Hmm. Well, at least one appears happy. That's quite a cake. Yes. Quite a cake indeed...
I've been a little overwhelmed the last few days trying to get my ducks in a row so to speak. So, this morning while sipping my coffee and watching the sunrise, I created the above little digital work in Photoshop. They are like doodles for me and they help to calm my mind.
I've entitled it "Star Ladies" for various reasons. I wouldn't stare at it for too long, however, if I were you, as doing so may cause your soul to flee from your psychical being, soar without your control through space and time and land in a freakish little jar that I keep on my kitchen shelf.
Welcome glorious spring! That’s right folks – today is the first day of spring. I am a spring fanatic. And even though it’s relatively bleak and chilly this morning, I know that the weather will slowly begin getting warmer from this point on and stay that way at until at least mid to late October (I’m an autumn fan as well).
Hyper-hued flowers have begun blooming in my yard and the melodic chirping of seasonal birds has begun to break the silent, steely, cold sunrise of winter. I say bring it on! This is a time for rebirth and renewal and I happen to be very ready for it on several levels.
Now that I’ve made my obligatory statements about the glory that is spring, I must mention something that has haunted me a bit since yesterday morning. As I have mentioned in earlier posts from the last few days, the mother of a close friend of mine died last Sunday. The funeral service was yesterday morning which I attended with other mutual friends. It was a solemn (yet touching) service. It was especially highlighted by three short speeches given by close friends of the departed. One of the speeches was particularly compelling. Not necessarily because of the words which she spoke, that being the usual verbiage which accompanies such forlorn occasions, but because of a particular event that she had mentioned.
According to the speaker, the deceased woman told her about a dream that she had had a little over two weeks ago. In the dream, she said that her mother and father-in-law, both of whom are long dead, appeared to her. They offered her a key, which she accepted. According to the friend of the woman whose funeral I was now attending, the deceased told her that she “had a bad feeling about the dream.” And that “someone was going to die soon”. Synchronistically, it was she herself who would be dead two weeks later, and indeed, buried on the very last day of winter.
When I heard this little tale of foreboding, I felt a slight chill run up my spine. I’m sure many of the others in attendance did so as well judging from the palatable silence that permeated the huge chapel that can only be formed from the vacuum created when 100 people take a slight gasp of air into their lungs as the implications of such a dream momentarily flood every nook of even the darkest corners of their mind with a bright and inescapable white light.
It’s important to remember however that death, in one way or another, does indeed bring renewal. In fact, the traditional meaning of the death card in the tarot deck is “rebirth and renewal” contrary to hokey, low budget horror films and vapid sitcoms. So, perhaps in some odd way, the untimely death of this woman was possibly, at least, seasonally, timely in its own unique manner.
Well, with that being said, stand up; shake off the old detritus of yesterday and picture yourself being revitalized. And by the way, if you happen to have any nocturnal visitations any time soon from deceased loved ones offering you the key to their condo, you may want to make a polite refusal, slowly back away, and force yourself awake.
Here's a recent digital collage work entitled "Butterfiles & Mermaids". This works is available in a variety of high quality, full color prints only at http://sprouseart.imagekind.com/.
I had a rather busy weekend and wasn't able to drop into my blog as I wanted. It involved a rather tedious and white knuckle 3 hour drive from where I am now through horrendous rain and high wind to visit a close friend. Then, an afternoon at the Hirshhorn Museum where I saw this amazing exhibit (http://hirshhorn.si.edu/exhibitions/description.asp?Type=&ID=50). After this exhibit, I'll never see Fay Wray being introduced to King Kong in the same way ever again.
My friend and I were literally about to enter his studio to paint just as the high winds caused a massive power outage across the region. It left us along with his wife and lovely baby sitting in total darkness. Thank goodness for candles and my trusty Tarot deck which made the evening fly by.
The above image is one that I posted yesterday afternoon and is from my wonderful box of vintage photos. I love the smirked expression on her face as if she is about to burst into laughter. I can tell by the slightly parted lips of the robust fellow next to her that he must of just uttered something under his breath like "take the flippin' photo already" just as the flash went off.
Plus, you just have to love the butterfly hair comb on her head, now probably an antique piece of jewelry somewhere.
Wow! What a time capture this is. Another image from my vintage photo box. Summer 1946 and it’s the 25th Anniversary Dinner of the Sterling Council #92 of the Daughters of America, at least that is what is written on the back of this photo. Initially, when I first looked at this photo, I appreciated it for the photographic elements of it all - the very telling and often comical expressions on many of the woman’s faces, the great prints on the dresses (which were so popular in the mid-1940s).
But then when I discovered what the Daughters Of America is (or perhaps was as I can’t find any reference to them after 1978) http://www.rootsweb.com/~srgp/flaghold/flag018.htm, I felt very different about this photo.
Now I see them as uptight, ultra-conservative, racist prigs whose main concern seemed to be getting bibles in the classroom and the elimination of secular politics. Some of these ladies look as if they could lead a lynching party themselves, especially Big Beulah there front and center and her army of 4 crones directly behind her. And, of course, you know that these ladies know every speck of dirt on everyone in the township, especially on the young upstarts who have been delegated to the back rows.
These women were the mothers and grandmothers of the religious right movement as we know it today no doubt. Of course, this photo is 62 years old. Chances are that even the younger women in this image (who appear to be at least 30) are now dust, or close to it. Things were very different then. Fortunately, quite a bit, but still not all, of their foolish ideas have vanished with them.
