Sunday, January 13, 2013
Friday, January 11, 2013
The Tenement Museum
One of my favorite museums that I have not yet visited is the Tenement Museum in Manhattan. It's a Civil War-era multi-family, well, tenement, that housed immigrant families for generations. I love the mission, I love the interpretation, I love the marketing, I love the blog, I love this museum. The way they found the building and what it turned out to be is like a fairy tale to me. A total time-capsule, almost untouched for decades, loaded with clues and small items lost to history and found again under floorboards and inside walls and fireplaces.
You know what else I love? While parts of the museum have been restored to various moments of the 19th and early 20th century, replicating the domiciles of people who actually lived there, other sections of the museum have been left in the state of decay that I presume they were in when the organization moved into the building. They've been preserved to prevent further deterioration, but that's it. I LOVE that. I love ruins. Why? Who cares. Check it out.  |
| Yeah! That! |
Innovative Conservation at 97 Orchard
The idea of living in a large beehive of a city crammed with people and activity makes me feel anxious. I have no starry-eyed desire for New York, and one of the only things that could possibly change my mind about that is this very museum. It engages at least three of my Main Themes of Interest!
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
I listened to Lau's Twin Peaks/Christmas playlist on 8tracks and suddenly remembered driving home from LA in the middle of the night, once, a very long time ago.
My car had a tape deck, and I flipped the tape over and over so I could listen to the same few songs from the Twin Peaks soundtrack. It was hypnotic in the dark with nothing but faint green dash lights, a few feet of lit road, and stars glinting in the edge of my vision. It was the prettiest sense of isolation ever.
My car had a tape deck, and I flipped the tape over and over so I could listen to the same few songs from the Twin Peaks soundtrack. It was hypnotic in the dark with nothing but faint green dash lights, a few feet of lit road, and stars glinting in the edge of my vision. It was the prettiest sense of isolation ever.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Letters
I've mentioned it before, but I'm still concerned about letter writing.
It seems worthless or pointless or both to voice a concern about something that is inevitable, and already done. Worrying about the internet's erosion of communication styles is not unlike now-amusing comments of concern and distaste made by people who just couldn't get on board with the electric light. But what if it's emitting something? And it makes the furniture look so ugly!
No one writes letters but the very old and the very twee. What will happen with emails? Will there ever be publications of collected emails by cherished writers?
Emailing is so informal. Sometimes that's a good thing, but upon reading a structured letter, I feel that I am missing out on writing them. I have exchanged thousands and THOUSANDS of emails with my best friend over the last however many years, and while we both occasionally make the effort to write well or at least memorably, I am physically perceiving the missed potential. Although you almost can't fail at letter writing, no matter who you are. From Truman Capote writing to his society bitches from Capri to my grandma's older brother writing from a French battlefield in WWII, the little dispatches seem to be the perfect vehicle for being clever. After a paragraph of complaints about his living conditions, the brother said, "Ah, c'est la krieg." I thought it was the wittiest thing I had ever seen.
Anyway, this latest twinge of concern was inspired by my amusement at the conclusion of a letter from Groucho Marx to Dick Cavett:
Well, Richard (I’d say “Dick” but my secretary is a spinster), I’m running out of things to say. And they should be running out of me. Anyway, good-bye ’til hell freezes over. And if you’ve read this far, there’s something wrong with you.
Groucho
Perhaps the real problem here is not so much that we are not writing on paper, but rather who is doing the writing. Groucho is dead and I can hardly bear to say it, but Dick is getting old. The best, most interesting and amusing people are made of diverse interests and varied knowledge. Renaissance people, if you wanted to use a tired phrase.
It seems worthless or pointless or both to voice a concern about something that is inevitable, and already done. Worrying about the internet's erosion of communication styles is not unlike now-amusing comments of concern and distaste made by people who just couldn't get on board with the electric light. But what if it's emitting something? And it makes the furniture look so ugly!
No one writes letters but the very old and the very twee. What will happen with emails? Will there ever be publications of collected emails by cherished writers?
Emailing is so informal. Sometimes that's a good thing, but upon reading a structured letter, I feel that I am missing out on writing them. I have exchanged thousands and THOUSANDS of emails with my best friend over the last however many years, and while we both occasionally make the effort to write well or at least memorably, I am physically perceiving the missed potential. Although you almost can't fail at letter writing, no matter who you are. From Truman Capote writing to his society bitches from Capri to my grandma's older brother writing from a French battlefield in WWII, the little dispatches seem to be the perfect vehicle for being clever. After a paragraph of complaints about his living conditions, the brother said, "Ah, c'est la krieg." I thought it was the wittiest thing I had ever seen.
Anyway, this latest twinge of concern was inspired by my amusement at the conclusion of a letter from Groucho Marx to Dick Cavett:
Well, Richard (I’d say “Dick” but my secretary is a spinster), I’m running out of things to say. And they should be running out of me. Anyway, good-bye ’til hell freezes over. And if you’ve read this far, there’s something wrong with you.
