-

We're Moving

2011-08-22T20:26:00.000-07:00

With the impending fifth anniversary of this blog, it has seemed in order to update, upgrade and move.

This site will not be completely shut down in the short term, and there may be parallel posts for a while, but the new "official" blog is going to be:

http://junkthief.wordpress.com/

MAGPIE TALE: Show Me State Show Biz

2011-08-21T19:21:00.000-07:00

Another Magpie Tale

It was a muggy Tuesday in mid-August of 1947 when the three Blodgetts packed up the Studebaker, ready to seek their fame and fortune in show business and leave Sedalia behind forever.
The show biz bug ran deep in their family, going back to their maternal great-uncles, the Sauntering Steinbergs who were the toast of Jefferson City where the performed to sold out houses at the Tivoli Terrace Theatre in 1897. They toured upper Missouri and lower Iowa for six years, performing at union halls and synagogues. They felt they had hit paydirt when they signed an exclusive contract with the Odd Fellows lodges in early 1903, only to be devastated that fall when they had to turn down a chance to headline at the Rotary Convention in Kansas City. They went downhill after that and blamed it on not having a good agent.
No other successful acts came out of Sedalia unless you counted Dorinda and Dorenza Walker who were better known for their shoplifting sprees and were now serving time at the women's correctional facility in Monette.

After the Steinbergs broke up, the eldest brother Sheldon had a modest "performance" career as the Santa for the V. Payne and Cooke department stores.

Satchel, the fourth brother, moved to Chichicastenango, where he headed a bizarre Kabbalahistic cult that was known for brutal sacrifices of grasshoppers.
Growing up, the Blodgetts spent summer night dreaming up their future in show business and remembering their great- uncles' mantra, "Be sure to get a good agent."
That's why that the moment they arrived in St. Louis, they went to the office of T. Everett "Buddy" Aronow. Buddy had a reputation of not suffering fools lightly. He was gruff and tough, but he was the most savvy agent between the Mississippi and the Rockies, and once he took you under his wing, your future was set.
Buddy's fortunes had never been riper than right now, thanks to his management of the La Croix Sisters who had recently relocated from Montreal to St. Louis. It was an open secret that buddy was grooming Genevieve (second from left) for a solo career, and there was already a subtle shift with the recent rebranding of the act as Genevieve and the Sisters La Croix. It was obvious that Genevieve was a beauty, but critics and audiences alike agreed that it was Florence La Croix that was the one with real talent.
But Buddy seemed to be blind to these realities, and he was already investing in a major movie career launch for Genevieve, the first Technicolor musical featuring a French Canadian poodle to be shot in Missouri. Elaborate sets, including a castle in which Genevieve would perform the opening number "I've Got a Bone to Pick with You", were being constructed in Florissant.

It was into this tense and dramatic fabric the Blodgetts entered as they walked up the five flights of stairs to Buddy's office where they entered and he snarled, "So what makes you kids think you've got the stuff for show biz?"

MAGPIE TALE: The Truth About Letha

2011-08-07T19:52:00.000-07:00

The markets may be sinking and jittery, but we've got our Magpie Tales to ground us.

"Dorene, we need to talk." She always hated it when Clifford said that. His family was always trying to talk things out, and it always ended badly.

Dorene's family never talked about things, preferring to take their secrets to the grave.

"Well, go ahead and tell me. What has that sister of mine done now, Clifford?
Letha Clemons had always been the embarrassment of the family. Always showing up at the wrong time and in the wrong attire and disappearing when she was needed.
She had followed quite a different path than her brother Wade who was now traveling the tent circuit and had a very popular radio broadcast each Sunday and Wednesday nights from WRFW in Toledo.
Wade took Letha's daughter Adele under his wing a couple of years ago, and she was doing quite well with her own children's ministry. But everyone wondered what had happened to Rusty.
"Well, out with it Dorene," told Clifford. "What do you know about Rusty?"

"He's doing just fine. Very fine, actually. Working in Dallas as a husky boy jeans model and the mascot for a vegetable company. He's done quite a few public appearances under the moniker of 'Johnny'. He's the leading husky boy model in the Southwest, though they airbrush his silhouette for the vegetable ads."

"And, of course, he's supporting Letha while she does nothing except honky tonk and loll around in bed until noon," Dorene fumed.

"But it puts a roof over their heads and food on the table."

"More food than Rusty needs. I know he's just having fried chicken and gravy and none of the Wonderbread he needs to build a healthy body. You know it builds strong bodies in eight ways. Eight ways, Clifford!"

"I know, I know....but what can we do, Dorene."

"As usual -- nothing. I told you I didn't want to talk. Talk always leads to nothing but this sort of disappointment."
Just then, Cousin Clara called them in for dinner as she put the needle on for a gorgeous Julie London album and a scrumptious supper.
To no one's surprise, Letha met a horrible fate two years later on her way home at 3 a.m. from the Ebb Tide Lounge in Glendale, California, where she and Rusty had moved as his modeling career had spun off into bit parts on Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best. He would end up under the care of Clifford and Dorene where he would be a National Merit Scholar and culinary master in his "Bachelor Living" classes in high school.
This would lead to him living his dream and opening a small chain of restaurants headquartered in Grand Rapids where he lives to this day with his significant other of 35 years, Sheldon Dreysdale of Dreysdale Dry Cleaning Service.

MAGPIE TALE: The Inventor's Curse

2011-07-31T20:41:00.000-07:00

This week's elevated contribution to the Magpie Tales.

And it all began with a windmill...
Hosting friends in their Malibu split level with Les Baxter playing on the Hi Fi, Chauncey and Camille Souder seemed a world away from that windmill that inspired Chauncey's grandfather more than 70 years ago, but it was his inspiration that brought them both their elegant privilege...and paranoia.
That paranoia wasn't evident the following morning, as Chauncey served grand marshal of the Rose Bowl Parade.
There were surely hints of the family trauma as little Leamon IV played with his erector set as he stayed at home with the house keeper. Leamon, of course, was named after his great-grandfather the founder of Souder Vertical Transportation, and generally credited with inventing the escalator. The Souders were set for life with Leamon I's invention, but they were also haunted by the "founder's curse".

They were not the first wealthy family to be haunted by the guilt attached to a family fortune. The most famous of those was Sarah Winchester, widow of the inventor of the rifle, who was forever haunted by the ghosts of those who perished by the bullet flying from her husband's invention and piercing their flesh. While Otis would often claim to be the inventor of the escalator or the "moving staircase" it was Iowa immigrant Leamon Souder who truly invented it, later selling his patent to Otis at a tidy profit. Souder claimed that he got his inspiration by seeing windmills on the plains and had a vision for wheels that would take people "into the clouds".
He would soon be able to make a plush life for his young bride Clarisse. While she greatly enjoyed the privilege, trips to Europe and stable of servants, she was plagued by guilt. As was common among wealthy women, Clarisse hired an alienist to address her manic episodes. When both Leamon and Leamon II died from yellow fever in 1901, she suffered from a series of hysterical episodes.
It was shortly after this that she hired her first alienist, Mr. Schnoopers, and his "interpreters" Frank and Edna Kern. Schnoopers advised her to invest $1.3 million dollars in a real estate scheme that was a rouse by the Kerns who disappeared with the cash and Mr. Schnoopers and were never heard from again.

Two months later, another four-legged alienist in a top hat appeared, Count Black Leg Johnson, who spoke to Clarisse directly instead of through human "interpreters".

Cautious but not cynical after her episode with the Kerns, Clarisse entered into her relationship with the Count slowly. He was patient and respectful, asking for nothing from her in return beside an occasional slice of bacon and a bowl of water.

The Count used birch twigs and ash to do readings about what he saw in the future, not just Clarisse's future but the future of humanity. He was very sad to reveal to her that because of the escalator and elevated transport in general, humanity would become fatter and more sedentary into the 20th and 21st centuries. Though elevated transport alone could not be blamed, it was iconic of society being asked to move faster, and jump higher and become less in touch with their bodies.

This was devastating for Clarisse who would become a vegetarian and strong advocate for exercise among the nation's youth. She would travel around the world with the Count where the two would give lectures on the importance of exercise in diet in the industrialized age.
Souder Mansion in Des Moines, would reflect Clarisse's growing eccentricity, and she built an entire wing just for the Count.
Though Otis would eclipse Souder as the elevated transport industry reach greater heights, but the spirit of Clarisse and The Count is surely there each time circulating stairs raise a pair of legs to the next floor.

MAGPIE TALE: Bicycle Thieves

2011-07-24T20:28:00.000-07:00

This week's take on the Magpie Tales.

When the elegant Cycles Sirius line was introduced in 1891, it brought an elegant new means of recreation and transportation to the world. Unfortunately, this coveted vehicle also introduced a brand of criminal more vile than horse thieves. Here are a few of them.Ferdinand Freund stole more than 300 bikes from upscale families in Vienna. It so traumatized them that Dr. Freud identified a new psychological condition, "the bicycle bereft".
Kadlec "Snookers" Prager terrorized Prague for over six years, reportedly stealing over 1,300 bikes even though he could have afforded to buy them himself since he came from the wealthy Prager steel fortune. Snookers would enter the priesthood just before the Nazis arrived and found redemption through his service in Jamaica where he is said to have given about more than 3,000 bikes to peasants.

Alfonzo Bronstein of Montevideo had a fetish for unusually crafted, odd bikes. Although his haul was rather small at a couple of dozen bikes, these typically hand-made bikes were beloved by their owners who often fell into deep depression.
The Lovoti-Hauschner gang of Washington D.C.'s Adams Morgan district patrolled the Capital Mall and took standard bikes that they retooled into their trademark "stretch" models that they tend sold on the black market.
Mysterious Mikey of San Bernadino, California, was sometimes referred to as the invisible bandit since he was never captured, and there are no photos of him. Especially fond of Stingrays, he managed to nab them as if they vanished into thin air.
Belfast's O'Reilly brothers are still folk heroes, stealing bike that they sold to help fund the IRA. "The Ballad of Cian and Ryan" is still a popular tune in many an Irish pub around the globe.
Jumpin' Jimmy Jernigan was one of the most heartless and brazen of thieves. He would skate into a playground until he gathered a small audience of thieves, and then would wheel away with five to seven bikes at one time. He was finally apprehended in Utah in 1934.

Shaka and Audrey Are Sad to See Their Dad Head Out on a Plane

2011-07-23T04:16:00.000-07:00

Audrey's Daddy Shamelessly Lures Her with Greenies

2011-07-21T22:04:00.000-07:00

From the Days of Wine and Analog

2011-07-19T22:09:00.000-07:00

Borders is closing, Kafka is going to the e-reader, and book burnings today would probably involve some corruption of silicon chips. But some may not be aware that for decades before we were here, there was the glorious Junk Thief magazine. Here is one of our favorite issues from 1963.

¡El suspenso es matanza yo! (The Suspense Is Killing Me!)

