Marcia Miner’s Room with a View

Worth a Thousand Words

2012-01-30T11:02:00.007-05:00

I can't figure out how he got himself up by facing that way.

CLICK TO ENLARGE.

WOULD YOU DO ANY OF THESE THINGS ON A DARE?

Captain Abraham Benson - Part 2

2012-01-16T09:21:00.037-05:00

Benson is my ancestor by marriage, and his 3rd wife Finette Edwards was my 4th cousin, I think, but I am not sure how removed I am. Her sister Mary was my great great grandmother. Maybe she is my great great grand aunt.

Early in the 1800s Benson become a captain and part owner of a number of steamboats. He sailed the New England coast and up as far as the Bay of Fundy in Canada where he nearly lost his boat on his first trip there. His daughter relayed a story in her hand that told how Benson unfamiliar with the famous Bay of Fundy tides was conducting the unloading of cargo when he suddenly heard squealing pigs and started to laugh as he watched them run away from the flats where they had been eating fish left by the receding tide. Fortunately a sailor yelled, "Cast off Captain or you'll be swamped." He immediately pulled up anchor as the tide came rushing in and all around the boat.

Benson's second wife, Grissel died in childbirth delivering her 13th child in 1830. Several years later he met Finette Edwards, shown above, who was a passenger on his steamboat that ran from the Battery to Albany up the Hudson River. Two years later they were married. He was 53 years old and she was twenty-eight . His legs had been giving him trouble, so he decided to give up going to sea and opened the house as a tavern. The Old Post Road was the major road between New York and Boston so it was an ideal location. Having a young wife was also an advantage. He hired cooks who had worked for him on the steamboats. Benson House became one of the most popular taverns that entertained many illustrious men, namely Andrew Jackson and Daniel Webster, It opened in 1833 and ran until 1849, when Captain Benson died.

I copied and painted this watercolor from a pencil sketch, the same size, I found in the house done by someone who either did it while it was a tavern or had been told what it looked like. Notes made by Mrs. Benson indicate the large barn was rented each summer to various touring companies. Once the great actor Edwin Booth and his troupe of actors rehearsed in the barn, but slept elsewhere. Mr. Booth gave the family three etchings, which still hang in a frame in the guest room. One is of a Mr. Edwin Booth, in the center and the one on the right is Mr. Cowell who played Crack. On the left is Mr. Jefferson, another actor famous for playing comic roles.

The Van Amburgh's travelling circus also stopped one night and housed their 60 horses and two elephants in the large barn. It might have been April of 1876 because a search indicates Van Amburgh's Circus played in Bridgeport at that time.

Captain Abraham Benson - Part I

2012-01-09T09:51:00.026-05:00

On January 28, 1780, my ancestor Captain Benson, by marriage was born in Haverstraw, N.Y. during the height of the Revolutionary War, his future town and home, that bears his name, Benson House, in Fairfield, Connecticut lay in ruins.

CT Historical Society (from an 19th century book)

The house was rebuilt before the end of the war on the same foundation and is an exact replica of the original house burned by the British on July 7/8, 1779 .

Benson's father Benjamin home from the war to repair his roof in Haverstraw was shot and killed by a British sniper, August, 1779 leaving his mother a widow with 12 children and pregnant with him. Abraham was born 5 months later on January 28, 1780. Once able, she moved the family to a farm they had in lower Manhattan on Dey street. (where the Trade Center once stood) Young Benson grew up near ships and by the time he was out of his teens he was sailing on supply ships into Long Island Sound and into various harbors up and down the coast, including Black Rock which was still part of Fairfield. He fell in love with Isaac Jarvis' daughter Esther. Sadly, she died in childbirth the first year which broke Benson's heart. A few years later he met the elderly Brig-General Elijah Abel who owned the house that was to become Benson's and who had a ward, Grissel Burr, who took care of the ailing Abel. Benson married married Grissel in 1804 and leased Abel's house. Grissel continued caring for General Abel, who several years later returned to his home Bosrah nr. Norwich where he died in 1809. The following year Benson bought the house from Abel's estate, and it has been in the family ever since. I am the last descendent to live here.

Tribute to Fay Wray

2012-01-06T11:20:00.009-05:00

Though noted for playing the girl King Kong fell in love with, Fay Wray made many movies during her career.

Willow her grandniece, a singer I met in Berkeley pays tribute to her Aunt in this video.

Terry Garthwaite

2012-01-04T13:19:00.024-05:00

CLICK on the title TERRY GARTHWAITE to see her perform.

I remember years ago, in the late 60s or early 70s sitting on a friend's roof with Terry whom I had just met. She had formed a band and was deciding on the name "The Joy of Cooking." Being new to Berkeley and not very cool I could not get my head around a band named "The Joy of Cooking." Once I heard them I soon learned what it means when musicians really cook.

After The Joy of Cooking disbanded, Terry joined up with Willow Wray. I saw them together several times and really enjoyed Willow's voice. Her great aunt was a movie star named Fay Wray who was most famous for playing the young woman who befriended King Kong and who King Kong fell in love with and held in his hand atop the Empire State Building. Here is Willow giving homage to her Great aunt, Fay Wray.

Helen Frankenthaler 1928-2011

2011-12-31T11:24:00.023-05:00

Note how thin the paint is. Frankenthaler paints directly on the unprepared canvas allowing it to behave as a dye that penetrates the canvas.

What a great New Year's gift. I had not been familiar with this painter's work and as often happens I was amazed that I could have gone this many years ignorant of such a fine artist. When I read the announcement of her death a few days ago at the age of 83, and that she had been influenced by Pollack, married to Robert Motherwell, and was a New York artist I rushed to see her work on-line. And I marvelled at each one. The more deeply I looked at them the more I liked them and the greater I realized they were. I think I will have to do another page after this because I am enthralled by what she does and how different each painting is.

2011 American Watercolor Society Awards

2011-12-25T11:42:00.009-05:00

AWS GOLD MEDAL OF HONOR
Jeannie McGuire
"Kenneth"

AWS SILVER MEDAL OF HONOR
Kathleen Conover, AWS*
"Change is in the Air"

AWS BRONZE MEDAL OF HONOR
Al Beyer
"Untitled"

Happy Holidays to All

2011-12-21T12:31:00.008-05:00

Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-19T11:01:00.008-05:00

No celebrity's death has saddened me more that of Hitch's death. I will miss this brilliant wordsmith who could set me back on my heels with how he easily he pulled an apt quote from his memory. His wit, his perception and literary gift often knock off my socks. It is such a pleasure to read him. It mattered not whether I agreed or disagreed vehemently with him. Reading his words was the pleasure.

Each time an issue arises, I will wish he were here to comment.

Each time someone in the government writes or says something stupid, I will miss Hitch.

Each time I read a book or article written by one of his close friends I will feel sad that Hitch will not comment.

What a loss.

Victorian Trade Cards.

2011-12-04T14:44:00.009-05:00

These cards were given out to customers. Obviously it was advertising for the goods sold, but often also had the name of the store selling them.

Click photo to enlarge

This doesn't have much to do with the F.E. Hartwell & Co store in Danbury, Conn., that advertises on the back of the card that they sell overcoats, suits and is "The Reliable New England Combination Clothiers and Gents' Furnishers, operating 27 stores.

J.&P. Coats was a major thread and needle company. They joined forces with Clark and Adams at one time and now are still in existence.

Here is an example of a very elaborate advertising card for brushes. When folded to the usual size there was a litho on both side. It had to be opened and turned over to see the ad for the company, John L. Whiting & Sons manufacturing company in Boston that made the products.

My Deer Friends,

2011-11-21T13:46:00.010-05:00

They came and stayed for about three hours.

I thought there was only one of the twins resting here, but

when I looked more carefully I could see the other right behind.

And Mama decided to sit off by herself.

She was way off to the right where they could just see her. They all kept an eye out all looking in different directions. Their coloring is great camaulflage. I couldn't see one of the twins from the upstairs window.

Then the buck arrived and after a few nibbles he went off and shortly they were all gone. It was so peaceful to see them out there very relaxed and feeling safe. It made me feel good.

Watercolor Artist-Dean Mitchell

2011-11-17T12:28:00.012-05:00

"Waiting for Customers" 15" x 10"

Miss Clemmie 5 x 7

Damaged Balcony, 22 x 30

Violinist-15 x 21 1/2

Ruth Orkin-Photographer-1921-1985

2011-11-14T11:30:00.016-05:00

There are so many great women photographers I could go on and on, but this is the end, at least, of this series until I am moved again by a photographer I happen upon, and get motivated to share more.

Orkin won acclaim for photos from her New York City apartment and for her 1951 photograph of an American girl in Italy

Ruth Orkin

Whitestoops, New York City

American Girl in Italy

Tirza on Sinks, Israel — 1951

Two American Tourists

Comic book Readers, 1947

Silhouette

Jumping in the Water

Sonya Noskowiak-Photographer 1900-1975

2011-11-10T10:48:00.009-05:00

Photo by Imogene Cunningham-1931

Noskowiak met Edward Weston, and began her photographic career in earnest. From 1929 to 1935 they had a close personal and professional relationship; she lived with him as a companion, model, and mother to his children.

Jean Charlot, painter 1898-1979 married to Zohmah Day.

Zohmah Day 1909-2000. She and her husband are buried in the Diamond Head Memorial Cemetery in Hawaii

Jean Charlot and Zohmah Day embracing with their heads cut off.
Very strange shot. What in the world was she thinking? Although, it is fun trying to figure out what the whole photo would look like.

Frances Benjamin Johnston-Photographer (1864–1952)

2011-11-07T13:04:00.014-05:00

Self portrait as a young woman. She was proving women could smoke and drink with the best of them. She also could show her petty coat without caring who cared.

Cooking school in Hamdon, Virginia

When her active days in the darkroom were over, she maintained a photographic work area in an alcove off her bathroom.

Age slowed her down and she walked with a cane. And this made me laugh, ... "her doctor weaned her from bourbon; so she drank cherry wine instead... She loved to roam the French Quarter and sit in bars and talk. Once when someone recognized her as a famous photographer, she agreed, 'Yes, I’m the greatest woman photographer in the world.'”

click HERE to read about her life and see more photos

Laura Gilpin-Photographer-1891-1979

2011-11-06T10:22:00.015-05:00

Laura Gilpin. Mission Church at Rancho de Taos, New Mexico. Platinum print photograph. Built in 1772 by Spanish missionaries and native Americans, the Mission Church is an amalgam of European and indigenous building traditions. Made of adobe, a brick composed of straw and mud, the walls slope outward to buttress the structure and to fend off the effects of torrential rains. The Mission Church was recorded in photographs and drawings by the Historic American Buildings Survey in the 1930s and has enjoyed great popularity with artists such as photographer Laura Gilpin and painter Georgia O'Keefe, who both lived nearby.