Groucho
Perhaps the real problem here is not so much that we are not writing on paper, but rather who is doing the writing. Groucho is dead and I can hardly bear to say it, but Dick is getting old. The best, most interesting and amusing people are made of diverse interests and varied knowledge. Renaissance people, if you wanted to use a tired phrase.
Saturday, January 5, 2013
New Mexico
Late fall afternoon at Coronado State Monument, New Mexico
An excellent docent took us down into a kiva in the Kuaua ruin area. It was excavated by the WPA in the 1930s. Most of the kivas were reburied after excavation and study, because the best way to preserve something is to hide it in the ground. To get into the kiva, you climb onto a platform and then lower yourself 15 feet into the ground by ladder. The space is dark, with round earthen walls, and a scent that I have never smelled before. It smelled like wet dirt, with a hint of something aromatic, perfumed. The kiva probably dates to the 13th century or so.
The kiva at Kuaua is one of, or perhaps the only known kiva to have wall paintings. They depict men and women interacting with gods, animals, each other. There are no photos allowed in the kiva, because it's a holy place, and descendants of the people who built it want some element of the sanctity to be preserved.
It felt different inside. There was a sense of pause and feeling of quiet such that I didn't want to talk in there, and I didn't want anyone else to either.
& then there's this
Thursday, January 3, 2013
This
Is the greatest thing I have ever seen.
A 1927 travel trailer prototype built by one crazy guy and restored by another one. Read about it here. It's...perfect.
A 1927 travel trailer prototype built by one crazy guy and restored by another one. Read about it here. It's...perfect.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Anne Boleyn's Body
Sometimes I write posts for this blog, then become disgusted with them and never post them. Then I read them a year later and decide to post them because the world really needs to know how I feel about everything, even if it is poorly executed. That will become a pun if you read on!
Someone asked me what I could possibly be writing about so often in this thing (sometimes blogging comes up in conversation and because I never have the presence of mind to lie, I cryptically mention this, then refuse to give the address. The last person said, What do you like talk about private girl stuff there? If by "girl stuff" you mean Anne Boleyn then...yeah). Get ready!
After their beheadings, Anne Boleyn and her brother George were tossed into some graves under the floor of St. Peter ad Vincula. I am not really sure about the status of that kind of burial. It wasn't total dishonor (like having your head left on a bridge for your spiteful ex to sneer at from his window), but a queen in good favor naturally wouldn't have been put there.
As they do, the church fell into some disrepair in the centuries following Anne's death. A restoration effort was taken during the 19th century, at which time the graves beneath the floors were opened. It had always been known that Anne and her...family were in there (not only brother George but cousin Catherine as well), so I am not exactly sure why they were disinterred and can only attribute this to Victorian morbid curiosity. The opening of the floor led to the realization that a bunch of regular townspeople had been placed there along with the Boleyns and various other nobles over the years.
It was at this point that they realized they really didn't know which of the skeletons belonged to Anne, having only a 16th century map and a jumble of corpses to go by. Since a lot of bodies had been shifted around as they added new ones (apparently they would bash up old coffins and shove bones to the side to get new ones in), it was anyone's guess whether the female skeleton in the general area of Anne's X on the map was really her. Hm, no sixth fingers or tails in here. Get out the Victorian forensics! Victorian forensics: "Eh...thiiis one." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was just a kid when this happened, so he wasn't around to help.
Couldn't they have looked for trauma to the vertebra? Not that beheaded skeletons were in short supply at St. Peter's. Anyway, they picked the most likely female skeleton, slapped a tag on it reading AB 1536 :/ (jk, I don't know what the tag says), put her in a nice box, and back under the floor she went.
It seems like they could settle this situation with a little DNA testing. Anne's sister Mary had children, and surely some of their descendents are living today. Then again, would anyone care about this other than myself and Suzannah Lipscomb? Of course they would! This is important.
Someone asked me what I could possibly be writing about so often in this thing (sometimes blogging comes up in conversation and because I never have the presence of mind to lie, I cryptically mention this, then refuse to give the address. The last person said, What do you like talk about private girl stuff there? If by "girl stuff" you mean Anne Boleyn then...yeah). Get ready!
After their beheadings, Anne Boleyn and her brother George were tossed into some graves under the floor of St. Peter ad Vincula. I am not really sure about the status of that kind of burial. It wasn't total dishonor (like having your head left on a bridge for your spiteful ex to sneer at from his window), but a queen in good favor naturally wouldn't have been put there.
As they do, the church fell into some disrepair in the centuries following Anne's death. A restoration effort was taken during the 19th century, at which time the graves beneath the floors were opened. It had always been known that Anne and her...family were in there (not only brother George but cousin Catherine as well), so I am not exactly sure why they were disinterred and can only attribute this to Victorian morbid curiosity. The opening of the floor led to the realization that a bunch of regular townspeople had been placed there along with the Boleyns and various other nobles over the years.
