Carte de Visite: "We Could Make Believe"

Two Gentlemen from the late 1850s wearing frock coats and top hats.

The image has been edited in Photoshop. Shades of Edna Ferber's Show Boat.

What Did Leonardo daVinci Look Like?

What did Leonardo daVinci look like? While he did hundreds of drawings of men, but few can be said to be his portrait.

Artist Siegfried Woldhek sets out to find which might prove to show the real Leonardo.

Vintage Style: Happy Fourth of July, 1950s style!!

Carte de Visite: The Stand-ins

No this isn't the Lincolns, but they do seem to have been influenced by the First Family. These two are obviously people of money. She wears the popular crinoline and he wears a silk edged wool double-breasted frock coat.

 
L.R. BronkBallston Spa, N.Y.

The Truth?

“This story is true. If things didn’t quite happen the way I describe them, they should have.”


I’ve been reading an issue of Writer’s Digest which is devoted to writing memoir and over and over I am reading people trying to discern the difference between fiction and memoir. Many maintain that there is no place in memoir for anything but fact.

It has made me consider once again just how true is true.

I have a friend who worked in Germany for years teaching at American schools for the children of the military. When she came home on vacations, we were regaled with stories about her life overseas. The first story was how she had a run-in with a parent and how she successfully had changed their viewpoint and won them over. The next story was about how she had a run-in with her principal and how she had made him realize that he had been a fool. Then came another with her conquering problems in her classroom. Finally came a story dealing with her problems with a neighbor who she finally bested.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that my friend sees herself as a mighty David versus constant Goliaths.

From that experience I began to develop the idea I call “mythifizing” which I maintain all of us do to some extent or another. We all have an image of ourselves that appears in the stories we tell if our listeners pay attention. We become the archetypal heroes of our own daily dramas. [Charles Dickens begins David Copperfield with the thought, “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”]

How does this need to mythifize influence our concept of “truth”? In Maus, a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman which I teach, Vladek’s son Artie begins to question his father’s veracity. In every story about the Holocaust that Vladek says he lived, he is a Polish Odysseus, surviving incredible trials by his cunning and resourcefulness. His stories might be totally true, but how do we know? Artie realizes that if only had his mother’s diaries from the same years, he might see what the real truth was. Or would he?

A common writer’s device from the Victorian Period was to claim that the story was true. [How many books and movies can you think of which start with “based on a true story”?] Most often the Victorian works were fiction disguised as truth, but the Victorians still loved imagining that they were real. We seem to do the same. As one writer in the Writer’s Digest points out, Oprah touted the work of James Frey until it was made public that some of the things in his book were fabrications or distortions. Then he was villified for being dishonest. Did his book suddenly become poor writing because it wasn’t “true”?

I no longer worry about whether a story someone tells is true or just one from their imagination. I just want a good story. After all, it’s their myth. If I want facts, I’ll just stick to the newspaper. Oh, wait… never mind.

Carte de Visite: Three English Gentlemen

Back in the late 1960s, as my grandmother fought her final battles with the cancer that would kill her, I realized that my knowledge of her family would go with her. The more I pestered her for stories, the more she kept saying that she didn’t know any. Finally one day I sat her down with her mother’s photo album and asked her to identify who the people were and what she knew about them. From there the stories flowed.

“That’s Mrs. Kelly who cooked for us. One time she came in to my mother and complained, ‘Mrs. Vandoler, Hyatt (my brother) spitted in the milk.’ ‘What did you do?’ ‘Why I just dipped it out. His spit is clean.’” She laughed and laughed remembering the story. So it went for a magical hour.

The pictures in that album became my link to the people I would research for the next ten years. But it was the people I didn’t find in the album who were equally fascinating. What stories, I wondered, might their pictures have told?

Perhaps that explains why I have developed one of my guilty pleasures over the last few years: collecting vintage photographs. Through antique stores and ebay, I have amassed a large collection of CDV, tintypes, and snapshots. One of my current focuses is the CDV (carte de viste) from the 1860s. I planning to write a novel centered in that time period and gradually people in the collection are being cast in the visuals I’m imaging for the novel.

