What now? 11 Aug 2015, 11:38 pm

I haven’t blogged for awhile. The last time was a little over four years ago. Finally I have the time and inclination, my main purpose being to “Pin” some items that have been collecting on my actual desktop, but need to be trashed and yet saved. Hence this blog.

1. Vincent Musetto, retired editor of The New York Post, aged 74, died on Tuesday June 9, 2015 in the Bronx. He is remembered for having penned one of the most famous headlines ever written, namely, “Headless Body in Topless Bar.” The headline ran on the Post’s front page on April 15, 1983. Margalit Fox, who wrote the obituary for the New York Times News Service described the crime behind the headline as “lurid even by tabloid standards.” The bar was in Queens and owned by the headless victim, Herbert Cummings. Mr. Cummings head was removed by a woman taken hostage by Cummings’ killer, Charles Dingle who shot Cummings during an argument, took female hostages, raped one, and then forced another to cut off Cummings’ head. His plan was to thereby confound the police but, alas, Mr. Dingle ended his days in 2012 in the Wende Correctional Facility near Buffalo NY. A very neat twist is that when Musetto seized upon this bit of “verbless audacity, arresting parallel adjectives and forceful trochaic slams” (Thank you Margalit Fox!) he wasn’t certain the bar was, in fact, a ‘topless bar.’ “It’s gotta be a topless bar!” said Musetto. “This is the greatest [insert ungenteel participle] headline of my career.” A cub was dispatched who telephoned back to report “to the relief of all and to the everlasting glory of US tabloid journalism that topless it was.” Literary scholar Peter Shaw, writing in The National Review, cited its compelling “trochaic rhythm . . . the juxtaposition of two apparently unrelated kinds of toplessness conjoined sex and death even as they are conjoined in reality.”

Another neat twist is that while the world may regard it as perhaps the best headline ever, Musetto believed he outdid himself the following year with “Granny Executed in Her Pink Pajamas.” No explanation of the story behind this one though. Musetto was born in May 1941, grew up in Boonton, NJ and obtained a BA from Fairleigh Dickinson University in NJ. His headline took on a life of its own appearing on t-shirts, as the title of a 1995 movie starring Raymond J. Barry, loosely based on the true crime, and as the name of a book published in 2008, Headless Body in Topless Bar: The Best Headlines from America’s Favorite Newspaper. A beautifully written obituary, it is a fitting tribute to a genius of an editor/ journalist.

2. A few weeks later—on Monday June 22, 2015, Don Featherstone, the creator of the original plastic pink flamingo died, aged 79. I learned from his obituary that he was a classically trained painter and a talented sculptor who wasn’t the least bit ashamed of the fact that he owed his fame to “the ultimate piece of American suburban kitsch”. “People say they’re tacky, but all great art began as tacky” said Featherstone in a 1997 interview. Featherstone created the flamingo in 1957 for plastics company Union Products Inc. modelling it on photos in National Geographic. He continued at Union Products for 43 years inventing hundreds of products and rising to the presidency from which he retired in 1999. Descriptions of the man by his wife Nancy are heartwarming: “He was the nicest guy in the world…He didn’t have a selfish bone in his body. He was funny and had a wonderful sense of humour and he made me so happy for 40 years.” Wow—the plastic pink flamingo and a spousal tribute like that! And here’s a somewhat neat twist from the president of Cado Products which currently manufactures the original Featherstone pink flamingo: “They say there are more plastici Featherstone flamingos in the world than real flamingos.”—Need I say anything more about my ‘somewhat’ qualifier?

3. On July 8th, 2015 The Globe & Mail newspaper ran an article by Nathalie Atkinson in its Visual Arts section on the main summer show at the Society of Illustrators’s Museum of American Illustration in Manhattan. This caught my eye for a number of reasons: the five illustrations accompanying the article and the fact that I once visited this museum and enjoyed a lunch upstairs in the Society’s dining room. This was a great honour bestowed upon my graphic design class during our class visit to New York in January 2004, a once-in-lifetime, never to be forgotten experience. (Thank you Capilano College (now University) and Kiff Holland and the other wonderful teachers who arranged this.) The article explains that this exhibition “chronicles the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) Arts & Design public art commissioned since its inception in 1985 when the 1-per-cent funding program (at the time called Arts for Transit) was founded as part of MTA’s overall station rebuilding program; early works include Milton Glaser’s porcelain-on-steel mural project at Astor Place (1986). Since then, more than 230 site-specific projects have been installed, with another 50 commissions in progress, but permanent public art dates back to the founding of the transit and subways, accorded to Sandra Bloodworth, co-author of the recent book New York’s Underground Art Museum and the current director of MTA Arts & Design.” The article continues with descriptions of many more pieces and how they were conceived and executed. As I write this (August 11th) the exhibition continues, but only for four more days. If I could have gone to New York to see it I would have…but I couldn’t and I regret this. Boo hoo!