Georgia O"Keefe

Georgia O'Keefe

Berenice Abbott-Photographer-1898-1991

2011-11-03T11:30:00.012-04:00

115 Jay Street, Brooklyn, May 22, 1936.

Fifth Avenue houses.

James Joyce

Hands of Jean Cocteau
1927

Leonard Breger-Homage to Gertrude Stein

2011-10-31T10:11:00.005-04:00

These two artists have been friends for many many decades and obviously have a great time with each other and even inspire each other. They have a fire in their belly about expressing themselves through their art. The video is fun to watch and a lesson for us all, artist or not.

Leonard Breger-Homage to Goya

2011-10-30T00:32:00.007-04:00

Breger avoids rectangles and paints his images on cut masonite or board.

The Burdem After Goya-acrylic on masonite-48"x39"

Man Carrying A Huge Load
Circa 1812-23
Scraper, brush, and sepia ink wash over a black chalk outline on
white laid paper
H. 20.3 cm; W. 14.3 cm

Is Breger's painted man with many colors a different story, yet and homage?

Old New York Taverns-Part 3

2011-10-24T12:58:00.010-04:00

567 Hudson St. at 11th Avenue.

Funny I don't recall going here except on Sunday afternoons.

Other than many noted writers, Dylan Thomas was a regular when he was in town. One night after leaving the White Horse, "he returned to the Hotel Chelsea, declaring, 'I've had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that is a record!' The barman and the owner of the pub who served Thomas at the time later commented that Thomas couldn't have imbibed more than half that amount. Thomas had an appointment to visit a clam house in New Jersey on 4 November. When phoned at the Chelsea that morning, he said that he was feeling awful and asked to take a rain-check. Later, he did go drinking with Reitell at the White Horse and, feeling sick again, returned to the hotel. Dr. Feltenstein came to see him three times that day, on the third call prescribing morphine, which seriously affected Thomas's breathing. At midnight on 5 November, his breathing became more difficult and his face turned blue. Reitell unsuccessfully tried to get hold of Feltenstein.

Thomas was admitted to the emergency ward at nearby St Vincent's hospital. The medical notes state that he arrived in a coma at 1.58am, and that the "impression upon admission was acute alcoholic encephalopathy damage to the brain by alcohol, for which the patient was treated without response". The duty doctors found bronchitis in all parts of his bronchial tree, both left and right sides. An X-ray showed pneumonia, and a raised white cell count confirmed the presence of an infection. Caitlin in Laugharne was sent a telegram on 5 November, notifying her that Dylan was in hospital. She flew to America the following day and was taken, with a police escort, to the hospital. Her alleged first words were 'Is the bloody man dead yet?' The pneumonia worsened and Thomas died, whilst in coma, at noon on 9 November." Wikipedia

He was 39 years old when he died in 1953. Those were the years I went to the White Horse always hoping I'd see him. I never did. Below is a photo of him at the bar.

His favorite seat.

Old New York Taverns-Part 2

2011-10-21T11:31:00.011-04:00

MCSORLEY'S - EST. 1854

1937

Woody Gutherie singing a tune in the 50s

McSorley's was another old bar my pals frequented, but when we women were with them we were not allowed in because it was for men only. We hung outside while they had a drink. Women weren't allowed in until sometime in the early 70s. We'd go passed there if we had gone to China Town for dinner and the guys always wanted to stop in for a quick beer.

Love the sawdust on the floor. I remember it in butcher shops.

I love dark beer

And there is the founder, a fine ole Irishman named McSorley

Old New York Taverns-Part 1

2011-10-17T10:46:00.021-04:00

CHUMLEY'S
The white building on Bedford Street has nothing more than the number 86 written next to the door.

Other than Willa Cather, E.E. Cummings, Theodore Dreiser, William Faulkner, Ring Lardner, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Eugene O'Neill, John Dos Passos, and John Steinbeck, my pals and I hung out here in the 50s. We never saw anyone famous.
A bunch of us would drift in around midnight and stay until it closed at 4am. It was/is at 86 Bedford Street and there was no way to know there was a bar behind the door. There was no sign, only the address. From Wikipedia, "A number of qualities remain from Chumley's Prohibition history. Notably, the Barrow Street entrance has no exterior sign, being located at the end of a nondescript courtyard ("The Garden Door"), while the Bedford Street entrance, which opens to the sidewalk, is also unmarked.

Barrow Street entrance. (photo Wally Gobetz)

But WOW when I first opened that door and saw the inside I was amazed. The beer was all tap and a corned beef sandwiches on rye was just what one needs at about two in the morning. It had a very relaxed atmosphere and oh yes everyone smoked and no one choked or thought anything of it, even non smokers were oblivious to it.

(photo Sandra Nygaard}

About 4 years ago, work done on the building next door caused the fireplace to collapse and Chumley's has been closed since. There are all sorts of problems slowing up the opening. It would be a horrible loss to the city and its history if Chumley's closed. It is not as it was in the 50s or 60s, more people know about it...why not, it has been there since 1926 and word travels.

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up
--Frank O'Hara

Occupation Wall Street

2011-10-14T10:34:00.005-04:00

Comments very welcome and can be made by clicking "post a comment" and using "anonymous" if you are not a blogger

Java Head

2011-10-07T12:56:00.018-04:00

Diane deHaven Baker was a dear friend who was raised in her home called Java Head in Coconut Grove, Florida. We were roommates in Honolulu where we both were teaching in the early 1960s. We decided to visit our parents for the summer, but we wanted to visit New Orleans first. We did and ate in all the best restaurants. It was GREAT fun. Antoines, Court of Two Sisters...best remoulade salad I ever ate. Imagine the main course and the dessert.

She, then suggested I come with her to Florida before going to Connecticut first, and she could take me to see the Miami Biltmore Hotel where I went each winter with my parents because my dad was a newsreel man and would be stationed there each winter.

I could not believe my eyes when I saw what a mansion her folks had, but they were not swishy, but rather very regular folks and great fun. Her dad "Bake," Charles Baker Jr. was a noted writer and most famous for writing cook books, two called, The Gentlemen's Companion

Most times we ate in their fabulous kitchen, but this was a great dining room where we had some great meals that her dad prepared. Nothing like being introduced to gourmet cooking by a real gourmet.

Diane and her mom had great singing voices and there was an organ up on the balcony which she would play and they both sang great hymns.

Other side of the living room

I found these photos on the internet because the house is for sale for 14 million dollars. It probably was less than a million back then. The Baker's taste in furnishings was much better as I remember, although I recall their second house Java Head East which they built in the early 60s much more vividly because I stayed there for over a week.

Anna Hyatt Huntington

2011-10-01T13:49:00.017-04:00

In 1952 or 1953, the mother of my friend, Caroline Marshall, was a friend of Anna's and she took us to meet her at her home and studio, in Redding, Connecticut. This photo could have been taken the day I was there because that is exactly how she looked. The only difference was she was standing on a scaffold and ladder working on the horse's head when we entered the studio. She looked old and frail, but at 77, she apparently was in fine shape, and went on to live another 20 years.

She did not sculpt this specific triple life size piece nor any piece this large. Her original piece called The Torch Bearer was done on a much smaller scale. That allows a sculptor to make changes much easier. Once finished it was sent where it is prepared for a three dimensional pantograph to trace the outline and intricacies of the original sculpture to triple size size. It comes back to her studio in large pieces that are then assembled. She then does the finishing touches, which was what she was doing when I met her.

When I drove by the Discovery Museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut some 46 years later and saw this I was so excited I had to tell someone the story, and went inside and told the woman sitting behind a desk that I saw Anna Huntington do that very sculpture and it is such a treat and surprise to see the bronze finished product after all these years. She looked at me as though I was nuts. It meant nothing to her. I went out and took photos of it. I read later that Huntington had donated the statue to the museum. There are several copies around the world. It is magnificent and more so to me because I had been in the studio as she was putting on the finishing touches.

Anna Hyatt Huntington - Aug 1953

Women Writers by Caricaturists

2011-09-26T11:27:00.019-04:00

Lillian Hellman by David Levine

Annie Proulx by David Levine

Anne Tyler by David Levine

Susan Sontag by David Levine

Hannah Arendt by Luie Cornejo Arenas

Of these 5 writers Arendt and Sontag are my favorites, not because I agree with them, but because they arouse, annoy, challenge and fascinate me as intellects, philosophers and women. Arendt's "banality of evil" is not something one takes in easily, nor is Sontag's Illness as Metaphor.

I often wondered if there was any truth to the movie Julia, which is from Hellman's memoir Pentimento. For instance, I can I admire her for standing with those who stood up against the HUAC when worms like Elia Kazan and Robert Taylor gave names of those in Hollywood they claimed were communists, but she had a habit of attributing things to herself that never happened. She claimed to have said the following,

"To hurt innocent people whom I knew many years ago in order to save myself is, to me, inhuman and indecent and dishonorable. I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group, " but according to David Frum, she didn't. I believe him.

Annie Proulx's caricature probably signifies that she creates bizarre characters. Does anyone recognize this "bird" as something from one of her stories. I haven't read all of them, hence am not sure.

I included Tyler's caricature because I like it; however, I have only read one of Anne Tyler's books, The Accidental Tourist which I didn't like. Some have said it has a similarity to Proulx's Shipping News which I liked very much.

Cats in Art

2011-09-19T12:36:00.010-04:00

Henrette Ronner-Knip

A Dutch painter who n 1876 was commissioned by the Queen of Belgium to paint two of her favorite lap-dogs which led to further prestigious commissions from Emperor William I of Germany, Baron Tindal of Amsterdam, the Duchess of Edinburgh and the Princess of Wales. Henriette Ronner-Knip was awarded the Cross of the Leopold Order; a rare achievement for a woman artist. She settled in Brussels where she remained until her death in 1909. A major retrospective of her work was held at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam in 1998.

Saul Steinberg

Although we think of his cartoons, he exhibited his work at fine art museums and galleries. In 1946, Steinberg exhibited with Arshile Gorky, Isamu Noguchi, and Robert Motherwell in the "Fourteen Americans" show at The Museum of Modern Art. He also had a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1978 and after his death there was an exhibit at the Institute for Modern Art in Valencia Spain in 2002.