Periodically, I will post some of my collection here on my blog.
[Sorry the pictures are branded, but I have had some people who have taken images of mine and then published them as their own.]




John Worsnop, Photographer
Bridge Street
Rothbury [England?]
Negatives kept. Copies always be had.

The Beatles Rock Band by alberto mielgo

Animated short with great visuals.

BEATLES Rock Band from alberto mielgo on Vimeo.

All You Need Is Love

In my life, there have been some songs that have resonated so strongly that they can instantly get a reaction from me. "All You Need Is Love" is one of those songs. I used it as the finale of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" which I had placed in the 1960s.

On December 7, 2009, people in 156 countries made their individual versions which were then all cut together to support a global fund to fight AIDS in Africa.

Listening to it, how can you not sing along?

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Dance with me

This looks like great fun. What happened to line dancing anyway?

Dance with Me.

Learning about Seductive Design

Andy Budd of Buildconference.com has a really interesting lecture on applying to the principals of seduction with web design. Although it's a filmed lecture, if you do web design there are ideas you can use.

Andy Budd - Seductive Design from Build on Vimeo.

"Leave Me"

It's not often that a three minute film can tug at the heart strings. But this short film from Daros Films, about the power of a broken camera, does just that.


Leave Me from Daros Films on Vimeo.

The Heart Attack

The heart attack came at 4:10 on a Sunday morning. I was supposed to cantor that morning for the 9:30 Mass and I wasn’t too comfortable with the psalm I had to sing.


The first thing I noticed was one of my cats had her paw on my arm as if she was trying to wake me. I don’t know; maybe I was moaning in my sleep or something. As I turned over, I felt the pain in my chest. It felt as if someone had hit me as hard as they could on my breast bone. I sat up and tried to tell myself it was nothing. But I had a triple bypass five years ago and although I didn’t have a heart attack then, I knew what the symptoms meant. And I knew that the new feeling I was having, feeling clammy, was another one. I got up and turned on Google just to tell myself I wasn’t being melodramatic. And then I got dressed.

“It’s fourfucking20inmorning,” I told myself.

I couldn’t face having an ambulance come and carry me off—the last time it happened in my apartment complex, the lady never returned. So I did the man-thing. I gathered my medication (so I wouldn’t have to try to remember what I take) and took a baby aspirin, found my Kindle and its cord, made sure I had my ICE information in my wallet, and then drove myself to the local hospital which is about eight blocks away. No one was on the road and I kept saying to me, “You’re doing fine…”

When I walked into the emergency room entrance, there was no one around. I walked toward the emergency ward and finally saw a nurse. “I’m having incredible chest pains,” I said. “Oh, God,” she said quietly and had me give the initial check-in information.

By that point things in my memory begin to blur. I know they led me to a bed and I was surprised they didn’t have me remove my Levis. They gave me baby aspirin, a nitroglycerine tablet and morphine to calm the heart attack that they determined was going on. It took till almost 8 in the morning for the whole thing to subside. The doctor who became my cardiologist told me later that I’d had a “mild heart attack.”

The doctors at the hospital determined fairly quickly that they wanted me at their larger hospital in Chicago where the equipment and the level of care would be better suited for what I was going through. So I was transferred by ambulance to the hospital. I remember watching the ride through the doors and wondering what would happen if the doors flew opened.

For four days I was in the Rush Cardiac Emergency Ward. Great nurses, good doctors. After the angiogram which determined that one of the grafts from my triple bypass--the one with an artery from my arm—had failed. “But,” explained my cardiologist, “there were lots of little veins which had grown there providing the heart oxygen.” (At least that’s the explanation as I remember it.) I had worried I would have another bypass surgery, but instead a regimen of medicine was prescribed.

I was fascinated to see my heart on a sonogram. And I’ve never heard the different sounds the heart makes in the various cavities. I learned a lot of new things.

