I remember Kathryn Tucker Windham

Kathryn Tucker Windham; source of photo unknown

Kathryn Windham Tucker passed away peacefully in her home yesterday in Selma, Alabama, at the age of 93,  surrounded by friends and family. Author of two dozen books, cookbooks and ghost stories, mostly, she was a story teller of the highest rank. I remember listening to her spin tales in Auburn, Alabama, and in Montgomery. When people wonder how I could miss the Deep South, well, she pretty much embodies a special quality found only in that complicated place: a kind of charm seasoned with the deep awareness of a seething history. There is nobody like a Southerner to tell a story like it ought to be told.

Photo from the Tuscaloosa news

Kathryn began her career at 12 years old, writing movie reviews for her cousin's paper in Thomasville, AL, the same year she began taking photos with her Brownie camera. In 1940 she became a writer on the police beat for The Alabama Journal; she was the first woman in all of the South to hold that job. Years of writing and editing followed, until finally in the 1970's she began to appear as a story teller, founding the Alabama Tale-Tellin' Festival which occurs every year in Selma.


When we lived in Alabama I remember listening to her tell a story about Jeffrey, the ghost who inhabited her house. Her relationship with Jeffrey caused her to be interested in ghost stories, and eventually to write 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey.


In this video Kathryn, age 91, talks about her first awareness of Jeffrey, but in true Southern style she doesn't get to it until about 3 1/2 minutes into the conversation. She is standing in front of a bottle tree in her front yard. I love her dialect, and her honest way of communicating. She is completely disarming.

Plans are being made for a memorial service. But I think I know what will be inscribed on her tombstone, because she alluded to it in her book Twice Blessed,  when she said, “My grave marker won’t be one of those fancy examples of the stonemason’s art, nor will it have a flowery epitaph. I’d like to have some words from one of Jan Struther’s poems:

‘She was twice blessed: She was happy; She knew it.’

And finally, just for the heck of it, an Alabama recipe for Ambrosia, which Kathryn regularly served up:

Ambrosia Salad

• 1 (11 ounce) can mandarin oranges
• 1 (8 ounce) can crushed pineapple, drained
• 3 bananas, sliced
• 2 cups flaked coconut
• 2 cups miniature marshmallows
• 1 cup pecan pieces
• 1 (16 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed
• 1 cup maraschino cherries

1. In a large bowl, combine mandarin oranges, crushed pineapple, bananas, coconut, marshmallows, and pecan pieces. Fold in whipped topping. Garnish with maraschino cherries. Chill for 1 hour or overnight.

 Rest in peace Kathryn Tucker Windham; your life was well-lived.

Why why

Ai Weiwei, the prominent Chinese artist, was detained by the Chinese government a few weeks ago, accused of pornography, bigamy, and "economic crimes."

Mostly they're just mad because he posed nude in a satiric piece of art, covering his private parts with a toy horse, which looks like a llama.

The toy horse stands for a graphic curse, a homonym used by Chinese internet users to mock censors.

China, observing the unrest in the middle east, has recently been cracking down on dissenters. They arrested Weiwei, and have refused to allow him to come to the US for the unveiling of his 12 bronze heads of the zodiac in New York City.

photo: Abbie Fentress Swanson/WNYC

 The art was going to be unveiled today anyway, without the artist's presence, but it was postponed.  Why? Because of the surprising news of Osama Bin Laden's death.

Nude artist, toy horse, crackdowns, uprisings, death of an enemy, rabbit, horse, dragon, tiger...does it all have to make sense? I guess not.

Amazing photographer, Vivian Maier

Self portrait by Vivian Maier

Thanks to photographer Rebecca Haegele, I learned about Vivian Maier, a woman who passed away two and a half years ago, an artist who spent her life in oblivion working as a nanny in the Chicago suburbs. Ms. Maier took her camera everywhere, and with her superb eye, documented the streets of the city.

Photo by Vivian Maier

Her thousands of photos, many of them still undeveloped and in their canisters, were discovered by 26-year-old John Maloof at an auction of unclaimed items.

Photo by John Maloof

What a find.

