May 5th is the anniversary of the birth of Nellie Bly, American journalist and early feminist.  Well, she didn’t know she was a feminist, but she lived the life.

She was born in 1865 and lived a normal life until age 6 when her father died suddenly.  This wouldn’t have been so tragic except that he died without a Will and therefore his family had no claim to his estate.  Nellie was actually born, Elizabeth Cochran.  The Nellie Bly name was chosen much later. 

The family struggled along and eventually ‘Elizabeth’ went to a Normal school in Indiana with the intent of becoming a teacher.  When her mother’s financial circumstances deteriorated, Nellie quit school and jointed her mother running a boarding house in Pittsburgh.  As luck would have it, when Nellie was 18, she was aggravated by an editorial in the Pittsburgh Dispatch and wrote a response that caught the eye of the managing editor, George Madden, who offered her a job.

That was when Elizabeth took the name of Nellie Bly, chosen from the name of a Stephen Foster song title. She took on undercover assignments and did a 10 day stint in Bellevue hospital for the mentally ill. The resulting book was Ten Days In a Mad House. She also went undercover in the sweat shops of New York, exposing the terrible conditions of workers.

In 1889, The New York World hired Nellie to copy the adventures of Jules Vernes’ novel, Around the World in 80 Days. She broke a world record by finishing the trip in a mere 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes, and 14 seconds. That was with travel on ships, trains, rickshaws, horses, etc. Her record was only held for a few months though. George Frances Train beat the record by making the trip in 67 days. Oiled the wheels on the rickshaws perhaps.

When Nellie was 30 she retired from journalism for many years. She married Robert Seaman, age 70, who was a millionaire industrialist. In 1904, she was acting as President of the Iron Clad Manufacturing Company when her husband passed away. The company was doing quite well but due to employee embezzlement, it went into bankruptcy. Her career turned back to journalism and she continued her work until her death in 1922.

Nellie Bly was an inspiration to many young women hoping to become investigative journalists. The adventures with her work, especially with her world tour, have been turned in to many books and movies and are still interesting to read/view today. She was a feminist without really focusing on that part of politics and never had the right to vote. Her work took guts and drive and she was consistently up to the challenge.

“Make new friends, but keep the old,

One is silver, and the other’s gold.”  1925 Girl Scout Song Book

I’ve recently been reconnecting with old friends.  Some from 30 years ago and some from 10 years ago.  It’s a fun thing to reminisce but even more fun to find out what people are doing now, who they are, their plans, their dreams. 

Friday I met with a former co-worker from the year 2000.  We were hired in with two other people and began our training in New York City at the same time, the first week of January.  It was a tremendous time of learning for each of us and maybe, especially, me.  I had never been to New York and I was like a typical gawking site seer in the big city.  It was fascinating and so perfect.  The weather was strangely mild for January, people were surprisingly very kind and helpful and interesting.  I understood the work I was to do and got to know the other new hires pretty well.  In fact, one of them shared the germs with me from her children that became the worst flu I have had in my life.  I barely made it back home on a late Friday evening flight and spent the next three days in bed.  Then I had to get back on a plane and fly to Dayton or someplace in Ohio and travel with a co-worker for the week.  During that time of my illness, I lost about 20 pounds.  Of course, they have been found since then.

Now, to get back on track. This former co-worker was a victim of a cut back at work, as I was, and about 25 of our co-workers. Some of us have stayed in touch but others have been ‘lost.’ I was happy to reconnect with this particular person and share some of what has happened over the past 12 years since we’ve seen each other. We talked about all kinds of things and I gave him the nickel tour of St Louis in a pretty much monsoonal rain. It was one of the nicest afternoons I have spent in years other than time spent with my husband. We will certainly stay in touch from now on and I think of the 1968 Simon and Garfunkel song Friends/Bookends:

“Time it was, and what a time it was, its . . . a time of innocence, A time of confidences”
“Can you imagine us years from today, Sharing a park bench quietly?”