At one point I worried how incapacitated I would be. “Can I drive?” I asked my doctor’s assistant. “Why not,” she laughed, “you only had a heart attack.”

My school was incredibly supportive. In spite of us only having three weeks of school left, my colleagues covered my classes. When I returned to work the Friday before the last week, one of my freshmen girls was the first to see me walk toward the classroom. She literally beamed. And when the kids got in class, they gave me a standing ovation. It still makes me smile. Later for my junior class, I usually stand at the door and give the kids the equivalent of a high-five—we hit elbows since swine flu made us all worry about spreading germs. Well, I started the elbows with the kids and one of them said, “I want a hug.” So he got one. And many in the class lined up for theirs also.

Having a heart attack leaves me in a new category. I don’t feel much different than I did, but I do get more tired than before. I realize I have to spend part of my summer trying to build up my strength.

The change I know I have to deal with is suggested in the statistic which says, “One out of every three people who have heart attacks suffer from depression afterwards.” Believing I was close to death, whether I was or not, suddenly makes me question lots of things about my life that I thought I had already found answers for. I had a brother and a sister and parents and grandparents—all of whom are gone. And I’m not sure I’m ready to follow them this soon. I have five books I want to finish—all in various stages of completion. I have artwork I want to do. But I have to fight the feeling that it may not really matter.

Seen in the Neighborhood

Today I decided to take a walk as a tourist in my own neighborhood of Oak Park, Illinois--home of Frank Lloyd Wright and great Victorian mansions with broad porches, colonades, and broad lawns. We get a lot of tourists during the year and I decided to take a tour myself and look at things like a tourist would. I've posted the series on Picasa, but here are ten of my favorites.

From Seen in the Neighborhood

From Seen in the Neighborhood

From Seen in the Neighborhood

From Seen in the Neighborhood

From Seen in the Neighborhood

From Seen in the Neighborhood

From Seen in the Neighborhood

From Seen in the Neighborhood

From Seen in the Neighborhood

From Seen in the Neighborhood

Nothing is Random

How random are the things that happen to us? Is there some kind of connection to those seemingly freaky coincident that we experience?


My class is reading John Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things and we have been discussing Magical Thinking. One of the concepts we sent some time on yesterday was Synchronicity.

Synchronicity is a concept proposed by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung in 1951 where two or more unconnected events, seemingly random coincidences, are found to have significance by the person experiencing them. The concept seems to support the idea that in life there are no accidents.

One famous story of Synchronicity deals with French writer Émile Deschamps and plum pudding. On her page, Endearing Christmas Story –The Plum Pudding, Juanita Violini quotes the following story:

A series of delicious Christmas coincidences began in the year 1800 in Orleans, France. The famous Romantic poet, Emile Deschamps, was attending boarding school when a Frenchman recently returned from England, M. de Fortgibu, introduced him to an English taste treat unknown in France at that time -- plum pudding. Deschamps was delighted.

Ten years later Deschamps was passing by a restaurant on Boulevard Poissoniere when he spied a beautiful plum pudding in the window. Remembering the wonderful dessert from before, he immediately went in and asked for a slice. Regrettably, the hostess informed him that another customer had just ordered the entire pudding. Seeing Deschamps' look of disappointment, she went over to an elderly man in a colonel's uniform at another table and said, "M. de Fortgibu, would you have the goodness to share your plum pudding with this gentleman?" The two Orleans friends became pleasurably reacquainted as they again shared their holiday treat.

Many years passed. Emile Deschamps was attending a dinner party one evening where plum pudding would be the featured dessert, and joked to the guests, "Then I know M. de Fortgibu will be there." He regaled the party with the tale of his previous two experiences with plum pudding. The meal wended towards its conclusion, the dessert was brought forth, and the guests began to tease Deschamps about his missing acquaintance when the butler opened the door to the dining room. "M. de Fortgibu," he announced.

Deschamps' hair stood on end as in tottered his friend, now very old, looking blankly around the table. It turned out that the venerable colonel had been invited to another dinner party, in the same building, and had accidentally knocked on the wrong door. Deschamps exclaimed, "Three times in my life have I eaten plum pudding, and three times have I seen M. de Fortgibu! A fourth time I should feel capable of anything... or capable of nothing!"