 Photo by Vivian Maier

This weekend, thanks to Mr Maloof's efforts, a show will open at the Chicago Cultural Center. If you live in that area I hope you get the chance to visit.

 Photo by Vivian Maier

If you can't go to the exhibit in Chicago, you should at least visit  John Maloof's blog; he gives you the details of what he has learned about Vivian Maier and shows many examples of her fantastic work.

Check out the following link to see an interview with John Maloof and look at his boxes full of negatives. Super cool:
  Vivian Maier


A slide show of Ms. Maier's work:

           

  Vivian Maier photos - DVD slideshow GUI

Simonetta and Leonardo at the Willow Manor Ball

Check it out: The Third Annual Willow Manor Ball

There is a ball tonight, and we have all been invited. Pick your date. Pick your partner. Pick everything.

Botticelli's Birth of Venus, 1486, modeled after Simonetta Vespucci

I desperately need a dress for this occasion.

I'm going for this, by Donna Koran, and for just under $4,000, a steal.

Tonight I will be myself, but I will be channeling Simonetta Vespucchi, at age 19, from Florence, Italy in the year 1473. She (I?) was the young bride of merchant Marco Vespucci, and all of Florence was besotted by her--okay--me, including the brothers Lorenzo and Giuliano Medici, from the most powerful family in the city...

Sandro Botticelli's self-portrait, a detail from Adoration of the Magi

...and the artist Sandro Botticelli adored me (her). It was an unrequited love; I was after all a married woman (dear John, err...Marco), and the mistress of Giuliano d'Medici (that bastard).

Portrait of the Ideal Woman, 1480


Over and over again Botticelli used my image as his model of the ideal woman.

Madonna of the Pomegranate, 1487

Upon his death he requested to be buried at my feet. I had died decades earlier at the age of 22, sadly taken by tuberculosis.

But tonight I am alive again, happy and ethereal. I thought about choosing Sandro as my date, but no. Sandro Botticelli was obsessive, and who needs that? Instead I have asked Leonardo da Vinci, handsome in his youth, and gay as a spring zephyr, how perfect.

Self-portrait, Leonardo da Vinci, 1513

Although I know he was fetching in his younger years, I have requested his presence as an old man. I have questions that only an old man such as he can answer.

We shall arrive at the ball, each of us astride our favorite horse. My horse will be a white mare, a good match for my red dress.





Amid the swirling dancers, the dim lights, and the music, tonight Leonardo and I will talk. I have armed myself with great knowledge, and I know he wonders...

..about flight... and I, having prepared myself with the facts of aerospace engineering, will describe a jet.

I will ask him about his mother, the peasant from Vinci from whom he was separated as a child; I know that she must have been excessively beautiful and intelligent...

He will be surprised that helicopters were actually produced in the 20th century, and I will have to tell him about the combustion engine, and alloy metals. I will want to change the subject, of course.

I must ask him if there is a hidden fresco in Florence. (I do hope so!)

He will be interested to know that submarines have been feasible for over 100 years, and that parachutes are unremarkable these days.

I will want to know his secret recipe for the color blue.

Bronze horse, September 1999, in Milan, Italy. Designed in honor of Da Vinci's clay horse destroyed by the French in 1499.

Leonardo will be glad to know that horses are as lovely as ever...

July, 2010

...and that the trees still look the same in Tuscany.

We will have so much to talk about.

Leonardo, who designed weapons for the Duke of Milan, will dine on stuffed mushrooms because he is vegetarian, and really very gentle.

Join us. It will be a perfect night.

Friday My Town Shoot-Out: For Barry

Barry. It was through your evident affection for your community, the West Hills area of Toronto, and your kind encouragement that I first participated in Friday shoot-outs. You were one of the very first to adopt shoot-outs; you were the main reason why FSO never felt like a typical internet meme but rather more like a group of interesting friends. Ed & Reub is peppered with your funny comments, and I always looked forward to seeing your remarks on others' blogs as well.


Barry Fraser passed away on Tuesday of last week, leaving behind hundreds of sad followers and a ton of good memories. Barry, we'll miss you more than you could have imagined.