Hasegawa 10 X 7 1/2 mulberry (rice) paper

Japanese Woodcut by Sadanobu Hasegawa IV, A 20th century Japanese painter and printmaker. He belongs to a famous family of woodcut artists. During the past several centuries it has been common for either sons or students of Japanese artists to acquire their master's name and continue on in their footsteps. Sadanobu I (1809-1879) came from Osaka and was a traditional ukiyo-e woodcut designer. His son, Sadanobu II, continued to create woodcuts during the Meiji era. In the next generation Sadanobu III (1881-1962) designed woodcuts of Kabuki actors and beautiful women.

Mary Cassatt

(May 22, 1844 - June 14, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists.

Horatio Henry Couldery - 1832-1893

He trained at the Royal Academy, and exhibited there and at the British Institution, the Royal Society of British Artists gallery in Suffolk Street, and other notable galleries . His paintings were almost always of animals. He was known for his great attention to detail and was highly regarded by art critic John Ruskin. Some of his paintings are sentimental which is always a danger with animals as the only subject in the painting.

The Wonder of Man and Nature

2011-09-09T10:55:00.002-04:00

Hurricane Irene in Connecticut

2011-08-31T10:37:00.007-04:00

These homes are at the end of Fairfield Beach Road. For many many decades the beach cottages which were only lived in during the summer months were regularly destroyed during huge storms or hurricanes, but rebuilt. The 1938 was the worst. In time new zoning restriction were imposed. Then came huge monster houses. The houses were mostly safe, but the charm of the summer cottage was gone. There are still a few left. I have photographed many and must go see if any of those have been destroyed. The old small cottage that are left are less vulnerable than the one's in between Long Island Sound and the channel.

Photos by Cathy Zuraw, Fairfield Citizen photographer.

There is nothing to say.

NYC Shut Down

2011-08-27T17:59:00.002-04:00

031, a photo by MTAPhotos on Flickr.

That Old House-1641

2011-08-20T08:56:00.019-04:00

The residents of Dedham, Massachusetts are proud to claim the Fairbanks House as the oldest timber framed house in the United States. It has sagged a bit, tis true, but the sagging makes it even more interesting, I think. Undoubtedly, it was built by early carpenters who had emigrated from East Anglia where such timber frame houses were popular. The difference being, in East Anglia they were plastered and painted, while in Massachusetts they were covered with clapboard sidings. Of course, another house in Dedham had claimed it was older. That happens in New England towns with a 17th century history.

An old East Anglia house today. By comparison, you can see that they plastered and painted their houses. In the U.S. painting the clapboards and shingles came later.

Recently, Travis Pardo a PhD candidate in Boston University's Department of Archaeology, noted that this plate featuring the Boston State House and Boston Common with cows roaming the grounds was manufactured by the John Rogers and Son company roughly between 1815-1842.

What makes this an especially valuable house is that it remained in the Fairbanks family for eight generations, hence found artifacts tell us much about how people lived during each of those periods.

Click

Here

to see more archaeological finds around the property.

Suddenly, Last Summer

2011-08-04T10:33:00.019-04:00

value="http://www.youtube.com/v/HBPwPIqYXtg?version=3&hl=en_US">

This Tennessee Williams' play has elements of two of his other plays, Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Each play features a person already dead when the play opens and whose death traumatizes the main character and as such has a ripple affect on everyone else in the play. In Suddenly Last Summer, Sebastian, Violet's son had been devoured by young boys on a beach at Cabeza de Lobo as his young cousin Catherine watched. When the play and then the film opened many felt it was shocking because it was about homosexuality, but it wasn't. Rather, it is about how people use each other. It is a devouring of the other. It is how we get what we want, Williams postuates. An early scene shows Sebastian's mother in her son's garden showing a Venus Fly Trap that devours an insect.

Until Sebastian's mother had a stroke, she and her son traveled together. They were even thought of as a couple. She was his "bait" to meet young men, but a stroke left her less attractive, so he took his beautiful cousin Catherine to procure for him. She said that people existed in Sebastian's mind for his gratification. When Catherine told the story of his death, his mother refused to believe her and called a psychiatrist insisting she be given a lobotomy. Think about that.

When I saw the film I was surprised it had been released in the 50s since there had been rules at that time on what could be shown in films. (Married couples couldn't even be shown sleeping in the same bed.) Sebastians was clearly a gay man who solicited for sex, very much a no no for films in those days. However, the play is not about homosexuality, although Williams was a gay man and homosexual men are significant in his stories. The main characters are not gay, but all the characters in the play have been touched and are affected directly and indirectly by him. as Sebastian is certainly not the only horrible character. Violet is equally a horror. As for the psychiatrist and Catherine...rent the movie. It is different.

Penfield Reef Lighthouse- Up for Auction

2011-06-24T09:45:00.158-04:00

Early July, 2011, after learning the lighthouse was up for auction, a group of Fairfielders asked the Board of Selectman to approve the formation of the Penfield Reef Lighthouse Preservation Committee. It was approved and voted upon.

updated July 18, 2011
This woodcut by Craig Smith will be donated to whomever wins the bid and acquires the Lighthouse. He hopes it will be the Town.

It was built in 1874 for $55,000, in the style called Second Empire which is borrowed from France and named for the reign of Napolean111.
Photo: Paige Herman

CLICK to enlarge photos

The new committee immediately began accepting tax deductable donations to establish a fund to acquire and preserve the Penfield Reef Lighthouse for future generations.

Some of the committee on July 18, 2011 with the first donation checks

Should the Town of Fairfield not assume ownership, all donations will be returned. Anonymous donations will be donated to a charity.

A Brief History of a much loved Fairfield Historic Landmark

The Penfield Reef extends over a mile into Long Island Sound from Fairfield.

photo Mike Lauterborn.

Great photo because it allows the imagination to see how this really was a peninsula where cattle could grazed centuries ago. Erosion because rocks were removed for ballast and normal climatic changes made it in time, not only, unsuitable for cattle but the most dangerous area on Long Island Sound, because at high tide the reef is entirely hidden.

In 1916, Frederick Jordan, the lighthouse keeper set out in his rowboat just before Christmas, to visit his family. After fighting the rough seas, the boat overturned while a helpless assistant trying to launch a rescue boat watched in horror.
The Light has been rife with ghost stories ever since. The assistant was convinced that he saw Jordan a few days later in the lighthouse, and that the logbook had been taken from the shelf and left opened to the page describing how Jordan had died. Several people swept off the reef or caught on the reef have claimed a mysterious man appeared and saved their lives but he disappeared before they could thank him/

This sub sank off the Penfield Light. Enlarge to read how the crew escaped.

photo-Dana Seymour
Nice shot!

photo David E. Johnston

The lighthouse keepers saw many harrowing things and participated in saving many lives They experienced ferocious storms and severe hurricanes, all incidents above and beyond maintaining the lighthouse that insured the safety of ships entering the Bridgeport Harbor. February 1, 1929 the keeper helped a scow in distress, and wound up taking the captain and his wife to the lighthouse and housing them overnight. The following year a Japanese steamer went aground on Penfield reef. Similar stories have become part of the Penfield Reef Lighthouse history.

Shocking News!!!

In 1969, the CG announced plans to remove the lighthouse and replace it with an automated light on a pipe tower. The Ct. State Historical Preservation Office said they knew of no historic significance; the Connecticut Historical Society said the same. The Bridgeport Post disagreed. "In our opinion few things are as worth saving as an impressive landmark, visible for miles around, that has existed longer than living memory. “

Fortunately, U.S Rep. Lowell Weicker and State Representative Stewart McKinney took up the cause. McKinney asked the CG to reconsider and automate the light but retain the existing structure, which he called.
A thing of beauty which lends a graceful touch to the shoreline area.;">

Today love for the lighthouse is exemplified here. You can even see the lighthouse on the horizon above left.

After many protests, the new equipment was installed in 1971. A decommissioning ceremony was held . A “sail by” and a “fly by” saluted speakers, Senator Weicker and Representative McKinney. The last crew left December 2, 1971.
During the Coast Guard era three men were assigned, with two on duty at one time. The men had two weeks on and one week off. One of the last keepers was C.J. Stiles, who later became Bridgeport’s harbormaster.

The lighthouse fell into disrepair after it was automated. Then in 1990, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and in 2000, many repairs were made to spruce it up.
photo courtesy of The Library of Congress

The Coast Guard will continue to maintain the light and the foghorn. Now, it must be a fast run to get everything in place to be prepared to bid when it comes up for auction sometime in August.

This is but a small sampling of the history, because there are 97 years of history by those who served on the Light and 137 years of history by those who have lived and still do live along the beach and have been witness to and participants in rescues of the best and worst of boaters or reef walkers.

Donation categories are:

Lighthouse Keeper $25.00
Petty Officer $50.00
Ensign $100.00
Lieutenant $250.00
Commander $500.00
Captain $750.00
Admiral $1000.00
Fleet Benefactor Above $1000.00

Tax deductable donations can be made out to:
Penfield Reef Lighthouse Preservation
Mail to:
Penfield Reef Lighthouse Preservation
Independence Hall
725 Old Post Rd.
Fairfield, Connectict 06824

This might interest you also.

click here

Latches and Hinges and Keyholes

2011-06-17T12:40:00.022-04:00

A friend pointed out that one never forgets the sound the latches make. My cat has better ears than anyone and appears from nowhere when I open the cellar door latch because she would love to get down there.

Theses hardware latches and hinges were all handmade. The house was built in 1779 after it had been burned down by the British. There was a renovation in the 1830s, and indoor plumping came in the early 1900s. A few of the door latches date from the 18th century, but the large hinge was installed in the mid 19th century when the front door and center hallway were built. There are ceramic door knobs on the bathroom and metal door knobs to a tool room.

Marcia Miner’s Room with a View: Bloomsday June 16th-James Joyce

2011-06-16T11:13:00.002-04:00

Click below

Marcia Miner’s Room with a View: Bloomsday June 16th-James Joyce: "Several years ago I decided to finish reading Ulysses . I suppose many people have started it and put it down in frustration. I was one of ..."

