Harriet Goes to the Rodeo
Meet Harriet the Elegant Ghost
Harriet the Elegant ghost went shopping for a new frock but found that the styles were too wild for her refined taste.
Love, Karen
There is a number of years between my oldest sister, Karen, and myself. In fact, I don’t even remember her living with us much other than here and there between different life events. She tended to move around a lot and travel a lot which most people, and I guess particularly women, did not do in the 1960s and early 1970s. What I do remember is that she was my barometer for what it meant to be grown up when I was a little kid. On reflecting now, at age 63, I probably should have held onto that particular idea.
During one of the times that Karen was back ‘home’, I recall several evenings when I would get out of bed to use the bathroom and see the light still on downstairs. It was probably only around midnight but everyone else was asleep and it seemed extremely late to me. I would peek down the steps and see Karen sitting in this black recliner she brought home with her, staring out the window smoking and drinking scotch. At one point I was so curious I ventured downstairs to ask what she was doing and she said ‘Just thinking’. Wow! I figured this must be what it was like to be a grown up; count me in!
There were other things Karen did that seemed worldly to me. She had a skin care regime that included odd products like astringent, read Cosmopolitan magazine (which I would sneak and read), and ate something called Bagels. Whenever she went to a movie, I always asked her what it was rated (the rating system being new at the time). One time, she went to see a new movie called Midnight Cowboy. When she told me it was rated X, I was shocked!
Karen worked as a journalist most of her life. One morning before I went to school, I asked her to write a note for me in case I had to go to the bathroom. I had a teacher in 5th grade who said he would not let anyone go to the bathroom without a note from home. Being 10, I took him very seriously. She wrote me a note and then when I repeated the request the next day, she decided she would furnish me with several days worth of notes courtesy of the staff at the Philadelphia Daily News. Thereafter, notes were no longer required
So back to the title of this blog post Love, Karen. Karen traveled very often and sent postcards regularly, not only to the whole family, but to each of us individually if she saw a card that she thought we would like. Two of the notes on these postcards I thought were particularly funny:
From the Grand Canyon in 1971: I’m sitting at [the] Grand Canyon on lookout point – grooving along with nature. Love, Karen This sentiment could only have been written and sent during that time period.
From Monaco, circa 1976: Stopped by to see Grace & Rainier but they weren’t around Love, Karen
Often, they said nothing more than Hi, Love Karen
What’s In a Name??
As I have written about in the past, I currently work in an herbarium. For a very long time, I mounted botanical specimens. Now we are pretty caught up on that and I am delving into other tasks that surround collections. One of the things I work on fairly regularly is looking up current taxonomy. I used to not only desire to know about plants, but also know several of their names, both common and Latin. I have come to realize that this is a futile task.
First of all, common names are largely based on culture and geography. I learned this immediately when my friend and now coworker Stefanie was calling a tree a Tamarack and I was calling it a Larch. We were talking about the same tree. This is why people do use Latin names. However, after working in the herbarium I have come to realize two facts: (1) There are millions of plants and I will never know even a fraction of a fraction of their names and (2) Latin names also change, and much more often than you would think. This is why I have to check for taxonomy updates. Plants that have been collected even just a few years ago, may have a new Latin name assigned and can even be assigned to a new family. There can even be a new family! According to Jim, the botanist, there are two kinds of botanists: lumpers and splitters. Which is what brings me to the photographs in this post.
I came across this book on one of the herbarium shelves, and, being very attracted to the binding and typeface, picked it up immediately. The image at the top shows the title page Lectures on Botany, by Mrs. Lincoln (as written on the spine of the book). Mrs. Lincoln was the principal at the Patapsco Female Institute of Maryland and author of books on natural history. I decided to read the preface of the book where she discusses, among other things, what she choose to exclude from this text. I almost fell over laughing at the part I have underlined in red below where she writes :
While changes that occur in recent years do rely on DNA of plants to really tell if there is a new species or not, you cannot overlook the vanity of what drove people to make such ‘discoveries’ in the past. And possibly the fame of discovering something new still drives people, which is not necessarily a bad thing all in all.
But I cannot leave this post without sharing two other things. One is the beautifully written inscription inside the front of the book indicating to whom this particular volume belongs. The other is the entirety of Mrs. Lincoln’s Preface.
Obsolete?
Earlier this summer I spent several weeks in Maryland. I packed lots of ‘comforts’ that I depend on at home. One of them was this.