OK, I’m still on my vintage photo kick, so bear with me until I move onto other things. Did I mention that I threw my back out getting out of the car last Friday? It happens once in a while, the price paid when tall waisted. While I am 6 feet 5, it’s all from the waist up. I wear a 33 inch inseam on my pants and often can get away with a 32, which, I don’t think is that abnormal. In any event, people with that build throw their backs out more frequently than those who do not have such a build. Today is the first day that I have felt normal and not been walking about like a pretzel in mind-numbing pain. So, I’m very pleased about that!
Now, this is an odd image that was found in my magic box of abandoned photographs. The original is very small ( about the size of a matchbook) and is not mounted on cardboard. It's very sepia toned and because of it's small size and color it's very difficult to make out any detail. I scanned it at 350 DPI then adjusted levels in Photoshop to get this. It's a photo of an older girl with pigtails and a hat, a younger curl caught with a rather unfortunate expression, and a dog.
Initially, I was dating this image to date from between 1895 and 1910. But after further research, I came to the conclusion that this is more likely than not a very early Kodak Brownie Camera snapshot which would date it more so circa 1900 - 1910.
Kodak Brownie Ad from 1900
You can read more about the Brownie here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownie_camera, and every time you snap an image today with your cell phone or digital camera, you can thank the Brownie for introducing the populace to the idea of taking their own photographs quickly and easily.
Speaking of cameras and spinal pain, did you know that George Eastman, founder of the Kodak company suffered from Spinal Stenosis? An excerpt from wikipedia.com -
"In his final two years, Eastman was in intense pain, caused by a degenerative disorder affecting his spine. He had trouble standing and his walking became a slow shuffle. Today it might be diagnosed as spinal stenosis, a narrowing of the spinal canal caused by calcification in the vertebrae. Eastman grew depressed, as he had seen his mother spend the last two years of her life in a wheelchair from the same condition. On March 14, 1932, Eastman committed suicide.[7] He left a suicide note that read, "To my Friends, My work is done. Why wait?"[8] His funeral was held at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Rochester. Eastman, who never married, was buried on the grounds of the company he founded at Kodak Park in Rochester, New York."
This is one of the weirdest photos from my vintage photo collection. It’s undated and has been developed on somewhat flimsy paper which has faded greatly and become rather brittle over the years. The original photograph is much darker than this image which I have adjusted in Photoshop. While on some levels, this is a photo of a humorous looking man who appears to be having fun or entertaining, he also give me a bit of the creeps in that psycho-killer clown kind of way.
There is no information on this image at all and I don’t know if this fellow is performing in costume or if this is his everyday look and was photographed in the middle of a story. I love his top hat and his very slight, barley discernible twinkle in his eyes.
Perhaps this fellow is practicing, or is actually performing, some type of vaudevillian act. There is definitely some sort of canvas backing behind him and he seems to be up lit from a light source at his feet like early stage lighting. I guess there's simply no way of knowing, unless someone out there recognizes him. But considering that this image is at least 100 years old, I find that event highly unlikely.
I came across this image many years ago. I found it in one of the many little antique shops that I used to frequent in the Virginia countryside, but I can’t be sure which one. On the back written in pencil are the words “Harland Bryant Tibbetts.’99 - ΛΣ I.H.S.”
Sometimes when you come across the name of a person written on a card, you can still find some very interesting things if you search a bit. I typed the name in a google.com search engine and made several discoveries.
The first link showed me that Harland had a great granddaughter named Lainey who was married on October 18, 1986 and whose wedding was important enough to have been written about in the Style section of the New York Times
(query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DEEDE1239F93AA... ).
In the same article, it states that Harland was “a chief assistant counsel to Judge Samuel Seabury in the 1931 investigation of New York City municipal affairs.” I found that of interest as well, especially when you read about how very important these trials were for the average working class New Yorker at that time. They were known as the Seabury Commission: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seabury_Commission
Then I found on this page www.rootsweb.com/~nytompki/school/yeard.htm this line of information, “TIBBETTS, Harland Bryant Entered from I. G. S., Sept., 1895; graduated Cl., '99; Congress; class vice-president; commencement speaker. Will enter Cornell, 1900. 232 S. Geneva St., Ithaca”. Now I knew that I.H.S. stood for Ithaca High School and that this was more likely than not a senior portrait taken in 1899. I also know knew that Harland lived on S. Geneva Street.
My next stop was this fascinating link : ecommons.library.cornell.edu/bitstream/1813/3168/11/006_1...
Thats where I first saw this : farm3.static.flickr.com/2286/2305707485_508e30786d_o.jpg
That’s from the December 16, 1903 edition of the Cornell Alumni News. According to the article, Harland will be a key debater in “The most important debate event of the year will be the annual Intercollegiate contest between Pennsylvania and Cornell, to be held in Witherspoon Hall, Walnut street, Philadelphia, Friday evening, December 18th.” There’s even a photo of Harland! He does look a bit more mature and polished after 3 years at Cornell.
Here is what is mentioned about him in the article “Harland Bryant Tibbetts, 1904 Arts, of Ithaca, prepared for college at the Ithaca high school and won a state scholarship and also a university scholarship in competitive examinations. In his freshman and sophomore years he represented his class debate club, in the interclass series was a speaker on the '86 Prize Declamation stage in his sophomore year and in his junior year spoke on the '94 Memorial Prize Debate stage. In his junior year he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Mr. Tibbetts is also an associate editor of the CORNELL ALUMNI NEWS.”
So, as you can see, a little research can tell quite a bit about a name, especially Harland Bryant Tibbett’s name. What it can’t tell me is how his senior photo ended up in the middle of some dusty and forgotten antique store in the mountains of Virginia.
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