Opening Doors

2011-06-13T00:19:00.006-04:00

Margaret Bourke-White-Part 3

2011-06-06T08:57:00.009-04:00

A magnificent shot of a B-36 at high altitude. I wonder if she is in a plane's gunner seat on the side of the fuselage taking this fantastic shot. Seeing the tail of the plane she is in is brilliant. It give the illusion she is outside of the plane.

Margaret Bourke-White-Part 2

2011-06-01T18:11:00.015-04:00

Balanced on one of the chromed, art-deco eagles on top of New York’s Chrysler Building, Bourke-White is doing what she does best, risking her life to get unusual shots. The next photo was probably taken from this vantage point, which looks pretty scary, but she was fearless and would go anywhere for a story; wars, floods, mineshafts, planes and tall buildings.

The Chrysler Building built in 1930 was the tallest building in the world. Bourke-White took this photo in 1931.

1954-Crop Protecting Pattern. Colorado.

New York City 1936. This is an incredible photo. She had to have taken it from the Empire State Building. Her camera position is right where the ESB is and it had been built six years earlier. She must have known that plane would be flying low over Manhattan. Allowing a plane to fly lower than the Empire State Building is pretty spooky. A few years later a private plane hit the building.

Margaret Bourke-White-Photographer

2011-05-31T12:01:00.012-04:00

In 1945 Bourke-White took the first photos of the horrors in Buchenwald.
She said, "I saw and photographed the piles of naked, lifeless bodies, the human skeletons in furnaces, the living skeletons who would die the next day... and tattooed skin for lampshades. Using the camera was almost a relief. It interposed a slight barrier between myself and the horror in front of me."

U.S. soldiers were ordered to round up local Germans and bring them to the camp to have them see what their leaders had done.

Dr. Kurt Lisso, Leipzig's city treasurer, and his wife and daughter after taking poison to avoid surrender to U.S. troops.

Memorial Day Began After the Civil War

2011-05-19T17:02:00.021-04:00

George S. Cook took the above picture at Fort Sumter. He was born in Stratford, Connecticut in 1819, but left early and headed south and began as a painter, but photography was getting started, so he put down his paint brushes and picked up a camera. Then came the Civil War.

The shutter on the early cameras had to be open for several seconds to record a photo. As a result there are no candid shots. People had to be posed; however Cook did make perhaps the first candid shot ever made during war. It is awesome because it was at Fort Sumter, the first battle of the war. He couldn't have captured that at the moment he saw the flash. He had to have had his shutter opened before the shot was fired which allowed time to capture that first puff of smoke that after a few days gave the Confederates their first victory. Ft. Sumter was their's.

soldiers gathered in preparation for burial

He became known as the Southern Matthew Brady. It is amazing they could haul those huge cameras around near the war zone.

After the war Cook had a photo shop where he took portraits. He also traveled about photographing freed slaves.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

2011-05-13T12:47:00.008-04:00

"To take a photograph is to hold one’s breath when all faculties converge in a face of fleeing reality. It is at that moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy." Cartier-Bresson

He caught a split second of life. One could never capture that in a posed photo,.

I am sure I saw these women on Fifth Avenue back in the '50s. They surely are waiting for a cab.

Imogene Cunningham

2011-05-10T17:58:00.006-04:00

Irene "Bobby" Libarry, 1976, Gelatin Silver Print

Lace

The Colors of Spring

2011-05-09T10:27:00.004-04:00

Greta Garbo

2011-05-04T11:01:00.014-04:00

The most famous movie star in the world about whom we know almost nothing. Illusion was all that she was about.

Sometimes this doesn't appear. It will. It's a scene from one of her films.

Foyle's War

2011-04-30T22:25:00.013-04:00

One of my most favorite Brit TV shows. I want to watch all 10 episodes so I am going to and anyone who wants to join watching can. So here goes. It's only 10 minutes for the first one. You can see it full screen by clicking the lower right 4 dots in a square.

IMG_7997

2011-04-28T12:33:00.001-04:00

IMG_7997, a photo by LGP8 on Flickr.

Richard Serra at the Met

2011-04-22T19:14:00.002-04:00

The Four Seasons Colony

2011-04-14T23:40:00.004-04:00

I saw this moving and important documentary this evening, April 14th and it will be shown on PBS again on these stations soon:
Troy/Albany WMHT — Thurs April 28, 7:30P
May 1, 6pm
Long Island WLIW — Sat April 30, 8pm
Miami WPBT — Sun May 1, 5pm
LA KCET — Sun May 1, 9pm

I urge everyone to see it. It can be rented or bought if you can't get to see it on PBS.

These are some of the last of the Holocaust survivors. Although fun loving and happy to be together, their story is in their eyes. As one man says, it is always there. As I watched them I was reminded again that a whole generation of people disappeared off the face of the earth. They would have been tradesmen or women, doctors, teachers, lawyers, inventors, politicians, musicians and many would have been great and contributed to this world with their gifts and talents, but they died in the camps and in the ovens. It still is beyond belief.

Chinese Artist Arrested

2011-04-07T18:39:00.006-04:00

World renowned artist Ai Weiwei native of China, born in 1957 was taken into custody by the Chinese police on Sunday, April 3, 2011 at the Beijing airport on his way to Hong Kong and no one has heard from him since. It seems impossible that he could be killed or removed permanently given his great fame. His studio in Beijing was sealed off in what has been called a crackdown by the regime on activists and dissidents.[

At the Met

2011-03-25T18:16:00.008-04:00

Paul Cézanne

A study for The Card Players

A study for The Card Players

The Card Players

oil of the The Pipe Smoker

The Card Players

The Super Moon

2011-03-20T17:40:00.006-04:00

With a cheap camera the best shots were these. (;=)The super moon to show up as magnificent as it was one would have to have a very expensive camera. Sometimes cheap is better.

These are all taken from the same window of my house looking across above my neighbor's house. With a little strain one can see their house. The lights from their windows show. But the designs are much more interesting that the actual supermoon.

Vintage Photos Women

2011-03-13T17:28:00.004-04:00

A friend who is a police woman posted this photo on a social network. I thought it so great I went off looking for others like it.

More Fine Art Photography

2011-03-08T00:07:00.008-05:00

I am so enamored with this superb photographer's work that I want to show several more. The sensitivity he captures of intimate moments is amazing. Such shots are not so difficult with a 35 mm or digital camera, but he uses a large format camera that requires a tripod, lights or affective natural light. The people have to be posed but not look like they have been posed. He is a true artist and I assume does his own printing, although I don't know that.

@Nickolas Nixon
I love this photo.

@Nickolas Nixon

@Nickolas Nixon

@Nickolas Nixon

Fine Art Photography

2011-03-03T11:29:00.025-05:00

What may seem no different than a snap shot any amateur could have taken with b/w film , most definitely isn't when Nicholas Nixon is looking at the image through his large format camera. He's a genius! The beauty of the large format camera is that it makes a 8 x 10 negative which means the negative doesn't need to be enlarged which causes a loss of details. His forté for me is his fabulous use of bianco scuro

The Brown Sisters @Nicholas Nixon

The Brown Sisters @Nicholas Nixon

Ruth Bernett @Nicholas Nixon

Nixon has said "When photography went to the small camera and quick takes, it showed thinner and thinner slices of time, [unlike] early photography where time seemed non-changing. I like greater chunks, myself. Between 30 seconds and a thousandth of a second the difference is very large."[

@Nicholas Nixon
@Nicholas Nixon
@Nicholas Nixon
@Nicholas Nixon

These images cannot do justice to seeing them in person. They are the wrong size and the details cannot be fully appreciated.

His photography can be seen at various museums including: The Museum of Modern Art, Harvard University's Fogg Art Museum, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the National Gallery of Art. In 2010, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

You Can't Go Home Again

2011-03-01T19:07:00.006-05:00

This was my home for about 12 years. I had moved there from Berkeley and left in 1988 returning to Connecticut. I miss living there, but wouldn't want to go back. It is simply a lovely memory to savor. There had been an oil spill that devastated the shoreline north of San Francisco which is how I learned about that village. I probably learned more about myself from living there than I had learned anywhere else. Things all came together somehow.

This sign was always torn down to keep tourist away.

I lived up there and walked my dogs along the beach each day

Small village festivals always are fun.

I made many lovely friends, and one or two are still there. Others of us felt it was time to leave.

Black History Month

2011-02-27T09:45:00.002-05:00

Black History Month

2011-02-25T11:06:00.000-05:00

Black History Month

2011-02-24T14:50:00.000-05:00

Black History Month

2011-02-21T23:41:00.020-05:00

Paul Robeson finally left the country and lived in Russia where he felt like a free man.

James Baldwin went to live in France to feel like a free man. The U.S. was not kind to black gay men.

Josephine Baker moved to France where she was treated like a human being and loved by the audiences, something she didn't experience in her own country.

Not much has changed, even though it seems so. As Baldwin says, why should Americans have to fight for civil rights. Isn't that a right of all citizens?

Mary Tuthill Lindheim

2011-02-09T18:13:00.048-05:00

Early in her career
Ceramics Monthly, 1953

CLICK photos to enlarge them.
All photos copyprinted from her book
Mary Tuthill Lindheim, ART AND INSPIRATION
edited by Abby Wasserman.

Family 1950s,
7.75 x 11.75 in. Sculptural clay with ashes,
gas-fired on painted wood base

Bottle
1950s Porcelain, dark clay, carved, glazed, reduction fired.

In her Bolinas studio on Dogwood Street on the Mesa, 1994.
Plhoto: Wynn Richards

Blue Mother and Child
c 1966 Sculptural clay, slip painted 15 in. tall

Turquoise flat-sided vase, 1966
Thrown in three pieces, cut attched, applied wet clay, glazes brushed on.
22x12.5 x 5 in
Collection of Crocker Museum

This is a terra cotta piece called Moses18.5 x 8 x 5 in.
Property of Jay Lagemann (Mary's nephew).
Photo : Will Taylor.

In Sausalito where she lived and was active in saving the water front from being developed which would have blocked the view of San Francisco Bay.

I remember this in her home
Towards Unity
Stones in magnesite, wood, paint
49 x 25.5 in.
Photo: Mary Tuthill Lindheim

I lived next door to Mary for many years, in Bolinas, a tiny village in northern California. We lived on a mesa and on a very rugged dirt road. The first time I went into Mary's house, a makeshift structure, but with a wonderful living room overlooking a swamp filled with wonderful singing frogs, a tiny bedroom and an equally tiny kitchen, and a large pottery studio that ran the length of the small house, I was stunned by the magnificent sculptures and fine pottery. I felt I was in an exquisite hidden museum. The colors and furnishings reflected the many years Mary spent living in Arizona.