And I have been meeting with old friends from college and high school too. Funny that as we grow older, we look back and like to remember people we used to know or would like to know again. Some of my old friends have surprised me with different lifestyles or more children than I thought they would have. Some never married. Some have married many times. Some have leaned far left and some, far right. Some have become deeply religious and some have become agnostics or atheists. I truly appreciate all of them and enjoy getting reacquainted.

To old friends and new, I offer this additional verse from the Silver and Gold song:

“You have one hand,
I have the other,
Put them together,
We have each other.”

I became interested in the work of Dorothea Lange many years ago and remain fascinated with her art, her photographs, to this day.

She had two major formative issues when she was quite young.  First, at age 7, she contracted polio and had a limp from a weak, shortened leg from that time on.  Her comment on how that impacted her life was,  “It formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me and humiliated me. I’ve never gotten over it, and I am aware of the force and power of it.”^[  The second major personal pain was that her father abandoned the family when she was 12.  At that point, she changed her last name to that of the maiden name of her mother.  She became a very strong, independent woman and studied photography at Columbia University in NYC.

After she moved to San Francisco, she met and married the Western artist, Maynard Dixon in 1920, continuing her work and having two children with him.  They eventually divorced in 1935 and Dorothea married Paul Taylor, a Professor of Economics at the University of California.  He educated Dorothea in social and political matters and they worked together to document the lives of migrant workers and sharecroppers.

During the Great Depression years, from 1935 to 1939, she worked for the RA and FSA and photographed the plight of the people fleeing the Dust Bowl and people suffering from the Depression. Her typical subjects were sharecroppers, displaced farm families and migrant workers. The pictures she took, along with other RA and FSA photographers, brought the story of the poor to magazine and newspaper readers across the country.

You may remember her most well know picture, “Migrant Mother.” In 1960 Dorothea was interviewed about that picture and said, “I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.”

What struck me most about Dorothea’s photography was that the people seemed not to pose for her or even be aware of her presence. She said that because of her shyness, she always just tried to become an invisible person in the background and not intrude into the personal space of her subjects. I think she was incredibly successful and for that reason we still celebrate her photographs to this day.

I am very happy to say Dorothea Lange’s photography will be on display in St Louis’ Grand Center starting this August. It will be a joy to see her work in person, as I know she would have liked it to be viewed. She was yet another great artist that shared a view of American through a discriminating lens.

May Day is Lei Day in Hawai’i

Garlands of flowers everywhere
All of the colors in the rainbow
Maidens with blossoms in their hair
Flowers that mean we should be happy
Throwing aside a load of care
Oh, May Day is Lei Day in Hawai’i
May Day is happy day out there.

– Red Hawke, 1928

This is one of the very best times to visit our 50th state. In Hawaii, since 1928, May 1st has been celebrated as Lei Day. The idea of a day to celebrate leis was first suggested in a newspaper article written by poet and writer Don Blanding, then the following year, Grace Tower Warren created the saying, ‘May Day is Lei Day,’ and the local government recognized it officially.

Each island has their own festivities and on Oahu, the main activities are centered in Queen Kapi’olani Park in Waikiki. There are many entertainers and, of course, hula, as well as instruction for making leis and competitions for best leis. And, did I forget to mention the food? Typical luau food is on hand with enough variety to satisfy pretty much everyone.

I was fortunate enough to be there many years on May 1st and got to attend the sunset May Day concerts, given by the Brothers Cazimero. They used to be held outside at the ‘bowl’ in Queen Kapi’olani Park. Nothing like the sweet ocean breeze and the scent of thousands of flowers and the warm smiles of the Hawaiian people. The Brothers Caz sang their own great music and also brought in many of the other big name performers of the islands. That was when I got to see IZ, and Hapa, and Keialele Reichel. I was head over hills in love with Hawaiian music and still am. There’s something about the flow of the music and the vocal harmonies that take me back to the aloha of the islands.

Something else pretty spectacular to see on Oahu on May Day is the statue of King Kamahamaha in downtown Honolulu. His outstretched arms are covered with hundreds of leis, sending a very warm message of Aloha Nui Loa to all his people.