I am a radio person, more so than a TV person. So when my grandson, age 4 1/2, saw my radio, he was very curious. I showed him how to turn it on, which he did about five thousand times. Then he said “Grandmom, tell it to play [a specific song]” I explained to him that the radio played what the person at the radio station wanted, not what we wanted. He decided that this odd piece of technology was worth taking to school for show and tell, which he did. Apparently, his school friends were equally amused by this contraption.
The particular radio I took was the one I keep at work (though I have another just like it at home as well as two other models). Anyway, when I brought it back to work, I noticed the green name tag we put on it when he took it to school was still there. I decided to keep it there!
Shopping with Dad
A few posts ago I shared a sketch I made of my mom from a memory I have of her. So it did not surprise me that lately I have been thinking about particular memories of my dad. What I decided on was a sketch of my dad shopping. As with the sketch of my mom, this is not meant to be a realistic depiction but more of the essence of a particular memory I have.
In order to grasp this image, there are a few things I need to explain about my father. First of all, he loved to shop and really, Really, REALLY loved bargains such as: 50 pounds of sharp provolone cheese, 6 foot in diameter rolls of paper towels, cigarettes he got cheap and gave to people as he lectured them about smoking, etc. But what really stands out about my dad’s shopping habits at this moment is not so much what he bought but how he walked around the store.
My dad was an average size man but he had a very strange shape from the back view. He was straight up and down and had absolutely no rear end. Therefore, his pants were always baggy in the butt. They stayed up by assistance of a belt and a very large belly that was solid muscle (which was not at all apparent from the back). He also had excessively long arms which contribute to this particular memory of him. As dad walked around looking for bargains we had no use for, he would hold his hands behind him in a very contorted manner and point his fingers upward. Usually one hand he held his fingers splayed apart and the other hand his fingers were together as if he was cupping something in that hand. Observing these mannerisms resulted in hysterical fits of laughter from my mother and I. In addition, he was always humming. The song that comes to my mind is one that was a favorite of his is The Shadow of Your Smile.
What struck me odd when I made this image was that I could not really picture any of my father’s clothes. I could picture him in his fireman’s uniform and his painting job clothes (fireman always had about a thousand jobs because they generally had large families, low pay, and a schedule that allowed them to hold down other jobs). He was not by any means a flashy dresser barring the occasional Hawaiian shirt popular in the 1960s and 1970s. His shirts were generally pale in color; that much I remember because they contrasted his olive complexion. I have very vivid recollections of my mother’s clothes but not so much my father‘s clothes which is strange since he was my main caretaker.
So below I present my memory of my dad, hands awkwardly positioned behind him, as he wanders through one of the many stores he loved – Sears, Two Guys, the PX – surrounded by the glitz and glamour of bargains he could not resist.
Local names
An occasional series on local culture
I spend a lot of time in the Baltimore area and recently I heard some commentary on WYPR (NPR Baltimore) regarding telephone culture of the past. My ears perked up because this was something I wrote about on my last Local Post which you can find here. The commentator talked about telephone exchanges in Baltimore and how they also were an indicator of a person’s social status since the exchanges was based on the neighborhood you lived in or worked.
So playing off of social status, the next thought that wanders into my mind are names, which are another indicator of local culture. Belk is a well known name where I currently live in North Carolina that is associated with a local department store. Van Every (Lance Crackers – Yum!) is another name of note here in North Carolina. Every city, town, and small borough has it’s local famous families. In the Pittsburgh area, those people were the Carnegies and Mellons. Girard is a Philadelphia family as is Rittenhouse. Often these people started in industry and then entered politics directly or had great influence on politicians. Many became great philanthropist but also were quite despicable! What are some of the famous local names where you live? What are those people known for?
Public Art
Recently I heard from my friend Allison Wooley, who I met during a residency I did through through the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Art Futures Program. Allison has since moved to Cleveland and sent me images of a public art project she is part of.
Allison has had two works accepted for public display through the Shaker Arts Council. These are electrical utility boxes that are wrapped with an image designed by a local artist. The images are printed on a plastic material and are permanently adhered to the utility boxes.
I was first reminded of the various similar project that sprang up several years ago in the Philadelphia area – the RCA dogs in Moorestown, cows and dinosaurs somewhere else. Those projects involved artists decorating a fabricated replica of whatever animal was being placed around the town. The animals had some significance to the area; the RCA dog related to the company being local to that area of New Jersey.
What I like about the project Allison is involved in is that it takes something that is part of our everyday infrastructure and modifies it so it is something pleasant to look at. As a person that does not like extra ‘stuff’, the utility of this project appeals to me (no pun intended). I had to ask, since Allison’s first design showed a street light, if the project had to be related to electricity but it does not. Her most recent one, that is currently being printed up, is of a fish bone she saw at Lake Erie.