This picture is of Barry (I think) and his new puppy, Lindsay, eleven years ago. I thought of it last week when we did "Feet" and borrowed it from his blog, An Explorer's View of Life. This photo brings a smile through the sadness, and I'm pretty sure Barry would want that.

My husband John greeting a springer puppy.

Barry was a dog lover and I always looked forward to his engaging Wednesday posts featuring his English Springer Spaniel, Lindsay: her sleeping through a burglary, barking at the police, meeting with the coyote, greeting the super models, helping with the raised beds, and of course the capers with the naked guy. Who could resist the irrepressible Lindsay?

Barry and his wife Linda were lucky to live near woodlands and bluffs, giving both of them a deep appreciation for nature. We are similarly lucky, and this kind of dog-walk reminds me of many outings that Barry described with Lindsay.

Barry's family were transplants to the New World from Scotland, just like this proud thistle coming into bloom. Which one of these flowers reminds me most of Barry? The one that stands out in focus, of course. Barry-- with his unique gift for words, his wit, wisdom, and generosity of spirit--always stood out in the crowd.

Thanks Barry. I was honoured to know you.

Bruno's sad episode

My interest in Giordano Bruno began with this imposing statue of him in Campo De Fiori, Rome, the site of his death at the hands of the Roman Inquisition in 1600. I've been reading about him and well, what a guy:

By the time he was 24 Bruno was an ordained priest who had developed a system of mnemonics that made him widely known for his skilled memory; even the Pope demanded a demonstration of his amazing memory. But Bruno was a free thinker and got into big trouble when somebody found the writings of the humanist Erasmus squirreled away in the privy (that classic hiding place). Bruno removed his religious habit and wandered around Switzerland, England and France, writing and teaching.


Things got worse. He competed for a math professorship and lost out to Galileo. His pantheistic views, the fact that he doubted Mary was a virgin, that Jesus was the son of God, and that earth was the center of the universe, got him into major trouble. He said that stars were suns and could have planets and life of their own. He suspected the existence of atoms, and believed that the universe is infinite. He was excommunicated by both the Lutherans and the Catholics. After almost 8 years in prison, Bruno was sentenced to be burned at the stake in February, 1600. To his judges Bruno made a rude gesture (wonder what that was) and gave the following response:

Maiori forsan cum timore sententiam in me fertis quam ego accipiam (Perhaps you pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it).

In the year 2000, 400 years after his death, the Vatican issued a statement of regret, calling it "a sad episode."

Jimmy Dean and the yogurt problem

Chrystal (my beautiful soon-to-be daughter-in-law) recently informed us that Jimmy Dean (of sausage fame) was actually a real person who was also a country singer. Guess I should have known that, because he sang a hit I remember from my childhood: "Big Bad John." He also acted in a couple of movies (Diamonds are Forever was one of them) and on TV, all before establishing a sausage company sometime in the 60's. He is not to be confused with the iconic James Dean, who was sometimes called "Jimmy".

I thought about Jimmy Dean sausage a little the other day when I was buying yogurt, trying to remember when they changed 8 ounce containers to 6 ounces, and some 6 ounce containers are downsizing to 4 ounces. What does Jimmy Dean sausage have to do with this? Well a few years ago this recorded rant, a message to the Jimmy Dean customer service department, made the rounds on the internet:

Caution: strong language used!

The first time I heard this I laughed snarkily, like everybody else who listened. But now I find myself slightly annoyed by how tiny yogurt containers have become, and how bizarre the flavors: everything from sugary pina-colada to lemon cheesecake. I'm just like the guy from Texas, who complains to Jimmy Dean about maple-sage sausage! I know, I know, plain yogurt is really easy to make, but it is never at the top of my to-do list, so I shell out money to buy it. And I usually go for "Nancy's" yogurt which comes in just two flavors: plain or vanilla. Still, I see the shelves ever-expanding with smaller and smaller containers of something that should be healthy, but really is not.

Fight like hell to do any good

"You have to fight like hell to do any good."
Aengus Finucane

I was told this week about the death of Ireland's Aengus Finucane. Do you know this name? Maybe. I was informed by a comment made on my daughter's blog from an Irish reader, that Father Finucane had died on October 6, after a short illness, so I read up on him. Talk about a life worth living:

1. 1959: he was a parish priest in Biafra. (Biafra, oil-rich, declared independence from Nigeria, and subsequently its population was starved to death by the Nigerian government.)