Renting Palm Springs 18 Jul 2011, 3:55 am

The internet is a wonderful thing for sure …BUT…I have spent almost my whole weekend glued to VRBO Palm Springs trying to find a place for my family and friends for February and March 2012. It didn’t have to be this weekend but, with the horrendous weather we are having, and with my tendencies to (1) procrastinate when I am starting a difficult painting commission, and (2) feel incredibly gloomy when the skies are gloomy when they should be bright cerulean…what could be a better activity. You can almost be walking down the various streets of Palm Springs and peering in, house by house and dreaming of how lovely they would all be to live in. I want to subdivide myself.

…But online searching and sorting is time consuming and doesn’t feel productive. And it bounces your head around. One minute you are thinking you are searching in vain; the next reveals an embarrassment of riches.

It’s not that —apart from the weather —I don’t love where I live. I do. It’s not that I’m not (more or less) engaged with my life here. I am.  Except when the weather is this ‘maritime’. As my psychologist friend reminds me: this dreaming of faraway places is a ‘state of mind’. I think she is biting her tongue when she could be adding adjectives to this diagnosis: pathetic ‘state of mind’, escapist, shallow, flighty, flakey, etc.

I get intensely attached to some places. Places and the homes we make for ourselves while we are there bind us to the world and to each other. I am, as a result of the wonderful times we have shared in the wonderful houses we have rented for the past four years in Palm Springs, attached to the place.

Indescribably Delicious 22 Jun 2011, 12:44 am

I have a number of friends who have been animal lovers their whole lives. They love them all: cats, dogs, birds, rabbits, caterpillars (are these animals?)…all of God’s creatures, distinct from the human kind. I have come to this much later in life, although I always loved horses and birds. But I was scared of dogs and I remain ‘not’ a cat person. You can’t say anymore that you ‘own’ your pet. But for the sake of brevity, I will say that owning my own dog cured me of my fear.

I love poodles. Our male standard poodle ‘Thor’ (now deceased) was an angel. Our female miniature poodle ‘Rosie’ (six years old) is a more complex creature—the most angelic of angels, and the most devilish of devils. She is something else.

My husband will not eat meat or poultry and he is dedicated to feeding the birds.

I do eat meat and poultry and I will confess that the overbreeding of Canada geese in our fair city has often prompted me to say that a goose in every pot at Christmas time would be a local improvement. So imagine my delight to see in the letters section of the National Post this morning what sounds like a terrific recipe for Canada Goose. I thought about it as I watched the latest crop of goslings (looking quite mature already) practicing their swimming today in the Stanley Park pond. The letter with the recipe follows:

“The low income people in Pennsylvania who are to be fed Canada Goose are in for some “gourmet” meals, as many of us in Western Canada already know. Many years ago, a native Canadian friend gave my husband and I a Canada goose, cleaned and ready to cook. I was about to throw it out, but my grandmother soon put an end to that notion.

Gran had spent from 1918 to 1937 in Alberta, on a patch of scrubby land called a farm. She was 22 when she arrived at a farmhouse with a dirt kitchen floor, no plumbing and no electricity. She set to work learning the skills she needed to survive. One of those was how to cook a wild goose. She told me that if it hadn’t been for the abundance of geese on the prairie, they would have gone to bed hungry many times. The goose she cooked for me that day was indescribably delicious. Here’s Margaret Stranaghan Millar’s (1896-1993) recipe:

The secret to roasting a goose is to render all the fat out before the final roasting. To do that, soak the cleaned goose in salt water for three hours, remove to a drain board or pan and drain for three hours. Put six medium-raw onions inside the goose cavity, put in a roaster with one quart cold water and steam for two hours. While goose is steaming, prick skin all over to drain fat. After two hours, remove goose from roaster, pour out fat, then let sit in roaster overnight with the onions still inside, lid on, in a cool place (but not a fridge).

Next day, remove onions. Wash the cavity with warm water and stuff with your favourite stuffing. Make a paste of: 1 tbsp. butter, 1 tbsp. flour, 3 tbsp. cool water and cook this in a pan until thick.

When cool enough to handle, rub paste into all the skin, shake on salt and pepper. Put goose in roaster with just a little water, lid on. Roast at 325F for about three hours, until juices are clear.

Enjoy.”

I also saw a raccoon in the park today in broad daylight sauntering up to have a visit with a Parks Board gardening crew. I scooped up Rosie. I have heard horror stories about dog and raccoon encounters. This got me thinking about raccoon coats. I have always loved them. Vancouver and Toronto are overrun with raccoons.