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”  
―     Sylvia Plath

Let me live, love and say it well in good sentences.”  
―     Sylvia Plath,     The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath is one of those writers young women read when they are balancing between angst and fulfillment.

She is so compelling because her life was a complexity of passion, love, creativity, despair, fear, and futility.  Through all of that, she was an excellent author and poet.  And, even though she was wracked with mental illness, she managed to have the start of a good marriage and produced two children. Of course, after a while, the darkness overwhelmed her and she took her own life with her two young children in the next room.

Sylvia had already made a splash in the literary world with her books and poetry but I wonder if she would be so well remembered if she had merely had a heart attack or died in an auto accident. Part of the attraction to her writing is due to her tragic life. This is true of many writers, not just with tragic lives but sometimes with flamboyant lives. Is a prerequisite of being a notable writer having an interesting personal life? Or, is there something about having the drive to write that makes a writer have a tragic and/or flamboyant life? What makes up the personality of a writer?

The question I ask is more specifically about women writers. George Sands, Willa Cather, Louisa May Alcott, Flannery O’Connor, Mary Shelley, Margaret Atwood, all are well known authors and all have had ‘interesting’ lives. Would we still read their books if they were typical middle income, suburban type people? Or, would they write if they were typical middle income, suburban type people?

I have recently developed a strong distaste for ‘artist statements’ that are required for most gallery shows. As a student of fine arts, I have always thought works of art should speak for themselves and sometimes they speak different messages to different people. Asking someone that produces a painting to ‘explain’ their style or the painting takes something away from the visual experience of viewing the painting. Perhaps this is true also of books and poetry. Maybe we should know less about the author and simply experience the words on the page for a full appreciation of the book or poem.

But, I have to leave with this one last quote from Sylvia Plath. Most writers will, I suspect, agree with this:

“Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.”

Sylvia Plath

“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day. 
”

Ernest Hemingway

Edna O’Brien, author of Country Girl, and many other books has recently been giving interviews and has shared a bit more of her life through her autobiography.  She is an Irish author compared in a way to Yeats with more of a view of the feminine side of life. 

I have read her books and have been interested in her words about her own life and more importantly, the life of a writer.  The thing that struck me over and over was that she said she has always been lonely and she thinks most writers are.

What connection is there between writing and loneliness?  A great deal, I believe.  First of all, it is important for a writer to have time to write.  If one is on ones own, there is more time for creative thinking and pursuits.  Also, if one is on ones own, there can be a brooding about being alone.  More than that, I think if a person is lonely, they carry that with them even when they are in a relationship or in a crowd.  That, I believe, is what Edna O’Brien is saying.

There is something in the pursuit of writing that requires the writer to separate him/herself from others and delve into the story and characters. Much like people in acting professions, writers become a part of their own stories.

Maybe this is the reason creative people have a harder time with relationships than others. If a person is innately lonely, the ‘treasured person’ or ‘other half’ must surely feel this. The loneliness of the artist is perceived by the partner as a type of rejection, furthering the loneliness of the artist. Or, if the writer is fortunate, the ‘other’ is willing to accept that loneliness aspect and be a part of the rest of the writer’s life. I think of Hemmingway, Piccaso, Beethoven, Van Gogh, of course O’Brien, and so many, many others.

If you haven’t had an opportunity to read any of O’Brien’s work, you may want to check out the Country series. Lonely or not, she manages to spin a great yarn and introduce the reader to some fascinating characters.

More than just not wanting the job, I would consider having the job the most vile of nightmares.  And that’s exactly what Margot Woelk thought when she was forced to become one of the food tasters for Adolph Hitler in WWII.

After her husband was drafted and left to fight in Hitler’s army, she fled Berlin to be away from the war as much as possible. Unfortunately she fled to Rastenburg where she was drafted into ‘civilian service.’  Recently, after decades of keeping this terrible secret, she decided to unburden herself of the horror she lived through.  Yes, at 95 years old, she finally felt she had to tell her story.

