Mabel’s Lights IIII, third in series, Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Taos,
New Mexico, February 2007, photo © 2007-2011, by QuoinMonkey.
All rights reserved.
When we were sitting around the fire at a writing retreat a few weekends ago, someone threw two questions out on the floor — If you could go back in time, who would you want to meet? What period in history would you visit? The answers stirred up a lively discussion — and 30 minutes of time travel.
Last Friday at the art studio, same thing. We pulled musty old boxes of albums out of storage — Neil Young, Van Morrison, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Joni Mitchell, Olivia artists, Meg Christian, Margie Adam, and Cris Williamson (women who blazed the way for female musicians, Women’s Music, and Lilith Fair), Aretha Franklin, Prince, UB40, Bob Marley, and Two Nice Girls. We played analogue music on a refurbished turntable; the three of us reminisced about the days before Internet, cell phones, and pagers.
People used to sit around in college dorm rooms and spend hours talking about literature, art, music, women’s rights, civil rights, the environment. When we walked into a room, and the first thing we did was throw a scratchy album on the stereo, light candles (when candles still dripped), and plop down on the nearest sofa to talk. We painted blue skies and puffy clouds on the wall of the 1800’s apartment we were renting. Hours passed; we didn’t notice. Yet every second we talked, the world kept changing.
That’s why I’d go back to the 1920’s, to the salons of Paris; to Mabel’s heyday in Taos; to the likes of Gertrude Stein, D. H. Lawrence, Frieda Lawrence, Georgia O’Keeffe, Dorothy Brett, Aldous Huxley, Alfred Stieglitz, and Carl Jung. In the 1920’s, a creative renaissance was booming; the second wave of feminism was rolling across the country, women could finally vote.
Photographer, Berenice Abbott studied with Man Ray in the early 1920’s. Amelia Earhart took her first flying lesson on January 3, 1921, and in six months managed to save enough money to buy her first plane (Hillary Swank will star in the lead role of the upcoming feature film “Amelia” along with Richard Gere and Ewan McGregor. Shooting is taking place in Toronto and the film is currently scheduled to be released sometime in 2009.)
In 1922, Frida Kahlo attended the National Preparatory School in Mexico City, with a goal of studying medicine at university. She admired Diego Rivera as he worked on a mural at the prep school. In 1925, Zora Neale Hurston became Barnard’s first black student, studied under anthropologist, Dr. Franz Boas, and received a scholarship through novelist, Barnard founder, and Harlem Renaissance supporter, Annie Nathen Mayer.
During the 1920s, Hurston was dubbed “Queen of the Renaissance.” She was good friends with Richard Wright until their differences in philosophy, and a dispute over a mutual project they were working on, drove a wedge between them.
For me, it’s the 1920’s, hands down, for time travel. But if I had to choose who I would want to meet, there are three people who come to mind: Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Roosevelt, and James Baldwin.
As a writer, I find Baldwin inspiring. According to Literature, the Companion Website for Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, Baldwin published:
- 6 novels
- a collection of short stories
- two plays
- a screenplay about the life of Malcolm X (later the basis for a Spike Lee film)
- a volume of poems
- two book-length dialogues (one with anthropologist Margaret Mead, the other with poet Nikki Giovanni)
- a short book (part autobiographically-based and part sociologically-based) about American movies
- a long essay on a series of murders of young African American children in Atlanta, Georgia, in the early 1980’s
- 5 other volumes of essays and nonfiction
The man was on fire.
If you could go back in time, where would you go? Who would you like to meet?
Mabel’s Place II, The Early Days, Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Taos, New Mexico, July 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Mabel, Tony, Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Taos, New Mexico, July 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
-posted on red Ravine, Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
-related to posts: WRITING TOPIC – BAND-AIDS® & OTHER 1920′s INVENTIONS, The Vitality Of Place — Preserving The Legacy Of “Home”
Great post QM. I love the 20’s as well. What’s not to love about those Flappers, great art Deco designs, cool music and stylish clothing. But if I could go back…in time…to meet anyone, I would love to meet my Grandmother. She was a wonderful painter and according to my Father, the sweetest woman that ever lived.
QM…If you ever were to meet me, I rarely go out into the sun without my vividly colored rice paper umbrellas. I’ve carried them for at least 20 years. I was gifted one photo of my Grandmother a couple years back…and the wonder of it is…she poses with both a lovely smile…and her rice paper umbrella.