2011-07-18T20:43:00.000-07:00

Some Films You May Have Missed

2011-07-18T16:24:00.001-07:00

MAGPIE TALE: The Vicuna Mask

2011-07-17T22:28:00.000-07:00

Another edition of the Magpie Tales.

She was swift.

She was swank.
She carried many a secret to the grave.

And beyond.Too many people seek truth as a commodity. There is no truth in this world. Those who seek truth or reality or balance will meet a horrible fate.
Mystery is the true musk of life or the itch that is beneath each being. Every being has an itch. When a dog scratches, we reach for powders or ointments or high powered cures for the scratching that we often mistake for something that is not there, only to realize the itch we are denying.
There is no seven year itch. The itch is eternal. We just deny it. We are too civilized to scratch or itch or spit or seek root vegetables. We write verse and send text messages and get our chakras in order while denying the obvious, the unknown. The unknown is the eternal vicuna in the room. There is no elephant ever in the room. Only a fool would believe that there could be without explaining how it could get through the door unless one lives in a garage.

A vicuna is just large enough to fill the room and fit through the door. It is filled with mystery but never wears a mask. Look, here comes one now, chewing scrub and ready to fill the room.

Certain Tools

2011-07-14T20:23:00.000-07:00

Are there certain tools you find you absolutely can't live without? These days it's hard to think of there being tools that aren't electronic, and I have my fair share of those. In general, I am drawn to specific products more than brands. I have never caught the whole "cult of the Apple" though I was fond of the original Macintosh a quarter of a century ago. One of my exes foisted the big, ugly iMacs of the early 1990s on me that were all in gaudy tropical colors. Maybe I was projecting my troubles with him onto the computer, but all I know is that it crashed all the time, took up too much desk space and forever put a bad taste in my mouth for Apple products. I've had few iPods which I use less, and I find their stores really glaringly bright and ugly and their staff are always annoyingly cult-like and unable to solve problems and seem to have drunk too much of the Steve Jobs Koolaid.

But I digress...

In his book Hamlet's Blackberry, William Powers devotes an entire chapter to the cult of the Moleskine, as an alternative to the online life. For a long time I avoided them as being too cultish and fadish as well but have come to enjoy them over the past couple of years. The above represent the first six months of 2011. Not journals, per se, but books where I often make collages, paste in photos or articles I want to come back too or just work out words or thoughts beyond the many other journals I keep that range from ones on food, gardening, dogs, yoga, and topics I won't share publicly as well as a traditional journal that I have been keeping consistently since age eight.I have long used yellow tablets for work, but over the past few years have picked up a habit from my sister of using 5" x 7" yellow Cambridge pads and a Sharpie. There is something about the smaller format and the bolder strokes of a Sharpie that helps make tasks written in this format get done. There is more urgency and manageability to points written here, even if they spill on to another page.

My sister and I used these when caring for our ailing parents a few years ago, and there is always a tinge associated with that when I used them, but also a comforting continuity.
On the topic of family and continuity, this pen was given to me by my sister more than 20 years ago, and I think has forgotten giving it to me, but it has come to be known as the pen, the one I use for my daily list of things that matter the most to me. Not tasks, but those things that confirm I have really lived that day.
And then there are the mechanical pencils. Ah, the mechanical pencil. These are something I could write pages of poetry with and about. I would like to do an entire photos essay on them.

The above are but three of my favorite variations, none of them particularly. The top one is from the local art supply store FLAX, the middle one is a generic Papermate one from Walgreens and the last one is from Daiso, the Japanese dollar store. Its compact, sleek design is half the fun of it.

Mechanical pencils have a near sacred appeal to me, perhaps because they can both document and are erasable, a written masala that could be removed with one swipe of a gum eraser.

And then there are razor point markers....well, that's another post.

We Find the Oddest Things

2011-07-12T20:01:00.000-07:00

Indeed, we call this place Junk Thief, and that is a spirit we take. But is it junk thievery if it's discarded junk, just waiting to be rescued? And is it junk? Having two rescue basenjis (who are the opposite of junk), I think about all the treasures out there waiting to be rescued. Some of the most curious items in my home are "pound art" and "shelter furniture". I am forever picking up pieces of paper, discarded baskets and other pieces on the street that often go into collages and assemblages.

Shaka and Audrey often weigh in on my finds, and they realize that just as -- sadly -- there are shelter animals that are not adoptable, the same holds true with junk. The morning after the Fourth of July, we happened upon this oddity. Clearly, Audrey was still stressed from the previous night's fireworks, but she was quite clear that this was one that "will probably have to be put down" and suggested that we just move on.Some days, such as this morning, we happen upon things that are so odd and intriguing, you just wish you knew the whole back story. We came across this triptych on a single sheet that boggles the mind. It starts off a bit morbidly. Is that really a dog or a frog? And was the one on the left scratched out because the one on the right was more realistic?

Okay, now the story gets a lot more upbeat, Though much smaller, I can buy that this really is a dog. Though I hate to quibble, it looks like the dog is not enjoying "a" cookie but four. Or maybe he enjoyed one, and the other three were yucky. We may never know for sure.
And, finally, it gets mystical. I buy that it's a billygoat and that those are rocks. He ponders them? And why? And what happens next?

We may never know the conclusion of this story. We may never know who the artist and author were. (I'm sort of assuming they were the same person.) It's all mysterious, but then it may be next summer's blockbuster movie. But then, I've never been able to stay awake through an entire Star Wars movie and fell asleep during the opening credits of one of the Spidermen movies on a flight to Newark. However, I can sit through five hour documentaries about 12th century Catalan art without blinking an eye.

We do find the darndest things in the Mission.

Get Him on the Line

2011-07-12T01:31:00.000-07:00

MAGPIE TALE: Move Over Matisse

2011-07-11T09:33:00.001-07:00

This week’s contribution to the Magpie Tales.

When Thomas Hart Benton’s People of Chillmark was unveiled in 1920, it was universally praised as being one of his greatest works — a reputation it continued to hold until more than 30 years later when it was discovered by…the people of Chillmark. News, especially news from the art world, traveled much more slowly back then. Needless to say, the populace of Chillmark was outraged, and they felt something needed to be done to repair their reputation.

A community meeting went on for hours with angry outbursts, frustration and people wanting to find a way to track down Benton. This all seemed to go nowhere until Edna Turkinberry stood up and said, “The best way to fight fire is with fire. Let’s paint portraits of the real people of Chillmark!” Edna had taken a correspondence course in painting from an Adventist liberal arts school in Nebraska and was prepared to teach the citizens of Chillmark on how to become artists themselves.

It sounded like a daunting task in a town where few knew the difference between pizza and Picasso, but all admired the sensible self portrait of Edna that hung in her living room. She distributed flyers around town asking people to submit a sample work.

No one was prepared for the volume and quality of work that soon flooded in. Luellen Luis’ portrait of Snoopy was just one example, and soon Edna realized that this would have to be a juried class, and she let in only 12 of the top artists who submitted work. When the Courier-Gazette interviewed her, she said, “In a nutshell, all I can say is that Chillmark has talent.” The classes went all spring, and by the arrival of summer, Edna announced that she would be mounting a show right after Labor Day and she planned to send a personal invitation to Thomas Hart Benton himself so he could see what an injustice he had done to the good people of Chillmark.

The show was mounted at the dining hall of the Cranberry Cottages Lodge and Resort out on Route 17. It was clearly the event of the season. Chillmark’s citizenry came out in droves, and the line to get in backed up nearly half a mile. Visitors were first greeted by a stunning portrait of leading local equestrian Elvira Itchmite and her mare Inky, painted by Rhoda Rashburn Richie.

A serene portrait of retired librarian Agnes Oogleston captured both her grace and fondness for the glorious flora of Chillmark. It even included her wearing her favorite pair of Thom McCanns.

Single mother Tina Travisa charmed everyone with a gloriously vibrant portrait of her with her delightful daughter Shirley. Shirley was a remarkable and bright girl who would graduate high school at age 12 and would win scholarships to Harvard and Cambridge before dropping out at 14 to join an early punk band called the Stool Samples. She would later go on to found her own band, Shirley Pimple and the Pus Cats, that shocked not only the people of Chillmark but even the most radical members of the punk scene. By age 21 she was married, had two daughters and worked the evening shift at a TGIF Friday’s in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

But the sensation of the show was the self portrait by Rhonda Razzdale. Long considered the “Venus of Chillmark” with her swan like neck, flaxen hair and eyes that were once called “the color of a Tuscan summer sky” Rhonda captured her beauty on canvas with an unexpected intensity. Standing at over nine feet high, this portrait left many people stunned, including David Dinkeldorf, an art critic with the Boston Globe who stood in front of it for nearly an hour, his jaw dropped and his eyes transfixed. After taking it in, he silently exited, not saying a word to anyone.

The next day his opinion was heralded in three words at the top of the arts section: “Move over Matisse”. In his review of the show, he praised all of the artists but spotlighted Razzdale as “single-handedly pushing art forward with one painting into the 21st or maybe 22nd century.” Calls soon came in from the Met in New York, museums in Paris and Buenos Aires. That was until they actually saw the work. The following week, Dinkeldorf completely recanted and said his review was written just before he came to terms with a long-standing substance abuse addiction and that he was heading upstate for treatment. “Honestly, I don’t even remember going to that show,” he confessed. “It all came after a 48 hour binge, and I probably would have been charmed by the stains in my kitchen sink.”

The show continued for another month, but the sizzle had obviously diminished. Most of the paintings ended up being sold in garage sales or church auctions. All, that is, except for Razzdale’s portrait which she held on to and still considers to be a masterpiece.

The Sour of the Now

2011-07-10T20:13:00.000-07:00

There is no such thing as the present tense.

It is an illusion and delusion.

We mistake the present for a series of tableaux

Revealed through the sliding doors of the what was and the hope that we will be alive in a decade.

These two poles are the only true time. We are forever wedged and pulled

Between the unrealized dreams of youth and the undefined

Fate of the future. There is no Now and it has no Power.

A balloon ride over Catalonia in 1877 may have been experienced by

Only a handful but is present as we breath, our nostrils taking in the

Microscopic debris of pterodactyls and giving oxygen to 31^st century

Nieces and nephews granded to the 72^nd power.

We hear a bird, we see the milky outline of the moon in the early evening sky

And we are uncertain, unwilling to commit to whether this is reality or the dance

Of history and fate. Any lie, told carefully over time, will erase all that

Came before it and become reality.

Aged to Perfection

2011-07-05T00:22:00.000-07:00

Irish Pipers

2011-07-04T21:41:00.000-07:00

Golden in Chicago

2011-07-04T21:29:00.000-07:00

Now We Have Webcams

2011-07-04T21:04:00.000-07:00

MAGPIE TALE: All the Wheat in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence

2011-07-04T10:46:00.000-07:00

Our contribution to the Magpie Tales series.