It was at this point that they realized they really didn't know which of the skeletons belonged to Anne, having only a 16th century map and a jumble of corpses to go by. Since a lot of bodies had been shifted around as they added new ones (apparently they would bash up old coffins and shove bones to the side to get new ones in), it was anyone's guess whether the female skeleton in the general area of Anne's X on the map was really her. Hm, no sixth fingers or tails in here. Get out the Victorian forensics! Victorian forensics: "Eh...thiiis one." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was just a kid when this happened, so he wasn't around to help.
Couldn't they have looked for trauma to the vertebra? Not that beheaded skeletons were in short supply at St. Peter's. Anyway, they picked the most likely female skeleton, slapped a tag on it reading AB 1536 :/ (jk, I don't know what the tag says), put her in a nice box, and back under the floor she went.
It seems like they could settle this situation with a little DNA testing. Anne's sister Mary had children, and surely some of their descendents are living today. Then again, would anyone care about this other than myself and Suzannah Lipscomb? Of course they would! This is important.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Party
My grandma was always a great fan of holidays and parties and decorated her entire house for Christmas. Streamers and stockings and lights and cookies, cakes, food and crap everywhere. This photo of her parents at Christmas on the farm helps to explain that. I would place this picture around 1918. Unlike other holidays, the most recognizable elements of American Christmas celebrations have changed very little.
Crepe paper decor was such a big deal back then. Not sure, but I think the Dennison's catalogs pretty much invented using it to decorate for parties, or at least made it popular to. They're good for ideas when you want to decorate your Victorian palace in the most authentic way.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Jane Eyre in Film, 1
I have queued every film adaptation of Jane Eyre that Netflix has, because why wouldn't I? It may impress you to know that there are eight, all of which I plan to watch. No, nine if you count the one with Timothy Dalton, which I reluctantly do.
So far, my favorite is the 2006 BBC miniseries. It's extremely loyal to the book and to the descriptions of the characters. I cannot say the same for the 1944 Orson Welles/Joan Fontaine film, which takes obnoxious license with the story, but is ultimately still watchable. It also stars a young Elizabeth Taylor as Jane's only school friend, who dies. I would say spoiler alert, but this book was published 165 years ago; you're on your own.
The Welles version was done while he was still young and babely, frankly too babely to be a convincing Rochester, but he makes up for this with his gruff, barky demeanor and reluctant smile. Joan Fontaine was also too pretty to play a believable Jane, but we make do. Unfortunately, she portrays a totally boring Jane, who simpers around seeming weak instead of interesting and willful. The film shows a protracted view of Jane's unfortunate childhood, and we see just how terrible Lowood was. Almost more terrible, in fact, than is described in the book. This movie is all about how sad Jane is and how lucky she is to be rescued by a strange yelling man, rather than how resilient she is and how she rescues him, as CB had it.
Maybe I'm being too hard on this film because I've seen it done better. For an era that produced some intolerable period pieces and adaptations, it is not terrible. Also, Agnes Moorehead plays Jane's bitch aunt, three years after playing the crappy abandoning mother in Citizen Kane. At this time, she seems to have been typecast as the plain domestic failure who knows she sucks but can't seem to do anything about it. Thank god she showed everyone what the fuck was up later on Bewitched.
In closing, I just saw this on tumblr. The tag! Ah, the internet is for everyone.
So far, my favorite is the 2006 BBC miniseries. It's extremely loyal to the book and to the descriptions of the characters. I cannot say the same for the 1944 Orson Welles/Joan Fontaine film, which takes obnoxious license with the story, but is ultimately still watchable. It also stars a young Elizabeth Taylor as Jane's only school friend, who dies. I would say spoiler alert, but this book was published 165 years ago; you're on your own.
The Welles version was done while he was still young and babely, frankly too babely to be a convincing Rochester, but he makes up for this with his gruff, barky demeanor and reluctant smile. Joan Fontaine was also too pretty to play a believable Jane, but we make do. Unfortunately, she portrays a totally boring Jane, who simpers around seeming weak instead of interesting and willful. The film shows a protracted view of Jane's unfortunate childhood, and we see just how terrible Lowood was. Almost more terrible, in fact, than is described in the book. This movie is all about how sad Jane is and how lucky she is to be rescued by a strange yelling man, rather than how resilient she is and how she rescues him, as CB had it.
Maybe I'm being too hard on this film because I've seen it done better. For an era that produced some intolerable period pieces and adaptations, it is not terrible. Also, Agnes Moorehead plays Jane's bitch aunt, three years after playing the crappy abandoning mother in Citizen Kane. At this time, she seems to have been typecast as the plain domestic failure who knows she sucks but can't seem to do anything about it. Thank god she showed everyone what the fuck was up later on Bewitched.
In closing, I just saw this on tumblr. The tag! Ah, the internet is for everyone.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
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