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heather, that’s great. We can go back to the 20’s together. 8) And I’ll see you there with your rice paper umbrella. Great story about the photo of your grandmother. So do you think you remembered that from her? Or that it was simply passed down as part of the internal family lineage?
I found this list of 1920’s slang on an antique car site – it’s kind of fun to see the words and phrases that were invented during that time. We are still using many of them. I think it would have been a fun time to go out dancing.
Potpourri – Slang of the 1920’s (LINK)
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Evocative and inspiring. I loved the juxtaposition of life in the 20’s with life in the 60’s–all those beloved musicians like Chris Williamson, Meg Christian, Neil Young and Van Morrison, always heard best with candlelight and before (and after) intense conversations. And the photo of the Mabel Dodge Luhan home is fantastic.
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QM,
Interesting post. I am very interested in the West. I’d like to see southwest New Mexico during its wild and wooly days. Mogollon, Silver City, and Lake Valley all booming with activity. This would probably be around the end of the 19th century. 1890’s or so. That’d be cool to experience.
MM
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I think I would like to travel back to Taos and Northern NM in the 1920s, but in addition to meeting the socialites and artists, I would like to meet my dad’s parents. My dad was born in 1923, I think, and his father died by early 1930, his mother a few years later. I think it would be fascinating and probably sobering to see how simple their lives were, how hard, rock hard scrabble.
I would also love to travel back to the late 1600s, around 1680, when Taos Indian Pope’ led a revolution against the Spaniards that pushed them out of NM. I would have loved to meet Pope’, a sort of Che Guevera of his time.
I’ll have to think of others, QM. I’ve always wondered about Amelia Earhart. James Baldwin must have been an incredibly deep thinking man. Georgia O’Keeffe. Frida Kahlo.
Mabel Dodge not so much. Just a feeling I have that I wouldn’t have liked her. Although I love the photos and I love her home.
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Deborah, thanks. I’m so happy there’s someone else out there who remembers Women’s Music! One of our studiomates was so happy to see those albums. It’s a lot of fun to read the jacket covers and see the photographs album-sized and not so tiny on the bottom of a CD cover that you can hardly make them out. It’s also fun to hear all the old music in analogue. Makes me glad I saved all those old albums. 8)
mimbresman, sounds like a wild time, going back to the Wild, Wild West. I think it might have been fun being a fly on the wall during those times. But I”m not sure I would have wanted to be a woman out there in the Wild West! Unless I lived close to the land, kind of off in a community with other like-minded people.
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It’s always interesting to contemplate things like this. We have the advantage of time between us and the past, where things take on a life of their own and make posthumous heroes of very ordinary people.
I love philosophy, but realize that many of my heroes of philosophy were never regarded with much respect in their time. Consider Spinoza. I would have loved to have sat at his little table and eaten some of his raisiny-gruel concoction, just for the chance to consider things that were heretical and life-threatening at the time.
Hindsight makes this thought experiment work. Have fun!
Brian
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ybonesy, I like the idea that you and heather bring up — about visiting our own grandparents or great grandparents. Going back and seeing exactly how they lived. I would have wanted to visit my great, great grandmother on my mother’s side. She was a healer and collected herbs with my grandmother. Mom has found a couple of references in her genealogy searches that she may have been Native American. I’d want to talk to her and learn what she knows about the land.
Sounds cool to visit Taos in the 1600’s. Was that around the time it was founded? Sounds like turbulent times.
About Mabel, I admire her tenacity and her Utopian Vision for artists and writers in Taos. But everything I’ve read indicates she could be a difficult woman. It’s funny, I was just reading the same thing about Georgia O’Keeffe. I ran across an old article I had saved written by a woman who worked at Ghost Ranch one summer as Georgia’s live-in assistant. This was near the end of O’Keeffe’s life and the woman slept outside her room, brought her medication, things like that. She said that Georgia could be kind of crotchety, too. And opinionated. She definitely knew what she wanted and liked.
It reminds me of all those conversations we’ve had about how strong women have to be to get their work out there. That there is a kind of artistic arrogance that surrounds some of these women. If you think about it, they had to work twice as hard to be noticed and recognized for their accomplishments. In that regard, I sometimes wonder what’s changed!