Great grand grand father Adelard had no idea he was being painted from the window of the asylum. Some days as he wiped his brow from the summer heat, he would look up at the Saint-Paul Hospital and would see a face peering out at him from a window. Their gaze would be as intent and steady as a cat, making him wonder what was happening with the information sent to the brain by those eyes. Adelard hated being in the range of such eyes, as if they could suck him up from the wheat field and possess him.
And on the afternoon of July 27, 1890, he saw that odd man with red hair and a wound to his head step by his table outside of the Ravoux Inn. He had seen this off fellow around quite a bit, knew he spoke with what he mistook for a German accent and was likely on release or escape from Saint-Paul Hospital. Our Aunt Clarrisse worked as a laundress there for six months, but our family had no other connection. Adelard always wondered why that wheat field stood there between the asylum and and the stone wall that stood between it and the outside world. Who was that wall protecting -- the inmates, those of us on the outside or the wheat?

Wheat was so central to the life of our family. Adelard's hands worked the fields, and the bounty of the harvest nourished his body. The word gluten, which would come to be a scourge in our family in the next century, was a term Adelard had never heard nor understood. When the opportunity to marry Inès Boulliard presented itself in 1893, it was not because of any passion or attraction to this rather plain woman of 24 who had been waiting for a suitor for nearly a decade. It was only because 82 hectares of prime wheat fields and a small vineyard came to him with her hand.

Years later, Inès would educated Adelard on who that "odd little Dutch fellow" was and urged him to sell 12 hectares of the fields to buy a painting. Adelard would hear nothing of it, pointing out that the painting were very poorly executed -- wasting too much paint that was piled on thickly and the man clearly had poor eyesight as well as mental problems because all of his landscapes and figures were blurry and lacked precision.Adelard knew he was much wiser investing in new farm equipment, practical tools that would put food on the table. He would hear no more of these insane ideas of from Inès. She bristled at the word "insane" but would say nothing of it, fearing that Adelard might learn the truth about her sister Jasmine who had been at Saint-Paul since she turned 14. She clung to the hope that her long, near-spinsterhood was not because of her less than stellar complexion but the reputation the Boulliards had gained for being "a bit off" because of Jasmine. She just prayed that it would not be passed down to the next generation they hoped to produce soon. Nearly 25, there was much pressure for Inès to produce heirs while "the field was still fertile" as Adelard and her father would say, unapologetic about putting every situation in to agricultural terms.
A full year and a half passed without any children, and then suddenly they began to arrive. Adelard did little more than to pose in family photos with them. Fatherhood did not suit Adelard , and he fairly much chose to ignore it. Children were there to help him tend the fields in his opinion. But the two boys had no interest in farming, and he daughter had no interest in him or her brothers. She and Inès, however, had a close bond that Adelard always resented. They seemed to speak in their own language, finding refuge from that household of three males, three males who never talked to each other. It was Etienne, the younger son, who worried Inès. He had developed a brooding demeanor worse than his father’s at much too early an age. And she caught him drinking bourbon at the age of 12. Clearly he was following in his father’s footsteps at much too early an age. Adelard’s sullen moods grew darker, and he had gained the nick name of the “grim reaper” as he sauntered along the back trails of the village as he departed the wheat fields at dusk.

Etienne, Inès was certain, would end up in a room at Saint-Paul Hospital before he turned 18, staring out at those wheat fields. Those wheat fields that would turn one more male to madness.

Brawling Mob

2011-07-02T11:36:00.000-07:00

Red Dogs on the Redwood Chips

2011-06-30T21:39:00.000-07:00

After several days of rain and fog (which I am glad to have considering how hot it is in other parts of the country), it turned sunny and warmer but not to hot the past two days. Shaka and Audrey were thrilled, and I was thrilled to see them thrilled.

The Reward of Waiting Three Decades

2011-06-29T21:03:00.001-07:00

In 1979, I first saw a three or four paragraph mention of the Japanese group Yellow Magic Orchestra in a magazine sidebar. They had recently played in California, and I rushed out to get their first two albums.
The next two hours whizzed by magically with hits from the late 1970s to more recent experimentations. Decades ago, I gave up home that I would ever see these guys live. Keeping ever hopeful finally paid off. It was a real high being surrounded by grandparents singing along with their grandchildren, and we all knew every word.

MAGPIE TALE: The Colors!

2011-06-27T09:09:00.000-07:00

Our weekly contribution to the Mapie Tales

Ralph Rengdorff was never a fan of art. "It's all to arty," he would say, but when he saw the exhibit Endeavor by Lino Tagliapietra at the Columbus Museum of Art, his head started spinning. "The colors!" he exclaimed.
He got on the phone the second he and Bark Cantrell motored back north to Rocky River. He couldn't wait to tell his wife Lurelle what he had just seen and how it was going to change their lives.

The phone rang for what felt like an eternity until he finally heard Enoch Light playing in the background and finally a dainty voice saying, "Wah, wah dah." It was Lurette, Ralph's youngest, not quite able to form complete words yet, but she just loved to talk on the phone.
"Lurette, can you hand the phone to Mommy?" Mommy and big sis Adele were in the crafts room where they were trying on new matching blouses that Lurelle had made using a Simplicity pattern on her Singer. Smashing and sparkling with just the style of color Ralph wanted to restyle their home. "Lurette, if Mommy's not there, let me talk to Billy."
Billy wasn't there. He was over at Kirk Craven's house. Kirk sure liked art and theater and was so kind to take Kirk cultural events. They had just gone to see a matinee of "Gigi" which Kirk had seen three times already and thought was just smashing. Billy always came back full of vigor and vim after an outing with Kirk, and he always came back freshly showered. That Kirk was one heck of a guy.
Lurelle sometimes wondered why a fellow as handsome and cultured as Kirk never got married. He sure seemed to have a lot of bachelor friends, though. Seemed you'd always find him walking up to some striking gentleman at the train station and introducing himself. "That Kirk never knew a stranger," folks would say.
Just in case anyone got the wrong idea, Lurelle would point out that Kirk did like the ladies. In fact he and his buddy Stretch Johnson were always seen out on the town with Lillian Lushmore. Lillian said she was the luckiest gal in Cleveland to always have two handsome escorts. "Think you'll ever settle down with one of those handsome bachelors?" people would ask. "Settle down? Oh, I don't want those boys to ever settle down," Lillian would say, arching her left eyebrow.

Now that Ralph had fallen for the arts, he was looking forward to discussing it with Lillian. Hey, maybe he might give Kirk a call. Kirk had said for the longest time he would love to take Ralph to see "The Red Shoes".

Carson, Pirie & Scott

2011-06-23T16:11:00.000-07:00

Standing at the important address of 1 South State Street, the Carson, Pirie, Scott & Company Building is not unlike Sullivan himself -- providential and a mass of contradictions. Modern and ancient, urban and reflecting nature, massive and delicately intimate, comforting and foreboding.Built in 1899 as the Schlesinger & Mayer Department Store, it housed Carson, Pirie & Scott until 2006 when the store closed. Word is that it will now become a Target, Chicago's first in The Loop.
The building has been stripped of much of its original detail through the years, but an amazing amount has survived.
Now referred to as the Sullivan Center, it has managed to survive various attempts at "modernization" or demolition.
Perhaps my favorite detail is the LHS -- Louis Henri Sullivan -- signature.

MAGPIE TALE: The Marking Down of Beauty

2011-06-20T17:02:00.000-07:00

Our latest contribution to the Magpie Tales series

We all knew Latrice Williams would come back one day when 20 years ago she swaggered out of Joliet to seek her fame and fortune. How fitting that she is now working the fountain counter at the same Woolworth's where photos of her are stacked 10 high in the remainder bins next to LPs of Milton Berle singing Yellow Submarine and dakron aprons with rooster patterns.

She has even reverted back to her original name, Agnes Blanchburn.

Edna Cosgrove and Coeta Healdton whisper over the lime aids and pimento grilled cheese sandwiches Agnes serves them. They can remember the days when Agnes was better known for "putting on airs" after she came back from elocution and posture lessons from a tutor in Evanston.
Agnes always tried to present herself as the artistic type ever since she won the contest of Miss Studebaker of Kendall County and that artist from Ann Arbor breezed through town and painted so many portraits of her. He said he was going to submit some of them direct to the Studebaker designers and insist that her likeness should be used in the design of the hood ornaments for the 1932 model. Agnes had visions of dozens of chrome versions of herself coming down Michigan or Park avenues, glistening in the sun.
It was Detroit not Hollywood that came calling for Agnes when she entered the contest for Miss Buick 1935 but came in only fifth place but was featured as Miss August in calendars in the men's rooms of dealerships in the Upper Midwest. It was then that she adopted the name Latrice to avoid too much scandal back in Joliet. Soon she was actually off to California and making films, but in Encino not Hollywood or Culver City.
She adopted a number of other names -- Lillian Lushmore, Bernice Babcock, Colleen Coobaugh -- as she made a series of increasingly squalid potboilers. And before she knew it, she was 35, a marginally employed "actress" who primarily supported herself working at Van de Kamp's. Finally, she got a speaking role, albeit one line ("I think he went that way.") and in a B-picture, Revenge of Tarzan.And now, here she is back in Joliet. "This job at the counter is just transitional," she tells Coeta and Edna who nod in polite albeit mock understanding as they struggle to quiet their condescending giggles. "I think I will either teach acting or piano lessons. And I still have my ceramics. I could always pursue my craft in ceramics. I find glazing much more rewarding than the glare of the spotlight these days."

Charnley Charm

2011-06-16T21:16:00.000-07:00

Although they collaborated for only a few years, the careers of Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright were forever entwined. Clearly, I greatly favor Sullivan whom I consider the far more talented and romantic and who more successfully merged nature and architecture.
There are not that many clear collaborations between the two, but perhaps the most terrific is the Charnley Persky House at 1365 Astor Street in the Gold Coast, essentially Chicago's version of the Upper East Side. Today it houses the Society of Architectural Historians. Unfortunately I was not free on the days they did tours during my visit but got to see it from outside which is glorious in its own way.
Many debate how much is Wright and how much is Sullivan. I think the lines of the overall structure are clearly Wright, and the ornamentation is obviously Sullivan. One of the key things I got from my Sullivan tour given by George Paldo of Chicago Savvy Architectural Tours is that Sullivan is unique in designing soffits, and there is no example quite like Charnley.

And I went to Chicago...

2011-06-14T19:09:00.001-07:00

And I had a glorious time. My primary purpose was to attend the Basenji Rescue and Transport (BRAT) convention which was very helpful in building my skills to be a better foster for Audrey and Shaka
However, my greater purpose was to do some architecture tours -- Wright (meh), Burnham (okay) and Sullivan (the master). The Sullivan tour was clearly the highlight. Where to begin?
Why not at the end, at his last building on Lincoln Avenue, the Krause Music Store.
Built in 1922, two years before his death, it is relatively small. Barely 20 feet wide and two stories -- a shop on the lower level and a residence above.
The man who invented the American skyscraper ended his career in poverty, not able
to pay his AIA dues and living in a small rented room, though he created the nation's greatest structures of the late 19th century.
If the Auditorium Theater and Tower are a symphony, this one is a jewel box/chamber piece like the incredible banks he designed during the same period.
These photos are but the tip of the iceberg, and I will be posting many others. But they are like an homage to the master, who would face a sad end but went out with a blaze of glory with thei building.