Here she is in 1994 with her editor, Abby Wasserman. The book about Mary and her work, Mary Tuthill Lindheim: ART AND INSPIRATION was published posthumously in November, 2010. It is a glorious tribute and beautifully done with super photos of her wonderful museum pieces.

She was not only youthful well into her 80s, she was always fascinating and fun to be with, and I couldn't have had a more wonderful neighbor. I moved east when she was nearing 80 and missed her friendship very much and I was deeply saddened to learn of her death at 92, several years ago. Most of the time I lived there she was writing a family biography which is still unpublished, but I am hoping her good friend and editor of this book of her work will get that published also.

She had a fascinating history. I loved the fact that she had had three husbands and that former lovers were still visiting her in her 80s. Her true love, her last husband, Donald Lindheim was killed at the end of World War II, and I don't think a day went by she didn't think of him. She died quietly in her bed holding his photograph.

Her work can also be seen in the following museums, Arizona State University Art Museum, Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art at Utah State and Mills College Art Museum.

All photos were photocopied from the recently published book, Mary Tuthil Lindheim, ART AND INSPIRATION
edited by Abby Wasserman.

CLICK HERE TO SEE A BIO

Looking Out My Window Today

2011-02-04T22:16:00.003-05:00

Seems my neighbor's roof was leaking.

I had the shed part of my roof shoveled, but can't imagine what having the whole roof shoveled would cost.

It was amazing seeing them up there when it is covered with not only snow but ice. It is the ice that can cause leaks. I don't dare go up in my attic.

Fine Art

2011-01-22T13:56:00.013-05:00

Philippe De Montebello, former director of the Met

The Madonna and Child paintings present some fascinating variations and styles. My first thought about this topic was when the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York obtained the very wonderful Madonna and Child, ca. 1300 by Duccio di Buoninsegna (Italian, Sienese, active by 1278, died 1318) It is Tempera and gold on wood, with original, engaged frame; 11 x 8 1/8 in. (28 x 20.8 cm)

I blogged it a few years ago, then I saw it in person and was astounded by the blue color and how small the painting is. What makes that painting unique according to De Montebello was that the baby Jesus is reaching for the mother which made this painting a transition from the stiff unrealistic paintings of the times and earlier. Unfortuanately the blue doesn't reproduce well, but you can see the story from my earlier blog. Click

HERE

Da Vinci who lived several hundred years later paints in an entirely different style. He paints a more natural and realistic looking mother and child. The baby is responsive playing with an object in the mother's hand.

Botticelli who lived at the same time as da Vinci studied with Fra Lippi whose Madonna and Child is on the previous page. da Vinci's Madonna also shows a more human mother and affectionate relationship between mother and child.

Back to the Arts

2011-01-18T11:26:00.009-05:00

Recently a Filippino Lippi painting of the Madonna and Child was restore. In 1949 the Metropolitan Museum was bequeathed this painting which was painted around 1485. It is unusual because it shows the Madonna and Child seated in a room with a window that overlooks a river. One of the wealthiest men in Florence, Filippo Strozzi commissioned many great works of art, and this was one of them. He built the largest and most magnificent palace in Florence and had a chapel decorated with frescoes by Filippino Lippi. He also had commissioned a marble bust of himself by the sculptor Benedetto da Maiano. No expense was spared. In the case of the Madonna and Child, it probably was intended to decorate his villa, and he must have instructed the artist to use the most expensive ultramarine blue available.

The difference is easily seen and makes a great difference. It was originally felt that bright colors were not appropriate for religious subjects and many great paintings were lacquered over to dull them, but the intensity is what makes them glow with a richness that makes them more interesting to study and appreciate. It was what the patron or the artist wanted and that is what should be seen by the public.

Roof Shoveling

2011-01-15T12:09:00.004-05:00

Since we are going to have more snow, YIKES I had to have the snow from the lower shed part of my roof removed. I was afraid it would cave in if anymore snow fell on it. Fortunately I was the first one to call my roofer who came right over and did it. I AM SO SICK OF THIS SNOW, I COULD SCREAM.

How do people in Finland and places like that stand it? I hate it, hate it, hate it.

New England Snow Storm & / Great Neighbors

2011-01-12T12:21:00.008-05:00

Click foto to enlarge

My neighbor Walter who lives down the street cleared my front walk as he always does. What a dear!

Then he came around and helped Peg dig out my car. She lives across the street.

And there is Peg doing the walk to my back door.

That bird feed is almost flat on the top, so that is how much snow we have.

When I saw Amadeus on B'way

2011-01-04T11:04:00.016-05:00

continuing from last entry in 2010 of plays that I saw on B'way or on stage in England during the golden age of Broadway plays as it were. CLICK HERE to see photos of scenes from those plays with Helen Hayes, Marlin Brando, Shirley Maclain etc. I saw, and one video of a play with Lawrence Olivier.

I cannot find an excerpt from the stage performance, but I went with the son of a friend and we bought standing room and had a very good spot right in the back center. During the first act we scaned the audience for any empty seats, and sure enough Eric spotted two on the aisle in the center section. Very expensive seats for that time.

Here's the trailer to the film which was excellent, but stage plays are always very special and very different from film.

Harold Pinter's The Collection Part 1 thru 6

2010-12-22T18:26:00.025-05:00

I saw The Collection in England, in the mid 60s. I was teaching American Literature and the Theatre of the Absurd at the University of Sheffield's Teacher's Training College, Thornbridge Hall. Fortunately I was able to I take the students to regional theatres where Pinter plays were being performed. Harold Pinter is surely one of the great theatre of the absurd playwrights. Below is the first part of the TV version of The Collection It stars Lawrence Olivier, a very young Helen Mirren and the young Alan Bates. I am not familiar with the actor Malcolm McDowell who plays Bill and has appeared in zillions of movies, none of which have I seen.

The play has 4 characters, James and Stella and Harry and Bill. The conversations are full of ambiguity and meaninglessness, evidenced by the difficulty people have communicating with one another. The plot is simple enough. Harry and Bill live together. Bill is a young dress designer and a boy toy to Harry. James has learned that his wife kissed Bill. It is much ado about nothing but so much much ado that it is riveting as a performance. It is probably Pinter's best play. My students understood more than they knew. What was "rubbish", as they called it, was that no one communicates with each other in the play.

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In the stage version there was a split stage allowing the audience to see Harry's & Bill's house and James's & Stella's flat. In the TV version which preceeded the stage version they have to switch back and forth. When it was made into a stage play, Pinter must have decided his point was more poignant by having a split stage

We never know if Stella was telling the truth or trying to make James jealous, but we get a clue more from the stage version because Pinter has Stella on stage all the time, sitting in her flat with a cat on her lap. We are constantly reminded that she is alone. The play, a 4d layered study of 4 people entangled in unfulfilling relationships, focusses on the three men who play cat and mouse games with each other. Finally when the three are faced with each other the sexual tension is almost unbearable.

When I saw "Long Day's Journey into Night" on B'way

2010-12-15T23:50:00.007-05:00

It was 1956.. When the curtain came down there was not a sound in the theatre, and then a burst of applause and a standing ovation.

The play is painful to watch at times, and after learning it was somewhat biographical even more painful. Years later Jason Robards jr. lived in Fairfield and when I returned here after having lived elsewhere , I saw him at the railroad station. We were both saying goodbye to a weekend guest. We were the last to leave the platform. He was about a train car length away from me when I recognized him. I yelled over, "You are terrific." He yelled back, "So are you."...Ha. I wish I had remembered I had seen him in Long Day's Journey and told him so.

I love this photo of O'Neill, his wife and child on Cape Cod in 1920

"O'Neill died in Room 401 of the Sheraton Hotel on Bay State Road in Boston, on November 27, 1953, at the age of 65. As he was dying, he, in a barely audible whisper, spoke his last words: "I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room, and God damn it, died in a hotel room." The building would later become the Shelton Hall dormitory at Boston University."

When I Saw "Kiss Me Kate" on B'way.

2010-12-14T14:59:00.005-05:00

It was some time in the 50s and I don't remember with whom I went. I was so in love with going to the theatre that I went every chance I got. It was possible to get $2.00 standing room and there were even times I sneaked in between acts and stood in the back seeing only the 2nd and 3rd acts. I wonder if it is possible to do that today.

Cole Porter

When I saw "Waiting for Godot" on B'way.

2010-12-12T13:40:00.017-05:00

(Photo Richard Avedon Foundation)

I feel blessed that I saw the most famous of all the productions of Waiting for Godot at the John Golden Theatre in 1956 with Bert Lahr who played Estragon. I was doubly fortunate to go with an actress friend who knew him. After the show we went backstage and talk to him. I asked him what the play meant and he said, "I don't know." In my 20s I didn't know either but I was bowled over by it.
Brooks Atkinson, a great critic wrote a review of the opening.

"And Bert Lahr has never given a performance as glorious as his tatterdemalión Gogo, who seems to stand for all the stumbling, bewildered people of the earth who go on living without knowing why.

Although Waiting for Godot is an uneventful, maundering, loquacious drama, Mr. Lahr is an actor in the pantomime tradition who has a thousand ways to move and a hundred ways to grimace in order to make the story interesting and theatrical, and touching, too. His long experience as a bawling mountebank has equipped Mr. Lahr to represent eloquently the tragic comedy of one of the lost souls of the earth..." Rest of the review

HERE

I have had an opportunity to see it again but felt I had seen the best and I didn't want anything to spoil that experience. As long ago as it was that I saw it, I still can see those tramps in my mind's eye, on the stage, and from the angle where I was seating in the theatre.

Lahr, a famous & great comedian played many movie roles; the most famous as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland. In articles he was acclaimed for his performance as Estragon because he had an instinctive sense of how to play the part even though I have read since, that he had also said to the press that he didn't know what the play was about.

This is one of his lines I like.: We are all born mad. Some remain so.

I love this photo of the playwright Samuel Beckett.

I didn't want to see the film version of this play because the audience is directed as to where to look. In the theatre the audience looks at the whole scene. That is a significant difference between the stage performance and film performance.

When I saw "The Pajama Game" on B'way

2010-12-10T09:58:00.021-05:00

I saw this some time between 1954 and 1959 and loved it. And when it came out in the movies I loved it as much.

"Steam Heat" typifies Bob Fosse's choreography, and that continues to be the most memorable number from a show with many great numbers.