"The proof of the pudding is in the eating." - Miguel de Cervantes

This story is excerpted from the December 24 entry of Almanac of The Infamous, The Incredible, and The Ignored, by Juanita Rose Violini.

A Wickipedia article on Synchronicity describes a strange coincidence which occurred with filming The Wizard of Oz. The Costume Department purchased a coat for the character of Professor Marvel which later was shown to have been owned by the book’s author, L. Frank Baum.

When discussing this in class, one of my students said that her father had seen actor Cary Grant at a ballpark three times in his life. Each time the father was eating a hotdog. The third time, Grant looked at him and said, “Don’t I know you? Weren’t you eating a hotdog here before?”

I was talking with my friend about the term. She related that on her second son’s birthday which is in the afternoon, she sends a text message or calls to wish him happy birthday. But since her eldest son was born at 2:19, she doesn’t do it. The night of her son’s last birthday, she got up she thought around 12 and realized he wasn’t in bed and thought she should go downstairs and wish him a happy birthday. Instead bed seemed a more logical action. As she got into bed she looked at the clock and realized it was 2:20.

What kind of examples can you share of Synchronicity at work?

Little People Living in Little Towns

Soldier's Home, 1943 by C. David Claudon

Have you been facinated by the idea Gulliver's Travels and seeing miniature people living in a full little town? Much of my life I have. The 1:12 inch scale room above speaks to that fascination.

I like to imagine that Swift had seen one of those early dollhouses that the Dutch and English delighted in. Called poppenhuis in the Netherlands, these often became so elaborate that legend has it that at least one woman bankrupted her husband to fill hers with silver accessories.When I visited Amsterdam in the 1970s, I especially wanted to check out the poppenhuis at the Rijks Museum. [For information on this poppenhuis, check out here.]

Inspired by the cabinet dollhouse, when I returned home, I started Braymore-at-Carnavan, a 10-room dollhouse built in two adjoining bookcases. Over the years, it became the place to put in a collection of miniatures and allowed me to design and  decorate a turn-of-the-century 10-room setting.

Among the other stops in that visit to Holland included Madurodam where famous Dutch buildings have been reduced to 1:25 scale. To stand among the buildings gives us the feeling of a Gulliver in Lilliput.

All of this leads to this little gem of a film, The Sand Pit by Sam O'Hare, which at first glance appears to be of beautifully done miniatures but instead is of life-size people from Manhatten and Brooklyn. The scale suddenly made me examine, how do I understand and "read" scale. This is a fascinating film.

Enjoy The Sandpit from Sam O'Hare on Vimeo.

The Water Is Wide

I am currently doing research on music that would have been sung during the 1860s, and one of the songs I found is the traditional The Water Is Wide.



When I first heard the song the performer chose only a couple of the verses, and it seemed a very haunting love ballad. But after doing more research I discovered it's actually about the loss of love, not the joy of it.

Based on a 17th century song, O Waly, Waly, the song has a couple of titles. You might know it is as There Is a Ship. There seem to be many variations to the lyrics.

I've settled on this version of the lyrics.

The Water Is Wide

The water is wide, I cannot get o’er
Neither have I wings to fly
Give me a boat that can carry two
And both shall row, my love and I

A ship there is and she sails the sea
She's loaded deep as deep can be
But not so deep as the love I'm in
I know not if I sink or swim

I leaned my back against an oak
Thinking it was a trusty tree
But first it bent and then it broke
So did my love prove false to me

I reached my finger into some soft bush
Thinking the fairest flower to find
I pricked my finger to the bone
And left the fairest flower behind

Oh love be handsome and love be kind
Gay as a jewel when first it is new
But love grows old and waxes cold
And fades away like the morning dew

Must I go bound while you go free
Must I love a man who doesn't love me
Must I be born with so little art
As to love a man who'll break my heart

When cockle shells turn silver bells
Then will my love come back to me
When roses bloom in winter's gloom
Then will my love return to me

Market Street, San Francisco 1905

Seen from a cable car showing the city before the earthquake.