Curious About Men?

2011-06-03T12:59:00.000-07:00

Sprout Mania Sprouts

2011-06-02T15:45:00.000-07:00

Dog Friendly Gas

2011-06-01T16:27:00.000-07:00

Fire All the Way

2011-05-30T11:00:00.000-07:00

Can You See the Beauty?

2011-05-29T21:36:00.000-07:00

How to Catch an Atheist

2011-05-28T11:43:00.000-07:00

Life after Oprah

2011-05-27T21:35:00.000-07:00

No Clutter, No Booze

2011-05-23T17:29:00.000-07:00

More Shaka and Audrey Photos

2011-05-17T15:21:00.000-07:00

Audrey

Shaka
AudreyShaka

Saga of the Solano County Basenjis, Part One

2011-05-10T12:05:00.000-07:00

(I've been out of commission in the blog world the past few days, the this post shows why. This will appear tomorrow on the blog for Basenji Rescue and Transport (BRAT), but I am previewing it here.)

When I lost my beloved basenji Bow in March, I knew I needed to have some time and a break from basenjiland even though I ached to have a basenji next to me again the moment she departed. Barely a month later, on May 2 I got a message from Ray Eckart, BRAT regional coordinator in Chico that there was a basenji whose owner had to move the next day into an apartment that did not allow pets. Then we learned it wasn’t one basenji but two. The owner didn’t want to go through the hassle of filling out a second online intake form. The information we did have was sketchy besides the fact that they were a six-year-old male, Shacka, and three-year-old female, Crybaby (yes, urgh on that name). And we knew that they had not been spayed or neutered. We needed to act fast or we weren’t sure what might happen to these two, and we weren’t even positive they were basenjis.

Arrangements were made for the owner to drop these two at my house the following day at 10 a.m. At 10:30 a.m. the owner called to say they were missing and might have gotten out the night before, or even earlier. Ray spread the word widely to have volunteers, other rescue groups and individuals to be on the look out for them. Having psyched myself up to bring them in, I now had to try to detach from worrying too much about these two dogs I’d never met. But it was impossible not to think about them running lose in Solano County, a highly developed area in the middle of the San Francisco-Sacramento Corridor where I-80 weaves through and is one of the busiest interstates in the nation. The likelihood of them surviving seemed very slim. I went to bed heart sick that my chance to help these two had probably vanished.

All day Wednesday I tried to blot out what might have happened to these two mystery basenjis, and then a message popped up that afternoon. “Shacka and Crybaby have been found!!!!” Multiple postings and messages had led to them being discovered on Petharbor at the Solano County Animal Control in Fairfield after being discovered running lose on a major street. The grainy online photos showed that they were indeed basenjis, Crybaby looking underweight and with a very sad, miscolored coat.

I called animal control, and miraculously the two had been microchipped, but the information on file was all out of date. That meant the owner had a week to claim before BRAT could gain custody of them. We gave animal control his contact, he chose to turn them over to animal control who in turn signed them over to BRAT
.

The next day I nervously made the drive to Fairfield uncertain of what I might find. Would they be aggressive, fearful, rabid? There was an excruciating five minute wait after I signed the paperwork and then they emerged charging out on leash with an animal control staffer. They looked like no basenjis I had ever seen. Their coats were matted and very light. Crybaby was especially underweight.

Shacka came right up to me and gave me a friendly sniff. Crybaby cowered but didn’t not show any aggression as the slip leashes were removed and they were put onto my leashes. After a walk around the grounds to prepare for our long ride back to San Francisco, they jumped quickly in the car and rode well all the way back, Shacka sitting regally in the back seat and Crybaby hunkered below him on the floor

I followed all of the instructions I’ve read of fostering of keeping a good distance and giving them plenty of treats and happy talk along the way. As we crossed the East Bay Bridge’s S-curve and then emerged from the tunnel of Yerba Buena Island, I felt my right shoulder twitching, sure that it was from all the stress of the past few days. I reached it to scratch and realized it was Shacka’s paw. He wasn’t pushing to get in the front seat. He had simply gently put his paw on my shoulder and looked into my eyes with what felt like was an attitude of “I think I can trust you.” Even if he couldn’t understand the words I told him, “The best part of your life has just begun.”

With virtually no medical history besides the round of shots they got at animal control, no background on their socialization or temperament, my fostering of these two began. I will go into more detail in a later post, but I will just say that so far these two have proven to be the miracle basenjis. I admire them for just surviving on the streets of Fairfield for at least a day or two. Shacka immediately acted as if I was his best friend. Crybaby (whom I am just calling Baby for now) was very frightened that first afternoon, but snuggled up next to by the end of the day – clearly desperate to be protected and loved but afraid of almost every sound she heard. She let me brush her coat that was as stiff as a porcupine and felt like silk by the time I was finished. By the second day she was almost begging to brushed. They both love to be brushed.

There has been some marking and chewing in the house but nothing so severe that I have really been ready to throw in the towel. The fact that these two have been so willing to trust a human after what seems like a really horrible start in life gives me reason to want to make every effort to help them begin the next chapter of their lives where they will be showered with love, nurtured to great health and thrive as the best basenjis they can be.

Having such support from the whole BRAT community has made this initially chaotic foster assignment much less daunting.

More than once I have thought I was insane for doing this, that it's more than I can handle, that it's too soon after losing Bow. But another side of me thinks Bow had a hand (or a paw) in this, seeing that my life had become too dull and she decided to send them my way. It really is a miracle that they survived that day or two running virtually feral on the streets of Fairfield. Maybe it was Bow, their guardian angel, watching over them and sending them into a new life where they will now be safe.

(And here is a link to a video of them settling into fun in the back garden.)

MAGPIE TALE: Two Birds

2011-05-09T21:44:00.000-07:00

Another Magpie Tale

Two birds came to him that morning as he strolled into the garden in his robe. His beard, that robe and modest sandals made many think he was a priest. But he was a mere bank teller at a branch on the west side.

He cherished his moments in the garden, usually going there just after rising and enjoying a cup of oolong tea. He much preferred oolong to herbal infusion or the dreaded chamomile. For a certain percentage of the population, chamomile is a soothing, relaxing herb. For him and many others, is a toxic irritant since it is in essence ragweed, and when in tea form is like ingesting that wretched weed into the bloodstream. Any time he drank chamomile he had restless nights with his heart racing, his lungs feeling swollen and his chest tight. He caused not only sleepless nights but delusional ones.

Oolong by contrast soothed and cleansed him, making him feel at one with nature. It was because of that he lately found bird choosing to perch on his hands. Even without a lure of seeds or other gifts, they seemed at one with him. With time he would offer them pieces of straw. His hand would become a virtual lumberyard for bird construction as each morning he found communion with them before he went off to work to process loans.

MAGPIE TALE: Smoldering Fires

2011-05-02T16:09:00.000-07:00

This week's contribution to the Magpie Tales series

Grammy Coobaugh always talked about the time Clarence Holbrook Carter came through Deaver County and started painting residents. Grammy only had half a dozen photographs of the family that she'd barely been able to afford at that little photo studio in Eaglesburg. She managed to pay for it by agreeing to let the photographer come up to farm and take payment with picking blackberries on the halves -- he got to go home with half of the buckets he picked. She'd never paid real money for a photograph. Later her Sister Ida who had moved to Memphis as a teen bride would buy her a Brownie, but that was years later.

The idea of having her portrait done in oils seemed a bit silly to her. All that time involved. Mr. Carter had her sit there for three days straight holding Little Chester who would get restless, and the painter would complain about the light not being correct. She thought of the time she could have spent washing or weeding the tomato patch, but she agreed to stand for the portrait and stared into the distance.

"Smoldering Fires" was the name he gave to it. Many thought it was an obvious title referring to the slag heaps issuing smoke in the background. Grammy Coobaugh never lived to see the portrait since Carter didn't come back through the county after he completed it. Did he maybe sense what was smoldering beneath her composed expression, a certain incomprehension about Carter and life and what she pretty much knew would be Chester's fate. She was optimistic after the Korean War when Chester settle in California but rarely heard from him. He sometimes would send her a Mother's Day card in June with "Sew sorry. Done forget till now but I git it to yoo." He worked as an apprentice mechanic in a garage in Southgate for the next 30 years, drifting in and out of marriages and never making child support payments to a disconnected of children strewn Oxnard to National City.

It was his sixth wife, Edna, that took him to that exhibit at the Huntington in 1973 when he stood in front of the painting, seeing something familiar but still not comprehending. Edna, who fancied herself as being an art and anthropological aficionado nudged him and said, "Why look Chester, it could almost be the Appalachia of your youth."

"Ain't half as good as that Norman Rockwell, if you ask me."

Chester stuck his hands and pockets and sauntered off, adding, "Which room's got that Pinky and Blue Boy. I heard this is the museum with Pinky and Blue Boy."

Where I Am Headed Today

2011-04-21T09:40:00.000-07:00

Spherical Abberation

2011-04-20T00:33:00.000-07:00

Haruki "Cupcake" Murakami - Noble Beast

2011-04-19T21:20:00.001-07:00

I've spent thousands (okay, probably more like tens of thousands) of dollars at Dog Eared Books (http://www.dogearedbooks.com/) over the many years but never knew about their mascot. I wish I had met him.

Norway

2011-04-18T22:39:00.000-07:00

MAGPIE TALE: Fear of Gypsies

2011-04-18T14:44:00.000-07:00

Another entry in the Magpie Tails

My father was never one to dispense advice or voice prejudice, but he frequently warned me about gypsies. He had few fears but chief among them were rattle snacks, tainted buttermilk and gypsies.

Mother, who could find reason to have empathy for even the most contentious individual, would point out that gypsies were the only Aryan victims of the Holocaust. A people without an official country and little political motivation.

Father also had a phobia about eating eggs, especially eggs that were not cooked well through to the yolk. A runny yolk was one of his greatest fears. "Eggs are one of the favorite ruses of the gypsies."

That statement was never expounded on, and it always mystified me. Years late while on holiday walking through a fashionable neighborhood of Milan, an egg mysterious fell from above and splattered all over my expensive leather jacket. While I looked above at the myriad of closed windows trying to find its source, a pleasant bypasser came to my aid and began to pat away the mess on my jacket with a large handkerchief he produced from his vest pocket. "Ah, how horrible. How could anyone do that to you? Oh, look there is some here on the back of your trousers. He produced another handkerchief and continued his helpful patting. Just as I was about to thank him, he excused himself saying he had to rush to his work since he was late. Freed of the egg yolk stain I decided to reach for my wallet where I had stored a small pocket map only to find...both were gone.