2. Instead of comfortably returning to Limerick, Ireland, where he was born, Gus worked with Gabon, Africa, to evacuate sick children and arrange food-drops to Biafra. The Biafran war was the first to be reported on public television as a place where mass starvation was a strategy used by a government to subdue its people. The novelist Frederick Forsyth, who covered the war as a journalist, wrote of the children airlifted out of Biafra by Finucane that they were the "living, breathing monument" to his work.

3. Unsurprisingly, Aengus Finucane was expelled from Nigeria in 1970. He got a degree in Development from Swansea University in Wales, and became head of the aid group Concern Worldwide in Bangladesh, where he was friends with Mother Teresa, and became known for using strong language to speed up the delivery of food to the extremely famine-stricken areas of this region. Finucane led Concern International out of financial crisis into a smart, successful aid group.

4. This is a blog, so it's supposed to be short. There were further adventures in Sudan, Somalia, and Rwanda but I won't go into them here because you get the picture. This past summer, though, John and I saw the results of Aengus Finucane's intense devotion to African children. We got to know a little boy who is only alive because of the availability last year of a Concern Worldwide clinic near his village. For the six hardest months of the year the Niger-staffed clinic is available to help mothers and children survive famine, and Rahman was one of those kids:

John and Rahman

Me and Rahman

Jessica and Rahman

Quite honestly, I could have easily swooped this child up and brought him home with me. Thank you Fr. Aengus Finucane for your work in Africa.

Lilli

I am looking at the doll Lilli because I have been looking at my childhood Barbie, and I've been looking at Barbie because she was introduced 50 years ago this spring. During all of the celebratory hubub I found out that Barbie's prototype was this little harlot named Lilli, from post-war German comics; Lilli was portrayed as a "working girl" (wink wink) inspiring a doll of the same name, first sold in cigarette shops as a gag gift for men, and then taking on a life as a children's toy in Germany.

She looks an awful lot like Barbie, doesn't she?

This Lilli doll sold on eBay in August,2008 for $1,400

Barbie herself was designed by an engineer who was a missile designer, and who had been married briefly to Zsa Zsa Gabor; he was told to make the new doll look " less like a German street walker." All of these interesting factoids made me want to get out my Barbie doll. I wanted to do a Barbie photo shoot! I will share the results of this flawed idea after I get back from Colorado next week. In the meantime, maybe somebody could translate that Lilli comic. I think she is wondering if she is "difficult" after reading something in his horoscope about love being a hard test. But my German is limited, so I might be all wrong.

Asking price for this Bild Lilli on eBay is $3,999 (June, 2009) She is wearing a fur coat.

Kate Puzey

I never knew her, and you few folks who read this, you probably didn't either. But this week I have thought about her. Her family in Georgia, just 2 hours from where we raised our own kids. The loss of a child. The village in rural Benin, where they are mourning her death, March 11, a murder. Our own Peace Corps experience, many years ago, in Afghanistan. Our daughter, a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger right now. Danger, the random finger of death. That there are no guarantees, wherever you live, whatever you do, however old you may be.

But, I suppose I know a few things about this girl: that she followed her heart, that she was loved, that the world is certainly a better place because of what she did: what more could most of us say? She lived a life of value, and although I never knew her, I am so sorry she is gone, and I ache for her family.

Her memorial service was held today in Atlanta.

The lady bullfighter

After a corrida, a bath is a torero's greatest pleasure.---Conchita Cintron

Downstairs, in a closet, there resides a pair of matador pants. They are black, itchy wool, with gold brocade trim, dozens of brass buttons running up the sides, a flap in the front, and you would have to be very very skinny to fit into them. Who wore these pants, before they became a costume for a play, 35 years ago? I don't know, really, but just looking at them you can imagine yourself, head and shoulder cocked down at the bull, eyes locked, with one hand lifting your cape, this moment suspended, the crowd roaring in the background. Who among us hasn't imagined themselves with such bravado, if only for a moment, or only in the far regions of a dream? Ahh, if only the pants fit. But who could kill an animal so violently, systematically, slowly? Not me; I couldn't even bear to watch, yet there is that aura of drama, courage, and finesse that surrounds bullfighting.

