If You Could Go Back In Time…

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.

Mabel & Tony, Taos, New Mexico, July 2007, photo © 2007-2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

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”

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White Elephants On Art

White Elephant Cafe, Augusta, Georgia, June 2007, photo © 2007-2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved. 

I don’t have much energy for writing. Liz and I spent the day at the Frida Kahlo Exhibit at the Walker Art Center. Then romped around the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and Conservatory, snapping photographs of: 

That’s our idea of a FUN day. This is a sculpture by Claes Oldenburg that’s pretty famous around these parts. Oldenburg’s wife and collaborator, Coosje Van Bruggen, contributed the cherry as a playful reference to the Garden’s formal geometry. It reminded her of Versailles and the larger-than-life dining etiquette of Louis XIV. She also conceived the pond’s shape in the form of linden seed.

The sculpture was a gift from Frederick R. Weisman in honor of his parents, William and Mary Weisman in 1988.  The Basilica of St. Mary is in the background (left). 

Spoonbridge and Cherry, 1985-1988
aluminum, stainless steel, paint
354 x 618 x 162 in.

The Frida Kahlo Exhibit – all I can say is WOW. I’m still reeling from standing a nose width from her paintings. And viewing the 80 or 90 vintage family photographs of Frida and Diego Rivera. More to come on Frida. We’re thinking of going back Monday night during Members Appreciation.

When we arrived at the Walker, the wait to get into the exhibit was a minimum of 1 hour. But there was a Members Express line that would roll us right into the exhibit in 5 minutes – we’re now members of the Walker. If you live in the Twin Cities, or even within 100 miles, I recommend you see it before it leaves on January 20th. Chances are it will be a long time until you have the opportunity to view a collection like this again.

We’re on the downside of New Year’s week. I’m wondering what other gifts in the form of:

 

people received for Christmas. For details of the White Elephant ritual, I refer you to the comments in the pig post, On Collecting Pigs Against Your Will (Comment 42 and on). Do you have any Christmas presents you’re going to return? Ties, wallets, shirts, an hourglass, or maybe some time in a bottle?

The White Elephant Cafe was a bar in the 1950’s. Last June my mother, step-dad, and I took a drive down Broad Street in downtown Augusta, Georgia. I took photographs. They talked about their memories of Augusta. The White Elephant was a place my grandfather used to frequent. The stories were rich.

Now they serve Southern lunches with: White Elephant Peanut Butter Pie and Moroccan Chutney Meatballs on Couscous. The most expensive thing on the menu is the: Rib-eye Grilled in a Peach Balsamic Sauce Topped w/ Peaches & Bacon served w/Smashed Red Potatoes for $18.95. I’m drawn to the: Smoked Salmon Hash for $8.95. Anything hash and I’m there.

New Year’s luck, did I mention I’ve had my fill of black-eyed peas. Remember all those extra:

I cooked up in bulk? No way I could eat them all. Ugh, tummy rumble.

Well, that’s it for Saturday. I’m heading off to watch a movie on the couch. Over and out with a portrait I took of Liz in the Conservatory at the Sculpture Garden after frolicking in the snow.

Any other White Elephants? So far I’ve heard about a Starter Pig and a bottle of Stay Young pills (2 a day for the next 40 years). Next year maybe Love Potion #9. (I remember the 60’s song by the Searchers? But something tells me they weren’t the first to record it.) Too tired for more research tonight. Off to see the Wizard.

-related to post, Dreaming Of Frida Kahlo

-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, January 5th, 2008

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Dreaming Of Frida Kahlo

By Laura Stokes

Casa Azul, the home where Frida Kahlo was born, lived, and died; July 2007, photo © 2007 by Laura Stokes, all rights reserved.

Acting on dream and impulse, we found ourselves in Mexico City last weekend at the Frida Kahlo Centennial Celebration at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. I had read about the exhibit but never thought we would go until I told a friend whose passion for Frida is even larger than mine, and somehow momentum took over. So we booked a flight and arrived late on a Friday evening, very hungry after passing on an option to buy “dinner” of potato chips and Mars bars, the current American Airlines cuisine.

The town was quiet and all the restaurants in the area were closed by 10:30. Our hotel dated from the 17th century when it served as a monastery — old, quaint and spare, as opposed to the luxurious Sheraton across the street where most Americans must have been staying, as we saw only Mexican families in The Cortez. This suited us perfectly and was consistent with our wish to melt into the life of the city. We were pleasantly surprised to see few tourists in the Zocalo, the restaurants, and the museums — selfish of us, I suppose, because I am sure the Mexican economy could use the tourist trade.

I had expected to be touched and inspired by Frida’s actual work, but so much more came to the surface as I stood in the long queues of Mexicans waiting for this unique opportunity to pay homage to one of their most beloved cultural heroes and icons. The works were chosen to exhibit Frida’s life-long dedication to and use of indigenous Mexican folk traditions and popular arts in her work and lifestyle. And by the snail’s pace of the crowd of visitors as they crept along the walls devouring each word of the descriptions and studiously examining the detail and imagery of her paintings, it was obvious that Frida must have been successful in honestly evoking a genuine connection with her audience. Frida’s reverence for the indigenous people and culture permeated her work and was transmitted to those who could most recognize and appreciate it.

Again, at Casa Azul, where Frida was born, lived and died, I continued to notice the reverence of the Mexican people for her work The same long lines of Mexicans were there as were at the museum and the same thoughtful and thorough scrutiny of the works and the memorabilia. I was struck with envy and resentment, as I have often been before, at the lack of heritage and story in my own white Anglo-Saxon protestant background, the poverty of tradition and influence and cherishing of what has passed.

I ponder the social consequences of such a lack of understanding of the significance of belonging to a culture rooted in centuries of custom and tradition and language and how that ignorance and insensitivity is manifested in my own country.

Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, July 2007, all photos © 2007 by Laura Stokes, all rights reserved.

About Laura:  Laura Stokes lives in the Rio Grande valley, outside Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she works with great passion on matters of peace and social justice. She is also active in her community and with her daughters and granddaughter, who she happens to presently be keeping up with in Ghost Ranch.

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