The night that I went the Duchess of Windsor was in the audience. I can't remember who she was with, but it wasn't the Duke. They were sitting about 20 rows in front of me. The song, "There Once was a Man" had a line in it that went "There once was a man who gave up his kingdom for a woman." At the time I thought she must have felt embarrassing, but now I am sure she must have known the line was in one of the songs.

This is the number from the movie.

The musical on stage was directed by George Abbott and Jerome Robbins. The original cast included John Raitt, Janis Paige, Eddie Foy, Jr., Carol Haney, and Stanley Prager. The cast was the same in the movie accept Doris Day played the lead.

I saw Carol Haney in the stage production "The Pajama Game," but it was the musical that Shirley Maclaine got her start. She understudied Haney, and when Haney broken her ankle Maclaine did her part for many weeks. What a break, to coin a phrase. I remember reading about in the papers at the time and wondered if anyone could have been as good as Haney. Obviously Maclaine was and went on to become the great star she is even today. And Haney did play the part in the film.

When I Saw "Happy Birthday" on B'way

2010-12-08T10:48:00.010-05:00

I was in high school when I saw the play Happy Birthday starring Helen Hayes, who was known as the "First Lady of the Theatre." I loved the play, and Hayes was marvelous. Anita Loos wrote the script at Hayes' request to help her break out of a string of overly serious roles she had been playing. It is about a librarian whose entire life is blown open after a few drinks at the local bar. The play premiered on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theater on Halloween 1946 and ran for 564 performances. I remember laughing so hard my sides hurt. The character got progressively drunk which struck me so funny.

My own interest in theatre grew like Jack's bean stalk because I was given the lead in the high school play, "I Remember Mama." I played Katrin the narrator and oldest daughter. I asked my parents if I could delay college and go to the Academy of Dramatic Arts in NYC. They agreed.

Helen Hayes' daughter Mary was in my class. Then after we both had graduated and she was about to open in a play with her mother at Buck's County Playhouse, Mary died of Polio. I was really shocked because I heard it over the radio one early morning while I was still in bed. My dad had an income system in the house and he plugged the announcement through to my room. I was furious with him to wake me up like that. He thought I was awake. Mary and I were never close friends, but while at the academy we were friends and often had breakfast at a cafe close to Carnegie Hall. Grace Kelly was in the class also which was before anyone had ever heard of her either. We all met for breakfast on occasion.

In her own words Hayes discusses what she learned from the death of her daughter.

http://thisibelieve.org/essay/16625/

Helen Hayes on stage as the lonely librarian.

When I saw "Life with Father" on Broadway

2010-12-07T12:35:00.008-05:00

This was the first play I ever saw on Broadway. My dad took me to see it. It opened in 1941 and I saw it probably sometime during that year, because the following year my father went off to World War 11. I remember him laughing and enjoying it so much. I don't remember if I liked it or not. I did become a huge lover of theatre. I remember all the boys had flaming red hair as did the father.

In Search of the Washington Novel by Christopher Hitchens, City Journal Autumn 2010

2010-12-02T23:12:00.005-05:00

Interesting thoughts as to why there are no novels about Washington D.C. worth reading.

click on title for article

Hitch is undergoing chemo, and working despite feeling like crap much of the time.

Here he is when I covered him in April at Fairfield University prior to the rotten diagnosis.

Cindy Sherman

2010-11-29T21:33:00.006-05:00

Saul Bellow: Letters

2010-11-21T11:44:00.021-05:00

Our greatest writers are witnesses, which is why Bellow is considered by some the greatest witness of the 20th Century. I had read Faulkner before reading Bellow and felt that he was our greatest writer, but once introduced to Bellow, I knew that they belonged in the same category. He certainly was the successor to Faulkner.

When Bellow won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946, the Academy said it was for his "understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture in all his works."

I had heard about the coming publication of Bellow's letters some time ago, so was delighted to see in Sunday's NYTimes that it's out. I scooted right down to Border's and bought it as a Xmas present for me.

After John Updike wrote a luke warm review of Bellow's, "Humbolt's Gift" Bellow's friend Samual Goldberg called Updike "an antisemitic pornographer." The editor of the Letters wrote, "As to Goldberg’s charge against Updike, it is scurrilous, and you see in the letter that Bellow does not take it up. Which is not to say that he had any fondness for Updike. That review went on rankling."

I also read somewhere that he didn't like the New Yorker for whom Updike wrote, but he also didn't like the NYRB which he called, The New York Review of each other's books, or Commentary.

P.S. Bellow had beautifully soulful eyes. I loved his looks as well as his books.

A Cat Named Pumpkin

2010-11-17T10:11:00.009-05:00

CLICK TO ENLARGE
Whether a cat watches Autumn leaves fall

or the first snow

or meditates on Buddha with a squirrel

or watches me

or tries to get me

or zones out. They are useless but beautiful to watch.

A Few Fairfield Birds

2010-11-15T14:04:00.010-05:00

I have a number of wonderful birds who spend time in Fairfield; some all year round, some migrate & some simply fly through on their way south or north.

Each of these I have seen here. I only took photos of the Great Blue Heron and Great White Egret. I don't know the names of the photographers of the others.

Click to enlarge

The Whitecapped Chickadee stays in my yard for a while, but not for long.

I saw the Downy Woodpecker only once this summer

This Northern flicker stays around all winter. I have seen him/her several times

Few water fowl are more beautiful than the elegant Great Blue Heron
photo m.miner

or the Great White Egret
photo m.miner

Dog and Dolphin

2010-11-10T10:10:00.009-05:00

I saw this on facebook and decided it was something to share. Enjoy! Even the dolphin knows that a dog is a wonderful friend. Those of us who have had or who have a dog know that the relationship is unique. And there is usually one dog for whom we still mourn. I know I do.

And here she is. Her name was Saki. She was a collie shepherd. We lived in a cottage in a small village, called Bolinas, just north of San Fransisco

Community Theatre Fairfield

2010-11-03T11:35:00.014-04:00

We are lucky to have this wonderful Art Deco marquee and that it still fronts our local movie house. The Community Theatre opened on April 21, 1922 and featured young Jackie Coogan in “Peck’s Bad Boy.”

After the first owner, Mr. Flint died, Mrs. Flint sold the theater to Aaron Fishman who lived on Penfield Road. Names like Norma Talmadge, Joan Crawford, Nazimova, Francis X. Bushman, Pola Negri, Carol Lombard, Dorothy and Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess and Greta Garbo were names of stars that appeared in films at the Community in the silent film days. Then in 1929, sound came on film, and MGM’s publicity machine cranked out ads for Anna Christie featuring their most popular star, Greta Garbo in her first “talkie.” Headlines screamed, “Garbo Talks.” Fairfielders like all of America were surprised to hear the thick accented husky voice come from the classically beautiful Swedish actress, but incongruous as it was, it suited her perfectly.

The early sound films did not record sound directly on the film as has been done until the present transition going on in most theatres to digital. The projectionist had to use a Vita-phone, which played a phonograph record that was supposed to be in sych with the movie. According to Jimmy Sabados, the projectionist in 1998 said projectionists hated it because it was always jumping off the track or getting out of sych. When sound went directly on to film they were glad to get rid of the old system.

The theatre got a huge renovation in 1933 that included building a balcony and our now famous neon marquee. By the 90s it was struggling and by May of 2001 Loew's closed it down. It reopened for a short time in December 2001 as an independent movie house, but finally closed down for what was believed to be, for good. The residents were heart sick, and so was a wonderful long time Fairfield resident, Leo Redgate who decided the theatre was too precious to go the way of so many of these wonderful theatres.

Leo Redgate
Photo: Phil Noel / Connecticut Post

It was saved and today is a non-profit movie theatre that charges $4.00 and is run by high school volunteers. Townies are thankful to all who have worked to keep this piece of our history alive for the last 10 years. It is constantly needing money and Redgate's dedication is incredible. The upkeep, the rent for the building and the films is monumental. With the current recession even movie goers have fallen off quite a bit.

More about what the foundation does can be read

HERE

and

Here

Fairfield History in a Graveyard

2010-10-29T09:43:00.016-04:00

Walter T. Matis, Fairfield Museum and History Center's Program and Volunteer Coordinator is very often seen in his reenactment attire out in the field somewhere giving fabulous history lessons to Fairfield students. Not in one of his usual uniforms the other day, I spotted him standing on Beach Road telling a group of young students and their teachers about a house that had been burned when the British invaded Fairfield in 1779 during the American Revolution. He said they were on their way to the Old Burying Ground up the road, so I decided to meet up with them there and listen to Walter who always teaches me something about our town.

CLICK TO ENLARGE PHOTOS

Here Walter is telling the students to scatter about and see if they can find the gravestones of the Burrs, Jennings, Morehouses and other Fairfield names they had learned about in school.

Here, this intense young lady came upon a Samuel Morehouse's 18th century stone

Walter also sent them off to find the oldest gravestone in the cemetery. They scurried all over on their hunt, until several discovered this one believed to be for another Samuel Morehouse who died in 1687. It is barely visible after 323 years of rainstorms, snow, icestorms and lichen.

President Obama's Desk

2010-10-24T11:30:00.034-04:00

A friend of Mrs. Roosevelt's spoke in Fairfield when I was in my teens. She told about going to visit Mrs. Roosevelt at the White House, but because E.R. hadn't arrived back from a trip yet, President Roosevelt invited her into his office to chat while she waited. He told her about the desk at which he was sitting. Referring to a plaque attached to the desk he said it was a gift from Queen Victoria. The reason for the gift was that an American vessel had found an abandoned British ship at sea, refurbished it and returned it to Britain. When the ship was retired years later, Queen Victoria, in appreciation for the return of the ship, had the desk made from the ship's timbers and presented it to President Rutherford Hayes in 1880.
(photo is of FDR and his Secretary)

Note that the kneehole is covered with a modesty panel that was order by FDR to conceal his leg braces that show in the above photo. He actually died before it was installed.

Mrs. Roosevelt and her friend spent the evening together. The following morning before leaving the woman went down to FDR'a office, which was empty, to read the plaque to get the exact words. Because it was still dark she lit a match to help her read it. Then as she was leaving the building she and anyone one else were asked to wait.

It seems every time a president leaves his office, security goes in and checks how things are arranged. Then before he returns they check it again to see that nothing has changed. What was different this day was a spent match in the ashtray. Security questioned everyone in the White House and once Mrs. Roosevelt's friend explained what happened she and others were allowed to go about their business or leave the building and business was back to normal.