This week I was completely captivated to read about the life of Conchita Cintron, the only woman ever to fight bulls both on horseback and on foot. She was born in Peru of American/Puerto Rican parents who had never had anything to do with bullfighting, but they did pay for riding lessons in Lima--and that was the start of it. (Unsuspecting parents: be aware that your children will use the education you give them in ways that you could not possibly imagine.) Her Portuguese riding teacher was a former rejoneador (horseback bullfighter), and like all great teachers, he inspired his student to apply her talents in a new and unexpected way. She went on to kill 750 bulls in her lifetime throughout Latin America and Europe.

Orson Welles described Conchita Cintron's last fight as "a single burst of glorious criminality": the Franco regime had banned women from bullfighting on foot, so Conchita, fighting her last bull in Spain, dismounted from her horse, approached the bull and touched the place on his neck where the spear would have landed. She was promptly arrested, and the crowd went wild, demanding her release. Now that's more like it, my kind of bullfight.

But there is more! Here is the part where the damn matador pants don't have to fit, the part of Conchita that I would like to thank her for. That is, to her surprise in 1967, she was contacted by the widow of Vasco Bensaude--the Portuguese shipping magnate who was determined to keep the Portuguese Water Dog from going extinct--that Conchita was the sole heir to all of his beloved dogs: 4 males, 10 females, and many boxes of archives concerning all of them. She then spent the next 5 years, breeding dogs and writing letters to people in the US, imploring them to help resurrect the breed. And she did. It is because of her that the Portuguese Water Dog has been successful in the US.

We love Eddy. Thank you, Lady Bullfighter.

Goddess of the Bullring: The Story of Conchita Cintrón, the World’s Greatest Matador by Lola Verrill Cintrón (Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1960)

International Encyclopedia of Women and Sports, Vol. 1, edited by Karen Christensen, et al. (Macmillan Reference USA, 2001)

Memoirs of a Bullfighter by Conchita Cintrón (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968)

The mother of our country was...hot?

Portrait of Martha Washington, 1796 by James Peale, and painting by Michael Deas , 2006

How should we get in the mood for President's Day? I know. Let's talk about Martha Washington; when was the last time you did that?

Artist Michael Deas, who painted the Columbia Pictures symbol (white-robed lady holding a torch in front of a giant cumulus cloud), has illustrated the cover of Patricia Brady's book about Martha Washington. To do so he looked at an "age regression" image produced by forensic anthropologists at the LSU Face Labs, where they scanned the bone structure from a painting done in 1795. And guess what: Martha wasn't always a "frumpy, dumpy, plump old lady" as described by Brigid Schulte in the Washington Post. She was apparently quite pretty. And we know she possessed purple silk high heels, which obviously makes her foxy, no question. It also gave Mr. Deas the idea of dressing her in a purple gown for his portrait of her.

Martha Washington, 1795, Charles Willson Peale's 3rd portrait of her. I have a problem with her hat.

Martha Washington in her 20's, and all gussied up, by Michael Deas, 2006. There, that's better, no hat.


I was impressed with Mr. Deas until I realized he painted this: Cows in History....ackkk!!!

Good bye Andrew

Ides of March, 1974, Andrew Wyeth

"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show." Andrew Wyeth

"God, I've frozen my ass off painting snow scenes!" Andrew Wyeth, speaking about en plein air painting

Andrew Wyeth died this month, at the ripe age of 91. I was sad to see him go. In an Art News survey in 1977 he was listed on both "The Most Underrated Artists" and "The Most Overrated Artists" lists. I always thought Christina's World was an overrated painting. So overly dramatic, and leaving little to the imagination. I don't feel too bad in saying that, because Christina's World was one of Wyeth's least favorite paintings. I admire many of his other paintings; he certainly never deserved all of that snobby criticism.

I always loved the dog paintings, but of course, I would.

Dil Huey Farm, 1941, Andrew Wyeth

This is what the sky looked like this weekend when we took the dogs on a run.