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Brian, interesting choice, the Dutch philosopher, Spinoza. Good point about hindsight and its 20/20 vision. I don’t think his Ethics work (1600’s) was regarded very highly until long after his death. I used to like to study the philosophers. Do they still teach them when kids enter college? It used to be a requirement (but then, so was Latin which I had to take in Junior High).
I like what you say about hindsight making posthumous heroes of very ordinary people. I love the ordinary hero — everyman, everywoman. And I think looking back at those who were ordinary gives us the tools to find these same kinds of people living in our lives today.
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What I react negatively to about Mabel is more of a certain patronizing attitude that many Easterners and others from outside of NM had toward NM and its people. Yes, she married Tony Luhan, but how much of that was because he was an exotic thing that fulfilled her self-image?
BTW, there was a whole movement, more in the 1940s/50s, of environmental determinism — a belief that the harsh environment of NM was responsible for the “backward” nature (not my description) of New Mexicans. That they were poor because they couldn’t grow much in the land, that they couldn’t help but be small and brown given the environment. This was another way in which people from the outside came in, observed, and made assumptions about the simple and so incredibly different lives they saw here.
So there’s a certain suspicious nature I have toward those who came, who found it beautiful and quaint and special, and what they loved was completely outside of themselves. I especially attribute this idea to Mabel, that she was quite “above” the ordinary, everyday people, except insofar as they were also laborers to build her exquisite place. I don’t know why her, in particular, but she seems to me like people I’ve met people before and who have turned me off.
It completely comes from a gut feel, my own imperfect assumptions, and nothing more.
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QM, in trying to answer your question re: whether Taos was founded around 1680 (no, that’s when the Pueblo Revolt happened against the Spanish colonizers), I found this very interesting timeline of Taos history:
http://www.taos-history.org/time.html
Take a look. It’s quite amazing.
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ybonesy, yes, I think there are many who feel the way you do about Mabel Dodge. She’s become a kind of lightning rod for the movement of outsiders into New Mexico, and specifically, Taos. (As I’m thinking about it, and at the risk of opening a can of worms, it reminds me of the way Hillary has become a current day lightning rod, for a certain kind of negative association.) But the movement you are talking about somehow seems a lot bigger than Mabel to me.
It does seem like most of the writers and artists who came to New Mexico during that period of the 1920’s were not what I’d call “ordinary” people – the Lawrences, O’Keeffe, many others came from the East, from wealth, or had married into it.
I’m not sure about Tony and Mabel. It seemed kind of mutual from what I’ve read. I seem to remember he had a dream about her, a vision, didn’t he? long before she arrived. And then told her he had dreamed about her. Then she left her husband for him. Have you read any of the books about them around that time? For better, or for worse, I think it might have been meant to be.
From what I’ve read about the settling of this country, I’m not sure the experience of people coming in and taking over the land, misunderstanding its peoples, is unique to New Mexico. It seems like it has happened all over this country. And that kind of tension, between outsiders and those who grow up in a state or on the land there, seems very much alive to me when I travel. I also feel it when I go up to some of the rural areas of Minnesota. And I often heard it from my Montana friends who grew up in that state. They did not like outsiders coming in; there was often an “us and them” energy going on. It’s a good topic for discussion. Luckily, we are all imperfect. 8)
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As I’m thinking about it, and at the risk of opening a can of worms, it reminds me of the way Hillary has become a current day lightning rod, for a certain kind of negative association.
Yikes, that *is* a can of worms. 8) Hey, I wonder if Mabel and Hillary would have enjoyed meeting and if so, would they have liked one another? What about Bill and Tony? 8) 8)
From what I’ve read about the settling of this country, I’m not sure the experience of people coming in and taking over the land, misunderstanding its peoples, is unique to New Mexico.
Of course not. It’s a story that is common in so many places, all over the world. And it continues. Conquest, reconquest, more conquest. Or, as some might see it, progress, life.
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ybonesy, that’s an amazing timeline link. I can hardly bend my mind around numbers like twenty-nine million years for the land. And people at the 12,000 and 3000 BC markers. And is it 1050 for the pueblo beginnings.
Lots of turbulence in the 1600’s. I had seen somewhere the number 1620 for the time Taos was founded. It makes me wonder what they were basing that on.
It’s interesting that there’s a mark in the 1800’s for the arrival of the first “American” artists. I wonder if that was the precursor to Mabel’s vision.