A very familiar photo of John John. Note the plaque.

Every president since Hayes—except Presidents Johnson, Nixon, and Ford—has used the Resolute desk, although some chose to use it in their private study in the Residence. The desk was made famous in part by a photograph of John Kennedy at work while his son, John Jr., peeked out the front through the kneehole panel.

Liz Cheney & Dee Dee Myers Debate

2010-10-22T09:45:00.018-04:00

photo by Jean Santopatrie©

Sparring with Dee Dee Myers about the future of the nation a few nights ago, Liz Cheney held back nothing while slamming Obama's Healthcare & Stimulus plan. She said the election would not be about the future of our children as elections often are. "This election is about the future of our nation," she said, "and people want to know if we are going to continue down this very dangerous path of massive increased taxes, an expanding government and a path that very clearly follows a European social democratic model." That brought a low groan from the audience.

Cheney predicted the U.S. would gain as many as 33 governorships, and 400 State legislature seats. Then when Obama comes around looking for votes in two years, he will ask them to examine his record to which she said, "is pretty dismal." She said that when a govenment makes radical changes that people don't want and refuses to listen the american people, "they are bound to lose at the polls, and they deserve to."

photo by Jean Santopatrie©

Dee Dee Myers believes this election will be a huge "democratic wipe out," and that they will lose the House and possibly the Senate. She doesn't see that the Republicans have offered any alternative plan. "They want to cut spending," she said, "but they haven't said what programs they want to cut. During the Bush administration, the national debt doubled, and that was not what anyone would call fiscal responsibility." She thinks the public is simply mad and that Republicans will face the same problems Obama inherited.

Then they really clashed swords on the issue of torture. Cheney believes Obama was wrong to end the interrogation practices that were used during the Bush administration. Myers said, "One person's interrogation is another person's torture." Cheney snapped back that no one was tortured during he Bush Administration. The processed used, she said, "saved American lives." Myers countered that water boarding is torture and that is why Obama had it stopped. Continuing, Myers said that both Senator McCain and Colin Powell said water boarding was an ineffective and totally unreliable method to obtain information and that there are effective alternative methods.

photo by Marcia Miner©

Following the lecture Myers listened to a student's thoughts on the dot com bubble and the housing mortgage debacle.

Click on photos to enlarge

A Disappearing Number

2010-10-17T21:56:00.016-04:00

Ramanujan writes to the Dr. Hardy the Cambridge don.

Fascinated by the Indian they discuss and exchange formulas through the mail

Hardy invites him to England to work with him.

In the parallel story Al doesn't understand Ruth a mathematics scholar's fascination with formulas.

They fall in love and marry. She has a miscarriage, which is another symbol of creation.

I can’t stop thinking about & feeling this play. I know what it is about as well as not knowing what it is about, but when it ended no one moved for several minutes. Imagine a play partially set in the early 20th century, about two genius mathematicians, (passionate scientific relationship), one a poor Indian from India who came up with 1+2+3+...infinity = 1/12 and wrote to a Cambridge scientist . Stunned by the genius of the uneducated brahmin, he brought him to England. They worked together 7 years, but Ramanujan became ill, unable to adjust to the English clothing or the food. English ate meat and he was a vegetarian. He returned to India where he died at age 33. His ashes are taken to the Ganges. (true story)

One can simply have a visual experience, because the play is a mix-media show. There are projections of passing landscapes as the characters ride a train, by sitting on a chair that simulates a car or a plane. Moving projections at the back of the stage also allow the characters to be in London or Bombay. We watch their silhouettes morphed onto the projections.

I managed to remember a quote Hardy, the don, says, “ A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns." See the formula at the top of this page. It is a painting, to be sure.

The play is about passion, continuity. patterns, searching, creativity, birth, death and rebirth. In a parallel story that takes place today in England, a mathematician named Ruth works out formulas as though painting pictures and with all the excitement of the painter creating his or her pattern. Indian music accompanies her with the "ticka ticka daa ticka daa ticka ticka daa" sound so familiar in Indian music.(they have a different scale also ... again emphasizing the connection between music and mathematics.

It is quite simple though doesn't seem so and is not unlike looking at a painting. One can simply experience it or analyze it and go further and further into the painting. Ruth explains that infinity goes both ways, as in 0 1 2 3 4 5... as well as the the minus numbers or negative numbers…-1-2-3-4-5 …..She ultimately travels opposite to Ramanujan's trip, and goes to India where she becomes ill and dies. Her husbands takes all her papers, burns them and takes the ashes to the Ganges.

N.B. I may come back and edit this as I process it more.

High Tide

2010-10-11T10:54:00.006-04:00

CLICK TO ENLARGE PHOTOS

John Lennon- Give Peace A Chance

2010-10-09T12:47:00.002-04:00

HAPPY 70TH BIRTHDAY JOHN

Town Leaders Destroy Historic Sturges-Atkinson House

2010-10-08T10:49:00.017-04:00

Sturges-Atkinson Cottage
CLICK TO ENLARGE

KEEPING THE WRECKING BALL AT BAY

Thursday, October 7, 2010
Fairfield Connecticut.
Fairfield Citizen

by Patricia Hines

Here is one of those times when I just sit back dumbfounded, shaking my head in disbelief at the decisions our decision-makers make and how they do what they do.

Everything looked promising for the preservation of the historic Sturges-Atkinson Cottage and its move from the site of the Carolton Chronic and Convalescent Hospital on Mill Plain Road to town-owned property down the road at the Eunice S. Postol Recreation Center.

The cottage, built in 1840, is an example of Gothic Revival, not many of which are still in existence. The structure was commissioned by Fairfielder Jonathan Sturges, who had it built for his gardener. It was added to the State Register of Historic Places in 2009. The wood-frame building, on a fieldstone and mortar foundation, is situated close to the exit and entrance ramps of Interstate 95.

Efforts to preserve, relocate and refurbish the cottage began more than five years ago when Carmen Tortora, who owns and operates the Carolton, offered it to anyone who would take it from his property. He plans on an expansion of his hospital and the cottage is in the way. Several suggested uses for the cottage surfaced, including moving it to the nearby Roger Ludlowe Middle School property for educational purposes. The Board of Education rejected that idea.

Then along came the Fairfield Chamber of Commerce and a few dedicated residents who think the cottage would make a perfect home for the business organization as well as serve as a visitors' center. Have you ever gone to the chamber office? While it is in an enviable location in the heart of downtown, the office is not easy to get to as visitors first have to find a parking space in Fairfield Center, and then climb a set of stairs. The office has been expanded and renovated over the years and is a warm and welcoming place, but is just inconvenient.

Enter Melanie Marks, Jeanne Harrison and David Sturges, who take on the cottage project as their mission and form the Friends of Sturges Cottage Committee. They have worked hard in gathering all the necessary information, researching all the details in order to take a funding request to the town. Tortora generously offers to give $20,000 of his own money if the town also gives $20,000. The money would be used to disassemble the cottage and store it on the Carolton property (another magnanimous gesture from Tortora) until fundraising is completed for the delicate move of the cottage to its new home. Additionally, Fairfield qualified for a Small Town Economic Assistance Program grant of $100,000 to be used for renovations once the cottage is relocated. The Town Plan and Zoning Commission also recently gave its blessing to have the cottage moved to town property. On Tuesday, the Board of Selectmen approved the $20,000 funding request, authorized First Selectman Ken Flatto to accept the STEAP grant and OK'd the lease arrangement with the chamber.

All sounds good so far, right? Kudos to the Friends committee for its successes.

But what appeared to be clear sailing hit some choppy, unpleasant waters when the funding request and the STEAP grant ran into the Board of Finance, which seemed to be in a bad mood Tuesday night. Even the Fairfield Citizen's Tom Cleary referred to the Board of Finance as "combative" as it questioned Flatto.

Not only did the board unanimously deny the $20,000 request and authorization of the STEAP grant, but members got bogged down in nitpicking the lease agreement, which was not under their purview and was only included in the agenda packet for informational purposes. Board members also claimed that there were too many unanswered questions, including those about future expense to the town and other liabilities, the budget for renovation and upkeep, and whether enough funds would be raised privately.

In reading the various accounts of Tuesday's meeting, I could not help but wonder if the girls' softball field's $350,000 bonding request endured similar scrutiny by Board of Finance members before they approved it 6-1. A check of past articles and board minutes make me think not. Did Board of Finance members question whether the girls' softball league's fundraising efforts to pay for various amenities at the field would be successful? Somehow I doubt it. Or did the board take the league's promises on faith? That's more likely.

"There are unknowns," Flatto is quoted in the Fairfield Citizen as saying to Board of Finance members Tuesday night. "There is no guarantee. It is a leap of faith. I can't give you all the guarantees some of you are looking for and it would be disingenuous to say I could."

Disturbing and confusing, too, about the Board of Finance's action is that some members actually verbalized that they like the idea of saving the cottage and the project overall. So what happened the other night? Even casual observers would think something else was going on behind it all.

While I am uncertain of the board's motivations the other night, I am sure of one thing -- the three people making up the Friends committee will persevere. I have known all three for years. Marks is a genealogist who has been instrumental in preserving the town's historic cemeteries and other properties. Harrison spent years raising money and awareness to save the Victorian Cottage on the Town Hall complex. And Sturges is a descendant of the Sturges family, which has a long, important history in Fairfield. All three never have backed down from a fight and I don't see any of them starting now.

There is a possibility that the Board of Finance could conduct a special meeting next week to reconsider the money and the grant. Flatto says he will try to answer as many of the board's questions as possible. I am hopeful about both.

In the meantime, other residents need to get involved in the preservation fight. The same energy used to argue with the Board of Education over redistricting plans or the TPZ about new commercial developments can be directed at preserving a part of Fairfield's past. Otherwise, another piece of Fairfield's history just might face the wrecking ball.

Patricia Hines, recently retired editor of the Fairfield Citizen , is now writing a weekly column, called Hines Sight

Swedish Artist Camella

2010-10-06T16:34:00.008-04:00

"They Smoke so Beautifully in the Movies" Acrylic on board 61x81cm

"Air" 6lx81 Acrylic on board.

Her work speaks for itself. It gives me a smile everytime I see one of her paintings.

http://camillaengman.blogspot.com/

Holocaust Survivor's Sketched Life

2010-10-01T11:47:00.034-04:00

Helen Breger: "[Lines] is my graphic memoir of a Holocaust survivor, tropical exile, artist's life in California and other places."

