swallowed a Fly book. It is narrated and the music sung by Cindy Lauper. I think this may be the best video adaptation of a kids' book I have ever seen. It seems that I cannot embed it. But go to Youtube and watch. It is totally worth the time.

I think my very favrotie book was the Caldecott wining, Joseph Had a Little Overcoat.

I think that this book is everything one can want in a children's book. It is has a page turning quality, with a lovely repetitive rhythm. It is fun. It is also beautifully illustrated, without being tight and self important and self congratulatory, not to mention pretentious, which is what so many kids' book art is. Not this book. The art has a wonderful mock-primitive feel that is actually extremely sophisticated and extraordinarily satisfying, from an artist's point of view. Any artist, even in the absence of liking kids' books, would love and appreciate this artwork. The art stands completely on its own. To be honest, a lot of art for kids' books may hold up in the children's book

My ethnic heritage is half Norwegian/Swedish and half Italian. The way I figure it, that is my the source of my weight problem, because when it comes to food, my appetite is the offspring of a marriage between a conquering Viking who invented the Smorgasbord and a loving Mama Mia, chanting, "Mangia, Mangia!" In other words, I love good food and drink and enjoy a great meal with close friends, or even friends not that close for that matter, as much as anything in the world. And that love is simply deadly for the waistline.

After reading Jeff Gordinier's delightful interview in today's New York Times with Simon Doonan, discussing Donnan's new book, Gay Men Don't Get Fat, I think I might develop another theory: I eat like a straight, macho guy, or, at best, a healthy Lesbian who likes to climb mountains and hunt. The solution is pretty straightforward, if not "straight": I need to eat like a Gay Guy: sushi, salad, berries, light, light, light.

Don't get me wrong. I love all that stuff, like whole grains, salads, and fish filets and legumes. The problem is that I love them to excess, like  hungry Nordic lord or a zoftig  Italian Grandma. I also love Meat. Almost any meat. Burn the hair off and serve it up. Not good, even in small amounts.

I have to say that I found the interview totally entertaining and that Simon Doonan came across as a person I would love to get to know better--probably over a hearty meal with lots of red wine, instead of a light lunch. The dry humor and quick wittedness apparent in the article have only whet my appetite for more, so I think I will have to read some of his other books,  like Wacky Chicks and Eccentric Glamour, to consume some more of his entertaining repartee.

Meals. Appetite. Consume. Sigh. It's all about food in the end, isn't it? Oh, well. Pass the champagne. I'll toast to that.

Now off to get the books. Check back for a review at some point.

The above photo is from Robert Heller. It is of his parents and was submitted to the New York time for this wonderful piece: THE LIVES THEY LOVED. Do yourself a big favor. Take the time to look at and read through this slide show.

If you have read this blog on a few occasions then you know that the single thing that most fascinates me is the passing of time. In keeping with that, I want to take a moment and wish that anyone reading this takes a moment and reflects on life, love, lives, loves, and how very quickly we experience all of it. 

This NY Times collection of memories from not-famous people of not-famous loved ones who have left this earth this past year will touch you in a way that warms your heart and make you think of your own loved ones, alive or gone. 

Here's to finding time in 2012 to reflect on what exactly it all means--not that we will come to know for certain, but maybe we can all just think about it some more. And let's think about loved ones who have left us and about what our lives should hold for us going forward. Will those words written about you reflect that you lived life fully and richly, generously and thoughtfully? Hope so.

Have the happiest and most thoughtful of holidays!

It's been a Loooooong while since I was able to carve out blogging time. I am hoping that I can get back on schedule after a solid year of non-stop art work with books and fabrics.

Mind you, I am not complaining. I am thrilled to have the illustration work and the inspiration to create. But balance it always good, and so, after having stuffed myself silly with work this year and stuffed myself silly with food over the Thanksgiving weekend, it is time to regroup, step back, and assess. 

So stop back and visit me again soon. I'll be posting  some "deep thoughts" something later this week.

It seems that this blog is often turning into a forum for obituaries of people who have moved me. That may very well be, for I if I am going to write about things that are important to me, then that needs to include losing people or artists who have touched my life. I guess as one gets older and more of those key players in a person’s lifetime pass away, it becomes even more important to acknowledge, reflect upon, and celebrate lives well lived.