1898
The first American artist, Ernest Blumenschien and Bert Phillips arrive in Taos when their wagon wheel broke. They liked it and stayed, later to establish an Artist Colony.
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Yeah, I noticed that, too. I remembered the story about the wagon wheel, but I hadn’t recalled the timeframe.
BTW, I haven’t read Mabel Dodge’s memoirs; have you?
From my family members, Jim would like to meet his grandfather that he never knew. Em would like to meet Cleopatra.
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Cleopatra! Now that just rocks. 8)
I read Edge of Taos Desert (LINK). And Winter In Taos (LINK). Winter in Taos talks a lot about her house and takes place over one winter day in Taos in the 1930’s.
But it was a while ago now that I read them. I’d like to reread them, now that I’ve been to Taos quite a few more times. Reading her books adds a whole other level to staying at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House.
BTW, ybonesy, the link I added in the body of the post over the line — Mabel’s heyday in Taos — is an excellent NY Times article by Henry Shukman about Mabel and many of the Taos characters in the post. Remember Natalie mentioning him in the interview in April? It was great to find a link to one of his pieces.
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I clicked on that link, QM, and recognized the article from the one that had come out when we were in Taos, right? Wasn’t it posted on the board at Caffe Tazza the day we were “just sitting”?
But I hadn’t realized it was by Henry Shukman, Natalie’s friend.
It is a great article.
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I’m not sure. Could be. It’s from October 22, 2006. I don’t remember an article posted in Caffe Tazza. I’m not sure if I’ve ever checked out the bulletin board there. My last memory of being there at Tazza is last July. (Has it been almost a year already?) I bought a little motorcycle sculpture from one of the artists who had work in one of their cases. He happened to be there that day, so I talked to him about his work.
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Or wait, maybe that was a different trip that I bought that sculpture. Last July I was there in Tazza for their open mic. There was a big thunderstorm that night and a rainbow. I think it was right after a workshop ended.
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QM, this post sparks a lot of interesting thoughts! If I were to go back in time I would choose the early 1900’s. Of course wanting to meet some of my ancestors & the 1920’s would be awesome! Perhaps meeting famous people before they became famous, but that really wouldn’t matter much to me. D
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diddy, yeah, it wouldn’t matter that much, would it. People before they become famous are just ordinary people like the rest of us. Perhaps the lucky ones remain so.
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what a fun trip down my own memory lane. some of the times in my life I loved the best revolved around people sitting around, playing records, sharing a smoke, and talking about how we would ‘rule the world’ with peace, love and understanding.
I was born in 1957, so I’m a little too too young to have been a member of the Beat Generation. But those would have been my kinda people, I think. Hanging with Jack Kerouac would have been a real E Ticket Ride.
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QM, I never met my Grandmother. She was gone before I came along. The umbrella is a mystery of life.
Georgia WAS a tough cookie. She came from small beginnings but had to learn to survive the brilliant Alfred and his major ego… Dorothy Norman…and at the end…the loss of her sight.
I won’t tell you about Tony and O’Keeffe. 😉
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Grace, the Beats were a wild bunch. I was a little too young for them, too, and learned about them more after the fact. I feel the same way though — part of me would have been fascinated by their rebelliousness and the way it morphed into poetry, art, and writing. I think there’s another kind of conservative side to me that wouldn’t have been able to hack the uncertainty of the way they lived though. Always on the road to somewhere else.
And though I like Ginsberg and Kerouac, it seems like the women of the Beat Generation got kind of lost in there somewhere. I’ve read a little about them and even found a link that I think I posted in the comments on a Kerouac post. Even I can’t remember their names. 😦 I’ll have to search for that in the comments somewhere past.
heather, yes, Alfred’s ego, I’ve read a little about it. And about Georgia. She did have humble beginnings on a farm in Wisconsin if I recall, not that many miles from here. Was it Sun Prairie? Love that name.
Tony and Georgia? I hadn’t heard about that. Please — do tell (if you so desire). Or maybe that was it exactly — desire. 8)
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I really enjoyed this post and especially the thought of re-creating the artists’ “salons” of the past again today. Chris Williamson and Meg Christian cheered me on and inspired me through the ’70’s and early ’80’s. Since I don’t listen to many albums or tapes anymore, that is one part of the past I would like to bring forward to my present.