You can see additional designs for the utility boxes here. Congrats to Allison!
Story Time with Mom
Not long ago, I was thinking about a short story my friend Claudia wrote about a train ride she took to see her son in Pittsburgh. The reason I was thinking about this story is because I remember reading it to my mother on a visit to her when she was living with my sister.
My mother was afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease later in life. During our visits, I would play classical music and opera for her and read her stories. For some reason I decided to read her Claudia’s story even though I took it on the trip with me to read for myself. My mother, for whatever reason, was absolutely captivated by this story . She sat on the edge of her seat leaning towards me with this look on her face of complete fascination. Every once in awhile she would say THAT’S AMAZING or I NEVER IMAGINED THIS or some other similar exclamation. I have no idea what my mother was hearing or imagining, but she seemed very content and happy and engaged by this story. It made me wonder all kinds of things about people with dementia that we ‘feel bad for’. They may have a much more rich interior life than we could ever know. Certainly they are not aware of any particular issues on a broader scale, which in and of itself would make anyone happier. Anyway, I digress. Because I was thinking of this story, I found myself making a picture of it in my sketchbook (below).
Now this little scene above is far from reality. First of all, at the time, my mother was in her late eighties. Of course, I was a grown up but depicted myself much smaller than my mother because, to our parents, we are always children. My sister did keep our mom’s hair short for ease of care so that is accurate as is the purple shirt. My mom seemed to have a lot of purple shirts. The image of the steam engine is a stretch since this train trip that my friend took occurred in 2013, not 1913. But I do feel I captured my mother intently listening to this story; hands on face in awe and her mouth slightly ajar.
Actually, I do not remember my mother reading to me. She didn’t have time; working all day and cooking for who knows how many people every night. But I do remember her telling me stories and she had quite a lively imagination. She would tell me that she was not my mother, that she was my mother’s twin sister Josephine and my actual mother was off on a secret spy mission in another country. Me, being somewhat of a jackass, believed her.
Anyway, back to my trip to visit my mother, I did do an actual sketch of Mom while she was napping in a chair sitting out back. It is a much more accurate depiction of my mother at that time, though I think within herself she felt more like the image above. Maybe she was dreaming about her adventures as a spy in a foreign country.
Local? What does that mean anymore?
An occasional series
The question What Is Local seems to be on my mind quite often lately and something I will be exploring . It is a term we utter quite a bit: the local post office, the local weather, the local time, etc. But many of these terms that we throw around so readily have developed new or expanded meanings. For instance if you are interacting virtually with people on the other side of the world, ‘local time’ is replace by Coordinated Universal Time. But here is one concept of ‘local’ that has not changed, but actually no longer exists at all: The Local Phone Call.
In most homes during the time I grew up (the 1960s), phone calls outside your local area were considered an extravagance and, therefore, only made on rare occasions. Our local area was the city of Philadelphia, and maybe the immediate surrounding suburbs. I recall in the 1990s when the area codes were split up in Southeastern PA and all of the sudden a friend of mine who I called regularly and was considered ‘local’ became out of the calling area. In order to continue talking with her on a ‘local’ call basis, we had to pay a bit extra each month to include the new area code (which was 610).
I remember having a boyfriend in sixth grade who went to his Uncle’s house over a school break. His uncle lived in a town called King of Prussia, a suburb of the city but well outside the local calling area. On one given day, he called me three or four times which was unheard of and became the talk of our family at dinner.
People went to great lengths to not pay for a long distance call. There was the trick that if you were visiting someone far away and wanted your relatives to know you arrived safely, you called collect person- to -person. This means that the person you are calling is not only footing the bill, but the only one who the call with be put through to. So the trick was you would call the operator, give her (it was always a woman) the phone number you wanted to reach and say “I would like to make a collect person-to-person call to…” and you would give the name of your dog or some long lost relative. The operator would convey this message to whoever answered the phone to which the person answering the phone would respond: “No, Theodore isn’t home right now“. The person answering the phone would know you arrived safely and nobody spent a dime, literally.
Aside from the local call aspect, telephone numbers were assigned to such a local degree that the beginning of your phone number (the exchange) would be an indicator of where you lived. Our phone number from my childhood began with CU 9 (Cumberland 9). This was an indicator we lived in the Frankford section of Philadelphia. When I lived in Mayfair when I was older, the exchange DE 5 (Devon/Devonshire 5) was replaced by the numbers 335. A new era.
Not only can you call anyone in the whole country for the same price now, you really have no concept even what state anyone lives in let alone their town or neighborhood. So the ‘local’ phone call? As outdated as the images in this post.
anniepodart.com 