Distraught at my hotel where I related the story, the sympathetic night concierge sighed and said, "Ah, the work of gypsies. They work in pairs. They even steal the eggs from unsuspecting vendors. Sadly, Milan is full of them now. I'm surprised, you don't have the look of the typical victim."

My father was long gone by the time of this incident, and I never got the chance to ask him if he had a similar incident in his travels before he married my mother. I will never know, that Rosetta Stone to his psyche buried with him years ago.

Just Breathe

2011-04-18T10:58:00.000-07:00

Why Do the Wrong People Travel?

2011-04-17T17:55:00.000-07:00

What do Lars von Trier, Franz Kafka and Mrs. Favell Lee Mortimer have in common? All three are Europeans who created works with a strongly slanted view of the United States without ever visiting here.

There are von Trier's didactic takes on America in the films Dancer in the Dark and Dogville. Kafka's surreal Amerika has been a favorite of mine since childhood.

Only this week have I discovered Mrs. Mortimer, an "Evangelical author of educational books for children". And, boy, did Mrs. Mortimer have her opinions. Though she rarely left her home, she wrote extensively through a very opinionated lens about the many countries of the world that are compiled in the book The Clumsiest People in the World: Mrs. Mortimer's Bad-Tempered Guide to the Victorian World.

Here's what she has to say about the U.S.:

"America is never spoken of in the Bible. One only savages lived in America; now there are very few savages, and a great many civilized people. Yet there is room for a great many more --for there are fewer people in America, in proportion to its size, than in any other quarter of the globe..."

And her views on China
"China is a heathen country; yet it is not a savage country, for the people are quiet, and orderly and industrious."

On Rome:
"Rome is the capital of Italy and once it was the capital of the world. It was a wicked city then, full of idols and cruelty -- and it is a wicked city now. Here the Pope lives. He is the chief of the priests of the Catholic religion."

Racism and bigotry are never a laughing matter, but Mrs. Mortimer's amazingly misinformed words are hard not to read without being just a little bit amused. It is a bit frightening that this woman was respected and well read in her day, and it probably speaks volumes about attitudes that were handed down from the Victorian era to the present.

American Commons

2011-04-16T09:39:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, I had the chance to hear photographer Robert Dawson speak at the San Francisco Public Library where his exhibit Public Library: An American Commons is on display through June 12. Representing 17 years of work that is still in progress it is epic, touching and enlightening.

Dawson, a native Californian who has also written and documented extensively on the topic of water in the West, is clearly much more than a photographer. His library project takes the perspective of an anthropologist, social commentary, architectural appreciation, literary critique and poet. While he documents temples of reading with grand structures in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, Portland and other urban hubs, the most fascinating are tiny libraries in remote towns. In many places they are the only source of the written word or internet access. One in the desert, no larger than a garden shed, serves as both a library and post office. He also has a fascinating series of images of post-Katrina New Orleans libraries, victims of that tragedy we don't hear much about.

Though not in the exhibit, he shared new images of the tool library in Berkeley.

Anyone in San Francisco should take time to see the exhibit or catch one of Dawson's talks listed in the link above. He plans to eventually publish a book but will likely spend another 17 years on that. His next goal is to visit the middle part of the country, especially those areas that are strongly anti-government to see what attitudes are about public supported libraries there.

The dichotomy he emphasized in his talk is that not since the Great Depression has use of libraries been so high and funding so threatened. For some, the library is a lifeline to seek employment online or find warmth in the winter. With that comes much more and a reminder that this is a true American Commons.

African Palm Swift

2011-04-15T09:55:00.001-07:00

Who's the Boss?

2011-04-14T13:32:00.000-07:00

Upland Sandpiper

2011-04-14T00:06:00.000-07:00

From the Literary Giants Series

2011-04-13T13:29:00.000-07:00

Reynaldo Hahn is hosted for tea by Marcel Proust in his cork walled parlor.

Barn Swallow

2011-04-13T01:47:00.000-07:00

Western Tanager

2011-04-12T00:46:00.000-07:00

MAGPIE TALE: Family Portrait in Alcohol

2011-04-11T20:13:00.000-07:00

(Another adventure in the land of Magpie Tales.)

'Wine has always flowed in our family, splashing the banks of our bloodline as it rushes to the the family tree and soaks its roots before drowning its branches, retreating to leave an eternal crimson shroud.

Where did it all begin? Likely long before any of our ancestors crossed the Atlantic to Canada and then descended ever further down the Mississippi and then out to the west, scattering in random streams from Vancouver to San Diego, like the errant remnants of a spilled glass of merlot. Our now revered ancestors always had a bottle of cheap burgundy as they strolled the back alleys of Vienna picking rags or sneaking through through the loose board of a fence to steal a pair of chickens for Christmas dinner.

The New World brought only a slightly scrubbed new start. Stories of Great Great Uncle Winchell and his over-sized coats to hide his eternally present bottle.
His cousin Harriett thought she broke the chain by switching champagne and later pink and blue cocktails that her dog Jasper was always quite happy to lick away so she could delude herself into believing that any evidence of her debauchery had been erased.
Grandpa Orleans continued that tradition by never acknowledging that his problem ever existed, forever scolding his fellow plumbers guild of the evils of booze. "Don't throw your earnings down the drain, boys." They found him face down in one of his latest porcelain installations on his 37th birthday, lifeless from an alcoholic stroke and leaving nine hungry mouths to feed.

Swainson's Thrush

2011-04-11T00:53:00.000-07:00

Sunday Wisdom

2011-04-10T22:23:00.000-07:00

"He who seeks beauty shall find it"

- Bill Cunningham

"But the building's identity resided in its ornament."

- Louis Henri Sullivan

Loggerhead Shrike

2011-04-10T08:10:00.000-07:00

Si, se puede. Highlights from Cesar Chavez Day

2011-04-09T18:11:00.001-07:00

Factory Direct Wigs in the Mission

2011-04-09T10:57:00.001-07:00

Mr. and Mrs. Frank Kern. And Bobbie.

2011-04-09T09:58:00.000-07:00

Dropping Judgment, the Search for the Perfect Green, and Adrift in the Universe

2011-04-08T00:41:00.000-07:00

Do you check your Myers-Briggs or ennegram type regularly? I forget where I am on the latter, but I consistently come out either INTJ or ENTJ. I've always been told that I am over the top on intuitiveness. The highest possible ranking.In the days before I had to say goodbye to Bow, my level of judging (the signature J of INTJ and ENTJ) was over the top. Since she departed, it seems to have dropped almost completely. I find a tolerance for the most tedious of personalities that usually grate on me. I also seem to have a heightened awareness of the color green. In the wake of the winter rains, all plant life is either blooming or emerald green.
I've always been fond of this building at 20th and Valencia, but it seemed to be even closer to the perfect shade of green tonight.
It and many other green things seemed to be calling out to me this morning.
The afternoon I saw the life leave Bow's body, I felt I saw my own life leaving with her. I say that not in some mournful, tragic or even regretful way. My life as defined during my two and half years with her seemed to be departing with her as well as everything that had come up to that point in my life. With Bow gone, I knew that I could not return to who I was before she entered my life.
When the life exited her body, I did not feel a need to linger. I knew that she was walking out of the vet's office with me. Like all basenjis, Bow always wanted to be clean and odorless, and it seemed so appropriate that her remains be cremated.
In a few days her ashes will return. I keep saying that in this interim, I have trusted her to be watched over by the Universe until her sacred remains return. I feel that I am out there in the Universe right now. I have felt grief, but more I have felt that I am in transition, waiting for her sacred ashes to return and to be in their eternal resting place.
When I got in tonight, I got a message from one of Bow's first foster moms who said that she had been verbally and physically abused for years before she came into rescue. I knew she had a difficult life before she came to me, but I never knew this. The fact that she was always such a loving, trusting, obedient girl when she was me was a reminder that we may put too much stock in the impact of the past. She was able to let it go and be a very different creature with me. I am thinking about that tonight as I feel that I am trusting the Universe to watch over her and me until we are reunited. We had a past together, and I feel that she will be there in some way in the future.

Fresh!

2011-04-07T00:47:00.000-07:00

One Week

2011-04-06T08:46:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, at 4:45, marks the one week point when I said goodbye to Bow in this world. It hurts a tiny bit less each day. I am continuing all of my rituals and plan to walk up to the spot where we parted a week ago this afternoon.

Last night I attended a pet loss support group. Some people have been going for two years or more. Others felt grief so tremendous they could not speak. For once I was able to hear other people's life stories and their pets' without judgment. There was an element of my grief in each of them and an element of the love and joy as well.

Having made it a week, I don't plan to continue my daily posts about this loss nor to close the chapter on life with Bow. She will continue to make an appearance here, but not with such immediate, raw grief. I don't want "closure" but only to honor the grief and move forward with her where she needs to be in my heart, knowing I am forever changed by her. She was one of the greatest teachers ever to enter my life.

Healing Routines

2011-04-05T00:24:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about having a dog in your life is that you have a series of familiar routines that shape your life and give it order.

Since the morning after Bow died, I have continued to go on our morning and evening walks, keeping our usual two mile walk each time with her collar in my pocket. The familiar routine, movement and being outside are helpful. How long will I do it? Forever perhaps, and when new dogs enter my life we may keep the same route knowing that she is watching over us.

This week I have started another routine. During our time together, I took hundreds of digital photos but only got around to printing a couple dozen of them. Trying to now print all of them is overwhelming, so I have started by having ten printed at random each day. I pick them up when I go to get coffee, and instead of having a pastry for a couple of dollars I have ten new prints of Bow. Some of them I don't even remember taking, and several of them show a side of her I don't remember seeing.

As the breadth of her life comes into focus in the larger scope, how thrilling that she can continue to bring joy and surprise me.

MAGPIE TALE: Tears and Smoke

2011-04-04T20:56:00.000-07:00

A return to the Magpie Tales after a couple weeks' absence
Why'd you stick your eyes in my smoke if you knew it might make them burn?
I've no pity for your pain and need to smolder and smudge my own aches away.
Let your tears flow as they must and let my little clouds rise on its own.And to think you came from the land of smudge pots and citrus.
Smokey winter nights on the edge of the desert and a banana tree
in the basement hidden like a refugee or pock-marked lover.
You came from that land of questionable icons, each with a Salem or Marlboro
lit and shrouding their calls for flag waving and stoicism.
The passion of the pastels has come with the season.
Some embryo shell dipped and shellacked to be hidden and found,
a sullen reward for a chase whose purpose remains elusive.

Memories of Joy Replacing Those of Pain

2011-04-04T07:16:00.000-07:00

As I have worked through the pain of losing Bow with still less than a week since her departure, a small sign of progress is that I am starting to see the fuller picture of her life and our time together. I am able to look at older pictures of her and not be devastated by what was lost in her final days but cherish that I had what days of joy she brought me.