It is curious how some things fall away and also how some don’t. I have moved my weaving studio back into my house. I have vowed to really clear all the clutter from that space before I set it up again. What I have found is just how much of the past I have clung to. I am in a process of letting-go and creating a space for new things to happen.
In the process, I have become acutely aware of how often my mind is occupied by leaping to the past. So, for now, I am focused a little more on the possibilities of the present moment.
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breathepeace, I didn’t know you were a weaver. How wonderful. The woman who moved out of the studio we moved into a few months ago was a weaver. She had the whole space (we now have 4 in that same space) and there were a couple of huge looms set up. I have no idea how to weave. But just the presence of a loom like that takes me back to a rooted place.
I agree, it’s curious what falls away, and what stays. When I read your comment about focusing on the present, I immediately thought about how hard that is when you are working on a memoir. Memoir, by definition, is about the past — about pulling it forward and integrating it into the present.
I used to dwell so much on the past, trying to understand some of the pain I felt about parts of it. And I did quite a bit of clinging, too. It feels different these days. I’m still trying to let go of a lot of objects that have memories, sifting through what to keep. It’s a long process for me.
But the more I visit the past, dig up memories and information, the easier it gets to let go. It’s kind of strange that way. I can see why memoir has become one of the most energetic genres. It’s the past filtering into the present (in an intentional way) — which changes the future.
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Funny how so many of us feel a connection to the times of our grandmothers, whether we knew them or not. I grew up in a 4 generation home, so spent the first 12 years with my great-grandmother, born in 1882 and a womens libber. Divorced in 1901 with a 1 year old, studied practical nursing in a correspondence course, became a midwife out in the country, and dragged her little girl along as her helper. She claimed she attended the births of a thousand babies, but that seems like an awful lot to me..:-) She was a spitfire in her 80s, I’d have loved to have known her when she was younger.
And yes, O’Keeffe was born in Sun Prairie, right outside of Madison. Guess she gave her private art teachers fits when she was a child – did as she pleased then, too. I remember reading she went to the Art Institute in Chicago for a year but didn’t go back because she had typhoid I think. And she was happy that she didn’t return. Wanted to do it on her own. I can sure understand that kind of thinking.
I’m sure Georgia would have been a character to meet, but perhaps not best friend material. Sound like Mabel was that a way, too. Funny thing about artists then – they had to fight for their way, I suspect.
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[…] -related to post, If You Could Go Back In Time… […]
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Bo, somehow I missed your last comment. It seems so unusual to grow up in a 4 generation home these days. What a gift. And your great grandmother was a women’s libber – I bet she was a firecracker.
Yeah, maybe Georgia and Mabel would not have been good best friend material. Well put (and diplomatic). 8) I wonder if it’s that arrogance about their Vision and their work that ybonesy sometimes talks about — a certain amount of arrogance around their art, writing, vision, in order to get their work out there and be noticed.
Thanks for the great comment.
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if i could go back in time, i’d go back to 1993 and convince River Phoenix not to take that fatal speed ball (heroin and cocaine mixed together in a needle). if i could do that then maybe he’d still be alive today, or at least his life would have been a little bit longer.
RIP River Jude Phoenix
(1970-1993)
A soul taken far too soon.
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Annie, thanks for your comment. A noble cause for a great actor.
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[…] I met my blog partner. We were both attending a silent retreat with Natalie Goldberg in Taos at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House, near the foot of sacred Taos Mountain. It was the first silent retreat with Natalie for both of […]
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[…] the name Amelia. It reminds me of Amelia Earhart. I never thought to ask Mom if she was named after the famous aviator. Amelia Earhart’s plane disappeared on July 2nd, 1937 near Howland Island in the South […]
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[…] If You Could Go Back In Time – Mabel headed to Taos in the 1920’s. It was a New Age when many other writers and artists were co-creating artists’ colonies and writing spaces. A fotoblog of Mabel’s and some history from the time. […]
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[…] thing that grounds me is looking to writers and artists who have gone before; their sage advice is hard earned and welcome. Recently, I perused paintings by Georgia […]
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[…] I met my blog partner. We were both attending a silent retreat with Natalie Goldberg in Taos at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House, near the foot of sacred Taos Mountain. It was the first silent retreat with Natalie for both of […]
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[…] was strange to find myself sitting in the zendo at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, our teacher Natalie Goldberg urging us to Let Go. I had just a few weeks before made the […]
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Happy Birthday, Mabel Dodge Luhan! I remember….
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