Along those lines, several weeks ago I was so sorry to read in the NY Timesthat Jazz artist Billy Taylor had passed away. Here is another blog post about it on Mirror On America. I was  also so sad to read about the passing of George Shearing in today's NY Times. When I want the kind of harmonic jazz that is both contemplative and inspiring, I think of Billy Taylor and George Shearing. Their music  has a distinctly classy and urban New York feel to me.  I love it for the harmonic, sensitive and thoughtful sound, as well as for the fact that it reminds me of early years in New York, listening to live jazz in the city. That sound reminds me of being very young and feeling the world was there for the celebrating and taking.

I was very young.  A good friend of my then-fiancee, Phil's and mine, Norm Freeman, was a student at Julliard. Our summer evenings would often be like this: I would work until my shift was done at Capra's Restaurant in Stony Point, NY. That was usually until about eleven at night. Norman and Phil would pick me up and we would then zip into New York City to catch some live jazz. Getting down to the village about forty minutes later meant we could catch at least one set in a club.

And in the early seventies, you could   hear some great music in the clubs at night. We most often ended up going to the Village Gate (Top of the Gate)  or the Village Vanguard or the Half Note. At the Vanguard we  caught the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis orchestra in a place where we would

In the early to mid-1970s, I was living in Buffalo. Having grown up in the NY/NJ area, and pretty much mired in the overpowering megalopolis of NYC, the contrast of Buffalo, against what I was familiar with, was striking. Make no mistake. Even though the city is officially in the state of New York, Buffalo is very much a part of the great Midwest. For me, it was extremely different. In the winter the sun NEVER came out. It was a city that had a small town feel. The foods had different names. There were even foods served in restaurants up there that nobody thought of back then (they don't call them Buffalo Wings for nothing). The accent? The total opposite of a New York accent. A Buffalo accent is the same as a  Chicago accent--the A's cannot possibly get any flatter. 

In those years, I was a stranger in a strange land. We had no money. We barely eked out an existence. Naturally, I did the only thing I could do: I made art. And my art reflected my experience. It was dark and it was pensive. 

Fresh out of college, I had left painting and drawing behind for fiber art, because the trauma of an obnoxious art program made me want to flee from what I knew. And so, I began to create in cloth the very figures I had always drawn. The odd thing was this: as unfamiliar as it was, Buffalo was the perfect place to really get in touch with myself and my aesthetic.

And THAT is where Milton Rogovin came in. I had been making cloth figures for about a year when I discovered his photographs. I was already familiar with the work of Diane Arbus.  I found her photos tremendously inspiring. But Rogovin's work touched me in a way that made for a shift in my thinking. What I learned from Milton Rogovin is that portraiture is best when in context. That is to say, that the things that people surround themselves with or the things that hover in the background, are as much a statement about who the persons are, as are their actual faces. And his work contained a more positive, and less depressing "feel." The picture above was part of the collection of his work that first caught my eye in the mid seventies when I was still living and working on the north side of Buffalo.

His work  influenced me even more in my years as an editorial illustrator. The work I did in the early to late 80s was filled with the kinds of images that might have been pictures taken of actual people by Mr. Rogovin, had they been real and not out of my imagination. I like to think that I channeled  his way of thinking into my art as an illustrator, as I had done as a fiber artist.

Tomorrow my husband and I are heading down to good old Rockland County, New York for my 40th high school reunion--North Rockland High School, Class of 1970. The school is now located in Theills, New York and has been since it opened for my senior year. This won't be so tortuous for my husband because he actually went to school with most of these people until his family moved to another nearby town in 10th grade. The best part is that the reunion will take place in Haverstraw (which is where the grand, old school was from 1933 until the new one was built) in a place just a half a block down the street from the house (on the Hudson River) in which my husband grew up, until the fateful move.

Needless to say, this is a prime experience for a time-passing-obsessive-nut like myself. What could be better than participating your own Ken Burns experience? I am not exaggerating when I say that with very little effort, I can put myself right back in my late 60s mindset, in the very halls where my high school heart still wanders in my dreams. In that place, everyone still looks exactly as they did 40 years ago. Close my eyes, and it is not much of a stretch to be back in my old clothes, in my old classrooms, cafeteria, and locker room, with a vivd sense of what was. I can recall the feeling of the halls, the big old windows, the way the old granite and marble steps felt, the vivid CCC/WPA  Depression painted murals on the walls of the Home Ec classroom, and the sense of a solid and substantial building meant to last (they still use it for the Middle School).

I won't go into much detail about how the new, one level, barely finished high school structure felt for the one laskluster year I was there. But suffice it to say that the yearbook staff managed to sneak one four letter word via morse code into the monotmous brick cover of the yearbook itself; that exposed where our collective hearts really lay with regard to the new school vs. the old stately building. It was a very silly and immature act of rebellion in retrospect, of course, but accurate at the time for a bunch of 17-18 year olds who loved the old building and town fiercely. 