Rastenburg is a town fairly close to the Wolf’s Lair, the hiding place of Hitler during the later part of the war.  He was very much afraid, and for good reason, that his food might be poisoned.  To avert that possibility, he had a group of 15 girls drafted to act as food tasters for him.  Margot said the food was always of the best quality with each meal consisting of vegetables and fruits with either rice or pasta, prepared by the best of chefs. Although the food was delicious, with every bite there was the fear it would be her last.  You may recall, food was very expensive and hard to get during those war years and most civilians as well as most military were in a constant state of being malnourished. The job had it’s plus side in that she wouldn’t starve to death, but the down side was the looming possibility of poisoning.

She worked two and a half years as a food taster and never once saw Hitler. She saw his SS Guards and his favorite dog, but never him. When the war started turning for the worse for Germany, the SS Guards warned Margot to leave, which advice she took, heading back home to Berlin. The other 14 girls were from the Rastenburg area and they returned to their homes. Unfortunately for those girls, the Russians came in to their villages, captured them and shot all 14. Margot made it back to Berlin in time for the bombing and destruction of that city. After it was known that Hitler died, the Russians came in and took many prisoners, including Margot. As their prisoner, she endured 14 consecutive days of being raped and beaten. She did survive and managed to reunite with her husband and live another 75 years without revealing what happened. At first she thought she would be punished for working in Hitler’s household, then, after that worry subsided, she just wanted to put the ordeal behind her.

There are so many stories from that time of people doing what they had to do to survive and in many cases having to chose between living and dying. The world they inherited after the war provided very little to keep life going. And yet, somehow people do survive. There’s a resilience of the human spirit even in the worst of circumstances doing the worst of jobs. I salute that young girl who feared for her life with every lifting of a fork and final broke her silence to remind us of the unseen horrors of war.

There is a sad loss in the creative world of origami today.  On April 24, 2013, Russell Sutherland passed away and the art of origami will never be the same.

How should we feel when someone we only know through facebook passes away?  Russell’s death was like a blow to the gut for me.  Yes, I only knew him through his work and through fb but I always thought I might meet him some day.  He was only about 700 miles away, down in Corpus Christi. We spent time occasionally ‘PMing” each other and chatting about people we both knew and talking about his life and his art. He was a gentle, kind, giving, and most of all extremely creative person. I did feel like I knew him because of his art and because of what he was willing to share with me through his words. I know he had a tough childhood and he had current health issues. He seemed to be making his way through both of those problems. But, evidently he could not get past his current health issues and succumbed at a too young age, probably in his 50s. Yes, that is way too young to leave this earth in my opinion.

I found out after the fact that he had almost 2,800 friends on fb. He was so generous sharing his folding techniques and promoting others. I didn’t know he also sold his work. I would have gladly purchased something had I known he was short of funds, especially since I loved most of his folds. He really had something for everyone from flowers to sconces for the home to masks. I loved his home décor pieces but never knew I could purchase them. I feel some guilt over this now that I have found out he would have loved to have sold them. He never asked.

I would like to pay tribute to Russell but don’t really know how. Maybe the best I can do is to remember him and share his name and his website while it is still up and running. http://foldedexpressions.com For any artist, beyond their family and children, the best he/she can hope is for their work to carry on. Russell had no family. His ‘children’ were the origami pieces he created.

He will live on the in art of the many people he inspired through his work.

I was interested yesterday to see a thread via Stephen King (TOSK) that seemed to be generated by a post from Brian Klems.  That post is at: http://danasitar.com/2013/04/22/writing-a-book and is titled 3 Things You Shouldn’t do When Writing a Book. 

Well, you know people do write self help articles, all headed with either ‘3 things’ or ‘5 things’ or ’10 things.’  And, they are usually somewhat, if not totally helpful.  At the low end, they can still generate some arguments or some ideas on how to get you moving in the right/write direction.

The article from Brian Klems got a good thread started when he suggested that ‘writers’ should make sure to write a minimum of 30 minutes a day, even when they didn’t feel like it and even if it only generated a few hundred words.