The Threat of the Ordinary

[Note: I will try to avoid spoilers, but I really want you to see this film.]



The setting is daunting and alienating. A ferry arrives on a Massachusetts island in a storm and as the cars get off, one remains locked and abandoned. As the workers on the ferry try to figure out where the owner is, we switch to a deserted beach and a body washed ashore.

Switch to London, where the Ghost, a professional writer who helps say what the authors can't, is hired to take the place of the dead man and help a retired British prime minister finish his memoirs. The Ghost, Ewan McGregor, is a man with no ties, no family. Against his better judgment, he is wooed to the job by the promise of $25,000 for four weeks' work. The only problem is he has to join Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) on an island in Cape Cod to do the work. As he prepares to leave, he learns that Lang has been accused of allowing four British citizens accused of terrorism to be kidnapped and sent off with the Americans. "What have you gotten me into?" the Ghost asks his agent.

Thus begins Roman Polanski's carefully crafted homage to Alfred Hitchock. Like Hitchcock, Polanski takes an ordinary man and thrusts him into a world where even the commonplace seems threatening. The Ghost arrives at Lang's home which looks much like a German bunker during World War II. High tech, angular, concrete walls and floor to ceiling windows which make the foreboding Cape Cod storms part of the environment. The house reminds me in many ways of the high tech gloss of the house on Mt. Rushmore in Hitchcock's North by Northwest.

There's a wife and a blonde mistress (Kim Cattrall) at war with each other, a locked manuscript and secrets enough for all. Throw in the suspicion that Lang's previous ghost writer was murdered for knowing too much and you have all the elements of a fun ride.

Hitchcock loved to manipulate and concentrate on objects (think of the phone in Dial M for Murder, the glasses in Strangers on a Train, or a matchbook in North by Northwest). In this case we have a flash drive and manuscript, a wonderful BMW with GPS navagation which plots out one of the trips that the Ghost uses to solve his mystery, and the omnipresent Google provides the writer and us instant insight. One of the wonderful Hitchcockian (is there such a word?) moments is the climax of the film where a simple but deadly note is passed from one person's hand to another in great closeup. And at the end, there remains sly commementary as Lang's image looms in a poster for his book appearing to watch the action from behind another building. (It's the moment suggested in poster for the film.)

The score by Alexandre Desplat is evocative of Bernard Hermann's Hitchcock work [think Vertigo or North by Northwest]. Along with the violins of Hermann, Desplat in his most memorable moments relies also on oboe, tympani, and the celeste sounding like glass wind chimes.

Ewan McGregor plays the Everyman that Hitchcock would have cast with Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart. He has just the right subservient attitude. His character is a reluctant hero in his story and McGregor is both personable and vulnerable.

I've seen the movie twice since it came out here in Chicago and I highly recommend it to any fan of Polanski, McGregor, Bronsan, or Hitchcock.



For more information and trivia on the filming, check out here.

Signing

Lead Me Lord, ASL. There's something very poetic about signing.



In a totally different vein, here is Michael DiMartino's whose sign language work I subscribe to:

• Lady Gaga's Bad Romance SL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItLTSAw3nUk
• Lady Gaga's Beautiful Dirty Rich SL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-e6pGa9wTk
• Lady Gaga's Love Games SL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2raQgmg0UxU
• Britany Spear's If You Seek Amy SL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN1jEMCQ7EU

These are just a few of what Michael has on YouTube. I'll bet if you watch, you'll consider subscribing too.

Found on the Net

Laura Montana sings Lady Gaga. Does anyone else find this just too freaky?



OkGo, This Too Shall Pass. There used to be cartoonist named Rube Goldberg which created all kinds of jerryrigged machines. This is fascinating. Maximize the image and enjoy.



Blue Man Group: Crunch, Drums and Paper. If you haven't seen this in person, you have really missed a great experience. One of the fun experiences of my life.