In any event, I am very much looking forward to doing some time travel and some great catching up with my former classmates to see where our lives have led us during the past 40 years. We may not look now as we did then, but I am sure that many of us still feel like adolescents in our hearts.

After a weekend of High School revisited in Rockland, back in Boston the following week my husband and I have are having dinner with one of his law school classmates and his wife, after not seeing them for 30 years. Here is another case where it is effortless to imagine us once again back in Ithaca where we lived for 3 years, and get into that late seventies mindset. And it is equally vivid: clothes, food, house, soft sculptured dolls everywhere, while he happily toiled away in the evenings at his studies. Got local yogurt, Earth shoes,

Just when I thought there was absolutely no reason to watch television anymore, along comes the best thing since, well, the other best reason to watch television--the Sopranos. And the new best thing? BOARDWALK EMPIRE. If you haven't heard already, this new series on HBO, is set in Atlantic City in 1920--at the beginning of Prohibition and what would become the roaring twenties. Leading the show is the charcter of Nucky Thompson (based on real-life boss Nucky Johnson, see below), City Treasurer and the boss of everything that goes on in and around life on the Boardwalk. 

I have to admit I was already pretty eager to watch this show after catching the preliminary hype. What's not to anticipate with glee when you see names like Martin Scorcese and Steve Buscemi and Terrence Winter? Still, I wondered, will it really be so good? Nothing will ever come close to the Sopranos....

Well, I have just found appointment TV again. Last night I caught the first episode, directed by Scorcese, and it was everything I had hoped for, plus much, much more: the dialogue was rich in the way that classic Sopranos dialogue used to be (touched with the hand of authenticity and believability of character, gilded with surprising black humor in the perfect places); the attention to visual details was near perfect; the scenes were shot with the sense of true cinema, complete with near brain-scan close-ups and vivid costumes and makeup;  the period music sent you back in time; and the actors were absolutely perfectly cast. If I have to make one complaint, I would say that I caught a touch of mis-matched dialogue/film synching, that distracted me somewhat early on, but I got over it.

Prior to seeing the first, I had read that it would take seeing a number of episodes to buy into Steve Bsucemi as the infamous Nucky Thompson. Not so. Within minutes I was sold on his portrayal, and even though the name of James Gandolfini as the lead was bantered around in the pre-show hype, I cannot imagine anyone better in this part than Buscemi.

Michael Pitt practically has steam escaping from his pores, as he plays the part of Jimmy Darmody, Princeton drop-out who comes home from his service as a dough boy in WWI to embrace his darker side (discovered, or, perhaps, uncovered "over there") as Nucky's right hand man. Let's just say he simmers with the need to satisfy those urges.

Somewhere in the 80s, I was out with three friends of mine, all Asian. I can't remember exactly how or why, but the discussion turned to Charlie Chan. "Oh, I loved Charlie Chan," I said, sincerely and innocently. "Those were my favorite old movies!" And they were. My husband and I used to watch them religiously back in Buffalo in the 70s, where one of the local stations would broadcast one every week at around 11 o'clock. It was my first experience with appointment television since counting the minutes until five o'clock waiting for the Mickey Mouse Club twenty years earlier. 

"Ugh. You can't be serious," was the collective reply of my friends. "He is one of the worst stereotypes for Asians."

I felt like someone hit me in the chest. First, to think that I would willingly subscribe to that kind of thinking about people was an embarrassment. But, more important, I did not even see the reason for their disgust with the character (and hopefully, not me). My husband and I loved him and loved son number one (played by Warner Oland and Keye Luke respectively). In my mind, Charllie made everyone else around him look positively stupid, goofy, awkward, and incapable of seeing the details. He, on the other hand, was brilliant, had a fantastic gift for dry humor, and was all-knowing and all-seeing without being obnoxious. What's not to love? What better kind of stereotype can one ask for?

Reading the August 9th edition of the New Yorker yesterday I came upon a wonderful review by Jill Lepore of a brand new book by Yunte Huang: Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous With American History. Ms. Lepore offers some enjoyable information about Earl Derr Biggers, the author who first brought to character of Chan to book form and  the  movies themselves. But, even better, is reading about Huang's book which reveals that Charlie Chan was based on an actual Chinese detective with the Honolulu police force, by the name of Chang Apana, who was a legend in his own time for solving crimes. There are more wonderful facts to glean from the book, so get a hold of it and dig in. It is available now for pre-order (I made sure to order mine, you betcha).