Finally a note about squirrels. Rosie goes nuts when she sees a squirrel. They used to get Thor going too. Both of them would race out the back door of our house a hundred times a day if necessary to chase down the various squirrels that lived in the dense grove of cedars at the back of our yard. It was endless fun for all the creatures involved. I lived in a cartoon. In my new house, my upstairs studio looks down on a utility pole that has had no end of attention from the cable company and the wildlife department in an effort to clear out a black squirrel family. All sorts of fancy equipment surround this pole to keep out the squirrels. Completely undeterred, they lifted up the anti-squirrel mesh at the top and have been stuffing laurel leaves into the silo formed by the metal sheathing. They are incredibly industrious and cunning. I can’t help rooting for them. When my internet connection next goes on the fritz, I may change my tune. But ’til then…Go Squirrels Go, as we say (or used to say) in Canuckland.

More on Montaigne 7 Jun 2011, 11:12 pm

I can’t shake this guy. Neil Reynolds writing in the Globe & Mail last week quoted Montaigne extensively in connection with Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s fall from grace: “the worst thing you can say of someone is often the most truthful thing” and “The most sanctimonious men invariably perpetrate the worst sins. There are two things that I have always observed to be in singular accord…supercelestial thought and subterranean  conduct.” He went on to discuss Montaigne’s cynicism, his “deep distrust of humanity in general and limited expectation of humans in particular: He advised people, for example, to trust their enemies more than their friends.” — Is this caution related to the sage advice about no good deed going unpunished, I wonder?

…and then he (Montaigne) showed up this past weekend at Chesterman Beach at Tofino — in the bookshelf of the lovely house we rented with my Salt Spring Island in-laws so that we could all attend the Tofino Food & Wine Festival. So I had to get up early (no hardship) to squeeze in an hour’s read. I made it through a long essay on educating the child which was all about educating young men (of course) but interesting for it’s ‘modern’ ideas about sparing the rod and inspiring a love of learning not to produce brains stuffed with facts but rather to develop moral individuals, fit in both mind and body, and (the not so modern bit) loyal to their sovereigns. This loyalty he encourages for the sake of order and the sustenance of civil society … at least that’s what I took from it. And it’s true that despite the archaic style and that it’s translated, his voice these many centuries later sounds clear and persuasive.

Navel-gazing as an art form 26 May 2011, 12:15 am

Last week (May 17th), the National Post published an excerpt from Sarah Bakewell’s, How to Live (Vintage, 2010). The beginning was disconcerting for a brand new blogger to read: “The 21st century is full of people who are full of themselves. A half-hour’s trawl through the online ocean of blogs, tweets, … [etc.] brings up thousands of individuals, fascinated by their own personalities and shouting for attention.

They go on about themselves…they communicate with their fellow humans in a shared festival of the self.” I don’t know what prompted me to keep reading except the feeling, perhaps, that there had to be a turn. And sure enough there was: “This idea—writing about oneself to create a mirror in which other people recognize their own humanity—has not existed forever. It had to be invented. And, unlike many cultural inventions, it can be traced to a single person: Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, a nobleman, government official and wine-grower who lived in the Perigord area of south-western France from 1533 to 1592.

Montaigne wrote 107 essays in which he “jotted down whatever was going through his head when he picked up his pen, capturing encounters and states of mind as they happened. He used these experiences as the basis for asking himself questions, above all the big question that fascinated him as it did many of his contemporaries. Although it is not quite grammatical in English, it can be phrased in three simple words: “How to live?” Bakewell explains that this is not the same as the ethical question, “How should one live?” but rather focuses on what people actually do as they attempt to live “a good life.”

Answering “How to live?” splintered into ” a myriad of other pragmatic questions.” One that he asked that stood out for me was “What do you say to your dog when he wants to go out and play, while you want to stay at your desk writing your book?” In my case I would rephrase it as follows: What do you say to your dog when she wants to go out and play, while you are up to your eyeballs in a fresh palette of paint—acrylic or oil?

Montaigne proceeded to answer these questions by telling what he did in each case, providing all the details, all the “sensations that are harder to capture in words, …He even writes about the sheer feeling of being alive.” And the result of this accumulated detail is a self-portrait “so vivid that it practically gets up off the page and sits down next to you to read over your shoulder.” And then another turn: the result of having created such a vivid self-portrait is that each reader is able to see him or herself in the portrait—The journalist Bernard Levin, in 1991, said, “I defy any reader of Montaigne not to put down the book at some point and say with incredulity: ‘How did he know all that about me?’

I can’t wait to read Bakewell’s book. …And I feel much better already about blogging.