The thread comebacks were everything from how wrong he was to many other suggestions. Some of those were that a writer should produce at least 5,000 written words a day or that writers should give themselves some time off if they need a break. This reminded me so much of comments about pitchers and hitters in one of my favorite sports–baseball.

Let’s see. A pitcher has a fast ball of pretty consistently hitting 97 miles per hour and can get it past the batter most times. He has 8 great games during his pitch rotation. Then, horrors, he has a run of 4 or 5 ‘bad’ games. His pitch just isn’t hitting the speed or he can’t control it any more. What happens? First of all, the fans are terribly upset when the team starts losing. And, of course, the sports writers are all in a tizzy and start to make suggestions of changing the lineup and of what in the world can be done to get the pitcher back up to grade.

Everyone wants to make suggestions and they can range from sending the pitcher ‘down’ to the minors, or moving his spot in the rotation, or trading him, or having him take a few days off. Does anyone ask the pitcher? Sure they do but usually in a rude or accusatory manner. It would be something like this: “Do you still think you can help the team?” Or, “What do you think you need to do to get back on track?” Or, “Should you work more on that fast pitch?” Or even the very obvious, “Why do you think you can’t control the pitch?”

This seems so much to be what happens when writers have ‘block’ or burn out. Should they be required to continue writing 30 minutes a day or 5,000 words a day? Should they be required to take the week off to regroup? Or is all of this based on very individual situations and personalities? My personal thoughts on this are that writers should write every day. It’s a matter of staying in a position to be open to the muse or to the momentum to write. I can’t say how much time others should write but I can say that in most disciplines, whether writing, pitching, playing an instrument, or teaching, every day should include some exercise of your passion/vocation.

I am grateful for the posts of people like Brian Klems with suggestions for new writers on how to get in the pattern of being a writer and I won’t quibble over the details of whether writing should be timed or should be by the word. Whatever it is, it is good, and directs a novice writer to move into the world of becoming a ‘writer’ and helps them become involved, motivated, and inspired.

For some reason, I find things.  Usually sparkly things.  They just catch my eye.

Over the years, I’ve found everything from diamond rings and earrings (usually just one, not a pair), pins, necklaces, and every type of US coin and a few foreign coins.  The finding usually happens on my walks but sometimes just when I get out of the car at a gas station or an office or the grocery store.  It’s not limited to metal items.  I’ve also found paper money (including a $100 bill), lots of cell phones, one Ipad, gift cards, and recently, a very nice Nikon camera. 

I am curious how people lose these items.  Earrings I understand because I have lost a few myself.  Coins I understand too as I have dropped a couple from time to time.  But what about cell phones?  Wouldn’t you notice losing your phone?  Or your Ipad?  I would go into terrors if I lost my camera and it isn’t nearly as expensive as the $900 + one I found in a parking lot. 

Usually I try to locate the owners of the items I find unless it is a bill blowing by me on my walk or one I find run over in a parking lot. Of course, if I saw someone running after that wayward bill, I would pick it up and return it to them.  Cell phones and larger items I take to the police station.  Evidently lots of people lose cell phones and the police are pretty good about finding the owners.  They have told me that sometimes people put their phone on their dashboard or the hood or roof of their car, and when they drive, the phone slips off on to the street or sidewalk.

I was able to find the owner of the Nikon by myself. I picked it up and looked at a few of the pictures stored in the camera and they were mostly of a cute baby having a birthday party. This finding was after dark in a parking lot and not too many places were open. The camera was on the ground near several cars and one of the cars had a baby seat in back. I noticed a restaurant nearby that was open and I went to it and looked through the windows. Couldn’t see anyone with a baby so I stepped inside. Sure enough, there was the child with family and I was able to get the camera back to them.

I’d like to be able to tell you how it is that I find things but I don’t know the answer. I just do. It has to do with the way I observe things and notice when something doesn’t quite fit in its surroundings.

And then too, it’s sometimes just the sparkle that catches my eye.