"My family, consisting of parents Baruch and Esther Hammerman and four daughters, lived in Vienna, Austria at the time of the Anschluss (the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany). My parents jointly ran a substantial business. Within days of the takeover, my father and numerous other Jewish businessmen were arrested and taken to an unknown destination. The business was confiscated and entry was forbidden to my family.

CLICK TO ENLARGE SKETCHES TO SEE DETAILS. -Left to right - Nazis, Marriage, Birth of first daughter, Bottom left Helen as fashion designer, Mother couldn't leave from Trinidad because she had written chess moves on her paper curlers and the officials thought it was a code. Finally she was released.

ALL MEMOIR SKETCHES

HERE

"We managed to emigrate to different destinations: half the family to Trinidad, then a British colony, and the rest to Paris. Paris was soon occupied by Germany, and the urgent need to emigrate recurred. My oldest sister, who already had a ten-year old boy, fled to Chile. My next older sister, who had been a resident of Paris, managed to get an entry visa to the U.S. I spent the war years in Trinidad. I met my future husband there and eventually emigrated with my parents to the US, settling at first in New York City. "

This is my favorite sketch from her first shopping experience in NY. Helen's new coat.

Helen Breger in her nineties and lives in Berkeley, California, and is sketching every day. She is a fine lithographer and painter whose works hangs in many museums. I treasure a quick sketch she did of me once and which I use as my profile picture sometimes on my facebook page.

She only made 9 copies of the original which can be seen

HERE

Richard Parkes Bonington 1802 - 1828

2010-09-18T12:10:00.034-04:00

Regarded as one of the finest watercolor painters, Boyington in his brief life travelled a great deal painting wherever he went, Despite dying of consumption a month before reaching his 26th birthday, he left over 400 paintings, some selling today for 6 figures. He mentored many, particularly Thomas Shotter Boys who I featured in my last post. His oils are almost as beautiful in my opinion as his watercolors, and his lithographs add still another dimension to this fantastically gifted artist.

self portrait in oil

Watercolor
Sunset in the pays de caux

Watercolor

Watercolor

Oil on Board
The texture in this painting blows me away.

Lithograph

Thomas Shotter Boys (1803-1874)

2010-09-16T13:10:00.016-04:00

I came across this British artist quite unexpectedly and love his work. I read that he was apprenticed to George Cooke the engraver. Once finished with his apprenticeship he went to Paris and worked as an engraver and lithographer. It was there that he became acquainted with Richard Parkes Bonington who encouraged him to take up watercolor painting. Back in London he color lithographed the drawings that he had done in Paris. According to many he had reached a standard in print-making never previously achieved, and as a result it is Boys' early work when under the influence of Bonington that is considered to be his greatest and is said to be almost indistinguishable from that of his mentor. His watercolors shown here display his touches that create the beautiful transparency that really do make his paintings "sparkle with vibrant color and brightness," as one critic I read wrote.

Watercolour and bodycolour over pencil
6 7/8 × 10 1/8 inches (17.5 × 26 cm)

Notre Dame Paris, watercolour

I'd say this is a pretty unique view of the famed cathedral, given the foreground is a building draped with drying laundry.

Vue du Louvre et du Pont des Arts
Watercolour

I will post Bonington paintings next to show the influence he had on other painters who became known as the Bonington painters. Sadly he died very young, but remains the greatest of them all.

Corduroy Roads

2010-09-10T12:10:00.020-04:00

Yes, that's an old road. An early method of dealing with swampy ground was the laying of tree trunks side by side. Earth was then dug from each side of the road and laid on top of the logs. This produced ditches on either side for run off. However, with very heavy rains and floods, the earth covering was washed away and these “corduroy” roads became bone jarringly bumpy.

The above is a contributed photo that appeared in today's Fairfield News with the following blub. "Historic Corduroy Road is shown along Ash Creek, next to Great Salt Marsh Island. The road has been designated a State Archaeological Preserve. The road derives its name from the rough ribbed wooden surface, which resembles corduroy fabric. It was constructed about 1750 and is one of only two such colonial roads known to exist in Connecticut."
It only shows during very low tides. The resin and lack of oxygen has kept the logs preserved and will for 100s of more years.

California, circa 1880.Courtesy California State Archives.

New Zealand 1943

2010

Diagram of what the U.S. Army uses today when a method to cross a boggy area is needed.

It Took 81 Years

2010-09-06T23:33:00.022-04:00

(By the way Happy Birthday Bobbie)

I was born in London because my dad who worked for Fox Movietone News in New York was sent with his cameraman to London to help the British Movietone News guys get familiar with the new system of sound on film. My mom was pregnant and plainly shock to find out before they left for England that she was pregnant. I understand she told the doctor she couldn't be pregnant because she was going to England, to which the doctor said, "Well, they have babies in England too."

Here are two of the Brits back in 1929. The soundman is Terry Cotter. He, I was told by my parents, came to the hospital to see my mom and the new baby, me. He placed a new English coin in my tiny hand. I was told that was a custom in England when a child was born. I had never seen a picture of him, never met him, but only knew that story. When Amanda Emily a TV camerawoman who is researching the history of the newsreel business for a book and has a wonderful website, posted this photo of Terry Cotter, on Facebook, I felt a little pang, because for the first time I saw the face of a man who 81 years go, placed a small good luck coin in my hand. This is her website which is always fascinating. I don't know what happened to the coin, but it is fascinating to now read about Terry Cotter on Amanda's website.

Click Here

My dad, Chic Peden with his partner John Bockhurst, the cameraman on some story. They look like they are waiting for something to happen, which the press has to do much of the time.

(Just coincidence I posted this today .. but Happy Birthday again Bobbie for hitting 81 too. Creepy feeling isn't it)

Still Some Summer Left

2010-09-03T23:57:00.004-04:00

More Artists At Work

2010-08-30T10:25:00.012-04:00

Helen Breger in her 90s, still at it in Berkeley, California

Link

Verena Schindler in Switzerland

Link

Jen Bradford in Beacon, NY

Link

Joyce Clemens in Bolinas, California and Mexico

Link

Chase Langford in Los Angeles

Link

Artists at Work

2010-08-26T10:02:00.023-04:00

This painting done by John Singer Sargent shows Monet working on what is thought to be Monet's "Meadow with Haystacks near Giverny" Behind Monet on the grass may be Alice Hoschedé who had been living with her husband Ernest Hoschede at Claude Monet’s house. After she left her husband, Alice and Monet married.

Claude Monet Painting
John Singer Sargent -- American painter
1885? [1]
Tate Gallery, London
Oil on canvas
54 x 64.8 cm (21 1/4 x 25 1/5 in.)

MONET

PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE

Weird ART?

2010-08-22T11:51:00.033-04:00

click painting to enlarge

"A London Salon"
Oil on mahogany panel
30”x 36”
Homage to: Camille Pissarro
Edouard Vuillard
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Yuan Blue
Chinese Export Porcelain

I don't know what to make of this artist. Obviously she can create a scene with photographic accuracy. She can skillfully copy a copy of a fine painting . The composition is so well balanced it is annoying. She includes with the painting, furniture and objects of past periods to remind us of golden ages. But is it art?

Former and long time director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, Philippe de Montebello said “Art is direct primary evidence of the study and understanding of mankind.” Art is more than pretty or well executed pictures.

Here is a link to her "Homage to the Creative Spirit" There are many similar paintings..

http://www.cortezart.com/gallery.php

Part 2. Edward Hopper's Watercolors Differ from his Oils

2010-08-19T20:36:00.009-04:00

CLICK TO ENLARGE PAINTINGS

House at Riverdale, 1928. Watercolor with graphite sketch on white, medium weight, roughly textured wove paper. Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Anita Steckler

Edward Hopper established his artistic reputation in the early twenties on the basis of his watercolors, particularly his bright but stark “portraits” of the Victorian houses of Cape Ann, Massachusetts. In 1923, the Brooklyn Museum was the first institution to purchase a Hopper watercolor.

Again his oils tell a different story than his watercolors that show a place. This oil called Chop Suey was done in 1928 and is at the Seattle Art Museum where the current show is of Edward Hopper’s Women. Patricia Junker, American Art curator wrote, “When the discreet but friendly sign ‘Tables for ladies’ began appearing in windows, it signaled a restaurant’s acceptance that society was changing. The morals and motives of an unescorted woman were no longer automatically questioned, and she was not shunned in a public dining room. The placard ‘Tables for ladies’ also indicated a place of refuge for the young working woman desiring a comfortable, unthreatening environment in which to take her lunch and supper meals, a place where the stranger sitting next to her would most assuredly be a friendly female companion and not, as a woman alone might understandably fear, a predatory male.”

My favorite coffee cup from the Museum of Fine Art, Boston

Edward Hopper's Watercolors Differ from his Oils

2010-08-15T12:18:00.015-04:00

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The Mansard Roof
1923
Watercolor on paper
13 3/4 x 19 inches
The Brooklyn Museum, New York

Oil on canvas

Looking through an art book I saw some of Hopper's watercolors and was fascinated by how they tell a different story from the oils. I am more familiar with Hopper's oils and how they depict an loneliness because often a person is alone or in their own space. If there are no people there is a light inside some structure indicating someone is inside. I don't recall any oils where a house is ablaze of light in every room. They are sad because you know it will be the same the next day or the next evening.

His watercolors feature the place and usually do not have people in them. And as watercolors they have that immediacy quality which is why they are so hard to do. They cannot be fussed with or they lose their transparency and most important they lose the spark and luminescence that makes watercolors so powerful. His watercolors are often painted outdoors which gives them a different feeling when observed. You cannot help but look at the building as though you saw it for the first time. In the oils you look at the people even though they may be quite small and the space large. There is a story about to be told or still to be told in his oils. It's the first or second act. There is more to come. The story is all there in the watercolors at that moment. You are seeing a place for the first time as you would had you walked in front of the house or turned around a corner or walked onto the beach.

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2010 Am. Watercolor Soc. Winners

2010-08-11T13:50:00.011-04:00

AWS BRONZE MEDAL OF HONOR WINNER
Susan Montague AWS
Far and Away

AWS SILVER MEDAL OF HONOR WINNER
Dean Mitchell, AWS
Sunshine in New Orleans

AWS GOLD MEDAL OF HONOR WINNER
John Salminen, AWS
Morning Fog