 Just as intriguing to me, is the story about the author, Yunte Huang. Mr. Huang was born and brought up in China, and may well have no

Yesterday was Flag Day. Not  knowing where the holiday came from, I looked it up and found these facts on Wikipedia: June fourteen is the day on which the Second Continental Cogress adopted the flag in 1777 as the flag of the United States.  In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed June 14 as Flag Day and in 1949 National Flag Day was established an Act of Congress.  Pennsylvania is the only state to celebrate the day as a state holiday. Right here in Quincy, MA there is a long running Flag Day parade, and in 2010, they celebrated their 59th. The largest Flag Day parade is held in Troy, NY and the oldest continuing parade is held in Fairfield, WA which has had one every year since about 1910, with the exception of 1918. I would love to attend one of these parades. I love parades amd I am nothing if not patriotic. Don't forget--I have an entire powder room I call the Oval Office. 

Every year Flag Day sneaks up on me and I seem to miss it. Actually, every year the entire year sneaks up on me and I seem to miss it. This year, however, I was determined to fly the stars and stripes. And I remembered Flag Day! There was too much going on yesterday for me to take pictures, but I thought I would go out and shoot today. My flags will stay up until at least past the 4th of July, so it makes me happy to know they won't be collecting spider webs in the garage for another year, unused.

 photo from mcgarrigles.com

Besides reading the obituaries of two well know writers in this morning's New York Times, Robert Parker and Erich Segal, I was terribly upset to read of the death of Kate McGarrigle, at 63.

If I had to pin point specific music to be the soundtrack of my life as an artist working in my studio, it would be the music of the McGarrigle Sisters, whom I first heard on Saturday Night Live in the mid seventies, performing "Heart Like a Wheel." Naturally, even with the most limited of funds, we went out and bought that first album, "Kate and Anna McGarrigle," which became the very music that followed me from home to home, and studio to studio. 

The beautiful harmonies and melodies of Kate and Anna filled my small back room studio in Buffalo, New York while I sat and sewed the figures and dolls that first began my true life as a full time artist. When we came back from three months as vagabonds in Europe and settled in Elmira, New York, the album was the first to resume its proper place as number one on my play list. Happliy sewing away in the dining room of an old flat in the even more old fashion town of Elmira (which I loved, by the way), I listened to the sounds of that first album almost non-stop. I loved when they sang of what I thought was upstate New York in "Talk to Me of Mendocino," and I thought for sure I heard a slight smile in the voice of Kate when she sang the lead in "Go Leave," which I always imagined was her send off to her former husband Loudan Wainwright.

Make no mistake: as wonderful as the tunes themselves are the lyrics to the music of Kate and Anna. Theirs is truly poetry set to music in a way that makes it impossible to separate the two. Their sweet voices embraced the words and told the stories and your heart was never left untouched. The only time things went over my head was when they sang in French. I had not a clue about what they were singing. I liked it anyway.

In 1978 we moved to Ithaca so my husband could attend law school at Cornell, and I set up shop in a ramshackle house on Route 79, Slaterville Road. There, amidst the dolls and the cloths and the threads, and the painted eyeballs, played the wonderful, harmonious McGarrigles. 

And there, we happily added two more albums to the play list, "Dancer With Bruised Knees,"

 All photos courtesy of Cakewrecks

Here is the problem when you like to blog and when you also like to read the blogs of others: it all takes time, and on any given day, I seem to have less and less of it. Truth be known, when it comes to choosing between entertaining myself reading what other people have written or attempting to wax poetic myself and share my thoughts with readers, I choose--you guessed it--entertaining myself! Surprise, surprise!

In the blog post before this one, I wrote about getting in my daily dose of pick-me-up at Awkward Family Photos. Love the site. Can't stay away. Can't stop laughing. 

But my other, equally enjoyable place to visit and find a smile on my face and maybe even tears of laughter in my eyes is CAKE WRECKS. Cake Wrecks is exactly that--a blog devoted to the so-called professionally done cakes one can buy in a bakery, supermarket, or wherever, that are, in a word, wrecks. As defined by Jen Yates, the genius behind the site and the book that came out of the site:

 WHAT IS A WRECK?