A good friend has been dealing with a case of shingles while I have been dealing with my grief, and we have been able to be supportive during our mutual time of pain.

Each day, I keep thinking about the person I was when she came into my life and who I am now. I hope that I have become less selfish, and she taught me that I still have the capacity to love fully and unconditionally. This came after nearly a decade of bad relationships, loss of my parents, other relatives and friends. I am not ready to extend the kind of love I gave her to another creature just yet as I work through the grief and honor her legacy. But I know that time will come, and I will be able to give as much love again. It will not be an attempt to replace her or forget her. But when I feel healed enough to give the way I gave to her, I will know that she is there -- fully alive in my heart to help me rise to most best, most loving potential.

And I Will Know She Is There...

2011-04-03T19:53:00.000-07:00

One of the important parts of the healing and acknowledging that I will never hold Bow's wiggling, warm body in this existence again is knowing that while I may not see her dashing down the hall it does not mean that she is not there.

Each day I keep thinking of ways that her life will not be forgotten and will have influence for years to come. In my life and in others.

Over our two and a half years together, we did a number of evaluation visits for families considering adopting a basenji. In most cases, she was the first live, in-the-fur basenji they had met after seeing photos and videos but not the real thing. In every case, she won them over and confirmed that they definitely wanted to bring a basenji into their family. In the years ahead as those families continue to love and nurture their basenji, they will think back to that day when they met Bow and how she touched their hearts then and now. And in that moment as their hearts are warmed by her memory, she will be there.

With each visit I have become more thorough in my questions and knowledge of whether a family is prepared to bring a basenji into their home. I am more confident and diligent in making sure they are the right fit for these precious little creatures. This came not from great research or reading but from living with Bow and all that she taught me. In the weeks, months and years ahead when I assess further families, I will know the right questions to ask because of my great teacher Bow. And when I am bold enough to ask questions about how secure their cabinets are or how they would react to shoes being chewed or if there are holes in their fence, I will know she will be there. Guiding me to make sure this is a basenji safe home.

Thank you, Bow, for helping me make sure that more basenjis are able to find the appropriate safe, loving home.

Life Is Still Out There

2011-04-03T15:43:00.000-07:00

I don't know why, but today was one of the hardest days yet for me. Just after things seemed to improve a little bit every day even though I have been feeling the huge cloud of grief, I thought things were off to a great start. I was up early, did the usual two mile walk, came back for breakfast and settled into the routine of the Sunday paper and corresponding with friends on email.It was already in my plans to head out to Golden Gate Park on this glorious, clear spring day. Just as I finished the paper and was getting ready to go, my instincts told me that I should be saying, "Come on, Bow, let's go on an adventure." The silence in the house was one I was anxious to leave behind.Being in the San Francisco Botanical Gardens for the first time since the March rains helped a bit. I don't know if it cheered me as much as reminded me that there is still so much life out there. At times, I had a thought of "If only Bow were here to enjoy this." But then a morbid but realistic part of me thought of what it would be like had we not gone through with the procedure on Wednesday. If Bow had even survived until today, being here would be absolute agony for her. She would not have been able to enjoy the sun, the flower. She would not be able to chase the birds. She would have, at best, limped along, hanging her head in pain as the sun made it blindingly difficult for her to take each step. As I let this sobering thought settle in, I managed to clear my thoughts by just enjoying all the new life blooming around me. It was as if it was all there as a celebration of Bow's eight and a half years giving joy to our world. Even if my sinuses may be paying me back, I came away with more hope.
Over lunch two women sat at an outdoor table across from me with their charming female Boston terrier who sat patiently, sometimes begging intently and reminding me of Bow's familiar behaviors during dinner time. I could enjoy watching the love between the dog and her humans without jealousy or envy, just respecting that it was there. Something I have had and still have in my heart.
Afterward I bought a beautiful frame for one of my favorite photos of Bow that I plan to put up as a small memorial to her. I can actually look at it with comfort not tears. It will be another week or so before her ashes come back to me. There will be certain comfort in that, knowing that she has finally come home for her eternal rest. I can begin focusing on the joyful, funny moments we shared and think less of the last painful days. When the life left Bow's body, I knew that she was no longer there and walking away with me in my heart. But knowing that her remains will return home gives me something to look forward to in this process. It will be a benchmark in the long road of healing.

Live, Beautiful and Fragile

2011-04-02T11:09:00.000-07:00

The doorbell rings before 9 a.m. A Fed Ex delivery man is there and says with unexpected grace, "Sir, I have a beautiful, fragile, live plant for you." I sign for it and open it to discover a tall, elegant orchid from my co-workers.

This elegant and cheerful bit of life seems such a fitting tribute to the elegant lady it honors. It lifts my spirits and helps me make it through the day.

This Shroud Shall Be Liftted

2011-04-01T09:53:00.000-07:00

The very afternoon I returned from the veterinary specialist saying goodbye to Bow, I came into the kitchen to see that black netting was covering the kitchen window where the painters are doing final prep work for painting of the back of my building. Major renovations of my building started shortly after Bow arrived, and I always said that she was supervising them. She did not live to see this final work, but I keep taking comfort in knowing that this work that will likely last 20 years will be embedded with the memory of Bow being here to watch over it as it progressed.

The rug on the kitchen was a favorite place for Bow to take her morning sun baths, and she always looked so blissful and elegant there. The kitchen seems so dark right now, as if protected during this fragile time. It will be just a few days and the shroud will be lifted. Not long after that, her ashes will be returned. Having those last bits of matter to rest here in her home with me forever will bring me some comfort. I am working at moving through this pain, knowing that grief is the enormous price we pay for such incredible love and a bond that will always exist through it. I know that there is more love on the other side of this, and I can feel it now through the bite of such enormous grief.

Swainson's Thrush

2011-04-01T01:43:00.000-07:00

The Morning After

2011-03-31T15:37:00.000-07:00

I don't know how I made it through the first night without Bow. I just managed to do it. The many messages of support from so many quarters helped. Most were virtual messages not phone calls which helped. I needed to be alone, feel the emptiness. Having lived with illness for over a year, that emptiness was both agonizing and a relief. Bow was gone, but so was her suffering.

My sleep was calm, and I rose before 6:30, amazed by how okay I felt. My instincts told me that I needed to keep to our routines. Twisted as it may sound, I readied like any morning, but her collar in my pocket and began to walk our usual two mile route. Immediately I felt comforted to know that while her physical presence was not there but all the familiar things were. Life does go on. I felt that I was going to be fine, agonizing as it might be.

At the end of the second block, the little girl that greets us every morning must have seen the top of my head from her window and called out "Good morning, Bow. I love you Bow." For the first time since it happened I wept. I am not sure they were tears of grief. Having lived with her cancer for over a year, I feel that much of that time was filled with grief and dread of the eventual passing of my beloved.

As I walked further, I passed many familiar neighbors and their dogs, not able to make eye contact. Many had commented on how concerned they were about Bow and me in the previous weeks, and it had been more than a month since she could make it past the first few blocks. In that moment, as I could feel people sensing my sadness as I walked I felt her with me, felt the way she touched so many lives in this neighborhood. Someday I will walk this same route with another basenji, and as it pulls on the leash and I know what to do, I will feel Bow with me. I will know what to do because of her, and in that moment I will know that she is there living within me.

Goodbye My Lady

2011-03-30T21:14:00.000-07:00

The horrible day I have dreaded for more than a year since Bow's brain tumor was first discovered finally arrived today. I had to say goodbye to her after every effort to give her a reasonable life and exhausting her every last medical option.

Her specialist in Davis said in early December that she would probably not make it past Christmas. Her primary vet said a few weeks ago that the time had come. Today we were scheduled to see our neurologist who had treated her most recent seizures and to see if there were any last options.

The entire month of March got increasingly miserable. She came down with Giardia and bounced back a bit, but even after recovering, her days were worse. Most of her waking hours were spent spinning in circles, hanging her head down, standing in corners. She could not find her food. When I asked her to sit, she would spin in a circle and then finally sit, usually facing opposite me trying to find me but not able to. Walking was increasingly difficult. Being in the sun -- one of her favorite places -- was impossible on walks, and she would just drop her head in pain and could barely move forward.

Last night, she was restless in bed but finally found a position with her back against my stomach as was her normal place. She moved around the bed throughout the night. As the first glimpse of sunlight crept through, I realized that her head was facing mine on the pillow, something she had never done. Her good eye, the left, was looking at me intently and with a lucidity it had not done in over a month. (Most times she could not lift her head to look up at me when called.) Then she gently placed her paw on my cheek. It almost felt as if she might say words. In a second she moved, started spinning and was disoriented the rest of the day.

I really can't recall the rest of the day until our 4 p.m. appointment rolled around. She had to be carried most of the way. She wasn't agitated, just a bit disoriented and breathing heavily. The specialist said that she had reached the maximum dose of her medications before they would become increasingly toxic and would quickly compromise her liver, kidneys and other organs. There was one last drug that might reduce the swelling, but clearly the tumor was advancing more aggressively. The chances of a violent series of seizures taking her life in the middle of the night was very likely. He said that at best she might have two weeks left, and two very miserable weeks.

These were the words I needed to hear, and the procedure began. It was quick, she was calm and her body finally rested free of the pain against me. I held her just for a few more minutes, knowing that what I was holding was no longer Bow. She was with me, in my heart but no longer in that room.

There were no tears as I walked down Alabama Street, numb but well aware of every bird chirping, every tree blooming, every step along this familiar route that we had taken. The moment I arrived home I posted her passing on Facebook. Within seconds I heard my smart phone chirping with the arrival of condolences from friends all over the world. It took a while before I could look at them. For the moment I just needed to walk and be out of the house.

Fun with Hot Organs

2011-03-26T23:59:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday's Menu: Italian Cheese

2011-03-22T17:07:00.001-07:00

MAGPIE TALE: Nobody Dared

2011-03-21T20:18:00.000-07:00

Another entry in the Magpie Tales.

When Brent and Jennifer invited everyone over for the big reveal of their dining room redo, everyone marveled at what a wonderful job that had done.

"I really want to know who your colorist is," Brenda said.

"It's called Terracotta Thunder," Jennifer said.

"Really so rich. Manly yet regal," Bevin was quick to add.

Nobody dared. Mention. It. Even though the second they were in their cars and not even backed out of the drive, each couple stared at each other and said. "Could you believe it?"

Well, this certainly wasn't the first time they had ignored something connected to Brent and Jennifer. Susan had seen him with that awful woman sitting so close to him at the boat club last summer. And when Jennifer produced yet another putrid soup, everyone took a couple scoops and said it was delicious, and Jennifer didn't make a comment a few minutes later when she removed their still full bowls of soup. "How was it?"

"Terrific as always, Jennifer. What's your secret."

Todd and Theresa drove in silence until Theresa finally said, "Well, at least it's not as if he had some animal head on the wall. They're just weapons. Mock weapons, I'm sure."

"Don't make excuses for him, Terri. And for all we know it might be Jennifer's. You know how odd she can be."

"I'm not making excuses. Can't you give me the benefit of the doubt?"

Meanwhile as they cleared the table, Jennifer finally let loose a joyous laugh. "Did you see them? Just how hard they strained to keep smiling and not look?"

"You really outdid yourself this time, Jen. Your best presentation yet. Just imagine what must be going on as they get ready for bed and keep discussing it. Every last little prim pair of them, daring to say everything they wouldn't dare to say here."

Jennifer let a satisfied grin fill her face as she lifted the heavy soup tureen and poured its contents down the drain. "Entertaining can be so entertaining...when you have a certain flair."

Let's Hear It for Martin Böttcher

2011-03-21T00:09:00.000-07:00

Train Ambition

2011-03-20T22:00:00.000-07:00

That train ride home was full of bristling emotions and words in the mental cloud. There might have been a moon out there if he had taken time to look above the dust on his brow.

Bitter ambitions pay odd dividends. No one knew that better than Wendy, and Burtom would never acknowledge that. His monograms were all so out of whack. BCA - Burtrom Carter Alspaugh.

This Morning Before the Monsoons

2011-03-19T20:59:00.001-07:00

Kicking High Down South

2011-03-16T18:26:00.001-07:00

We dearly love both Charlotte Greenwood and Argentina. Put the two together with a dash of Nicholas Brothers, and it's heaven beyond heaven.

MAGPIE TALE: Pansies on New Year's Day

2011-03-15T16:16:00.000-07:00

This week's contribution to the Magpie Tales.

The one bit spring that could be seen year round was that little stall the Drabble sisters tended next to the cigar store at 8th Avenue and Conover. Even in the dead of winter, they managed to have lilies, orchids, violets and pansies.

"Orchids grow in every state of the Union," Elda, the senior Drabble sibling would say. "So it should be no surprise to see them here today. I think we're a good 40 degrees warmer than Alaska this time of year."

Where the Drabbles sourced their flowers was always a great mystery. Some said that there was a vast basement with heat lamps below that ramshackle house of theirs up on North Tedabury. When pressed for information on where they could find irises in the blazing dead heat of August or dainty pansies in a blizzard of February was always an urban legend.

Tillie was the one who came up with the idea of diversifying and adding pastries that they bragged were home made. The fact that they were made in the Drabble home was reason enough to heed caution. Many suspected that extra crunchy appeal in their snickerdoodles was potting soil. And only the bravest would dare to nosh on their Emerald Wonder Muffins.

When they retired and moved downstate, it just never was the same. Sammy Raulston ran that little hat and cap stall for a while and sold some fine alpaca scarves. Hernando Guggenheim did well with his counterfeit Gucci and Versace bags and wallets for several years. Now there is a little booth that sells lottery tickets. People shell out their bucks with the hope that luck or fate will reward them, but it just never had the magic of pansies on New Year's Day.

The Ancient Mechanics Club of Modesto, California

2011-03-09T00:02:00.000-08:00

Agatha Christie's Murder at the Bellagio

2011-03-08T21:57:00.001-08:00

Mountains of Moleskines

2011-03-07T19:37:00.000-08:00

With the demise of many Borders outlets, printed magazines and newspapers, there seem to be a lot of books being written about the topic. Sort of like a Dodo bird support and discussion group on extinction.

I've been reading one of them, Hamlet's Blackberry by William Powers. Like others he makes a case for taking time for being unplugged or at least having a balance. The fact that he has a website for the book shows he's not for complete removal of the wired life.

Midway through he makes a case for the Moleskine. I have my fair share of Moleskines as well as other variants. I am also an obsessive journal keeper. I have a basic daily journal that I do on my laptop but also yoga journals, gardening journals, travel journals, house journals, health journals, dog health journals...I tend to call my Moleskines "flash journals" in which I paste photos, make collages, line art, fleeting thoughts. I'm also fond of my Flip Notes which come with a built in pen and are about a third the width of an iPhone.

The German film maker Heinz Emigholz even did a series of films called The Basis of Make-Up which are nothing but clips from his Moleskines or whatever brand he uses. Double spread pages flash on the screen for a fraction of a second interspersed with flash clips of unedited field video.
So I was thrilled to discover the page Moleskines: One Page at a Time and The Sketchbook Project 2011 at the Brooklyn Art Library which features 10,000 of them. Indeed, there is talent out there!

MAGPIE TALE: Peel Quickly

2011-03-07T19:07:00.000-08:00

Another Magpie Tales entry

Careful as you peel,
you'll want to save each
layer to write your life's story along the way.

Don't waste time with onion skin that
requires too much time and tempts you to write
baroque fiction or overwrought tributes to your route.

Life is short. Truth comes in blips until you come to the core.
Don't worry about the smell embedded in your fingers.
Like all things, it will fade. But be sure to jot a line now.
It may already be too late.

MAGPIE TALE: The Lemon Lacerations

2011-02-28T18:20:00.000-08:00

This is our latest entry in the Magpie Tales series.

When Tede Truxler's confrontational photo essay exhibit "The Lemon Lacerations" was unveiled at the San Gabriel Valley Art Association's Spring Solstice exhibit in Monrovia in April of 1962, it did far more than raise eyebrows. How could this Cal Tech junior and great grand daughter of one of the Valley's pioneers create such confrontational images that seemed to cut at the very core of the area's culture and history?

To understand, we must go back to 1879 when Trudy Truxler, a recently divorce young woman of 22 arrived in what was then known as La Cienega Mud Springs and would eventually become San Dimas and home of Sunkist and other iconic citrus brands.

But Trudy -- a tough cookie with a shot-gun, moxie and a dream -- was the first to package fruit and send it east, launching the Harmony Brand. Around 1883 she developed a not entirely cladenstine relationship with Glendale attorney Asa V. Jessup, a married father of six and deacon in the Missionary Baptist Church. When Trudy gave birth to her twins, Randall and Russell Truxler, she gave little mind to the gossip or the snickers of neighbor children who dubbed the boys the Romulus and Remus of La Cienega Mud Springs. Randall was tragically killed just after turning eight when caught in the rushing water of Putah Creek during the torrential rains of late January. Russell worked steadily in the lemon groves and would soon be running the business with Trudy who named him chief of operations on his 18th birthday.
By the turn of the Century, Harmony was one of the most successful citrus packagers in the west. Russell had married into Pasadena's most respected families, the Troxdales of the railroad and telegraph fortunes, and his first born, Tessie Claire, was the model for many of the Harmony brand labels. His wife, Lurelle, gave tea parties attended by the Valley's most prestigious women. Tea might not always include sugar and milk and dainty English biscuits, but wedges of lemon were always artfully displaying on the china service.

Trudy refused to conform to her expected role of the grand old lady of the valley and was known to spit tobacco into a small tin can she carried to the San Gabriel Valley Citrus Growers Association at the Hotel L'Orange on Pasadena's Colorado Boulevard. And the otherwise all male institution never voted her an officer though she was one of the most successful in their ranks and had a fortune that equaled their summed assets.

When Trudy died in 1911, all the Valley's aristocracy came out and praised her with platitudes they denied her during her life time. "An inspiration and model of Christian virtue," read one of the shallow, insincere tributes from one of the many citrus growers angling to buy up part of the Truxler groves.
Having no time to morn the loss of the visionary matriarch, Russell had the vision for a new outlet for Harmony, launching Lemonland in 1913, California's first true theme park that predated Disneyland by nearly half a century.

Though some of its exhibits and rides bordered on the bizarre -- such as the 40 foot citrus tikis at the entrance -- it drew crowds from as far away as Eugene and Boulder.

Between Lemonland and contracts with both Safeway and A&P, the Truxler fortunes only increased in the subsequent years, and they sailed through the depression without a care.

Their parties at the family mansion, Truxlerala, were legendary. Until Hearst Castle was built, it was the largest private home west of the Mississippi.

In the postwar years, Harmony continued strong but seemed to plateau and slowly saw operation costs rise as real estate development encroached the Valley and higher paying jobs took away cheap labor.

Yet LIFE magazine did a feature on the firm and Russell, modestly dressed in farm clothes in an article titled "The Lemon of His Eye". Russell's daughter Tessie Claire, one of the most successful realtors in the Valley, was quoted as saying "My father's dream is to build an opera house named after my grandmother." Tessie's brother Clement was shown with his baby daughter Tede, said to have the same brilliant violet eyes of her great grandmother and an equally independent spirit.

After Russell's death in 1957, Lemonland eventually closed, and the family introduced Truxlerite, a chemical substance that claimed to have "essence of lemon juice extract" but was mostly a chemical compound created in a lab at Cal Tech. By the time Eisenhower left the White House, most of their income from providing the all important citrus scent in dish soap, toilet bowl cleaners and other "lemon inspired" products.

It was around the same time that Tede's "independent spirit" at St. Gremadine Academy was blossoming into full rebellion. She excelled in no class but photographic arts and shocked the academy when she used remote control cameras to capture nuns unawares on their toilets and in their showers. The Eye of Creation Gallery in Santa Monica was the first to exhibit her show "Breaking Habits" that earned such scorn from the Diocese that even Bing Crosby wrote a scathing letter to the LA Times condemning it. "NOT Going My Way" the headline to his letter read.

So it was not a complete shock when Tede's exhibit of blood strewn citrus, of bananas performing vulgar acts on kiwis was unveiled. Yet a lone critic from Horizon arts quarterly praised it as a beacon amongst the hubris of the New Frontier. Soon the exhibit was praised from Venice Beach to the canals of Venice. Tede resettled in Buenos Aires until the military junta when she returned to Los Angeles, a city as changed as she was. Having exhausted her range in still photography, she had a brief career as a script doctor with American International Pictures and later Avco Embassy before working in television. From the late 1970s onward, she worked on a teleplay about her great-grandmother called "Lemon Lady" and had serious talks with Meredith Baxter Birney about playing the role of Trudy. Financing never came through, and Tede was so intent that she seriously considered selling the shopping mall in San Dimas where Lemonland once stood and whose property her family still owned.

Today Tede dedicates most of her time to collage, paintings of lemons and selling Beanie Babies on Ebay from her condo in Pomona. The Truxler legend may have lost its luster, but there are those who speculate that Tede still has one last act she has yet to unveil.