"A Cake Wreck is any cake that is unintentionally sad, silly, creepy, inappropriate - you name it. A Wreck is not necessarily a poorly-made cake; it's simply one I find funny, for any of a number of reasons. Anyone who has ever smeared frosting on a baked good has made a Wreck at one time or another, so I'm not here to vilify decorators: Cake Wrecks is just about finding the funny in unexpected, sugar-filled places."

All photos courtesy Awkward Family Photos

Addicted. Totally. And without remorse of any kind. It's my computer and I. It's not just that I love using it as a tool to create art. It's the web. The Internet is my worst vice and my greatest enjoyment. I am always on it. My husband has even said that someday he expects to come home find me stuck INSIDE the monitor, like some sort of Twilight Zone episode.

 
I can justify it to some extent, because I am not a TV watcher of any significance. I'd rather be on line, checking out everything from eBay to newspapers to blogs by other artists and writers then sitting in front of some mindless sitcom or self important drama. I've even discovered a whole cache of blogs that write about vintage stuff and collecting, which is what this very blog started out as about 5 years ago. There is no end to the kind of information I suddenly find myself interested in. Hey--wanna  know more about scroll saws? Ask me!

Lately, however, my addiction to the net has to do with something more essential: getting my daily dose of humor. And my top choice of enjoyment?  AWKWARD FAMILY PHOTOS.

Yesterday the news hit that Soupy Sales passed away. He was 83. In my mind, it will always be 1964, or 1959, depending on which Soupy TV show I happen to be remembering.

Soupy first premiered on NY television in 1959. He came on at 12 noon on Saturdays on channel 7-ABC.  I loved him immediately when he did his initial "First one here gets a box of Jello" bit, followed by old film footage with a cast of thousands of people, or even an elephant stampede, all racing to get the Jello. Something abhout him just cried out, "SMART ALEC"--but in the nicest way. The bit above is most likely from the show that was on channel 5 in NY, WNEW, which debuted in 1964. Watching it I realized that Soupy was even edgier than I realized.

Here is a link to a great blog post by Dan Brockway, which excellent shots of the show actually in production. The fact that the show was shot and that Soupy was always relating to the crew, is what made the show as much fun as it was. Soupy was making himself and his crew laugh more than anyone, and we all got to be in on the joke. My favorite skits always had WHITE FANG or BLACK TOOTH. Here is a great one with White Fang.

Found this wonderful stand-up bit by Soupy as he tells the story of the famous "Green pieces of paper" scandal, in which he asked kids to raid their mothers' and father wallets and send him money. And, yes, he really did do that:

When I was watching the movie, The Conspiracy Theory, with Mel Gibson, some years back, I kept having this sense of recognition. Mel reminded me of someone during the entire film, and I had this sense of watching someone else. It took me a spell before I finally identified who the familiar face was: Soupy Sales! I'll post some pictures and you tell me  there is no resemblance!

Honestly, I really like Soupy More.

Do yourself a favor and go on Youtube and watch several clips. Then you'll be in on the joke, too.

RIP, Soupy. Seems like just yesterday I was laughing on weekday evenings in 7th grade....

If you read this blog, you already know that I obsess about the passing of time. You know that I wish I could time travel. You know that I love antiques and Ken Burns and the Oxford Project and anything that allows me a glimpse into the past. 

Now that I have discovered Google Street View, I even take trips to old neighborhoods of my past so I can "walk around" a see what those places now look like compared to  years ago. Let me tell you that can be fun, but also depressing. Sometimes places look very much like they did when I was living there, like my old street and house in Stony Point, New York (but the town itself is totally different) or the house my husband and I lived in in Buffalo, NY,  as newlyweds. Most of the time, however, things have changed so much, I don't recognize the neighborhood at all, or, in the worst case scenario, they  don't even exist, which is the case with both of the apartment buildings I lived in as a child with my grandparents in Newark, New Jersey. Gone. Empty lots. Rubble.

The discovery of Google Street View is just one of the wonderful things I came upon when I discovered my absolute favorite, MUST VISIT EVERYDAY blog: SHORPY.

To quote from the site:

THE 100-YEAR-OLD PHOTO BLOG

The blog is run by Dave, who posts the most magnificent high resolution pictures of years gone by. I do not know any personal information about Dave, except that he has some facinating looking family members whose mid century pictures he occasionally puts up on the site.  

Happened to catch a piece in yesterday's NYTimes reviewing E.L.Doctorow's new novel, "Homer and Langley."  The novel is another Doctorow blend of fiction and fact to tell the story of two brothers who lived in New York city in their Harlem brownstone during the first half of the last century. I love Doctorow's books, so I'll make sure to catch this one.