Try This Swinging Wig

2011-02-27T19:49:00.000-08:00

MAGPIE TALE: Along the Route

2011-02-21T20:05:00.000-08:00

Another Monday, another Magpie Tale

Can you imagine a life beyond the fray, beyond the foes --
those imagined and those you have embedded,
your very soul pock-marked from so many
explosive anticipations that finally fizzled but left you scarred nonetheless.
You just want to go back to that safe place at the soda fountain
at Kress' beneath the stool where your mother had a limeaid and you
perused the tabloids of lives saucily sordid and you never dreamed that you
would someday come to live.
How far you've journeyed now from Tierra de Fuego and Ha Giang and
Catalonia and the far edge of Bellingham, Washington and back.
Your route is far from complete, but you snap a handy torch now
to glance back as far as the light will travel. There is much more back
there that is hiding in the shadows.
Try as you may, you can never put all the puzzle pieces back together
to retrace what brought you here. The crumbs you dropped along the way
were gobbled up decades ago. And now you can barely recognize these musty
volumes of your description of the path that brought you here.

Men Are Good for One Thing, and It's Not Taking Out the Trash

2011-02-20T09:56:00.000-08:00

MAGPIE TALE: The Last of the Mecklenburgs

2011-02-14T20:22:00.000-08:00

Our entry for Mapgie 53

It is hard to believe that single item of crystal in auction block #349D is all in that remains of the Mecklenburgs in this town. No one seems to notice the small plaque on the wall outside Radverston Gardens with the Mecklenburg family crest and a small silhouette of Henri and Flora.It is hard to believe that the Mecklenburg estate, Fedelmeire, once stood on the shores of Craven Lake where today there is a Jiffy Lube, Krispy Kreme and Premium Factory Outlet Malls. In its heyday it hosted the crowned heads of Europe and Asia as well as Bernhardt and Caruso. By the early 1960s its top floors were rented out as SROs and the ballroom was converted for roller derby and the paddle boat rentals were handled out of the marble and mahogany adorned receiving room.

Henri's black marble bathtub with gold claw feet was long gone by then, and the portrait of him in his red smoking jacket was sold at the Presbyterian Church auction to fund the youth group's trip to Mount Rushmore that summer.

Everyone has a theory about when and how things went wrong. Some put the blame on Henri and Flora's daughter Claudine and her desperate attempts to ramp up the family's subdued sense of providence to town. When she auditioned and was turned down with the touring cast of the Floradora Girls in Detroit, she came back home and launched her own version of the show -- but on roller skates.

Claudine was not without her charms, but her voice had been compared to a cat, a raccoon and a hyena harmonizing while their tails were caught in bear traps. Her dancing abilities were even less accomplished, and when roller skates were added it was not just awkward, it filled the third and fourth floors of the French Hospital with the sprained ankles, bruises and three cracked jaws of her fellow dancers trying to avoid her rolling disaster.

"Hell on Wheels! Hell on the Eyes! Get the Hell out of Town, Claudine!" screamed the review of the show by J. Landis Fordham in the Tribune-Review.
Then there were Claudine's brothers, Rusty and Ralph. Both were fond of all forms of fireworks and gunpowder, toying with them at all times of year and at all times of night and increasingly combined with greater amounts of alcohol and other substances. Henri tried to lay down the law with the boys and put them on the right path.

Finally in 1923 he gave an ultimatum and $15,000 in cash to both. Rusty moved to Omaha and had a fairly decent run with his own Packard dealership. Ralph, as always, was not as stable. He invested his money in a poorly run lobster operation north of Portland, Maine, and then disappeared into the wilds of Quebec in 1925. Some claimed that he later opened a bar named Lucky Luc's in Montreal, but it could never be substantiated.

The end of the empire clearly came with Flora's gradual demise during World War II. She had not been seen out much since 1939, and when she passed in 1944, everything changed. The glorious banquets at Fedelmeire were never repeated. There was a certain shabbiness to Henri's usually dapper suits. He mourned Flora's loss deeply and then, in 1947 he returned from a trip to California with the new Mrs. Mecklenburg, the former Audry Babcock of Canoga Park.

The less said about her the better, but clearly this was the beginning to the end.

There were still parties, alright, out at Fedelmeire but nothing similar to the grandeur of Flora's era. By then Henri had fallen into dementia and died in the spring of 1951. The debauchery of Audrey's parties quickly descended with each weekend, sinking to the absolute depths the night of Henri's wake and the fire that brought Fedelmeire and the entire empire crashing into Craven Lake.

Whatever became of Audrey was never clear. And there are certainly plenty of Mecklenburgs still out there. Ralph alone is said to have had 43 great-grandchildren.

Each of us has likely crossed paths with at least one Mecklenburg. It's not just a sense of style but an air of whimsy. It's the cut of the coat, the tip of the hat. One doesn't ask if you are looking at a Mecklenburg. Their attire will tell you.

The Junk Thief Parade of Homes 2011

2011-02-12T20:08:00.000-08:00

Pearl, the Bird and the Little Brown Jug

2011-02-10T17:06:00.000-08:00

A Great Opportunity

2011-02-09T00:05:00.000-08:00

MAGPIE TALE: White Wash

2011-02-08T16:54:00.000-08:00

Here is a cheerful little winter story for Mapgie #52

When visitors came to Elvin Corners during the winter and remarked how quaint it looked, Taryn Stockbridge, wife of the town moderator would snarl, "God's whitewashing. It will cover up the secrets for the season, but they'll all come out in the thaw."
Elvin Corners was a village filled with many secrets, some darker than others. Little Ralphie Dunagin was a good example. He may have looked harmless as his German Shepherd pulled his sled, but if his parents ever found those magazines he stole from behind the counter at the Rexall Drug, it would be a different story. And even worse, he had taken to cutting out the most graphic images of the female form from the magazine, pasting them on construction paper and writing notes on the order. "Hi, my name is Lulu. You may not remember that night in Hartford last June since you were so drunk. I thought this candid picture might help you remember. Leave me $100 in unmarked bills on the second to bottom shelf of the Poli-Sci stacks at the Westside Carnegie Library or I'll spill the beans to your wife and boss. No monkey business, mister. Just the dough."

Ralphie had bought himself two top of the line Schwinns before he finished fourth grade, and his parents even bought the fib that he had earned all the money from his paper route.
Then there was Herschel Hershberger. Everyone said there couldn't be a nicer guy in Elvin Corners than "Hersh", the night time and weekend pharmacist at the Rexall. Most folks in town were really cheap and hated to go to the doctor. On top of that, no one wanted to drive the 40 miles into Lowell to the nearest emergency room. So unless you had a severed hand or stroke, you went to see "Hersh" when anything came up. Always sporting a smile and free advice, he gained the reputation of being the philosophical pharmacist. He was also the most eligible bachelor in town, and the various war widows and spinsters wondered how this one got away. He always sat in the back of the Rialto and the boldest women would whisper "Maybe he doesn't like girls."

He didn't like girls, alright, and he didn't like boys or sick babies or whining old biddies. When business was slow, he'd write on his pad "I'm sick and tired of the sick and tired. I'm sick and tired of the sick and tired...."

It was Thanksgiving Day 1949 when he set his plan into motion. Angry about working on a holiday and having to hear so many stories about sore throats and joints, he swapped Mrs. Greenwood's heart pills with Mr. Norton's malaria prevention pills. Week by week, he continued his plan, most people not noticing that they now had a small oblong pill instead of a small round pill. Strange ailments started popping up. A third of the elderly population died in the spring of 1950, a perfectly warm flu free spring. When Clara Erville, only 28 years old, had a stroke at her daughter's first communion, the police started to piece the trail back to "Hersh" and the Rexall. He got wind of the cops heading his way and skipped town before sundown.

Word has it that he turned up working at a health clinic with German missionaries in Sierra Leone. That may have helped him turn his life around. He always hated the New England winters.
It was no surprise that Kyle Kuchar was a bit "off". He was the only survivor of Elvin Corners' only quadruplets. His oldest sister Kara died three days after birth in the hospital, and not too surprising since she weighed only four pounds, compared to Kyle at nine. (They were clearly fraternal not identical quads.) Then sister Kelly fell down a well in their back yard on her second birthday. Kyle was found screaming and crying when his mother rushed in horror to discover what had just happened. But he went silent the moment she arrived, clutching the Shirley Temple doll that was Kara's prized possession and that she never let him touch. Kyle and his brother Kelvin were inseparable and finished each others sentences. But when Kelvin disappeared on a hiking weekend in the Adirondacks in their junior year, Kyle seemed oddly untouched.

Though he graduated top of his class, Kyle had no ambition to go to university and worked as a stock boy at the A & P. Then he quit on his 23rd birthday. Retreating to his bungalow on Carson Avenue where the drapes were never open, the Christmas tree was up year round, and he wore his holiday sweaters well past Memorial Day and pulled them back out Labor Day weekend.

Again, no one ever knew that Kyle did anything really illegal, but they never felt comfortable around him.
L.V. and Wanda Napier were raising their grand-daughter La Rue with help from Wanda's spinster sister Verona who finally abandoned her dreams of being a Broadway chorus girl and returned to Elvin Corners. Verona had a small walk on role on in the Hartford production of "Out of This World" and was the second understudy to a dancer in "Charlie's Aunt" but lately had been working the glove counter at Stern's Department Store for $.75 an hour.

Wanda had many wrenching stories about Verona's early days and was fond of showing pictures of her from the 1930s "before the accident". Exactly what the accident was, no one fully understood. Rumor had it that she was hit by a bus while on a drunken pub crawl with a sailor from Topeka in Elizabeth, New Jersey. When Verona would come to the breakfast table in her tight fitting night gown, Wanda would turn to La Rue and say, "Baby, look across the table. That's why you should always do your exercises and never eat processed meat."

Surely there could not be anything that more embodied the innocence of childhood and the awe of winter than little Annadelle Axtell. That porcelain face, those fragile lashes, her golden locks.

She was a curious child and one who found great delight in play and pretend. Though only six, she was well aware that Mrs. Greenwood, three doors down, was suffering from dementia and had spent the past four decades mourning the loss of her husband Everett who died early in World War I and their lovely daughter Eva Belle whom Everett never lived to see but was the light of Mrs. Greenwood's life -- until that day in 1918 when her nightgown caught fire from the candles on the Christmas tree.

Mrs. Greenwood always blamed herself for both tragic losses. Late at night, Annadelle would tiptoe to the kitchen and cover her face in flour and then walk down Archer Avenue in her night gown and bare feet and entered Mrs. Greenwood's back porch through the screen door that was never locked. With the flashlight below her chin to give effective lighting, Annadelle would begin softly. "Mommy...Mommy..." And then she would tiptoe to Mrs. Greenwood's bedroom and scream "Why did you let me die!" and then would drop the flashlight and run back home, snug under the covers of her bed seconds later.

Rosemary's Bears

2011-02-06T17:34:00.000-08:00

Slightly Fabulous

2011-02-06T09:13:00.001-08:00

"...the finest act...in a sunth of Mondays."
- Herb Caen, San Francisco Chronicle

Sunday Nun Fun

2011-02-05T22:30:00.000-08:00

Sittin' Around, Hangin Out, Doin' Our Thing

2011-02-05T22:13:00.000-08:00